Snapper

by Felicia Zekauskas

  Then Judd looked toward Deena.

  “I’d also like to apologize for my stupid behavior,” said Judd. “I’m truly sorry. I was a total ass. I lost control of myself and my emotions.”

  “Forget it, Judd,” said Deena. “We’re all human.”

  Judd reached out with his mug. August touched his to it. Then they both took a swig. The whisky coursed through the two men, warming them both from within.

  On the two stools at the end of the semi-circle, JJ and Mary clinked their mugs together. The hot chocolate they had brought in a thermos was still steaming. After their first sip, Mary reached over and wiped the froth off JJ’s upper lip with the knuckle of her index finger.

  “You look nice in a mustache,” she said. “But even better without.”

  JJ reached over and wiped the foam off Mary’s upper lip.

  “You too,” he laughed.

  Deena rose from her stool.

  “I think the fire could use another log,” she said.

  “Let me,” said JJ, starting to rise.

  Deena gestured for him to stay seated.

  “Thanks, JJ, but actually I kind of like doing it myself.”

  Deena chose a log from the stack at the edge of the clearing, balanced it on end then raised an ax high above her head. It was the ax August always kept razor-sharp above his fireplace. The ax head fell and split the log neatly in two.

  “One swing,” said Judd. “I’m impressed.”

  “I’m getting the hang of it,” said Deena. “It’s fun.”

  She tossed the two halves into the fire. A spray of embers flared into the air then rained back down like a shower of shooting stars. In the sudden glow, August glanced across the fire at JJ. He thought the boy had just winced. Then he noticed JJ reaching for his stomach.

  “Is something wrong, JJ?" asked August.

  “No," said JJ. "It's nothing. Sometimes I just get little twinges in my scar. It’s nothing.”

  Mary wrapped her arm around JJ’s shoulder. They leaned closer together. It felt good. But the pain in his scar didn’t stop.

  August looked again into JJ’s eyes. It was weird – too weird to be nothing – but August also had just felt a strange pang in his stomach.

  He looked again into the boy’s eyes. Something was wrong – and getting worse.

  * * * *

  “Want another?”

  “You have to ask?”

  Ted Tanner handed a cold can of beer to Bobby Savarese. He felt no guilt about drinking with a minor. The kid had stayed back once, maybe even twice, in grade school. Savarese wasn’t a kid. He was nineteen – practically twenty. There was nothing wrong with throwing back at few. In some states, he’d already be legal.

  “At eighteen it used to be legal in this state,” said Tanner.

  “What?” said Savarese, not following the line of Ted Tanner’s unspoken thoughts.

  “Nothing,” said Tanner. “Just the drinking age. It used to be eighteen here in New Jersey.”

  The two men sat on folding stools, sharing a six-pack. They were fishing through a hole they had chipped and sawn through the ice earlier in the night. A gas lantern cast a ring of flickering light. Each man had a fishing pole in one hand and a beer can in the other. Between slurps and burps, they talked.

  “Ever catch anything this way?” asked Savarese.

  “Nope,” answered Ted. “But others have.”

  “Like who?” asked Savarese.

  “The Eskimos.”

  “This ain’t Alaska,” said Savarese. “And we’re not Eskimos. How about somebody around here?”

  “Bill Lupo says he’s had luck ice fishing.”

  Savarese drained his beer and tossed the empty can into the hole they were fishing in. It bobbed in the freezing water along with other cans they’d tossed in earlier. The cans made Savarese think of the passengers on the Titanic – the ones freezing in the water hoping to be saved.

  Suddenly the tip of Savarese’s pole plunged like a divining rod. When he tried lifting it back up, he couldn’t.

  “I’ve got something!” he said. “Something big.”

  “Let me give you a hand,” said Ted.

  The two men struggled together.

  “The thing weighs a ton!” said Savarese.

  “Watch the hole,” said Tanner. “You’re too close. You’ll slide right in.”

