In my hometown of Aurora Falls there is a yearly event where the fish migrate downstream, at the beginning of May. There is a large river running straight through the city center, allowing bystanders to watch the migration from the comfort of a hot dog stand near the riverbank. The migration is a sign that summer is right around the corner, and a lot of townsfolk stop to watch it. A few vendors tend to stop by, and if you’re lucky, there might even be a few games and attractions. It isn’t much, but it is one of those things you’ll start to miss once you move away. I know I did.
When I moved out to study at the University of Minnesota, I started thinking a lot about those old traditions back in my hometown. It was the kind of event that made you feel like you were a part of something. Like an in-joke, it was just something that everyone knew the importance of. The yearly migration, or Migration Day, was just one of those things that outsiders don’t “get”.
The year I got engaged, Alan and I decided to travel back to Aurora. I wanted him to see the migration and experience the kind of small-town love I’d grown up with. Not that I remember much of those days. He was a bit sceptic at first, like with most things, but the promise of food stands can go a long way. And, as a bonus, he loves me. That goes a long way.
We arrived on a Saturday morning. Having no family left in town, there was nowhere for us to stay except at the one motel in town. After a short walk downtown, Alan and I met the town chaplain. I didn’t know him very well, but he was excited to see me. Just seeing a familiar face, like a bird returning to the nest, could get a smile out of most townies. I could barely walk down the street without having people stopping to ask if it was “really me”.
“I’m so glad to see you,” the chaplain said. “Following the world downstream, right by us, just like the river. What a beautiful tapestry our Lord weaves.”
I found him charming, but Alan thought it sounded a bit too… english major-y. You know what I mean.
We passed the afternoon with a few drinks, hot dogs, a walk through the nearby hiking trail, and watching the fishermen down at the docks. There was an expectation in the air, everyone seemed to have plans for the night. Some of the local kids were putting up lanterns along the river. 16 feet across, the kids called out to one another back and forth. They’d probably been promised fireworks.
As the evening started to creep up on us, Alan was getting excited. There was just that sense of anticipation in the air. Seeing the shadows pass by the lanterns and seeing the fish jump up and down, there was something natural to it. A reminder that we lived in a fragile system, and that no matter what happened out in the world there was something tying us all to that one river, in that one little town.
As night came around, Alan held me tight. As we watched the oil lanterns light up there was at least a hundred people huddled around both sides of the river. There seemed to be some sort of disagreement with the hardware store owner, Hamed, who had brought powerful spotlights and set them up along the bridge. Some said it just wasn’t customary, others standing upstream just didn’t like to be blinded. Hamed, on the other hand, didn’t care either way. He was there to make a show.
As the clock crept up on 9pm, we spotted the first shadows. Fish, as big as my arm, slowly made their way down the river. First one, then eight, and soon there were dozens. All hurrying down the river, one splash at a time.
On one side of the river, they’d set up a hot dog stand. Some teenagers were drinking and causing a ruckus, but the local sheriff couldn’t be bothered to even talk to them. Not even after the fireworks started going off. It was all the drama of a small town, all wrapped into one imperfect evening. Alan didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was smiling a bit more than usual.
As more and more people were calling it a night, Alan and I stayed by the river. The teenagers rolled off to an afterparty. Hamed left his spotlights on and went home to his wife. The hot dog stand closed, and the oil lights started going out, one by one. Alan and I cuddled up, still watching the fish pass us by. There must’ve been hundreds of them, maybe thousands.
Soon, we were the only ones left. As we decided to head back to the motel, we walked over the bridge. As we passed the spotlights, Alan stumbled on a cord, knocking one of the spotlights into the river. By now, the oil lanterns had gone out. I tried to hurry Alan along, but he insisted on pulling the spotlight back up.
Then he fell off the bridge.
One big splash, and he was under the surface.
The following minutes was a blur of screams. I could hear him splashing in the water down below, but I couldn’t see him anymore. The spotlight that’d fallen off the bridge had gone out, and the other lights were angled incorrectly. My screams for help attracted a few locals, but no one could see or hear him. I barely even remember what I did. It all felt so unreal, like it hadn’t really happened. One moment, he was there. The next moment, he was gone. I panicked. Long into the night, all I could do was scream his name.
But the strangest thing was the reaction of the other townsfolk. The consensus was that I was overreacting. It was as if they didn’t even know who I was talking about. Still, they indulged me, and tried their best to check the river.
There was nothing.
I was taken back to the police station and slept in their waiting room, wrapped in a fire blanket. Two officers stayed with me all night, making sure I was okay. They didn’t seem all too worried about Alan; it was more of a reaction to me and my emotional state. Of course I was upset and frustrated that they weren’t taking me seriously.
In the morning, there was no news of Alan. I got the impression that they’d barely even searched for him. I was so pissed off that I threw the coffee they handed me straight into the wall, screaming in their faces.
