by Scott Carson
“Not on its own. That was October of 1941. And what happened in December of 1941?”
He waited. She frowned. Prompted, “December 7, 1941?”
Aaron felt like he should know this one. “We dropped the bomb?”
“We dropped the— Are you serious? December 7, 1941, was Pearl Harbor.”
“Right. I was close.”
“You were…” She shook her head again. “Sure. Close. End of war, beginning of war, whatever, you got the war. The war ended construction up here, and by the time it was done and they were ready to go back at it, they started looking elsewhere. The slope grade wasn’t right, they said. The water flow wasn’t right. Engineering mistakes had been made. The rock was different from what had been anticipated. On and on. Nobody talked about the murders as a reason, but… by then they were all done with Galesburg, too. The tunnels at the Chill were sealed, and the term surplus reservoir was deployed.”
She put the flashlight beam on a photograph of water ripping through a spillway.
“That is Neversink. That one still boggles my mind. I mean, you’ve literally named your town Neversink and it ends up submerged? It’s too strange to be true, but it is. Anyhow, all this is going along well, and the Chilewaukee by then was… not a real popular site. People in the city weren’t feeling great about it, what with the way their best and brightest had a tendency to die up here, and the way our locals had a tendency of turning themselves into human torches. So in 1948 it’s officially changed to a surplus reservoir, which means the tunnel system isn’t completed, and the whole thing just… sits. They still claim the tunnels could now be finished in under a year if needed. They’d just haul Nora up here and blast away and—”
“Nora?”
“The Mole.”
“I know I should’ve gotten Pearl Harbor, but Nora the Mole feels a little more obscure,” Aaron said.
He saw her give a faint smile in the darkness.
“Fair enough. Nora is the name of a boring machine that is called the Mole by the people who work in the tunnels. Those guys are called sandhogs.”
“That I’ve heard of.”
“But not Pearl Harbor?”
“It’s not that I never heard of it, I just—”
“Don’t test well under pressure,” she laughed, but he couldn’t join her. He’d heard something similar to that phrase in helicopter rescue school. A question, a challenge, the instructor leaning down close and talking about pressure, talking about how all the talent in the world didn’t mean you could handle pressure…
“Relax,” she said, seeing his face. “I’m kidding. It’s not a history exam. I’m telling a story, that’s all.”
“Then tell it,” he said, and he sounded churlish and childish, and all of a sudden he wanted a drink or a joint. He wanted out. He didn’t want to look at any more of those pictures, all the frozen faces staring back at him.
“There are people who believe the Wallace and Mathers families would’ve been really pleased when the tunnel work stopped,” she said. “But that’s not true. By the end they wanted the tunnels open. Because they thought they could do a lot more damage if they were part of the life system of New York City. That was the goal. Galesburg was supposed to be a bubble in the blood. Slip downstream and burst. They’d remember us then.”
The statement came so flat and so chilling.
“You guys wanted to kill people in the city?”
“Not we guys; I wasn’t even born yet. My mother wasn’t even born yet.” She looked away. “But… yes. I would say that’s accurate. The idea of those fires was a pact. A sacrifice, like I said.”
He thought of the way she’d touched the fabric on the hood of the skull. The skull she thought was her grandmother’s.
“All of that’s so old,” he said. “You’re talking seventy-five, eighty years ago. Why was your grandmother in the water?”
She lowered the light so it was pointing at the floor, giving most of the room back to darkness. Aaron heard water drip again then, but from where, he couldn’t say.
“It was a drought season,” Gillian Mathers said.
“Excuse me?”
“The dead can dig the tunnels,” she said in an eerily toneless voice, “but they need the water to help. Otherwise, it’s slow going. So if there’s no water? Well, then they’ll need more help.”
Aaron’s flesh prickled and crawled. “I don’t—”
“So we have to sacrifice,” she said. “We have to join the struggle. But it was always clear there wouldn’t be many of us at work down there. With so few true believers left, and recruits hard to come by, we’d have to go slowly. That was the job. Procreate, educate… and sacrifice. Only when you were sure that there were more left to follow could you leave.”
The single student desk glowed in the corner of the flashlight beam.
“Drought season is when they need the most help,” she said. “That was the myth that I was taught, at least. When you joined them, you should go when the water was low. When their backs were weary.”
“They raised you like this,” Aaron said, his voice hollow. “Taught you this as a child?”
“My grandmother did. My father did not. I was saved from it.” She spread her hands, the light traveling with her, bouncing off the photographs of all those ancient watching eyes. “From all of this. We had to keep the story alive, explain what had happened, and why. And then…” Her voice wavered, and she cleared her throat again before she said, “… we had to die. My mother went early. She went much younger. I never knew her, but I always wondered if she couldn’t really bear to teach me the old stories anymore. If that’s why she went before my grandmother did.”
“How did your mother die?”
“Drove her car into the Dead Waters.”
“Holy shit.”
Silence.
“They were raising you to die?” he said finally. “Teaching you that?”
She nodded slowly.
“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.
