The River Is Dark

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 Joe Hart

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477825778

  ISBN-10: 1477825770

  Cover design by Elderlemon Design, www.elderlemondesign.com

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014939861

  ALSO BY JOE HART

  Novels

  Lineage

  Singularity

  EverFall

  Short story collections

  Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror

  Short stories

  “The Line Unseen”

  “The Edge of Life”

  “Outpost”

  For my kindred spirits who can’t get enough of being afraid—this one’s for you.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  His mother screamed again.

  She screamed, sounding like her lungs were going to come out. Eric ran. He flew up the stairs two at a time, something he did only when racing Champ or his dad, trying to beat either of them to his room on the second floor. He couldn’t hear his dad anymore, and that scared him even worse than his mother’s screams. He knew Champ was dead, the faithful golden retriever’s body in the garage entry, a blood-sodden and twisted mess that didn’t resemble his closest friend of five years. Now, instead of a lighthearted race, terror propelled him up the stairs with an unseen hand that both quickened and slowed his movement. He heard the thing roar something that resembled words in the kitchen, and his mother’s screams took on a new pitch, making him want to fall to the floor and clap his hands to his ears. He wanted never to hear anything like it again. But he couldn’t disobey her, not now, not after how her eyes looked. They said, Run away and don’t look back. So he did.

  His toe caught on a runner, and he cried out as he sprawled onto the landing just before the upstairs hall. His knees burned on the carpet, and his shoulder popped as he thrust his hands out to stop his face from connecting with the floor. Eric leapt to his feet as he heard his mother shriek again, like the sound of air escaping from a pinched balloon, and then abruptly fall silent. The quiet of the house was so horrible that he nearly fell a second time, the strength gone from his legs. He knew what the silence meant. His parents and dog were dead, and he was alone with it.

  His parents’ bedroom loomed closer as he ran down the hall toward its darkened doorway. His own room flashed by to his right, but he knew there was no help there. The only phone upstairs was in his parents’ room; they had promised him that when he turned twelve he could have one put in next to his bed. That promise felt alien now, something unreachable and strange, like a dream fading fast in morning light. Eric wished that he would wake up now, the blood and the screams just a cloudy nightmare that would drain away to nothing, and Champ would saunter into his room any moment, the ever-present guilty look plastered across the dog’s face.

  Eric heard a wet thump in the kitchen, like the time his dad dropped a whole pizza on the floor just after taking it out of the oven. Footsteps, heavy and slow, moved below him, and he bit back a scream when he saw a shadow darken the foot of the stairs. As quietly as he could, he shut his parents’ door behind him and locked it. The room was dark, but he made his way directly to his father’s side of the bed and grasped the cordless phone from the charger. The buttons lit up the space around him and made his finger glow green as he punched the three numbers and slid down to the floor. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then a clicking in the receiver. A woman’s voice came on the line, the sound of her words too calm and collected for the insanity that surrounded him.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  Eric stuttered the first thing that came to his mind in a frantic whisper, and lay on his belly when the sounds of the stairs creaking under a heavy weight met his ears. The stairs had never sounded like that before, not even when his dad treaded on them in his thick winter clothes and boots.

  “Are you okay?” The lady sounded more anxious now, and somehow it made him glad. Someone knew he was scared and she wanted to help.

  “I’m hiding under my parents’ bed,” Eric whispered as he slid beneath the wooden frame. “It’s coming down the hall. Please send help. My mom and dad are dead, and so’s Champ.”

  “Help is on its way, honey. You just stay on the line with me and everything will be all right.”

  A bang echoed in the hallway, and he knew what it was: his door rebounding off the wall inside of his room. It’s in my room.

  “Are you there, honey?”

  “Yes,” Eric whispered, but quieter now. It was close and it would hear him. It would pull him out from under the bed and do to him what it had done to Champ and his parents. Hot tears squeezed out of his eyes as the door to his parents’ room rattled in its frame.

  “Are you okay?”

  “It’ll hear you,” Eric breathed, his voice no longer anything he recognized.

  The door burst open with a cracking sound, and pale light spread onto the floor, along with splinters from the shattered jamb. Eric registered the woman’s question one more time before he pushed the off button and silenced her voice. He tried not to breathe, although his lungs wanted nothing more than to heave in huge amounts of air. Stinging tears slid off his cheeks and fell to the carpet inches below his face, and he was sure it heard them land, because it moved closer. He could smell it, a rank and powerful scent that reminded him of spoiled milk. Please let it go away, please make it leave.

  It was closer now, and he could hear it breathing, sniffing him out. A high whining sound began to fill the air, slight at first but gradually getting louder, and in the moment before the bed flew up and away from him, Eric’s hope flared and died with the keen of sirens and his own scream in his ears.

