Evil Heights, Book IV: In the Pit

by Michael Swanson

  They were less than fifty yards away, when Lee could finally make out the trestle. It just appeared ahead suddenly, dark and gray. The river was indeed up over the tracks, passing through the upper suspension supports, white curls splashing off the steel beams like heavy breakers on the beach.

  As they were drawn forward, Lee wondered if this was how the lookouts on the Titanic had felt when they saw the mountain of ice looming ahead and knew there would be no escape.

  All along the rising waterline, debris was jammed into the girders, entire trees, pieces of signs and roofs, all creating a deadly strainer, which allowed the water through, but trapped and drowned everything else.

  Lee looked forward frantically, searching for a place that might allow the raft to pass. The entire middle of the bridge was jammed, but to the right was an open space between the widest section of cross members.

  "Paddle hard on the left,” he ordered, wasting no time in doing the same.

  Phoebe dropped the coffee can and took the picket, leaning over the edge and digging in.

  The raft, sluggish because of the weight of water, seemed destined to be swept into the strainer as they charged ahead, now less than twenty yards away.

  Lee strained, pulling back with every ounce of strength again and again, fear of what was ahead driving him beyond himself. If they washed into that tree they would never come out. They'd be held under and drown.

  Foot by foot, the raft moved right. It was going to be close. The roots of the tree spread out like gnarled fingers. Pieces of ragged cloth, caught on the tendrils, flapped violently like hazard flags warning them away.

  They weren't going to make it.

  Desperately, Lee leaped to the front of the raft and shoved out against the filthy root ball with the picket. His ankle screamed excruciatingly as he braced his feet against the opposite thwart, all the pressure of the impact running through his body.

  The raft lurched, the rear spinning around to the right, as Lee had hoped. The front hit the roots, but the rear was already coming around the other way, turning on the center axis. A long section of root pushed deeply into the rubber, so far that Lee was sure it was going to pierce the fabric and come clear through. But as the rear of the raft came sweeping around, the root pulled free without rupturing the raft.

  Lee lunged over to the right, digging the picket in and back paddling in an effort to stop the spin. Without needing to be told, Phoebe had recognized the problem and was paddling opposite on the other side.

  The raft careened to the right, now within the trestle. It slammed into the angled, back suspension girder and began to ride up as the current pressed past.

  "Hi-side!” Lee yelled, leaping up to bring his weight to the section of raft rising up and threatening to flip.

  Phoebe was right by his side, the picket in one hand and Patty's arm in another as the raft teetered and hundreds of gallons of water spilled out, while the left edge rose higher and higher.

  Lee thought quickly, trying to form a plan of what he'd do the second he hit the water. But it didn't happen. The raft slid around, the bottom tube moving away downstream without folding under.

  They were free and past the trestle.

  In any other instance a celebration would have been in order, just for still being alive. But the current was raging, waves of enormous size were pitching the raft, the wind was ripping with tremendous force, and the rain just came and came and came. The frequent stabs of lightening were the least of their worries, and if they produced thunder, Lee wasn't even aware if he could hear it over the constant roar all around.

  After almost flipping, the raft was lighter now by a hundred gallons or more. When they rose to the crest of one wave, Lee felt his stomach shrink, as it seemed the raft would be blown away and tumble off drawn up into the sky. But down they went, the river water continuing to splash in faster than Phoebe could bail with the coffee can. In no time they were back to sloshing around with water well over their hips.

  For one brief second Lee made eye contact with Patty huddled stoically in the bow, Flapjack still in her arms. The blend of love and confidence in the look she gave him filled him with a determination he hoped he could fulfill.

  The river was careening madly downstream, rushing headlong as though it was trying to escape the storm itself. It was hard to gauge the speed, without being able to make out any landmarks, but Lee figured they must be moving at least fifteen miles an hour, maybe faster.

  Constantly, they were tossed and buffeted about. Lee was hard pressed to keep the raft straight. Learning quickly, he found that if he could hit a wave or a trough head on, instead of side ways, significantly less water was thrown inside. As it was, there seemed like only a few inches difference between the level of water inside the raft and the river.

  He pushed back with the paddle, striking something, and turned about to see a dead cow trailing just behind.

  The storm was back to full fury. It seemed as the world was just going to tear itself apart.

  A roar, even stronger than that of the wind, began to set itself apart from the maelstrom. Lee's heart sank and that awful taste of brass came back.

  Lee had desperately hoped the enormous volume of water from the hurricane flood would pass over the Falls, washing it out. He was certain anyone back upstream could pass over the Chutes right now and never even know they were there. But, this tremendous roar meant that the Falls was not washed out. The fifteen foot natural rock dam had created a monster, river-wide hydraulic, that no sane person would dare to run.

  Phoebe crept back and yelled in Lee's ear. “What's that noise?"

