Peter Benchley's Creature (22 page)

"Like what?"

"Groucho likes to get too close, so she gives me a lot of soft tape, out of focus. It's as if she doesn't feel she's made contact unless she touches the whale. Chico likes to hassle the whales, especially the small ones. She's just playing, but sometimes she upsets them."

"What about Zeppo?" Chase asked.

Amanda hesitated, as if abruptly yanked back to reality. "As I said, she's lazy. What worries me is, she's also the most curious. She'll swim right up to something, just to see what it is."

The image on Harpo's tape zoomed from whale to whale. There were a few good close-ups, and one spectacular shot of a whale breaching—roaring to the surface, exploding through to the sunlight above and crashing down again with a cataclysmic splash—but the last few minutes of the tape were blank ocean blue. Amanda fast-forwarded through it.

She had turned away from the screen to say something to Chase, when Max yelled, "Hey! Look!"

She returned to the screen. "What?"

"Go back."

Amanda scanned the tape backward, and after a few seconds she saw something—vague and blurry, but definitely something—on the upper right-hand corner of the screen. She passed it, pushed the "play" button, and the tape spooled forward.

Something was there, a shape, and then it was gone, and the image shuddered and zoomed away toward the surface.

"What the hell was that?" Chase asked, leaning forward on his elbows, staring at the monitor.

"I don't know," Amanda said, "but whatever it was sure scared poor Harpo. Did you see how fast she took off?"

Suddenly the engine slowed, and Tall Man's foot stomped three times on the overhead. Chase walked aft, out into the cockpit, and called up to the flying bridge, "See something?"

"A red blinker ahead," Tall Man said. "Like an emergency flasher. The light's so tough this time of day, I can't tell."

Chase leaned over the side and looked forward. It was almost dark, the water was like a sheet of black steel; against it, a tiny red light was blinking at one-second intervals. He grabbed the boat hook, braced his knees against the bulwark and waited for Tall Man to guide the boat to the light.

As the light slipped along the side of the boat, Chase reached for it with the boat hook. It was attached to something hard, about twelve inches square, and Chase twisted the hook till he snagged it, then brought it aboard and set it on the bulwark.

"It's a camera housing," he called to Tall Man.

"Ours?" Tall Man pushed the throttle forward and resumed his course for the island.

Chase heard footsteps behind him, then a short, sharp gasp.

"That's Zeppo's," said Amanda.

They took the housing into the cabin, dried it and set it on the table. The housing was undamaged, but the harness straps had been shredded. Sadly, silently, Amanda removed the tape from the camera and put it into the VCR. She rewound it, then pushed the "play" button.

The first few minutes of the tape were indistinguishable from the others: long shots of whales, close-ups of whales, whales cruising, whales rolling, whales diving. Then came an interminable shot of the surface, from just above, then from just below.

"She's basking," Amanda said, and there was a thickness to her voice. "I told you she was the lazy one."

The camera went underwater again and showed two whales in the distance, moving away. For perhaps fifteen seconds it pursued them, before turning away and showing nothing but blue.

Amanda said, "She gave up."

"But look," Max said, pointing at a minuscule black figure in the center of the screen. "That's one of the other sea lions. Zeppo was following her, coming home."

The image roller-coastered up and down, as the sea lion had accelerated through the water, trying to catch up to its fellows. Then it slowed and broke through the surface—for a breath, presumably—and when it submerged it cruised slowly for a moment. Then, abruptly, it veered off.

Chase said, "Something's caught her attention."

Though there were no other animals visible in the blue vastness, speed and direction were discernible from rays of sunlight refracted by the surface into arrows that shot down into the darkness, and by the countless motes of plankton that glittered as they passed the lens.

"She's circling something," Amanda said.

"Why can't we see it?" asked Chase.

"Because she's above it, looking down, and the camera's on her back."

The sea lion had gone into a long upward loop— they saw the light from the surface flash by far away— and then had dived, turned and hung upright in the water, vertical and motionless. The surface shimmered in the distance above.

Amanda said, "She's looking at it; she's not afraid of it."

"Isn't she going to take pictures of it?" asked Max.

