The Miraculous Waters of Crescent Bay
When the medicines of man fail you, the water shall set you free
For Day 17 of the Madness & (May)hem challenge, I asked writers to write a story or poem from the perspective of the villain.
More than that, I asked them to try and make the reader sympathize with the antagonist by the end of the piece. As you read this, ask yourself: who is the true villain here?
Is it the man willing to sacrifice anything to save his love? Or, is it the Warden who has come to destroy everything he’s worked for?
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Grayson Locke stared into his bathroom mirror, looking for any sign of the person he used to be. He couldn't find a single one. He was staring into the eyes of a stranger.
A draft of icy wind crawled across his back. He let out a deep, exhausted sigh.
"This is the last time. You hear me?"
The reflection didn't respond. It didn't need to; he had made up his mind.
Grayson got dressed, applied a few sprays of cologne, and crossed the scope of his mansion to the entrance.
He opened the ornate glass door and spotted his latest visitors in the driveway beside their modest SUV.
Their affordable car seemed out of place beside the nearby luxury sports cars, but he didn't judge them.
In fact, he felt a pang of nostalgia for simpler times as he saw them climbing the steps to his front door.
"Lucas and Olivia, I presume?"
The husband nodded, his gaze fixed on his wife's unsteady steps. She looked frail, as if her bones were made from tissue paper and her skin was a thin layer of ashes.
"Thank you again for seeing us on such short notice," Olivia said.
"Please, the pleasure is all mine. Come inside; I'll have someone fetch you a wheelchair, and we can start the tour."
"Oh, you don't need to—"
"Olivia, please," Lucas said.
Olivia nodded in defeat. "I suppose a wheelchair would be nice."
Within a few moments, one of the mansion’s many employees arrived, rolling a simple wheelchair with a padded leather seat and polished metal frame.
The worker wore black leather gloves and a ceramic white mask with a neutral expression.
Grayson could tell the couple was uncomfortable at the sight of it.
"Pay him no mind. My staff are very protective of their privacy. We get a lot of people coming here to visit Crescent Bay, as I'm sure you can imagine. This uniform allows them to retain their anonymity. I'm sure you understand."
Lucas nodded as he helped his wife into the chair.
"Of course."
Grayson turned to the worker. "That will be all, thank you."
The worker bowed and disappeared down one of the mansion's many halls. Grayson gestured for them to follow.
"Right this way!"
The three made their way through the house as Grayson gave a practiced speech, one he could no doubt perform in his sleep.
"This land, and by extension, Crescent Bay, has been in the Locke family for generations, but it wasn't until recently that its unique properties were made known to the world."
"And how did you find out?" Lucas asked.
Grayson paused and turned back to face them. His gaze was distant.
"I came down with a bad case of the flu. I was bedridden for weeks. My doctors were nearly out of ideas. I was so desperate for relief that I thought a soak in the bay could help relieve some of the body aches. Not only did it work, but I was back to normal the very next day."
"Miraculous," Lucas remarked.
"Indeed," Grayson said, "Right this way, please."
A sliding glass door sat at the back of the mansion. Another of Grayson’s staff pulled the door open, letting in the crisp, icy air from outside.
"Fetch us some towels, will you? We don't want Olivia here to get a cold."
The masked employee nodded and set off back into the mansion. Lucas pushed Olivia through the threshold and down a concrete ramp beside the staircase outside.
"Your home is very wheelchair-friendly," Olivia said.
"Yes, of course. You can imagine how many people need assistance like a wheelchair when they come to see me."
He turned and winked, "But they never need one on their way out."
“Where are the others? From the sounds of your website, you have people staying here all the time.”
Grayson nodded. “Yes, of course, but it’s all by appointment only. Controlled chaos, if you will. This is my home, after all. I want to help, but I must preserve my peace.”
They followed a winding sidewalk flanked by decorative stones down to the shoreline. A thick glacier floated atop the surface in the center of the vast body of water.
Its thick base sloped upward into a thin crescent shape, casting a long shadow over the serene water.
"It looks like a piece of the moon," Olivia said.
"Yes, I believe that's where it got its name. You see, the weather remains frigid this far north year-round, but the glacier in the bay has begun to melt thanks to climate change. I believe this runoff has contributed to the water's healing qualities."
"Do you have any scientific proof of that?" Lucas asked.
"Well, that’s what you're here to discover, yes? What was your specialty again?"
"Microbiology."
"Yes, that's right. Well, shall we get started?"
Lucas helped Olivia out of the wheelchair and brought her down to the water's edge. She dipped one of her feet into the surface, sending ripples outward.
"Oh wow, it's freezing!"
Grayson nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid it's not one of those healing hot springs you hear about."
