Famous Last Words - Hardcover

From FAMOUS LAST WORDSI prepared to plunge under again and swim back to the shallow end. Then something brushed my ankle. I yelped in surprise and spun around, treading water as I searched for whatever had touched me. Nothing -- there was nothing. It must have been bubbles, a random current -- maybe a sunken palm frond. But then I felt it again. Only this time it took hold. And pulled me under. Fear and adrenaline burst through me in a massive soul-shaking pulse. My heart slammed around in my chest like it was trying to break out of my ribcage. Then something grabbed my other foot. It happened so fast that I didn't even process it as something that was really happening. Because it couldn't be happening -- it wasn't happening -- Only it was. I tried to kick free, but my legs were held fast. I managed to flail one hand above the surface of the water before being yanked down toward the blue-tiled bottom of the pool. My brain was on red-alert, acting on a purely animal instinct. THIS IS NOT OKAY. I thrashed and grabbed at my ankles in an attempt to pry off whatever had wrapped around them. But I couldn't free myself, because as far as I could see, there was nothing to free myself from -- not another person. Not a rope or piece of plastic. Not even a nightmarish monster. There was only water, and the sharp outlines of my own body as I flipped and struggled. Panicked, I looked up toward the sky -- and saw another person in the pool. For the briefest second I thought it was someone else swimming, and I wondered wildly why they wouldn't help me. But then it hit me with ironclad certainty -- this person wasn't swimming. They were floating. And it wasn't a person. . . . It was a corpse.