Monster Lake: A Thriller Read online

  MONSTER LAKE

  By

  J. D. CRAYNE

  A Renaissance E Books publication

  ISBN 1-58873-508-7

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2004 by J. D. Crayne

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

  For information contact:

  [email protected]

  PageTurner Editions/Futures-Past Horror

  Disclaimer

  The town of Solitaire and its inhabitants exist only in the author's imagination, and the characters' surnames are taken from famous gems and diamond mines of South Africa. Lake Mendocino, however, does exist and is a charming summer get-away, with fishing, swimming, boating, and activities for the entire family. Come early and spend the season. Heck, stay through Christmas; we'd love to have you!

  For Cecy and Judith, who like monsters.

  CHAPTER 1

  "There goes another carload of them, the damned ungrateful bastards!"

  "Who?" Steve Cullinan, asked, looking up from his sheave of notes for the City Council meeting.

  "Tourists! Vacationers!" Paul Berquem said with a snarl, turning away from the window. "As soon as Labor Day's over they're out of here like a well-fed swarm of locusts."

  "They do have jobs to get back to," Steve said mildly, "and I guess their kids have to go back to school."

  "Yeah, but where does that leave us?"

  "Up the creek as usual," George Regent, owner of Dresden Bait and Tackle, said glumly. "Making the summer money stretch until the opening of next fishing season. I may wind up eating the buckets of bait I've got left." He stared sadly at the remains of his lake trout lunch, which was glaring back at him with glassy eyes. George was a rather round young man, with fishy blue eyes of his own and a sensitive manner.

  Carlson Hope, owner of the local vineyard and winery, slouched further down in his chair, his hands shoved in his pockets.

  "Solitaire, the Gem of Lake Mendocino," he said bitterly. "Summer population 2,500. Winter population 324." He sighed. "Julie's been after me again to sell out and move back to 'Frisco. She wants me to go back to being a lawyer."

  "But the winery does okay, doesn't it?" Paul Berquem asked.

  "So-so," Carlson replied, smoothing back his thinning blond hair with one hand. "Between the bottle sales at the tasting room and our exports, we just about get by. It's the kids she's worried about. She wants to move back to town so Bernadette and the boys can go to a local college. Bernadette's been hanging around that young preacher in town too, and Julie doesn't think it's healthy."

  "Who does she expect you to sell to?" Steve Cullinan asked.

  "Hubert Pigott, that fellow from the Bay Area who owns the fish hatchery." Carlson said. "He's already made me an offer. Do you know what that... that... barbarian wants to do?"

  The City Council members shook their heads.

  "He wants to jerk out all of my French savignon grapes, and grow Thompson Seedless, and do you know what he plans to do with them?"

  They shook their heads again.

  "He wants to make them into a line of carbonated, artificially fruit flavored, pop wines! With screw tops!" Carlson shuddered, and his blond hair seemed to stand on end.

  Sancy Pitt, the Council Secretary, smoothed her skirt down over her pretty knees and lifted her delicate eyebrows. "Some people have no shame," she said sadly.

  "I'd think he'd be happy enough with his fish hatchery," Steve said. "Why does he want to buy the vineyard?"

  Carlson shrugged, drawing patterns in the remains of his mashed potatoes with a fork. "He's got some grand plan about setting up a restaurant and serving his own hooch and his own designer fish. I heard that he's hired a researcher and put him to work down in Sonoma County, developing a red, white, and blue florescent striped lake trout."

  "Damned shame," Janey Reitz said, shaking her head. She rolled the end of an unlit cigar around in her mouth, since the Florentine Palace restaurant wouldn't let her smoke it. "What this town needs is a winter attraction."

  "Sure, like what?" Steve asked, pushing his reading glasses up on his nose. "If you've got an idea, we'd all like to hear it."

  It was Steve's turn to be town Mayor and he was trying to show the proper spirit.

  "I dunno," Janey said, shrugging her meaty shoulders. "A festival of some kind?"

  "Like what?" George Regent asked. "Face it, from Labor Day to Easter the whole northwest shuts down. You couldn't get tourists up here if you paid them to come."

