Joseph Bruchac

by The Dark Pond

  I looked down at the floor. For the first time I noticed the box of books I had wedged my feet in next to. I leaned over, grasped some thick books on top of the stack, and held them up so that I could make out the titles on their spines.

  “Advanced Invertebrate Studies,” I read. “Annelid Anatomy.”

  Sabattis reached over, removed the books from my grasp, and put them carefully back into the box.

  “Clean off your hands before you pick up a book,” he said. “Those babies cost a hundred bucks each.”

  I stared at him, my mouth open.

  He looked back at me. “What?” he said. Then he smiled. “What’s the matter, kid, never seen an Indian working on his doctorate in zoology?”

  I shook my head.

  “Get over it,” Sabattis said. Then his face got serious again. “How long you had it?” he said.

  I didn’t ask what. Somehow I knew he meant the way I had of seeing and hearing things, the way the animals and birds relate to me, the way things come to me at times in dreams.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess always. It must come from the Shawnee side. Tecumseh was like that too. He could predict the future and he could make things happen.”

  Sabattis nodded. “Mteowlin—that’s how we put it in Abenaki. Means being something like a shaman. First noticed it when I was little myself. Makes you get quiet about things, doesn’t it?”

  It was my turn to nod. We sat for a while in silence, even though there was so much more I wanted to know. But I didn’t have to ask the question. Like he was reading my thoughts, he gave me the answer.

  “So what can you do with it? Well, one thing you don’t do is go wandering off into the night. Just because you hear something calling your name, kid, doesn’t mean you got to answer.”

  “You’ve been hearing it too,” I said.

  Sabattis grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and looked back at the mountains.

  “We have stories about it,” he said. “This thing that lives in certain ponds but has power like a mteowlin. Some even say it is half human and half whatever else it is. Comes, feeds, then disappears and isn’t seen again for a long time.” He tapped out a slow beat on the wheel. “Long life cycle, maybe,” he said.

  “You mean like a seventeen-year locust that spends all that time underground in its larval stage.”

  Sabattis looked pleased. “Maybe your mom was wrong about that second name. What was it?”

  “Wannisucka,” I said, feeling my face redden as I said it.

  Sabattis smiled, stared out the window for a while, and then let out another sigh.

  “Right,” he said. “Like a locust, but a very different kind of animal, and one with a lot longer life cycle. A life cycle that doesn’t enter into the feeding stage until certain things happen. Maybe the water temperature in the winter has to be just half a degree warmer or the acidity has to be at a certain pH. Any one of a number of variables that occur so infrequently that it might be a hundred or two hundred years before it gets to that point where it wakes up hungry and ready to call for take-out.”

  I brushed the dirt from the trail off my hands and then touched one finger to the cover of the book on top of the stack. Freshwater Annelid Anomalies. “So you think it’s like some kind of worm?”

  “Something like that.”

  “A worm that hunts deer and eats people?”

  “Kid, what humans don’t know about worms, about invertebrates in general, would fill more than one library. Worms are tough.”

  I thought about what he had said. It made sense. Worms are amazing. I mean, you can cut one in half, and one half grows a new head while the other half grows a new tail. Thinking of that, my idea about dynamite didn’t sound so good. What if I did succeed somehow in getting dynamite and getting it to go off underwater so that it blew the thing into pieces? All those pieces might just make more little monsters.

  “So what’s the deal then?” I asked. “You on some kind of research grant to find this thing? Part of your thesis or whatever?”

  Sabattis stopped drumming on the wheel. “Nope,” he said. “Nobody knows I’m here. Why you think I got that job on the grounds crew?”

  “So what are you going to do, study it all on your own?”

  Sabattis turned to look down at me over his nose. “You crazy? I’m here to kill the damn thing.”

  He reached over to poke me in the chest with two outstretched fingers. “And you, Wannisucka, are not going to get in my way.”

  15

  THE BREAK

  NO ONE EVEN seemed to notice that I got back so late to the dorm that night. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s just that way the night before a big bugout. People have either already departed or are mentally on their way. No one pays much attention to anyone else, aside from asking them if they’ve seen their sunglasses or borrowed their sweater. Everybody’s packing and planning, getting together and getting gone.

  Even Devo didn’t really pay any attention to me, despite the fact that he and the other two meddlers had been so intent on finding me earlier that afternoon. I guess they’d finally accepted that I wanted to be left alone. Just in case, though, I made myself scarce at breakfast. I watched from behind the shelter of one of the big pines near the gate as Devo’s parents—the ones who had pretended I’d be welcome at their home—loaded his bags into the back of their SUV. Even though he couldn’t have known I was there, Devo waved at the pine tree before he got in. Then they drove off. I should have felt good about outwitting them, but for some reason I felt kind of empty.

  By the next evening the place was like a ghost town. I was invited to dinner at the headmaster’s and I had to go. The headmaster and his wife are decent people. Even though I mostly just grunted like a badger, they acted like they were charmed by my conversation and so pleased to have me as their guest, along with Abdul from Kuwait, Maryat from Montenegro, and Ami from Ghana. There was always a handful of kids who couldn’t get home over the holidays because they came from other countries. They kept a skeleton crew in the dining hall to feed us few pathetic refugees.

