Beware the River

by Kitty Margo

  Dragging myself off the floor, I took another look at the painting. The man wasn’t moving, wasn’t talking, just staring straight ahead like most painted people did, and the buffalo was back to his grass munching pose. The water had receded back in the river and no one was in danger of drowning.

  If the mop bucket hadn’t been full of river water and minnows and a crawfish, I might believe it had all been the workings of my overactive imagination. Unfortunately, I couldn’t deny the truth. Not with a gallon of muddy evidence sitting right in front of me.

  What else could possibly happen to me today? I had almost been suffocated in a dust cloud, blinded by a weird light, watched a painting come to life, and was now possibly suffering a concussion. Man, Gram spoke the truth when she said dust devils were a bad sign.

  What if my friends found out I was suffering from these weird hallucinations, in broad daylight? I would be the laughingstock of the entire eighth grade. Make that the entire school! I would be accused of smoking wacky weed. My name would be MUD and Megan Cobb would never agree to be seen in public with me, let alone go to the eighth grade dance with me.

  I was just about to go upstairs, lie down and watch The Avengers for the 99th time when …whoa Nelly! My entire body began to tremble as I again caught a movement from the painting out of the corner of my eye. No way! It was a full movement too. I couldn’t even lie to myself and say it had been the gentle stirring or flitting of an insect, or my imagination.

  I sat up shaking my head as a cold chill slithered down my spine and the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. If I weren’t so spooked, this would almost be comical. Almost. But you can believe I didn’t feel like laughing. To be honest, I felt like I was about to hurl my lunch. I couldn’t bring myself to look and see if the movement was coming from the terrifying man or the horrifying buffalo. Either one was beyond my worst fear. I did however say a silent prayer that the painted river wasn’t overflowing its banks again.

  All of a sudden, the humiliating image of walking down the halls of South Stanly Middle School on the first day of school and passing the gorgeous Megan Cobb with a huge L tattooed on my forehead filled my mind. I shook my head to dispel that thought. Man, this was crazy!

  I was shaking like a leaf in a storm, I could only imagine how bloodshot my eyes must look after nearly being scorched from their sockets, I had dirt embedded in my ear canals, and my head was throbbing like a toothache.

  Okay, first things first. I would go upstairs and find eye drops, cotton swabs, and ask Gram for some pain reliever. Then I would come back down and try to figure out what had just happened. Or, if it had really happened! Although, I was sure I would need Stephen King’s assistance to unravel this twisted tale of horror.

  Willing my feet to move, I took a few steps and stood in front of the eerie painting. I stared at it for several minutes praying that nothing would happen and then released the breath I had been holding in a loud whoosh when it didn’t. There! I knew it! It had been my imagination after all. I mean honestly, shouldn’t I have figured that out from the get go? Gram was right. I’d had too much sun. Or Mom was right, again, and I had been ordering way too many old scary movies on Netflix lately.

  Why, the guys and I had just watched Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project, Signs, and The Lost Boys on video a few weekends ago, for a two night horror movie fest and none of us had slept for a week afterward. There was absolutely no way I was turning my light off at night either. Who cared about a freaking power bill? Even last night I had ignored Mom’s ultimatum of “You are never watching another horror movie as long as you live” and refused to turn my light, my TV, or my computer off. So, feeling a little foolish, I turned to finally get that glass of tea.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t turn soon enough!

  No horror movie has ever even come close to the horror that was right in front of me! The buffalo’s eyes, that had been painted to look straight ahead, were now glowing a bright red and slowly beginning to roll down to where I stood. And no matter how hard I tried to convince myself to remain calm, it was useless. Impossible really, once I realized that the painted eyes were settling… on me!

  I could feel my bones beginning to rattle under my skin as I clutched the mantle and pressed my head against it in an effort to keep myself from either collapsing in another dead faint or throwing up my hands to run screaming out of the house like my mom does when she sees a tiny mouse scurry across the floor. This was not really happening! But it was the mother of all hallucinations!

