Andriano_Beast_Trump

<> Beast of Trumps 3

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"Wake up your father,” she said. I shook, as well as I could, his inert bulk, which began to move. “Thank God they’re back,” Mom said from the door. “Wait, I don’t see Mark.”
   Dad arose and staggered out the door, still half asleep. “What the hell happened?” He held the door as Mr. Morrison carried his daughter in. Clinging to her father even after he put her down gently on the couch, she had a bruise on her forehead that looked like an Easter egg.
   “We can’t let her fall asleep yet," her father told us. She’s had a concussion.” Rob sat next to her and held her hand. I thought it best not even to make a face, much less a remark.
   “Where’s Mark?” my father asked.
   “He’s in the hospital.”
   “Why can’t she go to sleep?” my mother asked Mrs. Morrison, who sat on Charlene’s other side, placing a maternal arm around her daughter.
   “Just a precaution,” she said.
   “I’ll be ready to shake and wake ya, Charlie,” said Robert with a grin.
   “What the hell happened to them?” Dad asked again.
   “What’s wrong with Mark?” I asked.
   “He’ll be okay, son,” said Mr. Morrison. “He’s lost quite a bit of blood, though. A gash on his arm, looked like something clawed him.” Charlene started to say something but he cut her off. “Don’t say it, Charlie.” He fixed himself a drink, whiskey straight up, and plopped on the sofa. “She’s still delirious.” After a gulp, he told his tale. “As we pulled over near the cove we drove into a cloud of smoke—looked like the grass hill going down to the lake had been on fire. Now it was just a lot of smoldering, already almost out. When we got to the cove Mark was just sittin’ there in a pool of his own blood on the dock near his tackle. It looked like he’d tried to open up his first-aid kit, but then I guess he went into shock. He was just staring into the water. Charlene was laying on the rocks, almost in the water.”
   Her mother admonished her suddenly with a wagging forefinger. “You know young lady you could’ve drowned.” Then a bit more gently: “I wish you’d be more careful on those rocks, Charlene.” Charlie rolled her eyes and turned to Rob—I thought for a moment she was passing out, but then I noticed she was squeezing his hand.
   “You woulda jumped a mile if you saw what I saw,” said Charlene to her mother.
   “She was knocked out,” her father continued, “but I roused her pretty quick. While her mother helped her to the car, I wrapped Mark’s wound and applied a tourniquet, got him to stand up, that wasn’t easy, let me tell ya, walked him to the car and then drove like hell toward Glens Falls. I was goin’ 80 on Route 4 just to attract attention, and sure enough a trooper stopped me, then we got an ambulance. I hope to hell Mark doesn’t lose his arm.”
   “So what was it, Charlene?” I asked.
   “Never mind,” said her father. “I don’t want her to think about it now. Rob, why don’t you and Charlene play some gin rummy? That should keep her awake for a couple more hours.”
    Rob nodded and, grinning like a fawning idiot, went off with his injured sweetheart to the kitchen table to play cards. Her mother said softly, “She was raving about a dragon. She reads too much of that fantasy junk.”

After nodding in agreement, Rick Morrison gulped down the rest of his drink.

We all got up early the next morning and drove in the Morrisons’ Plymouth wagon to Glens Falls. In the back seat Charlene sat between me and Robert, she was holding his hand.
“All right, Charlie,” said her father. “You've had a little sleep and a big breakfast, now let’s hear the whole story. The real story.”
“I told you. Mark was fishing on the old rotten dock and I left my pole on a stick stuck in between two of the boards on the dock ‘cause I get bored just sitting there with a pole in my hand, and I was doing my balancing act on the rocks near the water. That’s when Mark got a strike, there was a big splash in the water and his pole was bending and shaking really good. He goes ‘I got a big one here! Look at him jump! Another lunker bass! Eddie loses again!'

I just stood on my favorite rock and watched the big fish jump and Mark carefully work his reel and keep the rod up high like you taught him, Daddy, but the drag on the line kept whining and the fish was flopping and splashing like mad at first, but soon tired out. Mark got the better of it like he usually does, and the fish was now close to the dock, barely able to swim. Mark was getting his net ready—he never wants me to help him with it since the time I lost the pike—when I saw a dark green circle in the water, you know, a whirlpool, right near where the fish last jumped and suddenly there it was, its head came shooting out of the water and its neck was all slime green and it had Mark’s fish in its mouth! I swear it was a little dragon, with immature wings like bat-wings, only bigger. It obviously got jabbed with the hook ‘cause it was whipping like a snake being electrocuted and that’s how its tail swiped poor Mark’s arm. Then it was gone and Mark was laying on the dock, his pole in the water with its line all slack and floating—and no fish of course. As I started to run to help him I slipped on the rocks and fell and hit my head.”
   “How many times have I told you—?” her mother, sitting just in front of her in the middle seat of the wagon, had turned and almost started the old forefinger wag, but she still didn’t have it in her to scold her daughter in her present condition.
   “Did you get a good look at it?” I asked.
   “No, it was all kind of a blur, it happened so fast, but it was dark green and had webbed spikes all along its back.”
   “Charlene,” her mother scolded now, albeit gently. “That’s enough. That’s your concussion talking, sweetheart. Or all those silly books you’re always reading.”
   “How big was it?” Robert wanted to know.
   “Little—for a monster, I mean, like maybe eight or ten feet, like an alligator or crocodile. But it wasn’t. It had a long neck like a dinosaur. But dinosaurs are extinct. Dragons never go extinct. I think it was a baby dragon, maybe just learning to fly. It must’ve fallen from the sky.”

http://www.feebleminds-gifs.com/baby-dragon.jpg

“The only thing that fell from the sky yesterday was a meteorite,” I said. “I saw it.”
   “Maybe you really saw my dragon fall!”
   Dad, who was driving, directed his question to her father. “What came first, fallin’ on her head or seein’ this dragon?”
   Charlene answered from the back seat, “I saw it. Nobody believes me.”
   “I do,” said Robert, squeezing her hand.
   “We all do, sweetheart,” her mother dutifully lied. “We believe you saw something that you interpret as a dragon.”
   “What about the fire?” asked Robert. “Maybe the dragon started it.” He grinned at Charlene.
   “I didn’t see any fire,” she said.
   “Yeah, cause you were knocked unconscious.”
   When we got to the hospital, Mark was sitting up in bed eating scrambled eggs. He had some thirty stitches in his forearm, which was also in a sling. Whatever got him had torn through muscle, ligament, and even scraped his bone, but he was going to be okay. Saved by his flab. He asked his sister how she got the blue egg on her forehead.
   “I slipped on the rocks.”
   “You saw it, though, didn’t you, Charlie?”
   “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to tell everybody.”
   “Tell us what happened, Mark,” said his father.
   “Didn’t Charlie tell you?”
   “Charlie’s had a concussion.”
   “I had a lunker on my line. A big bass. Almost had him, too. But Champ took him from me.”

http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-07/monster-fig1.jpg

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