Deadman's Run

Dead Man's Run

    During the July 4th, weekend of 1985 I was in Washington, D.C., marching with my high school band, the Bancroft-Rosalie Pride of the Panthers. We were a small group, consisting of sixty-some members, with a mixture of eighth to twelfth graders filling in our bedraggled lines.
    Together we marched through the sweltering heat and humidity of a Washingtonian summer, sweating and blowing our hearts out as we struggled to play our horns while trying to keep in formation and step. We were each also waging a war to keep from passing out from heat exhaustion.
    Band Boosters ran around us with cups filled with ice, popping ice cubes into our mouths to help us stay cool and upright. After the march we struggled out of our uniforms and marching shoes, all of our white socks were stained pink with blood, one of the clarinetists had to be carried onto the bus, her socks soaked with blood, the stiff leather of the shoes cutting deep into the flesh of her ankle.
    That evening some of us from the band sat on the steps of the Capitol building, listening to a classical band playing on the green. Other members of the school band were farther down the Mall at the Beach Boys concert. The Fourth of July ended with a spectacular fireworks display and we trudged back to our motel rooms, exhausted.
    The next day the Mall was strewn with garbage as we went to the Lincoln Memorial. A black gospel choir sang on the steps of the memorial, amidst a field of garbage bags and litter.
    On the 6th, we boarded the two charter buses and headed back to Bancroft, Nebraska. I was never so glad to see my little village home. When I got home my mother gave me the copies of the Omaha World- Herald she had saved for me to read. She pointed out a story of a young boy in Lincoln, NE who had drowned on the Fourth in a creek named Dead Man's Run.
    There's a saying in Nebraska. If you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes. That's how long it takes for a storm to blow in. That's exactly what happened in Nebraska during the celebration of our nation's freedom.
    A storm started forming in west central Nebraska as a cold front from Canada slammed into the blistering heat of our state, the humidity of the Central Plains is surpassed only by that of the Gulf Coast far to the south. Thunderheads formed with surprising speed, the clouds built into towering masses of roiling rage. Before long a massive line of storm cells extended from South Dakota down into northern Kansas. By the time it reached the Lincoln area at 10 p.m., winds were gusting up to 35 mph and lightning and thunder were rending the sky.
    The Stuart family lived in Tangeman Terrace, a division of the Chateau Development apartment complex in the Bethany section of northeast Lincoln. The back of their townhouse lay on the edge of the banks that cradled the slim flow of water named Dead Man's Run. On the Fourth of July, 1985, as I pounded the hot pavement in the nation's capital, the Stuart family had a bar-b-que picnic in their back yard, went swimming at the Chateau Club and flew the Frisbee in the evening as the air cooled and the breeze became brisk.
    At 10 p.m. the family of four, including father Pete, mother Rene, son Jacob, 5, and daughter Anna, 4, took up seats in the yard behind their townhouse. Anna sat in her father's lap, her head resting against his chest as she struggled to keep her eyes open as they waited for the fireworks to start out at Holmes Lake Park, a mere two and a half miles to the south.
    The first shell burst in the sky, creating a cascade of colors. The family ooo-ed and aahh-ed appreciatively and covered their ears as the boomers exploded in bright flashes.
    By 10:30 p.m. the last of the fireworks faded from the sky. Pete carried Anna inside and put her to bed. Rene followed her husband and called after Jacob to come in soon. She could see the storm clouds massing on the western horizon and didn't want her son caught out in the middle of a storm. Jacob said he would be in soon and headed down the banks of the creek. Rene figured he needed to expend all the excitement he had wound up from the fireworks display.
    It was the last time she saw him alive.
    At that time the creek bed was dirt and rock. It would be another seven years before the creek was temporarily dammed and the city put down cement channels and retaining walls. The banks of the creek are twenty feet high in most places and often higher, which is seemingly ridiculous considering that one usually could not get his or her ankles wet by walking in the half inch of water that flowed through the channel. However, whenever there was a gully-washer of a storm in Lincoln the creek would fill with water at an alarming speed and had been known to overflow the banks.
    The Lincoln police estimated that Jacob had made his way as far as 66th Street, which is about a mile from where the family lived, when the rain started, still walking and playing in the creek bed. There had been enough light from street lamps for him to see by and the clouds reflected much of the light that would have otherwise only escaped into the atmosphere.
