Alex said nothing. What was there to say? That he was dreaming of mashing himself on the scree pile below the falls?

  A woman stepped from the patrol boat’s pilothouse, her long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Alex?” she said.

  “Katelyn?” He hadn’t seen her in years, but even in the harsh light she looked beautiful in her tan uniform and orange lifejacket. “What are you doing out here?” Stupid question, but he wasn’t at his best. A burp welled in his chest, but he pushed it down.

  “The question is, what the hell are you doing out here? If I didn’t know any better…”

  “Doing some fishing,” Alex said, though there was no fishing gear visible. “Actually, I was just packing it in.”

  “You know this guy?” the male officer said.

  “Yeah, give me a minute, will you, Kris?”

  The guy looked put-out, but he turned and went into the pilothouse. The aluminum patrol boat came in close, and the two vessels rubbed together as Katelyn stepped over the gunnels onto Alex’s boat. She leaned in and gave him a weak hug. “What were you doing?” Her eyes gleamed in the darkness.

  “Nothing. Like I said. What about you?”

  “What about me? I’m working up this way these days. Gabe said he told you.”

  Alex waited.

  “We’re out doing extra patrols because of what happened on the river today. You heard, I assume?”

  “I was there.”

  “Really? Do tell.”

  So he did, going light on the beast’s tail, but not leaving it out.

  “A tail? You sure?”

  “That’s what it looked like, but without a picture, it didn’t happen, right?”

  “Is that what you’re doing up here? Searching for your father’s creature?”

  Alex had made the mistake of opening up to her when they were dating. All of it, the entire sordid family history.

  “You’re not alone; some of the tourists on the observation platform saw something in the water, though none of them was able to give a credible description.” She eyed her feet. “You still believe in that stuff?”

  “Never said I did.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “There’s been new developments.”

  “Really, why don’t—”

  The patrol boat’s exterior annunciator came to life. “We’ve got to blow, Katelyn. Dog in the water upstream.”

  “10-4.” She took his hand. “I heard you got married. Congratulations. Anyone I know?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  She frowned. “I’ll have to change that.”

  “You pissed at me?”

  She chuckled and looked over her shoulder toward her partner who eyeballed them from the patrol boat’s wheelhouse. She shook her head and looked to the stars as if asking for divine intervention. “You were well over the line tonight. You know that, right?” she said.

  He said nothing.

  “I can write you up. Pull your registration.”

  Alex chuckled. “You do that, and I’ll have a conversation with your captain. Make sure you were fully truthful on your police application. Revealed all your… childhood crimes.”

  She punched him on the shoulder, hard. “Go home.”

  Her smell was intoxicating, and it was like a time machine, and he spoke without thinking. “We should get together. Have a drink and catch up.”

  An awkward stillness filled the night, water lapping against the boats.

  “Will your wife like that?”

  “Two old friends catching up?”

  “You can fill me in on the ‘new developments’. Call me.” She handed him her State Park Police business card. Then she climbed back onto the patrol boat and the vessel tore away like a silver rocket, disappearing into the blackness.

  Alex eased the throttle down just enough to make headway with the current. Katelyn looked better than she had in high school, and the thoughts that ran through his head weren’t the thoughts of a married man in love with his wife. He cracked his neck. It was nostalgia, and like his mom always said, “Men only want what they can’t have.”

  7

  Tuesday morning arrived like a nail pounded into Alex’s forehead, or an icepick in his ear… or both. Lilly’s snoring was like a rock hammer tapping on his brain. His wife was done with mid-shifts, but thanks to trades and repayments, she’d be filling in on her off days, and would be off the first day of her next cycle. Nurses. Always making things more complicated than they need to be.

  As he fought through the haze of waking, the prior night's images replayed, pausing on Katelyn. She’d seemed happy to see him, genuinely wanted to catch up. Alex swung his legs off the bed and rubbed his temples. Lilly huffed and puffed, and he grabbed clothes and slipped out of the bedroom without waking her. She would want to cook breakfast, eat out on the patio, and he wasn’t in the mood to talk.

