Dead River (13 page)

I don’t care if he’s going to help me. I still have to smack him.

Chapter Fifteen

H
ugo suddenly transforms into Mr. Athletic as he takes the kayak and fastens on his life vest.

“Do you really know how to kayak?” I ask, skeptical, as I pull a vest over my jacket and fasten the strap of the helmet under my chin.

He snorts. “Well, let’s just say I have more experience than you.”

I glare at him.

“I’ve been kayaking since I was nine,” he mutters. “Get in the boat. And don’t do anything stupid like falling out, okay? Keep your arms and legs inside the kayak at all times. And enjoy your ride.” The last part sounds like he’s a flight attendant.

I get in. The kayak is even mushier and more unbalanced than the raft. A few prickles at the back of my neck seem to be telling me to turn around, go to the cabin, and watch
What Not to Wear
. But it’s nothing too alarming. I can do this. I need to do this.

“What, exactly, about old cemeteries sounds good to you?” he asks as he sits in front of me.

“I don’t know. I like the history, I guess,” I say, which is the truth. When I was in third grade, we went on a class trip to Boston and I spent most of that time walking around the Granary Burying Ground. Most of the class went to the harbor, but my father asked the teacher to make an exception for me, because I was “afraid of the water.” And back then, I was, because my father had told me so many horror stories about it—that drownings happened all the time, that there were creatures with tentacles that could pull you under, et cetera. So I spent three hours hanging out with Sam Adams and John Hancock and a bunch of other dead people. It was interesting, but I was disappointed when the rest of my class showed up and not one of them had been maimed by an octopus.

Hugo nods and pats his camera bag. “I do, too. Wanted to go across. Thought I could take some pictures. Guess that means we have something in common, huh?”

I snort. The horror.

We push off and immediately follow the flow, but then Hugo begins to paddle. He does a good job of keeping up with the current at first, and even I’m impressed. I never figured that the spindle-limbed guy would have much athletic ability. Soon we’re halfway across, in the middle of the river. Hugo groans. His rhythmic motion falters a little, and he loses his grip and slows for a second. We begin to slide downstream.

“Keep going,” I call to him. “We don’t want to—”

He picks it up again. He mutters something like “I am” and some random curse word, which I’m sure is meant for me. I deserve it; I’m not helping at all, just calling out commands like a total backseat driver. I try to bite my tongue and let him do it, but then he stops again and we’re slipping farther downstream.

I can’t help it. I say, “Watch it, we’re—”

“I know!” he erupts. “Shut it, Miss Life-is-but-a-dream-and-death-is-the-awakening.”

I straighten. So, while looking for the Absolut, he found my book of private ramblings. What else did he find? “You went through my things? You disgusting creep!” I grab my paddle and nudge it into his spine.

“Ow, you bitch!” he snarls, and it must have been such a surprise because his own paddle slips from his grasp. He leans over and collects it before it can float away with the river. Though I have a great weapon, I guess this isn’t the time to use it on him for being such a complete and utter scumbag. Because now the current is pushing us back toward the east bank. I tighten my grip on the paddle, but when I look up, I hear something, partially drowned out by the helmet over my ears and the rushing water.

Whispering.

Oh no.

I look around. There is nothing on the west bank. I turn, scanning the dark water, and finally focus on the east bank. Trey is there. He is cupping his hands around his mouth and
yelling something, but the whispers have grown to a deafening buzz.

By now we’ve slipped so far down the river that I can no longer see the Outfitters or the cemetery. I fumble to get my paddle into position, but my hands are wet with perspiration and it falls out of my grip, splashing into the water. “Crap!” I yell. A lost paddle is twenty bucks. I reach down to get it and wrap my hand around the cold metal pole. But when I try to pull it back up,
it pulls me
. And then I can feel it moving.

It’s not the paddle after all. It’s a hand.

And all at once I know what Trey is shouting. He’s shouting that I’m a complete idiot for not listening. He’s shouting that I should have left when I had the chance.

The hand wraps around my wrist, tightening. Hugo has his back to me now, and he’s fighting to keep the kayak upright, but it’s tilting toward the water. The pressure is too much. I know I’m going, because before the hand yanks me over, the water is once again whispering its welcome. And I know that what happened before wasn’t a freak accident. Things like this don’t happen twice by mistake. Maybe I belong here, among the waves.

