1 The Bank of the River

by Michael Richan

Steven called to his father to wake up while watching the eyes to see if they would react. They didn’t. His dad didn’t respond; Steven called again. He shifted his gaze to his father, and Steven saw for the first time that something was wrong with him. His body was as stiff as a board, shaking very slightly, and – he blinked his eyes to be sure – hovering about an inch off the bed.

  It seemed to Steven that his father was under some kind of attack, that the shadow figure was doing something to him. He heard the first knock of the second series. It was much louder than he’d ever heard it before, it seemed to be coming from everywhere. Now he wasn’t worried about his father hearing the knocking, he was worried that the shadow was harming him, maybe even killing him. No longer concerned about the eyes or his own safety, he rushed to his father’s side, grabbing his shoulders.

  “Wake up, Dad!” he said as he shook Roy. “Wake up, for god’s sake!” It seemed that every muscle in Roy’s body was contracted. Shaking his shoulders caused Roy’s whole body to move. He looked at Roy’s closed eyes, waiting for them to open, but Roy was unresponsive. He heard the second knock, as loud as the first and lasting longer than normal, as though the sound itself was in slow motion. He felt under his father, confirming there was space there, enough for him to slide his hand entirely under his father’s body. He glanced back over his shoulder to see if the shadow was still there, and yes, the eyes still hovered in the same position, now staring at both Roy and Steven.

  Steven knew he had to do something. “Let him go!” Steven yelled. He stood from the side of the bed and approached the shadow, more angry than scared. He didn’t have any idea what he was going to do once he reached it, but it felt like his only option. The third knock resounded in the distance and the eyes in the shadow shifted now to look at Steven. Steven froze. The eyes looked human, but they were off, not quite right. He sensed malevolence, the kind of feeling you sometimes get when you read about something abhorrent and repugnant. This thing is evil, he thought. There’s no other word for it. His body felt freezing cold and a wave of despair washed over him that made him want to drop to his knees in defeat. He forced himself to take another step toward it, and as he approached within an arm’s length, the eyes closed, leaving only the black of the shadow, which began to move away from him. He felt the cold and hopelessness diminish. He watched it drift towards the bedroom door, as though it was walking out of the room. He followed it, and once again he saw it descend into the floor of the hallway as the fourth knock hit and reverberated throughout the house.

  He rushed back to his father, who now was lying firmly on the bed. He grabbed his shoulders again, to give him a gentle shaking. He could tell instantly that the muscles were now relaxed, like they should be. Roy’s eyes opened and then winced in pain. “Goddamn,” he complained, looking at Steven.

  “Are you hurt? Do I need to call an ambulance?” Steven asked.

  “No ambulance, no,” Roy replied, wincing again. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

  “Can you sit up?” Steven asked.

  Roy tried, and found himself able, though certain movements surprised him with pain. “I could really use a couple aspirin or something,” he said.

  “What hurts?” Steven asked.

  “Everything hurts,” Roy replied.

  “Stay there, I’ll bring you some.” Steven walked into the hallway and down to the bathroom, retrieving a couple of pills and a glass of water. He waited while his father swallowed them and drank the water. “I heard the knocking, and came in to get you. The shadow we saw in the hall earlier, it was in here with you.”

  Roy looked up at him.

  “It had some kind of hold on you,” Steven told him. “Your body was completely stiff, and…” Steven paused, becoming uncomfortable with the irrationality of what he was about to say.

  “Yeah?” Roy asked. “What? Tell me.”

  “You were floating above the bed.”

  “Really?” Roy seemed intrigued, but Steven didn’t know if it was sarcasm.

  “Maybe it was something else, maybe it was due to your muscles spasming,” Steven said.

  Roy chuckled. “Even with all this, everything in the last few hours, you still think it’s hallucinations?” Roy asked.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Steven replied. “Yes, my mind looks for something normal to explain it.”

  “Oh, you’re making my head hurt more. I need a cup of coffee. Make me some, OK?”

