1 The Bank of the River (3 page)

Steven
returned to pick up Roy at nine p.m. The ten minute trip back to Steven’s house
was peppered with banal updates from Roy about the neighbor’s dog and a problem
with the gas bill. Steven normally did not spend much time with Roy – they had
never been close as father and son, even while he was growing up. Now they
seemed to have a mutually acceptable arrangement of seeing each other twice a
year, once during the holidays and once during a summer BBQ that Roy’s brother
held each Fourth of July. But other than that, even though they lived only a
few miles apart, they rarely communicated. Steven wasn’t used to talking with
him for much more than a couple of minutes at a time. He was going to have to
try harder if he wanted his help.

He pulled
the car into his driveway and he and Roy walked into the basement. The alarm
had inexplicably started working again, and Steven disarmed it. He turned to
his father and pointed overhead.

“This is
where I heard the footsteps last night when I got home. I came in the door and
the alarm wasn’t working. I thought someone might be home, so to scare them I
decided to slam the door closed, thinking they’d run.”

“Damn fool
idea.”

Steven
ignored him. “As soon as the door closed I heard the footsteps upstairs. They
were unmistakable. So I called 911.”

“Another
damn fool idea.”

Steven
sighed, irritated. “If you think someone is in the house,” he said to Roy,
“most people would call the cops.”

“Nothing
wrong with the cops,” Roy replied. “But it’s stupid to think they can do
anything about ghosts.”

Steven
didn’t know how to reply to this.

“Where do
you keep your guns?” Roy asked.

“I don’t
have a gun.”

Roy looked
at Steven as though he was from outer space. “Well don’t you think that might
be a good idea, with people breaking into your house?”

“Well, you
can’t shoot a ghost,” Steven shot back.

It seemed
like a stalemate, and neither of them spoke for a moment. The longer things
were silent, the more Steven felt like he should apologize.

“Dad,
listen, I —”

“It’s your
story,” Roy cut him off, waving a hand. “Keep talking.”

OK, back
on track
, Steven
thought, then continued. “I never found anyone inside. The cops searched the
place. No forcible entry, they don’t know how they got in. The front door and
the kitchen door are the only ways out up there, and they were both bolted when
I went up. If they went out a window, they bothered to lock the window from the
inside on their way out. I think the cops thought I imagined it.”

Roy
contemplated this. Steven expected him to say something sarcastic but instead
he just seemed to be thinking. “Then what?” Roy asked.

“Well, I
tried to go to bed. Took forever to get to sleep, I was too wired by the idea
that someone had broken in. I woke up around 3 a.m. Heard the knocking.”

“What did it
sound like?”

Steven
walked to the wall and knocked on it four times. “Well, kind of like that. It
sounds more muffled, like it’s coming from a room on the other side of the
house. Then it happened again, a second time, maybe ten or fifteen seconds
later – four more knocks. When it first started weeks ago I thought it was
coming from the front door, but I ruled that out. It was coming from somewhere
inside the house, one of the interior walls. That’s when I thought it might be
the plumbing. But it’s still happening, every night – and it seems to move – it
doesn’t come from the same place every night.”

“Hmmff,” Roy
snorted.

“Then last
night,” Steven continued, “it happened again. I got up during the pause between
the knocks. It seemed to be coming from downstairs. When I looked down the
stairwell, I thought I saw movement and I heard the sound of water running.”

“That’s when
you went into the bathroom?” Roy asked.

“Yes,”
Steven said, leading Roy around the hallway and into the downstairs bathroom so
he could reference the layout there. “The tub had water in it but wasn’t
running. The drain was open, but the water wouldn’t drain. I knelt over it to
see if something was blocking it, and that’s when I felt the blood. Hit me on
the back of the head. You know the rest.”

Roy stepped
over to the tub. “So there was a head floating,” he held his arm out, pointing into
the space above the tub, under the shower head, “…right here?”

“Well, no,
it was more over here, in the middle, but yes, it was there, floating. Staring
down at me.”

Roy yanked
his hand away from where he was pointing, a look of pain on his face. He rubbed
the hand with his other, wincing.

“What?”
Steven asked. “Did you feel something?”

“Yeah, I
think it bit me.”

Steven
rushed over to his dad, wanting to help but not knowing how. “Are you OK?” he
asked.

Roy dropped
his arms. “Yeah, I’m just fucking with ya,” he said, and smiled.

Steven
dropped his head, relieved, but pissed. “Look, I’m trying to —”

“Lighten up!”
Roy said, and walked out of the room. Steven could hear him going upstairs.

Between the
ghosts and his father, it was going to be a long night.

-

Steven awoke
in a panic, his heart racing. He had just woken from a familiar nightmare he
had experienced several times since moving into the house. In the nightmare he
had fallen into a lake, drowning. He would swim to the surface, but upon
reaching it he would suddenly be five feet deeper and would have to swim to the
surface again. It had gone on and on like this until he thought his lungs would
burst and his arms give out. The dream was filled with despair and
hopelessness; a sense that he would never reach the surface, that there was no point
of trying to survive. He sat up in bed, his senses returning, and sucked in the
bedroom’s air in large gasping breaths. After a moment he started to breathe
normally, and checked the clock on the nightstand: 12:34. He could hear his
father snoring in the bedroom next door.

He rubbed
his face with his hands.
Get a grip, just a nightmare
, he thought.
Think
about something else and try to go back to sleep. Like you’ve done a hundred
times whenever you’ve had a nightmare.

