In the Water

By Nic Rawson

The sun was shining so brightly on the water that day that it hurt my eyes. It played across the ripples that were the last reminders of the pontoon boats that lazily glided up and back down the deep brown river. The bright green of the valley’s walls seemed to amplify the sun’s rays as if they were specifically targeting my retinas. I slid down my sunglasses as the only line of defense I had available, and listened to the high-pitch of my son squealing through the air before the gush of river water momentarily overwhelmed him. Then, it was that laughter. The laughter that seemed to outshine every photon that had ever been conceived.

The laughter resonated before him as the thud, thud, thud of his feet drove him across the wooden planks of the dock and back to the water’s edge. There was a flash of the orange and green T-Rex swimming trunks and then he was in the air again before he had even stopped for a breath. This time the splash got me. The metallic taste of the water filled my mouth and the distinctive odor of the Clarion River enveloped my nostrils. I was laughing now too!

“Alan, you have to be more careful!” I said, feigning anger playfully.

“Sorry, Daddy,” he returned, letting a sheepish grin flow over his face.

“How much longer do you think you’ll want to play, buddy?” I said. “It’s getting kind of hot and it’s just about lunch time.”

“Just a few more minutes,” he said, pushing off the dock with his feet and allowing his bright blue and yellow life vest to bob him up and down.

“Ok, but we need to get going soon. I have some work to do still today.”

“Ok!” He replied through a toothy grin. His first tooth had just fallen out a few days ago. He was upset that it had happened during the summer since his 1st grade teacher had been giving out stickers for the kids who had lost teeth. All that had dissipated once he found a 5 dollar bill and a sticker I had managed to beg off Ms. Cranz a few days earlier.

He always seemed to be so little. He was the smallest kid in his class, but he was sharp as a tack. He ran circles around his peers. Maybe I’m biased though.

Alan, soon tired of propelling himself off the dock, was now trying to catch minnows with the yellow shovel and green castle-shaped bucket from his sandbox toys. It wasn’t long before he had given up and traded his tools in for the olive-green dinosaur that matched his swimming trunks. I listened to him rahhhr! at the minnows as he pretended to ravage their aquatic home.

This is when I looked down to check my phone. It’s the moment everything happened and yet I saw absolutely nothing. The quiet is what suddenly caught my attention.

“Alan?” I called glancing up and over my sunglasses. There was only a faint ripple in the water, as if someone had just thrown a small rock. “C’mon. You know the rules. You have to be where I can see you at all times.” I listened, but the only response was the twittering of the robins downstream. Warmth began creeping from chest into my throat. I looked down toward the birds and saw nothing, and then back upstream and saw nothing except the curve of the valley moving to the right.

“Alan? ALAN?! Alan where are you?” I was now moving my head back and forth so quickly that my sunglasses fell off. I don’t remember moving but suddenly my feet were on fire. I was standing on the hot wood of the dock looking out across the river.

My boy was gone.

“Alan! This isn’t funny, buddy, come on! We have stuff we need to do today!” I didn’t recognize my own voice. It was high-pitched and straining for any kind of human response. I was trying my best to stay calm, but he never could contain his laughter when he tried to play these kinds of pranks. It would only be a few seconds before I could zero in on him. This was different; I felt that in my soul.

Now, I was in the water. It was only waist deep at first, but the cold quickly seeped to my neckline. Then, I was swimming. I took a gulp of air and then went under. All I could see was a green tinted world that extended only a foot or so in front of me. There was nothing to be seen. I was officially panicking.

I came up for air. While I splashed a circle trying to gain any vantage I could, I realized I was hyperventilating. My vision was beginning to develop black spots. I forced myself to slow down and try to reassess rationally. I began swimming back to the shore when I kicked it. There was a hard sensation on my foot and then a burning. The sudden pain had me lurch for my foot and, as I did, a strap grazed my hand. Out of instinct more than anything I took hold and began swimming as quickly as I could to the rocky bank only a few yards away. When I got close enough that I could walk I pulled my find out of the water. Bright fluorescent blue and yellow met my eyes. And another color – one that still, and will always haunt the depths of my psyche. Red. There were streaks of tattered red flesh clinging to the life jacket. The black spots began to consume and then all of the light was gone from the world. The last sensation I recall is the cold water around me – as if it were a trillion hands pulling me into its cavernous void.

* * * * *

I woke to the most awful, acrid smell that the human nose is capable of recognizing. My eyes opened and there were two blurred figures above me.

“What’d ya take, sir?” a flat voice asked. My vision began to sharpen on a man in his 50’s with salt and pepper hair that came down to form a neatly trimmed beard. He had a scowl on his face. It could have been concern, but his care-worn face made the two nearly indistinguishable.

“What?” I managed to stammer out.                                                                             

“What’d ya take?” he repeated with a furrow of his salt-and-pepper caterpillar eyebrows. His partner then leaned down to get a closer look at me. She had jet black hair that framed her pale and rounded face. Both were average build for their ages and dressed in all black. Their badges caught the sunlight, making me squint.

“I’m sorry?” I whimpered. “I’m not sure I know what’s going on.”

“Well, sir a passerby found you lying face down in the bank over there. We aren’t the cops, so you don’t have to be afraid to tell us. We get this semi-frequently. Got a little too drunk or high or whatever and end up in a little too-good-of-a-nap. You have pretty nasty cut on your foot that’s going to need some stitches. When was the last time you got your tetanus shot?” The woman told me. She was trying to be polite and friendly, but my initial response was clouded by confusion – and then grief.

“Where’s my son?” I snapped at them

“Sir, you were alone.” The man’s baritone hit me in the chest as if it were his fist.

“No… No. NO!” I yelled, “My son. He was here. Then he was gone. I found his life vest.”

“Calm down, sir, you were al… Sir, hold on. Don’t get up so fast.”

It was too late though, I was moving to escape them. I was sluggish, but it must have caught them off-guard because in a few heartbeats I had the vest in my arms. I realized now it was only one pad with a few straps attached to it. I couldn’t see the blood anymore, but the stuffing was falling out of the woven fabric covering in globs.

“See!” I shouted.

Their eyes were so big now that I could see white encircling the entirety of their blue and brown irises. Then, there was confusion, but I must have made some sense in my feverish state. The woman leaned down and said something into her shoulder microphone. She then patted me lightly on the shoulder and asked me to sit. It wasn’t until then that I saw the group of firefighters looking on from their boat that was floating just about where I must have passed out.

The next few hours were a flurry of commotion, questioning, and faces that I can’t seem to recall with any great accuracy. I recalled the story once, twice, twenty times. Always the same anguish welling up in my throat. Always the same inquisitive looks on the face of the officer in front of me – with just a hint of doubt. The authorities eventually decided that I probably didn’t murder my one and only child, but they were going to keep an eye on me. And, well, you probably saw Alan’s story in the local paper or the news. “Local boy drowns, divers unable to recover body. Presumed dead in drowning accident.”

When is the last time you, kind reader, heard of a life jacket being torn apart during a drowning? How does the act of breathing in water lead to the blood I know I saw that afternoon? And how do you explain the 6 inch gash on my foot? The doctors told me it wasn’t something they saw every day. Two days after it had been stitched back up, I had to be taken to the OR to have it cleaned out – presumably from bacteria in the water. The only problem is, they didn’t find bacteria. Not a single one. Not even a contaminant species.

Something took my son – something big and venomous. As a reporter it’s my duty to investigate this and inform the people. I will be updating this column periodically as my investigation progresses. Just be careful out there friends.

Something is in the water.

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