Monster in the Mountains

by Peacock, Shane;

  Copyright © 2003, 2019, Shane Peacock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

  Nimbus Publishing Limited

  3660 Strawberry Hill Street, Halifax, NS, B3K 5A9

  (902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca

  Printed and bound in Canada

  NB1390

  Cover design: Cyanotype Books

  Interior design: Jenn Embree

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Monster in the mountains / Shane Peacock.

  Names: Peacock, Shane, author.

  Description: “A Dylan Maples adventure”. | Originally published: Toronto : Puffin Canada, 2003.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20189068299 | Canadiana (ebook) 20189068302 | ISBN 9781771087155 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771087162 (HTML)

  Classification: LCC PS8581.E234 M68 2019 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23

  Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

  For my friends, the Prince of the Air and the Great Farini: Jay Cochrane and William Hunt. Forever young.

  “There’s no use trying,” [Alice] said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”

  “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

  Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

  Harrison Area Map

  1

  Into the Upper World

  Walter Middy tossed and turned. His eyes flickered beneath his closed lids, racing back and forth inside his sockets. His bed was wet with sweat in the warm BC night. It ran along his brow and trickled down his cheeks. His dream had come again. The monster was in the woods. He saw it through the dark shadows, the shades of green, staring at him. Walter Middy came suddenly awake. Now his eyes were as wide as moons. He sat on the edge of his bed, his heart thumping.

  Kicking back. That’s what I was trying to do. I’d just been through this harrowing experience of getting my butt lost in Dinosaur Provincial Park in southern Alberta, and then being chased by this weirdo called “the Reptile.” Now he was on his way back to jail, and my parents, who had rushed out west from our home in Toronto like a couple of mother wolves, were back in charge of me. Usually at fourteen you don’t like to think of Ma and Pa as running your life. But I’d had enough adventure to last me a long, long time. So I was chillin’…working on it, anyway.

  I had draped myself across the back seat of our rented Jeep, the seat belt kind of on. The tunes were exploding from a playlist I’d put on Mom’s phone and rocketing into my head—whenever I can get them bouncing off my eardrums like that, doing them serious damage, man, that’s the best. The sky was clear blue and distant, like it always seems in Alberta, and I was watching the world go by. Every now and then I’d think about the Reptile, seven feet tall with a shaved head, tracking down me and my buddies in that desert-like park, holding us captive until we escaped. It seemed like a nightmare to me, not something that really happened. It was still freaking me out. But I just couldn’t admit that to Mom and Dad. After a while, I started thinking about it too much. The Reptile’s face was in my head.

  I couldn’t concentrate on the tunes any more, so I took off the earphones and snuggled down into the seat, curled up, kind of hugging myself. That blue sky was passing over. I was tired out, so wasted….

  I thought I heard a sound in the distance, like the squawk of a goose or something. It took a while before I realized what it was.

  It was Mom. She was turning to look back at me, with this sweet smile on her face. It’s the one she uses when she’s trying to look “pleasant,” as she says. Normally, she’d be pretty upset by the fact that I’d been spending my time lying on the back seat listening to music while we were driving through a place I’d never seen before. Mom and Dad expect me to at least glance out the window when we’re travelling. But here she was with that great big smile. Her head seemed like it had swivelled around so it was on backwards. She was looking right at me.

  I sat up. I felt dizzy at first, but then everything in the Jeep cleared up. In fact, it got very clear.

  “We’re nearing the mountains, sweetie. Care to take a look?”

  Why we’re heading west towards the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, instead of east in a plane from Calgary to home, is another story. Mom and Dad are always worried about something they call my “well-being.” And after what I’d been through in Alberta, they were absolutely paranoid about it. They thought I needed some time off. And they were right. A trip to BC, they told me, is like a trip into another world, where everything and everyone is totally relaxed. It’s more beautiful in British Columbia, they said, than I could imagine.

  “Its gorgeous,” said Mom.

  “It’s Lotusland, buddy,” said Dad. “It’s Wonderland.”

  “Mountains,” said Mom.

  “Giant trees,” said Dad.

  “Nature!” they said together.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as I get to catch some rays, play some tunes, maybe put in some swim time, great. I just wanted to relax. I doubted my parental units really understood what that meant. They’d packed a tent and three sleeping bags into the Jeep. They’re into that kind of back-to-nature stuff. Most adults from the city are. But it sort of makes me puke.

  “So, what do you think?” asked Dad, pointing out the front window towards our destination.

  “Nice. Nice mountains, Dad.”

  “Are you really looking at them?” inquired Mom. She reads me like a book.

  So, I took a look. And I must admit, I was kind of blown away. We were nearing a town called Canmore, getting close to the BC border. They were mountains all right, a wall of them approaching from the distance. I’d seen lots of mountains on TV and in movies, but man, these were real mountains. They loomed like rocky monsters in the sky. And as we moved towards them they kept getting bigger and bigger. It was June, but I could actually see snow way, way up on their distant peaks.

