Black River

by Will Dean

  A fly buzzes down through the pipe and loops around me, ricocheting off the smooth white plastic walls and then flying back out again to freedom.

  Vibrations.

  Mikey comes back and looks down at me, his face backdropped by blue skies and white clouds.

  ‘Who made you do this, Mikey? Who’s out there telling you what to do?’

  He frowns.

  And then he drops a Kinder egg down the pipe and it falls at my feet. I stare at it. The foil is dented and the chocolate will be smashed but the yellow plastic yolk should be fine. A small yellow plastic ball trapped inside a woman-size white one. I’m the toy inside the egg of this cellar looking down at a Kinder egg with its own toy trapped inside. A twisted reimagining of a Russian doll.

  ‘Just open the door, Mikey.’ I don’t shout, I try to inject my voice with fake calm. ‘I won’t hurt you and you won’t be in any trouble.’

  He scrunches his nose and drops another Kinder egg. I catch this one in my hands.

  Then he purses his lips like he’s had an idea. To let me out? To drop my phone down the pipe? To get help?

  Mikey runs off, the vibrations rolling through the plastic all around me.

  I have some hope now. From those pursed lips, he’s just a kid, he will not leave me down here. He’s a good kid. Troubled, but good. All kids are good. Aren’t they?

  More vibrations.

  His face again at the pipe.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask, looking up.

  He passes a cord down.

  ‘That’s it,’ I say, encouraging him. Is it a rope? ‘Pass it down to me.’

  But it stops.

  Some kind of snake thing attached to his iPhone. A black sinewy snake with an eye at the end. It’s a flexible camera.

  I take a deep breath and maybe it’s me, maybe I’m paranoid, but the air isn’t helping me to breathe like it should. How much is carbon dioxide now? If Mikey continues to partially block the vent pipe how much breathable air do I have down in this thing?

  I still haven’t talked to Tammy. I need to see her for God’s sake. She’s free at last and I’m locked inside a plastic root-cellar under Viggo Svensson’s garden in Utgard forest.

  But I did tell Noora. Didn’t I? I told her I was coming here to see the lumberjacks. Are they forcing Mikey to do this? Have they befriended the boy? Threatened that his father will die just like his mother did, alone in a rotten beech tree.

  How do I reason with this child?

  Mikey says, ‘Wait there,’ and I almost laugh.

  I unwrap the unbroken egg.

  It is not an egg.

  It is the head of a plastic doll, decapitated, defaced, wrapped in Kinder foil. The head of one of those dolls from the wheelie bin Noora and I found, or from the Snake River rowboat with its blistered doll captain. Were they connected? One of the doll’s eyes is shut, the other is batting her eyelashes at me. I unwrap the other egg. It’s Kinder. The real deal. No doll. I eat the chocolate and my thirst intensifies. I can hardly finish it. I’m left with a yellow plastic yolk. If I had a puzzle book and a biro like Tam did I could write something and throw it out the vent pipe. How the hell would that help me? I start to panic, my breathing quick and shallow, my hands pulling at my T-shirt.

  Sweat streaming down my back.

  So thirsty.

  The pipe darkens.

  Mikey’s back and he’s holding a magnifying glass. Is he going to burn me with it? That’s what eight-year-old boys do, isn’t it? Incinerate bugs with their convex lenses? But he just stares. A huge singular eye peering down at his captive bug.

  He brings the voice disguiser toy back over to the pipe and breathes deep and low and then he says, ‘Water?’

  ‘Yes!’ I say. ‘Drop down some water, please.’

  Please? Why am I being polite to this devil child?

  He reaches away. Something in his hand. Green? A snake? He lowers the hosepipe down. I will climb up it. I will pull until it’s taut from the outdoor tap and I will climb. Will it hold my weight? What do I do when I get to the vent pipe? Is there anything to hang on to? An escape hatch?

  The hose stops coming. It’s next to the camera device attached to his iPhone. Two snakes dangling down into the roof of the cellar. Out of reach. Hanging limp above my head.

  He runs away.

  I expected a bottle of water but I guess I can drink directly from the hose.

