Sand Over Secrets

"Funny thing about secrets—they don't get lighter when you share them. They just mean two people are carrying the same weight instead of one."

"Chris! Kain!"

Karen's voice sliced through the post-coital fog like a blade through butter, and every muscle in my body went rigid with panic. I jerked upright, sand cascading from my shoulders and back, my heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to crack them.

She was coming. Cresting the nearest dune, her figure silhouetted against the too-blue sky, moving toward us with the kind of urgency that meant something was wrong. Something beyond the obvious wrongness of finding her husband and a near-stranger lying side by side at the edge of a mystical lagoon, their bodies still cooling from activities she could never, ever know about.

"Chris, your shirt!" I hissed, the words coming out strangled and desperate.

The garment lay discarded on the sand between us, a damning piece of evidence that screamed of intimacy and secrets. I grabbed it, my fingers clumsy with panic, and hurled it at Chris with more force than necessary. It hit him in the chest, and he caught it reflexively, his own eyes wide with the same terror that was clawing at my insides.

"Not a word of this... to anyone!" Chris whispered, his voice sharp.

He was already pulling the shirt over his head, arms tangling briefly in the fabric before he managed to yank it down over his torso. The motion was jerky, panicked, nothing like the calm confidence he'd shown minutes earlier when his hands had been—

I shut that thought down hard.

"No shit!" I replied, my voice a barely audible rasp.

The agreement hung between us, heavy with implications neither of us wanted to examine. We were co-conspirators now, bound by a secret that could destroy his marriage, my engagement, whatever fragile social structure we might manage to build in this hellscape. The weight of it settled on my shoulders like a yoke, another burden to add to the collection I'd been accumulating since the moment I fell through that fucking portal.

I scooped handfuls of sand and scattered them over the evidence of our encounter — the disturbed patches of ground, the impressions our bodies had left, any trace of the fluids that had been spilled. The movements were frantic, instinctual, the behaviour of an animal covering its tracks from a predator.

Karen arrived breathless, her chest heaving, sweat glistening on her forehead. She hadn't been running for exercise — she'd been running because something was wrong, something beyond the already considerable wrongness of our situation.

"Have either of you seen Joel out here?" she asked, her eyes sweeping the landscape around us, searching.

Joel. I hadn't thought about Joel since... since before. Since the morphine and the medical tent and the nightmare journey to this lagoon. He'd been a peripheral presence at best, a shadow at the edges of my awareness while more immediate concerns consumed my attention.

"No," Chris responded, and I marvelled at how steady his voice sounded, how completely he'd masked the guilt that must have been eating at him. "It's just been Kain and I since you left us earlier."

The lie rolled off his tongue with practised ease, and I wondered how many times he'd done this before — covered for things that shouldn't have happened, smoothed over cracks that threatened to show. The thought made something curdle in my stomach, a fresh wave of nausea that had nothing to do with my injured leg.

I forced my brain to cooperate, to dredge up memories that felt like they belonged to another lifetime. When had I last seen Joel? The campfire. The butter chicken. His raspy voice offering to help build the road, the collective surprise at his willingness to participate in physical labour.

"I don't think I've seen him since dinner last night," I said, the words feeling inadequate. A missing person in a world with shadow panthers and starless nights and god knows what else lurking in the darkness. "Is everything okay?"

The question was absurd the moment it left my lips. Nothing was okay. Nothing had been okay since I'd stepped through that portal, and the universe seemed determined to remind me of that fact at every possible opportunity.

"It appears that Joel is missing," Karen revealed, her voice heavy with the kind of worry that bordered on panic.

She reached out to steady me as I tried to shift position, her hand finding my arm just as my wounded leg sent a bolt of agony shooting up through my hip. The pain was a welcome distraction from the guilt, from the shame, from the memory of what had happened on this very spot not fifteen minutes ago.

Everything is definitely not okay, I thought grimly, accepting her support with a nod that I hoped looked grateful rather than guilty.

