This River Awakens

by Steven Erikson

  Something was wrong. He leaned over the sink and rapped his knuckles on the window. He waited to see the glitter of eyes, waited to hear the rattles and the scraping claws. Nothing. They’re not there any more.

  He walked slowly into the hallway, threw on his winter parka and stepped into his boots. At the back door he flicked on the yard lamps, then went outside. The white light revealed each empty cage – its door back in place, and the thousands of mink tracks scattering everywhere, and among them, down each aisle, the tracks of a person – the boot imprints small, the steps short.

  The cold air came up under his parka, making his legs shiver, his crotch tighten. He could feel panic, deep inside him, but he wouldn’t let it out. No point in letting it out. And rage – but that too could wait.

  One of those boys. I should call the cops. But what can they do? It’s too late anyway. My beasts are free, racing away through the darkness, flowing across the night. They’ve escaped, each one insane, each one unleashed.

  He walked down the first row. My beasts are free. Out into the thaw. I’m ruined. Wiped out. The tracks in their thousands were all that remained, claws pinching the mud, darting memories of escape. Not one left. So many would die. On the highway, to dogs and owls, but mostly the highway. They’d run. Nothing will stop them, run until exhausted, run until dead of burst hearts.

  But I still have the ones in my cellar. Enough for me, for now. From now on. That’s the place for my … my anger, my revenge. Nothing more to say, nothing more to do. He turned around and headed back inside. My beasts are free. Thank God.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I

  Sten wasn’t home and the car was gone. So were the dogs. Maybe he’s taken them for a run.

  Elouise began preparing to make breakfast for her and Jennifer. It was Sunday, and Dr Roulston would be by before noon. She wondered if she’d be the only one there to meet him, since Jennifer was sure to head out – the day was clear, bright and warm. She’d want to be with Owen. It had come slowly, but Elouise could now see the change that had come to her daughter. The anger was still there, of course, but Jennifer had found friends that mattered, and they’d given her a safe place, a refuge, where she found strength, maybe even faith.

  Elouise remembered Sundays as a child. She remembered a church, where they sang hymns and listened to an old man reading from the Bible. The sun would come down through the windows, stained by the glass into rainbow streams. A cloth on the altar, candles throwing out wavering light, some of them flickering dangerously through the morning – she had watched those ones, holding her breath when it seemed they would go out. She’d lose track of the old man’s words – only the candles mattered, and the fear that they’d go out. She couldn’t recall if they ever did.

  She stood in front of the sink. I’ll have to walk. At least a mile on the highway. I’ll be able to make the eleven o’clock service. I’ll wear the blue dress – it’s the only one that still fits, which is funny, because it used to be the only one I couldn’t wear any more. Not for years. I’ll leave Jennifer a note, and another one for the doctor.

  She returned the egg carton to the refrigerator and went upstairs to the bedroom.

  They’d stopped going to church after the war. With her brother’s death, a candle had gone out in the family, the fragile illusion of faith had been shattered. The men who came back cussed, smoked and drank. Some of them had spilled blood in churches, after all, and they were all more in this world and less in the other. Most of them believed in one thing – chance, the unguessable twist of fate. There were those who tried to go back, to the old ways, and some seemed to succeed – at least to all outward appearances, but so many others stood stiffly at the pews, fidgeting, their eyes turned inward, bringing with them memories of hell.

  Things changed. For everyone. It was harder to believe in God, and there were riches in the world now, so many temptations easily served.

  She looked at herself in the mirror. The dress carried her back ten, fifteen years, but the face that she saw looked old, pulled down by hard years.

  The front door banged open downstairs and she heard Sten’s boots clump into the living room. ‘Elouise!’ he called harshly. ‘Where the hell are you?’

  As she stepped into the hallway, she heard music from a record come on in Jennifer’s room. Elouise hesitated, then went downstairs.

