Monster (17 page)

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Ang
e
la drove Kevin hom
e. They spoke little on the way.
Kevin was
still digesting the news that s
he had gone out with another guy. Angela couldn't stop thinking about fo
o
d
.
She had nine bucks in her purse, but she wondered if
s
he needed to stop at an automatic teller machine to get more money in order to satisfy her hunger. She hadn't a clue what was causing the immense craving. She couldn't be pregnant, that
she knew for sure.

Kevin was reluctant to leave
her when she stopped in front of his house. “
Where are you going?
”
he asked.

“To the library.”

“
Why don't you want me to come with you?
”
he asked
.

“Bec
ause I'm in a weird mood.
”

“You
're always in a weird mood
.
I
can help you.
”

Her
stomach growled. It actually felt as if it were digest
ing its
elf.
“I
have to go. Please?
I’ll call you later.”

Kevin got out slowly. “
What are you doing tonight?
”
he
asked.

“I don't know. Resting.
I think
I d
o have the flu. I'll call
you tomorrow.”

“F
ine.
”
He shut the car door. “
Stay away from the bad
guys,
A
and
W.”

“I
will.”

Sh
e drove straight to
the McDonald's, doing well over the s
peed limit all the way. She ordered another Big Mac
and a
Coke, leaving off the fries. It was a relief to put
the
food in her mouth and chew it. Yet the hamburger didn't satisfy her. They had cooked the meat too much,
she
thought. Nevertheless, she ordered another burger
before she was done swallowing the first one. This
time
she told them she wanted it extra rare. The second
one
tasted better, and her hunger finally began to dimin
ish,
although it didn't go away completely
.
She contemplated ordering a third for the road, in case she got hungry la
ter,
but she couldn't eat three Big Macs! She had never e
aten
two before.

Next stop was the library. The old woman with
the
book tapes was behind the desk. She was listening
to a Shakespearean pl
ay; it sounded like
Ham
le
t.
Angela
won
dered if she should e
xplain to her that there were such
things as headphones.
The woman smiled kindly at her as
she approached the desk.

“Can I help you?”
she asked.

“
Yes,
” Angela said. “I
want all the material you have
o
n two subjects. The Indians who lived in this area befo
r
e the white man arrived, and the meteor that created Poi
nt Lake.”

The old woman was excited. She looked like some
body’s
grandmother who had just got stoned on marijuana
for the first time. “Do you like Indians?”
she asked, turn
ing
off her tape.
“
I love them myself.
” She began to get up. “I
know where every word on them is in this library
. You
just have a seat, and I'll bring you the material. What
was
the other thing you were interested in? Parking me
ters?”

Angela had to smile. “
The meteor that formed the
lake.”

“
I'll see what I've got,
” the woman said.

She was gone for some time. Angela worried
that
sh
e
had sat down and do
z
ed off. But eventually she returned with a handful of material. Most of it was magazine article
s
and loose papers. There was one book, however
–
small a
nd poorly bound.
It looked as if it had been published a
t
ho
me
with desktop equipment. Angela thanked the
wom
an and
went off in the corner to study. The woman put her tape
back on
–
Hamlet was talking to his father's ghost
.

There was only one article on the meteor and
Point Lake. Angela read it first.
The piece started with
a disc
ussion on how long ago the meteor
–
the article
never deba
ted for a moment whether it was a meteor or not
–
hit
t
he
Earth. Angela was surprised to l
earn
the author had determined, using a carbon-
14
radioactive decay test,
that
the meteor had hit the area as li
ttl
e as one hundred thousand years ago. Angela knew a little about astronomy
. That
wasn't very long ago. The author went on to describe
the
extremely high magnetic content of the rock in and
a
round Point Lake. He finished by comparing it to another
m
eteo
r
site down in South America that was also now a
lake.
He said the two holes in the ground appeared to h
av
e been formed at the same time by the same highly magnetic ore from outer space.

He
didn't say anything about the water in the lake being
unhealthy
.

Angela made a note of the author
's
name
–
Alan Spark.
He
was
a professor
of
geology at the University
of
Michigan. That
was
only a ninety-minute drive from Point
. Perhaps she’
d visit him someday.

The material
on the native Americans took longer to
wade
through. Apparen
tl
y the Manton had been the predominant tribe in the region until the white man had
arrived
a couple of hundred years ago and destroyed their
lifesty
le. There were numerous anecdotes of battles, of
treaties signed, of more battl
es. It blew Angela's mind how
many p
romises the US g
overnment made and broke with th
e Manton. These native Americans were either
a
trusting
sort,
or else they had short memories. Of course, they
probably
had no choice bu
t to agree to the government's tre
aties. History was overrunning them, and there was no s
topp
ing it
.

B
uried in the history were several intriguing references t
o
Point Lake
. First off, its Indian name was
Sethia,
which
meant
Bath of Blood. Angela stopped and asked herself
why
they'd have given such a picturesque lake as Point
Lake
such
a terr
ible name. She couldn't imagine it and dug deeper
for an
explanation, figuring there must have been a major
bat
tle on its shores. But she could find no such reference
. The
name Sethia seemed to go way back, thousands of years
perhaps. The word appeared loosely connected to ano
ther
strange word
– KAtuu.
There was one story describing
how
the KAtuu emerged from the depths of the lake. Ano
ther
spoke of the KAtuu coming out of the sky above
the
water
.
Try
as
she might, Angela couldn't find out
exactly
what th
e KAtuu were. In one place they
were descri
bed
as tiny
i
nsects too small for the human eye to se
e. In
another they were spoken of as huge bat-like beings
that
could cross great distances rapidly. In all ways
t
hey described as deadly
and to be feared. Above all, it was
clear the Manton avoided Point Lake.
It
appeared
that
they successfully quarantined the area around the lake for decades at a
ti
me. It was a sacred rule among the Manton that no one of their tribe, under any circumstances,
was
to drink the water in the lake.

“Oh,
my,
” Angela muttered to herself. “
Somebod
y should
have shown the local
board
of education these sto
ri
es.
”

“
Did you say something, dear?
”
the old librarian
asked,
turning off her book tape. Angela had been so engrossed in her research she didn'
t know what the woman was listening t
o now.

“
I
was just remarking
to myself how fascinating the Indian
history is in this area,
”
Angela said.

The woman clapped her hands
–
she was pleased to
find
a mutual fan
. “
Isn't it?
”
she asked
. “
But if you really want
to
hear wonderful stories about the Indians who lived around here, you must talk to Shining Feather. He can tell you stories first-hand
.
He's been around a long time
.”

“Pardon?”

“
He's an old India
n who lives off Highway Seventeen near Wind Break.
There's a shop there called Cheap Stu
ff.
It's run by Shining Feather's great-great-granddau
ghter.
You'll have to be careful with her. She'll try to sell
you
one of the rugs she makes whether you want it or n
ot. I
have three of her rugs at home in the closet.
”

“
H
ow old is this Shining Feather?” Angela asked.

“
I don't know. He had whi
t
e hair when I went to visit hi
m for the first time.”
Th
e old woman stopped and scratched her balding white
head. She frowned.
“
That was back in
the De
pres
s
ion
, when I
was a lit
tle girl.”

Angela
drove from
the
library to the shop, stopping
along
the way at a deli. Maybe she
was
pregnant and
had
conceived during an erotic dream. She bought the
strangest
thing to eat:
a
foot-long German sausage and a
loaf
of
bread. She didn'
t
even touch the bread, though. She
gobbled
down the sausage as she drove along Highway
I
7.
It was
only when she was done that she
realized
it hadn't
even
been
cooked
.