This River Awakens (12 page)

An old chant he had once heard a mate singing – off the Portuguese coast, he recalled – came back to him. His voice drooping to a growl, Walter sang:

Grume goes the sun,

Heal goes the wound.

Bloom goes the sun,

Bright goes the wound.

He had never asked that mate what it meant. He had never heard of ‘grume’ and so he figured it was just there to rhyme with ‘bloom’. Old wounds, he thought, that was what it was about, old wounds and the way they could come alive years after they had healed.

He had signed up on the trawler
Helmquist
out of Copenhagen to do a North Sea run then hand the ship over to her new owners in Lisbon.
Helmquist
’s captain and crew were mostly Danish and they told tales of the sea that seemed to go back to the days of the Vikings. And when they had cleared the English Channel and plunged straight into an unexpected bank of fog, one of the Danes told him about the Ship of Nails. The day it came up from the south, from a spanse of endless fog, would mark the end of the world. Nails pared from all the men who had died the ‘straw death’ – a bloodless death – would be constructed into a ship by the prince of Hell, and it would lead the legions of the damned to the battle at the end of the world.

The sun sank lower. Fire and ice, and blinding clouds. Walter wondered if one day those clouds would part, revealing the Ship of Nails, and at its prow, the prince of Hell.

The sun was gone, the pool of gold turning a deep crimson. A wind sprang up from the south, luffing the surface of the river. Suddenly shivering, Walter climbed to his feet. He stood for a moment, watching the water, his hands on his hips. Then, sighing, he turned about and made his way back up the bank towards his shack.

VI

We hurried through the deepening shadows of the strip of woods separating Fisk’s land from the playground. No one spoke as we emerged on to the playing field. To our left, beyond the swings, stood Louper’s house and kennel, both cast in dull yellow from the lone porch light. Within the kennel the dogs were visible as four black shapes, three gathered around one.

My gaze remained on them as we crossed the playground. There was something odd about one of the dogs, I realised. Then I stopped. The dog in the centre had just risen on its back legs, and it stood there, watching us.

‘Jesus Christ!’ I whispered.

At my words Roland stopped and turned, followed my gaze. ‘Weird,’ he muttered. ‘That’s Old Man Louper in there.’

‘With the dogs,’ Lynk said beside me.

I shook my head. ‘What’s he doin’ inside that cage?’

‘Maybe he’s feeding them,’ Roland suggested.

Lynk pushed past me. ‘Who cares? I gotta get home.’

We began moving again, but I felt shaken. I could’ve sworn I’d seen four dogs in there, not three and a man.

Reaching the road Lynk laughed suddenly. ‘He probably lives in there.’

‘Wonder what he was doing out at Fisk’s?’ I said.

‘Probably ordering a fur coat.’ Lynk turned to grin at me. ‘Dog fur.’

I realised that he was making overtures, but I didn’t trust him. So I didn’t return his grin. I held his gaze for a moment, then turned my attention back to the road.

‘I’ll see you guys later,’ Roland said.

‘Did ya get the homework?’ Lynk asked.

‘Yeah. See ya.’

We nodded and he began making his way up the street. We continued on in the opposite direction.

I glanced at Lynk. ‘What was that about homework?’

‘Roland missed the morning.’ Lynk shrugged. ‘Doctor’s appointment.’ He paused, then: ‘Man, that was some fire!’

I grunted. ‘I’ve seen bigger ones.’

‘Oh yeah? Where?’

‘In the city. I saw a whole apartment block burn down, once.’

‘Anyone get killed?’

‘Yeah,’ I lied. ‘Lots.’

‘Did you see the bodies?’

I nodded.

‘What’d they look like?’

I sneered at him. ‘Bodies. What else would they look like?’

‘All black and crisp, eh?’

‘’Course.’

‘Just like those mink.’

I suddenly felt sick. They would’ve looked just like those mink. Bones bursting and veins popping, skulls with eyes of fire.

‘Did somebody start it?’

I glanced at him. ‘Start what?’

‘The fire. Did somebody light it on purpose?’

I shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’

Lynk grinned. ‘I once started a forest fire,’ he said. ‘Down near the beaver lodge. But it rained, and the firemen came and put it out. I bet if they hadn’t come and it hadn’t rained, it would’ve burned for miles.’