  He stuck his face to the side of her head and cupped his hand over her ear. “The Falls! It's going to be bad. Real bad. We'll have to paddle as hard as we can, and when we hit, we'll all have to throw ourselves forward!"

  Phoebe's hair was whipping around her face. “How will I know when?"

  "When you see me jump, you jump too. We'll both hold onto Patty. If we flip, we'll try to stay together, okay?"

  Phoebe pulled her ear back from his mouth and looked him in the eye, giving him a dose of something similar to that which Patty had imparted. She planted a quick kiss on him and fell backwards into the front of the raft, just in time as they smashed into another tremendous wave.

  Bailing no longer did any good. The raft was mainly full, and water splashed in and out in equal amounts all on its own.

  The river had gone totally wild, pitching and heaving as it raced ever faster, and all around the rain was being driven in by the wind, and the approaching roar was terrifying.

  Lee kept to his picket paddle, twisting it left or right, doing anything he could to try to keep the raft headed straight.

  He could see it now. The wave. It was enormous. Lee was sure it stretched river wide, though he could see only thirty or forty yards ahead.

  Just ahead an entire pine tree they'd been following, suddenly went down, disappeared entirely, and then shot up, all sixty feet spinning in the air, tumbling like a Tinker Toy.

  Lee was paddling as hard as possible, though he doubted it was doing them any good. Still he couldn't just sit and watch. He needed something in his hand.

  They came up on it.

  It was monstrous.

  The force and violence of the tremendous wall of seething water was utterly terrifying. There was no rain. There was no wind. Everything else dropped away into insignificance.

  They rose up on it, and came right to the edge. For a brief second, Lee was able to look down, knowing how a man must feel who's just stepped off a cliff. There was no bottom, only surging spray, spinning and whipping itself into a hurtling vortex of power.

  The raft fell away.

  Down they went.

  For a moment the raft plunged totally out of control. The impact was incredible. They might have been submerged, then again maybe not. There was no way to tell. Air and foam and river were everywhere. Down in the vortex they were spinning, pitching, everything was chaos. Th
e picket was torn from his hand, and Lee desperately grasped to the side thwart, expecting any second to feel the fatal spin and flip which would dash them all away into terrifying oblivion.

  It could have only been a second or two at most, but holding your breath in a place like that, an eternity can pass in the span of a heartbeat.

  The raft came out, rising up, spit out of the maw, to make the crest or fall back in.

  Lee threw himself forward, slamming himself into the front of the raft and hanging on, willing with his soul for his weight to be enough to carry them through. He was so focused on these few seconds which would make all the difference of their survival he wasn't even aware that Phoebe had followed his lead and was right at his side. All he knew was if the raft fell back into the maw at the bottom of the wave they were dead.

  Up they went. Lee could feel the bottom of the raft dropping away. Holding on, he reached back and grabbed Patty, determined not to let go of her, no matter what.

  They must be almost vertical now. He opened his eyes, taking in a massive breath, ready for the dizzying fall back, end over end.

  The crest broke away, tumbling out from under. The bow of the raft fell forward, sliding down the wall on the far side.

  They ploughed into the trough of a smaller secondary wave standing just behind, and turned sideways bouncing and pummeling around wildly, totally at the mercy of the river, before spinning around and then up and over.

  Lee looked around. They were all there, even Flapjack, still tucked in under Patty's arm. They had no fence pickets to paddle with, and no coffee can to bail, but they were through and still alive.

  Together, they all touched hands for a moment, just before another great slosh from a breaking wave crashed down reminding them of where they were.

  There was nothing to do now but hold on and hope.

  Ahead and to the right, Spit Creek was raging, crashing into the Yalahalla with no definable banks to be seen. The Yalahalla churned, changing color from ochre yellow to a hard, dark, black, as Spit Creek had become a foul river of mud. Refrigerator sized objects by the dozens were being carried in by the sideward flow, pitching about and bobbing randomly like huge black and gray corks.

  Lee hollered out to Phoebe and they bracing against the right side to compensate for the seething diagonal waves created by the cross current. Lee and Phoebe leaned in together as without any way to turn the raft their only hope was to use their weight to keep that side of the raft from being pitched over.

  Once past these treacherous waves one of the objects which had been carried down Spit Creek slammed into the side of the raft, then rolled under bumping along the bottom before emerging on the other side. When it came up they could see it was coffin, long and black. The flood up in town was washing away the Lenoir Cemetery and bringing the tenants down along with the real estate.

  With a nervous eye, Lee counted five coffins pitching about within the small area he could see around them through the driving rain. In the back of his mind he wondered about the range of the power of the presence from under the little house, more than a little fearful that one of the boxes would suddenly burst open and its grisly occupant might try to climb in with them.

