Part 1

Pauline Bleek

            My name is Pauline Bleek. I wait tables over at the Highs and Lowes Diner. I’m the morning gal. Folks—gentlemen mainly—come in either before or after their fishing spots. Usually carrying their rods and tackle boxes. That’s how I came to meet him. He started coming in regularly at one point. His rod was some rinky dink rental, no tackle box and no hat. Fishing boys come in here so often I’ve seen them all with different effects—overalls, thigh high boots, you name it—and none of them ever come in without a hat. I remember the first time he came in he was wearing a pair of hiking boots that had seen their fair share of walking. You could tell he hadn’t done much fishing in his time. I don’t know if he was getting advice from the other boys planted out at the river but he started coming into the diner with fresher gear: shiny new rod, some fishing boots, a tackle box, and he finally got himself a hat.

Dorothy Belham

            Name’s Dorothy. Belham’s the last name if you need it for this ‘record’. I manage the Alpine Apartments. I only knew the guy as one of my tenants. Came to me and asked for the cheapest one bedroom I had. He moved in with one suitcase and the clothes hanging on his back. Paid his rent on time. Figured he’d be no fuss judgin’ from his entrance until about a month later when folks around started complaining about the noises.

Norman Blake

            I’m Norman Blake. My friends call me Norm. So, you can call me Norman, thanks. My occupation is my business and not yours. I knew that Nathan guy because he always took the best fishing spot out on Lowe River. I always set up camp farther down the river where most of the fish had already been caught. I know what happened to him and that is a shame, but that doesn’t make it okay for you to be taking the best fishing spots.

Francis Davies

            My name is Francis Davies. I’m the sales manager down at Pioneer Inc. We sell tractor equipment to farmers in Anchorage. That’s how I knew Nathan. We worked together in the same office in different departments. He was a project manager before he got demoted. We weren’t necessarily friends at first. But after what happened, I just didn’t feel right about leaving him be like everyone else in the office did. I can’t imagine how to navigate through everyday life after something like that happens. Management told him to take as much time as he needed and he was back within a week of the funeral. You believe that? Because nobody at the office could. I swear when he walked in it was like the whole world stopped. I remember like it was yesterday.

Pauline Bleek

            This fellow ordered the same thing every time: two sides of toast with the crust cut off, two sunny side up eggs, and four pieces of bacon; with a special request to put everything in the shape of a happy face. Kind of peculiar. He was polite and minded his business; it wasn’t any trouble. I did it myself sometimes when the cook wasn’t feeling like it. I didn’t ask any questions about it at first. Maybe the third week of coming in I decided to see why he liked his breakfast such a certain way. And I really wish I hadn’t.

Francis Davies

            I was talking with Frank about something day-to-day when he looked up toward the front doors and interrupted me with a low “Oh my god”. I turned around and there was Nathan; wrinkled button-up shirt that was too small for his long skinny arms, simple bargain bin tie, hair that looked as if it was briefly fixed by hand, and five o’clock shadow that looked more like a five-day shadow. The entire office stopped. The clacking of keyboards froze in the air. Conversations ceased midway through. We all froze. Nobody knew what to do. He walked through an office of statues and gargoyles; all watching his every move. He sat down at his desk and resumed his work.

            The whole scene held so much gravity that the CEO approached his desk. We all watched as they spoke. Nobody could hear what they were saying. We saw them go back and forth about something until we heard him. “NO!” he shouts and then he looks around at all of us looking at him. Eyes darting back and forth, he recognizes his outburst. Then I don’t hear him but I can see him say to her “please, I just need to work”. I don’t have any kids. Most of us don’t so I don’t think anybody understands what he’s going through. She gently touches his shoulder and walks back to her office. As if the boss’s experience with him is our permission, we all go back to work and suddenly my conversation with Frank isn’t important anymore.

