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The underbrush rustled angrily as he crashed through it, tripping over the forest floor. Barely any moonlight shone through the dense canopy, and he suffered for it. His arms were littered with scratches and bruises. He felt like he’d been walking forever.
He felt like he’d only just buried his mother’s bones.
In reality, that had been days ago, and he’d been moving steadily since. He’d been aiming for east, to head into the desert, but must have gotten turned around and headed north. His mother would be pissed. They aren’t supposed to double back so quickly.
Well… it was just him now.
The sound of running water drifted lazily over to him, and he changed course and headed towards it, vaguely remembering something about that from the few survival videos he’d seen in school.
Abram…
The soft voice whispered through the trees and stopped him dead in his tracks. That couldn’t be- No. He was exhausted and his mind was playing tricks on him. He’d been awake too long-
Abram… Where are you?
No. No. It's not her, she's gone , he burned her and buried what was left three fucking days ago, it can't be her , he thought as he shook his head hard, it-
A sob. I can’t find you!
Abram’s breath hitched. He’d only heard his mother cry once, many years ago, but it’s the same sound, the exact little choked-back thing she’d hidden behind a shut bedroom door. The small part of himself that kept chanting she’s dead she’s dead it’s not her it can’t be was quickly overridden by the rest of him. “Mom?”
Abram! It was relief in her voice, the same relief he’d only heard a small handful of dangerous times before. Abram, come here!
He ran, stumbling over tree roots and bushes, uneven paths forged by the animals that lived here. He crashed through the trees and came upon a river, and-
There she stood in the shallow water on the riverbank, in a white dress, the bottom hem damp where it touched the water. Mary Hatford.
He rushed over to her, blinking to clear the sudden blurriness in his eyes. “Mom, I- I thought-” She shushed him and ran a gentle hand through his hair. “I missed you,” he whimpered, and the tears fell from his eyes.
Abram… she said, almost sing-song like. I’ve been looking for you. I’ve been looking for my baby.
He took a step forward. The toes of his shoes dipped into the water. He looked up at her, and- wait. She had never been that tall. The feeling of wrong oozed down his spine and into his stomach, and then his mother’s face shifted grotesquely into someone else, some thing else, and-
She shoved his head underwater.
She’s not Mom , was all he could think as he scrabbled ineffectually at the hand gripping his hair under the rushing current. He could see now, as the thing faced him and began to drag him in, that this wasn’t, had never been, Mary Hatford. Her hair shone blonde in the moonlight, swirling around her pale face chaotically, mouth open in an irate scream rendered silent by the water around them.
Abram didn’t know her. He didn’t understand why she was doing this to him.
Black spots danced across his vision already as he dug his fingers into the soil to prevent himself from being dragged in further. She was pulling him in and under. His heart was beating frantically, every part of him fighting this because he had to keep going, had to keep living, that’s what she died for, I can’t just let this happen!
The mud underneath his hands gave way, and she dragged him fully beneath the river.
Everything was dark as he blinked his eyes furiously, trying to see his captor. He didn’t know whether it was because of the night or the lack of oxygen to his brain. His chest burned. He would have to breathe in eventually. He knew that even as he used up the last of his oxygen trying to twist away from his captor, even as his heart started skipping beats. He twisted to take one last look up at the sky through the rippling water, hand reaching up as he exhaled the last of the air in his lungs, and then breathed in.
It hurt. Even to him, and he was no stranger to pain. His body was full of scars carved into his skin, but the water flooding into his lungs hurt more than anything else he’d ever felt. His body tried to cough it out and ended up breathing in more water. He clawed at his chest, as if he could just get it out, get it out, I need to breathe, I need to-
Suddenly brightness filled his vision. Dying was quicker than I expected , Abram thought, but then he realized something was holding his hand, something warm and alive and so very different from the hands that had been dragging him down. Hands that were suddenly gone.
The living thing in his hand gave a mighty tug upwards. He didn’t fight as he breathed in another aching lungful of water. He barely registered breaking the surface, something holding his head above the water as he was towed back to shore. He only fully comes back to himself as he was coughing up all the water in his lungs, throat and chest burning.
That first ragged breath of air felt like heaven even as it scorched his insides on the way down.
A hand pushed the hair off his forehead, and he jerked back in alarm, eyes flashing to the figure hunched over him.