  -

  Steven and Roy sat at the kitchen table. Each had a mug of strong coffee in their hands, drinking liberally. Roy asked a few more questions about what happened, and Steven filled him in.

  “So,” Roy asked, “you went at the shadow because you thought it was attacking me.”

  “Right. I couldn’t get you to wake up and I could tell something was wrong with your body. You were as stiff as a board.”

  “That would explain why I feel worked over,” Roy said.

  “And it just left. Closed its eyes, drifted out into the hallway, and disappeared into the floor, just like earlier.”

  Roy spent a moment contemplating this. “I suppose there’s something we should talk about,” Roy said.

  “Yeah?” Steven asked, almost dreading what his father was about to say.

  “In my younger days, I used to be able to…” he paused, seeming to search for the right words. “I used to be able to feel things. I could pick up on things other people didn’t seem to be able to feel or notice.”

  “What do you mean?” Steven asked, sensing he was about to hear what Bernie had referred to years ago. He felt uncomfortable.

  “You know what I mean,” Roy replied. “I know you know. You just hate admitting it.”

  “I’m not sure I do,” Steven told him. “Maybe I do. But why don’t you just tell me, so I don’t have to guess.”

  Roy shook his head. “Always this way. You’ve always been this way, ever since you could speak. Always on the banks, but never with a pole in the water.”

  “What?” Steven asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Stevie, there’s a wide river in front of you, rushing along, thousands and thousands of gallons of water moving every second, all coming from somewhere, all going somewhere. You can’t see what’s in there, but there are things in there, moving along with it. We both know that. You, because someone told you there’s things in the river. You like to pretend they’re not there. Me, I know they’re there because I jump into it and find them, touch them, experience them.”

  Steven wasn’t prepared to go along with it. It sounded too kooky. “A river?”

  “Not a literal river, no. It’s one that most people can’t see or choose not to see. But it’s there, moving, full of things. I found out when I was younger that I could jump into that river, swim in it. Find things. Come back out. When I told some people about it, it scared the hell out of them, but my father knew what I meant. He could do it too. He taught me to be selective in whom I told.”

  “I had no idea,” Steven said. It was a lie, but he wanted to see where this was going.

  “Your mother knew,” Roy said. “She did not approve of it. There was an incident, early in our marriage, just after you were born. She got a glimpse of it. Scared her to death. I felt bad about it, tried to soothe her. I tried to explain it to her, make her understand it was nothing to be afraid of. But she was so jarred by it, so shaken, that she went the other way. Turned completely batshit Christian, made me swear to never do it, especially not around you. Or your bother, when he arrived. I agreed, partially because I knew I could still do it and she would never know, I just had to keep it secret from her. But I suppressed it for years and I think that created a sense of something being bottled up. Every year she got more and more churchy, dragging you boys off to bible-this and that, goddamn church camps and all, and it didn’t matter what I had to say about it.”

  “I always wondered why you never came to church,” Steven said.

  “Did you like goi
ng to church?” Roy asked.

  “God no,” Steven said.

  “Neither did I,” Roy said, slapping the table. “Wasn’t going to waste my time. But I think she felt that shoving Jesus down your throat would protect you from this other side of things. I think she was afraid one or both of you would…inherit it, and she was gonna build up defenses so it wouldn’t take.”

  Steven considered this. Was Roy implying that Bernie, or himself, might have this same ability?

  “What do you call it?” Steven asked. “This ability you have. Does it have a name?”

  “I don’t have a name for it,” Roy replied. “And to be honest with you, I haven’t dabbled in it much for a while. I got so tired of hiding it from Claire, I gave up after a while, it was just easier. She got really crazy about it in those last few years, I didn’t dare mention it, it would send her into hours of crazy bible thumping. I think at the end she began to view me as the devil or something like that. Accused me of it more than once during the dementia. Then, after she passed, I considered cranking it back up, but I’ve not done much with it. One night after she was gone, when I was particularly lonely, I thought maybe I’d try to contact her – you know, from the other side.”

