2.

Eventually it occurred to me that Shannon and I could reposition our ex-sisters before they woke, but by then it was too late. They were already sighing and stirring, though even more slowly than Tonya. The only one who seemed at all conscious of her situation was the last to rise: Leslie.

Leslie sat up as if pulled by invisible strings and immediately fixed her gaze on me. Her face was expressionless, her eyes shadowed; and even though I was dressed by then, that look made me feel more exposed than I’d been when I was still naked. Leslie’s lips parted, the tip of her tongue poked out—

—and she turned away, yawning idly.

It was like being doused with ice water. Shuddering, I told myself I had to get out of that room. The longer I sat there, the more freaked-out I was going to get.

For a moment I thought about the kitchen, but this just wasn’t a traditional-breakfast kind of morning. I couldn’t even get excited about the coffee. Nor, apparently, could anyone else. All three of the cabin’s showers were running, bustling noises sounded from the bedrooms, and the kitchen remained still and empty.

Maybe we were all too hung over to eat, I thought. But I didn’t feel hung over, not exactly. No headache, no stomachache, just a strangely spacey feeling. And maybe a desire for some fresh air.

Yeah, fresh air. That was it. Walking carefully behind Leslie, who was still cradling the book like a baby, I stepped to the door and opened it. A wet, earthy scent washed over me and I drank it in gratefully, thinking it must have rained during the night. The sunlight flickering off the wet grass, and off the lake, was so strong it made me dizzy.

I stepped outside, squinting, and my fears evaporated like dew. Yes, Beck’s Peak was a magical place, but only in a real-world sense. The air and the sparkling light calmed me, grounded me, flooded me with relief.

Sighing again, I walked a little further out of the cabin, then turned to look back at it. Had there been vines on the walls yesterday? I didn’t think so, but maybe I just hadn’t noticed them. Or, hell, maybe they were just a particularly quick-growing variety, something I’d never seen before. The droopy, frilled leaves with their mushroomy gills really did look alien.

But that thought only made me smile, now that I was out in the open air. I’d always had a vivid imagination, I reminded myself, and I usually enjoyed it. Besides, what did I know about plant growth? I’d never studied botany and was lucky even to have remembered the term gills.

I studied the vines a moment, then moved on around the back of the house, where the trees thickened into a forest that marched all the way up to the summit. There was more real-world magic here, I told myself, studying the interlaced branches. If I stared at them long enough, I might find hidden images: glyphs, perhaps, or faces, woven of tree bark and space.

“Hey, Allie!” called a voice, and I jumped.

Shannon was sitting on a bench Leslie had installed, next to a garden Leslie had not installed. A garden I was quite sure hadn’t been there yesterday. No, when she’d showed us around the property, the ground behind the cabin had been lumpy and full of weeds: the remains of a garden, perhaps, but not a garden itself.

Yesterday.

Today, an irregular polygon as wide as the cabin overflowed with colorful, glistening shapes. Fruit and flowers, tubes and trumpets, greens and yellows and pinks and purples....

How cool, I thought dreamily. A fairy garden.

Shannon waved a spray of half-familiar flowers at me. “Looks kind of like honeysuckle, doesn’t it?” she asked. Plucking one of the blooms from its stem, she bit off the endcap, then sucked delicately at the base of the flower. Her eyes closed a moment and she smiled. “But God, this is soooo much better than honeysuckle.” Her eyes opened again. “Here, Allie, try.”

I took the offered bloom. Yes, it did look a lot like honeysuckle, if a little too pink. And it smelled a lot like honeysuckle. But there wasn’t just a drop of nectar beneath the endcap; it was more like a dropperful. And the taste was muskier than anything I’d ever sipped from a flower before.

“Told you,” Shannon grinned as I mm’ed my appreciation. “There’s more on the trellis at the back of the garden if you want. Or you can share mine.” Her smile grew saucy.

And I was nervous all over again, though for purely practical reasons. Last night’s orgy really had been a fluke, and the origins of the fairy garden just weren’t important, but I was afraid of being outed to my friends. Not that Shannon wasn’t adorable, sitting there cross-ankled and smiling, flowers in her hand and sunlight in her red-gold hair....

