Story: Drownings (part nine)

Drownings

(part nine)

Victor Tambinder, or Dustin Carmadge, or some other, had in his kitchen four kinds of cereal, soured milk in the refrigerator, blackened bananas on the countertop, a bucket of dirty mop water on the floor.

Faia in the medicine cabinet found nasal spray, eyedrops, coated aspirin, earplugs, swabs. “Nothing prescribed by a doctor. Nothing I couldn’t name. Nothing the apparent property of another person.”

Home-ripped CDs in a plastic tub under the bed, pop tunes so far as McAlley could guess. A pen and notepad. He pocketed the notepad. Further under (the bed never folded back to a sofa), were a scattering of catalogues and envelopes.

“Where might he have a picture of himself?”

“On his phone. His phone will be in the river.”

On hands and knees, under wall-shelves limiting his mobility, McAlley missed the entry, but heard Faia say:

“Are you Victor?”

It could not tell them, but by signs. McAlley dug elbows into the mattress…to stand wanted pushing forward, and a degree of battle with his knees.

“Dustin, are you and Victor mates?”

“Victor,” McAlley said, “was worried about the work, at Bitterroot. He was miserable, desperate for a way out.”

The creature’s hands moved.

“An engineer on the project. A man you reported to.”

“In his colleague he saw the doubts, his own. Victor was not always kind,” Faia said. “He egged you on to that difference you had with Herbertson. Some at the cooperative wouldn’t hear, believed themselves powerless. Only be sacked, the project carry on anyway… You heard them say it. But by leaps and bounds the awfulness is spreading. Everyone is frightened.”

It could not weep, but its face was a lamentation.

Faia’s phone signaled a text.

23, 7, no guarantee.bench outside tunnel OP SH

“What is wrong with people who don’t know how to text, but have faith it requires a special language?” she muttered. “Herbertson, McAlley. He will meet us tomorrow at seven, unless he can’t, at the place we found the body.”

McAlley glanced up from the proof she showed him on her screen, and saw that the ghost, the zombie, the life forced through some crack in time the infernal engine had pressured open—

Must need one’s attention to hold itself visible.

“Faia, is there a presence?”

His angel said: “There is not.”

9

Drownings

Drownings (part one)

(2021, Stephanie Foster)