by Scott Carson
He closed the notepad, uneasy.
The estimated time of completion is four and one-quarter years at a cost of $26,000,000.
Four and one-quarter years? There had never been a day in his life when he’d have used that phrase.
It was like something out of the past. Just like Anders Wallace.
That was impossible, of course. Mick Fleming was a firstborn son of science, a man without patience for superstition or religion, for anything that couldn’t be demonstrated with measurements and math. So it didn’t matter that he remembered Anders; it mattered that his memories were impossible.
As the night sky outside of Albany bled with the soft rose light of dawn, Mick wondered about brain tumors. Swelling, maybe. It didn’t take much. The brain was a fine-tuned system. It didn’t feel that way to people, of course, but that was simply because the brain was so exquisitely balanced that it could fool you into thinking the math didn’t matter.
It did, though. And somewhere in Mick’s mind, a number was askew.
It troubled him that he didn’t remember leaving the water. Or leaving the dam, for that matter. He’d seemed to fall back into his own body somewhere on the lonely predawn highway, northbound toward home, with no awareness of how this had all come to pass.
Also troubling: his shoes and pants showed no mud stains, no water stains. He vividly remembered stumbling and tumbling down the hill toward the tailwaters, but there was no visual evidence to corroborate the memory. It was as if he’d waded out along that bluestone wall in the moonlight and washed himself clean.
When? How?
That he did not know. All he could say was that he kept emerging on the other side of his memories, no worse for wear. He hadn’t slept, but he wasn’t tired. He’d stood in the frigid water, but he wasn’t cold. If the sheriff’s son was to be believed, then Mick had also taken a beer bottle off the side of his face but remained unmarked.
He decided what had to be done as the rose light brightened and the landscape seemed to widen with it, exposing the sprawling subdivision, all of the brick houses on wide lots of browned lawns glimmering with frost. He had to see a doctor, obviously. A neurologist, most likely. He would see the doctor before he spoke with Lori. When he told his wife the problem, he wanted to be able to reassure her that he was still mentally sound enough to call for a doctor before he shared any of the disturbing visions with her.
If he did share them. He still wasn’t sure about that.
The doctor would be his second call. Not his first. His first call needed to be to his boss. There were not many certainties before Mick this morning, but he knew that he would not—could not—return to the Chilewaukee. He wondered if his elaborate break from reality had roots in something very real, something that had stalked him for years, the way depressives referred to the black dog that would appear without warning, darkening their moods.
Mick’s trouble wasn’t depression, though. It was frustration. How many times could a man offer warnings that went ignored before he began to lose patience? It had gone that way for years. Mick was Paul Revere, and yet they all regarded him as the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The threat was real, he sounded the alarm, and the world ignored him.
The black dog, he thought again. That was the right idea but the wrong symbol. No poet had ever set out to capture the rage of righteous work ignored, dismissed, or kicked down the road. No one had ever offered verse to the plight of the maintenance engineer.
Maintenance. Such a boring term, and yet so critical. Everyone craved invention and innovation, but it was maintenance that kept empires alive.
Mick Fleming, not a poet, had no words for the feeling. You didn’t need poetry to express the risk of a flood, though. All you needed was a thundering cascade of water. What came next required no imagination. Houses flattened, schools submerged, rescue workers steering boats through intersections built for cars.
“They deserve it,” he said aloud, and he didn’t like the sound of his own voice.
Call the section chief and then the doctor.
Yes, that’s what he would do.
He remained in the car for another hour, wondering vaguely why he wasn’t cold, sitting there with the engine off, and then the garage door of his house rose and Lori’s Honda CR-V—they were a brand-loyal couple, and Honda’s engineering had always pleased Mick—backed out of the driveway. He watched as she put down the garage door and pulled away, off to work, safe in the knowledge that her husband was doing the same somewhere in the Catskills.
Telling her the truth would be hard. Easier with a doctor’s opinion in hand, though. By evening it would all be easier.