  "Tourists, no," Steve agreed, "but maybe there's some kind of special interest groups we could get. You know, conventions, seminars. That sort of thing."

  "Where do you expect to put them?" Paul Berquem asked. "There isn't a place in town that's big enough to put fifty people together. You can forget that, unless you expect them to sit out under a tent in Carlson's vineyard and freeze their asses off."

  There was brooding silence in the Florentine Palace's small parlor for a few moments and then Carlson said, "Just how desperate are we?"

  "What do you mean?" Steve asked.

  "Well, I was just thinking, there's all those flying saucer people who go up to Mt. Shasta, and the Big Foot trackers that hang around Oregon. They don't seem to care about the weather. From what I've heard, the more miserable they are, the better they like it. Can't we get something like that around here?"

  "They're a bunch of nuts!" Janey said, rolling her cigar to the other side of her mouth. "You want Solitaire overrun with a bunch of nuts?"

  "If they're nuts with money, I'd welcome them with open arms," Paul Berquem said, and drank off the rest of his whiskey sour.

  "So, how do we get them to come here?" Steve asked. "I've never heard of any kind of mystery about Lake Mendocino."

  "Doesn't mean we can't come up with one," Paul said, and winked.

  Steve stared at him. "You're serious?"

  "Damn right I'm serious!"

  "But that's dishonest!"

  "What's dishonest about it?" Carlson asked. "We suggest a few questions. If we do it right and if we're lucky, people come to Solitaire to try and find answers."

  "What kind of questions?" Steve asked.

  Carlson shrugged. "The kind you read in the newspapers at the market checkout counter. You know, buried treasures, spaceships, ghosts, stray monsters. Could it be that ancient cosmonauts once visited Ft. Bragg? Was the Garden of Eden really southwest of Willits? Did ancient soothsayers predict the lousy grape harvest of 1922? Was Blackbeard's gold sunk in Lake Mendocino? That sort of thing."

  "Forget Blackbeard, Janey said. "Wrong part of the country. We're kind of short of pirates around here. Spanish gold, maybe."

  "Indian treasure!" Sancy Pitt said cheerfully, making notes on her steno pad.

  Carlson shook his head. "You start talking about treasure you'll have everybody in the country digging holes in your backyard."

  "Couldn't we sell claims?" Paul suggested hopefully.

  "We could, but no one's going to come up here to look for gold in the rain," Steve said. "We need something that will bring them here in the off season. When it's raining cats and dogs and the whole damned County is under water."

  "Like 1994," Paul said. "I had artesian wells coming up out of every gopher hole in the back yard.

  "How about a lake monster?" George Regent said, his fishy blue eyes wide with excitement. "Like Loch Ness with their Nessie! We could tell people it only comes out in cold, wet, weather. Hibernates, or something, in the summer."

  "Estivates," Steve said absently, taking off his reading glasses and putting them in his pocket.

  Janey stirred in her chair. "How come it's never been seen before?"

 
"Maybe it has," Paul said. "Maybe it's an old indian legend or something. Comes out at night and eats people."

  "Wouldn't that scare off the tourists?" George said doubtfully.

  "Not the kind of tourists we've got in mind," Carlson said. "Haven't you ever seen those movies where the guy goes up to the monster waving a white flag and talking about peace and brotherhood?"

  "And then it eats him," George said, nodding.

  "Right! And people like that will be falling all over themselves to get a snapshot of their best friend being chomped up."

  "But we've got to have something to show them," Steve said. "I mean, fuzzy snapshots, or funny-looking footprints."

  "Maybe a mangled corpse or two?" Janey suggested.

  "Naw, just a handful of fur or a couple of claws," Carlson said. "People who want to believe are real easy to convince."

  Steve scratched his chin. "I can't believe we're having a serious discussion about this! Okay, where do we get claws and fur and stuff?"

  "You could go see the mad scientist," Sancy Pitt said, diffidently.

  They all looked at her, until she started to flush. "Well, I don't know if he's really mad, but he's pretty strange. Dr. Orloff. He moved into the old Rowland house, around the point from the fish hatchery. My little brother says he's got all kinds of weird stuff in the house. Maybe you could get something from him. All in a good cause, I mean."

