Death by Water

by Alessandro Manzetti

  Their lips wear small smiles, now. But deep circles under their eyes make them grotesque. “Sorry, not in the mood,” croaks Léa.

  “Maybe later, mate,” nods Sean, swallowing drily.

  Cedric shrugs. “What were you two talking about?”

  A quick look between them. Guilty?

  Léa coughs and says, “Nothing. Iancu. What else? This sucks.”

  Cedric looks into her large, green, almond eyes that, despite their gorgeous brightness, look in need of sleep, but stays silent. He steps to the rail, lays his hands on the wrought iron, and watches the lake.

  The water looks like it has been scattered with sequins, blinking in the ponderous afternoon sun above four hundred meters of darkness. Its crown of mountains encloses it heavily, severely, with their bright green oaks and chestnut woods and their gray, high, jagged profiles of limestone two thousand meters above.

  “He loved it here. The lake stole his heart the first time he saw it. Once he told me the only thing that cheered him up when he had to go back to everyday life, and everyday work, was that he knew he would wake up and come out here drinking a beer.” He uncorks one, adding hop bitterness to the musk of the lake, raises it, and before taking it to his lips he whispers, “To you, man.”

  Autumn – Corsica

  “This is where we found her backpack.”

  The young woman with Léa’s green, almond eyes and orchid lips, but different hair and some years more, points at a sort of alcove beneath a thick myrtle bush without looking at it.

  Her eyes are on the sea.

  Cedric follows her gaze, along a barely tracked trail through the impenetrable scrub above the precipitous cove, a calanque sculpted by water and wind and ages into a phantasmagoria.

  The trail vanishes quickly into a low thicket—quivering in a cold breeze that spreads about the dense, balsamic texture of a conflagration of aromas—but its destination looks quite obvious: at the tip of the V-shaped inlet, a sea-cave gapes at the bottom of the cliff of red granite. A fifty-meter wide, twenty high, naturally arching ceiling where human faces and animal muzzles of stone hang upside down, their laughter and snarling frozen in time.

  The crystal waters become dark underneath, where they are swallowed, in a deep breath.

  The woman speaks in a throaty voice, much like her sister’s, but hers sounds raw and broken. “That route was so important to her.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Claudette. Don’t use the past.”

  She turns to look at him. The saddest smile on Earth. “She’s not coming back, Cedric.”

  “But…”

  “I don’t need to see a body. I just know. She was my little sister.” Her eyes go back to the cave.

  Cedric does not insist, and just follows her gaze again. “Gravité. Her masterwork,” Cedric comments, following the invisible route along that arch, right on the jagged line dividing light from shadow, vertical from horizontal, from one side of the cave to the other, until it touches the water again.

  She lightens up, just for a second. “It is.”

  “Hate to ask, Claudette, but…was she having one of her mood swings lately?”

  She shakes her head. “No. For the past three years—since she opened Gravité—she’s been well, didn’t even need her meds anymore. She used to say whenever she felt…you know…she could take the bike, ride here from home, and come down here—do the route and ‘be born again.’” She frowns. “Still, there was something. But different. I haven’t seen her much this year, I’ve been in Marseille for work, but when I saw her she looked, I don’t know, tired…troubled about something?” She shakes her head. “Anyway, I’m sure she just fell. It’s as simple as that.”

  Cedric looks at the dark, unanswering threshold down there. An involuntary, uncontrolled fall from that ceiling, even into water, could be less than nice. Kill? Unlikely. Stun, injure? Likely—and then the sea will do the rest.

  Claudette turns again, looking him in the eye. “So, is your mind still set? You won’t find her, you know.”

  Cedric nods, taking the trail. “I have to look anyway.”

  Winter – Aosta Valley

  Dear Sean,

  Man, I’m just so glad I’ll be seeing you next month for the snow-trail in La Thuile.

