Monster in the Mountains

by Peacock, Shane;

“Why then?” I asked.

  “Because I’d seen it before…in my dreams.”

  At that moment I could have just passed off Uncle Walter as a nutbar. But I had a problem. I had seen a creature too, and the one he described looked exactly like it. That both excited and scared me. And the look that was coming into Uncle Walter’s eyes right then didn’t help things. He was kind of staring into the distance. Was he having a bad flashback? This was not the time to lose the only adult we had with us to a weirdo psycho brain seizure.

  “Mr. Middy?” asked Alice.

  But now Walter was standing and walking forward in a sort of trance. We got up and followed him. As he moved zombie-like through the woods towards something that his eyeballs seemed to be glued to, he started to talk again. He was using his quiet voice.

  “Most people who know anything about the sasquatch claim they make nests in the forests. Sometimes they use caves or pile up rocks to make shelters, but usually they build lean-tos, with lots of trees they’ve torn down and lots of leaves on top…like…right there.”

  He was pointing straight ahead. My heart started to pound.

  About twenty metres away, I could see a lean-to made of torn-off trees, mud, and leaves. It was camouflaged so you couldn’t see it until you got close. And as we neared we started to smell something. Rotting meat. It quickly became overpowering, so strong that it made me want to throw up. I put my hand to my mouth and moved forward with Alice and Uncle Walter.

  But he cautioned us to stand back. We didn’t need convincing and stood as still as two statues while he kept inching forward. When he reached the nest, he peered slowly into the part that looked like a doorway, an opening about a metre and a half high. Walter moved his head so gently that it seemed he was afraid that just rotating his neck would make noise. His hand had slid down the side of his pant leg and found the handle of his machete. Now he was slowly raising it so that he could defend himself in an instant. Then he crouched…and entered the nest!

  Everything was quiet for a moment. Then we heard a sound coming from behind us. We whirled around. It was like a shout, an inhuman cry; a deep shriek that pierced through all the other sounds in the forest. And in the trees, less than fifty metres away, we saw something move. It seemed to be coming right at us!

  “Walter!” Alice and I screamed.

  Uncle Walter was out the nest doorway in a flash, his machete held up, his face flushing red with excitement.

  “IT’S COMING!” we shouted.

  He pivoted and looked where we were pointing, then sped towards us. Keeping his eye on the rushing form in the forest, he slid in front of us like a protective shield. It made sense that we should turn and run, but I couldn’t move my feet: they were rooted to the ground the way they’ve always been in nightmares when I’ve been chased. Alice and Walter seemed to have the same problem. We stood there waiting for the worst.

  But immediately we could tell that the creature wasn’t coming our way any more. Or maybe it hadn’t even been running at us to begin with? It was moving away on an angle, crashing through the woods, faster than a big, speeding bullet.

  For an instant we stayed put. We didn’t know what this thing was anyway. Maybe it was another bear, or a mountain lion? We hadn’t seen it clearly. Perhaps there were explanations for this so-called “nest,” and even that smell? Maybe something had been killed nearby?

  But in seconds all speculation died. A black laser shot out of the sky. It came at us as fast as it could go, past the tops of the trees and downward towards us, its target. Ten metres above us, it finally spread its big wings and swooped over our heads. Its feathers were ruffled, its beak open in a scream.

  “Sassss-squash!” Poe shouted. “Sassss-squash!”

  15

  Towards Hell’s Gate

  That was when we started to run. After it! We sprinted straight into the forest, searching for the path the creature had taken, following those crashing sounds. It was either frightened or very angry because it was simply ripping things out of its way now: trees weren’t just being twisted off at their trunks—some were actually being uprooted. It was shrieking and screaming, a huge beast on the run.

  But before long the growls grew fainter. It was moving at twice our speed!

  We looked up and found Poe, making frantic circles as he flew above the trees, constantly doubling back to find us, but moving ahead to keep track of the monster. We could sense his fear. He wasn’t merely after what Walter was after any more—he was terrified by the creature he saw below.

