Beware the River Read online

  Beware the River

  Kitty Margo

  Cover design by Viola Estrella

  violaestrella.com

  Published September 30, 2012

  Buttercup Publishing

  Copyright © 2012 Kitty Margo

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 098592800X

  ISBN-13: 978-0-98592280-0-1

  Dedicated

  To the true loves of my life.

  JoJo, BJ, and Josh

  My amazing, loving and gifted sons.

  and

  Jaiden, Jordan, Cady, and Clara.

  My adorable and precious grandchildren.

  I love you more than hot boneless chicken wings

  and

  the entire Twilight series.

  (And you all know how much that is!)

  In Loving Memory Of

  James Daniel Diggs

  12 /10/1981 – 9/20/2004

  Gone, But Never Forgotten

  Chapter One

  I was sitting in a rocking chair on Gram’s front porch, wondering if I could dig up a shovelful of fat juicy worms from her petunia bed. At the same time, I was sending a text to Megan Cobb, still trying to work up the courage to ask her to the eighth grade dance. I had attempted the smooth move several times in the past week, but each time my lips had suddenly become almost paralyzed. We are talking so frozen with fear that I wouldn’t have noticed if drool had been pouring down my chin. I was busy trying to come up with a way to remedy this embarrassing situation when a sudden movement across the road caught my eye. Peeking over my phone, I watched as a swirling dust devil spun up from the dry ground and began wildly bouncing and zig zagging toward the house.

  Of course, I knew the whirlwind of dust was supposed to be harmless. I had seen dozens of them over the years. But this one looked more like a small tornado barreling across the dried up field of cotton. It was about thirty feet high, spinning like crazy, picking up speed, and taking dead aim for the porch. Screw this! I knew when it was time to bust a move! Jumping up to take shelter inside the house, I almost crashed into Gram as she shoved open the screen door carrying two glasses of sweet iced tea.

  She looked up with eyes the size of duck eggs just as the furious wind hit the porch and surrounded us with a suffocating cloud of dust. I quickly shut my eyes, held my breath, and pulled my tee shirt over my face for added protection as grit and sand stung the exposed skin on my arms and legs like jabbing needles. I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth as the pressure inside the dust devil caused my ears to pop like popcorn.

  Luckily for us, it was gone as quickly as it had arrived, leaving a thick film of dirt, cotton stalks, and gravel littering the porch. Shaking off as much dirt as I could, I ran my tongue across my teeth and felt gritty sand grinding against them.

  When I lowered my shirt and opened my eyes, Gram’s hair, which she has teased and sprayed into submission with an entire can of hair spray every Friday morning at the beauty parlor, was standing straight up on her head and filled with leaves, twigs and dirt clots. Her hose, the kind that elderly women roll somewhere up around their knees, were now sagging pitifully around her ankles. The chain of her locket, which held a photo of Great Grandpa Tom inside that she always wears around her neck, dangled from her right ear. Poor thing was a mess!

  But she wasn’t the only one. Our clothes were twisted and tangled, and a thick layer of dirt covered us from head to toe. We had at least an inch in our hair, our ears were clogged with topsoil, and I felt like even my eyeballs had a thin coating of grit over them.

  Gram tossed the dirty tea, and spit a wad of tobacco over the porch rail. “After we take showers, if you’ll get the hosepipe and scour off this mess I’ll fix us some more tea.” She turned to go inside, but stopped to gaze across the field shaking her head and mumbling, “I’m here to tell you, BJ. Nothing good ever comes from a dust devil.”

  As I headed inside for a much-needed shower she repeated her favorite phrase, “Remember now, don’t be lollygagging in the shower. The well could go dry any day now.” Which was true, even though I was tired of hearing it. We desperately needed rain. It hadn’t rained in over eight months and practically everything in the state of North Carolina was parched.

