Kraken Island, page 11
It was too early in the season for the foliage to be turning yellow and orange, but even that subtle lightening made a difference and brightened the woods considerably as the sun rose.
Pleasant as it was to not have to pass any joggers, or to let fellow runners pass, the holiday lonesomeness unnerved Vanessa, made her think of that terrible Inquirer article her mother had forwarded her about how Wissahickon was a dead zone for cell phones and police radios. The article was either out of date or a slight exaggeration, because Vanessa had two bars of reception now. But still she kept to the side of the path nearest the creek. The more distance she kept between the dark, wooded paths that veered off to the north, the better.
It was foolish to be afraid of something happening to her and still keep her earbuds cranked loud enough that they drowned out all ambient sound. But if she let fear rule her life and turned down her music, then the terrorists won.
She was a mile north of the parking lot and a half-mile from turning around when she spotted the man in the water.
If she weren’t actively watching the creek, she probably wouldn’t have noticed him at all. He was wearing a dark jacket, made darker by being soaking wet.
If he weren’t fully clothed, Vanessa would have assumed the man was bathing. It was possible that he was a homeless man who did this every day, staying clean while trying to avoid park rangers. His arms were busy, but he wasn’t scrubbing himself. They were waving, but he wasn’t trying to tread water, either, because he should have been able to stand where he was, a couple of feet from shore. The water of the creek was clear enough to see the stony bottom at all points.
Facedown, the guy looked like he was trying to make a snow angel in the dirt and gravel of the creek’s shallows.
The man was maybe thirty feet in front of her, another twenty downhill if you measured from the path to the creek itself. Unsure what it would achieve, Vanessa plucked out her earbuds and yelled out to him.
“Hey! Are you okay?” she asked, hesitant but still jogging toward him, not yet sacrificing forward progress on her own run to be a good Samaritan.
There was no reply. The man’s arms still moved up and down in the water, loose on their hinges.
His head still hasn’t come up for air, has it?
Parallel with the man in the drenched overcoat, unsure if she would soon be vaulting over the stone ledge and making her way down to the water, Vanessa took out her phone to dial 911.
Oh, sure. Now she was in a dead zone. “No Service” showed in the top left-hand corner of her phone’s screen.
“Hey. Can you hear me? Get out of the water!”
She didn’t know what her yelling was going to achieve, but she said what she said either way. Looking both directions down the path, she was beginning to regret how happy she had been to have the trail to herself.
Her eyes fixed on the man and, squinting, Vanessa decided that she was looking at a corpse. The movement of his arms had to be the result of being caught in a whirlpool.
And because the man was dead, there was no moral crime in running back to the parking lot, right? She could tell someone at the restaurant, if they were opening for brunch, or a park ranger, if one was around, and then go about her day.
No, she didn’t have to get any closer to the dead man if there was nothing she could do.
But then an elbow popped up and the man rolled to his side. Something that sounded like a gasp for air filled the silence of the valley. He was drowning.
Fuck, Vanessa thought, dialing in 911 and her iPhone going into its red-screened panic mode.
Even if the signal had a hard time getting through the valley, texts and alerts would be sent with her whereabouts, right? That was why the damn thing had a panic mode. No matter how faint the signal, they could use a satellite to find her, right?
She returned her phone to her waistband and hopped the stone wall. There was a bigger drop-off behind the wall than she’d first estimated, and she crashed into brush and dead leaves.
Vanessa’s ankles throbbed. She paused to get her bearings before navigating down the steep incline to the riverbed. It wouldn’t help anyone if she slipped on a rock, hit her head, and joined her new friend face down in the water. Heh, synchronized drowning.
“Hold on!” she yelled, navigating down the incline. It was a thing heroes said in kids’ movies to let the audience know that something heroic was about to go down. In response, there were some more gurgling sounds, which may have just been the movement of the water itself, not something the bum was responsible for.
No, not a bum, just a man. Don’t think like that—don’t minimize another human being’s life, not now that you’ve gone all-in with this rescue mission.
Vanessa reached the water’s edge and stopped. Closer now, she could see that there were black ropes caught up around the man’s legs as he bobbed along with the current.
A new scenario bloomed in Vanessa’s imagination: not one where a wino on a tear passed out too close to the river’s edge, but one where Philly’s notorious criminal element tied this guy up and tossed him into the water on purpose. There were probably much better places to dump a gangland body, but maybe they were trying to send a message or something …
She shivered and pushed the thoughts of drug cartel execution from her mind. In for a penny, out for a … she wasn’t even sure what that cliché meant or how exactly it was supposed to go.
To keep everything dry, Vanessa tossed her phone and earbuds into the grass, undid her running belt with the squeeze bottle and pepper spray falling away, and stomped out of her running shoes.
Unencumbered, she waded into the water.
“Mister?” she asked, close enough to touch him now, close enough to put two hands under his arms and pull him onto shore. Like she should. And she was just about to.
But.
But—holy shit—that wasn’t her imagination: something just brushed against her leg…
She remembered the thick black ropes. The ones rival drug dealers had used to tie this guy up, then she pictured them getting caught up in the current and dragging her down.
Sure, consciously she realized that at its deepest point this section of creek was only three feet of water, but still that’s what she thought when whatever it was touched her calf.
Instead of using both hands and giving up a fighting and/or swimming arm, she put one hand on the man’s shoulder, the jacket squishy and waterlogged under her fingers, and rolled the man onto his back.
Yes, he was dead, that much was obvious. Any further analysis would have to be left up to the experts. She watched the occasional episode of CSI, but she had no real point of reference to tell how long he’d been in the water. Vanessa Dini was a freelance brand-awareness coordinator. She was paid to write tweets for shampoo companies for Christ’s sake!
His skin was blanched white, no pink left in his lips or nose, the places you’d expect color in a bum.
But his face was also deeply pockmarked, pale fleshy strings seeping from the holes. Were those bullet holes? Water-engorged veins and arteries trailing from them? Or had the creek’s fish already begun to…
Something darted past her leg again. There were two taps against the exposed flesh of her ankles, where her cute little running tights didn’t cover. The two-touch was unmistakable: a body and then a tail…
Chewed. The bum had been chewed. Fish or lampreys or whatever had already found the body and begun picking at it. God, how long had he been there? There was no smell of rot except the wet-dog scent of the man’s winter coat.
Vanessa puzzled whether or not she should try dragging him to shore before returning to the parking lot to give a statement to whoever showed up. But her thoughts were silenced when the impossible happened: the man’s mouth began to move, to open.
He looked about to speak, but in the end he didn’t say anything. Instead, a long black tongue parted his teeth and wriggled free, landing in the water with a splash.
Vanessa Dini screamed, but—due to the holiday schedule—no other joggers were around to hear her.
Crawling Darkness is available from Amazon here.
Eric S Brown, Kraken Island
