“Makes sense, I guess,” Gabe said.

  “She wants to be out there at dusk, but she didn’t say why.”

  “Seems obvious, no?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a reason many animals hunt at dusk. The half-light throws their circadian rhythms out of whack, and for some animals, it acts as a defense mechanism.”

  Alex knew all this, but he hadn’t made the connection. “See you at three.”

  Celeste had things under control at work, and he stood back and watched her get the 11 AM tour underway. It was nice not to be needed. He ate his roll and sipped his coffee as he watched the tour boat disappear downriver, the rumble of the rapids and the hum of civilization blending with the push of the wind. The breeze brought the scent of bacon, smoke, and a chemical Alex couldn’t identify.

  When he was done eating, he hit the supermarket. He was on a mission to obtain twelve hotdog buns and twelve hamburger buns. When he arrived at the market, he found that all the packs of buns contained eight rolls, and he wondered if Gabe had picked the number twelve on purpose, intentionally creating an unsolvable conundrum. He grabbed two packages of each. Gabe could freeze the extras. He ran a few other errands and arrived back home to find Lilly sunning herself in the backyard. It was her first day off in a week.

  “I’m driving, so can I start you off with a cocktail?” he asked as he slipped through sliding glass doors onto their patio.

  She inched down her sunglasses and squinted into the harsh daylight, her body greasy with sunblock. “Is it even noon?”

  “12:19.”

  “So I’m covered,” she said. “What do we have?”

  “Everything. What do you want?”

  “Frozen margarita?”

  “Look at you. Making me work.” He retreated to the kitchen, where he used his considerable skills to fire up the blender.

  Later, they arrived at Gabe and Ginger’s to find the professor waiting curbside in her car.

  “Since they don’t know me, and I wasn’t sure if they even knew I was coming, I was a little uncomfortable going in by myself,” Dr. Silverfish said.

  “They know you’re coming,” Alex said. “I’m not that uncouth.”

  The three companions paused on the porch as Alex knocked. “Prepare to be uncomfortable anyway. Gabe is a bit…”

  “Gruff,” Lilly said.

  “Hello hello,” Gabe said as he pulled open the door. “You must be Dr. Silverfish?” He cycled his brew from his right hand to his left, then held out the right hand to the professor.

  She gently took it. “Call me Evelyn.”

  Alex and Lilly exchanged a glance. She’d never told them to call her by her first name.

  Ginger wiggled around the imposing bulk of her husband and held out a slender hand. “Evelyn, so nice to meet you.”

  “Since there’s no need for subterfuge anymore, shall we have a drink before we set out? We can eat when we get back,” Gabe said.

  “Subterfuge?” Alex said. “Did you get a word calendar for Christmas like me?”

  “You trying to embarrass me in front of the professor?”

  Alex harrumphed.

  When the five companions were seated on the deck, sipping beer and wine, the pool pump whining, the faint rumble of the falls beating back the push of the wind, Ginger said, “The kids will be home from baseball soon, or I’d offer to go with you-all.”

  “Yeah, right,” Gabe said. “You? In the woods? Do you even own sneakers or boots?”

  Ginger opened her mouth to speak.

  “And I’m not talking about your snow boots.”

  Ginger’s lips tightened into a thin red line.

  Alex chuckled. Ginger was definitely a Ginger. She was stunningly beautiful, all thick brown hair and dark eyes, and a figure that never seemed to expand, no matter what she ate or how old she got. She never exercised or dieted, and all this was why Lilly wasn’t the woman’s biggest fan. Things Lilly had to work hard for came easy to Ginger, and the woman didn’t seem to realize it.

  “A toast?” Gabe said.

  “To?” Dr. Silverfish said.

  “To the enduring majesty of the falls.”

  “To the falls,” the group intoned in unison, clinking glasses and downing drinks.

