by David Boop
“We got the land for cheap because no one else wants it after a band of Bigfoot ripped the timber mill apart and killed three of the twenty workers and timberjacks,” Seneca reminded them both. The sun was dropping toward the horizon, and his scrutiny of the tree line became wary. He gripped the six-shooter on his hip.
Kormos knew they would run their mill differently, taking from the surrounding forest only what they needed, using only enough of the younger smaller trees to fuel the mill until they could afford to shift to coal. There would be no destruction of Bigfoot homes, no reason for the Bigfoot to attack.
“We’re creating textiles, not sawing and planing wood,” Seneca reassured himself, and his cousins. He was the business person, columns of numbers spoke to him more than ancient family lore. He was blond, like Isolde and Gramps, and therefore less of a person to Kormos.
“The rubber was more expensive than the rebuilt boiler,” Isolde answered, but kept her gaze moving from clearing to tree line. “We only bought enough rubber to fulfill your specifications, Katie. Gramps isn’t going to advance us more money for a steam mill if this one breaks or is broken up by those murdering Bigfoot.” She mindlessly dismantled, cleaned, and reloaded her precious Colt six-shooter. Then she started the same procedure with the Henry repeater rifle lying on the stoop beside her. She took after their gramps, a retired fur trader, in restless energy and need for adventure. She was the weaver in this trio, the least likely to have the scientific bent of the other two. She’d make an admirable hostess for Kormos. But she was blonde. Blonde, just like the hated tsar and his murdering brood. Kormos had refused her.
Katie, the engineer, was the least likely person to hear and carry Kormos. She, more than the others, had succumbed to the safety and comfort of civilization. Kormos loved it when her cousins raised their guns and shot things, even if only targets. Shooting equaled destruction and chaos. If only their hair was not blond, they could bear the burden of his presence.
“Kormos says the engine angers the spirits of the forest.” Isolde imitated the sing-song, breathy voice of another cousin who wrote bad poetry and drifted through life in a dreamy haze. “Like we care about his whiny fears. All he really wants is to go back to Siberia.”
Kormos pursed his lips and blew a wet raspberry at her.
“No one cares what that fiend thinks,” Seneca spat at her. “We need to worry more about the Bigfoot.”
None of the family wanted to admit that Kormos, the malevolent housegod, existed. But they had all grown up with Granny’s stories; enough to make them believe he was real, if not believe in him. They all had witnessed her temper tantrums that were as fierce as any fit when Kormos got his claws into her mind.
“I wish he was imaginary.” Katie sighed. She fingered her thick black braids. “And he also says they are Yeti, that’s what they are called in Siberia, not a Bigfoot, or Sasquatch. He thinks we should let him out to sow chaos among them so they won’t bother us.” Then I might be rid of him once and for all.
I heard that!
“Gramps should have buried that thing with Granny,” Seneca said.
“But that would have released his nasty spirit into the wild to infect everyone with violence and evil at random,” Isolde protested. “He’s our problem. We keep him confined.”
“Gramps told us that the world is safer when Kormos has a custodian.” Katie patted the bulge in her thick braid again. Then she flicked the plait over her shoulder, making certain Kormos shook and rattled as his fetish home thumped against her bones.
“Housegods, demons, evil spirits, they’re all just an excuse for people to be mean,” Seneca scoffed, rising from his search of the pile of discards. “Is this piece of hose long enough?” He held up three feet of the snakelike rubber.
Kormos hissed; he feared snakes more than the outraged Yeti he heard thrashing through the underbrush about a mile distant. Of course, the monster came with a purpose. It came to destroy this mechanical monster that threatened its home.
Ice and snow! Kormos cursed. Does that make the Yeti akin to me? And my humans akin to the murdering Cossacks?
Katie eyed the hose. “Just long enough.” Quickly she disconnected the imperfect bit of rubber and substituted the new piece. But first she let her sensitive fingertips examine every inch of it. No splits, bulges, or rough nubs.
