His father had never pushed him to believe, and his older brother Andy Jr. never had, but Alex listened and tried to understand, mainly to be closer to his dad and win the brotherly competition for his attention that Andy never seemed to care about. Now the past was back, his father’s memory surfacing like a corpse on the ocean. If the doc was right, and this was the sixty-sixth year, he’d find out once and for all if there was anything to what his father had believed.

  When he reached Saunders Settlement Road, he made a hard left. His friend Gabe and his family shared a property line with the state park that contained the reservoir, and a cut in a fence provided 24/7 access. The park closed at dusk, and there were cameras and patrols, but there wasn’t a significant security presence. Most of the park police hung out in the plant, monitoring the area via computer screens and drones. There were no fish worth catching in the hundred-acre reservoir, but the deer hunting in the surrounding woods was excellent.

  He pulled his phone and swiped until his friend came on the line. “Yo.”

  “Where you at?” Gabe said. When not playing hockey with his kids, or at work as a manager at Relliocanos Marketplace, he could be found bow hunting in the woods behind his house or at The Barrel. If anyone knew what was going on at the reservoir, it would be Gabe.

  “Coming up your street. Do you have a few minutes for me?”

  “We’re just finishing dinner, but sure, come on by,” Gabe said.

  At the mention of dinner, he thought of Lilly, but she was working the middle shift at the hospital and wouldn’t be home until 11 PM, or later. There was a nurse shortage, which was good for the family coffers, but not for their relationship which had been flagging lately. “Thanks. Need beer?” He hoped his friend didn’t say yes because then he’d have to backtrack.

  “I got a fridge full. You know that.”

  “See you soon.” He clicked off as he scanned the road for playing children and cats.

  The hamlet of Gill Creek was nestled within oak, ash, and maple trees. Expansive lawns—mostly burnt out from the summer heat and lack of rain—protected mid-sized houses in various states of repair. Here new and old money mixed, and the result was a collection of houses that didn’t look like they belonged together.

  Gabe, his wife Ginger, and their two kids lived in a modest two-story house covered in weathered cedar shakes with a cracked blacktop driveway and an above-ground pool. The garage door moved on its motorized track, lifting like the entrance to a spaceship as Alex pulled into the driveway.

  Alex was barely out of the vehicle before Gabe tried to press a beer into his hand. Alex declined for the moment.

  “If not beer, what brings you over after a long day? Your mother-in-law in town?”

  “No, nothing so personal. Can we take a walk out to the reservoir while we talk?”

  Gabe chuckled, “If you want your ass chewed off by mosquitoes as big as piranha.”

  “I’ve got a case of bug spray in the Jeep that I forgot to put in the office,” he said.

  “The good deep woods shit?”

  Alex nodded.

  “Why do you want to go out there?”

  “If I tell you now, we won’t have anything to talk about while we walk.”

  Gabe scrunched his lips and waved his hand. “Whatever. Let me inform management and I’ll meet you in the backyard.” Management was Ginger.

  The buzz of the garage door sliding down echoed over the neighborhood as Alex grabbed a can of bug spray. He strode across the lawn, reached over the fence, and unlatched Gabe’s backyard gate. The pool filter sang like its pump needed to be rebuilt, but his friend would wait to fix it until the pump was so loud the neighbors would complain.

  The back screen door slapped against its frame as Alex sprayed himself with bug spray. Gabe approached, a rifle over his shoulder, a pack on his back, a small cooler dangling from one hand.

  “We havin’ a party?” Alex said.

  “Always pays to be prepared, and beer is food.”

  Alex sprayed his buddy and stowed the bug spray in his pack. Gabe handed him a beer, and the piss of air as two seals were broken scattered the birds in a nearby Oak.

  The duo slipped through Gabe’s hidden rear gate, but there was no path through the forest, and that was on purpose. Though Gabe shared a property line with Reservoir State Park, he still had to follow the same rules as everyone else, and if the rangers saw a path, they’d try and block it.

