Brothers’ Keeper

The light of the morning struggles to brighten the day, but the fog has other intentions. The fog lurks along with him through Grianan in the predawn morning, as if it had been eagerly awaiting his arrival.

Pat looked in honest amazement at the mist carpeting the pasture. The low hanging fog was stagnant over the field, one consistency lingering over the green like the guest who has not only overstayed their welcome, but the guest who clearly has no intention of leaving. Anxious and overjoyed, he proceeded through the fog.

Pat’s hands shook. Normally, he would start over, but the plebs ate that shit up, at least on this series. Even though he posted a variety of videos, from gaming to ‘a day in the life’ videos, the fear made him the most money. As blogger and YouTuber extraordinaire, Pat of the channel and brand, ‘Pat’s Special Sauce,’ was currently recording the latest installment of his bread and butter segment, ‘Scare Pat Shitless.’ Basically, he would take requests from his viewers, suggesting things that could scare him. He would put himself in the middle of this legend or that haunting, etcetera. It had its humorous points because it was a raw look at his responses to the rush of being scared. Whether people loved seeing him scared because they were genuinely interested or if they just hated him and wanted to see if he would get hurt, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t really care. He got paid either way.

The fog started a couple months ago near the town of Grianan, Iowa. Not that he was a fan of the Midwest, but Iowa had everything, from random hauntings in nameless cemeteries on the outskirts of small towns, to places like Independence State Mental Hospital in Independence. This was not his first trip to Iowa, and it would not be his last.

Pat’s body jolted and he stopped, sensing something… That was ridiculous. Didn’t that only happen in movies? ‘Wait…do you hear that?’ and then there is a jump scare or smarmy comment from one of the others, anything to set the viewer off balance. But the smell of decay and rotting fish made it impossible to ignore. The water.

The lake.

Pat did not have a fear of water itself. He had no problem drinking it, or swimming in pools of it or taking baths in it (he found the latter disgusting, like a ‘me-soup’ he used to joke to his girlfriend). The feeling he had was similar to what he feels when even thinking about swimming in a lake or other natural collections of water. It was what he could not see.

Sweet boy. They never found his body.

The lake. Every so often, his family would visit the lake. Pat’s uncle had a cabin they occasionally used to get away. The last time they were there was uncharacteristically warm. When his brother and sister, Josh and Jane (eight and ten years old respectively), had eagerly and excitedly ran from the grocery getter, barely waiting for it to stop. His brother’s long blonde hair flopping behind him. They had both worn their swimsuits, donning them the night before, so all they had to do was roll out of bed and into the car.

His brother had been so eager. Pat remembers his excited squeal as he ran down the hill toward the misty, murky water. If there had been a foot more of yard, he surely would have fallen on his face. Even so, he belly flopped into the water. His sister opted for a lady like cannonball off the edge of the dock. He had watched all this through the rear window of the family cruiser, no longer pretending to read. He opened the door to get out of the backseat.

Then, the screams.

Pat ran full tilt, flying down the hill, towards his sister’s screams. He veered off toward the dock, and dove into the murky water. A sudden rush of water and helplessness. Sinking, then triumphantly climbing to the surface.

Pat flailed, spinning around, intermittently swallowing spore and shit laden water. No brother. It was then that he first felt everything in the water boring into his skin, his own organ betrayed him as it became a conduit to his fear. It would pull him down, aided by whatever hands or appendages awaited him in the murkiness below. Its microscopic tendrils bored into his pores and pulled him down. He sunk, arms extended upwards, his sister’s muffled screams fading with the light.

Pat forced himself to continue through the fog. He could barely keep his hands from shaking. He barely progressed five feet before he heard a loud, deep squelching sound. He stopped. His heart was pounding in his head.

“I do this for you, you assholes,” he said before taking two steps. The first one squelched and would have probably pulled off his shoe, but it never had a chance. His second step dropped him into the gaping hole that laid beneath the fog.

