The year is 1912, by the beard of Kepler, but not the 1912 you coddle in your history books. The Great Fizzle, as the fogies call it, saw the Wright Brothers unhappily grounded and Tesla’s wireless dreams go kaput. We’re a world choked by coal smoke and lit by gaslight from the state-mandated stripey four columns of Beautiful Downtown Brainardsville’s Bloated Bakery, with progress a rusty jalopy stuck in the mud, along with our ill-fated Post Office, mysteriously lost in a sinkhole — or perhaps, buried forever in a lost time vortex, to be reimagined in an as-yet-unwritten tale from some of the strange yarn-spinnin’ antiquated junk machinery of my neighbor Johqu Bogart’s imaginary but cacophonous inventions.
That’s where a grizzled sap like me, Franklin Bellows, comes in. I guide fools with fat wallets and artistic pretensions into the teeth of the North American wilderness. Today’s mark? Arthur F. Tait, a hack with a brush who fancies himself a latter-day Currier & Ives. We’re perched on Chateaugay Lake, a frozen expanse as unforgiving as my own gut after a night of Brazen Serpent Wendigo Whisky.
Big Brother Lewis, also my partner in this Adirondack purgatory, hacks a hole in the ice, his breath puffing white ghosts into the biting air. Tait hunches over a canvas, his charcoal scratching a symphony of mediocrity. “This,” he declares, pompous as a stuffed owl, “will capture the pioneer spirit!”
He gestures at Panther Mountain, a hulking beast of rock that looms like a disapproving god. A shiver crawls down my spine, an atavistic fear that has nothing to do with the thermometer. Lewis yanks a trout from the lake, its struggles a muted echo in the silent tableau.
“Fewer bites than usual,” he grunts. “Like the damn things sense somethin’… off.”
A low rumble ripples through the ice, a monstrous heartbeat echoing from the depths. The shadow of Panther Mountain stretches, consuming the dying sun. A primal terror clamps my jaw shut.
Tait, oblivious, scribbles away. “This scene embodies grit, perseverance! Man against the harsh dominion of nature!”
Another, louder boom. The ice spiderwebs around Lewis’s hack job. Panic cracks his voice. “Franklin, you numbskull, pack the goddamn gear! Now!”
But I’m frozen, eyes locked on the ice splitting open like a gaping maw. A horrifying, cyclopean creature emerges, a grotesque parody of a serpent with a single, malevolent eye.
Tait’s charcoal clatters to the ice. “What in the… hell?”
The monstrosity lets out a sound that’s more cough than roar, vibrating the very air. The last dregs of daylight vanish, plunging them all into an abyss colder than any Shatagee Woods winter.
A scream pierces the night, short and sharp. Then, silence. The only witness is the frozen lake, a tomb for Tait’s ambition and a stark reminder that some things, buried deep in the heart of a forgotten timeline, are best left undisturbed.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?