He did not move. For maybe twenty seconds, he did not even breathe. He just stood there, the dank mist rising around him, the flashlight gripped tightly in one gloved hand. His whole body was minutely trembling. The sound of that droning, like a hovering cloud of mating insects, made his flesh creep.

It came again, louder this time.

From out in the mist.

From maybe a dozen places like separate swarms of insects were calling out to one another. And then it came yet again, but this time it was behind him: clear, distinct, unnerving. He knew he had to turn around and face the thing. He’d wanted to see it…at least, some part of him did…and now here was his chance. He could feel it back there, hear the hollow sound of its respiration, the leathery scraping of its limbs. And smell it, yes, dear God, he could smell it—a pungent, acrid odor like methyl alcohol and chemical preservatives that made his nose burn.

His chest was so tight, his lungs contracted with fear, that breathing was like trying to suck air through a swamp reed. He swallowed, said in a choked voice, “Anderson…is that you?”

That low droning rose up again. It was like the soundtrack to a jungle swamp, but infinitely sinister.

In his head, Orr heard, turn around and face me…not a voice, but a searing thought, but one he did not think that his own mind had generated. He swung around, wishing he’d brought a gun, and looked his visitor dead-on.

The first glimpse made him feel weak and loose inside.

Dear God…

It droned at him, directly at him, and that sound stirred a panic like he’d never known before. Not even when he’d been a salvage diver and had gotten trapped beneath the hull of a freighter in six-hundred feet of water off Long Island Sound. There had been panic then, too, that he overcame with sheer guts and training, but this was beyond that. If that had been like burning cordite flaring inside him, this was like an atomic bomb going off. The panic rose right up from the cellar of his being and sucked the wind right out of him.

The creature.

It was about twelve feet from him, close enough that its rank smell was shoved down his throat and he could see the droplets of water beading on its blue-gray, oily hide. It hovered over the deck like a ghost from an evil fairy tale, water dripping from it.

But it was no ghost.