The Lurkers & Other Strange Tales

by Benedict, S. Lee

  And as Richard sat there in the dark, he resolved to uncover the truth.

  He had a pretty good idea where to start.

  5. The Warning

  The Indian’s house wasn’t really a house at all. It was a steel Quonset hut, situated in what was essentially no-man’s land in the middle of a forest, ten miles or so outside of Perry’s Landing. And the place hadn’t been easy to find, either.

  Richard’s GPS device had been little help; it led him to the general area, but he needed to stop three times for directions in order to locate the place.

  As Richard pulled up next to the familiar blue pickup, he spied the old man, peeking out at him through a window in the front of the steel hut. A moment later, the strange man was standing in the structure’s doorway, beckoning for Richard to come inside.

  “I’d almost given up on you,” the man said as Richard climbed out of the car. “But it’s good you’re here now. I'm sorry for the rushed nature of our first conversation, but I don’t like spending any more time in that town than I must. Come in, come in.”

  “Now, hold on just a minute there, Mr. …” Richard shook his head, partly in disbelief that he’d actually come. “I don’t even know your name. What do you want from me, and what do you know about Blackwater?”

  “Harold Johnson’s the name, Mr. Cadeau,” said the man. “And I asked you to come up here so I can try to convince you to take your wife and leave Blackwater and Perry’s Landing before it’s too late.”

  Harold walked over to Richard and took hold of him by the shoulders. “Tell me, has your wife started behaving strangely? Is that what made you finally come see me?”

  Richard was stupefied. What did this old man know about the perplexing effect that had recently overcome Penny? Richard stared at Harold in stunned silence, unable to put into words the horror that had been growing in him the last several days.

  “Come inside, Mr. Cadeau,” said Harold, and then he went back into the hut.

  Richard hesitated. He could sense this was where he would find some answers but wasn’t so sure he wanted to know them.

  Finally, he willed his body to move. He reached back inside his car and pulled a cloth-wrapped bundle from out of the glove compartment. Then he followed Harold Johnson inside.

  The interior of the hut was quite a bit more lavish than Richard expected. The place was cozily furnished and surprisingly inviting. Woven rugs lined the floor, and here and there, whimsical pieces of modern Native American art were displayed. To the left of the entryway, a small kitchen area consisted mainly of a stove and a counter with a sink. A compact, two-person dining table stood nearby. On the right side of the room, Richard even saw a modest entertaining space, complete with a comfortable-looking but well-worn couch in front of a flat-screen television. A wood-burning stove stood in the center of the room, providing heat to the entire hut.

  And toward the back, Richard noted a large bookshelf, serving as a divider, partially concealing behind it what Richard assumed was Harold’s sleeping area. The shelf was filled with a variety of reading material, and as was his habit, Richard scanned the titles. Mostly pulp stuff, but at least Harold Johnson was a book person and that counted for something in the writer’s opinion.

  Heck, my book might even be sitting over there, he thought.

  Harold went to the kitchenette and started filling a glass carafe with water. “Coffee?”

  “Got anything stronger?” said Richard with a nervous chuckle.

  “Sorry,” said Harold. “Never touch the stuff. I’m a friend of Bill W.”

  “Oh,” said Richard, abashed. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Can’t say I blame you for wanting a drink, though, living out there on that evil rock.”

  Richard set his bundle on the dinette and removed its wrapping. It was the stone idol he’d taken from his wife the night before. Being careful not to touch it with his bare hands, he used the cloth it had been wrapped in—an old dishtowel—to stand the thing up on the table. Richard couldn’t even bring himself to look directly at it; he could only peer at it out of the corner of his eye.

  “Can you tell me anything about this, Mr. Johnson?” Richard said.

  Harold’s back was turned away as he filled his coffee maker with ground coffee beans. He grabbed the carafe intending to place it on the heating element and was holding it in his hand as he began to turn back toward Richard.

  “You can call me Harold if—”

  Harold dropped the coffee pot; it shattered against the concrete floor.

