After getting barely three hours of sleep, I somehow managed to get to the Pasky Public Library at 9am on the dot.
I scanned the room but couldn’t see Emily anywhere, just a small crowd of people hosting what looked like a book club.
“Psst, Ty!”
I whipped around and saw a sight that was so bizarre it took my brain a second to catch up to my eyes.
Emily and the elderly woman from last night were sitting in the Children’s Books section, sitting on plastic stools with a small blue and yellow table in between them.
They both had a mug of tea in front of them, the old woman eagerly taking a sip from hers as she saw me approach.
“Aw man, you mean I missed out on sharing what I read this week?” I joked as I grabbed a stool, sitting down at the table.
Emily smacked me on the arm, “Shh!”
“OK, OK!” I said, reluctantly lowering my voice.
“Ahh young love,” the woman said, smirking behind her cup of tea, “I remember when I used to chase boys around at your age.”
Emily let out a sound that was somewhere between a nervous cough and an anxious laugh, inadvertently causing the tea in her throat to surge back into her mouth.
The result rendered her unable to speak due to a coughing fit, and left it for me to clarify that we weren’t actually together.
“Um, I think what she’s trying to say, is that we’re not dating,” I said to the woman.
“Well I think you’d make a great couple,” she said, slyly nudging me as Emily wiped her mouth with a tissue.
I definitely had a crush on Emily in high school - we had been friends since we were young after all. Unfortunately being a teenager I never worked up the courage to tell her.
I’d always thought she was cute but now any kind of romance seemed impossible, given we lived in different cities.
“Thanks for the advice...what’s your name by the way?” I asked.
“I’m Annie. I’m sorry if I scared you the other night,” she apologised, putting her hand on my arm, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Annnnyway,” said Emily, “Who are you, how do you know us, and what do you know about that thing in the tank?”
Annie took in a deep breath, bringing her arms close to her chest. A mournful look spread over her face as she seemed to heavily contemplate what she was about to say.
“Margaret was my sister,” she said, finally.
“We grew up here...we didn’t have much but we made do. Margie though…”
Annie slowly rubbed her eyepatch, pressing two fingers to the leather and massaging it rhythmically.
“She had trouble, mentally. She often saw things that weren’t there, or she’d get really worried about things that were never true.
“My ma never really understood it, I guess in her world mental health was something that was considered taboo and never really treated as a real issue.
“So she brushed it under the carpet, never took Margie to see anyone. It was up to me to keep her sane, which I tried my best to do, because I was her big sister and I loved her.
“I think I was the only real person she ever trusted during those years. She was teased relentlessly at school, and while she was superb academically, her teachers always kept their distance.
“They never really understood her.”
Annie paused, looking into the hazy tea in her mug. I realised that both me and Emily had begun to lean in closer to her, so close that we could see the inside details of her cup.
“But she found a man. Got married. Had a family. All of which was really good for her, she loved her son more than life itself,” she said, still peering down into her cup.
“That’s why, the day when Michael fell into the water tank…
She trailed off, staring out into space. At this point Emily and I were practically face-to-face with her, and I could see the tears beginning to well up in her one visible eye.
“Sorry,” Annie said, pulling a handkerchief out of her leather purse and dabbing at her eye with it.
“It’s OK,” I assured her.
“So her son drowned in a water tank?” asked Emily.
Annie nodded, “Margie went out to do the shopping and left little Mike home with her husband.”
“He took a nap and Mikey got bored, so he went out the back and started fooling around.”
“The tank wasn’t locked up or anything...and he fell in. Couldn’t get out. I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been for hi-ah!!”
She cried out in pain, clutching her eyepatch and rubbing it vigorously.
I wondered what was underneath that patch that was causing so much pain - and why she had been rubbing it so much since she started the story
Maybe she was still internalising some of the trauma from it.
“Are you OK?” I asked, not really sure how to help.
“I’m fine,” she said, her face contorted into a grimace, “Sometimes when I talk about this she plays up.”
“She?” quizzed Emily.
“Oh,” Annie said, waving Emily off, “Yes, yes I’ll get to that.”
Taking another deep breath, she continued with her story.
“When Margie found out what had happened she couldn’t take it. She was destroyed, as any mother who has lost their child so young would be, but for her it was worse.
