Monster in the Mountains

by Peacock, Shane;

  “Drop!” instructed Uncle Walter, “Just let go and drop! Aim for the grass. And when you hit, do the give thing again with your legs. Then roll. Dylan first.”

  I dropped. I’ve heard that coming down in a parachute can be a pretty hard landing and this was probably like that. I kind of crashed into the ground and my legs smarted. But I was okay. I rolled out of the way. Alice came thudding down after me, and then Uncle Walter.

  I wanted to rest for a while. It felt so good to be alive and on solid ground. But up Walter jumped. He swung around, raced across the tracks, and looked upriver. That yellow rubber raft was coming towards us, crashing through the waves, people screaming. It was hard to tell if they were happy or scared.

  “We’ve got to stop them!” barked Walter. He darted across to the edge of the ledge, lowered his body over the lip, adjusted himself as he hung—and then did a flip, fifteen metres downward onto the narrow sandy shoreline of the Fraser River! He immediately got to his feet and started frantically waving at the raft. Though it was packed with people, no one seemed to notice. But then, for some reason, it steered its way towards him, banging around in the rapids.

  In minutes it had hit the sand less than twenty metres from where he was standing and all the passengers started getting out, laughing and talking excitedly.

  I could tell Uncle Walter was really surprised, though I could only see him from the back. His shoulders relaxed in relief, and then he turned to us and helped us down, getting Alice, and then me, to jump into his arms. I couldn’t believe the strength the guy had.

  Nor could I believe his energy. The second we were on the shore he ran towards the raft. The man in charge seemed shocked to see him.

  “How the heck did you get down here?” he asked.

  “Long story,” replied Uncle Walter. “I need your raft.”

  “Come again?”

  “We’re after a sasquatch and I need your raft!”

  “Run that by me one more time, partner.”

  “How much do you want for it for about a half-hour rental?”

  “Listen, old-timer, I don’t know what you’re smokin’ or how you materialized down here with these two children—”

  “We aren’t children,” interrupted Alice.

  “—but this here belongs to the Fraser Rapids Explorers Adventure Kompany, with a K. FREAK we call it: ‘Get outdoors and FREAK out!’ It’s the best ride not in a carnival. A natural high! We, uh, don’t rent this baby to anyone. You see those rapids down there?” He pointed downriver. “There’s a spot there a few kilometres away called Hell’s Gate. Believe me, it’s well named. It’s the narrowest spot on the Fraser, where the canyon just kind of squeezes the river into this foaming mass of water and rocks. It’s as impassable now as when Simon Fraser and his guides avoided it two hundred years ago. If you go down there, you’re dead. We always stop right here and portage past.”

  “Can’t do that today, my friend,” replied Walter.

  “Eh?”

  “I need that raft and I’m going to get it. I’m heading downstream.”

  “You don’t say? Well, Mr. Wacko, read my lips: we won’t rent it to you! You couldn’t afford it anyway: it would cost you an arm and a leg, in addition to the ones you’d lose on your voyage.”

  Uncle Walter reached into his pocket.

  “Here’s my Visa gold card and here’s the keys to my Hummer. If we don’t make it, get yourself a new raft for the FREAK show.”

  The raft captain guy didn’t look like he was into making any kind of a deal.

  I could see Uncle Walter’s eyes moving around, glancing over at the raft. The crew had left their paddles in it and he had noticed. Alice must have seen the same thing because suddenly she darted for the boat.

  “Hey!” cried the captain, and made for her.

  Walter moved like lightning, too. He stuck out his foot, tripping the man, and then sprinted towards the raft. He leapt into it and seized Alice.

  “Out. OUT! I can’t bring you! I can’t! It’s way too dangerous!”

  But Alice had driven her arm into one of the steel looped things that fastened the paddles to the raft. She was immovable. Walter looked up and saw the captain rising and coming towards him on the run, screaming. There was no time to waste. Walter climbed out, shoved the boat forward with a grunt, and sent it into the river. I stood on the shoreline with my mouth open. I couldn’t believe that Alice and my uncle Walter were floating past me on the Fraser River heading straight towards Hell’s Gate.

