“What the—” he muttered, rubbing his eyes and staring at the dark area under the trees. A smear of white, looking like a puff of cotton in the night, kept shifting in and out of view. It took him a few seconds to realize it was a woman, standing on the riverbank and gazing out across the water in his direction.
Lori.
It has to be her!
Ben cranked the driver’s window down a few inches and, cocking his head, put his ear close to the crack, listening to hear if she was calling to him. The only sound was the low, steady whistle of the wind, brushing across the dried grass. A sudden compulsion to see her again and talk to her gripped him. He desperately wanted to call out to her, but he still didn’t dare get out of his car.
What if there were others out there in the night?
What if those things—he still couldn’t think of them as real people—were lumbering around in the darkness?
The wind gusted stronger now, and a sprinkling of leaves rattled like steel pellets against the side of the car. Ben imagined bony fingernails were scraping against the metal, trying to get in at him. His hand was shaking as he quickly rolled the side window up and shrank back into his car seat. As he did, his gaze shifted to the small tool shed where his landlady stored her lawn mower and other tools for yard work. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was staring straight at Linda’s canoe, which was lying bottom-side up on two sawhorses beside the shed.
“That’s it,” Ben whispered, snapping his fingers.
The temperature had dropped, so his breath came out as a thin, gray cloud. Without thinking it through, he got out of the car, making sure to lock the door behind him. After making sure the paddles were stored underneath, resting on the thwarts, he rolled the canoe over and gripped it in the middle with both hands. Grunting, he lifted it just enough to clear the sawhorses. It was heavier than he’d expected, but he was sure he could get it down to the river.
The wind was gaining strength, blasting into his face and making his eyes water as he hefted the canoe down the street and over to the bench he always sat on. By the time he got there, he was panting heavily, the air flooding his lungs like cold water. Dead leaves swirled around him, and when he listened carefully, he was positive, for a moment, that he could hear a faint moaning sound coming from the darkness.
“Is that you?” a woman’s voice called out.
The sound of Lori’s voice sent a tingle of excitement through him, and he almost hollered back to her, but he checked himself. All around, he could sense looming presences, and he glanced to the right just in time to see a dark smear on the edge of the riverbank. A black figure had burst through the surface and was churning the water with both hands as it tried to heave itself up onto the shore. It grabbed at the rocks, making a wet, slapping sound that filled Ben with nausea.
He froze where he was and watched in rapt fascination.
The thing was definitely human shaped. Its head was down, and dark clots of slime dripped from its hair and shoulders. Ben knew nothing—nothing alive, anyway—could survive the chill of the river at this time of year. The creature’s head swayed slowly from side to side as it made watery, snuffing sounds that reminded Ben of pigs, rooting in the mud. Amazed and terrified by what he saw, he took a deep breath but gasped when his throat choked off as if unseen fingers had suddenly gripped him from behind. He cringed, hoping that the thing hadn’t spotted him, but the instant he made a sound, the creature on the riverbank stopped. Its head blurred as it swiveled around, seeming to turn in all directions at once.
“I think it sees you,” Lori called out from the opposite shore. “Whatever you do, don’t move.”
As if I would, Ben thought, but he didn’t say anything out loud. He was convinced that the slightest sound would draw the creature’s attention. After an excruciatingly long moment, the creature finally let out a low, groaning sigh that sounded like shifting gravel before continuing its climb out of the river. Ben tried not to think about how cold the water must be. He expected within a few weeks to see thin collars of ice forming close to the bank.
The creature finally dragged itself out of the swirling black water and staggered to a slumped, standing position. It looked unsteady on its feet. Its entire body was draped with tangles of black, rotting vegetation. When it turned and looked in Ben’s direction, a dark, liquid glimmer lit its eyes with an unearthly glow. Then it started moving slowly up the incline, all the while grunting and puffing as it struggled for balance. When it finally reached the paved walkway, it started moving straight toward where Ben stood, trembling.