It was a man, wet hair plastered to his head and dripping into intense eyes. He sputtered and coughed some more, leaning back over so he could spit out the rest of the river water. The man stroked his hair off his forehead again. “Can you walk?” the man asked tonelessly.
Abram was too dazed to duck from the gentle touch and too busy sucking in oxygen to answer. The man sighed anyway and got to his feet. He watched the man look back towards the water with absolutely no expression on his face. After a moment breathing wasn’t such a Herculean task, the pain in his chest and head less critical, and he became aware that he was shaking like a leaf.
“Can you walk now?” the man asked again, still staring disinterestedly at the moving water. Abram avoided looking at the river, afraid of getting another glimpse of the woman who’d tried to drag him under, and instead studied the man who had saved him.
The man’s clothes were dark, either because it was an intentional look or because they were soaking wet and clinging to him. A large battery-powered lantern was strapped across his body, still on. He wasn’t very tall or impressive looking, but something about his expressionless face was unnerving.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Abram said, voice hoarse.
The man looked at him, turning his back to the river. “If you think she won’t try to get you again, you’re stupider than you look.”
His lip curled. “And you think you can protect me?”
The man tilted his head as he looked down at him. “She’s always been more afraid of me than not.” He didn’t answer, and the man was silent. The wind picked up, and they both shivered in the cold air. “Well, whatever. I warned you. Stay here and die if you want, your life is no longer in my hands.”
Just as the man turned and stepped away from where Abram was struggling into a sitting position, the wind picked up, rustling the tree tops and carrying on it the faint sound of weeping. Abram saw a puff of frost in front of the man’s face, and realized it was his breath. He was still shaking.
The man stepped back to him and reached down. “If you want to live you have to trust me.”
Abram could hear his mother’s- his real mother’s- voice in his head. There was no choice. He clasped the man’s wrist and allowed himself to be yanked up. After a few fumbling steps, the man wrapped a secure arm around Abram’s waist and supported him as they hustled upstream.
The woman wailed, heartbroken.
“Don’t listen to her,” the man murmured, voice hard. “She’s lying.”
It struck Abram as something very odd to say. But he allowed his eyes to fall closed and for the man to lead his weak feet.
After a while the man jostled him slightly, holding him up even as he reached for the door of a cottage right by the riverbank. Despite only being a few minute's walk upstream from the rushing waters that had almost been Abram’s doom, the river was calmer here.
The woman had not stopped crying.
The interior of the cottage was plain but cozy, decorated only with battery-powered string lights hung on the walls and across the exposed beams of the ceiling. The soft glow illuminated the small couch and large supply of cushions strewn across the floor in front of the fireplace. The man deposited him heavily on the couch before disappearing into a side room, returning what seemed like only a moment later and shoving a bundle of clothes at Abram. “Change before you freeze to death.”
Abram reached out to take them, and only then realized that he was shaking visibly.
The man turned his back as Abram started struggling out of his waterlogged clothes, leaning down and fiddling with the fireplace. Abram hadn’t known just how cold he was until he began putting on dry clothes. Instead of abating, his shaking only became more violent. Huh , he thought. I’ve never been in shock before. This sucks.
He was snapped out of his thoughts when the other man draped a blanket around him and used it to maneuver him onto the hearth, right in front of the fire. He hadn’t noticed the fire start, nor had he noticed the man leaving the room and coming back, though he must have; he was wearing dry clothes and had a towel draped over his head. Time was running together.
“Where are we?” Abram asked, looking up at him as his cold fingers clutched at the fuzzy blanket.
“My house,” the man said shortly.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Andrew Minyard.”
"What was that-"
He was interrupted when the man took his towel and rubbed it over Abram’s head. "You're awfully chatty for someone who's undeniably in shock."
Abram ducked away and glared up at the stranger through his damp and frizzy bangs. "I want to know what happened to me."
The man- Andrew- huffed and looked away. "How does your chest feel?"
"My... it hurts, actually."
"Yeah, I thought so." He sat next to Abram and grabbed a stack of large cushions, arranging them around Abram, urging him to lean back when he was done. "Common symptoms of near drowning are shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing, and vomiting," he recited in the same bored voice that Abram was beginning to assume was the norm for him.
"Andrew." At the sound of his name, he stopped and finally looked Abram in the eye again. "What just happened." Andrew huffed and looked away. "I just nearly fucking drowned, something dragged me into a river, and it wasn't- that thing wasn't human because it sounded- she had my mom's face until she didn't, I don't-" He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath through the sharp pain in his chest. "I would be seriously freaking out right now if I weren't so damn tired." He looked back at Andrew finally. "You know what that was. I need to know."