  Harold pointed at the hideous figurine. His voice was a hiss. “You brought that thing into my home?”

  He rushed toward it, snatching the idol off the table. But as soon as he took hold of the thing, Harold started to convulse like he’d latched onto an electrified rod. And the more he shook, the tighter he seemed to grip the infernal thing; it was as if Harold just couldn’t let go. The look of fear and pain on the man’s face was anguishing.

  Richard flung the dishtowel over the idol and pried it from Harold’s grip, taking care not to touch it himself. Harold immediately stopped shaking, but he was breathing hard and sweating profusely.

  “Bring that outside,” he said.

  Richard followed the Indian out the door and around to the back of the hut. He saw a small shed next to a large propane tank. A chopping block fashioned from an old tree stump sat next to a tall stack of firewood.

  “Put that thing on the block and keep it wrapped up nice and tight,” said Harold. He went into the shed and came out seconds later holding an eight-pound sledge.

  As soon as Richard placed the bundle with the idol on the stump, Harold swung the hammer with all the strength he possessed in his aging frame, bringing the tool’s head down upon the wrapped totem.

  Richard heard a definitive crunch as the stone figure broke into pieces inside the cloth. His ears popped, and he instantly felt warm and somewhat more relaxed. It almost reminded him of the way he felt after a massage or a good workout at the gym. He felt … unburdened.

  Harold brought the hammer down on the idol a half-dozen more times until he seemed satisfied the cursed object was good and obliterated.

  “Bring that and follow me,” he said, casting the sledgehammer aside. He headed off into the forest.

  Richard did as he was bade, thinking it better to not question the old man just then. The look in Harold’s eyes as he’d pounded the idol to bits made Richard feel as if he should treat the situation with the utmost seriousness.

  Richard and Harold trudged through the woods for twenty minutes before they emerged on a bluff overlooking the sea. The waves crashed forcefully against the rocks below, sending explosions of white foam into the air.

  “What are you going to do?” said Richard.

  Harold took the pieces of stone from Richard, still wrapped in the dishtowel.

  “I’m giving it back to him,” Harold said.

  He then unfolded the dishtowel over the edge of the bluff, allowing the broken remnants of the evil thing to fall. Bits of black rock, no single piece bigger than a pellet of buckshot, rained down into the churning waters below.

  Harold spoke a few words in a Native American dialect that Richard, being completely unschooled in such things, was unable to identify.

  Then the Indian said in English, “Let this black totem never ensnare another with the madness it brings. Let him choke on its unholy pieces.”

  Richard stared at Harold in fearful astonishment. “Who, Harold?” He was almost whispering, quite sure he didn’t really want to know the answer. “Him who?”

  Harold lifted his eyes from the rocks below and regarded Richard with fervent intensity.

  “The lurking god,” Harold said. “The one who watches.”

  Back in Harold’s hut, Richard sat at the dinette and watched his host clean up the broken glass on the kitchen floor. A mug of water, instead of a cup of coffee, was cradled loosely in Richard’s fidgeting hands.

  “So will Pe
nny be all right now?” he said, nervously. “Now that you’ve destroyed the totem?”

  On the walk back from the bluff, Richard had filled Harold in on everything that had transpired—about Penny’s accident and her late-night walks, the baffling dialect she’d spoken, and how he’d discovered the black idol.

  “Not as long as she remains on that island,” Harold said. “Askuwheteau, my people named it. In the Algonquin language it means the one who watches. It’s what the Passamaquoddy tribe called the dark god who dwells in the waters around the island.”

  “Dark god?” Richard was skeptical. “You mean just some old Indian wives’ tale, right? Surely you don’t believe—”

  “I can’t make you believe what I do, Mr. Cadeau, or describe with certainty what form the darkness poisoning Askuwheteau Island takes. I can only tell you there is a darkness there. These legends have been passed down among my people for hundreds of years.”

  Harold put his broom and dustpan away and took a seat across from Richard at the little table. “If I were you, I would take that pretty wife of yours and go back to where you came from, sooner rather than later. Tonight, even.”

