(swimming with the boys you little slut disobeying me and swimming i warned you time and again what that dirty seawater would do to you)

And then Regina let her fall and she struck her head on the hardwood floor, but there was no pain because Regina kicked her again and again, stomping her. Finally, she grabbed Javy by her wet ponytail and dragged her across the room and right out the back door, throwing her in the grass.

(do you see it out there do you see it do you feel its pull drawing you into green depths that you can never escape you little witch you awful awful little witch)

Javy, battered and bleeding, saw the sea, yes, the setting sun making the dark waters glow red, but she didn’t understand. It was just the sea, the ocean, that’s all it was…just water, nothing but water. It couldn’t hurt you.

Regina fell into the grass next to her, undergoing terrible muscular spasms and violent contractions that made her gasp and drool and roll in the grass like a poisoned dog.

And then the memory faded and Javy jetted forward, the whirlpool gone. She was in the tunnel and it canted wildly to the left and the right, widening, narrowing. She saw flickering light ahead that looked disturbingly like that of guttering candles. Then the tunnel opened into another chamber.

And what she saw in it was absolutely impossible.

19
BODIES

Terror that was both hot and cold filled Hubbs like pumped blood fills an artery. He was woozy and disoriented with it, childhood fears and adult anxieties splashing around in his head in conflicting currents. He waited there, drifting, floating, doubting what his eyes showed him, certain that he was lost in some hallucination. Maybe he wasn’t even in the city. Maybe he was trapped in a nightmare that he could not wake from.

Yet, he kept thinking, Bodies…oh Jesus, look at all those goddamn bodies.

He was in an endless passage, a barrow tomb without end, and he thought maybe he’d always been in it, carried along like a speck of silt. As he was drawn deeper and deeper into it, he wondered vaguely if Javonivic was even still alive or if she had ever existed in the first place.

Inside his head, he could hear dozens of voices competing for his attention. Some of them were sobbing. Some were screaming. Others were laughing with a shrill, insane sound. The cacophony of the damned went on and on.

The tunnel was made of bodies.

They were faintly luminous like noctilucae.