The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  He stepped out of the house onto

  Milner Street. A minutes walk and he turned onto Riverside. He crossed the road and stepped down the dozen steps leading to the river path. He decided to walk along the river until it eventually wound around to Ross's. On the news that lunchtime he had seen the police boats off-loading divers. It was a three mile trek but that was cool. It felt good to walk in the crisp February air. There were few riverboats and barges moored at that time of year so he had the river path to himself for the most part. Although John-o had lived in the town all of his life, he still loved the river especially during the summer. As the night came down they would chill out at the water's edge, sipping beer on a blanket, watching the barges float by decorated with multi-colored light bulbs and lanterns casting magical reflections on the surface. But that was way off. Across the river the avenue of leafless trees gave way to an uninterrupted view of Measton Hill complete with its Tudor tower keeping watch over the town. Downriver, Teddy the ferry boy sat in the old wooden boat that the town people somewhat grandly called a ferry. As John-o passed the boy/man he looked up from his activities and smiled his gap-toothed idiotic smile. John-o nodded hello. Teddy was a part of the river all year around and had been for as long as John-o could remember. Despite the elements that he braved daily the boy/man had never seemed to age and was as much a part of the town as the river itself. John-o wondered if Teddy was aware of what all the attention was about. As if in response to his thoughts he heard the chain links rattle against the rusty pole set into the river bank. He turned and saw that Teddy was lowering the ferry rope as he heard the distant buzzing of an outboard motor and saw the police launch come into view. It was in a hurry it seemed. Two police divers were doing an equipment check while a uniformed Inspector spoke into his radio; he could catch none of the substance but it seemed important. As the launch swerved around the bend in the river, its wake causing the river to swell up and over the river bank, John-o's curiosity brimmed over too. He broke into a trot, trying to look like a man taking a constitutional jog along the river. He knew that his attire- more suited to hanging around in his mate's workshop- didn't fit the image but didn't care.

  Soon his labouring breath came in great rasping wheezes and the beginnings of a stitch nagged at his side. He slowed to a fast walk for a minute before jogging again. In this fashion John-o made his way to Ross's, signified by the railway bridge that came into sight as he came through the copse that marked the edge of Ross Forest.

  The divers had found something.

  John-o came to a halt when he noticed the police incident tape and the two bobbies standing nearby. He stepped back into the trees and crouched against a tree trunk. From a safe distance he watched as two policemen pulled at some sort of rope. A diver's oil slick head bobbed on the surface next to the boat as he looked down at whatever the rope carried. John-o held his breath. On the opposite side of the river he saw the unmistakable figure of DCI Collins as he limped towards the water's edge for a closer look. Thunder sounded in the distance and he noticed the beginnings of rain disturbing the oily skin of the river in a series of sporadic splashes.

  The pale and bloated figure of Patricia Bourne seemed to roll to the surface rather than ascend. The police diver assisted the two men in the boat as they heaved the corpse over the side of the boat. Even from this distance John-o could see the damage that had been done to Patsy's torso; the wounds in her chest looked green like the vegetation that lived at the river bottom; the river had invaded her he thought. At that thought his stomach lurched and he vomited against the base of the tree.

  He staggered away from the steaming mess, wiping his mouth and as he turned into the forest he saw two figures, a man and a tall woman, both of whom looked familiar, heading towards him out of the shadows. The man was David Weaver and, after a few seconds, the woman's name came to him. Mary Moran from the shop at Cornhill. The skies seemed to open then as it rained harder.

  7

  Mary watched David step out of the old Beetle and recognized him instantly. She smiled to herself and shook her head slightly. The Welsh Witch strikes again. He looked as though he didn't eat properly, she thought noting his angular face and bony gait and with the slump-shouldered downward gaze, as though he carried the weight of the world with him. He looked up at her and asked for his cigarettes. He doesn't remember me, she thought.

  "Hello Mary," he said, proving her wrong, and smiled briefly albeit a smile of the mouth and not the eyes. "How are you?"

  "I'm fine, David," she responded. "You?"

  "Good," he said and smiled more naturally at her inverted eyebrows. He knew how he looked. "Well, we've had some family problems," he said shortly. He did not seem to want to elaborate. She respected that in a person. Too often she was the unwitting recipient of the cares of the world. She nodded. "I haven't seen you for years," she said. "What are you up to nowadays?" She handed him his change.

