Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

shower area and then onto the same door he had once dragged Garrett Weaver through. In his mind, Kellen knew the door had been painted blue in life. In his ongoing nightmare, the door now gleamed of the bone-white and blood-stained ivory he had witnessed before.

Kellen did not see which of his former companions opened the door, only that the others carried him across the threshold and spilled out onto the Tiber High School pool deck. Unlike the heat he had always felt when crossing over in life, now Kellen knew only freezing cold.

“Let me go!” Kellen shouted all the while, cursing and screaming, then begging them each by name for his release. “Let me go!”

None produced any effect, the dead carrying out their muted task and bearing him to the pool’s edge. As one, they flung Kellen toward the middle of the pool, the momentary flight turning his stomach as if he had performed a somersault off the diving board.

Spinning as he flew, Kellen glimpsed the army of Selkie dead. Reanimated seals and sea lions too had all surrounded every inch of the pool’s edge.

All watching . . . all waiting . . .

Kellen struck the icy water on his back. The last he saw of the blurry above came from looking toward the same central point in the second-storied, bleacher stands where his mother had often sat to watch him race. Though the one who sat there now bore his mother’s face and emerald eyes, Kellen understood then it had only ever been the lady of darkness herself, the pretender, Nyx, to wear his mother’s face and form in the watery Salt world beneath.

Erebus too sat alongside her, his tentacles sprawling across the bleachers in twining match of hers, concern lining both of their faces as they looked down on all that occurred below.

Kellen opened his mouth to call for Erebus and rescue, just as he had done when trapped in another of the nightmares that Moros had inflicted upon him. Before the name could leave his lips, however, what felt like a lassoed noose latched around his ankle and yanked Kellen below with insurmountable force and speed.

In an instant, Kellen was dragged beyond where the tiled floor should have been, the depth no longer the twelve feet he remembered at the Tiber High pool, but now far deeper and darker. Kellen doubted the anchor carrying him into the abyssal depths would ever stop its pull as he continued to claw for purchase among the water, failing all the while.

I’ll fight for air. His eyes stung at the continued, rapid descent. I’ll make it back.

The laughter in the surrounding darkness suggested elsewise. And when the marbled eyes of Moros opened from the abyssal deep to look on Kellen in full, he understood then that all his efforts and continued fight to combat the prophetic words of Marisa Bourgeois had all been the foolish hopes of a naïve and arrogant boy.

More of the monster’s tentacles emerged from the shadows to seek out Kellen’s wrists and bind his other ankle. We admire the fight in you, favored one, said Moros. But even one such as you are cannot resist us forever . . .

Despite his squirming, continued attempts to breakaway, Kellen saw no true escape in the surrounding darkness and deep. He cringed when the icy tentacles of Moros slithered around his legs and worked up his thigh, their touch lengthening and growing in both number and strength as still others clamped upon his wrists and then flew up his arms also, all working in tandem movement to envelope the full of his body.

Kellen screamed all the louder when the frigid feel worked up to his neck. The Salt flooded into his mouth, its force and supply unending as Kellen swallowed down each new burning, watered breath. His vision began to swim also, alternating black and red with popping white spots. And all the while, the voice of Moros called to him from all around, booming one moment from afar, then whispering to him the next.

Look unto us now, child, said Moros, even as Kellen shut his eyes to the monster before him. Look and see . . .

Still, Kellen refused the call as the icy and shadowed tentacles of Moros poked at his ears and nostrils, prodding him at first, then slithering inside. Kellen howled as the tentacled tips flattened and delved deeper still, burrowing inside his skull, then spreading across his brain. Each ran in search of the others, the feel of them like a rush of icy water dumped into a jar and quickly filling to the brim.

Kellen fought on, his struggle lessening with each passing second. His legs no longer answered his call, as if both had again been taken from him with only the phantom feel where they had once existed to haunt him. Wh-What’s happening to me? Kellen wondered.

Moros purred in answer of Kellen’s private question. Look and see . . .

Kellen’s arms numbed, the strength in his back removed from his control too. No. Kellen refused to obey, the icy touch of Moros climbing in him all the faster, racing up his neck and then into his face as well. Kellen tried to scream against the overtaking coldness within him, yet found his voice strangely stolen too, his mouth no longer working, nor even the grunted sound of one trying to give voice to his pain either.

Aye, look and see, favored one, said Moros, even as the cold consumed Kellen in full. For I am thee . . . and thou art me.

Kellen Winstel opened his eyes, then . . . but not of his own choosing.

Though the darkness and watery deep surrounded him still, Kellen saw no sign of Moros, nor felt the tentacles holding him captive either. Rather than wait for Moros to reappear, Kellen attempted to ascend.

His efforts did not serve though, and his body would no longer heed him.

Swim! Kellen thought to himself, commanding his limbs over