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Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: J. Ellington Ashton Press
Pages: 34
Copyright: November 1, 2013
Price: $1.00 (eBook)
There's something strange in a northern Ontario Lake. It's been there for a long time and it's hungry.
The ancient history of strange lake attracts two university students to visit the current owner of the lake. It is a history that involves death every one hundred years when the water turns red. Its read now and they are in grave danger.
Excerpt
1
The very old father was sick and probably dying. He’d seen more winters than anyone in the place of the three long houses could count. There was no doubt what the end would be, but this end was coming very slowly, and the road to that end was increasingly painful.
The long houses were made of tall saplings pushed into the ground and bent over. The spaces in between these posts were filled with a weave of small rods or anything that could be used to keep out the bad weather. They were topped off with a layer of sod or sometimes carefully cut thatch with holes that let out the smoke from both cooking fires and fires kept for warmth. The one the old man lived in along with his extended family had a door in one and the middle.
The old man lay on a comfortable bed of fresh grasses set near the door he could feel the sun fall on his face and see the people go about their business. A particularly soft step approached and a shadow crossed the sun. The old man knew who this was. He opened his eyes and saw a raw hide bucket that contained the treatment to ease his pain.
With the help of a long handled dipper, carved from a branch with a bur at the end, the shaman poured red tinted liquid over the old Father. Then gently rubbed it in with a piece of hide. Once all affected spots had been treated he helped him drink a dipper full. This was strongest medicine he had available. At the same time the Shaman had to admit to himself it was slowly losing its power to completely block the pain. Job finished, he simply sat next to the pallet where his patient lay and looked out at the afternoon.
“My teacher always told me, be confident when the end is unclear and be kind when the end is undeniable,” he said softly.
“My end is very clear I have said my farewells,” said the old father.
“I know. This even comes at a good time. Though it makes me sound cold about the issue. You have been my good friend and supporter my whole life and I do not want to be cold,” the Shaman said.
With surprising strength probably granted by the medicine that took at least part of his pain away the old father opened his eyes and looked out at the day.
He said, “My friend there is no prisoner or criminal that can be used. I must believe this thing is real. Where else would the medicine come from? It has given me one last summer full of beauty, even if I could only watch that beauty from my bed. If the medicine proves this thing is real then the rest of the teachings must also be real. I have protected the people my whole life. Let me do it one last time.”
The Shaman reached into the pouch that was slung across his chest at all times and took out what looked like an elaborately carved sceptre. This was a complex method of keeping track of time. The moment the sceptre marked had arrived and now the lake was red. He had no choice. There had been a slave girl taken from another tribe in a raid, but she had recently gone from slave to wife, and was now heavy with child.
To the Shaman the girl was never a very serious choice anyway. The thought of taking innocent life left a sour feeling in the pit of his being. To take an unwilling girl, never schooled in the danger of the lake, felt too much like murder.
The shaman put the carved staff into the sick old man’s hands. The bony fingers gripped the wood like a valued gift. This would not be murder. This would be self-sacrifice; noble and brave.
The Shaman said, “Very well old man, I give you your release and sanction this act. Say you’re final good-byes to your family. We will take you when the moon is high.”
Clearly exhausted by this interview, the old father said, “This summer I watched the great grandson born in the dark of the year learn to walk. I do this so he will live long enough to run.”
That night six senior braves and three elders, one a woman, walked away from the clearing where the three longhouses stood. The Shaman led the way, then came the elders, then came the braves carrying the very old father on a litter. Travelers who came to trade and learn about their neighbors often asked why the people did not live closer to the lake. Most of the time the people simply answered, “Because our grandfathers said it should be so.”
This was an answer that hid the fact they had no logical reason why they should not live closer to the water. Of course they did have a reason. That reason was lodged in the mists of time and truly understood only by the Shaman, whose business it was to understand magic things. Even those people who knew and believed the truth gave any who asked the same bland answer. There were some truths that were not for public consumption.
Once at the lakeside with its gently sloping pebble strewn beach, a strange sight greeted the party. It would have shocked outsiders. These people whose ancestors hunted and fished here were only mildly startled. The water was red. Some of the redness came from the strange oily mucus that floated in the water. This was the medicine that helped pain or if taken in large quantities brought visions. The rest of the color came seemingly from red mud dumped into the water. On the pebble beach was a canoe adjusted so that someone could lay in it, a small bonfire already burning, and a drum.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the color this dark,” said the old woman.
“No one living has. We’ve come in good time,” said the Shaman. To the men with the litter he said. “Put him in the canoe.
The men gently moved the old father from the litter to the central part of the old boat. The Shaman knelt by the canoe and spoke softly to the old man.
“Say the word and I will have them take you home,” he said.
“I am going home and you have no need to carry me there,” the old father answered.
He then closed his eyes and was instantly asleep. Seeing this peace the Shaman stood and waved his hand to tell the braves how to proceed. The big men then pushed the canoe into the water. On its own power it first rushed then slowly drifted toward the center of the lake.
The Shaman said, “Brake the litter up and burn it. When the fire is high beat the drum. Sing if the will strikes you. The time has come when this place may know light and sound once more.
Soon the small fire was twice the size lighting up the beach like a beacon. Backing up that light was a hypnotic echoing of drums and chanting. Only two present did not sing, the Shaman and the old woman. Both walked outside the wide circle of light eyes on the canoe.
“Why did you ask me to come and see this?” she asked.
“Because your talent for telling the truth in way’s men will remember and understand surpasses my own. This is a truth you must see and tell,” he explained.
After a long silence she asked, “Do you really mean to take my granddaughter as a student?”
“It is time for me to take an apprentice and one has appeared. She is young. Too young to witness something like this certainly. At the same time she is having the dreams. The same dreams I began to have when I was her age. When she asks questions and looks at things she does not examine the surface as most do, she looks underneath,” said the Shaman.
The old woman thought this through, eyes on the increasingly distant boat.
“So she will be Shaman,” said the old woman.
The Shaman thought he heard a small sad note to these words and understood. For a woman gaining such status was like a knife with two blades.
“No matter what else she does in this life yes, she will be Shaman. A shaman may take a husband and have children my friend. It will take a man willing to share her with her vocation but it can and does happen,” he said.
Distracting them from the future of the still very young girl they spoke of; out in the center of the lake the canoe began to rock and bob. It looked as if something large was stirring the water from beneath.
“Look,” said the woman softly, her voice gripped with a combination of fear and awe.
The Shaman motioned for silence. Over near the fire the men at the drum noticed the developments and fell silent as well.
Out in the center of the water the movement reached a fever pitch but before the small boat could sink on its own something huge and near formless reared up. The beast crashed down breaking the boat in half and taking the man down into the water.
For a long time the woman and men on the shore simply stood as the fire crackled. Part of the boat came to the surface, then another. No man, alive or otherwise could be seen.
“What was it?” asked the old woman.
The Shaman answered, “The only souls who really know are the ones it has sent to the beyond. In this way our people have kept it at bay. If this sacrifice has been successful then over the next year the amount of the oil that fights pain will grow small and vanish. The water will become clear. When fish can be seen in the water, this place will be safe.”
The Shaman led the way back to the fire.
“You young men tend the fire. Let it burn down. If any part of the boat comes to shore burn it as well. It’s fed; now you should be safe but do not enter the water to retrieve any part of the boat. Elders come with me. It is time for us to sleep.”
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