In the River Darkness

by Marlene Röder

  “Let’s see if I can make it to the island!” she called, and took off swimming as if someone were chasing her. Half disappointed, half relieved to have firm ground under my feet again, I returned to the shore. There I dried myself off with the blanket that was supposed to be for our picnic and got dressed again. In the pocket of my pants, I found the voodoo doll. I hurled the disgusting thing out into the river.

  The dog sat next to me and together we watched as Mia, with quick strokes, drew closer to the spot of land surrounded by water.

  “Watch out, rumor has it that the island doesn’t like people!” I called out to her.

  At that moment, the dog sitting next to me began to growl, a low rumble deep in its throat.

  “Something just brushed against my leg!” Mia cried suddenly. “There’s . . . there’s something in the water, Alex!”

  “It’s a river. There are fish here!”

  “No, it felt like . . . hands!” The beam from my flashlight illuminated Mia’s contorted face; she was wide-eyed with fear. As fast as she could, she started to swim back toward the shore. Then I lost her again in the darkness. Had she gone under?

  The dog ran back and forth along the bank, yapping like mad. Its hoarse barking sounded across the water. I wanted to jump into the river to help her, but my body didn’t respond. I could only stand there and scream her name: “Mia, MIA!”

  The dog discovered her first—with its tail wagging, it pounced on Mia, who was crawling onto the shore a few yards away from us. Panting, she dropped down in the sand, where she curled up into a ball. I draped the blanket over her shoulders and she wrapped herself up in it.

  Tangled strands of hair plastered to her face. “That was not a fish, that was not a fish,” she kept repeating with white lips. “What the hell was that?”

  “Whatever it was, it’s gone, Mia.” I talked to her soothingly, trying to convince us both that she was safe now. But through the blanket, I could feel that she was still shivering. “It tried to pull me underwater, Alex!” Mia whispered insistently. “You have to believe me!” She rested her head in her hands—and stopped.

  “My earrings are gone,” she said in a flat voice.

  “Oh. You must have lost them in the water.”

  “Both of them? No, I’ve worn them lots of times when I was swimming!” She stared at me defiantly. “Your damned fish stole my earrings!”

  A romantic picnic in the moonlight was out of the question. Silently, we gathered up our things and headed back.

  We were still a ways below the dock to our house when Mia suddenly grabbed my arm. “Look, Alex. What is that?” She pointed toward the river. Out there on the black water flickered tiny lights. One of them had been propelled close to the shore and had gotten caught in the tangled roots of a weeping willow right near us.

  “Wait a minute, I want to have a closer look at this!” Before I could stop her, Mia had already climbed down the bank.

  “And?” I asked.

  Mia didn’t say anything for a moment. When she finally did answer, her voice sounded astonished: “It’s a kind of raft . . . with a tea candle on it and a couple of . . . pancakes!”

  “What? Pancakes?” But her description was exactly right. Mia climbed back up again and held the thing out toward me. Incredulous, I turned it this way and that in my hands. “It looks like a kind of sacrifice,” I muttered. “I’ve seen something like this in the pictures from my mother. People in Indonesia make offerings like this to their nature gods to win their favor.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed yet, we’re not exactly in Indonesia!” Mia exclaimed excitedly. “So where do these sacrificial things come from?”

  That question, at least, wasn’t hard to answer. The closer we got to our dock, the more of these lights we discovered on the river. Without a sound, we continued on our way, as if stalking someone.

  And there she was! On the dock, someone knelt and was carefully releasing another raft into the water. It was a figure in a flowing white dress, a nightgown. The hair that was usually tied back in a severe knot hung thinly over her shoulders, and her feet were bare. I had never seen her like this before . . .

  It was my grandmother!

  I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. Her hands moved as if she was praying the rosary, but I couldn’t understand her mumbled words. I didn’t understand anything anymore. While I saw Grandma pull out some metallic object and heard Mia give a muffled gasp next to me, everything seemed oddly surreal to me, as if we were caught in a nightmare.

