The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (95 page)

The smell of coffee boiling in the open air is sufficient to raise the lowest spirits, and the prospect of lacing it with grape alcohol was even better. Gregorio seemed to have shaken off his depression by the time we sat huddled at the fire, tin cups steaming in the damp air. I felt peaceful again. It was the end of the day, but nightfall was not a definite thing under that overcast sky. The raindrops battered at the fuscous forest surrounding us, seeking entrance through the foliage and falling like moths to the firelight. It was dark and sombre, a scene from a nightmare world. The little stream splattered from the rocks in peaceful contrast to the wind calling overhead, and the pungent odour of Gregorio’s pipe drifted sharply through the scent of sodden vegetation and mouldy earth.

Presently, feeling that I should do something constructive, I took out my map case and unfolded the best map obtainable of the area. It was sadly lacking in detail, with frequent gaps, indicating nothing more than approximate altitude. I asked Gregorio where we were, and he frowned over the map. A raindrop bounced heavily from the Straits of Magellan.

“Here. Somewhere here.”

He stuck a forefinger in the centre of one of the blank areas. It told me nothing except that we were over 5,000 feet above sea level.

“Well, are there any landmarks, anything to get an approximate bearing from?”

Gregorio thought for a moment, his finger moving over the map. “MacPherson’s ranch is nearest,” he said. His finger strayed northwards a vague distance but remained within the confines of the blank space. “Somewhere here. It was there I was travelling when I looked for work. When I saw it.”

That was encouraging, and I kicked myself mentally for not finding out sooner where MacPherson’s place was. The creature had been there several times, at least once since Gregorio had seen it, and this knowledge increased my hope that it still frequented this area. I modified my self-castigation by realizing I couldn’t have found MacPherson’s on this map, anyway, and hadn’t known Gregorio was headed there, but decided I’d better tie up the other possibility into this framework.

“Do you know where Hodson’s is?”

Gregorio shook his head. “I don’t know that name. Is it a ranch?”

“No. Just a house. In a valley.”

He smiled. “There are many valleys,” he said. “I know of no
house. Not north, I think. I know what is north from here, that is where I sometimes work.”

I folded the map carefully and slid it back in the case.

“How shall I go about finding the creature?”

He shrugged, looking into the fire. The light danced off his face like sunbeams off granite.

“Wait,” he said. “You must wait.”

“But why should it come here?”

“Perhaps for two reasons,” he said. He was smiling again, but it was a strange, tight smile. “One is the water.” He nodded towards the stream. “It is the only water to drink on this side of the mountain. There are small streams that come and go and ponds that grow stagnant, but this is the only constant fresh water in some miles. It begins only a little way from here, and it ends just beyond. So, if this thing must drink, I think it will drink near here.”

This revelation delighted me, although I felt very much the amateur for not thinking of such a simple aspect of the search, and I was grateful for Gregorio’s good sense. He was still smiling into the fire.

“And the other reason?” I asked.

“Because we are here,” he said.

It took a moment to understand what he meant. The fire was hot on my face, but a definite chill inched up my spine. Gregorio stood up and walked over to the supplies and packs, then returned with the shotgun and handed it to me. I saw his point. I bolted it together and kept it in my tent.

In the morning I set out to trace the stream to its source. Gregorio assured me it wasn’t far, and that it emerged from a subterranean course through the mountains. I wore my heavy boots for scrambling over rocks and carried the shotgun. Gregorio volunteered to accompany me, but I didn’t think it necessary since I was going to follow the stream and couldn’t very well become lost since I could easily follow it back again.

The stream burst into the camp in a miniature waterfall, tumbling from a narrow opening in the rocks and falling a few inches with comical fury, a Niagara in the insect world. It was impossible to follow the winding stream around and under the rocks but that wasn’t necessary. I crossed the barrier at the easiest point and walked back along the perimeter until I came to the spot where the water flowed into the circle. It was just a shallow flow there, and I saw that it must have been compressed and confined as it ventured through the rocks, to break out in such Lilliputian ferocity at the other side. But on this open ground it wandered through marshland
with little direction, and it wasn’t easy to follow its main course. Several times I found that I’d gone a few yards along a side branch which diminished and then vanished, seeping into the ground. There was still no danger of losing my way, however, since I was moving upwards and could still see the trees surrounding the camp, and as I walked farther the stream became wider and deeper.

