Interlude, Part II: A Long Time Ago:
The Dark Water Horror
Schnottweiper, with Brumvack’s club in hand, emerged into the lower cavern that held Dark Water. Schnottblower, already feeling that the trip had been too much, tagged behind. He wanted to return to his rocky bed. He had had enough adventure. But Schnottweiper, he knew, wouldn’t be pleased by his retreat. He’d have to make his own way through the maze of dark crevices that made up the troll caves. Ordinarily, the darkness of the caverns was comforting, but tonight, with Brumvack surely about to wake at any moment, he didn’t want to be discovered skulking through the dark and rocky corridors. Darkness wasn’t so great, when one started thinking about who might be lurking within those shadows.
The trip down to the beach was a short one. As they progressed, the natural luminescence of the cave walls increased, the air became more humid and cool, the gentle slap of the waves of Dark Water against the shore more pronounced. Soon, they emerged onto the beach itself. Schnottblower, though he still wished he was in his bed, relaxed his shoulders. They were unlikely to be discovered, now that they weren’t in the main troll caves. Here, if they made noise, if they tripped and fell, say, and let out with a surprised grunt, they’d be unlikely to be heard. It seemed to Schnottblower that perhaps the most difficult part of the operation—getting the club itself—was behind them. All that remained was to slide the club down the fish’s throat and into its gullet, and they could call it a night.
Schnottweiper, too, felt some amount of satisfaction, now that he had Brumvack’s club in hand. It had been a long afternoon for Schnottweiper, with all his planning and conniving. He too looked forward to the sleep that would come when this operation was over, when he could look back with satisfaction on a job well done. A quick slip of a club down the mouth of the fish was all it would take to put the job behind him. Then, he would wait for the fireworks.
The fish was laid out on the beach, between the cutting board rock and the shore. Schnottblower found his eyes drawn to its morbid details: its eyes had glazed over until they were a sightless milky opalescence; its skin, though drying, gleamed with a slimy coating. Its mouth was halfway open, as if it had died gasping for air. The bone-headed dinosaur fish always gave Schnottblower the willies, especially when they were drug up on land and plopped heavily upon the rocky shore. Even dead, the fish looked hungry for revenge.
Schnottweiper, for his part, was busily pacing up and down the length of the fish. He gave it the once-over with a measuring eye. Stopping near the head of the fish, he looked at Schnottblower and said, “This oughta be easy enough.” He grabbed onto the fish’s lower jaw, and worked it on its hinges a couple of times. “Piece a cake,” he said. “Hold its mouth open for me, willya?”
Schnottblower, though, didn’t want to touch it. Lying on the beach, there, like a snail pulled bodily from its shell, the sight of the fish made him shudder. He especially didn’t want to touch its mouth. What if it wasn’t truly dead, but only mostly dead? Those teeth were sharp. They could take a troll’s fingers in one gasping snap. He had been through enough tonight, he thought, without losing any fingers. He looked askance at Schnottweiper. He smiled weakly, and shook his head.
This, of course, wasn’t the answer Schnottweiper was looking for. He raised his hands in frustration, made a small noise of contempt, and readied himself for a speech on the loyalty of brotherhood, on the honor of troll-kind, on the tough reputation of the Rabid Band, none of which contained any room for squeamishness. But, looking at Schnottblower before him, twirling his toe in dirt, he gave up. He just didn’t have the energy for it.
With a longsuffering sigh, Schnottweiper dropped his hands. He’d have to lead by example, he could see. Holding the club at the ready, he reached down and opened the mouth of the fish himself.
Even with its mouth held open, though, Schnottweiper found that he couldn’t guide the club past the fish’s wide bands of bony teeth. He tried three or four different positions, each time grasping the fish’s jaw with a firmer hand, each time discovering a position of slightly more leverage with the club. Each time, he opened the fish’s mouth ever wider; each time, he struggled more valiantly with the club. He wrestled and snorted and maneuvered, but made little headway. It was a frustrating enterprise: if he was in a good position to brace the fish’s mouth, he lost leverage with the club. A good stance with the club left him helpless to manipulate the fish’s lower jaw.