  The pipe squirms and stiffens. Gushing noises. Then water shoots down onto me and it is red hot, the hose has been coiled in the sun all morning. It’s like a shower in a spherical cubicle. Like an involuntary futuristic shower or being locked inside an isolation tank and it being filled without my consent.

  The water turns lukewarm and then cold. I drink from cupped hands, water spraying all over my face and my arms and my T-shirt.

  I gulp it down.

  The water is forest-well water, pale brown although I can’t tell from this deluge, and it tastes of nuts and bolts and screws. I gulp down more and it cools me and it soothes me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I shout up, but the noise of the spray means I can’t hear Mikey’s response, if he even gave one. ‘Turn it off.’

  Nothing.

  ‘You can turn it off now.’

  But he does not turn it off.

  The water has turned ice-cold and it’s flowing down to the sump pump drain but it is not being pumped. The pump is either turned off or it’s not operational. The water comes back up through the drain.

  ‘Turn the water off now,’ I scream up towards the pipe in the ceiling. Nothing.

  My aids are getting wet from splash back but there’s nowhere safe for me to put them. ‘No more water!’ I yell.

  Nothing.

  Ankle deep, now. The water-level rising.

  My feet chill in my boots. The water reaches above the top of my ankles and I feel sick with fear as ice-cold well-water floods my boots and freezes my feet and runs in between my toes. I walk around the base of this egg, splashing, trying to think. But the water level is rising.

  Filmed and flooded, all at once.

  Drowned.

  A snuff movie.

  I scream, ‘Help me!’ and it sounds different now, the acoustics have changed again, I’m a rat in a flooded sewer, a rat with no chance of survival.

  The noise of the water is growing. Water splashing down and hitting water. My screams. That silent snake camera watching the whole thing. Recording me. Mikey’s face just visible through the pipe. Him watching me watching him.

  I splash over to the steps and heave at the door again but it does not budge.

  Headlines flash before my eyes. Headlines about a journalist who dies in a locked cold store. Drowned. The comments underneath the online article. About how she should have stayed away. How if you agitate a hornets’ nest you should expect to get stung.

  ‘I will give you whatever you want,’ I yell up to Mikey. He must be able to hear what I’m saying. ‘I’ll come stay with you and your dad if you like. I’ll let you drive my truck. I’ll give you pocket money.’

  He says something back through the voice disguiser toy but I can’t hear him.

  ‘What did you say?’ I scream.

  Nothing.

  No repetition.

  I think about Mum and Dad side by side in their Karlstad graves. Two newish headstones. Room for one more.

  ‘My PlayStation,’ I scream. ‘I’ll give it to you. And all my grown-up games.’

  The water’s almost up to my waist now. How long until it reaches the ceiling? Another hour? Two hours? The doll head floats towards me, bald, one eyelid still opening and closing.

  It’s freezing.

  My teeth begin to chatter. Warm up there and freezing cold down here.

  And then the lights go off.

  48

  No sparks or flash of light. No warning. Just darkness.

  The cold store is living up to its name alright. Freezing cold. Storing me.

  ‘Open the door or I will
drown,’ I say, and then my eyes fill with tears. ‘Open it!’

  My tears feed the rising tide and the water surges up to my chest and takes my breath with it.

  So, so cold.

  How long until hypothermia? How much time do I have?

  Through the vent pipe I see a warm summer’s day, a boy playing with his toys, a blue sky. It’s a Midsommar idyll up there and some new form of hell down here, a sub-level that Dante missed, a grisly mezzanine floor not even he could have imagined.

  Somebody come, please. Anyone. Somebody take this kid away and help me.

  Mikey says something else with his miniature plastic loudhailer, his voice a synthesised grumble I cannot understand. He retracts the hose and the camera so they’re both high in the pipe. The water reaches my chin and I realise the walls of this thing are ball shaped so the flooding will speed up from this point on.

  ‘Help!’ I scream. ‘Mikey, your mum would not have wanted this. Please. Open the doors.’

  Nothing.

  I sit on the stairs but I feel I need to be under the pipe, under the boy, under the air flow. To plead with him. To beg. I’m floating now. Treading water. My boots are heavy. Do I take them off? Do I remove my clothes and swim around to stay warm? To stay alive?