  Gabe led Alex through the thick underbrush, the tree canopy blocking the falling sun. The partners went around a stand of evergreens and headed north, the chain-link fence marking the edge of the park only a half-mile away. They were in the thickest part of the forest, and to the south some of Gabe’s neighbors had nothing but a thin tree break between their backyards and the trail that ran around the huge pond of still water.

  “Where we heading?”

  Alex didn’t know, but he said, “I’d like to walk the edge of the reservoir, maybe get off the hiking trails a little.”

  “That’s a few miles, my friend, you up for it?”

  “Walking? I’ll walk around the reservoir twice while you’re still getting out of your chair,” Alex said, but knew that was bullshit. Despite his friend’s massive beer belly and propensity to drink too much beer and vodka and eat too much fried chicken, Gabe was in decent shape.

  His friend laughed. “What the hell are we looking for?”

  Alex said, “Are any sections of the park closed that you’re aware of?”

  Gabe shook his head no.

  The partners broke free of the trees and slipped through Gabe’s custom cut in the fence. It was behind a support pole and held in place with metal ties, and unless one knew exactly where to look, the cut was invisible. A hiking path ran along the fence and a barren patch of dirt and dead weeds ran to a narrow rock beach where water lapped lazily onto sun-bleached stones.

  The constant sound of running water from the dam, the power plant, the tiny waves rolling onto the white shore, the grumbling river, and the roar of the falls was soothing, but at the same time distracting and maddening. You couldn’t live in Niagara if you had a bladder problem, that was for sure. The sun had started its descent to the horizon and Alex glanced at his watch and saw it was almost six o’clock. He gazed left and saw thinning forest, houses, and the road and dam beyond. He went right, Gabe sucking at his beer, the breeze bringing the scent of water and burning rubber.

  “You see or hear anything strange up in here lately?” Alex asked.

  Gabe shrugged. “Saw a fox with a white streak in its tail last week.”

  “Not what I was looking for.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “There was rumor of a hole, or a cave-in out here.”

  Gabe said nothing.

  “You smell anything weird?”

  “Smells like a swimming pool back here sometimes when they flush the pumps,” Gabe said. “There’s a pump access pit west of my house. You know the one I mean.” Miles of massive control channels, pipes, and tunnels ran beneath the city of Niagara Falls, both providing and drawing water from the reservoir. Huge pumps moved water upriver to increase the flow of the falls, or downriver to lessen it, and the system was akin to how water management authorities controlled the ebb and flow of the Everglades, except in Niagara each time water was moved power was generated.

  “I meant have you smelled anything out of the ordinary?”

  Gabe hiked his shoulders and said nothing.

  The partners reached a right angle where the engineers hadn’t tried to make the lake look natural, open fields and green grass stretching to the eastern horizon. They walked for an hour and a half, the sun sinking in the west and painting the sky purple-orange with slashes of cloudy white, but they saw nothing unusual. When they reached the back of Herbie’s Chicken Shack, Gabe pulled out his third beer.

  “So that was a waste of time,” he said, and took a long pull on his beer.

  Alex handed him his empty can and Gabe gave him a fresh one without a word. Alex was starting to feel the fool. A vague worry he couldn’t identify ate at him, and Alex couldn’t help but think that if his father’s beastie did exist, the water control system could be its preferred mode of transportation.

  “Can we take a look at that pump maintenance pit you mentioned? Were you talking about the one by that deer stand we built at the edge of the park?”

  Gabe nodded.

