Thunder Falls

by Michael Lilly

  The contrast between the deadened silence of the house’s interior and the perpetual, active life outside is a small shock; as I look around, flitting shadows and mischievous shapes assail my tense mind. I almost retreat back into the house and wait there until morning, but that panic ceases, its termination allowing for a fuller, more present lucidity. The moonlight hits the leaves in an ethereal way that seems to transcend the barrier between this dimension and the next, like mere holograms, massless and untouchable.

  Down in town, the song of the crickets permeates the late summer like a dye disperses into clear water, but up here, they are either silent or absent. While a more survival-focused portion of me wants to call it a night, the rest of me, without such tedious inhibitions, itches to explore the other cottages around here. Chances are high that a person would only have one base, but as that was the first house I explored, it’s a low chance that, as the first one, it alone contained all of the information of interest to be uncovered.

  Before parting from the property, I head to the west side to look at the side of the house containing the window of the strange hideout room. A small rock trim lines the house and reaches maybe four and a half feet high. Above that, a wooden ledge wraps around the house. A window sits between these two. Unlike its south-facing counterparts, the glass is intact, with one thin crack, visible by the moonlight, bisecting the big glass pane vertically, a jagged line illuminated by the lunar light that makes it look like a bolt of lightning.

  As far as I can see, this wall is quite accommodating to a climber, even one of average caliber. Protruding ledges are both abundant and sufficient, allowing for a swift, if a little labored, ascent.

  One fact strikes into my mind like a blacksmith’s hammer descending upon hot iron: the window is open. Adrenaline surges into my veins and courses through me with the purposeful charge of stampeding rhinos, their footprints a direct mimicry of my heartbeat.

  Have I simply had excellent timing in my exit of the house, or have I been under observation this whole time? Surely, it must be the latter; any good karma I’ve earned in my lifetime has been spent, the last of my tokens being exchanged for finding this particular structure in the first place.

  A morbid, heedless segment of me wants to call out to him, make my presence known, connect with him, but my inhibitions rematerialize, powered by my freshly charged sense of self-preservation. I have no idea what I could be getting myself into, after all; I have no insight into his mental status, access to weapons, or capability. I could be calling up to the window as if to Rapunzel, only to find that my princess is actually a sociopathic sharpshooter with a vendetta against intruders. That possibility is quite enough to deter me from intruding further.

  Even so, my exploration itinerary isn’t limited to the smattering of modest, decaying houses in the area. However, my discovery makes me think that my next destination, the school, may already have been picked clean by the squatter. Based on the nature of the material I found there, he has probably combed and sifted through every bit of accessible information in there, relevant or not. Regardless, the thrill of exploring abandoned places is quite enough allure for me, and my non-encounter with the mystery squatter isn’t enough to keep me from it.

  So I step away from the property with a half-fake confidence, trying to ignore the surveilling gaze I feel boring into my back. It buzzes behind my head like a persistent mosquito.

  I do note the non-aggression in my observer’s actions (or lack thereof); he knew where I was. He must have a familiarity with the layout of the house and the land. If he wants to harm me, he’s had plenty of opportunity to do so already. He could have ambushed me at virtually any point during my exploration of the small house. So while I can’t necessarily embroider a ‘Team Remy’ letterman jacket for him, I can infer that he’s not necessarily aggressive in nature. Beyond that, the extent of my knowledge about him is only that he hides away in an abandoned house and that he harbors an unresolved obsession with the suicide that ultimately closed the school all those years ago.

  I remain under my mask of nonchalance until I’m reliably out of sight from the cottage. Only then do I allow myself to look behind me, my sight able to join my hearing in my strained surveillance of my surroundings.

  Adjusted to the dark and assisted by the moon’s glow, I’m relieved to find that my visual assessment of the small ridge I just breasted to be satisfactory. No one is following me closely enough to worry me—not that I can tell, at least.

  But of course, by law of the universe, where one sense is finally permitted a measure of freedom, another is limited, so although I’m glad to be free to look around with (presumably) no scrutiny, my hearing is impaired by the sudden increase in the waterfall’s volume. Additionally, the spray and rumble of the crashing water are ever more palpable, further consuming my brain’s sensory bandwidth.

  From here, the trail wraps up and around the ravine, to a bridge that spans the river, which feeds the falls. The school is supposed to be on the other side of the roaring cascade, overlooking both it and a scenic, mountainous series of cliffs on its hind side. I find myself wondering, abruptly, whether they had stopped to consider the inherent potential risks of building a treatment facility so close to so many geographical dangers. I wonder if a student had ever had a bad day and attempted to hurl herself off the cliff into the churning waters below.

  I shake myself loose from that morbidity and continue my trek, which has become something of a hike.

  The other campus, for boys, is all the way on the other side of town, amid its own cluster of worn down houses. Again I visit the idea that other abandoned subsections contain interesting things, but I push the thought aside; it does me no good here and now. My consciousness is better spent assessing the area around me in case the squatter turns stalker. I don’t see that as likely, but as already demonstrated tonight ‘unlikely’ does not mean ‘impossible,’ so I stay on my toes anyway.