  Since I came back from Corsica (hell, it’s been three months already) I’ve been losing sleep. I wake up at night and just sit at the window and look outside at the snow and the mountains for hours, listening in my head to the operas we both loved. Her sister said she’d been troubled about something lately, you know? And thinking back I can’t shake off the feeling that last time I saw her she looked scared to me, that there was something wrong (I keep feeling like I almost get it, but then it goes away, and it’s driving me nuts) and that she wanted to say something to me, but didn’t dare. Can you imagine? Léa scared of something? Léa not daring?

  Hell, she managed to be both the strongest and the frailest woman I’ve ever met.

  But she didn’t do any of this to prove anything to anyone, not even herself, as I know you and I did sometimes. She was just happy there, hanging solo from an overhang with her fingertips wedged in some crack, and the sky below.

  I keep thinking about the light that switched on in her face in those moments—the light that curled back up inside her beautiful eyes the rest of the time. That was a sight to behold.

  It’s been a shitty time (to say the very least) and I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with you, during the race (if you can keep my pace), and especially after, during the third half, and having a beer or two (or three) and being depressed together.

  Hugs,

  Cedric

  ~

  Sorry, mate. I was just about to write you that unfortunately I cannot make it. I won’t be there in La Thuile.

  Looking forward to next time.

  Sean

  Spring again – Aosta Valley

  Un uom nell’onda!—a man in the wave! shouts the choir, over frenzied strings like that stormy lake, over Alaide’s exquisite panic—Ciel! Soccorso!—in Renata Scotto’s enchanting voice, as her beloved dives in vain, trying to rescue the friend he just ran through, pushing him into the water—and then the phone rings, shattering the sublime chaos of the scene behind Cedric’s closed eyelids.

  Turning down the volume on the hi-fi, he answers, “Hello?” with a slightly furry tongue.

  “Hi, Cedric, it’s Asha.”

  Five years back. Zermatt Watches’ advertising photo shoot. Those legs, those unending legs as she walks like a tantric goddess in a bathing suit, the Matterhorn ridiculously huge and perfect behind her, shining white and wounding the sky, deep. And Sean, stomping his beer mug down on the table, and, with a white mustache of foam, pulling down his sunglasses to show goggling eyes while he says, “Who’s that?” “You don’t know Asha Nagpal?” “I’m going to. Bloody hell, I’m going to marry her.”

  “Asha! Wow, it’s been a long time.”

  “It has indeed. Sorry I sort of vanished after Sean and I…”

  “Never mind. I get it. How’s life treating you?”

  “Well, I’m a bit tired. Always flying here and there for fashion shows, and…and I’m sounding like the most spoiled and ungrateful woman in the world, aren’t I?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say the most.”

  Chuckle, like crystal jingling.

  “But tell me, something you needed besides hearing my beautiful baritone?”

  Another tiny chuckle, then a shadow can almost be heard thickening the wire. “It’s Sean.” An electric discharge through his spine, black closing in at the edges of his visual field (that call?), but while he croaks, “Something hap— ” she’s quick to add, “No, no, nothing happened. I’m just a little worried.”

  “Why?” The black edges aren’t going away.

  “I’ve driven them to the airport this morning, little Rick and him, and…he was strange. I’ve been so glad he wanted to take the boy for a trip there, but…I don
’t know how to explain it, but he looked…haunted.” There is something ominous in the ensuing silence. “I was wondering if you can…I don’t know…Thing is, it may sound absurd, but I had the same feeling when my dad got cancer and he wouldn’t tell us. I’m worried, Cedric. I was wondering, since you’re seeing him tonight, could— ”

  Swallowing, “Tonight?”

  “Yes…” She sounds puzzled. “Right?”

  “Here?”

  Now her voice wavers. “For the snow-trail, there in La Thuile? He’s going to run with you, isn’t he?”

  Men lie to their wives all the time. Let alone ex-wives. Friends are supposed to cover for them. But.

  “Actually, Asha, he told me he couldn’t come.”

  “But…”

  “Maybe he’s planning to surprise me?”

  “That can’t be…He told me he made arrangements for Ricky to stay with your family during the race, sleeping there.”

  “But no…Marta and the girls are in Liguria, visiting her parents…” Heart rushing, heat creeping up the neck to the ears.

  “Something’s wrong, Cedric. Sean’s never lied to me. Never. I’m scared. Oh, God, and my Ricky…What’s happening?”

