Lately Brigitte was often rude, headstrong, and arrogant. Except around that Bobby Capra.
Cappy.
Thank God she wasn’t around Cappy too often. It wasn’t healthy the way Brigitte seemed to fear, idolize, almost worship the Capra boy. It was her first love, a puppy love, as the Americans called it. When Brigitte was with Cappy, it was as if she had no family at all.
Just like now, the child expresses total disregard—
“It is raining, my dear?” asked Michelle, walking back to the window with Gaston’s drink in her hand. “I thought I heard it raining.”
Looking out the window, she saw no rain, and no Brigitte. The reflection of the kerosene lamp in the dark glass made her think of another era, a time before electricity had come to the island, when nighttime meant isolation, not a two-hour trip to Montreal in an automobile.
Her eyes fixed on the flame in the window. Somehow it seemed very far away. Too far to touch. Her mind seemed to swim in the window glass as if the panes were made of water. She could feel the glass all around her. It was cold. The glass was cold. She felt it, yet she was not touching it. The reflected flame fascinated her, called her, irresistibly beckoned her into the reflecting, churning glass sea.
She thought she could take a step and pass right through the window glass and into the more comfortable world beyond.
Wait! She shook her head.
Part of her mind knew that something was wrong. Why was she thinking so strangely? Her mind grasped frantically for explanations. Had her husband somehow caused a leak when he shut off the gas? Was she becoming asphyxiated?
Michelle couldn’t tear her concentration away from the flickering reflection of the kerosene lamp. It seemed so far away. So very far away. Away. Away. Look away. Try to look away. Try… to… look… away…
But she couldn’t. She was too heavy, and there was no communication between her mind and her extremities. She needed help, wanted to cry for Gaston, but she knew he could never hear her above the monotonous humming of the rain.
The humming of the rain…
No! Rain doesn’t hum! She knew that. Rain does not hum.
My dear God, what’s happening to me? Is this a heart attack? Am I having a heart attack? Am I having a stroke?
Her ears throbbed with the rain, the solid, sparkling crystals of glass rain that slid and scratched like diamonds against the windowpanes and tore viciously against the slate roof of the cottage.
None of this is right, she realized in a sudden, sickening terror.
She was perspiring now. Her solidifying muscles pushed sharp glassy beads of sweat from her soft pores. The delicate openings tore painfully. She wanted to scream.
With a tremendous effort of mind and body, she whirled from the window, crying, “Gaston!”
Her husband was sleeping in the chair.
Sleeping? How could he be sleeping?
Her muscles weren’t working right. She was trembling violently, as if giant, invisible hands clutched her by the shoulders, shaking her mercilessly.
And she was cold, as if she were inhaling an arctic wind that froze her lungs and slowed the movement of her blood.
My dear God, I can’t breathe!
The alcoholic liquid splashed from the trembling glass in her hand. It burned like acid as it coated her fingers, saturating her sweater and skirt. The glass rocketed from her grip and shattered on the floor. Diamonds. Crystal raindrops. “Gaston!”
“GASTON!”
He didn’t move, and she couldn’t. Michelle tried to go to her husband, realizing there was something wrong with him, too. Mercifully, in that moment of empathy, she forgot her own agony.
But when she tried to move, it was like trying to move in a nightmare. It was as if the air all around her had turned to sand.
Then the tremors returned. Violently. Like a million strong hands gripping her, trying brutally to pull her in every direction at once.
She sank, as if her legs were melting into the cold pine floor. In her convulsions, she ground shards of broken glass into her palms and knees.
But now she didn’t feel it.
4
Anthony and Ellie Capra had the car packed and were making the final rounds of their property before abandoning it to another island winter. Last year they had forgotten to cover the chimney. Snow had collected in the opening, melted, and created a sooty black liquid that ran down and stained the carpet in front of the fireplace.
Their plan was to skip dinner and have a light snack on the way home to Plattsburgh, maybe in Rouses Point, on the New York side of the toll bridge.
Mr. Capra placed a cardboard box into the trunk of the car. He shouted to his wife, “Is Bobby ready?”
“I’ll get him.” Ellie started toward Bobby’s room. He had come back a little over an hour ago, looking exhausted and confused after a hard afternoon of playing. He was dirty from where he had fallen, and he was very, very tired. He had walked directly to his room in a somnolent fashion; within moments he was napping fretfully.
“Come on, Bobby. We have to be going.” Ellie smiled at the sleeping boy from the door to his room.
He sat up in bed, rubbing his swollen eyes. He still looked very sleepy. Ellie was afraid he was getting sick with a cold or even the flu.
“Do you feel all right, dear?”
“Umm-hmm.”
“Are you ready to start back?”
“Yup.” He looked around. “I had a nightmare.”
“A nightmare? What about?”
“I can’t remember.” Bobby yawned. Then he stood up.
“Do you have everything you want to bring back with you? Anything you forget stays here till next summer, you know.”
“I got everything.”
“Did you say good-bye to your friend Brigitte?”
“Yup. They left already.”
