Four Octobers

by Hautala, Rick

  The next thing he was aware of was the steady slap-slap of approaching feet. Then he heard Tommy’s fear-edged voice.

  “Is he all right? He isn’t dead, is he?”

  “No, I’m not dead,” Danny mumbled even though it took a lot of effort to say those few words. Behind his closed eyes, he was watching the most amazing display of shifting reds, yellows, and whites that spiraled in a pattern against a field of shimmering blackness. He took another, deeper breath into his lungs, held it for a moment in spite of the pain between his ribs, then let it out in a slow, whistling hiss. He was absolutely amazed that he could breathe at all.

  Honest to God, I can’t believe I’m still alive!

  He wasn’t sure if he said these words aloud or simply thought them, but it didn’t matter.

  Tommy started asking a barrage of questions about what he had seen, but Danny felt like he was far away from it all. He didn’t think he could say much even if he wanted to speak. He needed some time to think things through before he said anything to either Tommy or Booger.

  He knew now, without a shred of doubt, that there was a dead person up there on the ledge. He also had a pretty good idea who it was.

  It had to be Alice, the waitress from the Whistle Stop Cafe.

  In the shimmering darkness swirling behind his eyes, Danny tried to piece together what must have happened.

  If this really was Alice, then his Uncle Bob had to be involved somehow. Danny wasn’t sure how he knew this, but he remembered how last year, when his uncle had stopped by the house to say good-bye before moving out west, he had seemed edgier than usual. Nervous, even. At the time, Danny guessed it was because he was still upset about his divorce from Margaret, but now he understood that it might have been because of something else entirely.

  It might have been because his uncle had killed Alice and hidden her body on the narrow ledge below Blood Ledge.

  But why? Danny wondered.

  Why would Uncle Bob do something like that?

  In a flash, he thought of several possibilities.

  Maybe they had been arguing about something. Maybe Alice had been badgering Uncle Bob to leave Margaret and marry her. Maybe she was going to have a baby, or maybe she had threatened to reveal their relationship if he didn’t leave his wife, so he had to kill her.

  No!

  Uncle Bob couldn’t kill anyone.

  Could he?

  Maybe while they were out here one day they’d been fooling around and Alice had died accidentally or from natural causes. Maybe she jumped off Blood Ledge and banged her head on the rock in the shallows, and she had died, and Uncle Bob didn’t know what else to do, so he hid her body so he wouldn’t be questioned about it and have their relationship made public.

  Danny wanted to believe that his uncle wasn’t involved, that this wasn’t even Alice the waitress, but he was pretty sure it was.

  It had to be.

  That would explain why she had disappeared so suddenly last year and why Uncle Bob had taken off for Oregon.

  Whatever the reason, though, two thoughts gnawed at his mind and before long they became certainties: Alice the waitress was dead, and—somehow—his Uncle Bob was involved.

  The only question Danny needed to answer was: what was he going to do about it?

  Even if he was wrong, even if that wasn’t Alice’s skeleton rotting away up there, he had found a dead person stuffed into a crack in the cliff where he—or she—was slowly decomposing.

  Shouldn’t he tell the police about it so they could investigate?

  Then again, if he reported it, he might let slip what he had seen happening out here between Alice and his uncle. Even though he knew that Uncle Bob was divorced from Margaret now, Danny didn’t want his aunt, who seemed to be getting crankier by the day, to have anything else she could use against her ex-husband or the rest of the family. Danny certainly had heard his Uncle Bob complain enough before he left about how Margaret’s lawyer was taking him to the cleaners.

  Why make things even worse for Uncle Bob, wherever he was?

  Besides, how could Danny tell anyone what he had seen without his mother finding out that he’d jumped off Blood Ledge? He’d be in real trouble then, probably get grounded for a few weeks, at least. His mother was always telling him that he shouldn’t hang around with wiseguys like Booger and Tommy, and this would just give her more ammunition.