"How is your leg doing?" Karen asked, her concern shifting to my physical state with a practicality that felt almost jarring.

"It's still really painful," I replied, and at least that wasn't a lie.

Every nerve ending in my calf seemed to be competing for attention, the torn flesh throbbing with a deep, persistent ache that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. The lagoon had done something — I could feel that much — but whether it had healed me or simply delayed the inevitable amputation remained to be seen.

"Come on," Karen urged, her gaze darting around the landscape with a nervousness that set my teeth on edge. "Let's get back to camp. Paul's requested that everyone gather at the campfire."

Chris's brow furrowed. "Why the rush?"

"Just come on," Karen replied, her hand making an impatient gesture that brooked no argument. "We need to find Joel."

The words landed like a verdict. Joel was missing. Actually missing, not just wandering or exploring or taking some time to himself. Missing in a world where creatures with serrated teeth dragged people into the darkness and did unspeakable things to their flesh.

I pushed myself upright, gritting my teeth against the explosion of pain that accompanied the movement. My wounded leg screamed in protest, the muscle fibres — what was left of them — pulling against torn edges in a symphony of agony that made my vision swim.

"Help Kain, would you," Karen snapped at her husband, her patience apparently exhausted by the morning's events.

Chris shot me a look — nervous, uncertain, loaded with a meaning I didn't want to interpret — and then moved to my side. His arm slid around my waist, strong and supportive, and I couldn't help the way my body flinched at the contact.

Don't, I told myself savagely. Don't make this weird. Don't let her see.

I draped my arm across Chris's shoulders, letting him take the bulk of my weight. The position was practical, necessary, nothing more. It didn't matter that his body was warm against mine, that I could smell the lagoon water still clinging to his skin, that the last time we'd been this close he'd been—

"It's fine," I said quickly, waving Karen away as she moved to support my other side. "Chris has got me."

The excuse was flimsy — Karen's height would have made the arrangement awkward, but not impossible — but she accepted it without question, turning to lead the way back toward camp. I was grateful for that small mercy, grateful to have at least one fewer witness to the way my body tensed every time Chris shifted his grip.

We started walking.

Each step was its own small torture, the sand shifting treacherously beneath my bare feet, my wounded leg dragging through the dust like dead weight. Chris moved carefully, adjusting his pace to match my hobbling gait, and I hated the tenderness of it. Hated the way his concern felt genuine rather than obligatory. Hated that I couldn't hate him for what had happened, because it wasn't his fault any more than it was mine.

Clivilius had done this to us. Had manipulated us like puppets, pulled our strings until we danced to its tune. The anger should have been directed at that ancient, alien presence lurking in the bones of this world — not at the man who was currently helping me limp across a desert I had never asked to visit.

The first dune loomed ahead of us, a gentle slope that might as well have been Everest given my current condition. I focused on putting one foot in front of the other, on the simple mechanics of forward motion, on anything except the weight of the secret that now bound Chris and me together.

Joel was missing.

While I'd been dragged through the darkness by a shadow panther, while my leg had been torn apart by teeth designed for exactly that purpose, Joel had disappeared.

And I hadn't noticed. Had been too consumed by my own pain, my own fear, my own humiliation at the lagoon to spare a thought for anyone else.

The guilt settled into my bones alongside everything else, another layer of weight pressing down on shoulders that were already struggling to bear the load.

I tightened my grip on Chris's shoulder and kept walking.

We were halfway up the dune when the bark shattered the silence.

The sound ripped through the air like a gunshot, and every muscle in my body seized with a terror so absolute it nearly dropped me to my knees. I knew that bark. Had heard it the night before, in the darkness, in the chaos of screaming and running and teeth sinking into flesh that couldn't escape fast enough.

Lois.

I spun — or tried to, my wounded leg screaming in protest at the sudden movement — and there she was. Standing at the lagoon's edge, her golden fur bristling along her spine, her teeth bared in a snarl that belonged on a wolf rather than a family pet. She was growling at the water, her body rigid with aggressive intent, barking in sharp staccato bursts that echoed across the empty landscape.

