Silas: A Supernatural Thriller (19 page)

“So kid, how we gonna get across?” I asked, rising to my feet though my right leg, bearing teeth marks, still smarted.

“Boat,” he replied.

“We have to actually get
in the water?
I thought you said they could smell us in the water?”

“If we use a craft, they cannot. They only recognize flesh. Even motion is ignored. We’ll be safe.”

“Well, that’s great in theory,” I cracked, “but how’re we supposed to get a boat? Make one?”

Kaiser pointed to a tall knot of dead grass further down the bank. “No, sir. My boat is hidden over there. It’s how I get back and forth.”

“Don’t you think that would’ve been important to tell me earlier?” I asked.

“I apologize,” said Kaiser with a straight face. “But I didn’t think you’d be so quick to jump in, especially when you know nothing about this land.”

I grimaced. “I deserve that, don’t I?”

The boy nodded.

After a few moments spent smiling at each other, Kaiser stood up with the grace of a dancer and glanced skyward. The sun had dipped, now sitting low on the horizon, just above the misty sliver of land on the other side of the lake.

“The sun will set in a few hours,” he said. “We have to get going.”

“Why?”

“We can’t be out after dark. It’s not safe.”

“Why?” I asked.

“That is when the monsters come out,” he replied.

He was serious. And thinking about his words to me, about how I knew nothing of this land, I decided that I should be, too.

27

It can be hard for dogs, with all their anxious energy, to stay still for extended periods of time. In fact, I can say from experience that it’s nigh impossible. Back at home there was many a morning where I tried to keep Silas in the bedroom in an attempt to give Wendy and me a few extra moments of peace and quiet before work. He thwarted my plan each and every time, constantly barking and throwing his large body against our bedroom door, sending paint chips flying and causing a ruckus we couldn’t ignore.

Driving in the car was another great example. He paced relentlessly, his destructive tail swinging wildly back and forth. I made the correlation between his actions and an atom in a particle accelerator, spinning around at higher and higher speeds until it reached that moment when all his energy was released in a cosmic explosion. Silas’s explosion moment? The opening of the car door at the end of the trip.

I say all of this to illustrate how impressive his behavior was on our voyage across the wide and deadly lake.

The dinghy Kaiser pulled from the weeds was a rusty, stainless-steel rowboat, an ancient relic from a seemingly forgotten world. Its sides crumbled into green and brown flecks when I placed my hand on the aft. The sitting boards wedged into the grooves were new, thank God, but I had to be careful when I sat my nearly-bare butt on the one in front, because neither board had been sanded.

Silas hopped into the craft with me, taking his place between my legs. I hugged him tight with my knees, hoping the strength of my embrace would be sufficient enough to tell him not to do anything frantic. He complied, though given the way he shuddered I wasn’t sure if his obedience was my doing or not.

Kaiser shoved the boat into the lake and jumped in, landing with a thud on the rotting aluminum inlay. He sat down behind us, picked up a pair of oars, fitted them to the side supports, and dropped the paddles into the water. With each labored stroke he made we moved slowly across the lake. I glanced down and noticed fluid trickling in through a small hole to my left. I shuffled my bare feet away from the slowly expanding puddle, nudging Silas over in the process.

“Um, there’s water coming in,” I said.

“That happens,” the boy replied. “This is an old boat. Just don’t let it touch you, please. I don’t want to be larva food today.”

I gnashed my teeth together. “Me neither.”

Oddly enough, the longer we spent gliding across the still water the more comfortable Silas became. His shaking ceased, replaced by the sort of attentive, ear-raised, head-whipping behavior more becoming of him. I put my hand on his back and whispered, “Take it all in, just don’t make any sudden movements. Okay?” I was nervous, but my fear proved needless, because even though his head was on a swivel, the rest of him didn’t move. It was as if he somehow knew in that canine brain what would happen if he got carried away, just like he knew what would happen to Bridget Cormier that day on the Mancuso farm. I pulled him close to me and rubbed my cheek against his. “You don’t know how good you are, do you?” I said. “I’m the luckiest man in the world to have you as a friend.”

Kaiser, still paddling behind us, sniffled.

28

Fog enveloped us as we approached the shore, a swirling mass of vapor so dense that I could barely see my hand when I held it up in front of my face. With the stillness of the lake, it felt like we were rising above the earth, reaching for the atmosphere, but the water that continued bubbling into the craft kept me grounded in reality. A full inch now covered the bottom of the boat, forcing me to sit with my feet up on the rusting sides with Silas draped over my lap, his weight pressed into my gut. My back ached, my stomach rumbled, and I had to fight the urge to piss.

“How much longer?” I asked.

“Almost there,” Kaiser’s disembodied voice answered.

The fog lifted like a curtain a few moments later, and I gazed in wonder at the sights I saw. The land we approached was nothing like the one we left. There was a pristine beach of sand, white as any in the
Caribbean
, shimmering under the intense light of that massive sun. Palm trees dotted the area, as well as wildflowers and tall, wavering sea-grasses.

Beyond the trees, rising like a monolith in the distance, was the most wondrous sight of all. It was a mountain devoid of green, its black surface glittering in the dying light as if it were made of opal. It was beautiful and haunting at the same time, and I almost cried at the sight of it.