Pat’s eyes stung as he blinked them open to darkness. He closed his mouth against the sudden rush of lake water. He felt the cold water around him, already pulling him down. He kicked up toward the light and broke through the surface. The smell of decaying biological matter, of bloated and rotting fish invade his nostrils. Even though he had not been here since the day he had buried deep in his mind, he knew instantly where he was.

Pat treaded and turned. He saw the dock on the familiar shore and began to swim toward it.

Pat’s muscles burned. The dock was not getting any closer. For a second, he could swear he had seen it receding into the distance. He stopped and treaded around looking for any sign of safety, of relief. Not ten feet away, he saw a swimmer floating, bobbing with the ripples of the water.

Pat frantically kicked and splashed toward the swimmer. As he arrived, instead of the plea he planned to deliver, he screamed. The swimmer’s torso had been cut in half, his lower half nowhere to be seen. Tendrils of fat and muscle hung from the eviscerated torso, which (upon closer examination would show) looked more like it had been ripped from its companion. Water flooded his mouth. He tilted his head up and spat out what he hadn’t already choked down. The water pulled him down again, its fluid surface pawing on and into his skin, coaxing him down. The familiar tendrils bore into his pores. His head went under. All he saw was the shimmer of the surface fading into a deep, dark black.

His muscles, not wanting to be occupied by the viscous intruder, began to churn his limbs.

Pat’s hand flailed up and grabbed onto the faded red kick board. His fingers slipped off the edge and snapped together. He grabbed at it again with his other hand, repeating the outcome. Moving past the limits of his muscles he thought existed, he kicked his legs into overdrive and propelled his head above the water. He punched and pried the fresh corpse off the kick board, positioned himself on the board and tried not to listen to his screaming muscles. He sunk almost instantly. He flailed and kicked, and almost lost the board. The boards were meant to keep the upper torso afloat while one could focus on kicking. He calmed down and shifted his weight to hold the front edge of the board, his forearms and hands the only parts of his body on the floatation device. He breathed in and out, eyes closed and treaded lightly with his legs. Heart rate slowing, he backed into the corpse’s head. He screamed, turned around and punched it in the side of the partially submerged head.

The body had turned in the chaos, no longer buoyed by the kick board. Exposing the raw meat and gore of its insides where his waist and legs should have been. His arms were frozen, extended in their kick board position, his long blonde hair fanned out like a sunburst of dirty sea weed. His hands and fingers contorted into claws, like he was trying to be scary, showing his monster claws. Which was made even more morbidly funny because the boy couldn’t have been older than ten.

Pat stopped treading and began to sink. He looked up, and saw his brother’s torso floating towards him.

Pat made an effort to swim away, but only made it a few feet and had to come up for air a final time before his brother pulled him down…

Josh awoke, head throbbing. Giggling drew him around to look through the back window of the family wagon. All he saw were his brother and sister running toward the lake. Pat and Jane (eight and ten years old respectively), to streamline their transition into summer and their way from the bed to the lake, they had both slept in their swimsuits. Pat had just hit the water when Josh started to get out of the car.

Then, the screams.

Josh ran from the car, running toward the scream from his sister. He flew down the hill. He dove off the side of the dock, and plunged through the fog into the murky water. He immediately began to sink, regardless of his efforts to stay afloat. Josh dove and resurfaced several times, but no brother. He flailed, spinning around, intermittently swallowing lake water by what seemed to be the gallon. Jane had gone silent, in anticipation of or forestalling the news. When it was obvious what was happening, she began to wail.

Josh saw the kick board a little too late. The mili-second it took between the time he saw it a couple yards out and when he was pulled under, he had no idea what it meant, but it scared him. He froze. Disoriented by the glare of the reflecting noonday sun, he sank further.

Josh started his ascent, when something clamped onto his ankle. Its…fingers bored into the meat of his calf. He looked down, his brother’s eyes, fish-eye black, hungrily staring back. He rocketed up, grabbed Josh by the waist and rent it from the rest of his body.