  Rather than backtrack, the partners climbed from the woods onto the park access road and crossed over the dam, heading back south toward Gabe’s place. Dusk filtered through the trees, the fading sunlight like a dying flame. The service pit was just east of the road, across the street from the park’s winter pavilion. The patch of woods was thick at its edges, but its center was packed with a thicket of brambles and weeds that surrounded the maintenance station, truck tracks running like a maze through the vegetation. The smell of rot… and something Alex couldn’t identify, carried on the breeze, and mist hung above the ground as the day’s humidity faded and the air cooled. A six-foot chain-link fence with razor wire running around its top surrounded a cinderblock building, and a single spotlight cast daggers of light through the growing dusk.

  A low humming sound, like the call of an angry cicada, rose above the rushing water and the push of the wind. The sound grew in volume and pitch, and Gabe covered his ears.

  “What in the hell and all that is holy is that?” Alex said.

  “Godzilla fly?” His friend pretended to look around in panic. “Where’s Mothra?”

  Alex didn’t laugh. Though his friend didn’t realize it, he was making fun of Alex’s father.

  Shadows danced as darkness leaked across the glade, moonlight glinting off the metal fence. A dog barked and a gull cawed as if to say the park’s closed and you two have no business here. Alex snapped on one of the flashlights Gabe brought.

  The shrill buzz stopped like its power had been cut.

  Alex panned the flashlight around, pausing on the brick building. The structure sat on a concrete slab, and there was one door, blue, and it was made from metal by the looks of it. Several stacks protruded through the metal roof, and they puffed smoke into the hot night, the low chug of a pump thumping like a heartbeat.

  The pop and sizzle of another beer opening broke the stillness.

  “What do you make of that sound?” Gabe said. He took a long slurp of beer.

  “The equipment in the pump house?”

  “Do you believe that?”

  He didn’t.

  “Cut that light before a ranger sees us in here,” Gabe said.

  Alex killed the torch. “Do you know what’s in that building?” Alex asked.

  Gabe said, “A monitoring panel and control board, along with a stairway that goes down to the pump well and maintenance tunnels.”

  “Can we get inside?”

  “Not without breaking the door, setting off an alarm, and falling under the gaze of the camera mounted above the door.”

  “Camera, why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  Gabe held up a hand. “We’re out of range. If you—”

  A branch snapped, and the tall weeds across the clearing shifted and swayed in the starlight, sharp hissing and chirps filling the glade.

  Gabe dropped his beer and let the rifle fall from his shoulder into his hands. He flicked off the safety as he brought up the weapon, but as he sighted the gun a pig-like wail pierced the night. The hulking shadow of something big bounded through the vegetation toward the reservoir, and Gabe took two steps in pursuit, realized what he was doing, and let the gun fall to his side as he jerked to a stop. “O.K., now you’ve got my interest,” he said.

  “Because of a doe?”

  “I repeat, do you believe that?”

  Again, he didn’t. The sounds, the size…

  Alex sighed. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I’ve got no idea what we’re looking for, or where we might find it, and we’re wandering around on private property, with a gun, looking to shoot at shadows.”

  “I ain’t shooting no shadows.”

  “This place is huge, and now it’s dark,” Alex said. “We could wander around out here all night and only scratch the surface.”

  “So we try again during daylight when the park is open and we’ve got all day,” Gabe said.

  Alex knew his friend was trying to get away from his family to drink a sixer, but that didn’t mean he was wrong.

  To put a period on things, Gabe said, “And if we get caught out here after dark, they’ll think we’re terrorists trying to poison the reservoir or destroy the pumping station.”

  “A bit of a stretch since most of the park police have been on my boat and have bought food at your store,” Alex said.

  “You might have a point there, but still? What’s our excuse?”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Gabe nodded. The friends threaded through the forest in silence, and Alex could almost feel the questions bursting from Gabe like x-rays, but his friend said nothing. His buddy knew when Alex was ready, he’d talk. Truth was, Alex was doing his best to push thoughts of his father and tales of an ancient myth from his mind, but he wasn’t having much luck.

  “You want me to ask around?” Gabe said. The floodlights surrounding his pool sent white daggers knifing through the forest, shadows dancing and fighting.