No. I pretended not to notice her flirting and instead headed toward the back of the polygon, where pink and lavender sprays swayed in the breeze. I drew in a deep, delightful lungful and let myself relax. But even as I reached for a vine, something nearer the ground caught my eye.

Oh. Wow.

I’ve always loved blackberries, and the ones in Mama Gilman’s garden were nearly as big as fists. Their purple-black globes gleamed in the sun, dark and lush and far too tempting to resist.

I didn’t even think about thorns. I just reached through the leaves and drew out a cluster the size and shape of a bell pepper, or perhaps a human heart. It was warm and firm, and I could almost imagine it pulsing in my hand.

Raising the bunch to my mouth, I bit in, relishing the feel of the berries bursting and the spray of juice on my lips. My eyes rolled up for a moment and I moaned.

“That good, huh?” came Shannon’s voice. I looked back and saw her grinning salaciously from the other side of the garden.

“That good,” I agreed. Pleasantly conscious of the sway in my hips, I strolled back to the bench and sat down, not quite close enough for our hips to touch.

Shannon slid closer and laid a hand on my thigh.

Suddenly nothing mattered but the woman with the flowers. I smiled as she took my chin in her hands and turned my face toward hers. She leaned in, and just before our lips touched, her tongue flicked out to lap a splash of juice from my face.

“Oh no, uh uh,” came a voice I still heard in my dreams. I turned around, feeling the brush of Shannon’s cheek against mine even as my veins iced over.

Dianne was standing at the edge of the garden, one hand on her hip and her mouth hanging wide. “I thought I dreamed last night,” she snorted, staring from one to the other of us. Her face twisted slowly; then she turned and hurried back around the corner.

I started to rise, but Shannon squeezed my thigh. “It’s okay,” she soothed. “She’ll come around.” She took my face in her hands again, but this time I pulled away. My stomach was roiling, and my dreamy delight had fled beyond recall.

4.

“Is this perfect, or what?” purred Leslie.

She lay on a towel at the end of the dock, completely recovered from whatever strangeness had gripped her this morning. Or, at least, it seemed that way. They all seemed to have recovered, though Dianne still avoided Shannon and me and shot us nervous glances from the corners of her eyes.

I hadn’t spoken to her since she’d found us in the garden. What could I say? I wasn’t ashamed of my sexuality, but the condemnation of someone I cared so much about would hurt. A lot. Better to stay quiet and try to convince myself that she knew less than I imagined. Condemned less than I imagined. After all, she’d turned away before I got a really good look at her expression. Maybe it was just shock.

My mind turned again to the strangeness of the garden, and of last night. I still couldn’t believe there was anything supernatural behind it all, not when I was lying out in the fragrant air with the lake sparkling like green crystal. But wouldn’t it be nice if there was? Wouldn’t it be fantastic if Shannon was right and Dianne really did come around in the end? All the way around?

Anywhere else, I would have rejected a thought like that the moment I noticed it; fantasizing like that about a real-life friend just seemed...disrespectful. But here at Beck’s Lookout, that train of thought seemed perfectly natural. A bit of supernatural MC would give me what I wanted, given someone or something else what it wanted, and even give Dianne what she wanted. Or, well, what she’d learn to want. Happy endings all around.

My eyes slid back to the other end of the dock. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, Dianne had put as much space between herself and me as she could. Also, her eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses now. She was totally cut off from me.

Trying to soothe the sting of that thought, I turned back to Leslie, who was sitting up and was testing the water with her toes. When we first came out here, it had been too cold even to consider swimming, but a couple of hours had passed since then. “How’s it feel now, Leslie?” I asked. “Any warmer?” I’d get in, even if everyone else would rather sweat in the sun than cool off.

“Getting th—oh!”

Leslie jerked as though trying to pull herself back from the water, but her foot seemed to be caught on something.

At least, that was how it looked for the second or two before she disappeared over the edge.

5.

Leslie didn’t scream. All I heard was the splash of her hitting the water, then a series of muted gurgles. Jumping up, I watched an arrow-shaped wake pull away from the dock, out into the depths of the lake. Leslie herself was nowhere to be seen.

