SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (46 page)

The white shape hovered before him and
became part of the rhythm of his running. It was the whitewashed
stone lockhouse at Swains, gaining tangibility as he approached. If
I can just get back to my bike, he thought, I can finish this
misbegotten triathlon and be home in half an hour. And find out
that Nicky is alright. And confirm that my fears are unfounded,
like Lee’s fears may have been unfounded.

He visualized his bicycle locked to the post
where he’d left it and recited one number from its combination lock
with every fourth footbeat. 3…19…36…3...19…36. He was still
intoning the sequence when he reached the white shape and the gates
of Swains Lock.

A looming form ahead surprised and alarmed
him: a long dark arm barred most of the towpath. After a confused
moment he realized that it was a swing-beam. The downstream lock
gates were closed! Normally the beam rested parallel to the
towpath, held in place by a taut wire cable that connected the
swing-beams together across the lock, preventing either beam from
moving. But now the cut wire hung limply from an eye-hook in front
of him, falling tensionless onto the towpath. As he stepped around
the distal end of the beam, he heard the bubbling sound of churning
water and a pleading stream of words he couldn’t understand in a
woman’s voice. His apprehension congealed into fear and he darted
to the lock wall.

Peering down into the darkness, he saw the
water was higher than he expected, and moving. It was welling up
behind the upstream gates and flowing toward him as the lock slowly
filled. Who had opened the wickets? From the wall’s midpoint, he
squinted at the upstream gates beyond the footbridge. The three
nearest stems were naked, but the stem closest to the far wall was
crowned by a slim perpendicular shadow the length of his arm. A
lock-key! He looked at the area around both gates but saw no
one.

He started across the lock to investigate.
As his foot struck the bridge, a plaintive voice rose from the
gloom below.

“Help me, I’m chained!”

The hair on his arms stiffened. It sounded
like Nicky, somewhere beneath him! He backtracked to the wall and
dropped to his knees. Standing under the bridge in shoulder-deep
water was a woman with short, straight hair. Her head hung forward
and her upraised hands were braced on the stones of the far
wall.

“Nicky!”

“Help me… Vin! I’m chained!” Her voice
sounded alien and remote and she answered him without turning away
from the wall or lowering her hands.

“Hang on, baby! I’ll get you out!” He sprung
to his feet and raced across the footbridge, then skidded to a stop
and strode up the lock wall to the upstream gate. Grasping the end
of the lock-key with both hands, he felt a sticky substance against
his palm. He swung the key and heard the rush of water grow louder,
then immediately pushed it hard in the opposite direction. The
bubbling sound subsided. The wicket had only been opened part way.
He exhaled in relief as the bubbles below him dissolved into
swirls. Glancing at his palm, he saw that it was stained with a
viscous fluid that looked like blood.

“Nicky!” he cried, walking back along the
wall to a vantage point where he could look under the bridge, “are
you hurt?”

“I can’t get out! I’m chained!” She answered
without looking at him and his anxiety mounted again. She sounded
drugged… maybe she was cut! She could bleed to death in the water!
What had happened? How was she chained?

“Hang on, Nicky! I’ll get you out!” He sat
down with his legs dangling over the edge, then set his hands
against the wall and dropped into the lock. As he collapsed into
the water, his feet struck silt at the bottom and penetrated to the
buried stone floor. He stood and let the water stream from his head
and shoulders, then turned toward the gloom under the
footbridge.

When he was able to focus, he saw Nicky
standing nearby, head still hanging forward and hands pressed
against the stone wall. He waded over and put his hands on her
shoulders. “Nicky,” he said softly, “are you bleeding? What
happened?”

“My leg,” she whispered, still without
raising her head or lowering her arms. “It’s chained… a metal box…”
She sounded distant and her breathing was shallow, but she didn’t
seem to be in pain. Vin couldn’t see any obvious injury. Beneath
her wet v-neck shirt, her shoulders trembled at his touch.
“Shackles…I can’t lift it. The water… getting deeper…”

The shackles! Preoccupied with the
disappearance of the toolbox from Gladys Island, he hadn’t noticed
that the leg-irons he’d unearthed along with it had vanished as
well. If one of the cuffs was clamped to Nicky’s leg, did that mean
the other was locked to the missing toolbox? The keys! He dug into
his pocket, hoping they were still there. One for the toolbox, one
for the shackles.

