Monster Page 20

  —

  “I will not ask you what you are doing or seeking in this place,” says the captain to Edgar near the end of the third day as he joins him, appearing out of thin air like a ghost and leaning over the railing beside him, “but I will tell you that I have learned that contentedness is the greatest gift God can give you. When I was a young fellow I sailed with men who sought the fabled passages through the arctic to the Orient. They came over these very waters and many died during those attempts. Why do human beings need to do such things? Be contented, my boy, let it be. I wish we could let these poor whales be. But we must pursue.” He spits down into the water. “People are always in pursuit of something.” He pauses for a while before he speaks again, and when he does, his voice is low. “My men wonder if your mission here is evil.”

  Just as he says this there is a shout of “land!” from the mast above them.

  —

  It takes five hours to get to the distant shore. As they near, they see a rocky terrain and mountains, great ranges of them, white aprons draping their sides. There isn’t a single tree or even a bush. Grim is the word that comes to Edgar’s mind; everything is grim and gray. He has never seen so much gray. But there is a magnificent silence too, and everyone on board stares at Spitsbergen with a kind of awe. It is as if they were looking at heaven…or hell.

  25

  “Where do we look for him?” whispers Jon.

  “He could be anywhere on this island. It looks vast—it could be a hundred miles long and just as many across,” adds Lucy. “What have we done?”

  They have no idea exactly where they should be set down so they take the captain’s advice and stay with the boat as it sails up the western coast to the first large fjord, where there is some shelter from the winds and the land is somewhat more hospitable near the water and one might at least be able to stay outdoors for a few nights. They see stretches of green tundra.

  “Spitsbergen is a mythic place,” the captain pronounces. “It is said there are creatures here unknown to the rest of the world. They say there are deep lakes up there in the mountains, so deep they go to the center of the earth and that prehistoric monsters live in their waters. The sea here beneath this boat is awfully deep too. I’ve heard tell it goes all the way to hell.”

  They move along the southern coast of the fjord and drift inland for nearly an hour. Then Lucy spots something.

  “There!” she cries out.

  It’s a rowboat, pulled a good fifty feet onto the pebbles and rocks.

  “That is unusual,” says the captain, standing beside Edgar. “Whoever rowed that vessel is likely long dead, not worth even searching for.”

  “Let us off here,” says Edgar.

  The ship’s small boat is lowered and they get into it, Jonathan making sure that it is he and not the eager crew members who help Lucy in. Tiger, of course, refuses any aid. A big hairy sailor, one who had watched her with greedy looks throughout the trip, follows behind the four of them, the captain’s choice to row them ashore. They all sit silently on the wooden benches.

  “You know about the regular wildlife here, do you?” shouts the old captain from above, as they begin to pull away.

  “What wildlife?” asks Jonathan.

  “There are reindeer and arctic fox, and, of course, the bears.”

  “Bears?”

  “Polar bears, the most dangerous bruin known to man. But you have a rifle. Make sure your first shot counts and save your bullets because you may encounter many of them in the week you will be here. Them and who knows what else!”

  The four friends are well aware that the weapon in Jonathan’s hands has all of four bullets remaining.

  “What is that?” cries the sailor up in the crow’s nest. He is pointing across the island.

  They all turn and see a figure in the distance, walking in the opposite direction, climbing toward the bottom of the glacier on the nearest mountain.

  “It can’t be human,” shouts the sailor.

  “It’s an ape, for sure,” says another man, “a sasquatch, a Yeti! I hear tell there is some of them here.”

  “Seen mermaids, seen giant squid bigger than whales, but never seen one of these!” shouts the sailor in the mast.

  “If it comes near us, we’ll kill it!” yells a crew member near the harpoon gun. He gives that weapon a pat. “Drive this into it and haul it in! Put its head on a pole and take it home and sell it for the museums to show. Would fetch a pretty price, it would.”

  His voice and the laughter that ensues are beginning to fade into the distance as the big sailor rows the boat toward shore. The four friends aren’t saying anything, but they are looking at each other, and Jonathan is gripping the rifle so hard that his knuckles are white.

