Shane continued staring out into the ocean as his father spoke; he could hear the deep New Jersey accent ringing through the air, but they had no impact on him, the way the sound of the wind brushing through the trees rarely registers.
“Shane!”
Shane blinked twice and then reluctantly turned his face toward his father, fighting the urge to keep his eyes locked on the water. It was as if a magnet had been attached to the horizon now, and Shane’s eyes filled with iron pellets.
“This is important, Shane. I know you’re still a little bit scared about what happened yesterday. So am I. But that’s why we need to handle this on our own. You get it, right?”
Shane nodded, but all the emotion he had conjured earlier to portray some frightened little boy was gone. Now that he was back here, so close to the beast again, so close to the behemoth that lived somewhere just off this coast, beneath the surface, he had lost the ability to keep up his scared kid act. All he wanted was just to see it. Just to feel its power.
Shane’s dad rolled his eyes and sighed, and then lightly gripped the back of his son’s neck and ushered him over to a place in the sand that was still aglow with moonlight. He stopped on the spot and then placed his hands on his son’s shoulders and pushed down gently. “Just sit here, boy. That’s it, just sit here. I’m going to my place on the dune, but I’ll be able to see you the whole time. Just as long as you stay right here.”
Shane sat obediently, only pivoting his body enough to watch his dad retreat to the brush before turning back to the ocean. With his back to the dunes, Shane unzipped the pouch and pulled out the smart phone that he had only gotten last Christmas. It’s all he had wanted at the time, never realizing how important it would come to be. He touched a series of buttons on the screen and pulled up the two applications beginning with the sound booster. He adjusted the settings of the boost to ten, and then opened the recording application. He opened the first and only recording in the library.
Whale sounds.
He turned the phone outwards toward the water, resting it tall on his lap against his belly, trying both to project the sounds and hide the device from his father.
This whole concept of what the man on the beach had told him. about using whale sounds as a lure, made no sense to Shane; even at nine, he knew that whatever noises came through the tiny phone speakers would get pushed around and covered up by the beach winds and crashing waves. How could the sound of the minke whale coming off the shore ever be heard by anything that lived deep in the ocean?
But his beast was something new in the world, unknown by the books of science, not mentioned among the popular ancient myths and stories that had survived over the centuries. And, just as Shane had read of sharks smelling a drop of blood in a million gallons of water, or the ability of bats to detect the flight of a housefly in the night, it wasn’t impossible that his creature had some similar extraordinary sense, only this one having to do with detecting the cries of distress.
Shane looked back over his shoulder, but he could see nothing other than a cold stretch of sand about eight feet in front of him. Beyond that was only the night, and somewhere his father lie in wait for a man that would never come.
Shane scooted forward a few feet and then dipped his hand back into the shallow nylon pouch. He felt nervous now, as if the eyes of his father were following his every move. He doubted his dad could see the details of what he was doing, but he couldn’t know for sure.
He felt in the bag until he touched the first of the six sharp points of the ice chipper and began breathing rapidly. He ran his finger down the middle of the tool, which was about eight inches in length, until he reached the end of the wooden handle. He wrapped his fingers around the chipper, feeling the thickness in his palm, imagining the strike that would come soon.
Shane saw the first appearance of daylight in the sky as he stood and began to walk toward the water. It would be light in a few minutes, but no one would be on the beach for another hour or so.
Shane stopped at the edge of the shore and within seconds heard his father behind him.
“Shane, what are you doing? I told you to stay put!” The anger in his whispers was as forceful as any scream Shane had ever heard.
But Shane didn’t budge. He stood tall and focused on the dark waters that spanned forever in front of him. The sounds of his dad grew closer now, and Shane knew the mission was over for the day. Tomorrow he would try something different. A new person to bring to the edge for his god.
Tomorrow was always waiting.
And then he heard the splash.
Chapter 11
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Danny Lynch slept in.
He didn’t set an alarm and didn’t care about the sunrise. He almost didn’t care if the creature was standing on the beach at this very second. He had no desire to feel the sand in his toes this morning, no desire to stare out at the sunrise. The ocean had won yesterday, perhaps permanently, and as Danny lay in his bed staring at the ceiling, he thought seriously about starting a new life somewhere far from the salty air. In the mountains perhaps. Maybe Arizona. The desert suddenly seemed like the best place in the world.
Danny turned and checked the clock. Still twenty minutes until the sun started breaking through. The beach would get a day off today. Maybe he would go again tomorrow, he thought, and then he flipped his pillow over and fell back asleep.
Chapter 12
Samuel lifted the low handles of the wheelbarrow once more and pushed forward, rolling the solid wooden wheel over a wide, smooth road. It was a path he had never known about before today, and it was a far more sensible path than he and Nootau had taken on the day they went to the sound. And today, Samuel was grateful for it. Nootau’s uncle was light for a man, that was true, but Samuel knew he would have never made it to the water taking Nootau’s route from days earlier.
But Kitchi knew the path well, giving clear instructions about where to turn and when to slow at every turn and rise in the dirt.
