by Alex van Tol
Lubricated by the rushing water, the loop slides over my hand. I keep poking my thumbs around, looking for the next loop to slip off. Another loop slides free. I feel the rope loosen around both my wrists.
My heart skips out a hopeful beat, but I force my attention back to what I’m doing. I wiggle both hands like an awkwardly jointed butterfly. Flap. Flap. The rope slithers away from my hands.
I leave it there, twined around the branch.
The river swings me downstream.
Toward Hell’s Gorge.
Chapter Fourteen
I’ve got about two minutes before the rapids start. Plenty of time to get out. I look ahead to make sure there aren’t any other sweepers waiting to grab me in their woody embrace. Nope, the water ahead is clear. I angle toward the near shore, toward the reserve, kicking my freezing legs. I paddle with arms that feel like they’re made of lead.
I’m pretty close to the edge now.
Suddenly I spot the hole in my plan. The bank isn’t grassy or sandy. It’s not even gravelly. It’s just a wall of rock. And it’s, like, twenty-five feet high.
Being the start of a gorge and all.
I don’t even allow myself a second of whining at this newest awful development in my day. I’m cold, and I’m growing stupid as my awareness slowly dwindles to a pinprick centered on surviving this crappy mess. I’ve got to save my mental energy for getting me through the rapids. I can’t climb out on this side. And that stupid freak stabber guy is somewhere on the other side. I have no choice.
I have to swim them.
I flip onto my stomach and point my head downstream. I force my arms to paddle as the roar of the approaching rapids gets louder. If I’m going to avoid getting sucked under, I’ve got to be going either faster than the water, or slower. Without a boat and paddle, there’s no way I can control my speed enough to slow down. But I can swim faster than the current.
So I do. I pinwheel my leaden arms and kick hard, trying to keep my head above the surface so I can see dangerous rocks. I’ve piloted plenty of rafts through this canyon before. But things look different from up high, on top of the water’s surface. Down here, things happen fast, and it’s hard to see through all the splashing white water.
I’m not sure where everything is, but I remember the major features.
The roar becomes deafening. Then suddenly there’s a drop.
I’m in. The thunder of pounding water fills my head. I gulp mouthful upon mouthful of icy water as I hurtle my way through the churning mass of waves. Up, down, under.
My right ankle glances against a submerged rock. I suck in a freezing gulp. My left knee smashes squarely into another rock. I scream and choke.
I paddle harder, lifting my head high to see what’s in front of me.
I crest a large standing wave and stare around, planning my line. I’m a quarter of the way through, but the worst is still ahead. I’m pretty sure my kneecap is broken. I kick anyway.
This is such. A bad. Day. My eyes catch a glimpse of a red shirt on the shore and I feel a wave of relief.
Relief? That’s kind of twisted.
Yeah, I guess it is twisted. You know things are messed up when you’re relieved to see the crazy nutcase who’s out to knife you to death.
But if I can see him, at least I know where he is. Better over there than creeping up on me in the water. He’s got a huge branch, and he’s dragging it along the trail behind him. What the hell is he up to now?
I slip into the trough of one wave and kick up to the top of the next one. I’m in the center channel now, away from most of the rocks, but the most deadly rapid still lies ahead.
The river twists and turns as it slides through the canyon in a fast-moving S-curve. I skid around a corner and experience a momentary thrill. A finger of piled rocks juts out from the shore, almost to the center of the river. I could climb out before hitting the weir!
But as soon as the thought occurs to me I realize it’s impossible. I’d be climbing right into a death sentence. Because somewhere over there, Darren is waiting for me. With a knife. And now a big branch.
He’s waiting for me to give up. Waiting for me to swim, broken and freezing, to the shore.
I look ahead. Scratch that last bit. He’s not waiting for me to come to him. He’s going to catch me. And he’s got himself a big-ass fishin’ pole to do the job.
I watch in horror as Darren strolls to the end of the pile of rocks. He’s got the big branch slung over his shoulder.
As I watch, he lifts the branch and then lowers it over the water. He’s planning to hook me with it and drag me to shore.
And I’m helpless to stop him.
The current sweeps me past the outcropping. He leans out from the rocks, a bleeding monster. He jabs the branch at me, snagging my shirt. I reach back, fumbling. Trying to free my collar from the branch’s woody tip. I can’t. My fingers are too cold. They won’t bend far enough. I scream in frustration and fear.
The water swings me, held fast by the branch, around the point of rock toward the eddy below. If I cross into the slow-moving water of the eddy, Darren will be able to fish me out easily. And kill me. Unless I can somehow stop myself from being pulled to shore.
Either way, I’ll probably die. But I’d rather die in the rapids downstream, thanks. And then a thought hits me.
It’s a perfect thought, round and bright and easy for my tired mind to grasp. It’s scary as hell, but it’s the only way I can see an end to this madness.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I reach behind me with both arms. I clamp my freezing hands around the branch. I pull hard. With a shout, Darren lets go of the branch—but it’s too late. Yanked sharply off his feet, he lands with a splash in the water behind me. My frozen cheeks stretch into a grin.
