Peter Benchley's Creature

  It did not give chase, sensing that any attempt at pursuit would be futile. It waited, feeling strength suffuse its body.

  Another animal appeared, and this one came close, circling slowly and gazing curiously.

  The creature hung motionless, wanting to appear harmless, dead.

  The animal drew closer, shaking its head, expelling a stream of tiny bubbles.

  The creature waited . . . and waited . . . and then there came an instant when the neurons in its brain formed a conclusion that possibility had become opportunity.

  It struck, lashing out with steel claws. The claws found softness. They plunged deep into adipose flesh and curled in upon one another, fashioning a grip.

  The other arm sprang forward, and its claws, too, found pinguid tissue.

  The animal lurched backward. Its mouth opened with an explosion of bubbles. Its appendages thrashed, its body contorted as it struggled upward.

  The creature expected the animal to retaliate, to defend itself, but it did not. Now the creature knew that the animal was an alien here, could not survive here, so success could be achieved simply by holding it here.

  After a few moments, the animal stopped struggling. Its head lolled, and blood gushed from its torn flesh.

  The creature began to feed. The animal was covered with a thick layer of fat—nourishing, energizing, warming fat—and so it was positively buoyant, it would not sink. Predator and prey were bonded together in still suspension.

  As it ate, its peripheral vision detected other animals—larger animals, predators—attracted by the scent of blood and oil drifting in the current.

  It surrounded its food arid consumed it ravenously.

  Most of the animal was edible. Bones fell away into the abyss, and were surrounded by scavengers; bits of flesh escaped and were swarmed upon by schools of little fish. There was a hard inedible object, which the creature tore free and cast away. It floated upward, toward the surface.

  26

  "HOW long till dark?" Amanda asked. She sat on the bulwarks, stroking the heads of the three sea lions.

  The late-day sun cast long shadows on the sea, and as she turned her head, Chase saw shadows on her face as well—in the lines of grief that etched the skin beneath her eyes.

  "An hour," he said, "but we don't need light to get back. We can stay here all night if you want."

  "No," she said softly. "There's no point."

  They had not talked much during the past couple of hours; they had sat and watched until their eyes were red with strain and fatigue. Max had tried to entertain the three sea lions, had tried to feed them, but they seemed to sense something was wrong, and they had refused to respond.

  Chase had offered no more theories, though he had one. Theories wouldn't help, especially if the one he harbored was correct.

  "Okay," he said finally. He stood up and looked to the west, at the silhouette of Block Island. They had drifted at least two miles. He walked forward to start the engine as Tall Man climbed to the flying bridge. "It could've been the white shark," Amanda said, as if continuing an interrupted conversation.

  Chase started, for that had been his theory, the only one that made sense. The sea lions had escaped from the shark before, but they had been near the refuge of the boat. Alone in the open ocean, a sea lion—especially one tired and distracted—might well be ambushed by a big, fast great white shark.

  "Yeah," he said. "It could've." He pushed the starter button and flicked the switch that turned on the boat's running lights. He rapped the overhead with his knuckles, to tell Tall Man to head for home.

  "Maybe the others picked up something," Amanda said. "Let's look at their tapes."

  As Tall Man swung the boat around to the west, Amanda took a video monitor from one of her boxes, placed it on the table in the cabin and switched it on. She connected a VCR to the monitor and inserted one of the tapes. When she had rewound it, she pushed the "play" button, and sat on the bench seat. Max sat across the table from her; Chase stood at the end of the table.

  She fast-forwarded through a couple of minutes of blank ocean blue, then slowed the tape as the first image of a whale came onto the screen.

  "The whale looks so small," Max said.

  "It's a wide-angle lens," said Amanda. "It has to be, or all you'd see would be a lot of shots of blubber."

  As they watched, the whale grew until it filled the frame.

  "How close is she now?" asked Max.

  "Sixty, seventy feet. She'll close in, then she'll stop at about thirty feet."