Perhaps, he thought, he’d have to take this one step at a time. Schnottweiper dropped the club at his feet, then took a couple of steps and stood near the fish’s gills. From there, he pulled open the fish’s jaw with both hands. Schnottblower could hear tendons pulling, whether of the fish or of his brother he couldn’t be sure. Each time Schnottweiper pulled on the fish’s jaw, its eyes seemed to bulge a little. For that matter, Schnottweiper’s did too.
Eventually, the mouth of the fish was open about as far as possible. “There,” Schnottweiper said, satisfied. In a rush of motion, he let go of the fish’s jaw, grabbed the club, and stuffed it into the fish’s oral cavity, but he wasn’t very far into the operation before the fish’s mouth began to close with a cadaverous slowness. By the time its teeth had closed firmly on the club, he had only made eight inches or so of progress.
Schnottweiper’s patience was beginning to wane. Or maybe his confidence was beginning to flag. This was no one-troll job, he could see. He looked pleadingly at Schnottblower. He raised his eyebrows in a silent question: “Now will you open its mouth, help me out here?”
Schnottblower’s answer was just as silent but just as definitive. He shrugged a bit, bent one knee slightly inward, and bit his thumbnail. He made a small grimace behind his thumb. He didn’t want to touch the fish’s lips.
Schnottweiper exploded. “What are you good for anyway? Jeez! It’s just a fish! It’s just a dead fish! If I would have known I was going to do this whole job by myself, I never would have invited you!”
Schnottblower ducked his head even further in apology, but he remained adamant: Fish’s lips were out. Yucky fish. Yucky lips. Cold lips. Rubbery lips. Well, maybe they were rubbery. He wasn’t going to find out. No.
“Honestly,” cried Schnottweiper (a word he had gotten from his dearly departed grandmother) “I don’t know why I put up with you! You’re a….you’re a…” But for the third time that night he reined in his anger. They were in too deep to quit now, and it was clear that he wasn’t going to be able to operate alone. He took a deep breath, and began again. “Okay,” he said to Schnottblower. “I’ll hold open its mouth, and you push the club in.”
Schnottblower wasn’t so sure that he wanted to do that, either. Those teeth were huge, and if he was manning the club, his fingers…his hands…his arms! might be fish bait. In his imagination, he saw the fish struggling to fight the insertion of the club, only to suddenly suck it inwards, sucking his extremities right in there with it. He looked from the fish to Schnottweiper, then back to the fish. He wanted for all the world to return to his bed. Again, though, the thought of Brumvack waking, missing his club, and stalking the halls in search of retribution returned to his mind. He’d have to stay here. And, if he had to stay here, he’d better help. Given the choice, working the club was more palatable than holding on to the fish’s rubbery lips. “Okay,” he said, nodding his head. He reached for the club.
Soon, Schnottblower was standing in front of the fish, holding the club at the ready. Schnottweiper had already planted his feet in position, and was grasping the fish’s lower jaw.
“Ready?” Schnottweiper asked.Schnottblower stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. He nodded.
Schnottweiper pulled open the fish’s mouth.
Schnottblower, careful to keep his fingers well clear, guided the club past the fish’s long rows of pointy teeth. So far, so good. He’d already made more progress than Schnottweiper alone had managed. As the rough wood passed along the tissues of the fish’s mouth, it made a wet, slippery sound that made him shiver. He squinted his eyes against the sound of it, and pushed the club further.
“Push!” urged Schnottweiper. “Push!”
Schnottblower pushed the club harder, gaining a couple more inches. It was now a foot or more into the fish’s mouth. But every inch, of course, brought his fingers that much closer to the fish’s menacing teeth. He gave the club another anemic push.
Schnottweiper growled in frustration. He let go of the fish’s lower jaw and stood erect, glaring at his brother. He reached toward the club.
Schnottblower gratefully released hold of the club, and withdrew a few feet as Schnottweiper wrestled with it. He watched as his older brother grasped the club with both hands and gave a series of heaves, putting his weight into each forward motion. Each thrust gained perhaps a couple inches. After each thrust, Schnottweiper would retreat a few inches and then thrust again. Every time Schnottweiper made any headway down the fish’s throat, it sounded to Schnottblower as if the fish were gagging on the club. He felt a little like gagging himself. He backed further away in an effort to keep the noises from vibrating so viscerally through him.
