The Spring

The sun was high when Lance pulled off the road and into the dusty lot of the service station. The sign back at the hairpin--the first sign in a long time--said they just rolled into Hatter’s Creek, Population 63. It was small enough it didn’t appear on the handmap in Shelby’s lap, yet here it stood, the first backwater township on the fringes of the National Park. The plan was to gas up, restock the snack bag, and press on into the wilderness.

The problem was that there was no one around; the street, the service station, the store, each more barren than the last. Lance putzed back and forth between the aisles, certain that something was wrong.

“I’m telling you, this is fucking weird,” he said through his teeth. “Where is everybody?”

“It’s small town life, babe. Things are different here, it’s not all go-go-go,” Shelby explained as she looked over a rack of packaged pastries.

“Well, I’m done waiting. Let’s get in the car and hit the road before we lose anymore daylight,”

“It’s the longest day of the year--I think we have plenty of time,” Shelby reminded him.

The front door chimed open before Lance could respond, and he turned to find a kid sneaking through the opening. They froze when they saw each other, and exchanged the universal expression for what the hell are you doing here?

The kid turned and started to run back out the door.

“Hey, wait!” Lance nearly shouted. “You live here?”

The kid turned back, nodded. He couldn’t have been older than ten.

“We’re from O’Fallon, just driving through to Arrow Mound. Do you know where that is?”

The boy nodded and said something, but Lance couldn’t understand him; he spoke the garble of a true hillbilly.

“Can you tell us where everyone is?” he tried asking the kid instead.

“Dey down yonder, by the water, like they do,” he said.

Lance and Shelby shared a look.

“Will they be coming back soon?” Lance pressed.

“Hard’t say,” the boy said with a shrug. “They wen’ down t’kiss the spring on account’a the solstice.”

“Spring? Is it close?”

“Yup,” the boy said, waving a hand for them to follow. “This way.”

The trio exited the building and walked around back, where an old rock staircase cut through the bushes. The steps of it looked ancient, laid right into the hillside. The boy led them down through a canopy where the air felt much cooler.

They could hear water next, and soon, people clamoring somewhere in the distance. The foliage was too dense to see through, but after rounding the last bend, the forest opened up into a beautiful cove along a river. Folks stood in a loose ring around a rocky opening, where the water pushed out of the hillside and into the pool below.

There was an old wooden sign pegged to a tree. It read SUN SPRING.

“Nice swimming hole,” Shelby said.

The boy looked up at her and shook his head.

“We don’ dip a toe in that water,” he mumbled.

“Why not?” Lance scoffed.

“It belong to the Sun,” was all he said.

A man closer to the river turned back to look at them; he had thin, combed hair, a collared shirt tucked into a pair of faded blue jeans. He smiled and nodded and took a few steps up the hillside.

“Where’d you go, Clive? Better not be stealin’ all my damn candy from the store, boy,” the older man said to the kid.

“I wasn’t, Mr. Kirby,” Clive said, pointing up to Lance and Shelby. “They were waitin’ for ya up at the station,”

The man nodded and turned an eye on the couple.

“Good morning,” Lance offered. “The kid said we’d find you all down here,”

“Yep, come down for the solstice. Should be done soon, then I’ll getcha taken care of,” he said, turning back to face the water. Clive walked near a cliff and peered into the churning depths below.

Lance and Shelby settled into the background as they watched the celebration. Those standing nearest the spring seemed to be chanting a hymn of some kind, while all the others stood with their eyes closed and their mouths open, reaching their palms up toward the sky.

“Well, it looks like this is a bust,” Lance said, nodding up the stone stairwell. “Let’s get back to the car and get out of here.”

“No, wait,” Shelby said, looking over his shoulder. “Look at that.”

She raised a finger toward the spring.

Lance slowly turned to face it.

What had been a gorgeous flowing faucet was now stopped up with a big, spongy cork of some kind. He would’ve thought it was rock, except it had the fluid, vascular movements of a lung; slowly expanding outward before pulling back into the rubble of the spring. Lance watched it balloon out several times as the locals lined up beside it.

He took a step toward Mr. Kirby, who didn’t go to join the congregation.

“What is it?” Lance asked the old man.

“The solstice ceremony,” Mr. Kirby answered.

“No, what is that?” Lance clarified, pointing a finger at the wheezing membrane.

“Oh,” Kirby laughed. “We don’t know,”

They looked over just as the first few worshippers leaned over and placed their lips against the tissue. They delivered a single kiss, ducked under the balloon as it filled up, and then jumped into the water below.

Lance looked back to Shelby in horror.

They go down t’kiss the spring…

This is what the kid was talking about. Lance scampered up the hill and pulled Shelby after him.

“What’s going on?”

“We need to get the hell out of here,” Lance said. “This. Is. Crazy.”

“What? It’s just some hick tradition--”

“No, that thing is fucking alive, do you hear me?”

Lance could hear more people jumping into the water as they argued.

And then he heard them scream.

Their words hitched and they both turned back to the creek; the only folks they could see were the boy and Mr. Kirby. The older man was clapping and cheering at the congregation. Lance took Shelby’s hand and together, they crept back down the stairs.

Most of the locals had already kissed the thing and jumped into the pool, but there were twenty or thirty still in line. The screams came from the others, swimming down below; one by one, the couple watched as something yanked them under the surface--not a single person returned.

Above them all, the membrane expanded much more frantically, turning from a balloon into a sail. It extended above the rocks, above the trees, until the end of it popped loose and exposed it for what it was.

It wasn’t a lung or wad of subterranean protein; it was the first great arm of a starfish, stuck in the fresh mountain spring. It wasn’t the spines along the top or tubes along the bottom that gave it away; it was the four other arms spread out beneath the water. The pool proved so crystal clear Lance could see its unmistakable body sprawling across the floor of the river.

He watched as they snaked up to the surface and yanked the locals under.

We don’ dip a toe in that water…

It was obvious why. The spring had additional openings underneath, where the starfish could push the rest of its body through. For whatever reason, it forced its head up through the waterfall, where a beady little eye looked down at the folks kissing it.

It belong to the Sun.

The creature spread out symmetrically for a moment, and Lance saw it indeed looked like a child's drawing of a sun. He crept closer to Clive and tugged on the boy’s sleeve, careful not to get Kirby’s attention.

“Where are your parents?” Lance asked.

The boy pointed down toward the spring.

“Are they in line or in the water?”

“They got took last summer,” the boy said with a trembling voice.

Lance took a hard look around the river and wondered what godless community this was--feeding parents to the river and leaving the children all alone. His eyes landed on Clive and Lance decided he couldn’t leave the boy; not with these people.

He grabbed Clive by the shoulder and ushered him toward Shelby. The trio ascended the stairs together, just as they came down.

Behind them, the population of Hatter’s Creek continued to scream.

“What the hell was all that?” Shelby asked as they climbed the last step.

“I don’t know, none of them do. They just do it,” Lance said.

“Where we goin’?” Clive asked.

“We’re leaving. We’re getting you out of here,” Shelby explained. “Don’t worry about anything.”

They came upon the car and stopped; all four of the tires were punctured and deflated. A sick, liquid worry started to fill Lance’s stomach.

“Come on now, boy!” Mr. Kirby hollered from down the stairwell. “Let’s go take a swim!”