The Water Thief Read online

  TIDEWATER

  THE WATER THIEF

  a novel by

  A.M. Caturello

  When a drop of water had more value than a bar of gold, and splashing sounds were more satisfying to the ears than the jingling of coins.

  Copyright © 2019 by A.M. Caturello. All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Book cover by R.A.Y.N on 99designs.com.

  The following is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events in this book are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to real world persons, living or dead, organizations, and/or events are coincidental and not intended by the author.

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  TIDEWATER

  THE WATER THIEF

  Prologue

  In these days, the Water Thief ruled over the hellscape known as South California, an island country of New America.

  South California had been a hellscape ever since the earthquakes, the droughts, and the Water War between it and North California. Even so, after these things, South California truly didn’t know Hell until the Water Thief arrived to triple its flames.

  With his men the Water Thief terrorized and massacred, pillaging in the night and the day. He took all types of water: clean, murky, green, sewage, and blood-mixed. For those extra drops, he shoved straws down dead people’s throats and their esophagi; he sucked away the very acid of their stomachs until they turned into dust. This wasn’t enough: he mined into their bladders and harvested their urine, and purified it for drinking standard, drowning himself in the liquid gold.

  He, only a man, was the drought of South California. He tapped the few reservoirs and rivers remaining in the country. He set ablaze the forests and the mountains to whet the drought. All green things scorched beneath the cry-free sky and turned black. A ball of smoke filled the country from the eternal wildfires he created, killing people by smoke inhalation. And he stole stole their remains.

  But he did one thing good: the smoke he created blocked—though, true, without much effect—the merciless sun.

  In the city, the Water Thief put tall and wide nets on top of the crumbled skyscrapers to catch passing vapor. He placed tanks to collect the rarity of rainfall.

  The discovery of these things made the thirsty people of South California hopeful. They believed that someone was out to help them.

  Ha!

  No—the Water Thief kept all the catch for himself.

  People said many things about the great Water Thief. Many theories. One of them: he could create water with the movement of the palm of his hand from thin air. People believed this, for they failed to believe that he, a man, could own the amount of water he had, from only stealing. So, they had to make him out to be some divine being.

  But in truth, the Water Thief was a thief of thieves. He was such a great manipulator that he could convince others to steal for him. After all, he created the barren world himself, the type ideal for breeding savages. Oftentimes, not having to a lift a finger, his assets compounded while lying in his bed at night. In his bed, he slept to the screams of murder outside. He slept to the pleasant sounds of streaming water. He would go on to gather this water, mixed with blood, in the morning. With this, he laughed himself to sleep.

  But his sleep would yield nightmares; his laughing would turn into gasping. The guilt of his bloodlust always echoed in his subconscious.

  But over time, he had programmed his mind to, while asleep, transform his nightmares to those of his dead family. Nightmares of the savages who killed them.

  These nightmares made him gasp awake in a greater pool of sweat. They made him remember why he was an agent of genocide in the first place.

  He had to make peace; he had to make everything right.

  CHAPTER 1

  One evening a man with a hoarse voice laughed so hard and loud that the sound of it echoed all throughout the land of South California. But most everyone was dead in this firepit to hear it. So, to find a set of working ears, the roaring laughter went on a journey: it flew above the red mountains and through the wildfires, and through the smoke. It whooshed between the walls of the empty rivers and creeks, and through the branches of naked trees. It traveled to the northeastern parts of the country; it found itself in a great bowl of sand, rocks, weeds, and dead, smelly fish.

  This dusty “bowl” was a deep crater, the shell of a former lake. There, in the barren dumpster, the laughing sound spotted life: a young man, who sat at the end of a dock, which hung over a cliff into the crater.

  This young man had the fine set of ears which the laugh sought in its long journey—but it seemed he was too lost in a trance to hear it.

  The laugh hovered and squeezed out one last cackle. It was a final call for his ears, a final warning, as it burst with the wind, flicking the young man’s lobes.

  The young man bobbed back-and-forth as the sun burned his face a crimson-red. He had never opened his ears for the laugh that often visited him, and he made no exception for this one. That was because his ears were too distracted by a thunderous whisper of a demon:

  Bring it back to me . . .

  . . . you want to bring me back to life, don’t you, Davy?

  David was the young man’s name, but Davy was his predilection—his father always used to call him that.

  Davy, eyes closed, listened to the words of the demon, his guardian angel. He smiled at the sound of the demon’s voice. He flirted with death as his legs dangled over the dock a hundred-feet above the crater floor—he didn’t care. Sitting at this spot brought him the closest to home. Here, he was vulnerable. Here, at the edge of death, in the great heat, he would fantasize.

  He began to nod off to the heat. He snored.

  He felt the cool shock of the water swallow his legs up to his knees. He heard the waves slap against The Spirit of the Lake, which bobbed in the lake in front of him. (In truth, the boat sat tilted on the floor of the dusty crater, drowning in sand.)