Pauline Bleek

            Horrible accident, what happened to his little girl. He used to make that breakfast for her on the weekends she wasn’t at her mom’s. The day he told me he tried to pay but I told him that breakfast was on me. I really hoped I wasn’t offending him by not accepting his money. I have two boys and if anything had happened to them, I don’t think I’d be able to continue. I just wanted to try and let him know somebody cared about him. I was relieved when he thanked me. He became a bit more talkative after that day. I asked him about the fishing and he’d ask about my morning. It was nothing more than simple small talk, but it was nice. The small talk continued up until that visitor came in. That older fellow; dressed in all black with the hunch. That’s when Nathan stopped talking.

Norman Blake

            One morning I got up earlier than usual to get that spot on the river. Packed everything the night before, too. It’s early enough for the sun to be hidden behind those mountains. I drive out to the spot by the water and, sure enough, there he is. And get this, he’s not even fishing. He’s got no gear on him. Not even a rod. He’s just standing there in a damn robe, arms down at his side, staring at the rushing water before him.

Pauline Bleek

            This older gentleman came in one morning. It was the day before that weird visit with that fellow, Norm. The bell on the door clanged and I noticed him standing there. But it was almost like he never walked in. Like he just sort of…appeared. He had a tattered black wide-brimmed hat that matched his long overcoat. The bottom of it was torn and frayed where it dragged against the mud that caked his boots. I told him to sit anywhere he liked and he sat down in the booth behind poor Nathan and just stared at him. He had this hunch. It made him limp when he walked. Except it was more of a…twitch. I found it strange when his boots left behind wet prints and it wasn’t raining outside. When I asked what he wanted for breakfast he just said in a low and, what first sounded like to me, gravelly voice “Water”. But his voice wasn’t gravelly. It sounded like he was gargling. He never stopped looking at that poor man ahead of him.

Dorothy Belham

            Kept to himself, mostly. Kinda felt on purpose, it did. His windows were always shut with curtains down. Didn’t think anything of it until I seen him paste newspaper all over them. I tell him he can’t be doing that and messin’ up my glass. Right then and there he hands me double rent for that month. And I think he says something like “Piss. I don’t like you, son” or “Please, she doesn’t like the sun”. To be honest with ya I didn’t entirely catch it, what, with countin’ all that money in my hands. Before it clicks and I try to hear what he dun’ said one more time he shuts the door and locks it. Sounds like he installed some of his own, too, because ain’t none of my doors have that many locks.

Norman Blake

            Now, at this point I’m mad. I went through all this effort to get there before him and he’s already set up camp. It’d be bad enough if he was posted there with a rod and tackle box, but he wasn’t. I get out of my truck and make my way towards him. I start calling out to him, telling him he can’t always be here, that there’s other fishermen, this and that. He’s not even looking at me. Like he doesn’t even know I’m there. I get up close enough to him and suddenly my rants fade and I get a good look at him from behind. He’s quietly saying something. Not to me, but out there. Like he’s talking to the river. But I can’t understand what he’s saying. Not because it’s too quiet. Because it’s not English. Now, I’m not the most educated guy. I feel like I might be able to tell if German was German or if Chinese was Chinese. But what he was saying didn’t sound like any language I’d known.

            I creep up a little closer and put my hand on his shoulder and his body whips around at me as if I just hit the fire alarm on his arm. Now, this could have been because it was still dark out but, I swear to you, right then I saw what his eyes were. They weren’t any normal pair of eyes I’d ever seen. His eyes, sunken in his face, were black.

            It looked like there wasn’t anything there in his skull, but he was looking right at me. I fell to the ground and he starts saying his gibberish. Not necessarily to me, but at me. I’m scrambling on the ground, backing away to my truck. He’s still saying these things at me and now he’s getting louder. I finally find my footing, get back in my truck, and hightail it out of there. As I look in my rearview mirror, I see his red illuminated body—waning in the distance—shouting at me with his index finger following me.

After that, the nightmares started.