  Steven felt a lump in his throat, saddened that his dad had felt that lonely. He suddenly felt guilty for not visiting him more.

  “But,” Roy continued, “I didn’t because I knew even if she could talk to me she never would that way, out of her hatred of it. She’d be too busy staring endlessly into the eyes of Jesus to bother and talk with me. Hell, I don’t think we said a dozen words to each other that last year she was alive anyway. But I did miss her.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Steven knew his mother’s extreme religiousness was a big reason why he was such a rationalist now. It was pure rebellion, a one-eighty from what she hoped he would be. He hadn’t considered his father also held beliefs he found just as unpalatable but were never expressed.

  Roy stood and refilled his coffee mug. “Listen, I think you made your point. You’re not crazy, there’s no brain tumor. Something’s going on here and it’s taking a toll on you. Like I told you, you look like shit.”

  “It’s because of sleep,” Steven replied. “The knocking, every night.”

  “Fuck the knocking,” Roy replied. “The knocking is just the appetizer. You got a real problem here. The knocking is just to wake you up so they can scare the shit out of you. And it’s working, because they know you can’t accept what you’re seeing. Nothing more horrible than a brain tumor.”

  “They?” Steven asked. “Who is ‘they’?”

  Roy sat back down. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “How?”

  “Not sure just yet,” Roy replied. “But I have some ideas. Drive me home. There’s some things I need to do.”

  The early colors of dawn were just appearing in the sky. Steven sat down his coffee and went to look for his car keys.

  Chapter Six

  “This seems pointless, Dad,” Steven said as he picked up his father once again at his house and drove him back to Steven’s to spend another night. Steven had taken his father home earlier that morning and dropped him off. Later that afternoon he had received a call from Roy asking him to come and pick him up at 9 p.m., that he wanted to spend the night again. He told him that he wanted to hold a “trance” at the house, with his help. Steven felt it was a useless exercise.

  “Tell me what this is and why we’re doing it,” Steven insisted.

  “Your tone could use a little softening, considering I’m helping you here,” Roy replied.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, I just want to know what the plan is, and why you think it will matter.”

  “The plan,” Roy said, “is a trance. I did a little studying up at home. There’s a book I have, that I’ve had for years, since I was a teenager, that I always kept hidden from your mother. It’s been invaluable to me over the years.”

  “What book? What’s the title?” Steven asked.

  “I didn’t think you were interested in such things,” Roy said. “I’m sure it’d all be a bunch of gobbledygook to you, or you’d just pick at it, ‘cause that’s what you do. So just trust me for now.”

  Steven wanted to object, but he knew Roy was right. He would pick at it, trying to discredit it. Probably not the “energy” Roy wanted right now.

  “So you learned what we should do from this book?” Steven asked instead.

  “Well, it gave me an idea,” Roy replied, “to turn the tables, so to speak. So far, this has all been a one-way communication, it trying to talk to you. Or to scare you. But always initiated by it. This time we’re going to initiate things. That sends a different signal. We’ll see what happens.”

  “So you’re not sure what’s going to happen?”

  “No, not really,” Roy replied.

  “So, we’re just stirring things up then? Stirring the shit? That seems like a bad idea to me.”

  “This isn’t my first time at the rodeo, kid,” Roy said. “Give me a little bit of credit.”

  “What are you going to do, exactly?”

  “A trance. It’s like jumping in the river. But I’m in charge this time, I’m controlling the process. If I’m lucky we’ll get some answers.”

  “What, like a séance?” Steven asked.

  “Well, kind of, but you won’t be participating,” Roy answered. “We won’t be holding hands around a table. But I will go into a trance, and come back out. I need you to keep an eye on me, make sure I don’t trip over a rug or walk into a knife, that kind of thing.”

  “Has that ever happened? When you’ve done it before?” Steven asked.

