These Nameless Things

by Shawn Smucker

  I couldn’t tell if it was a river or a lake or an ocean, although I would have guessed lake because the water wasn’t moving. Reeds grew along the bank, oozing up out of the muddy mess. Beyond them, the water seemed a bit deeper, but still very brown and full of silt, a gray kind of mud. In front of us, as if placed for our purposes, was a small rowboat.

  Lucia bent over and lifted an object out of the mud. It came up like something peeling and hung from her hand. It appeared to be a shirt coated in the gray muck. She threw it out into the reeds and it spun end over end, making a wet slapping sound where it landed. I realized the whole bank was coated in mud-covered clothing. I had thought they were only strange shapes in the mud. I bent over, grabbed a wrinkled ridge of mud at my feet, and lifted a pair of jeans up.

  We moved closer to the boat grounded among the reeds.

  “Can we get to it?” I asked.

  The boat was only ten or fifteen feet out from us, but the mud was oozing and liquid, nothing that could support us. I shuddered. It seemed a particularly horrible way to go.

  I took in our surroundings, paying closer attention. There were tiny white flowers growing up around the reeds, barely out of the mud, concentrated in circles. The sheen of their spiky white petals, even in those dire surroundings, was not beautiful. The bright red stamens rising from their throats looked hazardous. I glanced down at my feet to make sure I wasn’t getting close to any of them.

  The reeds were brown and jagged, the same color as the mud, or perhaps a bit more yellow. I touched one to see if we could perhaps lay them down as a kind of bridge to the boat, but their edges were sharp and slicing, like upright blades. The air was almost unbreathable, and I coughed, trying to hide the sound in the crook of my arm. I listened again for the one coming behind us.

  A strange coldness pooled at our feet, moving in like a breeze, and the slow pace of it made it seem sentient, as if it was picking its way along, choosing where to go, where not to go. The cold unsettled me, but it did seem to clear the air, the mist rising above our heads so we could see farther in both directions.

  Lucia gave a quiet coughing sound as if the air was catching in her throat after her run, but soon she was off again, this time along the edge of the undefined bank between land and mud. She bent down and seemed to be pulling article after article of clothing from the mud, throwing them over her shoulder. Was she digging a hole?

  “Lucia,” I said, trying not to be too loud. “What did you find?”

  I walked carefully in her direction. This place had that effect, with the ascending and descending mist, the creeping cold, the knowledge that all around us, the cliff face rose hundreds of feet, thousands of feet, with the only way out being that narrow path. The voice behind us. The always-present question about what had happened to those who had tortured us. And the bog. Even the bog seemed to hate us, to hold a seething animosity. I wondered if anything living swam in its dark depths, out in the middle.

  A long-lost phrase came to mind like a memory. I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. I could not remember where those words had come from.

  Lucia was down on her hands and knees, tugging at something, wrestling a shape from the mud and the clothes and the smell of the bog. I arrived where she was and reached out to touch it, my fingers sliding along the muck. It looked like an oar, the long kind a gondolier might use to direct a flatboat along a shallow canal.

  “How did you see that in the mud?” I marveled.

  She didn’t quite smile, but it was there in her eyes.

  I followed her back along the soft bank to where we had stood staring out at the irretrievable boat. She dropped the oar to the ground and worked over it, wiping as much of the muck from it as she could, leaving small piles of mud that sank back into the earth without a sound. The wood, partially cleaned off, was quite light colored. It reminded me of pine.

  Lucia placed the oar between us and the boat and walked on it, balancing herself above the mud. Moving along it like a water bug, she got to the end and hopped into the front of the boat. When she turned to look at me, her eyes were wide with exhilaration, almost joy.

  The cold came in deeper, approaching from the far side of the water, and it was rising, no longer swirling around my ankles but rising to my waist, my shoulders. With it, the bog smell lessened. But it was cold. Very cold. I clutched my arms to my sides.

