by Scott Carson
“I don’t think you understand the significance of a dam failure to all of us,” Ed said slowly. “City and state. I won’t even ask you to consider my role in the moment, but let me explain why I am sending—”
“Come yourself. Just you. None of the consultants. Not yet.”
“They’re the best in the country, Mick! And they want to see—”
“Please,” Fleming said, his voice going weary and ragged. “There are two ways to address the situation at the Chilewaukee. One of them embarrasses all of us. The other is a quiet fix. We are not past the point of a very quiet fix. But the minute you roll consultants out here, it changes. Not the fix, but the level of public attention given to it. Do you follow me?”
Of course Ed followed him. You didn’t get this job without grasping the idea of media timing. And, sure, the idea of showmanship. What was stunning to him was that Mick Fleming cared about either of those. Was aware of them, even.
“I think our guys at Tabor will be fine,” Ed said.
“You’ve got wannabe heroes at Tabor,” Mick told him. “Trust me. Worse, you’ve got wannabe heroes with Twitter accounts. They’re going to leak details. The fucking dam won’t leak but they will. And I don’t need them yet!”
Ed could hardly muster a response. Mick Fleming was shouting and swearing at him about leaks to the press?
“Mick? An outside opinion might be—”
“Cavitation.”
“What?”
“That’s what we’ve got here. Cavitation on the spillway. Bad, yes, potentially fatal, yes, but not rapid-fire. We’ve got time. You know more about the mistakes at Oroville than I do. But if they’d handled it right, do you think they’d have gotten their asses burned in the media like they did?”
Oroville. Holy shit. The modern Johnstown, if it hadn’t been headed off in time. Oroville had been evacuated, though, and that was what put Oroville in the news. Mick was right. If the fix had been made, would Fox and CNN and all the rest have known, much less given it attention? Probably not. The attention came with the evacuation order.
“What’s the condition of the spillway face?” he asked.
“Deteriorating but not failing. Listen, Ed, you can come up here and see what I’m seeing. But don’t call FEMA and the Red Cross out just yet, okay? This thing can either be all done in a week, a quiet week, or it can turn into a few panicked hours that will embarrass us for years. The process won’t change, and the result won’t change, but the way everyone views us will.”
Us. How strange it felt to hear Fleming say that word. Fleming never showed an interest in the reputation of the agency.
“The dam is solid?” Ed asked.
“The dam is solid. The spillway is deteriorating, which I’ve noted in every report for the last—”
“I know, Mick.”
A deep breath, then: “The spillway is in the preliminary stages of failure. But the dam will hold.”
“It’s still raining, Mick.”
“Let it keep raining.”
“Say that again?”
“We’ve got days before the reservoir tops the dam, even if the rain keeps coming. By then I’ll have a fix.” Mick paused, then said, “Or, screw it, Ed, do what you want to do. Order an evacuation, get the TV helicopters in the air, and then go on camera explaining why we’ve ignored a decade’s worth of site inspections. Fix it in silence or in front of an audience. That’s not my call. That’s yours.”
Fix it in silence or in front of an audience.
Ed said, “I’ll head your way. I’ll tell Tabor and the rest to stand down tonight. By morning, though, I need to be ready to have somebody go on camera and say this is a nonstory.” He swallowed. “Or tell them we’re ordering an evacuation.”
“By tomorrow you won’t need to make a statement.”
“That confident, eh?”
“Yes. By tomorrow, it’ll speak for itself. But it’s your call. If you want to get out in front of this…”
“Not if there’s time. I’ll head your way, and I’ll keep everyone else quiet until tomorrow.”
“Perfect.”
“You understand the trust I’m putting in you right now?”
“If you’ve got a better engineer, send him up here.”
It was fascinating how different Mick Fleming could sound when you touched a nerve. But after nearly two decades of working with him, Ed knew there was no better engineer.
“It’ll just be me,” he said. “Where do you want me?”
“The gatehouse.”
“You’ll still be there?”
“I’m not leaving until it’s done,” Mick Fleming said.
Ed felt better, hearing that.
UPSTREAM
44
The Torrance County Coroner’s Office completed a successful identification of the corpse that had been tugged free from the waters below the Chilewaukee Reservoir in under four hours.
That was possible when a detective could tell you who the subject was and what dentist she’d used.
Molly Mathers had never missed a dental checkup. That habit expedited identification.
That, Gillian thought, was a hell of an endorsement for dental hygiene. She sat in her car and laughed, imagining the commercials that could be made pushing this unique benefit. She should drop by the dentist’s office, let him know how impressed she was. She laughed harder, sitting there in the cold car in the parking lot of her department headquarters in Kingston while the rain sheeted down. Eventually, she realized she was crying, too. Then the laughter stopped and it was just the tears.
And the rain.
She’d never been much of a crier. After all, what good did it do for you, as her grandmother had asked so many times? It was better to be stoic. Such a familiar word, always heard in her grandmother’s voice.
Be stoic, dear. The Mathers women are known for that. We’ve always been stronger than our husbands, but don’t tell anyone. They’re sensitive little creatures.
