The empty lot next to Eddie’s house was the football field where Joe Montana threw the game-winning touchdown to Jerry Rice. It was the baseball diamond where Mark McGwire beat Jose Canseco in the most epic Wiffle ball home run derby in MLB history. It was where Rambo took down the Predator with a Nerf gun, and where RoboCop blew the Terminator’s head off with a Super Soaker. It was my favorite place to hang out with my three best friends.
And it was the last place I saw them alive.
The four of us had known each other since we were toddlers. We lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same schools, and played on the same Little League teams. Eddie’s house was our main hang-out spot, partially because of the empty lot next door, but also because his mom kept the best assortment of Tastykakes stocked in the pantry. Even better, his house had a big finished basement with a ping pong table and a Nintendo with its own dedicated TV. He had all the best games, too: Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Metroid, Double Dragon, Contra. He even had The Legend of Zelda, the one with the shiny gold cartridge that I coveted so much.
The lot was nothing special, but that’s also what made it so special. It could be anything we wanted—a sports field, a war zone, an alien planet, or whatever else our imaginations could conjure. Some of my earliest, fondest memories were of the four of us running around in that lot, having squirt gun battles in the summer and snowball fights in the winter, then retreating to Eddie’s house for Elio’s Pizza and Fanta Orange Soda.
The lot was mostly dirt, about the shape of a football field, with a row of dark green hedges separating it from the neighbor’s yard. The ground turned into a mud pit when it rained, but it hadn’t rained in weeks. That’s why we were so confused about the enormous puddle that had appeared there overnight. There were no sprinklers, fire hydrants, or water mains nearby. The nearest hose was coiled up way over by Eddie’s front porch—it was nowhere near long enough to create a puddle in that part of the lot. And yet, inexplicably, there it was: a perfectly round circle of water, maybe fifteen feet across, with a mirror-like sheen that reflected the cloudless sky overhead.
“You’re telling me you have no idea where it came from?” Marco asked Eddie.
“Dude, I swear.” Eddie held up his fingers in a Scout’s Honor gesture. “Jack, tell him.”
I nodded. “Yep. We were inside all night.”
The previous evening, the four of us had been out in the lot until well after sunset, tossing a baseball around while listening to my Def Leppard cassettes on Eddie’s boombox. We only stopped once it was too dark to see the ball anymore. Marco and Shah went home, but I spent the night at Eddie’s, watching Indiana Jones movies on his VCR until 2:00 AM. We were together the whole time.
“This sucks,” Marco complained. “Now what do we do?”
The plan had been for us to play Wiffle ball all afternoon, but the puddle was directly in the middle of our infield, in the exact spot where the pitcher’s mound was supposed to be. It was so big that it even encroached on the base lines we had scratched into the dirt with the heels of our sneakers the day before.
“We could run around it,” Shah suggested.
“Or through it,” Eddie added. “We’ll just take our shoes off.”
I peered at the puddle, trying to examine it from different angles. “I don’t know, guys. Looks pretty deep.”
There was something about the thing that just felt off to me. The puddles in the lot were usually muddy and brown; the water in this one was perfectly reflective and oddly still, with a surface unbroken by mosquitoes or water striders. That was unusual—any standing water in our area was usually a breeding ground for insects. But not this one. It was like someone had left a giant compact disc in the middle of the dirt, shiny side up.
“It can’t be that deep,” Marco said. “It’s a puddle, not a lake.”
“Why’s it so shiny then?”
“Don’t ask me. Ask Mr. Wizard.” Marco pointed at Shah.
Shah Patel was the resident genius of our friend group. While Marco, Eddie, and I spent most of our free time playing video games, Shah preferred hacking into government computer systems using his dad’s dial-up modem. He couldn’t actually hack in—he had no idea what he was doing—but that didn’t stop him from running up exorbitant long-distance phone bills while he tried. His favorite movies were War Games and The Manhattan Project: he was a real “let’s steal plutonium and make a nuclear bomb for the Science Fair” kind of kid.
