Altar (5 page)

Tyler spun around one last time, hoping to see a glimpse of his mother’s red suit, her face...

He didn’t see her, he couldn’t see anything but water and terror and chaos. He tried to scream but water filled his lungs and he was sucked backward and down.

The hole had opened.

Gary watched blankly as the funnel in the pool fell open into a black abyss. He saw the willowy underwater forms of two kids get simultaneously sucked through the dark drain of the whirlpool and disappear. He looked up at the lifeguard, who stood rigid, motionless, his mouth slack and open.

What had only moments ago been slowly drawing children toward it, creating a whirlpool effect, had torn completely open, like someone had punched a hole in a bag of grain, emptying its contents in one great vacuous, volcanic downward expulsion.

Gary could only look on in numb horror as a pretty blonde girl held tightly to the buoy-lined dividing rope. The rope
—
as old as the pool itself, Gary imagined
—
frayed, then snapped. The pretty girl yelled something to someone, a last torrent of words he could not hear, as she and the end of the rope vanished. The rest of the long rope quickly followed, the buoys slipping down into the funnel like a long centipede burrowing with naked speed through a hole into the earth.

The air filled with the smell of thick, rancid sulfur, and Gary could not turn away as several more bodies struggling in the swirling water were simply sucked away. Down, down into nothing.

The waterline was getting noticeably lower. The opening was now the size of a small car. Gary heard horrible cries from around him and someone knocked him down. He hit his head on a step of the hard white metal pole that held the lifeguard stand aloft and a flash-bulb popped like a pistol-shot in his brain.

Lying on the ground, he forced his eyes open. Blood from the cut in his forehead slid into one of his eyes, turning the world a blurry crimson as he tried to blink it away.

A wave of nausea swept over him and it felt like some invisible force was squeezing down on his chest. His eyes rolled back into his head and he felt his body lift off the ground, rising into the air, higher and higher, shooting like an arrow into the sky. Or was he falling? The earth and the sky had switched places, and Gary wasn’t sure which direction he was looking anymore. Up at the pool, now so very far away? Or down at the stormy, dark gray clouds, rushing up at him from below?

He tried to tilt his perspective, look down at the pool. He saw it now as a bird would, the entire blue rectangle, a cancerous hungry sphincter wide and open in its middle, sucking everything down into it. He watched tiny bodies disappearing into the dark. In the next instant, the hole doubled in size, devouring everything within its reach, including Ted, who went down screaming.

Gary continued to watch from high above and, as the mouth widened, his vision
sharpened
. He could see, miles below the surface, a large stone slab, rough and stained. The bodies of children were splattering against it, and crouched down in that darkness was a creature, a large black beast with stiff limbs, each long and bent but quick. The creature’s elongated, twitching head danced atop its insect-like torso as it skittered from one end of the slab to the other, gathering the broken bodies of the children as fast as they were falling, enwrapping them, keeping them alive, keeping them for its own sake.

Some of the bodies the thing caught before they struck, some he caught as pieces. Others, Gary felt sure, it was somehow pulling down from the surface, ethereal tentacles reaching miles upward to claim fragile souls.

Gary’s stomach lurched and bile roiled into the back of his throat. He felt cold rain on his skin and felt something shaking him savagely.

He heard his name, “Gary!” and tried desperately to open his eyes, to focus.

His mother’s drawn face filled his vision, her expression a mask of terror and pain, madness. She clutched him to her, and he was limp in her hard, bony arms. Over her shoulder he could see the hole had doubled yet again, the waterline of the pool visibly lower as the water was swallowed, suctioned down and down into the earth. He watched as two more bodies slid away down the funnel. Some of the kids, those in the shallow end especially, were now standing on dry ground, their parents or the parents of other children holding them, clutching them tightly, lifting them out of the pool.

Gary’s mother pushed him to arm’s-length, looked at his face.

“My god, you’re bleeding!”

Before Gary could respond, she shook him, her eyes wide, her hair falling wildly. He noticed her suit had broken at the strap and one of her breasts was exposed. He wanted to be back in the sky.

“Gary, where’s Abby? Where’s Abby?” his mother yelled, right into his face, shaking him again.

Remembering his sister and the events that had transpired prior to this new madness, he turned and looked toward the locker rooms.

Abby was walking toward them.

Her dress was gone, but her suit was still intact. She was limping slightly, Gary noticed, and she had a large smear of blood on her leg and a cut on her face that leaked even more blood down her cheek and neck.

“Abby!” Martha screamed. But Abby kept walking, calmly, her head held high. Gary thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The rain spattered against her skin, the wind rippled her hair. She continued on straight, determined, taking no notice of her family or the chaos around her.

She walked until she reached the pool. At the edge she paused, took in a deep breath. She looked downward into the maelstrom. Then, softly, she turned her head and looked right at Gary. Met his eyes.

“Abby,” he said.

She smiled crookedly, and gave him the Wink. Then she jumped head-first into the pool.

Gary heard Martha’s scream but couldn’t see if Abby had actually made it to the hole or just hit the bottom.

He yanked himself free of his hysterical mother and, kneeling, looked down into the hole. Abby was gone.

A few feet of water remained, and now many of the kids still moving around inside the basin had stopped, breathing heavily where they sat or stood, their parents yelling, beckoning.

One younger boy dangling at the edge, who had been desperately holding on to his mother’s hand, appeared to simply...
let go.
As the churning water carried him, he turned to face the hole as he slid toward it, and then he lifted his arms.
Like a waterslide
, Gary thought.

The boy disappeared feet-first.

Gary looked up in time to see his friend Billy Marks, whose birthday party was next week, the invitation for which was taped to the fridge at Gary’s house, run to the edge of the pool and leap. He didn’t quite make it to the opening, smacking against the concrete a few feet from the jagged slurping edge. There was a loud
snap
as one, or both, of his legs broke beneath him. The water, racing downward, acted as a lubricant for Billy, who was now crawling toward it, dragging a bleeding, bent leg behind him. Finally, mercifully, the water built up around him and carried him down.

Gary felt light as air, his vision turned hazy. In his decaying vision he saw other kids jumping, diving, running for the hole. Some lay unmoving where they land, having hit wrong, the water now so shallow. Others were caught in the remaining current and taken down. Insane mothers and fathers clutched at their children, no longer protecting them, but subduing them, holding them back, keeping them from following the others down into the abyss.

The sounds of the world sharpened and condensed to a high-pitched throbbing tone, and Gary could now hear what the other children were hearing
—
that ancient voice
—
and he knew what lurked in the deep, gloomy below, where the voice kept house, waiting for them. He knew he was already gone, already broken, but it was sweet. So very sweet...

Martha wrapped Gary in her arms and he jolted against her, writhing. Desperate to follow, his arms reached for the edge, for purchase, his feet kicking, the pads of his feet and bones of his ankles scraping and pushing against the concrete, smears of blood from his ripped skin mixing with the gray rain, snaking out in crimson rivulets.

Martha screamed and held him. With everything that remained inside of her she squeezed his wet thrashing body to her naked chest and wailed into the driving wind for all that had been lost as the rain fell in torrents and the children strived for escape. The pool swallowed all those willing.

And the living knelt along the edge, their arms frantically reaching, screaming prayers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip Fracassi
is a screenwriter and the author of THE EGOTIST and the novelette MOTHER. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.

You can connect with him on Facebook, Twitter (@philipfracassi), and on his website at www.pfracassi.com