Cannik looked at her for a long moment, then drew his blade and tossed her a quick salute. “If your old life ever bores you...” he said.
Katya smiled and returned the salute. “I’ll remember,” she said, then turned and started on the long, hard journey home.
~THE END~
Image of the Beast
Um… this story was one of those things that woke me up in the middle of the night and demanded I write it. Right Now. It first appeared on the Book View Café when we had new, free fiction on the front page every day.
<<>>
“Mom, I hate camping,” Ben whined.
“You used to love camping, Benji” his mother replied as she stuffed boxes of cereal and crackers into the food crate with its bear-proof lid.
The entire family bounced around the house, getting ready for tomorrow’s big trip. Like they did every year the first week after school let out for the summer.
“But there’s nothing interesting to do,” Ben continued his litany of grief, even though he knew it was pointless.
“Meaning: I told you to leave your sketch book at home,” Mom replied.
“Yeah.” Ben brightened a bit. Maybe he could convince Mom that he really ought to be allowed to pack the tablet. “I could draw our campsite, and the trees, and the river, and the squirrels and birds. Better than a camera.”
“Benji, we love that you are developing a real talent with your art work. But you need to do other things, too. You need to swim and hike and climb trees, not just sit and draw. You haven’t been more than two inches from your sketch book since we gave it to you for Christmas. It stays home.”
“But, Mo-oM!”
“No buts about it.”
Ben scowled. He wanted to cry. But at twelve he was really too big for that ploy.
“Look, Benji, how about we let you use the camera on Dad’s phone. If you get some good shots you can download to the computer when we get home and sketch from those.”
Ben continued to pout, arms crossed. He felt his chin sticking further and further out in defiance.
“Compromise, Benji. You can take the sketch pad but you wait until evening around the campfire, or in your tent. You spend the rest of the day out-of-doors with your sisters, playing and doing all the things we love about camping.”
“No. And I hate you calling me Benji. My name is Ben!” He dashed out of the kitchen, slamming the door hard behind him.
This time the tears came hot and heavy.
He heard his mother following with determined and angry footsteps. He decided to get himself elsewhere. And quick.
“If you take the sketch pad it stays in your backpack until I tell you otherwise,” Mom called as Ben climbed out the dormer window of his bedroom onto the roof.
He sat there a long time baking in the afternoon heat, pencil flying over the blank sheet of paper. He outlined, shaded, and gave definition to the curious woodpecker that stared back at him from the trunk of the old Douglas Fir overhanging the garage. After many meticulous flicks of the pencil that showed the bird’s feathers, a smile crossed Ben’s face.
He drew a bug. A nice fat, tasty one just right for a woodpecker dinner. When the bug’s shiny carapace seemed real, almost as if it was really crawling across the page, he held up the drawing for the bird’s inspection.
With a raucous call it launched from the tree branch, diving directly toward Ben.
Ben sat very still. The big bird landed on his crossed legs and began ramming its beak into the paper, trying desperately to get that bug.
Startled, Ben dropped the page and scrambled back into his room.
The bird flew away, bits of heavy paper clinging to its beak.
Ben lay awake a long time that night, wondering what he’d done; how he’d done it; and if could he repeat it.
Next morning, Ben tucked the sketchbook deep into his sleeping bag and left it there as he threw clean underwear and a swimsuit into his backpack.
Five hours later, with the camp set up and Mom and Ben’s two sisters, Jen and Marie making sandwiches for the entire family, Ben and Dad wandered down to the lake shore. They’d all been so busy Ben hadn’t thought about his hidden sketch book all day. Well, not much anyway.
Now Ben’s fingers ached to hold a pencil so he could capture the angle of light against the trees across the water, the ripples and reflections of mountain and clouds in the surface of the lake. And he had to add that hawk gliding around the shallows as it looked for its own lunch.
“Mom thinks it’s about time we let you upgrade your old cell phone to my old smart phone. I got a new one yesterday,” Dad said. “I agree that you’re old enough to take responsibility for an expensive piece of equipment that does more than just call home in an emergency.”
For the first time, Ben noted that his head reached almost to his father’s shoulder. He already stood nose to nose to Mom.
“The camera in the phone is okay. And I’ve got good graphics software on my computer. But a photo is a poor substitute for a good drawing,” Ben murmured. At the same time a quiver of excitement started just behind his breast bone and spread outward. “Did you say take responsibility? Not just borrow?” He looked up at his father.
“Yeah. I got myself the newest model, with more features. I think you can handle the old one. The camera is limited, but a good one to learn with.” Dad pulled the small flat phone out of his jeans pocket.
Ben’s heart leaped to his throat. His very own smart phone. He reached for it eagerly.
“Now remember, hold it by the outside of the body,” Dad instructed, subtly moving Ben’s fingers away from the screen.
They spent a happy half hour shooting images of Mirror Lake and trees, deleting some, keeping some. All the while, Ben kept thinking of ways to translate the digital pictures to his sketchbook, adding color here, shading there, letting the pristine white paper shine through there.
“That’s a decent picture, why are you deleting it?” Dad asked as they settled at the picnic table for lunch.
