Prophecy (20 page)

“It would.”

She shuddered and Rob turned, seeing the fear in her eyes. It hit him like a thunderbolt. “My God.”

“Rob?”

“Is it possible?”

“Yes.”

Their eyes locked in terror. But their terror was not the same.

“The size of a dragon,” Rob whispered.

“What?”

“That poem. The forest ranger. The size of a dragon. Isn’t that what it said?”

Maggie stood in a daze. But Rob was unaware of her torment, swept up in his own.

“And that old man. That Indian. Didn’t he describe that creature as being a part of ‘everything in God’s creation’? Isn’t that what he said?”

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Maggie eased herself down on trembling legs and sat on the porch stairs.

“The eyes of a cat,” Rob hissed. “That’s what Isely said at the airport.”

Maggie lowered her head into her hands. The words kept coming and she was powerless to stop them.

“Listen to me, Maggie,” he whispered intensely, “listen to me.”

But she was trying to shut it out.

“A developing fetus goes through certain, distinct phases. Each phase represents a specific stage of evolution. A human fetus. At one stage, it’s like a fish. It his fins and gills. At another, it looks feline. The face looks like a cat. It develops upward in the shapes and phases of the evolutionary scale.”

Maggie’s eyes were glazed. The words that fell on her ears echoed as though coming from a great distance.

“This chemical, clings to the DNA. DNA is a chromosomal fixative. It could ‘freeze’ certain parts at one evolutionary stage, while other parts continue growing.” He paused. “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” she responded numbly.

“A pregnant animal-a bear, maybe, ingests the fish … and it corrupts the fetus to the point where it gives birth to a monst-” He turned to Maggie, who sat unreacting, with deadened eyes. “Maggie?”

“Yes?” she whispered.

Rob gazed into the night, finding it hard to believe the words that he was about to utter. “There could be a monster out there. A literal monster.”

In the silence that followed, a loon began its unearthly cry. It echoed across the darkened lake, filling the entire forest with its wail.

“How much fish, Rob,” Maggie uttered haltingly, “would it take … to give birth to a … ?”

“It concentrates in the fetal blood cells.”

“How … much?”

“Very little.”

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Maggie knew she was going to vomit. She rose and started for the cabin.

“I’ll need proof,” Rob said in a deadened tone as he glared toward the lake.

“You’re not sure?”

“I’ll have to take blood samples. My first priority is the people.”

She turned to him, fighting down the nausea long enough to get her question out. “How long? Before you’ll know for sure?”

“If they have a laboratory at the hospital here … tomorrow.”

Maggie entered the cabin, closing the door behind her. Rob remained outside, listening to the demented call of the loon.

As Travis Nelson lay beside his campfire reading, he, too, heard the call of the loon. Checking his watch, he noted that it was too early for the loons to call. He smiled to himself as he listened, wondering what had prompted it to waken so early. Perhaps it had responsibilities on this night, as he did.

The three-day rains had severely hampered his and his family’s progress to the waterfall. They were waiting until the ground was dry before they attempted the uphill climb. It had been an exciting idea to the children to scale a mountain and camp out by a roaring waterfall; to assuage their disappointment, Travis had suggested that they explore the shores of the lake and learn survival techniques on the way. After walking all day, they had found themselves at a remote offshoot of the Espee River, one of three outlets where the rushing water found its way down from the mountains and merged with the lake. It was a sheltered area, surrounded by high cliffs, a natural inlet, listed on the Forest Service Map as Mary’s Bend. They had walked a quarter mile upriver and pitched camp in the trees where they could hear the sound of the rushing water. Travis had noted several beaver traps and

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salmon nets along the way, and he had dismantled most of them. The Forest Service Map listed this area as “protected.” It was a spawning ground; there was no hunting or fishing allowed here. The nets were set by poachers, probably Indians, who did not heed the boundaries and limits set by those whom they considered outsiders.

The nets and traps did, however, give Travis the opportunity to teach his children a lesson on primitive hunting techniques. It had led to a conversation, as night fell and they sat around their campfire, of what it must be like to have to rely on one’s own courage and resources to survive in a primitive environment. The children had dared each other to face the night alone; Travis and his wife, Jeanine, had watched with amusement as the challenge escalated to a point where neither of the children was willing to back down. They had each taken their sleeping bags and a flashlight and moved off separately into the trees to prove that they had the courage to do it.

