Darrk Creek
Prologue 1884
The boy ran through the forest. He ran to Tyee's longhouse, burst through the entryway, dropped to his knees in front of Tyee and began to tell his story...
He had been out to the river gathering candlefish and had followed a branch of the river far back into the woods, where it had turned into little more than a creek. It was good there, and the boy thought maybe he would come during his vision quest next moon. He continued to follow the creek back into the far corner of the forest, where he had never gone before. He decided to go down into the water for a drink but tripped and skinned his knee on a rock. It hurt, his knee was bleeding, and he continued down to the water to wash it off. The woods did not seem so friendly here. The breeze had turned cold and the trees seemed to reach out for him.
He was cleaning his knee over the water when he noticed a ripple up the creek. As he watched the ripple grew and spread, and that's when the monster came out of the water at him.
It looked at first like a huge beaver, but it swiped at the boy with a flipper. It also had claws, and a flat, scaly tail. Its eyes were old.
The boy screamed and scrambled out of the creek into the woods. He began to run.
September 1994
The smell of hot tar washed over the creek bed. The blast of the jackhammer and yells of the workmen scattered the animals that had ventured out to drink
Bowman county road crew had been working on the section by the bridge all day, crashing and scraping with their backhoes. It was the first county road repair of the fall, in an area usually forgotten by town planners, as it was on the border of Bowman and Prince County and the two had been discussing for years whose responsibility it was to fix the basketball size pot holes that were every few feet. Bowman had won (or lost, depending on which county you lived in) and had started early that morning, cleaning garbage out of the ditches.
One lone muskrat waded at the edge of the water. It pawed at the mud under the bridge, looking for something edible that might be in the weeds.
They were supposed to clean the debris from under the bridge that morning, but the muskrat didn't know this, it knew only that it was looking for food, and after rooting in a leftover chili can and cutting itself on the jagged edge, followed its nose to some discarded french fries that were rotting in the slime. As it nosed the fries out of the mud it sensed a change coming from the creek. It froze, nose in the air, waiting for the breeze to carry a familiar scent.
The thing moved quietly through the water. The creek hardly rippled with the movement of its flat, scaly tail. It knew that the muskrat was close; it could smell the blood seeping from the wound made by the chili can. It swam closer, and just as the muskrat recognized the scent and started to bolt; it lurched onto the bank and bit deep into the ruff of the muskrat's neck, dragging it squeaking into the water.
On the hill above, Tricia rounded the corner; the road sloped downward toward the bridge. She had run this way other times, although never this late in the evening. Fall was approaching; it had been for several weeks. The evenings began with a chill earlier now, certainly earlier than when they had the barbeques down by the creek, or went swimming until well after nine o'clock at night up at the lake. It was seven now, but it had been getting dark since five. They lived way out in the middle of the county where there were no streetlights, and now she could barely see the outline of the white stripe in the road. She didn't like being out here at this time of night, the shadows made her uneasy, but after that argument with Matt she needed to run to calm down. She made a mental note to start out earlier next time and picked up her pace.