  By the third day of the break I was climbing the walls. I kept thinking about the stuff Mitch Sabattis and I had talked about that night in his truck. After he’d given me the word that I was to stay out of his way because he knew what he was doing and I didn’t, he had let down his guard.

  He’d shown me some respect by explaining how he’d happened to come here and what he was going to do. While working on his zoology degree, he remembered all the Native stories about water monsters and started making connections between the work he was doing and the old tales. He decided to do research on local legends, and for the last three years he’d been noting things like cycles of disappearances that tied in to those same places where the stories were told. Until he’d come to this part of the mountains, he hadn’t found anything significant. But when he had come here and felt something pulling him into the woods, he had found that pond—the same day I saw those footprints and the fox—and he knew he was in the right place, that he’d discovered something from one of his people’s stories. He decided to make it his mission to find out what lived in the pond, and to destroy it. The job on the grounds crew at the school made it possible for him to keep an eye on the pond and try to keep people away from it until he decided what to do. I was the only thing he hadn’t counted on.

  “My mom always says that our old stories have got a truth in them and that they can be understood on a whole lot of levels,” I said.

  “Sounds like my grampa,” Mitch said.

  That had led us to start talking more about our families. He had even told me about his fiancée. Then he turned and smiled at me.

  “Got a girlfriend, Quashtoki?”

  “No,” I said. I wasn’t sure I liked the turn our conversation had just taken.

  “I only ask because I’ve got this cousin who is sick of dating guys without a brain. The two of you might hit it off.” He paused and looked me over.
“Does the way your ears are getting red mean you’re interested?”

  I didn’t answer that, but by the time he dropped me off on campus, he’d told me to call him Mitch. I had come away from it feeling like I’d been with an uncle.

  However, he was an uncle who had given me the hard word that I was to mind my own business. Since he really did seem to know what he was talking about, I’d agreed. I’d stay out of the woods for the next couple of days, even—or especially—if I felt it calling me.

  His plan now was to keep a close watch on the pond for a day or two—using the monitoring equipment in the back of his truck, which included an infrared camera and a night telescope. He had a high-power rifle, a 30.06 with a ten-power scope, but he said he had a hunch that if this thing was what he thought it was, a rifle wouldn’t do much to stop it. It’d just make a few holes in it and make it madder. What he was counting on was not dynamite, but this poison he had mixed up to put into the water. Once he was totally sure of what he was dealing with—when he had hard evidence like a sighting or, even better, a picture—he’d use it. I couldn’t quite understand how the poison worked, but it was some kind of organic thing that wouldn’t hurt mammals or stay in the environment, like the rotenone that they use to kill the fish in some ponds before they restock them with trout. He made it sound easy. I hoped he was right.

  That third night into the break, though, I had a dream. It came in a confusion of images. Silent darkness of a hillslope, sound of feet moving through the muddy snow, a jet-black pond growing closer and closer. Still, dark, silent water—then something erupting out of the water, lifting like a glistening tree trunk topped by a mouth that gaped wide. Then running, stumbling, rising to run again, hands scrabbling against stone. I could hear the heavy breathing of a person struggling as he climbed, and then an ear-shattering scream.

  That scream was still ringing in my ears as I sat up in bed.

  It had been three nights since I’d been on the hillside myself. Three nights since I had answered that wordless call that drew me there. But I hadn’t felt that call at all since then, not even once. There’d been a complete break. It was as if the creature was no longer trying to lure me in. But if it wasn’t calling me, drawing me close enough to be taken, who was it calling?

  Mitch.

  16

  THE CLIFF

  I TOOK A QUICK glance at my watch as I threw my clothes on. The night was almost over. It’d be dawn soon. Praying I wouldn’t be too late—and not at all sure exactly what I thought I was doing—I jammed a few things into a pack, including a hatchet and a strong flashlight. I slipped my buck knife onto my belt.

  When you go to an outdoor school, you’ll find that most of the students have lots of things with sharp edges. Also, there’s a lot of pack rat in me. I have this one wide shelf in my room that is heavy with stray items I’ve found here and there and brought home. Coils of wire, pieces of string, old tools that someone dropped, odd bits of wood and metal and plastic. From that shelf I grabbed a forty-foot coil of strong nylon rope. Then, as an afterthought, I snagged the three unused road flares I had found beside the Lake Placid highway after a truck breakdown had been towed away. A shoulder-held rocket launcher would have made me feel a little more secure.

  You might think I was developing a plan. Maybe so, but for the moment I was doing a great job of keeping it a secret from myself.

  I used the flashlight when I got to the woods. I was in too much of a hurry to try to get there in the dark, even though the first light before dawn was just about to make itself visible over the mountains. With the light I could run full speed along the trails. I wasn’t worried about wearing myself out. Years of playing lacrosse had built the kind of endurance you find in a marathon runner.