Mick waited until Lori was out of sight and then pulled into the garage she’d just vacated. The house was a two-story, brick-and-vinyl-sided home with an attached garage and a swimming pool that Lori adored. A swimming pool in Albany was woefully impractical, but during the short summers she used it plenty. Mick didn’t, but he’d enjoyed watching the concrete go in, and he had a fondness for the filtration system, the careful calibrating and balancing of chemicals.
He entered the house and made it halfway across the kitchen before he stopped and tilted his head. He stood like that for a moment, then walked back into the garage, closed the door behind him, and stood in the darkness, breathing the vanishing vapors of the Pilot’s exhaust.
He counted off thirty seconds and then went back in the house, closed the door, and crossed the kitchen, walking out into the living room with its vaulted ceiling. The TV was on, morning news playing, as if Lori had wanted background noise, but Mick didn’t glance at that. Instead he went straight to the thermostat.
Seventy-two degrees.
This was troubling, and not just because he’d asked Lori on countless occasions to drop it to 68 when she left the house.
The garage had no heat and was poorly insulated. The temperature in there had to run fifteen or twenty degrees lower than the house. And out on the street, where he’d sat in the dark for nearly two hours? Colder still.
Yet he’d felt no transition. Out of the cold and into the warmth, and he detected no difference. He hadn’t been cold in the car; he was not warm in the house.
“I will need a doctor,” he said, the second time he’d spoken aloud, and this time far more comforting, because he sounded like himself and the message was right.
The doctor was second, though. His responsibility to the public was first.
It was just past seven, and he knew that Ed Cochran wouldn’t be in until eight. Ed was his direct supervisor, the man whose job it was to tend to every facet of the inspection and protection of the New York City watershed. Mick felt that waiting for Ed to get in would be a mistake, though. With the way his mind was wandering—Wandering? You’re walking into rivers, buddy… You call that wandering?—he didn’t trust himself to stay on task, which was somehow almost more frightening than all the rest of it. Mick had his faults and failings, but a lack of focus wasn’t on the list and never had been.
So he called Ed even though he knew he wouldn’t reach him, thinking that he should leave a message. Get the ball rolling.
He got the voicemail and he muted the TV so it was just the sound of his voice when he said, “Ed, it’s Mick. Listen, boss, I’m going to need to talk to you about yesterday’s inspection at the Chilewaukee. It was, um, a—”
The shower turned on upstairs.
For a long moment he stood there with the phone to his ear and his words forgotten, just listening to the sound. Hoping it could be anything else.
There was no doubting it, though. The high hissing water splattering off tile and glass was clear. The house was quiet and the shower was loud. They had excellent water pressure here. Mick had always been pleased with that.
He finally realized that dead air was filling his boss’s voicemail, and so he cleared his throat and said, “Sorry, Ed, I got distracted. There was… uh, Lori just walked in. Anyhow, what I was saying…”
What had he been saying? And why was he still jabbering
into the phone instead of going upstairs to see what in the hell had happened?
He looked at the stairs, still with the phone to his ear, and he did not want to walk up them. He wanted to walk right out the front door. Not walk, he wanted to run—wanted to sprint—out of his own home and tear down the street of the quiet subdivision, screaming until someone heard him and helped him.
“Just give me a call, please,” he said woodenly, and then he disconnected. He put the phone into his pocket, each motion methodical, because he did not want to rush.
Oh, no. He did not want to rush up those stairs.
Above him the shower pounded away. In the wall behind the leather couch, he could hear the soft gurgling of the drainpipe whisking the water back out of the house.
He took a breath, ran his fingers through his limp, thinning hair, and then nodded as if agreeing with someone else in the room.
Yes, he thought, I do need to look, don’t I? I do need to check this out.
He moved then, finally, and managed to bypass the front door, which seemed to beg for him, and turned left toward the stairs. He went up them one at a time, careful to keep his feet on the runner carpet so each step was muffled, soft.
