Warning, make sure you read PART 1 and PART 2 before continuing…

The jelly began to ooze silvery pus, puddling in strange beads like mercury from a broken thermometer over the surface of the mud where the tentacle had fingered its way out of the grime.  The bubbles seemed to emerge from within of their own accord, gathering around the swollen gleaming surface.

Frankie started howling and stared at me with wide-open eyes, his finger beginning to blister and swell rapidly.  Veins of silvery black traced beneath his skin from his fingertip towards his hand and wrist.  No sense in calling him stupid now, the situation had progressed beyond a casual jab and had begun to be genuinely alarming.

“Do you really think it’ll fall off?” he cried, falling to his knees and staring at his hand in disbelief.

I was starting not to be so sure, wishing I’d never made such a flippant comment.  The black silvery tendrils spreading beneath the skin’s surface continued to thread and fan out but had slowed somewhat, pooling in necrotic-looking lumps.  His fingertip was wholly black and had started to dry out, as if it was turning to charcoal and might flake off with any sudden movement.

The houseboat was a good ways off, yawning lazily as always, leering at us from afar like a fleck on the far side of the lake.  My bicycle stood sentry over my brother’s, which had sunk into the mud and would require more effort than it was worth to pull out, especially given the change in circumstances.  Frankie didn’t seem capable of riding back anyway.

I glanced back towards the jelly, perhaps hoping to find some sign of what was happening or anything logical or sensical that I could grasp on to, to tell me what was going on.  It just pulsed there, continuing to ooze silvery pus as the tentacle shrank its way back into the grime, either being slurped back into the mud or spilling forth its contents to the surface.  The silver beads began to move independently, congregating and trickling towards us.

Frankie trembled and continued to howl, eyes wide begging me to do something.  Anything.

I tore off my shirt and wrapped it around his hand and wrist snugly, scooping him up.  I had no idea what his finger or hand looked like in its wrapping but I knew I needed to get him back to some kind of civilization…  Immediately.

“Hold on to me,” I ordered.  “Tight!”

Frankie clamped around my neck, his grip tightening like a trap that had been sprung.  I raced back to my bicycle, my little brother in tow.  Together, we awkwardly mounted my bicycle and wobbily sped out of the mud pit towards what had once been the shore of the lake, leaving his bicycle sinking in the grime.

And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.

Don’t start this before you read part one!

God, how I wish they didn’t exist.

Frankie was way ahead of me on the road. How the heat didn’t bother him was beyond me. Some part of childhood magic I’ve already lost. 

“Slow down!” I yelled, trying to get my rusty bike to keep up with him.

“Keep up,” he called back. Pain in the ass. 

I could smell the remains of the lake around us. The good things had gone, but that awful stench remained. Dead fish, rotting lake weeds. 

Frankie hit his breaks without warning and dropped his bike.

“Hey!” I called. He’d dropped his bike in the mud, and for sure that would be my fault when our folks saw. But he wasn’t listening. He was instead running off towards something he’d seen sticking out of the mud. 

Anything he did I was going to get in trouble for. So I propped my bike next to his and took off after him. 

By the time I caught up with Frankie he was crouching down, looking at something. “Check it out,” he said.

I bent down to look. Something was coming out of the ground, alright. But I had no idea what it was.

If we’d been near the ocean, it would have made more sense. The closest thing I could compare it to was a jellyfish. 

“A long jellyfish,” I supplied helpfully. And Frankie just nodded. It had that consistency of a jelly but stretched out like a tentacle. It was so clear we could nearly see the mud beneath it. I wondered how Frankie had even seen the damned thing from so far away. Whatever it was, we could only see part of it.

“I wonder how big it is,” Frankie said. He looked around us, found a stick, and started digging near the thing. 

“Be careful,” I said. “You might hurt it.”

“What are you talking about? It’s not alive, look.” Frankie gave the jelly a gentle poke with his stick. It didn’t indicate that it had been touched at all. Still, though, I felt like it was alive. And that I didn’t want to be anywhere near it.

“Come on, leave it alone,” I said. 

“But I want to see how big it is,” he complained. “Oh wow, look at that!”

He pointed. The spot where he’d touched the jelly seemed to have broken open. Something silver was leaking from it, shimmering in the sunlight. Where had it even come from? The jelly didn’t seem to have any veins as far as I could see.

My brother, ever the ten-year-old boy, reached out and poked the silver liquid with his finger before I even had time to call him stupid. But he pulled back quickly, yelping in pain. “It burns!” he cried, as he rubbed his finger in the mud to clean it off.

“It’s probably some old chemicals,” I muttered. Pollution had always been a sensible explanation for why the lake had dried up. “Come on, let’s go find a sink and wash your hands before they fall off.”