  Keeping our eyes on Poe and on the trail being ripped through the forest in front of us, we moved forward as fast as we could go. Before long we came to the remnants of the old logging road, and ten minutes later we saw a clearing up ahead. Green Ranch Road! That road would help us tremendously. The creature wouldn’t dare run along it in full view. It was more apt to just use it to navigate, sticking to the bush nearby, moving along beside the rough highway through the trees. But we could use it to make up time.

  It was strange to be out of the woods. Our feet were freed from shackles. We ran along the gravel, faster than we’d gone for days. The road began to turn northward. It didn’t take long before a sign appeared: Boston Bar, 5 km. We were nearing the town!

  But another half-kilometre along, we heard Poe shrieking. We looked up to see him flying east, away from the road, towards the nearing Fraser River.

  We had no choice. We darted off our gravel path and into the bush. Sasquatch signs began appearing again. First the smell came back, then fifty metres into the trees we saw something that nearly made us sick. Lying across a twisted-off tree was a body of some sort, tossed aside. It was a large male mule deer, its neck badly broken, antlers crushed in anger, blood oozing from its nose and still twitching.

  We moved on. In five minutes we could hear the Fraser, thundering through the trees. Then we reached a dead end. We had to put on the brakes before we all went flying out into thin air. We were standing at the edge of a rocky cliff. Several hundred metres below was the legendary brown river, the torrent of water that cuts southward through the centre of British Columbia like a massive ditch into the mountains, the route along which the Thompson people of the Salish Nation guided famous Simon Fraser more than two centuries ago. The explorer had hung on for dear life, fame and fortune in his mind, a rocky wonderland he had only dreamed existed appearing before his eyes.

  The drop beneath us was breathtaking. It went straight down. Running north and south as far as we could see, a huge canyon was split in the earth. It would be impossible to get from where we were to the river.

  The cliffs were just as daunting on the other side. We looked across and saw cars speeding by on the winding Trans-Canada Highway above them. We had come out of the mountains and the forest.

  “LOOK!” shouted Alice. She was pointing at the river. Way down there, something seemed to be bobbing around in the rapids. It appeared to be dark. It was swimming!

  “It’s heading south, right towards Hell’s Gate!” shouted Walter. “It knows we can’t follow!”

  It was a terrible feeling. I could sense Walter’s frustration. I just knew what he felt. He wanted to jump. Just leap out into mid-air and hit those rocky rapids far below at terminal velocity, then ride the water downstream and find that creature from his mind, the one he had seen so long ago and wondered about ever since. But he couldn’t. He’d be dead before he even touched the water. We were stuck.

  Then things got worse.

  Up on the Trans-Canada Highway across the canyon, a van pulled a sudden U-turn, swerving so abruptly that we could actually hear the tires squeal. Then it came to a jarring stop next to the railing on the shoulder of the road. Several men leapt out and rushed up to the canyon’s edge, shouting and pointing.

  “Binoculars!” demanded Uncle Walter.

  I had them. But I didn’t hand them over. I raised them to
my eyes and looked across the canyon myself.

  “Who are they?”

  I brought everything into focus. There were four men. Three of them were wearing camouflage army fatigues and ball caps. Each of them had something in their hands. I focused again. Guns! High-powered rifles! And they were pointing them down at the river, following something through their telescopic lenses!

  “NO!” I shouted.

  But the men couldn’t hear me.

  “No…what?” demanded Uncle Walter. Both he and Alice reached for the binoculars. I pulled them away and panned over to the van. There was advertising on the side. I focused. tweedledum and tweedledee it read. I whipped the binoculars back to the men and focused on the fourth one. There he was, shouting and issuing orders, the one and only….

  “Lance Bennett!” I belted out.

  “Lance Bennett? Where?”

  “Right there, with his company van and three guys who look like snipers with high-powered rifles!”