  I spend my hike breathing in the misty air from the waterfall and looking all around in case of followers. My left ear is pretty much useless for now, as nothing around creates enough noise to be heard over the falls to the left, and even my right ear has trouble picking anything up. I can’t even hear my own footsteps over those formidable decibels.

  When I reach the north side, the crashing roar of the water below is all but replaced by the innocent babble of the river, which is far quieter than I expected. This is a relief. Now, if there’s anyone moving about in the surrounding trees and bushes, I’ll be much more likely to detect it.

  As I crest the hill, my right—the north—opens up just beyond the river to a gradual, sweeping slope which turns into a meadow full of wildflowers and long grass. I make a mental note to come back some day during daylight hours; the view must be absolutely breathtaking. But again, this thought can be categorized as ‘irrelevant’ and filed under ‘entertain later.’ So I turn away from the moonlit meadow, heading toward the school once again.

  A chain-link fence surrounds the property, and a beaten, damaged gate sways and creaks gently in the breeze. Despite its state of ruin, the clinking gate sports a chain and padlock which gleam in the moonlight. Fortunately, I brought my lock picks with me.

  Raking the pins is a lock-picking technique (though, in this case, I use that term generously) in which the lock picker holds his tension lever taut against the turning direction of the lock with one hand while the other uses the pick to pull outward while also applying pressure against the pins. The hope is that, with the pressure applied, the pins simply get locked into place as the pick pulls out. Obviously, such a crude technique is only likely to work (‘likely’ being another word used rather loosely) on cheap locks. Providently, that’s what this lock is, and it clicks open with just a couple of rakes. The gate creaks an ominous song as it swings open. I stash the lock itself in my pack and walk toward the school, dark and tall and foreboding. Given the geographical setting, I half expect lightning to strike it, like Dr. Frankenstein’s la
b atop a hill all its own.

  The locked doors attached to the school prove to be more challenging than the outer gate. I wonder whether the squatter also has lock picking in his arsenal. The lock clicks open (a heavy, industrial click-thock) and I hear it echo through the dark lobby even after the door swings open.

  To my dismay, it seems that just about every door is locked. This makes travel through the facility slow and burdensome, but at least I’ll get a hell of a lot of practice in lock picking. The lobby is dark; the only windows face to the east, and that’s through two sets of glass doors facing the same, while the moon is currently at play in the western sky. A lingering sense of being watched keeps me from using my flashlight, but I’m sure that, after another door or two, I’ll be unable to function in the darkness without it.

  I’ve always had a fond affinity for darkness. I did not harbor a fear of it as a child (at least, no more than the fear which afflicted me during daylight hours), and in fact, it brought with it a restful sense of relief, as my abusive monster of a father would retire. Sometimes, during those starlit hours, I would perform a simple daily type of routine, like brushing my teeth or making breakfast, relishing in that I could do whatever I pleased without the otherwise constant fear that my father would see fit to interrupt me with a belt, a dowel, a wet rag, or his bare hands. I would fantasize, not of my father undergoing an overnight transformation into a Nice Person—those fantastic hopes had long since been dashed—but that he was simply gone. Summoned permanently to some plumbing conference, abandoned us, turned up dead, I didn’t care. Any way his foul being could no longer have power or influence over my life.

  Perhaps it was the birthplace of my morbid indifference to death and my ever-deepening attraction to the macabre—wishing my father away, even if it meant decaying under six feet of earth. As long as his headstone was nothing worth looking at—the same amount of character as he had—I wouldn’t have given the slightest of fucks.

  Instead, it was my mother who left. I placed a lot of blame on her at first, but since she reappeared in my life I’m coming to believe more and more that she actually had no other choice. He was going to kill her. And if she took Trina and me with her, he would have looked for her, probably found her, killed her, and most likely turned and done the same to us. And while she knew that he would likely be enraged by her leaving, he would not pursue her, and he would not kill Trina or me. It was the only choice she had to keep all three of us alive. She could have gotten ahold of the police, but she’s seen firsthand that it’s not an immediate solution, and any solution other than immediate would have given Dad time to react—to retaliate.

  Now, the standby hours of society, the ones in which most of the population sleeps in innocent naiveté, remain the ones during which I’m most at ease. In addition, it has always been a nice break from my anxiety. Walking the streets of Riverdell at night brought with it none of the compulsions to which I insisted the rest of my life adhered. The moon. The stars. Orion. And darkness. They are my oldest, most reliable friends.

  The lobby opens to a small hallway of sorts, containing bathrooms and an office. Just across the hall is yet another set of doors, also locked. There are slim windows admitting a small amount of light into this area from the main entrance, but not enough to offer much insight as to the layout of the room. Immediately, my primary goal becomes to procure a key so that I don’t have to keep picking these locks—they can be quite the time suck. I consider finding objects like chairs and small garbage cans to hold the doors ajar, but I disregard that idea; it would save me time on my return trip, but it would also lead any pursuer, should there be one after all, straight to me. I play, too, with the idea of opening and propping a couple of other doors to distract and mislead, but that will only work as far deep as layers I care to open by picking locks.