A few of the fish’s teeth gave way under the strain of Schnottweiper’s exertions. Every couple of thrusts, a new tooth buckled and fell to the stony beach. But forward progress, Schnottblower could tell, was nearing an end. With a lot of sweating and groaning and swearing, Schnottweiper had managed to force the club another ten or twelve inches into the great fish’s gullet, but it was becoming obvious that it would go no further.
Schnottweiper, with a scream of frustration, gave a final great shove. He put his back into it, and even put his prodigious belly into it. He yelled out an “Aaargh” that echoed down the length of the water and back.
The club responded to this effort. With a noise of internal structures shifting and breaking, the club thrust another six inches into the gullet of the fish.
It took a moment for Schnottweiper to process what had happened. He stood for a moment, staring at the club. Something in the throat of the fish had given way. Suddenly, there was more of the club inside the fish than outside. With a grunt of satisfaction, he grabbed the club and manhandled it further. Suddenly, he was making real progress. With one long push, he got the club another foot inside the fish’s mouth.
At this point, only about a quarter of the club’s length stuck out of the mouth of the fish. The fish, thought Schnottweiper, now looked like a troll choking on a mastodon bone. Sensing success, Schnottweiper proceeded with gusto. As he pushed, he shared a look of enthusiasm with Schnottblower.
And here we come to the image that was riveted to Schnottweiper’s imagination for years afterward: Schnottblower, his younger brother, was standing stock still. He wasn’t paying attention to the operation with the fish at all, but instead faced Dark Water. His fist was clenched, raised in a defensive posture. But though his fist might have been ready, the rest of him wasn’t. He was stuck in his tracks. His lower lip quivered slightly, moistened by a bit of drool that leaked from his weakly held mouth.
But Schnottweiper didn’t rest his gaze upon his brother for long. What captured his attention was the creature that loomed immediately in front of Schnottblower. The creature, whatever it was, was shedding water as it emerged from the underground lake. Its hindquarters were in fact still in the water. It was huge, a bigin-the-middle-and-small-at-both-ends sort of creature, though Schnottweiper couldn’t get a good look at its still-submerged tail. It was purple, mostly, though its skin was mottled with raised blue spots that looked like outgrowths of a virulent mold. Where the spots weren’t, the beast gave off a purplish light that glowed faintly from within. But its jaws were what Schnottweiper fixated upon. Its gaping jaws, with row after row of dirty crystalline teeth, each nearly as long as his own forearm.
The long muscular neck of the beast moved sinuously as the creature eyed Schnottblower. Schnottweiper sensed that it was tensing for a forward thrust, a pounce, a kill.
Schnottweiper, as he stood there watching his brother face down this beast, this Dark Water Horror, had a sort of conversion experience. He went from being frustrated and resentful of his younger brother to feeling an upwelling of fondness and care for him. Here he was, having brought his younger brother down to the beach in the middle of the night, the beach that everyone knew housed this Horror of the Dark Water, and now his brother was about to lose his life to that beast. He felt a rush of self-loathing rise up from his heart, a loathing all the more bitter as he remembered that he, Schnottweiper, had arranged that Schnottblower was to take the blame for the operation. This small and helpless troll before him, how could anyone think he would do such a terrible thing! His brother! His poor brother! He had to save his brother! With a superhuman and even supertrollian rush of energy, he pulled Brumvack’s club from the mouth of the fish. It came forth, covered with blood and a milky, translucent slime, with a long wet schlurp of a noise. He wielded the club in front of him as if it were an extension of his own body. The energy within him informed him of just the correct warrior posture and samurai style and sumo grace that would bring down this monster of the deep. He leapt forward, then leapt again, then leapt yet again until he was even with Schnottblower. With a quick shove, he pushed his brother aside. Schnottblower fell to the rocky beach, hard, catching himself on his left hip and his left elbow. He didn’t see his older brother hitting the head of the Dark Water Horror with his blunt instrument.
When the club found its target, the beast of the lake let loose with a guttural scream. A gout of bluish blood erupted from its forehead, then ran down its face. Its eel-like tongue slurped out of its mouth, tasting the blood that rushed down its chin and covered its long, long teeth.
Schnottweiper swung again. He swung blindly, wildly, but accurately. With a jarring crash that rattled his bones, he hit one of those long crystalline teeth, loosing it from the mouth of the attacking monster.