    The Stuart townhouse was on 58th Street and Norfolk Dr., not a seemingly long distance until you count the added length of the creek's meandering course and the evidence that young Jacob didn't feel himself to be in any danger. It took only minutes for the creek to start rising when the clouds finally broke and the rain came pelting down in sheets. At this, Jacob finally started to make his back to the townhouse, remaining in the creek bed and shunning the safety of the sidewalks and the higher levels of the creek banks.
    The cool water in the creek tingled Jacob's skin deliciously on what had been a muggy night. Runoff drained from the streets and by the time he had reached the North Cotner bridge the water was over a foot deep. Within moments the water rose like an ancient sea dragon and bore down on young Jacob Stuart, knocking him off of his feet and dragging him under.
    When the rain changed from a pitter patter to an intense drumming, the Stuarts became concerned for their son. Pete and Rene went out and walked the banks of the creek calling for Jacob. Pete crossed the foot bridge and checked the bike trail, the wooded grove and the soccer field. Jacob was nowhere in sight and he did not respond when his name was called.
    On his way back over the bridge, something caught Pete Stuart's eye. It was the sight of Jacob's thong sandal swirling on the muddy waters of the swollen creek.
    Pete became frantic, his heart in his mouth and his thoughts screaming in panic. He yelled his son's name as he hung precariously over the railing of the foot bridge. The water swirled and rushed by below him, pulling his eyes into it. He felt vertigo tug at the pit of his stomach and he imagined himself falling downwards into the watery rage and surrendering to its irresistible grasp. For a moment Pete Stuart felt a calling sounding in the back of his head. The call beckoned him into the creek, to fall from his precarious perch and be embraced by the exhilarating cold, to rush along with the speeding current.
    Gasping, Pete Stuart pulled himself back from the railing and panted, feeling as though he had wrestled with some massive, indomitable beast. His eyes tracked the muddy course of the creek as it went off to the west past the 56th Street bridge and disappearing past 48th Street. He ran, his feet pounding a staccato on the wooden planks of the bridge. He raced for the townhouse, pushing through the door when he got there. Before Rene could ask, he had picked up the phone, his numb and shaking fingers hitting the three numbers that all people know by heart.
    Jacob's body was found on the grounds of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln East Campus in one of its agriculture research fields. Jacob had been trapped in a net of exposed tree roots, caged under the water. His shirt and shorts and skin were caked with mud and silt. His feet were bare and his eyes were open and glassy. His skin was grey and bloated.
    When the men from the medical examiner moved his body, muddy water spilled from his mouth. Pete Stuart had a nervous breakdown a month later. Rene Stuart was hospitalized for depression after she attempted suicide by cutting her wrists. After Pete suffered his second breakdown the Stuart family subleased their townhouse and left the state of Nebraska for Texas, leaving only tears and broken hearts behind.

    For my high school graduation in 1986 I received a marriage license and a union card. My wife, Angela and I moved to Lincoln and I began working at the Kawasaki plant on the outskirts of town and my wife began working at a data entry job for a marketing and direct sales firm. We each took night courses and correspondence from UNL. We lived in a seedy upstairs apartment in an area of town south of the state capitol building.
    Five months after Angela and I were married she gave birth to our son, Steven. We continued to live, work, raise our son and pursue our degrees. We had our fair share of problems. Angela's pregnancy was considered a pre-existing condition and the insurance company didn't cover the birth. The old car broke down from time to time. We struggled to pay rent and to continue our studies.
    When I received my business degree Angela's marketing company offered me a position. Though I would have preferred to stay at Kawasaki and hopefully work my way up, the managerial position offered more money, benefits and the like and we needed all of it.
    The neighborhood south of the state capitol was not a good one, filled with college students who partied to all hours, hoodlums and drug dealers. Angela and I desperately wanted to move to a better part of town. Now that I had the managerial position we could afford something better. We searched and settled on Chateau Development in northeast Lincoln.
    We wanted something more than an apartment, a place that had a view, a yard for Steven to play in and other kids our son's age in the neighborhood. However, we weren't yet ready for a house. We didn't have the money for it, the time or will to worry about upkeep and the property taxes in Nebraska are infamously high. A townhouse with an on-call management office seemed ideal, even if the only ones we could afford were old and in need of new paint, but thankfully the interiors were newly remolded and nice.
    One thing we learned the hard way was that in August and September it is hard to find living space in a college town. Lincoln has four colleges and a business school, so rental space runs out quickly once the fall semesters start and we were hard-pressed to get anything. There were a few places left in Tangeman Terrace and the leasing agent showed them to us. We settled on one, signed on the dotted line and paid our deposits.
