Read Online The Drowned Forest by Kristopher Reisz - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kristopher Reisz
Tags: Fiction, Horror, YA), Young Adult Fiction, Young Adult, teen fiction, ya fiction, ya novel, young adult novel, teen novel, teen lit, young adult horror
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them out across the marina like dandelion seeds.
Under the tea-colored water, streamers of milfoil wave with the currents. I watch them, wiping sweat from my face without looking away.
Hearing the Dreadnought’s voice again makes me remember those afternoons when you’d ignore me. I’d try on your clothes or bounce a rubber ball against your floor and closet door, getting so mad that you wouldn’t do anything except practice guitar. Sitting on your bed, you’d spend hours curling your fingers at unfamiliar angles across the strings, teaching them to move the way your mind wanted them to.
Tyler lifts his Aviators up, then shakes his head. “What are we—”
I sink fingernails into his arm. “Shhh! Quiet.”
I never take my eyes off the weeds. If I don’t blink, I can see new spirals of leaves unfolding. Stalks stretch upward, slow as the afternoon shadows, reaching toward the music.
People walk by without noticing, but down in the murk, the milfoil winds around dock bumpers and slack mooring ropes. Tiny snowflake flowers blossom, then fall to the water. The longest stalk reaches under the railing, making me jump back. “Stop! Mr. Alton, stop!”
The song breaks off. The clatter of the marina pours back in on us.
I grip the railing and peer down. “Holly? Holly, where are you?”
There’s no sound, no bubbles, no motion in the water except for the plants continuing to grow for several minutes. They keep climbing up the railing, working with the patience of a girl learning her instrument, teaching her fingers to move the way her mind wants them to.
Eight
Your pa-paw stares across the water as he talks. “When I was ten, me and some friends played hooky from school, went swimming in the river. Next day, I got a fever. Bad one, kept me in bed past the end of the school year. Then it got into my liver. After a while my skin turned yellow. My eyes, the whites of them, turned yellow with the jaundice.
“Doctor couldn’t help. Everybody thought my liver would shut down completely, and when that happens, that’s it. That’s the end.” He snaps off a stalk of milfoil curled around the railing post. Raking the spiny leaves across his palm, he squints at them, trying to understand.
“I never told my folks I’d skipped school that day, didn’t think it mattered. But both my folks grew up down in the holler, the river valley back before they built the dam and flooded it all. Finally, they called a root-worker named Mr. Buckley.
“Root-workers had been pretty common in the holler, back before there were any doctors. Mostly they mixed up medicines, helped lay out the dead, and such. But they knew others things too, charms, curses, and things like that. Mr. Buckley was a little grouchy old man, one of those turtle-faced old men, y’know? He came into my room holding the Bible, looks me up and down, then says, ‘What were you up to ’fore you got sick?’
“I told him like I’d told my folks, that I’d just been at school and hadn’t been up to nothing. But Mr. Buckley, he holds that Bible out and says, ‘You ready to swear to it? Swear to it there on your deathbed?’ The word ‘deathbed’ really scared me, so I told him all about playing hooky. Besides, I figured Dad couldn’t whoop me if I was dying.” He chuckles.
“So I told them I’d been swimming, and Mr. Buckley nodded, and scratched his chin, and looked around my room, and finally he tells my folks, ‘The fever must have followed him home. We gotta find it quick, or it’ll do him in.’ So they started searching everywhere, under my bed, in the attic. I thought they’d all gone bananas, y’know? Momma even told Dad to pull up the floorboards. He was about to do just that when he noticed the grille over an air duct had been worked loose. He got down and reached in there, started shouting, and pulled out a frog, piss-yellow and this big.” He holds up his fist to show us its size. “That was it. That was the fever.”
“That was
Under the tea-colored water, streamers of milfoil wave with the currents. I watch them, wiping sweat from my face without looking away.
Hearing the Dreadnought’s voice again makes me remember those afternoons when you’d ignore me. I’d try on your clothes or bounce a rubber ball against your floor and closet door, getting so mad that you wouldn’t do anything except practice guitar. Sitting on your bed, you’d spend hours curling your fingers at unfamiliar angles across the strings, teaching them to move the way your mind wanted them to.
Tyler lifts his Aviators up, then shakes his head. “What are we—”
I sink fingernails into his arm. “Shhh! Quiet.”
I never take my eyes off the weeds. If I don’t blink, I can see new spirals of leaves unfolding. Stalks stretch upward, slow as the afternoon shadows, reaching toward the music.
People walk by without noticing, but down in the murk, the milfoil winds around dock bumpers and slack mooring ropes. Tiny snowflake flowers blossom, then fall to the water. The longest stalk reaches under the railing, making me jump back. “Stop! Mr. Alton, stop!”
The song breaks off. The clatter of the marina pours back in on us.
I grip the railing and peer down. “Holly? Holly, where are you?”
There’s no sound, no bubbles, no motion in the water except for the plants continuing to grow for several minutes. They keep climbing up the railing, working with the patience of a girl learning her instrument, teaching her fingers to move the way her mind wants them to.
Eight
Your pa-paw stares across the water as he talks. “When I was ten, me and some friends played hooky from school, went swimming in the river. Next day, I got a fever. Bad one, kept me in bed past the end of the school year. Then it got into my liver. After a while my skin turned yellow. My eyes, the whites of them, turned yellow with the jaundice.
“Doctor couldn’t help. Everybody thought my liver would shut down completely, and when that happens, that’s it. That’s the end.” He snaps off a stalk of milfoil curled around the railing post. Raking the spiny leaves across his palm, he squints at them, trying to understand.
“I never told my folks I’d skipped school that day, didn’t think it mattered. But both my folks grew up down in the holler, the river valley back before they built the dam and flooded it all. Finally, they called a root-worker named Mr. Buckley.
“Root-workers had been pretty common in the holler, back before there were any doctors. Mostly they mixed up medicines, helped lay out the dead, and such. But they knew others things too, charms, curses, and things like that. Mr. Buckley was a little grouchy old man, one of those turtle-faced old men, y’know? He came into my room holding the Bible, looks me up and down, then says, ‘What were you up to ’fore you got sick?’
“I told him like I’d told my folks, that I’d just been at school and hadn’t been up to nothing. But Mr. Buckley, he holds that Bible out and says, ‘You ready to swear to it? Swear to it there on your deathbed?’ The word ‘deathbed’ really scared me, so I told him all about playing hooky. Besides, I figured Dad couldn’t whoop me if I was dying.” He chuckles.
“So I told them I’d been swimming, and Mr. Buckley nodded, and scratched his chin, and looked around my room, and finally he tells my folks, ‘The fever must have followed him home. We gotta find it quick, or it’ll do him in.’ So they started searching everywhere, under my bed, in the attic. I thought they’d all gone bananas, y’know? Momma even told Dad to pull up the floorboards. He was about to do just that when he noticed the grille over an air duct had been worked loose. He got down and reached in there, started shouting, and pulled out a frog, piss-yellow and this big.” He holds up his fist to show us its size. “That was it. That was the fever.”
“That was
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