“Mentally she became...unhinged. She couldn’t cope with it, I spoke to her on the phone and it was horrific.
“Then she began accusing me of stealing her boy.”
That rang a bell in my head, the zombie-woman or I guess I should say zombie-Margie was screaming at us for ‘her boy’ when we were in the tank.
“I tried so hard to tell her that I had not and would not ever do something like that - especially as her only sister. But she wouldn’t listen, and that’s when she got physical.”
Annie winced in pain, but she clutched her right hand with her left, as if to prevent herself from rubbing her eyepatch.
“She attacked you?” I said.
“That’s how I got this,” Annie pointed to the eyepatch with a half-smile, “Nearly scratched my eye out because she thought I had masterminded everything.”
“What happened to her?” asked Emily.
“The eye I could save, Margie on the other hand…” Annie paused, her face twisted with sorrow.
“After she left me in a pool of blood, she locked herself in the bathroom. By this time her husband, Rick, had woken up and was trying to figure out what the hell was happening.
“But she refused to come out. I still remember laying there, watching Rick pounding on the door desperately, calling her name over and over again.
“Then there was the most horrible sound and a flash of light so bright I could have been blind in the other eye if I wasn’t careful.”
“She killed herself,” Emily said, her voice barely a whisper.
Annie gave a small nod to confirm her statement.
“In the bathtub, with a hair dryer.”
“Margie is who we saw in the tank, then” I said, turning back to Annie.
“I hate to think of what’s become of her,” Annie responded, “It’s definitely not the sister I knew.”
“When you saw us at the cemetery you said ‘the eye sees what she sees’,” I continued.
“What did you mean by that?”
Annie gripped her left arm with her right hand as she spoke, pinning it to the table, “Yes, I’m half-blind in my right eye, it’s practically useless so I wear this patch.”
“But every now and then I...see things. It began shortly after her funeral. I woke up in the middle of the night and all I could see in my right eye was...was…
Annie searched for the right words as her voice wavered.
“It was like I was underwater and I was looking up at the surface.”
“You mean you were looking through her eyes while she was in the tank?” I asked.
“Yes and it only got worse from there...a few years later I saw you two and your friend. That night you visited - I saw everything.”
“Ever since that night I began getting flashbacks, I re-lived what I saw happen a thousand times over. Your faces were etched into my memory...so much that I even began to feel your presence Parsky when you returned.”
“That was how I found you at the cemetery last night.”
A silence fell over the table as Emily and I contemplated what she had told us, the memories rushing back of the unrecognisable thing we had encountered inside the tank that night.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell Annie anything about what her sister had become.
It was a fate worse than death.
The silence was broken by Emily, who stood up out of her seat and began shouting at Annie, completely ignoring the fact we were in a library.
“Why didn’t you do anything?!” she said, stabbing an accusatory finger at her.
“You saw what was going on, you could have called the cops.”
Emily shook as she spoke, and her eyes blazed with the fire of a thousand suns. It was actually kind of scary to see, I was just glad I wasn’t on the other end.
“I didn’t know if what I was seeing was real, I...I thought I was hallucinating until I read about it in the paper,” Annie stammered, putting her hands up in defence.
Emily slammed her fist into the table and stared daggers at Annie.
“Jeremy died and you could have saved him.”
With that she stormed off, a number of onlookers murmuring as she slammed the library door behind her.
I sat there awkwardly for a moment, before returning my eyes to Annie, who looked like she’d just seen a ghost.
“Uh, I should probably check on her,” I said, but before I could get out of my seat I felt the pincer-like grip of Annie’s hand on my arm.
“If you go back,” she said, pulling something out of her pocket, “Can you give this to her?”
Annie placed a black-and-white photograph in my hand. It was a young boy, looking no older than six years old. He was smiling and clutching a basketball in his hands.
“Maybe Margie will find what she’s searching for,” Annie said, using her wrinkled hand to close mine over the photo.
I couldn’t really think of what else to say but, “Thanks”, before rushing out the door after Emily, leaving Annie to try and explain what all the noise was about.
**
I found Emily standing outside, her back pressed up against the library wall and a cigarette between her lips. She pulled it away and exhaled smoke into the air as she saw me approach.