    As we were preparing to leave I asked the fateful question. "Wasn't there a family in the Terrace whose son drowned in the creek during a storm in the mid-8s?" The woman blanched slightly but nodded.
    "Yes, the Stuart family. It was a very sad. The storm blew in so unexpectedly and the creek rose fast. And Jacob was such a nice boy. We always tell people to watch out for that creek and to keep their children out of it. But you know how some people are, especially children. Curiosity gets its cat every time and there are a lot of places around here that kids like to explore, especially the undeveloped sections of the super block."
    "Which unit did the Stuarts live in?" I was feeling a morbid curiosity overcoming me and I felt a need to ask the questions. Angela cut her eyes at me, silently signaling me to stop asking such disturbing questions, but it was too late. The leasing agent, Regina "Reggie" Garver, frowned and wet her lips.
    "It was Number 23, Mr. Schlausser." I nodded, thanked Reggie, wished her and everyone else in the office a good day and turned to leave. Our names were on the lease for Number 23, Tangeman Terrace.
    "What was that all about?" demanded Angela as she wrestled Steven into his car seat. He had turned two in January of 1989 and was indignant of car seats and of having to sit still. I shrugged half-heartedly when she poked her head back over the top of the car.
    "I read about it in the paper back in '85 and I wanted to know if we were moving into the same place. Nothing wrong with knowing."
    "I'd swear you were trying to spook me or something, Jerry." She finally won the wrestling match with Steven and got into the front passenger seat of our '83 Buick Skylark.
    I shrugged, got in and started the car. "Just call me morbid, I guess."
    "Mm-hm," Angela responded, leveling a cool gaze at me. "I think you've been reading way too much Stephen King as of late."
    On the way home I chanted the Tommyknocker song from the book of the same name by King. Angela was not amused.
    We celebrated our new home in proper fashion and nine months later Steven found himself sharing space and attention with a baby sister, Melissa Lynn. Steven immediately became possessive and jealous. He made it plainly clear that no one was taking his teddy bear away and giving it to the intruder. The teddy bear resembled Rush Limbaugh. Both Angela and I were fans of his and even Steven would listen to the talk show host when his show came on at noon over radio station KLIN in Lincoln.
    The stuffed toy was dubbed Rush Bearbaugh and it was inseparable from Steven and the two were always around to listen to the radio. When Rush's TV show came on after the evening news we would let Steven stay up to watch it, the teddy bear firmly clutched in his arms and a grin on Steven's face. The embarrassing thing for me was that before Steven had learned to say "Daddy," he had already learned to say "Rush."
    When Steven was four he started talking to imaginary friends. I found nothing wrong with it, passing it off as a normal phase of childhood. I gave up imaginary friends after a time, but would still speak to myself now and then throughout my youthful years. On the whole, the conversations I had with my reflection during the formative teenage years were a great deal more intelligent and satisfying than interaction with my peer group.
    Steven seemed to have only one imaginary friend, Jake. The way Steve spoke to him I wondered at the age in which Steve had cast his friend. Steve talked up to him, respectfully, deferring to the judgments of this unseen guide. I found this unusual. As far as I knew, imaginary friends were often the same age or younger than the children who thought them up. Imaginary friends were meant to be practice for learning how to socialize with others in one's peer group.
    But Jake seemed to be more of an older brother. Was Steve merely coping with being Melissa's older brother? Or was he looking for an older role model other than his parents and Rush? I decided it best to leave the matter alone. He would either grow out of it or we could do the yuppie thing and use our health insurance to pay for child counseling.
    By the time Steven turned six he was still talking to Jake and I was starting to get worried. Angela was becoming concerned as well. She no longer did data entry at the marketing firm. The company had a homeworkers program where people were given personal computers to use at home. Every week she took in a batch of work and picked up a new one. She had opted for this in order to stay with the kids. As a homeworker she took a pay cut but we saved on driving expenses, daycare and baby-sitters. She enjoyed staying with Steve and Melissa. It gave her a chance to watch them grow and to cherish the moments instead of just catching snippets of their lives. I envied her for that.
    "Jake likes Rush, too," Steve informed us one night. Angela and I looked at each other, a worried look passing between us. Steve sat between us, Rush Bearbaugh sitting on his lap.
    "What does Jake think of Rush?" Angela asked in her all attention parental voice.
    "He thinks Rush is funny and right. He also thinks it's mean that all those groups are so rude to him"
    Steve did not yet clearly understand the difference between conservatives and liberals or what politics was all about, but we figured Rush was a good head start on his education. The name of Steve's imaginary friend had not escaped us. I had chalked it up to mere coincidence for quite a while. But recently both Angela and I had become concerned.
