The Lord of the Lake

A supernatural Western short story

Photo by Ivan Rohovchenko on Unsplash

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Three figures walked across the windy plain heading toward the mountains in the distance.

The year was 1843, the year the first wagon trains left Missouri along the Oregon Trail far, far behind the three men blazing a trail deep into the wild.

The trio of fur-wrapped figures struggled across the snow-swept grasslands of the northern Rockies under an overcast sky, the white-on-white mountains towering in the distance, forbidding in the sunless day, running down, down to the foothills where white pine, spruce, hemlock, and red cedars dotted the landscape. The early snow had covered the land, bringing a swift end to the autumn trapping season but the men, dogged, intrepid trappers all, had decided to brave the weather and seek their traps, though miles from the meager yet welcome comforts of the outpost.

Wrapped in furs head to foot, a trusty flintlock rifle over his shoulder and a new Colt Paterson on his hip, Andrew Davis led the party. A thick beard covered what part of his face was visible, leaving dark, piercing eyes above, scanning the landscape, following the fading signs of the well-worn trapper path. He was confident not only in his skills but also in the essentials of the trapper’s art that he carried in his pack: a large knife, cord, flint and tinder, dried and preserved food, and a host of other items that made survival possible.

Philip Spencer, a second cousin of Davis’s and much younger, followed behind, wrapped and armed and carrying a similar pack. Despite the time since his last shave, his cheeks were barely covered in a young man’s first growth. Behind Philip came Carson, an ancient, grizzled man, wizened and dour, made almost fully wild by the frontier life, friend of the Blackfeet, Salish, and Kootenai.

The wind in their faces increased in strength, reaching a higher pitch and making even Davis pull his furs over his face, though Carson, his gray and black beard streaming beneath deep wrinkles, faced the wind without a wince or a teared eye.

They knew their purpose without needing to speak: reach the foothills by dusk and find shelter there for the night. The sun rose, reached its zenith, and began to fall behind the overcast sky, the gray landscape fading before them as they strode across the grassland buffeted by wind, the snow flurries swirling around them.

Davis eyed the failing light and urged on the others. Ahead the foothills had drawn closer and a stand of trees next to a rocky outcrop in the distance was his intended destination.

Finally approaching the lee of the outcrop and shielded from the wind, the three men began setting up camp, long practice and experience allowing them to work without speaking, Carson’s wiry hands mothering the precious tinder kept dry in his pack along with some small sticks for the first beginnings of the fire while Philip gathered what fallen branches there were and chopped fresh wood and Davis saw to the primitive, temporary lean-to that would shelter them for the night, taking long branches of pine with their limbs and needles intact and leaning them expertly against the side of the outcrop, thereby creating a space for the three men to huddle, gain warmth from the fire, and shelter from the still-swirling snow.

When a blaze was going the three men gather around drinking snow melted over the fire and eating pemmican and what other bits of dried food they had.

***

A mere twenty yards away, his movements making no sound, a lone man with long black hair and the distinct look of a native, wrapped in furs so thin and light as to suggest that he felt neither cold nor wind, watched the fire, observing the movements of the three trappers, three white men invading from the east, observing their size and strength, judging them.

Farther up the mountains was where he needed them and farther up the mountains was where they would go.

He melted back into the night and the snow and retreated higher up the mountain to wait.

***

After passing a fitful night among the trees, Davis, Spencer, and Carson ate a rough porridge of barley and water with a scant cup of coffee for each man and they were on their way up the mountainside.

“We’ll have a good haul,” Davis said to Spencer as they hiked steadily uphill in the bright early sun, the previous day’s clouds chased away by the morning light. “I’m sure of it. An early snow like this, no one wants to come out and risk it, but they scurry back to their burrows—beaver, weasel, pine marten, fisher, mink—all of them, and that’s when we’ve got them because we laid our traps right. We’ll have a good haul. No reward without risk. That’s the trapper’s life.” Davis felt the nearly empty bag against his breast, mere pennies remaining after the summer’s unusually poor harvest, and nothing but the deprivations of winter to which they could look forward.

“No reward without risk,” Spencer echoed. Hardened but not yet as hardy as his older cousin, he pulled his cloak around his head tighter and followed closely behind as if pulled along by the older man’s determination, keeping his eyes on the ground in front rather than up at the long path ahead, all too clear in the brilliant morning sun.

