Prostrate on the floor like the pious of past religions, Anthony felt as if his breath had been snatched off of him and flung against the wall, the metallic taste of fear mingling with the deceivingly sweet taste of blood in his mouth . Of course he had heard about them, but he had written it off as an urban legend, as a way to crawl out of the void of dusk when the soft gyrating of TV's artificially sweetened teen fairytale creatures could no longer rock you to sleep.
But here they were, there were no longer just two of them, but they surrounded him now, a pernicious stillness exploding in the room and settling on everything, pervading the senses like a thick layer of ash, the appetent thirst of this subhuman silence swallowing all other sounds. Even the voices held back, as if unsure what to do. Anthony could feel molecules of air tumbling down to his lungs like pebbles down a well, but they felt stale and useless. What seemed like hundreds of pairs of glowing eyes stared at him when they may have been only a handful, the murky physical presence of these beings weaving in and out of each other like branches on a dead tree, waiting to fall on him. To crush.
Those were the Riverains, soulless poachers trawling along the banks of the Mississippi river, packs of nebulous wayfarers with hide was human but their behaviour was bestial. Unable to love or feel anything themselves, they would track down acts of love and feed off of them like a swarm of angry mosquitoes until nothing would be left of the people performing these acts of love but the burning rubble of human life, heart still beating but thumping as hollow and gloomy as the clang of bells belonging of abandoned churches in the starless night.
Wherever people would gather, seeking warmth from stray bonfires and other people's company, they would whisper in hushed, almost excited tones about these people, if such a term could even be used, rev up each other's fears and feel the titillation that chewing on these exaggerated horror stories evoked provide them with nourishment when nothing more substantial could be found.
Anthony had quickly dismissed these stories as hackneyed fables, folkloric Advil to fight off the painful ennui and hopelessness, but soon enough the drop began hollowing the stone and doubt started seeping in. What if? How? Could he let it happen? Every step he took from then on kicked up a swirl of questions and he finally sunk so deep into himself that the only thing he noticed was the endless flow of questioning that submerged him, the voices of doubt and warnings that washed over him, trickling down the walls, cascading down the stairs, even with each breath a new ripple of them was roused. He thought of the times when he would stand over his own child's crib, watch it cry but unable to hear it through the shrieking ebb and flow of his own mind. He was too far in to reach it.
This would exasperate Leah no end. She would scream, throw herself at him (a long with other things), beg, plead, but he dared not react. How could he explain to her what he was going through?
“You want yourself to get holed up in a madhouse?”, he'd ask himself and the kitchen shelves would wholeheartedly concur. How to explain the voices? How he had come to fear even touching her because he was afraid that he might attract what he'd call “the boogeyman” with a defying snort, only to be swiftly scolded by the voices. Not being a particularly amiable person to begin with, his retracting even further into himself turned him into a “worthless fucking troglodyte”, as had been Leah's last words before she drifted out of his life, carrying away with her the baby and leaving nothing but a arid and coarse feeling of solitude, as pleasant as a snootful of sand. In a way he was relieved. He felt as if he had committed a supreme act of love by saving them both from how he felt about them. How good it had felt to transfer the blame to something else instead of himself and his impotence, his godforsaken self and the voices! What a saint. What a goddamn saint. He thought back on how the voices had almost shrieked in delight when Leah left, barely containing their glee, their chatter echoing off the walls in Anthony's now empty house. The strange thing was that with them gone he loved them more than he had ever let himself before. Such a fucking saint.
Suddenly, he felt himself torn from his memories and pinned once again to the cold barn floor by a sharp jab in the chest from the creature holding the soiled pitchfork. One of them had separated from the others and approached Moses raising its gnarled fingers contorted with greed while a barely contained growl like that of a famished hyena ground Anthony's bones to a fine dust, making his body go limp with pain. Inside him, something gave in.
“Please,” Anthony begged, his tone of voice desperate. His eyes stung and the tears that filled them felt like the acid rain that had begun to fall from the sky after the meteor impact, preceded by an atmosphere of promise, but instead showered the earth with more destruction. Just like in old times. Anthony knew that all he was doing was setting the table for the feast, he could see the the glow in the creature's eyes grow steadily stronger until it was no longer flickering but burning intensely, peeling off the hardened expression in its face, revealing a ghoulish smirk. What Anthony felt, it felt too. Love. This inexplicable need to protect, carry, embrace and save the little bundle of virtually unidentified contents this overpowering need to give without receiving, living solely for someone else. His forces reached out to Moses, in his mind he wrapped his arms around the tiny and held it tight, while feeling the icy claws of the Riverains grasp for his for his heart, searching, grabbing, scavenging, leaving nothing behind but an arid wasteland, a dried-up riverbed once glistening with feelings and desires. The dam had burst, only to drown him and the child in the gushing flow.
“Don't hurt...the....my child.”
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