Downstream by Sean Cannon

The river’s current was strong. Everyone knew that, although very few ever felt it. The ripping current. That current was what caused the body to float to the surface. It had been the first dead person I ever saw. Actually, no, that’s a lie. John’s funeral had been my first sight of a corpse. I suppose it all started with him. I was not meant to see that one,not that I was meant to see the other.

I had been nine when old jolly John died. I called him uncle when in fact he was my grand-uncle. I only ever referred to him as that because my pops did.

‘Wanna go see uncle John? Will we go see him Adam?’ he would say, uncle John who was suffering from oral cancer. The doctors only gave him a year and a half.

I hadn’t known him very well, whether that was for the best, I don’t know. It might have hurt more, but not like I was going to have a full grasp of the situation, not at age nine. Still, thinking about it now, I wish I had known the man more, as an adult, not just a child.

My grandmother was the first to notice me. At the funeral home. Drowned in the sea of people staring at the open coffin. When Grandma did catch me, I saw her jump, rushing over to take me out of that stuffy room. God,it was so warm in there, but yet cold. The Sadness. You could just feel it. Unfortunately she had caught me too late. I had gotten nearly two full minutes of just looking at him, John, done up in his tuxedo. Dead.

I told them I was alright, they all tried to convince me John was just sleeping for a while, I played along with it. But seriously, come on, I knew why we were there. I knew.

It had been after the burial, I think it was just about a week, when I started seeing John. Every night, I would doze off and instead of some stupendous dream, I would see John. Just John and myself, stuck in some endless void. Jolly John, who would just stand there,staring at me, blankly. His eyes never left mine, he never said a word. John may as well have been dead in that dream, he was as lifeless as when I saw him in that funeral home.

No,that’s wrong.

I would like to believe that, but no. There was some bit of life in him, only it wasn’t one I had come to sort of know. It had been a look of great shame and disappointment. Like he was asking me ‘why’d you let me go under Adam. Why?’

That’s what I saw every night,well most nights. Sometimes I’d be too scared to sleep. Despite this I never told anyone, I thought if I talked John wouldn’t be very happy. Maybe even start moving, oh I prayed he never would.

But John stayed put, and eventually, overtime, he started to fade. By the age of ten John was the last thing on my mind. Still, I never forgot about those dreams, not fully. You forget a good few things at that age, but no, not jolly Johns stare.

***

Anyway, that had been years before Davey and myself went down to Seasons river on a fine summer’s day, the hottest of the year. We weren’t supposed to be there, Mom had said so, and of course I thought she’d never find out. Mom never told us why we weren’t supposed to be there. I had always thought it was because of the frequent kidnappings there. That may have been part of it but I don’t know. I’d say she knew. Knew about the force around that river, the non-physical one. The one you needed to believe in. The sense may not have been fully, it could have been more like a gut feeling, it was something at least.

I knew she’d have my ass if she found out where we got up to. I knew. ‘Your eldest Adam, you should have more cop on.’ But hey, what she wont know wont hurt her. As far as she would know Davey and I were going for a stroll around the estate. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

I had told Davey we needed to find a big stick,’One big enough to reach the bottom of the river, I want to see how deep this goes,’ I said. Davey, what a lovely little thing he was, went searching. As did I. Davey did find a nice big one by the picnic bench. The bench stood on a small slope, overlooking the river, a spot where I later found out had been the place jolly John heard the bad news. When my Father told me this years after what happened at Seasons river, I almost burst into tears. It all made sense, it was all connected.

I took hold of the stick, little Davey didn’t seem to mind, usually he did, but not this time. If he had been the one who plonked the stick in the water, maybe he wouldn’t have had the strength to pull what was lurking underneath. Maybe what happened next would have been avoided.

I began to push it down, deep, nearly took the whole stick, about a meter and a half. Me and Davey both let out a giggling ‘woh,’ and started to fish the thing around.

It was then that I felt the stick catch onto something. I at first presumed it was some seaweed I was tugging on, but as I tried harder and harder my mental image of what was under started to shift. It went from a rock, to a turtle, to a boulder. ‘Might even be a sleeping hippo,’ my child’s mind imagined, though I thought of it more as a joke.

I asked Davey to help pull from behind, he did so. We counted down from three and gave it one big pull, heave-ho, and out it came.

The both of us fell back, I had been the first to spring up, Davey stayed on the ground, beginning to sob, the fall back probably startled him. He was about to cry, might have, I never stayed to check. Wish I had. Instead I walked over to the river’s edge.

I saw her choked arm, that was what I saw first. I did not make it out at a glance, thought it may have some log, or small tree branch. It wasn’t until I followed it up to the head where I made out what I was looking at.

Her hair was like seaweed, all green, and wet, soaking. There was in fact gross amounts of clumpy seaweed caught in those long strands. Her nose had been taken clean off, leaving only rotted bone traced nostrils. And worst of all, her left eye was missing. It had been filled up with mucky,gloopy water.