  He needed more proof, something he could take to the authorities that amounted to more than a visual account of… he didn’t know what. He pulled on shorts and a Mists Edge River Tours t-shirt, buckled up his river sandals, and grabbed his phone.

  Alex’s stomach growled as he eased the front door closed, the early morning sun already a blistering eye in the eastern sky. Mist rolled over Niagara, the falls rumbled, and a chorus of birds serenaded him as he jumped in the Jeep.

  He grabbed an egg sandwich, a water, and a cup of joe, then parked along the river’s edge, watching the Whirlpool Rapids. Tourists lined the suspension bridges crossing the river, Canadian and American border patrol monitoring the comings and goings as folks moved freely between the two countries.

  What to do next was the question. Alex needed a more viable plan than random patrolling. Maybe he could get Katelyn to help. She had a badge and gun, access to boats and equipment, and she could speak with her superiors, get them to increase patrols. Problem was, Katelyn had looked at him like he was nuts and justifying extra overtime when the local authorities were already stretched thin because of tourist season would be a tough sell.

  If he could get proof, then Katelyn would get onboard. He finished eating and decided to take a cruise downriver and do a little investigating by sea. He could examine the riverbanks, the shallows and pools, cruise out onto Lake Ontario and see what was happening at the coastie station.

  It was 9:11 AM when Alex pulled into the Mists Edge River Tours empty parking lot. He retrieved the jet boat keys and finished his coffee as he made his way out onto the dock. He released the Mists Edge’s mooring lines and jumped aboard as the boat floated onto the river, the current jerking the vessel north, which was the direction he wanted to go.

  Alex peered through his binoculars as the boat floated with the current, engines off. The vessel slid past the ArtPark open-air theatre, the Canadian shore a tangled forest of evergreens and oaks. The river widened and the current eased, the boat slowing to a crawl. Houses lined both sides of the Niagara River, the shoreline packed with boat slips and dense vegetation. If something bigger than a river otter made a home in the river’s banks he couldn’t see it, and the affluent people who lived along the river would surely have noticed.

  But would they have? Legends said the creature grew while feeding above ground, but he had no idea how large the creature was when it first emerged. His father had described a tunnel mouth big enough for soldiers to walk into, and his notes said the opening was at least twenty feet around. Not big, but certainly not small. The tail… no sense trying to think of it as anything other than that, was twenty feet long if it was ten, and he had no idea how much of it he’d seen.

  The shore slipped past, and he saw nothing unusual on the American side of the river. When he headed home, he’d examine the Canadian side. He floated by Lewiston, and he spun the boat’s wheel, using the current to stay in the center of the river. The vessel slid past the row of open farm fields that stretched to the horizon in the west. A beast could hide there, maybe. Probably not, though. Farmers were meticulous about their land, and Alex doubted a farmer would miss a giant scorpion chowing down on his cornstalks.

  Something glinted in the water.

  He started the boat engine and checked it out. Nothing. What he thought had been the sun glinting off a large carapace, was nothing more than sunlight bouncing off river stones. Alex put the Mists Edge in reverse, the skinny water at the river’s edge tight with vegetation and rocks. The boat pumps gurgled and spat river water as he spun the ship’s wheel with his finger, the boat catching the current and heading downstream again.

  Ahead, a massive blue maw, a hole in the world like a porthole to another dimension, loomed as the Niagara River fed Lake Ontario, which stretched to the cloud-streaked horizon. The thirteenth largest lake in the world, Lake Ontario was Niagara’s ocean. As the last lake in the Great Lakes' hydrologic chain, it has the lowest surface elevation of the lakes at 243 feet above sea level and a maximum depth of eight hundred feet. Plenty of sea to hide beasties of all types, and both the Attawandaron as well as the local settler myths told of a Loch Ness-like creature that stalked Lake Ontario, its tall neck sticking from the water.

