“But it wasn’t an alligator or a crocodile,” Eric continued calmly.
“We told you that,” Peter said.
“And it wasn’t a shark or anything.”
Dill rolled his eyes. “Noooooo, it came up out of the water.”
“What about a…hippopotamus?”
“We know what a hippopomatus…hippopomamu…I know what a hippo is,” Dill growled. “I’m not stupid.”
“I’m just saying that you’ve probably never seen a live hippo before,” Eric explained, “so maybe you wouldn’t recognize one in person.”
“Hippos don’t walk on hind legs, do they?” Peter asked.
“Probably not, no,” Eric conceded.
“Then it wasn’t a hippopotamus,” Dill almost shouted.
“Calm down, Dill,” Mom said, though she seemed pretty upset herself.
“Guys, you gotta work with me here,” Eric said. His chair was turned backwards underneath him, and he settled his arms on the backrest. “You’re basically telling me a dinosaur lives in the lake.”
“Dinosaw,” Beth burbled happily.
“Now, that’s a pretty big whopper to swallow. Are you sure you’re not exaggerating?”
“Yes,” Peter emphasized, then frowned. “I mean, no, we’re NOT exaggerating.”
“Peter, please, if you know anything that could help the rangers…” Mom pleaded.
“I already told them everything I know!”
The ranger tried to look sympathetic. “Dill? You want to tell me the truth?”
Dill narrowed his eyes. “I’m tired, and I’m hungry, and I saw some kid get carried off by a monster, and this hot chocolate sucks, and I’m freakin’ P.O’D because YOU GUYS KEEP ASKIN’ ME IF I’M TELLING THE TRUTH OR NOT!” Dill hollered. “THERE, IS THAT ENOUGH TRUE STUFF FOR YOU?”
The sheriff’s deputy standing behind Eric stepped forward. He was tall, and much older than Peter’s mom. He wore a cowboy-looking hat and sunglasses, even though it was dark outside. “Show some respect, you little punk,” he snarled.
“I can handle this, Deputy Jenkins,” Eric said softly.
Dill looked up at Jenkins defiantly. “I’ll show some respect WHEN YOU STOP ASKING ME THE SAME STUPID QUESTIONS OVER AND OVER AGAIN!”
“Dill,” Eric warned.
“Dill,” Mom hissed.
“I DON’T – ”
“Shut up, you young hoodlum,” Grandfather barked from the corner of the room.
Dill shut up and shrank down under his blanket. Peter had the fleeting impression that Dill looked at Grandfather the same way he’d looked at the monster.
“Everybody, let’s just calm down,” Eric said. “Guys, look…we’ve got a dozen deputies and rangers out there searching the marsh on your say-so. I can’t keep ‘em out there all night unless you give me a little something more than a brontosaurus.”
“Don’t be dumb. It was like a bigger, fatter, slimier one of those raptor things from Jurassic Park,” Dill said, “but not as badass. But still really mean-looking.”
“Dill!” Mom snapped. “Don’t use that kind of language!”
“Well, it was,” Dill protested.
Grandfather cleared his throat from the corner, and Dill hunkered down in his blanket again.
Peter had been thinking while everyone else was arguing. “Ranger Eric…”
“Yes?”
“You said you’ve got a whole lot of people searching, but you don’t believe us.”
“I believe something happened out there, Peter. Maybe it was an accident, or maybe you guys were playing around and something got out of hand…or maybe there was some kind of animal. I don’t know.”
“So you don’t really believe us.”
Eric shifted in his seat. “Like I said – ”
“Just say NO,” Dill snapped.
Eric glared at Dill.
“You’re beginning to get on my nerves, Dill,” Eric warned. “And I wouldn’t do that if I were you, because I’m the best friend you’ve got in this room right about now.”
Dill snorted. “How about loanin’ me twenty bucks, then?”
“You don’t really believe us,” Peter continued, trying to take the heat off of Dill, “but you’ve got a bunch of people out there with flashlights. Why? If you don’t believe us, there’s got to be a reason they’re even looking.”