  I’d been reading a bit about BC, using this guidebook Mom and Dad had purposely left on the back seat that morning. They think it’s important to study every place you go to. I started leafing through it, reading bits here and there. It actually had some neat stuff in it. BC has rainforests and beautiful lakes…and lots of legends about weird creatures that live there. In fact, the British Columbia Cryptozoology Club claims that its province has more unclassified animals than any place in the world. Just what I need…monsters. But I read on, to a page headlined “Demons of the Deep.” It described BC’s famous sea serpents—like the gigantic Cadborosaurus, which haunts the Pacific coastline, and the awesome Ogopogo, the huge prehistoric snake that lives in Okanagan Lake. Some claim its black-and-green torso twists up above the blue waters to this day, its horse-like head surfacing in plain sight.

  I turned the page.

  BC’s greatest monster, the one and only sasquatch, terror of the forests, was staring back at me. The first sentence said there was evidence it really existed.

  I closed the book
. My pulse was quickening.

  I’d been kind of freaked out by stories like this long before I went to Alberta: by ghosts and weird, lurking creatures. I used to hate the dark when I was a little kid and I guess I hadn’t entirely grown out of it. In the old days, I was the worst guy for thinking there were monsters in my closet or under my bed. Now I dream up other things. I’m cursed with a wild imagination. My nightmare in Alberta hadn’t helped matters.

  “We’ll be in Banff in twenty minutes,” remarked Dad, who had the map pinned between his legs. He’s a lawyer: John A. Maples, always full of information and opinions. Mom’s a private-school teacher: Laura S., a bit of a hugger and kisser. As he talked, she kept glancing back at me.

  “Banff has a population of 8,666 granola-loving souls,” Dad explained, sounding, as usual, like he was reading from a tourist pamphlet. “It is home to one of the country’s most spectacular CP Hotels, opened in 1888, just after Sir John A. Macdonald put his legendary railway through the mountains. It looks like a huge Canadian castle in the wilderness.”

  I didn’t care about any castle in the wilderness just then…unless it had a hot tub.

  “Would you like to camp out tonight, honey?”

  Mom wouldn’t usually give me a choice like that. It showed how careful she and Dad were being about my feelings. I had even heard them use the word “fragile” about me. In a way, that sounded great. The more fragile I could be, the more I could make things break in my direction.

  “Uh, maybe not tonight, Mom. Could we stay in the hotel?”

  “That,” exclaimed Dad, “is a fine idea, champ!”

  He actually calls me champ. Still.

  Funny thing about this place in the wilderness: you get to it on a four-lane highway. But the coolest thing about it was entering it through the mountains. It was the weirdest feeling. It was like we fell into a hole or something that had no bottom: except we went skyward, pulled up the road into a fantasy world. Into Wonderland, I suppose.

  Things started to get very weird from that moment on.

  The elk wandering around on the streets of Banff should have told me something. By that I don’t mean that the elk should have been talking to me, though by the time my trip to BC was over that would have made perfect sense. I just mean that elk casually strolling down the main drag of the place didn’t even raise an eyebrow from the locals. The Americans, and there was a pile of them in Banff, kind of stared at them with their mouths wide open. Mom and Dad were all giddy about the elk in a different way and kept telling me that this was how life should be, that nature should “co-exist” with human beings. But I bet Dad would have called the police if one of those things had wandered into our backyard in Toronto, especially if it pooped on Mom’s “organic” garden. Here, they were “magnificent creatures.”

  Banff is a sort of paradise for people with money. There’s lots of stuff to buy: clothes, skiing gear, fancy food. And chocolate stores everywhere. Some looked like they were made out of candy. The Tweedledum and Tweedledee Emporium was the best. It was designed like a rainforest inside, with spooky animal sounds and thunder bursts and candies hanging from the trees; candies they claimed were both “healthy and sweet.” The old bookstores with the wooden floors were neat too, with stuffed Harry Potters and Gandalfs peering out windows like they were alive. One store had a Humpty Dumpty falling off the front door.

  Mom and Dad decided to take me to a museum. For most kids that would be a big drag, but I actually don’t hate museums, not too much anyway. History kind of gets my juices flowing. I know that’s strange. But I just can’t get over how freaky the past seems. And this place had one thing that really got to me.

  I was walking along looking at the five millionth exhibit about the Canadian Pacific Railway being built through the mountains, getting a bit bored, when I suddenly saw a monster, the monster. I spotted it clean across a room and turned and walked slowly towards it. Behind the glass I could see some plastic trees, some fake dirt, and then this amazing face staring over at me. I went right up to the exhibit and put my nose so close to the glass that my breath made a circle of fog on it. The creature looked like a huge ape, but there was something human about it, especially in its eyes, the sasquatch read the sign. “The Salish people, indigenous to this beautiful land, called it Sesquac, a wild beast that lives in the forests and is better off left alone. In the United States it is known as Bigfoot. It is just one of the many legendary creatures that live in British Columbia.” I looked deeply into its wild face. A wave of fear came over me. How could I be so frightened of a model in a museum?

