Grendel

By Gabriel Darke

Jeremy Lanier is the owner of a film production business. He makes a unique brand of movie. The kind talked about in whispers, seldom screened in public, and much sought after by an exclusive clientele. Jeremy decides he requires a particular, and highly illegal, product that will add the realism to his films that is not to be seen anywhere else except in newsreels depicting the aftermath of battles and natural disasters. Alice Hunnicutt begins work as an actress at Nightshade Film Productions at the age of seventeen and swiftly rises to become a top star and money-earner despite initial low esteem and a background of poverty. These two will clash, and as a result struggle to survive both in life and in death owing to a monster named Grendel.
John, a farm boy from the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, enters into the picture long after crucial events have made a ghost town of the hidden home of Nightshade Films and as two trapped human spirits and a monster that cannot die vie for supremacy in a macabre dance that seems to have no end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gabriel Darke
• Release date: Feb 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311583604

Gabriel Darke

I am a retired HS math teacher. living in Alberta, Canada with Bachelor degrees in Education and humanities English. I've been writing since the early 1980s and my genre is Science Fiction.

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Grendel1

a novel by Gabriel Darke

Smashwords Edition

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Published by:

Wes Reib on Smashwords

Grendel

Copyright 2014 by Wes Reib

This New Edition December 2019

Thank you for purchasing this eBook. This book may be reproduced and copied at one location only and is not meant for a wider distribution without permission.

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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I dedicate this work to Anne.

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Grendel

by Gabriel Darke

Part One - Bumpkin

The Thompson gun is empty and the sword is gone. My wounds are many and grievous. I will take solace from the sight of my beloved to until the light fades forever before my eyes.

Sonya perches over the rear backrest of the speeding ‘69 Caprice convertible, white with blood-red upholstery. She wears a long-sleeve Tee, its chest exploded by a sunburst of neon greens and yellows. Her pose is parade queen perfection. Her mane of crimson hair is unnatural liquid, fluttering as though a flock of birds struggles to escape from within. A single spark from her luminous smile will ignite the forest she glides by.

The convertible passes me, and then decelerates with angry squealing desperation. Sonya’s abrupt dismount from her precarious seat is painful to watch.

Traffic is backed up to beyond the curve ahead owing to road construction, whose stenches of tar and diesel drift all the way to my astonished self. The Caprice finishes broadside-on to the rear of the queue of cars awaiting permission to proceed. Numb and astonished, amazed by tragedy narrowly averted, I resume my way, mildly tremulous, perversely curious, an empty two gallon gas can in hand.

Sonya is far more than pretty, and I take, in full, pleasure from her disturbed and disheveled looks while approaching the convertible at its crazy angle to the road.

Her hair is the most unsettled of her parts. As she remonstrates with the driver—I would like to know what she says, but have no skill at lip reading, especially when it is presented side-on—she runs her fingers through its tangles, soothing its startled-cat condition. Her sunglasses ride a slant athwart her lips. She punches the driver in the shoulder. He puts up a hand to ward off further blows.

A third person in the car, occupying the front passenger, shotgun seat, makes comment over her shoulder. The Caprice, California plates, stands within the abundant shade of mature deciduous trees. I walk in sunlight still.

Persons who exited their vehicles owing to curiosity or fright linger to admire Sonya’s art and performance. Reluctantly they resume their cars. The flag man, yellow hard hat and red plastic vest with phosphorescent V front and back, the red and white ‘STOP’ of his dual sided sign displayed, having retreated to the opposite side of the ditch, resumes his place also.

As I near the convertible, the bellowing of machine noise increasing with every step, Sonya resumes her backrest perch. The Caprice’s driver, no doubt embarrassed about his orientation, makes one better by backing, straightening, and rolling forward. Sonya, barrel racer-style, rides out his corrections with aplomb.

An ocean-blue 1969 Pontiac Lemans two-door hardtop glides into place behind the Caprice. The Pontiac’s driver cranes forward as he slows, the object of his attention combing her hair. Sonya’s expression, which I am able to see clearly, now that I am so much nearer, alternates between pout and vexation. Her lips are cherry red. Her tan not so dark as mine.

