This River Awakens

by Steven Erikson

  I swung my attention to the trapdoor above me. It was beyond reach, so I stepped up on to the window sill. Father had said to use the stepladder if I had to, but from the sill I found I could push the door upward. Woodchips and sawdust drifted down. I pushed harder and it cleared the attic floor and slid to one side.

  I hefted my knapsack and tossed it up through the opening. It disappeared into the darkness and I heard a thump. Then I gripped the edges and swung away from the sill, hanging a moment before pulling myself up.

  The attic’s floor wasn’t flat, as I’d thought it would be. A grid-work of boards lay set on end about thirty inches apart, the spaces filled with woodchips. I flicked on the flashlight and directed the beam forward.

  A narrow corridor ran no more than ten feet ahead, opening out into a larger space. An attic with tunnels. Tense with sudden excitement, I crawled forward.

  II

  In 1962, while towing an Iberian oil tanker into Halifax Harbour, a Samson cable snapped ten feet under water. The first indication Walter Gribbs, able-bodied seaman on the tug Lifeliner, had had of danger as he stood near the winch amidships was the growing shriek behind him. He awoke two days later in the Halifax General Hospital, suffering from a severe concussion and a partial loss of hearing in his left ear.

  Suddenly freed from the tension created by the tanker’s weight, the cable had recoiled back to the tug. It swept three men from the deck in less than a second. Walter was the only one still breathing. One had gone down into the water, wrapped in the cable, where he drowned before anyone could get to him. The other man had been decapitated.

  Nineteen sixty-two was also Walter’s last year at sea. After the accident he found it difficult to keep his balance on a sidewalk, much less a pitching deck. For him it was over. He soon realised that living close to the sea was like sleeping night after night beside a woman he couldn’t touch. He boarded a train bound for the centre of the continent, and eventually found a job at the Yacht Club. Once a seaman, now a grounds keeper.

  Gribbs had always been a solitary man. Even among a crew months out at sea he remained a loner – it was never an obvious thing; it never led to discomfort or resentment. He was there when needed, ready with a smile, and somehow able to mend arguments as a healer mends broken bones, and though he didn’t say much, when he spoke he was listened to.

  And yet there had always been a distance between him and everyone else. Not a wall – nothing so deliberately constructed – but a span of nothingness that no one could cross, and that distance had grown steadily for as long as he could remember. It had never left him feeling lonely, for inside his head there lived a rhythm, a slow music that gave every thought, every memory, the cadence of a poem, or a song. He’d heard stories told for most of his life, stories recounting the tragic lives of women in ports, stories told by old men in ship’s cabins and staterooms, who’d seen their share and more. He’d heard poems that lodged in his memory and stayed with him, and he’d seen things with his own eyes that were of themselves poetry.

  The music in his mind cushioned him, made him an observer of the outside world. Gribbs had never spent much effort trying to understand that world, but he did strain endlessly to catch its every note.

  It had been at sea that Gribbs found his lover. He’d feel her coming in the air; he’d be the first on board to see her smudge on the horizon; and when she arrived – the old Witch, the wild-haired lover who lifted high the seas and brought the squalling sky down with howling winds and curtains of rain – Gribbs would be the first to greet her, and he’d talk to her, his words gently reproachful, and he’d sing her lullabies and roll out poems and stories that his mates would swear calmed her, easing her rage, and so saving their lives.

  You being nice to the lady today, Gribbs? they’d ask, the question its own refrain, from ship to ship, wherever Gribbs signed on. How’s her mood, Gribbs? They knew he’d be there when she came, singing for their lives.

  His second night on the prairies, he’d awoken in his hotel room to the fury of a summer storm. He’d thought he’d left her behind, but he realised, that night as he stood at the window and watched the storm, that she had followed him. And she was giving him an earful.

  * * *

  It was still spring. The witch had yet to stalk the skies. Gribbs knew that it wouldn’t be until the sultry heat of summer that she’d start blowing off steam.

