January 15, 2025

The Ghosts of Blackrock River
by Arpad Nagy

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.


The wipers slashed furiously across the windshield of the Land Rover. “Casey — sweetie, maybe we should pull off somewhere until it lets up? I can barely see.” Claire Banner said to her husband.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere to pull off. Besides, it’s safer to drive through it until we leave the valley. I don’t want us parked with a mountain on our right and the river on our left,” A whoosh of water swept over the window. “If that slope gives out and there’s a landslide, we’d be in the worst possible position.” Despite forcing calmness into his words, Casey Banner tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
​
It wasn’t even an hour earlier that everyone’s phones started buzzing with the emergency weather alerts, causing the company barbeque to end abruptly. It said to expect extremely high winds and heavy rain with severe warnings to avoid travel and take cover. The reports suggested it could be a record-breaking deluge. But while the rest of the company sought shelter inside the hotel and continued the party, Casey told his wife they’d be better off heading home while they could. If the storm turned out to be as bad as forecast, the highway out could be closed by fallen trees or washed away in landslides.

“But wouldn’t we be heading into the storm’s path?” she asked, as they said their goodbyes and hurried to the Land Rover.

“I looked at the storm tracker,” he answered calmly, “And the worst of it will be on the other side of the mountain. We should only get the tail of it. Besides, this is what Land Rovers are made for.”

They were only halfway into the hour-long drive home with the blue sky turned black and walls of water washing over the vehicle. Casey leaned forward, doing his best to stay on the highway but out of the ruts and hydroplaning. He’d misjudged the storm’s power and direction, and almost as soon as they entered the winding mountain road, half of the violent system crested the mountain and was now crashing down upon them.

For her part, Claire was terrified, and each time the wheels caught the well-worn track of the highway, she could feel the Land Rover begin to float and drift. Her stomach mirrored the sensation.

“Sweetie?” she said gingerly, “I think you should slow down some more.”

“I’m already down to forty-five. Any slower than that, and we’ll start floating backward.”

Claire was about to lean over and check the speedometer when she thought she saw something ahead on the side of the road. It was almost impossible to see between the machine-gun wipers and the torrent of rain plastering the windshield.
But there was a blur of movement on the highway. A shape. “Casey! Slow down!” The panic in her cry made Casey’s alarm bells sound, and he immediately raised his foot off the accelerator.

“Wha-,” he began, but Claire smacked the windshield, her finger pointing ahead.

“-There’s someone on the road! A man, I think. You have to stop.”

Casey leaned in further, concentrating to see through the wipers and water, but he didn’t see anyone. Wait. Yes, yes! Someone was walking on the highway.

“God, what if he washed off the road?” Claire said, already rolling down the window.

As Casey pulled alongside the pedestrian, Claire called out, “Sir? Can we give you a ride? Are you okay?”

The man stopped walking but remained head down, looking at his feet. Water ran off his face in such a steady stream that Claire wondered if anyone had drowned while standing up.

“Jump in. We can take you home.”

When her words, “Take you home,” reached his ears, the man raised his head, turned, and looked at the couple in the vehicle.

“You’ll drown out here.” Claire continued yelling into the rain. “Please. Let us give you a ride.”

The man looked over his shoulder, then ahead. Finally nodding, he stepped to the side door and got in.

When the door shut, Casey pressed on the gas and continued into the storm.

“I wish I had a towel or something to give you,” Claire said, looking back at the water-logged passenger. “You’re utterly drenched. Are you okay? Were you driving? Did you get swept off the road?”

“No.”

Claire glanced at her husband, who merely shrugged but didn’t take his eye off the road. Unsatisfied with the vague answer, Claire pressed him for more. “You weren’t driving?”

“No.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“What were you doing on the road? You could have been hit; we barely saw you.”

“I was at the river.”

Relieved he had more than a one-word vocabulary, Claire relaxed a hair. “Were you fishing?”

“No.”

“Well, what were you doing at the river? If you wanted to swim, I daresay you’ve done that by walking in this rain.”

No answer.

An awkward pause. What’s wrong with him? Did we pick up a psycho hitchhiker during the storm of the century?

He exhaled. A long, slow breath. “I was looking.”

“I know it might seem silly,” Claire said, not knowing how to ask what he was looking at or for, “but there’s water in back — if you’re thirsty.”

No answer.

After a long moment, Claire turned and saw the man sitting with his head slumped against his chest. Water dripped from his nose and chin. She turned back, looked at Casey, and shrugged. They drove on with their rescued guest, apparently asleep.
Nearly ten minutes went by in silence when without warning, the man spoke.

