Текст книги "Rushed"

Автор книги: Brian Harmon

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter Thirteen

Isabelle led him by the hand through the empty bedroom, across a hallway, into another bedroom and through the bathroom door into what proved to be not a bathroom but a very large garage.

“He’s noticed us,” she warned.

“Already?”

“He’s a part of the house now.  It’s kind of hard to keep things from him.”

“How long do we have?”

“Not long.  But he’s restricted by the house just like we are.  Weird as this place is, you still can’t walk through walls.”

They ran through the empty garage as a low, strumming reverberation began to rise in the walls around them.  Upon reaching the far door, they passed through it and emerged from what should have been the linen closet of a small bathroom.

Trippy.

Out of the bathroom, through another bedroom and into another hallway, where they raced to the far end, opened a bedroom door and immediately ascended a wide set of stairs as the whole house began to tremble with a warbling, muffled tone that Eric once again realized contained words that he desperately did not want to hear.

A door at the top of the stairs deposited them in a large dining room.

“We’re almost there.”

“Thank God.”

They ran through the dining room and directly into another bedroom, into a closet and up another flight of stairs as the unnerving thrumming rose into a terrifying roar of voices.

“We have to hurry!” screamed Isabelle as they burst through one last door and into what must have been the parlor that she described.

There were large windows spaced all along the outer wall and a pair of matching French doors directly in the middle.  Isabelle led him to this door and then let go of his hand as she seized the handle.  The door did not budge.

“Don’t listen to it!” she cried.

Eric realized that the muttering had become a sort of chant.  Words he didn’t yet recognize flowed over him, filling him with deep and inexplicable dread.  He clamped his hands over his ears and tried not to listen.

Isabelle pulled at the door, her bright eyes fiercely fixed on the handle, her jaw clenched, her muscles taut.  She looked intense, as if she were giving it everything she had, both physically and emotionally.

He began humming loudly to himself to cover the disturbing sound of the chanting, desperate to avoid hearing it.  There seemed to be something profoundly evil about the voice.

Looking back, he saw something enter the room.

It had a vaguely man-like shape, but was little more than a smoky haze rippling through the air.  Dark shadows etched themselves across the wall and carpet, snaking out from the shape at its center.  Somewhere in the middle of the mass, an evil pair of eyes glared at him, as if not from a man’s head, but from his belly.

Altrusk.

There was a sound like fabric tearing apart and Eric looked back to see Isabelle slowly inching the door open, the small cords in her neck standing out with the exertion.

“Go!” she screamed at him.  “Go now!”

The chanting suddenly gave way to an insane shriek.

Altrusk darted forward.

Eric wasted no time.  He bolted through the door and out of the house.

Free now, he turned quickly and seized Isabelle’s wrist.  “Come with me!” he cried.

Dark, twisted arms wrapped around her, clutching her, pulling her backward.  A terrible voice howled with fury.

Eric held fast.

“Just go!” Isabelle screamed.  “Leave me!”

“No!  I’m taking you with me!”

“I can’t!” 

“Try!”

“No!  I physically can’t!”

Eric’s eyes dropped to her hand and he saw that her fingers were sinking into the door, binding her to the house.  He knew she was right.  Whatever happened to her, whatever Altrusk did to her, it had somehow fused her into the house.  But he couldn’t bear to leave her.  She didn’t belong there.

“Just go!” Isabelle screamed again.  “I’ll be fine!  He can’t hurt me anymore!”

The dark, snaking fingers crept up her arm and reached for his hand.  In another moment, those foul tethers would coil around his wrist and he would be dragged back inside to suffer fates worse than madness and death.

“Go!  Before it’s too late!”

His heart breaking, Eric let go.

The door snapped shut like a steel trap and left him standing there, staring at his own reflection in the window.  Instantly, all was silent.  Nothing stirred.  There was no movement behind the glass.  All that remained were shadows and dust.  Both Altrusk and Isabelle were gone.

Feeling profoundly numb, Eric turned and gazed around.  He was on the patio.  He ran by here while fleeing the monster.  To his left was the planter it shattered as it raced after him.  Rich, dark soil and fragments of clay were spilled across the pavement.  To his right was the pile of broken scaffolding.

Again, he was struck by the forgotten memories of his dream.  Everything came back to him.  He walked past here, calmly, curiously, wondering about the purpose of this building that looked so elegant but appeared abandoned.  Nothing pursued him.  Nothing shattered the planter.  With no need to flee for his very life, he never climbed the scaffolding.  It never collapsed.  He was never stranded on the roof and therefore never needed to break into the house to get down.

