Into This River I Drown

Flash. Feathers turn back to rain.

“I’m haunted,” I say, my voice flat.

And I am. I know this. I am haunted here at this river.

There’s another flash and I’m down by the riverbank, mud squishing up against my boots. There’s a cross, starkly white. Then there are a million of them. Then there are none. Another flash. Feathers on the river, covering the surface. Then there are none.

The river beckons. I take a step toward it.

A truck on the road, the engine roaring. The sound of metal striking metal, grating and sharp. The truck sails over the edge, bouncing on the bank behind me. It strikes a large boulder. It flips, landing upside down into the river, its back end angled up toward the sky. The rear tires spin lazily until they stop.

There’s a flash and I’m knee-deep in the water, the current pressing against my legs, my feet sinking in river mud.

I’ve been here before. I’ve been at this moment before.

An arm, a strong arm, will slip around my chest, and a voice will tell me I cannot cross, I cannot be allowed to drown. I turn my head swiftly, but there is no one behind me. Movement catches my eye up on the road.

A figure silhouetted against the gray-white clouds, staring down at me.

“Help me!” I scream as I wave my arms over my head. “My dad is in there!”

But the figure does nothing. They don’t call back. They don’t wave back. They just watch. They just watch as the cab of the truck behind me slowly fills with river water. They do nothing. They say nothing.

I turn back toward my father. I’m going to get him out. I’m going to change this. I’m going to fix this. The future will be changed because I am here. I am here. I am—

“No, Benji,” a strong voice says from behind me. An arm wraps around my chest, pulling me against a large body filled with so much warmth it’s like he’s burning from the inside out. “You’ll drown. You’ll drown here and I can’t watch that. I can’t let that happen. Not now. Not ever.”

I struggle against him, but it’s no use. I scream at him to let me go, but he doesn’t. He won’t. He’s too big. Too strong. I moan and sag against him, the fight draining as quickly as it has come.

“I will help you carry this burden,” he whispers in my ear. “I will carry you.” There’s another flash and the roar of the river and I—

will carry you

—open my eyes to a sunlit room. My sunlit room. My heart thumps against my chest, my breathing is rapid. A dream, I think. Everything was a dream. I’m sure of this now. None of what I remember happening did happen. I know it didn’t. There was no storm. No light fell from the sky. I did not cross the river. I did not find an angel.

Calliel. A name that causes a twinge in my chest.

I sit up and put my feet on the floor. I listen to Little House. It tells me nothing. But that means nothing. He—

could be on the roof again

—was nothing more than a figment of my attention-starved imagination, something my lonely mind created, someone big and solid who said he came here because I called him, because I drew him here. Things like that don’t happen, not in real life.

So why am I still listening for him?

I find my resolve buried deep. I stand, my knees popping. I glance at the clock. It’s almost noon. I reach for the doorknob, hesitating. Only the silence of Little House allows me to move forward. I open the door.

Calliel is splayed out on the floor in the hallway outside my bedroom door. He’s taken the comforter and a pillow off the bed in the spare room and dragged them into the hallway. The blanket has been kicked around in his slumber (I guess angels do sleep, I think). He’s found sweatpants to change into, from somewhere, and they’re a little too small for him, clinging tightly to his thighs. He’s not wearing a shirt, his biceps tight against the top of the comforter. He lies on his side, facing the door. I am mesmerized by the smattering of freckles scattered down his shoulders and his side, light brown and evenly spaced, as if they are forming a pattern. They disappear into the curls of his chest hair. I lose count of them once I reach thirty. I lift my gaze to his face and his dark eyes are open.

“Hello,” he says.

“Why are you on the floor?” I ask, though a billion other things are on my mind. “I told you that you could use the bed in there.”

He sits up and stretches, looking surprised when his back pops loudly. He stands, letting the blanket fall to the floor. I’m hyperaware of how close he is to me and take an involuntary step backward as I struggle to breathe. “I was doing my job,” he says, his voice pitched low, almost defiant.

“Guarding?” I ask.

He nods.