Really, it’s a pity that he’s not much of a swimmer.
Because I’m going to introduce this clown to my treacherous little friend.
The Widowmaker.
Chapter Fifteen
Now that Darren’s in the river with me, I’m not taking any chances. I want to get as far away from him as possible. I duck my head and pull harder, trying to swim as fast as I can. I kick and thrash my way through the standing waves, closer to the center of the channel. That’s where a narrow green tongue of water pours clean over the ledge and doesn’t curl back on itself like the rest of the Widowmaker does. If I can ride the green tongue, I might make it out alive.
From below, something grabs at my foot. I scream wildly, kicking out with both feet. I pinwheel my arms and turn myself around, drawing my legs up under me. But it’s nothing. Just my mind playing tricks. The thunderous roar of the Widowmaker edges closer now.
Not far behind me, Darren splashes angrily around in the rapids. His mangled face bobs up and down with the current. I wish I could swim away and never see it again.
I realize my fight against the imaginary foot-grabber has taken me off course. I’m not lined up properly to catch the green tongue. Things are moving very quickly now.
Instead of slipping through the safe channel, I slide over a huge ledge and into the foamy hole below. I feel it rather than see it, and dread seizes my heart.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
For a moment I forget about Darren and his knife and his broken face and his desire to cut me apart. As soon as I realize what’s happening, I begin to kick and thrash with my legs and arms.
I need to move faster than the water.
I can’t get sucked into the hole.
But I can’t break away. Panic fills me as the wash pulls me down into the frothy white trap.
“NO! Nooooooooo!” My voice sounds like it’s a thousand light-years away.
Thin and muffled around the edges. My eyes bug as I claw at the water ahead of me. “NO!” I kick hysterically, so much that my hips threaten to fly out of their sockets. I scream every swear I can think of, cursing the weir and its single-minded mission to swallow me into its huge hydraulic tumbler. I’ve seen
entire canoes go under this kind of rapid. If I go in, I won’t come out until the river dries up or until the Widowmaker spits me out whenever it damn well pleases. It could be hours. It could be weeks. I’ll just roll around under the wave with all the other flotsam that it’s trapped over the years. Logs. Life jackets. Bits of boats.
Darren.
I sob at this last thought, clawing harder.
And then, inexplicably, I pop free. Gasping and pinwheeling, I shoot away from the deadly rapid and hurtle downstream, still stuck in my churning whitewater nightmare. I piston around and stare, wild-eyed, behind me.
I turn just in time to see something red plunge over the ledge.
Exhausted and afraid to believe my eyes, I stop paddling. I stare, unwilling to take my eyes off the Widowmaker for fear that Darren will pop back up and lunge toward me. But he doesn’t. I watch and wait, but he doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
The river widens and its current slows as the rapids edge out of sight.
My fight against the river has warmed my body, but I’m completely wrung out. I put my head back and drift for a while, listening to the roar of the water as it smashes its way through Hell’s Gorge. Amazingly, I seem to be just as unkillable as Mr. Killer himself.
Except he’s been killed now.
The Widowmaker took care of that.
When I can’t hear the thunder of the rapids anymore, I lift my head and look around. I scan the riverbank for some sign of horses or hikers, but I see none. I guess there wasn’t an eleven o’clock ride after all. Or maybe Carrie and Laura are still asleep and the guests are just hanging around the corral, waiting for the wranglers to show up and start their day. Jeez. To think I was so stressed out about having to round up a piddly bunch of horses on my own this morning! It suddenly strikes me as funny, and I laugh.
When I catch sight of a couple of rafts around a bend in the river ahead, I laugh at that too. There are just two, big and blue and full of helmet-clad people squirting water guns at each other in the July sunshine. They’re coming onshore so they can enjoy lunch beside the river. Their voices drift toward me on the mellow breeze.
Calmly, as though I haven’t just been chased through the woods by a foaming-at-the-mouth madman, as though I haven’t just escaped being murdered and chopped into a billion tiny pieces, as though I haven’t just gone to hell and back in the freezing waters of the Sawtooth River, I call to them.
“Hey! Hi!”
The group turns toward me. Blue suits and yellow helmets, like some sort of rubberized army. They scan the water, searching to pinpoint the source of my voice, so unexpected.
“Hi!” I say again. I paddle toward them. They stare. I can’t figure out what else to say. I can’t think of how to start this conversation, how to tell them what I’ve just been through.
Seeing that I have no life jacket, several men have waded quickly out into the water. I smile at their chivalry, their instinctive desire to keep me safe from the treachery of the cold water.
If only they knew.
One of them reaches out to me with the butt of his paddle. I grab it with my frozen hands and drift in to the shore, comforted by its smooth plastic shaft.
I must look pretty rough, because no one scolds me for being out in the river without a life jacket.
“You’re okay now,” says one middle-aged guy who could be my own dad.
