Chapter 172

• Beth felt the cool water hit her body as she left the cave at the bottom of the lake. She blinked her eyes as the sunlight from the surface hit her. The creature shot her up to the surface just as fast as it did when he drug her down in the first place. Beth's body broke the surface near the cabin and the tentacles took her all the way to the shore. Once she was lying on the beach five feet from her towel and beach bag, the tentacles unwrapped themselves off of her and retreated back into the water.
• She laid there on her stomach on the beach for a while, unable to move. The sun was directly overhead while she stayed motionless for a minute trying to catch her breath. Everything was bright at first as her eyes readjusted. Her brain was going a mile a minute as she processed what had happened. Beth then let out a wail of anguish, fists pounding the sand as she realized that she'd just helped birth ten more of those things in the water. She curled into a tight ball, hugging her knees and cried for a good ten minutes.
• Beth managed to get ahold of herself as another thought hit her. She scrambled over to the bag to get her watch. Her eyes went wide when she read the date display on it. "Five Days," she breathed with horror. She'd been down there for nearly a week! That creature had used her for that long? She looked back toward the water in fright as if the creature's tentacles would be coming back up for her soon. Instead, she saw big, leafy looking lily pads in the center of the lake that hadn't been there before.