1 The Bank of the River (5 page)

Roy sat back
down. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

“How?”

“Not sure
just yet,” Roy replied. “But I have some ideas. Drive me home. There’s some
things I need to do.”

The early
colors of dawn were just appearing in the sky. Steven sat down his coffee and
went to look for his car keys.

“This seems pointless,
Dad,” Steven said as he picked up his father once again at his house and drove
him back to Steven’s to spend another night. Steven had taken his father home
earlier that morning and dropped him off. Later that afternoon he had received
a call from Roy asking him to come and pick him up at 9 p.m., that he wanted to
spend the night again. He told him that he wanted to hold a “trance” at the
house, with his help. Steven felt it was a useless exercise.

“Tell me
what this is and why we’re doing it,” Steven insisted.

“Your tone
could use a little softening, considering I’m helping you here,” Roy replied.

“Sorry, I
don’t mean to be rude, I just want to know what the plan is, and why you think
it will matter.”

“The plan,”
Roy said, “is a trance. I did a little studying up at home. There’s a book I
have, that I’ve had for years, since I was a teenager, that I always kept
hidden from your mother. It’s been invaluable to me over the years.”

“What book?
What’s the title?” Steven asked.

“I didn’t
think you were interested in such things,” Roy said. “I’m sure it’d all be a
bunch of gobbledygook to you, or you’d just pick at it, ‘cause that’s what you
do. So just trust me for now.”

Steven
wanted to object, but he knew Roy was right. He
would
pick at it, trying
to discredit it. Probably not the “energy” Roy wanted right now.

“So you
learned what we should do from this book?” Steven asked instead.

“Well, it
gave me an idea,” Roy replied, “to turn the tables, so to speak. So far, this
has all been a one-way communication, it trying to talk to you. Or to scare
you. But always initiated by it. This time
we’re
going to initiate
things. That sends a different signal. We’ll see what happens.”

“So you’re
not sure what’s going to happen?”

“No, not
really,” Roy replied.

“So, we’re
just stirring things up then? Stirring the shit? That seems like a bad idea to
me.”

“This isn’t
my first time at the rodeo, kid,” Roy said. “Give me a little bit of credit.”

“What are
you going to do, exactly?”

“A trance.
It’s like jumping in the river. But I’m in charge this time, I’m controlling the
process. If I’m lucky we’ll get some answers.”

“What, like
a séance?” Steven asked.

“Well, kind
of, but you won’t be participating,” Roy answered. “We won’t be holding hands
around a table. But I will go into a trance, and come back out. I need you to keep
an eye on me, make sure I don’t trip over a rug or walk into a knife, that kind
of thing.”

“Has that
ever happened? When you’ve done it before?” Steven asked.

“When you’re
in a trance,” Roy said, “anything can happen. I might lose track of what I’m
doing, physically. That’s your job, to keep me safe. I’m trusting you.”

Steven
swallowed hard and pulled into the driveway of his house.

-

Roy had
placed a kitchen chair in the middle of the hallway where they had both seen
the shadow the night before. He sat on the chair and handed Steven a scrap of
cloth.

“Blindfold
me,” Roy said.

“What,
you’re starting it now? You’re doing the trance now?”

“Yes,” Roy
replied. “I like the blindfold, it helps me concentrate. Another reason I need
you to watch me.”

“Wouldn’t it
be better…more successful if we waited until 3 a.m.? The time the knockings
have been happening?”

“No,” Roy
answered. “It won’t make any difference and it might make it worse. Three a.m.
is
their
schedule. This is on
my
schedule. Now is fine. They’re
here, I know it.”

Steven
walked behind Roy and wrapped the light cloth around Roy’s eyes. It wasn’t
thick enough to block much light, but would be enough to cause Roy to keep his
eyes closed, which Steven guessed was its purpose.

“What do I
do?” Steven asked, behind him.

“Come stand
in front of me, but down the hall by the bedrooms. Keep an eye on me. You have
the flashlight?”

“Yes,”
Steven replied.

“Good. I
know you’ve never seen this before, but you’ve got to trust me. I might make
all kinds of noises, but don’t try to stop the trance until I take the
blindfold off myself, OK? Promise me.”

“I promise,”
Steven said, now more concerned than intrigued. Given what had happened to Roy
the night before, he felt this was not going to end well.

“Good,” Roy
said. “Now, turn out the light and just stay quiet. Don’t talk to me. It may
take a while. We’ll wait and let things play out.”