I had been walking for ten or fifteen minutes when I heard the rumbling ahead, and knew I must be approaching the source. I was almost at the crest of the hill, and behind it a high cliff towered against the sky. The stream was much larger here, and when I came to the top I saw the waterfall, still above me on the next hill. It was an exact replica of the cascade in the camp, magnified many times over. The water surged from a long gash in the cliff and pounded down, defying the wind, in a torrent at the foot of the unassailable rock wall. The avalanche had worn the land away and formed a turbid pool at the base of the cataract, and this in turn spilled the overflow out to form the stream.

I hurried on until I was standing beside the pool. The spray dashed over me and the sound roared in my ears. It was a natural waterhole which any large animal would use in preference to the shallow stream, and I immediately saw traces of those animals. I recognized the tracks of fox, muskrat and wild sheep, and saw various other unidentifiable prints.

I moved around the bank to the other side.

And there, quite distinctly, I found a print that was almost human. I stared at it for some time, hardly believing I’d discovered it so easily and so soon. But there it was. It wasn’t quite the print of a barefoot man. The toes were too long and the big toe was set at a wider angle than normal. But it was without doubt the footprint of a primate, and a large primate at that. My heart pounding, I searched for further evidence, but there was only the one print. From that point, the creature that made it could have easily leaped to the nearest rocks, however, and it was all the evidence I needed to convince me I was in the right place, and that all I needed now was patience. If I waited, concealed near the waterhole, sooner or later the creature would appear.

But that suddenly posed another problem, one I’d been deliberately ignoring until the time came. If and when I did find the creature, what would I do? Or what would it do? My problem was based on not knowing what it was, whether it was man or beast or both. If there was any chance it was a man, I couldn’t very well trap it or use force to capture it. It was a tricky moral judgement, and one I was hardly qualified to make before I’d seen it, and decided, tentatively at least, what it might be.

I returned to the camp, excited and anxious to tell Gregorio what I’d found. As I slid down from the rocks, I thought for a second that he wasn’t there, and then I saw him by the horses. He had the rifle in his hands, pointing at the ground, but I had seen a blur of motion from the side of my eye, and wondered if he’d been waiting with the rifle aimed at the sound of my approach. Once again I felt a foreboding that he might act rashly; I knew, without doubt, that if it had been the creature that had just scrambled into the camp, Gregorio would have used his weapon with no hesitation.

I didn’t tell him about the footprint. I told him I’d been to the waterhole, however, and that I intended to wait there in concealment.

“When will you wait?” he asked.

“As soon as possible. Tonight.”

“At night?” he asked, his tone not quite incredulous – more as though he couldn’t comprehend such a thing than that he disagreed with it.

“I think the chance of seeing it would be better at night. And it will certainly be easier to conceal myself in the dark.”

“Yes. Those things are true,” he said, as if other things were also true. But he offered no discouragement, in the same way that one doesn’t argue with a madman.

There was a moon above the clouds and long shadows drifted across the land in skeletal fingers. By day that desolate cataract had been eerie enough, but in the moonlight the rocks seemed to take on a life of their own, grotesquely carved monsters that writhed and rolled in confused contortions, and would have been more in place on that moon which lighted them than on earth.

I lay face down in the forest, watching the water leap in silver spray from the pool. The shotgun was beside me and I kept one hand on the stock, the other on my electric torch. I lay very still, hardly daring to breathe, conscious of the soft ground and wet grass, the night noises cutting through the dull roar of the water, and my own heartbeats. I had no way of knowing how long I’d been there. My watch had a luminous dial, and I’d left it back at the camp, taking no chances with my concealment.

A sudden sound stiffened me. There was a scurrying in the brush beside me as some small creature passed by, not a dozen feet from my right hand, and emerged beside the pool a moment later. I relaxed, letting my breath out quietly. It was a fox, only a fox. It looked about,
cautious and alert, and then began to drink. An owl peered down from a nearby tree, then turned round yellow eyes away, seeking a less formidable meal. I judged it to be about three o’clock and my eyes were heavy. I was about to concede that my first night’s vigil would be ended without results, although I intended to stay there until dawn. A large cloud spun out across the moon, black with frosted edges, and all the long shadows merged over the pool. Then, whipped on by the wind, the cloud disintegrated and the light glided back.

