Death by Water

by Alessandro Manzetti

  The messages got progressively more incoherent, the man’s penmanship seeming to dissolve right along with his sanity. I couldn’t allow myself to read anymore. It left a bad taste in my mouth, so I threw the book into a dark corner of the shelter and let it sit there hidden in the gloom.

  I pushed up to my feet and exited through the open front of the cabin, and I gazed at the trail twisting even higher toward my destination. After reading those scribbled warnings I should have been feeling dissuaded, but that same dogged determination still lurked inside of me. I felt that I simply must reach Devil’s Pond. It was a pull within, almost like a fishhook had snagged my heart and something was reeling me in toward the summit of the mountain. The logical part of me wanted to turn back regardless of the fact that I’d have to pass the Disciples again, but I found myself incapable of doing that. I had no choice but to see this through. I came to hike this trail, and my only option was to finish it.

  The starlight gave me more than enough luminescence to navigate by, so I put it off no longer, leaving the shelter behind and forcing myself back to that taunting incline. I climbed in a cold sweat, my clothing soaked and dripping, but oddly enough I felt no discomfort. All I felt was that burning desire to reach Devil’s Pond and be done with it.

  The wetness of the sweat seemed to settle deeper into my pores with each step closer to the top of that distant ridge. My hair was a sopping mess, beads of moisture trailing across my brow and my cheeks. I felt like a human swamp slopping its way across jagged terrain, droplets of my own foulness falling to the ground behind me with each bit of ground I managed to gain.

  None of it mattered. I fell once heavily to the earth, a splash of liquid squelching out from my sleeves, but I got my knees back under me and resumed the climb. After a few shambling steps I came to the top of the ridge, and something like a doorway awaited me there.

  It was a gate of bone shards, animal limbs twisted and shattered, dark sockets glaring, cracked skulls leering, finger and claw digits beckoning to a glimmering pond beneath a grove of spruce pines lording over the water like sentinels. The last of the bone sculptures, and it was immediately clear that the structure was built solely for me.

  The end of my hike. I wanted so desperately for it to be over. I staggered past the threshold of bones, and suddenly a gush of stagnant water bubbled up out of my throat, a few splashes falling past my chapped lips. I couldn’t account for it and I didn’t try, I simply swallowed it back down like rising bile. The pond looked peaceful. I thought of throwing myself in and simply washing off the day. I thought of flipping to my back and floating with only the stars to witness it.

  As tempting as the water was, a feeling deep in my diaphragm made me recoil from the surface. I knew that I was not alone here at the end of my hike. A Presence was with me, and it was getting closer. I saw it flopping just beneath the surface of the pond, a churning form spinning and floating, little bubbles escaping from the figure to drift up and break against the surface.

  It stank of death, and from the flashes of fleshy tatters that I got, I could just make out bits and pieces of chipped bone. This was a bone sculpture too, but different from the rest. The waters shaped this figure, and the animals and insects did the rest, carving and shaping the ruined thing into this grim grand finale.

  The closer it got, the less threatened by the Presence I became. It was a pitiful sight. A lost and forgotten thing. It floated there, a distinctly bloated human figure, facedown in the pond with a waterlogged pack swollen to massive proportions on its back. It seemed almost like a great dead turtle to me, and without even realizing I was doing it, I reached down to turn the form over.

  I couldn’t get a grip on it. My hands kept slipping, seeming almost useless to the task. It didn’t matter. The Presence was turning over for me. A deep part of me did not want to see, but I knew I was powerless to stop it from happening.

  The rotation of the figure stopped, and I leaned down to stare at the true nature of it. A face so pale that it was fishbelly white, dead eyes engorged and staring. Lank hair nibbled to tatters by snapping turtles and tadpoles. Skin black and thick, just swollen sausage beneath a thin layer of epidermis. A mouth appeared to stretch open to speak, but on second glance the lips parted due solely to the slithering leeches that had balled themselves up and made a home there.