  "Sounds good to me," Paul Berquem said, getting to his feet. "Tell us what you find out, Steve."

  "Hey, why me?"

  "Because you're Mayor this year."

  There was a shuffle of chairs as the City Council arose en masse and went out.

  The five members and their secretary filed out of the small parlor into the Florentine Palace's main dining room, where a mere half-dozen people were finishing lunch. A dark, stocky man in a fawn sports jacket, and a plump woman with brassy hair were standing by the desk at the front.

  The man leaned back against the desk and waved casually. "The Solitaire City Council itself! I was just telling Mrs. Briolette here that when I take over the restaurant I'm going to redecorate that back room."

  Mrs. Briolette patted her mound of golden hair and batted her long blue-black lashes. "Now then, Hubert, we haven't really decided anything yet, have we?" A wave of Chanel No. 5 overtook them as she shook her head.

  "You're buying the restaurant?" Steve demanded.

  "Talking about it, at any rate," Hubert Pigott said, hooking a thumb into the belt of his checked slacks and grinning at the Council members.

  "You know that I shut down most of the place after Labor Day," Mrs. Briolette said, simpering. "I don't open the big dining room again until May. I barely make ends meet." She smoothed lilac satin down over her ample hips, costume jewelry glittering on her plump fingers, and smiled archly at George Regent.

  George nodded, swallowed hard, and walked a little faster.

  "Just what do you have in mind for Solitaire?" Steve asked Pigott, as the rest of the Council filed out of the building.

  Pigott rocked back on his heels and grinned. "Once I have the vineyard and get a my new strain of trout ready for the table, I figure I can put in a nice little resort here. Set up a blind where people can take pot shots at the deer, clear-cut some of the land for a golf course, and then sell the whole business to one of those big-spender oil sheiks as a private get-away."

  "Isn't he wonderful!" Mrs. Briolette gushed. "I just adore a man with vision!"

  "Wonderful," Steve muttered as he brushed past them. "Just wonderful!"

  He caught up with his fellow Council members in the parking lot, and grabbed George Regent by the elbow.

  "Get back in there, and convince Eugenie Briolette that you're a man with vision!"

  "Why me?" George said, his fishy blue eyes moving nervously.

  "Because you're the only one who's unattached!"

  "She's had eight husbands and she'll eat me alive!" George wailed.

  "Go!"

  George turned back toward the Florentine Palace, dragging his feet. "If I don't show up in a week, look for my body in Bilgewater Creek."

  Steve stomped through the parking lot toward his elderly sedan, calling to Sancy Pitt as he went.

  "Come on along, and show me where that doctor lives."

  They piled into the car, Steve started up, and they drove out of the parking lot.

  "That damned Pigott really gets to me!" he said, swinging the car around another departing camper van, loaded with bicycles and towing a boat trailer. "He's so god damned smug!"

  Sancy shrugged. "Well, he's got a right to be, hasn't he? He's got money and he's got plans."

  Steve seethed in silence, driving along the winding lake-side road.

  After a few more minutes, Sancy asked, "Have you told your mother about us yet?"

  "No," Steve said, sounding apologetic. "It's just not the right time, honey."

  "Well, when is it going to be the right time?" she demanded. "We've been going together for nearly a year now, and you keep making excuses."

  "Look, I'll tell her just as soon as I think she can handle it, okay?"

  "NOT okay," Sancy said. "Face it, Steve, your mother is a wacko. Loony-tunes, okay? She's nuts! If you're going to wait until she gets her act together to tell her that you want to get married, we might as well call the whole thing off."

  "Dammit, my mother is not nuts!"

  "No? When she spends half her time being someone else? I swear to God, I never know, when I go into the bookstore, whether I'm going to be dealing with a nice little old lady or Attila the Hun!"

  "It's called 'channeling'," Steve muttered. "She's getting in touch with spiritual entities from some other plane of existence. And she's never been Attila the Hun!"

  "Not yet, you mean!" Sancy crossed her arms over her chest, and stared straight ahead. "Turn right just past the bridge, into the driveway with the purple mail box."