I was instantly alert.

The fox had stopped drinking. It stood, poised and tense, pointed ears quivering. I had heard nothing, and felt certain I’d made no sound, but there was something in the animal’s bearing that implied caution or fear. The owl had vanished, the fox stood silhouetted against the waterfall for several minutes. Then suddenly it darted to the side, toward the undergrowth, halted abruptly and changed course. There was a louder stir in the trees as the fox disappeared. I rolled to my side, trying to follow the animal’s flight without using the torch. Just above the spot where it had gone into the brush, a tree limb swayed, a heavy limb, moving as though it had just been relieved of a weight.

I pushed the shotgun out in front of me, thinking even as I did how I’d feared Gregorio might act rashly, and how that fear could well be extended to myself. And then there was time for thought.

The limb moved again, bending farther down and slowly rising until it merged with the limb above at one wide point. The point moved toward the trunk, blocking the light. There was something on that limb, something heavy and large, crouching. Then it was gone, the limb swayed, unburdened, and something moved through the dark trees, away from the clearing. The sound grew faint, and left only the wind and water to throb against the silence.

I did nothing. For a long while I lay perfectly still, waiting, hoping it would return and, at the same time, feeling relief that it had gone. Whatever it was, it had arrived with a stealth that had defeated my senses; I’d heard nothing and seen nothing, and was quite aware that it could just as easily have been in the tree above me. I rolled on to my back and looked upwards at the thought. But the tree was empty, the barren limbs crossed against the sky, and whatever had come, had gone. I didn’t go after it.

Dawn came damp and cold. I got to my feet and stamped, then stretched, feeling a stiffness far more unpleasant than that caused by exertion. I lighted a cigarette and walked out of the trees. I could see the marks the fox had left beside the pool, and bent down to
scoop some water and drink; I splashed my face and washed my hands. The second part of my vigil had passed very rapidly, and I can’t begin to recall the inter-mingled profusion of thoughts that had occupied my mind.

Then I walked back along the route the fox had taken to the trees, looking at the ground and not knowing what I expected to find. A patch of undergrowth seemed to have been broken and I leaned over it. There was nothing on the ground. As I straightened up a drop hit me on the cheek, too heavy for rain, and when I wiped it my hand came away red. I thought I’d cut myself on a branch, and rubbed my cheek, then took my hand away and held it out, palm upwards, to see if there was blood. There wasn’t.

And then, as I was watching, there was. A drop fell directly into my palm, thick and red.

I jerked back and looked up, but the tree was empty. The blood was dripping, slowly, from a small dark blot on the lowest limb. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, although I felt a cold certainty that I knew. I broke a branch from the thicket and reached up, lifted the object and let it fall to the ground. I felt sick. It was the hindquarters of a fox, blood-matted tail attached, torn away from the rest of the body.

I searched, but not too thoroughly, and I didn’t find the rest.

Gregorio was squatting by the fire. He held a mug of coffee out to me as I walked over from the rocks. My hand shook as I drank and he remarked on how pale I was. It wasn’t surprising. I’d spent a night without shelter on the cold, damp ground. I took the coffee into my tent and changed into dry clothing. I felt very cold now and drew a blanket over my shoulders, lighted a cigarette but found that it tasted foul and stubbed it out. Gregorio pulled the flap back and handed me a bottle of pisco. He seemed to want to talk, but saw I didn’t feel like it. He didn’t ask if I’d discovered anything, assuming perhaps that I would have mentioned it or, possibly, that I wouldn’t mention it anyway. I drank the pisco and coffee alternately, my mind dull. The rain was smacking against the canvas without rhythm, a drop, a pause, two drops, three drops, another pause, and I found myself concentrating on the irregular tempo, a form of self-imposed Chinese water torture subconsciously devised to occupy my mind and avoid making conclusions and decisions. I shook my head, driving the stupor away and forcing my mind back into focus.