Part 2

Pauline Bleek 

            That fellow, Norm, came in one morning pale as an egg white. He usually gets a big meal; being a big guy like himself. He once told me “I always make sure to finish a meal”. This time he just sat at the bar nursing a coffee. I had to tend to him quite a bit, not to refill his coffee, but to clean it up after he kept spilling it. When he handed me his tab, I noticed his hands were shaking. Like a shiver. He told me he was rolling in from a long night of hitting the bottle. Now, this is a small town. We’re about three hours from Anchorage and another five from just about anything else. It wasn’t uncommon for folks to be making their own fun by staying at home with a cooler full of their own glass friends. I’ve seen a lot of hangovers in my days at Highs and Lowes; this wasn’t one of them.

Francis Davies

            Nathan’s punctuality started becoming exemplary at a certain point. Every time I came into work—no matter how early—he was always there sitting at his desk. He wasn’t necessarily working, though. I would come in and glance over at his desk on my way to mine and see the back of his head just staring at his computer screen. And I’m not saying that it was idle on his desktop wallpaper; I’m saying it was black. This happened more and more as time went by. It wasn’t long after when he got demoted.

            One day I decided it was time to talk to him. I only meant to as a way to extend a friendly hand. I walk over to his desk and before I get to the entry of his cubicle I’m greeted with this smell. It’s a rancid smell, like if your clothes stay wet overnight. His hair is greasy and mottled in places and his shirt has a small black stain around the wrist.

            “Hey there, Nathan”, I say to him, cautious to not overstep, “getting started on work early lately, huh?” As I’m waiting for him to respond I notice the other smell coming from behind the rancid stink. It’s alcohol. I’m pretty sure he’s drunk right there, at work.

            “Got some fishing done earlier. Figured I’d just come in afterwards,” he tells me after slowly swiveling his chair to face me.

            “Oh, I didn’t know you fished. Where do you go to catch?”

            “There’s a particular spot out on Lowe River that I go to.”

            “All the way out on Lowe, huh? Must be nice to get out of Anchorage every once in a while.”

            “I do it every morning” he tells me. I figure that explains how he beats everyone to the office.

            “That’s good. Funny how having a routine is a way to stay interested, eh?” I tell him, hoping he’s found a new routine to keep himself busy, and realize I’m running out of small talk after that last home run of a remark. “So how are you doing?”

            He looks straight head—right through me—and repeats my question to me. “How are you doing?” he asks, pausing in dreadful beats after every word, and here I realize I’ve done something wrong. “You know there’s a stop sign out by where it happened now? That’s right. I guess the city finally saw the danger in that turn from the highway. I was talking to the waitress at the diner I go to about that section of the highway—since apparently, she takes it every day to get to work and I only happened to be taking it once that night—and how dangerous it is. You know what she says to me? She says ‘What’s it going to take for them to put in a light or at least a stop sign?’ You know what it took? Everything. It took everything for them to put in a tin red octagon in the street. It took everything from me.

            “You want to know something funny about routine? That night, I wasn’t even wearing my seatbelt. My routine was to make sure she was always wearing hers. And this one night I forgot to click mine. After those bright lights ahead of us got brighter and bigger and the truck hit us, I got ejected to the side of the road. You didn’t know that, did you? How could you? They never recovered my car so you’d never be able to tell. No, they never recovered it because the truck that hit us shot my car off the road entirely into the rushing river below us. Did you know that less than one percent of Alaska’s river miles are classified as wild? The ‘wild’ classification is due mainly to the nature of the flow of the river, particularly its speed. She was safely buckled in the car as less than one percent of Alaska took them both away.

            “You want to know another funny thing about routine? I regularly go back to that spot. I pull off on the side of the road and watch the flow of traffic. Besides that stop sign, I’ll tell you something that’s there now that wasn’t there that night: the pulsating glow of red lights from cars slowing. I don’t know why I keep going to that spot. Sometimes I hope I see that truck again. Because I didn’t see it when I woke up on the street that night. But to tell you the truth, Francis, I wouldn’t know what I would do if it came back. Would I get out and confront the driver? Would I drag him out of his truck and toss him in the river? I honestly don’t know. The only thing I actually do at that spot is constantly wonder why less than one percent of Alaska took my little girl instead of me.