  Cell phones fully charged and ready, stocked with waters and doused with bug spray, Lilly and Ginger watched as Dr. Silverfish, Alex, and Gabe headed into the woods. Gabe’s Ruger .22 autoloader hung over his shoulder. The weapon held ten rounds, and that was all they had. Alex owned a shotgun, but he’d decided Gabe’s rifle was enough firepower and hadn’t brought it. He had experience with guns, but he also knew when a group of people went into the woods with guns, they ended up shooting each other more often than not. And what good would knives be? He’d considered making a gas bomb, but setting the park on fire wasn’t on his to-do list.

  The companions walked around the lake twice, the sun arcing across the sky and falling to the horizon in the west, a purple-orange sunset leaking over the reservoir. Dusk settled over the land like a coverlet and Alex was ready to quit when they got their first break.

  The party of three was threading through a thin copse of evergreens off the northern end of the reservoir, the grassy fields and glades of the Tuscarora American Indian Reservation extending to the horizon, when Dr. Silverfish jerked to a halt.

  “It’s O.K.,” Gabe said. “The Tuscarora won’t bother us unless we defile their land.”

  “It’s not that,” the professor said. “Look.”

  A drip of blood, no bigger than a dime, marred the path. There was no question it was blood, and Dr. Silverfish lurched forward, scanning the ground. Where there’s one drip of blood, there’s usually more. Alex and Gabe followed the professor through the trees into an open glade that was part swamp, part wetlands, and part grassy field. It was a low-lying area, surrounded by green farm fields with plantings of corn, cabbage, and potatoes. Shadows danced over the glade, dusk filtering through the clouds, the glow of moonlight painting the sky pink. The air was thick with the sharp tang of blood.

  The party’s short search ended with the discovery of a mutilated deer. It was a four-pointer. The beast’s chest cavity was flayed open, its insides gone, gristle, blood, cracked bones, and torn pieces of intestine spilling onto the grass-covered ground. The creature had been torn in half, and its rear was gone. The deer’s eyes were open, and they gleamed in the growing darkness as the beast stared into the next world.

  “We should use the blood trail and the corpse as navigation points to backtrack to the reservoir. Maybe there’ll still be signs of where… it came out of the water,” Gabe said.

  “There aren’t any indigenous animals around here that could do this, right?” Alex asked.

  “A bear, maybe, but I ain’t never seen anything like this here,” Gabe said. “If a bear mauled this deer, it was a giant.”

  The party backtracked, and in moments emerged along the edge of the reservoir, water lapping gently over sun-bleached stones, the dead strip of weeds and rocks along its perimeter like a magical barrier.

  Beyond the rocky shoreline the water gave way to a sandy bottom with patches of dark mud. The party arced their flashlights across the surface of the lake, but in the near darkness the lights revealed only inky black water.

  As the glow of the flashlights illuminated the surreal white beach, the dark stain of a mud trail leading into the foliage materialized from the gloom.

  Dr. Silverfish spun on her heel, tracking the slug-like trail with her flashlight. The weeds and brush were flattened, like a massive gator or snake had slithered through them.

  This time Alex didn’t rush to follow the trail.

  “Better douse those torches or a ranger will find us,” Gabe said, and as if on cue the rumble of an ATV sparking to life echoed through the park.

  “I do believe that’s our cue,” Alex said.

  “Not yet,” Dr. Silverfish said. She stared at the flattened plants and trail of mud. “I’ve got my university ID. I can say we’re performing an experiment.”

  “Who are you, Doc Brown? They won’t give a turtle turd who—” Gabe said.

  “Sssssh,” the professor hissed.

  A buzzing sound rose above the grumble of the searching ATV. Alex had heard this sound before, but this time it was louder, closer, more intense. He covered his ears with his hands and Gabe followed his lead. Dr. Silverfish didn’t move, her gaze still locked on the trail.

  Moonlight lit the night as a monstrosity from another time slipped from the tall grass, its dark carapace slick with water, its stinger curved over its back in attack position. Scorpion-like, and at least twenty-feet long, the beast’s claws clicked and snapped as they searched for prey, the creature’s call rising to a crescendo. Open jaws filled with razor-sharp teeth and fangs were silhouetted between two giant claws, smaller pincers at the tips of eight thin legs jerking and pulling toward the beast’s mouth. Fear sent an icicle of steel through him, and Alex took a step back, tripped, and fell on his ass.

