Here is the horror tale: THE VOICE OF THE WATER

THE VOICE OF THE WATER
by
G. W. Huber
Berry was not troubled by the sounds filtering in from beneath his door. The momentary clamor of hall-walkers and passers-by did not disturb him. Their prattle was meaningless, nothing in its meter or measure was meant for him.
Such disruptions were infrequent given the proximity of quarters. Boardinghouses, transient places that they are, are often given to noisy antics and melodrama. Not here, however. He had been pleasantly surprised that the place kept its peace. Apart from the occasional three A.M. fracases, he was not bothered.
Berry heard the water call to him, and so, filled his glass and walked to the window. It was raining lightly and beyond the embrasure the water sang a lilting tune. He pulled his chair as close as possible in order to listen better.
Tonight, the water’s voice was soothing and restful. Uncertain though he was, he believed its song was of redemption and salvation. Its intonation told of rediscovery and purpose. Although often frustrated by his inability to discern the precise meaning of its dialect, he was content to allow the water’s cadence to ease him. Soon, he drifted off to sleep, like a child to a lullaby.
He had been listening to the voice of the water for some time now. How he loved its patois! It spoke to him all the time. In the pipes within the walls of his room, its softly muffled
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voice confided to him. In the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass, he caught its effort to be heard. In the rumble of a thunderstorm, the rush of a river over rocks, and the tumult of the ocean, it strove to be understood. Still, he could not translate its language.
Berry’s marriage had brought him to this place, or rather; the dissolution of that marriage had brought him here. He had been surrounded by treachery. His wife’s affair had gone on for years before it was exposed. His so-called friends had known more about it than he and had aided her in hiding the facts. After the reality of those betrayals, he had seen complexity and connivance in the manner and expression of everyone around him. They called it paranoia. He accepted it as the truth of life. But such truth pained him, and he drank to escape that pain.
The noise of garbage trucks making their early morning rounds woke him and unraveled his nerves. The whine of their hydraulics became a scream. The scream pierced his heart, his head, and his soul. That exclamation was the sound of his life, and he replied to it with an anguished cry of his own.
His shaking hand poured amber liquor into a small rocks glass and he raked his fingers through his hair. Often, he did not wake well, but that shrieking arousal was the worst of it. Lately, he’d been finding a measure of peace with his fate. He attributed that bit of quiescence to the voice of the water. Something in its message was granting him a reprieve. If only he could entirely understand what it meant to tell him. He felt certain it had something important for him to know.
As his nerves quieted and he made his way into the bathroom, he listened for the voice of the water. It usually greeted him here every day. Its welcome might come in the form of a subtle rush through the pipes or an absent trickle from a faucet, a faint gurgle from somewhere
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deep inside the building, or a splash from some indiscernible source. Today, however, it was silent. He was met by nothing but the hollow staccato of ceramic tile and porcelain fixtures.
He was troubled by the thought that the water might never speak to him again. After all, he was a poor listener. For all its effort at dialogue, he still did not comprehend. Perhaps it had gone in search of a better interpreter.
Until its return, he would seek his other solace. The liquor store opened in a short while, so he would have to make haste to freshen himself. A glance in the mirror told him he was only slightly out of sorts. He was still a handsome man, even though his hairline had receded a bit, front and back. Gray pervaded his temples and sideburns. The lines around his eyes were more prominent. Most of his muscle had given way to gaunt. He supposed the hard eyes and emaciation could be attributed to his steady diet of alcohol. Still, given his circumstances, he seemed only a little the worse for wear.
He returned from the errand to replenish his liquor supply a little later in the day and he continued to consume its measure well into the evening. Just as he began to give up all hope of congress, the water spoke to him. He wondered, as he sat mildly intoxicated, if he could be hallucinating or going crazy. But the water’s phonation soothed and assured him. There was expression and articulation in its utterance that, although beyond his comprehension, brought him peace and validation. Its timbre led him into restful sleep of a kind he had not experienced in a long time. He woke gently the next morning, to consider how best to pursue his calling to define the water’s message.
He spent as much time as he could in places given to the water’s tone. He traveled to the park a short distance from his lodgings. There, he tried to pick out meaning from the whispering babble of the creek’s rush over smooth rock. He attempted to glean the sense of the water’s
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contemplative mood beside still ponds and stagnant pools. He listened for its rage, excitement, or fear, in its frantic plunge over the falls. Still, he could not grasp precisely what it meant to tell him.
He wasn’t entirely certain when he had given up speech. The function seemed to slip away from him in small doses. He had no telephone, as there was no longer anyone to call. He’d long ago driven away his false friends with this new faculty that they called madness. He did all his banking at an ATM. Twice a month, he slipped a rent check beneath the super’s door. When he remembered to eat he cooked on the hotplate in his room, and he drank alone.
Thus, conversation had become irrelevant. Dispensing with banter gave him the opportunity to become an even better listener. With his mind freed from the necessity to create and formulate language, it could better focus on deciphering the water’s message. So much vocabulary was nothing more than bluster and bravado anyhow. Many times in his life he had spoken just to hear himself talk. It was much better to really attempt to hear.
There were occasions when he found his voice, but they were few. Usually, in the midst of a thunderous downpour, he would add his own strains to the cacophony of the water. He would include his shouts with its resolve to beat against the brick and shingle of the building. He would call out encouragement as it flung itself wantonly at the world. Still, blaring and bellowing its futile rage until the storm’s appointed end, it revealed little more of its meaning.
He decided that in order to entirely grasp the water’s dispatch, he would have to immerse himself fully in its voice. So, one day he swam from shore, far out into the great ocean’s prosody. There, he encountered the voice of the water as never before.
He was beyond the simple experience of hearing. He was engulfed by the water’s tone and buoyed up by its melody. Its revelation was eternal, epochal, and he waded farther out and
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deeper into its depths in search of its dividend. The further he progressed from shore, the more it revealed itself to him. He swam until he could not see land, and beyond, he continued.
His body tired, but his spirits were lifted. A rush of lyricism washed away all his cares and concerns for the past or the present. He pressed intensely into its resonance and he passed the limitations of his physical and spiritual pain. As he united with the water and gave himself up to it, he finally understood its message, its call to finality.
THE END