  Lucia’s smiling face flattened out in a way that said, Come! Hurry! She reached over the side, lifted the oar, and laid it back down in a new spot so it wouldn’t be implanted in the mud. All around us, the little white flowers seemed to bloom in the cold, opening their petals, turning toward the swamp like rotating red eyes. The reeds made a whistling sound, or seemed to, even though there wasn’t a discernible wind. I could see no far bank.

  The cold was deeper, up to my chin. I could feel it the same way someone who cannot swim would feel the rising tide gather over their shoulders, their neck, their mouth. I could still breathe, but my exhale clouded out of my mouth. I glanced at Lucia perched at the very front of the boat, looking as though she was prepared to jump out and retrieve me if I fell off the oar and sank. She made me brave, though I doubted she would be strong enough to pull me from the muck.

  I took a few steps out onto the oar. It was slick, and one of my feet slipped off, went into the mud. I pulled it out, back on the oar, another step.

  Lucia looked at me anxiously.

  Another step, another. The oar was sinking in the mud. I walked faster, arms out at my sides for balance, feet sliding here and there, one step off the oar, quick back on before it sank, another step.

  “Dan!”

  The shout came from behind me.

  “Dan!”

  It was Miho. I knew it. I looked back. I had to see her. And because the cold had driven away the mist, I could see all the way across the flat space, all the way from the edge of the boggy lake to the cliff wall and the thread of the tiny ledge.

  Miho edged her way down quite quickly, twenty feet from the bottom. Fifteen feet. Ten. She jumped from there, hit the ground hard, fell, stood, and came running.

  I turned back toward Lucia. I slipped but then reached the boat. Her skinny arms pulled me in and I fell into the bottom, hitting my shoulder on one of the crosspieces. She leaned out over the edge and I clung to her legs to keep her from falling in. She hauled in the oar, and it was longer than I remembered—it didn’t even fit in the boat.

  I sat up on the seat and watched Miho come running. Closer, closer. Lucia’s eyes filled with questions, and she thrust the oar into my hands. I nodded without really knowing what to do, but I wedged the oar into the mud and pushed, leaning against it with all of my might.

  “Stop!” Miho shouted, standing on the bank only fifteen feet away, close enough that I could see the tattoo that edged her hairline. I missed her. An ache filled me, and I wished I could go back and do it all differently. I wished I would have told Abe the second I saw Kathy coming down the greenway. I wished I would have shared my memory with Miho.

  She didn’t look well. She was so thin I could see her collarbones clearly, and her arms were sticks. Her eyes were weary, and she kept giving her head a little shake as if trying to wake up. But even with her in that condition, even with the affection I felt rising in me, I knew we couldn’t bring her along. I had no idea how Adam’s actions had hurt her or what she would do to him given the chance.

  “Don’t stop,” I whispered to Lucia, though she wasn’t doing anything. “Keep going. We have to keep going.”

  She stood and grabbed the oar below my hands, and we both pushed. The boat edged backward, away from the bank.

  “Dan, I’m coming to you,” Miho said in a determined voice, as if she couldn’t believe I would leave her there. She took a few steps toward us into the mud. Her feet sank immediately, down to her shins.

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Again I leaned against the oar with Lucia, we both pushed, and the
boat moved. The farther we went, the less muddy the water and the easier we moved.

  Miho took another step. She sank up to her knees. “I’m not stopping, Dan,” she said, and her voice was calm. “You can’t do this. You have to come back. You can’t bring Adam out. He has to do it himself. You know it’s true!”

  “Why don’t you want him to come out!” I screamed, and emotion split my voice. I was crying and I didn’t even know why. “Why do you want to keep him here?”

  I had so many more things I wanted to say, but I knew if I kept speaking, I would lose the argument. I shook my head, a poor defense against the sadness and doubt gathering inside of me. The reeds made a rasping sound against the wooden sides of the boat. We went through a pool of white flowers, and their stamens burst in a cloud of red pollen.

  “Dan!” Miho shouted. “Dan!”

  “I can’t!” I finally said. “I’m sorry!”