“Just tell me something!” I demanded as the second officer started picking up pieces of my mug. “Just say what you’ve tried, where you’ve looked!”
“Ma’am, please,” said the younger officer. “We have several eyewitnesses stating that you came here by yourself.”
Of course, it was nonsense. I’d been with Alan for years, and there’d been plenty of evidence of the two of us not only being there, but there were plenty of witnesses who’d seen us throughout the day. I just started naming places, people and what we’d done. It shut them all up for a while.
It didn’t take them long to start asking questions. One lead after another, it all just turned up nothing.
Alan’s car was, strangely, registered to me. They said I’d checked in alone at the motel, and all my things had been moved to a smaller room. The vendor at the hot dog stand swore he’d seen me there; alone. But that’s when it hit me; I had paid for the drinks at lunch, so I had a receipt. I always saved my receipts. I shook out every receipt in my purse and went through them all one by one, and when I finally found the receipts from the previous day I felt my heart skip a beat.
There it was, black on white. All of Alan’s drinks were gone from the receipt.
Impossible.
Over the following hours, it became clear that something was wrong. Alan was gone, and no one was helping me look for him. It was as if he’d just disappeared. Hamed, from the hardware store, didn’t even think about one of his spotlights falling into the river. It was as if nothing had ever happened.
Two days passed in Aurora Falls. I tried calling Alan’s parents. Their number had been removed from my phone, and they didn’t seem to recognize my voice. All our photos were gone from my social media accounts. I called our friends, I called our landlord, I called his work; no one, at any point, had anything to say about him. In fact, some of them didn’t even know who I was anymore. It came to a point where I was just standing there, blindly screaming at Alan’s former roommate over the phone, demanding they tell me something about him. Anything. Anything at all.
They hung up.
As night came around, I found myself walking along the river to clear my head. The gentle rushing of water cleared my head and gave me another chance to reflect on what was really going on. My panic had subsided to a sort of surrendered desperation. I was frustrated beyond anything I’d ever experienced, but at the heart of it was a restlessness. If Alan had washed up on the shore somewhere, or gotten stuck, or hurt, someone had to find him at some point. Still, the river reached all the way down to the next town over, Tomskog, and there was no way for me to check all of it on my own.
After an eternity of walking, I just sat down by the river and cried into my phone. I had water up to my knees, but I didn’t care. Coverage was long gone, but that little light, in all that dark, was a surprising amount of comfort. My background picture of me and Alan was gone; some kind of factory reset. My sobs were interrupted as I felt something brush against my leg. The migration was still going strong, it seemed.
It was pitch black out, so I turned my phone towards the river.
There was no fish.
It was bodies.
They were floating downstream like a solid mass. Dozens, maybe hundreds. All with their faces turned down, shoulder-to-shoulder, not a muscle moving. Some naked, some fully clothed, some with broken accessories clinging to their carcass. An old woman with reading glasses hanging at the edge of her nose. A young man, still clutching a backpack to his chest. Eyes wide open, faces turned down, into the water. Almost surprised, as if they never anticipated losing their lives.
Then it hit me; the fish wasn’t migrating. They were fleeing. They were fleeing whatever the fuck this was.
I got to my feet. My leg had brushed against the arm of a young boy wearing swim trunks. He was one of the floaters in the front row.
Floaters. Sounds so fucking macabre.
I just stared. It felt like my mind was going blind, like I wanted to burn this image out of my head. Yet, I couldn’t. Their eyes were perfect. Diamonds, just beneath the surface. All of them full of forgotten life. Then a thought struck me. A terrible, gut-wrenching thought.
Alan.
I followed the rows of floating people, muttering his name, over and over. Maybe he was in the back. Maybe he was the last one. Maybe he wasn’t even part of this.
As I saw the bodies bump into one another, I noticed how eerily quiet it was. No birds, no splashing fish in the river. Just me, my runaway breathing, and a hammering pulse that was forcing tears into my eyes.
I couldn’t find him. I looked five times over, following the stream of bodies, but there was nothing. He wasn’t there. Still, I felt no relief.
As I picked up my cellphone to film it all, the screen started burning with static. Black and white spots, physically burning into the display of the phone. I was so surprised I dropped it. Just as well, it had grown so hot it was smoking in a matter of seconds. There, on the riverbank, it combusted. A tiny metallic scream. Another death.
Then, a noise.
I couldn’t tell what it was. I barely even knew where I was, I’d just blindly followed the river upstream. The tree line was close enough for bushes to block my path, but not so close that I couldn’t get around them.
Vegetation was sparse enough for me to see a close to 11 feet tall figure standing downstream, watching the bodies pass by.
The figure was dark. Not just because of the hour of the day, but in essence, and color. It was darker than night, like an ink blot on gray paper. Like a shepherd watching his sheep, it lingered along the river. As I looked at it, it bent down to push one body who got stuck; almost lovingly.