Olivia waded out until the water reached her waist. Then, she slowly descended until only her head was visible.
"The tumor is in my brain. Should I put my head under the water?" she asked.
"Well, I'm no scientist like your husband here, but I imagine that would be the best course of action.”
All eyes were on Lucas. He nodded, his face stoic.
Olivia took a breath and dipped beneath the water. Lucas felt Grayson’s hand dig into his right shoulder.
"I know who you are. What you are. Find me tonight. We need to talk."
Lucas’ stoic expression faltered as surprise took hold. His wife broke through the surface, taking a deep breath.
"This is amazing; I feel better already!" Olivia said.
"That's great to hear!” Grayson said, “Now come back to shore; I have a wonderful dinner planned for us!"
Grayson and Lucas locked eyes briefly as Olivia returned to the shore. Grayson simply smiled, his teeth perfect and white. The sight made Lucas sick to his stomach.
After dinner, Lucas and Olivia were in their guest room getting ready for bed. Olivia was brushing her teeth, talking excitedly through a mouth full of toothpaste.
"I'm serious, Lucas; I already feel so much better. I can't believe this actually works!"
Lucas was half-listening. He stared down at his bag of toiletries. Amidst the toothpaste, cologne, and travel-sized shampoo bottle was a 45-caliber handgun.
He picked up the weapon and slid it into the waist of his jeans on the back side.
"I'm really happy for you, babe. I'm curious to find out how it works. You know what? That reminds me, I forgot to ask Grayson for a sample of the water earlier. Do you mind if I go find him real quick?"
Olivia’s face appeared from behind the bathroom door. Her gaze narrowed as she brushed the back of her bottom teeth.
"Right now? Isn't it a little late?"
"I'm sure he won't mind. I mean, come on, this is the discovery of a lifetime. I brought all my equipment to try and understand how this works."
Olivia shook her head and smiled. "You're such a nerd. Okay, but don't talk his ear off; we need to get some sleep. I can't believe I might sleep comfortably tonight."
"I'll be right back!"
Lucas left the room and stepped out into the hall. He looked around for any sign of Grayson but didn’t see anyone.
He turned a corner and nearly ran into one of the employees. They didn't seem shocked to see him.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm looking for Mr. Locke. Could you point me in the right direction?"
"Right this way," the employee said in a monotone voice.
The employee took Lucas through multiple hallways lined with doors before they arrived at a set of double doors made from beautifully polished oak.
The worker pushed the doors open, and they both walked into a luxurious bedroom with a sofa, a massive bed, and a set of double doors leading to a balcony overlooking the bay.
"Lucas is here to see you," the employee said.
"Thank you, that will be all."
The worker left, and the room went deathly silent. Grayson walked over to a bar in the back left corner.
He picked up a crystal glass filled with scotch whisky and collected two smaller glasses from one of the shelves.
"Can I offer you a drink?" he asked.
"I'm good, thanks."
Grayson shrugged, pouring two glasses of whisky anyway. He drank one without hesitation and plucked the other from the bartop, finally turning to face Lucas.
"So, a Warden has finally found their way to my doorstep."
Lucas tried to hide his surprise, but he saw a glint of amusement in Grayson’s eyes.
"Oh please, don't look so shocked. I knew I would end up face-to-face with one of your kind eventually. One does not tap into the power of the Exiled Ones without consequences, now do they?"
"So you admit it? This whole magical water bullshit is coming from one of them?"
"Its body has been trapped in the ice for millennia. One of her more powerful children. One of very few who evaded your kind all those eons ago.”
"What does the water do?" Lucas asked.
Grayson raised his eyebrows. "You don't know? I was told Wardens were well-informed.”
Lucas pulled the pistol out of his jeans and charged forward. He knocked the glass of whisky out of Grayson’s hand.
It shattered on the floor as Lucas threw him against the bar and pressed the barrel of the gun into his jaw.
"A gun, really? I thought you were all about ancient artifacts and archaic magic. A gun won't do you much good here."
"From my experience, a gun works pretty well on humans like you. Now talk, or I'll end you right here."
"And then what? Kill me, and you'll never find out how to cure your wife."
"What do you mean cure her? Isn't that what the water does?"
"Of course, but there is always a price to pay when making deals with the devil. Or, in this case, something far worse."
Grayson’s eyes wandered. Lucas saw him looking at something behind him.
"Do it, now!"
Lucas turned as one of the masked employees swung a knife down toward him. He rolled out of the way and fired two shots from his pistol.
One landed in the attacker’s chest, and the other collided with their head, cracking the mask on their face in half.
It fell off the employee's face, revealing swollen skin and raw, empty eye sockets.
