Talking was Charlie’s strength. I wasn’t about to fall for that. I had to defeat him physically, and while I was stronger than he was, the gun in his hand negated my advantage. The gun in his hand negated almost every advantage, and there in the dark, shivering and bleeding and desperate, I couldn’t see a way around that fact.
Until, suddenly, I could.
The answer came in the form of a memory, a vision. Fiona standing in the snow, drawing two shapes. Hands. The left one with a thumb, a pinky, and a ring finger. The right one with only a pinky and a thumb. Charlie was a righty.
“You’d really shoot me?” I asked.
“Only to defend myself,” he said. “Wouldn’t anyone?”
“Defend yourself? I have a fishbowl.”
“And you have a broken heart. I don’t know what you’re capable of.”
I tried my best to pinpoint exactly where his voice was coming from, and I drew the fishbowl back again. “You sure don’t,” I said.
“I can see you, you know? I have the eyes of a bat. You throw that at me and I might have to pull this trigger.”
“How?” I asked.
“How what?”
“Are you going to pull it without any fingers?”
The fishbowl was in the air as soon as I posed the question. I can’t be sure what it hit, but I heard a thump, and I heard Charlie cough, and I heard the metallic percussion of the gun falling and tumbling across the floor. I dropped to all fours and scoured. I had no plan other than getting my hands on it.
“You think you know everything,” Charlie said, coughing. “You think you’ve got it all figured out. You don’t have a single clue.”
I felt the muzzle first and pawed until I found the handle. I pulled it to my chest, sat down, and braced it against my sternum so the barrel was pointing out. I held it with both hands. Gingerly, I tapped the trigger, making sure I knew where it was.
“Fiona Loomis?” Charlie went on. “That’s what you care about? That girl is pathetic. You know how I got to her? The same way I get to anyone. I figure out that itch they can’t scratch, that thing they need but can’t have.”
I scooted on my butt across the floor until my back was against the wall. It didn’t seem possible, but the rain was coming down harder than ever, determined to pound the clubhouse to bits. Breathing was a battle.
“Sometimes people will surprise you with what they need. But not Fiona. She was predictable. Like so many stupid and pathetic girls, all she needed was a boy. All she needed was you, Alistair. And she will never … ever … have you,” the Riverman said.
As the words stabbed me in the heart, a beam of light struck me in the face. It was a reflex more than anything—I pulled the trigger. And the blast echoed like thunder.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19
PART II
For a second or two, a man stood in the doorway of the clubhouse. Then he wobbled, let out a low groan, staggered, and leaned back as if someone were there to catch him. But there was no one else, and as the man fell into the yard, the flashlight in his hand tipped upward and cast its glow onto his face. His features were twisted, wincing from the shock. Still, I could see who he was.
“What did you shoot? Who did you shoot?” Charlie shrieked.
My body toppled, slid against the wall until I was lying on my side. It was like I was back in that cardboard box in the middle of the road, or back in my shower, letting the world pour over me. I stayed curled up for a few moments, and I might have stayed like that forever, if not for the sound of a wheezing voice calling from outside.
“It’s okay, kid. It’s fine.”
Fine? Fine was impossible, but sometimes you believe the things you need to believe, and I needed to believe in fine. So I willed myself back to my feet and lumbered to the doorway. With the gun pinned to my chest, I stepped out into the rain.
Prack!
A blast of nearby lightning illuminated the backyard for a second, and I saw Kyle lying on his back. On the ground next to him, the flashlight was highlighting the bleeding hole in his stomach. The notebook, spread open in the grass, was destroyed by the rain. Scattered on the edges of the yard, cats.
“Come here,” Kyle groaned.
I obeyed, and soon I was hovering over him, waiting for his next command.
“You shot me,” he said with a gurgle in his voice, liquid in his throat. “Right in the…”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Here.” He reached his hand up and I gave him mine.
“On three,” I whimpered, assuming he wanted me to lift him.
“No.” He coughed. “Give it to me.”
Rain ran down my arm and poured off the barrel of the gun like it was a teakettle. I peeled my hand from Kyle’s and swapped the gun in its place. It didn’t seem at all strange to give a gun to the person I’d shot. At that point, I trusted him more than I trusted myself.
“I didn’t mean it,” I said. “It was dark and—”
“Saw the … flashlight,” he mumbled as he drew the gun to his body. “I was like … great, cops found the…” He pressed it against his chest like a keepsake.
Prack!
Lightning again, and thunder even louder than the gunshot. My body jolted and I bumped into Charlie, who was now standing next to me, shoulder to shoulder. The fishbowl rested in the crook of his elbow.
“What’s it feel like?” Charlie asked, crouching down. If there was concern in his voice, it was buried deep in curiosity.
“Not … good.” Maybe the shock of being shot had numbed Kyle at first, but it was obvious that the pain was now digging its heels into his face. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“I’ll call 911,” I said.
Charlie set the fishbowl in the grass where it collected more rain.
“This … is really … bad,” Kyle whispered. “I’m not sure … this is what … I really…” He gulped twice, searching for the rest of his voice. He couldn’t find it.