  CHAPTER 1

  His eyes came open with the grating wail of the alarm clock on the bedside table.

  Liam blinked at the ceiling and wondered for the hundredth time why he even set the damn thing each night. Routine, that’s why. The doctor said routine was good for sleep. Routine. With a grunt he rolled over and slapped at the button, eventually silencing the screeching clock. He listened. The popping sound of the late-summer sun warming the floorboards of the old farmhouse kitchen, the jangle of the wind chimes on
the front porch, a breeze pressing its breath against the old windows in the bedroom, a car passing on the highway and then gone. He sighed and lay back, thinking about the gun in his closet, tucked out of sight on the high shelf, always there in the morning, in his mind, asking its question.

  As he showered, he rubbed his jaw, feeling the growth there. He should shave, otherwise the whiskers would become like steel wool and his fair complexion would suffer a “red tide,” as his dad used to call it. He hissed a laugh and shut off the water.

  The shave felt good, but not as good as when his father used to do it with the straight razor. The feeling after his father’s shaves was unequaled, something he couldn’t put his finger on. He thought of the barbershop: the tangy smell of leather that covered the heavy rotating chair; the musk of the shaving cream on his face; the feel of the blade, so sharp against his skin, yet held with a sure hand that relaxed him when his father shaved him. He paused, shaking the disposable razor out under the hot water, and watched the black stubble flow away down the drain. Without looking in the mirror above the sink, he grabbed the pearl-handled round mirror from the drawer to his left. As he did each time he picked it up, he remembered his dad holding it out in front of him when he was ten, after his hair had been particularly long. He could still see his father’s smiling face above the mirror, a face that his own would resemble more and more as the years went by, minus the ever-present cigarette in the corner of his dad’s mouth. He recalled the thought that went through his young mind, so happy in the moment that the black realization hit him like a thunderclap and nearly sent him out of the barber chair: someday, he would look into that mirror and his dad would be gone, and there was nothing he could do about it. The memory never failed to assault him when he picked the mirror up.

  He gazed at his reflection, noticing the patch of whiskers he always missed on the right side of his chin, as well as the lines around his eyes that seemed to deepen with each restless day and every night of shallow sleep. The thought of more sleep sent a tremble of yearning through his body. Instead, he toweled off his face, laid the mirror back in its resting place within the drawer, and went to make coffee.

  The day was as bright as he expected, and he ate a protein bar with his coffee on the front porch, soaking in the morning sun as well as the thick caffeine in the large cup. His mind went over the plans for the day without conscious thought. He was low on bread and deli meat and he needed toilet paper. Town it was then. And maybe he’d stop today on his way home. It wasn’t far off the highway. He could pull onto the exit and follow the road down to the stoplight, turn right, and go through the outskirts of the little suburb. His body would take him down the correct streets, turning and braking like an automaton, and he would park his car outside the apartment building like he had so many times before. He would walk up to the entrance and see the paint peeling off the siding, not enough to look trashy but still noticeable. He’d touch the rough brick beside the intercom, feel the grit bite into the skin of his knuckles as he tried to get his finger to push the button beside the name he knew so well. He wouldn’t leave until he did. Not like the last time, when he’d stood there for over ten minutes, until his knuckles bled from where he rubbed them raw against the brick.

  The phone rang inside the house, pulling him back to himself so fast, he jerked coffee over the rim of the cup and onto his pants.

  “Shit,” he said, and rubbed the scalding spot on his thigh. The phone belted out another demand to be answered, and he moved through the kitchen to where it hung beside the fridge.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Detective Liam Dempsey?”

  “No—I mean, yes, this is. Who is this?”

  “Mr. Dempsey, this is Senior Special Agent Todd Phelps with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.”

  Liam’s mind sped forward a hundred times faster than he could think, but he came up with no connection to him or to what had transpired ten months before. “Yes?” he answered.

  There was a pause, a familiar one. Familiar since he’d paused the same way dozens of times in the last eight years.

  “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but your brother, Allen, and his wife were the victims of a home invasion last night. They did not survive.”

  The icy tip of anticipation plunged into his chest fully, and he leaned back on the counter behind him. He let the words roll over him, let them sink in like water on dry soil. His brother was dead, and so was Suzie. He squeezed his eyes shut, a third shoe dropping, one he didn’t know existed until then.

  “Mr. Dempsey? Are you there?”

  Liam gritted his teeth and nodded. “Yeah, I’m sorry. What happened?”

