Words From the Fragile Spire

The River

The moonlight reflected off the slippery asphalt like a layer of gentle snowfall. The coldness of the occasional precipitation warred with Alastair's own clammy perspiration. That evening, he had decided to stakeout at the curb just past the end of the bridge - the bridge that presented to him a strange phenomenon, the clandestine nature of which had him hellbent on discovering the truth.

His first observation of this phenomenon had occurred some weeks prior. Alastair, who prided himself in the avoidance of pedestrians on his walks, felt like a single fish against a stifling headstream. At any other point he could divert, detour, but within the lateral confines of the bridge he could do nothing but submit and swim. He always felt an awkwardness with where to place his gaze; looking into each passing stranger's eyes was too self-serving for him, while looking down to his feet felt too submissive. But, on this particular occasion, Alastair felt an inexplicable confidence course through him and intended on not succumbing to this trivial routine.

What he noticed threw him into a spiral of confusion: when he met the first stranger's gaze, she flung her head down to the right, surveying the nearly-still river flowing underneath. The two passed by each other; he continued to stare at her while she, unwaveringly, continued to stare into the water below. This pattern continued for every stranger he passed on the bridge that night.

Alastair completed the journey back to his room - back to the blaring sounds and dizzying lights that often left him awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling like an inverse night-sky above him, questioning what, if any, good things might await him. On this night, his brain was wracked with questions: why did those strangers look so joltingly to the river? What were they hoping to find? It took him hours for his racing thoughts to subside, to drift into a superficial rest.

What followed on the second night were precisely similar occurrences as the first. Lying in bed that night, Alastair's thoughts led him to extremities: he pondered on myths of sea monsters he had read as a child, about leviathans and sirens, searching for any connections to his preternatural phenomenon. He came, however, to one sensical realization: perhaps the variable of the time of day would affect the strange behavior he had experienced.

Alastair awoke before sunrise the next morning, the depth of the navy-blue sky like a bottomless ocean surrounding him. He rushed along the path to the bridge as the first lights of dawn were breaking through. When he triumphantly turned the last corner to find the bridge naked in his sight, he found a man and a woman pacing in a circle, screaming and flailing their arms at one another.

His fixation remained on the two strangers, while they seemed wholly unaware of his intrusion. As he walked closer and closer, the whites of their eyes began to blind him - he suppressed the slightest inkling to turn back. Then, out of the blue, the woman, who faced him, locked with his eyes, then the eyes of her male counterpart. The two simultaneously vacated the center of the bridge, perfectly in-step like a choreographed waltz, and moved to the right. Alastair swore, as if he predicted it, that he witnessed their eyes dart, for an imperceptible moment, down to the flowing river now at their side.

It must be Alastair, himself, who was causing these people to turn their heads from him in repulsion. What about him was different then it had ever been? In what felt to him like he had been concussed, he stumbled to rest on a curb just beyond the end of the bridge. Time sprinted by and when he later regained his senses, it was twilight and the arguing strangers had disappeared.

It was then that he decided to stakeout at this curb to observe the pedestrians crossing the bridge, to see if their glances were clawed away to the river without his intervention. He waited and watched, barely blinking, but every person who crossed his eyes' path remained solely focused on his or her own affairs. Alastair was beside himself and stormed off from his watchful place in a blur; he kept his attention at his feet, how every step began with the pressing of his heel and the ended with the lifting of his toes.

He walked in this fashion to his room, to the one place he did not want to be. Overcome with all the emotions of the past few days, he damned this weirdness and almost cried out, then felt the caress of running water wash over his feet up to his ankles. He understood then that the titular river, that leaking scar in the earth, had not been calling the names of the people who passed it by - but was verily calling his name. He was overjoyed and, again, almost cried out, then set his mind to a singular purpose: I am going down to the river.

He walked down his familiar path for the last time, each step causing the ground to shiver. He arrived at the front of the bridge and climbed over the railing, landing on the swampy bank, his feet sinking in. The water showed a murky brown color, but he perceived it as only a thin veil hiding an endless abyss beneath it. He took his first step into the waters, held in suspense for a moment before his foot eventually felt the riverbed. It was, in fact, deeper than it seemed. He turned to look under the bridge and saw nothing but a nonfeeling darkness. He remembered staring up at the ceiling, a painted sky light-years away, and the unquenchable desire to finally know what he had been searching for, all his life, flooded him. Alastair took another step forward, another step along the river under the bridge - another sure step into the unknown.