The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (26 page)

The bowl had started to fill with rainwater, maybe as much as half an inch. “I don’t get it,” I said. “It makes no sense.”

“What’s to get? Back when we were kids, you threw out Humbert’s fishbowl. I picked it out of the trash and took it home. It’s called recycling. Saving the Earth.”

“Did you mean for me to find it?”

Charlie gave his umbrella a twirl, kicking a pinwheel of droplets into the air. “Nothing in life is meant. Things go the way the wind blows.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Where is she?” I yelled.

“Who?”

In a single motion, I pulled the notebook out from under my arm and flung it at Charlie. My hope was that it would sail like a giant ninja star and strike him in the face, but it hardly made it six feet before the wind opened it up and swatted it to the ground.

Charlie pointed the beam at the notebook until we could both see the open page. The handwriting was sloppy. The broken curves and squiggly lines matched the ones I’d seen in the bathroom stall, the ones that spelled out the response to my questions about Aquavania.

The author was missing fingers. That was the reason the writing was nearly illegible. The key word is
nearly
. Because even in the dark, at a distance, I could make out the title of the story.

The Legend of Fiona Loomis

Ink bled as the paper sucked up the rain and the words began to die. Charlie moved the beam to my face.

“‘Aliens of the Sixth Grade’ or whatever title you used,” he said. “That was actually my story, you know?”

“What?”

“Back when I first thought it up, it was called ‘Aliens of Fourth Grade,’” he explained. “But now we’re talking minor details. We were younger then. We were having a sleepover, and I told you the whole idea. Kids who weren’t kids. Kids who were older. Kids of another world. Sure, you might have written it down first, but you stole that stuff from me.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“No surprise there. You zone me out. Always have. Doesn’t mean my ideas don’t get lodged in your noggin.”

The notebook was fattening with water, and the words were almost entirely gone. Regretting my decision to throw it, I stepped forward, and Charlie closed his umbrella. As I bent to grab the notebook, Charlie skewered it with the umbrella tip and pulled it away from me. A flick of his wrist sent the notebook sliding across the wet grass and into the darkness. Some of the more timid cats scattered.

“How could you?” I cried.

“What?” he howled. “They’re stories!”

“You took them! You took her! Where are they?”

Charlie raised the umbrella like a sword and pointed the tip at my face. Stepping closer to me, he said, “You chose her. You hardly knew her. While you’ve known me your entire stupid life. But you chose
her
.”

“I didn’t choose anyone.”

He touched the tip of the umbrella to my forehead. “You said I was your best friend.
Best!
And where were you when I blew my fingers off? Where were you all those times I called? Where have you been for the last month?”

“I’ve been here. But people change, Charlie. You have to understand that.”

Before he could respond, the glow of headlights and the distinctive rattle from Kyle’s van pulling into the driveway grabbed Charlie’s attention. I seized the opportunity, swinging the fishbowl and using it to knock the umbrella from his hand.

“Careful now,” Charlie whispered, stepping back.

“What? Are you afraid that I’ll break this?” I shook the bowl in the air.

“I’m afraid you’ll get hurt.”

“It’s your way into Aquavania, isn’t it? That wasn’t a dream I had, was it? And when I didn’t answer the call, you took my place, right? If I fill this bowl with water, it will disappear, and if I touch the water—”

“Fill that bowl with water and you can put sea monkeys in it.”

“Screw you.”

“Would you believe me if I told you I have no idea where Fiona is?”

“No,” I said. “Would you believe me if I told you I was going to hit you over the head with this fishbowl?”

“No.”

Thwack.

The glass was so thick that it didn’t shatter, and the blow reverberated through my arm and into my clenched teeth. Charlie doubled over, dropped the flashlight, and raised his gloved hands to his head. He stumbled backward, groaning, “What is wrong with you?”

“Tell me you’re the Riverman. Say you’re the Riverman.”

“This is how you treat a best friend?” he asked as he struggled his way toward the clubhouse. I kept after him, the bowl raised and cocked for another strike. As Charlie threw open the clubhouse door, one of the hinges popped off and the door tilted and smacked me in the nose. Blood let loose. I pulled my arm to my face. It gave Charlie a precious few seconds to get inside.