  “When you’re in a trance,” Roy said, “anything can happen. I might lose track of what I’m doing, physically. That’s your job, to keep me safe. I’m trusting you.”

  Steven swallowed hard and pulled into the driveway of his house.

  -

  Roy had placed a kitchen chair in the middle of the hallway where they had both seen the shadow the night before. He sat on the chair and handed Steven a scrap of cloth.

  “Blindfold me,” Roy said.

  “What, you’re starting it now? You’re doing the trance now?”

  “Yes,” Roy replied. “I like the blindfold, it helps me concentrate. Another reason I need you to watch me.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better…more successful if we waited until 3 a.m.? The time the knockings have been happening?”

  “No,” Roy answered. “It won’t make any difference and it might make it worse. Three a.m. is their schedule. This is on my schedule. Now is fine. They’re here, I know it.”

  Steven walked behind Roy and wrapped the light cloth around Roy’s eyes. It wasn’t thick enough to block much light, but would be enough to cause Roy to keep his eyes closed, which Steven guessed was its purpose.

  “What do I do?” Steven asked, behind him.

  “Come stand in front of me, but down the hall by the bedrooms. Keep an eye on me. You have the flashlight?”

  “Yes,” Steven replied.

  “Good. I know you’ve never seen this before, but you’ve got to trust me. I might make all kinds of noises, but don’t try to stop the trance until I take the blindfold off myself, OK? Promise me.”

  “I promise,” Steven said, now more concerned than intrigued. Given what had happened to Roy the night before, he felt this was not going to end well.

  “Good,” Roy said. “Now, turn out the light and just stay quiet. Don’t talk to me. It may take a while. We’ll wait and let things play out.”

  -

  Steven had initially crouched down on his legs at the end of the hall but after ten minutes in the position he felt his legs beginning to cramp, and he shifted as quietly as he could into a cross-legged position. His father was still motionless in the chair halfway down the hall, and he couldn’t hear any sound coming from him, not even breathing. Steven suppressed a sudden wave of panic at the id
ea of his father having a heart attack or a stroke while sitting there. If he’s had either, Steven thought, he’d be slumped over. But he’s not – his head is upright, just as I left him ten minutes ago. Be patient.

  Another ten minutes passed, with Steven’s mind racing. What would he do if the shadow appeared again? Would it start at the end of the hall? That would be behind Roy’s head, would he know it was there? Steven strained to see the place where the shadow had first appeared. It looked normal.

  Steven checked his watch. Another ten minutes passed, it had been thirty minutes. How long would this last? Would his father sit there until the knockings started at 3 a.m.? Steven felt his eyelids get heavy and he fought back the desire to shut them. His breathing was relaxed now, and the darkness and stillness seemed to envelop him the way the promise of pleasurable sleep washes over you just before it takes you. He felt his head nod, and he remembered thinking that letting it hang was a bad idea.

  He thought he had nodded off for maybe a minute, but when he came back to awareness he was afraid it might have been longer. Things had changed in the hallway. The light was considerably less than before he had fallen asleep, and Steven had difficulty seeing his father distinctly; only his outline was visible from where he was sitting. His arms were suspended out to his sides, palms down, hanging as if they’d been raised by a puppeteer. He was breathing heavily with a raspy, grating breath as though he had just finished a marathon. With every exhale something vocal came out, but it was a short, guttural rumbling of his vocal chords, not a word or anything intelligible.

  Steven remembered Roy’s instruction to not talk to him or disturb the trance. But something was wrong, he felt it. There was a heaviness to the air in the hallway, it was thicker and more dense. He stood, and it felt like trying to stand from the bottom of a swimming pool. He felt a need to check on his father, to ensure he was OK. I can at least get closer, watch him breathing, he thought. I won’t interrupt him.

  Taking a step was like trying to move through sand. Steven was so jarred by the sensation he looked down at his lifted leg, trying to mentally will it to move. It was moving, but incredibly slowly. He felt exhausted at the effort it had taken to move a single step.