  I remove my aids and hold them up in one hand and then stick my head underwater to see my laces. The shock of being completely submerged in freezing water pushes the last of the stale air from my lungs. I surface and cough up water and splutter and my eyes are streaming and my body is shutting down. It’s too cold. Not enough hope in this closed space. Nobody rational to appeal to.

  I put my hearing aids back in. They’re wet. I can hear the roaring and splashing of the water through one but it’s fuzzy.

  I kick off my boots and that helps a little.

  I tread water, my feet cycling under me like a duck on a village pond.

  The doll head floats past again, this time face down. Deceased.

  The water lifts me and I feel around the smooth ceiling for an escape option. I climb the stairs and push the doors again but they are sealed tight. The water level rises less quickly because some water leaks through the door gaps now. But it is still rising. I swim to be underneath the pipe.

  The water rises more and I put my lips up to the mouth of the pipe as if it’s a snorkel.

  I breathe.

  My last desperate breaths through this vent pipe.

  Gasping, my legs flailing under the water, my head pressed tight to the ceiling.

  Cold water on my cheeks.

  Up my nose.

  I snort it out and take one last deep breath.

  Lips clamped tight.

  Vibrations.

  Help me, Dad. Stop this.

  I gulp in water, my chest convulsing with the cold.

  My vision blurs.

  I’m back at Mum’s hospice bedside.

  Darkness.

  49

  The cold-store doors fly open.

  Light.

  Noise.

  An arm plunges down into the cold well-water and I move towards it holding my breath, my face pressed up to the ceiling of the cellar.

  Someone pulling me out.

  Helping me.

  I find the stair with my feet and scramble up out the doors and fall on the grass spluttering water and panting.

  Viggo’s standing next to me.

  He looks utterly mortified.

  ‘Thank you,’ I croak, still coughing up well water and phlegm.

  He stares at me and then at Mikey, cowering in his shadow, the phone and the snake camera tight in the little boy’s hand.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asks Viggo. I can read his lips. He looks at me then to Mikey.

  I nod but I am still coughing, still shivering, still spluttering.

  Thank God he came back home in time.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say again.

  The hose flops around spraying the dry earth.

  Viggo takes off his wedding ring and puts it in the pocket of his slacks and then he turns to Mikey.

  ‘What have you done to her?’ he says. ‘You can’t lock people up, boy. You can’t do things like that.’

  Mikey looks down at the grass.

  ‘Hold out your hand,’ says Viggo.

  One of my aids starts working again but it’s not like normal. There’s interference. White noise.

  Mikey squirms and grimaces and holds out his hand but it is shaking and I want to say, ‘no’. I want to say, ‘don’t do that’.

  But I say nothing, panting for breath, relieved Viggo came home when he did.

  Mikey’s hand is outstretched. Quivering.

  ‘Hold it steady, boy,’ says Viggo. ‘Stop shaking.’

  Mikey scrunches his eyes and turns his head but he does not cry. He steadies his hand.

  Viggo pulls his arm back and ignores the outstretched hand and smacks the boy round the side of the head.

  Mikey goes down.

  Two of us down on the wet grass, cold water bubbling all around us. Mikey sobbing.

  ‘Up to your room,’ says Viggo.

  Mikey gets to his feet and I can see a thin trickle of blood on his earlobe.

  I’m dizzy with all this. I want to get back to the safety of my truck so I climb to my knees and then try to stand. Viggo helps me. His hand is red where he hit his own child.

  ‘I need to go,’ I say.

  ‘I am so, so sorry,’ says Viggo. ‘He hasn’t been the same since the news of his mother. Mikey’s not normally like this. I didn’t raise him this way. Please, come inside and I’ll get you a towel. It’s his mother. The sad news, so to say. I am sorry, Tuva.’

  We step to his back door and go inside. I’m still shivering. My left aid beeps. Viggo gets me a towel from his WC and I use it over my hair and face.

  ‘Hot drink?’ he says.

  ‘I need to go now,’ I say, my clothes dripping on his pine floor, puddles forming all around me. Mud covering my socks.

  Suddenly I’m exhausted. But I hold back my tears.

