Migrators

by Ike Hamill

  “Turns out that my other brothers were feeling the same way. Everyone except Hubie had something they wanted to do outside in October and they wanted the moratorium on October work to end. Gordie was the only one of us who had any idea why we didn’t work in October, and he wasn’t talking. Paul got us together. We used to meet out in the horse stall when we’d have a conference. Dad bought that old horse to plow with, but he immediately started fighting with the horse and the fight turned into a blood feud. Paul took over the horse and used him to haul wood. Dad wouldn’t go near that horse stall so that’s where us boys would conference in private.

  “So Paul and Skip got us together so we could all lean on Gordie. They said they wouldn’t give Hubie any money for gas if he kept fixing Gordie’s traps and reels. They blackmailed him indirectly, see. Gordie wouldn’t be able to work if Hubie didn’t support him. Gordie got pissed and finally spilled the beans. He told us about the migrators.”

  Alan jerked upright and spilled some of his coffee on his shirt.

  “Sorry,” Alan said as he wiped at the spill. “Go on.”

  Buster studied Alan a second and then smiled. Buster continued.

  “Gordie told us that there was these things that came out of the water. They move from west to east every October, coming up out of the ground and working their way towards the Kennebec river. Nobody was allowed to talk about them, because if you talked about them, they’d come to your house. According to Gordie, after he and Dad tangled with one, those migrators took the only girl baby that Mom ever had. It ate her skin and muscles right off of her crying body. It left just a rubbery skeleton full of organ meat by the side of the lake.”

  “What?” Alan asked. “Come on.”

  “I can’t say for sure because I didn’t bury her, but I do know that there was a headstone out back with the name Sophia Helen on it. I left flowers next to that headstone every October after I heard that story. Gordie said he had never gotten a really good look at one of the migrators, but he said that he would find fish remains, up and down the shore after Halloween. Gordie said that you couldn’t even see the migrators when they were awake. You could only spot them when they were asleep, and they only slept for about an hour a day. The rest of the time they would just blend into their surroundings and if they got ahold of you, there was no hope. That’s why we weren’t allowed to work outside in October.”

  “What about other kids who went to school? How did they survive? Did the whole town shut down for an entire month? Is that even possible?” Alan asked.

  “Nope, not the whole town. There was only a stretch where the migrators moved, and we just happened to be on that stretch. The migrators ran right through Dad’s land.”

  “Where was this property?” Bob asked.

  “I think you know,” Buster said. “You were hiking on part of it the other day.”

  “You didn’t grow up in the house where I live, did you? The Colonel’s house?” Alan asked.

  “No,” Buster said with a low chuckle. “That fancy place? Have you been listening to my story at all? We lived in a cobbled-together shit-hole. My childhood home burned down years ago. That cabin is the only thing left that my father ever had a hand in building. As far as I know, the migrators don’t get quite as far north as your place, but I’m pretty sure their route changes each year, so who knows.”

  “So Gordie told you about the migrators,” Bob said.

  “Yup, and it was the first time anyone had spoken of them at the house since my sister was taken. Gordie told us all he knew and then he told us we would all pay for making him tell. Of course, we didn’t believe it. Who would think that the simple act of telling a story could bring death to your door? But we were on their path and October was coming. I’ve thought about it a lot since then. Seems like maybe Gordie’s words hung in the air and left a scent. Maybe those slick bastards can track a scent like that back to its source. That’s the best explanation I can think of. There aren’t a lot of people left who I can compare notes with.”

  “So what happened?” Alan asked.

  Buster laughed.

  X • X • X • X • X

  “May I use your bathroom?” Bob asked.

  “Down that way,” Buster said.

  Bob left the room and Alan heard the door creak shut behind him.

  “Do your brothers still live in the area?” Alan asked.

  “Nope,” Buster said. “I was last in and I’ll be last out. They’ve all passed, but some of their kids still live pretty close. Skip’s son runs the lumber company that Skip built. He’s made a good run of it—built himself a little empire. Skip started that company with fifty bucks he borrowed from his wife, if you can believe that. He bought a little sawmill and went to town.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your brothers.”

