by Billy Wells
“Not really. Both of my grandmothers died before I was born.”
In his stupor, Jerry saw her moving closer to him with the switchblade mottled with dried blood. His blackened leg from the gangrene throbbed with pain and the smell of rotten flesh was heavy in the air.
Jerry barely had the energy to speak, but he didn’t want to leave the planet without letting Maggie know the way he really felt. “I never really worshiped the ground you walked on. I lied about that.” He coughed, and, sucking in a lungful of air so he could continue, rasped, “I’ve known all along you were a two-bit whore your whole life. The night your eyes got big when I mentioned my grandma was rich and you let me fuck you, I thought I was about to die. I wanted one more piece of ass before I went to the great hereafter. The risk of you giving me the clap didn’t much matter at that point.”
He reached for his dad’s gun and wasn’t surprised when he discovered it wasn’t there. Neither of them was going to make it. The wolves or the zombies would come soon. He saw a long slobber of drool oozing down Maggie’s chin as her hungry eyes undressed him. He barely felt the cold blade plunging into his stomach after the fourth time. The bitch was madder than a wet hornet. He tried to lift his arms in defense but fell backward into the leaves instead.
He smiled at the memory of her tender words “forever and always.” The honeymoon was over, and they’d never even gotten married. Forever had apparently come today. He watched her slice off one of his fingers and start chewing on it like a chicken wing as the world began to spin.
With his last breath, just before she slit his throat, he gasped, “Maggie, I don’t feel the love.”
SOMETHING IN THE ICE
Norma glided across the frozen lake with ease. She had learned to ice skate at the North Valley Arena when she was five years old. Her natural talent had caused her to try out for the ice hockey team in high school, but, while she waited to speak with the coach, one of the players on the ice lost her front teeth in spite of wearing a helmet and face guard. Norma decided she didn't love skating that much and made a hasty exit before the coach spotted her.
After that shocking realization of the damage a hockey stick could do to several thousand dollars’ worth of braces, Norma was happy just to skate for fun during the winter on weekends when the lake near her home was frozen solid.
Today was a perfect day to skate. The ice appeared extremely thick, and she couldn’t see one sign of a discoloration on the surface that would suggest an area of thin ice. The skating area was as long as a football field and twice as wide.
The only thing that troubled her on this perfect day was she had come to the lake too early. She should have had a few more cups of coffee and had another piece of toast before driving down here. When she arrived and found an empty parking lot, she realized students and commuters who had to get up early every weekday morning would sleep in on Saturday. She could have caught a few more winks herself this morning rather than rising at the crack of dawn.
Norma didn't like being alone with no one to call for help in case she did fall through a hole in the ice or trip over a piece of debris. In spite of the perfect conditions, she knew a few more skaters would make clowning about on the lake more carefree and exhilarating than continually worrying about unexpected aberrations in the ice.
Norma always listened to music on her iPod while skating, and she liked to play it loud. If Leatherface came up behind her with a chainsaw, she would never hear him. And she certainly wouldn’t hear a lion or a tiger bounding toward her if one had escaped from the Treasure Trove Zoo next door and was in the mood for a morning snack. Norma grinned broadly at this ridiculous notion of impending doom as Bon Jovi blasted her eardrums with the rock anthem “Livin’ on a Prayer,” which was one of her favorites.
Suddenly Norma spotted something in the ice about a hundred feet ahead of her, just about in the middle of the lake. She saw no sign of a break or a hole, but something large was protruding from the surface. From a distance, it looked like a branch of a tree obstructing her path. Cautiously she slowed as she neared the spot.
Her gloved hand shot to her mouth when she realized what she thought was a branch was actually a claw with monstrous finger joints and long black fingernails jutting above the surface about six inches. Behind them she saw two savage yellow eyeballs glaring at her from below the ice and a mouthful of curled, hideous fangs grinning at her malevolently in a perpetual frozen pose that took her breath.
