The River Is Dark

by Joe Hart

  The rope popped free and fell away from her wrists, and he was about to start working on the one locking her ankles together when he heard movement behind him. Liam spun, thrusting the Sig out as he did. Shuffling steps came closer through the darkness, and a shape emerged.

  “Stop right there,” Liam said, holding the bead steady on the person who stood in the doorway. The figure was small, shorter and much narrower than Peter. “Don’t move,” Liam said, his voice sounding dead in the enclosed space.

  “I’m unarmed, Mr. Dempsey.”

  The voice sent a runner of shock through him, partly because of the grating rasp it contained, but mostly because it was female.

  “Who are you?” Liam asked, squinting.

  The figure stepped closer, the dancing candlelight revealing two pale hands poking from the arms of a dirty hooded sweatshirt, the cowl pulled forward, shrouding her face from the glow.

  “My name is June Harlow.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I escorted Dani across the river. I have to say, young lady, that you are quite the scrapper. You left me with a nasty cut that will forever hinder my good looks.” June’s white hands drew back the hood, and her face came into view.

  Dani gasped.

  June’s face was lined like that of a woman in her late forties, with crow’s-feet extending out from the corners of her eyes. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and her nose was sharp and prominent, but below that her features became twisted and malformed, as if roughly hewn from a piece of wood. Her jaw sat at an angle, the right side drawn up in a rictus of bulging joints and sinew. Her cheek looked swollen and prodded from within, as if a bag of crushed glass sat inside her mouth. Her chin was wide and sloping, and several teeth stuck crookedly from her smiling lips. A long but shallow gash ran from her left temple down to her throat, and blood still seeped from it.

  June cackled, and in the small room it was cold, cruel laughter that raised the hairs on the back of Liam’s neck. He responded by pointing the Sig at the woman’s deformed face.

  “You’re going to back up, and then we’re all going to walk out of here, nice and easy, okay?”

  June chuckled. “Mr. Dempsey, you’re just as arrogant as your brother was.”

  The mention of Allen made him halt as he began to stand. He kept the muzzle pointed in her direction but lowered it a few inches. “You killed him, didn’t you? You and Peter Shevlin.”

  June sobered, her eyes like two points of flame in the dark. “Oh yes, he died at Peter’s hand, as did his wife.” She sniffed, her warped mouth tightening. “His wife wasn’t supposed to die, but she got in the way. Payment for his sins, I would say.”

  “Why?” Liam jerked his head around, surprised by Dani’s question. “Why would you do this?”

  June stepped closer, stopping only when Liam raised the Sig again. “To undo the wrongs of the past, dearie. The sins of the ones across the river run deep, but now they’re being cleansed. One by one they fall by a righteous hand.”

  “This isn’t righteous, it’s murder,” Liam said, finally standing.

  “Murder?” June nearly shouted. “You know nothing of murder, Liam.” A smile crept onto her face. “But your brother knew it well.”

  He licked his lips, watching June’s hands to make sure she didn’t go for a hidden weapon. “What are you talking about? My brother was a doctor, he saved lives.”

  “He carved a fortune out of the flesh of the weak and helpless!” June roared. “He was the enabler of what’s happened.”

  A semblance of calm spread across her distorted face, and she studied Liam in the flickering light. “You and I aren’t that different, Liam. You didn’t know the darkness that lived within Allen, but I always suspected my sister had murder in her heart.”

  “Your sister?” he heard himself say, the answer already forming in his mind before June spoke.

  “Karen Shevlin.”

  Liam heard Dani’s surprised intake of breath and glanced at her, then returned his gaze to June. “You killed your own sister?”

  “You would have too if you knew what I knew, what I saw. She deserved to die, right alongside that despicable husband of hers.”

  “What are you talking about?” Liam asked, his disbelief turning to confusion.

  June moved to the brick wall and ran her fingers in the mortared grooves. “My father helped lay these bricks,” she said, her face slightly turned away. “This was his first job after my family moved here almost fifty years ago. They added this room as a coal-storage chamber when they switched the furnaces from wood to coal. He and my mother had no place to stay, and the owner of the foundry took pity on them.”

  “Jerry Shevlin’s father,” Liam said.

  June nodded. “Yes. He was a good man.” Her face hardened. “Nothing like his bastard son. He let my father build a small house not far from here, let him work off his rent.” She turned to face them again. “In fact, you’ve seen it out in the woods, the day you trespassed here. My father and mother were happy to live away from people, as they’d been ostracized most of their lives.”

  “Why?” Liam asked, his eyes flicking toward the empty doorway.

  June touched the protruding contours of her face. “My mother had a disease of the bones. Paget’s disease, it’s called. It was mostly confined to her shoulder and back, but she walked with a limp and had a hump that people found . . . unsightly. My father fell in love with her despite her disfigurement.”

  June looked away for a moment before continuing. “He was a special man in many ways. He protected us from the prying, judging eyes of the world. He asked Jerry Shevlin’s father to keep our existence quiet, so rumors wouldn’t start about the freaks living across the river. He even went so far as to have our groceries delivered to the docks on the opposite side, so no one would even see him in town.” June’s eyes became wistful in the low light. “I remember how he used to sing to Karen and me at night in that little house, his voice so soft and low. It was home, a good one filled with love. But my sister wanted more.”

