Chapter Text
There’s a brief whirring sound as the tape inside the ancient recorder starts turning. Beau stares down at it dubiously.
“Does this thing even run?” She prods at it. There’s a dull tapping sound on the recording. “Well, fuck it. It’s Darion’s fault if nothing gets picked up on this thing. Maybe if they didn’t have me doing the boring shit this would be fine.”
Beau glares towards the door as if the head archivist could hear her through the wooden door and layers of soundproofing.
“But no, I have to start reading statements, have to start actively engaging with the work we do here.” The eye-roll accompanying that statement is near audible. “Whatever. I’ll sit my ass down in some dank closet and record some old, shitty statement for easier filing. Beats doing the actual filing.”
The closet itself is… just that. Beau might be somewhat uncharitable in her description, but there was no disguising that the room was an old supply closet hastily converted into a small recording studio. There was a small desk set up in one corner and the other side of the room was still home to various cleaning supplies.
Beau reaches an arm out to the desk and pulls over a beat-up manila folder. It’s blank, save for the words: CASE 2020715. The age of statements was always difficult to guess if they weren’t labeled correctly. Most statements were just taken and filed away for years, keeping them in deceptively similar conditions even if the ages varied by decades. It wasn’t until Darion became head archivist and wanted to start recording and following up on old statements that the seal on the old files was cracked and statements older than most of the people working in the archives came out of storage.
Case 20020715 looks as normal as any other Beau has seen. It is a relatively thin folder and when Beau opens it she sees a few newspaper clippings, likely from follow-ups to the original statement, and the original statement itself. It looks like most of the other handwritten statements she has seen since starting at the Institute. Thin black lines printed on plain white computer paper to give people a guide to write. There are a few identifying questions at the top of the page. Name, Reason for Statement, Date of the Incident(s), and Date of the Statement Writing. The whole thing has been filled out in cramped, messy handwriting and slightly smudged blue pen.
Squinting as the small letters, Beau coughs softly to clear her throat before beginning to read in a clear but monotone voice.
“Statement of Brandon Peters, about… um, a near-death experience due to drowning.” Beau sighs quietly.
“As if we don’t have enough ‘paranormal’ near-death experiences,” she adds under her breath.
“Statement was given July 15th, 2002. Shit, how does Darion start these? Um, this is Beau? Recording from the Cobalt Institute, Zadash. Um, here’s the statement:
‘I used to love swimming as a kid. Lakes, rivers, anywhere I could, much to the annoyance of my parents. It’s their own fault as they were the ones who taught me to swim almost as soon as I could walk. I think their intention was just to make sure I wouldn’t drown. Guess that backfired a bit on them since I was begging to join swimming clubs as soon as I was old enough.
I grew up in Oregon and we had plenty of lakes to swim in and the local pools, but that changed when my parents got divorced and my mom got remarried and… long story short, I was moving to central California with two new siblings and a chip on my shoulder. Maybe I’d convinced myself that there wouldn’t be any water there.
I was a moody fifteen-year-old at the time. I hated moving states and I hated my step-brother, Hunter. There was nothing actually wrong with him, but like I said: I was fifteen. Hunter was a year younger than me but nearly a foot taller and much wider. He played football. I wrote him off as a dumb jock but at that point, I was just thinking of every excuse to hate him. My mom seemed to think it was nice that I had a new sibling around my age, but in reality, I think that made it even worse. My new step-sister, Alicia, was only ten and she had no interest in hanging out with me or Hunter. It was a fine arrangement.
So my family ended up Felddwin, a small city about an hour east of Zadash. My step-dad, Greg, and his kids were actually from the area. Greg had just been in Oregon as long term job training, but the two years he lived in my home state was enough time for him to meet and fall in love with my mom and drag us both back to California with him when he secured a job in Zadash.
I found myself in a completely foreign place. Greg had moved us into a nice, big new house only a mile or two from where he grew up. He liked to clap me on the back way too hard and say how excited he was for me to attend his alma mater.
It was two months before I was set to start my sophomore year at a new high school, in a new state, and I was miserable. My one consolation was that we were in a safe and relatively secluded city, where I could explore my angsty little heart away. There were even rivers and lakes to swim in. But that was where the trouble started.