  As he lay there on the cold rocks, his eyes closed as the cold air swirled around him, Danny came to only one firm conclusion.

  He wasn’t going to say anything about this to anyone.

  “You all right, man?” Tommy asked in a trembling voice. “Say something. Man, I thought you was dead for sure. When you hit the water, I thought—”

  “Pipe down, will you?” Danny said as he wedged his eyes open and looked up into the frowning face of his best friend. “Your voice is hurting my ears.” He took a breath through chattering teeth. “I’ll be all right. But—boy, does my back hurt whenever I take a deep breath.”

  “Just stop breathing, then,” Booger said.

  “So what was it?” Tommy asked with an anxious twist in his voice. “What’s up there?”

  Groaning softly, Danny closed his eyes again and rolled his head gently from side to side, grinding it against the rock. That pain was nothing compared to the pain that gripped the rest of his body, and he wondered if he would have enough strength to walk home once they got back up to the path.

  “Yeah,” Tommy chimed in, “and tell the truth. Is there really a skull up there?”

  Wincing with agony, Danny sat up and looked back and forth between his two best friends. They looked like dark cutouts against the star-filled sky. As they leaned closer, moonlight trimmed the sides of their faces with a thin, silver line.

  “No,” he finally said, his voice hardly more than a sigh. “I… You were right. I must’ve imagined it or something, ’cause there’s nothing up there. Nothing at all.”

  Cold River

  October, 2003

  Part One: Evening Falls

  Evening came as it always did, which is to say, unlike any other. To the west, a deep rose hue lit up the horizon while overhead, thick rafts of clouds glowed with alternating bands of red and violet that cut across the darkening sky like inflamed cat scratches. Ben Skillings sighed loudly as he settled down on the wooden bench on the edge of the rocky embankment by the bend in the river. Narrowing his eyes, he took a deep breath and held it for a moment before finally letting it out slowly.

  The October night air made him shiver as he stared across the expanse of water in front of him. The wind, carrying with it a strong intimation of the oncoming winter, swept down from Canada. In the middle of the river, the water rippled with each sudden gust that shattered the reflection of the sky into dazzling slashes of red, orange, and violet. Closer to the shore, multi-colored maple leaves drifted by on the current, looking like flickering tongues of flame dancing on the water.

  Night was coming fast, and Ben knew that this night, like every other night, sleep would not come. His mind was fogged by exhaustion, but by his best estimate, it was going on three months, now, since he had last slept. He knew exactly when his problem had begun, too, but he couldn’t help but snicker softly at the thought of the word “problem.” It didn’t come anywhere near to capturing the scope of what was happening to him.

  His eyelids felt heavy. Every time he blinked, it felt like the insides were crusted with sand that scoured his eyes. A generalized weakness wrung him out, and he slumped over the back of the bench. He imagined that, to anyone who might be observing him, his body might resemble a huge, melted candle.

  As he shifted his gaze closer to shore, he watched the leaves flicker in the gathering darkness. Even when he looked straight at them, they looked like guttering flames, flaring up with brilliant forks of red, orange, and yellow. He was sure he was hallucinating from utter exhaustion, but the light that reflected in the inky swirls of the water hurt his eyes.

&
nbsp; It’s been three months…three months since—

  Before he could complete the thought, a strangled whimper vibrated in his throat and a cold, numbing sensation blossomed in the center of his chest. Pressure squeezed him from all sides, making it impossible for him to take a deep enough breath.

  “She’s gone, and she’s not coming back,” he whispered out loud, watching the gray mist of his breath drift and dissolve into the deepening black of night.

  A lonely ache deeper than any physical pain filled him as he considered the very real possibility that everything he was looking at—the sky, the sunset, the river, and the dense stand of trees that lined the opposite shore—all of it might not be real. It wasn’t the first time he had entertained the idea that—like his wife—he might be dead…or maybe he was in a coma in a hospital…or back at home in Stonepoint, safely asleep in bed and dreaming all of this before waking up and finding Mary in bed beside him.