“It’s the next turn. Toward the river.” The man said. “Go past the pig farm.”

The rain had lessened into a steady drizzle, and Claire had begun to doze; the man’s sudden announcement made her jump. She’d forgotten they had a passenger. Casey slowed and scanned for a gap in the greenery on his left.

It was barely there. You’d never see it if you didn’t know where and when to look. Concerned about the condition of the wood’s road with the heavy rain, Casey was about to ask about its reliability.

“I can get out here.” said the man at the very moment Casey finished his thought.

“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” Casey replied. The last thing he wanted to do was get bogged down in some mud hole and spend the night at a pig farm until a tow could come, but a squeeze on the thigh from Claire reminded him that a good Samaritan thought of others before themselves.

“Nah, I’ve got good tires, and this unit needs a good workout.” As he turned and left the highway for the dirt but currently mud road, Casey clicked the dial switching the Land Rover into four-wheel drive. The engine changed pitch to a lower whine, and they crawled down the slope leading into the woods.

Casey caught the look from his wife and noticed a heaviness in the air, but Claire, as always, tried to make everyone feel comfortable in an awkward situation. “Have you ever seen such a storm?” She asked, both and neither man.

The man beat Casey to the answer. “Only once.”

The air did not lighten.

Casey opted for his most common tactic — humor. “Ha! You and Noah must have been good friends!”

The man didn’t laugh. “Noah? I don’t know any Noah.”

Slightly embarrassed at his joke falling flat, Casey plodded on, “Ha-ha, yeah. I meant the Ark — you know — the Big Flood.”

Casey looked in the rearview mirror at their passenger and for the first time, got a good look at his face. He was pale, but not just without color but a glossy white. It made him think of polished piano keys.

The man looked up and caught Casey’s examination. His thin lips parted into an almost smile.

The skin at the back of Casey’s neck bristled like a dog’s, and he felt a cold warning trickle down his spine.

The Land Rover bucked and bounced on the rough road; the potholes and boulders disguised beneath the pooling water hit like hidden landmines. Casey returned his focus to driving, shifted gear, and wrestled the vehicle over a hump. When they crested, the river was only thirty yards off. It was angry water, running bloated and brown.

“We haven’t had a flood here in fifty years,” Casey said as he swung the vehicle away from a fallen tree.

“Forty-two.” said the man.

“What?”

“We haven’t had a major flood in forty-two years.”

Claire had been holding onto the “oh shit” handle the whole time the Land Rover fought to find the road, and now that it began to settle out, she exhaled. Ahead of them, the narrow track aimed for a grouping of trees, but she could see a field and fence on the other side. “Where’s your house, Mister — ,”

“ — Chalk. Sounds the same but spelled different. I’ll get out here. There’s a deep hole through those trees, and if this fancy truck gets stuck there, it’s staying stuck.”
Hearing the good news, Casey pressed the brakes and stopped the taxi ride.

“Oh, I’m sure we can make it through. This ‘fancy truck’ can climb a mountain and it’s part submarine.” Claire said, sounding much brighter than she felt. “We don’t mind getting you to your door. You’re soaked through; walking won’t be much fun.”

The man opened the door and already had one leg out. “If it’s all the same, Mrs. Banner, I’d rather not. I don’t like strangers coming to my house.”

The man stepped out, and before another word could pass between them, he closed the door and marched away, raising a hand above his shoulder and waving as he walked into the woods.

“That guy is weird as fuck,” Casey said as he steered the Land Rover around. Neither of them said anything more. Casey was too focused on getting back to the highway before they lost the afternoon light, and Claire was swiping and tapping on her phone, already scouring the internet for information about a “Mr. Chalk — sounds the same but spelled different” — who lived down past the pig farm along Black Rock River.

By the time Casey Banner pulled the Land Rover back onto the highway, he had a kink in his neck, and was uncharacteristically grouchy at his wife. “Why the hell would you tell some stranger we picked up off the side of the road our names?”

Claire jerked in her seat and stared disbelievingly at her husband. “I didn’t tell him any such thing!”

They looked at each other, reflecting on who said what but neither commented further.

“The storm is moving on,” Casey said. “There’s even blue sky up ahead.”

Claire looked shaken, “Good. The sooner you get us home, the better.”

“Honey, are you okay?”