            “People ask me all the time. ‘How is everything?’ ‘How are you doing?’ I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that most people don’t understand—or could understand even if I told them—what I’m going through. So, I always just tell them the same thing. “I’m still here.” Most people usually take that as some sort of divine sentiment that I have to take and keep going. But why should I when she doesn’t get to? It’s usually followed by a soft touch of the shoulder and they continue about the day as if our experience drowned away in some abyss. You know how much of my actual current state I tell people about? Less than one percent. You seem to be more ambitious than the others. You’re still here with me. And I want you to know, Francis, that I genuinely notice. Which is why you get more than one percent.”

            I hadn’t caught it when it happened, but at this point he’s eye level with me. I just stand there, probably slack jawed and dumbfounded. He turns back and sits down at his desk again and I make my way to mine. When I sit down, I sit for a moment just trying to collect myself. I notice a little damp feeling. Right there on my shoulder where he touched me.

Norman Blake

            I started having these dreams—nightmares, actually—After my little encounter with Nathan at the river. It was mostly the same one that went differently each time. I remember the first one the most. The dreams that followed all sort of blend together. Or maybe I just didn’t want to remember the following ones.

            I’m standing in a hallway. The hallway is long and it seems crooked. The door ahead seems like it’s turned diagonally, but it’s standing straight up when I get to it. There’s this sort of green glow that outlines it. At the bottom of it there’s a puddle of this black, brackish fluid that my feet splash in. And I can hear something coming from behind the door. Like someone chuckling. Someone young. When I open it, it’s the same scene every time: there’s a child in the corner, cowering. And the kid isn’t giggling; they’re whimpering. The floor is covered in some black liquid. Then there’s a man standing over the child. He’s holding his belt over his head, like he’s about to hit the kid again, when he turns around to me and makes his way towards me and says “It’s time for you to finish your meal!” When he gets close enough, I can see that it’s my dad. His eyes are black and whatever is black in there is streaming down his face. The kid in the corner looks up and it’s me. He brings the belt down and I wake up.

            Like I said, though, it’s usually different after that. Sometimes the man with the belt is me. Sometimes the room is filled with standing seaweed and they’re all swaying back and forth like in the ocean. Sometimes the kid in the corner is Nathan. Sometimes it’s his little girl. Sometimes the belt is a tentacle or a fishing rod; other times it’s a steering wheel. I could be remembering it wrong, anyways. I haven’t slept much since.

Pauline Bleek

            That older gentleman and Nathan seemed to be getting along. They started sitting together for breakfast. Except they didn’t eat so much anymore. They just sat there talking while Nathan drank coffee and the old man drank water. And the funny thing is that the old man never came in with him. He just happened to be sitting across from him whenever I got back to the table. Which I thought was peculiar because I swear that I never heard the bell on the door jingle. It was like Nathan could snap his fingers and the old man would be sitting there. I couldn’t ever catch what they were talking about. It was quiet whenever I approached them.  

            Nathan started getting his food to go. He made sure that it was still arranged the way he wanted it. Not sure who he was talking about, but one time he said to me “Thank you. She’s going to love it” and took off.

Dorothy Belham

            He started gettin’ a visitor. Some older guy. Wearin’ all black like he was comin’ or goin’ to a damn funeral. None of my business, though, so I never met his acquaintance. But things got strange since he came around.

            I had this dream. It was so real I swear I coulda gotten pinched a couple times before I woke up. I was walking around the building when I seen the older fella leave Nathan’s room. He left the door open and there was this sound comin’ from it. Something high pitched. I went to the room and the sound was gettin’ louder and shrill-like. Like a pig was squealin’. I walk through the door calling out his name. The room is dark and it smells. Smells rotten, like he left some fish out too long, and it damn near burns in my nose. The bathroom light is on and the door is slightly open. That’s where the shriekin’ is comin’ from. I walk over to it and push it open. In the corner of the room are a stack of to-go boxes from some diner. There’s black ink covering the floor and flowin’ out from the tub. In the tub is this…thing. Some black blob with what looks like tentacles floppin’ about, splashin’ this inky stuff on the walls and floor. It looked like a damn squid outta water but I know it ain’t a squid because this thing had teeth. Human teeth. It opened that mouth and wailed at me. I turn around to get outta that room and there’s Nathan. He reaches up at me and his hands and fingers are covered in the same black ink in the tub. He grabs the back of my head and starts whisperin’—or chanting, even—something to me but it’s too quiet for me to understand. And I wake up in a cold sweat. Here’s the thing that got me freaked. On my damp pillow, I look and see that it’s not sweat. It’s black.

