This River Awakens (14 page)

I turned to face the house, gazed up at the small half-circle window set under the roof. The sun was striking it obliquely, casting an impenetrable mirror sheen over it. Standing up there, behind it looking outward, what would I see? Would that glass alter the world? Somehow, I was certain that it would, though I couldn’t imagine in what way.

A tree off to my right had grown at a sloping angle – an easy climb. I walked over to it and laid my hands on the ridged bark. A sentinel needs a lookout, doesn’t he. There might be enemies on the horizon; they might be crossing the fields
en masse,
they might be coming down the river, or they might be swirling down from the sky on wings of flame. I began to climb. When I had come to the end of branches that would hold my weight, I looked down. From here, I realised, I could mark the arrival of dragons and ogres moving through the shadows. They would never think of looking up – children are never looked for over one’s head. They’re to be leered down on, crushed underfoot. They’re to be swept aside by the marching figures of adulthood. Trapped in dwarfdom, they’re to be ignored in the great battle.

But not me. I had surprises in store for them. Here, on the shoulders of an unsuspecting giant, the strength that flowed through me was unassailable, it was—

‘OWEN!’

Turning on my perch, I looked at the house. Mother was standing on the porch. I watched her cup her hands around her mouth.

‘OWEN!’

I sighed. ‘Up here!’ I called.

‘Come here this minute!’

Uh-oh, she was angry. I began descending the tree, horrible images of brutal punishments filling my head. I had never faced a brutal punishment before, but I imagined that there was a first time for everything, including torture.

I hurried across the lawn, came up to the driveway. Father had appeared and Mother was explaining something to him in exasperation. I saw him chuckle, and relief flooded through me. Still, delivery was everything. ‘What did I do now?’ I complained as I walked up to Mother.

She glared at me, but I could see that it was mostly acting. ‘What’s the meaning of setting traps all over your room, Owen? I nearly lost my fingers a dozen times!’

‘Rats,’ I explained. ‘Our house is fulla them, right?’

‘Looks like it,’ Father said, grinning at Mother.

‘See?’ I said.

When Father grinned, Mother could not help smiling herself. I had seen this before, and I had often wondered if maybe they were sharing some secret joke, with me always the butt. Shaking her head, she turned back to the door, then said to me over her shoulder, ‘Try informing me of such things in the future, Owen.’

‘But I thought you said – just last week – that you would never clean my room ever again. That’s what you said—’

‘You’re pushing it, son,’ Father said, wiping rust and grease from his hands.

With another shake of her head, Mother went inside, headed down into the basement to do the laundry. I sauntered after her but stayed on the main floor. Debbie was sitting on the living-room sofa, reading a book. She saw me, scowled, and turned her back to me. Shrugging, I continued down the hall and then ran up the stairs. The time was ripe for exploration.

All my clothes were gone, making my room seem empty, abandoned. The rat traps had all been sprung, and sat in a pile on my desk. The cheese was gone, and so was that musty pervasive odour that had been filling my room for the last week or so. I closed the door and went to the window sill. On the floor beneath it was my knapsack of essential items: candles, matches, the flashlight, an old hammer with a ripped rubber grip, a heavy long-shafted screwdriver, kangaroo-leather work-gloves, and my father’s binoculars. Picking the knapsack up, I slung it over my shoulders, spat on my hands, then climbed up on to the window sill.

To repeat the efforts of last week only took a few moments. Once again I crouched, looking down on my room. A wasteland: everything interesting had been removed or scrubbed away. Saddened, I carefully replaced the trapdoor. When it slid into its moorings, darkness closed in around me. I took off the knapsack, untied its flap and pulled out the flashlight. Flicking it on, I played the light down the passage. Nothing had changed. Somehow I had expected, with my new knowledge, that it would have undergone some kind of transformation; that now there might be spiders’ webs hanging down from the angled ceiling; that glowing red eyes would burn malevolently in the shadows, that the sounds of heavy shuffling might be heard around every corner. But the musty air was still and empty, and the only sound I could hear was my own breathing. Slowly, I moved up the passage.