Claire shook her head. “Casey, that pig farm has been inactive for decades, and according to Google Earth, there are no properties along this part of the river. And I can’t find any ‘Mr. Chalk.’”
                                                                         ***


The next day began with promise and bloomed into a glorious afternoon, allowing Claire to clean the Land Rover. Though she tried not to linger on it, the experience with Mr. Chalk had disturbed her — she wanted every trace of his water-logged ride wiped clean from the vehicle and her memory.

Opening the side door, Claire looked at the water-stained outline left behind on the premium leather seats and the whiteish skim of residue on the carpeted floor. “Mr. Chalk indeed,” she said out loud; then, as she was wiping down the leather, something glittered from the gap between the seats. Claire’s fingers fetched it out from the seam — it was a necklace. It wasn’t an expensive piece of jewelry, and as light as it was and as soggy as Mr. Chalk was, it was no surprise to Claire that Mr. Chalk hadn’t noticed it fall from his pants pocket.

She pulled on it gently, but something had it snagged. Claire gave a light tug, but the chain held fast to whatever obstacle was in its path. She reached between the seats and searched with her fingers, feeling along the chain until she felt solid shapes touching her fingertips. The necklace had two items, one flat and intricate, the second round and smooth.

Moving her fingers underneath them, she carefully extracted the chain from a metal rod underneath the cushion. While she worked the chain loose with her left hand, she applied tension with her right. A moment later, the necklace slipped free.
In her palm was a locket, and next to it, a bullet casing. Claire examined both items. The bullet casing, smooth brass, had no markings other than a few numbers on the headstamp around the primer button in the center.

She took the locket between her fingers, pinched the clasp, then hesitated a moment before opening it and turning it over. With the slightest pressure, the locket popped open. A picture of a young girl, with blonde hair in pigtails, perhaps ten, but closer to eight years old, thought Claire, smiled back at her. On the opposite panel were the words “Penny-Always Daddy’s Girl.”

Her impression of Mr. Chalk changed immediately. “Oh my,” she said, “That poor man, he’s probably distraught thinking he’s lost this.” At once, Claire decided to return the necklace and locket to Mr. Chalk. She texted her husband, briefly describing the circumstances and her intentions.

His text reply came quickly, “If you can’t wait for me, be careful. And let me know when you’re done and headed home. Xoxo”

She answered in kind, “It will be fine. It was just terrible storm. I’m sure we jumped to conclusions. I’ll be home in time to make supper. Ttyl. Xoxox.”

The road off the highway was much easier to find than the afternoon of the storm, partly because she traveled in the right lane with the left turn toward the river much easier to see and partly because she felt motivated and noble in doing this kindness. But the dirt track was no less harassing. Claire wasn’t as adept at off-road driving as Casey, but the Land Rover lurched, pulled, and crawled over every obstacle. She soon arrived at the gap where the forest pressed in on itself with the invitation of an open field on the other side. Once she poked the nose of the vehicle through the opening, she’d be on unfamiliar ground.

Not knowing what lay ahead unnerved her a bit, and an ominous feeling of being watched or followed sent goosebumps along her arms. Steeling herself to the task, she pushed on and drove into the unknown.

An old wooden fence line, what remained of it, ran crooked and rotten alongside her right. Inside the boundary lay a large field, overgrown with wild grass and shrubs and dotted with young pines.

The trees sat spaced farther apart. They seemed thinner, the trunks more grey than brown, and the boughs drooped, looking sad and forgotten by rain and sun. Blotches of orange needles made them look diseased, nothing like the forest behind her, which was lush, green, and vibrant.

The trail turned away from the field, back down toward Black Rock River; she followed it until there was no further to go. A wide, cleared rectangle of land sat in front of her, the river, 50 yards or so behind, the fast-moving water cut against high canyon walls. There was no house. No cabin. Not even a tent or shelter of any kind.
Claire retraced the route in her mind, thinking if she’d missed a turn somewhere, but she had driven slowly, carefully, taking everything in, and as Casey had taught, made mental notes of landmarks.

And then she saw him.

Mr. Chalk — sitting on a rock or stump far off to the left in the cleared expanse — hunched over and staring at the river.

Claire turned off the engine, took the necklace from the console, and exited the Land Rover. At the last moment, the sight of her phone caught her eye, and remembering Casey’s instructions, she grabbed it, swiped to the messages, and texted her husband.

“I’m here safe and sound. I see Mr. Chalk but no house. Creepy. Won’t be long. C u soon. Xoxo.”