“Hold this.” Shah handed me the yellow plastic Wiffle ball bat he was carrying, then squatted next to the puddle to get a closer look. “Hmm. You sure it’s even water?”
“What else would it be?”
Shah sniffed the air then wrinkled his nose. “Not sure. Smells like—”
“Your asshole,” Marco interjected.
“You would know,” Shah shot back.
Shah wasn’t wrong about the stench. I couldn’t vouch for whether it smelled like his asshole or not, but it didn’t smell like water. It had a noxious odor that reminded me of Mr. Birnbaum’s chemistry lab: a mix of sulfur, ammonia, and … something else. Something sour.
Shah tapped his finger on his lips thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s mercury.”
“Like from a thermometer?” Eddie asked. “Where the hell would that come from?”
“A meteor.”
“I’m pretty sure we would’ve heard a meteor hitting the ground next to my house, Shah.”
“Hey,” Marco said, pointing at the Wiffle ball I held in my hand. “Lemme borrow that for a sec.”
“No. Why?”
“Just give it.”
Marco tried to snatch the ball away from me, but I dodged out of the way. Instead of reaching for the ball again, he feigned a blow to my groin—the kid was a notorious nut-flicker. I immediately reacted, dropping the Wiffle ball and lowering my hands to protect my crotch. Luckily for my testicles, it was just a ruse, but it had achieved the intended result.
Marco snatched the ball off the ground and tossed it into the water. It landed right in the middle of the puddle. There was no splash. No ripple. It didn’t bob or bounce. It hit the surface of the puddle and just … stopped. It was like someone had pressed pause on the VCR at the exact second the ball had touched the water. Then, ever so slowly, the ball sunk. That was strange too—it was made of hollow plastic. It should have floated. But it didn’t.
“Whoa. That was weird, right?” Shah looked at us to gauge our reactions. “It’s like some kind of non-Newtonian fluid.”
Marco nodded thoughtfully. “Mm-hmm. Yep. That’s what I was thinking too.” He clearly had no idea what the hell Shah was talking about.
“Now what do we do?” I said to Marco.
“About what?” he replied innocently.
“About the ball!”
“Just go get it.”
“And reach it how?”
“With the bat.”
I looked at the yellow plastic bat in my hand. It was about three feet long, nowhere near long enough to reach the ball from where we stood. “It’s not long enough, dumbass.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Why don’t you just walk in?” Eddie asked.
“Why don’t you just walk in?” I snapped.
“Use the bat,” Shah suggested. “See how far down it goes.”
“You do it.” I held out the bat to Shah.
“Oh my God,” Marco groaned. “You’re such a pussy.” He grabbed the bat away from me. “Gimme that.”
My face flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. Kids our age called each other pussies all the time, but I always took it personally. I couldn’t help it. None of the other kids had a Dad who was an actual goddamned war hero like mine was. He had saved like fifteen guys in his unit in Vietnam, taking out an entire enemy encampment while getting riddled with bullets and shrapnel, then carrying the wounded one at a time back to the LZ to be airlifted to safety. He had two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, a Congressional Medal of Honor … he even met President Nixon. My dad would never call me a pussy—he was way too old-fashioned to ever use a word like that—but I always felt like, deep down, he must be thinking I was. I listened to music by guys who dressed like girls. I was more into books than sports. I didn’t like to hunt, fish, or do any of the things that he did with his dad when he was my age. Hell, I was almost a teenager and I was still afraid of the dark. I would never be half the man that he was, and I knew it. I think he did too.
Marco plunged the bat into the puddle to test the depth, sinking it as far as he could without getting wet. “Damn, that’s actually really deep,” he said as he swirled it around. “I can’t even feel the bottom.”
“Just like your Mom,” I grumbled under my breath.
He pulled the bat from the water and shook it dry. “Ha ha. So funny I forgot to laugh.”
“Maybe it’s, like, an old well or something,” Shah said. “Or a sinkhole.”