  They have no idea what time it is when they land. Their best guess is that it is nearing midnight. It doesn’t matter, since the sun is never out of the sky on Spitsbergen in late June. As the whaling ship sails away, its promise of return something they all know they cannot count upon, they gather in a semicircle facing the mountain and the tiny figure that is now climbing it, carrying its sacks. It hadn’t appeared to turn to look back at all, which means it doesn’t know they are here.

  “We need to eat something, get our strength up and then follow it,” says Jonathan.

  No one responds. They simply get out the food they bought on the Orkneys and eat in silence.

  “Just four bullets left, for sure?” asks Edgar.

  “Four is enough,” says Jonathan. “I’m not going to miss.”

  “If you do miss, I’ll take over,” says Tiger.

  Jon smiles at her.

  Soon they are trudging toward the mountain, their boots first crunching over the stony surface and then sinking slightly into the stretches of spongy green moss. The weather is surprisingly mild and the light is comparable to dawn, although somehow almost artificial, hazy like the glow given off by stage lights or like one might imagine a dim morning in a storybook.

  A half hour into their trek, they begin to climb. Since there are no trees they feel exposed and vulnerable, but the figure in the distance never seems to pause, let alone turn around, and they try to keep to the crevices and the areas in the rock where his view of them would be obscured.

  Edgar’s chest is tight, as if the hag were on his back with her wrinkled arms wrapped around him, in her glory. They are walking into oblivion to face a monster. Up ahead in the distance the rocky surface is covered in snow and ice, a massive glacier. Godwin will be there soon.

  But it seems to take forever to reach the snow. They walk for hours in the rocks and eventually have to sleep. There is nothing they can employ to make a fire, so they are obliged to snuggle together again. Though Jonathan and Tiger try to stay awake, they all drift off. When they awaken, they are still alone. They get to their feet and see Godwin, very far away, a black dot on the ocean of ice, still moving.

  Lucy looks the other way for a moment, back down the mountain and out toward the gray water, endless and empty. “Shouldn’t we still be able to see the whaling ship?”

  Jon scans the horizon. “It seems to have vanished awfully fast.”

  “They’re hunting whales,” says Edgar quickly. “That means going far out to sea. It could be just around a corner, too, or gone to the other side of the island.” But he wonders. He imagines the boat steaming away far out in the waves, that deadly black harpoon pointing the way, locating and butchering their prey and then heading home without so much as a pause at Spitsbergen. He imagines he and his friends starving to death on this desolate place, forced to eat each other until the last one dies…if the creature up ahead doesn’t kill them first.

  “Let’s get moving,” says Tiger.

  Soon their climb becomes steeper, and in another hour they reach the glacier. Not long after that, Godwin vanishes.

  26

  They search and then find two sets of footprints in the snow and ice. One belongs to Godwin, the others are even larger, each wit
h the imprint of five long claws.

  “A polar bear,” says Tiger.

  They stop again without a word and sit in a circle in the snow, all of them facing outward and speaking in low voices. There are now two deadly creatures nearby, maybe more.

  “We can’t go back,” says Edgar finally. “It would be almost as dangerous as going forward.”

  “Maybe we should at least get off the mountain,” says Lucy. “Be somewhere closer to the water where we can see him or a bear or whatever the hell else lives here when it comes after us.”

  Edgar has never heard her use that sort of language.

  “Then, Godwin would be able to see us better too,” says Jonathan.

  “So, really, we’re caught. We are in mortal danger whether we go forward or backward.”

  “Sounds about right to me,” says Tiger. “Though, we have one small advantage over the good surgeon right now. He doesn’t seem to know we are here. So, I propose we take that advantage, polar bears or not. Let’s get moving.”

  But Lucy has more to say.

  “Godwin seems to be almost un-killable. I think he’s drawing us here on purpose. Why else would he be trekking way up this mountain? He is so much more capable of living through any hardship than we are. Maybe we won’t be able to take him by surprise, maybe we can’t kill him no matter what we do? Edgar, you were able to talk to him. He said you had a deal. Why can’t we trust him?”

