These Nameless Things

by Shawn Smucker

  I turned to see where Sarah and Karon were going, and they had already stopped, the house still visible through the trees. In front of us was a river more wild and alive than any I had ever seen.

  “We never expected to take anyone this way, back over the river,” Sarah said quietly. She paused, and it seemed to me she still wasn’t sure about helping me go back, farther into the mountain.

  “Have you always done this?” I asked. “Have you always helped?”

  “One day we were standing here, the two of us, and we saw someone approaching from the other side.”

  I peered across the raging water. It was hard to see the far bank.

  “I turned to Karon to see what he thought we should do, but he was already in the boat, pulling himself across. When he returned, he had a young man in the boat with him. The boy was badly beaten. We didn’t ask him what his name was or what he was doing. He simply climbed out, crawled a short distance on the ground, rose up on shaky legs, and continued along the path.”

  Sarah smiled. Even Karon seemed to have a pleasant look hidden among the deep wrinkles on his old face. “The river,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said in a whimsical voice. “The river. After that, we came down every day, and if someone was at the far bank, Karon went over and brought them across.” Tears were in her eyes, but she didn’t move to wipe them away. They sat there like diamonds. “Soon we were bringing them over in boatloads, every day, twice a day, three times a day. Sometimes all through the night. Yes, even in this inky darkness. We could hear their cries.”

  The sound of the river was loud and alive. I thought the cries must have been very loud, to hear them all the way from the other side.

  “If you want to know why Karon looks so old, it’s because he worked so hard for so very long.”

  I looked over at him, his white hair, the wrinkles etched in curving lines around the movement of his face. He stared back at me, and this time he didn’t growl. He seemed content to let me stare at him, to let me explore, but I couldn’t hold his gaze for long.

  “Even after Kathy arrived, we kept bringing more people over, although by then the flow had slowed to a trickle. She was here, as I already told you. And after she left, there were no more from the far bank. Now, you.”

  Karon’s mouth curled up in anger and he snorted, but it wasn’t so scary now that I knew his anger was not aimed at me.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  Their faces held a subtle pity that said, You can’t possibly be. Karon looked embarrassed by my ignorance. He turned away and bent over, and I realized he was reaching for something. I had not noticed the boat, shallow and gray, bobbing against the bank. Mist from the raging water had partially hidden it. When Karon moved toward it, I nearly laughed, thinking he must be joking. There was no way that boat would make it across. I might as well hurl myself into the water and hope for the best.

  If Sarah noticed my doubt, she ignored it. “Over there, that’s where it truly begins,” she said. “This is nothing. This darkness, this ash, this dust: it’s only the wild edge of what’s waiting for you. Once you cross, you will see things you can never unsee. You will hear sounds and silence that will split you in two. It is a horror.” She paused. “I will ask you this only once.”

  I saw again the beauty in her gray eyes. Again I wanted to stay. “What?” I asked.

  “Will you please reconsider? Stay with us. Wait here for your brother. When he is ready, he will come out.”

  In that moment, it wasn’t her gray eyes that struck me, and it wasn’t the fact that she reached out and put her hand on my arm. It wasn’t even that, when I glanced over at Karon, he had tears in his eyes. What struck me was the sound of the word “please,” the way it sank into me, the way it latched on to my better nature, my best self. It was the “please” that was so convincing. I couldn’t say no, but she could see it in me, I guess, because she turned away.

  I helped Karon drag the boat to the bank. The ground was slick with mud, and as we struggled with the boat, Sarah put something around my neck. It was a knapsack made of burlap, and heavy. We situated the boat so that it pointed down into the water.

  “Food and water,” she said. “For your journey. It won’t last long.”

  I nodded my thanks. I didn’t know what else to do, what else to say. Karon grunted, motioning for me to sit at the front of the boat, and I climbed clumsily aboard. The inside was wet. There was a small bench that ran across, up toward the front. I sat down and realized I was terrified. I gripped the sides and closed my eyes, trying to breathe slowly. I looked over my shoulder to see if Karon was going to push us off, and I caught him leaning toward Sarah, kissing her cheek. They were both crying.