The creature’s feet made heavy slopping sounds on the ground, and the closer it got to Ben, the stronger the stench of rot became. Looping strings and globs of slime dripped from its shoulders and legs. Ben’s heart was frozen in his chest as he watched, unable to move as the thing drew steadily closer. It staggered and finally stopped when it banged a leg against the gunwale of the canoe and then looked around dumbly as the dull gong reverberated in the night.
Ben fought back a whimper as he waited, expecting that the thing would see him any second now. He cringed, waiting for it to reach out and grab him, but the thing’s gaze shifted past him and, after a moment, it shuffled by, heading toward the park. The fetid stench that trailed behind it wafted away on the night breeze, but it left a terrible aftertaste in the back of Ben’s throat.
The figure shambled away slowly, its body gradually fading into the hazy glow of streetlights in the park. When it was about fifty feet away, it wavered like a billow of fog and then vanished. Once he was sure it was no longer around, Ben allowed himself to let out the breath he had been holding.
“Do you have any idea what those things are?”
Lori’s voice drifted across the water, thrumming in the air like a subtle change in air pressure in his ears. Ben was still gripped by fear, and he barely registered her voice. After a moment, though, he took another shuddering breath and looked across the water to the gauzy figure on the distant shore.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” he replied, hearing the quaver in his voice. All around him, the night vibrated with a dark and dangerous energy. He had no doubt that more of those things were lurking nearby, wandering in the night like lost souls.
“Are they dead?” he asked.
Lori’s lilting laughter teased his ears, drawing him a few steps closer to the river. On the far shore, her figure seemed to hover in the night. It was indistinct at the edges and seemed to absorb the darkness of the shadows beneath the willows.
A moment of silence followed that was so dense Ben couldn’t shake the impression he had to be imagining Lori’s voice. But then she spoke again, her words lingering in the darkness like a gentle breath that caressed his cheek.
“Are they dead…or are we?” she asked.
Ben honestly didn’t know the answer. How could he determine if he was alive…or dead…or dreaming…or something else? When he took another breath, the cold air singed his nose and throat.
No, goddamnit! I am alive, he thought, squeezing his fists so tightly the palms of his hands ached.
I have to be alive! You don’t get sensations like this when you’re dreaming…but what if I’m not dreaming? What if I’m somewhere between living and dead?
“Come to me,” Lori called out.
Her breathy whisper was so faint Ben had the distinct impression it was only the night wind, teasing his ears. His vision wavered as he stared at the subtle nimbus of light that seemed to surround her. Without realizing it, he had walked down the bank to the river and was standing knee-deep in water that gripped his legs like rings of ice around his knees. When he saw what he was doing, he shivered and stared in amazement at the black water swirling around his legs. It took a great effort to resist the impulse to dive into the water and swim to her, but a small corner of his mind told him that it would be foolish, no doubt fatal to immerse himself in the frigid water.
What in the name of God is happening to me?
; Fear and bewilderment surged up inside him. Shivering wildly, he clambered back onto the shore. His gaze came to rest on the canoe, and he remembered what he’d been planning to do. His wet pants legs clung to him like a coating of heavy, sticky mud. His sneakers squished, and his feet slid inside them with every step.
The canoe seemed an impossible distance away, but he finally made it to it. Staring at his hands in amazement and feeling completely detached from what he was doing, he gripped the curved side of the canoe. The cold of the metal burned his fingers and spread icy fire up his arms. His head filled with a loud roaring sound, and he realized that he was trembling, seething with anticipation as he waited to hear Lori’s voice again.
He wasn’t sure he had enough strength to move much less lift the canoe, but he grit his teeth with determination and started dragging it down toward the river’s edge. The sound of the metal grinding across the rocks hurt his ears.
“What are you doing?” Lori called, her voice modulating seductively in the darkness.
