by E. Coulombe
The torn bloodied surfer shorts reminded Nani of her father’s shirt she had found only the day before, and she broke down – sitting in the sand, her body heaved as she sobbed, the grief and fear overwhelming. Lono heard her and tried to straighten himself. He had to find Dale, he told them, and managed to get his legs underneath his body and stand. He called out to his friend. They had stayed together most of the way, he told his father, but he’d lost him when they neared shore. His father helped him and together they walked down the beach, scanning the shore and the nearby waters with the light and they had all but given up when Dale’s body washed in at the far end of the beach. They pulled him from the surf, bloody and dazed, and he stared at them but did not respond. With Nani’s help they were able to carry him up the hill and place him in the truck bed.
As soon as they pulled into the compound Grant and Andrew jumped into the bed of the truck and helped carry Dale into the house. Emma washed and wrapped the deep cuts – Dale stared fixedly at the window, still mute, unable to speak.
Lono sat next to his friend on the couch and Nani lay across floor, hugging Lono’s legs. “When I saw you on the beach, washed up like a seal, I thought you were dead,” Nani cried. “Dead. Please Lono, never make me see you like that again, as long as I live I can never see that again. You hear me boy?”
Lono smiled weakly. “I’m okay mom, I’m alright.” He took a deep breath and looked towards Dale. “Are you okay, man?” Dale didn’t respond.
“I don't know what happened,” Lono explained to the others the events of the ride and the cave they had found. Nani grunted and Lono shook his head. “And Mom, I could hear your saying ‘told you so.’ That’s what was ringing in my ears while that wave pummeled me down below. I kept thinking, oh please just let me get outta here so I can hear mom saying one more time, ‘told you so Lono, what’d I say, told you so!’ But there was this thing, like a lobster but totally different. It moved up and down like a fan in the water, and it had this tail that stuck up, and these weird pincer arms covered in spikes. And the damn thing attacked us! And it hurt like shit, the claws kept gouging my back! I don’t know, maybe they felt cornered in that cave or something, with the waves and everything, maybe we cut off their escape route, but I swear they jumped on us.”
“What were those things, Dale?” he asked.
Dale’s eyes glistened with fear, but he remained frozen in place, mute… He opened his mouth to speak, finally, but all he said was “No!” his voice deep, emotional.
“What happened to you, Dale?” Nani asked. “Boy, you have to tell us…”
Dale looked away, and Emma suggested they let him sleep for awhile, that he was probably in shock and would do better with some rest.
“We almost lost you both,” Nani said as they exited, looking around the room like she was searching for someone to blame. Her eyes landed on Grant and she stared at him, making him so uncomfortable he looked down at the floor. “There’s something wrong with the water here. I’m tellin’ you all, there is something very wrong. And you better do something to fix it.”
Just then, George came running into the house and slammed smack into Andrew as he turned to leave. George recovered his balance but was still disoriented, his face flushed and his clothing soaked with sweat.
“George you look awful. What's the matter?” Emma said.
Panting, George could hardly speak, “You won't believe it. Andrew, you won't…” He stopped to catch his breath. “You've got to come with me. Now!”
Chapter Twenty
The next morning, after only a few hours of sleep, Andrew found George in one of the compound’s sheds, hammering nails into a sawed off two by four. George pointed to the other end of the shed where Kalani was sawing the boards. “I hope Grant doesn’t mind, but I asked Kalani to help. Have you secured us a boat to get to Ko`olau?”
“All set. They’re gassing up the outboard now.”
George breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought maybe you didn’t believe me in the light of day, old friend.”
“I’m not sure what I believe, but I know you’re not easily fooled by any fossil. Have you made any calls?”
“Not yet. I want you to see it first. Guess I need verification.”
“Good idea.”
“You checked on the waves?”