Looking back, I think that it was the fact that Greg told me not to go that solidified my need to explore the haunted river. It was near our house and it was just a small river that flowed from a nearby lake. I had mentioned wanting to explore it over dinner when Greg suddenly got very serious. He said that a bunch of people had drowned there over the years. The officially stated reason was that the current was too fast and that people got dragged under the water. Around the time of the third drowning, people started saying something demonic or a ghost was causing it. I let Greg think I wasn’t going to go anywhere near the river but that was a lie. I was a teenager; I didn’t believe in ghosts and even if there was one, I would insist that I wasn’t afraid of it. But above all, I saw that river as a challenge.
I set out for the river about two days after Greg told me about it. As usual, Hunter followed behind me. Whenever I did anything, my mom would always send Hunter after me. She always wanted me to consider him. “What if he wants to go outside? What if he wants to play video games?” I hated it.
None of that stopped my giant, idiot step-brother from following me out to the river. I walked out to the bank of the river, ignoring Hunter's silent footsteps behind me. It turned out he hadn't even known where we were going. As soon as he saw the river (accompanied by a "DANGER" sign so large I was sure it was sarcastic), he hesitated.
"Dad said not to go near this," he had said.
"If you're scared, you don't need you to come," I'd replied. Looking back, I'm glad he had thicker skin than me. If he'd left... well, I'm glad he ignored my jabs.
I'd taken off my shirt and shoes, leaving just my swim trunks on and waded into the water. There was a current, but it didn't feel strong at all. In fact, I barely noticed it. I had gone swimming in other rivers before and I swear it was usually worse than this. At the time, I think I just thought I was especially strong or something. Like I alone could brave these waters.
I waded in until the water level was up to my chest. There was a moment, right before it happened, where I looked back at Hunter, looking nervous by the riverbank, and smiled a cruel, taunting smile. That was right before I was dragged under.
Something... something grabbed me. My foot was yanked out from underneath me like something was grabbing at my ankle. The simple and terrible truth was: something was pulling me. As I looked through the murky water, I could see a hand, wrapped around my leg and pulling me under the water and downstream at an alarming speed. The hand seemed to stand out, the sickly pale skin a stark contrast to the dark water surrounding me. Even as little as I could see around me, I was sure that the hand dragging me through the water, and the arm it attached to, was not accompanied by a body. The arm seemed to extend as far as I could see. It was an awful, long, thin limb that stretched on and on. I wanted to scream, but I didn't want to lose any air. There were moments where I was sure I would faint, it was difficult to hold my breath with the water that filled my nose making me sputter.
I was sure, long before I saw the monster, that I was going to die. Then, I reached the end of the river. As I looked down at the river bed, I saw them. Hands. They stuck up from the soft, sandy bottom of the river. The skin on them was wrinkled like they'd been soaking too long in a bath. The nails of many were wickedly sharp. I saw that some of them were still holding a piece of clothing or even a part of a person. I felt sick. I knew that one of these hands had to be what was dragging me.
When I saw her, I thought maybe she was just a dead hand like the others, but as I approached, her eyes snapped open. They shone like yellow lantern light, a beacon in the dark water. Her long dark hair floated in the water around her like a sick halo. Her skin might have at one point been a warm light brown, but now it looked a sickly green in the murky water. She reached out to me with open arms, the pose almost inviting. Her eyes... I'll never forget them. I knew that she was dangerous, a monster, a THING living at the bottom of this river and drowning so, so many people. I knew that's where the arms were coming from. But when she looked up at me, as I approached her, she just looked... sad.
Despite the water of the river, I knew she was crying. Her arms were open in an embrace. It felt like she wanted me. Wanted me to join her down in the river. To join her family of broken bodies and help bring new people into the fold.
The scariest moment of the whole thing was when I felt myself want that. I wanted, just for a second, to join her and stay in that river forever. The burning in my lungs, the stinging of the water against my eyes, it all stopped. I couldn’t look away from her. I found myself reaching out to her, seeking an embrace that she was reaching out for in return. It felt like if I just took her hand, we would be at peace.
