1 The Bank of the River Read online

  “He figured I had taken it, and he came into my room one night to confront me about it. He was as kind as could be, and when I confessed I’d found and taken it, he wasn’t angry. He sat down next to me and asked me why I’d taken it, and I told him I thought it was impressive, and that I just wanted to browse through it. He asked me if I could read any of it, and I told him I couldn’t. He asked me if I’d like to be able to read some of it, and I told him that yes, I would like to. A big smile spread across his face, and he told me he’d help me.

  “My mother knew all about it. She didn’t have the qualms that Claire had. She was supportive. I think she might have married my father because of it, to tell you the truth.

  “That week my father showed me how to jump in. He didn’t push me, it was my choice. He taught me what you could do in it, and how to maneuver. He had a few tricks that he showed me. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. None of my high school friends could do what I could do. But he taught me to keep it to myself, and I tried.”

  “Did you confront any entities together?” Steven asked. “Like we just did with Lukas?”

  “Yes, several. The first was a ghost that inhabited a barn. A friend of Dad’s had a barn that always spooked his horses. He had to fight with them to get them inside, and he asked my dad to take a look. Even though he always kept quiet about his gift, close friends always seemed to know. They could sense it. They wouldn’t talk about it openly, but when there was a problem that needed solving, they would ask my dad. He always helped them.”

  “What happened with the ghost?” Steven asked, intrigued.

  “Oh, the barn ghost. Well, sure enough, we saw what he meant. In the field these horses were passive and gentle. You could pet them, feed them, lead them around, no problem. But if you tried to take them into the barn, they’d rear up. They would not go in.

  “My dad took me back to the barn one night, and sat a chair in the middle of it, kind of like I did with you in the hallway. He had me place a blindfold on his eyes, and gave me instructions not to interrupt him until he was done, but to make sure he didn’t walk into something and hurt himself. He went into a trance and I watched him for an hour in that dark barn, and let me tell you, it was spooky. Good fun for a teenager, but still scary as hell. After a while I noticed the body, swinging from the rafters. It was the top half of a woman, hung by the neck. The bottom half was missing. Grisly sight. Gave me nightmares for weeks. But that was the information he needed to sort it out. Within a few days he’d solved the problem and the horses would go into the barn on their own.”

  Steven was enraptured with the story. “How did he solve it?”

  “I don’t know,” Roy replied. “He never told me. At first he only involved me in the trance part. Later on, as we worked together more, he would let me see more of what he did. And he would show me parts of the book, as he recorded the things he’d done. And he’d explain other parts as I began to figure things out.”

  “Perhaps he figured,” Steven said, “that a hanging woman was enough for the first experience of a fourteen-year-old.”

  “You’re probably right,” Roy replied. “It knocked my socks off. It was better than a whole year of horror movies at the cinema.”

  “Do you have friends that ask you to solve problems?” Steven asked Roy.

  “Yes, I do. Not many, I couldn’t do much and keep the promise I made to Claire. But I’ve helped a few friends since she died, and a few while she was alive, that I hid from her.”

  Steven paused. “Were you ever planning on showing this to me?” he asked.

  Roy thought about this for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I always knew it would be you. I didn’t know how or when it would happen, but I always thought at some point it would be you. You have the gift. I think you have it stronger than me.”

  Steven didn’t argue, he just smiled. He had always known how to argue with Roy, and rarely agreed with him. This was one of those times when he didn’t need to do either, but just let it stand.

  -

  Steven sat on his deck, overlooking Lake Washington, sipping coffee. It was a rare sunny morning and the lake was unusually calm, the water flat and shiny. In the distance he could see an eagle flying over the trees in Seward Park. Things seemed peaceful, balanced.

  In his own home, Steven had fixed the hallway floorboards and had put the rest of the house in order. Things seemed normal. He slept the last few nights without incident. He remembered opening his eyes while lying in bed, glancing at the places where the faces had appeared, wondering if they would come back. They didn’t.