“What in the hell is this thing?” she muttered in stark horror. She had never seen anything like it at the Treasure Trove Zoo. For that matter, she hadn't seen anything like it at the Bronx Zoo or on the History and Discovery channels. This hellish thing appeared to be half human and half animal.
She looked around for someone else to share this nightmare with, but there was no one in sight. She reached for her phone and then remembered she had forgotten to take it from the kitchen table.
“What stupidity,” she said to the eerie wind that whispered ominously in the trees around her. What she had just come upon, when she’d least expected it, was the perfect reason not to skate by herself, particularly without a phone.
Norma had only been skating about five minutes, and she had planned to be here for a couple of hours. Now being alone with this weird thing, even if it was frozen in the ice, made her extremely uneasy. She thought of John Carpenter’s movie The Thing and shuddered at the graphic images that flooded her mind.
After the weird encounter, she didn’t feel like skating anymore. Turning in an arc like an Olympian, she hurried off the ice and removed her skates. She then made a beeline for her Honda Civic in the parking lot and sped toward home. She needed to tell someone right away what she had found. Let them decide how real this thing was. It wasn’t moving, but what if it was only in suspended animation and would climb out of the ice when it got warmer, like the monster did in The Thing?
She couldn’t wait to tell her parents and notify the police. Maybe she would get her name in tomorrow’s edition of The Gazette.
When she arrived home, she found her parents having breakfast in the dining room.
“Back so soon?” her mother asked, applying a dollop of butter to a stack of pancakes.
“You won't believe what I found in the ice,” Norma blurted out excitedly.
Her father lowered his morning paper and joined her mother gaping at her. “A suitcase full of money for next year's tuition, I hope,” her father said with a chuckle.
“No, Dad, I found a monster.”
“A monster?” her mother echoed with an incredulous look. “Did it chase you?”
“No, it was mostly submerged in the ice with only one ugly claw sticking out.”
“What did the rest of the monster look like?” her father asked, his brow creasing.
“It didn't look like anything I've ever seen at any zoo. It was half human and half animal,” Norma replied, picking up her phone from the counter and punching in 9-1-1.
“What are you doing, darling?” her mother asked with concern, yet seemed to already know.
“I'm calling 9-1-1, of course. I didn’t have my phone at the lake. Someone needs to go there and check this out.”
“Are you sure you want to get involved?”
“Mom, don't be like parents in the movies. I'm not making this up. This is serious. I think it's dead, but what if it's only in suspended animation?”
Both parents listened to Norma describe what she'd seen at the lake. After giving the 9-1-1 operator the information, she put the phone in her pocket, picked up a piece of bacon from a plate, and popped it into her mouth.
“What now?” her mother asked, eating another bite of a syrup-soaked pancake.
“The lady said a patrol car would be sent right away, and I should meet them in the arena parking lot in twenty minutes.”
“How did they react when you said you saw a monster?” her dad said with a measure of trepidation.
“I think they thought I meant I sa
w an animal. I didn’t mince words with them, and the lady said someone was attacked by a wild animal in the vicinity this morning. Maybe it was this monster that attacked him,” Norma said.
As she started toward the front door, she heard them whispering. It was obvious they didn’t believe her story about seeing a monster at all. It was just like in the movies: parents never believe a teenager when they try to tell them something.
On the way to the Arena, she noticed an unusual number of police cars speeding by with their sirens blaring.
When she entered the enormous skating rink parking lot, she saw several police officers directing about twenty skaters back to their cars. Three squad cars with flashing red and blue lights were parked in the lot. Another officer was cordoning off the area with yellow tape.
Norma couldn’t believe how all this could've happened in the short time since she had called 9-1-1.
After exiting her car, she walked toward a man in a dark suit shouting orders. He threw up his hand and motioned her to stop as soon as he saw her.
“I'm the person who called about the monster in the lake,” Norma explained.
