Spring River Flow

by Nemo Arator

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“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…”

“Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream…”

We sang this, over and over, bellowing with drunken enthusiasm as we did indeed row a boat – a long wood canoe, rather – down the winding passage of the creek through the valley. Our hoarse disjunctive singing made a jangled round of the lullaby, our voices rising to the sky and dissipating. The singing was broken only by exhaustion and sips from the bottle, which we passed back and forth between us, while the others carried on without him.

The three of us – Guido, Gaston, and I – were in high spirits, for we were on our way to the secluded residence of our friend, the infamous Jose von Walpurga, who had invited us to this year’s birthday party, which was being celebrated with a select gathering of people at his home, a ramshackle old mansion located somewhere along this uninhabited stretch of waterway, several hours downstream from the city.

(His house was accessible by road too, of course, but taking a boat was the customary method of going, among those who had been there, for it lent an aspect of pilgrimage to the journey, as invitations to his home were nearly none. Guido had been there before, but Gaston hadn’t, and neither had I.)

All around us, spring was blooming new life; the shore was dense with fresh foliage. Floating down this old river route, the same meandering course it’s run for centuries, it flowed steadily enough to keep us moving without too much effort. The way was long and treacherous; we had to watch out for rocks and occasionally manoeuvre around piles of fallen branches.

Eventually, we came to a sandy cove at the foot of a small cliff, where a handful of canoes, kayaks, and dinghies were lined up in a row. We hauled our own vessel up the beach and placed it among the rest. I noticed some old liquor bottles mired in the sand, the glass mottled from how long they’d lain there, evidently discarded by debauchees during the midst of some distant revel. I picked one up to see if anything was inside, but it was empty.

A staircase had been carved into the face of the cliff, the steps cut according to the sedimentary layers. With Guido leading the way, we climbed them and emerged up onto a grassy plateau. A cracked flagstone walkway led to the gates of the six-foot chain-link fence encircling Walpurga’s compound. Having made a fortune from his many patented inventions, Walpurga then bought this plot of land out here away from the city, and built this wall around it soon after taking residence; inside the wall was this place he was building, a piece of the world being remade according to his own designs.

A guard emerged from the sentry booth outside the gate. He glanced dismissively at Gaston and me, but he gave Guido a familiar nod and allowed us past. As we walked across the inner lawn, we had a good view of the small lake Walpurga had constructed at his property’s lowest point. It was well known that he had a penchant for alligators, particularly albinos, and that he kept several as pets.

One might think they couldn’t survive in this part of the world, but that is untrue. The summers are, in fact, just barely hot enough for nearly half the year; he dug caves for them to hibernate in over winter. The fence was as much to protect them as to contain them, for the affliction of albinism made them too conspicuous to survive in the wild; that’s why they were so rare. Only eighty are known to exist at the time of this writing; most are in captivity, and Walpurga had four of them.

They were allowed to roam the grounds freely, and though I never heard about any of his guests being injured by the beasts, the absence of such stories itself was worrisome, for Walpurga was a man of such means that could easily have such things silenced. He was said to be breeding the creatures, developing some type of super-gator; rumours told of a humongous grey one with crimson eyes. But as to why he was doing this, the reasons were unknown; that part was never made clear — perhaps it was simply to preserve something strange and beautiful.

At the house, we rang the doorbell and waited. We could hear its resonant chime sounding within, and a few moments later, it was answered by an elderly fellow wearing a tuxedo. He greeted us with a knowing pleasantry and bade us enter.

“Right this way, gentlemen,” he said.

He led us to a room midway down the hall and paused outside, gesturing for us to go in, which we then did. Inside, the party was in full swing: music was playing and everyone was having a good time: talking, laughing, dancing. Mostly people I didn’t know, though I glimpsed a familiar face in the midst (or thought I did). A band was playing in the corner: crashing cacophonous noise, frenetic bursts interlarded by some fool shouting random gibberish into the microphone, before they started up again.

At the very moment we entered the room, Isolde was swinging from a chandelier and screeching insanely. And then Jack stood up, looking very pale, holding a pistol, and started yelling and waving it about.

“I’m going to kill you all!” he shouted, and fired several rounds into the ceiling. But everyone was already either too intoxicated to notice or else they simply didn’t care, and eventually he sat back down and continued drinking, somewhat sullenly. Isolde dropped to the floor, and someone burst out a hysterical jag of laughter.

Naked women walked amongst the crowd, covered in paint and glitter, imbibing the libations with everyone else. I quickly inferred these must be the house-girls Walpurga was rumoured to keep on staff. Then I noticed the woman on her hands and knees upon the billiard table in the corner opposite the band. She had a horse-tail butt-plug stuck in her rear, and she was sweating and gyrating her hips feverishly while someone idly whipped her buttocks with a riding crop.

