Creek 1 “It Sits in the Creek”

“When I was younger I used to go swimming in the river by my home. It wasn't terribly deep, and the current was light, but there was a chill to the water even in summer that could sap the heat out of you the moment you touched it. I always assumed that is was maybe the dam up river that made it so, but it didn't explain why the water never warmed.

It never explained the things I saw under the surface.

There was a boy I liked back then. Not like like I do as an adult. It was just this boy named Alex who had a house nearby and seemed to not make too much of a fuss about me deciding what we would do on a day to day basis. Most of the time that meant we would go swimming, though I think, looking back, that he never much liked swimming.

He was always terribly thin, and the water had to be bitterly cold for him. When I think on it, I can remember him always shivering once we left the water, his lips blue and his face pale. I used to tease him about that, in the sort of backass sort of way that a young girl teases a young boy about what it was to be a man or some shit like that.

I liked him very much when I really think on it, and there isn't a month that goes by when something doesn't remind me of him.

That is the way of things for a lot of people, but I don't think people often remember their childhood friends with a sense of dread, a haunting emptiness that makes me feel the cold of the water even on the warmest summer days.

On those days when the memories reach their worst, I have to wear a heated blanket and drink warm broth just to bring my temperature up to the right level. They say I have bad circulation, but that was never an issue before. In retrospect, I think it was because I had such an easy time getting hot that I enjoyed the swimming so much, though I don't like it anymore.

I don't go swimming anymore, and I left teaching my kids how to up to their father. The few times I have, it has only ever been in a pool during the day, and only when it is crowded.

My friend and I would make up stories together along the bank, chatting about this and that. Much of the time, the stories had to do with why the water was so cold, and we would weave fantastic tales about things under the water that would sap the heat from you, or of strange, red eyed things that sought out new flesh to add to its own, that came from the deepest of waters.

I think those days were the points I look back on most fondly, and I wish they had lasted longer than they did.

I haven't gone back to that river since then, though I have been told the water is as cold as ever, and that the grass refuses to grow along its banks, the ground turned foul and strange smelling. Kids still swim in the water, but the locals tend to discourage it even if all the tests of the water have suggested there is nothing wrong with it.

I heard tell of places where terrible things happen, great acts of murder or tragedy where the ground turns sick and there remain spaces where nothing is able to grow. Whenever you hear of such places it always results in you going up to the top of the supposed hill or deep into the marsh, only to find the rumors are false and the ground is just like any other.

I don't doubt the rumors about the creek though, not for a moment.

That likely is because I know what happened there, though I have refused to share it for years, even when people began to ask what happened to Alex. A local drifter was brought in, but nothing came of it. People didn't much trust him, and many people assume that he had gotten away with something, though the the cops who worked the case would tell there was no connection to be found.

Didn't change the rumors, and I suppose it is for the best that people don't know the truth. A drifter coming into town and murdering a child seems like something terrible that would be talked around the porches and bars for years to come, a simple warning in days that seem to only get more scary with time.

But if anyone asks me what happened, I simply have to lie and hope no one digs too deep. They knew I was close to him, so most people tend not to think too much about it, but once or twice my mom noticed me crying in my room when I was a teenager, and I think she assumed it was a problem with my boyfriend at the time. I hadn't told her we had broken up weeks before, but I told her it wasn't about that. I didn't want to tell, but I was so tired of keeping it to myself.

My mom and I don't speak like we used to, and there is always a strange way in the way she looks at me. Even after all this time, I think she thinks I was and am crazy, especially when I refuse to recant what I said, even though sometimes I wish to. To deny what happened would be to carry it all on my own again, a private wound that I have to hide.

So long as my mom knows, it doesn't feel like so much to carry.

I am cold right now, even though I have a heater in my room and I am under the comforter. Sometimes I try to simply get used to it, but the shivering always comes eventually, and there is no way to hide it from my family.

I think of Alex a lot, and I think of the last time I saw him, under the water.

His eyes were green, like when summer in in full bloom.

The water was murky, but I will never forget the way he looked when he slipped away. How much he struggled and fought, the boy who I mocked for getting cold.

No other kids have gone missing after that, and I can't say why. Maybe what I think I saw wasn't what happened at all, my mind mixed up by all the stories we used to share. But what I saw wasn't from one of our stories, nor was it from any of my dreams.

Though now, on more than a few nights, it is waiting there in my nightmares, that day I lost Alex, and I suspect a little piece of myself along with him.”

I was supposed to meet up with someone this week, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. The recent surges have caused me to have to stay home, the museum taking all the fears very seriously.

It works out in the end. Lately, as far as I can tell, I have been struggling to put my words together. I am just feeling very tired this week, and my body aches in ways I am not used to. I try to reason that it is just the weather, but the weather has never affected me like this before.

I put the Halloween costume away at last. It has been slumped in the corner of my room, and I just couldn't find the energy to put it away.

Now it is in the attic.

Maybe I'll bring it back out never, but maybe I won't be able to resist.

The above story comes from someone away from Wellington Street, making it the third story in the last few months to come from outsiders.