  It seemed that the corpse had drifted and picked up other bits of animal carrion that had fallen into Devil’s Pond the longer it stayed here. Deer skulls. The ribcage of what may have once been a young black bear. The body so consumed by death that it attracted the dead parts of other organisms that once lived.

  But despite these superficial horrors, it was a different reason entirely that made me scream until stagnant water oozed up from the center of my soul. I recognized this man. This bloated corpse. This drowned hiker. So familiar.

  Familiar because it was me.

  My pack. My clothes. My face.

  The realization broke something in me, and I reached down desperately to pull the corpse up out of the water. My hands gained no purchase. I stared down at them, and suddenly I understood why.

  My hands were just wispy appendages, barely there. I looked down at the rest of my body, and I saw much the same. It was like I was built from the same ground mist that seemed to cling around my ankles with each step I took on this hike. I brought the fog because I was the fog.

  I tried again, but my spectral hands did nothing but pass right through the corpse. I couldn’t even feel the wetness beneath. It all came rushing back then, just like the water from Devil’s Pond that filled my lungs such a very long time ago.

  The messages in the trail journal. The whispers from the bone sculptures. All those words of imprisonment.

  It’s a loop. It’s a jail, a hell, an endless repeat. I’ve been here before. I’ve made this hike thousands of times on thousands of days. It always ends here. It always ends the way it ended the first time. I hiked here, I fell here, and I drowned here.

  I’m stuck. I’m here again. I want out. I want out. I want out.

  We all have our passions, and hiking has always been mine. I’ve heard stories about the Devil’s Pond trail, but now I finally get to explore it for myself. I’ve found the trail on this day when summer is dying, and up past the spruce pines I’ll go.

  EVEN THE STARS FALL

  by Nicola Lombardi

  (Translated by Joe Weintraub)

  It was a rough awakening, provoked by an irritating burning in his chest, as if the bit of a fine drill had pierced his heart. With immense effort, he fought to open his eyelids, at least a bit, just enough to glimpse through his sticky lashes the figure of Fosco busy prodding his chest with a branch glowing at one end.

  “That’s enough sleep for now. Wake up, you can do it…Are you there?”

  Rino’s line of sight was filled almost entirely by a black expanse, a shroud interwoven with infinitesimal points of light scattered at random atop the fabric. His head ached, throbbing, stabbing, gnawing. In place of his brain, his skull seemed filled with boiling lava. But it took only a few seconds before that seething mix cooled down—perhaps from the fresh air intruding into his eyes now that they were fully open—and the dark curtain hanging over him turned out to be the night sky, clear and infinite. And the stars were where they were supposed to be, each in its own place, charting a pattern far too large for Rino or anyone else to be able to interpret.

  “But even the stars fall.”

  That observation jolted him. But it was still only the tail end of the last coherent thought that had preceded his lapse into unconsciousness. Idly looking over the spectacle offered by the heavens on that Night of San Lorenzo, he had managed to count no less than three shooting stars (“Ah,” Fosco had commented drily, “It’s only the Night of San Lorenzo, the Night of the Falling Stars”) before the viscous coil of oblivion reached his brain and switched off the lights.

  Slender fingers had intruded into his hair, ruffling through it gently at the to
p. Rino realized then he was lying outstretched, the heat of the sand beneath his bare back, his head resting on a soft surface. Smiling, he suddenly recaptured the substance of his memory, and he raised his eyes slightly, allowing Marina’s head to enter the upper range of his vision. The girl was smiling, too, and continued to caress his hair like a mother with her child half-asleep in her lap. Really, it was wonderful. He could sense her fragrance, faintly diluted by the salty aroma gusting from the sea. And the others? Were they all still there? He tried to get up, struggling against the overall lethargy that still numbed his senses. His neck, as he lifted it just a bit from Marina’s thighs where it had been reclining, was immediately chilled by a pleasant coolness. Bracing himself on his elbows, he naturally thought first to take a look at the fire. The bonfire that had (how long before?) crackled and burned so vigorously, was now no more than a tangle of expiring flames, churning like little red mice in a cage. Smoking fumes, gray and pungent, were unrolling toward land, rising up from the bramble of charred wood. The pleasant aroma of grilled meat and charcoal was still lingering around him.

