The Chill

by Scott Carson

  It was him, though. I should know; I’m the one who killed him!

  But he hadn’t killed him. The man was alive and well.

  I confused him for someone else, maybe.

  No, he had not. He’d seen him clearly; he’d spoken to him.

  Then what in the hell had happened?

  The only answer was the very one Aaron knew his father was considering.

  I’m insane. I almost have to be, because nothing else makes sense.

  The fear he felt then was worse than any he’d ever known.

  “You should have let that cop check for the other body,” he said. “I saw the skull. There was fishing line and hooks and some sort of hood, and when I moved it, the skeleton slid and I saw—”

  “Stop,” his father said, and his voice broke with a barely suppressed sob.

  Aaron looked over at him and saw with astonishment that his father had started to cry.

  “Please, stop,” he said, voice pleading, desperate.

  Aaron turned and faced ahead. The windshield shimmered with ribbons of water, the wipers slashed, and otherwise the car was silent.

  They didn’t speak again until they reached the emergency room, and by then his father’s eyes were dry. When he came around to help Aaron out of the car, Aaron could feel a reluctance to his touch, as if insanity were contagious.

  I didn’t imagine it. I watched that bottle break on the side of his head, watched the blood begin to spill, watched him fall… and then, down in the Dead Waters, there was the body. I saw the skeleton face, dark eyes under that decaying black hood. I saw it all.

  He shook his head as if to refuse the memory.

  He kept his eyes down as he limped into the ER, kept his eyes on the blood-soaked bandage and tried to put more weight on his wounded foot to drive the pain up, to give him focus on what was real.

  But is it real? If the rest of it wasn’t real, how do you know this is?

  No, no, no. He could not begin to think like that. Couldn’t question everything and anything, that would drive him—

  Insane.

  They were at the reception desk now, and his father was telling the man behind it that Aaron had stepped on broken glass and would need stitches, probably a lot of them, because it was a bad cut.

  It had been a bad cut. The glass had razored right through the ball of his foot, into the nerves, an awful, electric pain.

  “That’s what did it,” he whispered, and his father looked back at him. He seemed nervous, as if afraid of what Aaron might give voice to.

  “Shock,” Aaron said. “It cut so deep, probably into the nerves, and I was exhausted from the swim… and I… I imagined some things. Because of the shock. Pain and blood loss and shock.”

  His father stared at him, nodded slowly, and said, “Sure. That was it.”

  They both knew he didn’t believe it, though.

  They avoided each other’s eyes as a nurse came around with a wheelchair and told Aaron to sit.

  Maybe Peaceful Passages is not that bad an idea, Aaron thought as they wheeled him away. I need to get my mind right.

  You went to rehab to get off drugs and drink. They could help you with those problems. What could they do, though, for a man who’d hallucinated a killing?

  16

  Long after Steve and Aaron Ellsworth were gone, Gillian remained at the dam. The rain fell and night came on, but still she paced the rocks alongside the Dead Waters, the eerily calm basin below the frothing tailwaters, the deep basin where old foundations still stood. There would be scorch marks on the drowned stones, she knew. She’d never seen them, but she knew they were there.

  She knew all there was to know about Galesburg, New York, the forgotten village, the sunken town.

  Foolish old stories. Terrible stories, told to a child. An isolated child whose mother had died when the child was only three, leaving her alone with a grandmother who told terrible stories, who asked for horrible promises.

  “I don’t care if it is her down there,” Gillian whispered aloud. “I don’t give a damn if it is.”

  She fought to keep her hand from drifting to her radio. Fought to stop herself from summoning divers to search for a corpse that had been the product of a drug addict’s hallucination.

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Addicts can see real things. A lunatic can be a witness. You never know. Just have the divers take a quick look. Steve Ellsworth can’t make that call. It’s not his jurisdiction, and he’s not thinking like a cop today.

  But what was Gillian thinking like? A cop, or a child with bad memories?