I stared at him briefly, then looked away. ‘You’re a fucking idiot, Lynk.’ We had reached my driveway and so without another word I turned into it and left them.

VII

When the world had ceased its wild, warped dance, returning to more familiar rhythms, and when the trees surrounding the ruins had retracted their claws, Jennifer led her two friends out of the homestead clearing.

No one spoke; their throats were tight and dry. The occasional hallucination still flashed through Jennifer, normalcy twisting and sliding into something else: for a moment it seemed that the shadows scattered in all directions and that the road beneath her feet dissolved into black mud, but, smiling, she rode it out. There was a sea within her, but the waves that had tossed her high into the air, that had run her through cavorting channels for what seemed an eternity, were now growing calm. She felt their tranquillity flowing down her arms and legs, felt a sudden, deep conviction that she was able to fly, the next moment sadly dismissed it.

‘You look weird, Jenny,’ Barb said, giggling.

Jennifer sighed, then glanced at her two friends. ‘You two feel able to walk home?’

‘Sure,’ Barb said, reaching up to twist her curls but missing. She groped for a second, then dropped her hand and shrugged. ‘It’s not far.’

‘Sandy?’ Jennifer asked.

‘Huh?’ Sandy turned, a slightly wild look in her eyes. ‘Home? Oh yeah, sure.’

Jennifer nodded. ‘Okay, see ya later, then.’

She stood for a moment, watching them walk up the road, then turned and made her way towards her house. The sky was still playfully spinning threads of colour before her eyes. It had been an incredible trip. For a time there she had been seeing through Barb’s eyes, and Sandy’s; and she was pretty certain that they had shared thoughts – she remembered poems, full of strange rhymes and odd inflections, lines they had each spoken in turn, often using words they had never heard before.

The road seemed to be getting narrower as she approached the first of the two sharp bends that would bring her around to her house. She held out her arms on either side for balance, slowing her pace.

Shadows crept close on all sides, and Jennifer felt a tremor of fear. As she reached the bend she looked up and gasped. Ahead, at the very edge of darkness, stood three figures. It was a moment before she recognised two of them. Lynk and Carl. Both were facing the third boy. The new kid, a disembodied voice informed her. She nodded. He spoke a reply to something Lynk said, then turned and entered the driveway. He hadn’t seen her.

Jennifer gasped again, then blinked and shook her head. For a brief moment she had seen large black wings on the shoulders of all three of them. But now they were gone, and so was the new boy.

Lynk and Carl approached. She watched as the sky above them reached down threads of colour and brushed the tops of their heads. Green for Carl, red for Lynk. The threads withdrew and suddenly the two boys were walking past her.

‘Hi,’ she said uncertainly.

Lynk nodded and Carl mumbled, ‘Hi, Jennifer.’

‘Was that the new kid?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ Lynk muttered, not stopping.

‘What’s his name, Carl?’

‘Owen Brand,’ Carl replied, hurrying after Lynk.

‘A third thread went down the driveway,’ Jennifer said.

Lynk and Carl stopped and looked at her. ‘What?’ they asked in unison.

‘A third thread,’ she explained. ‘It went in after him. It was white.’

‘How come you’re holding your arms out like that?’ Lynk asked.

‘Balance.’

‘What thread?’ Carl asked, a strange look on his face.

Without replying Jennifer began walking again, leaving them standing behind her. As she reached the second bend she saw Roland making his way up the road’s hill. And above him, stretching from north to south, Jennifer saw a black thread. She shivered as a cold wave passed through her. A moment later the sky was once again normal, dark and colourless.

Leaving the road, Jennifer hurried across the playground. Barking dogs greeted her as she entered the yard and ascended the back porch steps. She kicked her runners off just inside the door, walked down the hallway and entered the dining room.

Her father sat at the table, eating dinner. A bottle of beer waited beside the plate. Stopping, Jennifer sneered. ‘Down to drinking them one at a time, eh?’ She walked past him. ‘Well, good for you, Daddy. Where’s Mom? Let me guess. You beat her to a pulp and threw her in the kennel, right?’

‘Jennifer, don’t,’ her father croaked.

‘Go to hell, Daddy,’ she replied sweetly as she went to the doorway that led to the kitchen.

‘Have you eaten?’ he asked behind her.