With each step the sound of the shower grew louder. It no longer seemed possible that it was the shower, in fact. No shower had ever roared like this.
A burst pipe, maybe. A real gusher. Dumping water on the floor, maybe behind the tile and drywall, making an unholy mess. But a mess I can fix.
He reached the top of the stairs, rounded the corner, and entered the master bedroom. The door between bedroom and bathroom was open, and he could see steam on the mirror.
I should have told Lori last night, Mick thought numbly. I should have told my wife the truth.
Then he stepped inside the bathroom.
Empty. The big mirror over the double vanity was misted over with steam, and Lori’s robe was draped over the hamper. One of the towels on the rack hung heavily, still damp.
But the room was empty. The jetted tub beside the glassed-in shower was dry and empty, and the shower itself was empty, although the water steamed and pounded down with force that exceeded even Mick Fleming’s high standard for water pressure. It blasted out of the showerhead like a fire hose, as if it might loosen the grout between the tiles, chisel it out.
Just turn it off, Mick. It’s water. That’s all. Reach in there and turn it off.
He opened the door and a wave of steam flooded out. He had the dim thought that the water was very hot and yet he could not feel its warmth, but that was secondary to the goal of simply turning the faucet handle. One counterclockwise revolution and this would be done and then he could call Ed back and then the doctor, or maybe the doctor first, maybe that was the—
“Let it run.”
He had his hand on the faucet when the voice came. He didn’t let go of the faucet but he didn’t turn it, either. Just looked behind him.
Anders Wallace was leaning against the vanity. He wasn’t three feet away from Mick. His arms were folded over his fussy, old-fashioned jacket and vest, and his neatly trimmed white mustache bristled above a mouth that was twisted into an expression of disappointment. Of anger.
“There seems to be some confusion, Mr. Fleming.”
“No,” Mick said, his hand still on the faucet, the shower still blasting away, that hot, steaming water that felt like it had no temperature at all as it pounded on his arm and soaked his shirtsleeve. It felt neither hot nor cold. Felt simply natural, like his own skin.
“No?” Anders cocked his head and leaned forward, swinging his weight off the vanity. He put his right hand into his pants pocket, a casual gesture, but one that pulled his jacket back to expose the gun holstered on his hip.
Not a real man. So not a real gun.
Anders smiled coldly then, as if Mick had spoken the thought aloud.
“Some confusion,” he said once more. “Yes, there seems to be. I thought I made this clear already, Mr. Fleming, but you’re struggling to comprehend it. You are not alone. Do you understand that? You’ll never be alone.”
You’ll never be alone. It was the statement you’d offer a lover or a child. Reassuring. Eternally reassuring. And, in Anders Wallace’s voice, the single most terrifying sentence Mick had ever heard.
“You’ll need to understand that,” Anders Wallace said. “It will become easier in time. Soon it will feel natural. But you can’t lose track of the idea, Mr. Fleming.”
“I won’t,” Mick said.
“Your phone call would suggest otherwise, sir.”
“I wasn’t… that call was not about…”
He stammered to a stop. The thing that he didn’t remember from the night suddenly felt close. The last thing and the most important one.
“It was not about our business,” he said.
There it was. Their business. How had he forgotten it? No wonder Anders Wallace looked so disappointed, so angry. He’d stood up here and listened to Mick making a call to Ed Cochran as if he owed him that? He’d listened to Mick call Ed Cochran boss, no less? Anders had every right to his rage.
“I took the job,” Mick said. “Working for Galesburg.”
“Yes, Mr. Fleming. Yes, you did. I hope you also took it seriously.”
“One hundred percent,” Mick said.
“You must remember that always. Not just in fits and bursts. Always.”
“I know,” Mick said as the shower rattled off the glass door beside him and steam drifted in front of Anders Wallace’s face but did nothing to diminish the intensity of that unblinking, blue-eyed stare.
“You know?” Anders echoed.