  It looked like a black hood or a bag over the head, Aaron Ellsworth had said. Some kind of cloth hood.

  Gillian could see the black silk bag from her grandmother’s nightstand, the one that held her Bible and her private journal. The Bible remained on the nightstand but the journal and the bag vanished with Molly Mathers.

  Haupring, Aaron had said. Curtis Haupring.

  She’d fed it to him, though. Projected it onto him.

  Maybe you did. But you didn’t feed Mick Fleming his own family name.

  Jeremiah Fleming’s grandson. The old engineer had died in Galesburg before seeing his project to completion. His name had been in Gillian’s early history lessons, on quizzes that her grandmother prepared. His name, Haupring’s name, and even the Ellsworth name. Edward J. Ellsworth had been the sheriff in charge of evicting the families of Galesburg. One year he’d been elected by them, and the next, he was being told to clear them out.

  Galesburg had at least a modicum of sympathy for Sheriff Ellsworth. None for the city that came for their water, though.

  She paced the wet rocks, peering into the dark water as if she might spot the corpse Aaron had described. Down along a stone foundation, he’d said. The flooded-out remains of an old house, or maybe a store, one of the buildings of…

  Galesburg.

  The name sent a shiver through Gillian that had nothing to do with the cold rain. She stopped walking, put her hands to her temples, and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt a sudden, intense urge to call her father. To have the conversation that they’d avoided all these years. Talk about the school, about her grandmother, her mother, and what exactly had scared Deshawn Ryan so badly about the place that he refused to visit. Ask why he would meet them only in a public place and never the house when it was clear that a standing invitation to the house remained. There’d been no ill will between her mother and her father. In retrospect, that seemed bizarre. The man had left a pregnant woman and fled like a coward, and who cared if he sent checks and wrote letters? Yet nobody in the house had ever said a harsh word about him.

  She remembered the ride back to the city with him after her day of waiting in Steve Ellsworth’s office while people came and went and talked in hushed voices. She’d been with a counselor or a social worker of some sort, a woman with bleach-blond hair and a cultivated soothing voice who asked a lot of questions that Gillian didn’t want to answer. Gillian had preferred being with Steve Ellsworth, who would make a silly face now and then or tell a silly joke and otherwise just let her sit in silence. He brought her a bag of M&M’s and asked her to save the purple ones for him. There were no purple ones. She told him that, perplexed, and he told her to keep looking, because you never knew.

  He didn’t ask any of the personal questions in the false voice like the social worker did.

  Then her father arrived, and then they’d been gone from Torrance. No stopping by the house, just driving south, driving as if they were pursued. She could see his stubby-fingered, over-muscled hand gripping the steering wheel as if he intended to crush it. His jaw clenching as rapidly and steadily as a heartbeat. His eyes were directed straight ahead on the dark highway when she asked him if she was Gillian Ryan now. His voice was thick when he said no, not now and not ever, because a man who wasn’t there for his child didn’t deserve to have her take his name, and he hadn’t been there for her. She remembered so vividly the fear in his eyes when he finally loo
ked back over at her and said, “I’ll make up for it. I promise. I’ll make up for all those years, baby.”

  Gillian felt like a monster, something that scared him.

  She’d understood something crucial in that moment. Intuited it, as her grandmother would have said. She’d intuited that she needed to take her cues from him and learn what he feared about her and then bury those things deep. Never let them out.

  It looked like a black hood or a bag over the head, Aaron Ellsworth had said. Some kind of cloth hood.

  Gillian opened her eyes, lowered her hands, and turned away from the water.

  It was time to go home. Whatever sunken tree or old trash bag Aaron Ellsworth had hallucinated into a human corpse could stay right where it was, submerged in the dark, where Gillian’s old memories needed to stay.

  Where all of Galesburg needed to stay. Underwater and forgotten.

  17

  The emergency room doctor put twenty-seven stitches in Aaron’s foot after cleansing it and then she proclaimed Aaron lucky while Steve looked on.