“Yeah. Not so good, I’m afraid. Still six to eight feet. I asked Keikoa and the guys to take the outrigger canoe. They left about an hour ago-- they should get there about when we do. If the waves are up, we’ll have to use their boat to retrieve the cast. The outrigger can land in high surf, but our outboard can’t.”
George frowned. “I don’t know, Andrew.”
“Those guys are good, George. If anyone can make a smooth launch, they can.”
George caught Andrew’s worried glance. “We were up so late last night, Andrew. Did you sleep at all?”
“Enough.”
Andrew excused himself to grab his pack, while George moved into the shed, searching for supplies. He found a used bag of cement and hefted it inside the box. They only needed to make a lid for the box and they’d be ready to go.
With the engine at mid-throttle, the ride was smooth as they headed along the Southern coast line.
“So tell me about the Ediacarans,” Andrew said, sitting back as he prepared for George to switch into professor mode.
Sure enough, George puffed out his chest and started speaking in a theatrical baritone, loud enough to compensate for the sound of the chop.
George explained that around 1940, a young geologist in Australia stumbled upon a deposit of thousands of unusual fossils in the Ediacaran Hills. The fossils evoked a marine life unknown in modern oceans: they were odd things that looked like feathery fronds, embedded in sedimentary deposits. The surrounding bedrock was later dated at 640 million years old.
But even more notable to paleontologists were the features these organisms seemed to lack. Apparently they had no heads or tails, no insides or outsides, fronts or backs. They had no obvious circulatory, nervous or digestive systems. Without teeth, or eyes or almost everything including bones, muscles, mouths and internal organs, the Ediacarans were nearly impossible to classify.
Seilacher, a German paleontologist from the University of Tubingen, developed a controversial theory. He described them as single celled beings with hydraulic architecture that could be swollen with fluid much like an air mattress pumped full of air. The fossilized lines left behind, he thought, were the walls of their hydraulic compartments. He imagined that to sustain themselves without a circulatory system or guts they absorbed oxygen and nutrients directly from seawater by diffusion. Not everyone agreed with him. And if that thing that attacked George’s arm in the pool was one of them, he had a whole new theory on their digestive habits.
“They were the oldest organisms ever found!” George bellowed. “But
even more startling than their age was the fact that they had no heads, no tails, no insides or outsides, no fronts, nor backs. They had no obvious circulatory, nervous or digestive systems. No teeth, no eyes, or bones, muscles, mouths or internal organs! The Ediacarans were nearly impossible to classify.”
George stopped talking when the boat turned north and the water changed. The northwestern trade winds churned the ocean’s surface into havoc, adding considerable chop to the six-foot swells. George felt sick as the small craft rose and fell, slapping hard at the bottom of each wave. After thirty long minutes they caught up with the outrigger.
Keikoa had only four paddlers on board, leaving room in the middle of the boat for the sand cast.
“Can you make it in, you think?” Andrew asked as they came up along side the outrigger.
Keikoa never took his eyes off the waves.
“Maybe.”
Keikoa took the canoe toward the shore. His crew paddled hard, muscles taut, but the outboard soon passed them. Strong winds whipped Andrew’s straight blonde hair, making a kind of halo around his face.
Soo
n both boats were tossing in the water off Ko`olau Kai. The waves looked gentle enough, as if a large cylinder underneath was rolling them towards shore. But as they moved closer, the cylinder changed from dark blue to light green, rising higher than their heads and pounding the shore, spray flying twenty feet or more into the air. “How big are these waves?” George asked Andrew, trying to sound nonchalant, though a slight tremor in his voice betrayed his fear.
“I don’t know-- looks like what they’d call a four footer, which means about an eight footer anywhere else in the world.”
“Let’s do it.” George hissed. “We have to. We don’t have a choice.”
“Keikoa” Andrew shouted, “Can you land it?”
Keikoa nodded. “Yes. We can get in, but coming out…” his mouth turned down at the corners and he shook his head firmly back and forth, “we need luck, maybe a lull.”
