by Cave, Hugh
Will and Sam joined her and looked down through the screen. There was little light down there on the white sand beach; though the moon was in its first quarter, clouds scudding under it left most of the lake in near darkness.
Down on the shore two men were pushing one of the condo's rowboats into the water. When it was clear of the sand, the one at the bow stepped in and Will recognized Haydn Clay. His pant legs were rolled up, his feet bare; his silver hair matched the beach.
The other man was bigger, much taller, and also barefoot, with a mop of hair that he flung back with a toss of his head as he stepped in over the stern and kicked the craft into deeper water. Big Ed Lawson, the condo's manager. And, of course, it was nothing new, their going out together to do whatever they did on the lake.
"What are they up to at this hour?" Sam Norman asked.
"They do this pretty often, Sam. Claim they're looking for a 'gator they saw some time ago."
"An alligator? In this lake?"
"They're fairly common in this part of Florida."
"But why at night?"
"They go out in the daytime, too. It's a little weird, but they seem to be normal enough in other ways. Lawson does, at least. The big fellow. I don't know the other one, Clay, that well."
27
The Watcher
Someone else watched the building's manager and silver-haired Haydn Clay take out the rowboat' that night.
Unable to sleep, Carl Helpin in 202 had been sitting in front of his television set, a drink in hand, watching a late movie. His veranda door was open. Bored with the movie, paying almost no attention to it, he heard voices from the beach only just outside and below his apartment.
Curious, he turned off the tv and walked out onto the veranda. Standing there with his nose pressed against the screen, his thumbs hooked in his belt, Helpin allowed an expression of triumph to twist his face. There was no one present to see it, however; his wife, Nicola, was asleep in her bedroom. Still, his mouth curled as he sought to see better what was happening there on the strip of white sand in the glimmer of moonlight, and suddenly he stepped back, wheeled, and hurried to a lamp table in the living room.
From its drawer he snatched a pair of binoculars with a black leather strap which he looped about his neck. Thus draped, he hurried from the apartment, deliberately slamming the hall door behind him because to his way of thinking if he had to be up at this hour checking on Lawson, his wife had no right to be peacefully sleeping. Let her wonder what he was up to.
On the ground floor he hastened along the hail to the condo storeroom where, along with lawn tools, paint, and other such items, were oars for the rowboats and paddles for the condo's canoe. The night was cool, he suddenly realized. For what might turn out to be a long session on the lake, he ought to be wearing something more substantial than the whisper-thin sport shirt he had on.
Should he go back for something? No, there wasn't time. Opening the storeroom door, he switched on the light and was delighted to see that the maintenance man had left a nylon jacket, white with red stripes on its sleeves.
He put the jacket on. Its arms were too long, but it would keep the lake breeze at bay. Lifting a paddle from the wall, he hurried from the building.
But not toward the beach. The condo's canoe was not on the beach tonight; it was where he had hidden it earlier in the evening in case he might need it. There hadn't been much likelihood that anyone else would want it at night, of course—certainly not with so many of the building's residents now staying at the motel—but he prided himself on thinking of everything and taking no chances.
Careful to keep out of sight of the two men on the beach, he trotted across fifty yards of lawn, behind hedges where possible, to a small concrete building on a canal fed by the lake. The structure housed pumps by means of which the condo obtained water from the lake for its lawns and shrubbery.
The canoe was there behind it, waiting for him. He slid it into the canal. Certain he had not been seen, he seated himself in the stern and silently dipped his paddle into the dark water.
On the veranda of 504 Lynne Kimball said suddenly, "Look! Down there by the pump house!"
Will Platt and Sam Norman looked where she was pointing and saw a canoe with a solitary paddler in its stern glide from the canal into the lake. There was just enough light from the cloud-veiled quarter moon for Will to be reasonably sure of himself when he said, "It's Helpin."
Sam said, "Who's he?"
"Fellow from California. No one likes him much"
They watched the canoe glide along the shore, a dim white shape that became whiter whenever the clouds let the light of the moon through to shine on it. After a while Lynne said, "He seems to be following the rowboat."
Sam said, "You know, this could mean something. Why don't we check it out, Will, in one of those other boats down there?"
"Should you?" Lynne asked fearfully. "Suppose that thing—" She looked at Will's face and was silent. Then: "All right. I know you have to do something. Just be careful? Please?"
Will drew her into his arms and touched his face to hers. "Don't worry. I've a lot to be careful for now."
They took the elevator to the ground floor, and he led Sam to the storeroom where the oars for the boats were kept. He had been in the room earlier that day to leave a jacket for the maintenance man, who had been complaining that the lake breeze chilled him when he had to rake the beach. The jacket was not on the workbench now, Will noticed as he lifted a pair of oars from their wall brackets.
The moon was lost behind clouds when Sam and he reached the shore. Shedding shoes and socks, they walked a boat into the water, and Sam said, "You know the lake. Suppose I row and you tell me the headings.
"Right. Be as quiet as you can. Sound carries here."