“That would suck,” Eddie replied. “So much for ever playing Wiffle ball again. Or anything else.”
Marco handed the bat back to me. A wicked grin formed on his lips. “Dare you to jump in.”
“Yeah, right.”
“What’s the matter? You scared?”
“No. Are you?”
Eddie began untying the laces of his Reeboks. “I’ll do it.”
“See?” Marco said. He clapped Eddie on the back like a proud father. “Eddie’s not a pussy.”
“Stop it,” I growled through clenched teeth.
“Stop what?”
“I’m not a pussy.”
“Okay. So, prove it.”
I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything. My face felt like it was on fire.
After a few moments of waiting, Marco nodded. “That’s what I thought. Pussy. Pussypussypussy—”
“Fuck you.” I started to lunge at him, but Shah stepped between us and put a hand on my chest.
“Chill out, Jack. He’s just kidding.” He gave Marco a disapproving glare. “Right?”
“Right,” Marco said. His tone was unconvincing.
While Marco and I were busy arguing, Eddie kicked away his sneakers and peeled off his socks, shorts, and t-shirt. He stood there in his tighty-whities, swinging his skinny arms as if loosening his shoulders for a swim. “Who else is with me?” he asked. Nobody else volunteered. “All right, then,” he said with a smug grin. “See ya later, pussies!” He took off in a sprint toward the puddle and launched himself into the air, drawing his knees up to his chest for a full cannonball. “Kowabunga!”
I spun away and shielded my face in anticipation of a soaking splash of water. Marco and Shah did the same. But no splash came. Instead, there was a sharp slapping noise, the sound of an epic belly flop from a diving board. I turned back to the puddle to see Eddie sprawled on top of the water, staring at the sky with a shocked, pained expression on his face. It was like the water had turned to solid Jell-O when he hit it. Then, just like the Wiffle ball, he began to sink. His arms flailed as the seemingly-solid surface suddenly liquified underneath him. An abbreviated scream escaped his lips before it was cut off by water flooding his mouth. And then he was gone.
Marco squealed with laughter. “Holy shit, that was epic!”
Shah bent closer to the puddle, trying to see past the reflective surface. He looked up at us, his brow furrowed with concern. “Think he’s okay?”
“Relax,” Marco said, his laughter tapering off. “He’ll come back up.”
We waited for what was probably ten seconds, but it seemed like forever. Finally, I broke the silence. “He’s not—” My voice caught in my throat. I swallowed hard, then continued. “He’s not coming up.”
“He will,” Marco answered. “Eddie!” he yelled. “Come on, man! Quit screwing around!” He laughed again, but I could hear panic fraying his voice.
Shah snatched the bat away from me and thrust it into the puddle. “Eddie!” he called. “Grab on!” He moved it around, trying to find Eddie’s grip. “Come on, dude! Grab the bat!”
“Do you feel anything?” I asked. My heart was pounding in my chest. I had a very bad feeling about what was happening.
Shah plunged the bat even deeper, submerging his arm up to the shoulder. “Nothing,” he grunted, his voice straining. “He’s not—”
Suddenly, Shah was jerked violently forward, plunging face-first into the puddle. His legs kicked wildly at the dirt as he was dragged into the water. Despite his struggling, there was no splashing, no splattering—it happened as silently and smoothly as if he had slipped into a pool of shadow. The puddle barely even rippled.
Marco stared at the spot where Shah just had been. “Guys?” His previous bravado had evaporated. He sounded scared. “Guys, come on.”
“We need to get help,” I said quietly. But I didn’t move. I felt rooted in place, as if my feet had bonded to the Earth’s crust. I was frozen solid, utterly paralyzed with fear. Shah hadn’t just fallen into the puddle. He had been pulled. By what, though? The only thing I could think of was an alligator. But were there alligators in our part of New Jersey? And even if there were, how had they gotten into the puddle? And where had the puddle come from in the first place? And why was the water so deep, and so weird? None of it made any sense.