“Sorry it’s...been a while since my last one,” Emily said, her cheeks turning a shade of pink as she flicked ash onto the ground.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said, taking up a position next to her.
“Well this is actually my first in like a year, I quit but I guess the stress of this whole thing is getting to me.”
“I get you.”
“I didn’t mean to blow up in there.”
“It’s OK.”
“No, really, that was dumb of me.”
Emily gave me a genuinely apologetic look, before adding, “What’s that?”
She gestured to the photo I held in my right hand. For a moment I forgot I’d even been holding it, but I uncurled my fist and gave it to her.
“Annie gave it to me...it’s Margaret’s son.”
Emily studied the photo for a moment, pursing her lips.
“Poor kid.”
“She told me to give it to her...if we went back.”
I added that last part hesitantly, not knowing how Emily would react to the suggestion. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to return to the tank...but somehow it felt like the right thing to do.
After everything Annie had told us, I almost felt like I was obligated to do something about Margaret.
If there was a way to fix her, to prevent other young children from dying, then we might as well give it our best shot.
The first time we visited the tank we had no idea what we were doing.
At least now we had some idea.
Emily handed the photo back to me, and dropped the butt of her cigarette to the ground. She mashed it under the heel of her black combat boot.
“We could die, Tyler.”
Emily made eye contact with me as she spoke, her blue pupils peering into mine. She hardly ever called me Tyler - only when she was being serious.
“I don’t want to be responsible for...for you too,” she said, lowering her gaze to the ground.
I put my arm on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze. I knew I couldn’t do this without Emily, she was the whole reason I’d even come back to Parsky.
I understood why she was hesitant, but this wasn’t the Emily I needed right now. I needed the Emily who didn’t give a shit and was ready to take a risk.
“We do this together or not at all,” I said.
“If you’re not with me then I won’t go.”
Emily slowly looked up at me, her eyes beginning to slightly glow in the sun.
“You’re not gonna pussy out on me are you?” I said with a grin.
Emily chuckled, lightly punching me in the arm, “That’s my line, loser.
**
The headlights of my car illuminated the gloomy road as I slowly made my way to the meet-up spot - the entrance to the long-neglected Parsky industrial estate.
My stomach did backflips as I drove, the anxiety beginning to creep up into my throat. Here I was, voluntarily returning to a place that had claimed two lives already and had almost taken mine.
I must have a death wish, be crazy or both. Although I guess there is a third option to that checklist - I must be Emily’s friend
I saw Emily’s car on the side of the road and pulled over behind her, my heart beginning to beat faster in anticipation.
I killed the engine and climbed out of the car, the large boots on my feet already beginning to feel way too big for me.
My kit included rubber-insulated gloves, high-visibility pants and top, a high-vis jacket, and a yellow hardhat.
I definitely felt more prepared than last time.
Whether that would even matter, well we’d just have to find out.
Emily was standing with her back against the car door, gazing up at the water tank, which loomed over the top of the hill, illuminated by floodlights on either side.
“You ready?” I asked as I made my way over to her.
She jumped slightly, as if jolted out of a trance.
“Jesus!” Emily exclaimed, whipping her head around to face me.
“Yeah...yeah I’m ready, nice outfit by the way,” she said, giving me a look up and down.
“Likewise.”
Emily was kitted up similarly to me, with the pair of bolt cutters she had purchased earlier stuffed into her belt.
She took the lead as we began walking the same route we had 10 years ago, through the decaying industrial estate and to the hill leading up to the water tank.
The cold wind whipped at our backs as our boots crunched over stones, the carcasses of former business hubs passing by as we walked.
After slogging through the uphill section, trying to make sure my hardhat wouldn’t topple off throughout the journey, we finally made it to the plateau.
In front of us lay the tank, surrounded by a chain-link, barbed-wire fence that extended several feet off the ground. There was a gate in the middle of the fence that appeared to be locked shut.
Fortunately, security were nowhere to be seen.
Emily got to work cutting a hole in the fence for us to fit through, just as she had done all those years ago.
“There - cmon Ty!”
I ducked my head and climbed through the hole behind her, making sure I didn’t get my hardhat caught on the jagged pieces of steel jutting out above me.