  “Don’t be,” Buster said. “Some of them lived a long time. After everything, we didn’t talk that much. I was closest to Paul in a lot of ways, and he’s been dead almost seven years now.”

  Alan nodded. They heard the tail of the toilet’s flush when Bob opened the door down the hall.

  “My brother Paul’s death, that was an interesting story too,” Buster said. “When Paul found out he had stomach cancer, he took one long look at what the future held and he decided he was done with it. His wife was living with their daughter to help out with the grandson. He’s special, the grandson is. So, with his wife out of the house and not much on speaking terms, and cancer ripping through his guts like wildfire—they say it runs in the family—Paul decided to pull his own lever. Quid pro quo.”

  Alan looked at Bob. Bob was nodding.

  “Paul had a screened in porch,” Buster said. “He went out there and put a shotgun in his mouth. I think he didn’t want to leave a mess inside, but he didn’t want to leave his body out where the animals would get at it. They said it looked like he’d been there a month before I found him.”

  Alan winced and looked away. Bob was looking straight down into his cold cup of coffee.

  “But that’s a different tale. I was about to tell you what happened to poor old Gordie,” Buster said. “We blackmailed him into telling us. Have either of you ever been to a hypnotist?”

  Alan shook his head.

  “No,” Bob said.

  “They say a hypnotist can’t make you do anything you don’t really want to do. That’s the way I feel about Gordie talking about the migrators. On the one hand, he knew it was trouble. But there was something in his eyes—he wanted to tell that story. He wanted to unburden himself. He and Dad loaded that story onto their backs and carried it for all those years. He couldn’t give himself permission to let the story go, but as soon as everyone ganged up on him, it looked like the telling was a big relief.”

  Buster settled deeper into his recliner, shooting his feet out a little farther down the footrest.

  “Like I said, Dad took an interest in our education when we were just little tykes. For me, he gave me a gun and told me what to point it at. For Gordie, I suppose he showed him how to set a trap and bait a hook. Then he’d leave you alone until you had some reading under your belt. His next burst of instruction was intense. He’d give you a book or two so you could study up and then he’d just pour everything he knew into your little ear. God help you if you forgot one of his lessons by the next morning. You didn’t get many second chances without earning a spanking to go along with the second lesson. The boy was expected to listen and learn. You didn’t ask questions. You could just assume that Dad wouldn’t have an answer that could be heard, only felt.”

  “Sounds like a prince,” Alan said.

  “He did what he thought he had to,” Buster said. He smiled at a memory. “He was trying to ensure that each of us went farther than he did. Gordie was far enough down the chain that he knew when to keep his mouth shut. The other brothers told him what to expect for his training, so when Dad taught him how to set a line, Gordie kept his mouth shut and just listened.

  “Gordie’s l
ast day with Dad’s instruction was when he finally asked his first question. It was near the end of October and Gordie had a trap he couldn’t clear.”

  “I thought you didn’t work in October,” Bob said.

  “Not after that one, we didn’t,” Buster said. “Of course I was just a little one, running around with my first twenty-two then. Gordie had set a trap down near the water’s edge. Dad wouldn’t let him shoot a trapped animal. Gordie had to beat or drown anything still alive. He liked to use a little leg trap that was weighted underwater. It would snag a beaver and then hold them under until they drowned. Gordie would get a perfect pelt—no need to bash in the skull. The problem was, he didn’t catch a beaver. He caught something much bigger and it was still alive. He went and fetched Dad. Gordie worked up his courage and then asked, ‘What do I do if I can’t kill something I trapped?’ He said that Dad was excited at first. He figured that Gordie had trapped something big. Since Dad was a shitty hunter and I wasn’t pulling in game yet, the family was mostly living on small stuff that Gordie brought home. Dad was itching for a big hunk of venison or bear.