The Dark Water Horror was furious at this onslaught. Never before had any of its prey fought back. But the pain in its head, and particularly the pain of its now-missing tooth, brought a spear of clarity into its otherwise confused brain: it must retreat. Retreat, and find its vengeance on some better day. Clearly, two of these beasts were too much to handle. It would have to wait until there was only one. It backed off quickly, smoothly lowering its body into the depths of Dark Water. Before long, there was only an expanding ring of wavelets to show that it had ever been.
There was a span of silence as Schnottweiper considered what had just happened. The silence didn’t last long, however. Schnottblower was trying to get his attention.
“My elbow hurts,” he said. He held up his arm pathetically to show the bloodied joint.Schnottweiper didn’t want to hear about his elbow. “I just saved you from that monster! The Dark Water Horror!” Schnottweiper said. “You coulda been kilt!”
Schnottblower looked at him a bit dumbly. “But my elbow hurts,” he said. “It’s bleeding.” Evidently, the Dark Water Horror had been too much for him. Its visage had been pushed out of his mind, a vision too horrible to contemplate. All he could think about was his elbow.
“My butt hurts too.” He rubbed at his hip with a confused look on his face. “Why did you push me?”
Schnottweiper saw that his younger brother still had a gleam of spittle on his lower lip. Its image put him back in the mind of his conversion experience. His heart melted a little bit. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I pushed you.”
He grabbed onto Schnottblower’s hand. He said it again. “I’m sorry.” He stuck Brumvack’s club under his arm, and led Schnottblower as quietly as he could away from Dark Water. He led him upwards into the troll’s smoky caverns, past Brumvack’s room, and through the common area. He led him to his own bed, then tucked him in by dropping one of the larger rocks onto his stomach. “You’ll feel better in the morning,” he said. “It’ll be as if it never happened.”
“My elbow hurts,” said Schnottblower.
“Go to sleep,” answered Schnottweiper.
“What if I have bad dreams?” Schnottblower asked.
Schnottweiper sighed another of many sighs that would follow him through the course of his days. “If you have bad dreams,” he said, “wake me up. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
And then, embarrassed that some other troll might wake and hear him, he hummed a little lullaby until he heard the snort and gurgle of his brother’s fitful sleep.
Before Schnottweiper went to bed, he returned Brumvack’s club to the leader’s weapons rack. Brumvack’s dreams, fortunately, had resolved into a temporary peace; he snored soundly when Schnottweiper snuck into his cave. The operation of returning the club was as simple as procuring it should have been. It was still gooey and scaly with fish slime, but Schnottweiper wasn’t about to return to Dark Water to wash it off. Brumvack would have to make of it what he would.
In this way, Schnottweiper became Schnottblower’s protector. Whenever Schnottblower wasn’t up to the dangers that faced him, which was often, Schnottweiper was there to save him. When a mastodon was within a foot of goring him with one of its monstrous tusks, Schnottweiper was there to put that mastodon down with a brain-bashing swipe of his club. When Schnottblower was surrounded by trilobites at the edge of Lake Borack and thought he was going to die, Schnottweiper was there to take his hand and lead him into deeper, safer water. When Slimegobbler insisted that Schnottblower give up proprietorship of his favorite sitting rock, Schnottweiper took his brother’s case as his own, and faced down Slimegobbler in a brawl that left both trolls bruised and sore for a week. After that, though, no one in the Rabid Band challenged Schnottblower, knowing that Schnottweiper would have his back.
This, of course, is what guilt does to any of us: We begin to feel responsible for another’s well-being, often to their detriment. Schnottblower, after centuries of having Schnottweiper take on his personal challenges, couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. This, in turn, led Schnottweiper to be all the more careful to take on the forces in the world that might threaten his younger brother. His younger and dumber and weaker brother. His helpless, inept, and now overconfident brother, willing to lumber his way into any ridiculous situation because he knew that somehow it always worked out in the end.
Schnottweiper’s conversion experience didn’t last long, of course. Over the next months, his insight into the loving and supportive nature of brotherhood, of fondness for his younger brother, gave way to resentment. Schnottblower was an 800 pound ball and chain, bound firmly to Schnottweiper’s ankle. He was Schnottblower’s personal protector, bound to watch over him, destined to take the part of keeping him safe from the world and from himself.
