---
layout:          post
title:           "MAG160.10 - Rusty Fears Competition Winner - Nox Mare"
date:            2020-03-19 11:00:00 -0400
episode_type:      [special]
tags:            []
voiced:          []
categories:			"tma"
podcasts: ["tma"]
title_prefix:	"MAG"
prev_categories: ["tma"]
prev_prefixes: ["MAG"]
next_categories: ["tma"]
next_prefixes: ["MAG"]
prev_episode:		['16009-buildingthepanopticon']
next_episode:		['16011-season-5-trailer']
prev_episode_num:		['160.09']
next_episode_num:		['160.11']
prev_episode_title:		["Building the Panopticon - Making MAG 158"]
next_episode_title:		["Season 5 Trailer"]
episode_title:   'Nox Mare (Rusty Fears Winner)'
episode_number:  '160.10'
summary:         "As we build up to Season 5, this week's episode is the first of two winning stories from the Rusty Fears 3: Fearsome writing competition. <br/><br/><i>Nox Mare</i> is written by <b>Elizabeth Wynn</b> and read by Jonathan Sims. <br/><br/>Note: this is a piece of standalone fiction and not a part of the Magnus canon."
content_flags:   [Drowning]
acast_url:       https://play.acast.com/s/themagnusarchives/rustyfearscompetitionwinner-noxmare
formats:         
official:        false
unofficial:      ''
unofficial_name: 'Anonymous'
wiki_url:        
---

> As a contest entry, this story's content is not necessarily Creative Commons-licensed -- please contact the author about permission to reproduce!

------

#### ALEX

Hi everyone, Alex here, with a quick introduction to today's episode. Some of you might remember we ran a writing competition inviting listeners to provide their own stories for the *Magnus* treatment. Well, we've done it again. Today's episode is the first of our two new writing competition winners; the second story will be available next week.

As before, please be aware that this story is a standalone work and should not be considered part of the *Magnus Archives* canon.

That's all for now. We hope you enjoy the episode.

##### [ALEX THANKS PATRONS]

##### [INTRO MUSIC]

#### ANNOUNCER

Rusty Quill Presents: Nox Mare, by Elizabeth Wynn.

---

#### ARCHIVIST

There's something in the water. Every morning I sit on my porch steps and watch the wakes it leaves, so like the wind across the surface. That's what my mother told me when I used to come crying to her about the nightmares. "It's the wind." Too feeble to stir more than gentle waves, the wind. I can tell the difference between disturbances that come from above and ones from below.

I always thought I loved the ocean. I grew up about as far inland as you can get, among mountains that scraped the steely clouds. The closest thing we had was the lake, and that didn't count; you could see the shore all the way around on summer holidays. We'd drive hours to my grandparents' house on the coast, and my cousins, my brother, and I would spend the days burying each other in the sand, racing down the beach, trying to keep beach balls in the air in the evenings. I'd return with my mother and we'd sit for long hours, watching the sunset turn the sky cottony pink and yellow, then red, then deep purple. I loved to watch the waves pull in and out. I loved to follow the shadows in the breakers, the dark shapes moving within them. I loved letting the foam lap at my toes.

It never occurred to me that no one else saw the dancing shadows. It never occurred to me that loving the ocean might mean going in.

Because there's something in the water.

My little brother Jamie loved the ocean, too. He was always running into the surf the second we arrived, kicking sandals aside and plunging through the cold water until he was in up to his neck. He told me he loved feeling the waves break over him, pulling him back and forth, back and forth. He loved the sand shifting around his feet, making him stumble. He loved the little fish that brushed past, nibbled at his leg hair, and scurried away when he dunked his head to look at them. Sometimes it scared me, watching him stare down a wave that I could see was full of writhing sharp shapes. I always held my breath for the seconds it crashed around him and he vanished from view, ready to cry for help when he didn't come back up. He always did, of course, but I wonder if he knew that beach was too cold to have fish.

When I was 14, we moved from the house in the mountains to the nearest city, and my grandmother passed away, leaving the beach house empty. Four years later I moved out for school, but I stayed close to my now aging parents. Jamie ended up living on the coast, of course. When he visited home, he always smelled like those summer holidays, sunscreen and seaweed and saline.

I dreamed about him often, during those years. I dreamed that he came out of the water, first as a child and later as an adult, and salt encrusted every inch of his skin. It turned his eyelashes white, shaped his hair into a mimicry of waves. Every time the dream repeated, the minerals encasing him would be a little thicker, his face a little more warped underneath it all, but he still moved towards me with the ease of a trickling stream.