  The car rumbled across the bridge over Bilgewater Creek, and Steve swung into the driveway just beyond it, moving slowly forward and trying to avoid the worst of the potholes. The driveway was a mere track, largely hidden by tall weeds and shadowed by the overhanging blackberry thickets on either side. It ended at a tall, dark, Victorian house with curtained windows and a wooden porch leaning crazily in front.

  "Are you sure someone lives here?" he asked dubiously, pulling to a halt and turning off the engine.

  "It's pretty bleak, isn't it?" Sancy said. "Mama used to work here, back when it was a B and B. It was pretty fancy. It's got a patio in back, and a dock for boats, and they had a lounge and bar in the basement."

  "I can't imagine anybody wanting to stay at a bed and breakfast like this, unless it's the Frankenstein family."

  "It was vacant for about fifteen years, after the B and B shut down," Sancy said, opening the door and getting out of the car. "The goofy doctor moved in two years ago."

  They walked up onto the porch and Steve rang the front door bell, which echoed dolefully from somewhere inside.

  After a few minutes, during which they shuffled their feet and looked around at the unkempt shrubbery and weedy flowerbeds, the door opened silently and a dark-clad, middle-aged, woman stared out at them.

  "Mrs. Orloff?" Steve ventured.

  "I am Mrs. Kimberly, Dr. Orloff's housekeeper," she said in a flat, toneless, voice.

  "Sorry! I'm Steve Cullinan, Mayor of Solitaire, and this is Miss Pitt, the City Council Secretary. We'd like to see Dr. Orloff, if he's available."

  The housekeeper stepped aside. "Come in."

  They walked past her into a high, gloomy, paneled room.

  "Wait in the parlor," Mrs. Kimberly said, gesturing toward a doorway on the left. "I will see if Doctor Orloff is free."

  She moved silently off down a hallway and they stood close together in the middle of an octagon-shaped parlor, with somberly curtained windows and suite of old rosewood furniture upholstered in purple plush.

  "I feel like I've wandered into a
bad B-movie," Sancy said with a shiver. "Do you suppose there's a set of rooms upstairs, kept just the way they were when the last guest was found mysteriously dead in bed with a look of horror on his face?"

  Steve looked at her in surprise. "Was some guest found dead here?"

  "How would I know!"

  "Come this way."

  They both jumped as Mrs Kimberly's voice echoed through the room, the housekeeper having returned on her silent–and presumably rubber-soled–feet.

  They followed her through a labyrinth of dingy halls and darkened rooms, then up a flight of creaking stairs and into a second floor library, where a twitchy little man with gray hair and a white lab coat sat behind a massive desk piled high with papers. Mrs. Kimberley vanished on her noiseless feet, and the three of them stared at each other.

  Steve cleared his throat.

  "Dr. Orloff, I presume?"

  The man behind the desk peered at them from under bushy gray eyebrows. A tic made his left cheek twitch and his shoulders, one higher than the other, drew together. He clasped his pale hands together in front of him.

  "Yes, yes. What is it? What do you want?" he asked in a heavily accented voice, which reminded Steve of the worst excesses of thirty years worth of monster movies.

  "I'm Steve Cullinan, Mayor of Solitaire, and this is Miss Pitt. We were hoping that we might borrow some... err... biological specimens from you. For a... a sort of show that we're planning to put on."

  "What kind of show is this?"

  "Ah! Well, it's sort of a drama about the unknown. You know, sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, yeti? That sort of thing!" Steve laughed nervously.

  Dr. Orloff tapped his fingertips together. "Big Foot?"

  "That's the ticket!" Steve said, and Sancy nodded, her lips stretched into a fixed and wooden smile.

  "What sort of specimens do you have in mind," the doctor asked, his left eye narrowing in a sinister tic.

  "Well, fur I guess, and some claws, maybe?"

  The doctor thought for a moment, leaving his guests to huddle closer together and study the room, which was filled with a vast number of moldy-looking books, plus some unidentifiable items in liquid-filled jars and pieces of corroded metal that would have brought joy to the heart of a medieval alchemist.