The Black Water

About three years ago I moved to this abandoned farm out in the desert all by myself. I had lost my sister before that and everything around me seemed all too much to handle. I desperately needed to get away, from people, from the city, from anything that could disrupt the silence around me.

Life on the farm has been okay I guess. Fixing it up at first was hell but I managed to get through it. There is no one around for miles so I don’t have to worry about feeling the need to explain to anyone what I’m doing here. And this farm hasn’t been lived in since the eighties. Honestly, I’m kind of surprised it’s still standing. But now I’ve made it into this quiet and quaint little bit of peace just for me where I don’t ever have to worry about a thing. That was until this morning…

I woke up and started my normal routine of meditating, doing a little bit of painting to clear my head, and then making myself some breakfast when I looked out the kitchen window. Usually, I don’t see anything out there. I just look out just for the sake of looking outside. But I saw something black out there, flat on the ground. At first, I tried to brush it off. For all I knew, it could have been a piece of tire that was blown all the way out here, or a trash bag or something. For whatever reason though, the sight of it made me sick to my stomach, like something was very wrong.

I went to my dining room and tried to eat but I kept wondering what was outside. So after a few moments, I looked outside the window in my dining room and I could see it out there too. Almost as if it stretched across the length of my house. I then ran down the hall to my bedroom, and I could see it out of that window as well. Then I went out to the garage and it was there too. At this point, I had to go see what it was. Best case scenario this is some freaky dream and whatever is outside will swallow me whole and I’ll wake up in a fright. God, I really hope this is a dream.

Grabbing a shovel I reach the door and take a breath. Before I could second guess my decision to go outside, I threw the door open and stepped out onto the porch. Whatever the black substance was, it seemed to go on forever. At first, I thought it was on one side of my home but now it seems to completely wrap around it. I’m surrounded.

“Oh, this has got to be a nightmare.” I slowly walk towards the new entity holding my breath almost the whole way. It is about ten, twenty feet away but seemingly still. As I get closer it seems to reflect bits of the sky on its surface. It also seems fluid-like. Is this water? From what I’ve gathered there hasn’t been water here in years, maybe even decades. I had to gather water from town and install a massive water tank on the farm if I wanted any kind of water out here. There’s no way this is real. This much water, overnight, completely out of nowhere, and it’s black?!

“Wake up, wake up, wake up!” I scream with my eyes closed shut. Nothing. I once read that if you do something that causes extreme adrenaline in a dream it can cause you to wake yourself up. I was desperate. So I knocked myself unconscious with my shovel.

As my eyes flutter open all I can feel is the throbbing sensation on the side of my head. My sight is blurred but looking up I think I see the sky. I’m still outside.

“What?!” I prepare myself to sit up and notice my hands are touching something wet. I look towards my hands and notice it’s the water. Half of my body is engulfed in the stuff. That’s not possible. I was like three or four feet away from it when I knocked myself out. I rush to stand up and go back into the house. I head inside and lock the door behind me. How is this happening? I began to hyperventilate. No, my asthma will start acting up. I try to calm down and think.

Once I calm myself down I look outside and try to rationalize the situation. As I do so I realize it’s dark out. But I couldn’t have been out that long. And how did the water get closer? Even since I’ve come inside a minute ago it feels like the water has gotten closer still. And then I see something come out of the black depths of the new body of water surrounding my house. Something unworldly, dragging itself from the darkness. Before I can identify what it is I run to the back of the house and lock myself in the bathroom in my room. It’s the only room that doesn’t have some sort of direct access from the outside. I cover the bottom of the door with all of the towels I have. I shove a bunch of tissues in the sink and tub faucet if that thing somehow gets in my water tank or pipes. I’m fully aware that this won’t stop anything but maybe it will at least slow it down.

