“Oh.”
“And lupine isn’t really his name. It is simply a title given his race by the borderfolk. I simply don’t feel comfortable using the name you gave him.” The kid didn’t seem to realize his slip of the tongue, but I let him carry on without correcting him. “You gave him a proper name, he being your gi-faht and fated to you for life.”
“Oh yeah? And what name would that be?”
“Nicholas. Nicholas Goodman.”
The only word that I could say next was, “Oh.”
26
So I’ve fallen into some rift in the space time continuum. That’s gotta be it. In one reality Nick Goodman’s a murdering pedophile electrician, and in the other he’s a giant wolf that parallel me kept as a pet. So now I’m here to…to what? Does Nick want me to come back and be his poppa? Is that why Silas acted so weird around him?
These were my thoughts as the boy Kaiser led Silas and me through the forest of gigantic trees. We climbed up the mountain until the land leveled out, and that’s when I saw the first bastion of normalcy, of home. It was a decayed wood-and-brick building, overgrown with weeds. A tree sprouted from the center of the roof, whose shingles had rotted into a thin layer of sludge. As we drew closer I could see through the smashed windowpanes and into the interior. I hoped to see some sign of civilization, but instead there was only more foliage. It looked like the place had been deserted for hundreds of years.
When we passed the shack by, we came upon a tall pole that sprouted a pair of steel arms fixed with pulleys at the top. I’d never been much of a skier, but Wendy had convinced me to come out more than once to experience the exhilaration of constantly falling on my ass. There was no doubt I was staring at part of a chairlift.
“So, you know what that is?” I asked Kaiser.
“A leftover from the old world,” the kid replied. “Paul told us it used to be a shrine to the Forgotten Ways.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. People would strap planks of wood to their feet and glide down the slope. It was a ritual of self-discovery, Paul used to say. Back in the time before the Rising, back when ice fell from the sky and turned the mountain white.”
“It’s called skiing,” I said.
“That’s what you call it,” answered Kaiser, “We call it History.”
Silas yelped as if he didn’t like the matter-of-fact tone of the kid’s voice. I wished I could join him in that irritation, but I was too flabbergasted by everything that’d happened to feel anything but wonder.
The sun reached its zenith, turning the day into another scorcher. We started heading down the other side of the mountain, which was a good thing. Hungry and parched as we were, I didn’t think either Silas or I would’ve lasted much longer climbing in that heat.
The stroll downhill was amazing yet frightening. The trees thinned out until there were none to be found. Tall grasses surrounded us, three feet tall and swaying. With no trees, the horizon opened up. It was a desolate, prairie-like landscape, with those tall grasses, small shrubs, and strange, cactus-like plants. It was a vast, wide, and downward sloping land, and at the base sat a great lake of shimmering topaz. I could see steam rise all around me as the huge sun baked the earth. The setting seemed prehistoric. I imagined a pack of Velociraptors sprinting across the fields of tall grasses ala Jurassic Park, and my stomach tied in knots.
Sure, it was a nonsensical fear, but given the circumstances I wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
After two hours of hiking through the blistering heat, our journey came to an end at the water’s edge. I stood on the bank with Silas at my side. The lake itself was huge, stretching out as far as the eye could see in either direction. The water which had looked so crystalline from above now had a murky, grayish tint. It looked polluted.
“Where do we go now?” I asked.
“There,” replied Kaiser, pointing at a thin smudge of land on the other side of the lake, barely noticeable through a thick layer of fog that cut the horizon in half.
“Of course,” I sighed.
The boy smiled. “It’s not so bad, Mister Ken.”
That’s one hell of a swim, I thought. I glanced at Silas, thankful he was both young and a natural swimmer. I’d brought him to the lake back home on numerous occasions and knew that, with the energy he had, he’d have a much easier time getting across than I would. Judging by the distance, it would probably take an hour or more to traverse – if exhaustion and hunger didn’t drag me under first. I rolled my eyes. At least my clothes wouldn’t get wet, seeing as I wasn’t wearing any.