  June spat on the ground, as if to curse the memory, then looked up at them in the low light, hatred etched into every line of her face. “Karen had no disfigurements, and I heard my mother and father speaking at night when they thought we were asleep. They said that she might not even have the disease at all. Karen was beautiful and she knew it. By the age of twelve she was flaunting it in my face whenever our parents weren’t around. She loved the fact that I was like this and she wasn’t—she reveled in it.”

  “How did she come to live across the river without the rest of you?” Liam asked.

  June snorted. “She ran away when she was sixteen. It broke my parents’ hearts. The things she said to them before she left, the horrible things she called our mother. Karen was disfigured in the soul rather than in the flesh.

  “I started to follow her shortly after she left. She found a boarding house and charmed the owner’s wife into letting her stay for free, claiming she’d been abandoned by her family. She was intelligent and charismatic. It wasn’t long after that she met the only son of the richest family in town.”

  “Jerry Shevlin,” Liam said, enthralled by the story despite himself.

  “Yes. By the time they met, our mother had fallen ill, and my father worked himself ragged trying to care for her and hold down his job. Then the foundry shut down, and we had nothing. If my father had been a lesser man, he would’ve gone to the elder Shevlin and tried to gain favor with him since Karen was courting his son, but he had a stout honor that wouldn’t let him. Secretly I think he hoped that Karen would come back to us.” June closed her eyes and swayed like the candle flames that illuminated her. “My mother died soon after, and my father gave up. He fell into a deep depression, quit eating, quit moving, and slipped away. I was alone.”

  “How old were you?” D
ani asked.

  June shifted her gaze to Dani. “I was twenty. Karen was two years younger. She married Shevlin shortly after that, and I observed from the shadows, always there a few steps behind her, watching her perfect life unfold. I learned stealth from my father. Whether stalking a deer or watching people, I was always there but unseen. Truth be told, I was jealous. As much as I hated her, she had everything that I wanted: a rich and handsome husband, a big house, a new car. But I knew what would be coming down the line even before she did, although she figured it out soon enough. And that’s when your brother entered the scene.”

  Liam let the gun sink to his side, though he kept a firm grip on it. “The blood tests.”

  June nodded. “Yes, there were many trips to your brother’s clinic before they became pregnant. I knew what they were doing, making sure that they wouldn’t have a deformed child—that would put a damper on their perfect life. I watched and waited, always just outside the line of sight. Although, when you travel in the circles that I do, most overlook you.”

  “What circle is that?” Liam said.

  “The society of the homeless. People don’t really see beggars and drunks, they see trash—if they notice at all.” June smiled at him. “Even you don’t recall the times we passed each other.”

  Liam blinked, his mind flitting over the past week. The memory of sitting in the hardware-store parking lot watching the pack of kids ambling across the street, along with a hooded woman. The homeless woman he’d almost run over with the truck, her face shrouded from view.

  “Oh, I see you’re remembering now. I kept a close watch on you from the moment you entered Tallston.”

  “Why?” he answered, feeling unhinged by the discovery of her surveillance in plain sight.

  “To see if you were like your brother, meddling, without ethics.”

  “What does Allen have to do with all this? He ran tests for your sister, it was his job.”

  June’s face hardened again, her malformed jaw sliding even more to one side. “They told him their fears, about the disease being passed down. He had no more than opened his clinic when they came to him carrying money that he needed to expand his business. I watched her belly grow, an untold sorrow and fear building within me.” June fixed them both with a hard stare. “I knew what type of callous nature my sister had, but I didn’t know just how far she would go.”

  “What do you mean?” Dani asked, and Liam felt unease rising like dirty floodwater inside him.

  “I knew they were going to have the child at home—I’d heard them speak of it when they thought no one was listening. So I watched every night, and then one evening in the beginning of summer, the doctor came to visit. I could hear my sister’s screams inside the house, and after hours of labor, another set of lungs joined her cries. But their fears were confirmed the moment they saw him. Peter was born with many deformities on his face and arms. The disease my mother carried left Karen untouched but set its claws into their little son.”

  A bang issued from somewhere in the darkness behind June, and Liam snapped the Sig up again, trying to see past her. June made no indication that she’d heard anything and continued speaking in a low tone.

  “They came out of the house hours later, my sister and her husband, hand in hand, holding poor little Peter. I watched from the edge of the trees as they walked to the corner of their yard and Jerry began to dig a hole.”

  Liam heard Dani sob, and shuddered at the image the other woman conjured. “They didn’t,” he heard himself say.

  “Oh yes, they did. Karen held Peter until Jerry had the grave dug. They even secretly had a little coffin already made up. They placed him inside it, then buried him alive.”

  June’s words hung in the air, vile and undoubtedly true. The thought of burying a child alive was almost too much for Liam and he took a deep, steadying breath.

  “But how?” Dani asked.

  “You saved him,” Liam answered, watching June’s face. “You dug him up and saved him.”