  The knife glittered in the moonlight as my grandmother cut herself in the finger and then let her blood drip into the water. “Protect this house and those who live in it,” she droned in her worn-out, old woman’s voice, a monotone singsong. “Accept my offering and remain in your territory, in the river!”

  Grandma made the sign of the cross one last time and touched her hand to her lips. Then she turned away from the water and shuffled back up to the house with difficulty, without even looking around her.

  Mia exhaled raggedly. “What on earth was that all about, Alex?” Where was my brave, calm, cool, and collected Mia? She seemed to be completely stunned. “I mean, that’s . . . that’s completely crazy! Why in the world is your grandmother letting her blood drip into the river by the full moon?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and tried to evade her gaze.

  “You know more about this than you’re letting on, am I right?” Mia’s voice grew louder, and she stamped the ground with a foot in a helpless rage. “Right?”

  She might even have been right about that. I was afraid to think about it.

  “There’s something in the river, isn’t there?” she whispered into my ear, as if she was afraid someone might overhear her otherwise. “What is going on here, Alex? You have to tell me!” In a subdued voice she added, “This is incredibly creepy.”

  I didn’t tell her anything. I couldn’t. Instead, I took off my silver chain with the cross and put it on Mia. My neck felt strangely cold and unprotected without its familiar presence.

  “What is that?” Mia asked, looking at me with wide eyes.

  “It’s a substitute for your earrings. It will protect you, okay?”

  She studied me for a long while. “Okay,” she said finally, and then added in a slightly teasing tone, “Now I feel so much better!”

  I truly wished I could have felt the same way.

  That night, I had bizarre dreams about water and white silhouettes. When I woke up the next morning, my pillow was damp, as if I had cried in my sleep. But I couldn’t remember anything.

  Chapter 12

  Jay

  “It’s strange—on these hot summer nights, everyone always pretends they’re sleeping when they’re actually doing something completely different,” I said thoughtfully.

  We were sitting next to each other leaning on the railing of the bridge, Alina and I. We spit into the river and watched as our spit blended in with the dark water flowing sluggishly beneath us.

  The midday sun beamed golden from the sky, and hot wind blew through the empty streets. Other than us, there wasn’t a soul outside. Even the dogs had retreated, panting into the shade.

  Just one kingfisher sat an arm’s length away from Alina on the railing and preened its colorful feathers. The harsh sunlight reflecting off the brilliant turquoise made me see spots. The bird would have landed on Alina’s shoulder if she had wanted it to. All the animals along the river obeyed Alina.

  My thoughts were still churning around the question of why people always pretended. “They’re so busy pretending for each other, they don’t even notice that other people have their secrets, too.”

  The word pleased me, so I said it out loud several more times: “Secrets, secrets, secrets.” I was tickled as I thought about Grandma and Skip, both of them sitting at the breakfast table this morning with their eyes barely open, spooning up their cereal as if nothing had happened.

  “I think Skip was out with Mia last night,”
I told Alina. “That’s his girlfriend now, you know. She’s really nice and . . .” Then I noticed how the sound of Mia’s cello resonated in my voice, it couldn’t be disguised anymore. I abruptly stopped talking, but it was already too late.

  Alina had also heard the cello in me.

  “So Mia is her name?” Alina drew up her lips so I could see her pale gums. “What is she doing here, anyway? She doesn’t belong here!” she hissed, her voice vibrating like a string pulled too tight.

  “She should get out of here, away from our river. Go back where she came from! Don’t you think so, Jay?” Alina looked me directly in the eyes.

  I swallowed and felt my head nodding. That’s when I noticed the earrings she was wearing. “Are those . . . aren’t those Mia’s earrings?” I stammered. My vocal cords were tied in knots. My eyes were glued to the dangling strands of tiny shells. They jingled when Mia moved, a quiet music that always accompanied her. Seeing them on Alina now seemed wrong.