“What
is
this place?” I whispered.

Kaiser replied, “Home.”

The bow of the dinghy ran ashore and Kaiser, in a single motion, drew in the oars, dropped them into their brackets, and leapt over Silas and me. He landed on the sand and yanked on the boat’s tow line. The craft inched its way out of the water, the kid’s skinny and surprisingly strong arms quivering with each pull. I was so amazed by this feat of strength that I forgot to offer any help. Not that it mattered any, because Kaiser didn’t seem to mind the effort.

With the rickety old vessel resting on the beach and the water finally drained from the bottom, Silas and I stepped out. The sand underfoot felt strange – hard and compact like clay, unlike the shifting granules I was used to on most East Coast beaches. I glanced once more at the huge, black peak in the distance. Its surface, the longer I stared, looked like the inside of a geode. I marked that down as something I should explore later, if I ever got over the shock of being here. I thought Wendy would find it gorgeous, what with her passion for gemstones, and it struck me again how much I missed her.

Silas sprinted down the beach, spittle flinging from his mouth, his nose down. He looked free and at peace, as if he was meant to be here. My eyes went from him to the surrounding whiteness, only stopping when I spotted a stick lying in the sand. I picked it up, put two fingers in my mouth, and whistled. Silas stopped mid-stride, glanced back at me with a comically surprised expression, and proceeded to spin around and bolt back in my direction. When he reached where I stood he sat down, his body shaking with anticipation, his tongue lolling to the side like a wet sausage.

“You want this?” I asked, dangling the stick inches from his wet nose.

He panted, eyes locked on the prize, following it whichever way it went.

I reared back and tossed the stick as far as I could. Silas gave chase. Just watching him sprint after the soaring twig brought back memories, many of them tempered by melancholy. Had it really been more than a year since he’d come into my life? Time sure had flown by. We’d been through the whole gamut of emotion over that relatively short span, and he’d grown up so fast. There he was, a magnificent black beauty, galloping down a beach in some strange, misplaced land, his mature muscles flexing with each stride. His days of pure
puppidom
were indeed over.

A shrill, unearthly screech pierced the air. All movement stopped. Even Silas ceased his pursuit of the stick, which bounced a few feet in front of him. His ears angled upward and he cocked his head.

“What the hell
is
that?” I asked, holding my hands over my ears. Still the shrieking went on, hanging in the air like a wraithlike admonition that said
there are some things you’re better off not knowing.

Finally, the wail died out. I felt a tap on my shoulder and jumped. I lost my footing on the packed sand and stumbled to my knees. With my head still buzzing I looked up to see Kaiser standing there, looking quite anxious.

“Mister Ken,” he said, “we have to go. It’ll be dark soon, and like I said, we must go into hiding once the sun does.”

I rose up on shaking legs and went to call for Silas, but he was already there. “We gotta go, boy,” I said.

He was one step ahead of me, chasing after the grimy boy as he hustled toward the line of palm trees in the distance. Obviously my buddy didn’t need to be told twice. I took that as a sign.

29

The palm trees disappeared and we entered a forest containing the kind of foliage I recognized – elm, maple, and birch trees, with a smattering of normal-sized evergreens. We ended up arriving at Kaiser’s “home” just as dusk tugged its murky blanket of darkness across the sky. The entrance was a metal plate in the ground, four feet square. Kaiser took a large, archaic iron key from the bag over his shoulder and set it into a hole in the plate. With a twist of his wrist the metallic crunch of churning gears sounded from underneath the soil. The boy then grabbed the loop on top of the plate and pulled. The door swung upward with a rusty creak, revealing a dark chasm. I could see only the first few steps leading down until they disappeared into the black.

Kaiser looked at me, his face haunting in the dying light, and said, “Too bad you didn’t come a day later.”

Without another word he grabbed Silas by the loose skin on the back of his neck and guided him toward the hole. Silas resisted at first, giving the boy a distrusting grunt, but then that ultrasonic screech came about once more and he relented, disappearing into the chasm without further prodding. I followed my dog’s lead, jumping onto the concrete steps as fast as I could. The little light that remained disappeared as Kaiser closed the hatchway and locked it.

“Where are you?” I screamed. I heard Silas’s claws tapping on the concrete below me, but had no way of knowing how deep the rabbit hole went. So I stopped and searched for the wall, which was damp and coarse. The last thing I wanted to do was fall.

“Don’t fret Mr. Ken,” Kaiser’s voice announced from seemingly all around me. “You’re safe now. Nothing can hurt you here.”

“Great,” I muttered. “But what’s gonna stop me from hurting
myself?
I can’t see a goddamn thing.”

I heard Kaiser chuckle, followed by his hand on my back. “Take it slow. From where we are now there’s only thirty steps or so until we hit the bottom. Trust me. I’m right behind you, and I could walk these stairs in my sleep. You’ll be fine.”

I did as he instructed, inching my feet to the edge of each step and lowering myself down. I reached flat ground twenty-nine steps later. Silas, obviously able to traverse the darkness confidently, awaited me at the bottom. He rubbed up against my legs, and I breathed a sigh of relief.