  "I'm an artist," he said and smiled self-consciously. "Sorry. That sounds really pretentious doesn't it? I paint and do a comic strip for a newspaper. It's not as grand as it sounds. I guess it pays the rent which is the main thing."

  "Sounds great to me," Mary said. "Certainly better than being stuck behind this counter day-in and day-out."

  “It's a nice place you've got here." He looked around the interior seeming to take it in for the first time. "You've done wonders with the place. I remember what it used to be like before your parents bought the place."

  Mary smiled to herself.

  "What?" David smiled back; he'd forgotten how attractive Mary had always been but always off limits because of- well- because of history.

  "Nothing. I'll tell you another time," she said.

  “In another life maybe,” Weaver said sounded far deeper than he’d intended. He cleared his throat awkwardly.

  Mary seemed to enjoy his discomfort for a moment before asking: "Where are you based now any way?"

  "I'm in Brighton- the right on capital of England," he said and smiled. "It's very different to this place." He felt instant regret at his words. They made him sound like he thought himself superior. "Not better," he added, "just different."

  "People go to Brighton to lose themselves," Mary said matter-of-factly. "I've a few friends that have gone down there and just dropped off the edge of the planet as far as I know."

  To lose themselves, he mused. How right she was. How many of his acquaintances over the years had gone to the weirdness capitol to re-invent themselves? Was that what he had done? Lost himself?

  "Couldn't you say that about anywhere you go to get away from your hometown though?" Weaver countered. Mary shook her head and smiled.

  "No, I don't think so," she said and walked from around the counter to tidy up the magazine display. "Most places are like this, aren't they? In England, I mean?"

  Weaver nodded.

  "I suppose they are at that," he agreed.

  "I think you could be dropped into the new part on the outskirts of practically every town in England and think you were on the edge of your own town. Y’know? All of those new estates look the same don't they? And then there are these awful- y’know- commercial centres springing up everywhere with the inevitable drive-through, a large superstore, DIY store and whatever else. Even the name "commercial centre" bugs me. It sounds so-"

  "American," they finished together and laughed. Weaver was reminded of his own musings upon arriving in Measton the previous day.

  "And I thought I was cynical," Weaver said. "You'd get on well with one of my friends down south. He calls the latest spate of faceless town planning the red disease. With capital letters and inverted commas. All of those red brick estates that look the same."

  "Red disease," she said. "I like it."

  Mary perched on a three-step ladder left next to the counter for the purpose of reaching the higher shelves. Weaver saw the shadow of her brother, long dead but still alive in the mischievous slant of her eyes.

  "A few years ago they built
a posh little estate on the Rennick side of town,” Mary told him. “Do you remember the place? Down Devil's Lane, passed the scrap yard, half a mile or so on-"

  "Eventually becomes fields, I remember. You have to climb over a stile. There's a rickety little footbridge on the way down to the river."

  "That's it. You know it well. Courtship venue?"

  Weaver smiled and shrugged.

  "There was a massive rabbit warren down there. Do you remember?"

  Weaver shook his head.

  "Thousands of the little buggers. When we went down there as children Grant would make us lie still in the grass as twilight-" Mary trailed off aware that she had spoken the taboo name. Their eyes met briefly and the taboo was resolved.

  "Go on," Weaver said. "I think I do remember the place."

  "Well, if you lay still enough they'd all come out and feed. It was beautiful. At least that was what we thought."

  "Sounds it."

  "Any way, long story short, they built a housing estate down there. The fields are gone. The rickety bridge. Everything. There's a busy road that runs down that way now."

  "Tch. No way. That's terrible." But inevitable Weaver thought.

  "Guess what they called it." Mary arched her eyebrows provocatively.

  "I dunno. Something awful like Woodlands."

  "Worse," she said. "They called it The Warrens."

  "You're joking!" Weaver blurted.

  "I wish I was," Mary said shaking her head sadly.

  Weaver felt comfortable with Mary. She was so unlike usual Measton and it wasn’t simply the Celt influence. She was an outsider too; he could sense it. When she had turned from the counter to get the cigarettes, he had noted with automatic admiration the slim length of her legs. He remembered her quiet presence around the high school and the hard time she had always had as a result of the gypsy connection. There was more to Mary than long legs and a pretty face though. He was certain. He pocketed his cigarettes.

  "Well, I suppose I had better go." He felt saddened to leave her at that moment. Ridiculous. He'd only gone in there to buy a packet of cigarettes. "I'll see you."

  "Yes. Take care," she said. "I hope that everything works out for your family."