“You know how many schools teach you what’s worth dying for?” she answered with an oddly defensive tone. “We’ve got kids in some other country saying prayers right now, ready to strap bombs to their chests, believing it’s both right and necessary. We’ve got kids in this country saying a different prayer, ready to pick up a gun and die, believing the same things. When you’re inside of it, it doesn’t feel so terrible. It’s just… it’s what you know. Every culture in the world has their sacrifice story. Their rituals, things worth dying for, worth killing for. We know a lot of them, but we don’t remember just how many cultures this world had once. How many stories they told. Whatever the first European found up here in 1600-whatever, or whatever he brought with him, it merged into a culture that already had stories that were believed. Stories that were acted upon. These little villages in the deep, dark wood is where old European myths blended with Native stories, and then they grew cultures onto themselves.”
“You’re saying the story was right? It was true?”
“No. I’m saying…” She stopped, struggling for the words. “I don’t know. I never intended to share any of this with anyone.”
“But you’re sharing it now.”
“Yes. Because we just brought my grandmother’s bones out of the water in what was once Galesburg, and because you’re seeing dead men moving among the living and listening to conversations with people who were burned to death years ago. So, yes, I am sharing them now.”
He turned and stared at the old photos. “The dead disappear in your story. They don’t come back. Not like Mick Fleming did yesterday.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “They can when the math is right.”
“Pardon?”
She looked embarrassed. “It’s a crazy story told by crazy people. But they were waiting on a specific day. You know the Mayan calendar story?”
“Yeah. Supposedly it stopped in 2012. People thought that would be the end of the worl
d. There was also a religious movement back in the 1840s, when people around here sold their farms and went up to Maiden Mountain to wait for the Rapture.”
She nodded. “The Great Disappointment. People did that all over the country, actually. The Millerite movement. Maiden Mountain was just one of the places they gathered. Our myth about Galesburg is similar.”
“What’s the date?”
“It’s not a date. It’s the moment when an equation works.” She pointed at the chalkboard, where a long equation was scribbled, barely visible beneath the coating of dust. “The rules change when those numbers work.”
He stared at it. The equation was elaborate and he couldn’t begin to parse its meaning.
“The number that matters most is right here,” Gillian said, walking over and tapping the board with one fingernail.
20.17
“2017? Good news—that year has already come and gone,” he said, trying to sound amused but failing. “Galesburg didn’t predict any better than the Mayans or the Millerites.”
She did not laugh.
“It’s not a year,” she said. “It’s a water level.”
“What?”
“Height above normal pool level. When it reaches 20.17, they’re released. Sent downstream. Toward the city.”
It was hard to find his voice. “The dead will rise?” he asked finally. “That’s what you were taught.”
She nodded. “The rules change then. And the dam goes.”
“What do you mean, the dam goes?”
She finally turned from the chalkboard and faced him. “Bursts. Collapses. And then Galesburg is free, and headed for the city.”
“Headed for the city to…”
“Destroy it,” she said. “Galesburg wants their water back.”
37
Steve passed the ambulance carrying the corpse away from the Chill. He knew from the radio chatter what its cargo was. By the time he got to the dam, though, the police were gone, and neither his Silverado nor Gillian Mathers’s cruiser was in the parking lot.
The white Honda Pilot was.
Steve was staring at the car, thinking it was empty, when Mick Fleming climbed out, carrying his iPad and notebook just as he had yesterday, raincoat hanging open, collared shirt beneath, mechanical pencil tucked in the pocket.
Steve popped the driver’s door. Stepped out into the rain. Fleming turned to face him. Smiled. Steve didn’t like that smile. It was a huckster’s grin, somebody who’d stacked the deck of a low-rent card game and thought he was slick, thought he was big-time.
It also didn’t seem to suit the man Steve had heard described. The Mick Fleming depicted by Arthur Brady, by Ed Cochran, and by Fleming’s own wife was a serious type, methodical, and worried. He wasn’t a smiling-in-the-rain type. Not on this day, and not below this dam.
“Morning, Sheriff,” Fleming said. “How’s your boy feeling?”
“Son.”
“Pardon?”
“He’s my son, but he’s no boy. Grown man. That’s how the judge’ll see it, too.”
“The judge?” Fleming gave him a look of polite confusion, all while tucking his iPad and notebook inside the open raincoat to keep them dry. “I certainly don’t intend to press charges.” The smile returned. “And I’m still alive, so I’m not sure what charges I could press that would match his confession.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “I get that. You said it yesterday, so I don’t need to hear it again.”
“Apologies. Sensitive subject, I’m sure.”
“Not so much.” Steve looked downstream. “I spoke to Ed Cochran.”
“Oh? I bet he was in a foul mood.”
“Yes. Wanna tell me why?”
“He didn’t?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
There was a pause, and Fleming’s lip curled in the faintest hint of that cardsharp’s smile he’d seemingly developed overnight, and then he said, “I get it. We’re unhappy today, aren’t we, Sheriff? You got a negative report in the big city, and as much as you don’t like the big city, you’ve got to worry about it. Your reputation is made up here, but it can be ruined down there. You control Torrance County only until Manhattan comes knocking. Then you’re outgunned, aren’t you?”