  The two men sat quietly for a few moments until the silence became uncomfortable.

  Then Richard said, decidedly, “Tell me what you know.”

  The Indian leaned forward. “The Passamaquoddy people have lived here for a long time, thousands of years before the English settlers came to these shores. My people were fishermen and made their homes along the shores and on the islands near the coast. But long have tales been told of Askuwheteau and how it was shunned by our ancestors.

  “It was said that long ago, before even our peoples or any people walked the earth, a star fell from the sky into the sea. The star was a god, a dark god, who made his dwelling place in the great water. Later, my people believed this god’s home was deep below the island, and they named the place for the god, Askuwheteau, the one who watches.

  “Then in the 1600s, Captain Perry landed with his people from England and settled on the mainland, across the strait from the island. Eventually, some of his people made their home on the island itself. These people were bewitched by the call of the god in the water. They began to worship him. They built stone idols there and even an unholy place of worship.

  “When rumors spread that they had begun to practice human sacrifice, Captain Perry took many men and went to the island to destroy the evil cult. He killed many of them, but some escaped by hiding in the caves there. Many believe the cult survived in secret through the years. The woman, Eugenia Mallow, and her husband bought the island fifty years ago. I believe, even then, they were members of this cabal.

  “I also believe your wife has begun to succumb to the dark god’s call. If you do not take her away, far away, she may be lost forever.”

  Richard swallowed hard. It was several moments before he was able to speak.

  “I don’t believe in stuff like that, Mr. Johnson,” he said.

  “Okay. I can’t say I blame you for doubting,” said Harold. “You’re a man of reason, and stories like this are hard to accept in times such as these.”

  “Have you ever seen any of this?” Richard said. “This cult? This ‘god’ as you call it?”

  “Me? No. But I have seen strange things I can’t explain. Some of the elders told stories of a great beast seen in the waters around the island, a creature larger than any whale, like a squid with tentacles as big around as a mighty oak tree.”

  Richard was stunned. Ancient gods falling from the sky? Evil cults? And giant squids? It was all too much to swallow. Richard was beginning to think his new buddy, Harold, had taken too many hits off the old peace pipe or had a secret stash of peyote hidden in that shed behind the house. Penny’s bizarre behavior may well have been brain damage caused by her fall, and every moment Richard spent there could have been worsening her situation. If only he could discount the Indian’s crazy stories completely, but something kept gnawing at Richard.

  His mind raced back to that stone idol, the grotesque alien face with the tentacles growing from it. The leathery, demonic wings. The hideous claws. But mostly he remembered the way his brain had burned on the edge of insanity when he’d touched it. There’d been something unnatural about it for sure. Something … evil. Richard couldn’t find a better word for it.

  “How do you fit into all of this, Harold?” said Richard. “Why did you feel the need to warn me?”

  A shadow passed over Harold’s face then, and he grimaced as if recalling a painful memory. “I’ve lived alone up here for a lot of years, Mr. Cadeau. But I wasn’t always alone. I had a daughter once. Melanie. She was everything to me.

  “Thirty years ago she got involved with a man from Perry’s Landing. He convinced her to join the church there, but it wasn’t a normal church. Instead of following Jesus, these people followed Askuwheteau. Not so as you would know it at first glance, though. They spoke like Christian people. Their church looked like a Christian church. There were Bibles in the pews, and if you walked through the doors on a Sunday morning, you might even hear a sermon on how the meek will inherit the earth. But in the dark of night, on Askuwheteau Island, in their unholy temple, they worshipped the lurking god, the one who watches from the deep.

  “Melanie began to act in the way your wife is acting now. I was afraid for her as I’ve never been afraid. I made plans to take her away from here, away from those people. I spoke against them to Melanie every time I saw her. After I started talking to her about leaving, I began hearing voices and seeing strange lights in the trees at night. I heard chanting in languages I’d never heard before, like the one you described. I knew it was the members of the cabal—lurkers, hiding in the forest, trying to scare me.”

