The Origin (The Sighting #2)

by Christopher Coleman

  Sokwa reluctantly translated the question, and the woman gave a thin smile and a knowing nod.

  “Diahwa,” she said, and then rose quickly and scuttled back to a dark corner of the cave where she disappeared for several minutes. For a moment, Samuel thought the old hag had fled the cave through some secret back exit, but ultimately she re-emerged, creeping back into the light of the fire like a giant crab, her arms raised above her head, in her hands she held a thin stack of what looked to be a form of primitive paper, animal parchment perhaps.

  The woman waved the stack in the air, the same smile still traced across her face, and then she pattered back over to where Samuel and Sokwa sat apprehensively by the flame.

  She spoke quickly to Sokwa as she found a space to sit, telling the girl how her people’s stories had been passed down from one generation to the next through speech alone, but finally, during her years as a young girl, she recalled how the elders of the village began to record the sightings on page.

  The old hermit sat cross-legged by the fire as she folded the pages of the book one over the other, steady and careful with each leaf of parchment, finally arriving at a crinkled page that looked to be nothing more than a crusted-over rectangle of skin that was smeared with ash and dirt.

  Samuel reached for the page, almost instinctively, and the woman snatched it back toward her, opening her mouth wide as she gave a growl from somewhere deep in her chest.

  “No, Samuel,” Sokwa warned, shaking her head slowly. “You’ve not been permitted to touch her belongings.”

  Samuel put his arms up and blinked several times as he nodded, showing he had no more interest in touching the book, only in seeing the contents of what it contained. He leaned in slowly, his hands behind him, signaling to the woman he wanted only to look. Reluctantly, she held the book out and the page steady, and as she did, Samuel craned his neck forward and studied the page closer.

  He couldn’t see it at first, the grime was too thick, the coverage too complete; but then, through the soot of neglect and the creases of time, Samuel’s eyes began focusing, filtering, and soon he could make out what appeared to be a man’s screaming face.

  Samuel recoiled at the faded outline, and the woman smiled more widely now, satisfied at this white boy’s appropriate reaction to her god.

  The depiction of pain by the man on the parchment was undeniable, one Samuel knew intimately now, and as he continued to take in the drawing, his eyes found another figure, fainter and less detailed than the face of the man but undoubtedly there. This depiction was also of a face, and there was no question in Samuel’s mind it was the Croatoan.

  He formed his finger into a slow point, and then said the word under his breath, phrasing it as a question. “Croatoan?”

  The woman nodded. “Croatoan.”

  According to Sokwa’s translation, this scene was a depiction of the first slaughter by the Croatoan, and the man in the picture was not one of her own people, but a people that had been extinguished from the world at some point during the previous century. It was the first story transcribed from the oral record to the pages of the ancient text.

  “What else?” Samuel asked.

  “What else of what, Samuel. This is the story. This is what you came to know. The origin of the creature.”

  “There is more to this text. There are more pages. What else is revealed within.”

  “They’re pictures. Many of which are hardly recognizable.”

  Samuel frowned and gave a look of confession. “It’s not only the origin I wish to know. I want to know more. Her people called it from the sea as a protector. It destroyed a whole tribe of people.”

  “That is not what she said.”

  “I want to know how to call it from the sea. She knows this secret. I know she does. And I want to learn it for myself. It is the only reason I wanted to come here, Sokwa.”

  Sokwa paused and stared at Samuel, a look mixed with disgust and disappointment across her lips and eyes. “To learn to summon it? That is what you want to know? Why would you want such a thing, Samuel? Why would you want to bring such destruction to the island?”

  “I don’t want to bring destruction at all,” Samuel lied. “I want only to kill it. I want only to avenge Nootau.”

  Sokwa looked suspiciously at Samuel. “And Kitchi?”

  Samuel looked to the ground for a moment, considering the question. “Kitchi brought on his own death. I do not feel responsible for that.” He paused. “But yes, for Kitchi, as well. And for the protection of the colony. And your village.”