  Sten had moved to the kitchen, tracking mud all over the floor. He looked sober, but exhausted and shaken. He was spooning ground coffee into the percolator. ‘Someone sprung them,’ he said, not turning. ‘My dogs. They’ve run off.’ He slammed the percolator down on an element and turned the heat on. Elouise went over and removed it, shaking it in answer to his glare – no water. He sighed and sat down as she went to the sink.

  ‘Car’s in the ditch,’ he said, massaging his temples. ‘Slid off a section road. I looked everywhere. Had to walk back. Think I broke the rad. And an axle. They’ve run off. I’ve got to call the farmers around here, tell them they can shoot if they have to.’ He paused and looked over at her. ‘That’s nice,’ he said sourly. ‘Getting dressed up for Roulston, eh?’

  She shook her head and took from her purse a pen and notepad. She wrote down Church and showed it to him.

  His face twitched as he read it, then he sat back, looking away. ‘A fuckin’ waste of time. What are you going to do, walk?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Fuckin’ waste of time. I’m heading out again. After some goddamned breakfast, which I see I’m going to have to make on my own. This is what it’s come to. Well, you go pray, dear. Go sing your hymns. Go, get out of my sight.’

  * * *

  Her path along the west side of the highway was rutted and muddy. There were dead animals everywhere, at least a dozen within sight – on the highway itself, flattened and smeared by tyres – and on the shoulders and in the ditch on her right. All the same kind of animals, small, their bodies longer than a cat’s, their fur a thick, dark brown. Weasels, or mink – she didn’t really know the difference. She stepped over them, walked around them, feeling fear, a growing sense of dread, as if she were in some way gathering each one to her, collecting something from each tiny, motionless body, assuming a burden that she couldn’t identify.

  Like the rabbit, they were so helpless to their fate. Where did they all come from? Where were they going?

  The gravel was soft and greasy, yielding beneath her boots. The sound of trickling water surrounded her, punctuated by the wet hiss coming from the occasional car. The sun felt surprisingly warm, and there was almost no wind. She could see the church spire now, rising above a line of leafless trees. Orthodox. I should have remembered. I’ve never been inside, but I’ve seen it from the car window. Orthodox. That would have mattered once, it would have stopped me. But now … now it’s just what’s built around the altar, just the walls holding it in. It doesn’t matter what’s on them or how they’re shaped, or that things are done differently inside. It doesn’t matter which face they’ve put on God. Not any more.

  She knew why she’d come. She was tired of being alone. She’d lost her beliefs; her solitary voice wasn’t strong enough against everything else. There’d be people inside, all believing, all knowing the importance of coming together. That was all that mattered. She didn’t need to ask for anything, didn’t need God answering her prayers – she no longer had faith in that, anyway. God was the solid wood of the altar under her hand, the sun’s heat out here as it filled the morning air, a hundred voices guiding a hymn. God was what couldn’t be called into question.

  I need to be reminded of that. That spire, the shiny chrome of the cars clustered out front, those crows hopping across the highway to feed on a dead animal, and the ones wheeling down from behind the spire, loud as they join all those others in the branches.

  Elouise reached the driveway. Her legs trembled. She could feel the weight of what she’d gathered on her journey – it had settled into her bones, as heavy as mourning for a lost one. As sh
e passed down the treed aisle, she looked up at the crows in the branches. They chattered, bickered, batted their wings and fidgeted on their perches. They all seemed to be waiting for something.

  She crossed the parking lot and approached the front steps. An organ was playing inside. Beside the front door stood a poster-board, listing the day’s sermon – in Ukrainian – but the word Welcome was written below it.

  Elouise turned at the sudden cacophony coming from the twin rows of trees. The crows, cawing and laughing, had taken to the air, flapping out over the highway, off to their bounteous feasting.

  They’ll find only flesh. The thought came to her all at once. I’ve done that much. I hope I can light candles here. After the service. Will that be possible? Their deaths can’t be questioned, after all. So, neither can their lives. The crows know that. They help the flesh disappear, and they don’t question anything. Why doubt the taste on your tongue? I’d speak for them all, if I could. My hand touching the body of God. A moment of comfort, of connection, for us all. I can free us all.

