“He’s going to tell you everything anyway, and at this point any new perspectives are welcome,” Dixon said.

  “No more secrets?” Gabe said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Alex said, “Why me? What do you think I bring to this? You’re telling me you don’t know more than my dad did?”

  Dixon chuckled. “We pursue all leads, and you’re the only one even trying. Which is why we’re here. We need your help.”

  Alex looked at Gabe and the two men lifted their eyebrows.

  “There are no doubts that the creature is using the tunnels beneath and around the cities on both sides of the river.”

  Alex waited, the rumble of the falls, the cry of gulls, and the whistling wind the only sounds. The lights around the marina pushed back the stygian darkness, but he felt chilled, even with the mid-summer humidity.

  “We also believe the creature might be using the Cave of Winds, or what’s left of it, I should say,” Dixon said.

  Alex hadn’t considered that. The natural cave behind Bridal Veil Falls was discovered in 1834, and was originally called Aeolus’s Cave, after the Greek god of winds.

  “The cave was some a hundred feet high, one hundred feet wide and thirty feet in depth. Big enough for our slug,” Dixon said.

  “This thing is far from a slug,” Gabe said.

  Dixon glared at Gabe, and his eyes shifted to the parking lot where his car waited.

  “I’m sure you know the story, but it bears repeating,” Alex said. “The cave was accessible via Goat Island and a staircase that went down to the cave which led to the back of the falls, but a rock fall closed the tour in 1920.

  “In 1924 the cave reopened, but instead visitors went to the front of the falls on a series of decks and walkways. Winds can reach up to sixty-eight miles-per-hour underneath the falls, and the attraction closed permanently when the cave was obliterated in a massive 1954 rockfall and subsequent dynamiting of a dangerous overhang.”

  Dixon nodded. “I’ve been on the Cave of Winds tourist attraction near the original site. We took the elevator down to the base of the American Falls. Walked on the redwood decks and platforms. Pretty cool, right, Perry?”

  She nodded and spoke for the first time. “It was really beautiful with the water crashing around us and beneath our feet.”

  “Did you know the decking is removed each fall?” Gabe said.

  Dixon said, “The tour person said something about that.”

  Gabe nodded. “To prevent potential damage caused by ice buildup the walkways are removed and re-installed each spring. My dad used to work that crew.”

  “They even let sightseers watch,” Alex said. “I’ve seen them do it.”

  “Another fun fact,” Gabe said. “The decking isn’t secured to the rocks by bolts or anything like that. The wood…” He paused to drive home the point. “The wooden beam supports are only wedged into rock crevices.”

  “I’m happy they didn’t tell us that,” Dixon said.

  “Do you think the creature is using the old caved-in tunnel? Since the exit to its lair is blocked?” Alex said.

  “Crossed my mind,” Dixon said. “You know how the falls were created as well as I do, because of the interactions of the three major rock formations in the area. Your father worked the dewatering project, so you know the river eroded the soft layer that supported the hard layers, undercutting the caprock, which gave way in great chunks, but the cave is a different beast. Submerged in the river in the lower valley, hidden from view, is a layer of shale and fine sandstone. These softer sections led to the cave’s creation, and ultimate destruction, but there’s still a passage to the river.”

  “So what do you need me for? Take sensor readings. Geothermal pictures. Go down there and take a look,” Alex said.

  “We could just power in.” Dixon pounded his chest. “We be the FBI. Hear us roar. But we like to keep things low profile.”

  “I think I know what they want,” Gabe said, and all heads turned in his direction. “They don’t need you, they need Katelyn.”

  Dixon’s eyes went wide, and Perry smiled, a thin, tired-looking thing, but it was a smile.

  “Katelyn? You want her to bring you down there? I do

  n’t even know if she can… if anyone can. I mean, I’ve heard stories, but I’ve never met anyone who’s been down there since the tunnel was closed.”

  “She knows us, but we thought if you were involved, she’d be more inclined to… keep things on the QT,” Perry said.