  I leaned my forehead against the cool wood and drew a deep ragged breath, too terrified to lift my head or even move a muscle. What would happen if I looked into the blood red eyes of the buffalo? Would he use some type of supernatural X-ray vision mind control and force me to kill my family, my neighbors, or perhaps the entire town? Was he after my soul?

  Thinking back over all the horror movies I had seen none featured a buffalo as the killer, so I had no point of reference. But one thing was for certain. The painting was alive! I was sure of it! Nope, I hadn’t been out in the sun too long. Nope, I hadn’t found the key to the neighbors locked beverage cabinet. This crap was real!

  The light! That had to be it. The unnatural light must have brought the painting to life. Even before noticing the painting I had felt a strange chill sweep over me the second I had stepped into this room. It was that tingly sensation you feel when you’re being watched, but you don’t know by who or what.

  I had been in this house almost every single day of my life, but today something was different. There was something here. A presence. I could feel it all around me. Gram’s house had been possessed by its own paranormal activity.

  I had to get out of this house and the sooner the better, but what about Gram? She was taking a nap. I couldn’t just leave her. “Gram!” I shouted up the steps. “Gram, are you okay?”

  “Yes, son, what is it?” she mumbled sleepily from the top of the stairs. “I was just resting my eyes for a few minutes. You know the older I get….”

  “I was just checking on you, Gram. Go back to sleep,” I hated to interrupt her, but…this was not good! It took Gram several minutes after she woke from a nap to get her bearings. There was no way I could rush her out of the house without risking a serious fall. I was trapped. Doomed!

  After leaning against the mantle for what seemed like hours, I finally found the courage to lift my head about an inch. Then the phone rang. Good, at least I could tell someone what was going on in this madhouse. Without thinking I lifted my head to step down and answer the phone. I accidentally opened my eyes…and looked directly at the painting. Was that ever a mistake!

  My hands flew to my mouth to hold back a scream that would have surely awakened the inhabitants of every cemetery in the county. I hadn’t imagined it. The thing was alive! For not only had the eyes moved down to where I stood, they now stared directly into mine!

  The buffalo didn’t bat a red glowing eye as he kept his steady gaze locked with mine. Then as embarrassing as it is to admit, (not that I would ever admit it to a living soul) I lost control of my bladder and suddenly felt liquid sloshing around in my Converses.

  I lowered my head to the mantle and listened to Gram happily chatting with her sister Mattie Ruth on the phone. Well, actually I dropped my head and could already feel a goose egg beginning to rise, and my shorts were sticking to me, and my shoes were warm and squishy. However, I knew these were the least of my worries at the moment.

  I took a deep ragged breath and warned myself to calm down before I worked myself into a mini-stroke or something. This was not happening to me. The buffalo and the man in the painting couldn’t possible be alive. Of course not! I mean, let’s get real here!

  Yet how could eyes, that were nothing more than globs of paint some artist had brushed on a canvas, probably a hundred years ago from the looks of it, move?

  They couldn’t.

  Could they? />
  That was impossible.

  Wasn’t it?

  Of course it was! And I would prove it! I just had to look at the painting once more to be sure.

  I can’t say exactly where I found the courage, but I glanced up and found that the buffalo’s menacing eyes hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch. They were stilled locked on mine. So, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened to me today, a Nickelodeon Teen Choice Best Actor Award for sure, I strolled casually (hard to do with soaking wet pants) across the room, moved aside the heavy drapes and pretended to gaze out the window at the dried up field of cotton behind Gram’s house.

  Once there, I spun quickly around to find that the buffalo’s threatening glare had also shifted in that direction. But he completely ignored the dried up cotton stalks and kept his attention focused solely on me as he looked me square in the eyes.

  So now I was painfully aware that not only could the man talk and the river rise, the buffalo’s eyes could follow me around the room at random as well. Even though this had terrified me enough to wet my pants, I found it to be totally amazing. Still, there had to be a logical explanation.