Kormos’s heart sank. One step closer to completion. The Yeti must know that their doom was imminent. Closer than Kormos’s own demise. They would strike when the Murrays were vulnerable.
“Any sign of our friends out there?” Seneca asked.
“Not yet,” said Isolde and patted her Henry repeater. “They’ll come.” She cast nervous eyes into the greenery beyond the windows and door.
Katie completed her inspection of the boiler and nodded satisfaction. A crank of a spigot sent water from the creek through a series of pipes and pumps into the boiler. The level rose slowly but significantly. “Time to fire her up.”
“How will you know if it works if it’s not connected to anything?” Isolde asked.
“It is connected to the gear shaft in the long shed, if not the spinners and the loom. We need someone watching over there to make sure the shaft moves, and the gears turn. Then we connect,” Katie replied. She’d only had to explain the workings and the plan six dozen times.
“I think we’re ready. Who volunteers to go watch the gears? I need to stay here and monitor the engine,” Katie said. The boiler was more than half full, so she slowed the water intake to a mere trickle.
“Never, not me,” Seneca mumbled. “I’m not going anywhere alone this close to sunset. Nor are we leaving any one of us alone.”
“Ready as we’ll ever be. Light her up. We’ll hear the gears. They’re only a dozen paces away.” Isolde stood and propped the Henry repeater on the windowsill, pointed toward the thickest patch of mixed Douglas fir and cedar trees that ringed their property.
Seneca struck a lucifer against the rough brick wall, igniting a tiny flame. Then he held the match until it lit the kindling in the firebox beneath the boiler. Flames licked the dry wood, hungry for food.
Katie watched in fascination at how the fire caught a bit of dry bark, flared, and curled the fuel then leapt to the next bigger piece of wood. The sweet smell warmed her all the way to her toes. “Your reindeer dung fire doesn’t smell so sweet,” she admonished Kormos.
Kormos had to agree that this fire carried a pleasant odor. Without fire, humans would not have ascended above primitive animal forms and learned right from wrong. Fire gave him a family to guard…or condemn. Knowing right from wrong gave his mistress in the underworld a purpose: judging the deeds of each life and weighing the balance between good and bad. Without those developments his mistress would have starved to death eons ago.
“At last we have a chance to prove to Gramps that we’re not idiots just idly waiting for his money,” Katie continued. She slammed shut the iron hatch to the firebox. Her English great-grandfather, Gramps’s father, a lord of some sort, had turned losing money to drink and gaming into an artform. Gramps made sure none of his offspring had enough money to develop the same bad habits.
Isolde turned back to her vigil of the forest beyond the mill clearing. “Something big is thrashing through the underbrush,” she whispered. She didn’t need to tell them to take up their guns.
Kormos cringed within Katie’s plait. He knew that the Yeti were coming. The first one had stopped to gather reinforcements along the way. Short sharp raps of stout sticks slammed against tree trunks reverberated through the forest.
The Murray cousins stopped their pacing abruptly and turned to listen. “Why? Why are they attacking us? We aren’t disturbing them. Not like the timber guys,” Katie wondered.
Kormos pulled the carved reindeer bone tighter around him, shutting off most of his awareness of the outside world. He wished he could fall into a deep and dreamless sleep until fate had decided the outcome of this battle.
No! He had to stay awake
, be with Katie until the end.
Twilight crept up on them, fading into darkness so slowly that it wasn’t until the long shadows of the trees blended into the general landscape that Katie became aware of the loss of light. Her alarm sent jolts of fear through Kormos.
The boiler continued to build up steam. The crank and jerk of tight gears beginning to turn in the adjacent shed rivaled the noise of the tree knocks coming from the depth of the forest.
Battle cries.
And then they ceased, leaving only the grind and chug of gears. It rumbled in the night. A call to the enemy.
A tree knock reverberated, closer. A crack as loud as a rifle shot echoed from tree trunk to tree trunk. This must be a Sasquatch, then. The Yeti of Siberia didn’t have trees big enough to make so much noise. The beast whacked a hollow forest giant with a broken branch within feet of the intense shadows of the forest. One knock. Then other raps circled the Mill. They were surrounded.