  I watched as she wrestled her way backward and fell onto her back, her arms sinking in the mud. For a moment I thought she might be going under, and I grabbed Lucia’s arm, holding the oar still.

  “Dan!” Miho screamed, and there was an edge of terror in her voice. One arm vanished into the mud all the way up to her shoulder, but she wrestled backward, rolling, plunging, like a wild animal struggling to stay up out of a swamp. Eventually she dragged herself back onto the bank. She was covered in the brown-gray muck, and she stayed there on her hands and knees. I could tell she was sobbing, though I couldn’t hear it.

  “How could you leave me in that?” she shouted, but the mist around us swallowed up her words.

  “I’m sorry!” I shouted again, my voice cutting short, and there were so many things I was sorry about that I didn’t even know which one I was apologizing for. But the bog swallowed up my words too, and I didn’t think she heard my apology.

  The boat drifted slowly away through water almost completely clear of any reeds. Above us, the mist descended again. The cold grew sharper.

  I let go of the oar. Lucia pushed us out, one hand over the other, the oar reaching deep. Then she sat, and the oar trailed in the water as some current tugged us away. I put my forehead against her back and wept.

  22 Adam’s Rock

  “I CAN PUSH for a little bit,” I said, moving toward the back where Lucia had settled after turning the boat around and setting out across the muddy water. She slid forward to the bench where I had sat and handed me the oar. I thought for a moment how disastrous it would be to drop it.

  My legs wobbled underneath me as I stood, and I grabbed the oar with two hands, stabbed it into the water. The shallowness surprised me. I had expected to have to reach far into the depths to find the bottom, but it was only three or four feet beneath us. I got into a slow rhythm of plunging the oar, pushing the boat forward, lifting, bringing the dripping oar back beside the boat, and dropping it in again. The movement helped keep me warm.

  Lucia sat completely still, staring forward. All around us the water moved, creating small crests. I looked back, but the bank was far off. I couldn’t see Miho.

  In front of us, far in the distance, a dark rise became visible, a thin line along the gently swelling surface. I had nearly forgotten about the knapsack. It had become a part of my body, an extra appendage, and the way it bounced against my side as I walked had become a kind of comfort. We reached in and took what we wanted, and soon the small bits of food were gone. A small amount of water remained. How would we ever hike back up with so little water, with no food? But this was not a question my mind attached itself to. The only remaining desire was to get to the bottom and see if my brother was there. After that, who knew?

  The far bank came up on us quicker than I expected, and our boat ground up against rocky beach. Lucia and I crawled out, dragging the boat farther in until it was lodged firmly between two boulders. I pulled the oar up onto the flat slab that made up the rest of the bank. I wished Lucia would say something—I thought I would feel less lonely if she did.

  “Here we go,” I said, hoping for some kind of an answer.

  She nodded, her eyes bright again, eager. She took off in a slow jog, her feet padding ahead, away from the water and into another narrow canyon. It was maybe twenty feet wide, flanked by the same kind of cliff walls that made up the rest of the abyss. I wondered how she could run—gravity felt heavier there. My feet were a burden to lift with each step.

  I had lost track of the shape of our surroundings and the direction we were walking. Our wanderings had gone down, that I knew, but once at the bottom of the ledge, once we crossed the bog and left Miho behind, any sense of direction disintegrated.

  Beneath our feet was hard rock, and the path twisted and turned even deeper into the mountain. I had a sense that if I could see high enough up, there would be a sliver of blue sky, but the cliffs rose up all around us. The light was dim.

  “Lucia,” I said.

  She slowed, turned to look at me. But I had no other words. I had only wanted to hear my own voice, to make sure I wasn’t disappearing.

  We came to an iron gate. It was tall, too tall to climb over, and its imposing doors swung on hinges somehow attached to the stone. They were tall and narrow, formed with metal fastened to itself with rivets. There were no signs of rust.

