“Molly?” she calls. The echo returns in a muddy wave amplified in the quiet cave system she crawls through. “Molly, are you in here?”
There’s water trickling down the rocky decline beside her, a result of the storm’s flooding. The wet ground makes the air stink like decomposing leaves and rotten soil. Clouds linger outside and thunder booms occasionally, shaking the cave with her in it, and she feels like dice in the cup she and dad would play Yahtzee with.
Half of camping is sittin’ on your ass betting on card games and dice shakes, he’d told her. Always bring a deck or a cup.
She pictures the cards in the remains of the shredded tent, and even though she’s far enough into the cavern that the entrance has long since disappeared behind her, she can still hear the rain pattering off the canvas as it had when the storm had woken her. Or was it Molly that had made the noise, just before she turned into that thing?
Trudy’s headlamp cast bright light ahead, illuminating the earth that formed the system of caves they’d explored the last two days. Molly had insisted on the lamps so they could go pee without running into a bear. Trudy would have been fine without; dad was awful at remembering batteries and she had peed plenty of times in the woods as a kid, listening for crunching leaves and stopping quick at any sound.
She slides over a mound of rock, remembers it from their delves down here, but she’s still lost. There’s a strip of torn canvas hooked to the wall, and it gently swings bright blue in her light. Molly had come this way.
“Molly!” Trudy yells again. There’s no answer, but that’s almost better, because she’s not sure how she’d react if she heard a voice come from that creature.
No, not creature, Molly.
The image of it in her mind sends her to the ground hyperventilating. Molly’s figure sitting upright in her sleeping bag, coughing. Lightning blinking off the tent behind her like someone outside was snapping pictures with the flash on. Molly’s arms shooting up, twisting in places arms don’t twist, growing and pushing up, up, up until her fingers poked holes through the canvas roof. Not just her arms, but more limbs from her back, and Trudy could see them pushing through the sleeping bag where her legs were. She was growing. And not only limbs, but her stomach bloated, first like she was pregnant then past that, to where she looked like a hot air balloon slowly filling before liftoff. Each flash of lightning there were more limbs, each flash she was larger, filling the space of their tent. Then the tent poles gave out, and Trudy was stuck beneath the canvas with the thing that was Molly but wasn’t anymore.
Trudy doesn’t remember how, but she found her way out of the tent, fumbling with the zipper and scrambling out and into the woods. She watched the Molly thing wiggle its way out of the tent like it was shedding skin, then crawl down into the mouth of the cave.
The cave she now stood in.
There’s a scratching noise, she barely catches it, rising from the darkness ahead. She’s following a cave wall when the passage opens to reveal an underground body of water. She knows this place; the lake they found the first day. The lake where Molly took her shallow Instagram photos, where Molly called her a prude for reading instead of skinny dipping, where Molly baptized herself in bacteria and was reborn into her new self.
Trudy’s headlamp reflects off the still water and lights up the cave. Along the shore there’s a boulder where the scratching comes from, and she creeps toward it. She places her hand on the rock and it’s hard and warm, and that’s when she realizes it’s not stone, but skin.
The thing that was Molly but isn’t anymore is turning now, and Trudy tries running back but falls. Molly’s various limbs have grown into the rock around them, like veins pouring through the walls and down into the water. Her mouth works maniacally, teeth scratching against stone after stone that she scoops into her mouth, breaks her teeth on, then swallows before taking more.
Trudy screams. She stands, ready to run, but the light glints off the keys fused into the base of one of Molly’s limbs, and instead of running out of the cave, she looks for a weapon. Her fingers pull a ragged stone from the floor, and she charges the thing that was Molly but isn’t any more. She pulls at the keys, but they’ve grown into her fatty limb, so she hacks at it with the rock. Blood pools beneath her and leaks from the Molly thing, but the keys won’t come free. She can feel Molly’s body growing beside her, trying to push her away, filling the cavern.
Trudy drops the rock and tugs the blood-soaked keys with both hands. She feels them give a little, then pain shoots through her as the Molly thing’s mouth clamps onto one of her wrists, digging the remaining shards of teeth deep into her skin. She can feel the thing’s throat pulling her in. Molly’s eyes, black and wide, stare at her, and Trudy can see herself in them. Trudy takes the headlamp from her head and stuffs it into the Molly thing’s eyes, and the mouth lets go. Trudy’s crying at the pain, but with the next effort the keys pull free, and she runs into the dark. She can see only so far, but it’s enough to follow the rocky incline.
The thing that was Molly but isn’t any more shuffles behind her, and Trudy can’t help but look back. The Molly thing has grown so large it fills the lake caverns, fills the tunnel behind Trudy. Molly’s gaping mouth continues to gnaw at the cave, and when she tears chunks from the walls and floor Trudy sees it leaves black holes in space, like Molly is tearing the world from reality. Trudy scrambles over the mound of rock, and moments later Molly devours it. When Trudy looks back again, and in the holes she can see herself camping with her parents, dad drinking, the divorce, mom getting sick, and every moment from her life leading to this one.
Then, she rounds a bend and it’s there, the mouth of the cave. She runs out, through the drizzling rain, and gets into the car. The keys are sticky in her fingers when she turns the ignition and the car peels out of the campsite. Molly and the thing she turned into are gone, nowhere to be seen, left behind in the mouth of the cave like a moment of Trudy’s life in a tear from reality.