Finished with her repairs, Sonya knocks out a cigarette from a crumpled pack against the side of her fist. She sees me, tilts her head, parts her lips, and smiles. As our gazes connect, she gives her head a little shake, acknowledging my interest. Her infant-sweet expression encourages me and I smile back.

Run out of gas, Sonya declares. We are near enough our words can penetrate the machinery racket and be understood. She shifts a lock of hair across her forehead in the way girls used to being admired do.

Ahead of the Caprice is a four-door 1972 Valiant metallic green. Inside is a family of pairs: husband and wife front seat, prepubescent son and daughter back seat. The wife caresses her husband’s neck and shoulder as her other hand presses into her hair. The backseat kids appear settled and calm.  The vacations I recall at the same age were angry road-weary marathons.

It’s that obvious? I say belatedly, owing to my distraction.

Sonya puts her palms to both sides of her head, miming ear muffs, and beckons me nearer. After what must appear an obvious hesitation, I do so.

Run out of gas, she repeats, moving her sunglasses so their lenses rest in her hair. Her feet are bare, cork sandals rest in the well between the seats, lime-green nail polish winks from fingers and toes. I admire how the stonewashed denim covering her thighs strains to contain bulging. Nate, lighter, she instructs curtly. Bending to speak intimately to his ear, she straightens after, her lightly covered breasts performing a heavy liquid sway and recovery.

Yeah, I say, once more distracted.

Stinks. Sonya waves the unlit cigarette before her face as though its tobacco will dispel vapors daring to annoy her. I stare at her tented nipples. What she says next, in an irritated tone, is: Where you headed?

Gas, for my car.

Not that, stupid. Where after?

Salmon Arm. Gonna visit with a friend o’ mine. Supposed to be there today. My voice tends to strangle itself when talking to pretty girls. A discordant squawk inserts itself midway through my reply. Sonya is amused.

My friend Hal spent a relaxed summer doing whatever he wanted. My summer was day in and day out fields and farm: milking cows, mucking barns, mending fences, pulling weeds, putting up hay. In the three months after high school graduation, I hadn’t a single day off. If I was smart, I would have left for good and all right after school ended. I have no excuse for putting up with all that bullshit other than cowardice. What was that?

We can give you a ride. Sonya accepts the glowing cigarette lighter Nate passes back. You never know when the next gas station is going to happen along.

I, ah ... don’t mind walking, I all but say. Am I insane, a flaming idiot, too long on the farm or all of the above? Sure, I reply instead. I’m feeling a rise in temperature to match the changes in my breathing and blood flow.

The girl in the front passenger seat, honey-blonde hair styled rock-star fashion and resembling a rat’s nest, grunts and then looks to the side.

You can put your gas can in the trunk. Nate, keys. Sonya takes in smoke from her filtered cigarette, and releases it sideways, movie-star fashion.

My old man chain-smokes unfiltered cigarettes and drinks beer by the case.

Instead of handing me the keys, Nate opens his door and slides out. He’s not as tall as I and he’s more slender. Raven-black hair is parted on the side. He wears black jeans and an untucked green shirt unbuttoned half way down. Brown leather slip-ons, appearing put together with tape, no socks. His features are what most girls think attractive.

I’ve known plenty of Nates. Guys comfortable in their skins, able to chat up pretty girls any time they like.

He passes me by as if I’m invisible, a twist to his lips. He inserts the key into the rear slot, unlocks the trunk, it uncouples, he removes the key, and then he saunters back to his seat. Passing me the second time, again I don’t exist, again that silent snarl of his.

The Caprice is a two-door. After I divest myself of my gas can, I clumsily half vault, half slide over the rear side panel to enter. Sonya introduces herself, and then does the same for friends Fran and Nate. ‘Fran’ is short for Francesca. Tanned and buxom, she is aggressively pretty, especially owing to her hair style. Both of Sonia’s travel mates do no more than nod a little way toward where I sit during introductions.

Bad boy Nathaniel, predator-yellow along the gum line, worked part time for a movie studio—as part of the janitorial staff—and is far too proud for having done so. The Caprice isn’t his. It belongs to Sonya’s parents.

We’re going to find the Lanier Estate, Sonya says. Her expression is amused and anticipatory.

I aim palms at sky and shrug. Never heard of the place.