  Could the stinger tail of the alleged sea scorpion have been misidentified as a long neck with a head? Since mythical creatures were involved, he figured anything goes. He chuckled as he looked up at the blue sky, thin clouds of tattered cotton streaking by. If there was a Heaven, and his father had made it there, he was certainly watching his son and laughing his ass off.

  The U.S. Coast Guard station looked quiet; an orange helicopter silent on its pad. He dropped the hammer and the jetboat leapt from the water shooting a twenty-foot rooster tail. The vessel hopped over three-foot waves, throwing spray, mist lifting from the transom like smoke. Fishing vessels and pleasure crafts dotted the horizon, the gentle sea breeze bringing the scent of rotten fish and gasoline. A tanker ship inched over the lake like a massive snail, the vessel bringing fuel or goods to the area via a vast marine highway which facilitated commerce in the region. The shipping route pre-dated railroads and highways and stretched from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence River. This engineering enhanced seaway enables the region to thrive and feed the industrial heartlands of both the United States and Canada.

  When he was two miles out, he turned the boat in a wide arc, circling back to the mouth of the Niagara River. The electric engines hummed, the pumps growled, and the jets chanted as they spat water. He saw nothing of note, and when he arrived back at Mists Edge River Tours he found Celeste and the day’s first mate, Kris, wrangling tourists that stood on the dock taking pictures.

  Alex docked the boat and sighed. Time to make the donuts.

  All three tours were full and went off without a hitch. Winds were light, and the cool mists felt good, the summer heat a balmy eighty-seven degrees in the shade. He arrived home to an empty house because Lilly was working. He made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, searched for a beer, but then remembered he’d killed the emergency backup.

  He ate as he watched SportsCenter, some dumbass talking about how the Bills might have a legitimate shot the coming season. As a young boy he’d endured four straight Superbowl losses, still a record, so he was skeptical. His nerves hummed with angst, and he pulled Katelyn’s card even though she was probably off duty. He typed her number into his cell but didn’t hit send.

  Alex needed her help, but there was more. He was still attracted to her, and that’s where most of the unease and guilt came from. Maybe he should ask Lilly? Why hide? Because jealousy, even when unsupported, still caused problems that sometimes couldn’t be fixed. The house creaked and the AC compressor buzzed as it struggled to keep up.

  He tapped call.

  The phone rang three times, Alex’s heart pounding, his shaking thumb hovering above the red End Call button.

  “Hello? Alex?”

  “Hi.” Suddenly his tongue was in a knot like he was sixteen at his first high school dance.

  “What’s up?”

  “You want to catch a beer? I’ve got some things to show you.” He cringed.

  She said nothing.

  “Newspaper articles and such.” He had the pictures of the cave drawings, and there was the journal.

  “When?”

  “The Barrel in half an hour?”

  She laughed. “Oh, tonight. You don’t think I have plans?”

  He waited.

  “See you down there in half an hour.”

  Alex clicked off and dropped his phone on the couch as he let his head fall into his hands, the knot in his stomach getting tighter.

  8

  As he drove to The Barrel, Alex had second thoughts concerning Lilly. The Jeep’s window was open a crack, and a cool breeze streamed in, the truck’s AC struggling, the rumble of the falls faint background static occasionally interrupted by car horns, music, yammering gulls, and the chatter and hum of humanity. Within twenty-four hours of Alex and Katelyn’s meeting at The Barrel, Lilly would know. They would be seen, and reports to spouses would flow through the coconut telegraph with a speed Verizon could only aspire to. He decided to send a text saying he was bored and going to The Barrel to meet Gabe. That would cover his ass. As he worked his phone he reconsidered, one eye on the road, the other on his cell’s tiny screen. The message would create a series of questions, each one like a trap waiting to ensnare him in his real intentions. He erased the text, which was just as well because it was more typos than words.

  There was no way around him telling Lilly he’d seen Katelyn, so why not rip the Band-Aid off with one fast pull? He’d tell her when she got home, all casual like. “Hey, babe, I stopped for a drink and guess who I ran into?”