  The fellow with the red hair and beard could be seen squatting on the other side of the flames. His shape seemed blurred and wavering through the scalding air hovering above the remains of the fire. Rino tried to recall his name, but with little success. Then there were those other two girls. That blonde’s name was Sandra, while the little brunette with the short hair was Cynthia. That’s right: Sandra and Cynthia; he was starting to remember clearly. And, of course, Marina, behind him, under him, with that delicate hand continuing to caress his hair. He wondered if, by chance, he had made love to her, or if he had only dreamed of it. Well, no matter. That was, at the moment, a purely academic question, and he smiled, generally quite pleased with himself. Despite his leap into the void, his mind, by then, had already resumed working as it should, or almost. And to think that just before closing his eyes, he had believed that he was heading for his ultimate high, the “big blast,” the definitive one from which there would be no return. But instead, here he was back again, wide awake and ready to swallow life as he had always done before.

  Finally, he shifted his gaze to Fosco, his long black hair hanging disheveled over his tanned shoulders. His dark face, which seemed carved from the knot of a tree trunk, was turned toward him. Behind his moustache and goatee, he seemed to be smiling, benevolently. And just a little above his head, only several hundreds of thousands of miles farther away, the full moon pierced the sky like the glowing butt-end of a gigantic joint that someone hidden on the other side had, as a joke, pressed against a black curtain. Rino laughed softly at the notion. Obviously, the residue of alcohol and grass were still messing with his head.

  Rino had relocated to Portolargo less than a month before. Perhaps “relocate” was a bit premature, given that he was renting the most squalid of studio apartments in the hope of finding something better. He had enough time to replenish his finances; with his contacts and connections that would not have been difficult, even if his reckless spending had always been a problem for him. But the air was getting difficult to breathe where he had settled before, and he was already well-known in all the police stations of the neighboring districts. They had never caught him with his hand in the till, but that was a mere detail. In any case, he knew very well when it was time to clear out.

  Discotheques and late-night bars were his hunting grounds. There, he always found business to be good, and it was at The Flying Dutchman he got to know Marina. And Marina had introduced him to Fosco, also known as “the fisherman.” He was kind of the King of the Hill, apparently, in those parts, and although he wasn’t exactly a dealer, he could, of course, occasionally find something for you if he felt like it. But, certainly, it was vital to be in his camp if you wanted to deal in peace. Above all, he handled the running of the smaller boats, on the shadier side of the commercial port. Someone called him, in jest, “the fisher of souls,” but without respect to anything evangelical. Whatever the case, Rino was from “somewhere else,” and he had quickly understood that becoming friends with this Fosco was the only way to avoid being forced to pack his bags and move on.

  Invited to a late-night party on the beach, he at first wanted to back out. He had always felt uncomfortable out in the open, where there were too many people. But the gathering, apparently, would be limited to a small number of close friends, Fosco included.

  “Think of it as a kind of initiation, if you like,” Marina had told him, and that comment had removed all doubt. He would have to go.

  He had brought a little of his best stuff with him, just to elevate the spirit of the evening. Business would, perhaps, be discussed, and it would be an opportunity to make himself known for what he was, or what he fancied himself to be: serious, reliable, discreet.

  Marina had arranged the meeting in a rather out-of-the-way place, just beyond the pines, and there Rino had left his motor scooter, in a tangle of branches, chained to a trunk.

  “Relax, no one steals anything from anybody around here.” Marina had seemed so sure, He believed her at once, and they then walked toward the shore, hand in hand.

  She was wearing a translucent sarong over a pink bikini. Along the way, Rino felt free to wander with his hands, but the girl, other than laughing softly, stood firm, at least for the moment. “Later, later, we can’t keep Fosco waiting.” Right, Fosco must not be kept waiting. That annoyed him, but Rino knew how to hold back. If those were the rules of the game, he was willing to accept them without question, to avoid being shut out.