  “Because he’s a monster,” says Jonathan.

  “So are we, sometimes. We are monsters for doing this, aren’t we, for not keeping our end of the promise? Goodness has to start somewhere, doesn’t it? In the Bible, doesn’t it say: love your enemies?”

  Jonathan smirks, but Edgar wonders if she is right, at least about leaving the mountain, leaving Godwin alone, trusting him. There had been a soft look deep in the monster’s eyes for a moment when they made their deal. Edgar feels responsible for bringing them all here.

  “We need to go after him,” says Tiger firmly, a grim look on her face. “There isn’t any other way. I’ll go alone if I have to.”

  “But what if we do kill it?” says Lucy. “We seem to keep conveniently forgetting that we not only have evidence that there are living aberrations in our world but that if you kill one, another will come after you. We can’t say it’s just Shakespeare’s ravings! We know for certain that the vampire, the revenant, whatever it was, pursued grandfather after he killed Grendel.”

  “It took him a few decades,” says Jon.

  “But it came. And this thing—Percy Godwin—made by the hand of man, admitted that he pursued us after we made our kill in the Lyceum Theatre. Godwin has been even worse, just like grandfather said. So if we kill him…what comes next?”

  What, thinks Edgar, could possibly be worse?

  Jonathan is staring up the mountain. “There’s something up there,” he says suddenly, lowering his voice to a whisper and flattening himself to the cold ground. They all immediately drop onto their stomachs and look in the direction Jon is gazing. He pulls the rifle into shooting position, resting it on the snow and ice in front of him, and aims it, his finger on the trigger.

  A couple hundred yards away, thankfully upwind, something exactly the color of the snow is getting to its feet. Lucy is the only one to gasp, but all four feel the same way inside. They cannot believe the size of the polar bear. It rises onto its hind legs and sniffs the air, an awesome sight. It was this magnificent animal’s tracks they had seen following Godwin’s. It must have stopped for some reason. Perhaps it was tired, perhaps it sensed that Godwin had stopped and had paused to make a decision, maybe it was feeding on something. But now it is moving again. Its rear end is toward Edgar and his friends as it ambles away, its nose to the ground, smelling the tracks. Then it starts to move faster.

  It is hunting Percy Godwin.

  They follow, staying a safe distance behind, keeping as low as possible. The bear sticks to Godwin’s footprints and is so fixated on his trail that it rarely looks back, though any time it does linger, Edgar and his friends immediately plaster themselves to the snow and ice. Lucy has taken the lead, convincing the others that her size and the light color of her hair won’t stand out as much on the white snow as Jon’s big body and dark-blond locks or Tiger and her raven-black curls or Edgar with his bright-red, disheveled mop that sometimes looks like flames swirling around on his head.

  About half an hour later, the bear seems to suddenly disappear. It is moving up a particularly steep area, and then they see its rump vanish over an outcropping of extraordinarily jagged rocks.

  “It might be trying to ambush us,” says Jon.

  “But staying here just waiting does no good,” says Tiger.

  They move slower, cautiously climbing the stretch the bear just accomplished, an unusually tough section. It is almost straight up. Edgar is second in line, with Tiger and Jon bringing up the rear, everyone trying to walk silently and saying nothing.

  Halfway to the point where the bear disappeared, they meet a little rocky precipice more than ninety degrees vertical and about six feet high. Lucy reaches up and grabs the top of it and tries to pull herself up, but she struggles, her arms shaking. For a second she is dangling there and in danger of falling back down. Edgar figures he has no choice—he puts both hands on her rear end and shoves her upward. He hears her grunt as she feels his strength power her upward and she gets onto her elbows and then, with a heroic effort, pulls herself over the edge of the rock and onto the next section. She gets to her knees and looks down at Edgar and smiles.

  But ten minutes later none of them are smiling.

