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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/fainting–goat on 2024-10-06 03:19:11+00:00.

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I was knee deep in a swamp.  The sky overhead was a flat matte gray, the sort of inoffensive color you paint the walls when you don’t know what else to do with a room.  It was raining, the water neither hot nor cold, but the exact temperature to be unnoticeable against my skin.  There were high points of ground, swells in the terrain where the water thinned and I could see gray grass underneath the surface of the water.  There was nothing above the water level.  The rain fell steadily, just as it did on campus, and perhaps this was the reason why the town hadn’t flooded yet.

It was all coming here.  The rain released from its tormenter, falling incessantly, and flooding into the gray world.

I supposed that I could plant the seed and then try to find a way out, but something told me that this wasn’t the right spot for it.  I was seeing the effects of the rain, but it didn’t feel like this was anything other than the fringes of the rain’s influence.  I had to get this right.  I’d only get one chance, otherwise, the seed would be wasted and it’d do nothing but eat away at Grayson in bits and pieces.  Or worse, it would do nothing at all.

And when the gray world could no longer contain the rain, when things twisted and shifted beyond tolerance, then it would overflow onto campus.  I’d heard stories back home about what happened when a malevolent ancient claimed a parcel of land.  Slowly, person by person, the town would dwindle into nothingness.  People would either leave, unable to tolerate the oppression in the air, or they would die.  This sort of thing didn’t happen often… but it did happen.

Oh, we’d call it due to an economic downturn or something like that, but a ghost town is aptly named.

I began slogging my way through the water.  Seek the highest hill was the way to escape the gray world, but I wasn’t certain that was what I was looking for.  I was looking for anything at all, anything that would help me understand what I was to do with the seed.  It burned when it touched my bare skin so I carried it swaddled in my shirt, tucked against my chest.  

I walked for what felt like a very short time and a very long distance.  I could feel the world turning underneath my feet, rotating on its axis, but the scenery never changed.  I walked through the water, skirting the areas where I couldn’t gauge the depth, trying to stay on the swells where there were only a few inches of water.  The rain soaked through my clothing but I wasn’t cold, not with the stone radiating heat through my shirt.  Its presence felt comforting.  Somehow, it made me feel like I was doing the right thing.

Then I saw something up ahead.  A person.  I sloshed through the water towards it, nervously, because this was the gray world and I couldn’t trust that anything here was safe.  But they didn’t move, just stood there and stared at their feet, and as I grew closer I realized that I recognized who it was.  I broke into a run with a cry, my heels kicking up sprays of water, and I ran as hard as I could to where Maria stood all alone.

She raised her head and stared through me as I approached.  I came to a stop in front of her, panting, and wrapped both arms around the stone at my chest to shield it from her.  It was already covered up, but I didn’t dare let her touch it.  I couldn’t let it pull her inside as it’d almost done to James.

“Maria?” I asked.  “It’s me.  It’s Ashley.”

Her gaze sharpened.  She stared at me for a moment and then she smiled, a tentative, trembling gesture.

“I was waiting for you,” she said.  “I knew you’d come for me.”

For a moment I was speechless.  Then I began to cry, in relief, and with the heavy weight of her words.  She’d waited for me.  Because she knew I would come.  And I wanted to tell her that I didn’t know what I was doing here, that I was scared and confused, but I didn’t say anything at all.  Because she already knew all that and she’d waited for me anyway.

“I’m here now,” I said instead.  “You’re not alone.  I’m here.  We can go home together.”

“Go?” she asked, puzzled.  “But I stayed right here.”

Her words didn’t make sense to me, but that was to be expected.  She was caught between life and death and all of her focus was on holding onto herself.  I had to be patient.

“Right,” I said. “You didn’t want to wander. That’s smart. But we need to find the highest hill if we’re going to get out of here.”

I grabbed her hand. It was reassuringly warm. She was alive. I just needed to get her back into her body. I tugged, trying to pull her with me so we could keep walking in any direction, searching for any change in terrain. Any at all.