    I didn't believe in ghosts but recently there had been too many things that went unexplained which disturbed us. For one thing, Steven seemed to know all about our arguments, when we had them. Angela and I never argued inside the house.
    This was due to the fact that Steven was such a sensitive child. He was sensitive to our moods. He wasn't sensitive in a sissy sort of way. Our German blood saw to that. He had had his share of playground scraps for his age and he had no problem wrestling with the neighbor boys. He even showed signs of leadership, which made me, as a parent, extremely proud. But it upset him when we argued. He had been that way since he had been a baby. Melissa had no problem with us when we yelled at each other. As long as she was fed, changed and got enough sleep she didn't care one way or another what we did. But for Steven's sake we always went outside and shut the patio door before screaming at each other when the need to do so arose.
    For the past few months Steve would ask about our fights, somehow knowing the reason for our disputes. He also understood the problems and disputes in a way that a six year old should not yet understand. There were other things that he knew which we talked about after he had gone to bed and fallen asleep. It was as though someone were eavesdropping on us and reporting to Steve. The only person I could think of was Jake.
    I put my arm around my son's shoulder and he leaned into me tiredly. His arm securely embraced Rush Bearbaugh.
    "Stevey," I said and he frowned. He didn't like being called Stevey, only Steve or Steven. "Steve, how old is your friend, Jake?" Steve frowned and thought about it for a moment.
    "Five," he said. "And thirteen."
    "What?" Angela asked, perplexed.
    "Well," Steve explained, "he's always been five. But he turned five in 1985. So I guess that makes him thirteen. Kind of."
    We sent Steve to bed once Rush's nightly show was over. He said his prayers, we tucked him in, kissed him and wished him sweet dreams. Angela and I were both shaking visibly from Steven's revelation and we hurried out of his room and headed back downstairs. Neither of us could speak for awhile and we sat in the dark as the television played out a movie from HBO.
    "Do you believe in ghosts?" Angela asked me after a time.
    "I'm starting to," I responded in a low voice.
    "You still have that clipping from 1985?"
    "Yes."
    "And his name was Jacob, right?"
    "Yes."
    "I think we should move."
    I mulled it over. To move now would mean breaking our lease, it would be costly and I didn't enjoy the prospect of having to find a new place to live. Besides, no harm had come to Steven and there was still the possibility that this was all coincidence. Ghosts were a hard thing to believe in, no matter how much Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Anne Rice I read. I was saved from having to respond by the crying of the baby in her room. Angela got up to see to Melissa. Before she reached Melissa's room, however, the crying stopped.
    Frowning, I got up and followed after Angela. My wife stood in the doorway of the baby's room with a dour look on her face. In her crib Melissa was contentedly sucking noisily from her bottle.
    "What's the matter?" I asked as I placed a hand on Angela's shoulder.
    "That bottle was on the bassinet the last time I saw it. Someone gave it to her and it wasn't me, it wasn't you and it certainly wasn't Steven."
    "How do you know it wasn't Steven?" I asked. I knew what she was thinking, but I had no desire to give in to the idea of ghosts. I found that the more I thought about them, the more adamant I was in trying to deny their existence.
    "Well go look in on him, dummy," she said crossly. I did just that. Steven had already fallen asleep, taking on that perfect innocence only children can achieve while dreaming.
    "And," Angela continued when I joined her again, "her blanket has been straightened. You know how babies always tangle themselves in their blankets."
    "Kind of like you?" I chided. Angela had always been a restless sleeper. If I didn't freeze from lack of covers at night, then I usually found myself pushed or kicked out of bed.
    "Can we be serious for a minute?" she snapped. She turned her eyes on me and they were smoldering. She was upset, very much so. The reason, something unexplained was going on and it could possibly endanger the life of her children. She was reacting out of natural maternal instinct. I groped for something to say. Something that wouldn't get me into trouble with her. Finally I bit the inside of my cheek and said the only thing that I could say.
    "Jacob?" I didn't expect a response and I didn't get one. Angela chewed her lip for a moment and then pushed by me and headed for our bedroom.
    I sighed, gave a whispered, "Good night," to my baby daughter and turned to go downstairs to turn out the lights and switch off of the TV.