  He rolled through Little Italy and made a left on Pine Avenue as he slipped his phone away. It was past 7 PM so the small municipal parking lot was free, and he parked the Jeep in a corner by The Barrel and killed the engine.

  The Barrel was a Niagara fixture, and there was usually a short line of tourists waiting to take pictures in front of the bar’s unique façade. The front of The Barrel was exactly that, the end of a massive faux barrel with a door in its center and two windows on each side. The old wood was worn dark, almost black, and the barrel facade extended beyond the building’s cinderblock frame and bumped two feet out onto the sidewalk.

  The door creaked, the faint thump of Bon Jovi crooning about riding a steel horse running through the place, dim lighting birthing dark shadows that danced in the haze. The bar ran down the right side, with a smattering of booths and tables to the left, and a pool table in the rear. An exit sign glowed above the dark outline of a hallway that led to the bathrooms, a storage room, a small kitchen, and the back entrance.

  Most of the drinking heads turned his way when he stepped into the room, and the ones that didn’t watched his reflection in the mirror behind the bar or in the large glass-covered black and white photo of a wooden barrel tumbling over the American Falls on the far wall. The picture was surrounded by a variety of news articles encased in frames, and older, more time beaten photos of people standing by barrels or pods before taking the plunge over the falls. Some of the pictures had a date of presumed death at their bottoms. Presumed because their bodies were never recovered, though in several cases pieces of the daredevil’s barrel or pod were salvaged. Alex couldn’t actually see any of these finer details in the semi-darkness, but he’d been in The Barrel enough times to be able to recite most of the information posted there verbatim from memory.

  Katelyn sat at the bar, and Alex returned a few waves as he made his way to her side. It was a Tuesday night, but the joint was still crowded—The Barrel was always crowded. When Katelyn saw him approaching, she bounced off her stool like she was meeting her boss, then quickly sat back down. When Alex arrived there was a moment of unease; do we hug? Kiss on the cheek? Or an awkward limp handshake? She squirmed on her stool and Alex acted without thought, without considering all the eyes on them, the memories and innuendo wrapping them in their history.

  Alex leaned in and pecked her on the cheek as he said, “Thanks for coming on such short notice. It’s so good to see you.”

  Katelyn flinched slightly at his kiss, but he sensed it was more surprise than being uncomfortable. She nodded curtly and said, “Want to grab a booth so we can hear ourselves think?”

  He nodded. “What you drinking there?”

  “Amstel tap.”

  “I’ll get a pitcher.”

  Tony O was behind the bar, and he’d known Alex since he was an infant. The guy had been running The Barrel since before Alex was born. Tony set him up with a chilled mug and a fresh pitcher of Amstel, and Alex and Katelyn found a quiet booth back by the pool table, which wasn’t in use.

  Alex sat, poured himself a mug of beer, downed it, then poured another and topped off Katelyn.

  “Thirsty?”

  “Long day.” Alex pulled several sheets of folded paper from a back pocket and tossed them on the table. “You can keep those. They’re printouts.”

  “What is this?” She unfolded the pages like blood-sucking flies would swarm from within.

  “Some pictures, old newspaper articles, notes… like a summary.”

  Her eyebrows rose as she took a pull off her Amstel. “Summary of what?”

  “It.”

  “That’s what this is about? You want to convince me of… what?”

  “My father may have been eccentric, but he wasn’t crazy.”

  She sipped, her brown eyes appraising him over the lip of her mug.

  “No need to rehash the basics, but as a refresher…” He took a long pull of beer. “Dad worked the dewatering project in ‘69, as you know, and you know well what he claimed to have seen and heard, and… what he postulated.”

  “Postulated?” She smiled.

  “Lilly bought me a word calendar for Christmas last year.”

  She chuckled. “How quaint.”

  “Anywaaaaayyyyy,” he said. “What you may not know is the local American Indians believed a creature lived under the falls, and some say—not my contact—but some have said sacrifices were made to the beast by throwing people over the falls.”