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Back still to me, he calls, “Let all of your breath out before you dive. You’ll sink faster. If you breathe in while you’re under, force your body to still and close your eyes. It’s better to give into it at that point and cough it up later.”
Well, that sounds terrifying. “Here goes nothing,” forced confidence colors my words.
I wade into the lake until I feel the bottom slope in earnest. Lakes can be very deep, and I don’t know how far down I need to swim. I take one last deep breath and exhale fully.
Then I dive into the water.
Pitch black in the night it takes a while for my eyes to adjust. Vampire sight isn’t enough to penetrate it entirely, but I can at least see enough. Keeping myself close to the bottom, I swim as it slopes further into the lake. I hope this will be the right path, that the car didn’t veer so far to either side that I won’t be able to see a part of it.
Deeper I swim, the fish swirl out of my way as quickly as they can, not used to such an intrusion. I can’t make out the surface anymore. A brief flash of my lungs burning as I swim for the surface. Now there is just discomfort. Oz told me that the condition I was in was more than he could have healed and that I would’ve needed to turn either way if I wanted to live.
Would I have accepted his offer?
I like to think I would have.
I can’t shake the feeling that there is more to this than he’s letting on.
I also know how important it is to him that I become whole again.
Whatever the reason for this odd draw we both feel, I trust that it will be revealed in due time.
Rocks and bottom-dwelling creatures are all I see as I continue swimming. It has to be close. The steepness of the downslope has eased. I am near the deep point now. Assuming it must be some fifty feet below the water’s surface, I shudder to think of what it would be like to have this place as my watery grave.
There, embedded in the bottom of the lake, is a piece of a taillight. Just a few feet more, the car’s husk sits eerily dark and empty. The body's weight made the car flip right side up in the water. I cringe, seeing how the roof is bent in. It’s a miracle I survived the crash at all.
I swim to the broken window I must have climbed out of just days before. Is it too much to hope that this will trigger a memory? There could be something in the car that can help give me a memory. Maybe it can start a domino effect that will give me back my hidden past? I am inside the car again, trying to remember, seeing nothing but water and a growing layer of slime.
Frustrated, I push myself into the back seat. I picture the bags that had been at the cabin. Of loading them into the car. Of the face that belongs to a man who makes me sad when I think of him.
Nothing.
Clamoring my way back into the front seats, I look down at the center console. The armrest bows in. It seems like the briefest of flashes, but I visualize opening the compartment and dropping something inside.
What though?
Pulling on the hard plastic, it won’t budge. It is bent and trapped on itself. I pull harder than I should need to, tapping into the strength that being a vampire gives me, and pry the damn thing open.
Inside are waterlogged papers and a dark rectangle. Pulling it out, I realize that it’s a phone. Mine? Maybe. It will be useless having been in the water for so long. But the device itself could trigger something from holding it. Deciding I will take it, I give the car one last sad sweep of my eyes.
What a waste of time.
I turned towards the window and began pulling myself from the car.
A colossal fish speeds past me.
Startled, I instinctively tried to take a breath to scream.
Fuck.
Water is pouring into my lungs, and it hurts. I am gagging on it. My limbs start to flail, and I am vaguely aware of a sharp pain in my thigh as I kick myself off the car’s body and swim straight up.
I am panicking.
I try remembering what Oz said about relaxing and letting it happen. I attempt to take an intentional breath of water.
Nope.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