“I…I tried to find you earlier today,” Ben called back, grunting as he struggled to point the prow of the canoe into the water. The swift current swept it downstream and almost tore the canoe from his hands. “I drove all around over there, but I got confused. I wasn’t sure where you lived.”
Lori didn’t reply. The only sound Ben heard above the rushing of the water was what he thought was faint laughter, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Wait right there. I’m coming over,” he shouted.
He noticed that his voice echoed with distortion, but he ignored it as he swung one foot into the canoe while steadying the sides with both hands on the gunwales. The current was much stronger than he’d anticipated, and the downstream motion of the canoe threw him off balance, almost tearing it from his grip. One of the paddles fell onto the canoe floor, rattling so loudly in the silence of the night that it made his ears start ringing.
His feet and legs were already soaked, so he didn’t care how wet he got as he waded into the water, all the while trying to get his other foot inside before the canoe drifted too far away from him.
As he struggled, he kept glancing at the opposite shore to make sure Lori was still there. The darkness seemed to be playing tricks on his eyes, making her look like she was shifting and swaying back and forth along the riverbank. When he finally got into the canoe and settled on one of the seats, he gripped the paddle tightly with both hands and started pulling for the other shore, aiming the canoe further upstream than he wanted to go to compensate for the current.
Once he was further out on the water, he noticed that the river had a dense, fishy smell that painted the inside of his nose. He thought it might be just his imagination, but overhead, the sky flickered with blue light, like dry lightning in the distance. There wasn’t much chance of a thunderstorm this time of year, but Ben waited, nonetheless, to hear the slow rumble of thunder that never came. He thought he might not be able to hear it above the sounds he was making as he struggled against the current. The water lapped at the side of the canoe with the sound of someone noisily sucking their teeth.
The wind hadn’t let up and was riffling the surface of the water so it looked like hammered tin. The moon was behind him, casting a silvery patina over the rapidly approaching shore; but as he scanned the area beneath the willows, he realized that Lori wasn’t anywhere in sight. He was about to call out to her when something thumped against the bottom of the canoe. It hit hard enough to send a shiver through the metal like it was a tuning fork. Ben stopped paddling and held tightly onto the gunwales as the canoe rocked gently, and he looked down at the water, looking for what he might have hit. He didn’t see anything and was about to chalk it up to his imagination when he saw a dark, indistinct shape shift below the water just beforeit hit the underside of the canoe hard enough to rock it and almost spill him out.
“Damnit,” Ben muttered as he tightened his grip on the gunwales, trying to steady the canoe as it pitched violently from side to side. Water sloshed over the sides and swirled in foamy eddies around his feet. The canoe got increasingly unsteady, and the fear that he might end up in the icy water gripped him. Worse than that, though, was the shock he experienced when the large, black object moving just below the surface came toward the canoe again.
“Oh, Jesus,” Ben muttered, positive now that it was one of those things he’d seen crawling out of the river. Unable to stem his sudden rush of panic, he imagined several of those creatures swarming like fish beneath his canoe, grasping at the sides and reaching up to hook him with their cold, dead hands and pull him down into the river.
It must have been only a few seconds, but it seemed to last much longer until the canoe stopped pitching from side to side. The current was drawing him downriver, but Ben, his face dripping with sweat, picked up the paddle and gripped it tightly. Trickles of sweat beaded on his face and ran like cold threads down the back of his neck. The chill that clung to him from his earlier dunking numbed his feet and legs. After steadying himself, he started paddling again toward the shore, his eyes searching the darkness under the willows for a hint of Lori.
He felt compelled to call out to her but was leery of shattering the dense silence. Not hearing her voice left him feeling empty, like the hollow concussion after a loud explosion.
But it was more than that.
The memory of her voice filled him with a deep yearning that he feared might never be satisfied. He tried to recall the exact sound and pitch of her voice, but his memory was inadequate, and he knew that only hearing her call to him again would satisfy him.
“Lori…?”