  That was when I did something incredibly idiotic.

  I jumped. I just leapt straight out into the air from the shore and landed in the raft as it went by. I have no idea why, but I did. Walter looked at me like I was a sasquatch. But he didn’t look for long. He turned and faced the rapids. He had to take control of the life-and-death struggle ahead of us. We were about to shoot down the river at breakneck speed, like three skateboarders on a huge rubber skateboard facing a moving, raging half-pipe created by nature—the wickedest ride anyone could ever think up.

  Lying in the back of the boat, hanging on for dear life, I raised my head and saw the captain and his tourists quickly getting smaller behind us, their mouths wide open, like a weird sort of choir.

  “Alice! Dylan! Grab that paddle!” screamed Walter as we crashed into our first rapids and the front of the boat went almost straight up into the air. We stumbled and scrambled and fell over to one side of the raft and seized the paddle, using our combined strength to control it. Walter jumped over and snagged the other one. We all tried to sit up and face the front, paddles in hand, but it wasn’t much use.

  We were thrown around in the raft. The river had us at its mercy. Only luck would get us through this: incredible luck. Simon Fraser had big, sturdy birchbark canoes, a pack of hard-as-nails voyageurs, and a Shuswap chief when he came this way in 1808 looking for furs and adventure and the Pacific Ocean. He left his canoes north of here and just walked through the canyon like a mountain goat. He didn’t dare try the river. The whole place just messed with his mind. I’d been reading about him in that BC guidebook. The land here was like a new planet to him, an awesome one. Above the river the grey rocky canyon went up in gigantic walls, then the mountains rose behind them, with huge green trees clinging to their feet and snow at their peaks. And we were seeing it all at a million kilometres an hour in raging water!

  Alice and I were using the paddle to survive now—digging it into the side of the raft, bracing ourselves so we wouldn’t go flying out. Water surged around us, slapping us back and forth and sideways. We’d rise up and then bang down. We’d be twisted so we were facing the canyon walls and then we’d go backwards. One second I was looking straight downriver, the next I’d see nothing but sky; then a huge rock would come at me, about to crush my skull, then disappear as fast as it appeared. We looked at everything through a film of water, white and brown. Adrenaline was surging through me as fast as the rapids shot through the canyon. We were soaked to the skin.

  Walter was steering with all he had and screaming all sorts of things at us, but we couldn’t hear anything clearly. The water was creating a wall of sound. It went on like this forever and soon I wanted to give up, just let the water drown me, suck me down, and smash me to smithereens against a rock.

  But then I heard something Uncle Walter said. It was just two words, two words among the hundreds he was screaming:

  “…Hell’s Gate….”

  I tried to find the river in front of us. For a second we lifted into the air and floated, suspended on a magic carpet in the sky, above the Fraser. And that was when I saw it: the famous Hell’s Gate. The canyon was narrowing into a sort of tunnel, the walls rising up like the banks of a giant dam, and the river was a jet stream being forced through a funnel. I could see the highway snaking above us to our left. The tourist stop came into view beside it: parking spots, a sightseers�
� lookout, a ticket booth, and, stretching out across the gorge, a series of cables, like high wires. Hanging from those cables was the red air-tram, looking like a mini subway car. Through its windows people were standing up and pointing towards the water. They were about to start their journey over the canyon, across and downward, high above the river towards the half dozen stores and restaurants on the other side. To my right I glimpsed those stores, sitting on a big shelf near the bottom of the canyon about ten metres above the water. I could see tourists there, running towards the river, hanging out over the fences, pointing at something down-stream and at us slightly upstream. Some of them were screaming.