  Boom, boom inside the chest. Cedric tries to level his voice, sound confident. “Stay calm, Asha. I’m sure it’s all right. Which flight did they take?”

  “They departed from Heathrow at ten this morning. I think they must have landed in Milan about noon.”

  A quick glance at the wall clock: three hours ago. “I’m calling him on the mobile.”

  “I’ve just tried, it’s turned off.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll…” Then his gaze spots the flier magnetized on the fridge. A picture of a runner in the middle of a vast snowfield glittering under Orion, an ice-blue full moon surfacing beyond frozen peaks, and the writing FIRST EDITION: LA THUILE SNOW-NIGHT-ULTRATRAIL, 54 KM +3400m D, and the date: 21 MARCH, CELEBRATING SPRING WITH SWEAT (AND BEER)!

  “Cedric?”

  “I’m…” But his eyes are now on another picture. His own picture on the cover of the last June issue of Adventure, Discovery and Mystery framed on the wall. The picture of three specks of color coming down a completely white seething of foam, with big fleeting bulges and sharp crests and a huge dome. Sean, Iancu, and Léa appearing just beyond the Elbow, inside the Gorge of Children.

  You know why it’s actually called that, right?

  “Cedric, talk to me, you’re freaking me out!”

  He sounds like he cannot believe what he is saying when he answers, “I think I know where they are.”

  Sean is already there.

  As Cedric runs down the steep, rocky trail, his friend is standing almost on the brink of the high bank, unmoving, looking down the Dora next to the upstream end of the gorge.

  His son Richard lies close to him, a few steps farther from the drop.

  “Sean!”

  The four-year-old does not move as his father turns back, his face streaming with tears, his eyes wide and bloodshot.

  Cedric slows down without halting, raising both hands, palms forward. “Sean, for God’s sake, what have you done to him?”

  “It’s…it’s just Xanax. I didn’t want him to feel anything. But I couldn’t do it anyway.” He opens his arms, lets them fall weakly. “I just couldn’t…you understand? He’s my child.” And he moves one step on the slippery, dark rock, closer to the raging water—just three meters beneath. “But maybe…”

  Slow breaths. “Now calm down, man. I’m here to help you.”

  The crazed man strongly shakes his curly head. “But you can’t! Nobody can!” Another half step toward the water. Cedric stops.

  “Talk to me, Sean. It’s me, right? Your very worst friend. There’s no need for…,” he gestures at the river. “That. Right?”

  A hysteric laugh. “Can’t help me on this one, mate.”

  Cedric’s feet almost imperceptibly slide a little forward. Now about five meters divide the two men. “Sean. It’s all in your head.”

  A little forward, again; knees slightly bending, muscles tightening.

  “It keeps calling, you see? Every night, every single bloody night. It will slay the whole town if I don’t do it. Thousands will die. It…it showed me things.” He squeezes his eyes closed, as if to drive those visions away. “And yet I couldn’t. Maybe it will accept— ”

  But Cedric has already leapt, and when his friend opens his eyes again, he is upon him, grabbing and tugging back and head-butting Sean at the same time.

  Sean’s head falls back while his eyes go white, but when Cedric pulls him away from the edge he struggles hard.

  And now they are dancing in a circle on the edge of the roaring dragon, the sprays slapping them wildly.

  “Don’t stop me, please don’t stop meee!”

  Sean’s right hand finds Cedric’s left, grabs his little finger, bends it backward until it snaps.

  A cry of pain, and half the strength holding Sean is gone.

  With a jolt, Sean throws himself backward and he is loose, Cedric falling from the backlash, hitting the rock hard on his back—just a glimpse: Sean stumbling toward the edge—and for a couple of seconds, or maybe more, everything is black.

  Air, again, flushing down his choking lungs. Breath, breath. Pain throbbing in the hand.

  Richard? He is there, sprawled beside him on the rock, his eyelids fluttering.

  Sean is gone.

  A sharp tip of pain digging in his back, Cedric scrambles to his knees and right hand, crawls to the edge.