“I don't know anything about a monster, miss. Someone found a headless body in a ditch along the highway over there.” He pointed to a large heap of dirty snow piled high next to a bus enclosure to his right. “You say you saw a monster?” he said, shaking his head with a wry smile forming on his lips.
“I was here around 7:30 to skate. In the middle of the lake, I came upon something weird, totally submerged in the ice except for one claw sticking out. I was scared shitless,” Norma said, pausing a beat to reconsider her choice of words, then continued, “I’d forgotten my phone, so I went home to call 9-1-1.”
Another officer, who had just parked his car, approached them wearing a Mount Glory uniform and, as a helicopter roared overhead, yelled, “Are you Norma, the one who called 9-1-1 about the monster in the lake?”
“I am.”
The most recent police officer to arrive, who reminded Norma of Tom Cruise in Top Gun, introduced himself as Mark Logan and showed her his ID. He saw the yellow tape and, turning back to the officer in the suit, asked, “What’s the crime scene tape all about?”
“Didn’t you hear on the radio …?” Seeing Norma, the man in the suit motioned over the police officer to put some distance between them and her.
Norma heard him say they had found a headless body along the road near the entrance to the arena. Afterward she heard, “No shit!” Then someone else said under his breath, “The man was torn to pieces and devoured by some kind of large animal.”
Norma heard a shout from the direction of the lake, and another officer ran toward two policemen standing about fifteen feet away from them. Norma couldn’t help but hear him shout, “They found a shitload of body parts on the other side of the parking lot on the ice. The ME says it looks like five or six more victims.”
More black-and-whites swarmed in. The whole area was crawling with police. The taller intimidating officer in the suit returned to Norma’s side and said, “I’m sorry if you heard any of that. Look, my name is Mason, and I’m the lead investigator on the case. You say you got a good look at some animal out on the lake. Was it a bear or a big cat like a lion or a tiger?”
“It wasn’t an animal. It was a monster,” Norma said, and described the thing under the ice in as much detail as she could remember.
Mason looked at Norma like she had two heads, and the Tom Cruise look-alike almost laughed when Mason bellowed in Norma’s ear, “You expect me to believe there is something on this earth that looks like what you just described?”
Mason groaned and cast a skeptical glance at the young officer, then said to him, “Who are you anyway?”
“I’m here to see the monster. This young lady says it’s frozen in the ice in the middle of the lake.”
Mason glared at him. “You mean you’re wasting the taxpayer’s money running down leads on monsters? Have you cuffed any vampires or werewolves lately?”
Norma had had enough of this bullshit and lit into Mason. “Are you going to be like one of those mindless assholes in the movies who chooses not to believe what his only eyewitness has seen?”
Norma’s outburst caught both officers off guard. They stood glaring at her in disbelief.
Mason said gruffly, “I don’t have time for this. Wild animals are on the loose in Mount Glory. They aren’t frozen in the lake.”
“Sorry, sir,” the Tom Cruise look-alike said. “Let me investigate what Miss Osgood saw for the record so I can put it in my report.”
Mason barked, “Go to it, Van Helsing,” and stormed off.
Norma looked to the handsome, young police officer. “Well, do you want me to show you or not?” Norma couldn’t believe how blue his eyes were.
“That is what I’m here for, Miss Osgood,” he said politely. “Lead the way.”
They headed for the middle of the lake. More policemen were combing the woods behind the location where they apparently had found the mutilated body and the other body parts. Logan finally broke the silence. “What kind of animal did you think this thing in the ice might be?”
“You know, I’m getting so tired of repeating myself. Like I told Mason, I never said anything about an animal. I said I saw a monster,” Norma said in an irritated tone.
“I assumed you meant a ferocious beast of some kind when you used that term. After all, the only monsters are in the movies.”
Norma shook her head at the continual skepticism she saw on everyone's faces, including her parents, when she used the word monster.
