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

Steven.
    Steven knew
he had to do something. “Let him go!” Steven yelled. He stood from the side of
the bed and approached the shadow, more angry than scared. He didn’t have any
idea what he was going to do once he reached it, but it felt like his only
option. The third knock resounded in the distance and the eyes in the shadow
shifted now to look at Steven. Steven froze. The eyes looked human, but they
were off, not quite right. He sensed malevolence, the kind of feeling you
sometimes get when you read about something abhorrent and repugnant. This thing
is evil, he thought. There’s no other word for it. His body felt
freezing cold and a wave of despair washed over him that made him want to drop
to his knees in defeat. He forced himself to take another step toward it, and as
he approached within an arm’s length, the eyes closed, leaving only the black
of the shadow, which began to move away from him. He felt the cold and
hopelessness diminish. He watched it drift towards the bedroom door, as though
it was walking out of the room. He followed it, and once again he saw it
descend into the floor of the hallway as the fourth knock hit and reverberated
throughout the house.
    He rushed
back to his father, who now was lying firmly on the bed. He grabbed his
shoulders again, to give him a gentle shaking. He could tell instantly that the
muscles were now relaxed, like they should be. Roy’s eyes opened and then
winced in pain. “Goddamn,” he complained, looking at Steven.
    “Are you
hurt? Do I need to call an ambulance?” Steven asked.
    “No
ambulance, no,” Roy replied, wincing again. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a
truck.”
    “Can you sit
up?” Steven asked.
    Roy tried,
and found himself able, though certain movements surprised him with pain. “I
could really use a couple aspirin or something,” he said.
    “What
hurts?” Steven asked.
    “Everything
hurts,” Roy replied.
    “Stay there,
I’ll bring you some.” Steven walked into the hallway and down to the bathroom,
retrieving a couple of pills and a glass of water. He waited while his father
swallowed them and drank the water. “I heard the knocking, and came in to get
you. The shadow we saw in the hall earlier, it was in here with you.”
    Roy looked
up at him.
    “It had some
kind of hold on you,” Steven told him. “Your body was completely stiff, and…”
Steven paused, becoming uncomfortable with the irrationality of what he was
about to say.
    “Yeah?” Roy
asked. “What? Tell me.”
    “You were
floating above the bed.”
    “Really?”
Roy seemed intrigued, but Steven didn’t know if it was sarcasm.
    “Maybe it
was something else, maybe it was due to your muscles spasming,” Steven said.
    Roy chuckled.
“Even with all this, everything in the last few hours, you still think it’s
hallucinations?” Roy asked.
    “I don’t
know what it is,” Steven replied. “Yes, my mind looks for something normal to
explain it.”
    “Oh, you’re
making my head hurt more. I need a cup of coffee. Make me some, OK?”
    -
    Steven and
Roy sat at the kitchen table. Each had a mug of strong coffee in their hands,
drinking liberally. Roy asked a few more questions about what happened, and
Steven filled him in.
    “So,” Roy
asked, “you went at the shadow because you thought it was attacking me.”
    “Right. I
couldn’t get you to wake up and I could tell something was wrong with your
body. You were as stiff as a board.”
    “That would
explain why I feel worked over,” Roy said.
    “And it just
left. Closed its eyes, drifted out into the hallway, and disappeared into the
floor, just like earlier.”
    Roy spent a
moment contemplating this. “I suppose there’s something we should talk about,”
Roy said.
    “Yeah?”
Steven asked, almost dreading what his father was about to say.
    “In my
younger days, I used to be able to…” he paused, seeming to search for the right
words. “I used to be able to feel things. I could pick up on things