“The lighting is bland,” Ben said on a shrug. But he hesitated with his finger over the miniature trash can icon.
“Wait a bit. No sense in being hasty about it. You might decide you like something better about it later,” Mom added.
“Hey, you’re right. Look there, Dad, right in the upper left corner. I caught a fish jumping!” He stared gleefully at the entire photo, not just the bland light in the trees.
Mom shoved a paper plate in a wicker holder filled with chips and a sandwich toward him.
“Deleted pictures aren’t as easy to recover as a line you’ve erased and wanted back,” Dad said. “You might want to use your eraser less and think about what’s already there.” He bit into the thick bread and sliced meat, thus ending the conversation.
For two days Ben and his sisters swam, hiked, and played games. Ben kept the phone close, taking lots of pictures and wondering how he’d draw the water drops glistening on Jen’s hair. He played a bit with the ideas in his tent, but never got it right, so he put the sketch pad away again.
On the second night, a raccoon raiding their food supplies woke him up. He caught photos of the little bandit he knew he wouldn’t have time to draw first-hand but could translate later.
Ben paid extra close attention to details as the family hiked around the lake and up into the foothills of Mt. Hood the next day. Every time he heard a bush rustle, he snapped a picture. First glance at the images didn’t show anything unusual.
He worked through the photos later, while mom and the girls fixed dinner. He was about to delete one that looked like more shadow than tree, but hesitated. Was that something unusual about the shape of that shadow. He peered closer, wishing he a computer to download to and then enhance with the graphic software.
His hand reached for the sketch pad. He tried again and again to give the shadow shape. The closest he came was a lopsided blob with a muzzle that might belong to a bear. Then again it could be just a shadow. Adding the
light of a full moon to the drawing didn’t help either.
With a sigh of disgust, he ripped out those pages and consigned them to the fire. The paper caught the flames instantly and sent a long spiral of smoke upward. He and his sisters watched it disappear among the tree canopy. Little Marie threw in some dry leaves and they watched the same effect.
Then mom called them to eat, freshly caught fish grilled on an open fire with just a touch of lemon juice. His favorite camp meal.
That night, Wednesday, when Ben heard a rattling of tree branches, he grabbed his phone and opened the camera as he poked his head out of the little pup tent he had all to himself. Whatever made that much noise had to be big. Bigger than the raccoon last night. Maybe a coyote. Or even a bear.
That thought almost sent him cowering back into his sleeping bag.
A full moon high overhead sent a diffuse, silvery light all through the clearing where his parents had an umbrella tent across from him, and his little sisters had their own pup tent between them. To his right, their SUV sat parked. The picnic table and fire pit in the middle lay empty.
Something crashed behind Ben’s tent, between him and the lake. It sounded like an entire tree uprooted and fell. He’d heard that sound before, last winter during the big windstorm after a week of soaking rain. The top-heavy Douglas Fir across the street from their house had gone down right through the neighbor’s roof.
Dad stuck his head and shoulders out of the tent opening. He had a better angle to see the lake. His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped.
“Get back,” he whispered frantically. “Stay out of sight, Ben.”
Another big crash sent Ben diving back inside the fragile nylon walls of his tent. Fear warred with curiosity. He didn’t dare go outside again.
Quaking from the inside all the way out to his fingertips, he peeked out the tiny screened window at the back of the tent.
A shifting black and red shadow streaked with silver from the moonlight wavered before his vision. He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to clear them.
Still the wobbling shadow, as tall as the first branches on the fir trees, a good ten feet up, remained just as blurry as before. Like when he moved the camera just as he clicked the shutter.
Camera. Maybe the camera could get a better picture. He held it up to the screen and clicked. And clicked again.
The thing out there roared. It turned its muzzle full of big teeth toward the pup tent. Three long strides took the beast to the center of camp and reduced the picnic table to splinters with one blow of its clenched fist.
Each movement seemed here and there and everywhere between at the same time. Like the creature he’d seen in a SciFi movie phasing in and out of this dimension so that it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
The “phasing” made it seem like it moved jerkily. But it made steady, if slow and lumbering progress toward him.
Ben ducked down in fear.
“Everybody in the truck!” Dad yelled.
An acrid scent of fear overlaid the musky odor of the animal’s garbage breath. Underneath both smells he thought he caught a wisp of burning leaves.
Ben broke out in sweat and his knees turned to jelly.
Under the noisy roar of the beast, Ben heard the tiny click of the automatic locks as Dad hit the key remote.
Ben didn’t need a second order from Dad to dash to safety. He didn’t bother pulling on his jeans over his Transformers boxer sleeping shorts, or grabbing a pair of shoes. He just ducked and ran as fast as he could, pausing only long enough to let little Marie scramble into the seat before diving in and pulling the door closed after him.
He kept trembling as he held his sisters close. What if that thing slashed through the metal and ate them! The little scratch on his leg suddenly looked huge and the blood droplets seemed a gushing torrent.
His dinner wanted to come up.
The SUV began shaking. Ben peered out a window from his crouch on the floor.