"She doesn't think she's supposed to; the only things she's supposed to tape are—"

Suddenly the camera jolted backward, and the blue water was clouded by a black billow.

Amanda screamed.

For ten or fifteen seconds, the image swung crazily, lurching left and right, dimmed by what looked like ink and then clear and then dimmed again.

Something shiny gleamed in front of the lens.

"Stop the tape!" Chase said, but Amanda was frozen, her eyes wide, one hand over her mouth. And so he reached forward and pressed the backward-scan button.

The image was fuzzy, for the shiny thing was too close for the lens to focus. But as he advanced the tape again, frame by frame, Chase had no doubt about what he was seeing: five claws, curved, pointed, razor-sharp and made of stainless steel.

27

''HIT me again, Ray," Rusty Puckett said to the bartender at the Crow's Nest. He slid his empty glass across the bar and shoved a five-dollar bill after it.

"Enough's enough, Rusty," said Ray. "Go on home."

"Hey! I put a fuckin' fifty down there, and said lemme know when I worked my way through it." Puckett pointed to the jumble of bills beside the ashtray. "I ain't halfway there yet."

"Watch your mouth!" Ray said. He put his hands on the bar, and leaned close to Puckett. "Happy hour's come and gone, Rusty; there's people here for dinner, they're not interested in hearing your cock-and-bull stories. Do us both a favor: pick up your change and head on home."

Puckett turned around on his stool and gazed glass-

ily at the room. Ray was right: the bar had filled up, and there was a line of people waiting for tables in the dining room. When had all this happened? He looked at his watch, closing one eye to sharpen the numbers on the dial. Christ! He'd been here three hours.

He noticed a few people staring at him, and guessed they'd been listening to him while he was telling Ray about what he'd seen. To hell with them, he didn't care, it was true, every bit of it. He winked at one of them, a not-bad-looking woman, and saw her blush and turn away. She was probably interested; maybe he'd go have a talk with her.

Something funny popped into his head. He turned back to Ray and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "You don't dare shut
me
off, Raymond; the fuckin' place'd go broke."

Ray didn't laugh, in fact he looked kind of pissed off, and all of a sudden he raised the fold-back panel in the bar, came through and grabbed Puckett by the scruff of his shirt.

Puckett felt himself lifted off the stool, felt Ray's hand jam a wad of money into his pants pocket and found himself being frog-marched out the door.

"You can come back when you sober up and stop hallucinating," Ray said. "I'd worry if I was you, Rusty. You're in the grip of the goddamn DTs."

Puckett heard the door close behind him, and Ray's voice saying, "Sorry, folks."

He stood on the street, bewildered, swaying slightly. A couple got out of a car and gave him a wide berth as they made their way toward the restaurant.

He put a hand on the side of the building to stop the swaying. Then he started down the street, keeping his eyes on each foot as it landed in front of the other.

What the hell did Ray mean, "cock-and-bull stories"? Ray knew him well enough to know he didn't make up fairy tales. And he wasn't in the grip of any DTs, either. He knew damn well what he'd seen, what
had almost killed him, and he hadn't exaggerated anything.

It sounded stupid, impossible. But it was the truth. He'd seen a fuckin' monster.

PART FIVE

THE BLESSING

28

"ARE you sure you don't want to wait for Amanda and me?" Chase said. He held the bow line of the Whaler while Max started the motor and stowed his camera under the steering console. "She'll be ready in half an hour, eleven-thirty at the latest."

"I can't," Max said. "The Blessing of the Fleet starts at noon; if I don't go now, I'll never get a decent spot."

"You sound to me like a young man who has a date." Chase smiled.

Max grimaced. "Dad . . ."

"Okay, sorry. . . . Now: you know where the anchor's stowed, you've got two life jackets aboard, you—"

"We've been through all that."

"Right." Chase sighed and tossed the bow line into the boat. "Park the boat at the club; beach it if there're no slips."

"Okay." Max put the boat in gear, turned the wheel and moved slowly away from the dock.

"Remember," Chase called after him, "no stopping on the way ... for
any
thing ... no matter what you see."

