Green Lights

Green lights were never good.

Okay. That was a really broad generalization. If she were running late to work, then a green light was a good thing. And then, there was the aurora borealis. The green northern lights, those were neutral, at best--or at worst.

But other than those things, green lights were never good. Case in point: movies based on Stephen King novels were rife with examples. The radio in Christine. The comet in Maximum Overdrive. The Tommyknockers. And that nurse show on Netflix, Wretched or something. Green almost always meant “evil.” And when it didn’t, it was a warning about evil.

Then why was she drawn to it?

Stay away from the light, Carol Anne!

Yeah. Right.

It was good advice, but she was not a five-year-old girl, and these lights were not a poltergeist.

She steered toward the light, hair prickling on the back of her neck as she did so. The sensation wasn’t from fog or from humidity. At one o’clock in the morning, there was no sun to burn her. No. No matter what she wanted to tell herself, the sensation was from those hidden . . . what? . . . whatever was drawing her toward the light.

The bow of her cabin cruiser brushed the tendrils of the light. She braced herself for the impact of what she was certain would be a supernatural blow. Nothing came. Absolutely nothing. Confused, she turned the wheel starboard. The boat made a wide, lazy half-circle to the edge of the inlet where the light seemed situated. She cut the motor and waited.

If it were a movie, the boat would start to crumble, maybe. She would hear moans coming across the water toward her or see a, a thing, a form that would lurch in her direction, drawing closer. Ever closer. At the very least, her boat would animate itself, overturning to leave her in the water, then right itself to run her over with its engine on full.

There was nothing.

For some reason, that was even more freakish than if anything had happened. When there was a light set deep inside her best catfishing inlet, particularly a green one, she needed to know the cause. She started the engine and made another wide arc, this time to port, even farther from the shore. Again, she turned her boat to face the light, again, she cut her engine.

The boat bobbed, water lapping quietly at its sides. The light sent out more tendrils as she watched, slender green tendrils reaching out at something she could not see. But what? Even if the tendrils were now visible, the thing they sought was not.

For whatever reason, she felt unafraid. More curious, really, than anxious. The tendrils had not reached out for her when she’d piloted the boat right into them. They whirled, snapping and grasping, little whip-like appendages, like the curlicues on vines that held them in place. As she watched, the vines lost their tenacity, folded in on themselves, and disappeared into the light of the breaking dawn.

Dawn?

How had she sat so long without knowing? She had not dropped anchor, but she would swear the cabin cruiser had not moved more than a foot in any direction since she had turned off the motor. Even the tiny ripples that incessantly marched toward shore would have started her drifting in that direction. Toward the light.

Suddenly chilled, she turned the motor back on again. She returned to her home dock, never having set a line in the water. All she wanted to do was sleep.

* * *

The light was there again when she returned. It was stronger this time. The tendrils were more luminescent. If she approached them again, she was certain they would have substance. This time the green lights seemed to have purpose. They circled something, again, a something not visible to the naked eye. The lights had enveloped a larger area, as well, farther from shore.

She did not know what it meant. She didn’t sense an intelligence emanating from the light, even as the tendrils seemed to move with purpose. Again, she watched the vines grow, grasp onto things unseen, then fade away when the sun’s rays peeked over the horizon.

* * *

She had no reason to continue to return but return she did. She had told no one about these lights. Even with certain nighttime boat traffic, she had never been aware of others passing that inlet. Not when the light was there. Then again, she had never been aware of the passage of time when the lights were there, either. One thousand boats could have passed and she would not have known.

The lights were there again when she had approached the inlet. This time she had not even bothered to bring a pole with her. Fishing was no longer the object of her visits. She brought the cabin cruiser within hailing distance of the lights, then cut her motor. The boat moved forward, ever so slowly, as ripples common to the lake reached its shore. It was a normal motion. Time still seemed to be in play this go-round. She turned off her running lights--something she would not want to be caught doing by the lake patrol--and turned on the search light overhead.

The green lights were no longer just lights, if they ever had been. She could see something solid encased by the luminescence. It shrunk back at the touch of the search light. Then, as if angered, the vines that had been touched swirled protectively around the others. The swirl of vines became a vortex. Water pelted her; the very air screamed out from being sliced by whatever thing was powering the object? creature? That pursued her.

More by instinct than by intelligence she started the boat motor and propelled it backward. She had no running lights. If there was an approaching boat behind her, they were certain to crash. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now other than getting away from the thing that was in pursuit.

She could not say how long she backed away from the thing. There was no dawn, but there was no starlight, either. The boat was backing into a void, a void that contained only sound and water and the feeling of icy drops penetrating her skin. Her eyes saw nothing, yet she was aware of everything around her. The green vines whipped around her, whipped around her boat, pushing her, dragging her, raising her up to cast her down. Pulling her world apart. Pulling her apart.

And then there was nothing. Silence. The sensation of water, moving over her skin, moving through her body. The barest sensation of breath in her lungs. What did she breathe? Air? Water? Time meant nothing here, wherever “here” might be. As she drifted, she became aware of light again. Green light. Green lights were never good. She had proven that.