Others gathered around with pens and wrote things upon her. Verbiage was scrawled up and down her arms and legs, all over her torso, even her face, hands, and feet: her entire body was covered in writing. This woman was the May Queen. She would have much of that tattooed onto her after the weekend. Like a series of I Ching throws, dice and coins were scattered across the green, along with chunks of bone and tiny figurines.

Just as I realised both Guido and Gaston had disappeared into the festivities, I heard a male voice declare loudly with smooth confidence: “The future is ahead of us.”

I turned to see the source of this remark, and saw a handsome thin man with a moustache sitting at a table with a group of people. He set down his drink, leaned forward and snorted something from the plate in front of him. Then somebody nearby raised their glass for a toast and shouted, “To the future!”

And a chorus cheered: “To the future!”

“And whatever comes in between!”

“Cheers!”

And the toasting and celebrating continued. But eventually, it became too much for me, so I asked Jose if there was somewhere I could go have a smoke and gather my thoughts.

“Of course,” he said, and summoned the butler. “Geoffrey. Please show this gentleman where he can get some fresh air and have some time alone.”

“Of course. Right this way, sir.”

He led me down the hall to a glass door, through which I could see an enclosed courtyard garden, with little pathways leading into a maze of shrubberies and flowerbeds. He held it open for me and said, “I’ll leave you to it then.”

I walked through, lit a cigarette and started strolling. Pale statues lurked amid the greenery, doubtless Walpurga’s own, though they had aspects of classical antiquity. But the garden was not entirely enclosed, for I soon found a gate that opened onto the rest of the yard.

From where I emerged, I could see the lawn slope down to the pond, the expanse of water across which was scattered the log-like shapes of floating alligators basking in the sun. It was a bright, beautiful May afternoon, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and there was a faint breeze.

And so, I smoked and strolled, keeping to the periphery of the lawn, not striding across the middle, for it is indeed hazardous to be caught out in the open on this particular property. I kept an eye on the hedge along the fence for any gators that might be nesting in there, but it looked like most of them were out on the water.

I had gone most of the way down to the water’s edge when I noticed a sizable hole in the perimeter fence. It was big enough for a crouching man to crawl through; thus, it was big enough for an alligator, too. I’d have to tell Jose about this immediately; it would have to be repaired before anything escaped. But instead of going back at once, for some reason, I went over to investigate more closely; perhaps I thought I could block it with something.

I was halfway over there when, suddenly, the head of a humongous grey alligator emerged from that hole. I stopped dead in my tracks and stood staring helplessly at the great beast. It was poised so perfectly still in that ragged aperture that for a moment, I was unsure whether it was a statue or a living creature. It could be a joke, a Styrofoam bust operated by some sort of pop-up mechanism. I wouldn’t put it past him: Walpurga was well-known for his pranks.

But I didn’t think this was one of them: it was the eyes, those albino eyes, reptile eyes: cold, primordial patience, boundless appetite. This was it, the beast of legend, and the stories were true: it was the size of a horse. It looked like it could eat a whole person in a single gulp.

At the sight of it, my mind went blank, overcome with the sheer dread and awe of beholding the beast right there in front of me; it cancelled any possible thought – nothing else in the world existed except that ancient demonic face, the colour of slate protruding from the ragged opening in the fence like a dinosaurian jack-in-the-box.

That moment seemed to last forever; the only thing that kept me from fainting was the knowledge I would be devoured immediately. Incredible tension, like a wire being pulled on either end until finally it must snap.

Then something did – a flick of movement and the bubble burst – I whipped around and ran for the house, pushing as hard as I could, but my legs felt weak and jellied. I remembered alligators run fastest in a straight line, so I jerked to my left, then to the right, zigzagging back and forth across the lawn as I charged toward the house, mind bulging with terror. I couldn’t hear if it was behind me; I didn’t dare look back to see if it was; I ran so hard I felt my thigh muscles rip. But I forced myself onward, and I was nearly at the house when one of my legs just suddenly gave out, and I fell.

I landed on my hands and continued like that, pushing with the one good leg, a loping onward hobble, pawing, crawling, scrabbling forward, my leg kicking desperately as I pushed for the final stretch across the threshold and into the safety and enclosure of the garden.

I made it, but I nearly fainted with the effort, grabbing hold of the gate as I reached it and swung around to slam it shut, expecting to just barely evade the gator’s jaws. But instead, there was nothing. The way was entirely clear of pursuit; there was nothing behind me at all.

Relief and confusion washed over me. Did that just happen – or was it a hallucination, some kind of crazy mindfuck? If anyone saw that, they would surely be howling with laughter. But it was no matter: I was safe. I brushed myself off, the trembles subsiding, and stood there awhile until I felt calm enough to go back inside.