Late in the day they reached the first traps set long before in the high summer when the dearth of animals in the plains had driven first driven Davis up into the higher reaches of the foothills. The first was empty, undisturbed, but the second held a marten, a scrawny but much celebrated marten, that they all knew was a sign of more to come.

But more never came.

For two days they searched all of the traps in the lower foothills with not another marten, let alone a racoon, fox, fisher, or mink.

At sundown on the second day, Davis brooded over the fire, remarking on the unusual upheaval of the nature of things, the usually regular, well-ordered nature of things as they knew it. In the dim light of the fire melting the new snows blown by ever stronger winds, Spencer suddenly recoiled at the appearance of a fourth figure stooping over the fire to gain its warmth. He reached for his rifle but Carson restrained his hand and spoke words of welcome to the man, first trying one language then another.

The man’s impassive expression warmed slightly when Carson attempted a few words of Kootenai. The man said his name was Sunukkuhkau of the Ktunaxa—the name the Kootenai used for themselves—and added that he too was checking his traps in the unseasonable storm.

“Do you have mink or marten?” Carson said, pointing to the single animal the three men had found.

Sunukkuhkau shook his head and said, speaking in his native tongue, “Nothing this far down, but I am going up higher into the mountains. I know at the lake, not far from there, I will have more success. I was caught in the storm down the mountain but I am going back now. My people live near the lake and the lord of the lake always gives us what we need.”

Carson translated for Davis and Spencer, though he stumbled on phrasing ‘lord of the lake’ and merely said ‘lake’ to the other two men.

“Ask him if he will guide us to the lake,” Davis said. “I’ve only been there once, if I’m thinking of the same lake, and I did not set any traps this summer. I won’t rob another man’s traps.”

Carson spoke back and forth with Sunukkuhkau. “He says you will not be taking what is theirs, that the lake provides enough for all, and even with the weather you can set new traps and we’ll have animals caught in a day or two.”

“If the hunting is so good, why was he wandering around down here?” Davis said.

Sunukkuhkau explained that young men from the tribe often traveled many miles from their home, sometimes for trade or to exchange news with other tribes, the Salish living nearby, or down into the valleys to seek herbs and medicinal plants.

Davis merely nodded but made no other reply and stirred the barley into the pot just as the snowmelt boiled and set it to the side to cook slowly overnight in the coals, but as a sign of goodwill he passed a hunk of pemmican to the Kootenai man who handed over a dried strip of redish-purple meat in exchange.

Spencer, amazed at the Kootenai man’s sudden appearance, alternately stared at him or urged Carson to ask him more questions but the old man refused and soon all four were laid out around the fire. But Davis feigned sleep, clutching the Colt under his furs and watching the Kootenai until he too finally fell asleep despite his better judgment.

The morning revealed only three men around the fire. Sunukkuhkau was nowhere to be seen.

Davis was sure he was gone for good but Carson said, “No, I don’t think so. It is often their way to rise early to hunt and forage.”

They made coffee and waited until Davis, impatient to be moving on, said to break camp and it was just then that Sunukkuhkau, who the night before had been stoic, impassive, came beaming into camp holding a brace of coneys.

Spencer laughed with delight and even Davis said they would make fine eating that night.

They shouldered their packs and Sunukkuhau led them out from among the trees and up the mountain. The sun bathed the mountainside in its early red-pink glow, melting the surface of the snow which refroze and created a layer of ice through which their feet crunched as they went up, not straight up but north and west along the face of the mountain, the land still grassy and soft—they could not, would not dare scale bare rock—their breath steaming in the morning light and their cold limbs warming with the exercise.

They didn’t stop until after midday and then only just to drink from a stream and fill their skins, the three trappers sitting down gladly but Sunukkuhkau remained standing, seemed as if he needed neither rest nor water, and stared impatiently up the mountain as if silently urging the men to rise and continue, silently until he ventured a few short, urging words which Carson translated: “Time to go.”

Along the way Davis checked the traps that they happened upon, but all were empty and he marveled at the Kootenai man’s luck at catching two rabbits where there seemed to be nothing else, aware of a growing unease in his heart about following a strange man into unknown parts of the mountains but the promise of rich and plentiful furs drew him onward.