  The grass, flowers, and crops had withered up and died. The ponds, lakes, and streams were dried up to nothing more than cracked mud holes and according to the weatherman, there was no relief in sight. Water had become so precious that if you were caught doing anything as foolish as watering your lawn, washing a car or, heaven forbid, trying to have a little fun on a Slip and Slide, there would be a hefty fine to pay and possibly a few nights in the county jail to rethink your irresponsible ways.

  I couldn’t believe Gram was actually allowing me to waste water in a shower instead of taking a tub bath in the usual six inches of water. I chuckled to myself knowing full well that she wanted me to get the porch cleaned up before one of her friends dropped by for an unannounced visit and caught her porch in this mess.

  Last year, before the drought, a reporter for the Stanly News and Press had taken a picture of Gram’s lawn and wrote a glowing column about her green thumb. I think, secretly, Gram was eager to see her picture in the paper again so she could lord it over her fellow members of the Methodist Ladies Tuesday Night Quilting Bee.

  Gram spends most of her days in her room watching CNN’s coverage of the severe drought conditions in North Carolina and rambling on about such things as plagues, pestilence and the end of time. It’s a never-ending chorus with her these days and trust me, that’s not a topic your average thirteen-year-old enjoys discussing over his string beans seasoned with an unhealthy dollop of fatback grease.

  Now don’t get me wrong, I love Gram with all my heart. But recently she has begun taking this drought business to the extreme. Mom says it’s because Gram was raised during the Great Depression when times were hard and that I should just humor her and not let her little quirks get under my skin. However if you ask me, some of her ideas go way beyond the weird.

  Like for instance, since she is convinced her well is going dry, when she takes a bath she refuses to waste the water. Now wasting water is what you or I would refer to as a simple matter of draining the dirty water out of the tub. But no! Not in Gram’s world! I have to get a bucket and carry the water outside to water her tomato plants, pepper plants and petunias. I know exactly what you’re thinking. And yep, it does concern me as to exactly how much of that dirty water gets absorbed into her tomatoes.

  Gram uses some kind of natural organic soap. I read the label myself and it does claim to be safe for plants and animals. However, even the fine print doesn’t mention a word about it being safe for human consumption. It’s the sole reason I gave up tomato sandwiches, which I normally live on in the summertime.

  Get this! She even had some insane notions about us bathing in the same water to conserve the liquid gold. Nope! Not happening! I drew the line there. She finally gave in, but she wasn’t at all happy about it. I knew this when she cooked squash for supper, knowing full well it makes me dry heave just to smell it cooking.

  Anyway, I had enough to worry about besides sharing bath water with my 84-year old great-grandmother. Like going back to school for instance. Just three more lousy days of freedom and then it was back to those fun filled and ever exciting days of Math, English, and History without a day off for good behavior until Thanksgiving break. But you can believe I intended to make the most of my last three days of freedom. My two best buds and I had planned a camping trip at Grandpa’s cabin on the river for Saturday night and it was going to be awesome!

  Where was Gram with that sweet tea anyway? She suffers from a mild case of dementia, which in her case means her memory fades in and out. She
had probably forgotten all about it, but I sure needed a cool drink. The temperature had hovered around one hundred degrees for the better part of a month and today was no exception. I could feel sweat trickling between my shoulder blades as I rolled up the hosepipe and put it away with visions of my air-conditioned room dancing in my head.

  Breathing a deep sigh of relief I stepped into the house and it felt like I was walking into a refrigerator. The icy blast of air blew up my leg and billowed out my tee shirt as it cooled my sweaty skin. I had just turned toward the kitchen, when suddenly… out of nowhere… what tha!…a light so bright it practically blinded me reflected off something on the flowery wallpaper just above the fireplace.

  “Holy catfish sh…droppings!” I rubbed my eyes and blinked, trying to bring my blurred vision back into focus. I sure hoped that I’d caught my careless slip of the tongue in time. Mom had told me once that when she was a little girl she had accidentally muttered a curse word to her aggravating brother and as punishment Gram had shoved a bar of soap in her mouth. An actual bar of soap! Can you believe they did that in the old days? Talk about child abuse! You would be hauled into court for that nonsense today!

