“It’s empty,” I mutter to myself. “This whole place is empty.”
I’m lying to myself.
Without letting myself think about why, I leave the hallway light on and my
bedroom door cracked, so a little sliver of light lands on my bed. I’m exhausted. My head hits the pillow and I think I’ll drop off immediately. I’m ready for today to be over.
Twenty minutes later, I’m still awake.
Blue. There is so much blue.
You’re drowning.
Into this river—
You are my son.
Cause of death: asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water—
It isn’t true! He can’t be dead! He’s not gone, you bas—
Do you know who I am?
You’re my dad—
I sigh and roll on my side, trying to shut my brain off.
I open my eyes.
A river runs next to my bed.
As soon as I see it, the roar of it hits me, assaulting my senses. Water crashes
against rocks, rapids carrying chunks of debris onward. Mist hits my face. I lift the blanket from my body and put my feet on the ground. Grass beneath my toes. Stones. Dirt. Mud.
I stand.
Little House collapses around me with a groan and suddenly it’s an early gray summer morning, weak light shining through the thickening clouds. Rain starts to fall, and fat drops splash on my shoulders and head. Dream, I think as I stick out my tongue, catching a raindrop, clean and fresh, free of grit. This is a dream. I turn on the riverbank. My bed is gone. The embankment stretches up behind me at a steep incline, and at the top, just over the rise, a rectangular green sign peeks out. A mile marker. I can see the tops of two numbers, two horizontal lines. Seventy-seven.
“Benji,” a voice says quietly, deep and rough. It should startle me, but it doesn’t. I feel warm. Alive. The voice makes me feel alive. More than I’ve felt in years.
I turn and there’s a flash of blue, and a great noise, like the flutter of something huge. I look up, rain falling into my eyes. A single feather, a foot in length, falls toward me. I raise my hand out in front of me, palm skyward. The feather lands on my hand, brushing against my fingers. It’s a deep navy blue that causes my bones to ache. It feels like the softest silk against
my fingertips. I lift the feather to my nose and inhale. It smells like the rain around me, wet and wild. Full earth. Pungent. Strong.
“Benji,” a different voice says, and the warmth I’m feeling vanishes. This voice is dark and wet. My name is gargled on its tongue. I clutch the feather in my hand as I look up.
“Benji,” the river says again.
I take a step toward it, the feather hardening in my hand.
Then, above the rushing water, above the rain, above the voices calling out my name, comes a different noise. It is low, guttural. An engine roars. I hear brakes squealing, the crash of metal against metal. I spin around, my feet sliding on mud and grass. There’s another crash, this sound greater than anything around me.
A red truck sails over the embankment, rolling to the left in midair, its engine racing. It lands seven feet from me on its left tires, before it crashes down onto all four. But the momentum is too great for it to stop and it bounces toward the river. A great boulder rests on the river’s edge. The truck starts to veer right, as if trying to avoid the impact, but it catches the left front tire. There’s a loud crack as the axle breaks apart. The truck flips and lands in the river, water splashing high over the banks. The tires continue to spin seconds later, until they slow to a stop, the truck on its back and nose down in the water, the tail end sticking up at a sharp angle against the gray sky, the brake lights at odds with the fading light.
The feather is burning in my hand.
Without thinking, I run toward the river’s edge. The water is fiercely cold when I jump from the bank, knee deep. The second my feet hit the soft riverbed, mud rises up around my ankles and begins to pull me down. I fight it, wrenching my left leg up, feeling pain as the muscles in my legs shriek from the strain. My right leg follows. But every time I bring my foot down again, the mud wraps around me.