  Then, out of nowhere, I heard a little girl’s voice.

  “My father told me that when he was young, all the children who grew up in British Columbia were told stories about the sasquatch, and believed in it,” she said. Her voice sounded like one you’d hear in a dream. She was so close that she seemed to be standing right beside me, but when I turned to look at her, there was no one there. Then I realized Dad was saying something.

  “Dylan?…Dylan? Wake-ee, wake-ee. Never seen a monster before?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Don’t tease him,” whispered Mom to Dad. She didn’t look too pleased. But Dad walked up and clapped his arm around me. He had his own way of trying to make me feel better: his man-to-man solution.

  “You’d think they could do a better job than that,” he snickered. “If that thing had come out of my closet, or out from under the bed when I was a kid, I think I would have died laughing.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “I’d put the sasquatch on par with Santa Claus,” he smirked. “Man, that looks fake.” He turned and walked away. But I just stood there. Mom gave my arm a squeeze and then rapped him on the elbow when she caught up to him.

  A few minutes later I was still standing near the exhibit. “Uh, Dylan?” Mom called from across the room. “Let’s get to the hotel.” She looked a little worried.

  I moved away, glancing back at the sasquatch. When I tried to find Mom, she was gone. I guess she and Dad were doing that thing they often do: giving me “some space.” I walked like a bit of a zombie, feeling spooked even though I knew Dad was right about how fake the exhibit looked. I wanted to give my head a shake and knock out my fear.

  Soon I heard Mom’s and Dad’s voices near the exit. As I moved towards them I passed a mirror labelled The Looking Glass. On its frame was a button with a slot. “You’ve Seen the Past, Now Look into Your Future,” it said. Twenty-five cents. I pulled out a quarter, dropped it into the slot, and pushed the button. A card immediately came out.

  Beware of the monsters in your mind. They are here in Wonderland.

  Mom and Dad walked behind me back down the main street. The mountains loomed over the town. The hotel was in front of us, a castle on the horizon. Mom lowered her voice, but I caught bits of what she was saying. Something about me still being in shock from last week.

  I clutched the fortune card in my hand. It was wet with my sweat. Something didn’t make sense. I didn’t believe anyone could predict the future, but I was starting to get the awful feeling that something bizarre was going to happen to me on this trip. I felt like I was falling into something bad…and I couldn’t do anything about it.

  2

  Land of Dreams

  The next day we were up early and drove to a place called Lake Louise, about a spitball shot from the BC border. As we approached it, going through the Bow Valley on the Trans-Canada Highway, Mom and Dad were getting even more excited. We were about to really get back to nature.

  Ever since a few kilometres east of Banff, we had been in a national park. There’s a whole series of them out there, full of wild animals, mountains, trees, lakes…and all sorts of old people like my parents who want to walk around in the trees, hugging them, and getting teary-eyed looking at the water. Dad said nine million people came there every year.

  The hot
el where we stayed, the giant Château Lake Louise, up a really steep road into nowhereland, was actually pretty neat. The lake was right in front of it. It had this colour to it, sort of blue but not blue like any lake I’d ever seen—it kind of glowed. There were tourists from all over the world there, staring and taking millions of pictures, and tons of fake Mounties and beavers, of course.

  Mom and Dad insisted we do some hiking. We climbed a path that led into the mountains, where we found some alpine lakes. One was as smooth as glass and called Mirror Lake. Legend has it that wild goats used to come there to look at their reflections and comb their beards. That kind of fit the place.

  We hit the road early the following morning, and within ten minutes we entered BC. British Columbia, Land of Dreams, read a big blue sign. We went in through a “pass” in the mountains. These passes are like giant cuts through the rocks that Indigenous people used in the old days and that the Canadian Pacific Railway followed to get to Vancouver. This one had a great name: Kicking Horse Pass. Dad went on and on at this point about how they built the CPR. He said that all sorts of scandals and heroes came out of it, that they had to blast their way through the mountains, that people died scouting it out and building it, that guys with bizarre names like Cornelius Van Horne and Sir Sandford Fleming and “Hell’s Bells” Rogers helped do it—all to bind Canada together from coast to coast.

  I didn’t listen to all of what he said, but looking out the window and catching sight of the railway tracks winding along through the mountains really made my imagination run wild. It must have been quite the trip building that thing.

  “Selkirk Mountain Range, Rogers Pass, population zero,” barked Dad from the pilot seat.

  I caught sight of another sign going by. Avalanche Area, Do Not Stop, it warned.

  “What does that mean?” I asked shakily. “Are we going to get nailed by an avalanche?”