Silence on Cold River

by Casey Dunn

  I am reaching for the gun when the faint wail of a far-off siren dispels the hush of black and solitude. I stand and move toward a broken window. The siren is louder and joined by a second, and a third. Fractured blue light paints the tops of trees. They’re coming here.

  They’re coming here.

  I nearly laugh, shout, leap. I grab a boot from another locker and break out the remaining glass. All I have to do is drop through the window and run toward the light and I will be free and safe.

  But for how long?

  If they don’t catch Michael, he will come for me again. How will I close my eyes? How will I leave my house, my room? Will I ever be able to exist in a space alone again, if I know he can reach it? I am rooted to the dusty floor, watching in silence as the squad cars pull up on the other side of the chain link fence, sirens blaring, lights flashing. I have no idea how they knew where to come, only what Ama said, that a detective and my father were on their way. She must have let herself get caught by Michael the first time on purpose. But the way she fell to the concrete, the panic in her eyes when she told me to run… I don’t think she meant to get caught again.

  They won’t find her, not with their lights and their shouts and their dogs and their slow steps. Michael will go to the river, if he’s not already there, and he’ll be swept out of sight. He’ll either kill that woman, or he’ll take her with him. My neck burns with the memory of a tightening wire, and suddenly I can’t swallow. He won’t kill her. He’ll just make her wish she wanted to die.

  I could run to the police, tell them everything, try to explain what he will do, but it will be slow. They’ll want me to sit, to be evaluated, to rest. They’ll want me to show them the bunker, when instead we should be running anywhere else. They won’t let me hunt him. They will sit me in the back of a cop car or an ambulance, and they will leave me alone and go out into the woods and chase a shadow in the dark.

  I go back to Bill’s locker and pluck the gun from the floor. Then I move back to the window and study the length of the fence in the flickering light. Before Michael took me, I probably could’ve scaled it. Now, my arms already ache from crawling the length of the tunnel, my wrists burn where the shackles have rubbed off skin in new places, and my hands are barely strong enough to grip the gun. Near the end of visibility, I see a panel of chain curled away from the right-hand corner. If I can squeeze through the corner of a dog crate, that opening should be a walk in the park.

  I toe out of my shoes, too loose to run in, and store them in Bill’s locker. I can’t help feeling as though I’m leaving another marker in this room—another grave. I stand by the window, waiting, and the second the lights on top of the cars go dark, I slip out of the factory and sprint to the break in the fence.

  MARTIN Chapter 80 | 7:25 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  BY THE TIME THEY REACHED the factory, Captain and every unit on the payroll were gathered near the perimeter fence. Ama’s name flooded the air like cicadas on a summer night, rhythmic and constant. Flashlight beams swept over dead grass. Ama’s location had finally popped up when he’d been standing in Janie Walton’s driveway, a blinking, little red dot on the barebones map. At the sight of it, Martin had damn near thrown the old woman into the car. Eddie had been right—Ama was headed to the factory.

  Martin had used the rest of the drive to fill Eddie in on the true identity of Jonathon Walks. And now that they were here, Martin was losing faith. Captain and every uniform in the county had beaten him to the factory by nearly twenty minutes and had yet to report finding anything. Worse, Ama’s little red dot had disappeared off the map before they’d reached the end of Janie Walton’s road.

  “You’re absolutely sure this is where the signal was coming from before it dropped?” Martin asked Eddie.

  “Yes. She was right here. On the north side of the factory, maybe off the back of the building by a quarter of a mile.”

  Martin leaned in to instruct Mrs. Walton to stay where she was, but she was already out of the car. Her face turned up at the night sky, and she sampled the air.

  “This place still smells exactly the same,” she said. “Don’t waste your time searching the factory. Michael would never go inside.”

  “I don’t mean any offense, ma’am, but right now I don’t think any of us can predict what Michael would or wouldn’t do,” Martin argued, struggling for patience.

