Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(39)

But then he forgot that doctor’s appointment—yours or mine, I don’t remember—and Mom decided she’d had enough. The second she walked in the house, it was doors slamming and the two of them screaming at each other, and me thinking, Is this really Mom and Dad? They were like strangers with our parents’ faces. You tried to get between them, but it was no use. I remember hiding out in your room, wondering what world we had stumbled into and if it would ever be possible to get back to our own.

Once I got out to the center of the reservoir, I flipped onto my back and let myself float with my arms stretched out. Tiny waves lapped at my ears, alternating the sounds of the surface, crickets and frogs and night birds, with the silence below. I’d heard that the reservoir was nearly fifty feet deep at its center. Every inch of that darkness pulled at me.

Sometimes late at night I’d leave my room and walk toward the slip of light coming from beneath Dad’s office door. This was a few months before the outbreak, after he’d started sleeping in there instead of in bed with Mom. Only it never seemed like he was sleeping. I could hear his chair squeaking and his pencil scratching. Sometimes, standing there in the dark hallway, I’d lay my palm on the door, the way they taught us to do in school if you thought there was a fire in the house. But it didn’t feel like a fire. It felt like we had a black hole trapped within our walls, like Dad had collapsed into this infinitely dense, infinitely cold thing.

Other times I’d lie in your room, staring at the ceiling while you talked. Dad’s overwhelmed. Mom’s frustrated. Things will go back to normal soon enough. Don’t worry, Cardinal. Everything will be fine, Cardinal. You’d say it with a smile and a laugh, and then you’d flop into bed next to me and we’d read issues of Love and Rockets or Ms. Marvel. And I believed you. Of course I believed you. You were my big brother. You were right about everything.

I flipped over and kicked my feet against the surface of the reservoir, diving until I was surrounded by an echoey hush. With every stroke the darkness thickened and the world above seemed farther away. I decided I had to touch the bottom, had to feel it with my own hands.

It wasn’t long before the last glimmer of moonlight from the surface disappeared. The temperature dropped in bands the deeper I went. The cold seeped through my skin and into my muscles and bones. Worse, though, was the pressure. It felt like a hand had wrapped itself around my chest and was squeezing tighter and tighter. I thought it would be like when I was running, that I’d push through the pain and come out the other side, but this pain grew until it felt bigger than I was, bigger than anything. I started to turn back, but that’s when I heard Dad’s voice whispering in my ear, as real as if he were swimming along beside me. He said the only mistake he ever made was that he didn’t go far enough. He said that if I made it to the bottom, if I touched it and didn’t let go no matter what, then I’d have what he’d always wanted, what I’d wanted ever since the night of the sixteenth.

I tumbled end over end and pulled for the surface, clawing at water that seemed to have become as thick as wet concrete. Time stretched. My lungs burned. I felt as if I’d been swimming for hours and hadn’t moved an inch. Was it too late? Had I gone too far? All I could see was darkness in every direction. What strength I had left was draining away, but then, above me, there was a faint splash and a flicker of light. I thrust my arms through the water and heaved toward the surface, but there was still so far to go. My lungs were screaming. Cramps knotted every muscle. Dad’s voice was telling me that the only thing that would stop the pain would be to let go, to let myself sink. I could feel how hungry the dark below was for me to do it, how hungry I was to give in.

But then I heard another voice—a woman’s voice, faint but glassy. Mom’s. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but I felt a pair of hands clasp me under my arms and draw me up. The water raced by until the moon appeared above me, then individual stars, then the peaks of the trees as I crashed through the surface and gasped for air. My lungs spasmed as they filled.

It took every ounce of strength I had to swim back to shore. I collapsed on the rocks, shivering, gulping air. The last thing I wanted to do was move, but I knew I had to get dressed, had to get warm. I managed to find my clothes, and then I stumbled through the woods to my tent. I should have made a fire, but I didn’t have the energy, so I curled into a ball, pulling every blanket and every scrap of clothing I had over top of me, burying myself in them.

I lay there shaking, but then a slow warmth grew in my chest and spread out through my arms and legs and the tips of my fingers. I heard Mom’s voice again. Soft. Musical. As bright as a pin. The last thing I remembered before I tumbled into a dreamless sleep was the feel of her hands brushing across my forehead and down my cheek.





16


EVERY NIGHT for the next week I left Lucy’s Promise and walked into Black River.

I wandered empty streets, from the shops and apartments near Main Street to the mansions at the north end of town. I tried the doorknob of every house I came to. If it turned, I’d go inside and drift from room to room, imagining myself as one of Benny’s ghosts. I’d lie on unmade beds and sit at dusty dining room tables and on rumpled couches. I went through closets and explored attics and basements, digging out photo albums and children’s toys and stacks of old letters. When I left, I’d put everything back just the way I found it so that it would be like no one had ever been there.