  “It went deep,” she told him, “but not deep enough for nerve damage.”

  Steve was pacing at the edge of the room, unable to still himself. The doc didn’t know what had played out down by the tailwaters, of course, but still it was evident that she sensed the tension in the room. She’d chosen not to address it, dealing strictly with her patient, never acknowledging Steve.

  “I’m going to prescribe antibiotics for the risk of infection,” the doctor said. “A good amount of time passed between the wound and treatment. In that circumstance, I’d always like to give the body a little healing help.”

  “Sure,” Aaron mumbled, and then “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  Steve glanced at him with surprise. When was the last time he’d heard Aaron offer politeness? Only a few hours earlier Steve had watched him smirk his way out of jail.

  Maybe it was good, he thought wildly, desperately. Maybe the swim did him some good. Not in the way I wanted it to, but he’s… he’s different now.

  Yes, different. That was the word.

  “And for the pain,” the doctor continued, “I recommend a mild opioid-based painkiller. It should do the trick, but you need to be careful with it. Be mindful of the doses, of the times, and—”

  “No,” Aaron said.

  “Pardon?” The doctor was surprised; Steve was shocked.

  “I do not want that strong of a painkiller, please.”

  The doctor glanced from Aaron to Steve, then back.

  “I understand the caution,” she said, “and I appreciate it. But trust me, I’m not handing out refills, either. It would be just enough to get you through the short term with the most tolerable amount of pain.”

  “I understand that,” Aaron said. “But do you have a T3, maybe?”

  A T3 was prescription-strength Tylenol, and it didn’t carry the abuse potential of the opioid-based options.

  “We can do that,” she said. “But it may not be enough. You’re smart to be wary of the opioids, but it’s also important to be aware of the pain level.”

  “I can take the pain,” Aaron said, “better than I can take the wrong drug.”

  She seemed to get it then. She gave a single brisk nod and said, “Understood. Antibiotics and Tylenol, then. Crutches if you need them, though you likely won’t. Just keep the weight off the foot as much as possible. And next time”—she patted his leg—“keep your shoes on when you go wading in the rocks.”

  “Right.”

  Two hours earlier Steve thought his son had killed a man, and now Aaron was being chastised for reckless wading. It was a better option, obviously, but it presented fresh problems.

  Where do I take him? Who can help whatever is wrong in his brain?

  A nurse brought in crutches, and Steve held the door open as Aaron hobbled out. They didn’t speak until they were out of the hospital and back in the car. Then Steve turned to him and said, “Proud of you for turning down the pills back there.”

  “Right.” Aaron’s mind was elsewhere, his eyes unfocused. Or, rather, deeply focused but not on Steve.

  What in the hell is going on in his head? Steve wondered. Is it worse than I imagined? And if it is worse, what do I do?

  He just had to get through the night and then deal with it in the morning. He needed to get them both far away from the scene at the dam, and only then…

  Shit. The dam. His truck—the truck Aaron had stolen—was still parked there.

  “Can you drive?”

  Aaron looked at him as if Steve had asked if he could flap his arms and fly.

  “My truck is still down at the dam,” Steve said. “But if your foot is hurting too bad to—”

  “Not in the dark,” Aaron blurted. Then he gathered himself and tried again. “I mean, the pills might mess with my vision. I know it was just Tylenol, but…”

  “Right,” Steve said, eager to agree, because he hadn’t liked the fear in Aaron’s voice. “Let’s get you home.” He desperately wanted to be back in his own house, where the spirit of his wife hung heavy. He needed the reassurances that Lily’s memory could bring to him. “And then in the morning, whenever you’re rested up and feeling better, we’re gonna have to talk about—”

  “I’m ready to go.”

  Aaron said it with the same quiet firmness with which he’d once announced his swimming goals. Pure determination. No doubt.

  “Ready to go…?”