The lagoon. She was barking at the lagoon.

A cold finger traced its way down my spine, leaving ice crystals in its wake.

"I didn't know Lois was here too," Karen remarked, surprise colouring her voice.

"Me neither," Chris responded, and I could hear the confusion in his tone.

I hadn't seen the dog arrive. Hadn't heard her approach. She'd simply appeared, as if the land itself had conjured her from dust and memory, positioning her as a sentinel at the water's edge to guard against... what?

"I wonder what she's found?" Karen mused, already taking steps back toward the lagoon, her curiosity overriding whatever urgency had driven her out here in the first place.

No. No no no.

The word repeated in my skull like a warning bell, clanging against the inside of my cranium with desperate intensity. Whatever Lois had found — whatever had triggered that primal response in an animal bred for friendliness — I didn't want to know. Didn't want to see. Didn't want any more of this place's secrets crawling into my brain and taking up permanent residence.

"I think we should keep moving," I said, my voice coming out harder than I'd intended.

Karen glanced back at me, her expression shifting from curiosity to something more calculating. She was weighing options, I realised. Balancing the need to get back to camp against the pull of whatever mystery Lois had uncovered.

"You two keep moving," she decided. "I'll go and see what the problem is."

The words landed like a death sentence. She was going back. Going back to that water, that cursed stretch of crystal clarity that had done things to me I would never be able to explain or forget. And whatever had set Lois off — whatever lurked beneath that deceptively peaceful surface — Karen was about to encounter it alone.

I took another step forward, and pain lanced through my leg with enough force to make my vision white out for a split second. Chris had hesitated, his attention torn between his wife and the wounded man he was supporting, and the brief pause had jostled my injury in exactly the wrong way.

"Karen, please be careful," Chris called out, his voice tight with a concern that went beyond husbandly obligation. "We don't need you going missing too."

The words hung in the air, heavy with implication. Joel was missing. People disappeared in this place. Walked into the darkness and simply... didn't come back. The thought of Karen joining that number, of her vanishing into whatever horror Lois had discovered, sent an uncomfortable shudder rippling through my shoulders.

"I'm sure it's nothing," Karen assured us, but the confidence in her voice rang hollow.

She was already moving, her stride purposeful as she made her way back toward the lagoon. I watched her go, watched her figure grow smaller against the backdrop of water and sand, and tried to convince myself that she was right. That it was nothing. That Lois was simply being a dog, barking at shadows or reflections or some perfectly mundane stimulus that required no further investigation.

I failed.

"Come on, then," Chris said softly, redirecting my attention with a gentle tug.

We resumed our painful progress up the dune, sand sliding beneath my feet with every step, my wounded leg dragging through the soft particles like an anchor trying to hold me in place. The camp waited ahead, a collection of shapes and figures that promised safety and answers and the company of people who might help make sense of the chaos.

Lois reached us first.

The golden retriever came bounding past, her fur slick with water. She circled us twice, three times, her movements frantic and erratic, before stopping to shake the moisture from her coat in violent spasms that sent droplets spraying across the sand.

Karen wasn't far behind, her face pale, her expression carefully blank in that way people adopt when they're trying very hard not to reveal what they're thinking. Whatever she'd witnessed at the lagoon had shaken her. Badly.

"What was the problem?" Chris asked as she reached us, his voice tight with the worry he'd been carrying since she'd first walked away.

"It was nothing," Karen replied, shaking her head with a dismissiveness that convinced no one.

I caught it — the brief flicker of her eyes toward Chris, the warning glare that passed between them in the space of a heartbeat. A silent message, a plea for him to drop it, to not push, to accept the lie and move on.

Clearly it was something, I thought, my throat tightening around a dry swallow.

But Karen appeared uninjured. Lois too. Whatever had happened at the water's edge, it hadn't claimed them physically. Small mercies in a world that seemed to specialise in the opposite.

"Let's keep moving," I said, because the alternative was standing here asking questions that wouldn't be answered.