  “Oh, no,” cried Alice.

  “STOP!” Uncle Walter shouted as loudly as he could, but the men on the other side of the Fraser Canyon didn’t hear a thing. “He must have found Mack’s tourists! They must have told him we were going this way! We have to stop them! They’ll kill it!”

  As Walter shouted, a flurry of activity erupted near the van.

  “What’s happening?” asked Alice.

  “They’re…” I focused again. “They’re leaving!”

  Obviously, they couldn’t get off an accurate shot. All four of them had turned and rushed back to the van. Lance took the wheel and the vehicle tore off down the highway, spraying gravel, heading south.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “No, it’s NOT good. It’s not good at all,” exclaimed Walter. “They’re following the creature. They’re on a paved highway going 150 kilometres an hour and we’re up here—on the side of a mountain, immobile!”

  He had a point.

  Alice had snatched the binoculars while I paused. She was training them up and down the river, desperately looking for a valley or a pathway—anything that might lead down to the river and give us some sort of access. Walter’s eyes were darting around inside his head as if he was trying to make a decision about something, a very difficult one.

  “Look!” cried Alice. She had spotted something upriver. “There’s something in the water. Something big and yellow, floating this way—fast!” I looked down. There were several rows of people on board.

  “That’s it!” shouted Walter. “I’m doing it!” He seized his backpack and tore into it.

  “Doing what?” I asked, worried what the answer would be.

  “That’s one of those tourist rafts they take people down the Fraser River on to make like they’re a bunch of Simon Frasers.”

  “What does that have to do with us?”

  “Not us, Dylan…me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  By this time he had pulled a big rope out of the backpack and was tying an iron hook to it, so tightly I thought he was going to rip the rope in half.

  “You and Alice are staying here! Make your way back up the road, cross over to Boston Bar, and sit tight! Find a restaurant and call your parents!”

  He was shouting at me, even though we were only about a metre apart. His eyes were on fire, his face red, and I could see those old muscles—still hard despite the decade or so they hadn’t been used on the flying trapeze and high wire—bulging under his shirtsleeves.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Alice, swallowing hard.

  Uncle Walter paused for a second. He looked at us.

  “I’m going over the cliff.”

  Okay…he is going to commit suicide. Fine. Let’s get our butts out of here and over to Boston Bar and into a restaurant and order some hot chocolate or soup. Let’s phone the parental units and….

  “No,” said Alice to Walter as firmly as I’d ever heard her say anything.

  No? What does that mean?

  “If you’re going, then we’re going! Right, Dylan?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I can’t let you do that,” replied Uncle Walter.

  Good response, man.

  “Yes you can,” snapped Alice and she reached out and snatched his video camera from his backpack and dangled it over the edge of the cliff. “Let us go or I drop the camera. If it’s gone…then why chase the sasquatch?”

  Unfortunately, she had a point.

  That’s why, seconds later, we were all preparing to leap out over the rocky cliff of the Fraser Canyon together, and I was preparing to puke my guts out.

  “Hurry!” shouted Alice, eyeing the yellow raft coming our way.

  “Okay,” said Uncle Walter, surprisingly calm. He seemed to be reverting to circus mode, to the days when he performed death-defying feats. Nervousness would be the end of you in that business. So, he was forcing himself to be as calm as ice.

  “I’ve carried many people on my back before,” he said aloud to himself, like he was trying to convince himself everything was going to be all right. “It was an accident.”

  What was he planning?

  “Wrap yourselves onto me, grip me around the chest and the waist: Dylan on my right and Alice on my left. Hang on and don’t do ANYTHING unless I tell you to. Got that? NOTHING! Just hang on.”

  He slammed the hook into a rock, digging it into a crevice. Then he tested it. It seemed secure. It had to be. Walter tied the other end of that very long rope (that had somehow been coiled up in his big backpack) around his waist. He reached into the pack again and drew out a pair of leather mitts with no fingers. As he put them on, I could see they were skintight. Then he walked to the edge of the cliff.