  Gabe let the rifle fall from his shoulder into his hands, chambered a round, brought the stock to his shoulder, and fired, two fast shots that smacked into the creature’s armored carapace.

  The beast reared back, its head rising as it used its stinger tail for balance. Its maddening call changed to a gurgling cry of pain, like the sound a cockroach made as it was crushed. Yelling and screaming, the roar of the approaching ATV.

  The professor pulled her phone, holding it out before her like a tourist filming the falls.

  Alex pressed to his feet and did the same. Getting proof was the purpose of the mission, and he pushed away his flight reflex as he stabbed open his cell camera.

  The approaching ATV’s headlights arced over the reservoir, and Alex figured the park police would be on the scene within three minutes.

  Gabe faded back toward the line of forest that ran along the eastern edge of the park, toward his backyard and hamburgers and hotdogs. “That’s enough. Let’s go.” He fired one last shot and ran into the trees.

  The shot smacked into the beast’s right claw and the creature surged forward, trilling and shrieking. Dr. Silverfish and Alex tracked the beast with their phones as it scuttled through the grass and weeds, its legs churning and digging into the hardpan. It slithered over the rocky shore and landed in the lake with a splash and surge of whitewater, waves rolling onto the rocky shoreline.

  The ATV came to a screeching halt, its headlights illuminating the section of the lake where the beast had been, but there was nothing to be seen except muddy swirling water.

  The officer jumped from his ATV, gun out. “You two, hold up. Let me see the gun.”

  You two? Gabe had managed to slip away unseen, and he had the gun. “Sorry, Officer, we were just hunting frogs and this nut just starts shooting,” Alex said.

  Dr. Silverfish arrived at Alex’s side, but she said nothing.

  The cop was a tall man with graying hair and a hawkish nose, and unfortunately neither he nor the professor knew the man. Unusual. The guy looked tired, but cops always looked tired. The officer said, “You’re telling me you didn’t fire those shots?” He looked around. “What the hell happened here?”

  Blue blood streaked the stony shoreline and trailed into the reservoir.

  “Not sure, like I said, we were just hunting frogs when this guy shows up. Starts yelling about how we’ve got no business on his reservation. Then he starts shooting into the sky,” Alex said.

  The officer holstered his sidearm. “Doesn’t sound like anyone from the reservation that I know.” He knelt, dipped his finger in the blue blood, brought it to his nose, and flinched. “Any idea what this stuff is?”

  “It was there when we got here. It caught our attention and we stopped,” Dr. Silverfish said.

  “She speaks,” the cop said.

  Dr. Silverfish introduced herself.

  “You didn’t see anything else out here?” the officer asked.

  Alex and the professor shook their heads no.

  Gabe’s gun barrel glinted from the cover of the forest.

  13

  The disappointment was palpable, and Ginger and Lilly didn’t ask how things had gone when the three companions marched from the woods. Gabe had waited in the forest as Alex and the professor gave brief statements to park police, and they were let go with tickets and told they might be called in for further questioning based on a review of the scene in daylight.

  The disappointment was a product of their failure.

  The conspirators sat around a table on Gabe and Ginger’s deck, gunshots and explosions echoing from inside the house as the children fought their friends on some burnt-out planet far from Earth. Three cell phones rested on the table amidst empty bottles and cans, their screens dark.

  Alex took a long sip of whiskey and said, “Well, that was worthy of a Saturday Night Live highlight reel.”

  Gabe cleared his throat and cough-said, “Bullshit.” He took a pull off his Niagara Red Ale. “We found the damn thing, didn’t we? And I put three bullets in it.”

  “That seemed to hurt the thing. Your little pea-shooter .22,” Alex said.

  “Just for my sanity, and so you guys have your stories straight, tell me again what the thing looked like,” Lilly said.

  “Scorpion-like, with a fifteen-foot stinger tail, hard dark green carapace, two large front claws, and a mouth full of teeth. That about cover it?” Dr. Silverfish said. She turned to Gabe and Alex, who both nodded.

  “How big?” Ginger asked.

  The professor shrugged. “Thirty feet long?” She looked to Gabe and Alex again.