Andrew stared into the fire in silence for so long that Abram thought he wouldn't answer. Just as he tilted his head down and closed his eyes, prepared to give in to the overwhelming exhaustion weighing him down, Andrew spoke. "She lives on the river, comes out at night and weeps. If you're close enough to hear the water, you're close enough for her to call to you, ask you to come to her. She's looking for her children, her twins. One she lost, and one she drowned. But she'll never find them, so she takes whoever she can and tries to drag them down with her, underneath the water that killed her."
Abram stared at him, digesting the words as best he could through his foggy brain. "So she's... a ghost?"
"Ghost, spirit, haunting, whatever you wanna call it." He grabbed a poker and jabbed moodily at the fireplace. "Whether you believe or not-"
"No, I. I believe," Abram admitted. "It- she had. When she was calling to me, she was my mom. Looked like her and, and sounded like her. That's why I..." was so stupid . "I just wanted her to stop crying."
Andrew studied his face for a moment, and then traced down his own cheek a path that mimicked the tear running down Abram’s. He hadn't even realized he was crying. He turned away and scrubbed at his face. Andrew let it go without comment. "She lies. Every night she haunts the river and weeps, but they're crocodile tears. Stronger people than you have followed her right into the water." He sighed and leaned back against his own cushion, staring into the fire once more and letting the conversation die.
They could still hear distant weeping over the crackling of the fire.
Eventually Abram’s eyelids grew too heavy, and Andrew set him up on the couch in the recovery position. "Just in case you do end up vomiting. It would be stupid to have gone through all that effort just to let you choke on your puke now."
Andrew turned on a small portable radio, piano music crackling its way through the small speakers. It was just enough to lull Abram to the edge of sleep, ready to tip over into temporary oblivion. Before he could, though, Andrew spoke again, almost too quietly to be heard. "What's your name?"
He had to take a moment to remember. "Neil Josten."
Andrew nodded minutely. "Good night, Neil."
Neil closed his eyes and slept.
--
Andrew was sitting with a little boy on the riverbank. Neil watched him through the window, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. The boy jumped around and splashed in the shallow water, the bottoms of his overalls wet up to the knees.
Neil had woken up alone, pleasantly warmed by the embers still burning in the fireplace, though his chest still ached and his stomach twisted uncomfortably. The little clock on the mantle said it was mid morning. He couldn’t remember having slept this late since he was a child. He didn’t know whether to stay inside and wait for Andrew to come get him, or make himself known. His stomach gurgled and whined, reminding him that the last time he’d eaten was technically two days ago now.
The air outside was cool despite the sunshine, and Neil rubbed his arms as he approached the two on the riverbank. The gravel crunched painfully under his bare feet, but he ignored it. “Andrew?” he called when he was close enough.
Both the boy and the man looked up at him sharply, the boy’s laughter cutting off abruptly. He watched Neil with wide eyes, and reached out to clutch Andrew’s hand. There was stitching across the little pocket on the front of his overalls in blue thread that read Aaron .
He didn’t step out of the river.
Andrew turned to look at Neil darkly. Neil stopped a short ways in front of them and waved awkwardly. “Uh… good morning.”
Andrew stood and stepped in front of the little boy, acting as a barrier between them like he thought Neil would hurt him. “Shouldn’t you be asleep still? You had a very traumatic night.”
Neil shrugged. "I'm hungry."
The little boy- Aaron, Neil assumed- peered around Andrew’s legs up at Neil. He brushed a long strand of curly blond hair out of his face and tugged at the bottom of Andrew’s shirt to get his attention. “You hatfta feed him,” he said seriously. “It’s only fair.”
“I saved his life,” Andrew retorted. “I think that’s fair enough.”
Aaron scowled and stuck his bottom lip out stubbornly. If Neil hadn’t been watching Andrew, he would have missed the slightest uptick at the corners of his mouth.
He reached out and brushed the boy’s hair back gently. “I’m going into town for a bit, but I’ll be back, okay?”
“Okay!” Aaron chirped. He turned and hopped a little in the water, delighting in the splashes. He looked back at Neil and waved before going back to playing.
