He pulled his feet down off the dashboard and turned to face me, drawing one leg up underneath himself. “All right. Something nasty is buried down there, by the river. Somethings, I guess I should say. At first I thought it was just one—whatever they are—but now I know better. There’s a handful of them, at least. And they are pissed’”
“Why?”
“I have no idea. But they’re coming up more often. Eden, I swear to you—” he held out his hands, palms forward. “I swear. No bullshit. No bullshit this time. They’re killers. And they don’t just come out whenever, it’s got something to do with the river. It has to be a certain level, maybe. That’s all I can figure out for now. That’s all that makes sense to me.”
I thought again of Lu, and her one stupid argument for keeping me away from the North Shore apartments. “The water rises,” I said slowly. “The banks flood. And . . . and what? Something’s buried in the banks? What, do monsters reconstitute themselves like sea monkeys? I still don’t get it.”
“I don’t either,” he admitted, again with his thirty-year-old man voice. “But the more weird shit happens, the more I’m sure of it. And I think—I don’t know, but I think—they’re working their way farther up into the city each time. They’re looking for something.”
“Now you’re just grasping at straws.”
“I’m brainstorming. At first, the only people who went missing were right down by the water’s edge. But now they’re disappearing from farther and farther uptown. It’s only a matter of time, especially with the rain like this. They’re tied to the river somehow, and when the river rises, it—I don’t know. It might expand their reach. And with all this rain, the river’s bound to rise.”
“That’s what the TVA is for.”
“Yeah, and the TVA has never fucked up.”
“I didn’t say that.” His minute was up and we both knew it, but I didn’t kick him out of the car yet. “This is crazy,” I told him instead. “There aren’t any monsters down by the river.”
“Then where’s Pat? Where’s Catfood Dude? And where’s Ann Alice? Has anyone seen her lately? Because I found her jacket down under the Walnut Street Bridge. And I can’t find any other sign of her.”
“Wait—what? For a guy who’s afraid of the river so much, what were you doing down under the bridge?”
“Looking for Ann Alice!” He almost shouted it at me, and in the added volume I heard a hint of real despair. “She used to meet a dealer down there—she sold off her ADD prescription for lunch money. But he went missing last week, and I tried to tell her not to go down there looking for him. Now they’re both gone. And I found her jacket.”
He mumbled the last part, as if he wasn’t sure how to finish and he was becoming aware of how silly it sounded.
“Okay,” I said, trying to tie it all together in my head.
He hunkered down in the bucket seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “At first I thought that you could go talk to them like you talk to ghosts, and then it would all clear up. But now I don’t know. Now it seems weirder than that. It seems worse than that.”
“So why are you in my car, then? What happens now, if I can’t help?”
“I don’t know.” The way he said it, I thought for a second that he was going to start crying. I was glad he didn’t. I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. “And you can tell the cops if you want to, if that’s what you’re going to do. But I was only trying to buy some time.”
“For what? For things to get worse?”
“Sure. And it is going to get worse. Eventually, you’ll be able to see it too. You won’t be able to pretend it isn’t there, and then maybe you’ll get involved.”
I shrugged and rolled my head back and forth on the headrest. “And then what?”
“Who knows? But they sure as hell won’t believe me.” He tried to peer through the rain sloughing down the window, but the shapes out on the library steps were only half-formed blotches of color. “They won’t believe us.” He waved a hand at the other skaters on the steps.
“And why do you think that is?” I asked, half serious and half accusing.
“I know why people think what they think. But I can’t change it now, not in time to fix this.”
Under different circumstances, I wouldn’t have put up with his cryptic weirdness for nearly so long; but I had a niggling thought that wouldn’t go away, and he was stroking it—whether he meant to or not.
“I need to talk to Lu,” I said out loud.
“Your aunt?”
“Yeah. I need to talk to her.”
“About this?”
