1 The Bank of the River (13 page)

Steven sat
at the table, sipping the coffee, coming down from the pain. He saw the book on
the table and noticed the page it was turned to. He glanced over it, but was
surprised to find that a couple of the words made sense. Not all of it, but
some of it, here and there. The more he read the clearer it became.

“You were
reading this when I took over for you?” Steven asked, pointing at the page.

“Yes,”
answered Roy.

“This
section here? This part? ‘Invitations’?” Steven asked.

Roy smiled
broadly, surprised. “Yes, that very part!”

“You set
that up, didn’t you?” Steven asked. “You read about this in your book while I
was sleeping, and you woke me up just to see if this would work, right? That’s
why the attack started moments after you went to bed. That wasn’t a normal
attack from you falling asleep, like before. You made it happen. You invited
him.”

“Yes!” Roy
said enthusiastically. “Now, tell me what you learned.”

“Wait just a
minute,” said Steven. “I want to make sure I understand what just happened
here. You put yourself into a trance that you knew would draw the shadow.
Something you read about.”

“Yes,”
replied Roy, “and he showed up almost immediately. The guy is following us
everywhere we go, waiting for any opportunity. He’s hungrier than a cranky bear
after hibernation.”

“And you
banked on me coming to save you,” Steven said.

“Yes,” said
Roy. “And this trance I used, it was different. It made it easier for him to
get at me, but it also made it easier for you to join and take control.”

“That’s why
you were floating near the ceiling instead of an inch off the bed,” Steven
said.

“Was I?” Roy
asked. “That’s right, I fell on you, so I must have been above you. Anyway, you
did jump in. That’s what matters.”

“My point
is,” Steven said, “what if I hadn’t? How much faster was he draining you?”

“Much
faster,” said Roy. “I doubt I’d have lasted ten minutes.”

“It was a
dumb move. I don’t understand why you couldn’t tell me you were going to try
this before you did it. Why leave my involvement to chance?”

“Because,”
said Roy, “it’s like telling a scared kid he’s going to have to jump into the
swimming pool when he doesn’t want to, versus giving him a reason to jump in. A
little push, if you will. And you jumped. It worked.”

“Only
because I thought you were in danger.”

“If that was
true,” said Roy, “you would have banished it as soon as you came in the room.
Instead, you chose to jump into the river and check things out. And you found
out you can swim. Now tell me what you found out.”

Steven
relayed, as best as he could describe in words, the experience of the flow and
his watertube, the glass wall and the images behind the glass.

“That’s
Lukas, behind the glass,” Roy said. “Did you hear anything?”

“His lips moved,”
Steven replied, “but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. It was just…sounds.”

“The glass,”
asked Roy, “was it hard? Did you touch it?”

“It stopped
me,” said Steven. “But it wasn’t solid. It was moving, making it hard to see.”

“Moving like
what? Back and forth? Wavy, like water?”

Steven
thought about this. Yes, it was a lot like water. And once he realized it was
water, the sounds he had heard began to organize in his mind.

“Yes,
water,” he told Roy. “Water makes sense. And the sounds he made sounded like
they were coming from under water. That’s not normal when you’re in a trance?”

“Very little
is normal,” answered Roy. “Each can be different. You’re learning to work with
a new vocabulary, a new system of thinking. Each experience you have will teach
you to put things into context, and that will clarify other things that didn’t
make sense before. Like the book. You can read some of it now, can’t you.”

“Yes,”
Steven answered, “the section on invitations at least.”

“Whereas
before,” Roy continued, “the words didn’t make sense to you at all.”

“Right,”
Steven answered.

“Now that
you know he was under water, think back to the sounds again. What did he say?”

Steven
thought. The sounds were there in his mind, still a jumble of individual
noises. He imagined the water and the image of the man behind it, the lips
moving. The sounds began to clarify in his mind and come together.

“He said,
‘can’t breathe.’”

“Ha ha!” Roy
said, slapping the kitchen table. “That’s why he’s weak! That’s why he can’t
summon Michael to finish the deed!”

Steven
wasn’t sure he fully understood what Roy was saying, but Roy seemed to know
where he was going with it.

“The cave,”
Roy asked, “had water in it?”

“A stream
running through it. There were several pools in the rooms I saw at the end –
or, where I stopped.”

“How deep?”

“Maybe a
couple of inches. Maybe more, I don’t know, I didn’t check them out.”

“Ben buried
him in the cave,” said Roy, “but the water in the cave changed, covering the
body. That’s why Lukas is so weak. He needs a connection before he can latch
onto someone. The only connection he could make was through that house, where
he had success draining Ben. He couldn’t waste his energy just randomly trying
to connect to someone; the water kept him weak, made it hard for him to
connect, and he couldn’t afford to waste what he’d drained from Ben. Ben’s
journal, under the floorboards, was a perfect focal point for him. Once we came
into proximity with the journal, he latched onto us. ”

“Onto you,
you mean,” Steven corrected.

“Onto us.
You’ve been part of it from the beginning. And once he started draining us,
he’s raised enough energy to follow us around, so he could drain more whenever
possible.”

“But he has
been draining you, not me,” Steven said. “The attacks have been on you.”

“You don’t
feel anything?” Roy asked.

“I still
feel the headache,” Steven said.

“That’s the
river,” Roy replied. “That’s normal, that’s not it. Don’t you feel exhausted?”

“That’s
because we’ve had damn little sleep,” Steven said.

“You think,”
Roy said, “that when you watch over me while I’m sleeping, it’s to avoid an
attack, but when I watch over you, it’s just to make sure you get some shuteye?”