  The image continued to grow, traveling along the side of the whale, passing an enormous fin, then slowing as it reached the head. When the eye came into view, Amanda pushed the "pause" button, and the image froze.

  "Look at that eye," she said to Max. "Tell me that's not an intelligent being."

  "It's different from a shark's eye,"' Max said. "It's ... I don't know . . . just different. Not as flat."

  "Richer, deeper." Amanda smiled, enthusiasm for the moment erasing her loss. "You know why? Humpbacks have a brain the size of a basketball. They say the eye is the mirror of the soul. Well, there's a heck of a soul behind that eye."

  She pushed the "play" button, and the image moved again.

  There were shots of the whale from all angles, as the sea lion had swooped around it, playing with it, riding in its slipstream. The whale had ignored the sea lion, never altering its predestined course.

  Amanda fast-forwarded through ten or fifteen minutes of tape, until through the jiggly scan lines she saw the whale begin to undulate more vigorously and plunge into a deep dive. She slowed the tape then and watched the image grow dimmer as the sea lion had followed the whale down into the benthic darkness.

  When the whale was no more than a dark blob against the inky blueness, the camera angle suddenly swung upward and rushed toward the light far above.

  "She broke off," Amanda said, "I'd guess at about five hundred feet."

  The tape ended, and she replaced it with another.

  The second sea lion had followed a large female humpback, and as the image on the screen grew, Max suddenly shouted, "Look! A baby!"

  A calf, probably twenty feet long, was nestled under its mother's left pectoral flipper,

  "They always ride there," Amanda said.

  "Why?" asked Max.

  "Partly to learn. Watch, you'll see that he does everything she does, imitates every move."

  Indeed, the calf duplicated exactly his mother's every movement. When she rose to breathe, he breathed; when she dove, he dove; when she rolled on her side to look up at the sea lion, he rolled with her.

  "See her looking?" Amanda said. "She's protecting him, too. If there's a big shark around, we'll see her snuggle him really close and get pretty agitated. She'll probably take him down into the deep."

  But the mother didn't get upset. Evidently satisfied with her identification of the sea lion, she rolled back onto a level plane and continued her leisurely journey near the surface.

  "Nothing," Amanda said, and she fast-forwarded through the rest of the tape.

  Two minutes into the third tape, Amanda laughed and said, "This is Harpo's."

  "How can you tell?" Max said.

  "She's a chicken. Look"—she pointed at the screen—"she comes up behind a whale, and as soon as the tail flukes flap, she skitters away." The image on the screen went to empty blue, broke the surface and angled down onto another whale. "It takes her about ten minutes to figure out that they're not gonna eat her. She's learning, she's just not as quick as the others. They've all got quirks."

  "Like what?"

  "Groucho likes to get too close, so she gives me a lot of soft tape, out of focus. It's as if she doesn't feel she's made contact unless she touches the whale. Chico likes to hassle the whales, especially the small ones. She's just playing, but sometimes she upsets them."

  "What about Zeppo?" Chase asked.

  Amanda hesitated, as if abruptly yanked back to reality. "As I sa
id, she's lazy. What worries me is, she's also the most curious. She'll swim right up to something, just to see what it is."

  The image on Harpo's tape zoomed from whale to whale. There were a few good close-ups, and one spectacular shot of a whale breaching—roaring to the surface, exploding through to the sunlight above and crashing down again with a cataclysmic splash—but the last few minutes of the tape were blank ocean blue. Amanda fast-forwarded through it.

  She had turned away from the screen to say something to Chase, when Max yelled, "Hey! Look!"

  She returned to the screen. "What?"

  "Go back."

  Amanda scanned the tape backward, and after a few seconds she saw something—vague and blurry, but definitely something—on the upper right-hand corner of the screen. She passed it, pushed the "play" button, and the tape spooled forward.

  Something was there, a shape, and then it was gone, and the image shuddered and zoomed away toward the surface.

  "What the hell was that?" Chase asked, leaning forward on his elbows, staring at the monitor.

  "I don't know," Amanda said, "but whatever it was sure scared poor Harpo. Did you see how fast she took off?"