  There were so many times when he earnestly wished that were the case, and he would awaken to discover that Mary was still alive. But on a bone-deep level, he knew that was never going to happen.

  Mary had died the last week of June—June 27th, to be exact. A Monday. And it was just about three months ago, so he had no doubt exactly when his “problem” had started.

  He and Mary had been married for eleven years, long enough for their relationship to settle into that comfortable routine all marriages eventually fall into. He missed his wife terribly. He missed simply seeing her and being with her day after day and having her as a part—an important part—of his life. He missed not feeling the warmth of her body in bed next to him at night, and he missed not smelling the traces of her scent on her pillow when he rolled over to hug her during the night. He missed the simple human touch that we all need in order to survive, and most of all, he missed the daily sharing that people develop when they’ve been together a long time.

  Worst of all, as hard as it was to accept, he also knew that she was never coming back to him.

  “Never,” he whispered, the tangled fog of his breath drifting from his mouth and disappearing into the night. He sniffed, choking back his tears and leaning forward, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes as he fought back the salty surge of tears that blurred his view.

  “…Never...”

  The echo was so faint Ben wasn’t sure if he had uttered the word aloud or if it had resonated in the night.

  The last few days of October had been warmer than usual, and because there had been so little rainfall throughout the summer, some of the foliage wasn’t as vibrant as it might have been. Even the leaves on a few of the sugar maples that lined this side of the river had gone directly from green to brown. Every evening, if it wasn’t raining, Ben had sat here and tried to enjoy the autumnal scenery in the fading light. The wind gathered the dead leaves into drifts along the riverbank and blew them in chattering gusts down the paved walkway where they rattled like old bones on the cold ground.

  Ben started when he sensed someone walking toward him from behind. The scuffing tread of footsteps scraped the asphalt with a gritty sound that set his teeth on edge. Turning slowly, he looked to see who it was. In the deepening darkness, he wasn’t at all surprised to see no one there. For the past three months, he’d been having auditory and visual hallucinations. Nearly every night, while lying in bed, he would hear Mary whisper his name. He wouldn’t realize she wasn’t really there until he rolled over and reached for her, feeling the cold, empty space where she should have been.

  “I miss you, darling,” he whispered, turning once again to look at the river. Another powerful gust of wind blew straight into his face, making his eyes tear up. The feeling that an unseen presence was lurking behind him grew steadily stronger, coiling inside him as he cringed, waiting for a cold breath or the touch of a dead hand against the back of his neck.

  “Is that you, baby?” he whispered, widening his eyes but still not daring to turn around. “Are you here with me?”

  The footsteps had stopped, and the utter silence of the night made him tremble. Shifting forward on the bench, Ben listened to the steady sibilant hiss of the river as it rushed over the stones that lined its muddy bank. The sound grated on his ears. The leaves floating by on the water flared up so brightly they cast sharp-edged shadows that swung slowly to the side as they shifted past him. The glow in the western sky was gone now, and Ben was left wondering how long he had been sitting here. Time seemed to have been suspended, and he sensed how it stretched out in front of and behind him like a winding black river that slid silently over its muddy bottom.

  After taking another shuddering breath, Ben thought he could muster enough strength to stand up and walk back to his apartment. He was hungry, but he knew that, no matter what he prepared for supper, he would lose his appetite as soon as he sat down at the table and would end up staring blankly at his food, his mind lost in a dense, timeless fog. And then, like just now on the riverbank, he would begin to see and hear things…things that he knew weren’t really there but which seemed, on some level, to be more real than even he and the bench he was sitting on were.

  His knees popped as he stood up slowly and brushed the seat of his pants. The sound of his fingers rubbing against the worn denim was loud. It sounded like someone filing a stone with a metal rasp, and set his teeth on edge as he started down the walkway. It was a short distance to his apartment building. The orange sodium streetlight at the end of Spears Street cast a powdery glow so thick it looked like tiny snowflakes were falling inside the illuminated cone of light.