  “Can’t hurt, I guess,” Alex said. “But be cool about it and don’t mention me. At all.”

  “Got it.”

  The duo slipped through Gabe’s rear gate into his backyard. As he secured the latch, Gabe said, “Did you hear Katelyn’s back in town?”

  Alex shook his head no. “Visiting?”

  “Nope. Back for good, or at least for a bit.”

  His old flame was New York State Park Police, and she’d been stationed at Hither Hills out on Long Island for the last few years. “Do me a favor, and don’t mention that when Lilly’s around.”

  Gabe said, “Trouble in paradise?”

  “No, but I don’t throw lit firecrackers into a crowded room.”

  “You got tours tomorrow?” Gabe asked.

  “Yup, but I’ve got Tammy doing a few next week,” Alex said.

  “Good. Holler?”

  Alex nodded. “See you when I see you, and thanks for the beer.”

  “Anytime, partner.”

  Back on the road, the Jeep vibrating and trembling, his thoughts drifted back to the woods, to that hum. The stench. The huge shadow in the weeds. He remembered his father describing the smell that had wafted up from the cave mouth, the horrible shriek of terror and pain. He’d assumed his entire life his father had clung to his story because he’d believed some unseen, unprovable danger lurked under the falls. Alex had seen the pain and frustration in his father’s face, his tired eyes. He hadn’t made anything up, but that didn’t make his story true.

  “Time to find out, Pop,” Alex said, but there was nobody there to hear him.

  4

  Alex finished his beer, crunched the can, and tossed it toward the kitchen recycle bin, which he’d moved into the living room so he could shoot garbage hoops. The fallen soldier careened off the lip of the pail and landed on the wall-to-wall carpeting. He opened his last Niagara Red Ale, and the snap and pop won the argument with the chattering TV and the rumble of the central AC.

  The black shoebox that held what remained of his father’s life sat open on the coffee table; newspaper clippings, pictures, a composition notebook, and trinkets strewn about on the dark wood. He took a long pull of beer as he fished a tarnished penny from the box. It was an 1887 Indian Head. Rare. His father’s friend, Wahanu, told him it was worth a few bucks, but it wasn’t its value that made it special, it was the coin’s mint date. He rubbed the copper between his forefinger and thumb, felt the grooves of the Indian’s head, his worn braided headdress.

  He dropped the penny and picked up one of the newspaper articles, verifying its publication date. It was the summer of 1953. Sixty-six years ago. And what was sixty-six years before that? 1887.

  A tremor of angst ran through him, that unsteady feeling that told him perhaps he’d underestimated the situation, and his father. What do children really know about their parents, anyway? In that moment, with darkness pressing through the living room windows, and the creak of the old house talking and cajoling, he regretted not spending more time with the old man when he’d had the chance, and wished he’d listened more closely to his stories, his concerns. Was his father looking down on him, laughing, saying “I told you so, dipshit. Now what are you going to do?”

  Alex ran fingers through his hair. He didn’t have many options, and under the cover of darkness, they all seemed ridiculous.

  Headlights knifed through the front window and Alex stuffed his father’s stuff back into its cardboard coffin and put it away in the cabinet beneath the T.V. He darted across the living room, collecting a half-empty pizza box and the recycle can as he pushed through the swinging kitchen door. The door snapped back on its spring hinges three times before the front door creaked open.

  “Hey, babe,” Lilly yelled.

  Alex ran the status of the living room through his mental filter as he put the leftover pizza on a baking tray. The open beer was all he’d left behind. He put the recycle can back in its place, opened it, and shuffled the soda and water bottles, cans, and other containers so all the empty beer cans weren’t sitting on top. He wasn’t in the mood to hear his wife’s “concerns” about his drinking. The not leaving a mess part, well, that was on him. Lilly had just worked a twelve-hour shift taking care of sick people and her coming home to a dirty house wasn’t the way to get to bed without an argument.