Will sat in the stern, leaning forward, trying to locate the canoe and the other boat in the darkness. He could see neither, nor could he hear any sound from them. There were other sounds, however. Frog voices ranged from deep bass grunts to a shrill piping. An unseen water bird, perhaps annoyed by so much intrusion at an hour when it expected none, began what sounded like a practice session on a faulty trumpet. One of Sam's oars struck a floating slab of wood that turned into a large turtle and submerged with a sound like that of water gurgling down a drain.
Then the moon fought its way free of the clouds again and Will saw the canoe some thirty yards away, near the middle of that part of the lake known as the marsh.
He saw something else, too. The man in the canoe was wearing a white jacket with stripes on its sleeves—either the same jacket he had left in the storeroom or one a lot like it.
"That way, Sam," he whispered, making a direction signal of his hand. "Go slow. He seems to have stopped."
Carl Helpin had indeed stopped, because the rowboat he was following—the one with Lawson and Clay in it—was moving along the edge of the marsh only fifty or sixty yards ahead of him, and he feared the white canoe would be spotted if he went any closer.
Leaning forward, he laid his paddle silently at his feet. Then, straightening, he took hold of the binoculars that had been slapping the front of his borrowed jacket, and lifted them to his eyes.
The two men in the boat seemed to leap at him as he focused on them. He could see their faces clearly, and the sight brought the word "Bastards!" hissing from his lips—not loudly enough to silence a frog grunting on a nearby lily pad, but still loud enough to give him some satisfaction. Then he sat there motionless, watching his quarry.
They were talking to each other but not with any great animation and not loudly, or he would be able to hear them. Anyone who didn't know better might even believe they were just a couple of guys who liked to go fishing at night. Only, of course, they had no fishing rods.
What they did have—or what Clay had, at any rate—was a leather camera bag beside him on the seat, and a camera with a scope on it dangling from his neck. Pictures? In the dark, with infrared film and an image-intensifying scope?
&nb
sp; You could take such pictures, of course, if you knew what you were doing. No need for a light, especially here in central Florida where the air was so clean that even without a moon your eyes quickly adjusted to nighttime conditions. But what was a real-estate man up to out here with a camera at two in the morning, for God's sake?
Unless—it was a thought—he knew more about what was in the lake than others did, and wanted pictures of it in action.
The frog on the lily pad suddenly stopped grunting.
Helpin lowered the binoculars from his eyes and turned, frowning, to look toward the source of the sudden silence. Silence could be disturbing at a time like this. To make it worse, the moonlight went out again as abruptly as though someone had thrown a switch.
Something nudged the canoe, causing it to move sideways in the water. The paddle at his feet wobbled back and forth with a faint drumming noise.
The silence returned.
All at once the stern of the canoe rose three feet into the cool darkness and tipped sideways. Then with a loud grating sound it slid back into the water as though down a slope of sandpaper.
Helpin lost his balance and grabbed wildly at the thwarts, just as something swirled in the water directly beneath his eyes. The lake erupted as though a geyser had burst up from its muddy bottom.
The moon flicked on again. Helpin found himself leaning out in space, looking down on a pair of long, gaping jaws filled with teeth.
With a cry of terror he dived from the canoe just as the jaws snapped shut on it. Hitting the water horizontally with an eruption of his own, he began swimming frantically toward the rowboat and yelling for help at the same time.
28
The Taking
Will Platt and Sam Norman saw or heard it happen—a little of both—and were instantly alert. Both had lived in islands where caimans haunt the mouths of rivers and sometimes prey upon children bathing or women doing the family wash.
"The 'gator's turned him over!" Will said.
Sam Norman leaned into the oars and sent the rowboat skimming through reeds and water grass like an air boat, the marsh vegetation responding with a clawing, scratching noise as the craft bored through it. A heron rose from nowhere with huge white wings flapping and long legs dangling almost in Will's face. He leaned sideways to avoid it. When he straightened, the canoe was close enough for him to see details.
It had been overturned. More than that, it had been all but bitten in half, the bow a half-sunken white blur at a two-o'clock angle.
Carl Helpin had flung himself clear and was churning the water into froth as he stroked through a carpet of lily pads toward the other rowboat.
The two men in that other boat were trying to reach him, Ed Lawson massive at the oars, the other leaning forward from the stern as Will was, struggling to see and direct him.
"Damn," Will said.
A cloud had slipped under the moon again, blocking out its glow.
But near the overturned canoe something was happening that needed no light to reveal it. Out of the dark water rose a spiral of mist or fog, pale gray in the night. Up it came as though escaping under pressure from the mouth of a submerged bottle, and on reaching a point four or five feet above the surface of the marsh, it began to expand.
The spiral stopped twisting and filled out. It swelled into a shape that could have been human. It flowed over the marsh in pursuit of the man swimming through the lily pads in his bid to escape the alligator.
Sam Norman caught sight of it as he turned his head to get his bearings. The oars froze in mid-stroke. "My God," he said in a low voice. "Will, what is that?"
Hands gripping his knees, Will Platt could only lean forward and watch while a chill of premonition coursed through his body and made him tremble. There was light from somewhere now, at least a glow, if not from the moon then from the thing that had risen from the lake. It showed him again that the man from the canoe wore a white jacket with striped sleeves.
Mine, he thought.