Jeremy Lanier, thirties-forties movie mogul? prompts Fran, testing her backrest with a strenuous upper body stretch. With her mouth open and lips drawn back, her upper teeth appear overly large. Her haircut is the type favored by the rock singer Joan Jett. "The Rage of the Minotaur, Shaundra the Lioness, Daughters of the Peloponnesian Wars, The Twin Forks of Death? Have you never heard of Miranda Honeypot?"

Naugh. I’m not an old time horror movie fan.

They’re pornos, Sonya says gleefully.

Erotica, amends Fran.

Snuff porn, mutters Nate.

Hey, wait a minute. What?

Some of the most erotically-charged death montages ever filmed, elaborates Nate while setting the car into motion. The flag man shows us the ‘SLOW’ side of his sign. He watches into the car, in admiration, hope of another calamity, or to admire the scenery. Lanier mysteriously stopped producing films in the early forties.

Fran continues: His works were never marketed for general distribution. His clientele were fabulously rich. All of the filming was done on site and on spec.

Sonya adds animatedly: Less than fifty of his films are known to have survived to the present day, including just twelve feature-length movies. Each is worth a fortune to collectors.

How did you find out about this guy?

Nate knows someone, says Sonya. A collector.

Lots of people are nuts for the genre, Nate throws over his shoulder as we coast past the road construction. Men and machines widen the road by removing rubble from a cliff fifty feet high that used to be sixty feet high.

Which is why, Sonya further explains, we’re off to find Lanier’s estate. There could be a cache of old films just lying about and begging to be picked up.

Why hasn’t anyone done that already? The obvious question.

Because the estate is in a location about which all knowledge has been lost, says Fran irritably, as though such things any person can reason out for themselves with no trouble at all.

Yet you guys are on your way there? You must know where it is.

What we know or don’t know is none of your damn business, says handsome Nate while Sonya pretend pouts at me. Once past the construction the car picks up speed drastically. We tailgate the Valiant. Nate’s determined to progress up the queue as quickly as he can. The Valiant’s driver, intimidated by his belligerence, pulls half onto the shoulder and Nate takes advantage of his opportunity with a jerk of the steering wheel and plunging the car forward as if leaping a gap. We’re pressed into our seats by the acceleration.

I care not for his reckless driving. The offer of a ride ought to have been refused, no matter how attractive it seemed at the time. Better tired and footsore than crippled or dead.

Nate continues up the line of cars as though he has an urgent appointment he’s late for. Each time he accelerates, the car feels barely under control. He forces other drivers into avoidance tactics. At times opposing traffic bears down on us.

Owing to wind, engine and road noise it’s hard to talk and be understood. Sonya sits on her side of our bench and now and then gazes at me. I’m flattered, uncertain and confused by the attention, when not freaked owing to Nate’s demolition derby-style driving. The pretty girls I’ve encountered throughout my life never showed any interest in wallflower hayseed huckleberries such as myself.

I’m not looking to horn in on anyone’s play, I protest.

Nate mutters something that the rushing air consumes. Fran looks to where the long and high of machine-cut stone freight-trains past. Don’t mind them, Sonya says. It’s been a long drive.

All the way from California, I say.

Southern California.

The nearest gas station is twenty miles beyond the road construction in a notch chiseled out of the forest, and after domesticated with gravel and clap board structures. Half-buried logs are for tires to bump against. I pump gas into my two-gallon can. I’ve $ 47 left from the $ 60 my dad ‘lent’ me as I’ve no income or allowance. Most of it I’ll be spending for fuel to get me where I’m going and back home again. I watch Fran, in red Capri pants and pale yellow tank top, pump gas into the Caprice through the spout set low at the rear of the car. Her ears have on gaudy turquoise stones in silver settings. Her pose accentuates a leanness of body, narrowness of waist, and the teardrop bulges of breasts and calf muscles.

Lend me a dollar? says Sonya, bumping me from behind. As soon as we stopped, she left the rest of us to use the restroom.

Give me a minute. My can is nearing full.

Give me the money and I’ll pay for your gas at the same time. She shows me my wallet, which she tugged out of my back pocket at the same time as she bumped me.

You don’t have to do that. I’m uneasy about someone else holding my identification cards and cash. I barely know her.