“Nicky!” he said quietly, leaning toward her
ear. “I turned off the water. It’s not rising anymore.” Her
breathing seemed to slow and deepen but her eyes remained closed.
“I’m going to duck underwater to try to find the box. I think I
have the key to the shackles.” He saw a trace of a nod, then looked
down to guess the location of the box. “OK, Nicky. Just stay where
you are.”

He dropped into the water and thrust his
arms to push himself down. When one hand felt the mud at the bottom
of the lock, he swung the other outward and touched Nicky’s calf.
Which ankle were the leg-irons clamped to? He swept his hand down
along her leg in search of the cuff but found the chain instead. It
was taut, and his hand traced its path outward from her ankle. The
other cuff was clamped to the toolbox just over a foot away. He
groped to find the handle and curl his fingers around it. It felt
exactly like the handle he’d gripped on Gladys Island. What kind of
insidious treasure was this? The pressure in his lungs was
building, so he tightened his grip and pulled his feet beneath
him.

As he stood, he heard a splash and felt the
turbulence of a fallen body. Nicky must have collapsed into the
lock! He needed air before trying to help her, so he rose for a
breath and scanned the surface. There were swirls beside him and he
felt a forearm brush his leg. Still holding the toolbox, he reached
his free arm into the water and leaned over. Just as he touched a
receding leg, he felt a metallic jab against his right ankle. He
winced and withdrew as the handle was yanked out of his hand and
the box fell back to the bottom of the lock.

“What the hell is…” He dropped into the
water and swung his arms for Nicky but felt only her swirling wake.
When he kicked his feet out, he felt a sickening tug against his
ankle. This can’t be… He lifted his right foot and felt the closed
cuff as the shackle bit into his skin. Pulling his ankle toward him
with both hands, he felt the weight of an attached anchor. In
disbelief, he tried to pull the cuff open with his fingers. It was
firmly locked.

He released his shackled ankle and stood.
Where was Nicky? Was someone holding her underwater? “Nicky!” he
yelled against the echoing walls. The disturbed water was slopping
back and forth in the lock, chop reflecting from the sides.
“Nicky!” No one answered, but he saw a presence rising slowly from
the surface along the far wall, a few feet from the upstream gates.
It was her. “Nicky! What’s happening?”

Hands parallel, she was gripping something
on the lock wall. Her back hunched and her head and shoulders
ascended a foot. She was climbing a rope ladder that lay flush
against the wall near the upstream gate. That’s the ladder from our
basement, Vin thought. I didn’t notice it when I ran across the
footbridge… the key was on the opposite gate, so I wasn’t looking
at that part of the lock. His pulse raced as a wave of nausea and
despair engulfed him. “Nicky!”

As she climbed without turning toward him,
his queasiness distilled to anger. He plunged underwater and
brought his knees to his chest, traced the chain to the box,
gripped its handle, and stood up, balancing tensely on his free
left leg. Nicky was climbing from the ladder onto the top of the
lock wall. He hopped on his free leg until he was under the middle
of the footbridge and had a better view. She unhooked the ladder
and methodically pulled it out of the lock.

“Nicky! We can find someone to help you! But
you need to get me out of the lock!” Nicky rolled the ladder as she
retracted it, then dropped it balled-up onto the grass. “Nicky, if
you drain the lock, I can open the shackles and climb out!” He felt
himself leaning so he hopped to regain his balance. “You can use
the lock-key, Nicky! You just need to move it to the lower gates!
The key is on that stem,” he said, gesturing toward it as he began
to shiver. “If you cross the bridge, you can lift it off.”

With her wet clothes clinging to her body
and her dripping hair screening her face, she walked onto the
footbridge. He pivoted under the bridge and looked hopefully up at
the berm-side wall, waiting for her to reappear. He was starting to
cramp from balancing on one leg, so he lowered his shackled foot to
the lock floor. To keep his grip on the toolbox, he bent over until
his mouth was near the water. Nicky emerged and walked unhurriedly
along the lock wall to the swing beam, where she leaned over to
grasp the lock-key with both hands.

“That’s right, honey,” Vin said, as she
rocked it lightly back and forth. “Now just lift it straight up off
the stem.”