Travis had expected them to return within minutes. When they didn’t, he went looking for them. To his relief he found that they were no more than a hundred yards away, and they had decided to camp out together. He built them a fire, which they promised to maintain during the night to discourage any wandering bears; then they bedded down, side by side. Paul had zipped his sleeping bag up over his head, as was his custom, to keep the mosquitoes away; Kathleen opted for a liberal dousing of insect repellent all over her face so she could breathe the cool night air.

Travis had returned to his own campsite and then, at his wife’s urging, gone back to check on the children at midnight. He found that all was peaceful. The fire was still going; Kathleen’s alarm clock was on the ground beside her, set for 2:00 A.M., no doubt to awaken her for the purpose of refueling the fire.

Travis had lingered there, moved by the sight of his two children asleep beside their campfire in the darkened wilderness. They were at once vulnerable and

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courageous, beautiful in their innocence, endearing in their effort to prove that they were brave. The everyday problems and frustrations of raising children were, for this moment, washed away. It was a scene of unparalleled peacefulness, and he wanted to remember it.

An owl hooted from the trees above, and Travis saw Paul stir, pulling the zipper down to nose level and peering out into the night. His eyes slowly closed again, then he returned to slumber.

Travis stayed as long as he dared without causing Jeanine any concern. Then he returned to his own encampment a hundred yards away. His wife, too, had fallen asleep. Curled in her sleeping bag, she looked every bit as vulnerable and beautiful as the children did. There was something very special to Travis about being awake in this environment while his loved ones were asleep. It made him realize how much they depended on him for protection; how safe they felt in closing their eyes, even in unfamiliar surroundings, when they knew he was there to defend them. The feeling of self-worth was so delicious that he was unwilling to give way to slumber. He remained awake, reading a book of poetry by Thoreau that he had always loved.

At 2:00 a.m. he heard Kathleen’s alarm clock sound. It ran clear to the end without being turned off. Then he heard the sound of movement through the trees, and felt satisfied that she had awakened to fuel the fire. She was the responsible one, Paul was the impulsive one. They were good for each other, and Travis hoped they would always be close friends.

He closed his book and rolled onto his back, gazing into the heavens. He had never in his life seen so many stars. He started counting them as he listened to the sound of Kathleen rummaging among the trees in search of dry twigs.

As she lay in her sleeping bag, twelve-year-old Kathleen also heard the sound in the trees. She had been awakened bv the alarm clock but felt so snug in her sleeping bag that she didn’t want to reach

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out into the chill night air to turn it off. She had let it dwindle to silence, then debated the relative merits of remaining warm and snug or getting up to refuel the fire. Paul was asleep beside her, bis nose protruding from the narrow opening at the top of his sleeping bag. There was a mosquito on his nose; she reached out to wave it away. Paul responded with a snort, then rolled over, away from her, and began to snore. The sound irritated her; she knew she’d have to awaken him. But just as she was about to, she heard the sound in the trees. It was a heavy, crunching sound, as though something large were moving toward her.

“Daddy?”

In response, the sound stopped. The crickets stopped, too, the entire environment falling into a vacuum. Then the sound came again. It was barely audible this time, a rustle of leaves as though something heavy had shifted weight in the foliage just beyond the glow of the campfire.

“Daddy?” she whispered.

The atmosphere returned to pin-drop silence. Kathleen forced her eyes in the direction of the trees. It was a wall of darkness. But she could hear something breathing in there. And she could smell it. An odor of dampness, like a basement after a rain. Feeling herself begin to tremble, she looked at the smoldering fire. It had gotten too low to discourage the bears. She wanted to cry out to her father, but when she opened her mouth, no sound would come. She struggled with her shuddering breath to form words, but they came only as a whisper.

“Daddy … ?”

Then the sound moved closer. She could feel it now as well as hear it; the ground vibrated beneath her as the lurking presence came into the clearing and hovered near.

