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"I saw you coming," Pamela says softly. "I heard it on the wind."
Beneath her, the girl, Alice--like In Wonderland, one of Jason's favorite stories--stirs, groaning. Blood trickles from the gash on her head and Pamela dabs at it gently with her free hand, dark red clotting on her palm like stained rouge.
"My boy, he told me. He knew what would happen." Pamela moves her hand back and forth slowly, gently, in time with the soft shushes of the lake water. Patient, she can be patient, ever since she was a little girl. Patient Pam, her mother used to say, smoothing the hair from her face.
"I saw it in my dreams, I saw his signs every time I blinked. I looked at the horizon and I saw his signal flare lighting up the world." She chuckles, sharp and bitter. "Everyone said I was crazy, but I knew it. I could see what was coming, I could see you." Her voice teeters on the edge of a growl, hard as she tries to keep it back down.
"All of you, disturbing his rest, lolling around and making fools of yourselves and fucking like wild rabbits." She smooths the hair from Alice's face, nudges at the dropped machete to make sure it's properly out of the girl's reach. "Luring other little children back here to die, to drown."
Alice gargles something unintelligible and Pamela picks up the pace, just a little. They have all the time in the world, of course, but Pamela's getting on in years, and she wants to lie down, soon. She wants to dream of Jason, to tell him what she's done.
"He wouldn't let me sleep. Like he was a baby again, crying for help. And I'm a good mother, I helped him." Pamela pushes her hand as far as she dares, until she hears Alice whimper. "I took care of him, my sweet boy. I came back here, to this awful place, because that was how much he needed me."
Alice's lips flutter, something trapped and deerlike behind them, white eyes glistening. Pamela cups her face in a gentle hand, tracing the fractured outline of her cheekbone. The damp strands of Alice's hair wrap around her wrist like seaweed, like the first time Pamela stuck her hand in the lake and felt something reaching back.
"And it all came to pass, just like he said." She can't keep the awe out of her voice, her wonder at her beautiful, brilliant boy who had died so young, but knew so much. "You came here, the whole lot of you, smearing your filth over his burial ground and dribbling poison into his lake."
Alice shivers, hips juddering. Is she getting pleasure from this? Pamela frowns, moving her hands a bit faster; it's not about pleasure, she learned that long ago, in her marriage bed. Acts like this are about pain, pain and sacrifice offered up in exchange for the greatest of life's joys.
"I didn't know what to do," she presses on, giving her hand a firm twist. "There were so many of you, and here I was, just one old lady. But Jason, he helped me. He told me where to go, he sang it in the breeze and in the trees, in the rumbling wheels and the rippling waves. He told me when all the invaders would be alone, or too busy fucking to see me come near."
Alice's hands twist in the mud, scrabbling at nothing. Her lips move, making a gurgling sound like not unlike the lake, the water whispering mommy, mommy, mommy. Her spread legs flutter, twitching uselessly, paint cracking off her toes.
"He gave me weapons, I found them on the shore." Offerings, glistening silver in the moonlight. "I looked into the water, and I saw how you would die, all of you. And I saw the one he wanted to keep."
For just a heartbeat, Alice's eyes focus on her. She can see fear, through the mottled layers of bruising, but also the hazy outlines of a question.
Pamela sighs. "I suppose you were the nicest girl in the bunch, although that wasn't saying much. But my little boy deserves to be happy, doesn't he? So when he left his next gift for me, I knew what he wanted."
She glances between Alice's legs, thoughtful. "This is good enough, isn't it?" Alice doesn't answer, but the lake sighs his assent, and the trees croons in agreement.
"Good!" Pamela shifts back on her heels with a grunt, carefully, dragging her prize out from between Alice's legs. It comes free in her hands with a soft pop and Alice groans, chest heaving, eyes flaring wide as she sees the long, thin object that Pamela's holding.
"Adorable, isn't it?" Pamela turns it over in her hands, letting Alice give her a good look. "Such a nice size for a boy his age." She clicks her tongue disdainfully. "Pity so much of it rotted off, though. I could have sworn it was bigger than when I put it in...more of him to stay with you, then! Greedy girl."
Alice's mouth slides open, then her eyes slide shut. Her head lolls back, settling on the shore with a dull thud, blood trickling from her mouth as she goes still.
"Hmm." Pamela carefully sets her son's cock aside and settles her ear on Alice's chest, listening carefully. A good, strong pulse, battered as the rest of her was. "Well, I suppose you've earned your dramatics. It's been a busy day for all of us, hasn't it?"
She rests her hand on Alice's stomach, moving it in slow, tender circles. She swears she can already feel the first stirrings of life, her grandbaby sprouting like a flower, just as her son had promised.
"Busy, busy, busy," she whispers, tender as a nursery rhyme. "And it'll only get busier still."