  “Details aren’t entirely solid at this point, but from what we know, an individual or individuals entered your brother’s home last night and murdered both your brother and his wife. We have several leads already, and I assure you that we will find those responsible for your loss. I’m very sorry.”

  Liam heard concern in the man’s voice, but something else also: impatience. The agent on the other end of the line wanted, needed, to get off the phone. This wasn’t his specialty, and he wanted to be done with it. So did Liam.

  “Thank you. I’ll need a few hours to get some things in order, and then I can be down there.”

  “That’s perfectly fine, sir. If you need to get in touch with me before then, please don’t hesitate to call.” Phelps rattled off a number that Liam tried to hold on to and then let slide away beneath the crushing feeling on the top of his head. He was in the jaws of a massive vise, the handle turning slowly but surely, the steel around him unforgiving as it closed in.

  The agent said something else, but Liam didn’t catch it. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I just said that you can take as much time as you need.”

  “Thank you,” Liam said, and stretched his arm out to hang up the phone. The cradle didn’t grab the earpiece when he let go, and it fell to the floor and exploded into three separate pieces. He stared at the rechargeable battery, with its electrical tail sprouting from its casing, and without thinking about it, he picked it up and hurled it as hard as he could into the living room. It hit something that fell over with a crash, but he didn’t notice as he slid to the floor and closed his eyes to the sunshine of the young day.

  The Chevy’s tires growled as Liam turned left and headed southeast, away from the open country he was used to. The cab was quiet, with only the hiss of air traveling around the vehicle and his measured breaths. He glanced at the stereo and studied it for a moment, like it was an artifact from another planet. He considered turning it on just to drown out the quiet and his thoughts, but dismissed it. Music wouldn’t hold back the churnings of his mind. Songs didn’t mean anything to him anymore. What was the last song he’d heard? He knew the question was of no importance, but for some reason it felt criminal not to remember. Another question, the important one, finally shouldered its way to the front of his thoughts, and he clenched his jaw. When was the last time he’d seen Allen?

  His stomach surged upward for the umpteenth time, and he swallowed the taste of bile on the back of his tongue. The song his father used to sing began to play on a loop inside his head, the words rounded off into slurred vowels and consonants, but the melody so sad and clear it made the corners of his eyes sting. He shrugged his shoulders and brought the travel mug to his lips, letting the cooling coffee trace a path down his throat.

  The truck went over a bump in the road, and he heard his bag shift behind him. He hadn’t really contemplated the things that were in the duffel bag; the time after the phone call was indistinct, hazy with hurried motions and punctuated by several pauses when he merely stared at the wall for minutes on end. He knew there were some clothes, his toothbrush, and his iPad in there.

  And the gun.

  He fidgeted with a frayed piece of the steering wheel cover and tried to discern what made h
im reach onto the top shelf and feel with a hand until his fingers met the cold, dusty steel. He hadn’t shot the Sig in well over a year, but without thinking, he’d snapped the magazine free, checked the rounds therein, slammed it home, and placed the SP2022 at the bottom of the bag, beneath a pair of worn jeans.

  The miles became meaningless as he drove, landscape shifting without recognition outside the windows. The flat plains and fields filled with farmers’ crops became lined with encroaching trees, their arms flush with flags of green leaves. The land began to roll up and down, cresting on hills that overlooked the occasional stream or river winding through the earth like the track of some great serpent long extinct. The ground became rockier, the faces of stones peeking from beneath shaggy overgrowths of reeds and grass on the edges of the road.

  Liam noted none of it. He drove, his senses closed to all but piloting the truck.

  It was shortly before noon when Tallston came into view. When the Chevy crested the last hill before the town, he wasn’t prepared; even with the sickening pulse of grief in his stomach, the sight still moved something inside him.

  The city sat at the bottom of a depression, its left side hugged tight by a line of bluffs that soared a hundred feet above the town in some places. The muddy twist of the Mississippi flowed opposite the bluffs, hemming in the town with its curves. The city sprawled in a general crescent shape, its design embedded in the natural surroundings. It was as if the first settlers had wanted the city to blend with nature instead of declaring its blaring progressive presence, which was common in other towns of its size. The city’s name itself came from the sentinel bluffs. Tall Stone became shortened, robbed of its phonetic history by hurried tongues. At least that’s what Allen had told Liam when he’d opened his practice here twenty years ago.

  Liam sighed as the truck coasted down the steep hill and into the outskirts of town, past a sign that declared, Welcome to Tallston, the jewel of Minnesota. A few yards after the greeting, another sign stood in the high grass beside the road, this one smaller yet still imposing with slanted letters that blazed against a black background: Future home of Colton Inc. Where industry meets nature. LIES was spray-painted in dripping white letters across the lower half of the company’s message.