  She opened one of the heavy doors and stepped inside to singing, but she knew now that God’s music was behind her, filling the air.

  II

  The playground had turned into a lake. I saw Carl, in rubber boots, standing out in the middle. He had a sapling in his hands – at least seven feet long – which he used to push around pieces of ice.

  I stopped on the roadside. ‘Hey!’

  He looked over.

  ‘Where is everybody?’ I asked.

  Carl slowly sloshed towards me, making sure he didn’t get a soaker. He stopped on the other side of the flooded ditch and leaned on the pole. ‘What?’

  ‘Where’s Roland? I thought we were all meeting, heading down to the river?’

  Carl shrugged, then wiped his runny nose on the sleeve of his blue-checked jack-shirt. ‘Don’t know. I haven’t seen him. Or Lynk. Haven’t seen anybody.’ He glanced up at my face, then away. ‘Well. Roland. This morning. He was looking for Mr Louper.’

  ‘Louper? Jennifer’s dad? Why?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  I looked up the road. ‘What about Jennifer?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What are you doing out there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I pointed at his arm. ‘All that stuff come from just your nose, Carl? Is that all you do, make snot?’

  He hefted the sapling, water running down to his gloved hands. ‘Fuck off.’

  I grinned. ‘Gary beaten you up lately?’

  ‘No. Fuck off, Owen.’

  ‘How come, do you think? How come Gary doesn’t beat you up any more?’

  ‘’Cause you kicked him in the balls, I guess.’

  ‘Maybe because I told him not to,’ I said, watching his face.

  He looked at me sharply. ‘Why? So you could?’

  ‘I’ve never touched you,’ I said. ‘Not since that first time, on the boat. You’re not worth it, Carl.’

  ‘How come you hate me, Owen? I’ve never done nothing to you.’

  All those Carls. In every school. You get nailed early, and that’s it, you’re stuck. ‘Wipe your nose,’ I said, turning away.

  I thought about heading to Jennifer’s house, or at least hanging around outside until she saw me. But my mood had gone dark. I’d wanted to talk and wander around with Roland, even if it meant Lynk being there, too – even though they hated each other, they still hung out together. They’d been doing it too long, and there really wasn’t anyone else. I think they expected everything to settle down, even out, sooner or later. I think they were waiting for the return of how things used to be – a year ago, two years ago. Before the body. Before me.

  I decided to head to the river alone.

  Lynk didn’t even believe the body ever existed. I couldn’t understand him. He’d seen it along with the rest of us. We’d all talked about it, and he’d been the one to convince the rest of us not to call the cops. He’d talked about the guy being murdered, and the killer was out there and would go after us. Ridiculous, when I thought about it now. We’d been like … kids.

  So much had changed. We’d since built our worlds anew, and each of us in a different way. Maybe Lynk’s version couldn’t accept what we’d found.

  I went along the road that ran beside the bottom end of the playground. Carl had returned to the middle of the lake, but I could see him glance over at me every now and then. I left his line of sight, slipping through the windbreak and emerging on to the south edge of Fisk’s land. I remembered a year ago, walking with my friends here, coming down from the highway. It seemed like centuries had passed since. In that time, I’d given up my claim to the city, just as it had done to me. It had become an other place, still familiar but not my own. This new world – no longer as new to me as it had once been – was now a part of my life. The mud under my boots, the crows specking the sky above the highway, the dark thickets edging the river – all mine, now. And yet, something told me it was all changing, getting older even as I did, and that the shaping of what I’d become had to do more with time than with place. And that, like the body, my life here and now would one day disappear, become tenuous and unreal – that Lynk’s world would win out in the end, would engulf and drown us all.

  A bank of snow marked the line between Fisk’s field and the ribbon of trees and bushes lining the river. The snow remained among the trees and the air felt colder as I stepped into their shadows.

