Every year, at least three Edmontonians drown in the North Saskatchewan. The water is typically a brownish blue colour that makes seeing the bottom difficult at the best of times, and impossible at the worst. The rapid and random changes in depth are a danger to anyone who thinks they can swim any distance away from the shore, and the rocky bottom proves to be a poor place to stand. Wade out from the safety of the shore, and the quick and deadly undercurrents are likely to suck you under and belch up your bloated corpse hundreds of kilometres to the north-east.
Deadly though it can be, one can’t deny that Edmonton’s ribbon of green is a beautiful sight – as the largest urban green space in the entire country at eighteen thousand acres, who hasn’t spent an afternoon or an evening enjoying the tamed wilderness of the valley. Whether it be biking the trails, strolling the bank, dipping your feet in the edge, or taking a day to board a boat and meander down the river, the river valley is well and truly the heart of the city.
As anyone who lives in this city can well attest, wild animals aren’t the only fauna that call the valley home, as a sizeable portion of the city’s homeless are known to camp in secluded groves and grottos all along the valley. I’ve heard them referred to – somewhat disdainfully – as the ‘wild men of the valley’ or the ‘valley bandits’ before, but I myself have never had that bad of an interaction with them. You may hear stories of someone descending from a hidden camp to rape or rob a passing lone walker, but I think they just say that to scare kids into coming home on time. As a girl who’s walked through the valley after sundown, I’ve never had worse than a leering glare or being asked for a cigarette by one of the valley people.
However, my long-time understanding of what occurs in the river valley was shattered naught but three nights ago, and that’s the story I mean to lay out to you, dear reader.
It was a Wednesday evening, and I had the next day off work. As anyone who’s tried to organize plans for a Wednesday night will tell you – most people tend to not be free on a night in the middle of the week. After receiving the replies from my friends that nobody was up for a stroll in the valley, I shrugged it off and decided to go alone. I dressed warmly and brought along a thin jacket just in case the winds off the river decided to make tonight a chilly one.
It was the middle of July, so the sun never truly set until around ten o’clock – I had left home around nine, and after a quick jaunt from my home in Garneau, found myself descending the wooden steps below the great iron giant that is the high-level bridge, and entering straight into the woods west of kinsmen.
I had decided I would walk all the way to the equestrian park and back, which, at my casual and leisurely pace that involved frequent stops to drink in the beauty of my surroundings, I figured would have me home just around midnight. I had squirreled a bottle of red wine into my bag, which, along with my weed pen, promised to make it a pleasant night – I had a slight buzz going as I began my return walk from the equestrian park, and the weather was still and beautiful that night as the river gurgled peacefully to my left.
As the night drew on, I saw here and there along the slopes of the valley and hidden off in the trees small lights come to life in the darkness like giant fireflies – small campfires or lanterns set up by either the homeless or drunk teenagers, it was hard to tell. I heard the distinctive crack of beer cans off in the trees followed by a gale of faint laughter that echoed across the valley before fading into the night.
I had taken the walk far more leisurely than I had expected and was behind schedule by the time midnight struck. Having the day off tomorrow however, I didn’t care, as I had always loved nature ever since I was little until… well, until Wednesday. I decided that I wanted to stop and dip my feet in the river, so I turned off the path at the first game trail I could find and pushed my way north through the underbrush until I reached the riverbank.
Walking east along the shore, I eventually came across a small little cove in the bank of the river that was sheltered by a crop of mature birch trees. The grass around the cove had been flattened out, as the place was evidently a popular hideaway that had been visited before. I put my bag down in the grass, pulled off my shoes and socks, and pushed my pant legs up my calf before I dipped my feet into the cold brown water.
A lot of people think the water is brown because it’s polluted or dirty, but they’d be wrong – it’s brown because the mud at the bottom is brown. Scoop a handful up and you’ll see it’s clear as day. I dandled my feet in the water for a few minutes, propping my weight on my hands that were extended behind me, and gazed across the river at the lights that rose from Glenora and Westmount on the far heights of the valley.
As I sat there, a strange feeling started to come over me – it wasn’t the feeling of being watched, it was more like the feeling you get when you’re trespassing, or being somewhere you shouldn’t. I looked at my weed pen and wondered if I had smoked too much and it was giving me anxiety, but that didn’t make any sense as it had never given me that feeling before. I glanced around but noticed nothing except the silent woods and the distant sounds of a city that drifted down from the heights of the valley.
Feeling somewhat unnerved at this point, I pulled my feet from the water and wiped them on the grass, crossing my legs and looking around warily as I waited to be dry enough to put my socks back on.
Taking my feet out of the water at that exact moment may have been the luckiest I’ve ever been, for mere seconds after my feet had left the water, a hand burst from the surface of the cove and dug into the bank where my ankles had been only moments before. I instantly, instinctually let out the shrillest scream I had ever heard, as my hands clawed at the ground behind me, and my legs uncoiled in the blink of an eye to frantically push myself away from the water’s edge.