  Suddenly the engine slowed, and Tall Man's foot stomped three times on the overhead. Chase walked aft, out into the cockpit, and called up to the flying bridge, "See something?"

  "A red blinker ahead," Tall Man said. "Like an emergency flasher. The light's so tough this time of day, I can't tell."

  Chase leaned over the side and looked forward. It was almost dark, the water was like a sheet of black steel; against it, a tiny red light was blinking at one-second intervals. He grabbed the boat hook, braced his knees against the bulwark and waited for Tall Man to guide the boat to the light.

  As the light slipped along the side of the boat, Chase reached for it with the boat hook. It was attached to something hard, about twelve inches square, and Chase twisted the hook till he snagged it, then brought it aboard and set it on the bulwark.

  "It's a camera housing," he called to Tall Man.

  "Ours?" Tall Man pushed the throttle forward and resumed his course for the island.

  Chase heard footsteps behind him, then a short, sharp gasp.

  "That's Zeppo's," said Amanda.

  They took the housing into the cabin, dried it and set it on the table. The housing was undamaged, but the harness straps had been shredded. Sadly, silently, Amanda removed the tape from the camera and put it into the VCR. She rewound it, then pushed the "play" button.

  The first few minutes of the tape were indistinguishable from the others: long shots of whales, close-ups of whales, whales cruising, whales rolling, whales diving. Then came an interminable shot of the surface, from just above, then from just below.

  "She's basking," Amanda said, and there was a thickness to her voice. "I told you she was the lazy one."

  The camera went underwater again and showed two whales in the distance, moving away. For perhaps fifteen seconds it pursued them, before turning away and showing nothing but blue.

  Amanda said, "She gave up."

  "But look," Max said, pointing at a minuscule black figure in the center of the screen. "That's one of the other sea lions. Zeppo was following her, coming home."

  The image roller-coastered up and down, as the sea lion had accelerated through the water, trying to catch up to its fellows. Then it slowed and broke through the surface—for a breath, presumably—and when it submerged it cruised slowly for a moment. Then, abruptly, it veered off.

  Chase said, "Something's caught her attention."

  Though there were no other animals visible in the blue vastness, speed and direction were discernible from rays of sunlight refracted by the surface into arrows that shot down into the darkness, and by the countless motes of plankton that glittered as they passed the lens.

  "She's circling something," Amanda said.

  "Why can't we see it?" asked Chase.

  "Because she's above it, looking down, and the camera's on her back."

  The sea lion had gone into a long upward loop— they saw the light from the surface flash by far away— and then had dived, turned and hung upright in the water, vertical and motionless. The surface shimmered in the distance above.

  Amanda said, "She's looking at it; she's not afraid of it."

  "Isn't she going to take pictures of it?" asked Max.

  "She doesn't think she's supposed to; the only things she's supposed to tape are—"

  Suddenly the camera jolted backward, and the blue water was clouded by a black billow.

  Amanda screamed.

  For ten or fifteen seconds, the image swung crazily, lurching left and right, dimmed by what looked like ink and then clear and then dimmed again.

  Something shiny gleamed in front of the lens.

  "Stop the tape!" Chase said, but Amanda was frozen, her eyes wide, one hand over her mouth. And so he reached forward and pressed the backward-scan button.

  The image was fuzzy, for the shiny thing was too close for the lens to focus. But as he advanced the tape again, frame by frame, Chase had no doubt about what he was seeing: five claws, curved, pointed, razor-sharp and made of stainless steel.

  27

  ''HIT me again, Ray," Rusty Puckett said to the bartender at the Crow's Nest. He slid his empty glass across the bar and shoved a five-dollar bill after it.

  "Enough's enough, Rusty," said Ray. "Go on home."

  "Hey! I put a fuckin' fifty down there, and said lemme know when I worked my way through it." Puckett pointed to the jumble of bills beside the ashtray. "I ain't halfway there yet."