Eric went a few seconds without answering. When he spoke, his voice was weary. “We called Rory McCusken and Greg Witherspoon’s houses, and nobody has seen them since early this morning. Their parents said they were going fishing. Rory’s parents didn’t even see him leave, it was so early. Both families are coming over here now, guys, and I’d really, really like to tell them something believable that might help me get their sons back.”
Dill didn’t say anything this time. He just stared into his cup of cocoa.
Greg’s face appeared in Peter’s mind, his lips moving, right before he disappeared into the air.
You promised…
He started to cry silently.
“Peter, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?” Eric prodded gently.
Dill broke down, too, into a single, mournful sob. “Because you’re probably not going to get them back.”
“That’s not true,” Peter argued, wiping away his tears.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the deputies were leaning in hungrily, waiting for new information.
“Peter, they’re not asleep,” Dill said angrily. “Face it.”
“Who’s not asleep?” Eric asked. “Rory and Greg?”
“They are! I fell asleep, you saw me!” Peter snapped at Dill.
“Oh.” Eric put his hand over his eyes and rubbed his temples with his fingers.
“It’s true!” Peter said, and pointed to the scratch on his leg. “It stung me, and I fell asleep for five hours!”
Deputy Jenkins suddenly stepped forward and grabbed Dill’s shoulders. “What are you not telling us, you little snot?” Jenkins snarled. He started shaking Dill roughly, making his head snap back and forth. Everybody gasped.
“Jenkins, cut it out!” The other deputy grabbed Jenkins’ arm, but he just shrugged him off.
“I know your family!” Jenkins hissed in Dill’s face. “I know you!”
“Officer – ” Eric sputtered.
“STOP IT!” Peter screamed.
Jenkins suddenly jerked away from Dill, his hold broken. Grandfather stood there with a handful of the deputy’s uniform bunched up in one rough, callused hand.
“That’ll be enough,” Grandfather said coldly.
Jenkins knocked Grandfather away. “You get your hands off me.”
“Then you keep away from that boy,” Grandfather said without batting an eye.
“You’re lucky I don’t take you in for assaulting a police officer.”
“You’re lucky I don’t perform a citizen’s arrest for child abuse.”
“I know what he is,” Jenkins snarled. “I know his brothers, I see his brothers all the time in the station. And I know his daddy, oh believe you me, I know alllll about his daddy – ”
“And I know you, Anthony,” Grandfather growled. “I know all about your father, too, with his bootlegging and card-sharking, and his father before him – oh, there’s a good evening of stories. So if you’re looking at family histories, I’d advise you not to start while I’m standing here.”
Jenkins took a step back and scowled behind his sunglasses. “You crazy sonuva…” he muttered before retreating behind Eric’s chair.
Eric got to his feet. “I think we better – ”
“Call it an evening, yes,” Grandfather interrupted. “They’re obviously not telling us the truth, and if there’s a reason behind it, I’ll get it out of them.” He glared at Deputy Jenkins. “And nobody else will do anything.”
“Mr. Flannagan…” Eric tried.
“And nobody else,” Grandfather repeated.
There was silence in the room, broken only by the squ
elch from a radio.
“Base, this is Gutmann, over.”
The kindly-looking officer who had tried to stop Jenkins pressed on his walkie-talkie. “Canode here. Over.”
“We found something at the lake,” the walkie-talkie crackled.
Peter’s heart leapt into his throat.
Deputy Canode looked at the two boys, then at Peter’s mom and Beth. “Uhhh…we still got those two kids here, and a little ‘un…”
“It’s not that – just two bikes chained up to a tree.”
“See?” Dill crowed. “We told you!”
“And the dock.”
“What about it?”
“Hard to say. Most of it’s gone. Coulda broke apart in a storm and sunk, but it woulda had to have been one heck of a storm. There’s still part of it out in the water, and a section on the land – ”
“It didn’t break in a storm!” Peter cried.