  He headed for the door. He stopped and turned back to her. He shook his head. He wanted to say something to her about Grant. He had no idea why; it just seemed right. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times. But before he could articulate, Mary said: "I've been thinking about him too. In fact, I dreamt of the day that he died only last night."

  8

  Teddy listened to the voices in the water and nodded. They were always right. They always had been. He had listened to their whisper- aware of the fact that no-one else could hear them- for many years. Just below the constant sound of pouring and rippling- a sound that he heard even when asleep- they were always there. Voices from the past, the present or the future, he did not know which. All he did know was that the other folk didn't hear them.

  But he was special. His momma had always said so. Even when the other boys and girls that lived on The Lane had teased him and chased him, his momma had told him so. "You're special, Teddy. Always remember that. You're momma's special boy. That's why you go to the special school. You're not like the other boys and girls." She had made him feel special even with the taunts and jeers ringing in his ears. You're special.

  He remembered them though. Not their names. He never could remember names except for those that were special to him like Mrs. Johns who always gave him sweets and kind, old Mr. Parrett who had given him his job at the age of sixteen.

  But he remembered the faces.

  As the years had passed and the faces grew fatter, the hair thinner he still knew them well enough. The long-haired man that had passed on the river path earlier had been one of them. He had never called Teddy names but he had joined in with the laughter and that was worse. He didn't know why but the laughter seemed to hurt more than the names. Because he was special the names were forgotten the next morning but the laughter seemed to stay with him. The laughter and the voices from the river.

  If someone would have asked him when the voices from the river began, he would have looked at them as though they had asked him how long the grass had been green. As far as he was concerned, they had always been there. Fishing off the weir as a boy (with a pocketful of fishing weights) he had heard them- whispering beneath the wash of the river over the long ago smoothed down stones. Under the railway bridge he had heard them- echoing into the recesses of the catwalk like so many empty memories. As he had walked along the riverbank on his way to school and the daily name calling, they had been there.

  But they had never really meant anything before.

  It was only in the past few days that the voices had become clear to him. The hitherto comforting breaths and sighs had transformed into words, phrases and then distinct voices.

  Voices that knew his name.

  Voices that seemed to know everything about him and everyone else in the town.

  He had tried to put his hands over his ears at some of the things they told him. Dirty things. Bad things. Things that he did not want to imagine. But then he had realized that the voices were inside his head now and even when he went back to the cottage on The Lane that he shared with his sick mother and buried his head under his pillow the voices were still there- showing him things- transforming the dirty words into dirty images. He pulled the ferry rope up and out of the water and listened to the sound of the police boat buzzing around in the distance. He knew they had found the girl. The voices had told him that they would.

  The voices knew everything.

  The voices knew why Teddy had been born with brain damage too. More than the bad thoughts and the dirty things, this was the worst of all. He knew that they weren't lying to him but still he felt the pain of knowing too much.

  Teddy sat back in the ferryboat and to an observer with no knowledge that Teddy was special, he looked like a young man deep in thought, perhaps contemplating the meaning of life itself. They would of course have been mistaken. Teddy was not contemplating his raison d’être at all.

  Teddy was wondering how he should kill his mother.

  9

  Weaver headed into Ross's for the first time in many years and, to add to the surrealism, this time he was accompanied by Mary Moran, Grant Moran’s younger sister. They had stood for several minutes outside of the shop, the old bridge a monolithic backdrop, as Mary had told him of her dream of the previous evening. Weaver deliberated for a moment before replying. This was all so ridiculous, none of it made any sense. But then Mary had spoken of the dream. Mary had called herself the "welsh witch". With that, he began to tell Mary of the events that had brought him home, if that was what this was. Home. She had told him to wait, conscious of the twitching curtain brigade. He knew what she meant. He had felt watched since returning that morning. Some of the watchers were vague figures from a childhood spent in a small town, the kind of figures that never seemed to change or move on. Even those that he remembered to be elderly seemed unchanged. The fact of the matter was, in a town the size of Measton everyone was recognizable. Mary went into the shop and made a telephone call. By the time she had wrapped herself in a duffel coat and donned a pair of sheepskin gloves, Weaver saw a stout woman turn the corner at the top of the road. She smiled briefly as she passed him and entered the shop. Mary chatted to her unhurriedly and joined him outside.

  "I don't know what I'd do without Miriam," Mary told him as they set off. Weaver realised that she meant far more than the woman's value in the shop. "She's been there for me in all kinds of ways over the years. She's family, I guess or what family should be, any way."