Charlie didn’t say anything either. He pulled the glove off of his left hand, and for the first time I saw the damage. It doesn’t bother me to tell you that it looked like a claw, because that’s exactly how it looked. And as Charlie—as the Riverman—waved that claw over the wound in his brother’s stomach, like some shaman or some faith healer, I saw every side of him. I saw the boy, the man, and the monster.
“I’ll make the call,” I told them, turning away.
* * *
I could have called from the Dwyers’ house, but I wanted nothing to do with that place. Yes, minutes were precious. Even seconds were. Perhaps it makes me a bad person, but I ran all the way home.
I entered through the garage and opened the door to our kitchen. The cordless phone was in its charger by the door, mounted above the hooks where the keys hung. Grabbing it, I stepped back into the garage.
I dialed 911, and as soon as the operator answered, I said in as clear a voice as I could muster, “There’s been a shooting. Send an ambulance. 132 Seven Pines Road. Backyard.”
I hung up and stepped inside. I replaced the phone in its charger and my eye caught the shine of the key to Fiona’s house. I headed toward my room.
“There you are,” my mom said as she turned from the TV and spotted me creeping by the dining room table in the dark.
“I forgot my umbrella,” I told her as I passed, hoping she wouldn’t spot the streaks of blood. “Gimme a second to change.”
“We’re glad you’re home. Hope you had fun with Charlie.”
I stepped into the hallway, and Keri poked her head out of her room. “You been swimming?” she joked.
Filthy sanguine water dripped off my body and onto the floor. “It’s not how it looks,” I told her. “Don’t ask me what happened. Just make sure they know it’s not how it looks.”
She paused for closer inspection, and a mask of worry slipped over her face. “You bet,” she assured me.
I escaped into my room.
* * *
Fresh underwear,
dry pajama bottoms, and a new T-shirt, but I could still feel the dirt and the blood. I sat down on the edge of my bed. I figured the police could be at the door within a few minutes, and if they arrested me and searched my room, I might never again get the chance to hear Fiona’s voice. Reaching down between my legs, I pulled out the tape recorder and her grandfather’s jacket. I slipped the jacket on. It was still too big for me, but I liked the feel of the silk lining on my bare arms.
With the tape recorder in my lap, I ran my fingers over the buttons, but stopped before pressing Play. I needed more time with her voice.
A minute later I was pulling the key off the hook in the kitchen and sneaking into the garage.
A minute after that I was outside, under an umbrella, rushing to Fiona’s house.
Another minute and an ambulance screamed by.
One more minute and I was at the door, inserting the key.
It had been years since I had been in the Loomis home. Back when I was younger, I probably noticed the furniture and knickknacks that made it a distinct place, but I’m quite sure I didn’t notice what made it so eerily familiar to me now. It had an identical layout to my house, a matching skeleton. Under other circumstances, I might have explored a bit and puzzled out the variations, taken note of where they set their TVs and how they dealt with the awkwardly shaped kitchen. Under these circumstances, there was only one room I wanted to visit.
I climbed the stairs and opened the door to what, in my house, was my dad’s study. Here it was a bedroom, painted light blue, with two walls lined with white dressers and short white bookshelves that were overflowing with haphazardly arranged paperbacks. The ceiling slanted above the two walls to accommodate the angle of the roof. A bed with a looping iron frame was set against the back wall, and a window with gauzy drapes was above the bed. No posters. No pictures. A clean and simple room to read and dress and sleep. I stared for a bit, thinking about all the time Fiona had spent in here.
I climbed onto the bed and stretched out over the covers. My blood couldn’t maintain its fury for much longer. My body rejoiced at the surrender. I placed the tape recorder on my chest and closed my eyes as I pressed Play.
“Kilgore here will keep the record straight…”
* * *
I woke a couple of hours later. The tape had stopped. So had the rain. I expected to hear the sirens from police cars, but I didn’t hear a thing. It was dead quiet in the house, and lying there, looking up at the ceiling, I decided it was time to put an end to this.
I was going to turn myself in. There was really no other option. I would reveal every detail: my fears, my suspicions, Fiona’s tales of Aquavania. I would tell them about Kyle and the gun and Charlie and Gods of Nowhere and the Riverman. All of it and everything. And while I couldn’t be sure they’d count me as sane, I wasn’t sure if I should be counted as sane anymore.
I sat up, and as I did, my sanity was given one final test. The radiators began to click.
Fiona said the radiators spoke to her when they clicked. I don’t know everything they said to her, but I can tell you what they said to me.
“We’ve waited so long for you.”
And yes, they did sound a bit like Charlie, but they sounded like other people too. I had no choice but to follow.
Everything can change in an instant, and everything did change in an instant. The boiler was there and then it was not. The cylinder of water hung in the air, next to the dangling lightbulb, in the room full of boxes in Fiona’s basement. It was both the loveliest and the scariest thing I had ever seen.
