Beach Day

53: Fork Meets Blender

There's a large cavern behind the curtain of moss— bigger than she thought anything underground in Florida could be. Supernaturally large, even. In the center of it, in a massive dip, there is a perfect recreation of the underground room they found in the tunnels. She can see it in her mind's eye, and she can see it right in front of her.

There she is, in all her rotting glory. The Mystery Lady. Priscilla Cain. All that's left of the woman her grandfather killed. All that remains of her great-aunt.

It's easier to see her now that she isn't running through the woods, disappearing into woods, and leaving hair on the ground. Trapped in the flashlight's beam, there's no doubt about it: she's dead. Skin made of bark and animal hide sloughs off of what bones remain; patches of moss and animal bone fill the scorched cracks of her face, making up eyes out of rocks and water.

It seems to Tiff that the only things here that were original are assorted bones in her body— a femur here, a rib there. Most of the assembled body is there. Her head isn't. It's the head that is assembled from assorted detritus and carcasses, leaking necromantic energy like purple bolts all over the place. Tiff can feel it like a punch to the gut, just looking at her.

As soon as Tiff shines her flashlight beam across the pit-of-dirt-recreation, fear flashes in Priscilla's inhuman eyes, chiseled across rock and ever-flowing water. In that fear, the skittering ceases.

"We can piece together what happened to you, you know." Tiff doesn't look her in the eye. She just lowers the beam of the flashlight, trying to de-escalate the situation.

The bone creature drops from the ceiling. It reassembles itself between Tiffany May Sheridan and Priscilla Cain. Scapulae scrape the sky, jagged and absolutely brilliant. The sight of it takes her breath away.

And, unfortunately, it completely sideswipes Drew— runs him down, knocks him into the wall of the cave. Tiff's sure the earth moves and the sky goes with it— but it's more useful to be useful, and there's no real way to be compassionate and try for some pacifism with your dead great-aunt when she's actively trying to use her fucked-up, conceptually-very-cool six-legged gator horse to try and kill you.

"Oh, fuck," she mutters, trying to re-evaluate her entire plan with regard to everything happening here. "God absolutely damn it."

Matt doesn't seem to have the same issue of freeze-and-think. She can see him out of the corner of her eye; he's already moving, already drawing— and, quick on the draw, he fires at the bone creature from two feet to Drew's right. The shot rings out, tinnitus against the cave wall in such a closed-off space, shell and shot to the right front leg. A shard of bone snaps out and flies across the proverbial room, scratching Matt's cheek deep enough to draw blood. He doesn't flinch.

Tiff decides, as the leg buckles and the creature leans while trying to reform itself, that now is the time to do something stupid. Now is the moment; she can't hesitate any more, can she?

And, god, she hates that this six-legged gator is also kind of a horse, because she knows that her next move is going to be to get up on it.

"Keep it distracted," she calls to Matt on her way past. Running up the leg doesn't go how she thought it would in her head. Things rarely do. She sees Matt's nod and tries to climb up the leg, but it isn't like she can find her standing balance on a tree branch while it's swaying, and it isn't like she can stand on its spiny ribcage, even with her back hunched against the low ceiling of the cave. She loses her footing; she ends up a tumbling bolus, displaced and rattling in its trypophobia-nightmare ribcage.

Well, shit. She's just going to have to fight it from the inside, then.

Matt doesn't need to be told not to shoot her. While he switches tactics, Tiff turns on her hands and knees on intercostal bits of bones, just until she can see Priscilla through the fist-sized holes by her face.