“Not exactly, but maybe.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“I need to find out why she really doesn’t want me moving down by the river. It’s like you said—when the river rises, maybe it brings something with it.” I shook my head and gripped the steering wheel, just so I had a place to put my hands. “Lu and her sisters, they grew up over there—on the other side of the river. In North Chatt. I wonder if she knows something she isn’t telling me. I wonder, if I tell her what you’ve told me, if she’ll change her story at all.”
“Can’t hurt to ask.”
“That’s how I see it.” Another long pause hung between us. I broke it first. “Get out of my car.”
“What?”
“Get out. Go back to your playmates. I’m going to go back up the mountain now. I’m going to corner Lu before Dave gets home. Divide and conquer, in case it matters. Dave might not know. He doesn’t care if I take the apartment. She’s the one giving me a hassle about it.”
“Are you going to call the cops? Not like you’ve got any proof or anything, but if you send them my way, just do me the courtesy of warning me first, would you?”
“I’m not going to call the cops.”
“Or your buddy down at Channel Three?”
“Not him either. Get out, and shut the door fast behind you.”
He finally did as I ordered, leaving me sitting alone in front of the library. I wouldn’t have given his conspiracy theory a minute’s thought if it weren’t for Lu. I had no good reason to think there was anything linking her reluctance and Christ’s warnings, but there were enough tiny similarities to make me wonder.
The drive home took me longer than it sometimes does, because rain makes people drive stupid—on the mountains more than in the valley, I think. People never take those hairpin turns faster or meaner than when it’s wet outside, so I had to be careful.
Lu was there when I got home, as I thought she probably would be. I found her on the back porch, sipping something icy that smelled like sweet rum and watching the rain.
“Welcome back. How’s it going?” she asked, doing a little toast in my direction. “You saw the newspaper this morning.” It wasn’t a question. She knew I’d seen it; I’d taken it with me when I left the house.
“I saw it. Thanks for leaving it out. I went down there, actually.”
“Did you?”
“I did.”
“Not by yourself, I hope.”
“Not by myself, no.”
She let loose a half-smile and took another drink. “Went down there with that Nick guy, didn’t you?”
I had no reason to deny it, so I pulled up one of the wooden deck chairs and made myself comfortable. “Yeah, I did. I thought maybe he’d heard a few extra details, so I called him up. He wasn’t helpful, but I went down there with him while he shot some film for the 5:30 show. We took a look around.”
“Find anything helpful?”
“How do you mean?”
She crossed her legs and leaned back. “Useful, I mean. Clues, or whatever.”
“Why do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“You get weird every time the subject of me moving out comes up. You bugged me to get my own place for ages, then when I picked one—well, anyway. You get weird when it comes to the North Shore apartments.”
“I do?”
“You know you do, and I want to know why. Is it because you used to live down there, back when you were a kid?”
She didn’t wince, or flinch. But her posture changed. She hardened. “Who told you we used to live down there?”
I couldn’t remember. “You told me,” I said, because it was likely to be true. “Or I overheard it somewhere. You lived over near Frasier, back in North Chatt, up in the hills—right?”
Lu flashed me a face like she’d just bit into a lemon. “Up in the hills. Sure. Up there. Back on Tremont. In that area, anyway.”
“Where?”
“Don’t bother looking for it. That house burned down fifteen years ago. It burned down not long after my mother left it.”
“Where was it?”
“Oh, hell,” she said. “Over there—not far from where the gas station is. Up Tremont a little ways, but not far. In that strip where now they’ve got little businesses in those old houses. You know. Florists and the like.”
“Not far from the river.”
“Not far from the river.” She was still subtly rigid. She was trying not to look tense, and it wasn’t working. “But that was a long time ago.”
“Did it ever flood back then? I know the river used to flood sometimes, even after the TVA got a foothold here. I was just wondering, since you were so close to the river.”
“Sometimes, it flooded.”
“Sometimes?”
She dipped her glass and her head. “Once or twice.”
“What was it like?”
Lu set her glass down on the small patio table beside her. “Are you fishing for something, sweetheart?”