“The monster ripped it up!” Dill shouted.
Eric motioned for them to be quiet.
“ – but we didn’t find anything else,” the voice on the walkie-talkie said.
“All right,” Canode said. “Keep looking and keep me posted.”
“Roger. Over and out.”
The room was quiet as everyone absorbed the bad news. Grandfather finally broke the silence when he grabbed Dill and Peter by their necks and forced them to their feet. “Let’s go.”
“Now wait just a minute,” Jenkins snarled.
“Mr. Flannagan – ” Eric said.
“What are you waiting around here for?” Grandfather snapped at the ranger and deputy. “You haven’t heard enough fairytales about dinosaurs? Don’t you have two lost boys you should be looking for?”
Eric and Jenkins looked at each other – Eric helplessly, Jenkins angrily.
“Fine. We’ll be off, then,” Grandfather grumped, and herded Peter and Dill towards the door.
“What if we need to talk to them again?” Jenkins asked in an accusing voice.
“I think you know where I live, Deputy,” Grandfather shot back.
“I’ll take them in my car, Dad,” Mom offered.
“They’re coming with me. I want to have a little chat with them, man to man.”
“Dad – ”
“Man to man,” Grandfather repeated. Mom kept quiet and shifted Beth in her arms.
“I’ll see you at the house,” Grandfather said, and ushered Dill and Peter out of the ranger’s station and into the dark.
18
Grandfather turned up the heat in the ancient, battered truck. The warm air spilled over Peter’s bare skin, giving him pleasurable shivers up and down his neck. Then he remembered Greg being lifted into the air, and those goosebumps went prickly and cold.
You promised…
Over by the passenger door, Dill seemed a little happier. “Dude, that was awesome,” he said to Grandfather. “I thought you hated me.”
“Let’s get something straight right now, you little hooligan,” Grandfather growled. “I don’t like you. I’ve never liked you. I never will.”
“Uhhhhh…okay,” Dill said, confused.
“I just dislike that fool Jenkins even more.” He took his eyes off the road long enough to glare at Dill. “And that’s saying something.”
Dill shrank back against the passenger door and tried to make himself as small as possible.
Peter shook his head. “You don’t believe us.”
“I never said that.”
“‘They’re obviously not telling the truth,’” Peter rattled off in an authoritarian voice, “‘so why don’t we all go home and I’ll beat it out of them.’”
“Don’t you sass me, boy,” Grandfather scowled. “The problem with you is that you go blabbing your mouth to every Tom, Dick and Harry about things no sane person would ever believe, and then you get mad when they don’t.”
“You mean…you do believe us?”
“Does that mean you’re not sane?” Dill piped up.
Grandfather pointed at Dill without looking away from the road. “I’m warning you.”
“Well…why do you believe us?” Peter asked.
“Because the one thing that hoity-toity ranger didn’t tell you – and probably doesn’t know – is that this has happened before.”
Peter and Dill leaned forward.
“Someone saw dinosaurs?”
“No. But people have disappeared. Every seven years, something seems to happen out near those springs. Seven years ago, it was a strange drop in the wildlife. Fourteen years ago, two school children went missing. Twenty-one years ago, a boat full of high school students went out on the lake and never came back. The thing seems to avoid adults, and instead attacks prey that’s smaller and weaker. The pattern goes back a long, long time. Hundreds of years, actually. But people tend to forget what isn’t in front of their faces, and most of them are too stupid to read their history, so these things happen and are forgotten so they can happen all over again.”
“What is it? The monster, I mean.”
“Did you read those blasted information boards they’ve got up all over the park?”
“Uh…one of them,” Peter said.
“Do you happen to remember what Itcheepatucknee means?”
“…something about waters?”
“‘Hidden waters,’ that’s what those fools staple up on their boards everywhere. ‘Hidden waters,’ my foot.”
“Can we just skip this part, and go to where you tell us everything we need to know?” Dill asked impatiently.