    As I moved past Steven's door I saw light shining through the crack at the bottom of the door. I stopped, feeling the hackles of my neck rising in something akin to fear. Holding my breath I slowly opened the door to my son's room. I saw him, just as I remembered him from his picture in the newspaper cutting. Jacob Stuart sat in the rocking chair beside my son's bed. He held Rush Bearbaugh in his lap, an arm protectively wrapped around Rush's ample belly. Jacob's face was set and sad. His eyes were even sadder, more remote than anything I had ever seen on the face of another human being.
    "Jacob?" I whispered. I had known this boy for the past eight years. I had never met him, but I knew him. He was a person's whose horrid tragedy had made him an indelible part of my psyche. I had talked to him when there was no one else to talk to. I had thought of him while raising my own son. I had promised Jacob that I would make sure nothing ever happened to my son, that I would protect Steven from Dead Man's Run. Now I finally came face to face with this phantom child whom I somehow knew as well as I knew my own child.
    "She was hungry," Jacob said in a soft whisper that brushed at my ears, distant and fading even as he said the words. "And tangled."
    "Thank you," I said, keeping my own voice low to keep from waking Steven. "You've been a friend of Steven's for a long time, haven't you?" Jacob nodded.
    "I missed my own little sister, Anna. Then I had a little brother. Steven. In some ways I'm still older than him, but he's going to get bigger than me someday."
    I nodded, a smile creeping onto my lips. I felt as if something that had been long lost was now found and that I had been fulfilled in a way that I cannot possibly put into words. Jacob reached out a hand and his spectral fingers closed around Steven's. Jacob looked at me pleadingly.
    "Please don't go away," Jacob begged. "Mother, Father and Anna all left me. They left before I could tell them that I was here. Then I waited and waited until you and Angela came and Steven came and then Melissa came. Please don't go." The last sentence was said with such strong conviction that I had to swallow hard to keep my equilibrium. I shook my head slowly.
    "We're not going anywhere, Jacob. I promise you that."
    It's strange, living with a ghost. Not simply because of the fact that you know that the ghost is there, but because you know the person who is the ghost. Angela and I both had to get used to the fact that Jacob was around. Steven was glad that we finally acknowledged his friend's existence and Melissa thought Jacob was another servant to her eternal needs and whims. There were times that were disconcerting for us. Jacob would now join us at the dinner table, on the couch watching TV and in the backyard. Jacob and Steven would play games together. Steven often got strange looks from the neighbors and from his playmates because no one else could see Jacob.
    Angela and I were both chided from time to time about letting our son talk to imaginary friends so much. We nodded our heads, made it clear that we were concerned and if the problem didn't fix itself in the years to come, we would take action. In fact, all we hoped for was that Steven and Jacob would learn to become more discreet.
    Going on vacations and road trips was a new problem for us. Jacob was unable to travel far from the townhouse, for reasons none of us knew. But it was hard for us to leave him behind whenever we went somewhere. We had, in a sense, adopted Jacob into our own family. Steven and Jacob were as much brothers as any two boys could possibly be. Overall we were happy and Jacob had managed to bring a new wholeness to our families and to our lives.
    The summer of 1993 is by now infamous. I'm talking about the floods that plagued the Midwest the whole year. In Des Moines, IA, the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers both flooded and knocked out a water treatment plant. Whole towns were submerged under muddy water. Fields were washed out and tens of thousands of acres of crops were never grown.
    Lincoln itself was not too badly damaged by the rains and flooding. Farther to the south and east, around Nebraska City, there was greater flooding, especially by the Missouri River. The worst problem our little city had was the Salt Creek, which Dead Man's Run emptied into. The Salt broke its banks in a number of places, especially in West Lincoln. Dead Man's Run rose high on a periodic basis, leaving behind high water marks composed of dead leaves, grass clippings and assorted trash.
    We kept our eyes on Steven during this time. When it rained we forbade him to go out and kept him away from the creek most all of the time. He balked at this occasionally, especially when his friends were going on excursions into the creek's channels. We were firm, however, and no amount of protest or bawling could dissuade us from our position.
    That Fourth of July, we did much the same as the Stuart family had done in 1985. We sat in the backyard of our townhouse and when 10 o'clock came around the air burst into color. Melissa sat in her mother's lap, Steven and Jacob sat between myself and Angela. We all enjoyed the show and we were all tired from the day's events by the time the show ended.
    Angela took Melissa inside to put her to bed, calling after me and Steven to come in with the lawn chairs right away. Steven and I packed up the lawn chairs and carried them into the garage. Both Steven and Jacob were looking pensive.
    "What's the matter guys?" I asked as diplomatically as I could.
    "Can we stay up and play outside?" Steven asked, his words bursting out anxiously.
