Sinking Rattler
Sinking Rattler
That Thing We Killed
I still don't know what it was, that thing we killed. I've seen things like it, in movies and on TV. But those things were made up, or based on the bones of extinct animals, like monsters. This wasn't like that. This was just an animal, though not one that any of us had ever seen. Not around Glenbaker, that's for sure, or anywhere in King County, or all of Washington State.
It hadn't threatened us, as far as I can remember. It turned on us, hissing kind of, a limp trout falling from its mouth, because we had startled it. I sure remember that mouth, opened like a wet, black rosebud, showing spiny teeth, a white palate. Maybe it had lunged toward us. Maybe it deserved what it got. I don't even remember who fired first or why. It was a long time ago and everyone involved is dead, except me.
We'd gone out that day to get a trophy for my thirteenth birthday, even though it wasn't hunting season. We made an odd sort of family back then: Uncle Horseshoe (because of his mustache), Hank, and Frank Garstole, who lived in a cabin next door. Uncle Horseshoe owned every kind of gun imaginable, from Scout rifles to muskets, and the walls of his house were covered with every kind of trophy, the great prize being a seven tine rack of moose over the fireplace, which he said he'd killed alone in the Blue Mountains in December of '62, but which Frank said he stole from a woodpile in Alaska.
Frank laughed at the thought of us going out. "Horseshoe," he said, "Now what do you think a game warden's gonna say when he sees you outfitted like brigands?"
I remember Horseshoe just staring at him. He was huge on staring. "Don't worry about it, Frank," he said.
Frank said to me after they'd gone out, "They're scarin' up their own trouble, boy. Let 'em go."
But I ran after them.
We startled it, as I've said.
We were rounding a deadfall, bitching about how it had been a wasted day, when we saw it. I'd actually been looking at it for several seconds, looking at it but thinking about something else, until it moved. I saw it complete for only an instant; it looked like a snake--not a Rattler or a Moccasin, more like a Python, or one of those Boas you sometimes see in National Geographic, with its giant body held up by an entire hunting party--a snake threaded through a turtle. But then it fled, hissing kind of, slinking back into the water and paddling away, toward the center of the lake.
I wasn't frightened by it. It didn't look or act like The Giant Behemoth, or Reptilicus, or anything else you might see at a matinee or in comic books. It was just an animal, though not one any of us had ever seen. But then bullets went punching through its blubber. Then the thing's blood went spraying in all directions.
There was a rickety dock nearby, which we used to get closer. I remember the spent shells dropping and plinking off its boards. The thing turned on us; I suppose it had to. It tried to hiss but managed only a choked gargle. Blood bubbled from its throat and spilled from its mouth.
"Take the fatal shot," said Horseshoe.
He must have laid down his rifle because I remember him helping to steady my own. "Easy now, you'll own this forever." I stared the thing in the eye and squeezed the trigger.
It threw back its head, rising up. It gasped for breath, spitting more blood. It barked at the sky. Then it fell, head thumping against the deck. Its serpentine neck slumped. The rest of its blood spread over the boards and rolled around our boots and flowed between the planks.
I was the first to step forward, looking down at the thing through drifting smoke.
Its remaining eye seemed to look right back. I got down on my knees to look closer. The thing exhaled, causing the breathing holes at the top of its head, behind its eyes, to bubble. I waited for it to inhale, staring into its eye. I could see myself there as well as the others, could see the sky and the scattered clouds. The whole world seemed contained in that moist little ball. Then the eye rolled around white--it shrunk, drying, and the thing's neck constricted. And it died.
Horseshoe slapped my back, massaged my neck. "How's it feel, little buddy?"
But I didn't know what I felt. I could only stare at the eye, now empty.
We went back the next day with Frank Garstole and a bunch of others with the intent of hoisting it out of the lake, but there had been a thunderstorm and whatever it was we had killed was gone, slipped back into the water, I suppose. Old Frank sure had a laugh about that, chiding Horseshoe, "Well, the bigger they are the more apt they are to vanish without a trace."
Horseshoe just stared, like he might kill him right there on the spot. It was the same look he gave me when, visiting years later, I joked about that rack of moose he'd found in Alaska. We'd been sitting on his back porch which was falling to ruin just like his body, having beers, and--well, it was a look that said it was time to go. I went and never saw him again.
I still think about that thing we killed, from time to time. Sometimes I dream about it. Sometimes in the dreams I am in the water with the thing, where it kills me rather than me killing it. Sometimes, as I sink, I see it hovering high above. I see it through a cloud of blood and a ceiling of water, rimmed in solar fire, beautiful. Other times I am the thing, and I rise, spitting blood, barking at the sky.
© Copyright 2008 by Wayne K. Spitzer
About the Author
Wayne Spitzer is an author, filmmaker, and teacher of writing from the Pacific Northwest. His genre work includes an SF/horror novel, Flashback (Books in Motion/Classic Ventures, 1993), the movies Shadows in the Garden (Indie-Flix, 2007) and Monstersdotcom (Brimstone LLC, 2003), and numerous low-budget television programs and ad spots. His non-genre work has appeared in Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, subTerrain, Micro-film: The Magazine of Personal Cinema in Action, and Generation X National Journal. Wayne teaches creative writing at Airway Heights Corrections Center and Corbin Art Center in Spokane, Washington.
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