The sun retreated behind the mountains and the four men stopped for the night at a convenient spot at a bend in the pass leading between two mountain peaks where the wind died to a whisper. It was early still but Sunukkuhkau insisted they treat the rabbits properly and stew them slowly. While Spencer and Davis gathered wood, Sunukkuhkau produced a bone-handled knife, gutted and skinned the rabbits clean, then put all the meat into the small pot and filled it with water. Then as the fire grew the pot was placed over top and Sunukkuhkau shared out the rabbit livers and hearts which the men ate raw.

Sunukkuhkau smiled at the men, applauding them for their fortitude with words even Carson did not understand. The three nodded their heads in acceptance and recognition of the Kootenai man’s words, though Spencer coughed and choked on the raw meat with blood escaping one corner of his mouth.

“How far to the lake?” Davis, whose recollection of his one trip there, if it was even the same place, was hazy at best, said to Carson.

“Not far, not far,” Sunukkuhkau replied. “Tomorrow we will be there and you will see the good hunting that we have. We will send you back laden with furs.” He smiled with bloody teeth.

As promised around noon the next day Davis, Spencer, and Carson looked down from the high mountain pass into an oblong valley stretched out before them. The mountains ringed the edges, the oppressive snow on the peaks giving way to drab crags and cliffs before turning to green which ran all the way down before leveling off and ending in the massive lake in the center. The lake seemed to fill the valley and stretched far to the north before them while to the left side, to the west, part of it was hidden by a jutting finger of the mountains.

The sun, which had been hiding all day, suddenly broke forth and the fierce north wind eased and Sunukkuhkau beckoned them to follow him across the crest of the pass after which they descended into the valley.

The going was downhill and easy and a path wound down from the pass, as if it had been made for them. Between the sunshine and the gentle, almost absent breeze, the temperature seemed to increase from bitter cold to temperate to nearly tropical and the men hurried to remove their thick furs.

Davis marveled not only at the strange weather but also at the dozens of animals that scattered as they approached, not only martens and minks but weasels, hares, badgers, foxes, wolverines and down by the water as they approached were more beaver and muskrat than he had ever seen in one place.

He forced his mind back to the time, many years before, that he had been to the lake, which Sunukkuhkau, in his unintelligible language, seemed to call Yawunik Akuqnuk, and realized that he had no memory of such a haven for animals, nor a place that seemed to shimmer in the bright sun and water, which he saw as they approached, that was perfectly clear, perfectly still, and functioned as a gigantic mirror reflecting trees, mountains, sun, sky, and all.

Sunukkuhkau stopped at the water’s edge and began speaking rapidly, leaving Carson little time to translate, speaking, from what they gleaned from Carson, of the lake’s history and the history of the Kootenai people and their intimate connection with Yawunik Akuqnuk. Carson, struggling to keep up with the rapid speech, finally fell mute as Sunukkuhkau’s words came faster and faster, taking on rising and falling notes, developing rhythm, becoming a chant that mingled with the breeze, birdsong, and notes of pine and grass on the air until the whole valley seemed to vibrate to the same rhythm.

He stopped and all fell still. He turned to Davis, Spencer, and Carson, breathing heavily, and said, in clear English, “The Lord of the Lake bids you welcome.” Then he turned and walked steadily, unfaltering into the water up to his knees, waist, chest, then disappeared beneath the surface. No ripple, no bubble broke through.

They waited some time but Sunukkuhkau did not rise again. Carson, who had grown fond of the Kootenai man, called and called out into the water beyond the beaver and muskrat where he had disappeared but Davis stared at the lake grimly. He could hear Spencer praying beside him, uttering every word he knew begging God to save them from this forsaken place just this side of hell.

“We should not have come here,” Spencer said. “We are in Gehenna.”

“I’ll tell you when I want your opinion. Put down your bible and start setting traps. I don’t care if some crazy Indian drowned himself. There are more pelts than we can carry.”

Davis turned, crossed himself, and started getting to work. Spencer and Carson followed.

An icy blast from behind, from the north, froze the sweat on their necks. The next instant a blinding snow was pelting down. They struggled to wrap themselves in their furs, the wind whipping this way and that, covering them and the furs in snow so that even when they had managed to cover themselves they trapped the melting snow between the furs and their skin causing them to shiver and shake.

Soon snow was all they could see. By holding onto each other and feeling their way forward they came to a small stand of trees where seemingly minutes before pine martens and mink had cavorted happily. Now they chopped at the branches they could reach and, on the far side of a small boulder, huddled together covered in meagre branches of pine, shivering, cold, wet, and bewildered.