“Shit!” Marco cried. “What do we do?” I didn’t respond. “What do we do?” he asked again, his voice rising with panic. When I still didn’t answer, he looked back at Eddie’s house, searching for some sort of solution. His eyes lit up. “The hose! Let’s go, gimme some help!” He pulled me by the arm, finally breaking me from my trance. I ran after him as he sprinted across Eddie’s yard to where a long green garden hose was coiled up beside the front porch. “Pick it up!” he ordered.
I began gathering heavy loops in my arms as Marco unscrewed the hose from the pipe. Once it was free, we carried the messy tangle of rubber over to the puddle. Marco sat on the ground and began wrapping one end of the hose around his ankle.
“What’re you gonna do?” I asked.
“I’m going in.” He twisted the hose into a knot and pulled it tight.
“No!” I felt tears welling in my eyes. “You can’t.”
“You want them to drown?”
“No, but—”
“Then help me!” He limped to the edge of the puddle, dragging the heavy rubber hose behind him. “Count to twenty. If I don’t come up by then, pull me out.” Before I could protest any further, he took a deep breath and stepped into the water. He dropped like a lead weight, instantly vanishing under the mirrored surface.
“Oh my God,” I mumbled. “Oh, fuck.” I let the hose play through my hands as it uncoiled, ready to pull Marco out as soon as twenty seconds had elapsed. I counted as fast as I could: “One-Mississippi-two-Mississippi-three-Mississippi—”
The hose began to slip through my fingers faster … and faster … and faster. My skin burned from the friction of the rubber zipping across my palms. It seemed impossible that the puddle could be deep enough to consume dozens of feet of hose, but it was.
“Marco!” I tried to close my hands around the hose, but I was almost jerked off my feet by the force of whatever was pulling it. I had to let it go or risk getting yanked into the puddle myself. Just as the final coils of the hose unfolded, whatever had grabbed it—had grabbed Marco—stopped. I tentatively gripped the hose and hauled it hand-over-hand out of the water. It came out easily. Too easily. After about a dozen feet, the end emerged. It was cleanly severed.
“Marco?” My voice was barely a whisper. The tears in my eyes spilled over. The hose slipped from my fingers and fell to the ground. The severed end flopped into the puddle. There was no splash.
A quick flash of movement in the water made my heart trip in my chest. I felt a swell of hope at the possibility that my friends were surfacing from the depths … followed by a surge of unspeakable horror at what I saw instead. It was something so alien, so incomprehensible, so other that I struggle to describe it in terms anyone can understand. It reminded me of the hind leg of a grasshopper—long, skinny, barbed, jointed—but twice as long as my arm and made of something that looked like black glass. At the end was a churning cluster of smaller appendages that moved like the mouthparts of a crab. They had the ghostly translucency of white quartz crystals, but they were as dexterous and multi-jointed as my own fingers.
The nightmare limb breached the surface of the puddle and extended in my direction. I stumbled backward, tripping over my own feet and falling on my back. Two more identical limbs emerged beside the first. They pressed into the ground by my feet as the creature began to lift itself out of the puddle. With a desperate cry, I drove my heels into the dirt, propelling myself away from the water as fast as I could. Then I rolled over, scrambled to my feet, and ran.
I ran past Eddie’s house, down Grape Street, and all the way to my house on Peachtree Lane. Throwing the front door open, I sprinted across the kitchen to the phone on the wall and dialed 911. The operator thought I was making a crank call, but after a few minutes of pleading, I was able to convince her to send the Rescue Squad to Eddie’s house. Then I hung up the phone and ran back the way I came. By the time I got to the lot, sweat-soaked and gasping for breath, the police were already there.
But the puddle was gone.
All that was left in the lot were Eddie’s sneakers, socks, and t-shirt, exactly where he had tossed them. There was no sign of Eddie, Shah, or Marco. Just like the puddle, they had vanished.
I explained to the police exactly what happened, but they didn’t believe me. How could they? A disappearing puddle? Water that doesn’t splash? A trio of giant grasshopper legs with alien finger-mouths? I sounded like an insane person who had rented too many horror movies from West Coast Video.