Andrew watched him for a moment longer, face strangely blank, before he turned his back and headed into the house. Neil followed him hesitantly. "Are you just going to leave hi-"
"Yes," Andrew bit out, throwing the clothes Neil was wearing last night at him. They were dry and soft. "Get dressed. I'm taking you to town and dropping you off at the bus station."
--
The town nearest Andrew's home was a 20 minute drive in Andrew's beat up Chevy Blazer, and it passed in silence save for the tires crunching over the dirt road and then the highway. It was a small, sleepy-looking sort of place, the kind where most of the residents knew each other and their business. Andrew took pity on Neil and his growling stomach and stopped at a diner, ignoring the looks and outright staring from a few of the townspeople.
For someone who didn’t like being watched, it was distinctly unsettling to Neil. But even more than that was the fact that the looks were full of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Andrew didn’t speak until they were safely ensconced in a corner booth, and only then to grunt out, “The usual, and whatever he wants,” to the waitress, a dumpy middle-aged woman with a name tag that read Betsy .
"Did someone else wander into the river again?" she asked, not unkindly. Andrew looked away out the window, and the waitress turned to Neil with a soft, sad smile. "What'll you have, honey?"
She was too friendly. Neil didn’t like her.
"So," he started after Betsy left, trying to satisfy a little bit of his curiosity before Andrew made him leave. "You live next to an evil river."
Andrew slanted an unimpressed look at him. "The river isn't evil. It's just moving water carving its way through the earth. That woman-"
"The weeping woman?"
Andrew nodded, looked back out the window. "She was human, once. Fucked up, and a terrible mother, but only as evil as the average human can get. Now..."
Neil looked down at his hands, tracing the print on the vinyl tablecloth, then back up at Andrew. His hair, now that it wasnt soaking wet, was blond and fluffy. A little patch of hair stuck up awkwardly on the side of his head. "What happened to her?" Neil asked.
Andrew sighed. "She died. Drowned in the same river she threw her children into."
"You said last night she lost one and drowned the other."
"She tried to drown them both. One was rescued and resuscitated. The other got too far downstream.”
Neil sat back, trying to fathom a mother doing that to her children. "Why?"
Andrew shrugged, placing his chin in his hand, elbow propped up on the tabletop. "People say different things. She was always insane. She saw the boys' father with another woman. Her children made her angry. She was always abusive. But none of that really matters."
The waitress came then, and they sat silently as they ate their food, Neil troubled and Andrew uncaring.
"Did you find my duffel bag last night?" Neil blurted halfway through his pancakes.
"No."
Icy dread dropped into Neil's stomach. That bag held the only things he'd owned in the whole world, his clothes, all their backup cash, the list of his mother's contacts. Without it, he-
"Do you have anywhere to go?" Andrew asked, looking directly at him.
"No," he answered quietly.
Andrew sighed and looked back down at his plate. "My couch should be comfortable enough until you figure something out."
Neil's breath caught, and he looked up sharply. "I-"
"Do or don’t, I don’t care. Just make up your mind."
Neil looked back down at his food. He wasn’t used to relying on strangers, but this man had saved his life last night just because he was there. “Thank you,” he said quietly. Andrew responded only with a scoff.
On the drive back, as they turned off the highway and onto the dirt road that led to Andrew's home, Neil asked, "Why do you live on the river if it's haunted with a spirit that tries to drown people?"
Andrew was quiet a moment, and then simply said, "Because it's my house."
When they pulled up, the little boy was gone from the river. Andrew looked upstream for only a moment before continuing his way into the house. Neil hesitated before following, wondering if the child lived nearby or was somewhere safe. The familiarity between Andrew and Aaron led Neil to believe that they were related somehow, yet Andrew was the only other adult around that Neil had seen yet, but it was unlikely that he would leave a child in his care unattended for hours at a time.
He put Aaron out of his mind and followed Andrew inside.
Andrew was somehow more relaxed at home on the riverbank than he had been when they were in town. Neil didn’t understand it, but he had a feeling it had something to do with the stares that had pinned them down all through breakfast. He would have expected that in such a small town but the majority of the looks had been aimed at Andrew, not Neil.
The others had looked at Andrew the way bystanders would look at a tragic car wreck.
Andrew slept the rest of the day, indicating a full bookshelf before shutting his bedroom door behind him. He came back out again in the early evening, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and yawning. He prepared a stir fry for the both of them on and old timey gas stove, and then perched in an arm chair facing the window, watching the fog slowly roll over the river.
