Polderbeest

By J. R. Rada

Holland's windmills were once vital to protect the lowlands from flooding and from something else… something that lived in the polder, the lands protected by Holland's dikes. Fifteen years ago, Arjan van den Berg uncovered the polderbeest just before it awakened. As the storms raged and the windmills struggled to drain the polder, the polderbeest awakened and raged. Moving beneath the waters, it struck again and again. Its fury cost Arjan dearly, but it went to ground again. Now as the storms rage again, Arjan and polderbeest prepare to meet again.

From the author of Kachina and The Man Who Killed Edgar Allan Poe, comes a new monster and nightmare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AIM Publishing
• Release date: Jan 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393225232

J. R. Rada

J. R. Rada is the author of seven novels, a non-fiction book and a non-fiction collection. These include the historical novels Canawlers, October Mourning, Between Rail and River and The Rain Man. His other novels are Logan’s Fire, Beast and My Little Angel. His non-fiction books are Battlefield Angels: The Daughters of Charity Work as Civil War Nurses and Looking Back: True Stories of Mountain Maryland.He lives in Gettysburg, Pa., where he works as a freelance writer. Jim has received numerous awards from the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association, Associated Press, Maryland State Teachers Association and Community Newspapers Holdings, Inc. for his newspaper writing.If you would like to be kept up to date on new books being published by J. R. Rada or ask him questions, he can be reached by e-mail at [e-mail] see J. R. Rada's other books or to order copies on-line, go to jamesrada.com.

Book preview

1

The Changing Wind

The wind blew in without warning bringing Arjan van den Berg’s fear with it. The first straining creak of the large sails turning woke Arjan from his uneasy sleep. At first, he thought his wife was grinding her teeth in her sleep. He prayed it was his Miriam making the noise, but she was sleeping next to him undisturbed in the slightest. How long had it been since he had slept so soundly?

The shadow of a sail passed across the window. He heard the windshaft turning the staveswheel in the uppermost level of the windmill in Kinderdijk; the large wooden cogs ground against each other sounding like a branch breaking.

Or the gnashing of teeth.

Arjan shivered. The skin on his arms dimpled with goosebumps.

Outside, another windmill sail passed in front of the window, followed moments later by another and then another as the wind increased. Although the window was closed, Arjan could hear the sails pass as the wind blew through the latticework of the arms and against the canvas covering them.

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

Arjan folded his hands together on his chest. Not in the gentle grasp of someone offering a humble prayer, but in a panicked clutch of a drowning victim going under the water for the third time. He prayed, whispering under his breath for fair weather and not the storm these winds heralded.

Soon he would hear the first splashes as the water wheel pulled any water from the polder and dumped it into the canals where the next windmill would lift it a meter or so higher.

The wind rattled the window, reminding Arjan that while there might not be any rain yet, it would be coming...soon.

Whoosh, creak, snap. Whoosh, creak, snap. The noises of the working mill fell into a familiar pattern. Next to him, Miriam stirred, disturbed at some unconscious level by the noise.

The sounds reminded him of how settling joists in his house in Leiden had sounded. Though similar, creaking joists had never scared him like the turning of a sail. The faster the sail turned, the greater his fear grew. He should have never returned to live here. He should have given the windmill to his brother. Jacob wouldn’t have taken it, just as Arjan should never have. But Arjan could not stand to see the beautiful windmill sold to a stranger or decay from neglect. He had been born here. Seven generations of van den Berg men had been born here, and it was up to Arjan to ensure an eighth generation was born in the van den Berg windmill.

Pulling his blanket up to his chin, Arjan snuggled closer to Miriam. Let the wind blow. It always blew in Holland. The rhythm of the sails changed. Whoosh, whoosh. Creak, creak. Snap, snap.

Windmills. The saviors of Holland. Kinderdijk existed because the windmills drained the Alblasserwaard–the low land surrounded by the rivers Lek and Noord–creating the polder. Now Kinderdijk had only nineteen windmills because the government used electric pumps and dikes to keep the Alblasserwaard dry.

The windmills protected Holland’s ocean border not from a foreign invasion but from water. The windmill keepers were the watchmen searching for that which the government did not acknowledge because it could not understand it.

Arjan put his pillow over his head. This was not a normal wind. A storm approached, and the wind blew from the west. The worst possible direction. To the west, scarcely fifty kilometers away, was the North Sea.

The wind would bring in the high waters that would flood the rivers and the rain that would soak the dry fields of the polder.

Would It come then? Would It come for him?

A spatter of rain hit the window with a loud crack. Arjan jumped, almost screaming. The rain was beginning.

2

The Buried Fish

Fifteen years ago

Arjan van den Berg’s knew nothing of the polderbeest until his fourteenth year. He had never even heard the word, which meant beast of the polder. No one spoke it, or at least no one had ever spoken it where he had heard.

He was plowing the fields for planting when someone screamed his name. Arjan stopped the horse pulling the plow to look behind him. Peter van Deth ran toward him across the flat polder.

Arjan! Arjan! Come see what I’ve found in our fields. Peter slid to a stop in front of Arjan.

Arjan glanced at his father in the next field. Johan van den Berg had stopped his plowing to stare at Peter.