1 The Bank of the River

by Michael Richan

  “Much faster,” said Roy. “I doubt I’d have lasted ten minutes.”

  “It was a dumb move. I don’t understand why you couldn’t tell me you were going to try this before you did it. Why leave my involvement to chance?”

  “Because,” said Roy, “it’s like telling a scared kid he’s going to have to jump into the swimming pool when he doesn’t want to, versus giving him a reason to jump in. A little push, if you will. And you jumped. It worked.”

  “Only because I thought you were in danger.”

  “If that was true,” said Roy, “you would have banished it as soon as you came in the room. Instead, you chose to jump into the river and check things out. And you found out you can swim. Now tell me what you found out.”

  Steven relayed, as best as he could describe in words, the experience of the flow and his watertube, the glass wall and the images behind the glass.

  “That’s Lukas, behind the glass,” Roy said. “Did you hear anything?”

  “His lips moved,” Steven replied, “but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. It was just…sounds.”

  “The glass,” asked Roy, “was it hard? Did you touch it?”

  “It stopped me,” said Steven. “But it wasn’t solid. It was moving, making it hard to see.”

  “Moving like what? Back and forth? Wavy, like water?”

  Steven thought about this. Yes, it was a lot like water. And once he realized it was water, the sounds he had heard began to organize in his mind.

  “Yes, water,” he told Roy. “Water makes sense. And the sounds he made sounded like they were coming from under water. That’s not normal when you’re in a trance?”

  “Very little is normal,” answered Roy. “Each can be different. You’re learning to work with a new vocabulary, a new system of thinking. Each experience you have will teach you to put things into context, and that will clarify other things that didn’t make sense before. Like the book. You can read some of it now, can’t you.”

  “Yes,” Steven answered, “the section on invitations at least.”

  “Whereas before,” Roy continued, “the words didn’t make sense to you at all.”

  “Right,” Steven answered.

  “Now that you know he was under water, think back to the sounds again. What did he say?”

  Steven thought. The sounds were there in his mind, still a jumble of individual noises. He imagined the water and the image of the man behind it, the lips moving. The sounds began to clarify in his mind and come together.

  “He said, ‘can’t breathe.’”

  “Ha ha!” Roy said, slapping the kitchen table. “That’s why he’s weak! That’s why he can’t summon Michael to finish the deed!”

  Steven wasn’t sure he fully understood what Roy was saying, but Roy seemed to know where he was going with it.

  “The cave,” Roy asked, “had water in it?”

  “A stream running through it. There were several pools in the rooms I saw at the end – or, where I stopped.”

  “How deep?”

  “Maybe a couple of inches. Maybe more, I don’t know, I didn’t check them out.”

  “Ben buried him in the cave,” said Roy, “but the water in the cave changed, covering the body. That’s why Lukas is so weak. He needs a connection before he can latch onto someone. The only connection he could make was through that house, where he had success draining Ben. He couldn’t waste his energy just randomly trying to connect to someone; the water kept him weak, made it hard for him to connect, and he couldn’t afford to waste what he’d drained from Ben. Ben’s journal, under the floorboards, was a perfect focal point for him. Once we came into proximity with the journal, he latched onto us. ”

  “Onto you, you mean,” Steven corrected.

  “Onto us. You’ve been part of it from the beginning. And once he started draining us, he’s raised enough energy to follow us around, so he could drain more whenever possible.”

  “But he has been draining you, not me,” Steven said. “The attacks have been on you.”

  “You don’t feel anything?” Roy asked.

  “I still feel the headache,” Steven said.

  “That’s the river,” Roy replied. “That’s normal, that’s not it. Don’t you feel exhausted?”

  “That’s because we’ve had damn little sleep,” Steven said.

  “You think,” Roy said, “that when you watch over me while I’m sleeping, it’s to avoid an attack, but when I watch over you, it’s just to make sure you get some shuteye?”

  Steven considered this. He did feel exhausted, both mentally and physically. Sleep had been hard to come by. But he also felt something else missing, a piece of him that was much smaller than it used to be. He didn’t think he would have noticed it before today, or have known how to identify it. But now he could tell it was missing. The same way the experience in the river had made him able to read some of the book, and understand some of the words, he was able to assess himself and realize he was being drained.

  “It was attacking me before I even came to you,” Steven said.

  “I could tell the day you showed up, asking for that next of kin thing. You had no idea. That’s why I got involved.”

  Steven swallowed hard. He knew what his father was saying was true. He had slept through it all, but his father had recognized it. His dad seemed know what he was doing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Steven asked.

  “You wouldn’t have believed me, you never do. Some things you just have to figure out as you go.”

  “And this stunt tonight,” Steven said, “was about doubling our forces.”

  “I think we’re both finally on the same page. What I’m afraid of now is that he’s drained enough power from the two of us to contact Michael.”

  “To finish the ritual?” Steven asked.

  “Exactly. Michael doesn’t know where Lukas is buried any more than we do – but he will wait in the wings until we release him. My guess is, after tonight, he’ll be following us.”

  “Then how do we stop it? Anything in there,” Steven motioned to the book, “that will stop it?”