Steven
considered this. He did feel exhausted, both mentally and physically. Sleep had
been hard to come by. But he also felt something else missing, a piece of him
that was much smaller than it used to be. He didn’t think he would have noticed
it before today, or have known how to identify it. But now he could tell it was
missing. The same way the experience in the river had made him able to read
some of the book, and understand some of the words, he was able to assess
himself and realize he was being drained.

“It was
attacking me before I even came to you,” Steven said.

“I could tell
the day you showed up, asking for that next of kin thing. You had no idea.
That’s why I got involved.”

Steven
swallowed hard. He knew what his father was saying was true. He had slept
through it all, but his father had recognized it. His dad seemed know what he
was doing.

“Why didn’t
you tell me?” Steven asked.

“You
wouldn’t have believed me, you never do. Some things you just have to figure
out as you go.”

“And this
stunt tonight,” Steven said, “was about doubling our forces.”

“I think we’re
both finally on the same page. What I’m afraid of now is that he’s drained
enough power from the two of us to contact Michael.”

“To finish
the ritual?” Steven asked.

“Exactly.
Michael doesn’t know where Lukas is buried any more than we do – but he will
wait in the wings until we release him. My guess is, after tonight, he’ll be
following us.”

“Then how do
we stop it? Anything in there,” Steven motioned to the book, “that will stop
it?”

“From what
I’ve been reading, our best chance is to burn him. Incinerate the body. Fire is
a cleanse, it gets rid of everything.”

Steven
sighed. “If the body is in a grave under water, provided we can find it and dig
him up, it’ll be soaked.”

“Maybe not,”
said Roy, “if Ben put him in a box first.”

“A
waterproof box? I think you’re giving Ben too much credit.”

“Maybe
you’re right,” said Roy.

“In any
event, we can’t risk removing the water,” Steven said. “According to you,
that’s what’s keeping him weak. It makes no sense to remove it and give him any
kind of an opportunity. If there was some way we could keep him under water,
and transport the body out to Puget Sound, we could just weigh him down and
dump him.”

“I’m not
sure that would end it,” Roy said. “Water is water. I’m not so sure that a
hundred feet will matter more than a couple of inches.”

“He’d be
fish food,” Steven said. “Eventually the body would be gone.”

“If that
were true, he’d be gone already from insects. The problem is he’s not
completely dead, not even now, not after fifteen years in the ground. The body
needs to be gone, completely, if we want to stop the attacks.”

“So we’ve
got to burn it,” Steven said.

“Yes.”

“While it’s
under water.”

“Yes.”

“What burns
under water?”

They both
thought for a moment.

“Flares,”
Roy said, smiling. “I have a box in the basement.” He jumped up and walked to
the basement stairs. “I’ll be right back,” he said, disappearing down them.

Steven
removed his phone and searched for “burn under water.” Sure enough, he found a
YouTube video showing a flare burning in a bucket of water. The description of
the video said it was an ordinary roadside flare. He heard Roy rummaging
around, then coming back up the stairs.

Roy placed a
large cardboard box on the floor between them. The side of the container said
“144 count.”

“Why would
you need a whole case of flares?” Steven asked.

“They were on
sale at Costco,” Roy replied. “Great price. I was gonna give some of them to
you and Bernie but never got around to it. Forgot they were down there.”

“How old are
they?” Steven said, removing one and examining it.

“Couple of
years,” Roy replied, grabbing a flare himself. “Maybe seven or eight years. Let’s
test one.”

Roy took the
flare to the bathroom and began filling the tub. Steven followed him, trying to
read the instructions that were printed on the side of the flare, but the
lettering was too small to make out. Once several inches accumulated, Roy
removed the plastic cap from the end of the flare and struck it against the
tip. After a couple of attempts, it came to life, sputtering and dripping
molten material into the bathtub.

“Ready?” Roy
asked.

“Yes,”
Steven replied. Roy sunk his hand into the tub, immersing the flare. It did not
stop burning. Water bubbled up around Roy’s hand. He held it under the water
for over a minute, then let it sink to the bottom of the tub, where it
continued to burn.

“How long
will it go for?” Steven asked.

“Ten,
fifteen minutes,” Roy replied. “Maybe more.”

“One of
these won’t be enough to incinerate a body.”

“But a dozen
would do some damage,” Roy said.

“How are we
going to work that?” Steven asked.

“We bundle a
bunch of them together,” Roy explained, “like sticks of dynamite. All with the
burning edge facing the same direction. We’ll have to remove the dirt that’s
covering him while leaving the water in place. We light them all at the same
time with a blowtorch, then we place the burning side down through the water
and into the body. We should make several of them, so we can hit him with
dozens of them all at once. We could each hold two bundles, one in each hand.
We’d be hitting him with almost fifty of them, all at once. And they’ll burn
for a while. That’s got to do a lot of damage. Maybe enough that after they run
out, we can remove the body safely from the water and incinerate what’s left
with the blowtorch.”

“This is
insane,” Steven said.

“Yeah, but I
think it will work,” Roy said.

“It might. How
do we bundle them?”

Roy set
about gathering the remaining items they’d need to construct and prepare the
flares. He duct-taped a dozen of them together, and then used the duct tape to
make a handle on the bottom of the bundle. Then he returned with the blowtorch.

“Should we
test it?” Roy asked.

“Yes,”
Steven said. “I’d rather not have any surprises. We need something like a big
chunk of meat.”

“How about a
roast?” Roy offered. He went to the refrigerator and removed a chuck roast,
about an inch thick and ten inches in diameter.