He never met Isabelle.

That version of him simply walked on by, around the corner of the building, utterly and blissfully unaware.

His heart still pounding in his chest, a deep aching inside him, Eric began to walk in that direction.

The house loomed over him, monstrous in size and eerie in its silence, but otherwise perfectly unremarkable.  There was absolutely no way to know that the rooms and hallways did not lead where they were supposed to, that a man who had become a monster stalked unwary trespassers…that a young girl was hopelessly trapped inside.

It was difficult to breathe.

In the dream, he’d wandered these grounds for a while before discovering the little path that weaved through the garden and into a dense thicket of trees.  But because of the dream, he already knew it was there.  He followed the path and left the house of Altrusk behind him forever.

Once he reached the other side of these trees, once the house was completely out of view, Eric succumbed to the weakness in his legs and sat down in the middle of the path, where he stared despairingly up at the bright sky.

The trees swayed gently in a soft breeze.  A hawk was circling lazily overhead.  Inexplicably, the world carried on.

His phone rang.

Apparently, he was home again.

He fished it from his pocket.  It was Karen.

“Thank God, Eric.  I’ve been trying to reach you for like two hours now.”

“I’m sorry.”

Apparently, something about his voice revealed his distress because she immediately asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”  But his voice was unconvincing.

“What’s wrong?”

“She’s gone.”

“What?”

“Isabelle.  She’s gone.  I couldn’t save her.”

“Baby, what are you talking about?”

“She’s just a little girl.  Just a girl…  And I couldn’t save her…”

“God Eric, what happened?  Talk to me.”

“I never should’ve gone inside.  I didn’t know.  Never could’ve known.  But she saved me.  She saved me and I couldn’t save her.”

Karen fell quiet.

“I’m sorry.”

“No.  It’s fine.”

“It’s just hard right now.”

“I can tell.”

“I just need a minute.”

“You want me to call back later?”

“No.  It’s okay.”  And it was.  He didn’t have time to sit down and cry.  He had to keep moving.  The cathedral waited.  The foggy man might already be there.  He couldn’t stay here, couldn’t fail again.

He stood up and continued walking.  “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.  Just…  Just talk to me for a little bit, okay?”

“Okay.  Well…  You want to tell me what these things are that you sent me a picture of?”

“Picture?  What things?  Oh!”  Now he remembered.  Before entering the resort’s main building, back in the world before Altrusk, while he was still speaking with Taylor, he’d snapped a picture of the three creatures that were watching them.  He’d completely forgotten that he sent it.  “Just some things I saw following me.  Taylor says they’re harmless.  Basically some freaky breed of wild dogs or something.”

“Taylor?”

“Guy I met.  Friend of Grant and Annette, I guess.”

“Oh.  Well I didn’t know what was going on.  I got this picture and then you stopped answering your phone.

“Sorry.  Didn’t mean to worry you.”

“You were just gone for so long.”

“Didn’t feel like so long.  What time is it?”  He looked at his watch.

“Almost noon.”

That wasn’t right.  “My watch says it’s not even eleven yet.”

“Well it’s almost noon here in the real world.”

Eric compared his watch to the time on the phone.  They matched.

“I wasn’t gone that long…” he said.  He’d lost over an hour while stuck in Altrusk’s insane house.

“What?”

“I don’t know.”  He closed his eyes.  His head hurt.

“Well I was worried.  I was starting to think these things attacked you after you took the picture.”

“Like I said, I was told they’re pretty well harmless.  Other things out here…not so much.”

“What other things?”

Eric told her about the abandoned nudist resort and the monster that was waiting for him behind the kitchen door.  He described his terrifying flight through the garden and up onto the roof.  He told her of his lucky escape.  Somehow, he even managed to tell her the rest of the story as well, including his encounter with Altrusk and losing Isabelle.  It all poured out of him.  He couldn’t seem to help himself.

“That’s horrible,” Karen said when he’d finished.  “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

“Me too.”  He remembered Isabelle promising him that if he became a permanent addition to the house, like her, she would keep him company, and he found himself struggling just to hold back a tear.  It wasn’t fair.  None of it was fair.

“Are you all right?  How’s your shoulder?”