  “From what I’ve been reading, our best chance is to burn him. Incinerate the body. Fire is a cleanse, it gets rid of everything.”

  Steven sighed. “If the body is in a grave under water, provided we can find it and dig him up, it’ll be soaked.”

  “Maybe not,” said Roy, “if Ben put him in a box first.”

  “A waterproof box? I think you’re giving Ben too much credit.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Roy.

  “In any event, we can’t risk removing the water,” Steven said. “According to you, that’s what’s keeping him weak. It makes no sense to remove it and give him any kind of an opportunity. If there was some way we could keep him under water, and transport the body out to Puget Sound, we could just weigh him down and dump him.”

  “I’m not sure that would end it,” Roy said. “Water is water. I’m not so sure that a hundred feet will matter more than a couple of inches.”

  “He’d be fish food,” Steven said. “Eventually the body would be gone.”

  “If that were true, he’d be gone already from insects. The problem is he’s not completely dead, not even now, not after fifteen years in the ground. The body needs to be gone, completely, if we want to stop the attacks.”

  “So we’ve got to burn it,” Steven said.

  “Yes.”

  “While it’s under water.”

  “Yes.”

  “What burns under water?”

  They both thought for a moment.

  “Flares,” Roy said, smiling. “I have a box in the basement.” He jumped up and walked to the basement stairs. “I’ll be right back,” he said, disappearing down them.

  Steven removed his phone and searched for “burn under water.” Sure enough, he found a YouTube video showing a flare burning in a bucket of water. The description of the video said it was an ordinary roadside flare
. He heard Roy rummaging around, then coming back up the stairs.

  Roy placed a large cardboard box on the floor between them. The side of the container said “144 count.”

  “Why would you need a whole case of flares?” Steven asked.

  “They were on sale at Costco,” Roy replied. “Great price. I was gonna give some of them to you and Bernie but never got around to it. Forgot they were down there.”

  “How old are they?” Steven said, removing one and examining it.

  “Couple of years,” Roy replied, grabbing a flare himself. “Maybe seven or eight years. Let’s test one.”

  Roy took the flare to the bathroom and began filling the tub. Steven followed him, trying to read the instructions that were printed on the side of the flare, but the lettering was too small to make out. Once several inches accumulated, Roy removed the plastic cap from the end of the flare and struck it against the tip. After a couple of attempts, it came to life, sputtering and dripping molten material into the bathtub.

  “Ready?” Roy asked.

  “Yes,” Steven replied. Roy sunk his hand into the tub, immersing the flare. It did not stop burning. Water bubbled up around Roy’s hand. He held it under the water for over a minute, then let it sink to the bottom of the tub, where it continued to burn.

  “How long will it go for?” Steven asked.

  “Ten, fifteen minutes,” Roy replied. “Maybe more.”

  “One of these won’t be enough to incinerate a body.”

  “But a dozen would do some damage,” Roy said.

  “How are we going to work that?” Steven asked.

  “We bundle a bunch of them together,” Roy explained, “like sticks of dynamite. All with the burning edge facing the same direction. We’ll have to remove the dirt that’s covering him while leaving the water in place. We light them all at the same time with a blowtorch, then we place the burning side down through the water and into the body. We should make several of them, so we can hit him with dozens of them all at once. We could each hold two bundles, one in each hand. We’d be hitting him with almost fifty of them, all at once. And they’ll burn for a while. That’s got to do a lot of damage. Maybe enough that after they run out, we can remove the body safely from the water and incinerate what’s left with the blowtorch.”

  “This is insane,” Steven said.

  “Yeah, but I think it will work,” Roy said.

  “It might. How do we bundle them?”

  Roy set about gathering the remaining items they’d need to construct and prepare the flares. He duct-taped a dozen of them together, and then used the duct tape to make a handle on the bottom of the bundle. Then he returned with the blowtorch.

  “Should we test it?” Roy asked.

  “Yes,” Steven said. “I’d rather not have any surprises. We need something like a big chunk of meat.”

  “How about a roast?” Roy offered. He went to the refrigerator and removed a chuck roast, about an inch thick and ten inches in diameter.

  “Why not?” Steven said. They took the roast to the bathtub. Roy unwrapped it, and dropped it in.

  “You hold the flares,” Roy said. “I’ll light it with the blowtorch. Once they’re all going, use the handle to press it down into the water and into the roast.”

  Roy snapped the blowtorch to life and Steven held it over the tub, pointed away from both of them. Once all twelve were lit, it was extremely bright and Steven had to squint to see what he was doing. The heat coming from it and the vibration caused by the group of burning flares made him feel like he was carrying a lethal weapon. He sank it into the water, and immediately the water began to erupt around him in response. He kept pressing it downward until he felt it hit the roast. Then he held it there.

  Steven and Roy looked at each other.

  “This will work,” Roy told him. “I’m sure.”

  “How long do I hold it here?” Steven asked.

  “Until they burn out,” Roy replied. “When we’re doing this for real, each of us will have two of them, one in each hand, and we’ll be pressing them all down into Lukas’s body. We want every bit of these flares to burn up as much of the body as possible. We don’t stop until there’s no body left, or until the flares give out.”