  Sean is hanging there, one hand gripping a small overhead handhold, the other pressing against the rock from below. His feet—already soaked, a shoe gone—graze the waves.

  Cedric reaches down. “Grab my hand!”

  Sean looks up. He smiles, his eyes grateful. “Look after my son, mate. Maybe it will accept me, after all.” And he lets go of the handhold.

  “Sean! Nooo!”

  But his body is already hurled about like a puppet by the hands of the river, and it does not even seem to belong to a living thing while appearing and disappearing among the folds of water as it enters the gorge. Just a worthless object. It lasts just a few seconds, then he is gone.

  The trail runs along the upper lip of the gorge. Here, the crevice is so narrow it could be leapt over.

  Cedric, holding the chemically sleeping Richard in his arms, follows it at full speed while a hammer keeps driving spikes into his back with every stride.

  The path snakes its way on rocks, through huge larches whose roots have formed a gnarled staircase covered in a bed of dry needles.

  The river roars beneath, amplified in a resounding weaving of echoes, a deep rumble vibrating through rocks, bones, and belly.

  But there is another noise now, harsher, of something breaking—of tons of rocks falling, growing into a deafening thunder. Cedric stumbles at the shockwave, hitting the ground with his knees in his attempt to protect the child, while the earth keeps quaking for some seconds.

  Then he scrambles to his feet and runs, badly staggering, his leg stiff, blood soaking his blue jeans. He passes the ninety-degree turn of the Elbow and keeps going.

  And something is moving beneath, down there.

  Blood pumping in his ears, his legs twitching and his lungs scratching, he keeps running. Then, an opening in the woods: the trail begins its descent near the exit of the gorge.

  The town of Pre de Pulaz appears, its outskirts gathered around the black-roofed, pointed bell tower of a stone church. People are swarming into the streets, staring upriver.

  Between Cedric and the town, something is coming out of the gorge.

  And the townsfolk begin to scream.

  Not only water, though it moves like it.

  A winding waterspout as wide as the whole river, made of water and scaly flesh, like the body of a snake, with no head but a wave crest crowned by a ring of twitching, black, curved thorns—claws?—each as big as a tree; and a long tongue, or pro
boscis, or tentacle, protruding from the center of it.

  There is Sean in that proboscis—half of him.

  His upper body juts out of the appendage, his arms limp, like a broken doll, and yet his eyes are open wide and alive. He is screaming while the thing sucks him in—but no. It is not sucking him in: the following second, already several meters downriver and close to vanishing inside the waves, Sean’s disarranged body is spat out into the billows.

  Then, more water comes out of the Gorge of Children—a mountain of water which is more than water. It is its body. Now it is clear, the waterspout was only a head: the creature is the river. And its bulk now hides head, man, and everything else, as the rumbling mass plunges down toward the town where everybody is running away from the banks. But the wave is huge and the river overflows, sweeping away cars and uprooting trees and devastating the first houses, already grabbing the slower runners.

  Their cries cannot be heard over the roar.

  Not even when they see the clawed waterspout rearing up beside the church, taller than its puny bell tower, and they know it has come to take them all.

  RAISED BY THE MOON

  by Ramsey Campbell

  It was the scenery that did it for him. Having spent the afternoon avoiding the motorway and enjoying the unhurried country route, Grant reached the foothills only to find the Cavalier refused to climb. He’d driven a mere few hundred yards up the first steep slope when the engine commenced groaning. He should have made time during the week to have it serviced, he thought, feeling like a child caught out by a teacher, except that teaching had shown him what was worse—to be a teacher caught out by a child. He dragged the lever into first gear and ground the accelerator under his heel. The car juddered less than a yard before helplessly backing towards its own smoke.

  His surroundings grew derisively irrelevant: the hills quilted with fields, the mountains ridged with pines, the roundish moon trying out its whiteness in the otherwise blue sky. He managed to execute most of a turn as the car slithered backwards, and sent it downhill past a Range Rover loaded with a family whose children turned to display their tongues to him. The July heat buttered him as he swung the Cavalier onto a parched verge, where the engine hacked to itself while he glared at the map.