  A few moments later he was able to fish another board from the water. He attempted to push the coffins away whenever one drew near, but it didn't really do any good as everything was still chaos in the water, so he just slumped back, exhausted, and let the raft be swept headlong downstream towards Manseville, accompanied by their flotilla of grizzly, bobbing escorts.

  Thanks to the weight of the water the raft rode low and was mostly unaffected by the tremendous wind and pitching waves. The drawback was they had almost no control. And in coming around a tight curve, where the Yalahalla's flood waters piled up into the granite bluffs, they were lucky to rebound off the massive piled up cushion of water impacting against the rock face and come spinning around toward the opposite bank.

  The dangers just seemed to keep coming and coming; like the roar of the wind and the sting of the rain it just kept coming harder and harder. It seemed they'd miraculously get through one terror and then find themselves approaching another.

  Lee suddenly realized the raft had moved over from the cliff walls and they were careening straight for the trees on the densely wooded right bank. If the raft was caught in the branches it would surely be torn apart. Instructing Phoebe to paddle with her hands, he began frantically putting every ounce of remaining energy into drawing back with the board off the side of the raft, attempting to pull the raft back out into the main flow. It was then that he heard a shrill whistle blast and looked over to see three people clinging to the branches of a tree, the rising water having forced them into the weaker upper limbs. It was Carl and Dora, and an older woman he didn't know.

  Phoebe saw them too, but she, like Lee kept paddling.

  They were moving so fast, they flew past, but close enough to see the fright and desperation in their eyes. But there wasn't anything Lee could do to stop the raft. For a moment it looked as though Carl was about to jump out and make a swim of it. But the older woman slipped, her scream so loud it carried over the wind. Carl snatched her back, pulling her up by the neck of her dress with one arm while he clung to trunk. In seconds the raft had passed and the refugees in the tree were lost from view.

  It was late afternoon when a Manseville Sheriff's patrol, monitoring the threatening rise of the river, caught site of their raft. Water was rushing just under the highway bridge, leaving no more than a foot between the raging flood and the bottom of the beams.

  Tired as he was, Lee had seen it coming, and they were prepared. As the raft hit the lower girders and began to suck under, they jumped off, hugging to the railings while the startled officers pulled the kids up to safety. Patty had stubbornly refused to relinquish Flapjack, and little girl and duck were both hauled up on the bridge by an officer in a slick, yellow raincoat.

  "Where the hell did y'all come from?” an officer shouted to Lee, his raincoat whipping about his legs.

  "Lenoir!” Lee hollered back.

  "Lenoir! The hell you say, boy. Lenoir's destroyed,” the deputy came back. “Wiped out!"

  Lee voice was hoarse and spent. “We know!"

  The following host of coffins, one by one, could be heard bumping under the bridge. Lee looked across the road and saw their torn raft reemerge from the river upside down, fifty yards downstream.

  Two of the officers rushed the three to a car and put them in the back. One of them said something about Flapjack, but Patty was resolute in her insistence on not letting him go.

  They we're all shivering and deathly white, bordering on the verge of hypothermia and exhaustion. Slumping together in the back of the car, they were too dazed and too tired to even cry.

  The officer driving occasionally looked back, his eyes visible in the rear view mirror, as he asked questions of Lee. While watching the lights bloom in the droplets of water spattering the windows, Lee answered as best he could, as they drove into a town where the only people he knew were sitting next to him.

  It was too much to grasp, what had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and what was to come. He hadn't even yet fully realized that he and Patty were now orphans, alone and together at the same time.

  Throughout the wild ride down the Yalahalla, when he wasn't busy fending off a snag or steering with the unwieldy board his mind had remained in one place: what lay below the remains of the little house.

  He could see it, exactly as if he were there. The infernal heat was gone, and it was dark and cold. The bomb shelter was flooded. Even the stairway up and remaining door of the little house were buried under five or ten feet of the obscuring floodwaters of the raging Yalahalla. Down inside, the abandoned, naked bodies that once were Ridley and Betty occasionally bumped against each other and the passageway walls. Their eyes were open.

  Lee shook himself and put his arm around Phoebe, who'd fallen asleep on his shoulder. The slow rhythm of her bre
athing, with her body against his, was a feeling he knew he could grow quite fond of. She snuggled in next to him putting her hand on his leg, the prize ring, shining just like the real thing on her finger.

  Patty, her nightie a ruin, had collapsed, too, and had her head in Phoebe's lap. Flapjack though, was wide awake, having finally escaped Patty when she fell asleep. The duck, still with his tiny bit of blue feathers, huddled on the floorboard and looked up to Lee, undoubtedly asking, “What's next?"

  Lee tried to think, the only thing he knew for sure, that he vowed to himself, come what may, no one was ever getting him or anyone he loved any closer than this to Cherry Heights and Seminole Road.

  THE END

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