“I don’t blame you, Matunaagd,” Nadie replied, sensing the guilt flowing from her husband. “But the stories from Samuel are confusing to me.” She looked away, shaking her head, trying to organize the thoughts that were scrambled inside it. “I want to believe him, and I suppose I do, but if Nootau wanted to go to the Yapam, he knew to ask us for permission. It was not a point of debate.”
“He is...he was twelve, Nadie.”
Nadie furrowed her brow, trying to find the point.
“I was mating fishing expeditions at that age.”
“He is dead!” Nadie screamed, and then instantly settled her demeanor. “I don’t care what you were doing when you were twelve. You’ve had forty years since. For Nootau, it is the last age he will ever experience.”
Matunaagd turned his stare back to the bed where Kitchi still lay. The crippled man’s head was now resting back in a drunken state against the wall. His eyes were slightly open, presumably from the sound of his sister’s cry, and they shifted toward Matunaagd, catching his look just before Matunaagd looked back to his wife.
“I’m sorry, Nadie,” Matunaagd whispered. “It was my fault.”
Nadie shook off the apology, as if no longer able to bear the sound or her husband’s voice. “It wasn’t your fault, Matunaagd. I have no anger toward you.”
Nadie walked back inside the main room of the wigwam and sat at a desk she had helped construct for Nootau out of chestnut and pine only months earlier. She sat straight in the chair for a few beats, staring at the wall, and then put her head in her hands and began to cry.
Matunaagd looked back to his wife and then walked out of the wigwam.
The desk beneath Nadie’s cheeks had begun to form pools of tears in the crevices of the imperfect surface, and Nadie couldn’t imagine the sorrow would ever end. Each sob jogged another memory of her son, each more meaningful than the last. And just as Nadie was rounding into moanful release, a voice from across the room spoke.
“Nadie.”
Nadie nearly screamed at the sound of her own name. She turned to see her brother, his head in the same position as earlier, only his eyes were open now, thin and alert.
“Kitchi?”
Having seized the attention of his sister, Kitchi turned away and stared at the wall in front of him. He lit an oak leaf rolled with kinnikinnick and exhaled the smoke slowly, allowing it to dissipate before speaking. “Have you ever heard the story?”
Nadie blinked several times and shook her head, unclear about what her brother was asking. “The story? What story?”
Kitchi closed his eyes in a long blink and then turned his head toward his sister, opening his eyes slowly and softening his look upon her. “The one about the Croatoan.”
Chapter 6
Danny had finished adjusting the speakers on the porch well before lunchtime, and by mid-afternoon, he had tested the sound a dozen times, positioning himself at various places on the beach, testing whether he could hear the low bass cries of the whales from a variety of places. He even waded out into chest-high water at one point, nearly becoming hypothermic, catching the confused, disapproving looks of an elderly couple taking a hearty stroll across the sands of Wickard Beach.
Danny realized his testing was largely unnecessary, since the recorded sounds of the minke whale would need to penetrate the surface of the ocean and be heard by the sea beast from beneath the water. And even at the highest volume, Danny could really only hear the feedback from the speakers, not the impossibly low sounds of the actual whales.
He had dropped Sam off immediately after breakfast, a breakfast that required him to dodge her questions, making sure never to get close to the subject of Rove Beach or the sighting.
Or his encounters with the god.
As far as Sam knew, Danny was in the throes of a mid-life crisis, the source of which was a messy divorce and a burning need to find meaning in his life. Collecting royalty checks from a hit song was a nice way to feed your belly, he had told her, but it fell far short of feeding your soul. It was a good line, he thought, one he was proud of coming up with on the spot.
Still, there was something about the woman that touched him the wrong way. She had come on strong the previous night at Mason’s when they had met over flat beer and a game of darts. Danny had planned to spend the night playing alone, but Sam had sauntered over, watched for a minute, and then invited herself in to the game. Danny had pegged her as kind of ditzy, frankly, a past-her-prime bar chick with a moderate drinking problem who was looking for a string of good times to fill up her weekly calendar.
But the next morning had revealed someone a bit different. She was suddenly sharp, aware of herself, and whereas the two or three one-night stands Danny had had in his life preferred discreet mornings and silent exits, Samantha chose to stay a while.
And then came breakfast, where the questions had come fast and loose, challenging even, with a real desire to know about Danny’s life. She’d asked more about him after one night than most people did in a year.
Danny sat at the edge of the faded Adirondack chair—the only piece of furniture on the porch—and methodically began to flip through the first few sections of the Washington Post, stopping when he reached the local Metro section. He tossed the rest of the paper to the floor of the porch and began scanning each of the columns, looking for any headline that might suggest the beast’s appearance. This was his morning routine for the past two years, and though he was confident now that he had landed in the right place by coming to Wickard Beach, old habits died hard.
Danny found nothing unusual in the local section of the national paper, so, as was his practice, Danny moved on to the local rag—The Wickard Beach Times. Danny could read the entire paper in ten minutes, so he normally read more than just the headlines, trying to immerse himself in the local culture. He had just finished reading the first sentence of the front page, when something—he couldn’t have said it was a sound, but rather the sensing of a feeling—caused him to look up and south down the beach.