Playful talk, teasing talk, in a warm, safe house. Warm and bright, until you were sent to school.
Then it was different, yes. But outside of that damned bookcase door it hadn’t been so bad at all. Gillian’s grandmother, the woman whose teeth she’d just had examined in a morgue, had been kind and smart and strong. Patient.
The coroner’s office hadn’t listed an official cause of death yet, but Gillian could. The death certificate should read: “Molly Mathers, Dead of Indoctrination, October 20, 2000.”
All her life, her family had hammered those wild stories into her head. Legends older than any of them, legends older than the family’s existence in the region, dark tales that had chased early settlers from Ireland and Scotland. She didn’t know all of the lineage, but she had her guesses. Some stories of the Druids, which she’d first encountered in a college history course, felt familiar. Then there were the old curse myths, which made their way across the Atlantic with the Gypsies, a persecuted people over there who’d remained persecuted here. And, of course, there was the Native mythology. The American Indian tribes of upstate New York were not without their share of stories about death and demons, spirits and sacrifices. They would hunt and fish in what became the Galesburg area of the Catskills, but they didn’t stay there for long. They took their bounty—and their folklore—from the place and left. They didn’t settle there in the way the Europeans later did, families with names like Wallace and Mathers.
And none of that matters, Gillian told herself. You know this because you were saved from that house. Because Dad finally came back for you and, unlike your poor grandmother, you didn’t endure decades of it. You remember it, but it never had the chance to infect you.
Hooks and lines and chains. A black silk bag over the head. A step into what had to feel like terrible, infinite space.
Gillian put her hands to her eyes again, but there were no tears this time. She just sat there with her head in her hands. She’d intended to go into work, talk this through with her superio
rs. She’d intended to be a cool, distanced pro. Stoic.
She didn’t get out of the car, though. Instead, she dialed her father’s number. Somewhere on the island of Manhattan, a place that seemed impossibly far away right now, Deshawn Ryan’s phone rang and went to voicemail. Gillian spoke carefully. She didn’t want to let her voice break, and she certainly didn’t want him to hear any tears.
“Hi, Dad. It’s me. Listen, um… so we had a case today, I guess it was my case really, or at least mine for now, I have the lead on it, and…” Stop babbling. Get to the point. Say it, damn it. Ask him.
“Dad, I need to talk to you about my family. The Mathers side. We’ve just floated along without ever discussing… well, anything. That has to stop. Because I just watched divers pull my grandmother’s body out of the water, and she had hooks and lines and chain on her, and a bag to cover her eyes, and this didn’t surprise me. But I don’t know whether it surprises you. I don’t know whether anything surprises you, or if everything does. It’s time to talk about that. I need to know what you understood about that house and what they were teaching me. It scared you; I’m sure of that. I’d draw the wrong picture, and it would terrify you. I need to know why. Some strange shit is happening up here, and it’s time to end the silence.” She paused. “I don’t know if it will help, but I do know that it’s time to end the silence.”
She ran a hand over her face and through her hair. Took a deep breath, gathering herself.
“I love you, Dad. You know that. I always have, always will. But we’ve got to talk about things someday. I think today is that day. Give me a call when you can. I love you.”
She disconnected. Looked through the rain-washed windshield at the low brick building and thought of all the colleagues inside who would have questions. It was your grandmother? I didn’t even know you had family up here. How long was she missing? Why wasn’t it reported? Why were there chains and hooks, and just what exactly was wrong with your family?
She started the engine, backed out, and drove away.
DOWNSTREAM
45
Deshawn got a break before embarking on his double shift, but he stayed belowground. Sat with his back against the cool stone of the freshly cut stretch of tunnel, watched the Mole chisel through rock, and sipped a bottle of water. He was tired and sore but actually feeling more energized for the extra hours than he had been for the first shift. His hangover had faded, sweated out as the day wore on. It was also nice to see the rest of the crew turn over, to watch the men who’d seen him scream in the face of the oncoming car make their exit. The story would circulate, but for a few hours, at least, he’d be working among men who weren’t exchanging whispers about him.
He’d grown tolerant of the ghosts, too. There were more of them now, and they stayed in view longer, and he supposed that should have increased the terror, but it didn’t. He just kept his head down and passed below them or beside them, never reacting. So long as you avoided eye contact, they wouldn’t speak.
All of these things were reassuring, but the real source of his renewed energy was from the knowledge that this would be his last shift as a sandhog.
He was sure of it now. He was beginning to break, and things like that didn’t always happen slowly. Sometimes, particularly down in the tunnels, it happened fast. He’d hardly be the first sandhog to start seeing things down here; encounters with phantoms probably went back to the first dig on the Croton Aqueduct, nearly two centuries earlier. They weren’t stories that would’ve been quoted in newspapers, but they were there. They’d been told at old taverns along the Hudson and in tent camps upstate. Anyone who’d spent enough time belowground had heard a ghost story or two.
There were no rules for how you treated a man who claimed to have had such an experience, and Deshawn had never heard of management needing to get involved, although surely that had happened. A few sandhogs had visited Bellevue over the years for psychiatric care. Surely one of them must have seen something down here. Maybe the very ghost that Deshawn had seen. Who knew? All he was certain of was that he wanted to leave on his own terms. Today would put a dent in his reputation, but it would be small and quickly forgotten.