And every time he reached me, his eyes would snap open, shattering the salt shell. They would be bright orange, glinting like amber, or a fish's eyes. And I'd wake up, gasping and choking, the taste of seaweed laced with something filthy filling my mouth and nose.

The first time he drowned, Jamie was 19. I left class to find eight calls from my frantic mother, my father already en route to the coast. He picked me up and we drove straight through to get to the hospital at 1:00 in the morning. Jamie's heart had stopped for two minutes before they could resuscitate him. He'd been out sailing with friends when their boat capsized. In the initial panic, none of them noticed he hadn't resurfaced. They tracked the disturbances to where he was sinking quickly, flailing all the while. One of his friends muttered that it looked like something was pulling him, something dark and thin and twisting. I'm not sure if anyone else heard him; he had gone very pale.

My parents wanted Jamie to move back in with them, but he told them in no uncertain terms that he would do no such thing. He said he wanted to keep the life he'd built, the friends and job he'd found, but I knew he didn't care that much. The truth was, they still lived in the city, and he wanted to be near the ocean. He thought he needed it. Eventually, he agreed to give up sailing and a few of his other more dangerous activities, and they let him stay.

The second drowning was two years later. He'd gotten very drunk and fallen off the pier near his house, and this time no one was around to pull him out. He washed up on a beach four miles away at 5:00 in the morning, an unspecified amount of time after he'd gone in, so no one knew how long he went without breathing, either. The doctor assumed he must not have been in the water for long, but late that night Jamie gestured me closer.

"I remember it," he rasped. "All of it. And I didn't fall in, it pulled me. It was barely midnight. I wasn't even that drunk."

Jamie rambled on, but his eyes stayed locked with mine. They were wide and fearful and his lashes were crusted white. For an instant, his irises flashed amber.

My chair squeezed across the linoleum. It startled him out of his trance, but I was already gone.

The third drowning happened when he was 25. Nothing stranger than a riptide. Our parents weren't around anymore to chastise him for not recognizing a riptide after all his years practically living on the beach. For my part, I was well aware it had not been a riptide. I hadn't spoken to Jamie beyond funeral planning since the last incident, but I got my boyfriend to drive me to the coast anyway. I wasn't too rushed, given Jamie's apparent tenacity, but we still got there faster than was feasible if you were diligent about speed limits.

Jamie's skin picked up blue undertones in the hospital lighting. The remaining grit of sand and drying saltwater looked almost scaly, but I knew I wasn't looking for scales. The flickering of his luminescent eyes under their lids was much more concerning. I set my jaw to press down the roiling unease, and stayed by the bed.

Later he told me he coughed up seaweed mixed with foul shade for hours after we got him home. "There's something in the water," he whispered, voice still rough with salt.

"I know," I said, rubbing his back as he coughed again. "I know."

"It took my hand," he said, and the sound went muffled and wet. "It was gentle, this time, and led me deeper and deeper, and I could almost see... almost..."

He trailed off. I couldn't speak through the feeling of rotting seaweed in my throat.

That night, I dreamed the same scene from the past seven years, and this time, it didn't end when his eyes opened. Neither of us looked away as his hand wrapped around my wrist, surprisingly warm and soft without the salt. He led me into the water, and only as it started to lap around my knees did I feel fear creeping up my legs and curling into my stomach. There were no waves, I realized, or rather, there was just one -- on the horizon, a wall of water building, drawing itself higher and higher until it blocked out much of the sky.

I can't describe how the panic tasted as it rose in my throat. I tried to run, but the sand shifted under my feet and Jamie's grip had gone hard and icy. Something else, slick and dark, slid around my calves. All I could do as the water pulled us, stumbling closer to the curling mass of ocean and shadow, was trying to slow my breathing. So when the wave hit, my first inhalation wouldn't be too soon after.

I don't remember how it ended. I woke up completely still, held on my side, soaked with sweat. My mouth tasted like nothing but sea air. And somewhere, that wave was still building.

I thought the lake was safe. Otherwise, I never would have gone back. I certainly wouldn't have encouraged Jamie to come with my boyfriend and I.

In any case, a few days after my dream we made plans to move back into the mountain house our parents had never sold. I thought Jamie would put up more of a fight about finally leaving the beach, but his eyes were bruised and bloodshot, and he kept complaining of a rushing noise like a shell held to his ear. He wasn't in much shape to argue, and maybe I was feeling hopeful that this last incident had scared him off the ocean forever. It certainly had me.