  Sudden panic shot through Ben, and he jolted to an abrupt stop, every muscle in his body so tensed they hurt. The urge to run the rest of the way to his apartment swept over him, but the nameless, shapeless dread inside him froze him where he stood. He suddenly realized that the footsteps he had heard behind him earlier had been keeping pace with him, moving when he moved and stopping when he stopped. A chill teased up and down his back as he struggled to find the courage to turn and confront whatever was behind him.

  Is it just an echo, playing tricks on me? he wondered. Or is there really someone—or something—following me?

  He wanted desperately to turn and look if only to convince himself that he was alone. He wasn’t in any danger. He was just letting his imagination get carried away.

  That’s all it is.

  But after weeks…months of not sleeping well—if at all—he no longer trusted any of his senses, his eyesight least of all. Fear choked him and kept him rooted there in the middle of the street. The asphalt at his feet glowed with a shimmering iridescence that gave him a momentary impression that—somehow—he had turned the wrong way and had walked into the river, that he was standing on water, and his feet weren’t even breaking the surface. A wave of vertigo swept over him, and he stiffened his legs to keep himself from falling.

  Tears sprang to his eyes, and a wild shiver ran through him like a lance. He wanted to cry out. He heard a low, whimpering sound, but it seemed to be coming from the darkness around him, not from inside him. Another gust of wind swept up a spray of dust and dead leaves and litter from the gutter beside him, and spun around in a tiny whirlwind. The rattling, scraping sounds hurt his ears, and for just an instant, he imagined that he could see a face in the center of the swirling debris.

  This isn’t happening!…This can’t be happening, he told himself, but the unfocused dread was like a lead weight inside his chest, dragging him down. If he could get back to his apartment, if he could just get inside and shut the door and lock it behind him, he might be all right.

  “Might be,” he whispered and, at the same instant, thought, Safe from what?

  Transfixed, he watched as the dust devil with the face inside it glided down toward the river, gradually dissolving into the darkness. It left behind the faint echo of its passing and the raw smell of decay.

  A hard, hot throbbing in his neck made Ben’s eyes pulse. His vision swelled as he stared off into the darkness b
eyond the dusky glow of the streetlight. Tears blurred his vision, shattering the light from the streetlight into thousands of fiery, dancing splinters.

  He wasn’t stupid.

  He knew exactly what was happening to him. In college, he’d experimented a few times with pot and LSD just to see what they were all about, but he knew this was qualitatively different. This, he feared, was symptomatic of something far more serious. The only question was, was there something organically wrong with his brain, or was it psychological?

  He was positive he was having some kind of mental breakdown. Then again, what could he expect after going for nights on end without any sleep?

  “Jesus, get a grip,” he whispered, cringing at the sound of his own voice. Like the faint footsteps he’d heard earlier, his voice seemed to come at him from the darkness.

  Looking around, he noticed that Spears Street seemed curiously deserted. The houses on both sides were dark. It seemed as though time had somehow frozen for everyone except him, and he was left totally isolated. After what seemed like several minutes, from far off in the distance, he heard a loud, heavy rumbling sound. Looking toward Main Street, he saw headlights suddenly spike the night, sweeping like twin searchlights as a car sped by the town park.

  They’ll see me, Ben thought irrationally, and the instant he had a focal point for his panic, he found the reserve of strength he needed to move. Darting to the side of the street, he found himself ankle-deep in a pile of dead leaves that lined the gully. Cringing, he waited for the car to turn onto his street and nail him with its glaring headlights, but it moved down Main Street until its tail-lights glared like two baleful eyes before disappearing around a corner. As soon as it was out of sight, Ben had the distinct impression it hadn’t really been there. Only the thin blue cloud of exhaust that hung in the air behind it was any proof it was real. Before Ben turned up the walkway to his apartment door, he caught a whiff of the exhaust, and then the night closed down around him, muffling all sound except for his shallow breathing.