  Alina smiled with satisfaction.

  “You . . . you stole them from her!”

  “She’s stolen much more than that from me!”

  We looked at each other for a long time, while the poplars along the shore trembled in the breeze like blazing torches.

  I knew exactly what she meant, and fear grew inside me. So I said quickly, “I’ll never forget you, I promise!”

  “That’s not enough anymore!” Alina countered. “I want you to prove it to me!”

  “Okay, sure. How . . . what should I do?” The kingfisher that had obediently sat next to us the entire time seemed to throw me a pitying look with its beady little eyes.

  “But you know already,” Alina said. She made a gesture with her hand—and the kingfisher plunged down into the river like a falling jewel.

  Yes, I did know. I knew it even before Alina climbed up on the railing of the bridge. It took a lot of effort to resist the impulse to cling to her bare ankles as she stood up on top of it, swaying. Alina didn’t let anything or anyone hold on to her!

  I knew exactly what she demanded of me.

  Her image flickered before my eyes, a delicate silhouette against the blazing blue of the sky. “This . . . this is just a joke, right?” I waited for her to start laughing, but Alina’s expression didn’t change. “I mean, people have already landed in the hospital because of that . . . it’s dangerous!” Because she didn’t laugh, I did, but it sounded too shrill.

  “We’re going to do it together, Jay.” Alina turned herself halfway toward me on the railing, as elegant as a dancer. “Do it for me!” she whispered, stretching out a hand toward me.

  “But . . . but this is crazy!” I protested weakly, and then I had already taken hold of her hand. And then I stood next to her on the railing, trembling. I hardly dared to look down, where the water of the river yawned at least twenty feet below us. We were up so high that I didn’t know how we could possibly get down from there alive.

  In my head, everything was churning. The taste of bile in my mouth. “I feel sick. Please, Alina.” The voice that came out of my mouth sounded peculiar, an unfamiliar whimper.

  But Alina’s firm grip didn’t let me go. Her fingers clenched mine, foreign and as cold as stone polished by water. My limbs were clay under those fingers.

  Cold sweat ran down my spine, and I shivered in spite of the heat. The wind, the whispering hot wind, pulled at me. Enticing, threatening. There were voices in the air, but I couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying.

  “Go!” whispered Alina.

  Afterward, I couldn’t say whether she pulled me with her, or I did it myself. Only one thing was certain: we jumped.

  The water raced toward us. The air around me screeched. For a heartbeat, I could understand the voices more clearly; they sang of love . . . and of death.

  Then we crashed onto the surface of the water. It felt as if I were being shoved through a glass wall.

  Hand in hand, we sank, sank down to the muddy bottom. Alina’s long hair drifted in the current like seaweed, gently brushing my face. Down here, everything was green and murky. The only thing I could recognize clearly was Alina’s eyes, only a few inches away from my face.

  Air bubbles streamed from my nose, tracing a shimmering path toward the surface. I wanted to follow it, to take back the air, but I couldn’t. Alina had a firm hold on my wrists, holding me tight, underwater.

  Slowly, I was running out of oxygen. This isn’t a game anymore! This is not fun! I wanted to scream. Because that was the most awful thing down there: the silence. It was a stifling, deafening silence that swallowed any sounds. As if the world had gone mute; as if the world had died to me.

  I tried to tear myself loose from Alina. Fleetingly, I was amazed by the sheer strength of her delicate white hands. She was much stronger than me! With my lungs burning, I fought wildly to get free, kicking, scratching her.

  It was no use.

  The last thing I saw was her smile, which was gradually eaten up by black holes. Then darkness.

  My muscles went limp. I succumbed.

  And only then did she let go of me. I shot upward through the blackness, the water’s surface like a massive slab of glass, shattered as I broke through it. Air! Sounds exploded in my head.

  Alina pulled me ashore.

  Later, we both lay in the soft grass along the shore, with Alina’s hair spread out around us like a fan of silver.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked. “Why did you hold on to me? It was so quiet down there, I thought I was dead already.”

