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The moon’s cold light shone down across the sands, its malignance glittering across the remaining ripples of the tide lapping at her feet. Beyond the pale sands of the secluded beach, ink-black ocean stretched on into the horizon. What little light she and her son could use to pick their way through towards the water seemed to shrink away from the border between the two worlds. Against the sand, their bare bodies nearly blended in, saved by the faint outline of shadow created by the very light that washed them out.
Utter darkness pressed in before them. Behind them, the meager light watched from the safety of the small cabin perched on the dunes. Everything in her gut told her to turn back, to run for the safety of the dry sands, the thin reeds, the trees beyond. To grab her son and never return to the sea again. It told her that she was never meant to be out this far unprotected, in the ocean at night. That the utter emptiness pulling her forward was anything but. That, in this place, she and her son were at the mercy of things unseen.
Her son, watching his footprints in the glowing sand, paused to let his gaze follow the moon-pale crabs skittering away from their grazing as they approached. Suddenly, he was running chasing after the crustaceans without intent to catch them.
Her voice seemed muffled by the oppressive shadows around her. Her voice died as soon as it left her lips. Blue glowing footprints marked out his path away from her winding ever further away.
She quickened her pace too. The blue patches carried him away further and further, only the faintest silhouette of his moonlight washed body at the very edge of her vision.
The dots of blue carried past him, further into the dark, up above them.
She broke out into a full run, yet still her son vanished in the gloom with a muffled shriek.
“Dillon!” She called. The tone of her own voice made her heart race faster. Blue lights danced overhead, moving and shifting until they seemed to be hanging directly above her.
It had found her son. He was wrapped in a single, massive hand. Too many fingers with too many joints glinted in the scant light that had dared to follow them, as dark as if they were made from the very shadows of the ocean itself. Its attention has moved from her son to her. Her pace slowed until she was walking and looking up at its head. A curtain of tentacles hung from behind the hands clasped over its horrible visage from a second pair of arms. She knew those countless eyes being those hands. They bore down into her with timeless patience and alien knowledge.
The fingers around her son loosened as she stopped before it. Slowly, she raised a hand to rest it on the serpentine lower half of its body. Touches against her legs startled her. It's lowermost extremities, tentacles as wide as her arm coiled around her.
How far away was the shore now? Could the moon even see them anymore? Depths upon depths sung to her this far out, above and below.
As she slid her hand along the slick body, her son turned to look at her. Two more glowing blue lights appeared in the gloom.
“Mom, dad’s here!”
Warmth bloomed in her chest as she moved closer to rest her cheek against the cool, sticky flesh. The hands covering the face above her parted. Her eyes hurt and head swam at the sight.
“Yes,” She said, brushing her hand through her son’s mop of black hair. “It's good to see you, darling.” Lips touched the slimy flesh she pressed her cheek against.
Damn the moon and curse the sun. She found her comfort in the darkness.