The hand had ripped a chunk of dirt from the bank and lashed out again furiously for me, but now it was attached to some big, fat, dripping wet, humanoid shape that had risen out of the water behind it. I screamed again as the hand clamped down on my ankle and began to drag me towards the water – the hand was wet, freezing cold, and gripped me like a vice. I screamed again as I flailed frantically for anything I could get my hands on to steady myself, managing to grasp the trunk of one of the birches behind me.
The… thing that was holding onto me began to tug even harder, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before I was pulled into the river, as whatever it was, was far stronger than I could hope to contend with. With the last of the strength I had remaining, feeling more desperate than I ever had in my life, I screamed with anger as I kicked my free foot out towards the thing. I had aimed for the “head” in my desperation, but – luckily – I managed to miss and strike the arm right in the crook of the elbow.
The hand might have had a vice grip, but luckily the rest of the thing wasn’t so strong – my foot went into the flesh of the arm with a sickening squelch, and it felt as though I was kicking a soaking wet sponge full of bones. The arm came off right at the elbow and the water thing stumbled backwards as I pulled myself up with the birch tree. I was on my knees and desperately prying the detached arm off my ankle when a beam of light suddenly illuminated the monster in front of me.
I felt my stomach twist into a knot as I gazed on what had tried to pull me into the river – it was a rotting, drowned corpse. It’s skin was a mess of blueish, brownish, bloated flesh, with bites and strips of flesh torn from the body at random places. Black, disgusting hair like a mess of seaweed was plastered down against it’s face, and it lurched towards the bank of the river, when, in a quick red flash, it’s head exploded into a mist of reddish brown water, and the body collapsed back into the water.
A fire extinguisher, thrown from somewhere to my right, had taken the whole head right off the monster, and I looked to see a flashlight being pointed at me, which blinded me completely to the world.
“She’s alive.” A gruff voice spoke from behind the light.
“Get out of here little girl, that won’t be the only one.” Another voice, similarly rough called out.
Suddenly, a pair of hands had me under the shoulders and was pulling me to my feet. I too stunned to resist, allowed myself to be stood up, and, my eyes having now adjusted, gazed on the three men who had appeared out of the woods. All three of them looked rough – matted and dirty hair complimented matted and dirty beards, all of which came down into a tangled mess onto dirty, ripped, and old clothing.
The men were variously armed with an assortment of makeshift weapons – one had a baseball bat wrapped in a bike chain, another carried a rusted old axe, and the last one had nothing save the flashlight and a sharpened stick. “We said go!” the axe wielding man shouted at me, which woke me from my stunned stupor. I grabbed my bag as quick as lighting and wrapped my free hand around my boots that had been left on the ground, before I began sprinting back through the trees. Branches ripped at my face and body, and my feet felt like they were already bleeding from the rough ground I was running on.
Something caught one of my feet and I fell to the ground with a loud crash. As I regained my breath and pushed myself to my feet, I looked back to the river through the trees, and in the moonlit night, saw another scene of horror. An entire pack of the drowned corpses had emerged from the river and were engaged in fighting against the three men who had saved me. One of the men had been piled by three of the monsters and was being dragged kicking back towards the water. I watched the man with the axe open the stomach of one of the bodies with a powerful swing, after which a brown-red water spout burst from the body and it collapsed to the ground.
The flashlight man had speared one of the monsters through the neck, but the stick had been grabbed by another one, and he was beating at it’s head with the flashlight. I’ve never prayed since I was a kid, but in that moment I prayed to any and every god I could think of to save those men and to throw those horrible monsters back into the water and drown them for good.
You’ve never experienced an adrenaline rush like the one you get when you think you’re going to die. I sprinted the whole way home, and fainted onto the floor of my living room the moment I got home. I woke late in the night – my legs were screaming sore, my feet were cut and bloody, and my face was a mess from where I had been crying without even realizing it.
I tried to chalk the whole thing up to a dream, or being too drunk, or having laced drugs. I tried to rationalize what I had seen. Someway, somehow. But all my attempts were shattered earlier today when I turned on the news and saw that three bodies had been dragged out of the river that morning on the north-east end of town. Three bodies. Three men. Three, homeless, men. If that wasn’t enough, the faces they showed on the news proved it. They were the three men I had met that night.
The new said they had likely been doing drugs by the river and had somehow fallen in. But I knew that wasn’t true. It’s likely they didn’t even drug test the bodies – they’re just homeless, who cares how they died? It’s safe to say I don’t go in the river valley anymore, not alone, not with people, not at all. And now… well now I know the truth… the homeless people who live in the river valley might not just be your everyday down-on-their-luck homeless person – they might be protecting us from something far worse than we can possibly imagine.