  The two men dug their heels into the ice, but whatever was at the other end of the line kept pulling them closer to the edge of the hole. Tanner and Savarese looked like the losing team in a tug of war.

  “Let go of the pole!” shouted Ted.

  But Savarese didn’t like losing – or quitting. He held on after Tanner let go. Then his feet slid out from under him. A second later, he slid over the edge and into the hole.

  “Help!” he cried as he plunged into the water.

  The water was freezing – or just a degree or two above. If Ted couldn’t get Savarese out quickly, he’d be dead of hypothermia within minutes.

  Tanner dropped to his knees and spread himself flat on the ice. He extended his arm. “Give me your hand!” he cried.

  Savarese reached to grab it. Tanner felt Bobby’s cold wet fingers tightening around his wrist. Thank God, he thought – the kid was going to be okay. He’d be able to save him. And then, with a jerk from below, Bobby’s fingers let go and he was gone. His head went under like a boulder dropped into the water. The only thing left on the surface was empty beer cans.

  “Bobby! For chrissakes!” cried Tanner. “Where are you?”

  Ted stood up, grabbed the lantern, and bent over the hole.

  “Oh my God!”

  In the light of the lantern, Ted could see the water had turned from black to red. As he bent down for a closer look, Grundel’s head burst through the surface. Grundel reached up and grabbed Tanner’s right ankle. His claws ripped through Tanner’s pants, socks, and skin. Grundel yanked.

  Ted went down hard. The side of his head banged against the ice. He moaned once and tried to clutch the ice. His fingertips slid across the cold slippery surface as Grundel dragged his body into the water.

  A minute later, Grundel’s head popped up again. He pulled himself halfway out of the water and then rested with his elbows at the edge of the ice. Beer cans bumped up against his shell. Grundel looked out across the dark lake. Suddenly it began to glow a gorgeous bluish-white. Grundel looked up at the sky. His master’s beatific stone face was smiling down.

  Grundel craned his neck, surveying the western shoreline from south to north. There were lighted windows in houses all along the shore. Then he spotted a light that was different – a light that flickered and flashed. Somebody was having a campfire up in the northwest corner of the lake. Grundel had visited a campfire there once before. It had been a long, long time ago.

  Grundel clambered out onto the frozen lake. Just as he began crawling across the ice, a bluish white head with chattering teeth popped back up to the surface in the hole behind him. The head was Ted Tanner’s. Ted was missing an arm now, but he reached up with the one hand he had left – the one with four and a half fingers. He tried to grab the ice, he clawed at it desperately, but it was impossible. Then he slipped back under.

  * * * *

  JJ tried to ignore the pain, but he couldn’t. He was practically doubled-over.

  “What’s wrong, JJ?” asked Judd.

  “I don’t know, Dad. My scar’s hurting like never before.”

  “Let me see,” said Judd.

  JJ unzippered his coat and lifted up his heavy wool sweater. He was wearing a white cotton tee shirt underneath it. It was streaked with bright red bands of blood.

  “JJ!” cried his dad. “You’re bleeding!”

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” said JJ.

  He peeled up the bloody tee shirt. Grundel’s claw marks looked as raw and bloody as the night of the attack.

  August was also feeling intense pangs.

  “Let’s all go up the cabin,�
� he said. “As quickly as possible.”

  “Why?” asked Judd. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you when we’re all safe inside.”

  “Safe?” said Deena. “Safe from what?”

  August looked around. Everybody was staring at him.

  “I’m thinking Chief Rudolph was wrong,” he said. “I don’t think he killed the snapper. I think it’s alive – and I think it’s coming this way.”

  “But the lake’s frozen solid,” said Mary.

  “Solid or not,” said August, “I think he’s coming. Now let’s get going!”

  The pain from Judd’s broken ribs was still excruciating whenever he moved too quickly or suddenly. Running was impossible. Mary took his arm and helped him walk slowly up the slope toward August’s cabin. JJ, still bent in pain, walked alongside.

  Deena turned to August.

  “Should we put out the fire?” she asked.

