Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers

by JeanNicole Rivers

  “Mom!” She yelled again fearing the worst. Someone had come into their home and committed some horrendous crime against her mother. She ran down the stairs so furiously that her feet tangled underneath her and she slid down the last couple of steps. Her twisted ankle throbbed, but she hobbled forward screaming for her mother through the living room and the kitchen. The last room of the house was her father’s office and the slow strides of caution possessed the movements of her body as she feared what she knew was waiting for her just beyond the frame of the door.

  “Mom” Regina heard herself cry out weakly as she crept toward the threshold of the door. The moment she saw into the room her mouth dropped open in a gruesome awe at the sight of her mother. Regina’s mother sat in the middle of the hardwood floor of her father’s office, still clutching the hammer that had disassembled every image of her. Patricia Dean sat, unable to speak; sucking deep gulps of breath every few moments, her bathrobe hung down and had fallen to the floor around her waist. Blood covered her completely and was dripping to the floor from the deep cuts that she had made all over her chest, arms and wrists. The white bathrobe soaked up pools of red liquid. Her lifeless eyes never moved. Regina took a step toward her mother, but her legs were no longer able to support her, the room was beginning to fade and her swirling surroundings put her in the vortex of a psychological tornado. Regina’s arms flailed trying desperately to grab a hold of anything that would keep her on her feet, but it was a failed attempt and she hit the floor hard. Her vision was completely black, but for a brief moment she still heard the chirping of the birds and smelled the fresh cut grass before she was gone completely.

  “My mother!” Nikki’s words sliced into Regina’s thoughts and pulled her from her conscious nightmare. Regina was cold again in the heart of the forest.

  “She would have never killed herself,” Nikki said.

  “I always wondered, Regina. I knew she wouldn’t do that,” Nikki confided in her friend.

  “My brother was just as much a victim as you were.” Eden intruded triumphantly.

  “You guys don’t really believe this do you?” Natalie asked. Regina felt disappointed in herself at the fact that she couldn’t determine the truth one way or the other. Believing this story had the power to make sense of the senseless and that was what they all wanted. Sense was reason and reason was peace. Actions without logic just made chaos, but even the bad things; if they had meaning could be endured. Without this theory, they were just living in a place where evil things happened because they were embedded in the sometimes calamitous design of nature and with that logic they would never be safe, but if there was a reason then it could have been predicted and it could have been prevented and that prevention was the hope that would fuel the future, it was their only salvation.

  “How do you know this?” Regina asked Eden.

  “My parents; my father was a chemical engineer and my mother worked for the same company as biomedical researcher, she was a doctor. She was pioneering something great and if it were not for the idiot Black Water workers, the fire would have never broken out and the explosion would have never occurred.” Eden explained. “My parents were brilliant people and had they never come to this miserable town they would still be alive. My brother became a monster and then died alone and now you want to blame him for the death of your friend. Well, I won’t let you. I won’t let you or this town muddy the name of my family. Once her body was found here, I knew that you would blame Glen, call him a murderer, but he wasn’t and that is just what you want to prove by coming here, isn’t it?” Eden looked furiously at Regina; her eyes that once sparkled with innocence now sparkled with blind rage as she angled her head. Eden dragged her fingers through her heavy black hair to reign in the strays that had fallen into her face revealing a purple bruise beginning at one of the temples of her forehead and proceeding back beyond the line of her hair.

  Regina fell back, cupping her mouth before she spoke.

  “It was you, wasn’t it? At the house yesterday and at the parade? It was you that attacked me!” Regina accused wildly.

  “No,” Eden answered with a low demonic hum. “If I said it was me you would just go run to that ridiculous sheriff of yours, right? Hmmm, therefore it definitely was not me, but I will tell you that I will not let you ruin my brother’s name anymore than you already have.” She warned them as she took a step forward. Regina, Nikki, and Natalie all stepped back closer to the path, which they had taken to come through the trees.

  “Eden, just calm down.” Natalie told her. “We never said it was your brother, OK. We just wanted to come here and see this place for ourselves.”

  “Well now you have seen it so leave!” Eden cut off Natalie’s sentence and began yelling. “Leave! Get off my land! Go!” Eden moved toward them quickly while reaching into the bag that she carried. The women turned and sprinted back up the path toward the car before they could see the object of Eden’s search. They heard only the fierce breathing of one another, the cracking sounds of the twigs as their shoes crashed down on them and the sounds of the branches being broken from the trees as they slapped them with their hands and arms. All three women blew out of the trees and into the bumpy dirt road so forcefully that Nikki lost balance on her heels and almost slid under the car. She gathered herself back unto her feet and was bent over by the front tire of the car breathing ferociously. Regina was resting her back against the side of the vehicle, her hand pressed tightly to her chest in a vain attempt to calm her heart and Natalie stood at attention toward the trees making certain that Eden had not followed them.

  “Oh my God,” Nikki stated. It felt as if they had just stepped back into reality from the harsh, fantastic and twisted dimension that was just beyond the trees in the shadows of the forest.

