The Raven's Rocks

by Caroline Corfield

August Pritchard gazed through the window of the classroom. Its outside had a snaking pattern carved by the day's rain streaking through what had been a solid coating of yellow grime yesterday. That dust was his father's disappointment, as was August. 

August Senior had come to Aldrich with a grand vision to investigate its lake and set up a power plant using it's water. He'd spend his first summer out on its shoreline seeking a solid base amongst the yellow clay-like soil, mapping half-way round before he met Cecilia 'Cissy' Blair. And though he'd continued to plan the plant he'd never returned to the lake. Instead, life, Cissy and August Junior had interrupted his great idea. And August Senior had never let August Junior forget it.

'Pritchard! Would you deign us with your insights? Whatever lies outside is surely pertinent to our study since you choose to give it, and not me, your full attention.'

'Sir. Sorry, sir.'

August pulled his gaze to meet Professor Saltoun's. The professor had a stocky build though his girth was exaggerated by the academic robe he chose to wear. Student rumour had him sleeping in it. The man's eyes were a cold grey that pierced into August's soul and made him shiver.

Another disappointed adult. At eighteen, August felt like a man but was aware men like Saltoun and his father thought he was a child. They belonged in the old century, where time moved slowly. He, August Pritchard, was going to live fast. This new modern century was all about speed, about progress, about moving forward. Like that new cinema they were building on Hyde Crossing, all sleek and streamlined like an ocean liner. It stirred the desire for travel that August felt he'd never been without: a need to leave Aldri    ch as if his life depended on it.

The professor's gaze flicked away and turned to face the blackboard upon which was drawn, in a draughtsman's hand, the detailed outline of the geology around the town of Aldrich. Its most obvious feature, the circular lake, was red, indicating volcanic rock. But August knew that was supposition. The rest of the map showed contact metamorphic rocks, shale turned to slate, limestone to marble. These Triassic sediments had been tortured into new forms by whatever the lake actually was. The inability of anyone to get a sample from the lake bed had created two warring schools of thought. Either it was the site of a meteor impact or, as his father thought, it was the sunken remains of a large volcano. One still hot and waiting to be tapped for free energy.

His father had wanted August to study at Miskatonic University where he taught intermittently. But it was his mother's pride that her son would attend the prestigious institute based in the town that had finally shanghai'd August into the geology course. He'd no inclination for rocks and had developed a deep hatred of anything to do with the local geology in particular. Unfortunately his photographic memory had enabled him to pass every test with flying colours in this, his first year. His life seemed as mapped out as the one on the board.

August did not stay in the student digs on Winthorpe Road, much as he would have preferred. Like all the locals who attended the Miskatonic University's Earth Sciences and Life Studies campus he stayed at home. It was firstly a matter of finance and secondly, he was sure, a matter of control. 

The end of Saltoun's lesson meant his day was finished and he decided to stroll home under the maples and London plane trees that were now reaching a height to provide some shade this early June. The whole neighbourhood was less than twenty years old, built off-catalogue by a local firm to appeal to the increase in university staff as the faculty expanded. Each street had an eclectic and academic air as a result.

His family's home; a detached, Craftsman-style building was caked in his mother's choice of gothic options and stood out against their street's more restrained versions. Entering through its etched-glass, half-glazed oak door he ignored the intertwining trefoil motif. It made him uneasy whenever it successfully caught his eye and because of his eidetic memory that feeling only grew with each lapse of concentration. Instead he noticed his father's boots were gone. The brown leather boots were a fixed feature of the entrance hall. He'd no prior memory of them ever being missing. 

'August? Is that you?'

His mother's voice was brimming with anxiety and her accent always thickened in these situations. August winced hearing the evidence of her inferior Aldrich background.

'Yes, mother.'

'Oh,' she exclaimed, coming into the panelled hallway from the kitchen, smoothing her apron down with floured hands. 'I thought it was your father.'