I reached out my hand.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20
Ten years ago today was when they declared Luke Drake missing. Ten years since he fell into the Oriskanny and was snatched away from his brother, swept away from his future. Ten years since he became Thessaly’s lost child, and almost ten years since I saw him. That’s ten years in the Solid World, obviously. For those of us who’ve spent time in Aquavania, it’s been significantly longer.
That’s right. When I touched that cylinder of water, I went to Aquavania. And I stayed for a very long time. To get home, back to the Solid World, has taken me ages. Now that I’m finally here, sitting on Fiona’s bed again with Kilgore in my lap, it helps to revisit how it all started. My memories of the events that took place over those six autumn weeks in 1989 feel like they’re only minutes and days old. Because they are only minutes and days old. But they’re also much older and much more important than people might realize.
I think about Luke Drake a lot. He is a constant reminder that the meaning of a memory can change, even when the details remain the same. A boy waving hello is not always a boy waving hello. A girl who needs a guy might not need him for the reasons people suspect. Goodbye kisses are not always goodbye kisses … because gone for now is not necessarily gone for good.
There are many more memories I could share on this recording, but I’m not sure I want to do that. I’m not entirely proud of some of the things that I’ve done. Instead, I’d rather share one last story and then bury this tape out by Frog Rock, where someone can find it when the time is right.
Don’t worry. The story is a short one. Don’t ask me where I heard it. Just trust me when I say that it’s true.
THE LEGEND OF FIONA LOOMIS, PART VI
At the beginning of those twelve mysterious years in Aquavania, Fiona had a perfect day. Her world was still a blank slate, but the time had come to build her most ambitious project yet. She made a wish.
The ground shook, and a bed rose out of it. The bed frame struck Fiona on the legs, knocking her onto a firm mattress. Covers emerged and cocooned her, tucked her in tightly. Beneath the bed, a floor materialized, wooden slats shooting across in a wave. Walls sprouted next, topped by a ceiling. Then it all climbed upward as an entire house grew around her.
Fiona was in a bedroom identical to the one she had in the Solid World. She stripped the covers off, leapt from the bed, and skittered to the hall and down the stairs. She ate a breakfast of cereal in her family’s kitchen. Then she put on her neon green jacket and went to the garage to fetch her bike. Wheeling her bike outside, she was confronted with a gorgeous autumn day—an invigorating chill in the air, a bright but forgiving sun.
The neighborhood was also a replica of the one from the Solid World. Next door was the Andersons’ house. Across the street was the Carmines’. The telephone lines sagged and swayed in the breeze exactly as they did back home. Fiona pedaled down the street, playing music from the recorder duct-taped to her handlebars, and she looked up at the splatter of red and yellow and green and brown leaves.
Animals roamed about—squirrels and cats and birds—but there were no people, and Fiona pedaled alone. She continued past the school, past the memorial tree and the Skylark, by the graveyard where her grandma was buried, along the banks of the Oriskanny, until she reached a road on which she had never biked or walked. As soon as she turned onto the road, she was beyond the limits of her memories of Thessaly, beyond the limits of what she had built. She began biking on her blank slate. It was a flat stretch of nothing, with only the haze of the folds on the horizon. Such emptiness held no appeal for her anymore, so she turned around and headed back the way she’d come, into the realm of the familiar.
When she reached her street, she closed her eyes. She made another wish.
When she opened her eyes, the same houses and lawns and cars were there. Only now the street was lined with friends from the Solid World, such as Kendra and Fay-Renee. Alongside them were all of the kids Fiona had met and heard of from Aquavania, all of the kids she had written stories about. Chua and Werner, Boaz and Rodrigo. Plus many, many more. They waved to Fiona and said hello and seemed extremely happy to see her.
Fiona hopped off her bike when she reached the replica of Alistair’s house, bounded up the brick walkway, and rang the doorbell. As if on cue, a version of Alistair answered within seconds.
“Come out and meet everybody,” she said.
“Of course I know that,” Fiona said. “But for today, let’s pretend. For today, let’s believe that anything is possible.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The story of how this book came to be is one with a large cast of characters. If I could, I’d single out every author who has inspired me, and every friend or stranger who has enchanted me with a tall tale. I don’t have the memory to do that, but there are a handful of people whose contributions to this book I will never forget:
Joy Peskin. An editor with vision and courage and an uncanny ability to see the beauty in odd birds.
Michael Bourret. A tireless advocate, a good-humored geek, a spinner of gold.
Nova Ren Suma. A great friend to writers and an even greater writer herself.
Kate Hurley and Karla Reganold. Talented word wranglers who might object to this sentence fragment.
Angie Chen and the secret squad at Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers. Unassuming magicians who make books appear in your hands.
Elizabeth Clark and Yelena Bryksenkova. A designer and an artist who took my words and gave them a lovely and indelible face.
Jim and Gwenn Wells. Your support and encouragement keep me afloat.
Mom and Dad. They love a good tale, and me.
Tim and Toril. Not to mention all the muddy kids who grew up and ran wild on Cleveland Boulevard and in Brookside. This is a novel about us.
Cate. Our story is my favorite story.
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010
Text copyright © 2014 by Aaron Starmer
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2014
The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) Page 21