“You think because I am crippled I don’t know my own land?” Kitchi asked. “You would be wrong. I know it better than most because I am crippled. I listen, you see. And I learn. I drink, yes, but I listen and learn.”
Samuel took several rests during the trek; clear path or not, the haul was tiring, and Kitchi had little to argue about during these stops. Samuel was still a boy wheeling a grown man in a wheelbarrow, and he was not well known for his respiratory prowess.
But what Samuel lacked in fitness, he made up for in strength. His father was a big man, one of the tallest and brawniest in the colony, and Samuel had been blessed with this trait as well. He would be an important member of the colony one day, his mother always told him, and, she said, it was his father’s seed he had to thank for it.
Kitchi held the torch out in front of the wheelbarrow, and with the clarity of the sky above the two travelers, there was plenty of light to guide the way.
After returning home earlier in the day, following his initial encounter with Kitchi on the road, Samuel had spent most of his time worrying about the darkness of the night, and how he could ever make such a trip without the assistance of a bright sun. It seemed impossible. But when the time came to sneak from his house, almost immediately he formed the opposite concern. The veil of darkness that would blind him, but that would also keep this adventure secret, was lacking. The moon shone bright on the colony, as if marking it for some higher purpose, and the stillness of the night left every sound he made hanging in the air for all to hear.
But Samuel had made it to the longhouse unseen, and there he had found Kitchi sitting in his makeshift bed of bark and cornstalks, his face as awake and sober as a newborn fox. The wheelbarrow he had promised was also there, resting against the back wall, and Samuel wondered how he had managed to position the tool so conveniently and who he had gotten to place it there. Or perhaps he had known it would be there and chose the longhouse for just that purpose. Whichever the case, Samuel had
thought it wiser not to ask.
Samuel came to a small but steady slope rising in the path along a shallow ridge that wove through the forest. Kitchi immediately barked for him to put his weight behind it and start running; otherwise they would never make it. Samuel followed the order, driving his feet into the dirt, feeling the burn in his arms and thighs as he dug his heels back, dipping his head low as he heaved his body into the one-wheeled cart.
And with a power he was sure could only have come from his new god, they made it to the top, and as Samuel crested the slope, he could now see the shoreline of the sound below.
He had made it. It was all downhill from that point, and he needed only to keep the wheelbarrow slightly angled as they descended the path to keep it from getting away from him.
Still though, he thought, there was no way he could ever get Kitchi back to the village. The rise from the sound back to this point was simply too steep. Both he and Kitchi knew the truth of this, but the subject remained unspoken during their journey, though Samuel sensed the puzzle was always lingering in the space between them.
“When we get across the sound, you will have to carry me to the Yapam,” Kitchi said. “You know this, right? You must drag me to the ocean.”
There was a lilt of wonderment in Kitchi’s words, almost disbelief that he had arrived even to this point in the journey. Samuel could only imagine the last time the man had ever seen the big waters of the sound, let alone the Great Western Sea.
“A wheelbarrow in the sand is like a woman in battle,” he continued. “It will only slow us down.”
With this last sentence, Kitchi erupted into a full-throated laugh, but Samuel knew it had little to do with his joke. He was in the land of Samuel’s new god now—The Croatoan—and that was nothing short of euphoric.
Samuel couldn’t help but smile himself at the thought of the creature. For the first time since this quest began, he realized he, too, may be seeing it again shortly. All his work and worry to get Nootau’s uncle to the beach had kept his mind occupied, but now that the job was nearing completion, he could take a moment to relish his position. And he was suddenly flooded with energy.
Samuel heaved the wheelbarrow up to the side of the canoe, the same one that had been swept away the night Nootau was taken by the Croatoan. Samuel had spotted the canoe shortly after Nootau was killed, floating just down the shoreline from where they had left it originally. It hadn’t been swept away at all, it seemed, only moved temporarily by the tide and breeze. Samuel had wondered if that, too, had been the work of his new god, or the heavens, perhaps, playing its role in presenting the deity to him. It didn’t much matter to Samuel which; for him, it all ended in the same place.
Kitchi crawled inside the narrow opening of the boat with sneaky deftness and within moments, Samuel launched the boat into the water. In a few short minutes, they were across the sound.
“Get on my back,” Samuel ordered.
Samuel stooped in front of Kitchi, who was sitting upright and eager in the canoe, and the thin Algonquin grabbed Samuel around the neck, clutching his fingers at the boy’s throat. Samuel grunted and stood tall and then began the heavy slog toward the ocean.
Helpless, Kitchi could only drag his toes across the surface of the sand, making the journey through the thick powder all the more difficult. But Samuel was in a place of joy and strength now, knowing where he was headed, and the calm smile that extended above his chin never left his face. By the time he reached the top of the first dune and looked down on the shimmering waters of the Great Western Ocean, he was nearly delirious with glee.
Kitchi released his grip from Samuel’s neck and collapsed to the sand, and immediately positioned himself on his elbows so that he was facing the ocean. “When does it come?” he asked, almost giggling. “What do we have to do to bring it from the sea?”