Her accent now had more of a clip to it, none of the lengthened, town vowels that had been beaten out of him as a boy at the prep school.

'Where is he? His boots are missing.'

August did not expect his mother to faint. When she crumpled to the floor, lying bathed in the western-ing sunlight coming through the open living room door, he was transfixed. The blues and greens from the stained glass top-panes of the living room windows brightened over her as the sun came out from behind a cloud. He shivered. It was the kind of shiver one usually describes as a warning from the future that someone is stepping on your grave. 

'Mother.' He moved to her and knelt down, taking her pulse. 'Mother, wake up.'

Cecilia Pritchard came-to on her hallway floor with the smell of dank water in her nostrils and her son bending over her.

'Oh, August. He's gone. That foolish man, your father, he's gone. What will become of me?'

'What do you mean, gone? Where?'

'He came into the kitchen as I was baking and began to make coffee. I didn't notice how he was. I should have noticed how he was...'

'And then what?'

Her son's tone cut into her. He'd been a lovely little boy until he'd gone to that school and been changed. His gentleness had fossilised into a hard, sharp edginess which continued to slice at her daily. His sneers and his corrections to how she spoke. And when he'd say, 'you wouldn't understand', that was the worst. She knew things. Things that neither Augie or he knew about the lake. And now. Stupid, stupid August S Pritchard had gone back there. 

'He left the kitchen, I thought he's gone to... I don't know... pick up the mail, get a book, you know how distracted he can be. Then the door closed and I thought, he's gone out for a walk.'

'While he's making coffee?'

She shrugged. Her husband had gotten more disorganised and unfocused as the years had gone by. Beginning projects that never progressed. Constantly in flux between wild optimism and deep despair. His office was littered with the remnants of blueprints, reports, cardboard models. If only his first idea hadn't been the lakeside power plant. Every local knew the water never froze in winter, but nobody had ever thought to try and harness that. They knew better.

'I'm going to go looking for him. Call the police.'

'Are you sure, August? What if he comes back?'

'Then it will all be a unfortunate misunderstanding.'

August turned from her and stood up.'You'll be all right?' he asked.

She nodded. When she'd met Augie at the lake that fateful day and he'd said she was all he'd ever wanted, she believed him. To make that kind of statement in that kind of place... had to be the truth. But he'd never settled. 

That it wasn't true had become a problem. There was no point denying it now.

August had a fair idea of where his father had gone. The boots were specifically designed for walking in muddy, water-logged environments. He set off down the street, heading south onto Main and turning east reaching the lake shore in less than fifteen minutes. 

It was summer term and the light was slowly turning golden, heading for one of those long, blue-velvet evenings. The small beach had been abandoned by the young families of the afternoon but the student parties had yet to arrive. He thought he ought to call out for his father but also that any loud noise was a desecration of such a peaceful setting. Small waves broke his reverie, crashing onto the shingle. He looked out to the cluster of central islands. His mother called them the Raven's Rocks, though he'd never seen a bird land on them, much less a raven. Nothing appeared to have generated the wash that was dissipating at his feet. 

As his eyes moved back across the water he caught sight of something further along the shore. He ran. His feet slipping sideways as the pebbles gave way beneath him. Only his momentum kept him upright. For a second he thought that if he stopped the pebbles would continue to propel him, like hands rolling and tumbling him into the lake. He imagined the water closing over his head, the blue-green light flickering, he could smell the duckweed. And then he saw what was on the shoreline.

His father's boots. And his clothes.

August stood, dazed at the implication of what his father had done. Why? He knelt down. The rounded pebbles dug into his kneecaps like fingertips grasping, trying to drag him deeper. On top of the folded shirt and trousers, weighted down by his father's spectacles was a note. August read it.

My Dearest Cissy, I am so sorry. Please forgive me, I tried so hard to forget. You and the boy will be well provided for, I have seen to it. Do not mourn me. 

Yours, Augie.

