CHAPTER 1 — THE YEAR THE RIVER TURNED WARM

Briar Falls, Maine — June 3rd, 1963

The river should’ve been cold.

Every kid in Briar Falls knew that. The Briar River ran straight from the northern woods, fed by snowmelt that clung stubbornly to the mountains until July. Even in August, the water bit your ankles like teeth.

But on the first Monday of June, eleven‑year‑old Elias Crowe stepped into the shallows behind the old textile mill and felt warmth rising around his legs — not summer warmth, not sun‑baked warmth, but something else. Something wrong.

He froze mid‑step, one sneaker submerged, the other still on the mossy bank.

The water felt like breath.

Behind him, the mill loomed — a four‑story brick carcass with boarded windows and a rusted smokestack that hadn’t coughed anything but dust since ’49. Kids weren’t supposed to be here. Which, naturally, meant every kid came here.

Elias crouched, dipped his hand in, and jerked it back.

Warm.

Like bathwater.

Like someone had been soaking in it.

He looked upriver. Nothing but fog. The kind that clung low to the surface, thick enough to hide a person standing waist‑deep.

“Hello?” he called out.

His voice bounced off the mill’s broken windows and died.

A ripple moved across the water. Not from wind. Not from fish. A slow, deliberate ripple, as if something large had shifted just beneath the surface.

Elias stepped back.

The fog parted.

And a face appeared in the river.

Not a full face — just the suggestion of one. A pale oval, blurred by the water’s movement. Two dark spots where eyes should be. And a mouth.

A mouth that was smiling.

Elias stumbled backward, tripped over a root, and hit the ground hard. When he scrambled up, the face was gone. The fog closed again, swallowing the river whole.

He waited.

One second.

Two.

Five.

Nothing.

Just the quiet hum of Briar Falls waking up behind him — the distant clang of the church bell, the rumble of delivery trucks on Main Street, the faint whistle of the morning train.

Normal sounds.

Safe sounds.

But the river stayed warm.

And Elias knew — in the way kids know things before adults ruin it with explanations — that he had seen something meant for him.

Something that wanted him to see it.

He wiped his palms on his jeans, grabbed his bike, and pedaled hard toward town, heart banging against his ribs.

He didn’t look back at the river.

If he had, he would’ve seen the fog shift again.

He would’ve seen the pale oval rise just enough to break the surface.

He would’ve seen the smile widen.

And he would’ve heard — faint, almost playful — a sound like someone whispering his name through teeth that never stopped grinning.

---