The Creek That Ran Backward

The house my father found for us was a raw, new construction, all sharp corners and the smell of fresh paint, squeezed onto a lot that sloped down to a narrow, fast-moving creek. Behind it, separated by a strip of wild grass and a leaning chain-link fence, stood a crumbling Victorian, its paint peeled to the bone, its windows like dark, unblinking eyes. My parents took the only bedroom, and I had the other, barely big enough for a twin bed and a dresser. We were all of us walking wounded then, my sister’s death a wet blanket smothering every word we spoke. I didn’t sleep well, but I didn’t tell them that.

I started hearing her about a month after we moved in. Not my sister—I knew her voice, knew the way she said my name, and this was different. It was a woman’s voice, low and scratchy, coming from the direction of the front yard, right where the grass met the gravel path to the road. It called, ‘Jacob, Jacob,’ and I would run to the window, heart hammering, but the yard was always empty. Sometimes I’d see my mother in the kitchen, her back to me, and I’d think it was her, but she never turned around when I asked. She’d look at me with blank, tired eyes and say she hadn’t called.

The creek was the thing that changed everything. One evening, I was down at the water’s edge, skipping stones, when I noticed something wrong. The water was flowing upstream. Not a trick—I saw a twig go up against the current, then another. The sound changed, too; instead of the usual gurgle, it was a wet, sticky whisper, like something heavy being dragged over moss. I watched for a long time, frozen, until a woman’s voice said, right behind me, ‘Don’t follow it.’ I spun around. There was nobody there. But the air was cold, and the creek had gone silent.

That night, I woke to find myself standing in the backyard, my bare feet in the damp grass, my pajamas sticking to my skin. The door behind me was open. In front of me, the Victorian house—the old house—was lit up. Golden light spilled from its windows, and music drifted out, tinny, like a phonograph from another time. I knew I shouldn’t go in. But my feet moved on their own, drawn across the lawn, through a gap in the fence that hadn’t been there before. The front door was unlocked, and I stepped into a parlor that smelled of dust and roses.

A woman sat in a high-backed chair by the fireplace, her face half in shadow. She wore a long, dark dress and had her hair pinned up in a way I’d never seen before. She turned to me and smiled. ‘You came,’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting.’ Her voice was the same one from the yard. ‘For what?’ I asked. She gestured to the empty chair across from her. ‘For the boy who can hear the creek’s song.’ She told me about a family who had lived there long ago, before my house was built, before the road. A mother who lost her children to illness, one by one. She’d started hearing them calling from the water, the creek that ran backward, and she followed the sound to join them. ‘They never stop calling,’ she said. ‘And now that you’ve heard the creek, it will never let you go.’

I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn’t move. The room grew colder. The shadows stretched. The woman rose, her face changing, her skin turning gray, her eyes sinking into dark pits. ‘You must come with me,’ she said. ‘You must join them under the water.’ Then I saw them—children, half a dozen of them, standing by the window, their eyes black, their mouths open in silent screams. ‘Jacob,’ they whispered, in a chorus of drowned voices. ‘Jacob, come play.’ Something grabbed my ankle, and I looked down to see a hand reaching up through the floorboards, covered in mud and trailing creek weed.

I screamed and tore free, stumbling backward, out of the chair, across the room. I ran through the door, through the yard, through the gap in the fence, not stopping until I was inside my own house, slamming the door behind me. The music stopped. The Victorian’s lights went out. I stood there, shaking, listening to the creek outside, which had started to run forward again, making its normal sound. I didn’t tell my parents. They wouldn’t have believed me anyway. But I knew the old house was still there, and the woman was still waiting.

For the rest of the summer, I avoided the creek. I stayed indoors, away from windows. But the voices never stopped. They followed me to school, into the car, into my room at night. They called my name—softly, then louder, until they were all I could hear. My mother found me one night, standing in the kitchen, facing the backyard. I was holding a kitchen knife. I don’t remember picking it up. She took it from my trembling hands and held me tight. The next week, my father announced we were moving again, to a new city, far from the creek. I thought I was safe.

But forty years later, I am still here, in a different house, on a different coast. And I still hear the creek when I close my eyes. I hear the woman’s voice, patient and constant, calling to me. It doesn’t matter how far I go. I know it will never stop. It’s waiting for me to come home.