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From Beneath 
by Loren Rhoads 

The sky had gone as pale as an ice cube. The knifing wind brought tears to her eyes. Alondra understood now why the outfitter had suggested she buy snow goggles. She wished she’d listened to him. Too late now.

She leaned heavily on her walking stick. She wanted to make it across the iced-over lake to the bared teeth of rock she could see in the distance. It wasn’t a welcoming place to camp, but if she could get her back against the rock, maybe she could get out of the wind.

She prodded the edge of the ice with her stick. Plenty solid. The surface must have frozen on a day as windy as this, so that it was roughened with tiny ridges. It made good footing under her boots: less chance that her feet would skate out of under her and she’d strike her head.  At last, something was going right with this adventure.

Alondra hunched into her parka and moved toward the rocks methodically. Tap with her walking stick, make sure the ice was solid, move forward to join the stick. Tap, step. Tap, step. She kept her attention on the ice, with only brief glances up at the rocks to make certain she hadn’t drifted off course.

After a while, it seemed she could hear distant voices. They weren’t shouting, didn’t appear upset. It sounded almost like singing, like the long hollow whistle of breath across a bottle top. Maybe there were seven different tones, eight? The voices weren’t threatening or angry or mean. They sounded melancholy. The voices sang now in harmony, now clashing in discord, resolving again into parallel tones.

Was it the wind singing between the rock spires? That would make sleeping tricky tonight, Alondra thought.

It didn’t seem to make any difference how far she moved across the frozen lake, the voices did not increase in volume or grow closer, even as she neared the rocks. She sensed that whatever they were, they weren’t aware of Alondra. Not yet anyway. They were singing for their own pleasure, not to warn her away.

She had almost reached the rocks, only a couple hundred feet or so to go, when movement caught her eye. Something dark flashed past her, beneath the ice. Moving fast.

Alondra halted as suddenly as felt safe. The ice was clearly not as thick as she’d believed. Her heart knocked in her chest.

What could it have been? A seal, maybe, or a narwhal? Maybe a walrus? In her memory, it seemed long and narrow, more human than she would have expected. Whatever it was, it was going to have to come up to breathe somewhere. Did that mean that the ice had holes in it nearby?

She forced herself to draw a deep breath, then reached forward with her walking stick. Rather than tap the ice as she had been, she placed the stick, made sure it was steady, and glided forward to meet it. She didn’t want to make as much noise as she had been. This was no time to draw attention to herself in the mirror world above the ice.

There was nothing in this wintery habitat that didn’t eat meat.

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Fiction © Copyright Loren Rhoads
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Author Loren Rhoads:

Unsafe Words: Stories by Loren Rhoads

In the first full-length collection of her edgy, award-winning short stories, Loren Rhoads punctures the boundaries between horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction in a maelstrom of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Ghosts, succubi, naiads, vampires, the Wild Hunt, and the worst predator in the woods stalk these pages, alongside human monsters who follow their cravings past sanity or sense.

The stories have come from the pages of the magazines Cemetery Dance, City Slab, Instant City, and Space & Time, the Wily Writers podcast, and the books Sins of the Sirens, Demon Lovers, The Haunted Mansion Project: Year Two, Tales for the Camp Fire, and more.

Available on Amazon!