They walked carefully across the ice to a spot about midway in the center of the lake. As they approached, they could see the huge hairy hand protruding from the ice. When Norma saw the yellow eyes and the curled teeth under the surface, it chilled her just as it had when she had first seen them.
“Well, there it is,” Norma said proudly, as if she had just found the cure for cancer.
“So this is the monster?” Logan asked, looking down at the hideous monstrosity glaring up at him.
Norma looked at him in confusion, shocked at his lack of reaction to what was completely terrifying to her. “Of course it’s the monster. What does it look like to you?”
Logan couldn’t control his laughter as he slapped his thigh repeatedly and followed with an explanation. “You didn’t see the morning paper, did you?”
“Of course not. I don’t read the paper. I catch the news on the Net. What’s so funny about a monster that probably gobbled up the man down by the highway and all the others?” Norma asked in bewilderment.
“There was a picture of this thing in the local section of The Gazette this morning. I don’t know how it got stuck here in the ice, but this is only a movie prop. Some production company has scheduled to start filming today at the zoo. I can see how you thought it was real. It’s incredibly lifelike, but, like I said, there are no monsters except in the movies.”
Norma stood there, shaking her head in utter disbelief, feeling like a total lamebrain. Why did everyone know there were no real monsters but her? She was sixteen years old, and, somehow, she had never reached that conclusion for whatever reason.
“Hey, don’t feel bad. Think of all the people who watch those paranormal shows on the Syfy channel. You know stuff like Ghost Catchers and Finding Bigfoot. I read the other day that over 50 percent of the population believes in ghosts.”
Norma remained silent as Logan fastened his gaze on something else he saw in the ice. She didn’t tell him that her mother believed in ghosts, and, consequently, believed in them too.
“People believe in all kinds of crazy things,” he said good-naturedly. “Some even believe professional wresting is on the level. Can you imagine that?”
Norma couldn’t hold her tongue any longer at that remark. “I guess I’m pretty dense, but even I don’t believe that.”
“Well, good for you. I …” Logan paused midsentence and groaned as he saw a big
circle of what looked like blood on a section of the ice not far from the movie prop. He bent down and picked up a leaf stained with some of the red stuff and smelled it. Placing it in a small plastic container he had extracted from a pocket of his uniform, he said, “It does have a coppery smell, but I can’t tell if it’s real blood or movie blood. I’ll let the lab do a test on it.”
Norma could almost see in her mind’s eye an enormous lion bursting through the underbrush bordering the lake. Her eyes flitted back and forth at the possibility of an attack, but her fear subsided when she saw nothing wilder than about ten police officers searching the ice for clues.
“I think I’d better investigate who made these bloody tracks that lead toward the zoo,” Logan said, pointing to footsteps that began in the red circle and, after ten paces, disappeared entirely. “One thing is clear. The monster that made these tracks wore tennis shoes.” He smiled, and Norma’s face reddened.
“Aren't you going to at least draw your weapon in case something’s lurking nearby?”
“I can see you're still unnerved with this thing you saw and the death of the man. Let’s get in my cruiser, and I’ll stop at the zoo and take a look, and then I’ll drive you back to your car.
Norma thought it odd that Logan didn’t take her to her car first and then check out the zoo, but he was so cute, she didn’t complain. In fact, she hoped they would meet again sometime.
“I’ve got my high-powered rifle that could bring down an elephant,” Logan said with a smile. “You can stay in the car. You’ll be safe there. I’ll call a few more officers for backup to keep an eye on you to be sure. I won't be long. I just want to take a quick look.”
“No problem. I want to cooperate as much as I can. I brought my phone, and I can call 9-1-1 if anything weird occurs.”
Logan led her to his cruiser. While Norma settled into the front seat, he removed a rifle from the trunk and placed it on the backseat before he got in behind the wheel.
Logan pulled up outside the main lobby area of the zoo for purchasing tickets and souvenirs.