  The aroma bubbling up from the bottom of the tub was appetizing, not unlike the smell of a roast cooking on the stove.

  “Making me hungry!” Roy said.

  The process took a while. “Isn’t he going to fight back while we’re doing this?” Steven asked Roy.

  “I don’t think so,” Roy replied. “His body is still inert. It’s his mind that’s active.”

  “Fight us with his mind, then.”

  “Maybe. That’s why we’ll dose up on protection before we go.”

  Steven thought about this, unsure he wanted to drink Roy’s concoction. Still, it made sense to take every precaution. Steven felt himself giving in to Roy. Roy was winning him over.

  The first of the flares exhausted themselves after ten minutes and after another couple of minutes the last finished. They pulled the flares from the tub and looked in for the roast. There were only bits of charred meat floating around in the water, mixed with the material from the flares.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Roy said. “How about you?”

  “Let’s finish the rest of them,” Steven said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Steven let Roy sleep as they drove back to the cabin. Roy had grabbed a few hours of sleep after they finished creating the weapons, and Steven had used the time to read through the book. He found a few parts that made sense to him. The words seemed out of order, but he could rearrange them in his mind and construct a meaning. Still, much of the book seemed impenetrable, nonsensical. He took Roy’s word that those sections were areas he had no experience with. That was most of the book.

  Of the parts he could read, he found them highly intriguing. Invitations, he learned, could be used for all kinds of purposes, usually to the advantage of the initiator, but not always. In the older section of the book he found several sections that spoke of transformation and metamorphosis, ways to transform and ways to stop it. There were also some sections that spoke generally about the river, how to enter and exit it with less pain, and how to maneuver within it. He found several areas that spoke of protection, but they were still jumbled to him. He made a note to come back and read about them after he downed Roy’s potion and see if they cleared up.

  The more he read, the more intrigued he became. He felt himself falling into something that he knew even a week ago he would have resisted with all his heart as ridiculous and superstitious. The connection to his father and his father’s father was part of it, he supposed. This wasn’t some reality show ghost story he could easily dismiss as superstition. This was something with a deliberate history, intended for him.

  The parts written by Roy were the most baffling. It was as though his father was writing in an entirely different language, one Steven had never heard. His respect for Roy jumped significantly. He had accomplished many things Steven knew nothing about. And still didn’t. But the writing was extensive, and part of Steven yearned to learn what it was, to take advantage of what his father had felt needed to be written.

  After Roy awoke, they had loaded the flare bundles and the guns into backpacks in the trunk of Steven’s car. They decided one of them would carry the 9mm and the other would carry a sawed off shotgun. Roy had pointed out to Steven how to operate each one, where the safeties were, how to load them.

  Roy snored quietly as Steven piloted the car up Interstate 90, driving into the morning sun. This was the last day, he thought. No more after today. He envisioned his house in a normal state, returning to a normal pattern of life. I can go back to…what was I doing? he thought. He honestly couldn’t remember what had occupied his days after he was let go, before the hauntings began. It made him a little melancholy.

  He wondered where Ben was buried, how it had been for Ben in the final days, if he had tr
ied to return to the grave site and correct his mistake. Maybe, by the time he realized what was happening, he didn’t have the strength, Steven thought. Ben at least had the good sense to haunt the place. Steven wondered if any of the four owners of the house between Ben and himself had made it as far as Steven, if they had encountered the shadow, if it had drained them too. If any of them had pieced it together. If maybe he and Roy weren’t the first to attempt what they were about to do.

  After an hour, he turned onto the highway that led to the cabin. Another twenty minutes and they could turn onto the small road that was the final leg of the trip.

  Steven felt nervous, but at the same time confident. He supposed he was picking up on Roy’s confidence, that it was rubbing off on him. As Steven thought back over the past several days, he realized Roy had no fear. Roy had taken delight in confronting everything they had encountered. He didn’t hesitate. Steven thought he had been reckless, failing to consider consequences. But through it all, Roy’s approach had worked. Each time they had progressed, gaining new information they needed to tackle the problem. He knew Roy didn’t know the outcomes before he jumped, but he jumped anyway. Steven presumed it was because of a character flaw, but now he saw that it was just courage.

  Or experience. As far as Steven knew, Roy may have encountered far more frightening things than they were confronting now. Either way, Steven realized he’d been wrong. Roy was right, Steven didn’t give him enough credit. He looked over at the sleeping man in the car, and his admiration grew. He knew I’d figure this out, he thought. I need to trust him.

  As the car approached the spot in the road where they would stop and walk to the cabin, Steven woke Roy. “We’re here,” he said.

  Steven reached for the door handle, but Roy stopped him. “Wait,” he said. “Before we go out, this.” He produced the Mason jar. He removed the lid and handed it to Steven. “Two large gulps. It’ll sting, like booze.”

  Steven took the jar, looked at the clear liquid once more, and raised it to his lips. It went down more smoothly than he anticipated. He felt it spreading out inside him.