-

Steven had
initially crouched down on his legs at the end of the hall but after ten
minutes in the position he felt his legs beginning to cramp, and he shifted as
quietly as he could into a cross-legged position. His father was still
motionless in the chair halfway down the hall, and he couldn’t hear any sound
coming from him, not even breathing. Steven suppressed a sudden wave of panic
at the idea of his father having a heart attack or a stroke while sitting
there.
If he’s had either,
Steven thought,
he’d be slumped over. But
he’s not – his head is upright, just as I left him ten minutes ago. Be patient.

Another ten
minutes passed, with Steven’s mind racing. What would he do if the shadow
appeared again? Would it start at the end of the hall? That would be behind
Roy’s head, would he know it was there? Steven strained to see the place where
the shadow had first appeared. It looked normal.

Steven
checked his watch. Another ten minutes passed, it had been thirty minutes. How
long would this last? Would his father sit there until the knockings started at
3 a.m.? Steven felt his eyelids get heavy and he fought back the desire to shut
them. His breathing was relaxed now, and the darkness and stillness seemed to
envelop him the way the promise of pleasurable sleep washes over you just
before it takes you. He felt his head nod, and he remembered thinking that
letting it hang was a bad idea.

He thought
he had nodded off for maybe a minute, but when he came back to awareness he was
afraid it might have been longer. Things had changed in the hallway. The light
was considerably less than before he had fallen asleep, and Steven had difficulty
seeing his father distinctly; only his outline was visible from where he was
sitting. His arms were suspended out to his sides, palms down, hanging as if
they’d been raised by a puppeteer. He was breathing heavily with a raspy,
grating breath as though he had just finished a marathon. With every exhale
something vocal came out, but it was a short, guttural rumbling of his vocal
chords, not a word or anything intelligible.

Steven
remembered Roy’s instruction to not talk to him or disturb the trance. But
something was wrong, he felt it. There was a heaviness to the air in the
hallway, it was thicker and more dense. He stood, and it felt like trying to
stand from the bottom of a swimming pool. He felt a need to check on his
father, to ensure he was OK.
I can at least get closer, watch him breathing,
he thought.
I won’t interrupt him.

Taking a
step was like trying to move through sand. Steven was so jarred by the
sensation he looked down at his lifted leg, trying to mentally will it to move.
It was moving, but incredibly slowly. He felt exhausted at the effort it had
taken to move a single step.

Roy
continued to wheeze and grunt while Steven approached. His arms were
outstretched to the sides, within inches of the hallway’s walls, his fingers
hanging. His head was thrown back, and Steven could see his Adam’s apple rise
and fall as the sounds emerged from his throat. He looked down, checking his
father’s body. To his horror he found the chair missing. His father was
suspended, floating in the hallway.

Still, he
did not say anything or attempt to touch him, to awaken him. Maybe it was the
kid in him, but he felt he’d be in more trouble for violating his father’s
instructions than for letting this scene play out.

Looking up from
the space below his father, he noticed something on the front of Roy’s shirt.
It was dark, and looked as though it had been dripped upon him. Roy slowly raised
his head back into a normal position and Steven could see dark stains behind
the blindfold, where his eyes would be. It was too dark to identify as blood
for sure, but Steven didn’t need the confirmation. He’d had enough. He was
going to find out what had happened to his father, regardless of the trance. He
moved his arm to reach for the blindfold, but found it to be moving at the
glacial pace of his legs.

As his
fingers reached it and began to pull it down from his father’s forehead, he
called out to him, but nothing came out. He felt his lips move, but no sound
emerged. He felt the cold, dense air move into his mouth and lungs, blocking
him. As the blindfold began to fall he could see his father’s eyes – they had
been gouged out, and were bleeding down his face and onto his shirt.

All at once,
Steven felt the force of the air he had just inhaled move him. It rapidly
pushed him, standing, back down the hallway he had just traversed. Steven
flailed his arms to the side, trying to grab onto something to stop the
movement, but couldn’t reach anything, and he suspected that even if he had, he
wouldn’t have been able to stop himself – the force pushing him back was far
too powerful. He felt his back hit the doorframe to his bedroom and he felt
himself being forced back into his bed, face up. He had never felt anything
like this before. It felt as though he was being assaulted, forced against his
will, and he strained to raise his head or arms from the bed but could not.
Something incredibly heavy was pressing down on him, on all parts of him,
keeping him from moving. He had never felt
stopped
before. He felt
violated and humiliated. In frustration he felt a tear escape his right eye and
drip down his face to his ear and the pillow below. God knows what was
happening to his father out in the hallway, but if it was anything like this,
he was doomed.

The air
darkened around him and he could no longer make out anything in his room. He
felt consciousness leave him, and his last thoughts were: breathe. Breathe.

-

Knock.
Steven’s eyes flew open he tried to turn his head toward the nightstand. It
moved easily and he saw that it was 3 a.m. Another knock, the normal pattern.
The horror of being unable to move in his own bed washed over him, and for a
moment he was afraid he might not be able to sit up. But his brain gave the
commands to his muscles and he found himself able to sit easily.