  In the old days, when Shawnees played stick-and-ball games, a game could last a whole day and the goals might be more than a mile apart. I always played modern lacrosse with the idea of that old Shawnee game in the back of my head. Kind of like the Tarahumara runners from Mexico. Those guys will run a hundred miles just to swing by a friend’s house and say “Whazzup?” When the first Tarahumara runners took part in the Olympics, they nonchalantly trotted across the finish line way behind the winners, but they didn’t stop. They just kept going. When people caught up to them and told them that the race was over, the Tarahumaras were shocked.

  “What?” they said. “We thought this was supposed to be a long race. We didn’t know it was that short.”

  It wasn’t a hundred or even twenty-six miles to reach the hilltop where I could see the dark pond, but it seemed that long. Fast as I ran, I felt like I’d never get there. Or that when I got there it would be too late. Way too late.

  I’d been seeing footprints in the snow for half a mile by the time I reached the hilltop. The tracks had come in off that branch trail that led to the highway parking spot. I recognized them as most likely Mitch’s from the size of the print and the shape of the treads. But aside from the tracks, I saw no sign of anyone. I heard nothing more than the huffing of my own breath and the muffled thudding of my own running feet.

  The sky was glowing now. Dawn comes later in the mountains, but the light reaches you before the first sight of the sun itself. By now the birds should have been starting to stir. But there was no sign of them. No chickadees or nuthatches, no jays or crows. It was as if every living creature was holding its breath.

  Aside from a sick, sinking sensation in my stomach, I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t sense the presence I’d noticed before or feel that creepy pull, that voiceless call that made the hair on my arms tingle. I stopped and shone my flashlight down onto the ground. Mitch’s tracks led down the hill. I imagined him making his way down to the pond, using the infrared scope to see his way in the dark, carrying whatever it was he had brought with him to pour or spray into the pond and kill it. Alert, ready for anything.

  Then I imagined him walking down that slope in another way, moving against his own will, caught by that thing’s spell.

  The scream split through the silence like a rocket shell bursting against the black fabric of the receding darkness. It wasn’t a person’s scream, but it was answered by a yell that had to come from a human throat. As much as that first scream made my knees weak and my heart pound, that answering yell gave me hope. It wasn’t a yell of fear, but one of defiance, a warrior’s shout.

  I started down the hill toward the pond, visible now as a dark pool in the cupped hand of the shadowed valley. Mitch’s tracks swung off to the right, but the scream and the answering shout had come from in front of me. I shone the strong beam of my flashlight ahead of me, onto the pond. The last of the thin, late-winter ice was broken, floating in small pieces as if fragmented by something bursting up out of its waters. I trained the beam of the light on the far side of the pond, where the slope was almost vertical and the dead pines with their jagged branches leaned out over the top of the rocky cliff. It was too far away, and all I could see was blurred darkness and the faintest hint of something in shadowy motion. I had to circle around.

  I rounded the edge of the pond, close to the base of the cliff. My torch beam picked out something at the base of the cliff. It looked like it had fallen from above, for it was partially buried in the ground. It was a broken spray tank, the kind that firefighters carry in to shoot water onto the hot spots left at the edge of a blaze. I was sure that tank held whatever chemical it was that Mitch had planned to use. I also had a feeling that he hadn’t been able to use it.

  The tank was only a stone’s throw away, but I couldn’t get to it without wading—or swimming. The cliff was too close to the water’s edge. I shone the light farther, and it showed me something else next to that tank that made my heart sink. Mitch’s rifle. The stock of the 30.06 was splintered as if a heavy weight had fallen onto it.

  I trained the beam of the light higher. A wide, long glistening slide of snow stretched from the base up the cliff. Then that slide of snow convulsed and rippled. It moved like a giant slug craw
ling upward. Its skin was pale, so pale you could see the red and blue pulsing of the organs inside it. It had to be at least fifty feet long, maybe more, and it was twice as thick as a barrel. It wasn’t moving fast. It didn’t look like the kind of predator that uses speed to catch its prey, though I felt sure that it could strike quickly whenever something came close enough. The way it had grabbed the deer that night. Like a leech, a giant leech, it stretched its body as it crawled slowly upward.

  For just a moment I was frozen in shock. A chill ran down my back and my hands trembled. Something was here from our old stories, something that lived to hunt us.

  A rock came rolling down from above the creature, bounced off its side without doing any harm, and then landed with a splash in the open water. I shined the light even higher. From the bottom of the cliff to the very top was about two hundred feet. There, just above the creature’s head, was Mitch. He was in a climbing harness, trying to pull himself back up the rope that he’d fastened at the top to let himself down. If he’d been unharmed, it would have been easy for him to do. But the way his left arm dangled told me that he’d been hurt. I couldn’t see blood, but it looked as if he was partially paralyzed. He was still climbing, but only a few inches at a time. He had another hundred feet to go. Slow as the progress of the giant leech was, it would get to him before he could reach the top.

  Mitch turned his face down toward my light. He didn’t say anything, didn’t yell again or warn me to get away. I thought, though, that I could make out a grim smile as if he was saying to himself he should have known the dumb kid would butt in. He swung his head up and to the side. Then he went back to trying to drag himself up the rope, which he had looped under his injured arm so that he could steady it.