  Tears appeared in the corners of Harold’s eyes then, but he continued his grim tale. “Finally, I was able to convince Melanie to leave. She said she would go with me, but first she had to break things off with the man. I didn’t want her to go to him, but I couldn’t stop her. I should have tried harder. A few days later, they found her body on the shore near Perry’s Landing. She was … her flesh had been eaten away. They tried to tell me she must have accidentally drowned, that crabs had fed on her body, but I knew it was no accident.”

  The Indian met Richard’s gaze. Harold’s eyes glistened in the light of the wood-burning stove.

  “They killed her, Mr. Cadeau. They murdered my only child.”

  He got up from the table and walked over to the bookshelf. From the bottom, he pulled out an old photo album, opened it, and found a loose photograph near the back. He laid it in front of Richard.

  It was a faded picture of a group of people posing in front of an old-fashioned church building. The photo looked like it had been taken thirty years earlier, judging by the way everyone in it was dressed. The people in the snapshot were smiling cheerfully.

  Harold pointed to a pretty, dark-skinned woman of about twenty, standing next to a strapping, young man of about the same age.

  “That’s Melanie,” Harold said softly, a note of deep regret in his voice.

  “She was lovely,” said Richard. His heart ached for Harold then. Richard just couldn’t fathom what it must have been like for the man to lose his only child.

  Then Harold slid his finger across the picture and let it rest on an older woman of about sixty years of age. “This is Eugenia Mallow,” he said. "She was their leader."

  Richard had never seen a picture of Eugenia before. When he and Penny had moved into Blackwater, they’d found no pictures at all. It was as if someone had purposely removed them all before they got there.

  Richard looked at the woman closely then. She was smiling—as were all the people in the photo—but Richard noted something about Eugenia’s eyes. They were vacant and cold. Richard could almost believe she was the leader of a mindless cult.

  Next to Eugenia was a man Richard did recognize. He was beardless and a lot younger, but Richard was certain it was George Brooks, t
he caretaker of Askuwheteau Island. Was Brooks a part of this secret cabal Harold claimed had brainwashed his daughter? And next to George in the picture—was that Dr. Vogel? Richard thought it was.

  He scanned the other faces in the photo and froze when he saw a man about the same age as Eugenia was at that time. Richard didn’t quite recognize the face, but then again, he wouldn’t have; he never really got a good look at it to begin with. But Richard did recognize the cane the man was holding, the one with the silver handle in the shape of an octopus … or maybe it was only like an octopus. Now that he thought about it, the cane handle was almost assuredly a version of the idol he and Harold had destroyed, only fashioned from silver instead of black stone.

  The man was, without a doubt, Damon Black, senior partner at Mortel, Black & Black.

  Maybe Harold is right after all, Richard thought, a sense of panic and horror rising within him. A sadistic, squid-worshiping cult? He supposed it was possible. Things like that were known to have existed, right? Jonestown? Heaven’s Gate?

  And if it was true, then the lawyers were a part of it, which meant Richard and Penny had been lured there. But why? What could these people possibly want with him or Penny?

  Whatever was really going on, one thing was clear to Richard then. Penny was most certainly in danger, and it was up to Richard to get his wife off Askuwheteau Island. He hadn’t a moment to lose.

  A minute later, Richard was back in his car, tearing down the dirt access road that led away from the Indian’s property, back toward Perry’s Landing.

  Harold Johnson stood at the door of his little Quonset hut and watched Richard Cadeau drive away.

  Harold was thankful he was able to make the younger man understand how dire his situation truly was. It was much too late for his Melanie, but maybe this young couple could escape a similar fate.

  Harold only prayed the warning had come in time.

  6. The Lighthouse

  When Richard finally drove his car off the ferry onto Askuwheteau Island, the sun was beginning to set behind the tree-lined horizon west of Perry’s Landing. As soon as his tires hit the road, he floored it. In the rearview, he saw the ferry driver wave, but Richard didn’t acknowledge it as he raced toward the curvy, cliffside road and Blackwater Manor.