Above the surface of the water, barely within the range of Danny’s vision, were two figures rising just above the surface of the water.
Danny stood and walked to the railing of the porch, leaning forward as far as he could without tumbling over the rickety plank. But he’d barely narrowed the distance at all and was still well too far away to even guess what he was seeing. The figures could have been a pair of birds or simple debris.
Or the creature.
Danny blindly reached to his left, feeling for the binoculars that he had always kept beside him, but his fingers felt only splintered wood. “Dammit!”
Danny rushed back inside and immediately saw the binoculars sitting on the bar. He swiped them and then, instead of heading back to the porch for a magnified look, he rushed down the stairs and toward the water, scaling over the dunes until he was standing on the beach.
He knew the decision was a mistake even before he arrived on the sand. He had no doubt that whatever objects he had just seen floating on the water would now be gone when he looked through the lenses. The elusiveness of the god was a curse now. The binoculars weren’t on the porch for a reason; they weren’t where they should have been because it was the intent of the universe for him never to see the creature again.
Danny took a deep breath and then another, internalizing his feelings, noticing the manic nature of his thoughts. He closed his eyes and lifted his head slowly, turning it in the direction of the figures on the water, keeping the binoculars down by his side.
He opened his eyes again. And the figures were still there.
The two dark blobs atop the water were shaped differently from one another, he could tell that much, so it was likely that whatever the things were, they weren’t birds. But it was just as unlikely they had to do with the creature either.
For a moment, Danny considered not looking through the binoculars at all, and instead turning back to the house, packing what little possessions he had brought with him,
and setting off to some dry, landlocked state up in the Rocky Mountains. It would have been a safer decision for both his sanity and his life. After all, what if one of the things on the water was indeed the creature, and this new vision that Danny caught of it through the magnified lenses converted him back to the addict he had been before, instead of the hunter he had vowed to become?
But this was the moment to which Danny had committed the last two years of his life. He was confident he could see it again without falling under its spell, but if he saw it kill again, that was a more unknown proposition. Danny compared it to recovering alcoholics. Most could walk into a bar without succumbing to the addiction, but few could actually take a drink.
Danny took another deep breath and cleared his mind of any thoughts. He lifted the binoculars slowly and then stared out to the waves, and within seconds, he could tell at once that neither of the figures bobbing amongst the waves was the creature. They were too small, both in height and width, and there was something less secure about the way they drifted in the current, as if struggling for stability.
But Danny was right about the presence of something alive, and by the looks of it now, at least one of the figures was a person.
The object furthest out appeared to be a head, and it was just barely above the surface of the water, though still relatively close to the shoreline.
Danny lowered the binoculars and walked up to the water’s edge, glancing down the beach in either direction to see if anyone else was in the vicinity. It was a cold afternoon, and there were only a handful of people as far as he could see, several of whom were fishermen who had set up in various positions well down the beach from where he stood currently.
Danny broke into a steady jog in the direction of the “swimmer,” and within twenty seconds or so he was standing parallel with him. It looked as if the person was trying to wade in the same spot, to stay as far out as possible without being below the water, but he was losing his fight with the current, and it was slowly bringing him further and further from shore.
Danny flipped off his sandals and waded into the ocean, at first just up to his shins, and then waist deep. At this distance, he could see the clear shape of a head, and a full head of hair—there was no question now that this was a person. But why was he just drifting there? And what was floating behind him?
“Hey!” Danny screamed. “Do you need help?”
The figure turned instantly toward Danny’s voice, and Danny noted immediately the wide, terrified eyes of the boy he had met on the beach earlier that morning.
Shane.
Danny lifted his shirt above his head and tossed it to the surf, his throw not quite making it to the sand, and then he began to swim toward the boy.
“What are you doing out here,” Danny called, keeping his chin above the water with each stroke, his eyes focused on the boy. As he neared him, he could see that the other thing on the water was a bag of some sort, a backpack, a Jansport by the looks of it, and it was sitting atop a round inflatable.
The boy turned back toward the horizon, and then made a feeble effort to move south, down the beach and away from Danny. He could barely move his arms, and Danny imagined he must be close to hypothermia in these temperatures.
Danny followed him and was now within grabbing distance of him. But he restrained himself. At this distance, Danny figured he could bring the boy in, even if he fought, be he didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances. Maybe he could just talk the boy into shore.
“What are you doing out here, Shane?”
Shane looked to be nearing panic now, and he glanced once out toward the horizon before looking back at Danny. “I know he wwwants it,” he said, Shane’s blue lips struggling to form the words.
But the sentence, even with its lack of grace, sent a chill down Danny’s already ice-cold spine. “He?”
Shane closed his eyes, and Danny thought he saw a smile appear for just a moment. “The Black and Purple Man.”