  “But that’s not the main reason we’re here,” Dixon said.

  The commotion upriver had died away, but it would be a long night for the folks below the falls as they waited and hoped the scow continued its trek down the Niagara. Darkness pressed on the group as they stood on the dock, mosquitoes divebombing their heads.

  “Can we take this to our Tahoe?” Dixon said. “Where we’ll have better light and won’t get eaten alive?”

  Alex nodded.

  20

  The group transferred to the Tahoe, Dixon and Alex in the front, Perry and Gabe in the second row. Dixon turned on the vehicle’s interior lights and pulled a folder from the dashboard. “Let’s start with 1821 and 1755.”

  Alex looked over his shoulder at Gabe, and the two men exchanged wordless astonishment.

  “You already know about 1887, right?” Dixon said.

  “If you mean about the ship going down, the deaths, it’s all in dad’s journal,” Alex said.

  Dixon’s head pumped like a piston. “What you don’t know is there were some strange events in 1755 and 1821 as well.”

  “Proof?” Alex said. He couldn’t believe it. Did the feds have proof of the sixty-six-year cycle going back more than two hundred years?

  “No more so than your proof for 1887,” Dixon said. “But I’m convinced.”

  Alex said nothing.

  “There was a French expedition that came through the area in 1821, François De Something-or-other, and his writings about his experiences here were very specific. I saw the leatherbound travel journal with my own eyes, sat with the translator as she read it to me. He described the creature in amazing detail, even drew a picture.”

  Dixon handed Alex a copy of a drawing that looked eerily like the cave drawings the Attawandaron had made; the scorpion shape, raised stinger, front claws, and the two dark eyes above rows of elongated teeth. That was the only difference Alex noticed. This particular rendition showed long fangs that hung from the beast’s mouth like walrus tusks. “1821 you say?”

  Dixon nodded. “No doubt. The entire journey from France, the trek in the Americas, and his return to Europe were all dated. We crosschecked the information with a series of other known historical facts, and everything matched up. François and his team were here, and he drew that.”

  Silence filled the car, the faint rumble of the falls background static. Gabe sniffled, and Alex glanced in the rearview. Perry was pecking at her phone, and Gabe stared forward, eyes wide like he saw his mother-in-law traipsing across the marina toward him.

  “And there’s more,” Dixon said. “There wasn’t a hell of a lot here back in 1755, but the French were here.”

  “The French again?” Alex said.

  “Need I remind you of your history?” Dixon said. “Samuel de Champlain arrived in Ontario in 1615 and started fighting with the local Indians. I’m sure you’ve heard all those stories many times from Wahanu, so I won’t bore you. A litany of French explorers and opportunists followed de Champlain. In 1678 a team led by La Salle trekked south from the shoreline near Queenston, and the party portaged across the peninsula to the shore of the Chippawa Creek, which is now Welland River. La Salle established an outpost at the mouth of the creek and wrote about how he heard the roar of the falls as his team walked, how he saw the columns of mist rising high in the sky. This didn’t deter La Salle and his group continued to portage towards Chippawa.

  “This initial survey was used to plan and build Fort Niagara. Much later, in 1755, among British threats of war, the French reinforced Fort Niagara and experienced something spectacular.”

  The truck creaked, the moan of the falls and river leaking into the Tahoe. Perry’s perfume fought for dominance over the three men’s competing body odors.

  “When they were reinforcing the structure they found a tunnel, not unlike the one your father described seeing at the base of the falls. The documentation and drawings are very clear. One worker commented that the opening reminded him of a giant mouth with rotten fleshy breath.”

  “Puts a bit of a kibosh on the idea that the thing’s lair entrance was blocked back in 1969, no?” Gabe said.

  “Not at all,” Dixon said. “As you know, and Alex here has seen, this thing has no problems creating new exits if need requires it.”

  “Wait, so you knew?” Alex said, anger burning his stomach. “Well, not you specifically, but the feds. The government. The FBI. The powers that be. They knew this thing was real all along?”