  Now, like I said, Gram uses some kind of natural organic soap, while Mom uses Irish Spring and that stuff would gag the most robust maggot. Isn’t soap poisonous? Besides, nowadays most everyone I know uses some type of liquid body wash. That fact alone probably helped put an end to such an abusive practice as washing a child’s mouth out with soap. It’s probably much easier to shove a bar of soap in a kid’s mouth than force him to open wide for a spoonful of cucumber and mango body wash.

  At any rate, I didn’t really have time to debate the pros and cons of liquid verses bar soap at the moment. I was more concerned with how a bolt of lightning had streaked down from a clear blue sky, in through the window, and exploded in my great grandmother’s living room. It couldn’t be lightning. For crying out loud the sun was blazing and the skies around Twin Rivers had forgotten what a thundercloud even looked like. Okay, this was seriously strange!

  Then another troubling thought struck me. Gram had warned me about staying out in the sun too long. Was I suffering from sunstroke? That had to be it! Was sunstroke fatal? Did it cause hallucinations? Dang, if I had paid attention when Gram had watched practically every episode Dr. Oz had ever filmed I might know the answer to these questions. But what other explanation could there be for seeing the blinding flash?

  I felt my way to the sofa by sliding my feet slowly along the carpet. I couldn’t see a thing. My eyes were burning like fire and hot tears streamed down my cheeks. What was going on here? No doubt this ranked up there as one of the all time weirdest things that had ever happened to me. I shut my eyes for a few minutes, but the strange light blazed behind my closed eyelids.

  What if my eyes were permanently damaged? What if the blinding light had fried my pupils or something? My vision was slowly coming back into focus, but I could barely see my hand in front of my face. Inching along the carpet at a snails pace, I finally felt the sofa against my leg and fell down on it, putting a pillow over my face to protect my eyes from another random burst of light.

  When I opened my eyes a short while later they were still fuzzy and tears trickled down my neck soaking the front of my Doc Watson tee shirt. I sat up, and glancing toward the fireplace noticed that Gram had hung a new painting there.

  That was odd.

  How had she climbed up on the fireplace hearth, lifted a heavy painting down, and hung another without even asking for my help? And where had the painting come from anyway? It hadn’t been hanging there last night when I had sat on this very sofa and watched Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader with Gram. For the record, I am. Well, in science anyway.

  As I lay on the sofa trying to convince myself that I was hallucinating, and wondering if I should insist on a cat scan for a possible brain tumor, I could have sworn something in the painting moved. Okay, I realize that painted objects don’t normally move. I also realize that people who see them move probably don’t broadcast the fact that they saw them move to their neighbors. But still.

  Wait!

  Holy crap!

  There it was again!

  Definitely a movement!

  Okay, I could come up with three logical explanations.

  (a) I was indeed hallucinating.

  (b) I had suffered serious damage to my eye.

  (c) My mind was playing tricks on me.

  But wait just a cotton-picking minute!

  Here I was jumping to all manner of wild conclusions when it was probably nothing more than a fly or mosquito that had flown into the room and was buzzing around the painting. The insect had most likely followed me in when I opened the door, hoping to escape the sweltering heat as well. Who could blame it? That had to be the answer. Right?

  Nervously wiping the sweat from my brow, I glanced back at the painting and breathed a deep sigh of relief. It was a very realistic rendering of a middle-aged man standing beside a large buffalo with a rushing river in the background. Nothing frightening. And you know? The river looked kinda familiar.

  As I was gazing at the painting, I was also becoming aware of an unusual noise in the living room. What was that sound? It sounded like…something dripping. Water dripping? Gram! I had forgotten about her! Was she still in the shower? Had she fallen? Was she hurt! “Gram!” I shouted, taking the stairs two at a time.

