Crawl (The Sullivan Gray Series Book 4) by H.P. Bayne

Author:H.P. Bayne [Bayne, H.P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781999397777
Publisher: Bayne Independent Publishing
Published: 2019-04-17T22:00:00+00:00

18

Dez clutched the rope tied to his brother’s middle, eyes shut as he kicked through the water behind Sully.

The tunnel’s entrance wasn’t as far down as he’d expected, and it was only because he had his other hand free that he avoided banging his head against its ceiling. Keeping that hand moving through the water, Dez continued to propel his way behind Sully.

He had no way of knowing how far they’d come, nor how many seconds he’d been under when his lungs began to scream at him for breath. The press of the water, the hyperawareness of a roof of solid rock between him and his next breath, the knowledge a dead boy was at the front of this little convoy—all of it combined to push him nearer a ledge he didn’t know he could pull back from.

A memory came unexpectedly, slammed him back in time almost twenty years to that night, the first he’d spent with the knowledge he was now an only child. They’d pulled Aiden’s body from the riverbank earlier that day, and Dez had gone to sleep to sounds of his mother sobbing and his father’s emotion-choked attempts at comfort. Dez’s own tears had soaked his pillow, as he turned into it to muffle the sounds of his parents’ grief and to keep his own private.

He’d had his first of many nightmares upon sinking into an uneasy sleep. In it, he’d been searching for Aiden by the river. Walking along the bank, his eyes fixed upon the water beside him, he’d been terrified to see the face of his little brother beneath the creek’s rippling surface.

Aiden’s eyes were open and wide, mouth stretched into a soundless scream. Dez met it with a shriek of his own, but it caught in his throat as a small, white hand snapped out of the water. He felt the solid grip of fingers. Then he was falling, hitting the cold water hard and feeling it close over his head.

He struggled to reach the surface, had no air in his lungs to hold onto. He wasn’t under more than a few seconds when he realized it was no longer Aiden who had hold of him; it was the river itself, the cold weight of it holding him against the rocky bottom.

And all the while, those fear-filled, filmy eyes looked into his, the image of terror and death reflected within a face no longer familiar.

Aiden pressed toward him, eyes nearing his, as if he intended to melt into Dez. So close now that Dez would have felt the bubbles of the boy’s exhaled breath, had there been any remaining within his death-stilled lungs.

Dez had always woken up at that point. Not now. Now the nightmare was changing, taking on a life of its own as if it had found new strength in this black water.

The child’s face pressed against his beneath the water. Had Dez held any air to expel, he would have let it out in a water-muffled scream. Instead, he

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