  Sokwa’s face was filled with questioning, an expression that fell well short of satisfaction at Samuel’s answers.

  But he held her stare firmly, knowing that if he dropped his eyes for even a moment, she would see the lie in them. Finally, she turned from him and said something to the woman, which Samuel prayed was the question he wanted to have answered more than all questions that had been raised by The Bible for the past decade, since he heard the first story of Adam and Eve recited.

  Samuel sat anxiously as the woman thumbed through several more pages of the book while she spoke. Her words were very tempered now, serious, as she pointed to more unclear pictures on pages that looked to have been pulled from the sand at the bottom of the sea.

  Samuel tried not to appear too eager for Sokwa’s pending translation, but his throat was thick with anticipation and he wished he had his water bladder.

  The woman finally stopped talking and then nodded, as if that was all she could tell.

  Sokwa looked at Samuel and said, “She says she cannot know for sure exactly when the Croatoan emerges, or if it still comes at all anymore. It has never come to her in all the years she has been in this place.”

  Samuel wanted to remind the woman that, of course it hadn’t come, she had been searching in the wrong waters the whole time. But there was nothing to be gained by this reminder, and it may have only angered the woman.

  “But the record does give hints as to its arrival. It tells how the Croatoan comes at only certain times of the cycle, but again, she has lost all track of the duration or star cycle. She has lost her sense of time, Samuel. She has no calendar of when we are.”

  “It’s okay. It’s here now. The cycle is now. But can it be called, Sokwa? Lured? That is what I need to know.”

  Sokwa nodded, indicating the answer had been given already. “The legend tells how it can be brought from the sea with particular sounds, though it seems there is not one in particular. Her people lured it first with the conch, similar to this one.” Sokwa moved her hand toward the shell the woman had used out on the rocks. “But over time, the Croatoan was drawn by other sounds as well.”

  Samuel’s eyes were wild and flickering now. “What sounds?”

  Sokwa shook her head and closed her eyes, struggling to continue the translation. But she continued. “Legend tells that the creature became attracted to the sound of voices on the shores. The voices of the natives who took to the beaches for fishing and recreation. And at one point, the creature took a young boy from the beach as his father sat in helpless terror. And once this story was told, how no conch was needed to bring the creature, but merely the screams of joy or pains, the Croatoan took to a new practice.”

  “Yes. What was it?”

  “She says she bore witness to this as a small girl. She saw how the creature would arise from the water, drawn by the screams of...” She stopped.

  “What is it, Sokwa? What did she say?”

  Sokwa gathered herself and continued. “When she was a girl, her people would bring chosen victims for sacrifices. They would stand at the beach and summon the creature, screaming words of religion that they had concocted, incantations, begging for it to rise and take their offerings. The Croatoan is attracted by sounds of the conch, like the sounds she was producing on the rocks, but it responds to the beckoning of other sounds too. The sounds of its prey. It is as you said, Samuel. She was calling for it. You were right about all of it. A
bout Nootau’s death. And Kitchi’s. I can’t believe this is true. But it is.”

  Sokwa was both fascinated and terrified, and Samuel recalled the similar feelings he had on the shores of the Great Western Sea, when the Croatoan began its newest cycle on the beaches of this New World. It was a world that Samuel had never felt a part of. Until that day, when the terror and awe had turned to wonder and destiny. He needed to bring Sokwa to this same place, not because he needed her for any specific purpose or task, but because he now wanted someone else to share the glory with him, someone who could appreciate the magnificence of the carnage the god would unleash on their people.

  “What else did she say?” he asked. “She must have said more.”

  Sokwa looked wide-eyed at Samuel and nodded. “She did. A bit.”

  Samuel gave a comforting smile to Sokwa, and she grinned weakly back at him. It was a look that told him he was making progress.