  “Gordie took him down to the edge of the lake and pointed. He said that Dad didn’t believe him for awhile. The thing he’d caught was so good at lying on the muddy bottom of the lake that you had to know exactly what you were looking for or you didn’t see it. Gordie got a big stick and poked at the thing. It started thrashing. It came all the way up out of the water and almost grabbed ahold of Dad before my old man backed away. Dad told Gordie to keep an eye on the thing and then he went back to the house for his gun.

  “That’s the only thing I think I remember about the event, but I can’t say if it was a true memory or not. They say I cried and cried when Dad left the house with a gun and I didn’t get to come along. Of course, I don’t have any memory of Sophia, so maybe I just think I remembered it. Dad shot the thing five times, according to Gordie. The thing thrashed and jumped each time, but didn’t seem any closer to dying.”

  “What did it look like?” Alan asked.

  Buster ignored the question and kept going. “After that, Dad had Gordie rig up a rope to loop around the beast. They used a come-along anchored to a tree. Gordie said the thing was too strong to pull out by hand, even with both of them working together. They pulled it on shore and Gordie said it was stuck between the two tethers. There was the trap holding its leg in the water, and the rope pulling its arm up on land. The trap was fixed to a submerged log that must have weighed a ton. Even so, Gordie said that the thing pulled so hard that the log moved.

  “When it stopped moving, Gordie said it was like magic. It settled down into the leaves and just seemed to disappear. Dad shot it again, maybe because he was frustrated. Gordie said the bullet went right through and puffed up dirt on the other side of the thing.”

  Buster stopped talking. He folded his hands on top of his belly.

  “Well?” Alan asked.

  “Well what? You can guess the rest, can’t you?”

  “You’re saying that the thing we saw is the same kind of thing your brother caught in the trap?” Bob asked.

  Buster nodded.

  “You don’t want to tell us the rest of the story, do you?” Alan asked.

  Buster didn’t reply. He looked at Alan with wide open eyes and didn’t reply.

  “You think that if you tell us the story, then they’ll smell it, right? That’s what you asserted earlier—they can smell when someone talks about them,” Alan said. “If that’s true, then surely you’ve already said too much.”

  “Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t. It’s hard saying, not knowing,” Buster said. His next burp must have been the grandfather of all his previous. It ripped from between Buster’s lips and caused him to lean forward. The footrest on his recliner clicked down a notch. “Pardon me,” he said. Buster frowned. “Dad cried. He sat down on a big rock, let his gun fall to the ground and put his fists to his eyes. Gordie welled up just telling us about it, all those years later. Dad told Gordie that he knew there was a price to pay. He didn’t let on what he’d bought. Quid pro quo.

  “I’m not sure how we lived there so long without trouble. Maybe it was just because we were naive. But Dad knew that the easy days were over as soon as he saw that thing thrashing in Gordie’s trap. He told Gordie that it would just be a matter of time before more would come. They would find a way to spring the one he’d caught and then they’d come after the family. They wouldn’t stop until they’d taken one of ours as payback.”

  “How did your dad know about them if nobody talked?” Bob asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe some old timer wanted to get it off his chest. Maybe my Dad pieced it together from all those books he read before he gave them to us. Like I said, he was a Jack of all trades, and one of those trades was local legends. Lots of people had theories where the migrators came from originally, but none make much sense in the light of day. People say believe half of what you see, and none of what you’re about to hear, but this is my understanding.

  “For every living thing that builds, there’s something that evolves to break it down. It’s just all part of the natural ebb and flow of things. Species rise and fall. That works for our physical bodies and the things we create, but what are the worms and beetles that help decompose our souls?”

  “I don’t follow,” Alan said.

  “You grow as a person, spiritually, as you live on this planet,” Buster said. “You build up your character and your soul. What happens to those when you die?”

  “I don’t believe in that stuff,” Alan said.

  “You go to heaven,” Bob said. “Or your soul rejoins the sea of souls, right?”

