This is Red Creek Boy, a new Kindling serialized novel. For the navigation page and more on this story, click here.
Content Warning: This series includes violence, ritual harm, bullying, and psychological trauma involving teens. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
Read carefully. In Antigua Falls, even stories have teeth.
In this episode: Forty years before Lyla Hill, Antigua Falls lost Jessica Wilson. Tom Wallace was eleven years old, new to town, and already dreaming of her face.
Chapters:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Interlude | 10
“Tom.”
He heard a voice call his name. Was it the blue woman?
The shadow of pine boughs wavered in the yellow light of a crescent moon. The air was hot and sticky.
“Tom.”
The voice came again, echoing and watery. He was in the creek now. He didn’t remember it being this wide. Tom couldn’t see the banks on either side. He was traveling, moving fast, down towards the ocean. The waves were soundless as he rolled in their current. Then, the black water warmed. It started small and focused, right in the crotch of his swim trunks. It started to spread.
“Oh my God Tom. Wake up! Wake up!”
He opened his eyes. They stung in the dark, salty water. The waves rocked him harder. There was something floating below him. It bloomed like black silk worm remnants, stringy and floating in the green water.
When did the creek get so deep?
Pieces of it rubbed against his feet, tickling like spider legs on his puckered goose flesh.
Hair.
He didn’t see the pale hand until it was on him, wrapped around his ankle. Pulling him down into nothing. Into black. The warmth in his groin and thighs turned cold.
“Tom!”
He opened his eyes again.
Could you wake up twice?
But now it was morning. Sun streamed in through empty slots in the white blinds. The cat had been at them again. His mother was standing over him, eyes dark with worry. She put the back of her hand to his forehead. Sweat dripped down his temple.
“Again Tom?” she asked.
He followed her eyes down to the urine soaked sheets.
“Sorry mom,” was all he could muster. “I thought I was in the water.”
“Always the water. I told your dad you need swim lessons.”
She sighed, and he eyed her carefully, noted her mouth, turned down in worry. He hated seeing her this way.
“Up,” she stood, motioning him with her whole body in the subtle way mothers did. “Come on. We’ve got to get these in the wash.”
He sat up, and smelled the dank ammonia scent that had gone beyond bed sheets and blankets. It had permeated his mattress. That’s what pissing the bed four times a week did to you.
If only I could remember the dream.
The blue woman. She was trying to tell him something.
“Mom,” she turned to him as he stood, smiling deliberately. “Don’t tell dad.”
Her smile broke at the corners, then grew large.
“Sure thing, Tommy,” she winked at him. “It’ll be our secret.”
In the hallway there were boxes stacked against the wall, labeled in his mother’s notoriously messy handwriting. “Towels,” “Sheets,” and “Tommy Room.” She had her keys out. She would have to slice the wide strip of packing tape to open the box up. The first step of their cover-up.
He watched her in the doorway of the bathroom, listening to the zipping noise, then the inevitable pop as she opened it. Cream colored linens peeked just below the lid. She caught him watching, and smiled again.
“Don’t worry. He won’t find out.”
Tom nodded, and walked into the bathroom without looking back. It was his way of agreeing with her, saying she was right, of course he wouldn’t find out. Before his father’s new job, it wouldn’t have mattered if he did. But now?
He’ll know.
He hated that voice in his head. It had come right when the dreams started. Telling him what would happen. Explaining how things would be. It never had good things to say, but the trouble was, it always seemed to be right.
The move to Antigua Falls would fix things.
“That drive is getting to him. And the long shifts,” his mother was certain.
Tom’s stomach turned over when she said it. Even at eleven years old, he had learned that mothers and fathers often covered for each other. Said half-truths and white lies to make their children feel better. The first one had led them to Antigua Falls.
“Your father will find another job,” turned into “We never liked it here anyway.”
It was like they thought he was deaf or something. Like he couldn’t hear the late night conversations through the cracker box walls of their rental house. When his father got the job in the Falls, they were three months behind on paying the landlord. The bills lay stacked up on a little end table next to the front door, most of them unopened.
First, he planned to commute. Over an hour there and back seemed like nothing in light of a steady paycheck. But soon, his father’s mood soured. He didn’t want to be in Pushmataha County.
“Rest of the state has oil. Here?” he sighed. “Here, my best bet is disability.”
He never graduated high school. Didn’t have an education to carry him somewhere new. Hard work was how his dad made it. It seemed the work here had dried up. Now they were moving, and it was just the long drives getting to dad. That was all that was left standing between them and happiness.
“I wished he had his old job,” Tom said, staring out the window as blips of black cows raced in and out of sight.
“A fresh start will be good for us,” said his mother.
In the distance he saw a heifer laid on her back, legs stuck straight in the air. Her calf nudged her with its head. As they approached he could see her bloated belly, swollen with heat, to twice its normal size. Tom wondered what happened to it.