“It’s okay.  I’ve stopped the bleeding.”  For now, he thought but didn’t dare say.  He didn’t keep the injury from her, but he might have sugarcoated it a bit.  She didn’t have to know that he probably needed stitches.  That would only worry her needlessly.  She already had more than enough reasons to worry about him, most of them far better than a few nasty cuts.

“Where are you going now?”

Eric gazed ahead.  “I have no idea.”

“Anything coming back to you from your dream?”

“What I’m looking at now.  The path.  Actually, I guess it’s more like a road.  It’s all familiar, like I’ve been here before.  But only as I see it.  I won’t know what’s around the bend until I get to it.”

“Not the most useful of abilities then, is it?”

“No.  But it does come in handy.  I can immediately tell if anything’s changed, if there’s something that shouldn’t be there.”

“At least you have that, then.”

“Didn’t help me much in that kitchen, though,” he recalled.  And it didn’t help me save Isabelle, he thought.

“But it’s something at least.”

The path wound around a thick grove of trees and then emerged into a small clearing at the edge of a large lake.  An old boat dock stretched out over the water.  As soon as he saw it, he knew something had changed.

“Speaking of which…”

“What?”

“I just came across a boat dock.”

“And…?”

“The boat’s missing.”

“The foggy man?”

“As far as I know, he’s the only other one who’s been here.”

“That’s not good.  Are you sure you took the boat in the dream?”

Eric looked around the clearing.  There was a path that led left along the bank, but he didn’t recall going that way.  Though the details leading up to it were still piecing themselves together, he was sure he could remember climbing into the boat.  He wondered why he would do that.  He wasn’t very familiar with boats.  The idea of rowing out into the middle of a lake—especially an unfamiliar lake—was a little unnerving.

He moved closer to the path, intending to examine it more closely, and heard the phone crackle.  Now it all came back to him.  In the dream, he’d tried to go around the lake, but he found that he couldn’t go left or right without losing his cell phone signal and therefore straying off the path.  The only option was to use the boat.

“Yeah, I definitely took the boat.”

“So now what are you going to do?”

That was a damn good question.  He returned to the dock and peered off into the water.  A pair of ducks swam lazily near the shore to the right.  Farther away, he spied a second pair.  But there was not another dock within sight.  No more boats.  No way forward.  He was confident he couldn’t swim across.  “No way forward but by sea and nary a dinghy to me name.”

“Yar.  Seems ye be screwed.”

“Yar indeed.”

Eric sighed.  He really wished he could catch a break.  His heart really wasn’t into this right now.

“You okay?”

“No.”

“Come on.  You can figure this out.  Isn’t there anything in the dream that can help you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You said Grant, Taylor and Annette all acted like they expected you, like they knew you were going to be there.  If they aren’t entirely crazy—and you’ve sent me pictures that prove there’s something to what they say—then there must be some kind of force out there behind everything you’re doing.  I mean, maybe it’s God.  For all we know.  That force, whatever it is, must have known that you might run late and that the foggy man would beat you there.  Doesn’t that make sense?”

“Sort of…”

“Then I can’t imagine a force that wise and powerful wouldn’t see this happening.  There’s got to be another way.”

“Wow.”

“What?”

“You.”

“Well, I do hate it when you’re down on yourself.”

Eric smiled.  “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m going to hang up and see if I can work this thing out.”

“That’s my guy.”

Eric disconnected the call and stared off the end of the dock for a moment, trying to recall every detail of the dream.

Karen was right.  Something was out there, some greater force watching over everything.  There had to be.  These things were not merely random, after all.  They had obviously been set in motion long ago.  And this was not the kind of problem that should have gone overlooked by such a power.

And yet, that meant that this greater force had also foreseen that he would meet and then lose Isabelle.

He closed his eyes and forced her from his mind.  He couldn’t let himself dwell on that now.  Later.  He would think about her like she deserved later.  Right now, he had a problem to solve.

Opening his eyes again and gazing down at the water where the boat should have been, he could remember every detail of it.  It was an ordinary johnboat, green where the paint was still visible.  It had only a small trolling motor that was a pain in the ass to start, but it worked.

He remembered pulling away from the shore, using his cell phone for a compass.  It let him stay in this world and not drift into the other one.

He recalled looking back toward the dock, half-expecting the boat’s owner to come running out of the woods, shouting at him.  But no one was there.  It had been silent.  The entire shore had been peaceful that night.

The entire shore…

Now he remembered.