The questions were those of a child, Samuel thought, as was the pitch of the man’s voice. “It is your story,” he replied. “You should know these answers better than anyone.”
Samuel looked down at Kitchi, challenging him for some form of reprimand, and, at first, he could see in Kitchi’s eyes that the man was eager to offer one. But Samuel was a temple of confidence now, standing atop the dune like a king, shoulders and jaw high against the horizon, engorged with the power of his deity. Samuel was in control now, and he knew his face reflected the feeling.
Kitchi swallowed and lowered his gaze back to the crashing waves of the ocean.
“We wait now,” Samuel said, “just as Nootau and I did. It will come or it won’t. All we can do now is wait.”
Chapter 13
“Shane, what are you doing? I told you to stay put.”
Shane pulled the ice chipper from the pouch and gripped it with a strength that felt foreign to him. He felt a ripple in his undeveloped bicep and forearm that suggested there was more to his form than what he saw in the mirror each morning. It could be a false sense of strength, Shane recognized this possibility; after all, he wouldn’t reach puberty for another three or four years. But there was a new power inside of him. A new belief in his life that filled him with vigor, and he was at a point now, both in life and at that very moment, that the only way he could see to move forward was to believe in this power.
He closed his eyes and focused on the approaching sound of his father’s footsteps, feeling the grains of sand at his feet as they pushed through the narrow cracks of his toes.
“Shane!”
Shane opened his eyes to see the top of the sun pushing through to the horizon, and rising in front of the star, a dark shadow was being born from the sea.
The dark mass moved quickly upward, rising so that its shoulders breached the sea like two mountains, pushing forward through the water as it rose, encroaching the shoreline with a speed Shane would never have believed possible.
“Oh my god!”
Shane heard his father’s voice directly behind him—he could almost feel the breath on the back of his neck—and without allowing another thought to enter his mind, Shane spun around and dropped to his knees, and then plunged the six prongs of the ice chipper into the top of his father’s left foot.
Gerald DeRose screamed in agony, the sound rattling the dawn air like a gunshot. People would come, Shane thought, certainly the man in the house above them.
But it was a secondary thought to Shane now. All he could think about now was the Black and Purple man.
Shane looked up at his father’s face, measuring his level of incapacitation by the grimace of pain. But there was only disbelief in his father’s eyes as he stared down at his son, and Shane imagined how difficult that must have been for him to avert his gaze from the majesty of the approaching giant.
“Shane? What are..?”
They were the final three words Shane would ever hear his father say. With both hands around the handle of the ice chipper now, Shane lifted the weapon from the top of his father’s foot and then spun it deftly in his hands so that the daggers were pointing straight to the sky. Shane shot himself upward like a rocket ship, feeling a similar strength that he had felt in his biceps now in his thighs, and he thrust the ice chipper into his father’s throat. He twisted it once, hoping to lodge it there tightly, but it was barely hanging on when he let go.
Gerald DeRose grabbed at the kitchen tool with his hands and pulled it from his larynx, only making the damage worse. The opening in his jugular vein was wide, severe, and blood erupted from the wound like lava from a volcano.
Shane watched in astonishment, his neck and face twitching in a combination of fear and horror and wonder, both at what he was seeing and at what he had just done. But the feeling lasted only a moment; his god was coming, preparing to devour, and there was nothing else in the world right now but that.
Shane walked slowly backward toward the dunes where his father had lain in wait only moments earlier, and as he retreated, he fixated on the gashing mouth of the sea god approaching.
Shane looked down to his fath
er now who was writhing on his back, attempting desperately to keep the blood that still remained in his head from escaping through the awful wound in his neck. But there was no stopping the flood, and Shane prayed he wouldn’t die before the god reached him. He couldn’t know for sure, but he assumed the struggle of the prey would enhance the scene he was only moments away from witnessing.
The giant beast didn’t hesitate as it stood over Shane’s father, showing no desire to taunt or admire its victim. It was all animal as it reached down with its massive arms and grabbed Gerald DeRose by the sides of his head, lifting him high, seeming to take just a moment to study his eyes before sinking his teeth into his neck at the wound site.
Shane reveled in the glory of the scene as he sat behind the thicket of sea grass, knees pulled tightly to his chest, never blinking as he watched the Croatoan devour his father, wondering which was greater, the sight of the event, or the sound.
Chapter 14
The night was growing lighter, and sleep was inevitable for both Kitchi and Samuel. But Samuel knew he wouldn’t be the first to fall. He had seen the god already, and this fact alone was enough to see him through for a few more hours. He looked over at the Algonquin uncle of his best friend, Nootau, and could see the man was beginning to drift.
“You won’t see it if you’re sleeping,” Samuel warned, teasing the man, knowing there was little Kitchi could do now to will himself to consciousness.
Kitchi blinked and grunted himself awake. “I wasn’t sleeping,” he replied. But within a few seconds, his eyelids began to quiver again until finally coming to rest tight and still.
Samuel looked out to the dark churn of the sea and smiled, and then gave a silent prayer that it would come tonight, on this evening where he had expended so much work and which had culminated in the perfect climate.
The Origin (The Sighting #2) Page 8