The employee howled in pain, clutching at his chest where the bullet had entered. He cried out in a strange language Lucas didn't recognize.
It had harsh, rapid syllables and sounds that seemed to defy anything the human tongue could produce.
He should have been dead outright, but instead, he fell onto the floor, writhing like a worm freshly plucked from the dirt.
Lucas heard Grayson moving behind him. Without hesitation, he spun around and fired a bullet into Grayson’s leg.
He fell to the ground, clutching the wound as Lucas closed the distance, ready to deliver the killing blow.
"Wait, just stop! She's here!"
Lucas hesitated. "Who's here?"
"The Bearer of the Cosmos. The Mother of Stardust. Don’t make me say her name.”
Lucas’ breath hitched in his throat. He could barely bring himself to speak her name.
"Zal'Ythra, but how is that possible?"
"She needs a body to ground a piece of her infinite essence in this universe. She’s using my wife, and the process is killing her. She keeps using the water, but I don't know how long that will last."
"So, what then? Do you want me to spare you in exchange for Zal'Ythra? I'm not here for her."
"No, but if you managed to exile her, you could stop this cosmic invasion it starts.”
Lucas knew Grayson was right, but he also knew he wasn't prepared to take on the mother of the universe.
"In the meantime, we have to get back to Olivia," Grayson said, taking short, shallow breaths through the pain.
"Why? What's going to happen to her?"
"Just help me up; we need to go now!"
Grayson leaned on Lucas’ shoulder as they returned to the guest room. Lucas threw open the door and ran inside.
Olivia was nowhere to be found. Lucas laid Grayson down on one of the sofas near the entrance.
"Just find her; I'm not going anywhere on this leg," Grayson said.
Lucas went to the far side of the bedroom. The bathroom door was ajar. Despite the droning of the ventilation fan, he swore he heard the muffled sound of laughter..
"Olivia, are you okay?"
The laughter got louder, oscillating between a sinister giggle and a maniacal cackle.
"Olivia? It's me; I'm coming in."
Lucas pushed the door open. His wife was hunched over the bathroom sink with a metal nail file impaled in her left eye.
Streaks of blood ran down the perfectly white porcelain beneath her. She turned her head, smiling as she admired her work in the mirror.
"Shit, Olivia, what did you do?" Lucas asked.
Olivia turned to look at her husband as she wrapped her hand around the base of the nail file in her eye.
"I can hear him, Lucas. Can't you? He wants to see me, but I can't see him. Not with these pesky eyes in the way."
She ripped the nail file out, taking her entire eyeball with it. A bundle of nerves, dripping with blood, traced a path back into her skull.
"Not exactly the best tool for the job, but hey, you work with what you've got!" she shouted, laughing uncontrollably as she pulled the blade from her dangling eyeball and readied it for the other.
"Grayson, I need help!"
Lucas set the gun down on the countertop and grabbed his wife's wrist with both hands.
He leaned back with his full body weight, pulling on her arm, which only slowed the nail file’s descent toward its target.
Grayson appeared from the left side, holding the handgun.
"Wait, don't!"
A loud crack cut Olivia’s laughter short. She collapsed to the ground. Lucas looked over and saw Grayson holding the back side of the handgun in the air. Neither of the men said a word for what seemed like an eternity.
"I'm sorry, I had to knock her out. There's no use talking to them when they get like that."
Lucas holstered the gun in the back of his jeans.
"You could have warned me."
"We didn't have time! And besides, I let you have your gun back, didn't I? I'm trying to help you here."
"Why? Did you suddenly grow a conscience?"
Grayson shook his head. "No, I grew a spine. I've let that bitch push me around for half my life while she’s held my wife's body hostage. I told myself Olivia would be the last one."
"What the hell do we do now, then? Can we fix her?"
Grayson nodded. "I think so. Help me get her into the wheelchair in your bedroom. We need to get her to the basement before she wakes up."
Lucas stood behind his unconscious wife, holding the handles of the wheelchair, as they descended deep beneath the Earth in a hidden elevator.
When the doors opened, the smell hit him first—a damp, musty smell of rot, like slow decay. Grayson led them down a path between massive iron cages that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. All of them were filled with people that stood in total silence.
They were in various states of decay, but no one had eyes. Just hollow, dark sockets silently stared back at them. Lucas tried his best not to look.
"What’s the end game here? What are you doing with all these people?"
"I'm not privy to that information. I just know that the transformation happens within a few hours after they touch the water. Once that’s done, their minds and bodies belong to the Exiled One in the Bay."
"What is it?" Lucas asked.
"We don't have words to describe it; to my knowledge, it has never been given a name that we can utter. All I know is that it’s frozen inside that glacier, and its prison gets smaller yearly."