They tried to start a fire but no matter what they did the tinder refused to light from the wind or damp or cold or snow. They even spent a few grains of their precious gunpowder but it flashed and failed to light. Their only comfort came from tiny bites of food and the drops of water that formed on the furs just in front of their steaming mouths.

Time lost all meaning for them. Despite the snow, the day remained shockingly light for hours and hours after Davis reckoned the sun should have gone down. They could not see to find better shelter so despite the snow piling around them they had to remain huddled behind the boulder, draped in the thinnest layer of pine boughs, cursing Sunukkuhkau and cursing themselves for venturing on this trip.

Finally it began to grow dark and the bright blinding blizzard changed to a dark blizzard where vague shapes and dots of color seemed to dance in front of Davis’s eyes, some of them resembling the drowned figure of Sunukkuhkau come back to finish what he had started, something that began to seem welcome to Davis as the night stretched out and he grew drowsy. Beside him Spencer was breathing softly, whether asleep or not he couldn’t tell and didn’t want to bother him though sleep in such situations could be deadly. He too began to give in to the need for sleep.

Davis had just dozed for a minute when the shuffling, flapping sound of shifting furs and footsteps woke him. Carson was gone. Davis woke Spencer and they bawled and shouted themselves hoarse but heard no reply over the howling wind and Carson did not return. Both men soon descended into a state closer to senselessness than sleep and the storm raged on.

Light, a strange light filtered through cloud and snow, and the realization that he was not dead brough Davis blinking and shivering to his feet. Spencer was still alive too and similarly covered in snow that in all likelihood had helped to insulate them both.

Emerging from among the trees they were struck by the transformation of the valley. The entire oblong bowl between the mountains had been turned white, a brilliant white that glittered in the dim early sun. The lake before them was frozen solid and covered and nowhere were the tracks of any of the many animals present the day before to be seen.

They found Carson by the water’s edge, splayed out on his belly, completely naked, and nearly frozen solid. Davis and Spencer stood and stared at their dead companion, in shock at the state of him, the surprise of finding him naked in defiance of all logic.

“I don’t think we’ll be trapping anything out here.”

Spencer shook his head, grinned, started laughing, out of his mind.

Then he stopped and, gazing out into the middle of the lake, pointed.

“I see a deer.”

“What deer?”

“Antlers out on the ice.” He unslung his rifle, uncapped the end stuffed with wax to guard against the snow. “I’m hungry.”

“That? That’s no deer.”

“Yes, it is. It’s right there. My eyes are younger than yours. See? It’s not that far away. It must have died from the cold.”

“Philip, don’t go out on that ice. There is no way it’s solid. It just started freezing last night. You’ll fall through and there’ll be nothing I can do about it.”

“I’m hungry. We’re going to eat that deer and then we’re going to leave.”

Davis watched Spencer diminish to a speck in the middle of the lake. He squinted but the middle of the lake remained a blur. He wondered how Spencer could see antlers at that distance.

He was looking morosely at Carson’s body covered with a single fur out of respect when the sound of his own name shouted by Spencer came floating across the ice.

“Davis! Come out here.”

“I ain’t coming!”

“Get out here and look at this.”

Davis went back to their shelter and got his rifle, checked his revolver, then grudgingly returned to the ice and stepped out.

It held. He stamped down hard. It still held.

The next step went directly into Spencer’s footprints in the snow and so he went carefully following the path one step at a time, hoping that the same path would hold him just as it had held the younger man. He kept his eyes on the snow and his ears, which begged to be covered from the increasing north wind, he kept unwrapped and listening for the telltale crackling sound of ice snapping and cracking underfoot. Every few steps he looked up to see Spencer standing in the middle of the lake, standing in front of what looked like a small tree. As he went, he noticed the air growing colder but calmer until the wind completely died away and his breath practically hardened in the air before him, a shocking change for a valley bathed in tropical heat the day before. He tried not to think of Sunukkuhkau floating dead somewhere beneath the ice, waiting in that frigid purgatory to seize an unsuspecting ankle and pull him down, down into the icy black.

Davis came to the middle of the lake and stopped next to Spencer.

“That’s not antlers, that’s a tree,” Davis said.

“No, it’s antlers,” Spencer said, “look, look at the velvet. I don’t understand.”