When the moon rose, the wailing started.
Andrew sat there, watching out the window, listening to the woman's pained wailing. Neil dozed in and out, unable to fall fully asleep to the chilling noise even with the radio on. Andrew stayed up through the night, a sentinel bathed in the soft glow of his string lights, listening, Neil assumed, to make sure no one else would come near enough to be lured to the river.
--
Neil was roused in the pale blue light of early dawn when Andrew stood up and stretched, clicking the battery-powered lights off and drawing the curtains shut. Neil watched him, still laying on the couch, as he went over to the door, slipped some rain boots on, and left.
Neil sat up and scratched his head. He wasn't sure whether he should follow or not, but he was insanely curious, so he got up, shoved his feet in his own shoes, and followed after him.
The sun was bleeding into the sky as it rose, pale pinks mixing into the blue and indigo to the very western edge. Andrew was trekking into the shallows of the river, heading toward a small bundle.
Only when Andrew reached for it did Neil realize it was a tiny body, lying face-down and unmoving.
His steps carried him to the riverbank without any higher thought. He almost stepped into the water, when Andrew held out a hand sharply, stopping Neil in his tracks. This close it was obvious that it was Aaron, the little boy who had so happily splashed in the water and chattered to Andrew.
Neil's heart was about to beat out of his chest.
Andrew's face was devastatingly blank as he reached down and scooped the boy into his arms, holding him against his chest and standing back up straight. He turned and walked to the riverbank, bouncing the little body in his arms, and sat down on dry land. He moved the boy so he was sitting up in Andrew's lap, their feet still in the water, Andrew's arm around his waist to keep him upright.
He's still in the same clothes as yesterday , Neil noticed.
And then, Aaron coughed, hard enough to wrack his tiny frame, ejecting the river water from his lungs. Andrew held him steady all through it, shh ing softly and stroking a hand over Aaron's wet hair. The sun was peeking over the tree tops when he finally took a whole, shuddering breath and turned. "Aar’n?" he asked muzzily.
"I'm here," Andrew answered, to Neil’s confusion. The boy wrapped his arms around Andrew's neck and buried his face in his chest. Andrew held him tightly, protectively. "I've got you. Shh, I'm here. I've got you, Andrew."
Neil’s breath froze in his chest. As Andrew- Aaron?- continued holding the boy, rocking gently from side to side, Neil clenched his fists to keep them from shaking. He felt sick.
Eventually the little boy calmed down. He stayed in Aaron’s lap for a beat before squirming out of his hold. He jumped up, suddenly dry and with a brilliant smile on his face. “C’mon, Aaron! I wanna go catch frogs!”
There was a beat of silence. “But I don’t wanna hurt them,” Aaron whispered tonelessly, as if forcing the words out through a resisting throat.
Andrew laughed, high pitched and innocent. “We won’t hurt ‘em! I just wanna hop with ‘em. Hop hop hop!” He jumped once, twice, three times in the shallow water, little rain boots sending up splashes of water. The fourth splash never came, little feet vanishing before they could touch the water, gone in the span of half a breath. There was a faint sound of laughter on the wind before it too died down, leaving behind only the gurgling of the river in the early morning sunlight.
Neil sat down heavily in the dirt.
"He's..."
"Yeah," Andrew- no- Aaron said quietly, still watching the spot where he vanished.
"I thought- he looks so much like you, I-" His breath caught in his throat. "Twins."
Aaron looked up at the brilliant blue sky. "Twins," he confirmed.
“You… You’re not who everyone thinks you are.”
“No.” He glared darkly at the river. It continued sparkling in the innocently in the sunshine.
Neil opened his mouth, but Aaron quickly stood and squelched his way back to the house. There was a distant slam. The bedroom door was shut when Neil went back inside.
--
It was late afternoon when he finally emerged from the bedroom. Neil sat perched on the edge of the couch, not knowing whether he should leave and make his own way out of here. It felt wrong to do that, though. Like he was obligated to stay after learning such a secret, something that no one else in the town Aaron lived in his whole life seemed to know.
Aaron crept over and sat down at the other end of the couch, staring down at a photo frame held in his hands. He held it out to Neil, who took it, and stared down at two little boys, caught in identical laughter, playing in the river just outside.
“That’s Andrew,” Aaron said, pointing to the boy on the left.