The tank was waiting for us on the other side.
“Hey, what the hell are you guys doing?!”
The shout came from behind us. Without thinking I whipped around to see a balding man with a blue button-up shirt rushing towards us, flashlight in hand.
As he came closer into view I could see that he had a small radio on his breast pocket and a gun holstered on his hip.
Security were here after all.
“Get out of there right now before I call the cops!”
I immediately put my arms in the air, not wanting to go to jail for what we’d already done, but Emily had other ideas.
“Woah calm down pal, we’re here to clean the tank,” she said, raising her palms into the air to show the guard her gloves.
I realised what she was doing and immediately got on board with it, pretending that raising my arms into the air had also been part of showing off the gloves.
The guard scratched his head, giving us the once over with his eyes.
“Wait, why did y'all break-in then?!” he exclaimed, pointing at the hole cut in the fence.
“Well we were told you would let us in, but you never showed up,” retorted Emily, not missing a beat.
“Or did you want us to wait all night?”
The man was clearly caught off guard by all of this, and looked unsure of how to respond.
“They never...they didn’t tell m-
“Look if you need us, we’ll be in the tank. Shouldn’t be more than 45 minutes, capiche?”
Emily turned and began marching towards the stairs, leaving me with no choice but to follow her and hope the guard bought our act.
The steps beneath me felt a lot more stable than before, but it didn’t do anything to ease my anxiety as we reached the top of the tank.
The cityscape stretched out beneath us, the lights of Parsky glittering over the horizon. I could never get over how beautiful it looked up here, but there was never enough time to enjoy it.
I turned back to see Emily fiddling with a small hatch at the centre of the roof, holding her flashlight in one hand and the bolt cutters in another.
“Here, hold this,” she said, handing her flashlight over to me.
“What’s the problem?”
“There’s a handle here but it won’t budge.”
Emily placed the bolt cutters around the little handle jutting out of the hatch, and began to pull with all her might. The metal groaned and protested, but held strong.
“Gah!” she yelled as the strain became too much, causing her to lose her grip on the tool and fall backwards onto the roof.
I moved to help her but no sooner had she fallen down than she was back up again.
“Stupid thing!” Emily shouted, unleashing a devastating kick into the handle.
Her foot collided with the metal, causing the hatch to unexpectedly swing open.
I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed.
I gazed at the hatch in disbelief, and then looked back at Emily who was clutching her foot with a grimace on her face.
“Are you like...superhuman or something?” I asked, my eyebrows raised.
“Guess I should get angry more often,” Emily answered through gritted teeth, “Jesus that hurt.”
Walking over to the now-open hatch, I shined my flashlight down into the depths of the tank.
There was a ladder descending down into the darkness, but it was quickly consumed by the water below.
It looked like it was a new, safer method of accessing the tank that had been installed in recent years, replacing the former rickety stairway.
“See anything?” I heard Emily’s voice from behind me.
I shook my head, “Just a lot of water.”
“No zombie monster?”
“Not yet.”
Emily knelt down next to me and peered down at the calm waters below.
“Well what do we do now?” she said.
“Wait I guess?”
Emily rolled her eyes, “That’s no fun.”
“What’s your suggestion then?”
She took a deep breath, and proceeded to unleash a torrent of abuse at the water.
“Hey, you old hag! We’re here, just like you wanted! Two juicy humans! Now I know you’re more into kids which is kind of weird if you ask me, but we’re yours for the taking!”
Emily continued to shout into the void as I watched for any kind of movement under the water, the beam of light from my flashlight hovering from one spot to another.
Still there was no head or body that I could see poking above the surface. I was just about to give up when I realised something else was happening.
Something slow and methodical.
The water level was falling.
“Hey stop, stop!” I said, raising my hand.
Emily’s verbal barrage relented.
“Huh?”
“Look at the water.”
The water was now more than halfway further down than it had been when we opened the hatch.
“Oh shit, how is that happening?” Emily asked, sounding like a child witnessing magic for the first time.
I had no idea how it was happening, though if I had to take a guess I’d say it had something to do with Margie.
“Come on, let’s climb down,” Emily said, grabbing the ladder with her hands.