Another knock.
Dad!

He raced
into the hallway. It was empty. Grief and guilt hit him like a tidal wave. He
was supposed to have kept an eye on him, to have protected him. But he had
fallen asleep, or been forced asleep — he wasn’t sure which — and now his
father was missing. He called out for him, and began frantically searching the
house. The final knock sounded.  Steven raced from room to room, calling for
Roy, checking corners, closets. Nothing upstairs. He went downstairs,
continuing the search.

He found him
in the bathroom downstairs. Roy was curled up in the bathtub, sleeping. Steven
inspected him – no blood.

“Dad! Dad!”
he shouted, attempting to wake him. “Please wake up, dad! You’ve got to wake
up!”

He felt his
father’s body come to life and saw his eyes open to look at him. They were
perfectly fine. Steven let out a sigh of relief, and sat back on the bathroom
floor as his father awoke and gathered his wits.

“What time
is it?” Roy asked.

“I have no
idea,” Steven replied, “but I’m so glad you’re OK. Do you know what happened?
Do you know how you got down here?”

Roy grabbed
Steven’s arm, pulled him. “Steven, I know exactly what happened. Take me home.”

“What
happened? Tell me,” Steven implored.

“Not while
we’re still in the house. Take me to the car, drive me home.”

They walked
together, Steven offering to help Roy, but Roy insisting he didn’t need help.
Steven left Roy at the basement door while he went upstairs to get the car
keys. When he returned they went to the car together. The chair that Roy had
been sitting on in the hallway was on top of the hood.

“What the
fuck?” Steven exclaimed.

“It’s a
message,” Roy said. “Take it off and get in the car. We need to leave.”

Back at
Roy’s house it was still dark, but Steven and Roy had turned on all the lights.
Coffee was brewing in the kitchen, and Steven was trying to understand what had
happened to Roy during the trance.

“So you know
about the blood?” Steven asked. “Your eyes were gouged out.”

“I saw it
all. And more. Before you woke up in the hallway and tried to save me, I saw
plenty. The faces you described in your bedroom, the disembodied head, all of
it.”

“They all
appeared to you in the hallway?” Steven asked.

“No, not in
the hallway. In the trance. It’s a different place altogether. It felt like
other trances I’ve been in, years ago. Something yearning, trying to
communicate, and doing a damn poor job of it. But then, something else entirely
different. Something else I’ve never felt before. Completely overwhelmed the
trance, I lost all control of it. Then I felt my eyes being torn out. From then
on, the whole thing felt like an assault.”

Steven
didn’t know if he should share with his dad that he had had the same feeling
during the incident. The feeling of being violated, assaulted. Having something
overwhelm, control, and take something from you.

Roy paused,
reflecting. “The only word for the latter part of the trance was evil. I know
you don’t think much of that, and to be honest with you that’s not how I view things
either. But this was dark, unusually dark. So opposite of anything I consider
good and decent, the best word to describe it is evil.”

Steven
thought it best to let his father’s assessment stand, but he didn’t want to
acknowledge that he’d had the same opinion. “Are you all right? Physically? It
was horrifying to see you with your eyes torn out.”

“I’m fine.  Exhausted
though. Feel like I need a week’s sleep. I’ll sleep today, and we’ll try again
tonight.”

“What?”

“We’ll do it
again tonight,” Roy said. “I need to go deeper.”

“Like hell! You
just said this – whatever it is – is evil. If that’s true, shouldn’t we steer
clear?”

“Evil is
only powerful if you don’t stand up to it,” Roy said.

“I
felt
that last night,” Steven said. “It was powerful. It could just have easily
killed me as held me down. Seems to me we’re flirting with disaster here.”

“It’s not
going to kill either of us,” Roy replied.

“How do you
know that?”

“It needs us
alive. There’s something it wants. Killing us doesn’t achieve its goals. Listen,
I’m a little more skilled in this than you’re giving me credit for.”

“Isn’t some
caution in order? I don’t like the idea of you walking in there and just
opening yourself up to it. It scares the hell out of me.”

“Listen,”
Roy said. “What we need right now are answers. We’ve got a dozen pieces of a
five hundred piece jigsaw puzzle, and the only way to get more is to dive in
and get them. Besides, it’ll drive me crazy not knowing. There’s a few things I
can do for precaution’s sake. But we need answers Stevie, or you’ll never have
a night’s sleep in that house again.”

Steven felt
his father winning the argument, but he still needed to take some action on his
own. If more answers were needed, he knew where to get them. And this time he’d
watch his rudeness to make sure the answers flowed.