“Aaron...”
Aaron made a choked noise. Neil looked at him in concern. “The last time someone alive called me by my name was almost fifteen years ago,” he explained, still staring down at the picture of his brother. After a moment he started talking.
“It was always just me and Andrew and our mom. We lived here and didn’t really go into town that often, so Andrew and I were always together. He was my best friend.” He took a deep breath. “Even back then, our mom would get mad. At us, or something that happened in town, or just- she was usually angry. Other times she wasn’t, but...”
He leaned back and ran a hand through his hair, looked up at the ceiling. Neil watched him carefully, still holding tight to the photo of the twins. “We were playing in the river. Pretending to be frogs. Andrew thought they were funny, he liked the way they hopped. I was just happy to see him laugh. He was always a really serious little kid.” His face goes blank. “She’d gone into town. She was in a bad mood already, and she’d made us stay behind. She came back and she was the angriest I’d ever seen her. She was yelling about something to do with our father and mistakes, but I just thought she was gonna hit us again so I grabbed Andrew’s hand and held on as tight as I could. But instead she picked us up and just… threw us in.”
Neil stared at him. “She threw…?”
Aaron nodded, still looking up at the ceiling. “The bank where we always played was wide, but it just drops off into the deep part of the river, and once we were in, the current… It was the rainy season, so the river was moving fast. We were too small to keep our heads up.” He pressed a hand to his chest absentmindedly, either in memory of the pain or to steady his breaking voice. “It hurt, so bad. Having the water inside. But the worst part was- his hand slipped out of mine, and I heard him- he called for me one last time, but the water was moving, and...”
“He drowned,” Neil said hollowly. “And you didn’t.”
“A cop had followed my mom back from town. Apparently she’d caused a scene. He saw her toss us in and just stand there, so he tried to pull us out. He only got me.” He looked down at his hands, twisted in his lap. “Andrew… he was always taking care of me. I never really realized it until- after. I’d always just do what he said without asking. But, anyway. Mom was mad that day, and he thought- see, she’d always pick me, for some reason. We were identical but she always hit me more than Andrew. So that day, when she left, he…” He took a shuddering breath. “He said, Hey, let’s trade , so we switched our overalls so I had his and he had mine. And when the cop pulled me out, he called me Andrew, and I just… I thought maybe if everyone kept saying his name he’d show back up and correct everyone, but. Their bodies were found a couple days later.”
Neil let a deep breath out, and ran a hand through his hair. He was no stranger to his father’s endless well of cruelty, but this was inimaginable. His mother had been the one he’d relied on all his life, and while she hadn’t been perfect, she’d never hurt Neil as an outlet for her own feelings or tried to kill him. Even at times when simply getting rid of him would have been easier or assured her own survival, she’d never hesitated to put Neil’s well-being first.
Even when she’d escaped from her abusive husband, leaving Neil behind had never been an option for her, even though Neil was the reason his father chased them.
He suddenly missed her with every fiber of his being, and had to take a deep breath to refocus on the present.
“This was the house you lived in with them,” Neil guessed. Aaron remained silent. “Why did you come back here?”
“Because it’s mine,” he answered hollowly. “I was her last living relative, so the house went to me. And I...” He took a deep breath and looked down at his hands clenched in his lap. “People started drowning in the river after that summer. In town they started talking about the wailing at night. They all heard it, and they didn’t do anything about it. Just like they never-” He cut himself off and stood from the couch, walking over to the window to look out. “I came back here, because I knew. But I found-” His voice shook. “I found my brother, laying in the river, and I didn’t know what to do so I just… And then he- he woke up and he recognized me like he wasn’t dead and I wasn’t older and-” He sucked in a deep breath, not quite a sob, and ran a hand down his face. “He smiled at me and said come on, Aaron, I wanna go catch frogs and it felt like coming home after a lifetime of being away.”
Neil felt a horrible realization sink into his gut like a block of ice. “You do this every morning. You find him and...”
Aaron sniffed, but didn’t say anything for a long while, until he had scrubbed his hand across his cheeks. “I’m not letting anyone else die in this river,” he said quietly.
“You keep watch,” Neil realized, recalling Aaron sitting at the window all night. He studied the tense line of the other man’s shoulders, imagined that he could see something weighing him down physically. “What happened isn’t your fault,” he told him.
“I know,” Aaron said dully.