    I shook my head with slow exaggeration. "You know better than that," I scolded. "The weathermen are all saying that storms are headed this way and I could see the thunderheads on the horizon. You hear that?" I held up my hand for silence and a low whistle came to our ears.
    "That's the wind picking up. That storm'll be here real quick, so if you even think of going outside, much less near that creek, I'll give you a spanking you won't soon forget, and I'd just as soon not have to do that. OK?"
    Steve cast his eyes down but nodded. I shooed him back into the townhouse and upstairs so he could get changed for bed. Jacob lagged behind, his ghostly image pale against the lamp light.
    "That wasn't your idea, was it Jake?" I asked gently. The ghost boy shook his head slowly.
    "No," he whispered. He had a hard time meeting my eyes, however, and I still wondered.
    "I need your help, Jake. When Angela and I aren't around or aren't watching, you have to keep Steven safe. I don't want the same thing to happen to him as happened to you. You don't want that to happen either, do you?" I felt like a heel for bringing up Jacob's painful memories like this, but I had to protect my own son from danger and if the cost was dredging up the painful past for Jacob, then so be it.
    "I'll try my best," Jacob promised, his image starting to fade as it did at times when he needed time to himself.
    "Thank you, Jake, I can't expect any more than that."
    Jacob was gone, where to I never knew. Upstairs the water ran in the bathroom as Steven brushed his teeth.
    If I had thought that the fireworks were loud I was quickly disillusioned as thunder reverberated across the night sky and woke me from what had been a sound sleep. The townhouse shook from the force of the thunder. The bedroom brightened in flash bulb whiteness momentarily and then was shaken by another boomer.
    Angela was caught somewhere between sleep and waking, the attitude she usually takes in thunderstorms. I always wake up when there's good thunder and lightning and I have a hard time getting back to sleep again until after the storm has spent itself.
    There was a lull in the thunder claps and I heard both a voice and crying. It was Steven. Since I was already wide awake I figured that there wasn't much else for me to do but to check on my son. I found him sitting at the window, which overlooked the creek. As I had expected the creek was up, cresting to nearly fifteen feet.
    Steven didn't turn to acknowledge my entrance into his room, but continued to cry softly, sniffling from time to time.
    "What's the matter, Tiger?" I asked as I squatted beside him, folding him into my arms for comfort.
    "Jacob," Steven said in a wet voice. He put his fingertips to the window and I looked out. Jacob stood waist deep in the water. The ghost didn't move, but simply stood there, watching the rapid turn of the water as it rushed by and through him.
    "What's he doing?" I whispered urgently. My skin was breaking out in goose bumps and I was starting to have a bad feeling about the storm and an even worse feeling about the creek.
    "The creek," Steven whispered back, his voice far off and distant even though our heads were side by side, nearly touching. "It's calling to him. Again. Just like it did eight years ago. It wants Jacob to go into it."
    "Why?" My voice was urgent. I was worried about both my son, Steven, and my "adopted" ghost son, Jacob.
    "I don't know," Steven whispered, his voice continuing to grow more and more distant. "The creek's hungry."
    My son's voice was so hard to hear that I had to look at him, to be reassured that he was still there in my arms and not fading away as Jacob did from time to time.
    "When it gets like this, the creek becomes hungry." I tightened my grip around my sun, squeezing his small body into mine. I inhaled his scent, the scent of sleeping child and I felt his hair against my cheek.
    "I'll never let it get you, Tiger," I promised, using his favorite nickname. "Never."
    July 8, 1993, will always have a special, if not infamous, place in the history of Nebraskans and Iowans. The storm that came through on that night was entered into all of the meteorological record books as one of the worst storms Nebraska had ever seen. I can vouch for that fact.
    I got home late from work. Summer production was up in the mail order warehouse of the marketing company and everyone was putting in overtime. Being a manager meant having to put in even more overtime.
    It was 8 o'clock before I got home. Melissa was crying for some reason. She had turned two in May and whereas Steven had simply been a handful at that age, Melissa was a full blown hellion and a screamer at that. This often kept Angela from being her own usual happy self. In fact I have found that the Terrible Twos are worse on mothers than the combination of pregnancy itself, the return of PMS and postpartum depression.
    The one thing that the husband has to always remember is this: Stay out of her way and do whatever she tells you. She won't thank you for this, but it decreases the chances that she'll knock your head off with a frying pan.