  The downstairs bathroom was the most uncomfortable. The idea of Ben dying in that tub made him feel very sad. Steven didn’t use it as much as the upstairs bathroom, so it was easy to avoid.

  He still had Ben’s journal. He had been reading more of it, especially the parts that followed his identification of Lukas as the culprit. The actual story of how Ben was able to subdue Lukas and bury him wasn’t in the journal, but Steven had found the part where he figured it had happened, because the tone changed dramatically, from anger to fear. He had constructed several ways in which Ben might have done it. Some involved heroics, others subterfuge, others brute force. None of them seemed right to him, but he felt compelled to fill in the blank spaces. He liked the heroic scenario, and let it sit in his brain. He knew it wasn’t what really happened, but that didn’t matter.

  The sun was warming the air but it was still comfortably cool. He took another sip of coffee and glanced out over the water. No one was on the lake, and it looked like a giant mirror, reflecting the green of the trees that surrounded it.

  Steven knew he would spend more time with his father from now on. What they had gone though was the ultimate father-son bonding experience. He had learned how resilient his old man was, and how he had misjudged him for so long. There was so much he still didn’t know about him, and he resolved to find out.

  Then there was the book, and Roy’s knowledge. Steven knew Roy intended to train him, to give him the knowledge he possessed. Steven welcomed it. He wasn’t sure where his career or his love life might lead him, but he knew this was a new, unexpected dimension of his life, and he was ready to absorb whatever Roy felt like passing along. It was exciting to him, more exciting than anything that had happened to him since his divorce.

  Maybe since before that, he thought. Maybe more exciting than anything else in my life.

  Looking over the small ripples that now began to form on the lake, Steven imagined the flow, and pictured it in his mind. He fell into it, and floated, waiting to see what would occur. He heard the sound of birds, amplified. When he was on the bank he could hear them, but couldn’t see them – now in the river, he knew exactly where they were, what type of bird they were. He could move to where they were perched without disturbing them. He could fly with them, if he chose.

  He heard the sounds of his neighbors. The sentences and comments of everyday domesticity emerged and he suddenly felt like a spy. He was surprised at how easy it was to fine tune his hearing. He knew he could move inside their houses if he wanted, but he didn’t want to violate their privacy. And he knew that there were more ghosts in houses nearby, and he was through with ghosts for a while.

  He turned his attention back to the lake, and imagined what it would be like to be buried under water. In a rush he was transported into the lake, and he instinctively held his breath. Water enveloped him, cold and dark. Large green plants brushed against his feet, and he could see a salmon swim above him. He sunk into the cold earth below the lake, and felt the darkness surround him. This is hell, he thought.

  He emerged from the flow, and felt his headache return. He drank more coffee. The pain was substantially less than the first few times he’d jumped in, and it dissipated more rapidly. He had the sensation of having just completed a morning workout.

  Michael still worried him. It was like when you leave for a trip, and have a nagging feeling you’ve left something at home that y
ou should have brought. But he had learned to trust Roy. Roy was far more experienced with people like Michael. Trusting Roy had been hard to do at first, but now Steven found it easier. The old man was a cranky sonofabitch, but he loved him and knew he should heed his advice.

  He stood on the bank once more, ready to dive back into the flow. The bank was losing its attraction to him, and the river was becoming a place of immense pleasure and discovery. His skepticism now seemed like a crutch, a way to justify denying himself these new experiences. Jumping in felt like freedom from constraints he had placed upon himself.

  He glanced back over the lake, its calmness reassuring him. He watched the people moving around the path that circled the lake, some jogging, some pushing strollers, some just walking, solo. He felt sorry for them all. He felt liberated. He felt like a new man.

  Michael Richan lives in Seattle, Washington.

  Steven and Roy work together to confront the ghosts of Mason Manor

  in the next book of The River series,

  A Haunting in Oregon.

  Visit

  www.michaelrichan.com

  to learn about other books in The River series.

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