I checked the rat-traps as soon as I arrived in the attic’s main room. None had been sprung. Vaguely disappointed, I walked back to the wall, entered the middle passageway. I reached its end, set the flashlight down and ran my hands along the press-board barrier. Beyond this wall, I told myself, lay the secret room with the windows. Was there some kind of hidden latch? All I could feel along the wall’s edges were the heads of nails, one every five inches or so. I retrieved the flashlight and made my way back to the large room, then went down the third aisle. The wall at the end of this one was also studded with nails, but not as many, maybe one every foot. I took the hammer out of the knapsack and quickly set to work removing them.

The press-board was thin and soft, and I found I had to gouge it with the claw of the hammer in order to reach the nails. I moved from one to the next without pause, images of what lay beyond running through my head. A crypt, a laboratory (the lightning rod gave me that idea), or maybe a wizard’s chamber. There were skulls on the shelves, mummy-hands nailed to the window sill, a pentagram etched in black wax on the floor, flasks and vials full of potions. And then the last nail was removed, carefully placed with the others in a small pile between my knees. I gripped the edges of the partition and pulled. It wouldn’t budge.

Frowning, I leaned back to see if I had missed any nails. I hadn’t. With the flashlight in my left hand, I raised the hammer in my right and levered the claw between the wall and its frame. I pushed the hammer upward. With a loud snap the board broke free, flying forward and striking me. I went down beneath it, swearing. In moments pushed it to one side. Then I scrambled back to my knees and shone the light into the pale darkness beyond.

Caught dead centre in the flashlight’s beam, was a rat. We stared at each other. Behind it I saw another, and then heard some scurrying sounds crossing the wooden floor.

I bolted backward, scrambled wildly amidst the woodchips, trying to pick up the press-board even though I still held the flashlight and hammer. I heard even more skittering noises. Somehow, I managed to get the partition on to its edge. As fast as I could, I pushed it back into position, then leaned against it, gasping.

Rats. Thousands of them. I had found their city!

I used four nails, one for each corner of the wall, hammering them in as hard as I could.

So much for skulls, I mused, returning the hammer to the knapsack. And there hadn’t been thousands of rats; maybe a half-dozen or so. And I had caught a glimpse of other things in that room; things that suggested to me that it wasn’t as empty as was the rest of the attic. Angry with myself, I made my way back to the trapdoor. Rats. Just rats. When it came right down to it, I was a suck. Owen, the suck.

Next time, I vowed, it would be war.

V

The wolf pack moved beneath them, treading the murky darkness, among glowing ropes with diamond eyes. Their grey lean shapes parting flashing schools, their senses seeking the echoes of destruction. Beneath the pounding of the North Atlantic waves against the hull, Walter Gribbs imagined he could hear their abyssal growls. His gloved hands, gripping the depth-charge launch-handle, were frozen. He could feel nothing from his elbows down, and yet he knew that, given the word, they would move – like machines, they would obey.

As the destroyer-class HMS
Hector
sloughed yet another barrage of water and climbed high on to a swell, Gribbs could see flames on the horizon. The wolves had penetrated a flank of the convoy; they had struck, and they had drawn blood. With the first explosion to throw the world into red-lit relief,
Hector
’s engines had roared, and she and two other destroyers voiced the hunter’s horn, and the pursuit was on.

There was nothing to see of the quarry; no betraying flashes in the darkness. There were only the fires of the victim as it wallowed in its own oil. But the hunt continued –
Hector
’s course corrections told Gribbs that much. Still, he glared at the seas, the muscles of his face feeling like bruised clay, and the world seemed shredded and beyond its frail fabric was the blackness of Armageddon. He crouched, leaning against the catapult housing, waiting.

The signal came. Gribbs’s arms – the machine’s limbs – jerked downward and, their function completed, froze into immobility once again. The canisters rolled down the racks, were immediately lost in the darkness. And then, thrumming through the wind and waves, came the first concussive thump. The seas in their wake bulged upward into a white-maned leviathan that appeared again and again as if in pursuit.

Teeth bared, Walter Gribbs snarled curses at the explosions in their wake. ‘Come on, you bastard! Come on, you bloody snake!’ Oh yes, he laughed to himself, they had drawn her up, thrashing and tossing on the foam-laden main. And maybe – just maybe – she’d bring the wolves with her. ‘Come on, you bitch! Let’s get the goddamn fuck on with this war!’

