Deep Water Chapter 4

It was several hours later, when the rest of the school was cramming down the mishmash of nutrition optimistically called lunch, that Douglas learned what Shanice was talking about. She’d promised more if he met her in the library, refused to elaborate in the janitor’s closet, and quickly hurried out not long after the revelation. Douglas followed a few minutes later, relieved to find the storm had passed.

But Shanice’s words wouldn’t leave his mind. Ever since the incidents had started, Douglas essentially accepted he was having a mental breakdown. Not that he’d been willing to admit it openly, however one could only see so much phantom water before the truth became undeniable. His plan had been to grit his teeth and knuckle through until the visions stopped, or true insanity took hold.

The idea that other people had experienced the same things as him… it offered a potential way forward. What if he wasn’t having a breakdown, and it was all some weird infection from the inner lake’s microbes? That whole body of water was supposed to have a unique biome, it was what the Havis Bottling Company had built their branding on.

By the time lunch arrived, Douglas all but bolted through the halls. Luckily, as one of many teen athletes in the school, he wasn’t alone in the rush, though most others were heading toward the cafeteria, urged on by aching stomachs rather than fracturing minds.

Middlelake High School’s library was functional, in that it indeed stocked books that students could check out, however the majority were old and obscure enough that few bothered. The only semi-new tomes to be found were all related to the town itself, as fresh copies were constantly donated by the town council and other supposedly civic-minded organizations. And it was, surprisingly enough, in a pile of those books that Douglas found Shanice.

She’d clearly forgotten about expecting company, utterly absorbed in the book she was holding. Her eyes darted fervently across the page, and Douglas noticed she mouthed the words ever-so-slightly as she read them. Which was how he realized that Shanice wasn’t so much reading the book as catapulting through it.

Unsure of what else to do, Douglas finally spoke up, careful to keep his tone soft. “Hey.”

From the way Shanice reacted, one would have thought he leaned down and screamed in her ear. Letting out an unrestrained shriek, she threw her current book up into the air while tumbling backwards, knocking her nearest pile of tomes over as she tried to hurriedly scramble away. It took several seconds, long enough for her airborne book to come crashing down, before Shanice slowed her retreat.

Panting, and visibly embarrassed, she started climbing to her feet, and Douglas hurried forward to offer a hand. Not meeting his eyes, she accepted, leaning right back down to start gathering the scattered books. “Soooo, how’s your day going? Learn anything fun?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I haven’t been able to think about anything other than this morning,” Douglas admitted.

Shanice’s head snapped up sharply, and Douglas realized his wording might benefit from some additional clarification. “You said I wasn’t the first person this has happened to. What does that mean? And how do you know about all this?”

“Ah, right.” Pointing her warm cheeks toward the ground while she scoured about, Shanice eventually plucked a hefty book from the fallen pile. “Anthony T. Havis. He was walking the marshland that used to be where the inner lake is now, when a wrong step put him down a sinkhole. His brothers raced over, and after several minutes feared the worst. But just when they were about to give up hope, Anthony’s head broke the surface and they dragged him onto land.”

As she spoke, Shanice flipped through the pages, reproductions of old weathered photos showing a swampy chunk of land that no longer existed. Moreover, Douglas realized he’d heard some form of this tale before.

“Hang on, isn’t this the story from the old Havis Mineral Water labels?” Douglas have seen countless iterations of those labels growing up in Middlelake, hell there was a framed one in the principal’s office. “Anthony emerged stronger than ever, and you too can taste the vitality in Havis Mineral Water.”

“Before it was a promotional slogan, it was local history.” Shanice was undaunted by his evident doubt, continuing to flip through her tome’s pages, tapping on a particular line of text. “When doctors performed a physical on him after the incident, the formerly feeble Anthony proved exceedingly hale and hearty.”

Douglas waited for more, but when Shanice looked at him clearly expecting a response, he found himself at a loss. “How does that relate to me seeing water that isn’t there?”

“So no notable physical changes then?” She kept pressing the issue, watching him furtively.

“I wouldn’t really know. Haven’t been allowed to go to practice since the incident, today’s my first chance to get on the field.”

Bobbing her head, knocking her glasses mildly askew, Shanice finally flipped over to the next page. “Eager to reproduce the results of Anthony’s alteration, many of the locals began drinking water out of the sinkholes. That was when they discovered the unique structure of the watertable, with dozens-to-hundreds of unique, isolated pools lining the cave system, accessible through an ever-shifting array of currents. Which is to say, a lot of people got sick guzzling down the mostly tainted water.”

Flipping the book around, she pushed it toward Douglas, thumb pressed against a paragraph along the page’s top.

Without intending too, he read it aloud. “Symptoms of those who drank from contaminated sources included vomiting, loss of bowel control, fever, and several strange mental conditions, including a lingering series of hallucinations centered… around… water.”

Here it was, in black-and-white print. Proof that there was an external explanation for his strange visions. So why didn’t he feel relieved? Maybe it was the revelation that he’d ingested some sort of pseudo-toxin during his time submerged, or the part of him wondering about all the aspects to the story that hadn’t been printed.

Or perhaps it was Shanice’s face as she slowly, deliberately, turned the page once again.