He’d scanned the lakeshore up and down as he moved away from the dock.  It was about a hundred and fifty yards to the right, which would be his left as he stood on the dock looking out at where he would have been in the dream, looking back.  It had been dragged up onto the shore, half-hidden in the brush.  Another boat.  Smaller than the one that had been tied at the dock, and much older, with no motor.

Any other time, he would have assumed that such a boat would be useless, its bottom likely rusted out, incapable of holding his weight.  But if he was right…  If Karen was right (and how often was she wrong, really?), then that boat was for him.

Just in case.

Maybe it’s God, Karen had said…

Eric felt a chill creep through his body.

Shaking it off, he turned away from the lake and frowned.  Retrieving that other boat was going to be tricky.  For one thing, he’d already determined that the path leading over there was sunk into that gray zone between here and the other world.  That meant leaving the path, which Grant specifically told him not to do.

He crossed the small clearing and followed the path into the trees.  He watched the signal on his cell phone sputter and die in the space of just two steps and then tucked it back into his pocket as he searched the trees around him.

Though the sun still shone brightly overhead, the shade here was deep and cool.  The air had a completely different quality.  There was a subtle reek that might have been nothing more than a dead fish somewhere along the bank or it might have been a small taste of whatever foul atmosphere blanketed that other world.

How easy would it be to step off the edge and be lost forever?

The very idea was dreadful.

Less than fifty yards from the clearing, the normal sounds of the woods were lost and an eerie silence overcame the area.  The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and he became acutely sure that he was not alone out here.

Somewhere in the trees, something rustled.  He thought he heard a branch snap, a whisper of a footstep in the leaves.

He tried to tell himself it was only his imagination, but his experiences so far today had all been powerful examples of why he should never dismiss anything as only a fabrication of his mind.

Yet he somehow managed to make it all the way to the boat without being mauled or disemboweled or viciously leg-humped by something from another world.

The path did not pass directly by the boat.  A thicket of brush stood between him and it, effectively hiding it from view except from the perspective of another watercraft, making him wonder once more if it might have been left here specifically for him to find.

Pushing through this brush, he considered how he was going to proceed once he reached the boat.  The easiest way would be to simply push it right into the water and climb inside.  But sometimes the easy way was also the wrong way.  He had no idea where the gray area ended and the other world took over.  It was too easy to imagine pushing away from the shore and making his way back toward the dock, only to find himself hopelessly adrift in that dark and hostile world, never to return.

But then again, dragging the boat through this dense brush and then back along the path to the dock did not seem like a reasonable solution, either.

Arriving at the boat, he peered inside.  The bottom was badly rusted.  Given a choice, he would not have risked it.  But he wasn’t left with a lot of options.

At least it actually had a bottom.

Something rustled loudly in the branches of a nearby tree and Eric looked up in time to see a large, ape-like shape settle there.

Chapter Fourteen

Covered in shaggy red fur, it looked a little like an orangutan except for its enormous hands and ghastly face.  The moment he met its crazed, yellow eyes, it exposed a ghastly mouthful of massive teeth and uttered the most terrifying shriek he had ever heard in his life (which, given the events of only the past few hours, was actually saying something).

The question of whether it would be better to backtrack with the boat and launch it from the dock or simply cast off from where it sat became utterly moot.  So did any concern he had about the seaworthiness of the craft.  Taking hold of the port side, he shoved it backward into the water and threw himself into it as the Stephen King equivalent of Curious George dropped from its branch and came loping after him, shrieking insanely.

Managing somehow to position himself upright in the boat without capsizing it, he immediately realized that there were no oars with which to row to safety.  Swearing loudly, Eric turned and plunged his right arm into the water, splashing wildly in an effort to make the boat move.

Meanwhile, Furious George continued his noisy tantrum.  Long arms flailing wildly, massive teeth exposed, the angry creature charged out into the water, splashing and shrieking.

Eric didn’t seem to be going anywhere.  The boat began to turn lazily, slowly spinning in a circle as if utterly unconcerned about the angry monkey that apparently wanted to eat its passenger.

But even as Eric began to realize the futility of his crazed paddling, he also noticed that the creature refused to follow him any farther than a few feet from the shore.  Peering back over the side of the boat, Eric realized that the thing did not seem able—or at least particularly willing—to swim, which was a stroke of amazing luck since it turned out that he made a lousy propulsion system for a boat.