He’d been muttering about retirement for long enough that few would be surprised. There’d be a party for him, but that would be at a bar at street level, not down here in the dim light and the dust with the whirring steel blades of the Mole. He’d do fine at the party, have a few beers and tell a few jokes and maybe even turn his screaming episode into one of the jokes. Take ownership of the story. Yes, that was a fine idea. He could—
“Mr. Ryan?”
The voice floated down from above him. That was trouble, because there was nothing above him. He was alone in the quiet cool of the tunnel while the others worked a good fifty yards ahead. The Mole had stopped, which always brought a sense of solitude.
“Mr. Ryan?”
Deshawn didn’t look up. The voice from above was impossible. He knew that, and so he would not look. He kept his eyes on his water bottle while he unscrewed the lid and took a sip. Rinsed his mouth out and spit. He would not look up, and eventually the ghost would be gone, and Deshawn would go about his work again. His last shift of work.
“Mr. Ryan.” This time the voice had an added bite to it, and then something moved in Deshawn’s peripheral vision. Still he didn’t turn.
He didn’t have to. The ghost came for him.
It was the man in the high rubber boots and the suit jacket with the vest. The same man who’d stood in front of the railcar, speaking to Deshawn about pressure and water, asking if he thought anyone would remember him. He crouched down, looking right into Deshawn’s face.
“Mr. Ryan, I’m afraid we can’t continue with this approach,” the man said. “I understand you’d rather work alone and not have to acknowledge the rest of your crew, and that’s usually fine, because we can be patient. You’ll join us when you’re ready. But it’s not possible today. There’s trouble.”
The rest of your crew. What did that mean? The rest of the ghosts, the ones who watched him from the old timbers that didn’t exist down here? The gaunt-faced, grimy, weary men who seemed to be waiting on something or someone?
Were they waiting on Deshawn? You’ll join us when you’re ready.
“You’re not real,” Deshawn whispered.
That earned a pitying smile. “You’ll need to listen to me today,” the man said. “You’ll need to accept your circumstances.”
Deshawn looked from the man to the Mole, remembering the time a decade ago when a sandhog named Darryl Duncan had a premonition of something falling. Darryl just stopped in his tracks, refused to walk forward. It was only thirty seconds later that a chain snapped and two tons of rock fell from the muck cart just in front of him.
I had a feeling, that’s all, he’d said. He never talked of it again, and people didn’t push too hard. A thing like that? Nobody wanted to question it. They just hoped whatever voice whispered in Darryl Duncan’s ear that day would whisper in theirs, too, when the time was right.
So maybe this was good. Maybe Deshawn wasn’t losing his mind down here but rather seeing something that could help. The Mole was stopped, it was cooling, but maybe there was something wrong with—
“Not down there,” the man told him, shifting back into Deshawn’s field of vision, shuffling in his crouched stance like a catcher moving to take a pitch outside. His pale face with its close-cropped mustache was right before Deshawn’s eyes.
“Upstream,” he said. “We’re hearing there’s real trouble there.”
Deshawn looked in all directions. Left, right, and over the man’s shoulder. When he was sure they were alone, nobody watching or listening, he whispered back.
“Who are you?”
“We’re just like you,” the man said. “You’d know some of us. The newer guard, maybe, but not the old guard. You’d remember some names, though.”
“You mean… you died down here?” Deshawn looked past him again
, but this time up to where the impassive men in antiquated clothes sat or stood on timber beams staring down at him, waiting.
“That’s right.”
“But… there are so many of you.”
“And many more behind us. A man a mile, Mr. Ryan.”
A man a mile. How many times had Deshawn heard that quote? It was the average death toll for sandhogs in the water tunnels. For each mile carved to quench New York, at least one man had died. And that was just the sandhogs. That didn’t count the camps upstate, either. How many had been killed in the reservoir constructions? Deshawn doubted that anyone had an accurate tally. There were more than a dozen lakes involved and construction spanning more than a century. The aqueducts and reservoirs had been built largely by immigrants or people who ventured into the mountains just for the jobs, transient laborers whose deaths might never have made the official record.
“You’re all trapped?” Deshawn said. His breath left a trail of steam in the cool air of the tunnel.
“Not exactly,” the ghost answered. No steam chased his breath into the air. “It’s a complex system, Mr. Ryan.”
A complex system. That phrase had been uttered by every politician in the city or state over the past fifty years. Probably longer. And it was true. The Mole up there, a feat of engineering in its own right, was really such a small component of the whole.
The ghost was watching him intently, and Deshawn finally realized that he wasn’t talking about the water. Or at least not in the way Deshawn was used to thinking about it. The complex system the ghost was referring to was a different thing entirely.
The dead worked on. That was what he meant.
A complex system indeed.
Deshawn didn’t want to join them. He didn’t want to die, but he damn sure didn’t want to—
“Am I dead?” he asked, the thought jarring but not implausible. Maybe it was the only thing that made sense, in fact.