  Passing over a dune, he finally saw the bonfire. Several brownish and orange-colored shapes were crouching around it and looking over toward him. There was something primitive about that little scene. The priests of his new tribe were waiting for him. He smiled at that notion. And if the smile was followed by a shudder, he made sure to keep it to himself.

  Unable to predict the direction the party would be taking, he had sniffed a short line of snow before leaving, just to avoid being overcome by any emotions. Approaching the small group, he felt light-headed, safe, vaguely defiant.

  After some hasty introductions—as usual, he had grasped hardly a single name, while remaining favorably struck by the women present—he took a look around.

  “Aren’t we much too close to those houses?” he remarked, gazing over toward a row of low, dark, shed-like dwellings about a hundred yards away. Fosco simply invited him to sit down beside them, thereby putting to rest any concerns.

  Morsels of meat and fish were spitted on crude skewers, and the fragrance was inviting. There were considerable quantities of bottles and six-packs, and the girls were regarding him with such intense expressions, Rino was beginning to feel the blood already simmering in his veins.

  Then the little packet containing his contribution to the party appeared out of one of his pockets, and almost before he could realize it, he had begun smoking, drinking, inhaling deeply, dancing, and singing out loud—until the moon and stars were extinguished above and around him.

  The dull bellow rolled up into the air, toward the sky. The surf’s backwash replied with a liquid hiss.

  Fosco had risen to his feet, and he was now blowing into the interior of a great shell, which was serving as a horn. A second bass tone, more forceful and varied, resembled the prolonged cry of a dying bull, a groan arising from an unimaginable world. Rino felt himself shivering, despite his proximity to the still anxious flames.

  Cynthia was laughing softly, watching the others with eyes full of excitement. Sandra smiled back at her, raising her lips to reveal the gums underneath. Redbeard said nothing. He alone turned his gaze from Fosco to the sea. There below, sky and water embraced along the beam of moonlight streaming down to trace the horizon. Shimmering waves lazily followed one another, expiring quickly into mounds of foam.

  A third moaning from the shell, and only at that moment did Rino notice that Marina had given up caressing his hair. He let his head slip backward so that he could loo
k her in the face. The declining light of the bonfire was drawing fleeting tattoos, red and yellow, across her tense features. Her green eyes were fixed on the sea.

  The echo of that ominous tone was fading into the distance, in search of ears that could, perhaps, still hear it.

  “What…what’s going on?” His voice escaped from him like a thickening whimper.

  Lowering his eyes toward him, Fosco again twisted his lips into a shadow of a smile. He was holding the shell tightly in both hands, as he would a rugby ball.

  “You want me to tell you what’s going on? Nothing new. Nothing that hasn’t already gone down so many other times.”

  The girls were watching Fosco almost as if in adoration. For the first time, Rino appreciated the depth of the charisma that the man exerted over his crew. In that scattering of seconds, an aura of expectation adhered to the very air they were breathing, to the flickering heat escaping from the fire, to the briny stench blowing in from the east to chill his sweat.

  Without a word, the girls and Redbeard got up, sweeping from their tanned bodies the sand that was sticking to them in streaks similar to trails of gilded ants. Even Marina moved away, shifting the thigh where Rino had been reclining, and if he had not instantly braced himself on his elbows, he would have fallen heavily backward. His mind framed a protest he could not begin to pronounce in words.

  Then, the small strident voice of one of the girls pierced his heart.

  “There they are! Down there! There they are!”

  “Who?” he murmured, trying to push himself back onto his feet. But the world must not yet have become as steady as he had hoped, and a violent dizziness thwarted his attempt to get up. He felt the urge to vomit, but when he noticed the dark puddle drying alongside his head—a shiny, pitted hollow in the sand, moist with vodka, gin, and who knows what else—he realized there was nothing more left in his stomach to flush out. Suddenly drained of all energy, he sank back down, flat on his back. Numberless points of light hung over him, and he could not begin to determine whether or not they were falling. “The heavens are darker than dreams,” he thought. He did not know if that idea contained in itself any sort of logic, but it seemed to him fitting and proper. “Bright dreams falling, falling…”