  “Forget the fire,” said August. “Just go up to the cabin. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

  “What do you mean – ‘in a minute?’” said Deena. “What are you going to do?”

  “I need to get something,” said August.

  “What?”

  “Look, Deena, there’s no time for this. Please – just go up to the cabin.”

  “I’m not going without you.”

  Deena was adamant and there was no time for arguing. August turned and limped down toward the bushes where his sub was draped with heavy tarps. He started lifting and dragging them aside.

  “You’re not thinking of going out there?” said Deena. “It’s frozen solid.”

  “No,” said August. “I just need one of these.”

  August started struggling to free one of the spear guns that were mounted to the sides of the sub. Their tips had been treated with a potent tranquilizer that August had hoped – back when he was still searching for the giant snapper – would render his quarry unconscious.

  August cursed. Deena was surprised. She had never heard him utter a single expletive – not even a ‘damn.’

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “The clasps are frozen – jammed. They won’t budge!”

  “What can I do?” asked Deena.

  “I need something to knock them loose with. Something hard. Something metal.”

  An idea came to Deena instantly. The ax! She spun around, took one step then stopped in her tracks.

  “August!” she screamed.

  August spun around.

  Grundel was no more than ten feet away. After crossing the lake, he had crept across the frozen ground behind them. He was between them and the cabin. There was no escape. They were trapped. Deena inched backward till she was pressed up against the sub next to August.

  Grundel looked at the two people backed up against the metal tube that had caused him such problems just weeks before. He eyed them balefully. The he opened his mouth and hissed. No steam came out. Grundel was as cold on the inside as the air around him.

  He fixed his eyes on August. Him he had already tasted. The little nip he had taken had been quite savory. The flavor had been hauntingly familiar – almost ancestral. But today he would start with the flesh of the quivering woman. She was goose-bumped with terror. This was good. People always tasted better when they were frightened. Fear released something tasty into their bloodstreams.

  Yes, yes, yes, thought Grundel, looking into the woman’s dark brown eyes. So pretty, so plump, so doomed.

  Grundel crept forward slowly, relishing the terror that kept the woman frozen in place. He began mentally enumerating the savory sensations that awaited him: the mouth-watering meat, the crisp crunch of gristle and bone, the warm salty gravy of blood.

  The woman’s eyes were fixed on his – mesmerized. She was under his spell. But then, suddenly, she looked away – at something above or behind him. Grundel craned his neck to see what it could possibly be. He turned just in time to see a wedge of steel swishing through the air. It crashed into his shell, splitting his carapace like a coconut. Grundel couldn’t believe it. It was that same damn ax! There was no mistaking it. He had carried it in his back too long to ever forget. And now it was back – in his back! Only this time, it went in deep. The damn blade had hit the fault line it had created eighty years earlier.

  Grundel’s brain filled with pain. But he kept his head. He knew whoever swung the ax would want to swing it again. Big mistake! People thought they got three strikes. With him, they only got one. Grundel would get this ax-swinger – just as he had gotten the other one long ago.

  “Let go of the ax, JJ!” screamed August. “Run!”

  Startled by August’s cry, JJ let go of the smooth wooden handle. He turned and did exactly what August had told him to do: he ran.

  August grabbed Deena’s hand and yanked her past the giant turtle. They raced up the slope toward the cabin door. For a man with a limp, August moved pretty quickly.

  Grundel looked over his shoulder. There it was: the ax handle – sticking out of his shell like a shovel left behind by a sloppy worker. These people! Now he had two pieces of steel wedged in him: a bullet and an ax. The first had been bad enough – this second one hurt like hell. There would be no juicy, terror-seasoned flesh for Grundel tonight.

  Grundel felt the trickle of blood dripping down through his plastron. He looked down at the ground. He was leaking. A dark red puddle was widening beneath him. Grundel gave one last look up at the cabin before turning toward the frozen lake. He had to get back to that hole in the ice. If he didn’t, he might end up hanging on a wall above somebody’s fireplace – like some goddam moosehead. Whatever happened, Grundel wasn’t going to let them get him.