Somehow managing to point the bow toward the dock while keeping one eye on his angry, hairy friend, he allowed himself a moment to ponder the best route forward.  He considered removing his shoe and using it as an oar.  They were already soaked from his awkward boarding of the boat as he scrambled to escape the creature.  But he decided that they wouldn’t offer much more surface area for pushing the water than did the palms of his hands.

He also evaluated the boat, noting that it did seem to be taking on water, but not catastrophically.  He could probably keep it afloat indefinitely as long as he took a moment now and then to bail the vessel.

Furious George, still shrieking, turned and splashed back up onto the shore again, apparently having determined that he had made his point.

Relieved to see the beast leave, Eric bent over and paddled on one side of the boat and then the other, gradually pushing himself toward the dock.  He was concentrating on this task when something heavy clanged against the side of the boat.  Looking up again, Eric watched as George picked up a second rock and hurled it at him, this time striking the surface of the water three feet in front of him.

A third sailed over his head.

“Hey!” he shouted.

George didn’t seem terribly fazed by this exclamation.  He picked up a larger stone this time and bounced it off the side of the boat.

Eric swore loudly and paddled faster.

Another rock landed loudly inside the boat in front of him.

“Knock it off!” he yelled.  The words were barely out of his mouth before he felt the next rock sting his right knee and he fired off a particularly insulting insinuation about the ape’s parentage.

The creature threw its hands in the air and shrieked at him again, showing him all of its awful teeth.  They were huge.  He couldn’t quite fathom how they all fit in the damn thing’s mouth.  It didn’t seem possible.

Swallowing those enormous teeth back into its mouth, the hateful thing snatched up another stone and sent it hurdling straight at Eric’s face.

He threw his arms up to shield himself and felt it bounce off his right elbow with a sharp sting.

“Don’t make me come over there and kick your ass!”

George was so terrified that he chucked an even larger rock.  Luckily, it fell short.

Apparently, he wasn’t going to talk his way out of this mess.  Keeping one eye on the creature to watch for incoming headshots, Eric continued paddling, now trying to aim the boat farther from the shoreline.  Twice he had to duck incoming stones, but for the most part George turned out to be a terrible pitcher.

He did not fail to appreciate how lucky he was.

When he’d moved far enough out into the lake that none of the thrown rocks reached the boat, the beast threw its huge hands up and shrieked at him again.

Eric replied by showing him both his middle fingers and suggesting that it should copulate with itself.

It was important to occasionally vent one’s frustrations.  It was healthy.

Remembering his phone, he quickly pulled it out, checked that it was still dry and snapped a picture of the beast.  A pissed-off monkey was going to go great in his scrapbook with the mutant livestock and big-headed coyote-deer.

He returned the phone to his pocket and resumed paddling.  Slowly, he made his way back to the dock, ignoring the primal shrieks from the shoreline.

He would have liked to have tied the boat off at the dock and gone in search of something to use as an oar, but he didn’t dare return to the shore for fear that Furious George might still be sore about his impolite language.  He suspected that it might not be able to come all the way into this world.  Otherwise, what kept it from attacking him before he went searching for the boat?  What kept it from wandering into the nearest town and terrifying the locals?  Or climbing the nearest water tower and swatting at passing airplanes?  But he didn’t dare make any assumptions.

Deciding it was better to not take any chances, Eric resigned himself to making do with only his hands to paddle the boat.

Using his dream as a guide and frequently checking the phone to make sure he hadn’t drifted into that other place, he slowly crept across the surface of the lake.

When his arms had grown sufficiently tired and while he was still much closer to the dock than the far side of the lake, he decided to take a break.  He sent his picture of George to Karen and waited for her to call him, which only took a couple minutes.

He let her know that she was right, that once he accepted that there must be a solution to the problem, he was able to find one.

Karen was happy to have helped (and even happier, he suspected, to be right).  She was also disturbed by the nasty monkey.  “That is one ugly primate,” she declared.

“It had an even uglier disposition.”

“So where are you now?”

“Out on the lake.”

“Still?”

“It’s slow going with no oars.”

“I’ll bet.”

“And I have to stop occasionally to bail water.”

“That’s not good.”

“No.  But it’s a slow leak.  I think I can stay ahead of it.”

“Any idea yet where you’re headed?”

“I remember crossing the lake.  I still can’t recall where I ended up.”

“Well at least you’re on the right track.”

“Hopefully my new monkey friend isn’t waiting for me on the other side.”

