Mad Tales

Chapter 8 - Under the Rocks-1

CHAPTER 8 Under the RocksJason Riddle stood at the window a for very long time, staring out at the Rappahannock as it flowed in the night, timeless and heavy and dark. The window reflected the scene behind him perfectly: three men holding drinks, watching him, waiting for him to turn around. One, middle-aged, bald, a significant paunch pushing out over his belt, relaxed on an expensive couch, his arms spread out over the cushions. Another, middle-aged, too, but wiry and muscular, coiled in the doorway. The third, a young man with long hair and the beginning of a scruffy Van Dyke on his chin, crossed his legs on the love seat. Riddle fingered the lip of his cup. He c****d his head and held completely still for a moment. One of the men coughed politely and Riddle shushed him and leaned closer to the glass. After several minutes his shoulders relaxed. Finally, he turned around.

“Dan?” His voice had a nasal twang to it. Not quite as gruff as northern voices, but not the smooth purr of the Georgian gentleman, either. “It’s close to nine, isn’t it?”

The man in the doorway, the Dan in question, Dan Gallup that is, Fredericksburg native, contractor, hunter, former punk rocker, nodded and disappeared into the other room without a word. He was laconic by nature, prone to doing more than saying. His footsteps receded up a staircase, then thumped around overhead.

The man on the couch was Cole Porter, a Biology professor at UMW. His parents were, of course, fans of the late crooner, something he’d had to live with his entire life. He asked his colleagues to call him by his middle name, David, and they, of course, complied. For a while, when he’d first started teaching, one of his students would invariably discover his first name and some kind of juvenile wonderment would ensue, but as the years progressed and popular tastes skewed elsewhere, that sort of activity slowed and then ceased altogether. Every now and then a savvy student might express surprise upon discovering his name, but his classmates didn’t understand the allusion or were too captivated by the all encompassing lure of their screens to care.

“So, what are you saying, Mr. Riddle?” Porter asked. “That somebody murdered these people?”

“Not somebody, but something.”

Porter rolled his eyes.

“Now now, now now,” Riddle said, patting the air with his hands. “Let me tell you a story, gentlemen. If by the end of the tale you’re not convinced, you can leave. Minus my fee, course. Agreed?”

Porter paused and then shrugged.

“Why not. I’m here.”

Riddle looked at the young man in the love seat.

“Dean?”

Dean Goodman was a hard news reporter for The Free Lance Star in the same way that Elton John was a linebacker for the Pittsburg Steelers. He was twenty-three, fresh out of college, and, like many young men, hungry to prove himself in his new career. Unfortunately, he graduated right in the middle of the Great Recession, which meant that despite his degree from Cornell, despite his glowing recommendations from his professors, despite his perfectly groomed writing samples, the best job he could land was as a cub reporter covering local events in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The job was not without some intrigue; Dean’s predecessor was assumed to have been murdered the previous spring. Just disappeared one afternoon after an interview, his body never found.

He honestly had no idea what he was doing here, had merely responded to an invitation from Mr. Riddle out of curiosity. He supposed none of the “real” journalists at the paper would take the invite seriously, for why else would the kid (whose biggest scoops consisted of covering a concert by some interchangeable old guys playing grunge covers at one of the three dives around town, and august cultural events like the June craft fair in Market Square) be summoned?

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“Very good.”

Riddle sat down in one of the cushy chairs next to the fireplace and sighed. Took a sip of his drink. The ice clinked against the glass. “It started for me almost seventy years ago, in the summer of 1933.”

I’m the youngest of three sons. My older brothers, Lee and Mitch are, bless em, dead. Died of natural causes, mind, not because of the river. As boys growing up, we knew the Rappahannock like we knew our own bedrooms. Every summer we spent lounging about on its banks, fishing and swimming, sometimes all day.

Summer of ‘33 was terrible hot and dry. We were in the middle of a long, disastrous drought, much like we are now. The river was at the lowest point I’d ever seen. There were sections up by Falmouth that’d run dry, exposing rocks that hadn’t seen direct sunlight in over a century. Even so, there are others that will never run dry, and there are depths unknown to even the most experienced river rats.

Well, right around mid-summer the drownings started. First there was Lonnie Harris, a schoolmate of mine. Drowned in the middle of the day, surrounded by six other boys in my class. I wasn’t one of em, but I would’ve been had my mother not decided to take me out to visit my grandparents in Culpepper. Then there was Michelle Phipps, an older girl, friend of my brother, Lee. Drowned on the Fourth of July. Back then the fireworks show was held over the river, not like it is now at that load of concrete and asphalt out there on Route 3. Families would picnic out on the banks all day long, watch the display at night. Michelle’s mother said one second she was sunning on Diving Rock, next she was gone. Then there were two more, a Stafford man, a high school English teacher out with his daughters, drowned in late July, and my cousin Amanda in mid-August.

Now, my cousin Amanda was the sweetest thing in Fredericksburg. Even at ten years old I knew that. She was nineteen, beautiful, smart as a whip. She and my brother Lee had always been close, but as they got older her father, my Uncle Kenny, began to notice that they were a little too close. At the time I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, but early that summer there were some heated words between dad and Uncle Kenny, and then all of the sudden Amanda and her family didn’t come around anymore. Well, I guess Lee and Amanda found some way to meet up, usually at night, usually at the river. In fact, that’s where they were the night Amanda went missing.