  The boat shifted backward as Karon crawled in, bearing a long oar. “The river,” he growled, and we slid down the short bank and into the rapids.

  The water immediately lashed our boat to the right, downstream, and I nearly went overboard in those first moments. The front of the boat rose and fell once, smacking the water. I shouted my alarm, holding even tighter to the sides, leaning forward so as not to get tossed into the muddy, churning rapids. We moved from side to side, mostly facing downstream but also making our way to the far bank. I heard a loud sound from Karon.

  He was laughing. His white beard was wet and blown to the side by the strong wind that now swept over us. His wide eyes burned with a strange fire, and he was smiling a fierce, almost delirious grin. Every time a large wave hit us and I thought we would turn over or take on too much water, he would laugh uproariously, his eyes flashing. He was no longer the bent old man from the dusty house in the canyon—he was Karon, some kind of seafaring master. Something not human. Something beyond human.

  I turned back around, and the boat slammed into another huge wave. I pitched forward, striking my head on the bow. Everything went black.

  18 Into the Abyss

  IN THE DARKNESS of my mind I heard a gritty scraping, and I realized only once it stopped that the sound had been that of my heels sliding along a sandy beach. Someone’s hands were under my arms, dragging me along, and then they dropped me to the ground. I groaned. I could hear them walking away, their feet scratching along the sand, then the long, slow sliding of something into the water.

  I opened my eyes, reached up tenderly to touch the side of my head, and groaned again. My head felt split in two, and as if to mirror the feeling, a long grumble of thunder crackled around me. But there was no rain, no lightning. Only the pealing of thunder, one long, low sound after another. It was a persistent, faraway call, and it filled me with loneliness.

  The satchel Sarah had given me weighed heavily on my neck, an anchor. I sat up, looked out over the river, and was surprised to find that the water had calmed. Karon stood in the prow of the boat, steady and strong, his white beard billowing out to the side. I wanted him to look back, wanted him to wave, but his stoic silhouette never turned toward me. Soon he was a tiny speck at the far side, and I saw him pull his boat up onto the bank. Sarah must have already gone back to the house.

  There, on the far banks of the Acheron, I sat for what felt like a long time, thinking about all that had happened. And all of it in such a short time. I wondered about Miho and Abe, where they had gone after the fire in the village. I thought about the woman whose name I now knew, Kathy, living in my house, her dark hair soft and shining. I thought about sitting beside her when she was in my bed, kissing her, and shame smothered me. I dwelt on the story Sarah had told me about how Kathy had deceived them. Or had she? I still had trouble placing any blame on her. Maybe she had been trying to help.

  A sound moved around me, and at first it moved so subtly I was unaware of it, focused on my own thoughts, my own problems. But gradually I became conscious of it—a deep sighing, a long, heavy moaning. Was it the river? The wind was strong, drying me off, parching my lips. Another gust of wind, another long, low sigh, so heavy it ached in my bones.

  I turned away from the river, my head still t
hrobbing. I thought of my brother. I had to keep going. I couldn’t turn back now.

  The thunder continued to rumble, though the sound of it seemed to come farther and farther apart. My clothes still clung to me, and a mist moved in, a fog that made me feel even more alone.

  What was I doing? Why did I think I could go back inside and even find my brother, much less bring him out with me?

  I thought again of Sarah’s words. It’s the kind of place you have to leave on your own. Everyone who has ever left has battled their own way out. In this place, our guilt consumes us.

  Our guilt consumes us.

  I was guilty. I had lied to my friends, kept secrets from everyone. I loved my brother, the same brother who had hurt so many people. Was that a guilt? Was that a transgression? And now I was there, on the other side of the Acheron—even that seemed some kind of sin I would have to atone for. Having barely entered this foreign land, I could already feel my guilt rising up around me, an acid eating away at me.