  Dixon said, “The internet and the ability to compile data made much of these discoveries possible.”

  “People called my father crazy,” Alex said. He was on a roll, but strangely he didn’t feel his father’s ghost driving him on. “He spent his life trying to prove what he believed, and his own government knew.”

  “All true, with one exception,” Dixon said. “He was contacted.”

  “What are you saying, that your agency shared with him what you’ve just shared with me?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Dixon said. “As I said, a lot of this information was recently compiled, but he was visited by two agents, Leery and Conipsco, and they noted most of your father’s findings.”

  “While giving him nothing.”

  “Worse,” Dixon said. “The feds told him to stop his inquiries. Said if he continued, or told anyone they’d visited him, there’d be ramifications.”

  “Ramifications?”

  Dixon hiked his shoulders. “It was a different planet, a different United States, and a different FBI.”

  Alex harrumphed and settled back in his seat, seething, the anger rising from the knot in his stomach and settling in his face.

  “A peace offering. You can leak it if you want.” Dixon handed Alex a photo.

  The picture was a satellite image, and the writing along its edge indicated it had been taken two days prior. The shot showed the eastern edge of the reservoir by the reservation, the squared corner of the lake, the stone shore and the ring of dead vegetation, but none of that was what drew the eye.

  Just beyond the rocky shoreline, a hundred yards into the brush, the heat signature of a large lobster-like form stood out against the dull backdrop of the forest.

  “No question the thing is moving freely above and below the falls,” Dixon said.

  Something released in Alex as he stared at the photo. He believed, and he no longer heard his father’s laughter.

  The agents took their leave, and Gabe left after promising not to speak of what he’d learned, but what did it matter? Alex got the feeling Dixon gave the confidentiality speech out of habit. The paste was out of the tube, and there’d be no putting it back, regardless of whether Gabe blabbed or not.

  Lilly called on the drive home.

  “Are you OK? I just heard. Did you see it?”

  “Pretty much,” Alex said. “We caught a glimpse of the monster, and then the scow went over.”

  Lilly said nothing, and Alex wondered if it was the use of the word monster that threw her. There was no longer any reason to sugarcoat anything. It wasn’t an animal, or a creature or a beast. It was a monster that hunted to survive, and while he couldn’t blame the thing, he felt little sympathy.

  “What does all this mean?”

  “The scow is caught on the talus, and until it's freed, there’ll be no tours, monster or no,” Alex said.

  She sighed long and deep, Lilly’s mind no doubt conjuring images of more sponge baths.

  Monday came and went, but late Tuesday a crew of Canadians working with ropes managed to jar the scow free, and it crashed down the face of the scree pile and got sucked underwater, only to surge from the Niagara like a missile. It tumbled free, rolling in the current, until it got hung up on a large boulder just short of Whirlpool Rapids. With the wreck out of the way and the Niagara holding it in place, the bigheads deemed the river safe to navigate, thirty-foot sea scorpion aside.

  Maid of the Mists boats went out on Wednesday, and Alex watched along with a large crowd from the Prospect Point viewing platform as the ferry-like vessel passed into the mist. Alex felt the crowd hold its collective breath as the seconds ticked away, the boat hidden in the thick, swirling mists.

  Alex’s father had told him about the day in 1969 when men landed on the Moon, how the entire world waited while the spaceship passed around the dark side of the Moon and lost contact with Mission Control. Millions of people waited for the ship to appear. Time ticked on, but after ten minutes, a river of sweat running down the center of Alex’s back, the ferry emerged from the mists and headed back for the dock.

  With one successful tour completed, the crowds grew, and by the end of the day all the Maid of the Mists vessels were hauling full boats out to the falls every hour. There was a line on the dock.

  The Coast Guard fast response cutter sat back a discrete distance, just beyond the roll of the fall’s wash, slowly spinning in a circle. There was an increased police presence on both shores, and several helicopters roared up and down the river, eyes in the sky that had seen no sign of the beast since the scow had gone over the falls.