  Under his breath, Gribbs murmured soft words. Maybe, he thought, maybe she was near enough to hear him. He told her about his dreams, describing in detail those frightening images that remained with him. He spoke of the flames sweeping the world, the skies splitting open, the rains pouring down like blood; he spoke, in low tones, of the crags of ice exploding skyward, and of the things that flew down from the darkness with swords of flame. He told her of the weeping children.

  The wind whispered against his face. After a time it dried his tears, which had come suddenly, inexplicably. He rose from his chair and closed the window.

  III

  Caesar lay on his back in the dirt, his legs in the air as Kaja and Shane padded up to him and took turns sniffing his anus. Less than sober but not quite drunk, Sten watched his dogs bemusedly from where he sat on the back porch steps.

  The sun, high overhead, had bathed him in sweat. He sat very still, concentrating on every trickle running down his body.

  I’ll just let it suck every drop from me. Cool, clear streams of poison soaking my clothes. They won’t need washing, my sweat will kill the germs. All of them. Hah.

  With a growl, Caesar rolled upright, then began strutting back and forth along one side of the kennel.

  ‘Christ,’ Sten muttered, ‘you’re one helluva bastard, Caesar.’ The big male had a good ten pounds on his brother Shane, and more on Kaja, his mother. ‘And yet you play the suck, eh?’ Sten shook his head. ‘Max had you all beat, you know that? And he never played the suck.’

  Damn but I’m thirsty. Hell, just one beer. Just one? No, sweat it out. Just like that.

  Kaja whined as she poked her nose at the cage door. Her tail half wagged, then dipped and went still as her deep brown eyes met Sten’s gaze. A moment later she turned and walked to the far corner where she lay down in the shade.

  ‘I’m not letting you out,’ Sten told them. He wiped sweat from his face with a sleeve. ‘It’s simple, you see.’ He giggled. ‘We’re all out of garbage bags.’

  He could hear the vacuum cleaner moving from room to room in the house behind him. Every now and then came a skittering clatter as the machine picked up some more broken glass. From room to room, a methodical beast removing evidence. He smiled. I like machines.

  ‘All out of garbage bags.’

  He stiffened in sudden fear as the door swung open behind him. A moment later, Jennifer walked past, ignoring him. Sten watched her. Her golden hair reached down to the small of her back, just above the patched, faded and embroidered jeans. She’s going to be a tall one. Just like my old man. Damn, she’s some looker, though. He gazed at the deliberate sway of her hips, and frowned.

  ‘Hey, what’re you doing that for?’ he blurted.

  She stopped and slowly faced him. ‘Doing what, Daddy?’

  Sten’s gaze fell. He stared at his hands for a moment, then down to his stockinged feet. He scowled – he didn’t like looking at his hands. Not now. ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Why?’

  Sten glanced up at her, then at the dogs in the kennel. ‘I just want t’know, tha’sall.’

  ‘Oh well, in that case. I’m going to meet someone. He’s going to sell me some drugs. There, how’s that?’

  Sten closed his hands, wrapping one hand over the other. ‘Oh,’ he managed. His heart hammered painfully against his ribs. He felt like he was sweating from every pore now, and it sent a shiver through him.

  ‘Bye, Daddy,’ Jennifer said over her shoulder as she walked away.

  Shane leapt against the kennel’s wire wall as she passed, snapping and growling. Sten jerked to
his feet. Jennifer laughed. Sten’s anger became rage. He charged the kennel.

  ‘Shut up!’ he roared, driving his fists against the cage.

  Yelping, Shane scurried away, stopping every two or three steps to cast a cowering glance at Sten.

  His fingers twisting the wires, Sten stared down at the dog. ‘Just shut up!’ he hissed. That’s my daughter! He wanted to scream those words, knowing that she’d hear him. But it was impossible. His throat closed up at the very thought – she’d only laugh again.

  Sten’s eyes slowly focused. All three dogs now crawled towards him, whimpering, their tails wagging fitfully. ‘I’ll do it,’ he whispered. ‘I will. Garbage bags, for all fucking three of ya.’ He released his grip on the wires and stumbled back to the porch steps. In the house the vacuum cleaner stopped abruptly. Sten sat down on the rough boards again, and held his head in his hands.