  Dead or alive, Grundel was getting away.

  * * * *

  Marc Bozian was working on his book. He had tentatively entitled it The Turtle Terror of Turtleback Lake.

  Marc simply could not resist alliteration.

  Meanwhile, Stephen Borg over at The Record had put Marc in contact with an agent who thought Marc’s story – done right – could turn out to be more than a book. The agent, a young guy in the city named Mike Strong, thought there was potential for a movie – or maybe even a TV series.

  “Think Twin Peaks meets Jaws,” he wrote to Marc in an email. “See if you can work something up along those lines.”

  Marc loved all the Hollywood talk. He was thirty pages into his first draft when the attack at The Andersen cabin occurred. He covered it – for The Record. Borg had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  Frankly, Marc couldn’t believe his luck. It was as if the gods were helping him. In terms of death, drama and gore, the final chapter of the snapper saga surpassed any before it. The great snapper claimed two more victims – their bodies trapped beneath the ice with no hope of recovery until spring. Once again – and this was good – alcohol played a key role in the victims’ deaths. It added a moral dimension that Marc liked.

  And this was the very best part. The presumed-to-be-dead monster got to die a second death – this time at the hands of JJ Clayton – himself a snapper-attack survivor – using August Andersen’s grandfather’s ax! You couldn’t make this stuff up!

  For all the mayhem and misfortune that the turtle had caused the town of Turtleback Lake, it had all been a gift to Marc. Without the snapper, he might still be covering grand openings and town council meetings.

  Of course, it was somewhat unsettling that neither the turtle nor the ax had been recovered. Still, the creature’s blood spoor had stretched almost a mile. In fact, it was actually frozen into the ice: a red path that started near the Andersen cabin on the western shore and ended at the fishing hole where Ted Tanner and Bobby Savarese had vanished. No creature could lose that much blood and survive. Nobody was arguing that – at least not publicly.

  “How much blood do you think a creature like that could have in its veins?” Deena asked August one night as they lay in bed.

  “I don’t know
,” he answered. “It’s hard even trying to guess how much blood it lost that night. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” asked Deena.

  “Unless all the ice with blood in it was collected and thawed. Then the blood could be separated out and measured.”

  “You’re not actually thinking of doing that, are you?” said Deena.

  “No,” said August. “It was just an idea.”

  And soon it was too late even for that.

  Chief Rudolph had banned ice fishing for the remainder of the winter, but he had said nothing about ice-skating. Soon, sharp steel blades, crisscrossing over the frozen blood, scratched most of it away. Nobody would ever collect or measure Grundel’s blood.

  Chapter 26

  TURTLEBACK LAKE JANUARY 2007

  The view of the lake from the Claytons’ living room was breathtaking. But JJ and Mary weren’t looking at it. They were curled up on the couch with their eyes glued to the face of a grandfather clock that was ticking off the last minute of the year.

  Together they counted down the last ten seconds.

  “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!”

  When the clock struck twelve, fireworks exploded in the dark sky above the frozen lake. Streaming colors rained down, illuminating the revelers who had gathered on the ice below. Their cheers and the booming fireworks echoed off the mountainsides.

  JJ snuggled closer to Mary. Their eyes closed as their lips met.

  Suddenly, JJ let out a low moan. Mary opened her eyes and smiled.

  “That felt that good?” she said.

  “Yes,” said JJ. “It did. But that’s not why I moaned. I just felt something – like somehow the snapper is truly and finally gone.”

  Mary eased JJ down onto his back. She untucked his shirt and lifted it up. The scabs across his stomach, so raw and ugly just a few weeks before, were now fading. Mary gently traced the streaks with her fingertips.

  And then, in a soft chanting voice, she whispered into JJ’s ear.

  “Hey, ho, snapper guy, now it’s time you said goodbye.”

  And it was true. The great snapper was finally gone from the waters of Turtleback Lake.