  It was an alternate reality he put himself in. He had to fall for the mirage his guilt-filled mind generated. It was the only way to flush the guilt away. But this feeling was temporary; the guilt of his father’s death always came back.

  The mirage . . . he would soon awaken from it. And he would see a real mirage along the horizon of the empty lake. He would see the lake still gone, and his father still dead.

  Perhaps his own death would quell his inevitable disappointment? Hence, his sitting at the edge of the dock.

  That feeling of a sudden drop . . . it aroused him.

  But would he let it happen, this time? Would he join his father? Or . . .

  He let out a loud snore as his head dropped. His body leaned forward.

  That falling sensation in his pelvis . . . his insides clenching . . .

  He gasped as his eyes popped open.

  He gripped the edge of the dock before plunging to his death.

  Not today.

  Now wide awake, he rubbed his eyes to confirm that the lake was still empty. That was the catch of his dreams: wheneve
r he awoke, there on the dock, the first thing he would see was the massive, dusty crater. He would see the boat yet sunk in the sand along the distant horizon before the mirage.

  A final confirmation: he peeked over the dock and saw his father’s gravestone still inside the crater floor. His dream was, in fact, not reality. And he was back in Hell.

  Oh, just let yourself fall and die next time!

  As Davy wiped a sheen of sweat from his face, a crunching sound of dead grass came from behind. He turned. There she was: Namiane, the red-eyed princess. This is what Davy’s demon often called her.

  Namiane seemed purer than glacier water with that smile. So seemingly pure that she must have had a dirty secret hidden within that mirage; a secret so grave that she could sink a ship with it.

  She walked across the backyard of the cottage. She was half-naked, her tan skin glowing with the sun.

  Davy met her eyes with his. Upon this, she stopped and brushed her dry, black hair, pulling, tugging at the knots with a distressed motion. Her fingers had dried blue paint on them as if she had recently finished working on a painting.

  “Davy, baby,” Namiane said, with a tone of eagerness. “I’m ready to go.”

  Davy bit his lip—oh, hell. He must have made another promise to her that he had forgotten—he was a pathological promise-maker. And breaker. That explained her smile, Davy thought. She must have believed he would follow through this time.

  But . . . he looked out at crater, at the tilted boat in the sand, and remembered another promise he had made.

  He rose and walked carefully—it shook with a creak—across the dock. He faced her with a stupid-looking smile.

  “Which promise was this one, again? I can’t keep up.”

  Namiane rolled her eyes. “I knew it.”

  “Come on, Nam. I’m joking. I remembered.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you did.”

  “I just want to visit Dad’s boat before we leave.”

  Namiane stopped brushing her hair. She held still. Her face dropped.

  “What?”

  “Yup.”

  “You’ve never gone to the boat since the lake went away.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well? What’s at the boat?”

  “If you already know the answer, why do you ask?”

  Namiane froze. She took a moment to think, and—

  “No!”

  “No, nothing, Nam. I have to see him first.”

  “He won’t be there. He’s been missing for weeks!”

  “I need to find him. I can’t leave here without his permission. I told you this a million times. Sorry.”

  The wind sliced through the space between them. It whistled; Namiane’s ears perked to it. There was horror on her face—it was as if she caught a glimpse of a faint, distant, hoarse laugh. She twisted her head. Nobody else was present—but she was certain she heard a laugh. She was paranoid, looking about.

  She looked back at Davy. Still paranoid, she looked down at the dead grass and lowered her voice. “If you’re not really sorry,” she said, “don’t say it.”

  Davy noticed her sudden nervousness. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  Davy looked around. “Did you see my father? Tell me.”

  “No.”

  Davy smiled. It was a good sign, he thought. “He’ll be at the boat, for sure.” He met her dead eyes. “I need to talk to him. I’m sorry. I really need to find out if Dad wants me to stay to finish up here. I need to. Or else it’ll kill me forever.”

  “He doesn’t care,” she said, pleading. “He’s been ignoring you for three weeks, Davy. Three weeks! He doesn’t care about you. For all he knows, you’ve gotten killed. He abandoned you. He doesn’t love you like you think he does. You’re a pawn to his sick fantasies.”

  Davy pretended not to hear that. It wasn’t hard. Her persistent, blasphemous pleas, by this point, numbed his ears. So, he laid a kiss on her forehead—as he usually did to try to calm her—and walked to the edge of the crater.

  “You’ve been out here calling for him for three weeks straight. Every single day. And nothing. Nothing at all. He won’t come back.”

  Davy chuckled. “You really think he won’t come back, even if I visit his boat? That must be where his soul lives, in there.”

  Namiane had no answer to this question.

  Davy turned to her again. His body blocked the falling sun which now floated an inch above the tip of the mountains. “Don’t worry, Nam. Regardless of what he tells me, we’ll still visit the spot before the sun goes down, okay? I can keep that promise.”