  An unexpected upside of the monster’s appearance was reservation requests were up across the board, and that was forcing Alex’s hand. He didn’t know how long he could resist going back out. People were paying a premium for river excursion tickets, and locals were scalping Maid of the Mist tickets on Old Falls Road. The sea scorpion story and images had gone national, and that alerted every crazy person, cryptid hunter, and conspiracy fanatic looking to go on the river and see the monster, the lure to see something mystical that’s never been seen too strong to deny. If nothing else, the beast was good for tourism, and more than one pseudo journalist had suggested the mayor and other town officials had manufactured the crisis, and the whole thing was a hoax peppered with fake news.

  With the weekend coming, Alex had no choice, and he decided to head back out on Friday and use the weekend to make up for the lost time. He wasn’t comfortable bringing Celeste and the others out with him, but what other options did he have? His employees were specially trained, and all of them were volunteering to go out. Alex figured that the missing paychecks were the main issue, but he didn’t discount the lure of the monster. His crew saw the same opportunity as everyone else; the possibility of seeing something that has no business being seen and shouldn’t exist.

  Friday’s tours were uneventful. Alex felt the general malaise that had hung over the crowd and crew at the start of the 11 AM tour, but after hitting the first set of rapids and getting punched in the face by the cold Niagara, worries of the beast faded and the tourists settled in and had fun. Celeste’s voice sounded stronger for its rest, and Javon moved extra fast, at full attention, phone holstered as he moved with steady sea legs through the tourists, asking if everyone was having fun or if they needed anything.

  The days rolled on without incident, September and the end of the season coming on like the specter of the family Christmas gathering. Soon schools would open, Thanksgiving would follow, and Alex would be done for the year. He usually dreaded the end of the season, always worrying about what he was going to do in the off months, not counting all the maintenance on the boat and the business’s buildings and equipment. This off-season was particularly annoying because he had to update his captain certification. Not a big deal, but it was two weeks of going through the information he’d learned long ago and now understood wasn’t of much use on his small stretch of the Niagara.

  “We’re fully booked this weekend. Top price all the way. Celeste said there’s no coupons or promotions,” Alex said. Like many of the tourist spots that dotted the rural landscape of the United States, Labor Day weekend was the last major push for Niagara.

  “That’s great news. I’m going to grab holiday shifts then. Double time,” Lilly said.

  “What say we have the monster club over for burgers and bullshit Friday night? We’re all going to have a long weekend, except maybe the professor,” Alex said. He wasn’t big on entertaining, but it was an excuse to get the crew together. The beast hadn’t been sighted, and there’d been no suspicious deaths, yet Alex felt a sense of loss. He hadn’t seen Katelyn in over a week. Gabe. Dr. Silverfish and the feds had gone silent. It was as if everyone was content to let the next generation deal with the beast’s offspring when they were gone. Alex’s stomach churned and acid bubbled up his throat.

  “Sure,” Lilly said.

  21

  Friday August 30th dawned crisp and bright, the breeze cruising in from the west already damp with winter snow melt. Alex arrived at 10 AM to find the parking lot full and eight people on the standby line. Celeste wasn’t there yet, and as Alex worked his way through the crowd, he sized up the excited faces of children and adults, asking himself yet again if going out on the river was the right thing to do. The beast hadn’t been seen since the night the scow went over the falls, and most news outlets had moved on. Even the local authorities had cut back on patrols. Tourist season was almost at an end, overtime budgets were spent, and helicopters were expensive to run.

  Alex’s lawyer had suggested he have the tourists sign a special waiver which held Mists Edge River Tours harmless should the boat be attacked by a thirty-foot lobster tail. In the end he’d decided against it. The courts were strict when it came to lawsuits involving activities with significant inherent risk, and there wasn’t a person on the planet that could claim they didn’t understand slamming through huge rapids and floating up to the falls with a monster swimming around wasn’t dangerous.