‘Just one little tab of gelatin since lunch,’ Jennifer said. ‘But I’m not hungry so you just go ahead and finish it all off. It’ll give you something to throw up later.’ At the refrigerator she decided on an apple – it was true: she wasn’t very hungry, but she knew she’d need something or else she’d wake up with a headache.

Without another word to her father she left the kitchen and made her way up the stairs to her room. Outside, the dogs continued barking. Entering her room, yet another shiver passed through her. Jennifer drew a deep breath. ‘Fuck,’ she hissed.

CHAPTER FIVE

I

He’d taken a bullet below the stomach, and now crouched with his back against the crumbled limestone ruin of a Roman temple. The wind, hot and dusty, carried taints of the Mediterranean to him like the smell of corruption. Inland, the sounds of gunfire and shelling continued, but it now seemed a million miles away.

Corporal Hodgson Fisk was the last member of the squad left alive. All around him, baking in the Sicilian sun, lay his friends – the men he had known since the very beginning. Most were missing limbs: the shell that had landed in the midst of the firefight had taken out everyone who hadn’t already been brought down by gunfire. Scattered among Fisk’s friends were the remnants of strangers. Germans. Not that it mattered, he told himself. The flies covered everyone, so that apart from the uniforms there was almost no way of distinguishing friend from foe.

And now rats and mice had crept out from the tumbled limestone wreckage to join the carrion fray. They explored empty sleeves; they licked blackened blood and scurried among spilled entrails. They fought with the flies and maggots.

‘Lots of little wars,’ Fisk mumbled through cracked lips. He watched a mouse crawl from the mouth of one of his friends. ‘Little wars.’ The bleeding from the hole in his mid-section had stopped. A cool numbness had pooled around it. He kept his hand over it to keep the flies away.

Had it been hours, or days? Maybe years. He remembered the landing – he remembered all the landings. Dunkirk, El Alamein, and now Sicily. ‘Madness, then death,’ Fisk whispered, then coughed as a wave of pain crashed through him. ‘Madness.’

He gasped. Something was coming up. Something was pushing through his throat. Gagging, he leaned forward. It was coming up. Madness. He felt it tear against the sides of his throat, and his stomach convulsed. It crawled into his mouth, clawed his tongue, gripped his teeth and pushed outward.

Fisk screamed. Wet fur wriggled against his lips. And then it fell into his lap. Eyes wide, he watched the mouse scurry away.

Choking, Fisk bolted upright in his bed. He reached out and found the lamp switch. Blood covered his chest, red-yellow streaks trickling around the beads of sweat. He had bitten his tongue, and his mouth was filled with bitter, warm fluid. Pushing the tangled sheets away with his feet, Fisk rolled on to his stomach. His head over the bed’s edge, he opened his mouth and spat out the blood.

Slowly, the trembling faded from his muscles. The roar inside his skull lessened. Taking deep breaths, he blinked the brine from his eyes. After a moment, he rolled on to his back and then sat up.

His room and all its furnishings had become a mass of grey uncertainty; though he squinted, he could make out no details.
I might as well be sleeping in a cave.
Memories of the nightmare returned to him. He shivered. It had been years since he’d had that dream. Decades. Why had it come back? Why now?

Fisk pushed himself off the bed. He crossed through the grainy fuzz of his room, opened the door and entered the hallway. It seemed to lengthen as he walked down it to the bathroom, as if he had somehow found himself in an endless tunnel of half-darkness. In the bathroom he flicked on the light, then stood at the threshold, staring at his face in the mirror. Blood and spittle had smeared his lips and jaw, giving the lower half of his face a glossy sheen. The veins seemed prominent all across his face, blue-green branches that throbbed. On his creased neck he saw the pulse of his jugular.

Fisk went to the sink, watching the face in the mirror getting closer, and turned on the hot water tap. He waited until the steam obscured it, then he shut the tap off and sank his hands into the water. Though most of his fingers had nerve damage, he could still feel the scalding heat sinking into them. Swirling the water, he cupped his hands and then splashed his face.

It had been a splash in the face that had pulled him from unconsciousness that day almost thirty years ago in Sicily. An English medical officer and a squad of Gurkhas had found him in shock and almost dead. Back in Evac, it had been a source of astonishment that Fisk had survived to see proper treatment and a hospital bed. And the day he had been carried aboard a ship that would take him home, there were those who spoke of the departure of a miracle.