Doesn’t matter how. Same thing will happen to you.
“No it won’t,” he murmured under his breath.
His mom sighed, and kept driving.
The neighborhood wasn’t anything special. The kids his mom had droned on and on about, were nowhere to be seen. It seemed too quiet. Bikes lay in the front yards they drove past, and the only sound was the occasional sprinkler hissing against the late summer heat.
“Must be too hot to play,” she said.
The telephone poles all had white papers stapled to them, the same thing, repeated like wallpaper patterns. It was a black and white picture of a girl, maybe a few years older than Tom.
“What are those signs for?” he asked.
“Not sure honey. Maybe a lost cat.”
“Are you even looking? It’s not a cat. It’s a girl.”
His mother pulled up to the stop sign, made it a point to look both ways, then finally landed on the wooden pole Tom was pointing at. The girl in the photo was smiling, hair dark and parted in the middle. There was something about her that felt familiar.
“Oh, how sad,” his mother said.
“I think I’ve seen her before,” Tom said.
His mom chuckled a little, then sighed. She did that at first, whenever he told her about the dreams. Lately, he had stopped warning her about the move.
“Tom, where would you have seen her? You’ve barely been out all summer.”
It was true, but Tom felt sure he knew her face. He studied the poster.
“Maybe the diner?”
A car honked behind them, and Tom’s mother put up a hand to wave.
“I’m going, I’m going. Jesus.”
Tom looked back at the poster again. The feeling wouldn’t leave him. It was like an itch at the edge of his brain, one that couldn’t be scratched until he remembered.
“You know what? She looks like Marcia. That’s probably who you’re thinking of.”
Marcia. The high school dropout who worked nights with his mother at the diner. Her hair was dark, sure, but that was where the similarities ended. Marcia had a round, plump face, and acne scars from puberty. For whatever reason, his mother was convinced he had a crush on her. Tom knew he wasn’t mixing up the girl on the poster with Marcia, but he said maybe so she would drop it. They drove past a couple of streets, then hit a sign that read, Dead End.
“There it is Tommy.”
He looked ahead to the end of a cul-de-sac. His parents practically drooled over that word all summer. A cul-de-sac. The epitome of the suburban dream. How lucky to be on a dead end. No traffic. No cars. And even better? The lot next to theirs was empty. That meant one less neighbor to worry about.
“What do you think?”
Tom studied it as they approached. The house was nothing special, a white single story with a basement. The yard was small, hedged in by a chain link fence. The patch of grass in the front, half of it dead, felt comical when he compared it to the land.
“We could get a dog,” she said.
“I guess.”
His mother was beaming. He adjusted his head to try and get a better look, see what he was missing.
“There he is.”
His father’s large silhouette appeared behind the screen. The front door was propped open. When he saw them, he stepped out on the porch to wave. He had gone ahead of them the week before. When he called, he told them about how he was readying the place. His mom finished her last week at the diner before they followed.
Tom watched him, examined his face. His father smiled, and Tom felt a wary curiosity wash over him. He still had bags under his eyes, but for the first time in months, he looked happy.
“Look at him. What did I tell you?” Tom’s mom asked. “I know it’s hard, but this is a fresh start for us.”
Tom smiled a little. Maybe his parents were right about this place. Before, they lived on a stretch of isolated property. Now he would have other kids to play with. He scanned the neighboring yards, looking for a sign that kids lived there. Instead, his eyes landed on the nearest telephone pole. The same poster hung crooked, one corner of it lifting away in the wind. This close, he could read it.
MISSING
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?
The same girl with the dark hair smiled back at him.
Below the picture, he read her name.
JESSICA WILSON
DISAPPEARED AUGUST 10TH, 1983
He examined the houses, wondering for the first time if she had lived here in this neighborhood. Maybe on this street.
Maybe in your house.
The door to the car opened, and Tom jumped.
“Whoa there!” his father laughed. “It’s just me.”
His father was beaming, half of his face disguised in shadow in the bright afternoon sun.
“Not even a hug for your old man?”
Tom forced a laugh, but it came out strange. He hugged his dad, let his arms envelop him, felt him pound his back a few times.
“You’re getting big. Must be the tallest boy in your class.”
A strong wind picked up, kicking up dust as it blew. Tom watched as the loose corner of the poster wicked away from the pole, then tore loose, and tumbled down the street. A knot formed in the pit of his stomach.
Jessica Wilson — where did he know her from?
“You okay bud?” his dad asked. He was studying him, “Anymore — dreams?”
Tom looked at him, and forced a smile.
“No, just hungry is all.”
“Hey, now that I have a solution for.”
They walked to the house together arm in arm. The wind calmed and blew gently, hot air ruffling Tom’s hair, wicking away the sweat on the back of his neck. Before his father closed the door, he could hear the faint rustle of paper, blowing in the wind.