Eyes closed tight, I fought like a wild thing, thrashing and punching at whatever it was that had me in its grip. And then, for no reason I could see, it let go; I swam for the surface. Gasping for air I looked around. I’d been pulled out to sea. Way out.

I spun and something bumped me in the back. A shark; it was testing me out for a meal. My heart about to burst, I spun to face Ashling’s surfboard. One of her hands gripped the edge of it, white knuckles bobbing in and out of the water, the surfboard actually getting pulled under with her; the sight broke my paralysis. Her head was submerged except for the ends of her hair, which floated on the surface. Something cold and slimy brushed against my legs and I bit down on a scream that made it all the way to my lips before I caught it. Salt water slipped inside my mouth; I spit it out and slid around the side of the board, but not before she lost her grip and disappeared under the water.

“Ashling!” I screamed. My voice echoed out over the water, but the only answer I got was the gulls crying over head.

Looking down, I couldn’t see anything below me; I could barely see my feet. Breathing deep, I prepped myself to dive, but on the second gulp of air the choice was taken from me.

Teeth latched onto my calf yanking me under the water, my hands slipping from the surfboard. The bite was all too familiar. Apparently I’d been wrong; there were sharks in these waters. Serrated teeth sliced through my flesh, biting all the way through the muscle, my foot clamped inside a powerful set of jaws.

My first thought was that Mom couldn’t be upset with me now for losing Ashling, not if we were both gone, that was, if she didn’t celebrate her liberation from her children. My second thought as I rolled in the water—the pain drawing my eyes to its source—was that I’d lost my mind.

It was no shark on my leg. It was a monster, human in appearance with a single eye set high in the middle of its forehead, and a massive mouth filled with sharp, shark-like teeth. The thing smiled as its hands, hooked like claws, rose up to dig into the waist of my neoprene wetsuit. The jagged tips brushed against my bare skin inside the suit, and I trembled with fear, a new fear. What the hell was it?

“Can you hear me little Tuatha? I wonder if you know me deep in your soul? We are coming for you. All of you.”

I blinked and stared into the huge, soulless eye; felt the keen edge of years behind it, and, as much as I wanted to deny what I was hearing, acknowledged that the voice in my head wasn’t my own. It was the monster’s.