Once we arrived, my dreams actually did vanish. Jamie seemed better, his skin regaining its color and his hair relaxing without the constant salt. But more than once, my boyfriend came into the kitchen to find both of us gazing out the window of the glittering lake, all else forgotten in the rapture of its waves. Jamie was always perfectly still, while my whole body shuddered, like I was trying to run and my feet were buried in the sand.

Otherwise, though, we were doing quite well. There was no drowning, there were no dreams. There was nothing in the water, only the wind across its surface.

One night my boyfriend sat bolt upright in bed, staring out the window. My eyes were gritty with sleep, but I sat up too, squinting. Out of the lake, Jamie stood on the shore, looking out over the choppy water. At first I thought it was just a trick of my vision, but after I rubbed my eyes it was still there. He was glittering, ever so slightly. The edges of his silhouette were warped by the salt crusting his skin.

As we watched, he stirred and took one step, then another, then another, into the lake. Fluid, as a winding stream.

My boyfriend yelled and stumbled out of bed.

I didn't follow. He stared at me, wild-eyed and confused.

"It won't make a difference tonight or tomorrow," I heard myself say. "He won't die. Might as well get some sleep."

I could see he wasn't convinced, and I know he didn't sleep because I didn't either, but he got back into bed and uneasily pulled the covers up. I took a comfort in the warmth of his body, the dry sheets and solid mattress. My back was to the window and the lake beyond, but I stared at the wall and saw rippling water until sunlight refracted across it.

We ate in tense silence. My grandmother's rowboat was still in the shed, and though I'd never seen anyone but my mother use it, we dragged it down the sandy two-track road to the shore and pushed off as soon as we were sure the oars were functional. I leaned forward to scan the water and shoreline for signs of Jamie.

The terror was a surprise. A shock, even. I looked over the side, and immediately realized the lake ran far deeper than I had ever imagined. The Sun lanced into it, threading the green surface with impossibly thin golden lines. A meter down. Even the brightest rays could go no further. Below, there was nothing but shadow.

Of course, shadow can hide so many things. So many things can hide in shadow.

There's something in the water.

At first it was nothing but a difference between blacks, like the new moon against a cloudless sky. Maybe a fish or water plants. But I'd seen that kind of writhing before. Carefully, so carefully, I sank down to sit on the floor of the boat. I asked my boyfriend what he thought we should do, seeing as I had no intention of jumping in. But he wasn't there.

I wasn't surprised, but I felt the sudden loss as a dull thud in my chest, a bassy counterpoint to my shrill fear. Far away I could see him on the shore, yelling for me. It sounded muffled and wet.

The surface of the water was smooth, as it was a windless morning. Nonetheless, the boat rocked as it drifted, first gently and then much more violently. I pictured myself, a tiny triangle of metal cradling me in the center of an unfathomably deep green lake, and underneath, something incomprehensibly huge twisting closer, closer. I thought distantly about grabbing the oars and desperately rowing back to shore. It was too late. A particularly hard disturbance, and the boat tipped.

I gasped in a last deep inhale, though it was immediately shocked out of me in a spiral of white as I plunged into the freezing water. Useless. I didn't flail. What would be the point? I could still see the surface rippling like sheets in the wind, but with every thump of my pulse in my ears, it drifted farther away. I couldn't be sure I was looking up at all. I was suspended in dark so complete it pooled.

Something inky and beautiful grasped my ankles, dragging me faster into the depths. Despite myself, a wail wrenched from my chest, more white bubbles that only disoriented me more.

Was this what Jamie felt the first time, as his friends took to the mundane task of righting their boat and counting heads? Weight sliding around his knees, tugging at his wrists. The riptide that was never a riptide, tearing at him as it pulled him inexorably away. Did he feel this weak as the last air was crushed out of him? This small?

A hand slipped into mine; it was warm against the growing numbness. The pressure had increased, so even as I turned my head towards its own and my eyes were forced shut, behind my eyelids, I still saw the orange glow. The flickering of iridescent and nictitating membranes.

The last of my air sighed past my lips in relief. I'd keep being saved all those times before. Jamie was going to save me.

Fingers tightened around mine, and they'd gone sharp and slippery, wet and crystalline. There was nothing I could do as what was once my brother set my feet in the silt, but ignore the dancing darkness, the ruthless, crushing assault, and take my first breath.

There's something in the water, and it won't let me go.

---

##### [OUTRO MUSIC]

#### ANNOUNCER

This episode is distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For more information, visit rustyquill.com, tweet us @TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook, or email us at mail@rustyquill.com. Thanks for listening.

------

> As a contest entry, this story's content is not necessarily Creative Commons-licensed -- please contact the author about permission to reproduce!