Part 3 

Norman Blake

            The nightmares have been getting worse. Feels like they’ve been happening any damn time I close my eyes, so now I can’t even daydream. I try to stay busy; keep my mind from drifting. But there’s only so much coffee one can drink

            I drive. I never have a destination in mind. I grab a thermos and I just go. And you want to know something? I don’t even remember how I get there—like something else is driving me there—I always end up at that spot.

Pauline Bleek

            Something’s been going on with Norm. He looks like he hasn’t slept or had anything to eat in days. He doesn’t look like he’s been taking care of himself; it doesn’t smell like he’s been showering, his teeth are getting yellow, like an egg yolk. I mean, he was no Mr. Rogers, but we used to at least exchange pleasantries. Now he just sits at the bar and tells me to keep the coffee coming with this blank stare. He tells me he doesn’t want to see an empty mug in front of him. I even had to start brewing an extra pot when I saw him come through.

            The last time he came in, after his fifth or sixth cup of coffee, I tried lending him a helping hand that didn’t go so well. I said to him “Hey Norm. How about some breakfast? Maybe some water? On the house?” and he very hesitantly obliged. So, I brought him a standard eggs-bacon-and-toast-plate. When I dropped it in front of him, he stared at it for a second.

            He looked up at me and asked “Why did you do this?” I was in the middle of telling him that I just thought he needed a meal when he interrupted me. Louder, this time, “No. Why did you put it like this? With the face.” I didn’t know what on this green Earth he was talking about because all I did was drop a normal looking plate of breakfast in front of him. He started shouting at me. He was asking me “Do you know!? How do you know!?” and kind of accusing me of something.

            I tried to reassure him and point at the plate when he looked back at it and stopped his hollering. Like something appeared on the plate. He looked around at all the guests staring at him, what, with the scene he was causing. Then he said “I—I’m sorry. I’ll take this to-go” and when I reach for a box he said “No. The coffee.” As he’s walking out in a hurry, he says to me “Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t finish a meal. And tell him I’m sorry about his little girl. I’m so sorry.” And he never came back.

Francis Davies

            After our little… ‘chat’, if you will, I didn’t see much of Nathan. I would walk through the front doors of the office and see an empty cubicle when I looked at his desk. When it kept happening more and more, sadly, I knew they were going to let him go. I know they gave him a grace period after the funeral but, at the end of the day, the work still needed to get finished.

            One day I come in and notice somebody at his desk. I thought it was Nathan’s replacement. So, I decide to do the neighborly thing and introduce myself; try to make him feel welcome. I get to the cubicle and it’s this guy standing at the desk with his back towards me. It’s a bigger guy, too. He’s just staring straight ahead, though. Not down at his new computer or his desk. Straight ahead. I thought it was kind of odd but first impressions aren’t everything, right?

            I introduce myself to the big guy and it seems like it takes a second to register with him. He turns around slowly to me and, I swear, I jump back a few feet from what I saw. Staring at me with this flat, blank stare is this stranger with his mouth hanging open. I wasn’t sure if he’s staring at me or through me. You know why? Because he didn’t have any pupils. He didn’t have any whites, either. His eyes were black, like coal. No—like ink. He says this to me: “I can still hear her scream. Let the river take her screams from me.”