  ‘Let me get you a bigger towel.’

  ‘Thank God you came back,’ I say.

  He runs off and I try to catch my breath. My Hilux is right outside the window and that is a real comfort right there. Stun gun, knife, phone.

  Viggo comes back.

  He looks at me.

  His gaze runs slowly down my body.

  His grey-blue eyes flash. They change.

  He looks me up and down and swallows hard, and then he bites his lower lip and says, ‘Take this.’

  I cross my arms and awkwardly reach for it.

  It’s not a towel.

  It’s a robe.

  I can hear the high-pitch mouse repellers he has in the house and I can see the houseplants on every surface, on every shelf. He picks up a remote control from the coffee table. Next to it lies the green-handled combat knife I saw him wear on the Utgard search. I look at it, then at him. He’s staring at my body, not bothering to disguise his attention.

  ‘I’m going,’ I say, turning around, but he’s too fast. He’s blocking my path and I am too exhausted to scream. ‘Let me out right now.’

  ‘Dry off and put that on, then you can go. I will not have you leaving here and catching pneumonia, not after what Mikey did. I couldn’t live with myself.’

  I can just about hear Mikey upstairs sobbing and banging his foot on the floor.

  ‘Put it on, you can take it with you and return it another day. There’s the bathroom, have some privacy.’

  He points to the downstairs WC.

  The CD drawer of a stereo opens.

  I take the robe and shut myself inside the WC. There is no key. I can’t lock him out. I sit on the closed toilet seat. Think, Tuva. Just put the robe on and then leave. Polite and casual, don’t provoke him.

  I stand and unfold the robe.

  It’s peach coloured.

  Smells musty. Mothballs. A hint of perfume.

  Silk.

  There�
��s a name embossed on the breast pocket.

  It says, ‘Linda.’ It’s the robe from the honeymoon photos, from the police statement.

  I bring my palm to my face and squeeze my skin until it hurts. He wants me to wear his dead wife’s silk robe?

  I move my eye over the keyhole, my nose scraping the door.

  The living room. Pot plants. A stack of Sudoku and crossword books. Viggo moving around. Muttering something under his breath. He sprays something into his mouth. Checks his hair. A tea light flickers on the coffee table, next to an expensive-looking Bible.

  What the fuck?

  I’m shivering, still freezing cold, so I put the robe on over my clothes.

  The first bars of ‘Unchained Melody’ come drifting out of his stereo speakers. I hear it but my aids still aren’t working. It’s distorted.

  I see him grow larger in the keyhole.

  He’s approaching the door.

  50

  I turn and open the WC window and climb up and throw myself out of it.

  I hit the ground and go over on my ankle.

  Something cracks. I stifle a scream and bite into my thumb.

  No noise from inside the house.

  I crouch and hobble along the rear of the house and that hose is still bubbling and hissing and flapping around. Pain surges up my leg. I clench my teeth and see the water pooling at the base of a twisted old apple tree, flooding one of Mikey’s homemade dens.

  I keep low, skirting under a window so Viggo won’t see. I know what he had in mind. I’ve seen that look before.

  Chainsaws scream in the distance.

  Is my ankle broken? Fractured?

  I scoot past a rusting charcoal grill. He’ll think I’m still in the WC, still changing into his dead wife’s robe. I reach the safety of my Hilux.

  I try the door.

  Bastard.

  He locked my truck.

  I can see my bag on the passenger seat. Stun gun. Knife. Phone.

  My knees almost buckle beneath me. My ankle is throbbing but there’s no bone poking through the skin.

  I must run. My only option.

  Which way do I turn? Right or left?

  The sun beats down on my head and I’m drying now and my left aid is working again. Right is uphill to the wood-carving sisters but that way’s five or more kilometres and the hill would finish me off. Left is the hoarder’s house and then on to the main road. That scarecrow with a living pulsating wasp-nest tumour for a face. The blackened Midsommar pole alone in an isolated field. I set off. Two kilometres this way. I run but really it’s more of a hobble and every few steps I look back over my shoulder towards Viggo’s dark red torp cottage and his white Volvo parked outside, the ‘Careful. Kids on Board’ still erect on the roof.