  Alice moved with him.

  But I didn’t.

  “I’m scared!” I shouted.

  I couldn’t move.

  There was a long pause as they both stood at the edge of the canyon and looked back at me. Walter lowered his eyes, as if gazing into his past.

  “So am I,” he said.

  An image of the Reptile flashed through my brain. I wanted to curl up on the ground.

  Alice put a shaking hand on my shoulder.

  Uncle Walter seemed to be sagging right in front of us. We saw the sadness spreading on his face. His shoulders began to fall.

  I thought back over the past week. I thought of the progress I’d made and why I’d made it. I didn’t want to be the shell that Walter had been when we first got here. I was glad I’d convinced him to have fun again. I didn’t want to be afraid for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to let the Reptile and all the monsters I’d dreamed up win. My parents could protect me from a lot of things, but not from my own fears. I had to do this. I had to face things. Now.

  “Let’s do it,” I whispered.

  Walter looked at me. We locked eyes. Then he straightened up. He stuck out his chin.

  “Dylan: arms around my chest,” he ordered. I wrapped my arms around his chest. “Alice: around my waist.” She put her arms around his waist in a vise-like grip.

  Alice and I were looking straight into each other’s eyes. Our noses were almost touching as we rested our heads against Uncle Walter’s chest. I could feel his muscles tensing.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready,” said Alice.

  We leapt out into thin air.

  16

  Hell’s Gate

  At first it felt like we’d been shot out of a cannon—just fired into space. But what an incredible space! Beneath us the Fraser River and the sides of its rocky canyon were like some sort of gigantic IMAX film in 3-D. It was like a dream: one of those dreams where you’re falling. I had this amazing feeling in the pit of my stomach. Alice’s blue eyes, blue like Lake Louise, were right in front of me. And they were smili
ng at me. In my mind I heard one of the songs Walter had been playing a lot these last few days, about floating on a river with a girl with “kaleidoscope eyes.”

  “Hang on! Tight!” shouted Uncle Walter. I noticed that he had the last ten metres of the rope bunched up in his hands.

  A split second later he grabbed the rope. It jerked violently and he let go.

  “Ahh!” he cried.

  I saw it had cut through his gloves and scarlet red was oozing through the cracks. But he had slowed us down. In fact, for a minute we were just drifting in space. It felt like nothing at all. We hung in the air above the canyon.

  “Again!”

  The rope jerked once more as Uncle Walter seized it again and cried out. The blood dripped down onto his palms. We slowed a second time. And again we floated. It was an unbelievable feeling. I glanced up at the blue sky and watched it move by. Three more jerks of the rope, the last the most violent one, left us hanging at the end of our rope…so to speak.

  But it wasn’t over yet.

  Instantly the rope began swinging us, very fast, right towards the canyon wall. Uncle Walter twisted as we moved, trying to slow us down. But the rocks were coming up fast.

  “In the circus,” shouted Walter, “if you can’t get your butt up over your head, you’re dead!”

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Lift your legs! Use your stomach muscles! Lift your legs as high as you can and stretch them out towards the rocks. When we hit, let them give a bit. And push off! We have six legs here to cushion us!”

  And so we slammed into the side of the Fraser Canyon at jet speed, our legs stretched out to take the blow. We all let them give a bit, like accordions being squeezed. It was jarring. My knees hit my mouth and split my lip. I looked over and saw that exactly the same thing had happened to Alice! But we were alive.

  We bounced way out over the gorge again, came to a stop in the air, and then swung back towards the wall. The second time we hit we were going slower, and by the third contact Walter actually reached out and grabbed a rock, bringing us to a halt. We were dangling about twenty metres above the ground and the river. Directly below us was a ledge, a big ledge blasted out of the rock long ago. Along it ran a railway track, the tracks of the legendary CPR. They were five metres down. Bands of grass grew on either side of the rails.