“Did she go under?” Angie gasped at my shoulder.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled, my thoughts strangely numb. Leslie could be playing a joke, though it wasn’t like her to play this kind of joke. But she couldn’t really be in trouble, could she? Not here. Any thoughts beyond that just wouldn’t compute.

Angie, though, didn’t have any trouble thinking at all. Or maybe it was just the opposite. Maybe she didn’t give herself a chance to think before she dived in and started swimming after the arrow. Behind my back, splashing sounds told me the others had jumped in, too; but they seemed to be searching around the dock rather than swimming after Angie.

Well, that made sense, I thought, still too dumbstruck to do anything, myself. We didn’t know what was causing the wake, and we didn’t know that whatever-it-was had Leslie. Really, didn’t it make more sense that she’d be near the dock? Surely there was nothing in the lake big enough to grab her and drag her away like that.

The arrow paused, then reversed direction and headed back toward us.

I only got as far as “Ang—” before the turbulence swirled around her and dragged her under.

Someone behind me screamed, but I stayed rooted in place even as a geyser erupted from the point of Angie’s disappearance. Deep in my paralyzed brain, I began to realize the paralysis wasn’t just my own doing. Something wanted me to watch, even while everyone around me screamed and floundered.

So I did watch as, one by one, the clear jets of water darkened, then solidified, then flattened. I watched as suckers bloomed along their lower surfaces, whipping tendrils around their edges. And I watched as, several seconds later, Leslie and Angie reappeared, hoisted aloft by glistening, dark green arms.

The women were beautiful. The lake had remade them, as I’d known deep inside that it would. Their hair coiled around their heads like tentacles, and their skin gleamed softly with a pale green light. They were nude, and their nipples were puckered with arousal (They’d come closer now, and those details were achingly clear). Leslie’s areolas were large and only slightly darker than her skin, while Angie’s were smaller and a much deeper green. Magnificent.

My mouth was hanging open now, and I thought I could feel a strand of drool. I wanted to feel a strand of drool.

Or did I? Wait just one fucking minute! This was horror movie shit! I was not entranced, I was not horny, and I sure as hell didn’t want to stand here waiting for some fucking lake monster to sweep me off my feet and turn me into a wall-eyed zombie. Uh uh! I was scared out of my mind, and I was getting right the hell out of here.

Everyone else seemed to have the same idea. I heard their screams and sensed their movements as they scrambled for the shore; and I turned to run after them, grateful, for a moment, that I could run. If that thing had gotten any deeper into my mind, it might have been able to hold me there—

“Allie...Allison...Allie....”

Half unwilling, I turned around again.

Leslie and Angie were almost on top of me now. Their arms were outstretched, and their eyes were as deep and dark as the lake itself. Instinctively I avoided looking into them.

“Join us,” the women whispered, their voices flat but thick with arousal. “You can have anything you want. And we know what you want.” Their greenish lips curled into smiles, and the water that bubbled under the dock sounded like chortling.

“You don’t know shit,” I whispered, but I didn’t try to turn again. I was too fascinated by the watery arms slithering over my friends, across their breasts and between their legs and up inside them and—

No! Turn around! Run! You don’t want this! I swear you don’t! Not really!

Ohh, but I did. This was everything I’d always dreamed of, and more.

But I was a good girl! I dreamed about stuff like this, yes, but in real life I fought for every scrap of autonomy I could get.

And what had that done for me? It had only led me here, where fighting was almost certainly doomed to failure. Inside my head, half-formed memories of last night mixed with four decades’ worth of horror stories; and I knew everything I needed to know about my chances. Whatever we’d had summoned with our orgy, it was far too powerful to be driven back by seven—no, wait—five frightened women with none of Marietta Pickman’s knowledge and only a couple of tear gas canisters on keychains for defense.

Blackness swirled behind my eyes. We were powerless. I was powerless.

Then again, the blackness reminded me, a very large part of me liked being powerless. And in a world where lunacy like this was real, only good little girls had to suffer over it. Bad little girls could bypass all that pain and fear and dive straight into the pleasure.

Leslie and Angie floated above me, straining not against the tentacles, but against the force of their own arousal. “You want this, ohhh, you want this,” they moaned in unison. “You want this...want this...want this...ohhhhhhhh....”

Their heads fell back and their arms stretched downwards, and my arms reached up to meet them.