Just before I touched her, I felt a different hand reach into the river and grab my arm roughly. Just before I was dragged up and out of the water when the hand’s claw-like nails dug deep into my ankle, but whoever was now pulling me was stronger. Whatever spell that creature in the bottom of the river had me under broke and I kicked away from her as hard as I could. But for a brief moment, I looked back and could see, the lantern-like eyes stared after me with heartbreaking sorrow and there were even more tears in those eyes.
The sensation of fresh air in my lungs again paralyzed me as I broke the surface of the water and hauled over to shore. After what felt like hours of laying on my side on the riverbank, trying desperately to catch my breath, I looked over and saw Hunter. He was sitting a few feet away, his head was ducked low as his elbows rested on bent knees and he was panting as if he'd just been sprinting. I realized then that he must have been. I'd been dragged nearly three hundred feet downstream in a few seconds and he must have run after me and rescued me right in the nick of time.
I apologized to him, told him that the current got me. I'm not sure if he believed me. I don’t had less than generous thoughts about my step-brother’s intellect but he wasn’t an idiot. There was a series of five small bleeding cuts in my ankle where the hand’s nails broke skin. Neither of us mentioned it, even when we got home and Hunter grabbed me band-aids and disinfectant. We were closer after that though. I think that might have been the one good thing that came from all this.
I don't swim anymore. I can't, I don't think, but I also don't really feel like experimenting. The next time I tried to swim, two months had passed and I went to a small pond. The whole time, from the moment I got in, I felt this draw to swim down. To lose myself in the water until there wasn’t a trace of me left, not even a ripple on the surface. It felt like I would find her down there. Like if I looked long enough I’d see the faint yellow glow of her eyes. I don't know how she would follow me, but I just know she can. I know she does. Even swimming pools don't feel safe. The only body of water I feel safe in is a shower.
It had confused my mom when I didn't want to join the swim team that year, but I joined football instead as a runningback. Hunter helped me train. We really did become good friends after that. Years later, I tried to tell him about it, about what I saw. I think he believes me. He said that he saw some hands when he got in to rescue me. He always thought he’d been seeing things. I'm glad that he can back up my story.
I keep myself safe. I just don't swim. But the thing that still scares me most is those sad eyes. I still remember what it felt like to be drawn to them. I know that I wasn't afraid when I thought she was going to kill me. I just felt... safe."
Beau leans back, gently setting the lined computer paper back onto the folder. She clears her throat; it hurts a little from all the talking.
"That's, um, that's the end of the statement. Wow. That's... I know that we're supposed to remain skeptical, but..."
She glances over at the additional research that had been compiled in the folder.
"Oh, further research by Dairon states that there were an unusual number of drowning related deaths near that river and the connecting lake starting in 1979. In total, about 40 people died in that river, although the true number is unknown. Darion also found what appears to be the first victim of drowning. In 1978, a young woman by the age of Veth Brenatto and her three-year-old son, Luc, went missing.”
“Luc was found in less than a day. He was too young to confirm anything, but it sounded like the abduction theory was correct. Poor kid. He still had a dad though, and they apparently moved to Arizona after everything. As for Veth, her belongings, including clothing, that were later found suggested she drowned in that river, although the body was never found.”
Beau lifts a newspaper clipping to her face and feels a chill in her blood. "There's a- well, there's a picture here of Veth and Luc. Although the description Brandon gives about the appearance of the woman he saw at the bottom of the river isn't very specific, it seems Veth fits what we've been told."
"I just don't understand how Veth came to be this way. The sadness? The weird inviting sensation Brandon felt? That’s just… Whatever. Maybe none of this real. You know, most people feel warm right before they die of hypothermia. Maybe it's something like that. Feeling peace right before the end. Whatever it is, we checked in with Brandon Peters and he's still alive. He's nearly 30 and is actually getting married. He said that he just wants to put all that stuff behind him now. Although when we asked, he did say that he still doesn't swim."
"Anyway, this is Beau signing off."
With a decisive click, the tape stops turning.