I’m not sure how much time passes. It feels like just a blink of an eye. One moment, I’m bracing for the shock of the cold water, and the next, I’m lying on the ground, coughing and sputtering river water all over myself. I sit up and immediately bonk my head into something hard. When I say “Ouch!” someone choruses with me.

“Damn, girl, is this the thanks I get for saving your butt twice?”

I open my eyes. Trey is there, rubbing his forehead. I try to apologize but end up coughing up some gritty black water into my hand. Gross. I wipe it on my life vest and look around. We’re back on the east bank, a little downstream from where I set off. I know this because I can see the dock and the green roof of the Outfitters in the distance. The kayak is nowhere in sight. I’ll probably have to pay for it and the paddles we lost. After all, it’s not Hugo’s fault.

I sit bolt upright. “Oh no. Hugo!”

“Relax, kid. I took care of him. He’s back at the cabin, sleeping. He probably won’t remember much of this when he wakes up.”

“How can you … I don’t understand.…”

“Yeah, you
don’t
. That much is clear. So now’s my time to do some explaining, I guess.” His tone is angry. He wrings out the lower hem of his old shirt, which is open to the waist, revealing his tan chest. He catches me looking and I blush.

He turns away and starts pacing the shoreline. There are thousands of jagged little rocks and pieces of debris on the edge of the river, but they don’t seem to bother his bare feet. Well, of course not; he’s not real. “I thought I told you to get. What the hell did you do that again for?”

“I want to see my mother.”

Surprise dawns on his face. I expect him to tell me that I’m crazy, that she’s dead and gone and that’s the end of it.
Instead, he narrows his eyes. “You can’t see your momma. It’s impossible.”

“But she’s there? She’s across the river?”

He looks away, then nods reluctantly.

“So what Jack said was true,” I whisper.

“No. Look.” He comes up really close to me and grabs my wrist. “What that piece of slime says to you is
always
wrong. Don’t you ever listen to nothing he’s got to say. Got it?”

I don’t like the way he’s pulling on my wrist, almost hard enough to dislocate it. He looks down at it and remorse dawns on his face as he slowly releases it, then rubs the red welt his fingers have left.

“I’m sorry, kid.”

His fingers are rough and misshapen. There are sore-looking red circles there, popped blisters, and scabs all over his palms. I pull my hand away from him. “Are you a ghost, too?”

“I’m a guide,” he says.

“A guide for what?”

“I took your momma across. You were a kid then, so you don’t remember.”

“Of course I remember. You don’t think I remember my own mom dying?”

“Sorry, kid. Anyway, that was my job, taking her across. And it’s my job to take you across, too. When you’re ready. And you ain’t ready.”

I stare at him hard. “You … you …” And suddenly I remember it all. My little fishing spot on the river. I went out
there every day during the summers. My mom bought me that expensive new pole for my seventh birthday, and she would pack lemonade for me in a blue cooler and tell me to bring home a shark. And then one day that boy showed up, that funny-talking kid. He said he was waiting on a girl. My mother died three weeks later, and I never went back to that fishing spot again. “That—that was you?”

“You remember me?”

“I remember you catching all the fish in the river and letting them go. I was so angry.” And then a realization hits me. “You … guided my mother? To where?”

“Across the river. To the place of the dead.” He thunks on his temple as if to say
Where’s my head?
“She—you—you are both river guardians. Royalty among the river dwellers. You probably didn’t know that. She didn’t know much about it, either, when I guided her.”

“Wh-what?” I can’t say anything more.

“The water is no place for final resting. It’s always moving, too volatile. People who meet their deaths on or near the river need someone to guide them somewhere quiet, safe. Across the river. That’s where you and your mother come in.”

“And you? You are a guardian, too?”

He shakes his head. “My only job is to fetch the guardians and do what I can to protect them. I don’t have your power. You have great magical powers, Kiandra.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Like what?”

He chuckles. “Kiandra, you have no idea what you can do.”