Cappy picked up his sweater and struggled into it. He grabbed his BB gun and a pile of comic books, then stumbled groggily toward the door.
His mother laughed. “You look like you’re walking in your sleep.”
The boy went straight to the back seat of the car. He fell asleep again almost at once.
Within minutes the Capra family was in the car and on their way off the island. As they passed the Pelletier cottage, they noticed that the car was gone and the place seemed closed up tight.
They were almost to Alburg before their son began to stir.
Chapter 8 - The Witching Hour
1
All along, Nancy had known this would happen.
During some of their silences, she had even tried to prepare a tactful way to handle it. Now the time had come; she had to decide what she really thought. And felt.
When she and Harrison left the professor’s house, it was dark. There was no wind. The night sky was clear as glass. For a while they pointed out constellations to each other, avoiding the question.
The subject of how hungry they were came up, but Nancy hesitated to ask Harrison to her house for something to eat. It was late, and there was school tomorrow.
A lone pickup truck passed them on the otherwise deserted street. It swerved a little too close, as if the driver either didn’t see them or perhaps wanted to have a closer look. The noisy truck was strangely out of place in a night that seemed to belong to another era.
After passing the school, they turned on to Midway Road. No doubt Harrison intended to walk her home. She could see he was eager to accompany her.
“I felt like we were a couple of kids in a classroom,” she said.
“Yeah, me, too. He’s a great old guy, though. I’ve got to talk to him some more about the monster.”
“That monster really interests you, doesn’t it?”
“It really does. I know this sounds stupid, but ever since I joined the American Cryptozoological Society, my main goal in life has been to see the thing. As a matter of fact, I can’t recall a time when my life has had more purpose. Pretty sad, huh?”
“Not at all.
It’s… well, it’s sort of romantic.”
“And that’s partly why I came here. Failing a face-to-face meeting with the monster, I want to at least research it. Maybe do an article, interview some of the people who have seen it.”
“I’d never even heard of it before today. I’d love to see something like that!”
“Then why don’t you come monster hunting with me sometime?”
“Well… sure. That would be fun!”
She felt Harrison cautiously take her hand. She took his without hesitation. They walked in silence for a long time. Dry leaves skittered invisibly about their feet.
His hand felt good to her. She was aware how soft it was, how warm in contrast to the chill evening air. It had been a long time since she had been with a man. Being close like this reminded her of how alone she often felt, how unattached. She thought of the months that had passed since she left Albany to come to Vermont, and of that last night with Eric, when they had made love like robots, before she had left him quickly and forever.
At first her nights alone had been difficult. She had found some relief in fantasy, but all too often only the languorous release of secret masturbation would permit her to sleep.
Was it simply the need for fantasy and relief that attracted her to this unfamiliar man at her side?
She tightened her grip on his hand and stopped walking, then turned to face him. She kissed him long and passionately.
When their ardent lips separated, she spoke before Harrison had a chance to. “Please don’t ask me to spend the night with you, Harry. I will, I promise — but not tonight. Just say it’s because I have to work tomorrow and I need my sleep.”
He looked confused and a little hurt. Then, in the soft darkness his face spread into a beatific smile. His teeth were like small white stones in the pale moonlight. “I won’t ask you anything at all,” he whispered.
When he kissed her goodnight at the door to her cottage, he said, “Next weekend let’s go monster hunting, okay? And maybe we’ll even explore that old monastery. What do you say?”
“I was just going to suggest that,” she whispered, and she kissed him again.
2
The only decision Cliff Ransom had made all day long was that he wasn’t going to work on Monday. And that, by God, was for sure.
That night, as he drove back to Friar’s Island from Swanton, drunk and more than a little pissed off, he figured he just might never go to work again. The days were getting real cold, and he knew he would get laid off pretty quick anyway. They shut down the quarry every winter, so what difference would a day or two make?
Cliff always looked forward to getting laid off. It was the same year after year: work during the summer months, vacation the rest of the year at the expense of the unemployment office. Fun-enjoyment, Cliff called it.
WLFE, 102.3 on the FM dial from St. Albans, blasted C&W from the radio. Cliff tapped the steering wheel, trying his best to sing along:
Oh, I’ve had a lot of beer, a lot of women,
Courted trouble nearly all of my life,
But when that barroom clock strikes eleven,
Head on home to the arms of my wife.
He thought about the bar he had just left in Swanton; half-lit, smoke-laden, filled with beer-woozy men in cowboy shirts and Levi’s, and fat women with pointed tits and Dolly Parton hairstyles. That kind of shit wasn’t for him. He knew a spot in Burlington that had a shitload more class. Maybe next weekend…
Too bad there wasn’t a little action right here on the island.
The pickup bounced over the bridge from North Hero, and Cliff sped toward town, thinking how good his bed would feel.
As he neared the general store, now dark and empty, he was surprised to see the shadowy figures of a man and a woman walking close together along the roadside. The woman’s height and long black hair alerted him that it was the schoolteacher. And who was that walking beside her? Cliff accelerated even more, steering much closer to the man than he should have.