And the thing from the lake was now human, or at least as human as any creature of mist or ectoplasm could be. Seemingly without effort it closed the gap between itself and the man who was roiling the surface.
The other men had seen the lake thing too, and Ed Lawson had stopped rowing. Haydn Clay was holding a camera to his eyes, and there was just enough light from the lake creature for Will to see the man's finger repeatedly working the shutter release.
All at once the misty, glowing thing attained a position directly above its victim and descended upon him. Descended into him, it seemed to Will. The man stopped swimming—not all at once but slowly, as though the creature were feeding on him and sapping his strength so that he could no longer make his arms obey his will.
The glow revealing his plight became dimmer as the thing flowed into him. Just before it vanished altogether, Will saw the man make a feeble effort to move his arms again. Like the last struggle of a spent fish, it barely disturbed the water
Fleeing from the alligator, hoping to God it did not really want him but was merely annoyed by his intrusion into its lair, Carl Helpin was unaware of the pursuer above him until its glow lit up the water.
Then, looking up, he saw what appeared to be a woman made of mist hovering over him, and for the first time in his life knew the meaning of terror.
He was a man who more than a few times had inspired terror in others—certainly in his wife—but had always thought himself able to outsmart or outhate anything that might threaten his own security. Now the taste in his mouth was that of hot vomit while the blood in his thrashing body turned to ice water. Not enough blood reached his heart to keep it beating properly. He could not breathe.
The misty thing in the night air hung over him for only a few seconds, as if to be sure it was properly positioned. Then it flowed down upon him and into him, and the cold in his body intensified, the little strength that was left in his limbs was sucked out of them, leaving him limp, and with all his gasping he could find no air for his tortured lungs.
He was being destroyed. He knew it. This thing he had for so long been stalking—this thing he had been so certain was a creation of that crooked California realtor, Haydn Clay—was no fake. It was real. It was killing him.
Parts of his life flashed through Helpin's mind at that moment, while his arms and legs weakly struggled to keep him swimming despite the certain knowledge that his insides were being sucked dry. In vivid detail he relived the afternoon in Hollywood when, accused of causing the failure of an expensive film with his poor special effects, he had been told to get the hell out and stay out.
Then he saw himself asking Nicola to marry him while she thought he was still in great demand and she merely a struggling young actress. Strange, how much of a man's lifetime could rush past him when he expected to die in a few moments.
But then something happened. The thing that had overtaken him and was sucking his life away suddenly seemed to lose interest in destroying him. He felt as though a giant octopus had let him out of its embrace. He could breathe again! His heart was again beating! He tried his arms and they worked.
The thing didn't want him, after all!
Had he been strong enough, he would have cried out in triumph—something typical of him, something obscene.
But suddenly he felt a movement behind and beneath him in the dark water. Panic caught him again. He half-turned to look behind him. And as he did so, a pair of long, gaping jaws closed on his legs.
Even as he screamed, he felt the 'gator's teeth bite through flesh and reduce bones to splinters as the monster pulled him down.
Will Platt saw it happen and heard the scream. The explosion in the water must have been caused by the reptile's tail. Even if strong enough still to have struggled, the man could never have created such a commotion.
It endured for moments as the creature thrashed about, churning the lake to froth. Now and again the great snout was thrust above the surface, and those in the two rowboats saw the mangled thing in its
jaws.
Again Will was able to identify the white jacket, now in bloody shreds, as the one he himself had owned until that morning.
Then the frenzy subsided and the lake became quiet. And after a period of fear and speculation, the four men in the two boats brought their craft together to discuss what to do.
"There's no point in trying to find him," Ed Lawson said. "You think so, Haydn?"
Fussing with his camera, Haydn Clay shook his head. "No point at all, Ed."
"You were taking pictures," Will Platt said. "Did you get any of that thing?"
"The 'gator? No. I wasn't quick enough."
"Not the 'gator. The other."
"Yes, if it shows up on infrared. But what was it? Do you know what it was?"
Silence.
"What brought you two out here?" Lawson asked. The boats were close together now, gunnels touching; he didn't have to speak loudly. Obviously he didn't want to, either, so close to where the alligator had seized its prey just a few minutes before.
"We were following Helpin to see what he was up to," Will said. "What were you doing out here?"
"Looking for the 'gator, among other things," Lawson said.
"Other things?"
"Haydn's work. Look—hadn't we better get back and call the cops about this? A man's been killed."
Will Platt drew a deep breath. Now he would have to call Jurzak, that seemingly ordinary fat man with the watery gray eyes and computer mind. There was no way to avoid it.
The prospect filled him with dread. Because the investigator would almost certainly insist on a conference now, right now, while he, Will Platt, was overtired and likely to blunder.
For Will Platt the result could easily be calamitous.
29
A Resemblance
"Why don't we all just sit here and talk for a while?" At 3:35 A.M. Homicide Investigator Jurzak looked sleepy and unhappy—even more unhappy than the men he had sent out in the condo's boats to seek the victim of Heron Lake's alligator. "By the way," he continued, "my name's Karl. Same as Helpin's but spelled with a K. Might be easier for you folks than Jurzak."