I screamed my lungs out, crying. Davey started screaming also. He never saw what I did but I guess hearing me roar like that terrified him. Only nine, Jesus.

We ran, ran all the way home, never lowering our tone as we did. All the while I thought that dead woman was chasing after us, gaining, and soon I would me mere centimeters from that eye socket. Only she couldn’t. She had no legs. They had been ripped clean off.

I heard about the legs when the police found the body, all mangled and dismembered, only not by a knife or any weapon. The medical examiner concluded the woman must have gotten ripped apart by that river. Ripping currents.

***

The dreams started to come back. First as short spurts that I would awake screaming from, and then as long drawn out terrors which I would awake crying from, but not screaming. See there’s a difference. When you can’t bear to say a thing, you know it got you. It certainly got me. Every night.

Again I would be in the endless void, and there would be the woman. Staring at me with her one eye. The nose, or should I say lack thereof, made her look almost 2d. Somehow. She was like a cardboard cutout, stiff, but still breathing. Somehow. Just as filthy and soaked as when she arose from Seasons river. And of course, her legs were missing. Despite that, she was still at eye level. She hovered.

Those dreams continued on, even when I discovered the identity of who was hovering. Sandra Henan. It changed nothing. She wasn’t a person in those dreams. She had been something else.

This kept on until around the time I turned thirteen years old. The time when it was just Sandra Henan I was seeing. Davey was now ten and well over his churn of nightmares, while mine stayed constant. I had never told my parents, not fully anyway. They knew we had seen the body and heard the screams at three in the morning. That had been all at the start, sure. I don’t think they knew just how deep it was. The therapy wasn’t enough.

***

Sandra hadn’t been the only one I saw. There was another. That had been a few months later, maybe around six. I had seen a headline in the paper. It had been at the checkout of the local petrol station. It read: Body Found Flowing Down Seasons River. The picture shown was of a twenty-seven year old man, Jack Harbor. He looked like he was at a party.

That night I had a party of my own, with just two in attendance. Even though I never saw the body of Jack Harbor he was still right there, standing (thank God he was standing), next to Sandra. Jack had only one arm and both ears gone. Ripped off. I knew he could still hear me, though. Hear me breathing.

***

The one that really creeped me out was twenty-five your old Lexi Noven, who I saw one random night. She had no chin and her left hand was gone. There had been no news, no paper, and I certainly never saw her body, but there she was. Right there with the two others. She just showed up, without me even knowing of her existence.

Lexi too was standing, but only with her right leg. On the other, a nub of bone stuck out. The next day I found out what had happened. Reading through the article, I found myself rushing to the bathroom to throw up that night’s dinner.

When I turned sixteen, I would wake up most mornings with red eyes from crying so much in my sleep, bawling, I must have. My pillow would be soaking wet.

Every six months to a year it seemed I’d get a new person in the void. Joining the party. Some days or even weeks before their bodies were found. Always by Seasons river. They formed in a circle, all still staring into my soul.

One night, and this scared me, really scared me, I thought I noticed them being closer to me. Moving in.

At twenty-one years, now nearly a decade since me and Davey saw it, and over a decade since jolly John’s funeral, they were all now a meter away. Biding their time.

Soon after I started taking the drugs. No, not the bad ones, although I had taken a smoke out of a bong at a college party. I didn’t like it so much. No the drugs I took were the sleeping kind, given to those who have insomnia.

‘You’ll get knocked out.’ the doctor told me, ‘It’ll be like being put under anesthesia. Won’t remember a thing when you wake up.’ Dr Bob looked straight at me, ‘If there’s any problems, just ring the reception; they’ll put you onto me.’

Needless to say the pills worked to great effect. No more having to join that all night party. But popping those things can be draining. Very.

I passed out one time at my part time job, a fish and chips place. Had to be taken to the hospital. That was when I saw them again, all of them. In that period of unconsciousness. Only this time they were all right up in my face. I saw that eye socket, centimeters from my own, just how I imagined it all those years ago.

Did you miss us, Adam? Cause we sure missed you.

I woke up in a hospital bed, screaming. They had to put me under for real this time.

***

So here I am now. Writing this on the very same bench where Davey had found that stick, and where good old John got a phone call to tell him he had cancer.

Looking down at Seasons river. I believe it was, is, the root cause of all this. Those people I saw, maybe they also had visions. Maybe the same as mine, maybe different. Maybe they couldn’t take it and decided to go for a swim and never be seen again, alive anyway. Maybe.

As I look on I see two ducks. Could be my imagination, who knows. But it looks to me that both of them have their faces turned away from the centre of the river. As if turning away from a bad fart.

Everytime I close my eyes, think, think long and hard, I can see them. All of those dead lives in their circle. Wanting me to join.

I’ll sellotape these few pages on this bench. Someone might see them. Might even read them.

Those ducks are turning away now, saving themselves, heading back downstream. Away from this place. I think that’s where I might head too.

Sean Cannon

Image by Petra Boekhoff from Pixabay – a white duck reflected swimming on dark water near water lilies.