I hesitated, “Don’t you think we should wait until the water stops falling? I mean, you know there’s a zombie at the bottom of this tank, don’t you?”
Emily rolled her eyes and then proceeded to lower her legs onto the ladder.
“Isn’t that why we’re here?” she said, looking up at me.
The fact that she was now making her way down without me didn’t leave me much choice to follow her.
There were a lot of positives to teaming up with Emily, but the fact that she often gave into the urge to plunge head first into danger was not one of them.
I reluctantly pocketed my flashlight and began slowly descending the ladder. The handles were wet and crusty, some covered in rows of barnacles.
The darkness seemed to close in around us as we lowered ourselves into the void, and I tried to make a conscious decision not to step on Emily’s fingers below me.
When we finally made it to the bottom of the ladder, I realised that the water was all but gone now - the floor of the tank now visible beneath us.
I let go of the ladder, my feet coming into contact with the solid ground of the tank for the first time in more than a decade.
“You alright?” I asked.
“Yeah, you got your flashlight?”
As much as I wanted to turn my flashlight on, part of me was reluctant to even do that. I knew what lurked inside this tank, I knew what it was capable of.
I pulled my flashlight out of my pocket, but couldn’t bring myself to flick the switch. The tool hung in my hand, looking about as useless as a gun without bullets.
I wasn’t ready to take the shot.
But then I felt Emily’s hand clutch mine and squeeze it tightly.
“We do this together or not at all, right?” Emily said, echoing my statement from earlier.
I turned to look at her and saw that she too had her flashlight raised.
In that moment I knew now wasn’t the time to be hesitant.
It was the time for action.
“Yeah, something like that,” I said, grinning in the darkness.
“On three,” Emily responded.
I nodded, and we spoke in unison.
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three!”
Despite all the planning and equipment we’d undertaken before returning to this horrific place, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when our flashlights came to life.
Laying about five feet across from us on the tank floor was a strange insect-like creature. It was laying on its back with three sets of hairy legs curled in the air.
It looked like a gigantic life-sized beetle, except for that its body was covered in greenish fur and well...it had three heads.
From what I could see, one was larger than the other two, and had two long mandibles extending down from its mouth.
Its body was covered in water that appeared to be flowing up to its mouth, like it was sucking it in as it slept. Its abdomen was so large that I couldn’t see its face or...faces from where I was.
The bug looked like some kind of cross between a beetle and an ant, with its rows of spindly legs combined with a huge black abdomen.
However its main head looked more ant-like, with long antennae protruding from it, and sharp mandibles extending down from its mouth.
The two other heads were sort of moulded into the skin of the first, extending out from the left and right side of the first.
It looked nothing like what we had seen the last time we were here.
Before Margie had at least looked somewhat like a person.
This thing wasn’t human.
“What the f-
Before Emily could finish that expletive, the beetle began to convulse violently, twisting its heads towards us and letting out an ear-piercing screech.
The scream was so powerful that it felt like a gale of wind was blowing through me, and my hearing was reduced to white noise.
I staggered backwards as the insect formerly known as Margaret twisted its body and stood up on its six hairy legs.
It crawled towards us, moving faster than I expected for something of its size. As it came closer, I recognised all three of its faces.
In the middle was unmistakably Margaret, but the other two…
One I had seen a thousand times on TV after his death and the second was my best friend.
Tim and Jeremy.
Their faces were scrunched next to Margie’s, but while hers was twisted in an angry snarl, theirs were contorted in what I could describe as intense anguish.
They were in pain.
The beast let out another screech, somehow even louder than the first, this time rearing up on its hind legs and spraying out some kind of green liquid from its main mouth.
I dived out of the way as the mist rained down on us, just barely missing me. Emily had also managed to jump to safety, landing a foot away from me.
I shone my light at the gooey substance that the creature had spewed out and saw that it was sizzling above the ground, eating away at the surface.
It was shooting acid at us.
Nothing in our toolbox could deal with that.
The white noise continued in my ears as I locked eyes with Emily. Her face read just like mine - we were out of our depth.
I struggled to my feet and helped her up, my knees wobbling beneath me as fear began to consume my body.
This was too much to handle, we could at least attempt to subdue a zombie but there was no way we’d ever be able to get this creature under control.