Pulling close to the outrigger, Andrew handed Keikoa the box.
“Take it on in, Keikoa,” Andrew shouted over the sound of the surf. George and I will swim in.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Just get the box in.”
Andrew turned to George. “Jump in here. We’re south of the beach and the current’s going to pull us north. We’ll have to swim hard to get to shore. And we don’t want to land at this small beach, Ko`olau iki, straight ahead. Let’s aim for your beach—that big one further up. Ko`olau Kai. Over there,” he pointed. “The dark place just above the surface. See it?
As George studied the route, he flashed back to the creature sucking on his arm. “Should we be worried about that lobster thing that cut into Lono’s leg?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. In spite of his anxiety, nothing could deter George. “No, that had to be a freak,” he said, rationalizing. “Lobsters don’t usually attack. Probably happened because they were cornered.”
“We don’t have to do this now, you know,” Andrew said. “We can come back tomorrow.”
George looked at the shore. It seemed so close. He was going for it.
“Okay,” said Andrew, “but stay with me, stay on my left. Swim as hard as you can. We’re going in over reef, so try to stay on top, but if you get caught in the wave, tuck like this.” He pulled his head down between his arms and covered his knees in a ball.
“Don’t worry, I know all about tucking.”
“Alright. Then as soon as you get to the surface, lay yourself out as flat as you can, breath deep and keep your lungs full so that you skim over the reef. It’s really shallow there.”
Not giving it another thought, George looked down into the clear blue water and jumped. Andrew followed close behind him. Both men were good swimmers, and they quickly caught a wave into the beach.
George got swept up in the washtub. The wave tossed him around a bit, but with a little effort he was able to get to the surface and glide smoothly into shore. Without waiting to catch his breath, he ran up to the small shelter he had constructed the day before, threw off the leaf covering and knelt down next to the cast. It was intact. Andrew came up beside him.
“Well Andrew--What do you think?”
Andrew’s expression was unreadable, and George became defensive. “Come on man. What do you see?”
Andrew shook his head back and forth. “George, damn you! You dragged us all the way out here for that?”
George started to stammer his argument.
Andrew’s face melted into a crooked grin. “Old buddy, I have to admit. It certainly looks like a Dickensonia!”
A huge smile spread across George’s face. “Doesn’t it Andrew?” He was hopping from one foot to the other performing an unsual, but very George-like, dance. “Honestly, Andrew, I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I imagined we would come here and you’d look at the cast and say it was some kind of jellyfish or some common thing that lives off-shore here. And the guys would all joke about the stupid haole who thought this thing was some kind of never-before-seen creature.”
He shouted. “But not! It’s the Ediacaran, and I’m not crazy!”
Keikoa and the rest of the Nakoan men caught George’s fever and began to speak excitedly in Hawaiian. Andrew answered them in Hawaiian. Their faces beamed as they each shook George’s hand. He didn’t understand the language, but the gesture was clear enough – they congratulated him on his discovery.
George pulled his camera out of the dry bag he had packed inside the box. As he snapped photos, Keikoa retrieved fresh water from the stream and mixed the cement. George added a bit more water and poured a thin layer into the sand casting, creating a delicate mold and giving it some stability. He waited a few minutes for it to harden, then poured a second layer on top of the first and around the outside edges. Once it had dried, the men watched, speechless, while George used the shovel to lift his home made banana leaf boat and gently place the entire cast in the fern-lined box.
He took only a brief interlude to search the shore for any other sand impressions, or the creature itself, before they launched the canoes. Keikoa had his wished-for luck-- the swell was down to only a couple of feet, and the crew acted swiftly, making two trips to the whaler, the first to bring the box, the second trip carrying George and Andrew.
Even more than yesterday, George felt a sense of urgency to make contact with the outside world.