  I walked up to the gate and stared at it. I swung the knapsack around in front of me and reached deep inside, my hand sliding along the seams. There it was. The key I had found, the key Kathy had always been asking me about. I pulled it out. It was cold in my fingers, and something about it made me afraid. I handed Lucia the knapsack, and she slung it over her shoulder and watched me with expectation in her eyes.

  I put the key into the lock. It didn’t go in smoothly, but as I struggled to turn it, the entire gate groaned, and there was a loud splintering sound as the latch was freed. The gate moved toward me almost imperceptibly, and I reached my fingers along the inside edge and pulled. It was heavy but swung soundlessly, as if it had recently been oiled. Lucia didn’t run ahead of me. She nodded, and I couldn’t tell if it was a movement of agreement or a lifting of the chin indicating, “You first.” I reached back and slipped the key into the knapsack now dangling over her shoulder.

  We walked through the gate, and I noticed there was no lock on the inside. This gate was not for keeping people out of the area we had just entered—it was for keeping people in. I stared at it. Would it stay open? If it closed, would it lock us in automatically? I searched for anything to wedge in the gate and hold it open until we returned, but there was nothing.

  I turned away from the gate, and Lucia sidled up beside me. We put our arms around each other to stay warm, and I felt such a fatherly affection toward her. Her presence was a gift. I wondered again where she had come from, why she was here.

  The cliff walls pressing in on us widened into an open space of what appeared to be deep, rich soil, and the light increased, if only a little. I could feel my spirits rise. There were large, beautiful trees everywhere, their heavy limbs swaying in a breeze. The cold that had felt nebulous or intangible solidified there in that glade, made itself present in a way it had not been anywhere else.

  A light snow fell as we walked among the trees. They were shaped almost like people. The wide bases of their trunks split into several exposed roots before plunging into the frozen earth. Could there be a warm undercurrent of water? But what of the lack of light? It was a strange and nonsensical place, the lime-green leaves coated lightly in white snow, the rich earth carpeted with grass and filled with glassy puddles, the trees whose branches moved and shifted like arms.

  Lucia ran off, vanished among the trees, and her absence left a lonely, frightened space inside of me. The shadows in that place were strange. They seemed to move of their own accord, somehow separate from the object that made them. A tree’s shadow might appear to be billowing in a storm while the tree itself was standing nearly still. Or the dim shadow cast by the walls where we had entered shimmered and moved like a liquid, but the walls were
fixed.

  From some of the deeper shadows I thought I could hear something. Voices? Or maybe it was only the wind? I was so cold. So cold. Could I even trust my senses anymore? How much longer until my body gave in to hypothermia?

  “Lucia!” I shouted, a sense of frustration rising toward the girl. I did not like being left alone in that place. Why was she always running off?

  The snow fell heavier, and I moved farther in among the confusing trees with their incongruent shadows. It was like a swirling of my vision. I realized the ground had gradually gone from grass to icy puddles and then to a solid block of ice—the trees somehow grew up and out of that shallow, frozen lake. The trees looked more and more like terrified people waving me off, motioning for me to go and never return. Warning me.

  “Lucia!” I shouted again. The wind blew harder, and the snow stung my eyes, blinding me until I stumbled out into a clearing, all of the trees shrinking back from this open space. Here the ice was clear all the way down to the depths, and the snow stopped suddenly. I wondered if I was dead or alive. The stillness was vast.

  “Lucia!” My voice was weak and hoarse, scratchy in the cold, and puffs of steam escaped every time I shouted. But she did not reply, and I grew more frustrated, nearing anger. Where was that girl?

  Across the vast pool of black ice I saw movement. Lucia? But no, it wasn’t movement so much as something that didn’t blend in with the complete stillness, something that didn’t move so much as shift. I looked closer, peering through the darkness.

  Adam?

  I walked forward carefully, skeptically. Could my greatest hope be right there? But I hadn’t taken more than five or six steps forward when a sound made me stop suddenly. I was awakened by fear. It was the sound of creaking and a grinding split. The ice under my feet was not as thick as I had thought, and a gentle thread of water oozed up through the crack. I stopped. I peered into the darkness again.