“Here’s goes nothing,” I muttered. “Let’s go, boy.”
I stepped one foot into the water. It was warmer than a spa. “Damn, that’s hot,” I said. I thought I heard someone scream behind me, but I had the other foot in before I could reply.
The water rippled a few feet in front of me. I stared at the undulation, and soon more swells joined the first, creating a battalion of circular billows, until the entire lake was a giant boiling pot. A giant form burst through the surface, dark green and thickly cylindrical, its hide shimmering with moisture. The thing lifted farther out of the water until it hovered four feet over my head. The creature then bent like a pipe cleaner in my direction, revealing a circular mouth as wide as its body. Spirals of teeth lined the orifice and a proboscis jutted forth from the center, affixed with a spike dripping green fluid.
More of these same creatures emerged, hundreds of them, all facing my direction. I couldn’t move, only stare wide-eyed at these unbelievable and frightening things as they closed in on me, gliding slowly but with purpose across the water.
Teeth dug into my shin. My locked state shattered and I fought against the invader, knowing that one of those things was trying to pull me in and devour me. Then a slimy, surprisingly strong arm wrapped around my neck and yanked me backward. I fell hard, landing on the lake’s rocky bank with a thud. Though I was on dry land, the teeth digging into my leg didn’t let up.
I rolled to my back and lifted my head. Kaiser stood above me, hunched over and panting. His unkempt hair dangled in front of his eyes. Silas saw me looking up and released my poor lower leg from his jaws. He leapt onto my chest and licked my face. His weight knocked the breath out of me, but in my condition I had no choice but to take it.
When Silas finished his love fest, I offered Kaiser a weak salute and mumbled, “Thanks.”
Kaiser sat down beside me, crossed his legs, and sighed. He brushed his hair aside, revealing a morose grin. “No problem,” he said. “But please don’t do that again.”
I propped myself up on my elbows and stared at the lake. The creatures were gone, and the water no longer rippled. It was as if the strange, worm-like monstrosities had been figments of my obviously overworked imagination. I looked at the frazzled boy. “What happened?” I asked him.
Kaiser gazed out at the tranquil water. “The blood larva can’t see or feel on their own. They rely on the water to live, to guide them. They can sense an animal’s essence the instant its body breaks the surface…no matter how small.”
“But what are they?” I implored.
He shrugged. “Predators. You…Paul said they arrived soon after the Rising. All I know is they’ve owned the inland waters for as long as I’ve been alive.”
I petted Silas’s matted fur, troubled by the fact the kid kept calling me someone else. There I was, in a screwed-up world in which the sun was as big as a gong, there was beachfront property in Vermont, wolves the size of grizzly bears who were actually serial killers in another world stalked me, and man-eating worms who could smell blood from miles away lived in the waters, and yet the thing that bothered me most was the fact this Mad Max refugee kept calling me “Paul?” As misplaced priorities went, I guess that one topped the list.
I shook my head. Let’s just get on with this.
“So kid, how we gonna get across?” I asked, rising to my feet though my right leg, bearing teeth marks, still smarted.
; “Boat,” he replied.
“We have to actually get in the water? I thought you said they could smell us in the water?”
“If we use a craft, they cannot. They only recognize flesh. Even motion is ignored. We’ll be safe.”
“Well, that’s great in theory,” I cracked, “but how’re we supposed to get a boat? Make one?”
Kaiser pointed to a tall knot of dead grass further down the bank. “No, sir. My boat is hidden over there. It’s how I get back and forth.”
“Don’t you think that would’ve been important to tell me earlier?” I asked.
“I apologize,” said Kaiser with a straight face. “But I didn’t think you’d be so quick to jump in, especially when you know nothing about this land.”
I grimaced. “I deserve that, don’t I?”
The boy nodded.
After a few moments spent smiling at each other, Kaiser stood up with the grace of a dancer and glanced skyward. The sun had dipped, now sitting low on the horizon, just above the misty sliver of land on the other side of the lake.