“I found a hill”, she whispered. “There was something there.  It was… a bird?  But also the sky.  Yes, I think it was the sky.  It told me I could go with it and it’d keep me safe from everything.”

The master of the gray world.  She’d met it and she’d chosen to wait for me instead. I nervously licked my lips. Somehow, it felt worse now that it wasn’t just me I needed to save. I had to plant the seed and then get us both out. I took a deep breath. Maria was still talking.

“It sent me here,” she said. “Even though it’s not safe.  That’s what the sky said.  But there’s not many things around here anymore, so I suppose it didn’t need to worry about me.”

Maria was rambling.  I looked around us, trying to figure out what was special about this particular spot.  It was no different from everything around us, as far as I could see.  Just another swell of land, the soggy grass swaying underneath a few inches of water.  Beside me, Maria fell silent.  I glanced at her and noticed that she was looking at something, her gaze unfocused, her lips half-parted.  She was looking down at our feet.

So that’s where I looked as well.

And all around us the water was black instead of silver, the gray sheen was gone and so was the ground, there was nothing but the dark depths below us as far as I could see, like spilled ink directly below my feet -

I gasped and tore my gaze away.  I stared at the sky instead and at the raindrops covering the lenses of my glasses.  

“Is this… where you entered the gray world?” I finally asked, trying to keep my voice even.

“Entered?  I - I was pulled -”

Yes.  It was.

“But I fell for so long, through so much darkness,” Maria said and there was an edge of wild panic in her voice.

I squeezed her hand, distracting her from wherever her thoughts were veering.  She couldn’t lose herself.  Not when we were so close.

Then I looked down again and this time, I didn’t stare into the depths of the water.  I stared at my ankles, at where the water formed a silver ring, and then I swept my gaze out from that and I looked at the surface of the water, searching for a reflection, searching for something to ground myself on.

And I saw a shape, a person, except it wasn’t me.  It wasn’t me at all.

It was Professor Monotone.

I admit my brain short-circuited a bit at that.  I mean, of all the things I would have expected to see in the water of the gray world, that was not it.  But after a moment my brain kicked in again and I realized his back was to my point of view and he was speaking, he was gesturing, and then I saw who he was speaking to.

It was Cassie.  She faced him with her arms crossed, scowling bitterly.  Behind her was Josh and James… and Grayson.  Josh and James were holding onto Grayson’s arms, one to either side of him.  His eyes were wide with terror and I realized he couldn’t stop them.  He was in a human body, inside dying flesh, and there was no rain inside the power plant basement.  They were dragging him closer to the edge of the pool, dragging him closer to where I waited on the other side.

“I’d rather die!” he shrieked at them.  His voice was muffled, almost inaudible, like he was deep underwater.  “I’d rather be undone entirely than be trapped like this!”

No.  This wasn’t what I wanted.

“Let’s go,” I said to Maria, my voice right with urgency. “I think we’re in the right spot.”

I tried not to think about what I was doing.  Any hesitation and I might freeze up entirely, but I’d figured that out and I knew the trick to get around.  Just don’t think.  Get that first step out of the way and everything else would follow.

I took a deep breath and I jumped.  A short hop, enough to get my feet out of the swamp, and when my feet hit the water again they kept going.  There was no more ground.  I was falling, plunging straight into water, and I recognized this place.  I knew it, for I’d seen it in Grayson’s terror.  This was his realm, this was where all the water went, an empty void where he was alone, stretched across the entirety of the ocean, existing only from moment to moment as each raindrop fell and was absorbed into the earth.

I looked up.  I could see, far above us, my friends.  Their faces were blurred from the water, but I still recognized Josh and James and Grayson, leaning over the surface of the pool.  Cassie wasn’t visible.  No doubt she was tying up Professor Monotone and keeping him from stopping them.  I felt a little bad for pitting him against Cassie.  That wasn’t a fight he could win.

Then they threw Grayson in.  

He struggled, trying to swim up, but it was like the water was sucking him in and he twisted, thrashing, flailing with his hands as if he was trying to knock it away f…

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