This thing didn’t care about a photo, Margaret wasn’t even human any more.
What came next was certainly evidence of that.
The grotesque insect threw back its head, let out a primal shriek, and charged directly at us.
At the same time as it roared, showering us with spit, our flashlights blinked and then turned off.
It took me a moment to act, the sudden transition to pure darkness catching me off guard. That’s why when I did make my move, attempting to dodge out of the way, I was too late.
I did make it to the ground, thankful for wearing long sleeves as I skidded along the concrete, but the rough impact was followed by something a lot more painful.
I felt a sharp object pierce through my right leg with such force that the air in my lungs exploded out of my mouth, leaving me gasping for air, just as Margaret smashed into the wall behind me.
My scream caught in my throat as I frantically felt down my leg in the darkness. My hands came to grasp a round, furry object sticking out of my skin just above the knee.
I didn’t have a chance to try and address my situation, because the beast immediately began jerking its leg frantically, carrying me along for the ride.
It’s hard to accurately describe in words what being on the end of this punishment felt like.
If I had to compare it to something, I would say it was like being on a rollercoaster ride when the safety harness is on just a little too tight.
Except the safety harness on me was plunging directly into my flesh, digging in further and further as the minutes went by.
My hardhat bounced off the floor as I was dragged around like a play doll, the vibrations causing my world to be turned upside down repeatedly.
I heard Emily scream my name somewhere in the darkness followed by a guttural screech from Margaret.
I evacuated my stomach onto the ground, my eyes watering from the pain.
Fortunately, in that moment my survival instincts kicked in. I knew I had to do something or I would die, I couldn’t keep going like this.
I had to fight back.
Knowing there was really only one thing I could do, I closed my eyes and reached behind me with my right hand.
My fingers closed around the handle of the axe I had bought from the hardware store earlier. With great effort, I pulled it free from my belt, my head still bouncing along the ground.
Twisting my body around, I brought the axe down on its leg with as much force as I could muster. The blade sank into its flesh, but it didn’t feel anywhere close to cutting through.
Cursing in the dark, I frantically began hacking away at Margaret’s leg, the beast emitting a series of shrill shrieks as I did so.
Green ooze that shone in the dark began spurting out of the appendage, coating my arm in the sticky substance.
Feeling as if I was about to pass out, I pulled the axe back and brought it down as hard as I possibly could on the already weakened leg.
This time the blade cut clean through, severing Margaret’s leg. This finally brought the horror ride to the end, my body coming to rest on the floor.
“TY!”
Emily’s voice came from my left, filling me with some form of hope that I might survive despite the impalement.
“EMILY!” I called back, my voice catching in my throat and triggering another coughing fit.
“I’m coming!”
As I slowly sat up, pain shooting through my mangled leg, I saw Emily clutching a makeshift torch in the distance.
As Emily made her way towards me, I looked down and realised two things.
One, my entire body was glowing in the dark because of the green blood that now covered me, and two, there was still part of the insect’s leg protruding from above my knee.
The sight of the furry stump sticking out from my now glowing green skin was almost enough to actually make me pass out.
“Oh my god.”
Light flooded my vision, so intense I had to briefly shield my un-adjusted eyes. When my vision came back I saw Emily leaning over me, her eyes racing side to side as she took in my injuries.
“C-can you stand?” Emily stuttered as the beast roared somewhere to our right.
My whole body felt like it had been t-boned by a semi, but I tried to climb up with Emily’s assistance. As soon as I put pressure on my right leg, it gave out from under me and I collapsed onto the ground.
At this point I knew I was dead weight. I couldn’t walk even with Emily’s support, and the green blood that covered me was a dead giveaway in the darkness
“Emily,” I managed to choke out as pain shot up my leg, “You have to go.”
She looked offended by my suggestion, her eyes narrowing as she spoke, “I’m not leaving you, come on.”
“No, look, it’s not dead.”
Emily turned to see what I had been looking at as she was fussing over me. Margaret was now back on her feet, water dripping from her wet fur.
The flames from before were completely extinguished - it must have somehow cooled itself with the water it had sucked up before.
Emily put her arms under my shoulders in an attempt to pull me up, but I grabbed her hand with my arm to stop her.