You don’t trust me, she says playfully. Sonya inserts the fingers of one hand between the third and second buttons of my shirt and slides them up and down my sternum. I’m appreciating her touch as well as her breath brushing my chin while she holds my wallet out of reach in her other hand. As she leans toward me, her foremost parts pressing my lower chest, I notice her eye color is the same as mine, albeit a richer and darker brown. "I’m very trustworthy."

That’s all right, I mutter. I don’t dare muscle a pretty girl who stands so close her mint-flavored breath mingles with mine. I don’t grab for my wallet despite I ought to. I should insist she give it back. Her teasing and touching make me dizzy.

"If you lend me two dollars, I’ll convince Nate to give you a ride back to your car."

It’s past noon, and my size, appearance and dress—six foot five, thick dark hair, two hundred ten pounds, stubble, and blue jeans, work boots and jean jacket—intimidates all but the most trusting and bold drivers. A ride back to my car would really help me out. I remind Sonya of the road construction. Will they mind two more waits?

You don’t think they’re finished by now?

I doubt it.

You can trust me, she says, capping her declaration with a soundless chuckle. Sonya pretends to give me my wallet, I reach for it, she pulls it back out of reach.

Can I have my stuff back now, please? I’ve finished pumping. I settle the gas nozzle in its holder, and replace and tighten the cap on my gas can.

In a minute. Just listen, okay? I’ll pay for your gas, and buy us cokes and chips. I promise I won’t spend more than two dollars extra. Besides the gas.

Fine, sure. I’ll wait by the car. I’m tempted to snatch the billfold out of her hand. I imagine the sequence of subsequent events should I attempt to do so: I hurt her and Sonya screams, Nate comes out of the car and punches me in the face—despite my size and build I’m no fighter—or matters could go worse. The confrontation may finish three against one, and then three testimonies against one when the police arrive.

As Sonya skips across refueling bays to the mini-grocery I walk over to the Caprice. When she’s inside, she turns about and taunts me with a smile. The front of the store is all glass from a redhead’s knees to above her head. Fran has finished pumping her own gas. She leans, on elbows, her back to the side of the convertible, and looks both bored and anxious to be off. I don’t think she’s gone in to pay for the fuel she’s taken, except I was distracted by Sonya and may have missed her doing so.

What’s taking Sonya so long? Fran says, looking toward the entrance while seeming not to see me. I’m used to this sort of reception.

She’s buying snacks.

Oh? You paying?

Yeah. Ah, Sonya said you guys might give me a ride back to my car.

I dunno. How far back is it?

A couple miles the other side of that road construction we passed.

Uh huh. Nate sounds his horn. More minutes pass. I’ve not been invited back into the car. Fran hasn’t moved. I’ll go get her, says Fran, she’s always pulling stuff like this.

Tell her to hurry up. We should be in Penticton by now, says Nate, which I’ll later discover to be a lie. Fran, after some thoughtful lip posing goes to retrieve the third of their party. She waves without turning while crossing pumping lanes to enter the store.

Hey, Nate, you think I could get a ride?

Back to your car? I doubt it.

Sonya said—

Sonya’s not driving the car.

It’s her car.

We’re all paying for this trip, and we’re on a tight schedule.

Fine, I say angrily. She’s got my wallet.

You gave her your wallet?

Yeah.

Man, I would never do that. She’s probably buying tampons in there.

She said you guys would give me a ride.

Not her say to make promises. If I were you, I’d get that wallet back pronto.

As I cross the near set of pumping stations, Nate fires up his engine, which I ought to but don’t worry about. Neither woman is in view as I enter the convenience store and continue to the rear. As I arrive at the glass-fronted, refrigerated food and beverage lockers, I hear the front door swing open and I realize the girls are scooting out through it.

By the time I’m outside again the convertible is gone, my gas is gone, and I’m feeling the biggest stupidest shit-for-brains ever. I’ve been exploited since I was old enough to shovel dirt, I’ve been cheated plenty, embarrassed plenty, but I’ve never been outright robbed before. I’ve a leaden feeling in my gut. A tongue lashing waits for me now when I get home. I wonder how I’m going to replace my identification cards, my holiday is done, I’m dead broke, and my car is still out of fuel. Once I somehow make it home, I’ll be put right back to work, but not before I’m told, many times, what a worthless lump of dog turd I am.