  "Watch your mouth!" Ray said. He put his hands on the bar, and leaned close to Puckett. "Happy hour's come and gone, Rusty; there's people here for dinner, they're not interested in hearing your cock-and-bull stories. Do us both a favor: pick up your change and head on home."

  Puckett turned around on his stool and gazed glass-

  ily at the room. Ray was right: the bar had filled up, and there was a line of people waiting for tables in the dining room. When had all this happened? He looked at his watch, closing one eye to sharpen the numbers on the dial. Christ! He'd been here three hours.

  He noticed a few people staring at him, and guessed they'd been listening to him while he was telling Ray about what he'd seen. To hell with them, he didn't care, it was true, every bit of it. He winked at one of them, a not-bad-looking woman, and saw her blush and turn away. She was probably interested; maybe he'd go have a talk with her.

  Something funny popped into his head. He turned back to Ray and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "You don't dare shut me off, Raymond; the fuckin' place'd go broke."

  Ray didn't laugh, in fact he looked kind of pissed off, and all of a sudden he raised the fold-back panel in the bar, came through and grabbed Puckett by the scruff of his shirt.

  Puckett felt himself lifted off the stool, felt Ray's hand jam a wad of money into his pants pocket and found himself being frog-marched out the door.

  "You can come back when you sober up and stop hallucinating," Ray said. "I'd worry if I was you, Rusty. You're in the grip of the goddamn DTs."

  Puckett heard the door close behind him, and Ray's voice saying, "Sorry, folks."

  He stood on the street, bewildered, swaying slightly. A couple got out of a car and gave him a wide berth as they made their way toward the restaurant.

  He put a hand on the side of the building to stop the swaying. Then he started down the street, keeping his eyes on each foot as it landed in front of the other.

  What the hell did Ray mean, "cock-and-bull stories"? Ray knew him well enough to know he didn't make up fairy tales. And he wasn't in the grip of any DTs, either. He knew damn well what he'd seen, what had almost killed him, and he hadn't exaggerated anything.

  It sounded stupid, impossible. But it was the truth. He'd seen a fuckin' monster.

  PART FIVE

  THE BLESSING

  28

  "ARE you sure you don't wan
t to wait for Amanda and me?" Chase said. He held the bow line of the Whaler while Max started the motor and stowed his camera under the steering console. "She'll be ready in half an hour, eleven-thirty at the latest."

  "I can't," Max said. "The Blessing of the Fleet starts at noon; if I don't go now, I'll never get a decent spot."

  "You sound to me like a young man who has a date." Chase smiled.

  Max grimaced. "Dad . . ."

  "Okay, sorry. . . . Now: you know where the anchor's stowed, you've got two life jackets aboard, you—"

  "We've been through all that."

  "Right." Chase sighed and tossed the bow line into the boat. "Park the boat at the club; beach it if there're no slips."

  "Okay." Max put the boat in gear, turned the wheel and moved slowly away from the dock.

  "Remember," Chase called after him, "no stopping on the way ... for anything ... no matter what you see."

  Max waved and shouted, "See you!"

  Chase stood watching as Max accelerated, bringing the boat up onto a plane.

  At first, Chase had resisted letting Max take the Whaler; the boy had never been out in the boat alone. Though the channel into Waterboro was well marked, there were rocks to hit if you were careless. Though the outboard motors were meticulously maintained by Tall Man, all outboards harbored gremlins and could seize up and stop at any moment for no apparent reason. Though Max had shown that he was a careful boatman and a fine swimmer, what would happen if he had to go overboard and swim for shore?

  But for the past three days, the weather had been lousy: the wind had blown from the northeast, a relentless fifteen to twenty knots, sometimes gusting to forty, and a chill rain had soaked the coast from New Jersey to Maine. There had been nothing for Max to do, except for an occasional trip to town with Chase or Tall Man, during which the boy had disappeared into the warren of back streets and tiny houses and, Chase hoped and assumed, made friends with some of the local children. Max had looked forward to the Blessing of the Fleet, had been caught up in the town's enthusiasm for the celebration.