  “What if he doesn’t come back?”

  Davy cringed. What a terrible thought.

  “Then I suppose you and I will leave for Hawaii as I promised originally. Just as you want.”

  She glared at him. Davy caught himself: “Just as we want, I mean.”

  Namiane’s tense face calmed for a moment. She looked up at the cloudless red sky as though to ask for something from God. And God would have felt surprised at her request, given the broken-record requests he’d received in these days—it wasn’t rain that she wanted, surely. Rainfall was the least of this girl’s concerns.

  As Davy turned his back on her again, walking toward the crater, she cried, “Don’t go, Davy.”

  “I have to.”

  She blurted, “But he’s going to come back!”

  And this made Davy smile.

  Davy climbed down the crater wall. He used the planks of steps he had hammered into the narrow slope two years ago, after the lake disappeared. Namiane followed. He took her hand and helped her climb. Soon enough, they hit the ground to a billowing cloud of dust against his boots. Down on the crater floor, the wind flung sand and blew dust, making it harder to walk and see. But the damning gravestone peeped into his side-vision; he blocked his eyes again to not see it. He refused to see it ever again. He refused to be reminded of his guilt.

  Blind, he grabbed Namiane’s arm and walked straight ahead with her. He tripped over rocks and tangled his feet in roasted weeds. But soon enough, he hit the wooden hull of The Spirit of the Lake forehead-first to a thump. A bruise next morning, for sure.

  Namiane giggled—she allowed him to do it. “Doofus.”

  Davy uncovered his eyes. He beheld the boat, which shadowed over him. Sand stuck on the hull. He looked up to see the sails in a tussle with the wind. He climbed a small ramp of sand, sinking as he struggled up. He slid down on his bare belly; he fought his way back up until finally reaching the top. He threw his arm over the stanchion of the boat. Before climbing over he brushed sand off the hull to reveal the engraving of the boat’s name. He removed each piece of sand—every single piece—from the cracks of the letters and blew on it.

  He leaped over the stanchion. He hit the deck, sliding in more sand as he fell. In a panic, he pushed the sand aside and swept with his arms, but he drowned in it, overwhelmed. He sobbed. He laid on it and lifted his head to see that the helm was also buried. Bouncing back up, he threw himself at the wheel and brushed it clean.

  He took the handles and tried to turn it, but it jammed. He fell back down to a whimper. Time for another dream. He closed his eyes and pretended that the passing breeze he felt was clean—devoid of sand—bouncing off the water. The glorious laugh of his father sounded behind him; his father had reeled in a trout. His father’s boots clacked against the deck as he approached Davy . . . he grabbed his son’s shoulder . . .

  Davy’s eyes popped open. He did feel something. But he froze in place in fear, unable to twist his neck to his shoulder which felt the tap.

  His mouth was able to move, and he called to Namiane.

  “What, Davy?” she responded. She sat at the crater floor by the boat. Her voice was faint. Yet the impatient tone was clear to his ears.

  Her voice calmed him, regardless. “Did you hear him? See him at all?”

  “Davy, I can’t be here anymore,” she said, her voice now shaking. “I can’t.
We need to leave. I-I see the red lake again.”

  Davy rolled his eyes. That damn red lake. He didn’t believe her distress. Manipulation, he thought. She was a good actress; she would have made it in that film business, that Hollywood, of Old America. She would have gotten herself one of those strange brass-colored stars in the ground in the city—those strange stars which had crumbled from the earthquakes. She was a good actress, indeed. But she was born too early to star in the industry’s revival. So, she resorted to messing with Davy’s head full-time to quench that acting urge.

  He was awake to her ways, he thought. She was pure evil, how she temped him to defy his father. Yet, for some reason, he loved her so.

  Davy slowly turned his head. His father was not there. He fell back onto the sand to cry.

  “Dad! Where are you?”

  Namiane heard Davy. She dropped her head to her knees. She lifted her head again to look deep through the crater. It was a graveyard of disintegrating fish and weeds. It haunted her. She used the hot sun as an excuse to look down again.

  “Dad, haven’t I done enough? Surely I can leave now . . .”

  Namiane’s head jerked upright at the glimmer of hope. This was odd from Davy—perhaps she’d finally reached him.

  “I can transfer the water now. There’s plenty of water in our reserves that can fill most of the lake. Isn’t that enough—”

  Davy . . .

  Davy jumped. The voice was amplified, as if it came from a collective rumble of a hundred loud speakers, distant. The voice roared in a circle, the circumference of the crater; Davy spun, struggling to pinpoint the precise source. It flooded him from all angles. The voice echoed, repeating Davy’s name for a whole minute.

  “D-dad?”

  Why do you insult me?

  “I’m lost! Please, tell me what to do. Namiane very much wants to leave, and I—”

  Horror painted Namiane’s face as she heard Davy drop her name.