He’s watching my face carefully. His voice is soothing. “You’re here. We’ve got you. You’re okay.” He helps me out of the water, helps me limp up onto the grass where the paddlers were planning to have their lunch.
“Jeez, you’re a mess,” says another.
“Why are you out in this river by yourself? Where’s your boat?”
They look around at each other, out at the water. Everyone’s talking at once, excited and worried and wanting to help. My teeth chatter. I try to smile but I think it ends up being more of a frozen sneer.
A woman brings a blanket and puts it around my shoulders. “Honey, tell us what happened to you,” she says. Her warm voice starts my body shivering.
I chatter and shiver and shake my head, unable to speak. She draws me closer.
Another paddler rubs my back. One of the guides sets about examining my knee through my torn jeans. Another pours me a cup of hot chocolate from a thermos.
I lean against the blanket lady and shake.
“Jill!” A familiar voice cuts through the group’s murmuring. I look behind me, toward the path. James is sitting astride his horse, looking both arrogant and worried at the same time. “What the hell? Are you okay? Your horse came running back to the barn with her saddle spun. What’s going on?”
Before I can answer him—or swear at him or tell him I quit or laugh at the absurdity of all this help suddenly appearing just moments after I could have really used it—a shout goes up from another of the guides.
“Hey, you guys!”
He’s calling from farther up the shore. Our heads all swivel to look.
He’s walking quickly down the beach toward the group, holding up something brown for everyone to see. He’s young, maybe my age. “Look what washed up just below Hell’s Gorge. Is this freaky or what?”
In his hand he holds a leather case.
In his other hand a gleaming knife. He brings it over so everyone can have a good look.
Everyone except me. I don’t look at the knife. Why would I? I’ve seen it enough. I hug the blanket closer.
“Honey,” says the woman who’s holding me. She holds my shoulders, her soft brown eyes looking steadily into mine. She kind of looks like my mum. “Why don’t you just start at the beginning?”
Do I have enough words for this?
Will I ever?
I take a deep breath and begin to talk.
Alex Van Tol is a freelance writer in Victoria, British Columbia. Knifepoint is her first novel. Visit her in the electronic ether at alexvantol.com.
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BRENDAN, CAPTAIN OF THE BASKETBALL
team, has it all—good friends, a beautiful girlfriend and a loving family—until he is diagnosed with leukemia. Terrified and convinced that no one understands what he is going through, Brendan faces chemotherapy alone, until he meets Lark. She is also in treatment, although her condition is much worse, and yet she remains positive and hopeful. Brendan is torn between feeling sorry for himself and the love for life that Lark brings to even the simplest thing. Through Lark, he discovers the strength to go on, to fight for survival and to love.
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LUCAS AND HIS FATHER ARE NOT CLOSE.
In fact they hardly see each other, which is just fine with Lucas. When he travels to the remote fishing lodge his father manages, Lucas is left once again, this time with a lodge worker, a girl named Sumi. She makes it pretty clear that Lucas is on his own. But she does take him fishing and seems to be warming up to him. Then, in a horrible sequence of misjudgments, Sumi is shot in the foot. With no radio and no phone, Lucas and Sumi are truly alone. Fog rolls over the islands and it’s up to Lucas to get Sumi to medical help, a day’s journey by boat up the inlet.
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WHEN DANIEL ENTERS A CONVENIENCE
store on a secret mission, he doesn’t expect to run into anyone he knows. That would ruin everything. And when Rosie enters the same store to see what her father wants, she’s hoping to make a quick getaway with her waiting boyfriend.
All Daniel and Rosie want is to get in and out without any trouble. Neither expects what happens next. A masked man enters the store.
“This is a stickup,” he announces. He has a gun and isn’t afraid to use it. When he’s ready to leave, he decides to take Rosie hostage.
And then things
get complicated…
Titles in the Series
orca soundings
Back
Norah McClintock
Bang
Norah McClintock
Battle of the Bands
K.L. Denman
Big Guy
Robin Stevenson
Blue Moon
Marilyn Halvorson
Breathless
Pam Withers
Bull Rider
Marilyn Halvorson
Bull’s Eye
Sarah N. Harvey
Cellular
Ellen Schwartz
Charmed
Carrie Mac
Chill
Colin Frizzell
Comeback
Vicki Grant
Crush
Carrie Mac
The Darwin Expedition
Diane Tullson
Dead-End Job
Vicki Grant
Death Wind
William Bell
Down
Norah McClintock
Exit Point
Laura Langston
Exposure
Patricia Murdoch
Fastback Beach
Shirlee Smith Matheson
First Time
Meg Tilly
Grind
Eric Walters
Hannah’s Touch
Laura Langston
The Hemingway Tradition
Kristin Butcher
Hit Squad
James Heneghan
Home Invasion
Monique Polak
House Party
Eric Walters
I.D.
Vicki Grant
Impact
James C. Dekker
In the Woods
Robin Stevenson
Jacked
Carrie Mac
Juice
Eric Walters
Kicked Out
Beth Goobie
Knifepoint
Alex Van Tol
Learning to Fly
Paul Yee