The antlers, for antlers they were, resembled those of a bull elk, emerging from somewhere under the snow and branching up and up until they towered twenty feet high, each of the two main stems bearing hundreds of curving offshoots.

Spencer started digging at the base, removing a foot or more of snow until he reached the ice where the antlers disappeared through. Nothing could be seen beyond for the opaqueness of the ice.

“This beast has to be massive,” Spencer said. “Imagine the pelt we can get off of it. You think it’s an elk?”

“I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to find out. I was desperate for pelts when we came out here and now I just want to get out of here with my own intact. Carson’s dead. Our Indian guide led us into some kind of trap and drowned himself. We need to leave, Philip. I ain’t staying.”

Spencer wouldn’t listen. “Gimme the hatchet. Did you bring the hatchet out?”

“No, I don’t have the hatchet,” Davis said and started heading back to shore.

“Don’t be a coward, Andrew Davis.”

“I ain’t no coward, Philip Spencer, and I ain’t a fool either.”

Spencer grabbed the antlers and shook, trying to break off a chunk or free them from the ice. He stomped at the base to break the ice.

Davis watched his vain efforts. “Philip, we leave now or I leave without you.”

A rumbling deep beneath the ice brought them both up sharply. Spencer stepped back from the antlers, fell and went scrambling backwards just as the ice shattered and the towering antlers swayed side to side, shivering and shaking and rising, rising higher into the air, snow and ice cascading from the base revealing a creature stranger and more terrible than they could have imagined. The antlers perched on a smooth head, skin purplish-blue in color that shimmered and changed in the light, now cerulean, now black. The head was round with a long, sloping forehead that ended in a black nose much like a deer’s and beside it long drooping whiskers as big around as a man’s arm. The jaw was wide and its mouth split its face one side to the other—the gaping maw revealed rows of pointed teeth—and above were two golden eyes that seemed to swirl and twist as if made not out of flesh but shifting sand, eyes that were expressive, intelligent.

Above the water, just a head and neck, like a sea serpent, and behind the huge head the monster’s slick body, that same mottled violet-blue, massive and rotund, disappeared beneath the surface of the lake.

Davis and Spencer watched as the horror of the lake revealed itself.

It cocked it’s head as if contemplating them, each man feeling as if the monster was looking directly at him.

The light of the midday sun faded, faded and went out and a spectral moonlight with no source washed over the lake.

Rumbling, angry gravel rumbling as if from deep under the water but rather than from the ice the sound burst forth from the horror’s mouth, a cry, a summons and off in the distance figures came walking toward them, walking on the surface of the snow without sinking in, dozens, hundreds of human figures, and at their head was Sunukkuhkau. The ghostly figures—men, women, children, all resembling Sunukkuhkau—formed a circle around the monster and Davis and Spencer.

Sunukkuhkau approached the two men in the center.

“Behold, the Lord of the Lake. I see you both are unable to speak. Such is natural when meeting your god.”

Spencer breathing hard, managed to gasp, “Not my God. That is a monster, a devil. My God rules on high, in heaven,” and summoning a voice from deep within he recited, shaking at first but with growthing strength and confidence: “And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake. And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee. That is my God!”

“Your god has no power here,” Sunukkuhkau said, “or he would save you. My god is all-powerful here.”

“Your god is a devil and a monster!”

“The Lord of the Lake is ancient beyond reckoning. He swam these waters when the oceans covered the mountains, when this land touched the other side of the world. There is no resisting him or his power. The Lord of the Lake will offer you a choice: serve or perish.”

Spencer shouted, “I will never serve any god but the Lord Almighty.”

“What service?” Davis said.

Spencer rounded on Davis. “How can you even think to serve this foul beast? Death is better.”

In a low voice Davis said, “I’ve gotten out of tight spots before, son, I think I ought to try to do it again.”

Davis spoke louder to Sunukkuhkau, “Is that why you brought us here? To serve this lord of the lake?”

Sunukkuhkau nodded, raised a translucent hand, and pointed. From behind Spencer and Davis, a ghostly figure approached and both men were shocked to see Carson walking toward them, right through them to the monster, the same tired, withered face, the body as they had seen it naked in the snow.

They spoke to him but he made no sign that he heard or recognized them.

“You will become like us to live and live forever, forgetting your former self,” Sunukkuhkau said, “but you will live and you will serve the Lord of the Lake.”

“What about you?” Davis said. “Why are you special?”