  I have the sudden, panicked thought that should my lock picks fail me (or I them), I will end up trapped in here.

  In modern treatment centers, the locks are engaged by electromagnets. Thus, the risk of anyone being locked in is drastically reduced. The locks disengage when a fire alarm is pulled (or when the building is entirely without power), so that the risk of both staff and students not getting to safety is minimal.

  However, this school predates such uses for that technology, so every door has a traditional, mechanical lock instead.

  I worry about how much time I’ll spend in here if I don’t find a key and soon. I open the next set of doors and step into what seems to be the main hallway of the school building. One wall hosts several doors leading to what appear to be classrooms. They’ve been cleared of any desks or chairs, but the walls still bear signs with multiplication tables and sayings or poems designed to encourage kids to learn or to do their best. One such poster features a dog and a cat, smiling as they read a book together.

  One room, a little farther down the hall, looks to have been a music room. It has musical staffs on the wall, charting the most basic of scales. In a far corner, several music stands are clustered together, contrasting against the white wall like a tiny, black forest in the deadened wintry cold.

  Every noise I make echoes boldly through the dark, barren hallway, each footstep inciting a second and third and fourth and fifth, and for those moments, the ghosts of the past reappear here, filing to or from various classes, perhaps involved in chatter so easy that it could pass for jovial, of the immersive nature that, just for a minute, permits them to forget that they’re in a treatment facility and allows them to remember that they’re real, functioning humans.

  Todd was in treatment for a time, years ago. In fact, the trauma that sent him there was inflicted by the same perpetrator as mine: my father. In the same fashion, even. Todd had been too terrified to tell anyone about it, and even if he weren’t, he had no idea who my father was; he wouldn’t be able to tell on him anyway. That being the case, the trauma festered and putrefied until he started to self-harm. Todd had no idea why he was being sent away. In his mind, he was being punished for being punished for being punished, which only piled on more angst and frustration to his already heaping plateful.

  Todd never mentioned whether his experience there actually helped him, but I like to think that it did; that there are people, resources, organizations, willing to help struggling people through the hellish nightmares humans inflict upon each other. I’m not typically one for optimism, but even to consider the alternative—Todd, alone and confused and scared and wondering why everyone in his life wants to punish him even though he had no control over his life or his mind, all the while trying to fight through the tempestuous mental aftermath of physical and sexual abuse, akin to a dingy raft taking on a hurricane—is just too heartbreaking.

  Even now I tear up a little, but the freshly stirred dust may also be a contributing factor to that.

  Fuck I miss Todd.

  Four

  At the end of the hall, the doors rattle from the wind; apparently, a gale amasses outside. Most of the classrooms look the same, varying primarily in the degree and nature of decay and vandalism: a missing cabinet here, a hole in the wall there. Occasional graffiti adorns the walls, but it looks almost as old as the building itself. Most of it is unintelligible or misspelled, some of it both. Some looks like it was written by alumni, in pretty, loopy script with black or red paint; things one might expect: Fuck TF or TF 4evr. A penis here and there. The usual.

  I head back east toward the main entrance. Along the way, I spot a door marked ‘Jerome Batista, Program Director.’ If I were a spare set of keys, I think that’s where I would live.

  I pick and turn the lock and swing the door inward to be met with a darkness like unto the devil’s buttcrack. I stow my lock picks in my backpack’s outermost pocket in exchange for a flashlight. I click it on. The room is cramped, but functional. A heavy wooden desk sits solemnly in the center of the room, and I suspect that the chamber has seen a great many staff fired here, hanging their heads, whimpering, some of them maybe ushering in a raging s
torm of defiance.

  The walls are lined with empty, ceiling-high bookshelves that match the desk down to the wood and stain; perhaps even to the tree they came from. A worn metal filing cabinet at the back stands five feet tall and has an identical twin to its left. More matching. It seems that those behind the graffiti must have found a way into the school area without getting through any locked doors, as this room is seemingly untouched. Aside from the emptied shelves and the dust, it looks as though someone could have been going about his daily business here as recently as yesterday.

  There are loose papers strewn across the handsome desk, and there’s a bobblehead (a cactus with a sombrero and a maraca in each limb, all of which bobble) still upright. A fountain pen is lain across a couple of the papers, its inkwell sitting at the ready. Of course, the papers have yellowed a great deal, but they’re still perfectly legible. The one on the desk, bearing the weight of the abandoned fountain pen, looks like an admission paper. A small, hypothetical movie plays in my head.

  Batista, a hard-working hardass with a sweet tooth and a soft spot for human tenderness, sits behind his desk—and a mask of stoic vigilance. Finally, he thinks, ready to begin an economic upswing, after the Fucking Eboncore Fiasco. In relief, he dips his favorite pen—a gift from his late wife, Netty—and prepares to sign, to share one more triumph with his departed love, but then his door bursts inward, nearly coming off of its hinges. It’s his assistant, Eric, a young aspiring social worker. His eyes are all panic, but gutted of the typically associated urgency. Panic may not be the right word, he decides. No; panic means action. This, bless Eric’s soul, and Batista’s, is despair.