I massage the ankle, but the pain intensifies with my touch. He bends over me and slides my sock down over my heel. I don’t want him to touch my ankle. I don’t want to feel those icy fingers of his, stroking my skin. It will only confuse me. Because he feels so real. But he can’t be. This is all in my mind. When I pull my sock up and scoot away from him, the pain shoots up to my knee. “Don’t touch it.”
His face is rueful; it almost makes me regret not letting him help me. “You want to see your mother, don’t you?” he asks, his voice gentle. “She’s just across the river.”
I think of Spiffy’s words. I know what lies on the other side of the river. He said people lived on the east side, but they buried their dead on the other side. “I don’t … no. She’s dead. The dead are there. I’m not dead. And you’re not real.”
“I thought we went over this.” He studies me, a look of disappointment on his face. “I assure you, I am very real. And she is waiting for you, just over there. There is nothing for you to be afraid of.”
As he reaches for my hand again, another wind picks up. “I can’t—I can’t cross the river.”
A look of amusement dawns on his face. “You are afraid of the water?”
“No,” I answer curtly. “But I can’t cross the river without a boat.”
He scans the shoreline, scratching his chin. “Ah. The unique problems of the living.” He gives me a warm smile. “Forgive me, Kiandra. It has been quite some time since I’ve been on your plane.”
As he laughs, a thick trickle of blood starts to ooze over his forehead. I watch it trail over the tip of his nose, but he seems oblivious to it until I point it out with my quivering hand.
He takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabs at it. “Oh, how embarrassing.”
“It was your father who did that?” I ask softly. “I remember it from the story.”
He studies the new blood on the handkerchief, but now more is pouring past his hairline, falling between his eyes. “No. That story your companions told is a little, shall we say, inaccurate. I suppose it served its purpose. But sometimes a lie is better.”
“I don’t understand how all these stories we told around the campfire the other night are haunting me,” I say. “They’re stories.”
“They were legends. They did happen, long ago. And legends get twisted over time. And you don’t just know our stories. You know all the stories of the people who’ve died in the waters. That is part of your gift. You just need something to awaken the memory, I suppose. But it’s all inside you, waiting to be released.” He taps on the side of my head, sending droplets of blood scattering onto his shirt. I gasp and step back.
Suddenly he stops, looks around. I hear it, too: Sleesh … sleesh … sleesh.
He sighs. “I must go. I have something to attend to. I will see you again.”
I nod, but it’s not like I ever want to see him again. Seeing him again means I’m crazy.
He starts to walk down the path toward the river, and it’s only then that I realize he’s carrying the ax. The blade is brown with dried blood. “Oh, and Kiandra. Next time, I will prove your mother is waiting for you. And you will come.”
You will come. I shiver when I think of it. He seems so confident. Much more confident than I am.
But the thing is, I was perfectly happy knowing my mother is gone forever.
And I don’t want a next time.
Chapter Thirteen
Across the river, something gleams yellow, like gold.
It makes me think of my mother, of my bedroom, of the setting sun sparkling gold on the river outside. She grew up on the river. She’d moved away for a time, before college, but she’d found her way back. “I love the river,” she told me. “I love it to my bones. I never want to be anywhere but here.”
My father didn’t like the river. We moved there when I was five, and in the two years we lived there, the basement of our old house flooded about a hundred times. It was so permanently moldy and dank that we never went down there. The foundation of our house was crumbling because of the water damage. He kept telling her we should “sell the damn thing before it collapses on us.” My mother and father rarely argued, since my mom, being prone to headaches, tried hard to keep the peace. But when they did fight, it was about the house. “A river symbolizes purity,” she’d tell me. “To a river, every day is a new day, a chance to start over. Isn’t that a comforting thought?”
“Mom,” I’d ask. “Why do you want to start over?”
She’d laugh. “I don’t want to. But sometimes things end. And it’s comforting to be able to begin again.”
At the time, that made no sense to me. Sometimes things end. Afterward, I always thought about it bitterly. I mean, did she think that she could somehow just undo drowning herself in the river? But now Jack, a ghost or a vision or whatever he is, is telling me she’s here. That she is waiting for me. And though I know it’s simply crazy, it’s all I can think about.
Sometime later, and I really don’t know how much later, I hear Justin shuffling down the path. I’m sitting at a picnic bench, nursing a nearly empty container of coffee and staring across the river.
My mother can’t be there. And I can’t see her again. She’s dead, and people aren’t supposed to see the dead.
But I saw Jack. It wasn’t like he was a vapor, a ghost. He was beside me. Traveling on another plane, and yet real. I could feel his breath, his cold, cold skin.
Is my mother that real? Could I possibly—
“Hey, you.” Justin’s voice startles me. “I see you were up bright and early.”
I stare at him for a good long time, still lost in thought. The smile on his face is just beginning to break down into concern when I blink twice and come alive. “Oh. Um, yeah.”
“Angela made pancakes, if you want some.” He points to the cup on the picnic table. “Does that taste like yesterday’s sewage? I made a pot back at the ranch that’s pretty good.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks.” I spill what’s left of my coffee on the ground, throw the cup in a nearby trash can, then follow him toward the cabin.
“What do you say to a hike today?” he asks. “You feeling up to it?”
I stretch my back. For the first time I realize it’s not just my ankle that aches. I’m sore from head to toe. I feel every bit as if I’ve been tossed down a raging river with a bunch of logs and debris using me as a Ping-Pong ball. I totally don’t want to be a wet blanket, though. I’m the one who insisted we stay, because I wanted to spend time with Justin. And here, all I’ve been doing is spending time alone, with my imaginary “friends.” “Yeah. Of course.”
I’m dragging behind him, so he turns and watches me walk a few steps. “Why are you limping?”
“I’m just a little sore,” I say. “No big deal.”
He points down at my foot. “You weren’t limping yesterday. The paramedics—”
At first I’m not really sure how it happened. Then I remember trying to escape Jack, and him nearly putting his hand on my ankle. I shiver. “Um, I twisted my ankle a little this morning,” I say. “But I’ll just put an ice pack on it for a few minutes. It’ll be okay.”
“Well, Pleasant Pond Mountain isn’t too tough of a hike. It’s only eight miles.” He reaches down and touches it. “That hurt?”
“Ouch!”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says. “You are staying home. I’ll stay with you.”