Danny nodded, suddenly terrified at his position on the water. The god was here, in Wickard Beach, at least that’s what he now believed. And twenty yards out from the shore was not the place to be. He looked out in the distance of the endless surface of black-green water, and envisioned the beast rising from the surface. It was the game he played as a boy, only then it was the fin of a shark he imagined.
“What does he want, Shane?”
Shane swallowed hard, and somehow his eyes grew even wider than they already were. And then he glanced toward the backpack.
“You’ve brought him food, Shane? It’s food for The Black and Purple Man?”
Shane smiled widely now, there was no mistaking it. And then he gave a slow, confident nod. Danny recognized the spell he was under; he could see it in Shane’s every movement.
“Well, why don’t we go in and let him come to us? It’s very cold, Shane. We won’t last out here much longer.”
“Not until he eats.”
Danny knew he had no choice now but to grab the boy. If he didn’t, he was either going to drown or freeze to death. And if he waited too long, both would meet that fate. “We’ll feed him from the sand.”
Danny tried one last time, moving closer to Shane as he spoke, his hands searching beneath the water for one of the boy’s arms.
“I think he wants him here,” Shane said. “It will be easier.”
“Him?”
Danny looked again at the backpack, which looked stuffed to its limits.
And just as Danny grabbed Shane’s wrist beneath the water, he heard the cries of a baby.
Chapter 7
“Of course I know of the Croatoan. They have been our neighbors for centuries. And we have existed peacefully with the tribe for as long as that.”
Kitchi nodded, as if he had expected this very reply from his sister. “Yes, the Croatoan tribe. But somehow, I think you know I’m not asking about that. I think you have heard the story—the story of the Croatoan—from our Numohshomus.”
Nadie stood quickly, scoffing and shaking her head as she rose, and then she strode with purpose to the doorway. She had heard many stories from their grandfather, most of which were to do with spirits and ghosts, the rising dead or some other such monstrous nonsense. “I love you, Kitchi, but I cannot see your face in this moment. I am mourning the death of my only son; I will not entertain the talk of foreign myths that were once told by grandfather.”
“Sit down, Nadie,” Kitchi barked.
Nadie turned in shock toward her brother, her jaw in a clench that signaled preparation for a fight. She would have fought a bear at this moment, and would have had no reservations about mixing it up with her brother as well, crippled or not.
But there was a tenor in Kitchi’s voice that penetrated Nadie. It was grave, in a way he usually was not, and it completely masked the drunkenness that had certainly set into his cells. She couldn’t remember another time when she had heard him speak in this way. She walked back to the chair in front of the desk and this time sat high and rigid, staring at her brother with a look of challenge and cynicism.
“I always thought the Croatoan was a myth also. You think you are the only skeptic in the family, Nadie?”
Nadie didn’t answer.
“At one time, only a few generations back from ours, there were stories of people with white skin who lived across the Yapam. They were also a myth. Even though these white faces had been seen before, seen by our people, those who told their stories to others, of their encounters with these white men, were dismissed as storytellers and myth-makers.”
“It is not the same, Kitchi. Those tales were of men not monsters. Most Algonquin suspected there were others in this world besides us, others beyond the tribes, beyond the Yapam that we could not reach.”
Kitchi shrugged. “Perhaps. But it was still a story. Suspected but not known for sure. Just as we may believe there is life outside of this world. Beyond the depth of the sun and the night sky. We suspect but don’t believe. Because we cannot see
it.”
“What is your point, Kitchi?” Nadie was losing patience with her brother, regretful that she had engaged him. “My husband has left in a state of dismay and I must find him before the sun sets. I must make my house right again before nightfall.”
“Numohshomus lived amongst the Croatoans when he was a boy. Were you aware of that?”
Nadie shook her head reflexively, furrowing her forehead, shaken by this revelation concerning her grandfather. “Lived with them? Why?”
“His father conducted trade with the Croatoan, it was his business, and for most of the cycles, he was prosperous in trade. But not all. There came consecutive cycles of frost and drought, and at one point disease left the village depleted of men to work, and at the end of the third or fourth cycle, he was despondent, indebted.”
“So?”
“He had offered his son, our Numohshomus, as collateral.”
“My god.”
“And when he couldn’t deliver for what he had been paid by the Croatoan, he had no choice but to give over his son to them.”
“Is this true?” Nadie whispered, her voice a combination of both fascination and disgust.
“It is true. I believe it is.”
“But he returned to the village. It is how we came to be here now.”
“His time with the Croatoan was short—he said that the village was able to pool enough resources to buy him back within a full cycle. But he spent time amongst them, as a slave in practice, and during those days, he saw the sacrifices they offered.”
“Sacrifices?” Nadie scoffed. “What do you speak of, Kitchi? Sacrifices? The Croatoans are not like us, that much I will grant you, and on the few occasions when we have crossed paths, admittedly, I’ve been less than impressed with their demeanor. But they are not an uncivilized people. They are not like those empires to the south that fell when the white man arrived. The Croatoans don’t slaughter virgins for the pleasure of their gods. They don’t sacrifice in exchange for peace or bounty. Or whatever it is those earlier people did it for.”
The Origin (The Sighting #2) Page 5