“The sun will set in a few hours,” he said. “We have to get going.”
“Why?”
“We can’t be out after dark. It’s not safe.”
“Why?” I asked.
“That is when the monsters come out,” he replied.
He was serious. And thinking about his words to me, about how I knew nothing of this land, I decided that I should be, too.
27
It can be hard for dogs, with all their anxious energy, to stay still for extended periods of time. In fact, I can say from experience that it’s nigh impossible. Back at home there was many a morning where I tried to keep Silas in the bedroom in an attempt to give Wendy and me a few extra moments of peace and quiet before work. He thwarted my plan each and every time, constantly barking and throwing his large body against our bedroom door, sending paint chips flying and causing a ruckus we couldn’t ignore.
Driving in the car was another great example. He paced relentlessly, his destructive tail swinging wildly back and forth. I made the correlation between his actions and an atom in a particle accelerator, spinning around at higher and higher speeds until it reached that moment when all his energy was released in a cosmic explosion. Silas’s explosion moment? The opening of the car door at the end of the trip.
I say all of this to illustrate how impressive his behavior was on our voyage across the wide and deadly lake.
The dinghy Kaiser pulled from the weeds was a rusty, stainless-steel rowboat, an ancient relic from a seemingly forgotten world. Its sides crumbled into green and brown flecks when I placed my hand on the aft. The sitting boards wedged into the grooves were new, thank God, but I had to be careful when I sat my nearly-bare butt on the one in front, because neither board had been sanded.
Silas hopped into the craft with me, taking his place between my legs. I hugged him tight with my knees, hoping the strength of my embrace would be sufficient enough to tell him not to do anything frantic. He complied, though given the way he shuddered I wasn’t sure if his obedience was my doing or not.
Kaiser shoved the boat into the lake and jumped in, landing with a thud on the rotting aluminum inlay. He sat down behind us, picked up a pair of oars, fitted them to the side supports, and dropped the paddles into the water. With each labored stroke he made we moved slowly across the lake. I glanced down and noticed fluid trickling in through a small hole to my left. I shuffled my bare feet away from the slowly expanding puddle, nudging Silas over in the process.
“Um, there’s water coming in,” I said.
“That happens,” the boy replied. “This is an old boat. Just don’t let it touch you, please. I don’t want to be larva food today.”
I gnashed my teeth together. “Me neither.”
Oddly enough, the longer we spent gliding across the still water the more comfortable Silas became. His shaking ceased, replaced by the sort of attentive, ear-raised, head-whipping behavior more becoming of him. I put my hand on his back and whispered, “Take it all in, just don’t make any sudden movements. Okay?” I was nervous, but my fear proved needless, because even though his head was on a swivel, the rest of him didn’t move. It was as if he somehow knew in that canine brain what would happen if he got carried away, just like he knew what would happen to Bridget Cormier that day on the Mancuso farm. I pulled him close to me and rubbed my cheek against his. “You don’t know how good you are, do you?” I said. “I’m the luckiest man in the world to have you as a friend.”
Kaiser, still paddling behind us, sniffled.
28
Fog enveloped us as we approached the shore, a swirling mass of vapor so dense that I could barely see my hand when I held it up in front of my face. With the stillness of the lake, it felt like we were rising above the earth, reaching for the atmosphere, but the water that continued bubbling into the craft kept me grounded in reality. A full inch now covered the bottom of the boat, forcing me to sit with my feet up on the rusting sides with Silas draped over my lap, his weight pressed into my gut. My back ached, my stomach rumbled, and I had to fight the urge to piss.
“How much longer?” I asked.
“Almost there,” Kaiser’s disembodied voice answered.
The fog lifted like a curtain a few moments later, and I gazed in wonder at the sights I saw. The land we approached was nothing like the one we left. There was a pristine beach of sand, white as any in the Caribbean, shimmering under the intense light of that massive sun. Palm trees dotted the area, as well as wildflowers and tall, wavering sea-grasses.
