Blue O’Connor bolted through the never-ending cave. It was already so dark she could hardly see, and the flashlight in her hand was growing dimmer by the second.

Water splashed up to her waist as she scuttled barefoot through shallow, slippery puddles. Soaking from head to foot, she felt her torn wetsuit coated in moss and sludge.

Her legs were giving out. Her heart throbbed in her chest, and her lungs were so tight she could barely breathe. Blood oozed down her face from a gash in her forehead. She wasn’t going to make it much further.

A high-pitched wail echoed through the cave. Blue frantically looked back toward the noise while she ran. Several pairs of eyes gleamed in the darkness.

They were closer.

Thud! Something landed on the path just ahead of her.

Blue skidded to a halt through the muck and fell yet again, tearing fresh gashes into her knees. She could taste the briny muck as it splashed into her mouth. She looked back.

The beasts were behind her. She looked forward. They were in front of her. She was trapped.

Willing her flashlight batteries to stay alive, Blue shot the ray of light through the cavern, searching for another way out.

Swoosh. The musty cavern air parted as a glowing, white, ape-like form whizzed across the path.

They were here.

The faint beam of Blue’s flashlight bounced off the walls, illuminating a labyrinth of darkened caverns filled with eerie, translucent creatures. She didn’t know what they were. They were unlike anything she had ever read about.

They walked upright like humans, but they were not human. They were large and fast, so pale they were translucent, and their bodies glowed. They screeched and shook their fists at her, driving her deeper into the cave.

Something brushed the top of her head. Blue screamed.

The sound echoed through the cave, sending the creatures into a frenzy. Blue aimed her light at the creature in front of her. She locked eyes with the beast; it threw a white arm over its face, shielding its brown, ape-like eyes from the glare.

Screaming in pain from the light, the being darted away. Blue swung the ray toward the passage behind her. Every time she caught a body in the beam, it scurried into the shadows.

They couldn’t stand the brightness.

As long as her flashlight held out, she had a defense.

Desperate, Blue found a new gear and resumed her scramble through the narrow passageway. The path forked. She hesitated just long enough to take stock. To the left was a dead end of pure darkness. To her right, a tiny ray in the distance shone in from the top of the cave.

Daylight! Just a few more feet and she would be safe.

Without a sound, a massive white hand caught her from behind and closed around her neck. The creature pulled her close.

She could feel the heat of its body on her back and its rancid breath heaving against her bloodied cheek.

Her flashlight died.

Everything went dark.

Blue jumped awake. Two hands were shaking her.

“Blue. Wake up.”

“Mom!” Blue was relieved to find the powerful hands belonged to her mother, Julie O’Connor, and not some horrible monster. Blue was her mother’s double: same dark hair, same deep, intense blue eyes.

“It’s okay, honey. You’re safe. It was just a dream.”

“But there were these… things. These monsters. They were chasing me,” Blue said.

Her mother pushed her gently back onto the bed. “Lie down and get some sleep.”

“But it was so real this time. I was in an enormous cave. It was miles big and underground. There were these… creatures. They were stinky, white, and fierce. They were real.”

Blue watched her mother’s face. A tiny twitch pulled at her mother’s left cheek.

Her mother paused, then let out a deep breath. “It was just a dream, Blue. We’ve been through this before. Get some sleep. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Blue felt the blankets tighten as her mother tucked her in. “Night, honey.”

“G’night,” Blue called, reaching out from under the covers, wishing she would stay. Without another word, her mother turned the light out and shut the door.

Alone in the dark, the dream played over and over in Blue’s mind. She turned this way and that, thinking of anything else, but it was pointless. Her mind was racing.

She got up and walked to her bedroom window. From there, she had a glorious view of the water. Many nights she sat here for hours, marveling at the beauty of the ocean.

Blue felt lucky to live here on the Florida coast. When Blue’s grandfather had been declared deceased, her mother inherited the secluded property.

Her grandfather, William Simmons, had disappeared long before Blue was born.

The story was that he had sailed out to sea one day from the long dock that led straight from the property to the open ocean.

He never returned. His boat was never found. After a long and diligent search, a court officially ruled him dead.

Blue knew very little about him. Her mother rarely spoke of him, other than an occasional story. She knew he had loved the ocean.

Blue often wondered what it would have been like to spend time with him—an older, wiser soul who shared her connection to the water.

Neither her brother nor her sister felt it, but Blue knew the water ran through her blood.

The ocean was calm tonight. The moon reflected off the surface, carving an illuminated path into the dark sky. Blue thought back to the nightmare.

She felt sure that the cave and the monsters were connected to the sea.

Whenever she had the dream, she could taste saltwater on her tongue for hours afterward—just as she tasted it now.

Her intuition suggested a connection among the cave, the dream, and her missing grandfather. She wasn’t sure what it was yet.

She only knew that the answers were out there.

Deep in the water.