"Why doesn’t Zal’Ythra just break open the ice?"
"You don't think I've asked these same questions? Come on, it's just up ahead."
The claustrophobic pathway between the cages opened into a large room set up like an eldritch operating theater.
In the center was a stone altar surrounded by four black stone spires. Beside the altar was a rusted metal pedestal with a dial in the middle. Grayson pointed to the altar.
"Lay her down on that."
"This looks like some kind of sacrificial altar. What the hell are you going to do to her?"
"You're just going to have to trust me. I—wait a second, you've seen one of these before, haven't you?"
Lucas stayed silent.
"How long have you been a Warden? What were you in your past life?"
Lucas didn't say a word.
"Fine, you don't have to tell me. Fortunately for us, it works two ways. While it can extract the essence of a living thing, it can also sever the connection between your wife and the thing sleeping in the Bay.”
Lucas didn’t have any other options. He reluctantly laid his wife on the altar.
"Stand back."
Lucas took a step back as Grayson leaned over the dial. He turned the rusted metal rings in seemingly all possible directions before placing his palm at the center.
Lucas felt the air in the room rush past him, funneling its way toward the device. The light around the device seemed to bend toward it like a black hole.
Crackles of a deep green energy began running up the stone spires surrounding the altar. A pungent sulfur smell, like rotting eggs, filled the air.
From one of the spires, an arc of emerald lightning struck Olivia’s body. Her head fell back as she screamed in pain. Lucas resisted the urge to intervene.
Another spire fired a bolt into her. Her body shook and convulsed, foaming at the mouth.
"Is this normal?" Lucas asked.
"How would I know? I've never done this before."
Lucas pulled the pistol from his waist. A wave of anxiety tore through his mind as his heart started thundering in his chest.
Could he intervene? Should he? What if it made things worse? Lucas realized Grayson was right; he had seen one of these infernal machines before.
Memories flooded his mind like a dam had suddenly broken within his consciousness. It was the thing that killed him the first time and the reason his soul was chosen to become a Warden.
He remembered his orders, planted like seeds deep in his soul and poised to sprout when the time was right. His goal was clear: he was here to destroy the machine.
Lucas aimed his gun at the metal dials in front of the altar. Grayson threw himself between the gun and the machine as cracks of emerald energy arced from the spires behind him.
Lucas pulled the trigger as a flash of blinding light filled the room. An invisible force knocked him onto his back.
He dropped his gun in the chaos, rolling over and desperately feeling around for it as spots of color filled his vision.
"It's over, Lucas."
He felt the barrel of his own gun against the back of his head.
"Get up. Now."
Lucas stood to his feet, his hands in the air. Grayson stood in front of him, a fresh bullet wound pooling blood into his silk shirt.
“It’s like I told you, Lucas, a gun won’t do you much good here.”
Grayson looked past Lucas to the person holding the gun behind him.
"How's the body?" Grayson asked.
Lucas felt the barrel come off his head as his wife walked into view from behind him. She kept the gun trained on him.
"Not bad, it will suffice,” she replied.
Grayson nodded. "And my wife, is she safe?"
"Sleeping in your bed just like you remember. No worse for wear. Well, maybe a little. These sacks of meat are so terribly fragile."
Lucas looked into his wife's eyes and saw something else staring back. Something ancient and unknowable.
"Zal'Ythra, I presume? Just shoot me and get it over with," Lucas said.
The thing in his wife's body shook its head.
"Oh no, little Warden. I know your tricks. If I kill you, your essence will find its way back to the other Wardens like a lost puppy, and then you’ll tell them all about what you saw here. We can’t have that, not when we’re so close. Your body and soul are staying right here."
"You fucking bitch! I'll kill you!" Lucas shouted.
"Men far greater than you have tried," she turned to Grayson, "Have a few of the Husks take him down to the bay for a little bath. Once he's turned, throw him in with the rest."
Grayson snapped his fingers, and three masked workers emerged from the shadows.
Lucas tried to run but barely made it a few feet before they grabbed him by his arms and legs. His struggles were pointless against their inhuman strength.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry," Grayson said.
Lucas screamed in agony as they carried him out of the basement against his will. His cries echoed across the empty halls of the mansion, but they fell on deaf ears.
They took him outside and held him under the waters of the bay until his screams ceased, but not long enough for him to drown. Because, After all…
Lucas’ suffering was just beginning.
Thanks for Reading! Here’s Your Musical Pairing
Listen to this after reading, like pairing a glass of wine with dinner.
Oh my GOSH!
This story was incredibly intense from start to finish!
The way you describe her laugh towards the end was beautiful, but soo creepy 😅