  I mean why would this happen to me? A thirteen year old country boy who loves to fish, hunt, play video games, and whose greatest desire is for Megan Cobb (the most beautiful girl to ever stroll the halls of a middle school) to accept his invitation to the eighth grade dance? It’s a fact that I had practiced asking her in front of the mirror until my tongue about fell off.

  But, there was no time for daydreaming now. A sudden shiver passed through me and I felt goose bumps pop up all over my body. What if there wasn’t a logical explanation? There had to be. Perhaps it was as simple as me needing glasses. Or maybe the way the sunlight hit the painting caused my eyes to play tricks on my mind.

  No, that couldn’t be the answer. Gram kept the drapes closed against the sun in the summer. The house was darker than some of the tombs Lara Croft raided.

  Turning away from the doors, I carefully placed one foot in front of the other. My house was only two-doors down from Gram’s. Now, if only my slippery legs would cooperate I could be out of this house and in my own room in five minutes.

  My mom is a phlebotomist and since she was working the three to eleven shift at the hospital I was supposed to sleep over and keep an eye on Gram. However, there had been a drastic change of plans. I could help Gram on the back of my four-wheeler and she could spend the night with Mom and me for a change. It was past time to vacate these premises.

  So far so good… only a few more steps... almost to the door! I should have known it was too good to be true.

  I was so close though.

  I was almost out of the room when somehow my feet got tangled around the remote control and I went crashing to the floor almost breaking my neck in the process.

  Feeling a little woozy, I shook the stars from my eyes and thought how unlike Gram it was to leave the remote lying carelessly on the floor. Heck, she was always fussing at me for leaving it lying around. I was struggling to get to my feet and get the crap out of this house when suddenly the sound of pounding hooves and excited shouts drew my attention to the TV. Evidently when I tripped I had pushed play on the remote and…this could not be happening!

  Chapter 3

  On the big screen plasma in front of me was a massive herd of buffalo stampeding across an open plain in a boiling cloud of dust. There had to be hundreds, no thousands, charging across the prairie. Following close behind in hot pursuit were men on horseback. And each man had one eye squeezed shut as he aimed down the long barrel of a rifle at a helpless buffalo.

  Then they began firing.

  In Gram’s living room!

  I felt the breeze rush through my hair and smelled gunpowder as a bullet whizzed just past my ear. The sounds of gunfire ricocheted off the walls around me and vibrated painfully through my skull. Each rifle shot echoed louder and louder until I was almost deaf from the noise of the continuous firepower.

  This went on for what seemed like hours… until every last buffalo had fallen to his gruesome death and the hunters had galloped into the sunset loudly celebrating their kill. The poor animals didn’t stand a chance.

  It was slaughter on a grand scale.

  My head was spinning. I was going to be sick. I fell to the floor, snatching up the remote and fumbling for the power button to end the cheerful laughter on the screen, but the more buttons I pushed the louder the noise became. I felt like I was in a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. Thankfully, just as I was on the verge of placing a call to the nearest mental health facility and requesting a bed, I saw Gram’s bright pink flip-flops rushing toward me.

  “Good heavens turn down the volume on that TV set, BJ!” She snatched the remote from my hand and pressed the power button. “Why on earth have you got the volume so loud? I’m going to tell your mom that you need your hearing checked. “Here.” Slipping out her hearing aid and holding it in the palm of her outstretched hand she grinned. “I believe you need this contraption even more than I do.”

  Ignoring her failed attempt at humor, I slowly and painfully disengaged my nose from the carpet and pulled myself off the floor. Slowly walking to sit on the couch I dropped my head in my trembling hands and wondered why this was happening to me? The slight movement caused my head to pound. I still felt like I might barf any minute, my eyes were on fire, and gunshots were ringing in my ears.

  “I’m sorry I woke you, Gram. The remote was on the floor and I tripped over it.”