            “What? Buddy, you okay?” I ask him in what he thinks is a rhetorical question. I wave my hand in front of his face and give him a small slap on the shoulder. As if I have brought him out some trance, he hammers down a few heavy eye blinks and, all of a sudden, they’re normal. His pupils are huge, as if he’s on some kind of drug, but at least I can see the whites. He looks at everything around him. The desk, the cubicles, me. All as if he’s seeing them for the first time.

            He then asks me “What? Where…where am I?” I tell him and he’s just standing there. Not like before when he was in that…daze. He’s perplexed and trying to collect himself. He says “I—I’m sorry” and leaves the office in a hurry. He didn’t have anything on him, either. Just a thermos.

Norman Blake

            I don’t know what’s real anymore. I’ve been seeing things. It used to be in my dreams. But now those things are here. Street lamps are fishing poles. Tree branches wiggle like tentacles. My breakfast was in the shape of a happy face. The stop lights aren’t red anymore; they’re just bright and white, like a single headlight. Growing. Am I dreaming right now? Am I asleep? You would tell me, right? 

Pauline Bleek

            The last time Nathan came in was something else. The extraordinary part of it was how ordinary it was. The bell chimed, in came Nathan, he laid his fishing gear down, he sat down at his booth, and he made small talk. Weeks of him being silent went by to the point I thought that’s just how he was now. I was happy to have him talking again. Not only was he talking, but he was smiling.

            We went through the usual conversation. He asked about my morning and I asked about his. I apologized about the ruckus Norm had just made and asked him if he had caught anything on the river and he took a second to answer. His mouth stretched—ear to ear—and said “Yes, I did. I caught something.”

Dorothy Belham

            That mornin’, after I woke with that black gunk on my pillow, I went down them stairs to go tell Nathan that he wasn’t welcome in my building no more. I’m shoutin’ and poundin’ on the door to open up when I seen it wasn’t locked. I open it up and, get this, the place is empty. Up and gone in the middle of the night. No trace of him ‘cept what was in the tub. I don’t like what he left behind and, frankly, I don’t like talking ‘bout it, neither. That was all I seen of him. We done here?

Francis Davies

            I haven’t seen or heard about Nathan since. Will you let me know if you ever find anything out? He’s a troubled guy. I really just want to make sure he’s keeping his head above water.

Norman Blake

            I don’t know why I came in today. I feel like you’re my only sense of normal right now. Coming in to talk to you is the only thing I know is real. 

            I wish none of it ever happened. It was so fast. If I’m not dreaming right now, I want to say I’m sorry. It was an accident. I’m so sorry. I should have stayed that night. The car bounced off and into the river; I didn’t see him, so, maybe, I thought they would just assume that they lost control on the turn. I should have stayed. I can still hear her screams fading. Fading as the river took her. I want to tell her I’m sorry.

            If I am dreaming, that means I need some more coffee. I’m going to go see Pauline. If I am dreaming, then you can call me Norm.

Pauline Bleek

            Nathan watched Norm leave after his little outburst. I was at Nathan’s table when the fellow left. He had this look in his eye. Like a fisherman eyeing his next catch. He slapped down a big wad of cash, way over the amount of his bill, and took my hand in his. He looked at me—to be honest, it felt like he was looking inside me, his gaze was so deep—and said “Thank you. For everything,” and left in the same direction Norm went.

            As I was clearing his table, I saw a pair of mud-caked boots sidle up next to me. I looked up and it was that old man. That stranger. I stop in my tracks and almost felt like I stopped breathing, too. He smiled at me and water spilled out of the corners of his mouth. And he said something to me. He said “Funny thing how the water brings people together,” and left.

            That was the last I saw of poor Nathan. He’s a good man who’s dealing with some trouble. I do sure hope they find him.

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            Norman Blake was scheduled for another meeting, but is nowhere to be found. He was reported missing by Pauline Bleek after he stopped coming into the Highs and Lowes Diner. The local authorities discovered two abandoned cars parked on a local fishing spot on Lowe River in Valdez, Alaska. One was a truck registered to Mr. Blake and the other was a car rented to Nathan Gardener. No leads have been discovered at this time. 

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