Glitch. Part 19

Bay Park's parking lot was a gravel square spray painted with yellow parking lines. It could hold about four cars. Luckily, it was empty except for a green garbage drum in the middle of the painted lines.

I stopped the car. The tires skidded on the gravel.

Lena said. "What do you think?"

I got out. The cold lakefront air bit through my jacket. The sound of water lapping rocks came loud and clear here. It was cold so close to the lake, and the air smelled rancid. There were trees. Water. Squirrels probably having s.e.x in the distance.

"It's nice?" I tried. I tucked my hands in my armpits. "Very... flat."

I took another whiff of lakefront air. The smell. Granted, Lake Ontario was so polluted that if you tried to swim in it you'd come out with a third mutant arm, but there was something beneath this lake-stench that twisted my stomach the wrong way.

Lena and Josh got out as well and led me through the flatness towards the water. As we stepped onto the turf, my feet squelched in the gra.s.s. The mud tugged at my heels like it wanted me to stay.

We neared the edge of the turf. A thin strip of land, bordered by trees and a single-lane road, extended farther out into the lake. The strip arched back after few hundred metres, back towards land.

"Before we meet Haze we've got to show you something," Lena said.

We walked on the roadside. The wind howled across the water. Seagulls shrieked, and squirrels rustled in the trees. But beneath those tiny sounds, it was just the water and the stone. Lena, Josh, the trees and I seemed transitory-newcomers in a conversation that had gone on for a long, long time.

Josh announced to me. "You ever wonder how we got into Level Zero in the first place?"

I still hadn't fully acknowledged that Level Zero existed. I shook my head. "I thought you just entered using the line things-the gates."

Josh turned to me. The wind ruffled his close-cropped hair and dangled the string from his hoodie. "We enter through the gates. We open the gates, but the reason we're able to do that is because of this place."

I nodded just to keep him quiet.

Josh went on. "Haze found this place. Then he found us."

Josh kicked a pebble on the road. It skittered across the other side. He stopped, eyed another pebble, and lined himself up with it.

He kicked the pebble with everything he had, a perfect, fluid moment of rage against the tiny rock. It flew across the road and into the narrow strip of gra.s.s beyond it. It stuttered to a halt near some plastic nets keeping a mound of dirt from falling into the water.

"Haze is responsible for everything we do," Lena said. She looked straight at Josh.

"I also hate the guy," Josh announced to the lake.

"You hate everyone."

"Why do you guys keep calling him Haze?" I asked. "Doesn't sound like a name a parent gives their kid."

Josh smirked. He tilted his head. Lena flared her nostrils.

He walked ahead of us. Lena sneered. The expression came and went so fast I hardly saw it. "It's a code-name. We all have them. Mine's BBQ."

"BBQ?" I asked.

"They don't have to make sense." Lena said.

The cold and the smell mounted as we neared the lake. My chest felt sore.

Maybe it was the view. The land stood high enough for me to look down into the water. About a hundred metres off, the light blue of the shallows suddenly plunged into a deep, dark grey. Lake Ontario went about two hundred and fifty metres deep at its lowest point. It looked a lot deeper from here.

"You bought a change of clothes right?" Lena asked.

"What?"

"Didn't Josh mention it?"

Josh's shoulders hunched.

The road entered a blotch of land with more gra.s.s, three trees, a weather-beaten park bench and a dark green garbage can with pink spray-paint scrawling a stylized *P' on the side. Even though we'd been walking for only a few minutes, I already felt tired. I looked at the bench as Josh and Lena trudged up the road.

The next bit of road lifted us higher and higher into the wind. In the distance, waves sloshed against the rocks. It may have been my imagination, but the sky seemed darker the longer we walked.

Why did it smell so bad here? Like rotting fish.

We reached the utmost extension of the land strip. From here the road curved on, bending back to the main body of the park. Looking back, I could almost see the park entrance from here.

Josh and Lena walked to the very edge of the road. Below the road, a cliff plunged into the water. Rocks spilled against it to protect it from erosion.

There was something odd about the shape of the rocks at the very bottom, near the water. The rocks sort of fell apart from each other, and they curved in a strange way, almost as if-

"A cave?" I asked.

Lena nodded. Josh sat himself on the ground, and slowly removed his shoes. He placed them side by side on the side of the road. Lena kicked off her sandals.