“That would suck.”

“It would.  And he’d probably have enough time to beat me there, too.  In the dream, my boat had a motor.”

“Dream You gets all the breaks.”

“He really does.  He was always much more popular than me in high school, too.”

Eric wiped the sweat from his brow.  It had been hot most of the day, but it was particularly hot out here in this boat, with the sun beating down on him.  He bent over the side and began to paddle again as he talked.  At least the water was cool on his skin.

“By the way, I did an internet search for ‘Gold Sunshine Resort’ while I was waiting for you to finish trading insults with your monkey.”

“He so started it.”

“I couldn’t find any news reports or anything,” she continued, “but I did find a missing persons report for an Isabelle Albin.”

Isabelle…

“Says she went missing from Gold Sunshine Resort in nineteen-seventy-eight at the age of thirteen.  That’s really sad.”

“Is there a picture?”

“There is.”

“I have a picture, too.”

“You do?”

“I snapped it while we were waiting for Altrusk and his devil house to calm down so we could make a run for it.”

“There’s something you don’t hear every day.”

“It’s a day of firsts all around.”

“It is.  Send me the picture.  I want to see.”

Eric hung up and sent her the picture.  In just a few seconds the phone rang again.

“That is just freaky!”

“Same girl?”  As if he really needed to ask.

“It is.  I can’t believe it.  This is totally nuts.”

“That’s just the kind of day I’m having.”

“Crazy,” she said again.  “I can’t believe she’s been there this whole time.”

“I know.”

“Wow.”

“Did you find anything about Isaac Altrusk?”

“I didn’t.  I should look for him.”

“Isabelle said it was a fake name.  He was a con artist before he became…whatever he is now.”  Eric recalled Isabelle telling him that he used to be Isaac Altrusk, but now he was just Altrusk.  Her words were no less creepy now than they were then.

“I’ll see if I can find anything.  You keep that boat on top of the water.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.”

“Bye.”

Eric pocketed the phone and resumed his paddling.  A full minute had not passed before the phone rang and he had to stop again to answer it.  This time it was Paul.

“Hey.  I just turned off the Interstate down here, looking for your Cruiser.”

“That was fast.”

“I finished early.  I brought Kevin to drive my truck back.”  Kevin was Paul’s nineteen-year-old son.

“Thanks a lot.  I appreciate it.”

“Sure thing.  What’s going on, anyway, where are you?”

He considered lying, but he didn’t see the point.  “I’m in a leaky old boat, trying to make my way across a lake without any oars.”

“Okay…” said Paul.  “That’s…um…  Okay.  So you’re okay, then?  Doing all right?”

“Yeah.  Just tiring.  Hard to row with your hands.”

“Have you tried using your shoes?”

“Thought about it.  But a shoe doesn’t have much more surface area than your hand, when you think about it.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Eric smiled.  It was always fun tripping up his brother.  Thinking of Isabelle, he asked, “So you think I’m completely bugshit yet?”

“I wouldn’t say completely.  Yet.”

“What did Karen tell you?”

“Just about the dream.”

“It was more than a dream.  It was all real.”

“Real, huh?”

“Yeah.  Everything’s coming back to me.  And then some.  You wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen today.  I don’t even know where to start.  The mutant livestock.  The wardrobe monster.  The nudist resort.  I was almost eaten by a goddamn house!”

“Nudist resort?”

“Really?  All those things I just said and that’s what you want to hear about?”

“I’ve never been to a nudist resort,” Paul pouted.

In the background, Eric heard Kevin announce that he wanted to check out the nudist resort.

“You’d make an awful nudist,” Paul affectionately informed his son.

Eric heard Kevin point out that nobody would want to see Paul’s fat ass naked, either.

“It’s been abandoned since the seventies,” Eric said.

“Bummer.”

“You don’t believe a word I’m saying, do you?”

“I believe something’s going on,” Paul assured him.

“Right.  Well then, hang up.”

“What?”

“Hang up.  I’ve got something I want to send you.”

“Okay…”

Eric disconnected the call and located his picture of the ape creature.  He sent it to Paul’s phone and then resumed paddling while he waited for him to call back.  It didn’t take long.

“Hello?”

“What the hell is that thing?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but I just barely got into this boat before it tore my face off.”

“That’s the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen!”

In the background, he heard Kevin exclaim something about the thing’s wicked-looking teeth using more expletives than strictly necessary.