  “I’m telling you, he won’t be in there. If he knows you’re looking for him, if he knows he’s being chased, he won’t be in there. He’ll be out there,” she said, and pointed her finger away from the building and into the woods. Martin stared at her, wondering how she knew where to point.

  “The factory isn’t the only thing I can smell,” she said, as if she’d read his mind, and she turned her eyes upon him. “Can’t you smell the river?”

  “Her location was here, not the river. Let’s check where the map showed her to be, then we’ll go into the woods.” Martin peered into the dark. Chasing a perp through alleys and down city streets was one thing. Combing these woods was going to be a completely different monster.

  “We got something!” a voice called in the dark.

  Martin bolted across the field. Stanton was shining a light down what looked to be an open sewer lid just inside the tree line. There was a square hole in the ground, six feet deep and sealed with brick. Two doors were cut into it. The larger door almost looked like the hatch to a spacecraft, and the other was a small, square metal door, which stood open, a combination lock cast off to the side.

  Martin climbed down. There were scuffs in the dust on the floor, and Martin saw what looked like a smear of blood on a lower rung of the ladder and another on the doorframe. He shone his light beyond the opening, revealing a tunnel, three feet in diameter.

  Stanton dropped down beside Martin and tested the bigger door, which didn’t budge.

  “Do we have anything to blast it open?” Stanton called up to Captain, who stared down at them from above.

  “Don’t bother,” Martin chimed in. “This reads like they left, not like they’re holed up in there. If Michael had Ama here, he’d have been sure to secure the way in.” He spotlighted the edge of the ground-level lid, revealing tiny keyholes on both sides. “It locks. They’re not here.”

  “What about the other open door?” Captain asked.

  Martin returned his focus to the tunnel. The track was straight and level as far as he could see. He climbed the first couple of rungs of the ladder so he could follow the trajectory aboveground. Assuming it stayed straight, the tunnel led right back to the factory.

  He relayed his findings to the captain.

  “Stanton, check it out,” Captain ordered. Stanton crouched to enter the tunnel.

  “Someone went that way, but I don’t think it was Michael,” Martin cautioned, Janie Walton’s advice echoing in his mind.

  “Got it,” Stanton replied, and disappeared.

  Martin surfaced. Eddie approached the hole, hope and fear and hesitancy pulling at his features.

  “She’s not down there.” Martin wiped the grime and disappointment from his face. “Where’s Mrs. Walton?”

  Eddie turned back in the direction they’d come. Several other officers dotted the grass, but she was not among them.

  “Come on.” Martin touched Eddie’s elbow, swinging his gaze back and forth. He reached under his coat to withdraw a gun and then produced a second one and handed it to Eddie. “Do not shoot unless I tell you to.”

  Eddie’s phone chimed, and he glanced at it. “It’s back!” he nearly shouted.

  “Where?” Martin stared at the screen. The little red dot flashed beside Cold River. “Refresh the location every thirty seconds,” Martin instructed. “Can you run?”

  “Today, I can,” Eddie said, and they sprinted into Tarson Woods.

  AMA Chapter 81 | 7:45 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  MICHAEL STOOD AT HER BACK, and the riverbank crumbled at her feet as he again told her t
he story of the river and how it made him clean… how it made him invincible. She’d heard it all in pieces before, but she let him talk. The river was barely a half mile from the factory, if that. Hazel had gotten out. Martin—if all went well—should have her location. She just needed to borrow as much time as she could.

  A flash of movement to her left nearly made her look up, but if she looked, so would Michael. He had repeatedly said he wouldn’t push her, that it had to be her choice, but Ama wasn’t sure he would keep that promise if the police appeared.

  She must have tensed, because Michael stopped talking and she felt his attention swing left.

  “I think I saw someone,” she whispered, following his gaze. She heard a rustle in the leaves but didn’t see any flashlights. “Maybe it was a deer,” she said.

  “Probably. Let’s move upstream a bit, just in case,” Michael said, his hand skimming her waist, guiding her to the right, protecting her from venturing too close to the edge. Ama noticed they were moving uphill. The fall would be farther.