“Outgunned?”
“Big fish swimming into the small pond.”
“You’ve got a whole different attitude today, Mr. Fleming.”
“Well, it’s been a long night, Sheriff. After that fiasco yesterday, with you and your boy—excuse me, your son—keeping me from doing the city’s business.”
The city’s business. Everything about the man was different, from the smile to the taunting tone and even the phrasing.
“Let’s talk about business,” Steve said. “Let’s talk about the dam.”
“The dam.”
Steve nodded at the spillway. “Big stone thing, holds the lake back.”
“You weren’t so glib yesterday, Sheriff.”
“And you weren’t so smug.”
Fleming didn’t say anything.
“I understand that you’re concerned about the dam,” Steve said. “I understand half the DEP is descending on us tomorrow morning because of your concerns. And somehow I missed a single word about those concerns. Arthur Brady seems to have missed them as well. Gillian Mathers, too. Everyone you spoke to in Torrance County lacks recollection of your concerns.”
There was no trace of the smile now. Instead there was the cold sullenness of a quiet, smart boy who didn’t like being called on to show his work. He had all the answers, and he thought that should be enough.
“You want to understand the trouble?” Mick Fleming asked. His voice was now closer to what Steve remembered from yesterday, higher and fussier.
“I think I ought to.”
“You think you can.”
“I’m not expecting to make the calculations, but I can grasp the concepts.”
Fleming looked at him with amused distaste.
“All right,” he said. “Cavitation. One word. What’s your familiarity with it?”
“I brush twice a day. Sometimes even rinse with that stuff, Act, I think it is? The fluoride. I haven’t been so good about that since my wife died, I have to admit.”
“This is entertainment to you? We stand here in the rain and trade snarky remarks, is that it?”
“No,” Steve said, good and tired of him now—so tired of him, in fact, that he was feeling an urge to throw a punch. He hadn’t felt that since he was a young deputy wrestling a drunk man out of a house where a woman and two children with bloody noses and black eyes watched. One of them had called 911 for help, Steve wasn’t sure who, because all they’d done was leave an open line while Daddy beat the shit out of the family.
Steve had been more tired on that day than any other in his career. He’d seen worse things, but you couldn’t anticipate the moments that would break your spirit. He was tired now, too. Tired of Fleming, tired of this day, and so damned tired of the rain. It was running down his collar, chilling his spine.
He said, “No, I don’t want to trade snark, but you seem intent on making me look like a fool, Mr. Fleming, so I’ll play along with that, or you can offer me some fucking respect and we can go address the problem.”
Mick Fleming looked away from Steve. Turned to his left, smiled, and nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I heard it.”
Steve followed his eyes. Fleming was looking downstream, but no one was there. Just wind-ravaged trees and the swollen tailwaters.
“Mind telling me what you think you’re—”
“Walk with me, Sheriff,” Fleming said, moving toward the stone steps that led to the gatehouse. “I’ll try to give you a grasp of what the situation is out here. I’ll try to show you exactly what it is that you people have been ignoring and how it might have manifested into the worst loss of life your county has ever seen if I hadn’t come down here.”
Steve followed, glad they were going to the gatehouse. He didn’t want
to be alone in the woods with this little pissant. Fleming was a physically unimposing man and Steve was armed, but all the same Steve was uneasy about him.
They went up the steep concrete steps. At the top, the massive reservoir rested in the rain, millions of gallons of cold gray water filling it drop by drop. A thin mist rose from the surface like steam. There wasn’t a boat in sight. Why would there be? On a day like today, even the die-hard fishermen stayed inside.
“Your people were here from the beginning, weren’t they?” Mick Fleming said. Up here the roar from the water going over the spillway was so loud that he almost had to shout, and Steve wasn’t sure he’d heard him right.
“Excuse me?”
Fleming was using his left arm to press the iPad and notebook against his side, protecting them with the raincoat. He used his right arm to gesture across his body, out at the Chilewaukee.
“Before it was built. Don’t you all go back in Galesburg a long while?”
“Torrance,” Steve said.
“What?”
“The town is Torrance. The county is Torrance. Galesburg is not a place anymore.”
“You think it went away?” Fleming was looking at him intently, rain on his glasses, dripping down his forehead, pasting his thinning hair to his skull.
“It’s not a matter of opinion,” Steve said. “It’s underwater, bud. Has been for sixty years.” He thought about it. “Seventy-five, actually. Almost eighty. Point is, I’m from Torrance.”
“I see.” Fleming used his right hand again, pointing at the massive stone expanse of the spillway. “Remember the word I told you?”
“Cavitation.”
“Very good. I’ll keep this simple, because I don’t have much time to waste, but cavitation involves bubbles.”
“Bubbles.”
“That’s right. Millions of them. Billions of them. So small you might not notice them in all the chaos and churn, but what they represent, Sheriff, is big-league trouble. The system depends on balance. You’ve got a lot of elements at work here. Stone and water and air, mass and force and friction. When they’re working together, it’s an amazing thing. But it’s also an illusion.”