With my bleeding nose tucked in the pit of my elbow, I stepped into the black and dank of the clubhouse. Even with that bleeding nose, the odor was overpowering. Wet fur. Cat urine. My lungs burned with the stink. I hacked and coughed, which was met with a chorus of hisses. All around me, red eyes. I could see nothing other than those eyes.

“Get outta here!” I shrieked, swinging the bowl wildly in the air. The cats began to scatter. Up and down and past me. The awful smell was now joined by the awful sound of claws on wood. One cat even nipped at my calf as it slunk out into the rain. I flinched and floundered until my shoulder hit the wall. An exposed nail tore open my wet shirt and the skin underneath.

Someone had boarded up the windows long ago, and while the place was a calamity of holes, dark clouds were keeping all of the moonlight out. I was essentially blind, and thanks to the rain drumming on the roof, I was close to deaf too. Getting my bearings was nearly impossible. Not that it was a very big clubhouse. It was perhaps the size of a small bedroom. But it had a lofted space on top and a crawl space below. I didn’t know whether Charlie was above me, beneath me, or standing right in front of me, ready to dig his thumbs into my neck.

“Where are you?” I groaned.

“Prrrrack!”
Charlie’s voice volleyed off the walls.

“What’s that?”

“That’s the sound of me shooting you with the gun I’m holding.”

He was above me. I was pretty sure of it. I started drawing the fishbowl back so I could hurl it upward, and I said, “You don’t own a gun.”

“No, I don’t. But Kyle does. And the fool hides it in here.”

I stopped. As much as I wanted to believe Charlie was lying, I knew he wasn’t. No one ever dared enter that nasty clubhouse. It was the only sensible place for Kyle to hide the gun. “Okay,” I said. “You have a gun. But why would you shoot me?”

“Um … nothing to do with the fact that you thumped my skull with an aquarium.”

It was the brand of sarcasm I expected from Charlie, but I didn’t find it the least bit amusing. He was pointing a gun at me, and it was as if he was pretending this entire thing was a game. Only he wasn’t pretending. This
was
a game to him. Everything was a game. And I realized if I was going to stop him, I needed to play.

Weaknesses. Spot them, exploit them, and you win. That was the key to every video game. Only what were Charlie’s weaknesses?

“So how’s this gonna go, Alistair?” he asked. “You seem very upset with me. But all I want is to talk this out, address our differences.”

Talking was Charlie’s strength. I wasn’t about to fall for that. I had to defeat him physically, and while I was stronger than he was, the gun in his hand negated my advantage. The gun in his hand negated almost
every
advantage, and there in the dark, shivering and bleeding and desperate, I couldn’t see a way around that fact.

Until, suddenly, I could.

The answer came in the form of a memory, a vision. Fiona standing in the snow, drawing two shapes. Hands. The left one with a thumb, a pinky, and a ring finger. The right one with only a pinky and a thumb. Charlie was a righty.

“You’d really shoot me?” I asked.

“Only to defend myself,” he said. “Wouldn’t anyone?”

“Defend yourself? I have a fishbowl.”

“And you have a broken heart. I don’t know what you’re capable of.”

I tried my best to pinpoint exactly where his voice was coming from, and I drew the fishbowl back again. “You sure don’t,” I said.

“I can see you, you know? I have the eyes of a bat. You throw that at me and I might have to pull this trigger.”

“How?” I asked.

“How what?”

“Are you going to pull it without any fingers?”

The fishbowl was in the air as soon as I posed the question. I can’t be sure what it hit, but I heard a thump, and I heard Charlie cough, and I heard the metallic percussion of the gun falling and tumbling across the floor. I dropped to all fours and scoured. I had no plan other than getting my hands on it.

“You think you know everything,” Charlie said, coughing. “You think you’ve got it all figured out. You don’t have a single clue.”

I felt the muzzle first and pawed until I found the handle. I pulled it to my chest, sat down, and braced it against my sternum so the barrel was pointing out. I held it with both hands. Gingerly, I tapped the trigger, making sure I knew where it was.

“Fiona Loomis?” Charlie went on. “That’s what you care about? That girl is pathetic. You know how I got to her? The same way I get to anyone. I figure out that itch they can’t scratch, that thing they need but can’t have.”