  “Well, what on earth was it doing on the floor?” Her words were soft, yet they vibrated through my skull like she was yodeling from a mountaintop. “I just finished vacuuming this room before I went upstairs and it wasn’t on the floor then.”

  “I have no idea,” I assured her as I allowed my head to fall back on the soft cushion. Mistake. That action caused wave after wave of pain to bounce around behind my eyeballs. “But that’s where it was.”

  “What happened to your head, son?” She pushed her bifocals up on her nose and bent over me to get a better look at my goose egg. “And why are your eyes so red?” Then she gasped as her jaw dropped and her eyes bugged out. “And why are your pants soaking wet?”

  I rubbed my forehead gingerly and tried to come up with a logical excuse for each question. “Oh… I must have bumped my head, and my eyes are irritated from all that dirt from the dust devil, I guess.” Then her last question registered and I glanced down at my soppy pants and shoes. Dang, I had forgotten all about that slight…ah…mishap.

  This day was going from bad to worse with lightening speed. I had to think fast. “I accidentally squirted myself with the hosepipe.” I could tell by the way she was standing over me with her hands on her hips that she didn’t really buy the hosepipe tale, but it was the best I could come up with under pressure.

  “Then why did you bring a bucket of water in the house?” she asked, eyeing the bucket on the hearth suspiciously. Thankfully, she didn’t get close enough to see the aquatic life swimming around inside. That would have really been hard to explain.

  “Ah…um…it was the last bucket of my bath water. I was taking it out to water your plants.” I knew the fact that I was being frugal with my bath water would thrill her to the bone. It did. She grinned from ear to ear, forgetting that I had taken a shower instead of a bath.

  Closing my eyes for a second I prayed she didn’t have any more questions and opened them just in time to see the hem of her flowered skirt disappearing through the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Well, run upstairs and change while I fix us a snack,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m having a liver mush sandwich. Do you want peanut butter and jelly or ham and cheese?”

  Liver mush? Seriously? But nothing she said should surprise me anymore. I mean she was raised during the depression on rabbit, squirrel, deer, turtle, possum and catfish. “Either one is fine, Gram.” I doubted if I could swallow a bite of either. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.
”

  I showered for the second time in an hour and was standing beside her in five minutes. She was putting sandwiches, sliced cucumbers, and cookies on a tray. Then she filled a sandwich bag with ice and went to the medicine cabinet mumbling to herself as she searched for eye drops.

  I was so lost in thought I didn’t hear her speak and nearly jumped out of my skin when she did. This startled her so that she almost dropped the tray she was carrying. “BJ, now just what in tarnation has gotten in to you? I’m starting to get worried. Honestly, I have never seen you so jumpy before.”

  Closing my eyes, I willed myself to calm down and opened them to find that she was no longer in the kitchen.

  Oh no!

  The buffalo had her!

  Or the man had her!

  Or she was drowning in the river!

  The possibilities were endless!

  “Gram! Gram, where are you!”

  She was glaring at me in an odd way as I practically sprouted wings and flew to her side in the living room. She put the tray on the coffee table and played with the wattle under her neck for a few seconds. (She does that when she’s nervous). Then in a worried voice she said, “I want you to sit down here and have a nice cool glass of tea and rest a spell.” She took a sip of tea and repeated the words I had heard at least ten times already today. “BJ, I don’t want you outside in this awful heat. You could collapse from sunstroke on a day like this.”

  She shook her head and went to the window, pulled back the heavy curtain, and gazed out across the parched lawn. “I just don’t know what folks are going to do if we don’t soon get a break from this terrible drought and heat wave. No sir, I just don’t rightly know.”

  She handed me a glass of her sweet tea. Trust me, nobody makes tea like Gram, none of that artificial sweetener for her. I relaxed only slightly as the ice cold liquid slid down my parched throat. “Does sunstroke cause you to hallucinate, Gram?”