However, I must have entered a different door than the one I went out of, for I had some difficulty in finding my way back. As I arrived, Jack and Isolde emerged and said I was just in time, the May Queen was about to begin her dance. I went in with them and stood by the door and listened to the musicians, who played sonorously now in the lengthening afternoon.

Somebody dimmed the lights, so that the only illumination was from the windows, and from the candles and sparklers fizzling atop a heavily frosted cake on the central table. Walpurga was seated before it, his face shining in the radiance, and he was surrounded by four or five people gathered closely around him. He waited until the sparklers died down, then he took a deep breath and blew out all the candles, from which there was a great profusion of smoke.

Then the May Queen somehow emerged from the cake and performed a series of particularly suggestive gyrations with the smoke drifting around her; then she descended to the floor and commenced moving amongst the party-goers, a narcotic frolicking, traipsing through the crowd trailing ribbons of silk. In the dimness, I could barely see her pale shape. Mesmerised by the languidly lugubrious movements of her dance, I was enchanted by her rolling hips moving about the room; at one point, she cavorted right past me. Her eyes had a sleepy cloudiness — like she was hypnotised or in a trance.

She was performing a series of sacred dances, each with a central motif, and she would dance until she either finished the sequence or collapsed from exhaustion, for once it was begun, it must be completed. The musicians played along in accompaniment; they knew the program, having practiced rigorously in the preceding weeks. For this was a rare procedure, once recorded as having been common in olden times; they used the day of his birth to inaugurate the season with this dead tradition resurrected.

Then I noticed someone had opened one of the walls, which gave way to another room that consisted almost entirely of a huge tank with an alligator inside. At the sight of it, I had a sudden sick feeling that they were going to feed her to that gator; either that or it would get out and attack someone.

Then I saw someone go to her and offer her something that looked like a twig, like a little fig branch, or a dried-up piece of vine. I heard them say, “Try it. It’s like E.”

That cloudiness cleared from her eyes when they focused on the shape; she seemed to recognise it immediately; she had a look of horror and revulsion on her face. She started shaking her head back and forth, saying, “No-no-no-no-no-no-no,” and they had to take her away.

After she was gone, her absence created an empty space, like a lull in the tide where something was supposed to be, but isn’t. All the people here suddenly seemed stilted and awkward, uncertain what else to do right then, including myself.

Something seemed sinister about the butler now. I saw him standing in the doorway, talking to Jose. They were leaning in close together, clearly conspiring about something. I decided it was time to get going now myself, so I got up and departed from the premises.

I walked across the lawn to the gate we had entered. The guard was asleep inside the sentry booth, and I passed by without being noticed. I carefully descended the steep steps carved in the cliff-face, and at the bottom, I found Gaston and Guido were already here.

Guido was sitting on a driftwood log drinking a beer; Gaston stood nearby smoking a cigarette. They looked oddly excited. They’d been waiting for me; they figured I’d be coming back sooner or later; they got tired of that scene themselves; and furthermore, they found something in the trees some distance up the shore.

They beckoned me to follow them, and we made our way through the undergrowth until we came to a wooded clearing. The trees had almost overtaken the building, a ruined, run-down monolith with gaping holes in the sides. They said they almost didn’t notice it through the trees; they came over for a quick peek, then came back to wait for me; they hadn’t even gone inside yet. They figured it must be an old mill or some sort of riverside watchtower.

We went to the only ground-level entrance, a pair of huge black double doors. They were heavy and rotted in place, but with some effort, we were able to kick and pry them open enough to get inside. The place was a burned-out shell, gutted by some ancient fire. The roof had collapsed in upon itself. Scorch marks rose up the walls to the jagged hole where the ceiling had been. We saw a balcony above us, but the stairs to reach it were ash and cinders now.

We stood there awhile amid the heaps of rubble, drinking in the serene desolation of the scene. The air had a faintly acrid smell, like burning bones; like being at the dentist, or the crematorium. There was nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do, so eventually we had to tramp back through the bush, the branches scratching and tearing at me the entire way.

And then something clicked, I suddenly realised who she was – the May Queen, the goddess in flesh – I had known her once ago. But she slipped away, and I let her; there was nothing else I could do. And so, we lived our lives according to chance and circumstance, and somehow it ended up that I would see her again. But I didn’t know it was her, and I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything. And that was my punishment: to see it all slip away again, because it hurt so much.

We arrived back at the boat and carried it to the edge of the water. Gaston got in first, then me in the middle. As I settled into my seat, I remembered what the moustache man had said, declaring with smooth confidence: “The future is ahead of us.”

And indeed it is, I thought. Life goes on; whether we want it to or not, it just goes on, and that is surely its curse, as well as its balm.

Then Guido climbed in the back, and we pushed off and sailed on down the river.