Beyond the trees, rising like a monolith in the distance, was the most wondrous sight of all. It was a mountain devoid of green, its black surface glittering in the dying light as if it were made of opal. It was beautiful and haunting at the same time, and I almost cried at the sight of it.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
Kaiser replied, “Home.”
The bow of the dinghy ran ashore and Kaiser, in a single motion, drew in the oars, dropped them into their brackets, and leapt over Silas and me. He landed on the sand and yanked on the boat’s tow line. The craft inched its way out of the water, the kid’s skinny and surprisingly strong arms quivering with each pull. I was so amazed by this feat of strength that I forgot to offer any help. Not that it mattered any, because Kaiser didn’t seem to mind the effort.
With the rickety old vessel resting on the beach and the water finally drained from the bottom, Silas and I stepped out. The sand underfoot felt strange – hard and compact like clay, unlike the shifting granules I was used to on most East Coast beaches. I glanced once more at the huge, black peak in the distance. Its surface, the longer I stared, looked like the inside of a geode. I marked that down as something I should explore later, if I ever got over the shock of being here. I thought Wendy would find it gorgeous, what with her passion for gemstones, and it struck me again how much I missed her.
Silas sprinted down the beach, spittle flinging from his mouth, his nose down. He looked free and at peace, as if he was meant to be here. My eyes went from him to the surrounding whiteness, only stopping when I spotted a stick lying in the sand. I picked it up, put two fingers in my mouth, and whistled. Silas stopped mid-stride, glanced back at me with a comically surprised expression, and proceeded to spin around and bolt back in my direction. When he reached where I stood he sat down, his body shaking with anticipation, his tongue lolling to the side like a wet sausage.
“You want this?” I asked, dangling the stick inches from his wet nose.
He panted, eyes locked on the prize, following it whichever way it went.
I reared back and tossed the stick as far as I could. Silas gave chase. Just watching him sprint after the soaring twig brought back memories, many of them tempered by melancholy. Had it really been more than a year since he’d come into my life? Time sure had flown by. We’d been through the whole gamut of emotion over that relatively short span, and he’d grown up so fast. The
re he was, a magnificent black beauty, galloping down a beach in some strange, misplaced land, his mature muscles flexing with each stride. His days of pure puppidom were indeed over.
A shrill, unearthly screech pierced the air. All movement stopped. Even Silas ceased his pursuit of the stick, which bounced a few feet in front of him. His ears angled upward and he cocked his head.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, holding my hands over my ears. Still the shrieking went on, hanging in the air like a wraithlike admonition that said there are some things you’re better off not knowing.
Finally, the wail died out. I felt a tap on my shoulder and jumped. I lost my footing on the packed sand and stumbled to my knees. With my head still buzzing I looked up to see Kaiser standing there, looking quite anxious.
“Mister Ken,” he said, “we have to go. It’ll be dark soon, and like I said, we must go into hiding once the sun does.”
I rose up on shaking legs and went to call for Silas, but he was already there. “We gotta go, boy,” I said.
He was one step ahead of me, chasing after the grimy boy as he hustled toward the line of palm trees in the distance. Obviously my buddy didn’t need to be told twice. I took that as a sign.
29
The palm trees disappeared and we entered a forest containing the kind of foliage I recognized – elm, maple, and birch trees, with a smattering of normal-sized evergreens. We ended up arriving at Kaiser’s “home” just as dusk tugged its murky blanket of darkness across the sky. The entrance was a metal plate in the ground, four feet square. Kaiser took a large, archaic iron key from the bag over his shoulder and set it into a hole in the plate. With a twist of his wrist the metallic crunch of churning gears sounded from underneath the soil. The boy then grabbed the loop on top of the plate and pulled. The door swung upward with a rusty creak, revealing a dark chasm. I could see only the first few steps leading down until they disappeared into the black.
Silas: A Supernatural Thriller Page 12