  “Good guess based on what I saw,” Alex said.

  Gabe said nothing. He’d suddenly become a man of few words.

  “But we’ve still got no proof, which was the purpose of our little quest,” Alex said.

  Alex’s cell phone footage had shown nothing but darkness with daggers of flashlight beams knifing through blackness. Gabe had been preoccupied with his gun, so that left Dr. Silverfish. She’d been the closest and had gotten the most footage, but the majority of it was dark and much of it was out of focus. The professor had tried to zoom in, and the result was three minutes of blurry flashlight drenched vegetation. She did manage to catch a silhouette of the beast’s shadow on the surface of the lake that Dr. Silverfish was confident could be enhanced and used to make a computer rendering.

  “You’re looking at the glass as half empty,” the professor said. “We… us sitting here, have found clarity. There are no longer any doubts.”

  “Unless you’ve got a tank in your garage or a battery of antiaircraft missiles hidden in your bushes, I’m not seeing how our newfound knowledge helps us,” Gabe said.

  “Gabe’s right,” Lilly said, and her face twisted. “That tasted weird.” She took a long drink of wine as Ginger laughed.

  “How long do you think it will take your tech guy to work your footage?” Alex asked.

  “What does it matter?” Gabe asked.

  “I’ve got an idea or two. How long, Doc?”

  Dr. Silverfish hiked her shoulders and said, “It’s the weekend, but I can pull in a few favors. Midday Monday the latest.”

  Lilly put a hand on Alex’s shoulder, and he felt her warmth leak into him. Did she believe? Maybe she felt guilty about doubting his father? He sure did. She said, “What were you thinking?”

  “That it might be time to use my considerable pull… and family history, to give a young budding journalist a summer feature story.”

  All four of his companions laughed.

  “Yeah, people will be throwing bricks through your windows,” Gabe said.

  “The paper will never run anything that might hurt the money flow, you know that,” Dr. Silverfish said.

  “Wasn’t thinking of the local paper,” Alex said.

  The companions went silent, the pool pump singing, crickets and frogs crooning, simulated machinegun fire echoing from the house, and the static of the falls beneath it all. Moonlight lit the yard in harsh black and white, the pool shimmering.

  Gabe popped another beer and Alex poured three more fingers of Jack Daniels.

  Half an hour ticked away before Lilly said, “I know this isn’t fair, but… Dr. Silverfish, you’re the most…” Lilly glanced at her husband. “You’re the most credible person among us. You have the credentials, the reputation. The authorities would have to listen to you.”

  The professor smiled. “That’s sweet of you, dear, but as Gabe so poignantly put it, that’s bullshit. Without proof, I’d be labeled as another crazy environmentalist trying to kill the summer buzz. No, we need the picture. Then, with proof in hand we can go to the authorities.”

  “Alex, what news outlet would you go to?” Gabe asked. “If not the locals?”

  “FATE Magazine, for one. They’ve got a website and they run regular features. They’d love a follow-up to the earlier story. And if we’ve got a picture, it’ll be all over the net in no time.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Ginger said, and all attention turned to her. She hadn’t said a word in an hour as she sipped her gin and tonics. “Give me a minute.” She pushed up from the table and disappeared into the house.

  Alex said, “Any clue?”

  Gabe shook his head no. “The woman is still a mystery, after all these years.” He finished his beer, crushed the can, tossed it in the trash, and popped open another. “Big reason why I love her,” he added.

  Muffled screaming inside the house as the sounds of gunshots and shrieking went silent. Five minutes slipped away before Ginger emerged from the house holding a black plastic box. She placed it on the table, unsnapped the clasps holding the case closed, and opened the lid.

  A plastic composite of a sleek bat rested in the case. It was a miniature replica of Batman’s jet.

  “I fail to see…” Gabe started to say as his eyes grew wide.

  “That what I think it is?” Alex asked.

  Ginger lifted the foot-long toy from its case. It had four two-inch horizontal propellers mounted on the tips of its front and rear wings, and a small plastic Batman sat behind the controls. “My son’s toy drone,” she said.