  “She’s fucking nuts,” Natalie spit.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Regina told them. “I’ll drive.” Regina caught the keys as an unopposed Nikki tossed them to her and climbed into the backseat. Quietly, each woman gathered the tattered pieces of their misshapen existences as the car climbed out of the darkness and back onto Culliver Parkway. Regina peeked into the rearview mirror. Nikki had spread out in the backseat, her forearm rested over her eyes. Dense white fog had set in and was beginning to roll through the fields on either side of them as Regina navigated the cloudy road.

  “So…what do you think?” Nikki spoke from the backseat not bothering to remove her arm from her eyes.

  Regina sighed deeply. “I don’t know.”

  Natalie broke in harshly, “Aww, come on! Don’t tell me that you believe that explosion secret evil mist bullshit!” Natalie roared; her hair had fallen from the elegant bun that it had been at the wake into tousled disorder.

  “Well it happened, because I remember it now. I don’t remember everything, but we all know it happened. I remember going to my aunt’s house and I remember talk about…about something.” Regina felt defeated, unable to recall any specific details of the event.

  “So you don’t really remember anything,” Natalie stated triumphantly.

  “No, I remember it too.” Nikki chimed in. My father took us to a hotel in Johnson City. It was rushed and there was so much going on that I didn’t ask a whole lot of questions. My mother and I hung out by the hotel pool for a couple of days, went to some restaurants, shopped, and then we came home. After that, I never really thought about it too much,” Nikki told them.

  “So let me get this straight…your big revelation Nikki is that you don’t really remember anything either, right?” Natalie gloated.

  “You don’t remember, Natalie?” Regina asked. Natalie seemed startled by the question and shook her head from left to right, but was unable to muster the words to confirm her notion.

  “You do remember!” Regina told her.

  “Regina, I don’t remember anything, but some explosion at that place does not necessarily translate into Top Secret Experiment Devastates Town.” Natalie spit her sarcasm. “Besides, if there was
any kind of major health threat it could not have been just swept under the rug that way” Natalie finished.

  “It can if you pay enough,” Nikki said. “… if you have enough power.”

  “When did your mom start getting that cough?” Regina asked.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Natalie groaned in exasperation.

  “It was soon after this wasn’t it? It was.” Regina stated using her own memory without needing Natalie’s confirmation.

  “Are you listening to yourself? You sound as fucked up as Eden DeFrank.” Natalie told her.

  “Do you think that just because you curse at people you will get your way?” Regina asked finally at her limit with Natalie’s harsh treatment.

  “No,” she answered.

  “Then why do you do it?” Regina inquired.

  “It’s a style choice,” Natalie responded dryly. Nikki and Regina sighed in unison.

  “What if this is what caused my mother to kill herself? What if it did make Glen…you know? What if it even made you kill…hurt Lola?” Nikki asked all of these questions with such hope that it almost hurt Natalie to rebut, but she had no choice.

  “And what if it didn’t, Nikki? What if your mom was just miserable? What if Glen is just a sick disgusting fuck and what if I am just evil!” Natalie finished her sentence feeling as empty as if she had just thrown up one hundred times and had nothing left inside of her.

  Nikki took the words like a punch in the face; she pressed her head up against the window and stared out into the dense fog.

  “You’re grasping at straws,” Natalie stated as she rolled her eyes.

  “Fine, all of the bad behavior in Black Water was not caused by the explosion, but what if what Eden says is true and there were some effects after the explosion?” Regina asked.

  “So let’s say you go and investigate this explosion theory, how are you possibly going to be able to tell what actions were caused by possible infection of some toxic voodoo gas and which were just bad for no reason at all?” Natalie asked with an expression that reflected the fact that she knew that Regina could not answer her question with any level of satisfaction.

  “There’s always a reason.” Nikki moaned from the backseat.

  “When it is all said and done, nothing is going to bring Lola back. Nothing will give us our innocence back. Nothing will bring Nikki’s mom back and nothing will make my mom well again. Don’t you get that?” Natalie asked Regina before she turned to look out the window. Natalie could feel the compulsion that she despised coming on and she knew that she would have to bring Lola out just long enough to put her to rest again and she hated herself for it. A tear formed in the corner of her eye at the thought of having to travel to another seedy bar, but it was the only way.

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but if there is anything to find out about the death of my mother, I want to know it.” Nikki stated.

  “Fine!” Natalie scoffed, “But leave me out of this. I’m done with your wild ghost chasing fantasies. You guys are crazy and I just can’t keep re-living this. If you want to investigate this conspiracy theory, go ahead. If you want to go to Sheriff Handow and tell him everything, go ahead. But you’re just torturing yourselves,” Natalie said as they pulled up in front of her home that was barely visible as the fog thickened. With no farewell, she departed the car and disappeared effortlessly into the mist.

  In front of the Dean residence, Regina climbed out of the driver’s side door, while Nikki slid out on the other side. They hugged each other tightly as they passed at the front of the car.