Grandfather turned his blazing eyes slowly over to Dill. Dill, in turn, shrank back behind Peter.
“They’re mistranslating the original root of the words from the Winnapotakan language,” Grandfather continued.
“Ohhhh man,” Dill moaned. “Here they come again.”
“Here comes who again?” Grandfather snapped.
“The Indians. The Indians this, the Indians that. Vampires and Indians, giant frogs and Indians – every freakin’ thing is about the Indians. Why you gotta bring up the Indians again?”
“Because they were here long before the white man, you young fool, and knew far more about the land around us – including the things in it.”
“Well, they’re not here anymore, so why you gotta keep bringing ‘em up? Know-it-all Indians,” Dill muttered.
Grandfather looked like he was about to have a fit.
“The name is wrong?” Peter broke in.
“What? Oh – yes.” Grandfather shot daggers at Dill, then turned back to the road. “The Indians use a similar term for both ‘hidden’ and ‘deadly,’ the thought being that whatever you’re hunting out in the wild is especially dangerous when you can’t see it. ‘Itcheepatucknee’ doesn’t mean ‘hidden waters’, it means ‘deadly waters.’”
“Does it mean ‘giant salamander,’ too?” Dill asked.
Peter expected Grandfather to lay a verbal smackdown on Dill, but the old man surprised him.
“Not the word itself, but strangely enough, there are cave paintings south of here which depict large animals the Indians hunted. Bear, deer, wild boar…they were all followed by depictions of men, the order perhaps suggesting a chain of who hunted what. But there is a larger drawing that follows those men, larger than any known animal in these parts, and it looks a bit like what you described this evening to the rangers. Tail… triangular hands and feet…giant mouth, taller than two men standing on the other’s shoulders. That drawing has never been adequately explained, although it suggests that something might have been hunting the Indians.” Grandfather paused. “According to the eggheads over at the Charterton University archeology department, that cave painting is over four hundred years old. Perhaps a thousand. And if you go back in the historical record, every seven years – or at least, a multiple of seven – there is a major disturbance, and often a tragic disappearance. The tribal elders even proclaimed that every seventh year, the tribe would move away from the springs and not allow their
children to go there.”
“What are you saying?” Peter asked.
“It seems this creature you saw is on a cycle. And for whatever reason, it goes on a rampage every seventh year. Perhaps it is preparing for hibernation, perhaps it needs food for…other purposes.” Grandfather glanced uncomfortably over at the boys, then back at the road. “Whatever the case, this is a very dangerous time to be around the springs.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that before we went over there?” Dill asked sharply.
“I didn’t know you were going, you idjit! The first I heard of it was when the rangers called, saying you were spouting off about giant lizards! And even if I had known you were going to the springs, I wouldn’t have necessarily remembered – the cycle is every seven years, not exactly something I write on my calendar.”
“What about it stinging me, and my falling asleep?” Peter asked.
“I don’t know about that,” Grandfather admitted.
“Well, it stung Greg, too, and carried him off. What do you think it did with him?”
“I don’t know about that, either,” Grandfather said quietly.
“All he knows about is Indians,” Dill muttered.
“What did you say?!”
“Nothing!” Dill said with a fake smile.
“Do you think that they could still be alive?” Peter asked.
Grandfather was silent a good ten seconds before he answered. “I don’t know, boy. I don’t know. But it might be better for them if they’re not.”
“What does that mean?” Dill asked.
“It means I don’t want you going around those springs ever again, you hear me?”
“But – ”
“I mean it! You hear me?”
“Yes, sir…” Peter murmured.
“Okay, okay,” Dill said. “Jeez.”
Grandfather pointed at Dill. “You, now, you can go there as much as you want.”
“Ha, ha. Funny-funny,” Dill said, without a trace of amusement in his voice.
Peter wasn’t paying attention. He was staring out the side window. Grandfather’s truck was passing over the bridge that spanned the lake. Half a mile away, he could see flashlight beams slashing through the trees and reflecting dimly across the water.
You promised…
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS) Page 32