  She took her time before she answered, all the while braiding kingfisher feathers into her hair, little slivers of heaven. “I did it so you would know how your world would be without me. Promise that you’ll never forget me!”

  I promised it—of course. But I couldn’t take my eyes off my wrists, where her grip had left bruises like red chains.

  Chapter 13

  Mia

  “Would you like some more pasta, Mia?” my mother asked. At least she was speaking to me again.

  There had been an unpleasant postlude to the nighttime horror trip Alex and I had experienced recently. Just as I was about to sneak back into my room, exhausted beyond belief, the light had suddenly gone on. My mother was standing on the landing of the stairs, her lips pressed together in a tight line.

  “Where are you coming from in the middle of the night? Sneaking out of the house behind our backs. Did you meet that boy from next door?” There was no more talk about the nice young neighbors.

  Unfortunately, my nerves were already strained to the breaking point that night. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball in my cozy, safe bed.

  “Why don’t you take care of your own problems for a change, Mom!” I had snapped back at her. When I saw the expression on her face, I was sorry I had said it. More than a week had gone by since then, and my mother was still angry.

  “Thanks, but I’m full,” I replied and tried to send her a conciliatory smile across the dining room table. “I’ll see you later. I still have something to take care of.”

  My stolen earrings, the bloodletting ritual, and this creature in the river . . . all of that was still haunting my thoughts. Alex apparently couldn’t or didn’t want to help me understand these mysterious events.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” he said when I brought up the subject. “It may be that I used to know something, but I can’t remember anymore.” And he looked so tortured every time I asked that I soon left him in peace.

  So I would have to get to the bottom of things myself. I had decided to play detective. This afternoon I wanted to ask Iris a few unpleasant questions.

  On my way to the Stonebrooks’ house, I came across Jay on the dock. He seemed to be talking with someone who was hidden by the bushes. Curious, I went a little closer. But when I reached the dock, I couldn’t see anyone but Jay, who was throwing stones into the water. Strange. For a moment, I thought maybe Jay was talking to himself, but that couldn’t be it. That wou
ld be too crazy.

  “Hi, Jay. Who were you just talking to?” I asked innocently.

  He kept his gaze fixed on the river. “Alina.” Another stone pierced the water’s surface with a splash. Jay hurled them as if he wanted to give the river a beating.

  I observed him from the side and just couldn’t control my stupid tongue. “Did you two get into an argument?”

  “No! Well, maybe a little.” With an unusually forceful movement, Jay turned toward me and glared at me defiantly, almost with animosity. “Alina is my best friend! I’ll never forget her. Never!” he added for emphasis. It sounded a little like something he had memorized.

  “Okay. It’s alright, I get it!” I said, astonished. Why was he reacting so strangely? Carefully, I tried to test the waters and see what else Jay might tell me: “Your friend Alina sounds like quite an interesting person. Does she go to our school?”

  Jay blinked at me in confusion, as if this question had never occurred to him before. “Uh, no . . .” he replied hesitantly.

  “Then she drives to a school in the city every day? That’s a long way to go! I mean, she lives here in the neighborhood, right? I’d really like to meet her.”

  Jay suddenly seemed nervous. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he whispered into my ear so fast that his tongue almost tripped over the syllables, “because Alina doesn’t like you!”

  “But why not?” I exclaimed indignantly. “She doesn’t even know me!”

  Maybe it was just the light, but Jay’s different-colored eyes seemed more noticeable to me than usual today: blue and green-brown . . .

  Nervously, he looked around and whispered, “Alina is jealous. And angry, very angry!”

  I opened my mouth to ask what he meant by that, but just at that moment, he touched my chest.

  I froze. But Jay only touched the silver chain with the cross and twirled it in his fingers. “Ah, so you’re wearing the chain now! Skip gave it to you, didn’t he? That was clever of him. It will look out for you; that’s good. It will protect you.”