  “You’re scared,” Michael said.

  “It’s a long way down.”

  “It is. But at the bottom is freedom. If you invite Death to eat at your table and Fate intercepts the invitation, you’ll have nothing to fear for the rest of your life, because you will know, beyond all doubt, that Lady Fate has you in her hand.”

  Or that I was a college swimmer and set a record for the two-hundred-meter butterfly.

  Ama stayed at that pool in her head. When she jumped, she would pretend she was diving in for a race; the shock of cold water would be just like the training pool at a five o’clock practice, the ache of a one-mile swim during summer conditioning. That grit had been what made her successful in her career and maybe a little tough to understand.

  That grit, she decided, would be enough.

  MICHAEL Chapter 82 | 7:50 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  AMA SMELLS LIKE THE RIVER. The hem of her long dress billows against my legs, and her hair dances on a gust of wind. Even standing still, she is movement, water, Lady Fate herself.

  I can feel her turning over pieces of her life in her head, probably looking for a sign. I remember how it felt, standing at this spot, looking into the water, cold and scared. Then the moment came when I knew I would survive, and it will come for her, too.

  At her sides, her fingers curl and uncurl. Her weight shifts back to front, and I remember the same show of nervousness she’d displayed in the courtroom before they read the verdict. Now she will be on trial, the river her judge and jury, and I am her defender. The symmetry is beautiful, perfection.

  Beyond her, something flickers in the trees, and I straighten with attention.

  “Okay,” she says. She must not have seen it. I feel her lean away from me, weight gathering on the balls of her feet, her dress blowing backward. Hesitation bleats inside me, and I want to reach for her, to tell her to wait, but I cannot interfere, not if she has chosen now to jump.

  From behind, there is a scuffle of leaves and twigs. A ray of light sweeps the bank, and I realize the flicker I saw earlier wasn’t something moving over here but weak light catching on the boughs of trees lining the opposite bank.

  We’ve been discovered.

  Ama drops to a crouch, and her face appears over her shoulder. I move to shield her from view, but with the distraction and sudden pressure of a closing window, she may need more—she may need me to jump first.

  Two flashlights glare at us through the dark, and I recognize the shape of one man: Eddie Stevens’s stilted gait as he jogs up the crest of the hill, wheezing and puffing. Hazel sent them; that jealous little bitch sent them.

  “Michael, stop! Hands up! Ama, stay down!” another man’s voice shouts. I look down at Ama. Tears streak her face. She nods up at me. “Michael, step away from Ama, or I will shoot you! Michael!”

  “The river will set us free,” I say, preparing to push off. Maybe this is the way it was meant to be—I was always meant to jump a third time. Maybe my mother was wrong—pushing me into the water didn’t count.

  One last time, one last jump, and we can begin.

  HAZEL Chapter 83 | 7:51 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  I RACE ALONG THE BANK of the river, my gaze trained upward on the beam of light swinging across the ledge above, and I hear a man shout. Ama is kneeling on the bank. Michael looks down at the river, leaning out. He’s going to jump. If he hits the water, they’ll never catch him.

  He lurches forward a step. I lift the gun, bend my knees, and keep my arms bent, too, and peer over the barrel of the gun.

  I’ll keep both eyes open, Bill, I promise.

  Suddenly I am grateful I used the dark of that hole to imagine shooting Michael one hundred million times.

  His arms fly up, his body completely exposed. I train the sight on him dead center. Ama’s hand claws at a pant leg, but she won’t stop him.

  Exhale.

  Steady.

  Trigger.

  MICHAEL Chapter 84 | 7:52 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  BANG.

  A bullet tears through my back, and pain crashes through me, a wave across a beach, and nausea floods behind it.

  BANG.

  I hit the water, and the cold snatches the pain and my breath and my doubt, and I relax. The river will carry me. I can only hope Ama jumped, that she chose this path and that I won’t need to come back and show her the way.