Katie flinched and ducked, retreating to stand before the boiler. She cocked her rifle, the sound a direct challenge to the tree knocks.
Isolde brought her rifle to bear at the same time.
Keep it away, Kormos gibbered. It has no mercy. No mercy. Only anger. We are killing its home. It needs its home.
Katie’s innards froze. “Is that what this is all about?” Home to her meant a solidly built dwelling, fruitful work, family all gathered together. Civilization. This mill, only two hours by horseback away from the homestead where they all grew up, should become a new home for herself and her cousins.
Was the Sasquatch out there only trying to protect its idea of home, even if different than her own?
A mighty roar erupted from the trees, followed by another, and another, and another. They were surrounded by angry creatures. Very large, very angry creatures.
Isolde pulled the trigger five times before pausing to assess any damage she might have inflicted.
Then Seneca loosed five more shots from his Remington.
Reluctantly Katie counted the bullets in her bandolier, reluctant to fire a single one until she had to. She knew now that the boiler was the prime target of their enemies.
Resolutely, she took a position and began shooting at shadows, timing her volleys between her cousins’ so that whatever was out there, that had wrecked the previous timber mill, never had a lull in the gun fire.
“Got one!” Isolde chortled, reloading her magazine. As she spoke, a dark shape among the dark but tall tree trunks stumbled forward and fell prone on the ground halfway between the brick boiler house and the forest.
“My God!” Katie held her breath, waiting for movement or other signs of life. “The brute must be eight feet tall.”
Isolde and Seneca kept firing, without pause.
Katie wanted to vomit.
A wail went up all around them. Each of the Sasquatch mourned their fallen comrade loudly.
Another dark form stumbled forward and fell flat beside its giant mate. This one was smaller with lighter fur. Maybe only seven feet tall. Its eyes remained open, staring at the humans in accusation.
Katie, and therefore Kormos, knew that gaze had held intelligence.
Neither creature had screamed in pain or clutched the wounds that leaked red blood. Blood as red as any human’s. They just appeared and fell.
The hairs on the back of Katie’s neck stood up in response to the eerie sounds of grief.
Then silence. The absence of sound hurt Kormos’s ears as much as the noise.
“Are they gone for good?” Seneca asked.
“Doubtful,” Isolde said. “I wouldn’t give up a fight so easily.”
“They’ll regroup, find weapons. Make a plan,” Katie said quietly on a long exhale.
My thoughts exactly, Kormos echoed her words.
“What do we do now?” Seneca asked, turning a circle and examining their simple shelter. “The mortar between the bricks is still wet. They could push down the walls if they get close enough.”
“We sleep in turns and don’t let them get close,” Isolde said, cocking her six-shooter.
Biting her lip, Katie kept her own counsel. She knew what they had to do. If they made it out alive.
* * *
Here they come again! Kormos yelled at Katie.
She roused from her doze, preparing her rifle as she came to her feet.
“Yee haw!” Isolde shouted. Three shots exploded from her rifle in rapid succession.
A dark form ran forward, one arm raised. It threw a rock almost as big as Katie’s head. The knapped edges broke through the wooden door, shattering the planks.
Katie jumped aside. Her chin trembled, and her back teeth chattered in fright.
Do something! Kormos yelled at her.
“Why don’t you do something?” she yelled back at him as she shot blindly through the hole in the sagging door.
But I… But I…
Three more rocks flew into the shed through the unglazed windows and the doorway. The few remaining planks crumbled in the next onslaught.
“They’re coming closer. I can’t see them to shoot at until they are nearly upon us,” Isolde said, her voice shaky and uncertain for the first time in her life.
“They…they’ve learned to aim,” Seneca choked out. He kicked aside the next rock that landed at his feet. It wobbled as it rolled, revealing sharp planes on two sides. “And they know how to knap the rocks, like spear points.”
Katie fired her rifle at a suggestion of movement.