With a fluid motion that belied the
resistance of water against wicket at the base of the stem, she
swung the lock-key ninety degrees. Upwelling water immediately
formed haystacks against the back of the upstream gate.

“Nicky! Turn it the other way!” The swelling
and bubbling water rolled down toward his face, so he stood again
but lost his balance and had to drop the toolbox. The rising water
broke over his sternum and slopped against his collarbones.

“Nicky!” he screamed. She released the
lock-key, walked deliberately out around the end of the swing-beam,
and returned to step onto the crossing plank. “Nicky,” he pleaded.
“Help me! Turn the key the other way!” She proceeded along the
walkway to the center of the lock, where the swing-beams and
crossing planks met in a shallow V.

Then she stopped and turned toward Vin. The
water surged and lapped at his neck and his brain filled with
questions and fears. As she faced him, he could see her gleaming
legs were unhurt. Her wet khaki shorts hugged her slender, boyish
hips, and her drenched shirt clung to her strong shoulders and
small, well-formed breasts. Her lowered chin and downturned eyes
were framed by dark and dripping hair. That’s Nicky, he thought,
trying to reason through a tide of adrenaline and fear. That’s my
fiancée. She must be in some kind of trance. I can break it! I have
to get through to her!

“Nicky,” he cried again, raising his chin
and thrusting his hands down to rise as high as he could. “It’s me!
It’s Vin! I love you!” By paddling and kicking his free and
shackled feet he was able to keep his whole head above the surface.
He sought out her eyes with the hope that he could shatter her
somnambulism and make her recognize him.

Instead he saw what he’d overlooked until
now, and a dagger of horror impaled his heart. Above her breasts
hung a pendant necklace in the shape of a leaf. It was Nicky who
had followed him out to the island! In shock, he realized that the
woman facing him wasn’t Nicky anymore. As she lifted her eyes to
meet his, he could see the gleam of her teeth between parted lips.
A dream image flashed before him, of a girl with incandescent blue
eyes staring across the dark canal. Nicky turned away, continued
across the walkway, and stepped down onto the lock wall. He pumped
his arms to lift his head and watch her go. She disappeared without
looking back.

He screamed in fear and anguish, then tried
to think clearly. The downstream gates offered no handholds or
footholds, but two cross-beams on the backside of the upstream
gates were still visible above the churning water. He knew there
was a triangular sill at the base of the gate and another submerged
cross-beam. If I can drag the box to the upstream gates, he
thought, I should be able to climb onto the sill. Then I can step
up onto a cross-beam. I’ll have to contend with the torrent, but
it’s only coming through one wicket.

He dropped underwater to collect the
toolbox, then began hopping through chin-deep water toward the
upstream gates. As he emerged from under the bridge, his foot found
a downward slope in the floor of the lock and his leg slipped out
from under him. His head plunged underwater as his leg skidded into
a hole. Shit! He quickly dropped the toolbox onto the lock floor
behind him, transferred his weight to his shackled foot, and pulled
his free leg out of the hole. His chest throbbed from the exertion
and he thrust his head up for a breath. The hole could be lethal,
he realized. I don’t know how deep it is. If I had dragged the box
into it, I might not be able to pull it out. The upstream gates are
out of reach. Think!

The keys. One of them must unlock the
shackles. If I unlock either cuff, I can swim to the upstream
gates. He dug into his pocket for the keys, then held his fist
above the surface and carefully opened it to reveal them. The
rising water lapped against his lips and nose. He plucked the
smaller key and held it tight, stuffed the larger key back in his
pocket, jumped for a full breath, and dropped back toward the
bottom.

For an instant he remembered being buried in
a snowdrift after falling through the bridge on the Billy Goat
Trail while snowshoeing with Nicky. He had found her lying with
limbs askew, and she had seemed distant, almost entranced. Vin had
helped her up and then fallen headfirst into the drift-filled
gully, because the orange warning sign had been thrown into the
snow under the dismembered bridge. His scalp tightened underwater
as he realized now that Nicky had removed the sign. Then she had
dug for him in the wrong place while he struggled to forge an
airway through the snow before suffocating. He had been living with
someone who, unconsciously or not, had tried twice to kill him in
the last eight months.