Mick nodded. He opened his lips to speak, then hesitated. This man—not a man; he can’t be a man, he’s a phantom, a ghost—was not one you wished to disappoint. And yet…
“There are things I don’t remember,” Mick said. His voice soft and weak, almost drowned out by the sound of the shower.
Anders didn’t show anger. He just nodded almost sympathetically.
“That’s to be expected,” he said. “But confusion can’t be allowed to flourish into something greater. Something more like doubt.” He paused, and whatever hint of sympathy had been in his face faded like the steam. “This is a serious job for a serious man. A man can’t succeed at important work if he doubts himself. In moments of pressure, focus must be maintained. That’s the task, Mr. Fleming. Your people demand it. Your town demands it.”
“Yes,” Mick said, and he nodded slowly. This made sense to him. Concentration was critical. The greater the pressure, the sharper the focus. These were his gifts. For too long, they’d been unnoticed or undervalued. Anders, though… Anders was different. He understood so much and he missed nothing. Look at him here, with those piercing blue eyes. He missed absolutely nothing.
“It will be easier soon,” Anders Wallace said, “because I travel with you now. You’ll see, sir. Now, let’s send a message to the man who thinks he is your boss.”
Mick blinked. “I didn’t think I was supposed to talk to him anymore.”
“Quite the contrary, Mr. Fleming. You’ve been given an extraordinary opportunity because you have unique reach. Your value exceeds the Chilewaukee; don’t you see that? We need a surface man with authority, as we made clear to you last night.”
“I forgot,” Mick murmured.
“Understood. It happens. It will happen less soon. That’s why I’m here. To make sure you do your job.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Excellent. Then let’s craft our message, shall we? Wording will be critical. So will timing.”
Mick didn’t follow. His face must have shown this, because Anders nodded as if he’d spoken.
“It’s a process, sir. What began in Galesburg will not end there. You’ll be needed elsewhere before it’s done. You’ll be needed all the way downstream, don’t you remember?”
Maybe he did. “In the city?” he ventured.
Anders Wallace’s face split into
a wide, horrible smile. His eyes lit.
“Yes,” he said. “In the city.”
24
Gillian was drinking coffee and reviewing the day’s pending casework at the Owl & Turtle café in the heart of downtown Torrance—all three blocks of downtown Torrance—when her phone chimed with an email notification. She ignored it, keeping her attention on the file before her. Today’s work was an anonymous complaint alleging that a local contractor wasn’t building his septic leach fields up to watershed standard.
Despite her desire to be back in the city, Gillian had developed a fondness for Torrance. The bucolic village was an undeniably beautiful place to live, with its mountain-town charms. She loved her apartment in the Arlington Heights Inn, a three-story brick building that had been a boardinghouse long ago. The inn had been lovingly restored into town homes, and the combination of real history with modern amenities appealed to her. She knew the reason went deeper than dark wood trim and high arched windows, though; the apartment was also an intersection between two childhood homes. The wood trim and the windows made her think of the old farmhouse in the woods, while the walk-up apartment made her think of her father’s building in Queens.
Most of the good memories were from Queens, but there had been good memories in the farmhouse, too. The wide-plank floors of the apartment at Arlington Heights conjured those up, making her remember the best moments she’d spent as a child in Torrance County.
And the apartment didn’t have any bookcases that pulled back to reveal a disturbing relic of a schoolhouse, a dark chamber of madness in an otherwise sane house.
It did have a family just beneath her with a newborn baby who tended to shriek at two in the morning, though. So far she’d made it through the child’s early months without banging on the floor and pleading for silence. So far.
The people of Torrance were mostly good and sometimes friendly. Friction between citizens and police existed almost everywhere, but it was on a different plane when it came to Catskill towns and the DEP. Generations after they’d first arrived to police the reservoir work camps and the soon-to-be-submerged villages, the DEP officers in the Catskills still battled against the perception of being an invading force.