by E. Van Lowe
Chapter Fourteen
Slowly, I turned.
Rive was shaking hands with my father, who was smiling. Smiling! He was doing an amazing job of pretending he hadn’t noticed that Rive was not human.
My mom was always commenting on how unobservant Dad was, but a shirtless giant with cloven hooves was hard not to notice, even for him.
“Rive, is my sister, Asia’s, paramour,” said Eudora. Her eyes found me, and I could tell she was enjoying my mortification.
“It’s a pleasure meeting you, Rive. That’s an interesting name. Don’t believe I’ve heard it before,” Dad said.
“I am an original,” Rive said, and chuckled. “So, you’re the man who’s going to make things safer around here,” he went on.
“Once the equipment is installed, your paramour’s family will be able to monitor the interior of the house, the exterior, as well as the entire grounds. You’ll be as safe as safe can be.”
“That’s good to hear,” said Eudora. “We had an intruder the other day.” She looked at me.
“Really?” asked my father.
“Just a lookie-loo. It was nothing we couldn’t handle,” Eudora said.
Just then, Rive flexed his rippling muscles.
“It did let me know we needed better protection,” Eudora added, her gaze again finding me. She was smiling that smile again. “Are you all right, Josh? You seem pale.”
“Yeah, I’m… Dad, we gotta get out of here. I mean… I forgot I had a… school thing to take care of.” I began hustling toward my father.
“That’s fine. I’m done for the day,” Dad said.
“But you will be back tomorrow?” Eudora asked.
“Of course. I plan to start the installation first thing in the morning.”
“Good, good. So glad I can do business with someone who’s practically family,” Eudora said, and smiled at me again.
She was really messing with my head.
I reached my father’s side, and began pulling him toward the door. “Dad, it’s really important. I need to get back home.”
I didn’t know how long he could keep up the act of pretending a creature wasn’t standing right in front of him. As I dragged him away, I got the feeling that when I opened the door, Petros would be standing there, and then Dad and I would both be toast.
“All right, all right, don’t be so rude,” Dad said as he allowed me to pull him away from Eudora and the satyr.
“It’s perfectly understandable,” called Eudora. “I sympathize with the impetuousness of youth. We were all young once.”
We reached the door. I yanked it open. The doorway was clear. The path to the truck was clear, but I didn’t know for how long.
“Goodbye, everyone. See you soon,” I called as I pulled my father out the front door. I scanned the area for Petros.
“I look forward to it,” Eudora said.
“We all do,” said Rive.
They were both standing in the doorway as I dragged my father to the truck.
“What has gotten in to you?” he asked, getting annoyed.
“I’ll explain everything in a few minutes. Just get in the truck and drive—fast,” I said in a low urgent tone.
“All right, already!”
I dove into the passenger seat as Dad climbed in behind the wheel. He waved goodbye as the truck began heading back up the drive toward the public street.
“Dad, you cannot tell anyone what you saw back there,” I said.
“I know. I realize they’re secretive people. Like you said, it’s why they keep the exterior looking so shabby.”
“I’m not talking about the house, Dad. I’m talking about Rive.”
“Ah. What do you think he is…”
“A satyr,” I blurted.
“…French? He asked, completing his thought. “What did you say?”
We drove through the wrought iron gates and onto Benedict Canyon Road. I released a whistling sigh once we were off the Applegate property. I didn’t believe they’d come after us in broad daylight.
“Dad, it’s okay now. You can stop pretending you didn’t see what you saw.”
“Okay.” He was silent for a few moments. “Son, are you all right?”
It was then it dawned on me that somehow my father hadn’t seen Rive for what he really was. I had no idea how Eudora and Rive had pulled it off. Some kind of spell, I guess. Dad seemed to be none-the-wiser.
I didn’t have time to think about what my dad did or didn’t see. Just then, my cell phone started to vibrate. I yanked it from my pocket, hoping it was Lara, come to her senses. Instead, I saw the call was from Alan. He’d called three times, but I hadn’t heard the phone. When I answered, he told me to hustle my butt over to his house right away.
My father gazed at me, after I hung up. “Did you say… a sadist?”
Neither Alan nor Conner were on the rear deck when I arrived at the Feinman’s around noon. I entered the house through the sliding glass doors. As soon as I was inside, I heard voices coming for Alan’s bedroom.
When I entered, Conner was seated at the desk in front of Alan’s computer. He was still wearing long pants in the middle of summer, and I wondered if the wound on his leg had gotten infected.
Alan was pacing, and agitated.
“Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling you for hours,” Alan said.
