I looked down at my feet, eerily waiting for whatever was rising towards me. The water had begun to bubble and churn, as if something was disturbing it from below. My heartbeat quickened, but my legs refused to move.
A moment later, a splash erupted as a hand came rising out of the water and grabbed my ankle. Pale fingers, wrinkled from prolonged submersion, wrapped around my flesh with surprising strength. I buckled but stood firm against the pressure, trying my hardest to pull my foot from their grasp.
"Let go!" I shouted, my voice sounding hollow in the strange air.
Soon I noticed more of whatever was grabbing me rising out of the water. In anticipation and fear, I watched as a head popped out, dark hair plastered against a pale face. Unaffected by the black sea, I got a clear view of what was grabbing me. It was a woman; she had beautiful long hair and a tired but pretty face. The features so familiar, so impossible, yet unmistakable.
This woman was... she was my mother.
"M-mom?" I said, my voice quiet and shaky. My throat constricted with emotion, making it hard to breathe.
My mother glanced up at me but did not let go, still attempting to pull me down. Her eyes were clouded with something I couldn't quite identify. I locked eyes with her, and she spoke.
"Kai, sweetheart." The sound of her voice, unchanged after all these years, sent a tremor through my body. I looked down at her, and a tear started to bubble up in my eye, tracking a warm path down my chilled face.
"Mom," I said, breaking up bit by bit, my composure crumbling like sandcastles against the tide. "How are you—I thought—"
Then she spoke again, her lips barely moving. "Why, Kai?"
Confused, I sucked up my tears to respond. "W-why what?"
The transformation happened in an instant. Her gentle expression that I remembered from childhood—the one that had comforted me through fevers and nightmares—turned dark and grotesque. The skin around her eyes blackened and receded, her cheeks hollowing into something skeletal. "Why did you let me die, Kai?" her voice now carried deep spite, an undercurrent of hatred I had never heard from her in life.
"W-what? What are you saying?" My body trembled, not from the cold but from the horror washing over me. Her face got even more contorted, flesh sagging unnaturally, and her grip on my ankle tightened until I felt bones grinding against each other.
"WHY DID YOU LET ME DIE, KAI?" she screamed, her mouth opening impossibly wide, revealing rows of blackened teeth.
Before I could form any words, suddenly another hand grabbed my other ankle, and once again, another familiar face popped out of the black sea. This time, it was Ms. Clementine.
"Why didn't you save us, Kai?" she spoke softly while crying, tears mixing with the black water. "You could have saved us Kai."
"I-I'm sorry," I choked out, memories of that day flooding back—the wolf, the screams. "The wolf was to strong—I couldn't—"
And then another hand grabbed me, and another and another. Different faces popped out of the black sea, all of which I knew, all of which were dead.
Every voice said something different—"You were too weak," "It's your fault," "You walked away," "You watched me dies"—each voice overlapping in a messy haze of accusation. I was slowly being dragged into the water, now up to my waist, the cold seeping into my bones.
"Please," I begged, though I wasn't sure what I was begging for. Forgiveness? Release? Or perhaps the punishment I deserved?
Then suddenly, all of the voices stopped... a moment of terrible silence broken only by the sound of my own ragged breathing. And then they started again, but this time, they all repeated the same words, now screaming at me in a deathly rage, a horrible chorus of the damned.
"WHY DID YOU KILL US? WHY DID YOU KILL US? WHY DID YOU KILL US?"
So many emotions were flooding me—fear, sorrow, grief. Each accusation was a knife to my heart because deep down, I had blamed myself for each of their deaths. For not being fast enough, strong enough, brave enough.
"I-I didn't! I'm sorry, I—" I didn't know what to say. What could I say? They were dead, and I was alive, and maybe that was the real crime. The black water rose higher, reaching my chest, then my shoulders. The faces of the dead surrounded me, their hands pulling me down with relentless determination.
"Please," I whispered one last time, but there was no mercy in their hollow eyes.
Soon all that was left above the sea was my face, but as their hands grabbed it, that was under too. I held my breath and soon I was inside the dark sea. I couldn't see anything—the only thing I could feel was the hands of the dead pulling me down into an abyss that seemed to have no bottom.
The pressure built in my lungs as I struggled against the inevitable. I couldn't tell which way was up anymore, couldn't feel anything but those accusing hands tugging me deeper, deeper. My vision began to darken at the edges, tiny sparks of light dancing before my eyes.
I was underwater for what felt like an eternity until I could no longer hold my breath. With a release, I opened my mouth. Even though I couldn't feel the sea, it seemed I still wasn't able to breathe here, and I slowly felt myself begin to fade away.
At first, I was scared, thrashing against the hands that held me. But soon, I started to become at peace. A strange calm settled over me, like the final acceptance of a long-delayed judgment.
Maybe I deserved this. Maybe they were right. Why were they dead while I got to live? It wasn't fair... this—this is fair.
The guilt I'd carried for years—the survivor's guilt, the what-ifs, the could-have-beens—seemed to crystallize in this moment of surrender. They were right to pull me down. Right to claim me. I had cheated death too many times, and now death had come to collect its due.
And soon, I felt my consciousness drift away. The pain in my lungs subsided, replaced by a numbness that spread throughout my body. The voices of the dead grew distant, and even their hands seemed to loosen their grip, as if satisfied that their work was done.