“Listen, in a few seconds that thing is going to be on me, and I really don’t think you want to be here when that happens.”
“Put out that torch and fucking run.”
In a rare moment, Emily was speechless. I could see the cogs whirring in her mind as she contemplated what I had just said, but this was no time for calculation.
I could hear the unpleasant sounds of Margaret getting ever closer, and I couldn’t risk losing her too.
“GO!” I barked, desperate to avoid Emily meeting my own fate.
A single tear began to flow down her cheek as she reluctantly lowered the torch to the ground.
“I’m sorry Ty. I lov-
Emily was cut off by another shriek coming from our immediate right, and I knew Margaret was almost upon us.
Emily’s eyes widened as she snapped her neck to the source of the sound. She looked back to me with tears in her eyes, before turning away and sprinting off into the darkness.
I wondered if that would be the last time I would ever see her.
I’d never get to tell her how I felt.
But that didn’t matter right now.
“Hey, I’m over here!” I called out, my breath crystallising into small puffs of air.
“Y-you want some, come get some!” I stuttered, trying to sound like the heroes I often read about in comic books - confident in the face of unimaginable evil.
The unsettling sound of the beast’s legs scratching across the ground grew louder, and I could smell its foul odour drifting closer.
Then, the three heads of Margaret, Jeremy and Tim came into view above me, its disgusting features lit up by the green liquid covering my body.
I closed my eyes and prepared to be disintegrated in a pool of acid.
But that wasn’t what happened.
Instead, I felt two prongs pierce through my shoulders and rip me into the air.
Opening my eyes, I came face to face...or should that be face to faces...with the beast.
Margaret’s mouth opened and she began to lower my body legs-first into it.
I screamed, the realisation that I was about to be eaten alive almost too much to handle. I tried to squirm, to wriggle free somehow but the ends of her mandibles were firmly lodged inside my skin.
I tried kicking at her face, attempting to drive the stump still lodged into my leg into her eye, but in response she coiled her abnormally large tongue around me.
Then the next thing I knew I was falling through the air, the feeling of weightlessness enveloping me and I plunged towards the ground.
The fall felt like it was going to last forever, my body suspended mid-air like a freeze frame during a movie.
It didn’t.
My body bounced like a soccer ball when I smacked into the ground, the impact so great that I felt my shoes and socks spring off my feet.
Luckily I had landed side-on, and not headfirst or anything nasty, but the pain was unlike anything I had felt before.
I’d never been seriously hurt as a child. Never broken any bones, only a minor sprain here or there.
So my first thought as I lay on the ground, tears stinging my eyes from the intensity of the pain, was, had I broken anything?
That thought was interrupted by the madness my eyes saw when my vision began to focus.
The enormous abdomen in front of me was frantically spasming on the ground. The legs were scraping away at something that was obscured from my vision.
Suddenly, the insect twisted its body towards me, and I saw what was transpiring.
Margaret was trying to scratch her own eye out.
Her face was contorted into a panicked grimace as she stabbed at her own bulging eye, which had turned completely red and was spewing green liquid all over the place.
As I crawled away, my mind turned to Annie. I wondered if she had seen everything that unfolded tonight, if she looked through her eye as Margaret nearly ate me.
Her...eye...
The realisation hit me like a cold slap to the face.
Annie might had saved our lives.
If her eye was connected to Margaret’s did that mean she was able to harm her too?
Was Annie destroying what remained of her own eye to stop her?
As I contemplated that thought I was hit with a massive blast of light. I squinted my eyes, waiting for them to adjust as my surroundings slowly came into view.
When my eyes adjusted, I realised that the light was coming from above, and I could now see the entirety of the tank.
I had actually made it pretty close to the ladder for crawling in the dark - I was only a few feet away from it. I looked up to see the security guard we’d bumped into earlier descending the ladder.
I breathed a sigh of relief and raised my voice to call out to him - but I could only get out a rough “HE-” before erupting into a coughing fit that sent waves of pain coursing through my body.
Fortunately the coughing seemed to catch his attention, as he looked down from his position on the ladder and called out to
“God damn, stay the hell where you are.”
Then he turned to look up at the hatch, “I found your friend, he’s in bad shape.”