Chapter Twenty One
Altook walked down a long narrow corridor. Dim lighting on both sides gave the hall a sense of the infinite – he kept walking with a feeling of mounting desperation creeping up his back. The further he walked the longer the hallway grew. There were no doors on either side and no end in either direction. He began to panic. He started to run and a loud ringing siren sounded. “What the hell?” He stopped in total fear and turned around – the loud siren came again. He couldn’t tell from which direction. Louder, closer, just in front of him now! He turned to run the other way….
“What?” Altook awoke from his nightmare to the sound of his phone ringing insistently from the living room. The answering machine picked up and he heard George’s voice.
He jumped out of bed “George, what the f…” he said as he turned off the answering machine, which was echoing his own voice. “What are you doing? It’s two in the morning. What’s wrong?”
“Altook, listen. This is important.” Aside to Andrew he said, “Jeeze, I feel like I’m in jail, and I only have one call.” Back to Altook, “Wake up Altook, are you listening?”
Altook stood at full attention but only nodded.
“ALTOOK!”
“Yes, okay, ready,” stopping just short of sir.
“We don’t have much time, the battery is running out on my cell and once it goes who knows when I’ll be able to call. They have to turn on generators to get a recharge here. I’m sending you two photos of a sand casting I found here yesterday. I think I saw the thing that made this impression, but I didn’t catch it. Anyway, there are three people you must call, and send these photos to. Write this down okay?”
“Ready.”
“Dr. Davis at Boston College, and Dr. Herbert, you don’t know him, but he works at Belrich Institute in Switzerland. And Dr. Kaneshiro, he’s here at UH. In fact you should probably call Kaneshiro first, he’s going to be very, very interested. Tell them I have found a most unusual sand casting here on Nakoa Island, and that I need their help identifying it. I won’t be able to communicate easily for several reasons, one of which is a lack of electricity! I’ll call again tomorrow if I can. Got it? The numbers are in my Outlook.” George said anxiously as he heard the first warning of impending battery failure. “I have to send right now, but once you’ve received both photos, try and call me back.”
George hung up and waited interminable moments for his internet connection, practically begging the small hand held device to connect. As soon as he was on line he hit send and watched his little cellular send at its antiquated snail’s pace.
Fortunately the low kb photos moved out quickly and he felt certain that at least one had been
sent before the phone died. He sat there staring at the dead phone in his hand, shaking his head. “Well, I tried Andrew,” he sighed “we won’t know if he got them until I’ve had a chance to recharge. Doesn’t it frustrate your research not having an internet connection out here?”
Andrew tilted his head and looked up from the paper he was reading, “I have to respect the way things are here George. I left this island years ago, remember, and I returned here for Emma’s sake, not mine. With my deal with her I’m not even supposed to be doing any research, so I’m more or less just dabbling.” Andrew shifted his gaze out the window. “Anyway, these people here did not leave. This is their island, and their way of life, and we have to respect that. In many ways I am just a guest.”
“And the owner.” George looked straight at Andrew.
“Never one to mince words are you George?”
Andrew placed the paper in his hand back on the desk. “Anyway George, most of the great discoveries of our lifetime were made before the internet.”
“True. But no major discovery since 1980 has been made without it. And certainly not on some isolated island in the middle of the goddamn Pacific Ocean!”
Altook immediately downloaded and printed the photos. The cast looked vaguely familiar to him, but he wasted no time googling the net. Instead, he made the phone calls, starting with Dr. Kaneshiro, and set into motion a storm of activity in the small, but deadly earnest community of pre-Cambrian experts.
Chapter Twenty Two
George’s body ached as he dragged his feet up the hill towards Kahili summit. They had only yesterday returned from Ko`olau, and under any other circumstances George would have rested at least one full day before beginning another hike. But time was precious. He couldn’t risk losing the creature, and instead had convinced Andrew, Kerri and the boys to camp with him at Ko`olau Kai, and spend at least one full day searching for whatever had made that sand casting. But he needed rest, and finally stopped at the boulder named ‘Mystic Rock’, the highest point on the trail short of the summit.
