When Hazel was still a young pup–prone to the frequent escape attempts, bolting out of the door with even the slightest crack of sunlight–she could run. She’d run right out of our front door, jump clear across all eight of our white porch steps, and be off terrorizing the horses in our neighbor’s yard before I could even yell out her name.
Just then, as we sprinted away from whatever creature had taken over my wife, was the first time I ever found myself grateful for all the ruckus she caused as a puppy. She was faster than me, always had been, but she waited for me patiently at our front gate. Just before I yanked the latch open and hopped in my truck, I took a look behind me.
Still standing there, at the top of those eight steps, was my wife. She no longer had the colorful array of tentacles spreading their arms out from behind her teeth, thankfully. Instead, it looked like she’d swallowed them and was contorting her mouth in a wide, cruel smirk. Her cheeks bulged and there were big lumps that writhed and wriggled from inside of her mouth. Her eyes were a swirl of pink and purple, a swimming cloud of pastel paint masking her true self. Whatever was standing on my porch was not my wife.
Hazel had already jumped into the truck. She was pawing at the door, her long, un-manicured nails daintily scratching the glass windows, saying Dad! Let’s skedaddle! I jerked the key into the ignition and squealed out of the driveway, out of the neighborhood, and onto Highway 3.
There’s a fishing shop up the road in Bremerton. It’s operated by a lovely woman named Desiree, who has been one of the few quality friends I’ve been able to make up here. When we first moved up here, Des taught me everything there was to know about Pacific Northwest fishing–where the best spots were (if you fish, you know your “spot” is coveted information, only to be shared with people you hold close) and what baits–soft plastics or live–to use and at what times to use them. If anyone could tell me what I’d gotten myself into, it’d be Des.
My hands were trembling as we raced down Highway 3. My knuckles on the steering wheel had turned white, the palms of my hands all but welded to the leather at the good ol’ ten-and-two. Somewhere between the first and second roundabout from Belfair to Bremerton, Hazel had finally quit her panting and curled up in a ball in the passenger seat. It was out of her window–the passenger seat window, that is–that I looked out onto the Sinclair Inlet. The sun was working overtime to flip a cold, bleak morning into an almost enjoyable, slightly-warm spring day. If I could find a way to ignore the morning’s events, I might be able to salvage the day, maybe have a beer and take a walk around town…
My tires screeched in the parking lot of the fishing store. From the parking lot, I had a great view of the USS Turner Joy. When I stepped out of the truck, I realized that the sun might actually emerge victorious from its battle with the cold. The temperature felt to have risen ten degrees in the half-hour it took to drive here.
“Hold on, Hazel,” I said. “I gotta go talk to someone, but I’ll be right back.”
I took another peek across the parking lot and into the water. There were great big shadows drifting on top of the water, splotches of spilled ink atop a starry canvas. There were three distinct shadows, and a fourth that seemed to have a much more defined, less organic shape. The first three were loose ovals, circular shapes with blurred edges–very clearly shadows of clouds. The fourth, though, had sharp edges and a defined outline. It was the colossal, strict shape of a circle with…
With tendrils sprouting out from every side.
It was like it knew I’d seen it. The dark shape started moving across the water faster, betraying its disguise as a shadow and committing to its villainy. At the same time, a doorbell chimed behind me and a voice called out. “James? Is that you, man?” It was Des’ voice, but I couldn’t process it. It was like I was listening to her call my name from the surface while I was drowning underwater.
I watched the shape speed towards land–towards me. The creature created massive waves that raced to the shoreline, rocking the Navy boats and tightening, then loosening their mooring lines. The creature’s circular head finally broke through the surface when it was about a hundred meters out. It was a swirl of pink and purple, like a child’s sherbet ice cream cone. Its tentacles–eight, I counted–drifted in the water behind it.
There were a few tense moments of painful silence, where the world seemed almost serene, like the brief, peaceful moments between the clock ticking twelve and the bell finally ringing. I heard the creature break through the water before I saw it. Seven tentacles tore through the water, coating the sky above me in a tsunami of rainbow mist. Each one had suction cups as big as cars, each cup pulsing in the air like a greedy toddler begging for his toy back. In my fear, I didn’t even realize the tentacles were wrapping themselves around the Navy Destroyer. Steel groaned and whined and protested with a great fury, but it was no match for the strength of the creature…Could I only see seven tentacles? I thought there were eight… The eighth one–surfacing from the water twenty meters away from the rest of its body–thrust itself from the water. In a blinding flash of sherbet, with the deafening sound of empty suckers screaming for their meals, the tentacle whipped across the parking lot.
Des screamed as she flew through the air and didn’t stop screaming until her body hit the water. // JACKSON RUIZ
FIND PART 1 ‘A Monster Bass On Devereaux Lake’ in the April prints and at kitsapsmokestack.org, and check back next month for Part 3 of the story.