The light
from the clock was very dim, but it lit his room just enough to be able to make
out the dresser, some artwork on the walls, and the closet door.
Most people
have no idea what their bedrooms look like at night, in the dark,
he
thought.
Maybe insomniacs, or the crazy, or the haunted.
Most people
have their eyes closed once they turn off the light, so they’re not aware of
all the little lights and shadows that exist in a bedroom at night.
All the
ones he noticed in his bedroom now seemed new to him, and unnerving.  He had
just resigned himself to sliding back down into bed and giving sleep another
chance when he saw it.

It was very
faint, in the corner of the room. He strained his eyes, pinching them closed a
little in an attempt to focus.

A pale,
white face. Barely visible. Small, like a child, about the same height as the
bed. Staring at him.

A chill went
up his spine. His first reaction was to freeze, an animal instinct to camouflage
himself.

It knows
I’ve seen it
, he
thought.

He strained
his eyes and instead of pinching them to focus, widened them to let in as much
light as possible. There was no question it was the face of a small boy. It
wasn’t moving or reacting; it just stared at him. He thought he could just make
out all of the facial features – eyes, nose, cheeks, chin – no ears. It was
faint – it looked like a dimly lit painting, and when he stared at it too hard,
it almost seemed to fade out.

Maybe
it’s a reflection of light from the window,
he thought.
Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve scared
myself with a shadow.
He shifted his eyes to the bedroom window, trying to
find something that would account for the image.
Maybe I’m still dreaming?
he thought. It didn’t feel like he was dreaming, but then, it never does in a
dream. He was afraid to return his eyes to the face, but he forced himself to
do it. It was still there, still staring. It had to be some kind of reflection
that he was misinterpreting.

Then it
blinked.

He gasped. Instantly
his curiosity turned to fear.
There’s someone in the room,
he thought.
Why is he just standing there? What is he going to do?

Steven sat
frozen, staring at the face in the corner. He didn’t dare remove his gaze from
it, in fear it might move within the room and he lose track of it, which would
be much worse. The longer he stared at it, the more he began to feel or sense
the presence in the room and the more frightened he became.

Then he
became aware in his peripheral vision of something to the left. He let his gaze
shift away from the face, and there, in the other corner of the room, another
face. Just as dim and pale. This one was a little higher and the features
looked like a girl. He looked back to the right and the first face was still
there, lifeless and cold, not moving. But they were definitely staring right at
him. They looked like death masks with open eyes, floating in the air.

When the next
face appeared at the foot of his bed, he involuntarily pulled up his legs,
horrified. It was just above the height of the bed, not more than three feet
off the ground. It was a different face than the others, rounder and smaller,
and it stared directly at him with the same lifeless intensity. Now he felt
cornered, under attack.

When the
fourth face appeared next to the nightstand, he’d had enough. He reached for
the light on the nightstand, and switched it on.

All of the
faces were gone.

Of course
they’re gone
, he
thought.
Ghosts don’t like light.

He scanned the
room for something that might explain the faces – something he’d changed
recently? The curtain on the window was shut tight – no moonlight came in.
Reflections from the clock light perhaps? Then why did they appear one after
the other?

And it
blinked,
he thought.
It definitely blinked.

Shaken, he
got out of bed, threw on a robe, and quietly walked to the guest room. His
father was still snoring.
There was no way I could have shown him that,
Steven thought,
and they’re gone now
anyway
. He decided to let him
sleep. Perhaps the knocking would return, like it had every night around three.
He’d be able to rouse his dad for that, when it came.

A cold
breeze hit his left arm, and Steven turned to look down the dim hallway. There,
at the end of it, a shadow against the wall. There was enough ambient light in
the house to easily walk around between rooms if you knew the layout, and
shadows were everywhere, just like they are in every house at night. This
shadow, however, had the shape of a man, about Steven’s height, with a slightly
distended head. Steven froze with the same reaction as the faces, again afraid
that someone was in the house.
If it’s just a shadow, it won’t move,
he
thought.
Let’s just watch it until I’m sure...

He remained
frozen, staring at the shadow, trying not to blink, afraid he might miss a
movement. It seemed motionless, and the longer Steven stared at it the more
convinced he became that it must be caused by something innocent, something else
he wasn’t registering. He remained frozen, continuing to stare. It had been at
least a minute, no movement. That was long enough, wasn’t it? He would walk
down to the end of the hall and see what was creating the shadow, and be done
with it. It hadn’t moved, so it must be benign.

Then things
shifted a tiny amount. Almost imperceptible. It looked like the shadow was
coming apart, holes growing in it. Two slits in the head that slowly enlarged.
After a few seconds they stopped growing. Steven knew what they were even before
the pupils appeared – eyes.

Steven
grabbed the door handle to Roy’s room. “Roy, wake up.” He walked into the room
and shook his father. He grabbed his shoulders to practically lift him out of
bed.

Roy stumbled
as Steven led him out the door, and pointed to the end of the hall. “Look,” he
whispered.

Roy rubbed
his head, trying to wake up. It took him a moment to focus, but then he saw it.

“Shit,” Roy
said.

“Can you
believe that?” Steven whispered.

Both of them
observed the pupils in the eyes at the end of the hall shift to look at Roy.

“Shit!” Roy
said again.

Then the
shadow began to move down the hall towards them. The eyes remained fixed on
Roy. As it approached, it slowly descended, disappearing into the floor as
though it was walking down an invisible flight of stairs. Steven and Roy took a
step back when it was still six feet away, but now no more than the top of the
head still appeared. Another second and it was gone.