  All the glass is gone. So what’s she doing now? His hands throbbed. He dragged them down his cheeks and let them fall into the shadow of his crotch. I’ll sweat it all out, and the poison’ll be gone. But what’s she doing now?

  Inexorably, Sten felt his gaze travel down to his hands. Even in the shadows he could see the lumps, bruises and cuts on them. The cuts had a regular pattern. ‘Those,’ he muttered, ‘those were her teeth. Her teeth done those.’

  He wanted to cry, but the sun had baked him and there wasn’t anything left inside. ‘God!’ he hissed. ‘But I’m thirsty!’

  IV

  The attic room wasn’t as large as I’d thought it would be. Windowless, it was about the same size as the master bedroom. On one wall a wide, square projection rose up past the angled roof. Packed with insulation, with red bricks peeking out from tears in the fibreglass padding, it took me a moment to realise I was looking at the chimney.

  I walked over to it, then swung around and played the light across the room. The far wall split into three corridors. The one on my right was the aisle I’d come from, leading back to the trapdoor. The middle aisle ran lengthways down the mid-line of the house, while the corridor on the left ran parallel to the outer wall.

  Clumps of cotton and tissue – rat nests – lay here and there amidst the woodchips, but my flashlight detected no movement, and the only sound I heard was my own breathing.

  I chose the middle corridor. It ended at about thirty feet with a blank wall. The third corridor was the same. I returned to the large room and sat down on one of the boards.

  The wall at the end of all three aisles couldn’t be the house’s outer, north wall. When I’d come through the trapdoor from my room I’d appeared at the corridor’s far end, and yet I knew that, north of my room, there was a hallway and then the staircase, and beside the staircase was the guest room. So, where was the rest of the attic?

  ‘Owen!’ The voice was faint, coming up from below. I hurried over to the trapdoor.

  ‘Owen!’

  I knelt, stuck my head down into the opening. ‘Up here!’

  ‘Aren’t you finished yet?’ my mother asked.

  I pictured her standing there at the foot of the stairs, her head tilted up, seeing nothing but walls and carpeted steps. Below me the chaos of my room seemed almost orderly. ‘Just about!’ I called down.

  ‘Your father’s home, and he wants you out in the garage!’

  ‘Okay!’

  Enough fooling around, I told myself. Time for traps and poison.

  * * *

  It was raining. I watched my father draping a paint-spotted tarp over the machine in the driveway. Water ran down my face like oily sweat. Like Father, I didn’t wipe it away.

  ‘You do the whole house?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘Didn’t see any, but they’re there, all right.’

  ‘Rat shit?’

  Again I nodded. ‘And nests, I think.’

  He placed his hands on his hips. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the crawlspace. That’s where I put the poison.’

  He grunted. ‘Good. You’ve done enough. I’ll handle the garage myself. Got the traps?’

  I handed him the equipment bag. He opened it and looked inside, then nodded and walked into the garage.

  I felt reluctant to leave, regretting the end of this conversation. It’d seemed so grown up, curt and professional. The light rain felt good on my face. It had been a good day. My gaze found the roof and lingered there. I hadn’t told Father about the rat nests in the attic, because I didn’t want him going up there. I’d found a secret, and the secret was behind the small window just under the roof’s edge. It was a half-circle, flat end down, with dark panes set in a web of black iron. Figures of coloured glass filled the spaces. I’d found no windows when I’d been up in the attic, so I knew that behind it was a hidden room, beyond the walls at the end of the three corridors – the final third of the attic.

  The slope of the shingled roof stopped short of the window, and a squat construction projected out around it, neatly framing it. The construction had its own roof, steeply sloped and brown-shingled. At the pinnacle rose a lightning rod.

  Amazed that I had never noticed it before, I walked around to the back of the house. As I passed the living-room window I saw Mother standing beside the fireplace, lighting a cigarette. The sight of her made me think about the girls Lynk and Roland had talked about, smoking behind the school. I wondered if my mother had started the same way. I wondered if it was something girls did. Of course, men smoked, too, but that was different, somehow. Less grown up.