“Waaah waah!” A smaller furred creature darted out from the tree line. “Waaah waah,” it wailed as it knelt by a fallen form. The younger version laid its head on the back of its…mother? Pounding the ground, it lifted its flat face to the rising moon and screamed again.
Katie held her fire, choking on her appalling actions.
Seneca stopped shooting. “We’re murdering them,” he whispered.
“Them or us, cousin.” Isolde gripped his shoulder and squeezed. “We’re all just trying to make a home and survive.”
“This isn’t civilized. Our grandparents, and parents labored in the wilderness for years trying to carve out a bit of civilization. And we are reverting to the primitive violence of our ancestors,” Katie moaned.
“They attacked first,” Isolde protested.
“Because we invaded their home. This place belongs to them, not us.” Katie wanted to cry at the useless deaths.
Kormos had no words of comfort for her. Only accusations. He should be salivating at the thought of being able to report their evil deeds to his mistress in the underworld.
The perpetual hunger gnawing at his belly eased.
Tears he didn’t know he could shed dripped from his eyes at the thought of watching Katie die at the hands of the big brutes outside.
“It’s our land. We bought it!” Seneca protested feebly.
“But they don’t recognize our rights to their land, as the Cossacks didn’t recognize the rights of our ancestors to grazing land for their reindeer herds.” Katie repeated Kormos’s thoughts.
“And we don’t recognize their right to our land!” Isolde added. But she didn’t fire her gun. She didn’t even raise it from her side to take aim.
Kormos gibbered in fear at the thought of losing Katie. Losing Katie and her cousins. His family.
“Can you do anything to protect your family, Kormos?” Katie whispered.
He gulped. I’m just a housegod. I watch. I record your deeds. What else am I supposed to do?
“You are a supernatural being who communicates with the spirit world. Communicate with them!” She pointed out the vacant window.
A large shape stepped free of the shadows but stayed within a single (but very long) step of safety behind a tree. It raised a broken branch above its head, shook it hard, roaring in defiance of the bullets that had taken two of its family.
The single figure stood tall and silent, defiant, challenging the humans to murder him too.
They shouldn’t ha
ve to watch the destruction of their home as I did, Kormos thought, not caring if Katie heard him or not. To her, he said, Stand at the window and say as loudly as you can… He uttered a series of guttural grunts.
Katie shrugged and did as he told her. But she had to stop in the middle of the chain of untranslatable sounds to swallow past a dry lump in her throat.
Kormos knew that a human throat wasn’t meant to make such bizarre noises. Still, he prodded her to continue with a stab of pain to the back of her eyes.
“What did I say?” she whispered.
The big Sasquatch stood silent.
You promised that you and your kin would leave this clearing, taking with you every trace of human intrusion into their home, if they will back off for the space of a quarter moon’s passage.
The Sasquatch ducked away, thrashing a wide swath of destruction through the undergrowth. Isolde raised her rifle, then lowered it again without pulling the trigger.
“At least the mortar is still moist. We can dismantle this place, remove all evidence of it ever being here, every chunk of baked clay, bent nail, and scrap of wood. We’ll settle elsewhere,” Katie said. She wasn’t sure how or why she, as the youngest of the lot, had taken on the job of making decisions for all of them. “I’ll start working on cooling the boiler and taking it apart. That’s the most crucial piece of equipment.”
“I think I like the idea of setting up our mill someplace more civilized,” Seneca said softly. His hands shook as he holstered his pistol. “Somewhere I can have a quiet office and tote up numbers that mean something.”
“Someplace where there’s a saloon close by, but far enough away from home that Gramps won’t come and supervise,” Isolde said.
“We need to go east, upriver, where there isn’t enough timber, water, or game for the Sasquatch,” Katie said decisively. Suddenly it was important to her, and to Kormos, to give the creature its proper name, the name that belonged to this land, not to its cousins in Siberia, or the one imposed by the human invaders from the East.
“I heard that Marshall’s Station up Umatilla way has just been renamed Pendleton. Got a railhead and access to river transportation. They even have a post office. And a lot of sheep in the surrounding hills that need shearing every year,” Isolde said.