“The drownings that keep happening aren’t your fault either.” Aaron stayed silent that time, so Neil decided to push. “Just because you couldn’t save them-”
“Don’t,” Aaron interrupted, dark and angry. “You don’t know-”
“Based on what you told me, it’s obvious you’re not at fault for-”
“You don’t get it,” he snapped, whirling around to face Neil. “The reason she’s still here is because I am still here. The reason she calls people, why she cries for her baby, why my brother has to relive his death -” His voice cracked painfully, and he placed a hand over his eyes. “It’s all because I’m still here,” he continued, so quiet Neil held his breath to hear him. “It’s because I just didn’t die when I was supposed to.”
Something sharp and immovable lodged itself in Neil’s throat. He didn’t like the way Aaron was thinking, didn’t like how it offered only one solution to everything. “Aaron-”
“I’m going to go look for your duffel,” he said, not looking at Neil as he left. The door closed too quietly behind him.
--
It was around midnight when the screaming started.
She had been relatively quiet all night, only sobbing as she walked the banks outside. She’d gotten close enough to the house that Neil had hidden childishly behind the couch, out of sight of the window. He was afraid that if he’d looked, he would have seen her horrible face staring back at him.
His heart pounded in his chest as he stumbled from the house, looking around wildly. The screech came again, and Neil clapped his hands over his ears, trying to muffle the unholy noise. His heart nearly stopped in his chest when a hand closed around his wrist and pulled, but it was only Aaron, tugging him towards his Chevy. “You have to go, and you have to go now .”
“What-”
“She’s mad,” Aaron babbled, more shaken than Neil had ever seen him. “She’s- shit .” He patted down his pockets uselessly. “Don’t move,” he barked, and then dashed into the house. She screamed again, nearer this time, and he looked at the river to find-
“Andrew,” he whispered, horrified. The boy stood at the very edge of the riverbank, feet still in the shallow water. His wet hair stuck flat to his head, and even from the distance, even in the dark, Neil could see he was crying, little body shuddering from the force of it. He didn’t stop to think, and started forward, even as the boy started sobbing harder. He was almost to the water when an arm wrapped around his chest and pulled him back with such force that he fell, cushioned by a soft body. “Let me go! He’s-”
“You can’t help him,” Aaron said in his ear. “He’s already dead, there’s nothing you can do for him. Just stop!”
Neil stopped struggling, and Aaron let him up again after a moment, but kept a restraining arm around him. They both looked at the boy crying quietly in the water.
“I’m s-sorry,” Andrew said, voice made higher around his tears. “Aaron, she- she’s making me-”
“I know, buddy,” Aaron said softly. “It’s okay. I know. You’re okay, Andrew.” There were tear tracks down his face.
She screamed again, so loud it could have been directly in their ears. She was getting closer.
“I gotta go, okay, buddy?” Aaron called. “I have to go, but I’ll be right back, alright?”
“Hurry,” Andrew begged. “Please.” And then he was gone.
Neil didn’t have time to get his bearings before Aaron was hauling him into the Chevy and slamming the door shut. He picked something off the ground before climbing into his own seat and jamming the key in the ignition. He shoved the thing into Neil’s lap and stomped on the gas, roaring away from the cottage and the river and the ghosts of his dead family.
Neil looked down at the soggy thing in his lap. His duffel. “You found-”
“Yes. And now you have to go.”
--
They didn’t speak until they arrived at the bus station, a little well-lit building at the fringes of the other side of town. Aaron shifted into park, but kept staring straight ahead out the windshield. “The greyhound comes through here every morning, so you only have to wait a few hours. You got enough for a ticket, right?”
Neil didn’t answer him. “She was using Andrew to lure me into the river again.”
Aaron’s fingers flexed around the steering wheel. “No one’s stayed over for longer than a night before.”
“Except you.”
“Except me,” he agreed. He sighed, and turned to look at Neil. One corner of his mouth tilted in an already-defeated almost-smile. “Have a nice life, Neil Josten.”
Neil looked at him seriously. “Don’t throw yours away, Aaron Minyard.”
Aaron closed his eyes, like he was in pain, and Neil climbed down to the ground. He headed toward the bus station door and didn’t look back when the Chevy roared away.
The first bus east left at 4:55 the next morning with Neil aboard. He watched the trees roll past the window, watched them get sparser and less lush as the distance grew, leaving behind oceans and rivers for dry middle land.
He never went back to the west coast.