  There wasn’t much of a back yard, just a slope of muddy grass leading down to an undercut bank and then the river. I faced the house, and there it was – another window, this one smaller, round like a porthole. It gleamed milky silver, reflecting the sky. With my back to the river, I studied the window, my imagination running wild. Whatever was in that secret room, it was mine. No one else would know, not even Lynk, Roland and Carl. No one.

  V

  It had taken a third of a tube of Orajel to blunt the pain. Elouise stood at the kitchen window and silently gazed down at her husband’s back. In one hand she clutched a wad of tissue, which she periodically brought to her mouth to wipe away bloody drool.

  But the numbness was welcome, though her neck remained sore and the swelling made her jaw feel heavy. And despite the effect of the Orajel she could feel, deep in the bones, Sten’s knuckles. She wondered if that feeling would ever go away.

  He hadn’t remembered any of it, he’d told her in the morning, voicing his claim as if it were a worthy defence, excusing what he’d done. Elouise wondered. She thought of the look in his eyes, the moment when he threw his fist at her face. She imagined he’d seen the same look in her own eyes – hatred.

  Even now the thought shocked her. She’d always believed, no matter what happened, that the love they held for each other would survive. But now that conviction was gone, and she wondered if that hatred had been there all along, buried deep inside.

  Silent, Elouise stared down at her husband’s hunched back. He hadn’t moved since his last words. Still, she could almost feel the war that was even now raging inside him. He wanted a drink, and the only things stopping him were the cut and bruised hands in his lap. She felt no pity. In fact, she felt nothing at all. She had become as numb as her torn, bruised mouth.

  And that’s for the better. I need to keep from feeling anything, and I especially need to keep from panicking. I mustn’t do that. Not now. She had come close to it every now and then through the morning hours, and it always began with the question: what do I do now?

  She brought the wad of tissue to her mouth. The effects of the Orajel were wearing off. The pain was coming back, behind a cool itch tingling along her jaw. The tissue in her hand had soaked through. Saliva trickled down her chin. More Kleenex.

  ‘Elouise!’ Sten’s voice snapped from out on the porch. ‘Bring me a beer. There’s one in the freezer.’

  In the freezer. Of course. She wiped her chin with a sleeve, then turned from the window and approached the refri
gerator. ‘Cubbin,’ she said.

  VI

  The puddles alongside the highway lay sheathed in the night’s ice. As I stood waiting for the 7:45 bus to take me into the city I could see my breath. The winter came back each night, and in the early morning, with the sun a cold white disc on the horizon, the frost clung to the air. Like a passing beast, winter had licked the yellow spikes of grass around the fence-posts; it had lain down here and there, leaving ochre pools of shard-strewn water, and its breath had left a melting dazzle of silver on the highway’s blacktop.

  I waited, watching the cars and trucks hiss past. The bus was late, and I feared that I’d miss my connection. It was Monday, the beginning of a long day and a long week. Up at 6:30, home at 6:00. I longed for school’s end, I longed to escape the city’s hold on me.

  Twin shadows crossed the highway a little to one side of my position at the bus stop, dipping down into the ditch. I heard the flap of wings and didn’t bother looking up.

  My thoughts remained with the city. Though the old classroom and the faces were familiar, I now felt like a stranger, and the old world had lost its drama, becoming small, confined, crowded with meaningless gestures.

  The bus arrived, and the driver greeted me with the now familiar refrain. ‘Morning, Mr Gloom.’ I nodded in his direction as I clambered up the steps, dropped my ticket into the change-holder, then headed down the aisle to my usual seat at the very back. I leaned against the side and stared out at the scene sweeping past, squinting to make out details through the green-tinted glass. Heat gusted up into my face, smelling of oil and metal and dust.

  Mr Gloom. Yeah, well, who wouldn’t be gloomy? It’s too early in the morning for sane people.

  Through the window the city took form, encroaching on my thoughts – buildings, stores, cars, people, colours. It all seemed washed out, as if mere moments from crumbling away completely – everything into piles of dust, even the people.