  Slowly, June nodded. “I ran to his grave as soon as they went inside, and dug down with my bare hands. I flailed in the dirt until I found his casket and lifted him out. It was fate that he calmed as soon as I embraced him, otherwise his murderous parents may have come to investigate. I think he knew, even then, that I was sent to save him. Then I replaced everything back the way it was, and swam across the river with Peter. The whole while, my sister and her husband sat in their house with your brother, who was writing out Peter’s death certificate at their kitchen table.” June spit again on the floor. “Waiting for his check, I’m sure.”

  “Oh my God,” Dani whispered. Liam reached down and placed a hand on her shoulder, not sure whether to steady her or him.

  “God wasn’t there to help him, dearie, I was. He would’ve died down there, alone in the dark, but I got him out. I nurtured him and clothed him, kept him warm and safe through the long winters and cool in the sweltering summers. I am his mother, not her, and God did nothing to help us.”

  “So you waited until now to exact your revenge,” Liam said, stepping forward. “You poisoned his mind with your hatred until he became a monster.”

  “I told him the truth!” June shouted, her lips trembling with rage. “I told him his real parents abandoned him to death because of the way he looked! I showed him a world that had no place for people like us! I loved him and cared for him while everyone else turned their backs on him!”

  “You made him into a murderer!” Liam roared back. “He tried to kill an innocent boy. He killed my sister-in-law, who had nothing to do with this.” He felt his finger tightening on the trigger of the handgun and eased the pressure off, but didn’t lower it.

  “I let him fulfill his destiny,” June whispered. “He righted wrongs set in motion long ago. He is righteous and powerful and true. He has a will of his own, and I don’t think he meant to kill your brother’s wife, but . . .” She swallowed. “He is my son.”

  Liam’s chest heaved in and out, a river of emotion racing through him, clouding his thoughts. How could Allen have done it? How? He gritted his teeth and tried to clear his mind. “And what about the others? What about Haines and the mayor and Tracey? Why did they have to die?”

  June stood straighter and raised her chin. “They were going to take our home from us. This place,” she said, motioning to the walls, “is our sanctuary. We moved here when the house my father built began to fall in on us. We found shelter here and filled it with love, just as my parents did with their home.” June’s eyes hardened into glittering diamonds. “Jerry Shevlin and Donald Haines’s company were going to rob us of that. They were going to shred the ground we hunted on, tear the walls of our home down around us, strip the land of everything that is good. The mayor was going along with it, as were most of the other people in Tallston, because they are filled with greed. Progress means money, and money equates to happiness. They would rape the earth of all it had to offer just for more wealth.”

  “And you would kill in cold blood to keep your home,” Liam said, his hand that held the gun now shaking. A voice deep inside him screamed to pull the trigger, to right the wrongs that had been done to so many. He fought the urge and waited for her answer, all the while his eyes shifting toward the black doorway behind her.

  “I would kill to survive, nothing else,” she said.

  Liam remembered the story Nut told him in the jail cell. The disappearance of the homeless man, the heavy tracks in the snow leading away across the river. He grimaced.

  “You’re going to come with us,” Liam said, stepping backward until he stood beside Dani again. He bent over and was about to cut the ropes around her ankles when he heard June chuckling.

  “We’ve survived this long against all odds, Liam, and you expect me to come quietly with you?” June shook her head in the wavering light. “No, I’ll not be judged by people who would’ve shunned us
if we would’ve asked for their help.” Her face became poisonous. “You know nothing of living day in, day out with a hindrance such as this,” she said, swiping at her face. “No one knows.” She stepped to the side of the door and placed her hands into the pockets of her dirty sweatshirt. “I’m sorry, but this must be done.”

  Liam began to stand, but movement in the doorway caught his attention, a drifting of shadows that came nearer and then drew away before he could speak or even raise the gun. The cables he’d seen on the floor outside the room snapped tight, rising out of the filth until they hung taut in the air. The ground below their feet gave a sickening lurch, and he stumbled back, all at once realizing why the floor sounded so hollow before.

  The grate they stood on slid from beneath them, empty darkness sucking them down, and he felt his hand clutching the Sig relax in an attempt to grab something to hold on to. The gun pirouetted away into the room as they slid out of sight, and June’s disfigured face was the last thing he saw in the candlelight. Cold steel sung under their bodies as they slipped through the black. He reached out to where Dani’s screams came from, but his hand met only empty air.

  Then the chute was gone from around them, and they fell. The impact wasn’t as hard as he expected but still forced the air from his lungs, leaving him paralyzed for a second, long enough for him to realize that Dani wasn’t screaming anymore. He tried to move and found that all his limbs seemed to work and, other than the buffeting pain in his back from the fall, he felt okay. A dry clacking sound issued from the ground around him, and the smell of gasoline invaded his nostrils, almost overpowering with its cloying odor.

  “Dani!” he yelled.

  With a flick of his wrist, he folded the razor, which he somehow had maintained a grip on. Tucking it away in his pocket, he stood and attempted to walk, his feet sinking into the unstable floor. The darkness was liquid and complete around him, and as he moved, he held his hands out, blind to all else but touch. Liam reached down and felt the floor, his fingers coming back with a light, powdery chunk about the size of his fist. Coal.