Hey, kid, this yours? the cashier calls. He has to have witnessed my disgrace and I’m reluctant to answer as a consequence.

He hands me my wallet, no cash. I’m more grateful than I should be just to have my ID back. I was ripped off. I’m not expecting sympathy; I’m not expecting anything except amusement at my expense.

The attendant chuckles. He’s balding, pot-bellied, and his face resembles last year’s potato about to be peeled for tonight’s supper. His pinstripe coveralls have plenty of the type of smudges that never wash out. Years from now, you’re going to think what you’re feeling was worth it. That redhead was a real looker—both of ‘em were.

Yeah, say, you wouldn’t happen to have any work around here you want done?

A little short of cash, are we?

A lot short of cash.

The yard out back could use straightening up. For a fiver.

Make it ten?

Seven fifty.

What choice do I have? Two hours of wrangling worn out tires and trash twisted, metallic and sharp. Ted, the pit-stop owner, likes the job I’ve done so much he gives me the ten I asked for. It’s enough to get me half way home.

It’s getting late, Ted says to sun halfway down the horizon. "You don’t want to be walking this road after dark."

Sure. I expect the offer of a ride back to my car or the use of a cot in the back of his repair bay. Out on the highway a gravel truck smothered in its own dust rumbles past.

Stemco Trucking, Pit-Stop Ted says, his look pained. No riders. There won’t be any other traffic besides those trucks from now ‘til tomorrow morning. The locals prefer the One-Ten. I’m surprised your friends didn’t go that way instead of this’un.

The redhead preferred the scenic route, I say and blush as a consequence. I’ve no reason to lie. Sonya said no such thing. The trio of thieves don’t deserve my loyalty. The connection I thought I had was bullshit. I was taking the short cut myself, which proved not so short, which was how I ended up running out of gas.

When they finish the road, there’ll be a lot more traffic through here. I’m guessing Pit-Stop Ted hasn’t many opportunities to exercise his social skills. An old couple owns a farm just up the road. They’d likely pay to have some work done. If you’re willing.

I’ve been working my ass off since I was seven. Another dust-shrouded truck, this one towing a pup trailer, streams past.

Should be no problem then. The Emrys. They’ll likely put you up for the night, too. You for sure want to get there before dark.

I set off, walking alongside the ditch and then inside it whenever a gravel truck rumbles up from behind. Jeff and Jean Emrys’s farm is two miles up the road, in a pretty little hollow. An old Ford tractor half the size of a family car, cowling and rear fenders hand-painted light blue and tire rims bright red, with cracked tires, lounges in front of a set of rundown farm buildings. For a half day of labor, Jeff Emrys will provide me with five gallons of purple gas and a ride to my car, besides a couple meals and a place to sleep for the night.

A hedge of mature spruces separates the Emrys’s yard from the road. The long sloping house sleepily decays beneath moss-speckled shingles. The front porch was once painted but now is as grey as the fading light it bathes in. Barn and utility sheds melt into the backdrop of forest. They’re red with white trim and peeling and fading. Windows filmed with grit and mold look out myopically.

You can start in the morning, says Jeff. He’s 64, near as tall as I am, and as jovial as my old man is sour. Despite its tumbledown looks, the inside of the house is clean, neat and in decent repair. The couple laughs as I relate how I was cheated by a pretty, red-haired girl. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of, says Jean, 58, cheerful and stout. Jean is Jeff’s sister, not his wife.

The Emrys family have farmed the little hollow for more than sixty years. Jean used to work as a nurse at the clinic in Mallard. Jeff enlisted for military service in 1940 and went overseas in ‘41. He fought in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France, all those places, but has no desire to talk about his wartime experiences. Back in the 1960s the siblings’ parents died within a few months of each another, leaving the pair joint ownership of the farm.

Supper is reheated chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, pureed turnip and cold raw milk. The Emrys have their own milch cow. They’ve a spare bed in the back of the house and running water for sinks, bath and shower but no flush toilet.

The front yard blazes with light as I head over to the outhouse to relieve myself. The gravel-filled juggernauts persist in punishing the sagging blacktop beyond the spruce trees. Hooded lights, on twenty-foot posts in each corner of the yard, put out tremendous amounts of light—somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand watts each. Extravagance, I’m thinking as I walk back to the house in concert with my four shadows.