Right next to this ungodly being was an ordinary person, a stranger. Once the two noticed me, the uneven pair locked their eyes on me. The large being didn’t seem to mind, but the person next to it kept staring at me. From afar, they called out to me, like a frat boy yelling at an acquaintance from across the parking lot.
“You looking for someone?”
A man’s voice, one I’d never heard before. I just nodded as the man walked up to me. The tall figure didn’t move. Instead, it just kept ferrying the bodies along.
“Who are you looking for?” the man asked.
As he got closer, I got a better look at him. Large, broken, glasses. Barely hanging on by a frame. He was staring at me with large, empty eyes. Part terrified deer, part ravenous wolf. He had a shattered arm, as if he’d been hit by a car. He was pale as death, soaked in water. Another victim, or a victim-to-be. His feet squished as he adjusted himself. He only had a single shoe.
“M-my fiancée. Alan.”
“Alright” nodded the stranger, his head wobbling back and forth. Maybe his neck muscles were failing him. “What does he look like?”
I swallowed hard and threw a glance at the large being in the back. It paid us no mind. I could see the end of the trail of bodies further upstream.
Alan wasn’t there.
“Doesn’t m-matter!” I stuttered. “He’s not here. Just let me go. I’ll leave.”
“Oh, you can go. Alan too,” said the strange man, a squirt of water escaping his open mouth. “Just humor me. What does he look like?”
Then it hit me.
I had no idea.
This is where I have to admit something. At the time of writing, I know little to nothing about Alan. Alan isn’t even his real name. I can’t tell who he was, what he looked like. I have no idea where we met, and I can’t remember the names of the people I called to find him. And standing there, in front of a drowning victim, I choked on my words. Talking about Alan had been the easiest thing in the world, but it felt like someone had thrown a blanket over my mind.
“How do you even know you’ve lost someone?” he asked. “How can you miss what you can’t remember you ever had?”
“That’s not it” I huffed. “He was here. We were together. We watched the migration.”
“Who?”
I shook my head.
“Who what?”
“Who was here?”
And that was the first time I couldn’t remember his name. I hadn’t even noticed how my engagement ring was gone. There wasn’t even a mark left behind.
I sank to my knees. I knew there was something there, in my heart, missing. I felt it. My body remembered something I didn’t. Yet, I couldn’t think of a name, or a face. I didn’t know where we’d first met. I remember meeting someone, at someplace, but that was it.
“Please…” I cried. “There’s.. there has to be…”
“Something?” asked the man. “Something to make it all fair? No. No, little wheat, there isn’t. Just walk away.”
“What is this? What is going on?”
“A harvest in spring” nodded the man. “Same routine as last year.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I think you know” he answered.
But I didn’t.
I blinked, and suddenly the giant figure towered above us. With the flick of an overgrown finger, a large spike pierced the neck of the drowning victim. In an effortless move, he was thrown into the river, sinking into the back of the line, face first. The broken glasses fell off and sank to the bottom of the river, but his one shoe stayed put.
The figure looked down on me. I have never felt so small. I forgot to breathe. I’ve never felt a presence like that. It was beyond fear; I was questioning my very place here. My world. My life. I felt, much like the namesake I’d been given, like little wheat.
The figure reached out with a large finger, or a claw. Something sharp gently touched my forehead. It wasn’t even fast, but I didn’t know how to act. I just held my breath, hoping against hope to pass out before I got to experience the pain I knew was coming. I didn’t want to float downstream with the others. I was even having a hard time caring about Alan.
Then again, what Alan?
“Hello” the creature said.
My world turned upside down, as I fell into a dreamless sleep.
The next day I was found by a couple walking their rottweilers. I was brought to their home and given plenty of fluids and aspirin. They wrapped me in blankets, cared for me, and called the police. Of course, nothing would come of it. I’d been established as an unstable individual, screaming about make-believe and imaginary people. There was no way I could tell them about the previous night without sounding like a maniac.
Instead, I had a quick check-up, and then I returned to the motel. I packed my bags, got the keys to “my” car, and prepared to go back home. I would never come back to Aurora Falls again. Even though, as of writing this, I don’t think I’m even angry about it anymore. Though I know that I should be.
I think a lot of people have lost a lot of love in Aurora Falls. I think once you have, you move out. But that makes me wonder; what made me leave my hometown, all those years ago? It couldn’t just have been my studies. I had my family there.
Or did I?
Was I an orphan?
How can I know, for sure?
I’m writing this all down, as I found my bag from that weekend stuffed away in the attic, and I want to put this all to paper before I forget what is left of it. There was this one thing I found at the bottom of the bag that kicked all of this back into my head.
Remember the drowned man, with the large glasses and only the one shoe? The one who ended up as the floating body on the far end?
At the bottom of my duffel bag, just beneath my favorite pair of jeans, I found his other shoe.