His voice thrummed in his ears when he stopped paddling and sat tensed, waiting for a reply. The swift current hissed against the side of the canoe, but that was the only sound. The darkness under the willows swelled like a cavern that plunged straight down into the earth. For a moment, Ben was swept up by a terrible feeling of vertigo. He felt as though the river was suddenly plunging downward over a waterfall that was taking him with it. When he gripped the side of the canoe to orient himself, he heard a feathery whooshing sound deep inside his head.
The current was sweeping him even further downstream. Gripping the paddle, he strained to redirect himself toward the far shore, but the riverbank rapidly drew away, no matter how hard he paddled. A terrible, aching loneliness filled him. He was cold with a deep sense of loss and grief—deeper, even, than what he had experienced after Mary died.
The river seemed to widen and spread around him like a huge swirl of black ink. As he redoubled his efforts to make it to the willows, he caught fleeting glimpses of indistinct shapes swarming below the surface of the water. Eyes flared like wet matches and then faded away as they gazed up at him and then withdrew deeper into the darkness below. Fear wrapped around his heart and squeezed like a tourniquet. He realized tears were streaming down his face, but he didn’t care. His efforts seemed to be paying off. As the shore gradually drew closer, he had the disorienting sensation of not moving at all, that it was the shoreline that was sliding silently toward him. He was filled with grief when he saw that no one was waiting for him under the willow trees. When the canoe slid up onto the sloping shore, it scraped against dried cattail stems that snapped like old bones. The loneliness inside him exploded into sudden, stark fear.
She’s not here!
She isn’t real!
She never was.
She was a hallucination, just like those other things!
“Come to me, Ben.”
Lori’s voice lifted on the night, seeming to come from several directions at once. Ben froze and listened, each word beating against his ears like the wings of a hunting bird. His eyes widened as he stared into the tangled shadows of willows. In the frosted moonlight, the swaying branches looked like tangles of silver wires.
He wanted to cry out, to call to her, but his voice was stuffed inside his chest. His shoulders shook as a deep vacuum of sorrow sucked his insides, collapsing him in on himself.
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br /> Where are you? he shouted inside his mind, but he couldn’t find the strength to say the words out loud. The emptiness of the night pressed down on him, squeezing him.
“Ben…I’m here…”
When he turned and looked over his shoulder, the stars overhead smeared like a time-lapse photograph into wide, circular streaks of blowtorch brilliance. In the corners of his sight, the branches of the trees writhed like a nest of snakes. He couldn’t ignore the sensation that the canoe was pitching forward, falling vertically straight down as he scanned the shore he had just left. His eyes widened until they ached as his gaze was drawn to an almost leafless maple tree that leaned out over the water. Suspended from the branches like a wisp of cotton was a distinct human shape.
Ben knew it was Lori.
Her black hair hung in long strands and swayed on both sides of her shoulders. She was naked, and her skin glowed with the pale translucence of frost on a windowpane. She was waving to him, curling her forefinger in a slow, come-hither gesture. A smile twisted her mouth, and her eyes held a deep, lambent light.
“Come to me…now.”
The teasing tone of her voice filled him with an intense longing that he couldn’t begin to understand. It was drawing him forward, making him feel as light as a dandelion fluff tossed on the wind. Without conscious thought, he jammed the paddle into the mud of the riverbank and heaved off, paddling furiously so the bow was aimed toward her. As he leaned forward, he let out a savage grunt that surprised him with its desperation.
I have to get to her!
He had to see her and touch her and hold her and let her voice fill his ears.
The canoe cut a shimmering wedge as bright as mercury across the dark water. Ben was paddling so furiously he barely noticed how much he was splashing himself until, in midstream, the canoe started rocking violently from side to side. He threw his weight to one side, trying to steady the canoe, but that only made things worse. Dark, slime-covered hands slapped wetly against the sides of the canoe and held on. Water gushed inside like little waterfalls. Ben took a few swings with the paddle at the hands holding onto the sides, but then he dropped it, fighting to keep his balance.
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