We like to have lots on at night, says Jean, when I declare admiration for an outdoor lighting scheme.

Keeps the bears away, Jeff adds.

The Emrys are in the habit of going to bed early and rising early, which is what I’m used to also. In the morning there’s brush to clear, manure to spread, hay to fork. I’m soaked by the time I’m done. Jean offers to launder my clothes while I shower. As I’m standing in one of Jeff’s old coveralls, he tells me how for one more day of work he’ll pay me an additional $ 25, which will be enough to get me all the way home from my friend’s in Salmon Arm.

A shed construction project is to be my next installment, to satisfy the debt of room and board I so selfishly enjoy, besides my usual chores morning and evening back home.

Next day, while I chainsaw logs into blocks and chop blocks into firewood, I think I would rather work for a man who pays me a decent buck, than put up with a miserly shit-sack who tells me every chance he gets how useless, stupid and lazy I am, while begrudging me every comfort of a serf existence. Jeff tells me I’m finished at six o’clock, which is several hours before nightfall, and I’m surprised. Working until close of day is my usual.

As Jeff is driving me to my car he tells me I ought to stay one more night rather than try the road that goes past his place after dark. If I go on, in the night, I ought not to stop for any reason until I’m past Mallard. Bears. Really bad this time of year, he says.

As long as a bear isn’t in the road at the same time and place where I’m driving, I can’t imagine a problem. I’ve no qualms about driving at night. Ten to twelve hours of farm tractor operation day after day, lunches in the saddle, pissing into grass, have prepared me for extended intervals of driving, regardless of discomfort level.

The part of the road just past the Emrys farmstead is notorious for accidents, Jeff says, especially after dark and during storms and fog. It’s a really bad area for breakdowns, he elaborates while I’m pouring purple gas, legal for farm operation, not for highway use, into my sunbaked, fire-engine red ‘62 Chevelle six-banger. The Chevelle is the crap car I was ‘gifted’ by my dad that six months later he declared I had to pay for, which I did by forking over the $ 634.54 saved I might have financed the start of some form of higher education with.

A big, home-cooked breakfast bright and early, no chores after, sounds good to me despite I’m far overdue for both my visit and my return. It is 8:15 p.m. and the dark creeping through the trees is the type suited to the telling of horror tales. I’ve lost another day of vacation time, but I’m beyond worrying over consequences.

The yard lights once more sterilize their playground-sized parcel of turf. When the big trucks flow by, they are accompanied by a dark with at least as much volume as the light they put out ahead. The Emrys never sit on the outside porch after nightfall and I shouldn’t either. They have disciplined their bowels to function during daylight hours only. I wonder about their unease as I step out the front door. The entrance to the outhouse is in the light, but the rest of the structure backs into darkness.

I exit the place of ease tucking the tail of my shirt past the waistband of my relaxed jeans. The night is utterly quiet. No insects, night birds, passing trucks. The air droops with dust, damp and heat. Finished tucking, I notice and then abruptly stop owing to a stench that comes at me from somewhere close.

Come in now, calls Jeff from the doorway.

What is that stink? I continue toward the bright rectangle in which he is backlit.

Never mind that. Come on! I wonder at his urgency. I’ve been conditioned from an early age to obey what I’m told to do. After I’m inside, Jeff closes the door, and then bars it with a solid baulk of wood.

I noticed the wooden bar early on, but not seen it put to use until now. What’s going on?

Just stay in the house. Do not, under any circumstances, go outside now! An unearthly howling erupts close by. Apelike, mournful, strangely compelling. The hairs on the nape of my neck stand. From my toes to the back of my head I quake. My scrotum retreats into my groin. I have never reacted to any sound in such ways before.

It’s close, Jean whispers while Jeff shutters windows. I noticed these safety features also, and thought them quaint. Jean’s sleep garments are very plain.

What is? I ask.

Jean shakes her head. Her complexion is ashen.

Jeff returns from his bedroom with a twin-barreled shotgun. Something’s stirred it up. The very old man who replaced my genial boss peers into the lawn through a gap between shutters, and then flicks extra switches and the wild behind the house goes flashbulb-stark and I see a peculiar high-sited twin glowing, but so briefly it may have been hallucination. For the instant of time I saw the thing, I’m convinced it saw me back.