  The mist settled on my skin, and the satchel swayed against my side, bumping me with each step. The day was cool even as it rose toward midday. Distant thunder moved around me like the sounds of a faraway battle. I waved my hand gently through the mist, and a kind of dew gathered on my fingers. I licked a finger, but it tasted almost stale. Not quite salty, but there was a sharpness about it, and it sat on my parched tongue. I shook the satchel and could feel the slosh of water, but I knew I needed to save it for as long as I could.

  The mist became so heavy that when I arrived at the edge of the abyss, I nearly fell in. It was an immense hole, wider than the river, so deep I couldn’t see down into it. This was the place from which we all had fled. I would have to be quiet now. I would have to be careful.

  Were they still down there?

  Our tormentors?

  The wind picked up, the mist melted into strands, and the strands sifted up and away. For a moment I could see all the way across the hole. It was like a caldera, except there was no visible bottom, and it was not the black color of hardened lava but granite gray. Was it a mile across? Two? I couldn’t tell, but as I took it in, I saw the path that wound its way down into the great hole, clinging to the edge of the rock like a thread.

  I stared at the path and found where it spilled out of the hole, not far from where I stood. I walked to that ledge and started down, then stopped. I looked back toward the river one last time. I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t see it. I almost couldn’t imagine it anymore, that river I had been sitting alongside minutes before. Or had I been walking through the mist for hours? My mind was weighed down with the unknowing. The place had a way of making me forget.

  The mist descended around me again, cool and heavy. I stayed there at the edge an extra moment, remembering Sarah’s words and wondering if perhaps Kathy had persuaded someone else to come back to this side of the canyon. Maybe she had persuaded all of them. I stared into the mist, looking for someone, anyone. Part of me wished someone had come so that I wouldn’t be alone. But another part was frightened for my friends, frightened about what would happen if they did come with me or what they would do to Adam if we found him.

  Then another thought.

  What if Kathy had followed me in?

  Another rumble of thunder. Another gust of wind.

  And down I went.

  EVERY SO OFTEN, as I followed the path down into thicker mist, it widened out. I hadn’t circled the great pit even once before I came to the first one: a small glade of trees up against the face of the cliff with four seats made up of wide, cut logs. I stared at them for a minute. I thought I should know why they were there or who they were for. Everything about this place felt familiar, which made sense to me because I knew I had passed that way once before, but nearly all of it was so deep in my mind I couldn’t quite remember it.

  I sat in one of the seats and stared out over the narrow space, out over the abyss. The mist seemed lighter there in that place, but it hung heavy higher up. The bare wooden seat was worn smooth, as if it had been used over and over and over again, so often that it had been buffed into something that felt like silk. I touched the rough bark of the sides. I felt like I could sit there for a long, long time, going even deeper into my thoughts.

  I heard a sound up the path, the direction I had come from, but I couldn’t see anything through the mist. What had I heard? Footsteps? Or perhaps the dew had gathered on a crumbled ledge and the ledge had fallen? Maybe it was only another rumble of distant thunder? The thunder never seemed to stop.

  The remarkable thing about loneliness is how the mind begins to turn further and further inward. I found myself latching on to memories, following them to their source. I remembered getting the news about the plane crash, and the long way into darkness I followed after that.

  I went deeper and deeper inside of myself. I could stay here forever. I could sit here for a long time until I remembered everything, until the mist cleared. Perhaps my friends would come and find me, and this suddenly seemed like a good thing. I imagined four of us sitting there on the wooden seats, perhaps me and Kathy and Miho and Abe. We could tell stories, talk about the old days in the village. The hint of a dazed smile lifted the corners of my mouth, I took a deep breath, and I sighed.

  There was no better place to be than right here.

  A loud crack of thunder seemed to come from right above me, and I ducked my head, nearly falling off the wooden seat. I was bent over so low that I felt the ground under my hand, rocky and solid, and the movement also caused Sarah’s knapsack to move on my shoulder.