  “I think your spirit lays there quietly, right alongside your body. The undertaker burns up your body, but then your soul, your character, your will, all that other stuff is left behind. That’s where the migrators come in. They move downhill and gather up all the leftovers of human spirit. They gobble it up and break it down into whatever the equivalent elements are. That’s what I think.”

  “So why wouldn’t they hang out at cemeteries then? Or why would they only move through one patch of land to go to the Kennebec river? People all around the world should know about them,” Alan said.

  “You can’t touch a soul. You can’t hold it in your hands. What makes you think it adheres to the physical laws that govern other matter?” Buster asked. “As far as we know, they do live everywhere. Maybe there’s some bigger reason it got caught in Gordie’s trap.”

  “And this is the nonsense your father told your brother?” Alan asked.

  “Nope,” Buster said. “The information Dad passed to Gordie was completely pragmatic. He told him that migrators are devious, intelligent, and vengeful. If you interfere with one or even talk about them, then you’re on the list. Nothing can get you off that list but flesh.”

  “So they feed on souls, but if they’re pissed, they’ll eat a baby,” Alan said.

  “Yup, kinda like a priest,” Buster said. He laughed at his own joke.

  “And nobody has ever seen one or heard of one. Science has never documented them. No naturalist has a picture. They’re more elusive than a yeti,” Alan said.

  “That’s right. And I’ll add to your description—they migrate through a very small area, or maybe areas, they’re perfectly camouflaged, and then hunt down anyone who traps or talks about them. How’s anyone supposed to document that?” Buster asked.

  “You assume that they have the ability to magically track down people who talk about them—that words leave a scent somehow,” Alan said.

  Buster raised his shoulders in a shrug. A bubbling gurgle rumbled in his belly and Buster patted it down gently with his hand.

  “You made Gordie tell,” Bob said.

  Buster nodded. For a second, Alan thought that Buster wouldn’t continue. He thought the old man was going to leave the story half told and never let them know what happened to the little sister. But, now that the story was rolling out, i
t seemed that it would keep rolling.

  X • X • X • X • X

  “They tried to figure a way to let the thing loose, but then they ran out of time. Gordie said he’d never experienced anything like it. You couldn’t exactly see what was coming, but you knew it was all around you. The leaves moved funny. The wind picked up and then died. The lake swirled and then kicked up a little waterspout out of nowhere. Gordie and Dad could sense those things closing in on them and the thing on the ground rattled. They ran.

  “Back up at the house, Dad called all his boys inside and he locked all the doors and windows. We spent the rest of the day and all night locked up inside. None of us knew why at the time. I heard Paul saying it was a twister. The only twister I’d ever heard of was the titty variety, so I wasn’t anxious to get outside and investigate. The next morning, Gordie and Dad went down to check the trap again. It was empty. They were about to come home when Gordie spotted the other thing just up the bank.”

  Buster paused. He laid a hand across his forehead, like he was a worried mother checking a temperature. He looked Bob and Alan directly in the eye before he continued.

  “I got the worst of my dad, and it was because of that day. That little girl meant everything to my old man. After Gordie found her, stripped of everything outside her bones, Dad was reckless and mean. If I was shooting and I missed my mark, he’d snatch that gun from my hands and pop me on the back of the head with the stock. Sent my eyes black a few times. They told me that they wrapped little Sophia in Dad’s shirt and carried her back up to the house. That was the end of the month. I remember Hubie crying that night because he wanted to dress up for Halloween. He didn’t understand that Sophia was dead. He just knew he wasn’t going to get any candy if he didn’t dress up.

  “Gordie was the only one who knew what happened to our baby sister until we all ganged up on him all those years later. The folks buried her out back and got a headstone. That little grave was such a part of my life that I never even questioned what it meant until I heard the whole story. After Gordie told us what she looked like, I would sit about twenty feet away from that headstone and just imagine that little girl down there, all naked without her skin. She ended up with the best Halloween costume of them all, but she never got any candy either.”