The Drownling

The drowned thing that dens in the Undertow's sump — slow, patient, and it does not breathe. It is what some of the gaol's flushed dead become in the still cold where the water stops moving.

Nothing living was meant to nest in the drowned drains beneath the bluff gaol, which is exactly why the Drownling does. The House flushes its dead down with everything else it would rather not count, and where the water pools and stops moving, cold and lightless, some of them do not stay drowned. The Drownling is the largest and oldest of them, bloated pale by the sump, grown into the sluice-chamber the way a thing grows into a shell. The rats fear it and will not go as deep as it dens; the warden Dural, who quit rather than keep feeding the forgotten, gives it its only warning to the living — when the water goes still and cold, it is coming up, and the only answer is to climb. It is not fast. It does not need to be. The drains are patient, and so is it.