1 The Bank of the River Read Online Free PDF Page A

brother
held each Fourth of July. But other than that, even though they lived only a
few miles apart, they rarely communicated. Steven wasn’t used to talking with
him for much more than a couple of minutes at a time. He was going to have to
try harder if he wanted his help.
    He pulled
the car into his driveway and he and Roy walked into the basement. The alarm
had inexplicably started working again, and Steven disarmed it. He turned to
his father and pointed overhead.
    “This is
where I heard the footsteps last night when I got home. I came in the door and
the alarm wasn’t working. I thought someone might be home, so to scare them I
decided to slam the door closed, thinking they’d run.”
    “Damn fool
idea.”
    Steven
ignored him. “As soon as the door closed I heard the footsteps upstairs. They
were unmistakable. So I called 911.”
    “Another
damn fool idea.”
    Steven
sighed, irritated. “If you think someone is in the house,” he said to Roy,
“most people would call the cops.”
    “Nothing
wrong with the cops,” Roy replied. “But it’s stupid to think they can do
anything about ghosts.”
    Steven
didn’t know how to reply to this.
    “Where do
you keep your guns?” Roy asked.
    “I don’t
have a gun.”
    Roy looked
at Steven as though he was from outer space. “Well don’t you think that might
be a good idea, with people breaking into your house?”
    “Well, you
can’t shoot a ghost,” Steven shot back.
    It seemed
like a stalemate, and neither of them spoke for a moment. The longer things
were silent, the more Steven felt like he should apologize.
    “Dad,
listen, I —”
    “It’s your
story,” Roy cut him off, waving a hand. “Keep talking.”
    OK, back
on track , Steven
thought, then continued. “I never found anyone inside. The cops searched the
place. No forcible entry, they don’t know how they got in. The front door and
the kitchen door are the only ways out up there, and they were both bolted when
I went up. If they went out a window, they bothered to lock the window from the
inside on their way out. I think the cops thought I imagined it.”
    Roy
contemplated this. Steven expected him to say something sarcastic but instead
he just seemed to be thinking. “Then what?” Roy asked.
    “Well, I
tried to go to bed. Took forever to get to sleep, I was too wired by the idea
that someone had broken in. I woke up around 3 a.m. Heard the knocking.”
    “What did it
sound like?”
    Steven
walked to the wall and knocked on it four times. “Well, kind of like that. It
sounds more muffled, like it’s coming from a room on the other side of the
house. Then it happened again, a second time, maybe ten or fifteen seconds
later – four more knocks. When it first started weeks ago I thought it was
coming from the front door, but I ruled that out. It was coming from somewhere
inside the house, one of the interior walls. That’s when I thought it might be
the plumbing. But it’s still happening, every night – and it seems to move – it
doesn’t come from the same place every night.”
    “Hmmff,” Roy
snorted.
    “Then last
night,” Steven continued, “it happened again. I got up during the pause between
the knocks. It seemed to be coming from downstairs. When I looked down the
stairwell, I thought I saw movement and I heard the sound of water running.”
    “That’s when
you went into the bathroom?” Roy asked.
    “Yes,”
Steven said, leading Roy around the hallway and into the downstairs bathroom so
he could reference the layout there. “The tub had water in it but wasn’t
running. The drain was open, but the water wouldn’t drain. I knelt over it to
see if something was blocking it, and that’s when I felt the blood. Hit me on
the back of the head. You know the rest.”
    Roy stepped
over to the tub. “So there was a head floating,” he held his arm out, pointing into
the space above the tub, under the shower head, “…right here?”
    “Well, no,
it was more over here, in