  Directly in front of us I saw a bridge stretching above the water. It looked like one of those old suspension bridges I’d seen in historic photographs of Niagara Falls. It was red and looked awfully narrow. It must have been a footbridge. There were people on it and they were pointing too, upward, at something on the side of the canyon not far away.

  We shot forward, approaching the bridge. But just as we neared the spot where the river was narrowest, the raft was pulled suddenly towards the ledge where the tourists were leaning out over the water. I could see them grimacing, others crying out, as we headed towards the rock-walled shore like a rocket. When we hit, it was what I’d imagined a head-on collision would be like. There was a jolt and we all went flying, really flying.

  In seconds we were in the water, the raft behind us, sucked against the shoreline. The famous river had us now, white with rage. It ripped us forward. I went under and back up, and under again. I was gasping for air, seeing nothing at times, people looking down at me, horror on their faces. Then everything went calm. I could see blue sky and I seemed to be moving at a much smoother pace. I thought I heard my dad’s voice saying something about the population of a town in the Alberta Rockies. I relaxed. Then, suddenly, I was back in the nightmare of the water, fighting to survive. I tried to turn myself in the rapids so I was facing downstream. When I did, I could see that I was very close to the shoreline. The water was pushing us towards the base of the bridge and a wall of rock that jutted out. I braced myself to hit it. I did that “give thing” with my legs, like Uncle Walter had taught us, and smashed into the wall.

  I felt a strong arm grasping my hand. I looked up and saw Walter, slightly out of the water. Gripped in his other hand was Alice Carr.

  “Hold on!” he shouted, and with that he hauled us onto the rocks.

  We both lay there for a few seconds, our chests heaving, as wet as seals. I could see people on the bridge staring down, pointing at us. A few started to applaud. Others were facing the opposite direction, watching whatever was up on the side of the canyon on the far side of the bridge.

  “Up. Up! Let’s move!” exclaimed Walter. I could see he still had the video camera strapped around him. In seconds we were crawling up the side of the embankment, making our way onto the bridge. It was wobbly up there and the pathway was packed—a dangerous number of tourists had raced onto it, drawn by the adventure unfolding around them.

  As soon as we had a view, we looked up the side of the canyon.

  Now I knew what people had been pointing at. Something was climbing straight up through the rocks. Every now and then we caught glimpses of it through the trees that somehow grew on the cliff. Then, for an instant, it emerged into an open space. I saw it as clear as day.

  A sasquatch! A real live sasquatch!

  There was no doubt this time. It was screaming as it climbed, and on its apelike face I could see something that looked like a smile. But it wasn’t: not by a long shot. It was a grimace or a look of fear. “Stay away from me!” it seemed to say. But it had been caught. Hundreds of people were now looking at it in broad daylight. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The mystery of the monster of the mountains, a mystery that had lived for thousands of years, was being exploded. The monster existed!

  We stood there, riveted.

  Then there was a sound like shattering glass in the distance and another scream, right near us.

  “Look!” cried a woman. “A gun! They’re going to shoot it!” She was pointing up towards the air-tram.

  We pivoted and looked. Way above the canyon, Lance Bennett and his three snipers were forcing their way onto the tourist car. One of them smashed a window and stuck a gun out, pointing it directly at the sasquatch. The air-tram began to move across the cable, downward, getting closer and closer to the other side, gaining a better shot for the sniper with every metre it moved.

  “NO! You can’t KILL it!” cried Uncle Walter and he started to run. In a flash he was at the gate near the end of the bridge where the air-tram would dock. And a second later he had grabbed the main cable and flipped himself up onto it. I remembered him telling me once that it was much easier to walk up a high wire than down one, since you can lean forward and press your weight into it. The cable went upward on a sharp climb from the floor of the canyon to the lookout and highway.

  As I stood there watching, my mouth wide open, it dawned on me what he was about to do. The Magnificent Middy had returned! Uncle Walter was about to walk up that air-tram cable in the high-wire performance of his life.