  “I’ll call you,” Regina said when they finally released one another. As Nikki’s car pulled away, Regina turned to face her home where she found a warm light burning in the kitchen and she knew that her parents would be waiting. Regina raised an eyebrow and stormed toward the home for a confrontation that was long overdue.

  23

  Regina blew into her childhood home like some kind of natural disaster and slammed the door behind her, before marching into the kitchen. Her parents were shocked when they laid eyes on her.

  “What happened to you?” her father inquired as he shot from his seat. Regina stood there fighting down the urge to vomit as all of her apprehensions churned in the pit of her abdomen like a witch’s brew.

  Her father was about to speak again before Regina cut him off.

  “What happened at Waterford?” She moaned.

  Regina was alarmed at what she thought was the subtle shift in their expressions, she prayed that she was mistaken and it was a dislocation in the angles of light and shadow in the room that made her parents’ appearances grow grisly at the mention of the old factory. Mr. and Mrs. Dean took their eyes off the thrashed girl only to eye one another carefully, communicating without words.

  “What happened?” Regina repeated herself. Her mother’s face brightened in an artificial expression of lightness.

  “Regina, honey, where is this coming from?” her mother wanted to know.

  “What happened there?” Regina asked a third time not allowing her mother’s question to distract her from her mission to dig up a truth that she was not leaving the room without.

  “Nothing happened there, for Christ’s sake!” Her mother’s voice was louder now and her father’s eyes traced some invisible object on the floor.

  “Patricia.” Regina spoke her mother’s name calmly as she took another step into the room. “I want to know what happened.” She finished.

  Charlie Dean gave a nonverbal go-ahead to his wife, but they were all silent for a long time before anyone spoke.

  “There was an accident there years ago,” her mother admitted.

  “That’s all?” Regina baited her mother, like cheese to a sniffing rat; she watched and waited for the curious animal to come to the trap.

  Her mother studied her before she spoke again.

  “People were hurt, a few were killed. Why are you asking these questions?”

  “Because, Mom, they’re important.” Regina could feel herself beginning to get choked up but still no less direct in her interrogation.

  “Why?” her father asked.

  “Can you just tell me what happened?” Her parents could see her frustration building.

  Her father began. “There isn’t much to tell, Regina.”

  Regina’s eyes glowered with a fury that was increasing exponentially by the moment with every attempt of her parents to understate the happening.

  “Daddy, please,” Regina pleaded.

  “Sit down.” Her father consoled her, preventing the explosion that he predicted may take place in this room if he continued to hold back what he knew. Mr. Dean grabbed his daughter’s hand gently and she allowed him to lead her to one of the wooden chairs at the breakfast table.

  “It was a Sunday afternoon when we heard a series of deafening booms, the house shook. No one knew what was happening.” His words gave license to the booming that came crashing down in Regina’s head as the memory floated back to her.

  “You remember my good friend Mike Dixon, he worked at Waterford. I knew him since we were kids.” Her father’s words were interrupted with a deep-rooted grief for several seconds before he regained composure.

  “I was standing at the window, just watching as people began to filter out of their houses to figure out what was going on when another series of explosions shook Black Water and then the phone rang, it was Mike. He didn’t have time to explain, he just told me to get my family out of Black Water. Later, after talking to his wife, we discovered that was the second and last call that he made, the first was to his wife.” Her father sighed, releasing all the air from his body. Mrs. Dean listened compassionately then lifted the burden from him by taking over the story.

  “We packed up some of our things and took off to Aunt Charlene’s in Edgarton. By the time we bundled into the car a black fog was spreading through the sky mixing with the clouds and before we knew it, the bright day became night. It was the most terrible thing
I had ever seen, people were running and screaming. It was like a natural disaster. I remember your father yelling for us to close the windows and the air conditioning vents. I thought it was the end of the world, but I jumped out of the car and ran through the smoke, back into the house to get my mother’s bible. It was awful, no doubt about that. Once we got to Edgarton, we stayed several days. When we received the OK to come back to town, your father came first to be sure that things were safe and then we came shortly thereafter. Parts of the facility were completely destroyed, but it hadn’t been the end of the world and we were all grateful for that, at least. What clean up could be done after such a thing was done and the company moved on. People were devastated, lives had been lost, jobs were lost and no one was sure how Black Water would recover but it did.” Regina’s mother finished her much too tidy recounting of events.

  “Did they pay you?” Regina asked the last question that either of her parents had expected; her father sighed.

  “Regina, I really don’t see how any of this …” Her mother was interrupted by Regina’s sullen voice.

  “Did…they…pay…you?” Regina asked again.

  “They did.” Her father admitted reluctantly.

  Regina could feel the hopelessness that was creeping up inside her at the mere thought that Eden was not as crazy as Natalie had suggested.

  “Why, Daddy?” Her trembling voice hinted at the possibility that she would be unable to hold it together for much longer.

  “Why did they pay you?” Regina pushed.

  “There was damage to the town, people lost their jobs, some people were hurt. There were several reasons.”

  “Was there any damage to our home, Daddy? Did you lose your job? Were you hurt?” Regina asked the series of questions, to which, she already knew the answers.