Instead, the police had a much more realistic theory: the boys had run away from home. They assumed I was covering for them—albeit badly—by concocting a crazy story to account for their disappearance. The cops could never explain why the boys might have run away or where they might have run away to, but it didn’t matter. For the next twenty years, that was the official explanation. It’s what Shah’s parents believed when they moved back to India, what Marco’s mom believed when she hung herself in the garage the next summer, and what Eddie’s parents believed when they died in their sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning a few months ago.
After Eddie’s folks were gone, a wealthy investor bought their land and knocked down their house so he could build a new mini-mansion on the property. With the addition of the empty lot next door, the new owner had enough room to add a tennis court, a putting green, and even an in-ground pool. It was during the excavation of the pool that a new clue to my friends’ whereabouts was found. The construction workers hadn’t dug up any bodies or bones, or anything gruesome like that. But a dozen feet underground, in the exact spot where the puddle had been, they made an unexpected find: a large cave with a puddle of strange, silvery liquid inside. And, beside the puddle?
An old Wiffle ball.
A yellow plastic bat.
And a tangle of rotten garden hose.
Some of the cops who had investigated my friends’ disappearance were still on the force, so they immediately recognized the significance of the discovery. They contacted me and implored me to drive the four hours from my apartment in Pennsylvania so they could question me once again about what had transpired that day.
I decided to crash at my parents’ house on Peachtree Lane while the police conducted their investigation. My dad had passed away a few years earlier, but his commendations were still proudly displayed in a case on the mantel, along with the famous photo of him shaking hands with Nixon after receiving his Medal of Honor. There was also a plaque with his favorite quote engraved on it, from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.”
There was no question that my dad had died once and only once. But me, on the other hand? I had tried following in my dad’s footsteps by joining the Army after high school, but I couldn’t even make it through basic training. The closest I ever got to a Medal of Honor was winning the Saturday night darts championship at my local bar. And I was still afraid of the dark. I was the coward Caesar warned about, dying again and again every time I let my fear stop me from doing the right thing.
The police forensics teams spent the better part of a week poking through the dirt and clay for any other evidence that might provide a clue to my friends’ whereabouts, but in the end, they found nothing. They closed the case again and told me I was free to go. But I didn’t. Instead, I drove my rental car to the empty lot where my friends had disappeared.
With the investigation complete and with construction yet to resume, it was easy for me to access the lot without anyone noticing. I ducked under the police tape, then slid down the steep side of the muddy hole to the entrance of the cave where the bat, ball, and hose had been found. It was a low, flat space, maybe twenty feet across, with a domed ceiling striped with sedimentary rock. The excavation had collapsed one side of the cave, turning it into rubble and exposing it to the open air. Even in the dark, the puddle inside was just as shiny and strange as I remembered.
As I stared at the water, I thought about what happened that day, about how the lot which had been such a source of joy for us had turned into such a nightmare. I thought about Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, about Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, about Terminator and RoboCop. I thought about Marco, and Eddie, and Shah. I thought about my father. If I had been more like my dad, maybe my friends would have still been alive. Not a day went by where I didn’t wish I had gone into the water after them. Maybe I couldn’t have saved them, but at least I wouldn’t have had to live with the fact that I didn’t even try.
After a few minutes of standing in silence, I sat down on the rubble at the edge of the puddle and took off my sneakers. I removed my shirt and pants, folded them neatly on the ground, then placed my shoes on top, along with my wallet, car keys, and flip phone. Then I closed my eyes, held my breath, and stepped into the water. It was warm, so warm that it barely registered as being wet. It felt comforting, almost womb-like. It surrounded me, cradled me, embraced me. As I allowed myself to sink into the Stygian abyss, I felt calm. Peaceful. Content.
Then, something grabbed my leg.
I should have been scared. I should have been terrified. But I wasn’t.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel any fear at all.
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Warren Benedetto 