  17

  Death of a Dream

  Walter made his way carefully up the wire, leaning into it, his arms moving expertly in the air above his head for balance. Every now and then he would take one leg off his narrow path and stand on one foot, using his free leg to help counterbalance. His eyes were glued to the wire about five metres in front of him; his concentration on his art perfect. I imagined what it must have been like to see him when he was young, thousands cheering. I thought of what he had told me about running away from home as a kid: he couldn’t stand to let his dreams die. “I wanted to fly,” he had told me. “When you stand at the edge of a high wire, your mind tells you it’s impossible, then…out you go.”

  I thought of something else he said, just the night before: “I believe there is a sasquatch, Dylan. I’ve always believed in things like that. I don’t want to put him on display or humiliate him or anything like that any more. I just want to prove to myself that he lives, see him up close, and then leave him alone.”

  One of Lance Bennett’s snipers had the gun trained on his target now. He held the barrel still. The air-tram was close enough that I could see his finger on the trigger. He started to squeeze it.

  “NO!” shouted Uncle Walter as he jumped straight into the air off the cable. My uncle was about to show his incredible skill. He came down as hard as he could and the wire quivered like a snake crawling through the sky. It shook just as the trigger was squeezed. I could see the gun barrel jerk up. The sniper swore and swung around to stare at Walter. For an instant I wondered if he might train the gun on him. Instead, he turned back to the canyon wall and locked onto his target a second time. Again Walter jumped just before the shot was squeezed off. Again the gun jerked up.

  The sniper glared at Uncle Walter. Lance leaned out the window and started cursing him. This was definitely the real Lance Bennett. There wasn’t anything false about him now. He sounded exactly like himself. There wasn’t even a trace of that smile I had seen pasted on his face so many times before.

  The air-tram was getting closer and closer to Walter. But it didn’t concern him. In fact, he kept, moving at a crisp pace towards it, his eyes concentrating on the wire, his arms in the air. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see it slam into him. I could feel the crowd cringing. My heart sank. This was going to be his last show—he’d had one adventure too many. And I’d convinced him to do it.

  Then I heard applause. I opened my eyes to see Uncle Walter on top of the air-tram! Somehow he had jumped from the wire and hit his mark. The crowd was roaring. Every time a sniper stuck a gun barrel out the window, Uncle Walter reached down and seized it in one of his strongman grips.

  Three minutes later the air-tram had reached the dock and the creature was asc
ending out of view. They didn’t have a shot any more. Walter lowered himself off the tram, dropped onto the dock, and raced up towards the bridge.

  “Come on!” he shouted, waving us forward. Alice and I didn’t hesitate, and soon the three of us were running between the nearby buildings, heading towards the base of the canyon wall the creature had scaled. We found a path winding up it, likely worn in by tourists, adventurers, and store employees. Our prey obviously wasn’t a fan of tourist traps, and didn’t know this one. The path seemed to rise almost all the way to the top of the cliff. We raced up as fast as we could, the creature high above us.

  Then we heard shouts. Turning around, we saw Bennett and his thugs about a hundred metres behind, guns strapped to their shoulders. I wished these clowns would just give up! But they were coming on the run. Up we all went, moving twice as fast as we should have on this rocky path. In places it almost vanished and we had to leap from one ledge to another.

  “Don’t look down!” Uncle Walter shouted, in aerialist mode.

  But I did. Mistake! I stumbled and almost fell to the floor of the canyon. From then on I kept my head straight up and my concentration turned fully on. Uncle Walter had once told us that he had a motto in the circus: “Pay attention!” He said it worked in life, too.

  Beside me, grunting with effort, Alice seemed as determined as ever. Her eyes were turned upward, locked on the edge of the canyon.

  Every now and then we glimpsed the creature. He’d glance down at us, with that look of fear or anger like a bizarre smile on his face. He screamed a couple of times. “Leave me alone!” he seemed to cry out. But we couldn’t. We wanted to see him up close, look into those mysterious eyes…and save him.