  EDDIE Chapter 85 | 7:52 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  THE BLAST OF GUNFIRE ROOTED Eddie to where he stood, and in his mind’s eye, he relived the night he shot Ama. In front of him, Ama covered her head and neck with her arms. She pressed her forehead to the damp earth and screamed. Martin hustled to her side. He crouched beside her, wrapping one hand around her back and training his flashlight down on the water with the other.

  “Eddie!”

  Martin’s voice snapped Eddie out of his daze and propelled him forward, his gun trained ahead, ready to fire at whoever was shooting at them from the other side. He wondered if it was Michael’s mother, if she’d come to the river first to protect her son one last time.

  His feet were lead-heavy as he reached the edge and shone his light down.

  “Hazel! It’s Hazel!” Martin said, but Eddie barely heard him. All his senses converged on the tender face peering up at him from the river, at her wrists shackled at her front, age in her eyes and a gun in her hands. Tears poured from his eyes, and his heart pounded in his chest. Eddie heard Martin radio for help.

  “Hazel!” Eddie said her name over and over and over, praying she wouldn’t vanish, that she wasn’t a ghost in these woods or a figment of fatigue and darkness.

  “Daddy,” she whimpered as she tried to climb up the bank. She slid down, her limbs folding like the legs of a newborn fawn.

  “Wait!” Eddie cried. “You wait right there. I know the way, Hazel. I’m coming to you, baby. I’m coming.”

  MICHAEL Chapter 86 | 7:55 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  I ALLOW THE RIVER TO tumble me, knowing the cold will slow the bleeding and my heart and will reduce inflammation. Fate always brings me here when I need to heal.

  I surface when my lungs demand oxygen, only allowing my nose and mouth to emerge, and then slide under again, riding the current down. It will become shallow a ways ahead for just a stretch, and then it plunges to an unknown depth, the water ten degrees colder in that section of the river, how Cold River came to have its name. I close my eyes and sail, listening to the underwater percussion.

  The current accelerates, announcing the shallows. Weakness sets in. If not for the river, I would probably be dead. My head pounds with pressure, and the sensation of static on a TV screen marbles my vision. I allow my whole body to surface and float, embracing Fate, trusting her method, her timing. Ama was ready, I decide. She jumped. I know she did. She’ll meet me in the river.

  The water turns cold again, and I know the deep is coming, then
after it the bend near my childhood backyard and into a desolate stretch of forest between towns, and I will be free. Isn’t your life supposed to flash in front of your eyes when Fate shines her light?

  I bump into something too soft to be a stone, too warm to be a tree, and my eyes open. A woman’s silhouette peers down, backlit by the moon. Her hands touch my face; then she threads her fingers through mine. The skin is not smooth like Ama’s, the knuckles knobby, fingers longer and spindly. A pianist’s hands.

  Mother’s face comes into focus for just a moment. Her lips move, but I can’t hear her. I wonder if she’s jealous, if she’s proud. For the first time in a long time, she doesn’t look angry. She squeezes her eyes shut, and I think she might cry. In the light of the moon, I see silver glint on her wrist. It’s the bracelet my father bought her with the first paycheck from the factory. I remember how pink and angry she became upon seeing it, calling it a waste. Later that night I caught her admiring the way it looked on her wrist, smiling down at it, cradling my father’s face in her hands and kissing him on the mouth.

  Her hand releases mine, moves to my throat, cups my face, and I am eight years old again, basking in the glow of a mother who does not hate me. Then she pushes me under.

  I try to stand and slap at her, but my feet can’t gain a hold. My legs buckle each time I try to bear weight, and my arms are weak with cold and blood loss. Something bites into my neck. She’s fastened a metal cord around my throat and now she’s towing me downstream, to the deep where she cannot stand.

  MARTIN Chapter 87 | 9:30 AM, December 10, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  MARTIN STOOD ON THE LEDGE overlooking Cold River. Above him, morning sunlight filtered weak and pale through naked branches. Below, divers disappeared under the surface of the black water. He breathed out hard, his breath a puff of vapor in front of his face.