I flash back to every shark movie I’ve ever seen. But there’s nothing like that in Lake Erie. A big channel cat, maybe. Or a really huge walleye. Even so, I turn back around and yell for Wyatt, since I’m so much closer to him than Trey. “Wyatt! Come on back. There’s something in the water.”

His cheeks are smudged with coal, his bandana gone from yellow to sickly brown. He gives me a thumbs-up and says, “Just a little more—”

Something launches out of the waves, rocketing into the air behind him. Water streams away from a glistening, quicksilver body as it stretches its arms wide like wings and lands as lightly as a butterfly on the bow of the barge, not two yards away from Wyatt.

“Wyatt!” I scream, dropping the propane tank and sprinting forward. I don’t know what I’ll do, I just know I have to get there.

Wyatt turns. Freezes.

The alien creature lifts its hand, points its strange fingers with their black-tipped nails toward Wyatt’s chest.

I’m almost there. I’m going to hit that thing like I’m a linebacker. Knock it back into the water. Count on my life vest to—

A wave bludgeons the barge, and I teeter, then bounce against the edge of the coal trough, flipping over the rail, landing hard on a mountain of coal. I scramble to get to my feet, but they just dig in until I’m sunk up to my calves. I can’t move. I can’t even breathe; the wind was knocked out of me and now my diaphragm is an unyielding boulder in my belly.

I’m gasping for air, trying to dislodge my legs from hundreds of pounds of coal, when Wyatt’s head—just barely visible from my half-buried position—jerks awkwardly to the side, right before he crumples out of view.

My breath unlocks, and I breathe in the entire sky before screaming, “Wyatt!”

I try to yank up my right foot, but it’s stuck, lodged against something. Maybe it’s just coal, heavy with water and the settling of time, but I pull and pull until I feel a sickening pop in my ankle and pain zings up my calf.

It’s not dislocated, not yet, but another hard tug might do it. I plunge my fingers into the coal and dig with my hands.

“Paige!” comes Trey’s voice. He saw me fall in. He’s coming for me.

“In here . . .” I start to yell, but the alien creature’s head crests my view, its translucent cloak still streaming water, its eyeless face focused straight ahead. On Trey.

“No!” I scream. “Down here! I’m down here!” Which I realize is a terrible plan, because I’m stucker than stuck, and I have no way to evade that thing. I’m still shoveling coal with my bare hands as it cocks its head. Like it heard me.