But, though she rose up in her wrath, after all the canisters had been expended and she fell away again into the deep, the wolves did not appear – not this time. Still, one of them might have burst apart down there, struggled briefly towards the surface, then sank in failure. Gods, Walter breathed to himself, shaking his head, to die unseen – to die down there with the only witnesses mindless eels that glowed in the darkness – nothing could be more hellish.

‘But we’re good at that,’ muttered Walter as he pulled the catapult lever back up to its set position. ‘Making hells to die in.’ Turning, he saw that they had come close to the sinking freighter. Spotlights played across the churning waves, travelled the length of the hull, and there were drowning men everywhere. Ships moved among them like trawlers sweeping schools of fish. But the nets were all too few – so many slipped away.

The roar of
Hector
’s engines grew muted. The hunt was over, for now. A hand closed over Walter’s shoulder and he turned. A familiar face leaned towards his.

‘They figure we got one, Walt!’ the seaman shouted, grinning.

Walter nodded. He raised his arms to relieve the ache in his shoulders.

*   *   *

‘Walter? You in there?’

‘Yep.’ Sighing, he pushed himself out of the easy chair, blinked to clear his vision, then walked over to the door and opened it. A short, stocky man wearing a wool sweater and brown flannel pants stood beyond the porch, pudgy hands anchored on round hips. Squinting, Walter stared at the smiling face. Cheshire, he thought.
Cheshire, yes, that’s it.
‘G’afternoon, Mr Dallow.’ Walter smiled. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Call me Chester, please.’ Pivoting on his hips, the man turned and waved a hand at the yachts in the dry-dock. ‘When do you figure you’ll have the equipment ready to start launching?’

Walter rubbed his jaw. ‘Well, I’d say by next weekend, Chester.’

‘Great. I’ll get a hold of the boys.’ He sighed loudly. ‘Well, another season, eh, Walter?’ He grinned.

‘Yep, and maybe the last.’

Chester glanced up at him sharply. ‘You thinking of retiring, then?’

Walter smiled. ‘No, I’m thinking of dying.’

Chester’s smile fell away abruptly. ‘Jesus Christ, Walter, what in hell’s got you talking like that?’

Walter leaned against the door jamb and crossed his arms. ‘Oh, I suppose it’s those noises I keep hearing at night,’ he said casually.

Chester frowned. ‘Is it your ticker?’

Laughing, Walter shook his head. ‘No, not that.’

‘What noises, then?’

Walter let his smile fade. ‘Chains breaking. All the links are parting. Used to be they just rattled, but now…’ He pushed himself upright and stepped back into the house. ‘I’ll have everything ready for next weekend, then.’

‘Uh, right. Thanks, Walter.’

‘Sure.’ Walter smiled as he began closing the door. ‘See you then, Chester.’

CHAPTER SIX

I

They were waiting for me at the end of the driveway.

Lynk was scowling. ‘Where’d all that junk come from?’ he asked.

I shrugged, turned to Roland. ‘We heading to the boat?’

‘Yeah. I brought window cleaner and rags.’

‘Good,’ I grunted. We began to walk.

The morning was still, the stagnant air hot from the bright sun overhead. Birds wheeled in the sky; men in white t-shirts mowed their front lawns or washed their cars; squealing children played in the back yards and dogs barked. The world was settling into the season, with the weekdays long and hot and silent and the weekends a domestic travail.

As I walked I wondered if this would be the world for me when I grew up. Hours in an office leading to hours pulling weeds and cutting grass. Blue and grey suits and pear-shaped white t-shirts stained with sweat and lawnmower oil – was this my future? Looking at my friends, I found it hard to imagine them in that kind of role, and yet, what else was there for us?

I did not imagine the future to be in any way different from the present. There would still be station wagons for the kids, washers and dryers in the basement, double beds and dens cluttered with the efforts of haphazard hobbies. And there would still be summers stained with motor oil and sweat. Nor did I think that we’d be any different: Lynk’s quick grin and the stick in his hands; Carl fumbling behind us and wiping his nose on his sleeve; and Roland, silent and full of life, with dirt under his nails and calluses on his palms. And somewhere, there in the future, I’d still be the unknown with the darting eyes, his face an unreadable mask.