Kathleen began to whimper and closed her eyes, her silent tears tracing a path toward the ground. “Don’t eat me, Mister Bear …”

Paul heard her voice and his eyes slowly opened.

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The next sound he heard was a heavy thud, followed by a groan. He rolled over to where Kathleen was. There was nothing there. The ground was empty where her sleeping bag had lain. There was something leaking down, splattering on the ground like heavy rain. But the raindrops were red.

Paul lay immobile, as if in a dream. The red raindrops were followed by snowflakes; a cloud of soft goosedown drifting groundward from Kathleen’s sleeping bag, sticking in the growing pool of red. There was a crunching sound from overhead. Like a dog breaking chicken bones. Paul’s eyes slowly traveled upward and froze in terror. The gargantuan shadow that towered over him ate silently, almost lazily. The bloody rain and feathered snow fell harder, the wetness hitting Paul’s forehead as he lay in a daze, gazing up through the narrow opening in his sleeping bag through which only his nose and eyes protruded. Then he saw the eyes staring down from above. They were saucerlike. Flat and reflective. And they made contact with his own.

Paul rose and tried to run, but he could not. He was trapped within the cocoonlike confines of his sleeping bag. He fumbled with the zipper, but it was stuck. It would not budge from beneath his chin. He heard the thud of Kathleen’s sleeping bag hitting the ground; her outstretched arm sprawled in the dirt in front of him. He screamed and began hopping toward the trees, crying out in desperation as the lumbering shadow swept down on him.

From his campfire a hundred yards away, Travis Nelson heard the desperate cries and bolted to his feet, racing through the forest. “Paul! Paulie!”

The child’s screams continued, growing more frantic. Then they suddenly stopped.

Travis Nelson raced into the campsite and saw the silhouetted form of his son’s body, flying upward with the weightlessness of a rag doll, consumed in a billowing cloud of goose feathers, against the light

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of the full moon. Then he saw the gargantuan form emerging from the trees.

“Oh, my God!” he sobbed.

They were the last words he would ever utter.

John Hawks had spent the night in the safety of the tunnel-like storage areas dug into the ground beneath M’rai’s tents. As the lumberjacks had promised, they came looking for him. They had questioned M’rai and Romona then left, satisfied that Hawks was gone. The old man had been upset by the intrusion into his encampment, and withdrew into isolation. From Hawks’s hiding place beneath the ground, he had heard M’rai chanting mournfully within his tent.

At dawn Romona and Hawks moved swiftly through the forest to the water’s edge and rafted to the island where Rob and Maggie were awake and waiting for them. In the cabin, Rob recounted to them his discoveries of the night before. They listened with rapt attention, their eyes filled with incredulity and outrage. As evidence of what they were up against, Rob showed them the photographs of Minamata. If the blood samples Rob was intending to take from the Indian villagers were positive, they might be facing a disaster of the same proportions here.

Maggie forced herself to listen this time and concentrate on every detail. She was on the verge of hysteria and knew that she must face and understand all of it, or else slip into the irresponsible safety of emotional collapse. No matter how awful the reality was, she was determined to cling to it,

Rob had dumped his soil samples from the glass vials, and sterilized them to hold blood samples instead. He felt that if he got a cross section of ten men, ten women, and ten children, he would have all the samples he needed. Hawks was unable to tell him whether or not the Manatee hospital had laboratory facilities; Rob and Maggie hurriedly packed some over-168

night things in the event they had to take the blood samples to the Portland hospital eighty miles away.

At 8:00 a.m. they left for the village. The sky had become thick with cloud cover, the air was again oppressive. The mosquitoes, gnats, and blackfties swarmed about their faces as the small boat cut across the water; the insects were stimulated into aggressiveness by the humidity, attempting to fill their bellies in the event of another rain. As they crossed the lake, Rob told Hawks and Romona of his speculation that the mutative effects of the chemicals might have reached the higher forms of animal life. He carefully couched his language, not wanting to sound overly dramatic or appear foolish. In the light of the day, with the forest around them looking peaceful and benevolent, it seemed more a flight of fancy than scientific reality to talk of a “monster” lurking there. But Romona and Hawks did not find it fanciful. They accepted it in silence.