I scooted on my butt across the floor until my back was against the wall. It didn’t seem possible, but the rain was coming down harder than ever, determined to pound the clubhouse to bits. Breathing was a battle.

“Sometimes people will surprise you with what they need. But not Fiona. She was predictable. Like so many stupid and pathetic girls, all she needed was a boy. All she needed was
you
, Alistair. And she will never … ever … have you,” the Riverman said.

As the words stabbed me in the heart, a beam of light struck me in the face. It was a reflex more than anything—I pulled the trigger. And the blast echoed like thunder.

S
UNDAY
, N
OVEMBER
19

P
ART
II

For a second or two, a man stood in the doorway of the clubhouse. Then he wobbled, let out a low groan, staggered, and leaned back as if someone were there to catch him. But there was no one else, and as the man fell into the yard, the flashlight in his hand tipped upward and cast its glow onto his face. His features were twisted, wincing from the shock. Still, I could see who he was.

“What did you shoot? Who did you shoot?” Charlie shrieked.

My body toppled, slid against the wall until I was lying on my side. It was like I was back in that cardboard box in the middle of the road, or back in my shower, letting the world pour over me. I stayed curled up for a few moments, and I might have stayed like that forever, if not for the sound of a wheezing voice calling from outside.

“It’s okay, kid. It’s fine.”

Fine? Fine was impossible, but sometimes you believe the things you need to believe, and I needed to believe in
fine
. So I willed myself back to my feet and lumbered to the doorway. With the gun pinned to my chest, I stepped out into the rain.

Prack!

A blast of nearby lightning illuminated the backyard for a second, and I saw Kyle lying on his back. On the ground next to him, the flashlight was highlighting the bleeding hole in his stomach. The notebook, spread open in the grass, was destroyed by the rain. Scattered on the edges of the yard, cats.

“Come here,” Kyle groaned.

I obeyed, and soon I was hovering over him, waiting for his next command.

“You shot me,” he said with a gurgle in his voice, liquid in his throat. “Right in the…”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Here.” He reached his hand up and I gave him mine.

“On three,” I whimpered, assuming he wanted me to lift him.

“No.” He coughed. “Give it to me.”

Rain ran down my arm and poured off the barrel of the gun like it was a teakettle. I peeled my hand from Kyle’s and swapped the gun in its place. It didn’t seem at all strange to give a gun to the person I’d shot. At that point, I trusted him more than I trusted myself.

“I didn’t mean it,” I said. “It was dark and—”

“Saw the … flashlight,” he mumbled as he drew the gun to his body. “I was like … great, cops found the…” He pressed it against his chest like a keepsake.

Prack!

Lightning again, and thunder even louder than the gunshot. My body jolted and I bumped into Charlie, who was now standing next to me, shoulder to shoulder. The fishbowl rested in the crook of his elbow.

“What’s it feel like?” Charlie asked, crouching down. If there was concern in his voice, it was buried deep in curiosity.

“Not … good.” Maybe the shock of being shot had numbed Kyle at first, but it was obvious that the pain was now digging its heels into his face. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“I’ll call 911,” I said.

Charlie set the fishbowl in the grass where it collected more rain.

“This … is really … bad,” Kyle whispered. “I’m not sure … this is what … I really…” He gulped twice, searching for the rest of his voice. He couldn’t find it.

Charlie didn’t say anything either. He pulled the glove off of his left hand, and for the first time I saw the damage. It doesn’t bother me to tell you that it looked like a claw, because that’s exactly how it looked. And as Charlie—as the Riverman—waved that claw over the wound in his brother’s stomach, like some shaman or some faith healer, I saw every side of him. I saw the boy, the man, and the monster.

“I’ll make the call,” I told them, turning away.

*   *   *

I could have called from the Dwyers’ house, but I wanted nothing to do with that place. Yes, minutes were precious. Even seconds were. Perhaps it makes me a bad person, but I ran all the way home.

I entered through the garage and opened the door to our kitchen. The cordless phone was in its charger by the door, mounted above the hooks where the keys hung. Grabbing it, I stepped back into the garage.