“The Lord of the Lake cannot leave the lake but he does me the honor of speaking and acting through me. I was the first that he found long, long ago.”

Davis looked up at the creature, which looked back at him. He flexed his fingers against the cold and unshouldered his rifle.

“It would be unwise to attack the Lord,” Sunukkuhkau warned.

The monster tossed its head sending waves cascading over the ice.

“It sounds like I either serve willingly or, like poor Carson there, I die first and serve against my will.”

Sunukkuhkau’s lips twitched into the barest smile but he said nothing.

“I don’t like those odds,” Davis said.

Spencer said, “I don’t suppose anyone will ever find us.”

“That’s the trapper’s life, son. No reward without risk. Go. Go, now!”

Spencer took off at a run and Davis backed away slowly, filling the pan with gunpowder as he moved, not taking his eyes off the monster, his fingers working expertly from long years of experience.

Sunukkuhkau screamed shrilly, “Do not—”

Davis fired directly into the creature’s face from twenty yards. A speck of blood appeared on its cheek. The monster roared and bucked lifting a huge limb, like a flipper with surprisingly human digits, to wipe at its face. Davis took off at a run, following behind Spencer.

He didn’t need to turn to know from the rending crash the creature had dived down through the ice to pursue them. In the dim moonless light he saw Spencer running, nearing the shore. Breath ragged, heart pounding, he pulled the Colt from within his furs and readied it for the inevitable, waiting for the ice underneath him to shatter and the Lord of the Lake to swallow him whole, like Jonah without hope of salvation.

Rumbling. Cracking. Davis was tossed headlong on a piece of ice that dug into the snow and flung him forward.

He turned to see the ancient monster rear up—antlers nodding and shaking on its head—and begin to bear down on him. It too seemed tired, awoken from its centuries of slumber at the bottom of the lake, its eyes tired and angry.

Flat on his back, Davis fired, putting five careful but rapid shots into its face.

The creature screamed, one of its giant yellow eyes, now dark, streamed blood.

Its one good eye rolled and its whole body went still, rigid, as if suddenly frozen.

Davis took off at a run.

The hurricane blast, wind summoned by the monster, struck his back and flung him headlong again, knocking the gun from his hand, and the monster lunged.

A shot rang out from the shore. Spencer stood with the rifle still raised, watching helplessly as the Lord of the Lake plowed through the ice, reared up, and dove onto Davis.

He disappeared in an instant under the crushing violet-blue mass of the monster which thrashed in the shallows for a moment then raised its antlered head to look at Spencer.

He dropped the rifle and ran.

Up past the stand of trees where they had spent the long night, up the slope of the mountain. A sudden heat bore down on him and the snow all around melted in an instant. Then The rocks began to sizzle and crack as rain thundered from the sky.

There before him among the splintering rocks stood Sunukkuhkau and Carson and Davis and all the ghosts of the valley with arms outstretched, palms up as if to stop him and Sunukkuhkau, suddenly corporeal, lunged forward and seized Spencer around the neck to hold him in place and said, “Now you will submit to the Lord of the Lake for the Lord of the Lake is the lord of this land and all who enter here must bow to him and never leave. Down! Down with you and make your obeisance to your Lord!”

Up the slope the ancient horror came, ungainly, waddling, its spindly flippers slipping on the rocks, its long serpent tail stretched out behind it.

Spencer stepped, twisted, and flung Sunukkuhkau down the slope. He landed in a heap and was crushed under the weight of the advancing monster and Spencer ran up, up straight through the ghosts of Davis and Carson, up to the crest of the pass, the noise of clattering rocks increasing in his ears, the monster all but upon him until, feeling a clawed finger dig at his back he flung himself forward and rolled over to face his doom.

Three huge webbed fingers reached for him and, as if struck by their own magic, suddenly shriveled to nothing but bone.

The Lord of the Lake shrieked, a wail it had never before uttered.

Its single golden eye rolled and it opened its mouth wide but it stopped short of charging forward, stopped just short of the crest of the pass and Spencer knew he had crossed some barrier beyond which the monster could not go.

He backed away slowly from the creature, now ensconced in the phalanx of its ghostly minions, Davis and Carson prominent among them, and ran away as fast as he could uttering every prayer he knew and grateful merely to be alive.

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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance, perceived resemblance, or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No AI of any kind, generative or otherwise, was used in any way to write this story.