Alan didn’t use profanity. That was Conner’s territory. The fact he was using it now meant something had really upset him.
“I was helping my father on a job. I didn’t hear the phone.” I decided to keep where I’d gone to help my father private for the time being.
“Okay, you’re the tie-breaker,” Alan said. He stopped pacing and faced me.
“For what?” I asked.
“Alan wants to go to the police,” Conner said. “I told him, we go to the police with this, they’ll keep us under surveillance until we’re out of high school—longer.”
I turned back to Alan. “Why do you want to go to the police?”
“Because somebody is fucking with us big time!” he replied, raising his voice.
“Keep it down, bro. Your Mom is right down the hall,” Conner said, taking an unusual role for him—profanity police.
“The cameras picked up the creature, didn’t they?” I asked. I gazed at Conner who gazed at Alan. The skin on my arms began to tingle.
“There is no creature!” Alan said. “What there is, is someone…” he lowered his voice “…messing with us.”
“You didn’t have to lower your voice for that,” Conner said. “You didn’t curse.” He peered at me over his shoulder. “Check it out.”
Conner began punching something up on the computer. While I was adept at helping my father install the surveillance equipment, Conner was the real geek in our crew. He could operate anything technical like a pro. It was a gift.
I moved in, and peered at the screen over Conner’s shoulder.
Alan flopped down on the bed. “It’s Gary Shanks,” he said. “He’s got motive,” he added. He turned his head away, not willing to look at what Conner was about to show me.
“Ignore him. He’s paranoid,” Conner said.
He began playing back the footage the cameras had picked up the previous night. A grainy image of the Feinman rear deck appeared on the computer screen.
“It was like this until around two a.m. Then this happened.”
After a few moments, the infrared light came on, flooding the deck with eerie light. I stared at the deck for another few minutes. It remained empty.
“Nothing,” I said. “Must have been a bug that triggered the sensor.”
“Yeah, that’s what we thought. But it would have to have been a pretty big bug, and I didn’t see any,” Conner said as he stopped the playback.
At that moment, I thought of the butterflies.
“So I decided to slow it down, and check it out frame-by-frame. Watch.”
Conner began rolling the video back, and as
he did, Alan rose from the bed. He drifted over and stood by my side. His left leg was shaking.
Once the video was re-racked, Conner began playing back the images frame-by-frame. This time, when the infrared light came on, a nearly imperceptible ghostly image appeared in the frame. The image was very faint. I might have missed it if I hadn’t been watching carefully.
“See that?” said Conner, pointing at the screen.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, dry mouthed, my nose inching in closer to the screen. “It looks like…”
Conner finished my sentence for me. “…a creature.”
“With lobster claws,” I said under my breath.
“It’s a trick,” Alan blurted, “a camera trick.” He pointed at the screen. “It doesn’t even look real.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I knew there was a creature. I knew the creature could move at speeds we couldn’t see with the naked eye. Lara had told me this, and yet seeing the thing right before my eyes, still threw me for a loop.
It was five feet in height, and scaly like the Black Lagoon creature in that old movie, only in the movie, the creature looked like a man in a rubber suit, and this creature looked very real. In place of hands were pincer-like claws.
“Whoa,” I softly exclaimed.
The ghostly image moved in stuttering flip-book fashion toward the hedge that separated the Feinman home from the Dupree’s. After several frames, a light came on in the Feinman kitchen. The creature ducked down. And then, right before our eyes, the creature began to shrink in size.
We looked on, frame-by-frame, as the creature turned and headed back toward the pool, slowly diminishing in size. It was as if we were watching a flower wilting in stop motion photography.
“It’s shrinking,” I said in a raspy whisper.
“Camera trick!” Alan called out.
“It turns into something like a tadpole before flipping back into the water,” Conner said.
In another moment, the light in the Feinman kitchen went out, then the light flooding the deck went out. I saw a tiny ripple on the top water at the edge of the pool, and then the images stopped playing. The screen went black.
Conner looked up into my eyes. “You were right. It wasn’t a dream. And did you see those claws? Those are what put the scratches on my leg, not Lara.”
“Yeah,” I said, the word creeping out in a long, slow crawl.
“So… what do you think we should do?” Conner asked.
“We need to have Gary Shanks arrested for trespassing!” Alan called out from behind me.
Conner and I turned, peering at our friend as if he’d lost his mind. After a few moments, Alan plopped back down onto the bed. He blew out a long, shaky breath.
“That isn’t Gary Shanks in the video, is it?” His left leg was shaking again.