“You said there was some sorta massive bug in here too? Well I don’t see it, just some woman.”
I twisted my head to scan my surroundings that were now lit up by lights that had been installed on the tank walls.
My eyes fell on the body of a woman lying motionless ten feet away from me. Her skin was grey, and a slimy liquid was spilling out of her orifices.
Margaret was a beast no more.
I quickly whipped my head back to the guard, “Don’t...don’t go near her,” I managed to get out.
“Don’t worry I’m coming!” he responded, making his way down the ladder.
I couldn’t tell if he’d heard me or not, but I couldn’t really muster up the strength to shout - less I trigger another coughing fit.
So I just laid there, clutching my broken body as he climbed down to me. Finally, his feet touched the ground next to mine.
The guard’s bearded face loomed over me, a black beanie now covering his bald skull. He looked like a grizzled veteran, so his almost squeamish response to seeing my impaled leg caught me off guard.
“Oh man, what is that?!” he said, stabbing a finger at the hairy appendage protruding from my skin.
“Trust me, you don’t wanna know,” I responded.
“You really don’t.”
Emily’s face came into view, her hands clutched close to her chest. She leaned in close to me, wrapping me in a tight hug.
“I’m never leaving you again.”
I wanted to respond with some sappy words, I really did, but her embrace compressed my potentially-broken ribs, forcing a pained groan out of my mouth.
“Shit I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Emily said, backing up with a look of concern on her face.
I chuckled, which still hurt but just not as much, and gave her a half smile.
“Man am I glad you came back.”
“I didn’t want to go in the first place.”
“But you had to.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I got help.”
Our conversation was interrupted by the slightly high-pitched voice of the guard.
“Ma’am? Ma’am are you OK?”
I turned my head to see he was speaking to Margaret, who was now on her feet, and slowly shambling towards him.
Her gruesome grey body was covered with the same green blood that I was covered head to toe in, but the most striking part of her appearance was her right eye - or rather the lack of it.
There was a bloody hole leaking grey matter where her right eye used to be.
Annie’s sacrifice.
As Margaret’s movements became more aggressive, the guard took a step back and reached for his gun.
“Wait, don’t shoot!” I called out to him.
Despite all she had taken away from me, despite the fact that just 10 minutes ago she tried to eat me alive, I wanted to make peace.
I wanted to help her, and fulfil Annie’s wish.
To set Margaret free.
The guard shot me a stunned look, “Are you crazy?!”
I grimaced, attempting to get up, but the pain in my chest was too much. Fortunately, Emily wrapped her arm around me, helping me up.
“I know a lot more about her than you do,” I said, moving towards Margaret with Emily’s support.
That caught Margie’s attention, and instead of moving towards the guard, she began to shuffle in our direction.
“Can you reach into my pocket?” I asked Emily, who nodded and stuck her hand inside, pulling out the photo Annie had handed me at the Library.
The one of Margaret’s son.
Emily handed me the photo, and I held it up in front of Margaret, who was now an arms reach away from us.
“Margaret, do you remember Michael?”
The zombie-woman paused as the name Michael left my mouth, her one good eye twitching as it scanned the photo.
“He...he’s your boy.”
A look of familiarity slowly spread across her face, starting from her furrowed brow and ending at her slimy lips.
She whipped her arm out, and for a second I thought she was going to land a blow square on my face, but her hand curled around the photo and pulled it free.
Margaret tentatively raised the photo to her eye, peering at the face of her son.
“My boy,” she said in a low, raspy voice that sounded nothing like the distorted screams I’d heard from her the last time I was in the tank.
It was her real voice, it was the real Margaret speaking.
She pressed the photo to her chest and made eye contact with me.
“Thank you.”
As the words left her lips, her body began to slowly sink into the ground. A puddle began to form at her feet as she disintegrated, first her legs, then her torso and lastly her head.
When she finally disappeared, two spirits shot into the air out of the puddle. I looked up in awe as they circled in the sky, before shooting off in different directions.
And then, silence fell on the tank.
It was finally over.
“Well, whatever that shit was, you two have a lot of explaining to do,” the guard said.
I looked at him, slowly gave him a thumbs up, and then everything went black.
---
Credits
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