Max waved and shouted, "See you!"

Chase stood watching as Max accelerated, bringing the boat up onto a plane.

At first, Chase had resisted letting Max take the Whaler; the boy had never been out in the boat alone. Though the channel into Waterboro was well marked, there were rocks to hit if you were careless. Though the outboard motors were meticulously maintained by Tall Man, all outboards harbored gremlins and could seize up and stop at any moment for no apparent reason. Though Max had shown that he was a careful boatman and a fine swimmer, what would happen if he had to go overboard and swim for shore?

But for the past three days, the weather had been lousy: the wind had blown from the northeast, a relentless fifteen to twenty knots, sometimes gusting to forty, and a chill rain had soaked the coast from New Jersey to Maine. There had been nothing for Max to do, except for an occasional trip to town with Chase or Tall Man, during which the boy had disappeared into the warren of back streets and tiny houses and, Chase hoped and assumed, made friends with some of the local children. Max had looked forward to the Blessing of the Fleet, had been caught up in the town's enthusiasm for the celebration.

Now that the day had arrived and the weather had at last turned fine, Chase wanted Max to enjoy it, and so he had relented.

He almost wished the weather had gotten worse. The good thing about bad weather was that it kept people out of the water, boats had stayed ashore and nobody else had been hurt. Whatever was out there, wherever it was, it had had nothing to prey upon. Chase hoped that fair weather wouldn't bring on a feeding frenzy.

The morning after the sea lion had been killed, he had taken the videotape to the police station and shown it to Gibson. He had suggested postponing or even canceling the Blessing until they could determine what the animal on the tape might be.

Gibson's reply had been brusque. "Forget it, Simon," he had said. "I'm not gonna cancel the biggest event of the summer because of two seconds of crappy videotape that doesn't look like diddly ... or on the testimony of some drunk."

"What drunk?"

"Rusty Puckett. He got himself sauced to the gills last night, started telling everybody that he'd seen some mutant zombie from hell. He made such a nuisance of himself, got thrown out of the Crow's Nest and two gin mills, that I locked him up."

"He's here? Can I talk to him?"

"Nope, not till after the Blessing. Then you can talk to him all you want, till you both come down with bullshit poisoning." Gibson had paused. "Have you shown this tape to anybody else?"

"No."

"Good. I think I'll just keep it here for the next few days. We have all the rest of the summer to get hysterical."

"I wish I thought you were right, Rollie," Chase had said. "But something's out there."

"Then let it stay there, Simon, or let it go to hell away. Either way, I don't imagine it's gonna come ashore and start hassling tourists."

*   *   *

When the Whaler was so far away that it was invisible against the contours of the mainland, Chase walked up the hill and down the slope to the sea lion tank. He could see Amanda standing on the concrete apron, using fish to try to lure the sea lions out of the tank. They were shaking their heads, refusing.

"They won't do it," Amanda said when Chase arrived. "It's like every day since we got back from the whales: no matter what I do, they will not leave that tank. It's as if they're receiving warning signals from the water."

"What signals . . . electromagnetic?"

"I guess so. All I know is, something is telling them to stay out of the sea. And they're behaving like they're scared to death."

29

MAX saw her as soon as he rounded Waterboro Point, and he felt his heart jump.

Though he still had to cross the entire harbor—a quarter of a mile, at least—there was no mistaking her: a slender, delicate figure standing alone at the end of the club dock, wearing blue, as always. In the ten days he had known her, he had never seen her wear anything but blue: blue sweaters, blue shifts, blue skirts with blue blouses. It was as if she knew how much blue became her, reflecting the blue in her eyes and complementing the shining gold of her hair.

He waved, though he was sure she couldn't see him, not through the maze of sailboats that clogged the harbor, all bedecked with multicolored flags and pennants and burgees in honor of the Blessing of the Fleet. Even the fleet vessels themselves—dark, rust-spotted behemoths laden with nets and outriggers and radar domes and enormous winch drums—displayed rainbow pennants as anniversary finery, as if eager on this once-a-year day to live up to their absurdly precious names:
Miss Eula, Miss Daisy, Miss Wendy.