  “To Peaceful Passages. Tomorrow. Actually, tonight if you want me to. Because…” His voice wavered, and he swallowed and pushed on. “… because, Dad, what happened down there today… I hadn’t been drugging, and I hadn’t been drinking, and I believed what I saw was real. I was sure it was real.”

  Steve was imagining all the worst clichés: hospital beds with restraints, padded rooms with guards on the outside, electric currents being fired into his son’s brain.

  “Shock,” he said. “You might’ve been right about that. It was a bad wound, son. It was a bad shock.”

  Aaron had been staring out the windshield and into the darkness, but now he turned and faced Steve.

  “Nobody’s ever had a wound that explains what I saw,” he said. His face was very pale in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. “Dad, I saw that man—I saw him—and I…” He made a slow-motion throwing gesture to mime tossing the bottle, and it seemed he was reliving it all again.

  “I killed him,” he whispered. “I killed him, and then I found a corpse in the water, one that wasn’t him. So I don’t know what Peaceful Passages has to help someone who can imagine something like that, but…” His voice caught, and he was close to tears when he said, “I need help. I need some serious help.”

  “We’ll get it for you,” Steve said.

  He’d never loved his son more, or feared for him worse.

  18

  Mick arrived back at the reservoir without making any choice about the destination. He just ended up there as if claimed by gravity.

  It was dark now, and the parking area below the dam was empty except for the truck that had been there when he arrived that morning. The one the sheriff’s son had driven.

  My murderer. Mick tried to smile but didn’t succeed.

  He drove on past, thinking that the empty parking lot meant there was no night operator. They had cameras and sensors, though. More and more infrastructure security was being entrusted to technology. Mick doubted that anyone was watching the camera feed, but you never knew, and he didn’t want to have to explain why he’d returned to the Chilewaukee in the middle of the night.

  He drove on, into the protective shelter of the pines and birches that lined the road above the tailwaters, looking for a place to pull over. The trees grew almost up to the asphalt in most places here. He finally found a gap across the road and pulled into it. The Honda was close to the road and facing the wrong way now, but it was a lonely place, and Mick didn’t intend to stay long.

  Why are you here at all?
What are you hoping to see?

  He cut the engine. Sat there in the dark while he called his wife, Lori, and told her that he was going to have to spend the night in Torrance. Too much work to be done in a day, he explained, and too little left to make the drive back and forth worth it. If he just stayed the night, he could wrap up quickly in the morning and then be back to Albany by noon.

  “How bad does it look?” Lori asked. She knew his worries about this one. The Chilewaukee had been high on his list of Why can’t they budget for this? bitching for years.

  “I don’t know,” he said. Those were the first honest words he’d offered in hours.

  He didn’t know how bad the dam looked. He didn’t know much at all—not anymore. Some of the things he didn’t know were terrifying.

  Such as: What happened today?

  Mick was a man who liked his facts, liked to see the numbers, to make sense of the world with math. Math made the unknown known, gave you a sense of control over things you hadn’t even yet seen.

  Mick badly needed some math right now.

  He told Lori that he loved her and then hung up and stared at himself in the rearview mirror. Touched the side of his head. Traced his cheek. Felt a hint of five-o’clock shadow stubble but no bruise, let alone a cut. His face looked familiarly boyish in the mirror in the way he’d always hated, a bit too round for someone of a slight build, as if announcing to the world that he was even softer than his size.

  The bottle broke on the side of his head, he was bleeding, and I damn near drowned trying to pull him back out!

  That’s what the kid had shouted. The sheriff’s son. But the kid was crazy, of course. A straitjacket psychotic. No question about it.

  Then why was the day gone and Mick’s memory a blank?

  Let’s take a look. Let’s walk down there and take one more look at the dam. You’ll be alone.

  Yes, he would be. As he climbed out of the Honda, he felt a familiar anger stirring. The reservoir was vital infrastructure, and the reservoir was also a threat. Every election year, every candidate spoke about infrastructure. Party didn’t matter; everyone agreed infrastructure improvement was important.