'The boy,' he said to the air, to the quivering rushes. And then standing up he shouted it. 'The boy! That's all I am? The. Boy. No! I have to be more.' 

His voice bounced back to him from the Raven's Rocks, mocking him. He felt like a by-product, a bonus, a side-note. The susurration of the reeds increased, the wind picked up and nearly tore the note from his hand. Out of nowhere gusts began to swirl around him, pushing over the boots, picking up the clothing, whipping yellow dust into his eyes. 

As he rubbed his eyes, bringing tears to wash out the grit, he looked again at the dark shadowed islands and saw three giant crow-like shapes. And was that a tower? He'd never heard of any buildings on the islands. 

His focus resolved as his eyes blinked away the excess water and the illusion vanished. No birds, no tower. His over-active imagination at work again.

An automobile pulled up creating fresh yellow dust which the sinking wind toyed with before dropping. Lettering above the town's badge - three, red-eyed ravens set equally apart, heads pointing to the centre of a blue circle - ran along the vehicle's side. They proclaimed it as belonging to the Aldrich Sheriff's Office.

'August Pritchard?' the Deputy drawled like his mother did, but August stifled his usual response. The air had taken on an oppressive stillness to disguise its previous nature.

'Sir.' August held out the limp paper hanging from his fingers. 'I think I've found my father's clothing. He's left a note.' Beads of sweat grew on his forehead. The Deputy took the note from him and August used both hands to wipe clear his face of sweat, tears and dust.

'Thank you, son. I think you best go home and look to your momma. She was much distressed in the phone call.'

Dismissal. Treated like a child. Again. What would it take to be considered a man?

'While I realise this is unconventional without a body, Mr. Pritchard did leave provision for this situation. The police have confirmed to me they believe there was no foul play and Mr Pritchard has drowned in the lake. They intimated sometimes a body turns up a few years later in these circumstances. And so I am instructed to read to you the last will and testament of August Shaffinger Pritchard, signed, eighth of September, nineteen hundred and one.'

The voice of the lawyer from Hess and Harrow had a soothing effect on August as he droned on. 

'A stipend of two hundred dollars a month to my son. May he pursue his life's dream...'

August reconnected with what Mr. Hess had been saying. 'What?' he interrupted.

'Your father has made provision for you to receive a monthly income and our firm, acting as trustees, have discretionary rights to increase this should it become necessary. Your mother...'

'No. Sorry. The next part. My life's dream? What does that mean?' August's fear that his future financial wellbeing was now to be tied to geology, to discovering what the lake was, even to his father's power plant idea leant his voice a slightly manic edge.

'That's all it says. May he pursue his life's dream.'

'There's nothing in there about a career in geology? Engineering even?'

'No. May I continue?'

'Please. Sorry.'

August's mind wandered. It visited ruined cities surrounded by impossibly high mountains, windswept steppes and plains, arctic glaciers. His heart fluttered at the thought of diving beneath the waves and discovering massive statues in sunken harbours. All the world was open to him. His legs shook to be away and already packing.

'Your offer to stay for tea is very gracious, Mrs. Pritchard, but I must catch the two o'clock back to Boston,' said Byron Hess, momentarily caught off-guard by the sensation that the etched glass design in the door behind Mrs. Pritchard was moving.

Cecilia nodded and watched the lawyer take his leave. His neat little black-suited body stepped down off her porch and walked briskly westward towards the station. She thought he might run, but he didn't.

'What a nice man. Wasn't he a nice man, August?'

Her son appeared distracted. A momentary pang of guilt coursed through her. She should have stopped him from searching for Augie. But there was nothing for it now. August had to pursue his life's dream and it would cost him dearly.

She remembered her son as she always did, the keen toddler into everything in the house. Whip-smart, always asking questions. It was the downfall of any stranger who came to Aldrich with their questions, their ideas, their imagination. Why couldn't that fancy school have beaten those out of him instead?