All he could see was something black and red and sliver with fur that looked like dried ferns leaning against the car roof and pushing.
His sisters wailed. Mom cried. Dad hid his head beneath his arms.
Ben discovered he still held the phone. Click, click, click.
Then the moon went down. The beast gave a mighty roar, as if he hurt a lot, just gave up and lumbered away.
Ben and his family stayed huddled together in the car until the sun finally brightened the horizon, turning the lake blood red.
They packed up in a hurry, throwing tents and gear half folded into the truck haphazardly. Dad didn’t yell at them for making a mess. He didn’t care when they left behind a box of dry food.
They left the campground without eating breakfast or trying to get their money back for the rest of the week’s stay.
Over the next two weeks, Ben tried again and again to draw the beast. He looked at the blowup of his pictures on his computer. He closed his eyes and remembered only blurred movements and huge teeth multiplied over and over again as the beast phased in and out of sight. Everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.
He managed to draw a picture of a big grizzly bear, using some photos he found on the internet as a guide. The lines just weren’t right, he couldn’t get the shape of the head the same as his memory, though his picture did match the National Geographic photo pretty good.
Mom and Dad listened to the news three times a day for reports. The local independent station mentioned that a rogue bear had rummaged through their campground, made a mess strewing loose things all over. Not one word about how big and ugly it truly was or how mean.
Maybe the phasing and blurring of Ben’s vision made it seem bigger than it really was. Maybe his imagination had tricked him.
By the end of the two weeks the whole family talked as if they’d all just had the same nightmare because they’d told ghost stories around the campfire before going to bed.
Three weeks after the aborted camping trip Ben went back to the computer. He had to try one more time to draw the beast. He had to find some way of giving it definition.
“Mom, why did you delete all the pictures from our camping trip?” he asked as he stared at all the blank folders.
“I didn’t do anything with those photos,” Mom replied absently as she studied a recipe for dinner.
“Did Dad move them to a different program, like maybe he was going to edit them?” Ben opened the editing program. He found lots of pictures from last year’s trip to the same campground—they’d had the same space the same week in June every year for as long as Ben could remember. The only difference was in the size of himself and his sisters in the photos, and what kind of car they drove. Christmas and Easter photos were all pretty much the same.
Why did Dad delete all record of the beast? Maybe he was deliberately trying to forget it. Maybe the beast was magic and part of its magic was making survivors forget it had attacked.
Ben contented himself with going on line for grizzly bear studies. He lucked out and found pictures of skeletons both on all fours and rearing up on hind legs.
He printed them out and headed back to his room and his sketch pad. Slowly, layer by layer, he added muscle and flesh to the bone structure, trying to make his drawings into real bears. That was easy.
Their fur always looked like fur instead of dried fern fronds.
More internet photos and he overlaid the greenery on the bear.
Closer to his memory. Still not right.
After dinner he started over and tried to put the camp beast onto the bear’s skeleton.
It didn’t work. The head was wrong, the legs too short, and the body too square. Reluctantly he gave up and went to watch a DVD with the rest of the family. He barely tasted the popcorn as he tried to puzzle out how to draw what he had seen.
“Can we watch that old SciFi movie, you know the one about the weird creature aboard an abandoned space ship?” he asked. He thought that was the one that resembled the creature they’d seen.
“We rented that one and returned it,” Dad said.
“Besides, it’s too scary for your sisters,” Mom added. She fixed Ben with a stern gaze.
He knew that look. He needed to drop the subject. Completely. Now.
Ben settled down on the big pillow on the floor with his back to the sofa, between Mom and Dad. They all watched some inane story about an American school girl suddenly discovering she was really a foreign princess. Yawn. Dumb. Boring.
“I heard on the news that the park service is re-opening a dozen campsites on the Clackamas River after last year’s mudslides,” Dad said when he paused the movie so everyone could take a bathroom break and replenish the popcorn.
Ben held his breath.
Did they dare go camping again after...
But then, his family seemed to have forgotten all about the beast that interrupted their last trip.
“That sounds nice,” Mom said. “I’ve heard there’s great fishing in the river behind the dams and a bunch of hiking trails.”
“Have we camped there before?” Jennifer asked.
“No, this is on the other side of Mt. Hood, from Mirror Lake,” Dad said. “I’ve got more vacation time I need to use or lose. Let’s go next week.”
On the other side of the mountain. Maybe they’d be safe.
Ben had a bad feeling about this. He excused himself to charge the phone and sharpen a bunch of pencils for his sketch book.
The following Monday they loaded all the neatly refolded camping gear into the back of the SUV. Dad also packed his hunting rifle in its special locked, hard plastic case. He placed it in the hidden compartment beneath the carpet and set a heavy box of food on top. The ammo went into a separate box, packed into a different corner.
They chose a camp site at the base of a cliff, across the road from the river rapids. A trail started just behind Ben’s tent. It skirted the cliff and climbed rapidly along a chuckling creek. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of being so close to the trail, but his sisters wanted to sleep nearer to the car, and Mom and Dad liked the level spot between the fire pit and the road.
Fantastical Ramblings Page 7