    Steven sat in the recliner, watching TV. His face was sullen and his heart looked broken. He had been this way since the Fourth of July storm. Jacob had disappeared that night and had not been back since. I was worried about Jacob and what Steven must have felt I could not have known.
    "Hey, Tiger," I said, hunkering down next to him. "How you doing?"
    "Fine," he said. His voice had not changed from that far away, fading whisper that I had heard on the Fourth and I was worried.
    "Any word from Jacob?" I asked. Steven shook his head.
    "He"ll be back, you've just got to keep hoping. He probably needed some time to sort things out is all. Be patient."
    Steven didn't answer me. His eyes had never strayed from the television. I swallowed hard and tried not to let my own worries show. I patted his shoulder, rose and headed for the kitchen.
    "I haven't got anything made," Angela said as she tried to appease Melissa, who couldn't decide what she did want to eat and what she didn't, but agreeing that all of it should be on the floor.
    "Don't worry about it. You've got your hands full. I'll just toss in a frozen pizza. You eaten?"
    Angela nodded. "I got it down before Melissa here got it on me."
    "How about Steven?" She shook her head. I gave a silent sigh. Steven also wasn't eating. He hadn't since Jacob had disappeared. If he didn't eat some of his favorite pizza tonight I was taking him to the doctor the next morning, no matter how busy it was at work.
    He didn't eat. He didn't even stay up to watch Rush Limbaugh. That night the local news warned us of the storm that was headed for us. We were told to be prepared for tornado warnings, flash flood warnings and that the winds were gusting to incredible speeds. I knew the creek was going to get high tonight. Probably higher than it had ever been since we had moved to Tangeman Terrace.
    The first line of the storm hit at about 9:30. The clouds had blackened the sky for the previous hour and blotted out the sunset. There was some lightning, thunder and hard rain. But it was nothing that we had not already seen throughout the summer; one of the wettest ones on record.
    At 10:30 the worst of it hit Lincoln. The winds howled around the townhouse and the rain sounded like buckshot against the roof and sides of the townhouse. At a quarter after 11:00 the tornado sirens went off. Angela went after Melissa and called for Steven to come downstairs as I checked the last of the emergency items for tornado warnings.
    The townhouse didn't have a basement, but the utility room was sandwiched between the main part of the house and the connected garage and was considered strong enough to hold in the event of a tornado. Then I heard Angela call for Steven again, an uncertainty rising in her voice and I felt my heart freeze in my chest.
    "Is Steven down there?" Angela yelled at me and I could hear it clearly in her voice. She had already been taken by fear and the maternal certainty that our son was gone.
    "No," I called back. My own voice quavered and nearly broke.
    "JERRY!" Angela screamed, her voice coming from Steven's room. "He's at the creek! He's at the fucking creek!"
    I don't even remember opening the patio door or the wind and rain stinging against my face as it blew into the living room. I remember the silhouettes of the boys and that's all. There was Steven, already descending the banks and the shape of Jacob's glowing form encasing Steven.
    They had become one in that instant. The same child, the same son and the same sacrifice. My son's name ripped from my throat as my bare foot pounded into the cold, wet and muddy grass. I wore a T-shirt and boxers and nothing else. The rain was cold, the wind was cold. I was cold with a bone-chilling certainty that this glimpse of my son, embraced by his non-corporeal, ghostly brother would be my last. I raced to reach my son before he set foot on the sloping banks of the creek. For as fast and as hard as I ran, I got no nearer to him or Jacob.
    The two boys, their bodies now one, seemed to be moving ungodly fast towards the raging current. Dead Man's Run was no longer a creek. It was no natural body of water. It was basalt black and it drank away the light. What had been the creek was now swollen like a tick sated upon a human's head, and it was grotesque. I could feel the hunger that Steven had spoken of four nights earlier. I could feel the tug, the calling. It had called Jacob into it eight years before and was now calling again. Steven had heard the call as well and now both of the boys were answering it.
    Steven's foot stepped into the bracken water and was followed by the other foot. Two more steps down the steep bank and then the water knocked his knees out from under him. I saw his head, wreathed in the halo of Jacob's glow, go under and I cried out in an inhuman, guttural voice.
    Steven's head bobbed back up over a water a moment and then went back under again, dragged down by the speeding current. I dove into the creek after my son. The primitive, guttural sounds were still issuing from my throat and when I dived I drank some of the water in the creek. I came back up, coughing and spitting, gasping for breath. Then the current took me as well and pulled me under.