  “As the years went on, a new generation of the Croatoan people outlawed the use of human sacrifice as a way to lure the creature, but the desire to view it remained strong in the tribe. So, as a way to keep the beast fed and away from the village, while still having the joy—it was the word she used—they began to desecrate the seas with the blood and entrails of their farm animals, hoping that this blood of the land would simultaneously lure it from the Yapam depths and satisfy its hunger.”

  “What about the calls for it. How would it be summoned?”

  “They began to use sounds other than the distressful cries of humans, learning to mimic the calls of the whales, for instance, to draw it to the blood and flesh that had been offered to the waters. The woman says the beast added these sounds to its memory, along with the cries of man and the sound of the conch.”

  It was the knowledge Samuel sought. The secret to calling the god forth on command. The conch. The cries. Whales. It was bizarre and wonderful at the same time. “What time of day does it come nearest the shore? Is it at regular daily intervals?”

  Sokwa took a breath of relief and shrugged. “She says the record is unclear on that. As I said, she has been here too long, Samuel. She can’t know any longer when it comes and goes.”

  Samuel nodded and blinked furiously, thinking of the next appropriate question. But his mind could devise nothing further. He had all the information he needed now to make the Croatoan his own. To use it for his bidding the way Lucifer used the serpent of The Garden.

  But he had a bit more work to do with Sokwa. Just a bit. He was so close to his god, and soon Sokwa would be the newest member of his religion.

  Chapter 28

  Danny fell asleep almost instantly, but by 4:30, he was rustling on the sofa, trying to find a spot comfortable enough to prevent him from having to face the morning. But it was no use; he was awake for good, and his early rising habit, which had been stuck with him for years, was unwilling to release him from its clutches.

  He slipped on his shirt from the previous day and walked out to the porch where he stood alone in the cool, dark morning, listening to the crash of the waves on the sand, wondering if the god was standing on the shoreline at that moment, watching him like a stalker, the backlight of Danny’s kitchen light showcasing his silhouette to the beast below.

  But it no longer mattered to Danny anymore. The creature was going to die soon, he could feel it as powerfully as he felt the addiction of the beast only two short years ago. It had to die, there was no choice. It had taken too much from Danny already, and now that Tracy had arrived, he felt more obligated than ever to destroy it for good.

  Later, perhaps that same day, he would confess to Tracy the things he had done to her and Sarah, about those nights soon after his own ordeal when he had drugged them and attempted to sacrifice them, an offering to the black and purple man. And he would reveal that it wasn’t his own restraint that had saved their lives, but rather some quirk in the beast’s cycle, some change that had brought them all to this house now.

  He stepped back inside the kitchen and spotted the book, still sealed inside its plastic cocoon, isolated on the bar top, situated directly under one of the recessed flood lamps. It looked like an ancient artifact that had been placed there with purpose, as on an altar in some Egyptian tomb.

  Danny examined the details of the book’s cover and binding for the first time now, examining it through the bag with the curiosity of an archaeologist. It was thin, the document, perhaps only a half-inch in thickness, and its cover was dark brown with faded veins of yellow and beige spidered across the cover, a tell-tale sign of age and weathering.

  There was no doubt the book was old—over a hundred years, at least—and Danny could tell that Tracy wasn’t just excusing herself when she said she feared the delicacy of it. Mailing it would have been a catastrophe. The spine was cracked and frayed, barely holding the covers together with thin strands of cloth or leather—Danny couldn’t tell which—causing both ends of the book to slip offline from the pages between them.

  Danny stood over the book and stared at it, not ready to open the bag and touch it just yet. He had told Tammy and Samantha they would wait until morning to explore the contents, but technically it was morning, and he felt he needed to view the text now.

  He was cautious as he took another step toward the book, though for what reason he could not have said, and then he unclasped the jaws of the Ziploc and slowly slid the contents to the bar. He ran his finger across the cover, feeling the broken leather, which was surprisingly cool and smooth to the touch.