That fuckin’ flatlander from the captain’s place. Sheee-ut, looks like some goddamn citified pansy to me! Like to take a fuckin’ round out of him!
As soon as the couple had faded out of sight, Cliff began singing his song again. He pointed his truck toward home, the schoolteacher very much on his mind.
3
After he left Nancy at her cottage, it occurred to Harrison that the quickest route home would be to cut through the eastern end of Childe’s Bog. However, he didn’t feel familiar enough with the island’s topography to attempt such a shortcut, especially in the dark. Instead, he opted to walk back across the island along Midway Road, then head south on West Shore Road to his house. A long way. West Shore Road led through the marsh, but it was a known route to him, so there would be no chance of getting lost or hurt.
With Nancy no longer at his side, he noticed for the first time how cold it was. He quickened his pace, arms folded tightly across his chest.
Now he was very much alone. The only sign of civilization was far behind him: the dim light from Nancy’s cabin. It faded with each step and was quickly lost among a scattering of invisible bushes and thick-trunked trees.
Before him lay the indistinct image of the road, a cleared pathway through black underbrush and shadowy grasses.
No one around, no light, no traffic. The only sound was the high-pitched squeaking and bass rasping of the generations of frogs that lived in the marshland. The moonlight was bright enough to see where he was going, but he could make out no details of his surroundings. Ahead, the gray pathway of road was clear. If he followed it, he would be all right.
On both sides of him rounded clusters of brush looked like the dark, crouching shapes of huge animals waiting to spring. The outline of the marsh, although quite near, seemed like a vast range of black mountains far in the distance.
Beginning to feel the return of childhood fears of the dark — and now more than a little convinced of the existence of monsters — Harrison forced his mind back to Nancy Wells. Her hand had felt so warm in his, her lips so moist and eager. He knew he wanted to see her again. He wanted to be with her. He even permitted himself to hope they would someday make love, and that would be fine.
But there was something more, something important: he liked her. And for the first time in weeks, he felt a cautious optimism.
At that moment, much more than ever before, Harrison began to enjoy his life on this slow-moving anachronism called Friar’s Island. The place was starting to feel very much like home.
He tried to recall the last time he had actually liked a woman. He couldn’t count Andrea, of course; she was more a symbol than anything else. An ideal. And now she was nothing more than a painful part of his pre-island past.
Had it always been his inability to find satisfaction in female companionship that had made him feel like such a misfit? Sure, he had known a few women; he’d lived with one, had made love to several. But he had never felt — what was it? The electricity? The magic?
The love.
Of course, it was love that he’d never experienced. And its absence had long made him uncertain of himself. If he were unlovable, then he had no place, no roots, maybe no soul.
Sometimes he pictured himself maturing into a funny little old man, a lifelong bachelor tottering unsteadily in his tennis shoes, mumbling to himself, growing old all alone.
It was as he was passing through the marsh — walking down the middle of West Shore Road — that he heard the sound.
What was that?
His reverie vanished instantly. He stood like a statue, ears straining to detect vibrations in the night air. The sound had come from his right, from the depths of the bog. It had been perfectly distinct. He knew it wasn’t frogs or wind or leaves; it was more like something solid, something that rustled the bushes deep within the oblivion of marshland.
His first thought was of Nancy. Could she be coming after him? Maybe she had changed her mind, wanted to call him back. But no, she w
ould not be coming through the marsh. It could only be something wild, some kind of animal.
He stopped again. Listened.
And the rustling stopped.
An animal, most certainly. And, from the sound of it, a sizable one. He had heard that there were deer on the island, but he had yet to see one.
But would deer hide in the swamp?
Harrison began to walk faster. The soles of his shoes smacked on the packed dirt surface of the road. Their reports seemed strangely loud in the night air.
The rustling in the marsh started again.
There could be no doubt about it, no doubt at all. There was movement nearby. Something was hurriedly pushing branches aside. Something was crushing dry leaves, breaking twigs.
He stopped. And the sound stopped.
Lightning flashed along his spine. Suddenly he was wide awake, alert, nerves and reflexes tense and ready. His eyes felt unnaturally wide, straining against the trees and shadows, trying to drink in what little light there was.
Something was out there. Something motionless in the lightless bowels of the marsh, just beyond the range of his vision. Something hidden and wary. Something that was following him.
Frozen in position, his mind raced wildly. Don’t be silly, he thought. It’s just some animal. A deer or a dog. Probably more afraid of me than I am of it.
Harrison took a few cautious steps, then stopped abruptly. The sound did the same.
But wouldn’t an animal run back into the trees? Why would it start and stop when he did? Why would it pace him like this?
Was it stalking him?
He peered again into the gloomy tangle of trees. His eyes, useless where there was no light, looked for movement, sought the red glow of animal eyes.
It was frightfully quiet. Even the frogs were silent now. Harrison’s eyes and ears ached in their attempt to pick up some hint of what was near.
Frozen to the spot, Harrison felt the first wave of dread pass from some long-protected cavity at the center of his body. It flowed out to his motionless extremities, slashing from nerve to nerve, muscle to muscle, in a white-hot electric current.
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