    There was a roar beneath the water that filled my ears, pounding against my head. I saw only blackness and my eyes stung with the impurities of the water. What I felt, though, is what scared me; what took years off of my life and would leave me with nightmares to my dying days. I felt the hunger as it reached out its hand and wrapped itself around me. If I could have, I would have screamed under water. The pure emptiness that held me and threatened to devour made me weak. I lost my strength to move, to kick, to struggle upwards for air. I was committed to surrender and ready to give myself over to that hunger.
    I do not know if what I saw next was real or the imaginings of a frightened man. Steven and Jacob, their beings now one, were before me in the creek. They were resigned and quiescent as they stood on nothingness and spoke to me in twin voices. I don't know what my sons told me but I did hear Jacob clearly ask me to forgive him. To forgive him. They faded from me, melting into the blackness of the mud and torrent. I reached out for them, invoking God's name to make them stop and come back with me. I swallowed more of that dirty water.
    Fingers wrapped themselves in my hair and tugged me up into the air and the rain. Angela was screaming my name as she desperately tried to drag me by the hair to the shore. She slipped and fell and I fell beside her, coughing and gasping for air. I spit up water, its foul taste burning my throat.
    "Steven?" I croaked. Angela was sobbing. "Steven?" I called again, my eyes casting into the creek. Growling out my determination to find my son I rose and staggered. I took deep breaths and then began running along the banks of the overflowing creek. Angela followed behind me and together we came to the 56th Street bridge and ran through traffic.
    The creek was overflowing, submerging the bridge in a solid sheet of water. Cars skidded and spun out of control as the drivers attempted to avoid hitting us. Horns blatted at us but were drowned out by the sound of the rain and the crash of thunder. We ran along the banks and continued after the course of the creek until we both collapsed, wailing, upon the banks of the creek.
    We had seen no sign of Steven. Above us the lightning continued to flash and the thunder crescendoed.

     Steven was found in the same place where Jacob had been found eight years earlier. His pajamas were caked in blood. His eyes were glassy and his skin was gray. When they moved him the brackish water flowed from his mouth. His picture and accompanying story would appear in both the Lincoln Journal-Star and the Omaha World-Herald.
    I took a leave of absence from work and tried to cope with the loss. Angela was withdrawn and constantly tired. Melissa seemed to have magically passed out of the Terrible Twos. I think she knew that her brothers were gone and she was mourning in her own way.
    When I went back to work I was reviewed and promoted again. I think it was only a mercy promotion. My new boss told me to try and take my mind off of my loss. I thanked him half-heartedly and said I would become a workaholic. My boss shook his head and told me not to do that, either. He had lost his son in the Vietnam War so many years before and he understood what it was like to lose a child. That helped to ease me somewhat.
    Angela understood something about this incident long before I did. I had, in my own way, silently blamed Jacob for Steven's loss. Angela cautioned me against this. She knew that somehow the creek was responsible for taking our boys from us. We, as parents, weren't to blame and neither was Jacob. The creek had called them.
    I myself had heard it, felt it and continued to have nightmares about it to this day. Dead Man's Run was as innocuous as it ever was after the water had fallen back to its usual two inch depth. In some places it even seemed to burble pleasantly if one cared to listen to it. The beast was gone and the creek wore its innocence anew.
    We waited until the end of August for our lease to run out and we moved. Reggie Garver bade us farewell, crying as she hugged us. She tried to apologize for the tragedy but we stopped her, reassuring her that it was no one's fault. It was simply something that had been.
    You might think that after our tragedy we would find a place far from water. We did just the opposite. I don't know why, exactly, but we moved to a nice new house on the edge of Capital Beach Lake in West Lincoln. The warehouse that the marketing offices were situated in was next door and I could see my house from my corner office.
    From time to time the jets coming into and out of Lincoln International Airport will skim low over the surface of the lake. We hear the roar of jet engines in the office sometimes and there is currently a betting pool going around that bets on the date when one of those passenger jets will finally crash into the warehouse.
    I think the reason for the move to Capital Beach Lake was a therapeutic one. We had to prove our bravery, our resilience to be like the pioneers who first came to this state and hold our heads high against the face of adversity.
    Our new home has a boat slip, a boat house and an incredible view. We also have something that we've always wanted, a fireplace. On the mantle sits Rush Bearbaugh. On one side of him sits an eight by ten portrait of Steven, his smile radiant and shining down on us.
    On the other side of Rush is the newspaper clipping reporting Jacob's death. It is in a frame now and whenever I feel the depression coming on, the empty void trying to swallow me, I look up to our mantle and to Rush Bearbaugh who eternally guards over my sons.

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