  There were tracks everywhere – tracks that might’ve come from squirrels, or weasels, and tracks from deer, and rabbit and dog. And, among them, the deep punching of a man’s footsteps, winding a seemingly random path through the snow – I crossed them again and again as I approached the river.

  The snow was gone, leaving only the ice and pools of water. The ice had cracked, making veins and dark blotches all across the pitted, uneven surface. I walked down to the bank’s edge. Brown-stained snow crowded the waterline, about six feet below the embankment.

  Walking its edge, I headed north. I’d come to houses soon, on my left, where I’d begin crossing back yards, eventually arriving at my own house. There were no fences to cross, just a few hedgerows to go around along the river’s edge.

  This section of the river ran straight, all the way to the Yacht Club. As I came clear of some bushes, I saw, out on the ice, a man and two dogs. And then I saw a third dog, wallowing helpless in a patch of open water, its front legs chopping the water as it struggled against the current.

  The man had gone down to his hands and knees and was crawling through ten inches of water towards the drowning dog. The other two animals ran back and forth behind him, as if playing.

  The scene was there in front of me, eerily silent. The drowning dog saw the man and tried to swim to him, but there was broken ice in the way. The dog then tried to climb on to the rafts, but kept slipping back as they turned under its weight.

  The man lay down. He squirmed to the edge of the open water. The ice pitched under him and he spread-eagled. The dog in the water had been pulled by the current to one edge, but it had gotten its front legs on to the ice and was pulling itself along, closer and closer to the man.

  I jumped down the embankment, landing in deep snow. Clambering free, I hesitated, unsure of what to do. This side of the river was the most melted, since it faced south, but there were broken chunks of ice crowded on this side, most of them frozen into the mud bottom. Although water covered everything, there were places to cross over, on to the thicker surface beyond.

  The ice the man lay on tilted and I stared as he slid head first into the water. The dog he’d been trying to reach at that moment scrambled its way on to solid ice.

  The man broke surface weakly, the current forcing him against the jagged ice. He reached out and threw his arm over its edge. The river tugged at him, sweeping his legs until he was jackknifed, both arms and head above water, everything else beneath it.

  I moved gingerly out on the frozen slabs, then jump
ed and landed, skidding, on firmer footing. Then I ran towards them.

  The man was losing the struggle. He clawed at the ice, but I could see him weakening.

  Then the dogs were there, biting into his arms and pulling him, worrying him with savage tugs. New cracks appeared all around them. The man screamed – the first sound I heard apart from the splashing under my boots and my harsh breath as I ran.

  One of the dogs got the man’s parka hood in its jaws. Pulling on it had driven the man’s face against the ice. Another scream came, this one muffled.

  ‘Pull him!’ I yelled. I was still about thirty feet away, water spreading out between us. The ice the dogs were on was going down – I knew that my added weight would just hasten its plunge.

  They’re all going to drown. All of them. He’ll go under the ice. His flesh will swell, go pale and sodden. The fish will eat his eyes. And the crayfish will feast on his insides. He’ll drift along the bottom, for miles and miles, until he snags, until the gases inside him lift him up, carrying him to the surface. Maybe he’ll be found, then, or maybe he’ll go through the dam or the locks. Maybe he’ll disappear for ever.

  But the dogs dragged him on to the ice. He couldn’t move, though his fingers still groped. The dogs dragged him along, over ice that dipped and tilted and was awash in churning brown water.

  ‘Here!’ I called. ‘Over here!’

  The man tried to look up, but the hood stopped him. He twisted his head around, and I saw his eyes, wide and encrusted, blood streaming down his face from countless lacerations, his mouth open, his lower lip a blotch of bright red.

  Three dogs. I knew who he was. ‘Mr Louper! Try crawling! The ice is going down – too much weight.’

  He gaped at me.

  The tilt sharpened. They began sliding back. I swore and jumped on to the raft. My weight, slight as it was, evened things out. They stopped sliding, and the dogs resumed dragging him closer to where I stood.