I've never walked by the river before yesterday and I won't again. Before yesterday I'd always had some reason or another why I couldn't join someone down there. It was always things I couldn't control like poor weather, work calling me in to cover somebody, illness or family issues. There had never been any time to go down there, not even when I was a child.
The first thing I noticed after I went down the narrow concrete steps to the main path was just how narrow the walkway was. A poorly paved poor excuse of a path that showed how few people used it yet all of my friends had, at some point or other, invited me to join them in the skatepark about halfway along it. The place I was heading to for just such an invitation. They said it was past a memorial to a guy called Dave who'd been found face down along the concrete flood barriers missing his left foot but holding his left shoe and sock.
Way before that I saw the first thing that made me hesitate to carry on. There are signs like this all over town, always missing parts of with something added on.They're meant to be tourist maps and information boards but they've become something of a local mystery. Generally these signs are just harmless jokes but a few make you pause and wonder just what is going on in that area. This was one of those signs.
The torn out section was where the Cathedral was and covered the grounds exactly. Tourists loved the idea of a riverside place of worship, especially one so large and ornate, every inch of it a reflection of the water and the creatures within. Where else can you hear choirs sing on a glass stall that has lights built in to reflect the water underneath onto their pallid skin, giving them the appearance of drowned ghosts.
Something about that place has never felt right to me, never been able to place what until I read the words written on the edges of the torn out section. I don't know if I've got the order right or if there even is an order but they make this couplet:
RIVERS AFLOWING AND THEY ALL LET GO, SOULS HEADED DOWN DEEP DEEP DOWN
THE LAKE UNDER GOD THE GOD UNDER LAKE THE LAKE UNDER GOD UNDER LAKE
I turned back after noting this down, texting my friends that I'd gotten a call from my aunt saying she needed someone to babysit while she visited her mother in hospital. They sent me an image of them looking sad and whatever filter they'd applied made it look like they were underwater. It was the same kind of image they always sent but with the sign's message fresh in my mind I realised that they'd never used a filter. They weren't even in a skatepark - they were under the church.
There was a new sign right by the steps that led back onto the bridge.
I know it hadn't been there before but it looked as old and ragged as all the others.
The first thing I noticed after I went down the narrow concrete steps to the main path was just how narrow the walkway was. A poorly paved poor excuse of a path that showed how few people used it yet all of my friends had, at some point or other, invited me to join them in the skatepark about halfway along it. The place I was heading to for just such an invitation. They said it was past a memorial to a guy called Dave who'd been found face down along the concrete flood barriers missing his left foot but holding his left shoe and sock.
Way before that I saw the first thing that made me hesitate to carry on. There are signs like this all over town, always missing parts of with something added on.They're meant to be tourist maps and information boards but they've become something of a local mystery. Generally these signs are just harmless jokes but a few make you pause and wonder just what is going on in that area. This was one of those signs.
The torn out section was where the Cathedral was and covered the grounds exactly. Tourists loved the idea of a riverside place of worship, especially one so large and ornate, every inch of it a reflection of the water and the creatures within. Where else can you hear choirs sing on a glass stall that has lights built in to reflect the water underneath onto their pallid skin, giving them the appearance of drowned ghosts.
Something about that place has never felt right to me, never been able to place what until I read the words written on the edges of the torn out section. I don't know if I've got the order right or if there even is an order but they make this couplet:
RIVERS AFLOWING AND THEY ALL LET GO, SOULS HEADED DOWN DEEP DEEP DOWN
THE LAKE UNDER GOD THE GOD UNDER LAKE THE LAKE UNDER GOD UNDER LAKE
I turned back after noting this down, texting my friends that I'd gotten a call from my aunt saying she needed someone to babysit while she visited her mother in hospital. They sent me an image of them looking sad and whatever filter they'd applied made it look like they were underwater. It was the same kind of image they always sent but with the sign's message fresh in my mind I realised that they'd never used a filter. They weren't even in a skatepark - they were under the church.
There was a new sign right by the steps that led back onto the bridge.
I know it hadn't been there before but it looked as old and ragged as all the others.
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