Chapter 16
Nobody in Deeper Harbour really knows just how deep Muddy Lake is, but it’s a fair bet that the bottom is awfully close to forever. The lake sits about half a mile out of town and feeds into the ocean just outside of the harbour through a winding stream we call the Drain.
There is a story passed around of a skidoo accident that happened many years ago. It seems a group of Scouts were on an ice-fishing trip. They were scooting across the ice when it cracked open, sending all three of the skidoos to the bottom of the lake. My dad says that it’s nothing but an old story that people tell to scare kids away from the thin ice—only Granddad Angus said differently.
“It’s a sad, true story,” Granddad Angus told me. “The ice opened up like a giant mouth, swallowed them up, and turned them into ice cubes.”
True or not, the story is soaked indelibly into the soggy annals of Deeper Harbour history. Kids around here say you can still hear the ghosts of those Scouts howling like wolves and reciting their Cub Scout promises on lonely, full-moon nights.
“Ice is funny that way,” Granddad Angus said. “You can look at it and it looks fine, but underneath the surface the rot has set in. The water, deep and warm, eats away at the strength of the ice. Things change, even if you can’t see it happening.”
And that spot on Muddy Lake was exactly where Granddad Angus wanted to test Fogopogo.
Warren backed his old station wagon, towing a gigantic wooden boat trailer, up to the boat shed. We loaded Fogopogo onto the trailer and covered it up with an industrial-sized tarp held down with some bungee cords and a whole lot of duct tape.
We drove away before the sun came up. I had told Mom that Granddad Angus was taking me fishing. I was getting pretty good at telling lies. I felt bad about that, but Granddad Angus always says that a storyteller needs to be a pretty good liar. Besides, it was nice to be good at something.
“This fog gets any thicker,” Warren fussed, “and I’m apt to drive us into the water, dory and all.”
“The fog is what we want,” Granddad Angus said. “It’ll add to the air of illusion. That’s why I picked today for the monster test launch.”
“Should I go down Main Street?” Warren wanted to know.
“How else are we going to get out of town?” Granddad Angus replied. “Besides, this is Deeper Harbour. Seeing a trailer rolling down Main Street with a boat-sized, tarpaulin-wrapped shape on the back is not going to make anyone raise an eyebrow.”
As we rolled down Main Street and past the police station, I thought I saw Dad waving at us. Or maybe I just imagined I saw him. As we got to the end of the street, I looked back. I still thought I could see Dad standing there in front of the police station, waving goodbye to a son running away from home in an old station wagon pulling an ark-sized boat trailer covered in duct tape and plastic. He receded into a dot in the distance, we hit one more bump, and then he was gone.
“What are you looking at?” Granddad Angus asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
When we arrived at the shore, the fog was so thick you couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of you.
Lowering Fogopogo into Muddy Lake should have been easy. I mean, we had gravity on our side, but it was tougher than I had figured.
“I’d feel safer if it wasn’t so close to duck-hunting season,” Warren said.
“Most of the hunters around here can’t aim worth spit,” Dulsie said.
“You better hope so,” Warren told her. “What’s with that getup of yours?”
Dulsie was dressed all in blue and green with a halo of goose down and the tracing of fish scales across her face and a magnificent sea serpent painted across her neck, up the sides of her face, over her eyebrows, and down the other shoulder. I wasn’t sure if she was a bird or fish. The truth was, I wasn’t sure if she knew just what she was supposed to be.
“We’re fine,” Granddad Angus assured us. “Duck-hunting season is weeks away.”
“All the same, I’d feel better if this hunting shirt of mine was bulletproof,” Warren said.
“Stop your worrying,” Granddad Angus told him. “Even if there are any hunters out here bold enough to shoot at a full-grown sea monster, they would most likely miss.”
“Maybe so,” Warren said. “But I still feel as if I’ve got ‘mallard’ written all over my backside.”
“Then make like a mallard and duck,” I suggested.
Everyone laughed, even Warren.
Then Warren tilted the trailer back and Granddad Angus took hold of his pry bar and me and Dulsie grabbed up a pair of two-by-fours and levered Fogopogo down into the water. The dory monster rolled going down and nearly crushed me against a nearby poplar tree.
“Hang on, Roland,” Granddad Angus shouted.
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one trapped between a tree and Fogopogo. All I smelled was the reek of worked-in mud, lake moss, and prehistoric moose hide. I breathed shallow and slow, trying not to stare directly into Fogopogo’s dark amethyst eyes.
I could swallow you up whole was what those eyes were saying to me.
You bet was what I was thinking.
I tried to stay just as calm as I could while Granddad Angus, Warren, and Dulsie pushed Fogopogo clear. The dory monster slid into the water of Muddy Lake. It made a wet swallowing sound as it went, as if the water was somehow digesting the nine-hundred-year-old moose hide.
“Climb in,” Warren shouted. “Before it drifts away on us.”
So we all dove into the cold, smelly water and clambered underneath the flap in the moose hide. It was darker than a belly full of midnight and twice as scary. I knew just what the dory monster looked like. I’d scraped its hide and smoothed its bones and mopped its guts with cheap red paint, yet something about the dark and the lake and the closeness scared the heck out of me.
At least the pedal-propellers worked fine. Warren worked one and I worked the other. It took more than a few minutes for the two of us to coordinate our efforts. If he turned his pedal too hard or too fast we would swerve in my direction, and if I turned my pedal-propeller too hard we’d spin towards Warren—either way we’d wind up going in circles. Finally, we got the beast going in the proper direction.
“It’s working,” I yelled excitedly.
“Let’s take her out a little further,” Granddad Angus said.
BLAM!!!
It happened just as we were heading out into the deeper water.
Somebody was shooting at us with a shotgun that thought it was a gi-freaking-gantic cannon. Prehistoric moose hide gave way to a blast of buckshot, fired by some eager hunter crouching on the shoreline. I ducked and Dulsie screamed…or it might have been the other way around.
BLAM!!!
Another shotgun blast.
Things were happening fast, but not fast enough for my liking.
“Full speed ahead,” I called out, cranking on my pedal-propeller just as hard as I could manage. Warren matched me, most of the time, and the old dory monster took off slowly, wallowing through the water like a cement speedboat.
“Slow it down,” Granddad Angus said. “This rig wasn’t built for speed.”
His warning came too late.
Warren leaned into his pedal-propeller and the dory monster tipped sideways. I slid off my bicycle seat and fell against Warren’s shoulder. All at once the water of Muddy Lake slopped into the gut of the dory monster and began pulling us down.
“Bail the boat out,” Warren said, frantically scooping water with the cup of his palm.
“Never mind bailing the boat,” Granddad Angus shouted back. “Bail the water.”
I tried not to panic.
I tried to think calm thoughts.
The lake wasn’t that deep.
We weren’t that far from shore.
But all I could think about was a pack of Cub Scouts and bubbles coming up and for a long, slow, frozen moment in time I thought I could hear the roar of a skidoo and the crackle-snap of hungry breaking ice.
“We’re sinking!” Warren shouted.
The dory monster kept on tipping. I reached up and tried to find something to hang on to, but all I caught hold of was the skin of my purple glitter banana seat. The vinyl was slick with lake water and my grip wouldn’t hold and I tipped sideways and slid out through the side of the sea monster. I hit the lake, opened my mouth to yell, and swallowed a horking lungful of dirty lake water.
The last thing I heard was Dulsie screaming like a scalded banshee. I don’t know why she screamed. She was in the boat, the same as everyone else. I was the one who had fallen in and was most likely about to drown to death.
And then I was under.