  “I’ll be down in a minute, BJ, ” she called cheerfully from her room. “I was just doing some ironing.”

  I sank down on the top step for a few seconds to calm my nerves, before returning to the living room and searching for the source of the drip. “Crap, wouldn’t you know it?” The water was slowly dripping off the fireplace mantle. Evidently something was leaking upstairs and running down the wall. It had to be either Gram’s bathtub or that leaky hot water heater again.

  On closer inspection, I couldn’t find water dripping from the ceiling or running down the wall. Apparently it was dripping from behind the painting. Though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I would have to take it down to see for sure.

  Grumbling that I might never get that glass of tea, I went to the fireplace for a better look.

  Huh!

  It wasn’t the hot water heater!

  I had to be seeing things!

  No freaking way!

  I shoved my fist into my mouth to stifle a scream that I’m positive would have caused Gram’s pacemaker to beat triple time. It couldn’t be! It wasn’t possible!

  In fact, it was physically impossible!

  Yet it was happening right before my own burning eyes.

  The rushing river in the painting (that is the painted rushing river) had overflowed its banks and was dripping out of the painting and onto the mantle.

  And the water was rising!

  I know this because the water was swirling around the knees of the man in the painting now, instead of flowing between the riverbanks where it belonged. I watched as the slow drip from the mantle slowly began to change to a steady stream. What if the entire river from the painting flooded Gram’s living room? Sure, I was a strong swimmer, but at Gram’s age I doubted if she was.

  When my brain began to function again, I ran to grab a mop bucket from the laundry room. Putting the bucket under the stream, I watched with mounting horror as it began to fill with muddy river water. I was going to need a bigger bucket. Then as impossible as it sounds, I watched as a couple of minnows fell out of the painting and began swimming around in the bucket and a crawfish scrambled around on the bottom.

  I glanced nervously toward the painting, praying that a snake wouldn’t slither out next. What was going on here! Had I entered the Twilight Zone? Was I being Punk’d? Was Mom filming my reaction for a chance at winning $100,000 on America’s Funniest Home Videos? Or make me the next YouTube sensation?

  Rubbing my stinging eyes, I glanced up at the bizarre painting in disbelief as water steadily splashed into the bucket. Was
that ever a mistake! I gasped and staggered backwards, falling over the arm of the sofa.

  Now the buffalo was looking straight ahead as the rushing water swirled higher and higher toward his chest! Honest to God! I kid you not! A few seconds earlier the painting had shown him to be contentedly munching the grass at his hooves!

  This creature was alive!

  Then something happened that I will replay over and over in my head for the rest of my life. In slow motion and in one of the most terrifying and gut wrenching moments of my entire life the man in the painting looked directly at me, just as the water rose even higher and began to lap around his neck, and in a deep voice said, “Beware the river.”

  Chapter 2

  When I opened my eyes Gram was bending over and shaking me like a saltshaker. “Billy Joe, wake up! Did you fall? I heard a noise and came downstairs to find you on the floor. Are you sick?”

  “Um…no…I guess I was…taking a nap,” I fibbed, reaching up to rub my aching head. I was fast discovering that it was tough on the old noggin to go from a standing position to a dead faint in well under a minute. I wasn’t about to tell her the truth though, which was that I had just passed out cold for the first time in my life. Fortunately, it wasn’t unusual for me to take naps on the floor in front of the TV, so she let it rest.

  “If you’re sure you’re okay I’m going back upstairs to finish ironing. Then I’ll probably take a short nap before I start supper.”

  “I’m fine, Gram.” I knew how antsy she got if an iron was left unattended. I’m almost positive that irons have safety features built in, but a couple of times a week Gram sends me rushing upstairs to confirm that her iron is unplugged. It’s a known fact the woman won’t step foot out of her house in a piece of clothing that hasn’t been starched and ironed until every wrinkle has cried uncle.