The Dream Again
The dreams returned on a Tuesday.
Brynn woke with a gasp, her skin cold, her heart racing. The room was dark, the window gray, the clock flashing 3:17 AM. She had been dreaming of the river. Of the seed. Of hands reaching up from the mud, grasping, pulling.
She sat up.
Corinne was standing in the doorway.
“You felt it too,” Corinne said.
“The seed?”
“It’s calling to us. I’ve been dreaming of it for weeks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I thought it would stop. I thought it would fade. But it’s getting stronger.”
They sat in the kitchen, drinking tea, watching the sun rise.
The city was quiet, the streets empty, the sky pale. Brynn stared at her hands, remembering the warmth of the stone, the pulse beneath her fingers.
“What do we do?” Corinne asked.
“We go back to the river.”
“And then what?”
“We find the seed. We dig it up. And we destroy it.”
“You couldn’t destroy it before.”
“I didn’t try hard enough.”
They drove to the river at dawn.
The water was gray, the current slow, the banks empty. Brynn stood at the edge, trying to remember where she had thrown the stone. The spot looked different in daylight. Smaller. Less significant.
“Are you sure this is the place?” Corinne asked.
“No.”
“Then how will we find it?”
Brynn closed her eyes.
She listened.
The whispers were faint, distant, but they were there. Echoes of the thing from the depths, calling to the seed, calling to her.
Here. We are here.
She opened her eyes and walked along the bank.
Twenty feet. Thirty. Fifty.
She stopped.
“This is it.”
“How do you know?”
“I can feel it.”
They had brought shovels.
The mud was thick, cold, heavy. They dug for hours, their arms aching, their hands blistered. The sun rose higher, the clouds thinned, the day grew warm. But the hole grew deeper.
Brynn’s shovel struck something hard.
Not stone. Not metal.
Something that pulsed.
She knelt and brushed away the mud.
The seed.
It had grown.
It was larger now, the size of a fist, its surface cracked and veined. The light inside it was brighter, stronger, more insistent.
“It’s been feeding,” Corinne whispered.
“On what?”
“On the river. On the fish. On the things that live in the dark.”
“Can we destroy it?”
“I don’t know.”
Brynn lifted the seed from the mud.
It was warm, heavy, alive. The pulse was faster now, stronger, matching her own heartbeat.
Take me home, the voice whispered. Take me to the dark. Take me to the deep.
“No.”
She raised the seed above her head.
Don’t.
She brought it down on a rock.
The seed cracked.
Light poured out—bright, blinding, painful. Brynn screamed. Corinne grabbed her arm. The river churned, the sky darkened, the ground shook.
And then, silence.
The seed was broken.
The light was gone.
The pulse had stopped.
Brynn opened her eyes.
The seed lay in two halves on the rock, dark and dead. The cracks were empty, the veins dry, the warmth faded.
“Did we do it?” Corinne whispered.
“I think so.”
They buried the pieces.
Separately. Deep. In different places along the riverbank. They marked the spots with stones, so they would remember, so they could check on them, so they would know if the darkness tried to grow again.
The whispers were silent.
The shadows were gone.
The thing from the depths was still—not dead, perhaps, but dormant. Sleeping. Waiting.
But not here.
Not now.
They drove home in silence.
The sun was setting, the sky orange, the streets quiet. Brynn parked the car and sat for a moment, staring at the dashboard.
“It’s over,” Corinne said.
“It’s over.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I want to.”
Corinne took her hand.
“Then let’s believe it.”