  What was I doing?

  Why had I stopped?

  I shook my head, trying to clear some space for the present moment. I stood up and was surprised at the effort it took. I felt like I was waking up from a dream.

  I remembered again the morning of the crash, the morning my brother had wrecked the plane. I thought about helping the injured woman into the plane. Po’s wife. I remembered the two businessmen climbing in, long-limbed and cramped in the small seats, made even more uncomfortable by the woman moaning in pain. The black man leaned forward, put his hand on her shoulder, and whispered a few questions. Miss B’s husband. She answered without opening her clenched-tight eyes, nodded, bit her lip.

  I waited impatiently for my brother. Where was Adam? What was taking him so long? I looked over the plane once, twice, even though I had already checked it twice that morning, and stared down the runway. This was what sat at the heart of our brotherhood: his constant return to failure like a dog to its vomit, and me waiting, waiting, waiting, the responsible one, clearing his path of all obstructions. Lying to keep him free.

  The truth was, we were staring down the end. This last business venture, this tiny warehouse and adjoining airstrip in the middle of nowhere, was one that I had sunk every last penny into. And we were walking the edge. I hadn’t slept well the night before and ended up roaming restlessly around the building, listening to the woman’s quiet pain, Po’s insistent caring. I tried to think our way out of our debt. But there was no way. We had to keep going and hope our luck broke through.

  And the morning found me waiting beside the plane, waiting for Adam to come and fly it, to keep this dream going. One more lost flight and we were finished.

  I WAS CONFUSED. I had thought I was back at the airstrip with my brother, waiting for him beside the plane. But the lashing wind and the drenching rain reminded me that I was walking down into the abyss along the narrow path. But no, I wasn’t walking, I was sitting, huddled up against the rock face. The darkness I thought existed only in the pit itself had crept up to the path. A storm shook the rock. Water rushed down over the edges in small waterfalls, formed small rivers that ran along the path or plunged over the dark edge.

  I didn’t care. The memories swallowed me.

  I WALKED AROUND the plane one last time. It was sunny there, in my memory. It was warm.

  One of the businessmen poked his head out the door. “Are we leaving soon?” he asked,
concern in his voice. “I don’t think this woman is doing well.”

  I stared at him, wanting to shout at him in frustration. I slapped the tail of the plane twice, not hard, but it still made a sound. He leaned back into the plane. But I knew he was right, so I walked to the warehouse, back toward my brother’s room.

  The early morning sky was cool blue on that day when I found my brother passed out drunk on the floor in his room. I went out and retrieved a bucket of water. I didn’t care anymore. I threw the bucket of water on him, and he barely made a sound. It was the lightest of groans, as if he was lost so deeply inside of his body that not even a bucket of cold water could find him. I got another one. And another.

  By the fourth bucket, he was sputtering, sitting up. He wiped water from his eyes, shook it from his hands, and stood unsteadily in the small lake I had created. He looked at me with tired eyes, eyes pleading to let him sleep, let him go, let him be. Let him live his own way. He had chosen his lot in life—that’s what his eyes seemed to say. And I almost did. I almost gave him what he wanted. But there was still that thing inside of me that had to keep going, had to keep pushing, had to make sure this little flight got out, had to keep my brother on the right path.

  “Adam,” I said quietly, “if you don’t go fly that plane, we’re done. We can’t take another loss like this. We’ll lose these customers, and that will be the end of it.”

  And after much pleading—and a change of clothes, a hat, sunglasses on his bloodshot eyes, and help to the plane—he agreed. He crawled in, he taxied, and they took off.

  I SAT THERE on the path, in the storm, and the realization of it all took my breath away.

  It had been my fault.

  Everything that had happened, all of that death, had been because of me. Everyone waiting in the village to exact revenge on my brother should have been waiting for me. When I forced him to take that flight, I had sent them all to their deaths.