“Think Lilith, think!.” For whatever reason, I am suddenly drawn to the image of myself in my mirror. I see blood trickling from my ear down my cheek. But then as I look closer, there’s something black in my ear. It was wet but thicker than just plain water. Almost like a goo of some kind. I frantically try to clean it out of my ear but more just keeps appearing. Then I notice that it’s starting to come out of my nose. Before I know it my eyes are turning grey and I begin to choke on the substance. Starting to spit up the stuff in the sink, I lean back and see the water beginning to flood the room. How didn’t I feel that? I keep trying to let out a cry for help but I can’t get any air in. The water rapidly rises and before I know it, I’m spitting some up, even though it’s only around my hips. And then I see the creature again. Trying to pull me under the already rising water. It looks like a woman, either a demonic one or a corpse that has been rotting for a while.

Now we are completely submerged under the depths of the black water. That’s when I noticed something else. We weren’t in the bathroom of my farmhouse anymore. We were in an open body of water like a lake or something. Then I realized the girlish creature isn’t trying to pull me under, she is trying to grab onto me for help. Yet I still keep trying to pull away to the little bit of light that peaks into the water. I kick and thrash but my body keeps sinking to the bottom of the abyss no matter how hard I try. And before everything goes dark, I get a good look at the corpse of my underwater companion. It’s my sister. My sister that has been dead for the past three years. The one that drowned tragically, way too young, way before her time. All because of me. As we sank even deeper she latched on to my body with a grip that’s impossible to break. I attempted to scream out, one last attempt to wake up from this nightmare or to get help, and that’s when I remembered everything. When I remembered what really happened that fateful day.

It was May 13, 2016. Our 25th birthday. My sister and I were on the way to our surprise party, unbeknownst to us, and got into a really big fight. Honestly, probably the biggest one we’ve ever had. The sad part is I don’t even remember what it was about, I just remember I was driving and it was pretty dark out and raining. In the midst of the argument, I just remember feeling this spark of rage deep in my belly and wanted to do something that would scare her and hopefully shut her up. And that’s when it happened.

Without even thinking what could happen I sharply turned the wheel as we were approaching a bridge. If I had known that or that it was unstable I swear I wouldn’t have done it. Before I could stop the car we were thrown off the bridge and headed for the water. Once we hit it, water immediately started filling the car. At first, I didn’t feel it because I was knocked out cold by the force of the side of my head hitting the steering wheel. I was woken by my sister Agnes screaming and shaking me for us to get out of the death trap. First, we tried slamming our fists on the windows but that didn’t work. Then she tried kicking out the windshield. Still nothing.

As the water continued to rise I remembered a special pen that I had that could break windows. A security guard at an old job gave it to me as a form of protecting myself on my walks home alone at night. I grabbed the pen and slammed it as hard as I could against the window next to me. First, time nothing. I slammed it again and I got just a minor scratch. Third time I saw cracks form in the middle of the glass. My glimmer of hope. But before I can rejoice, the car is now completely filled with water, and I can feel it sinking further and further down to the bottom of the river. Agnes takes the pen from me to try and crack her window as I try to finish breaking mine. After a few more tries I manage to kick it open and clear the glass as much as possible, that way I won’t get cut and bleed out on my way to the surface.

Time is running out. I can feel my lungs already being crushed by the water, my asthma squeezing them dry begging me to take a breath. As I barely escape the car I feel something tug at my leg. It’s Agnes. She is stuck under her seatbelt. I try to get away as I feel myself begin to choke but she won’t let go. There is not enough air in my lungs to save her but if I leave her now she may drown. I hate to say it but at that moment it was me or her. I could try to come back for her but I won’t survive if I don’t get out of the water now. As much as I kicked and thrashed she would not let me leave her side. Then it felt like she began to pull me back in the car with a strength I had never known her to have. As if to say we either both get to the surface and live, or neither of us does.

They found our bodies about a week or so later. Our bodies were so decayed it was hard to recognize either one of us. For whatever reason when the coroners examined our bodies they found a black goo coming out of our eyes, noses, and ears. Maybe it was the darkness in mine and my sister's actions that day. Maybe that’s why when I look in my mirror I don’t see me, but my dead rotting sister. Maybe the selfishness of our actions went against the idea of that sisterly love everyone talks about. So now every year on this dark, dark day, our unrested souls relive the tragedy of the betrayal of our twenty-fifth birthday. Happy birthday, sis.