  Danny then used the tip of his index finger and pulled the cover up, guiding it down gently to the laminated counter. He stared at the first page, and to Danny’s surprise, there was a clearly printed title on it, with proper publishing credentials, as well as a date typed out in Roman numerals at the bottom of the thick paper. He couldn’t translate the date immediately, but he could see by the first two letters it was printed sometime in the nineteenth century.

  But his eyes were drawn back the title.

  Algonquin Stories of Roanoke Island and the Disappearance of an English Colony.

  Danny felt his heartbeat accelerate upon reading the word ‘Roanoke,’ and a bead of sweat quickly appeared and rolled down his face. Instinctively, he dodged to the side to avoid staining the book with his perspiration, and the droplet landed harmlessly on the bar top next to the book.

  He touched his lips curiously as he took a step backward, leaving the volume open to the first page, and then he stared at the tome with a new fascination, a new fear, as if it were a book of magic spells that had mistakenly fallen into his hands.

  He stood pondering what might be in the pages for several moments, thinking back on what he knew of the legend of Roanoke and the Lost Colony. It wasn’t much, other than what he had seen on a tour as a kid one summer during a vacation to the Outer Banks. Colonists from England had come and settled in what was now North Carolina, west of Nags Head in the Roanoke sound on an island of the same name.

  And then they had disappeared. All of them. If he recalled, one or more members of the colony had gone back to England, and when they returned, everyone was gone. Almost without a trace. Danny couldn’t remember how many, but it was somewhere in the hundreds, he thought. And to this day, there was no explanation for the disappearance.

  There was a word written on a tree or cabin, if he remembered correctly. Maybe somewhere else in the settlement, too. It started with a ‘C,’ but Danny couldn’t place it.

  The book.

  He stepped to it again, ready to begin the research that would hopefully fill in the gaps of his Lost Colony education and bring him closer to finding the sea god.

  Dok! Dok! Dok!

  Three solid raps landed on his front door, loudly, as if it had been struck with a rubber mallet. He gasped and felt his heart seize, but he quickly placed the sound and suppressed the scream that was eager to be released.

  He stared curiously at the front door of his rented beach house, wondering if he had ever used it beyond t
he first day he arrived.

  Three more raps.

  Danny took several steps until he was within a few inches of the door. “Who is it?” he demanded.

  “Danny, it’s Sheriff Calazzo.”

  Crap Danny thought. Not yet. Not now. He just needed another day. Maybe two. Enough time to find the answers in the book and put them to use, neither of which he could do from a jail cell.

  He turned and walked quickly back to the bar and gently closed the book before placing it into one of a dozen unused drawers that lined his kitchen. He walked back to the door and tried to put on an expression that would make sense at this hour, and then he thought, Screw it; this was his house, he could look however he damn well pleased. Especially at five in the morning.

  “What can I do for you officer?” he called through the door.

  “Can you open up for me, Danny. Let me come in for a minute or two? I just need to talk to you for a moment. Obviously, I would have waited for a more decent hour, but I saw your light on and thought I’d take a chance and call on you.”

  Shit! Danny thought as he turned the knob and opened the door, trusting his instincts, believing that refusing the request of an officer wasn’t going to improve his situation as it concerned Gerald DeRose.

  “Sheriff,” Danny said cordially. “What brings you out so late? Or early, I guess, depending on what kind of person you are.”

  “I’d say I’m the kind of person for whom this hour would be early, though not especially.”

  Danny nodded, not sure what that meant exactly. “This is to do with Mr. DeRose, I take it? I’ll say this, you guys must put in some long days, because it’s been what, a whole eight hours since I left the station?”

  “We do put in long hours, Mr. Lynch, but fortunately for you, Gerald DeRose is not the reason for my visit. Not exactly.”

  “’Not exactly?’ What does that mean?”

  Calazzo cocked his head and looked off ruefully to the side. “It means that we have another problem, similar to Mr. DeRose, which I suppose is good news for you, because after what I heard tonight, I’m pretty certain you’ll be in the clear.”