  The mountain had flattened a little after that steep part and following another gradual climb of a few hundred yards, a vista had appeared before them: a sort of huge rocky field on the side of the mountain. Above it everything goes straight up and below it everything descends nearly straight down. For several hundred yards in front of them the glacier is a flat snowy surface and behind it they see a lake, almost black but glistening in the surreal arctic sun, its ice thin, the dark water beneath coloring it. And partway toward that lake, they see the polar bear and a hundred feet beyond it, Godwin. The bear is running at him.

  He has turned and is facing it.

  The four friends drop down to observe, their hearts racing.

  They can hear the bear growling, its head thrust out as if it is locked onto its prey, its teeth bared, the claws on its giant paws gripping the ice and powering it forward. Despite Godwin’s size it looks much bigger than him.

  He isn’t running from it. He has set down his sacks and is waiting.

  The polar bear leaps at him. But it doesn’t knock him down. They come together in a fantastic collision, Godwin upright and strong, his hands around the bear’s throat. They both roar while they battle, the animal struggling as Godwin grips its larynx but raking the human creature’s shoulders and his back and chest. Though thick lines of dark blood appear where the claws are doing their work, Godwin doesn’t falter, in fact, he shoves the bear back and leans over it, tightening his hands on its throat. The bear fights valiantly but then shudders and slumps down, quivering on the snow. Godwin inserts his iron fingers into its mouth, exposing its enormous fangs, and forces its jaws wide open, hyperextending them, snapping the mandible down onto its throat and the top of its jaw over its mane, fracturing it all so loudly that Edgar and his friends can hear the CRACK from hundreds of yards away. The sound echoes over the mountain and the bear falls in a heap at Godwin’s feet.

  Stunned by this surge of superhuman testosterone, this extraordinary masculine triumph, Jonathan rises to his feet and stares across the snow and ice toward the scene.

  Godwin sees him.

  “Oh, God!” cries Lucy.

  “Run!” shouts Jonathan.

  “No,” says Tiger quietly, “it won’t do any good…it’ll be worse.”

  Godwin is staring at them, as if he is stunned by their presence.

  “We have to speak with h
im,” says Edgar. “That’s our only chance.”

  “I’ll speak to him,” says Jonathan, “with this!” He raises the rifle.

  Godwin begins to walk toward them, increasing his pace as he comes, soon moving at a terrific speed, his strides long and purposeful. He only slows when he is within ten feet, his eyes on the barrel of the rifle. He halts.

  “I am disappointed, Edgar,” he says. “This is betrayal and it will be fatal to you and your friends. It is also extremely STUPID!” His voice bellows out and echoes throughout the mountains. One would not have been surprised to see an avalanche begin to descend from the heights above.

  Edgar is speechless. Fear has seized him the way it used to when he was a child. As the monster’s hideous yellow face glares at him, the hag climbs onto his shoulders. Edgar wants to say something, to fight back, to protect Lucy and his friends by his side, but he is frozen. He can’t even summon his father’s words, the words he needs—Do not be afraid. He is petrified! He can’t even run.

  Tiger’s black eyes are alert. She is quickly considering the things she might do, how she might effectively assault this supernatural creature. She thinks it will go for Edgar first. She must protect him.

  Lucy is quivering. She steps forward. “Please,” she says to Godwin, “do not harm my friends, for I love them and cannot bear to see them die. Take me.”

  Godwin turns to her for an instant, shocked by her irrational words, and in that split second, Jonathan hits the ground and rolls and like the crack-shot soldier he one day intends to be, fires a point-blank blast upward from Thorne’s extraordinary rifle right toward the place where the great surgeon’s skull is attached to the rest of his body. The shot misses, but not by much. The bullet travels on a line just a few inches lower than Jon intended and speeds toward Godwin’s chest. The creature’s eyes snap toward the barrel, the deadly bullet rocketing his way. He turns in a flash, faster than the human eye can follow and the bullet enters him, ripping through his skin, into his flesh, and through his breastbone, exploding on contact as Thorne ingeniously intended, creasing the edge of Godwin’s one-hundred-and-one-year-old heart, placed there by a man who took it from another man. Then the bullet exits through the breastbone three inches farther along the big chest and out through the flesh and skin and thwacks into the ice and snow some twenty yards away. The report echoes in the mountains.