I just sit there, numb. The idea is crazy. It’s crazy enough to
be seeing these ghosts, but that my mother and I could have powers, could be tied to the water in that way? Nuts. “I think you have the wrong person. I do not have powers. I can’t even put on a wet suit. And I nearly drowned in the river.
Twice
,” I say, but all the while I’m thinking about my visions. About how my mother always loved the water so much, and how her skin was always clammy and smelled damp. How when she finally disappeared into the river forever, despite the horror of that event, a small part of me said,
Well, of course she did
.

He comes in close and sits on the bank next to me. He smells like pine needles and something spicy-sweet. “Do you need me to prove it to you?”

I nod. “That would be nice, since it’s kind of impossible to believe.”

“You didn’t have to rent a kayak to go across the river, kid,” he says.

“What? Are you saying I can part the waters? Or walk on water?” I joke.

He smiles. “Which would you prefer?”

My jaw drops. “I was only kidding.”

But his face never changes. I get the suspicion that he’s serious. “But you don’t want to go over there,” he says. “If you’re over there, you ain’t alive. And I’m trying to keep you alive. So don’t try to go over there again, okay?”

“If I have such control over water, then why did you have to save me from drowning twice?”

“Because you don’t know how to use your abilities, kid. Until you do, you can’t protect yourself from nothing,” he
says, shaking his head. “You are Mistress of the Waters. That’s no small thing.”

“Mistress of the Waters?” I say the words, tasting them.

“Yeah.” Then he mutters, “Pretty much the sorriest Mistress of the Waters I’ve ever come across.”

I cross my arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve brought dozens of your ancestors across. But you are … different. I’m not supposed to take you across. Not yet. But damned if you’re not giving me the hardest time keeping you out of trouble. You don’t listen. You didn’t listen when I told you that fancy pole of yours wouldn’t catch you nothing, and you don’t listen now.”

I snort. Am I really being lectured by a ghost about how to live my life? “Jack told me
he
was sent to take me across.”

“No,” he says, his face stone. “Jack is no good. He’s lying to you, trying to trick you.”

“I don’t understand. What does he want from me?”

He’s not looking at me anymore. He’s scanning the riverbank. I don’t think he heard my question. He reaches down and grabs my wrist. “Look. We’re not safe here. Can we go somewhere?”

“You can come back to the cabin with me.”

He hesitates. “Can you see the river from there?”

I nod.

“I think I can do that. Can’t get too far from the river.”

“Or what?”

“Or I get pulled back. The river’s like a stake in the ground with a chain tied to it. And I’m the dog.” He reaches down
and helps me stand. “Can you walk good? How’s that ankle of yours?”

“It’s not too bad,” I say, putting my weight on it. I hop up and down. It’s just a numb ache, barely perceptible. I move it back and forth, testing it, but then suddenly I must do the wrong thing, because pain shoots up my leg. I shriek and fall to my knees. “Except when I do that.”

He reaches down and touches it. I feel the rough skin on his finger pad just barely swiping under my anklebone, and the whole thing begins to tingle. “Better?”

I jump. I move. I do everything I did before, but the pain does not come back. “So you did do it, last time? To my back? You can heal me?”

He nods like it’s no big deal, and we start to walk toward the cabin. He’s looking over his shoulder. Something is bothering him. As I walk behind him, I notice he is leaving a trail of small droplets of black blood on the dirt. I rush to keep up with him, and though he’s holding his arm close to his chest, I know it’s that same cut that’s bleeding. It looks as fresh as ever. I pull off my jacket and clamp it over the thing. He doesn’t argue. “Old war wound or not, I’m not letting you bleed all over the cabin.”

“Thank you,” he says softly.

“You’re Trey Vance, aren’t you?” I ask him, finally. “The boy who told on those other boys who killed the girl. I heard your story. They pulled a knife on you. That’s where you got that cut. And you jumped in the water but you couldn’t swim.”

He laughs, but there’s sadness in his voice. “That’s what
happens over time. Stories get twisted out of shape. But no. I couldn’t swim. Lived my whole life by water, first in New York and then in Oklahoma, and never learned to swim. How’s that for irony? The one at my home outside of Tulsa was muddy and full of them leeches. No fun. Some kids on the river where I died even made a rhyme up about it after, as a warning.