Schnottweiper even came to the point where he forgot how it had all come about. Were you to ask him, “Did you ever nearly get your brother killed?” he would answer “Of course not. I save his bacon nearly every day.” But his role in Schnottblower’s life had become such a part of the fabric of his reality that he never questioned it. It was his destiny to keep Schnottblower safe from his own clumsiness and stupidity and distorted self-concept. Or, if not his destiny, it was his job.
And now, all these centuries later, now in this brave new world not of mastodons but of land trolls and huge metallic insects and untold other dangers, Schnottblower was again facing down a charging creature. A big yellow bug with a pizza painted on its side. Once again, Schnottblower stood locked in place with his fist extended feebly in front of him. And once again, Schnottweiper leapt forward to save him. He looked about for a suitable weapon, and, finding none, looked for a tree from which to harvest one. He found a tree, a ten foot tall tree with a square trunk and a single red octagonal leaf. “Odd trees, here,” he thought, but he didn’t have time to consider the nature of the trees. He broke off the tree at its roots, and hefted it in his hands.
“Yes,” he thought, “this will work.” He swung his new club around his head a couple of times, then roared into the street to face the onrushing insect. Moments before that big bug could reach his brother, Schnottweiper was there to once again save the day. He whirled the club upwards in a wind-up, then smashed it down onto beast, just above its shining yellow eyes, a killing blow. The blood of the bug sprayed upwards in a long arc, greenishwhite and hot. The monster howled its agony, then died.
Schnottweiper tried to yank his new club free. It had felt good having a weapon in his hands again. He wanted to keep it, and of course it was never a bad idea to strike a final blow, just to ensure that one’s prey was dead and not merely stunned. But his new club was firmly lodged in the forehead of the beast, not to be removed. Schnottweiper reluctantly let it go. He had the sense that they’d better leave before any of the bug’s hive-mates might appear.
“Let’s go,” he said to Schnottblower. His brother, as if waking from a bad dream, shook his head to clear it. He followed Schnottweiper. Soon, the two caught up with Droolmeister at the end of the block. Then, the three of them ran off together in a slow jog. This new world, they had learned, was dangerous.
But the news wasn’t all bad. Though the world was proving itself to be an unpredictable and treacherous place, the trolls had so far showed that they had the mastery necessary to conquer it. They loped on, hoping to reconnect with the rest of the Rabid Band.
Ferdy Chicken, through the course of the altercation, had been a little surprised to see the stop sign. His attention had been snared by the beast in the middle of the road, and suddenly out of the corner of his eye a stop sign swung in a tight arc toward him. He had been ignoring stop signs for an hour or two now; at this point the stop signs seemed to be fighting back.
In his long life, Ferdy had noted that sometimes he found problems, and sometimes problems found him. This seemed to be an example of the latter. One moment, he was rushing headlong toward his destiny, a destiny in the form of a Lake Maebiewahnapoopie Monster who evidently didn’t know much about the energetic potential of a pizza van. He fully intended to take out that monster, at the expense of the van if necessary. Desperate to prove his worth to an uncaring town, he had it in his mind to haul in a trophy. Dead or alive. Maybe that would be the deed that would get him initiated into the Crime-Fighting Hall of Large Accomplishments.
The next moment, though, there was a stop sign winging its way toward him. Before he had much time to puzzle that out, the windshield before him exploded into a milky vista of cracked glass. Moments later, it sagged and slumped onto the dashboard, revealing the fact that the stop sign was still buried up to the “O” in the hood of the van. A geyser of radiator fluid surged upwards around the gash it had made, then it too fell away, leaving nothing but an up-rushing cloud of steam. As Ferdy sat there in wonderment over this loss of the engine’s vital fluids, the motor chugged twice, and then once, and then died.
“No,” Ferdy Chicken said quietly, to himself and to anyone else who might be listening. “Please no.” The Ferdymobile was out of commission, and now this substitute Ferdymobile was going up in smoke as well.
And the monsters of the lake were loping away from him at high speed.
Ferdy Chicken crowed out a short prayer to the Chicken in Charge, then cranked on the starter of the van. It chugged sluggishly for a time, but it was obvious even to Ferdy, who had earned a B in auto shop and remembered absolutely nothing about cars, that it wasn’t going to start. This van wasn’t going anywhere. He would have to proceed on foot.