The Mudstone Dirge

The rain had not stopped for three days. It drummed on the tin roof of our shack like a relentless fist, and the creek that ran behind our property had swollen into a churning, brown monster. I was fifteen, my brother Tomas was twelve. We were bored, restless, and hungry for something other than the same tortillas and beans. So when the rain finally eased to a drizzle that evening, I grabbed our two cane poles and a rusty tin of worms. Tomas followed, his eyes bright with the adventure of it.

We walked along the slick path to the old stone bridge, where the water funneled through a narrow gap. The river was wild, carrying branches and mud. We clambered down to a flat rock that jutted into the current, just barely above the waterline. The night was a thick, cold blanket. The only sound was the gurgle and hiss of the river, a sound that should have been soothing but felt like a threat. We sat in silence, our lines cast into the murky flow, the darkness pressing in around us.

Half an hour passed. The cold seeped through our jackets. Then we heard it – a low, muffled sound, like an animal in distress. It came from the other side of the river, where the bank was steep and tangled with roots. I shrugged it off, thinking it was a bird or a frog. But then it came again, louder, more distinct. It was a girl’s scream, high and desperate, cut off abruptly. My skin prickled. Tomas grabbed my arm. ‘Did you hear that?’ he whispered.

We both stared into the dark across the water. I fumbled for my flashlight, clicked it on, and swept the beam across the opposite bank. The light caught swaying weeds, the gnarled trunk of a fallen tree, and then – there she was. A girl, maybe eleven or twelve, sat on a large, flat stone at the water’s edge. Her hair was long and black, plastered to her face. She wore a pale, beige dress that was soaked and clinging to her thin frame. She was playing with the water, her fingers trailing through the rushing current, as if she were making patterns. She didn’t look up at our light.

I called out, ‘Hello? Are you okay?’ My voice cracked, swallowed by the roar of the river. Tomas joined me, shouting, ‘Hey! You shouldn’t be out here!’ The girl did not react. She just kept moving her hand through the water, her head bowed. I aimed the light more directly at her face, but her features were shadowed. We waited. The silence stretched. Then, she raised her other hand, slowly, and pointed downstream, toward the bridge we had crossed. Her arm was pale, almost luminous. As she pointed, the water around her rock seemed to pulse, and the current quickened.

A chill that had nothing to do with the cold raced down my spine. I pulled Tomas closer. ‘We should go,’ I murmured. But my feet were rooted. The girl suddenly stood up, her movements too fluid, too graceful. She took a step toward the river, and then another, until her feet were submerged. She didn’t sink. She stood on the surface, the water parting around her like it didn’t dare touch her. She began to hum – a low, eerie melody that cut through the noise of the river, a tune I had never heard but that made my bones ache. It was like a lullaby and a funeral dirge combined.

Then she turned her head, and for the first time, I saw her face. It was not a girl’s face. It was an old, wrinkled face, with eyes like hollow pits and a mouth stretched into a grin that was too wide. She stared directly at me, through me. And then she pointed again, this time directly at us. The river let out a deep groan, and a wave of mud and water surged up our side, soaking us, nearly sweeping us off the rock. I grabbed Tomas, and we scrambled away, slipping on the wet stones, clawing our way up the bank.

We ran home, not daring to look back, but the humming followed us, growing louder, until it seemed to come from inside our own skulls. When we burst through the door of our shack, gasping and dripping mud, our mother took one look at our faces and grabbed a jar of salt from the shelf. She threw a handful on the threshold. ‘You saw her,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘The river bride. She’s been waiting since the flood took her, years before you were born.’ She told us to never go near the water at night again. But as we lay in our beds, trying to sleep, the humming was still there, faint but persistent, a thread binding us to that spot.

We never went back. But sometimes, when the rain falls for days, and the creek swells, I see her face in the murky water, and I hear her hum a new verse – a verse that names me, and Tomas, and our mother. And I know that the river keeps its promises, even the ones made in silence.