Of course nobody could prove what they were doing, or if Lee was even with her. In the summer Hurkamp Park was often filled late into the night by people trying to escape the heat. All anybody knew was that a few old timers hanging round the park said they’d seen Amanda heading that way around midnight, and the only evidence they had was a dress of hers slung up in some branches on the bank. Like the other victims that summer, nobody ever did find her body.

Uncle Kenny and my father repaired their relationship following Amanda’s disappearance. I guess they figured one family tragedy was enough to bear. We all went to her funeral. Lee tried not to look distraught, but the pain on his face showed. He didn’t cry until they started lowering her empty casket into the ground, and Uncle Kenny came over and put his arm around him.

It rained that evening, and we thought it would cool things off but it didn’t. As soon as the storm passed, a thick front of heat and humidity settled over the city like a wet blanket. The rain did at least provide one benefit; I remember my parents talking about how the river had swelled up pretty high. Not up to flood levels, but high enough. Because of the heat, my parents and I slept in the living room, Lee and Mitch in the basement. The night of the funeral it got to be too hot for me even in the living room, so I went and made my bed on the screened-in front porch. Later on, I guess it had to be close to midnight, I was awoken by the sound of angry words. When I sat up and looked out, I saw Lee and Mitch out front on the little walk under the screen.

“ . . . don’t care what you think, Mitch,” Lee said, his voice raising from a whisper to nearly a shout. “I know what I saw and I’m going back there for it.”

“Well, you’re crazy if you think I ain’t goin’ with you.”

I was foolish enough to stand up.

“Ain’t going where?”

“Oh Lord, Jason!” Lee moaned. “What’re you doing out here?”

“Too hot inside. Couldn’t sleep. Where are you guys going? Why you got daddy’s gun?”

Lee looked at the rifle in his hand like he hadn’t realized it was there. He tried to hide it behind his back.

“I ain’t got time to explain.” He looked at Mitch. “I’m going.”

And he stalked off across the lawn.

I’d been around long enough to know when Mitch and Lee were up to something interesting, and I wasn’t about to let this one slip by, not with Lee toting daddy’s rifle around and acting like he was crazy. I slipped on my old fishing shoes, which I always kept on the porch, opened the screen and hopped down to the lawn. I wasn’t wearing anything else but my tightie-whities.

“Lee, wait! I’m coming, too!”

Lee stopped. “No you ain’t.” He walked up to me and knelt down to look me in the eye and put on that voice he used when momma put him in charge of me and Mitch. “Jason,” he said. “You’re staying right here till me and Mitch get back. It’s for your own safety.”

“Like hell I am. You step out this yard without me, I’ll wake daddy up, and tell him you got his gun. I’ll holler so the whole neighborhood’ll hear. I’ll start right now!”

I opened my mouth to scream and Lee clamped his hand over it. It was hot and sweaty.

“All right,” he hissed. “Dammit. But you ain’t going dressed like that. Go get some clothes on. Your fishing clothes. Hurry up. And don’t wake up mom and dad.”

I hurried upstairs to my room and got dressed. When I came back out I half expected Lee and Mitch to be gone, but there they were, waiting for me. Lee handed me the old machete daddy used to cut the kudzu in the back yard.

“Here, take this.”

“What for?”

“Listen, if you’re gonna ask too many questions don’t bother coming along. I don’t care if you do wake up the neighborhood.”

With that, he turned and walked away, daddy’s rifle slung over his shoulder.

“What about me?” Mitch called after him.

“You’re a big boy, Mitch,” Lee said over his shoulder. “Get your own weapon.”

I waited for Mitch while he went and got an axe from the shed, and both of us took off after Lee. Mitch explained what was going on as we snuck across town.

“Lee was with Amanda the night she disappeared,” he said.

“What you mean, they was together? Like they was—”

“Shut up, Jason. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, she wasn’t a blood cousin or nothin. Daddy and Uncle Kenny just fought in the war together.”

This was news to me. I’d grown up believing Uncle Kenny was family.

“Anyway, Lee says Amanda wasn’t drowned. Says something got her. Something pulled her down and took her away, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.”

“What was it?”

“He don’t know. But he said he’s going to find it and kill it.”

Fredericksburg was still and silent as we stole through her streets. We lived on Sunken Road back then. To get to the river we had to cut past the old Canal and head west up Princess Anne. Way off in the distance I heard the clock on the Presbyterian Church knell. It was quarter till one. Nobody was on Lee-Jackson, so we struck off north toward the river, then crossed Riverside and plunged down the hill and into the woods on the bank.

Lee stayed at least twenty yards in front of us the whole way, his gait sure and fast. Mitch had to call out for him to wait up more than once, and Lee’d stop for a few seconds, pawing at the ground with his shoes. When we got within ten feet he’d take off again. When we reached the woods we lost him almost immediately. The sound of the river drowned out everything but the sticks cracking under our feet and the crickets on the bank.