As inspired as she was in returning the keepsake to Mr. Chalk, Claire now felt highly motivated to leave as soon she’d completed the transaction. Hurrying over the pine needle-carpeted forest floor, she jogged toward Mr. Chalk.

She didn’t notice crossing the threshold.

All at once, the world around her changed. Claire was no longer walking in the open forest. Instead, she stepped on a solid wood floor inside a large log cabin. She stopped and turned herself in a circle; her eyes saw a staircase and the open door with a kitchen behind it. A large, wide hearth made of large, rough stone took up an entire wall of a sitting room. Draperies hung over narrow windows. A dining table, made of wide, wooden slabs and handmade chairs, took up the rest of the room. And there, sitting on a wooden stool, looking out a small window, was Mr. Chalk.

“When the river swells,” he said without turning to face her, “I can hear her crying for me. The pool is wide but shallow. It was running low then. It had been a hot, dry summer day.”

Claire stood frozen. She didn’t understand it, but she felt like something terrible was about to happen to her.

Mr. Chalk rose and ambled toward Claire.

“It was the blackberries she wanted. They grew thick across the river. The cliff behind it reflects the sunlight and mist from the river, making it like a greenhouse. It’s a perfect spot. Plumpest berries you ever saw.”

Mr. Chalk reached out and took Claire’s hand, the one holding the necklace. Her grip was so tight he had to peel her fingers back. “She wanted to make me a pie.”

The air went cold as a winter morning. She could not move. Outside, a wall of rain swept in like a tidal wave. The river began to rise.

“I hoped it would have been Mr. Banner who’d have brought this to me. It’s a shame it’s you.”

Mr. Chalk took Claire by the hand and led her to the window. Across the river, Claire saw the young girl with blonde hair in pigtails stepping into the river, her arms laden with a basket teamed with blackberries. She smiled and waved. Then she looked upriver, and the smile left her face. The river swelled and turned dirty. The girl hurried to get across, and now she was too far in to turn back but too far away to make the bank near the house.

The river rose.

Clinging to a large boulder, the girl cried out, and the blackberries floated away. The river was at her chest.

“Help her!” Claire’s voice, broken and shrill, cried out. “Help her! She’ll drown if you don’t!” She sprang forward, rushing to the window, waving her arms at the girl, and then she was outside again and standing at the edge of the stone foundation of the once-beautiful home.

Shaken but relieved, Claire fell to the hard ground, confused but relieved to be out of whatever dream she’d stepped into. When she’d caught her breath, Claire pushed to get her feet, and that’s when she saw it wasn’t the ground beneath her but a gravestone. Etched into it were words. Brushing away the leaves, and needles, Claire read the engraving.

“Too heartsick to stay, Angeline Chawk left us to find her Penny that the river took away. May 11, 1961 — July 15, 1981”

“I can’t find her,” Mr. Chawk stood beside her, his eyes fixed on the river. “He lets me come when it storms,” he said, “The river moves everything then, and I walk her banks searching for my Penny.”

The necklace with the locket and bullet casing swayed beneath his fingers, keeping pace with a four-count rhythm. The sky turned dark and the air heavy. Blankets of rain came.

The river swelled.

Mr. Chawk grabbed Claire by the arm, pulled her up, dragged her along, and threw her into the rising water. “I couldn’t swim,” he said, and his dead eyes began to cry. “I couldn’t save her. You have to find my Penny.”

She screamed at the top of her lungs as the river rose to her shoulders. Her mind was about to break, knowing she soon be drowned when she heard it. She turned her head to follow the cries, and at the bend downstream, Claire saw the end of a pigtail, a damp bundle of blonde hair floating around the turn.

Claire let go of the rock and swam for the girl.

Mr. Chawk stood on the bank and wept as the river grew.

                                                                   💀💀💀

Arpad Nagy is a proud Hungarian Canadian. After sustaining work injuries and being relegated to desk work, he dove into writing and has been doing so full-time since 2021. HIs passion is fiction writing, and his niche is romantic fiction, although I branch out into as many genres as I can. I also write personal essays, memoirs, pop culture, and anecdotal stories about being a father, husband, and former careers as a  chef, oil man, and civil construction. I am an editor for four publications, three for nonfiction and one for short fiction at Medium, where I have nearly 400 published pieces. 
Links;
Arpad Nagy – Medium

arpad56nagy (@arpad56nagy) / Twitter

Arpad T. Nagy (@arpad.t.nagy.5) | Instagram

Arpad Nagy | LinkedIn

Arpad Nagy (@[email protected]) - me.dm by Medium.com