What if the power goes out! Jean hisses.

We’ve the jenny for that.

Which is outside!

Well, it can’t be inside, Jeff grumbles while peering into brightness so far as he is able. Besides, it never bothers us. Never this close. Never for a long time.

Another howl, further away, and I am convinced the large and luminous eyes I saw must be related to the sound. What is it? It’s not a bear.

Not a bear, confirms Jeff shakily. It’s been years since the last time it came this close! You remember when was the last time, Jean?

Years, confirms Jean, nodding.

It hates the light. Can’t stand it. If ever you find yourself outside around here at night, you must carry a powerful flashlight, with fresh batteries inside.

You’re talking sasquatch?

If it was a sasquatch, you wouldn’t have to worry it might just up and, ah, do something. We don’t know what it is, or much about it, only that it’s been around these parts a long time. Could be there’s more than one; no one knows.

Some kind of monster? Not a sasquatch. Why haven’t I heard of such a thing before?

You’ve heard of Ogopogo, haven’t you? People think that’s a myth, too.

You’re saying it’s Ogopogo?

No, no, it’s something else. The Indians won’t talk about it. They’re afraid of making it angry. It’s nocturnal—it only comes out at night or during a heavy rain.

Freakish large eyes, gigantic man-shape. I saw it, for a second, just as the back lights came up.

Yes, Jeff agrees.

There are no bears.

It kills bears, says Jean, voice shaking, and eats them.

What about people?

For decades along the road from the mini-grocery gas hop to the outskirts of Mallard people have gone missing while hitching and after road accidents and breakdowns.

Have either of you heard of the Lanier Estate? Jeremy Lanier? I ask.

Jeff presses himself into his recliner. We’ve retreated to the living room to continue our very strange conversation. Jean puts a trembling hand to her face. It’s near here, but no one, if they’ve any sense at all, dares go out that way.

The two could be related.

I don’t know why they should be, says Jean tentatively. I suspect she’s lying, and the reason she lies is because she’s afraid I may go looking for the estate. She actually worries for my safety. I wonder whether I ought to mention I know of thieves who went to find the place.

It’s gone now, I think, says Jeff.

I’d like to know more about the monster, but my elderly friends protest stress and a long day. Jean sets about turning off inside lights. Jeff unloads and puts back the shotgun. We say our ‘goodnights’, retire to our rooms, where, I suppose, none of us sleeps.

Our morning breakfast is nothing like the joyful leave-taking I anticipated before the monster paid us its nocturnal visit. I regret this is so. I like the Emrys. Jeff gives me an additional ten dollars and advises me again not to stop until I’m past Mallard. As for Mr. and Ms. Emrys, they’ll be all right, he tells me. The monster was agitated over something, which is the sort of thing that has happened before, although rarely.

Jeff and I sit on rickety rocking chairs on his rickety porch and watch another gravel truck roll past. We lost our Sandy to one of those bastards, he says, pointing with his chin. Dragged him a hundred yards. Never stopped. Ripped the poor fella apart. Pieces and blood all over the damn road.

Pets done in by cars. Pets wandered away never to return. Pets dropped off by city folk because a farm is a good place for them, except not really. Such things are common in my experience.

There used to be a lot more deer. In the old days you’d arrive at the bottom of the curve, the one a little ways down from here, and there’d be a deer standing right in the middle of damn road. You think, ‘better not hit that deer’. Jeff gazes sternly into my eyes. "Don’t you act on that impulse, young fella. Stay on the road. Nine times out of ten dodging a deer sets you at 60 miles an hour in line with a 100 year old spruce.

People used to run down deer all the time. Hobos would camp down the road, to collect the venison. Then there were no more deer. No hobos neither. The deer moved away, so did bears and moose, until there was nothing but little critters. Squirrels, skunks, porcupine. Jeff rubs his grey-white stubble hard, as though to punish himself. His hand trembles.

Despite I’ve a long way to go, I’m rooted to my seat. I’ve been thinking radically different thoughts than my usual.

"Everything and everyone that could, moved out. We keep just the one milch cow now, and we leave the outdoors lights burning all night long every night.

"People used to talk about