Horror so pure it arrested any thought more elaborate than Run, filled me. For that reason, though I saw the ground ahead fall away, heard the sound of moving water, I continued forward without pause, until I had raced over the top of the bank and was half-sliding, half-falling down it into the galloping stream below.
Warm water embraced me, tumbling me end over end. I seemed to pass a long time submerged in depths shot through with black currents. Dark shapes darted around me. I kicked my legs, pulled my arms, attempting to right myself. White cracks split the water. I pulled my arms and kicked my legs. All at once, the stream caught hold of me and whisked me forward. Lungs at the point of bursting, I pushed for the surface and broke through. Spitting out brackish water, I inhaled lungfuls of air. Already, my boots had filled with water and were dragging me back under. I slid my legs against one another and forced the right boot off. The other held tight, until I ducked my head beneath the waves so I could grab the boot and twist it off.
Feet unencumbered, it was easier for me to keep my head above water, which was good, because the stream slid into heavy rapids. Gray boulders rose amidst the churning foam, signposting the underwater labyrinth through which the stream was racing. A low slab of stone loomed in my path; I breast-stroked around it, skimming the tops of a cluster of rocks that smacked my knees and shins. The current took me between the halves of a massive, split boulder, and dumped me over a short waterfall onto a pile of stones close enough to the water’s surface for it to offer no cushion. Something cracked in my chest. I grasped at the stones below me, but they were too slippery, the current too strong. A rock like the finger of a giant thrust out of the water ahead of me. I threw my arm over my head. The impact shocked through me. The stream rolled me off the stone and spun me into a wide pool. Below me, clouds of sediment billowed in the water’s depths. I was finding it difficult to keep above them: my clothes were waterlogged, and my body seemed to consist of more bruises, breaks, and cuts than it did muscles to propel me to the edge of this quieter patch. To be sure, I was exhausted, but the image of that great eye unlocking, of Dan’s fate on the beach, offered sufficient incentive for me to force my limbs into an approximation of the dog-paddle.
I didn’t see the figure that swam up out of the murk below, wasn’t aware of anything until the hand seized my ankle and yanked me under. In the time it took me to realize what had happened, I was dragged to the edge of the churning sediment. I knew it must be one of the pale creatures, possibly Sophie, finishing what had begun on the beach. My knife was long gone, lost at some point during my flight. I kicked at the thing with my free foot, but even panicked, I had little strength left me. Releasing my leg, the creature caught my belt and hauled me down until we were floating face-to-face.
Her hair fluttering in the current, Marie regarded me with her shining eyes. My surprise was succeeded by resignation. Of course, I thought. Sophie takes care of Dan, and Marie sees to me. I could almost appreciate the symmetry. I hoped that she would simply keep me here until I had no choice but to inhale the stream; after the initial unpleasantness, I had heard, drowning was supposed to be a peaceful way to die — unlike being torn apart by mouths jammed with fangs. Marie caught my shoulders, and pushed me deeper, down into the sediment cloud.
Immediately, I lost sight of her, of everything but the murk tumbling about me. Bubbles leaked from my lips. Whatever acceptance I’d imagined I’d felt departed, swept aside by a desire to escape that had me twisting in Marie’s grasp, striking her arms with my fists. All at once, her hands were gone, and I swam for the surface with my lungs searing, my arms and legs full of lead. I emerged near a shore fronted by trees I recognized, hemlock and birch, maple. Screaming with the effort, I paddled until the water grew shallow. I crawled out of the water onto dry land, where I collapsed, coughing up the water that had found its way into my lungs. Spent, shivering, I surrendered to the blackness that rose around me in a tide.
VI. Hundred-Year Flood
A pair of high school kids, who claimed they were out on a hike, but who I suspect were searching for a secluded spot to experiment with illicit substances of one form or another, found me washed up on the south shore of Dutchman’s Creek, almost to the Hudson. My clothes were shredded, my body scraped, battered, and cut, and I was running a fever high enough to induce hallucinations, which was what the doctors, nurses, and police detectives who attended me made of my more fantastical claims. The doctors and nurses were present because I was in Wiltwyck Hospital, being treated for the infection that was causing my temperature to spike and was proving stubbornly resistant to a range of increasingly powerful antibiotics. The detectives drifted in and out of my room because, in my delirium, I ranted about Dan’s death. There was little trouble tracing my movements: the cops checked with Howard, who verified that I’d been in for breakfast with another fellow, tall, with red hair and a scar all the way up the right-hand side of his face. The two of us had been bound for Dutchman’s Creek, Howard said, though he’d advised against it. (I don’t know for sure, but I doubt he shared Lottie Schmidt’s long, strange tale with them.) After a brief search, the detectives came across my tacklebox on the stone ledge where I’d caught what Marie had called a nymph; of course, the fish and my rod were nowhere to be found. Downstream a ways, the police located Dan’s gear, which apparently had been washed there by the flooded creek. Of Dan himself, there was no trace, and this, together with the wounds on my arm, which seemed to have been inflicted with a knife or similar weapon, raised their suspicions as to what, exactly, had transpired during our fishing trip.
I didn’t help matters any by ranting about Dan’s attempt to club me with a rock so he could feed my essence to a centuries-old magician, or his death at the teeth of his dead wife and children. It sounded mad, yes, but combined with Dan’s apparent disappearance and the cuts on me, the scenario I was narrating seemed as if it might be describing the substance, if not the exact details, of an actual event. I was under suspicion; though what friends and co-workers the detectives interviewed spoke well of me; nor did Dan’s friends or family voice any reservations about our fishing trips. Had the remains of Dan’s body turned up, I’m not certain what effect they would have had on the cops. I want to say they would have exonerated me beyond a shadow of a doubt, but the same evidence can lead to diametrically opposed conclusions, depending on who’s reviewing it. Of Dan, however, there remained no sign, despite a widening of the search area to include the stretch of the Hudson south of where Dutchman’s Creek empties into it. In the end, Dan would be declared officially missing, and a few of his cousins from up around Phoenicia would drive down to see to the disposition of his goods, the selling of his and Sophie’s house.
The police, though, did not let go of questioning me that easily. I suppose it is fortunate for them that I was stuck in a hospital bed, taking one step forward, two back in my contest with an infection whose diagnosis changed every few days. I could have requested a lawyer, and had I been in more of my right mind at the outset, I might have. By the time this occurred to me, the detectives had pretty much lost interest in me as anything other than the fellow victim of a fishing mishap that had almost certainly claimed my buddy’s life. At some point when my sickness was still causing me to see Dan, Sophie, and the twins silhouetted on the curtain that hung around my bed, I realized that neither of the men who continued to ask me what had happened the morning Dan and I went fishing would — or could — believe what I was telling them. In my fever, it was an insight I resisted, but eventually, I began crafting a story that sounded like something they would, and could, accept. I sometimes wondered if they were aware of my ploy, but if so, they let slip no sign of it. Maybe they were grateful for what I was doing, fashioning them a story that would account for most of the details they had to reckon with.