"We're going in?" I asked, meaning "you're not getting me in there".

"You'll dry off inside," Lena said. "It's warm."

"... Oh," I said. "Cool then."

I pried off my own shoes. Josh raised an eyebrow.

I tossed my shoes off, shrugged off my jacket, and rolled my jean cuffs up to my knees. This was just spelunking. Odd, but the type of oddness I breathed for Stranger Danger.

The cliff was made of flaky limestone. Worn grey rocks piled up around it. The rocks didn't look sharp, but their skeins of slime looked slippery.

I grabbed the top of the cliff and tested my foot on the rocks. They stayed. I saw a clear path of rocks I could walk down to get to the cave.

I descended.

"Hey-what, wait!" Lena said. Josh swore. They followed after me. I was already halfway down the cliff face by the time they positioned themselves properly for climbing.

A wave crashed against the rocks. White foam slurred the shallow cave mouth. A spray of water dotted the back of my shirt and soaked through to my skin.

Josh and Lena were having some trouble on an unstable outcrop. Lena was trying to leverage her weight against a crag in the limestone beneath the rocks.

The rocks smelled like dirt and b.l.o.o.d.y tin. A thin green slime rubbed off of them and onto my hands. Out of nowhere, I remembered that caribou lived on slime up north.

I paused to bring a gooey hand to my nose. I sniffed. Disgusting.

"Slow down!" Lena shouted. "It's slippery!"

I snuck my foot between two rocks and lowered myself further towards the water. I was almost level with the cave mouth.

During none of this did I remember the stalker man's delusion. And I'd completely forgotten my worries about coincidentally going to a beach again-the same place mentioned in that stupid labyrinth story.

I came down a few more feet. My feet planted down on the rocks just above the water.

From here, the cave mouth looked large enough to admit a person if they crawled in on their knees. The mouth was half-filled with water, so that person would need to get pretty wet.

It was darker now. The clouds were a thick, dark grey that didn't make sense for the afternoon.

I edged closer to the cave. Ice-water swelled up and licked my heels. I winced. The lake burned cold. When the water receded I couldn't feel the soles of my feet.

My teeth chattered. I clamped my mouth shut and the tremors spread down my back.

"Are we going in?" I shouted up at Lena.

"Yeah." Lena answered. She came down to my height.

"I'll meet you inside!" Josh yelled from above. His feet stuttered on the rocks. A free hand pawed for a new handhold.

Lena sighed. "If my b.o.o.bs get wet you're not allowed to stare."

"Understood," I said.

"I'll kick your a.s.s."

"Lena, I can get all the b.o.o.bs I want on the internet," I said. I was going to stare so much.

"Why don't you go in first?"

I looked at the cave entrance.

It wasn't so much a cave as a hole. An ugly hole. The rocks around it were draped with seaweed, plastic sc.r.a.ps, and flotillas of pine needles. The waves poured in and out of it, like steady breaths. When the water swelled in, I'd have just enough air to keep my head dry.

"The cold sucks," Lena said. "But it's not so bad once you get in."

"I can see your nipples," I said.

Lena's foot rose. She was in a perfect position to kick my kidneys out. I hopped into the water.

Cold.

"s.h.i.t!" I screamed.

Cold.

"What is it?" Lena asked.

COLD.

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!" I screwed my eyes shut. Think of b.o.o.bs. Think of b.o.o.bs. Just think of b.o.o.bs.

The water knocked all the warmth out of me. It pierced my clothes and turned my skin into numb, rubbery latex. I flexed my fingers; my tendons groaned like taught cables. My knuckles hurt like drilled teeth.

b.o.o.bs b.o.o.bs b.o.o.bs. What were some good words for b.o.o.bs? Ta-tas, that was a good one.

"Into the cave!" Lena shouted.

In India they were mangoes.

I forced my eyes open and saw the cave. I was right outside of it, and the cavern mouth gaped over my head like a monster ready to bite down.

t.i.ts, it had a nice, vernacular aspiration to it.

I grabbed at the entrance and slipped. I tumbled farther into the water, up to my neck. I thrashed my arms to stay up but I couldn't feel them moving.

Mandarin Chinese had bo-bo, p.r.o.nounced like bwoh-bwoh. Also man tou-meaning bread buns.

I gritted my teeth.