The Hauntings of Hood Canal

Why, the Creature?

Night clasps the Canal in layers of darkness as wisps of mist flicker ghostly in starlight. In the depths, night-swimmers drift, dart, eat and are eaten. It is a grand feast of chomping and biting and flight; the sting of jellyfish, the rush of small shark. Octopus hover in drowned cars, or in discarded refrigerators that lie on the bottom like open coffins. Octopus dart forward to make a meal or become one.

The Creature (one dare not yet call it a monster) floats high above the carnage. If, as Annie attests, the creature is a Fury, it was spawned in the Mediterranean Sea these twenty-five hundred years past. At its spawning (poor crippled thing) it bore the mark, nay the Curse, of immortality. For these aching years it has moved beneath the watery surface of the planet. As centuries passed, so must have also passed the vibrancy of youth as life turned to dull aches.

But Annie, whose magic only works when it wants, is only partly right. This creature came into being at the dawn of western civilization. It is surely less than a myth, but also much more. Like most everyone else on the Canal, Annie knows as much about the rise of the western world as a cat knows about Croesus.

Because what humps out there cannot be a Fury. It is without pedigree, some remnant of bizarre mating left over when elder Gods and Goddesses abandoned this world to step with immortal feet across the doorsill of eternity. Perhaps in the Creature’s self are strains of fury, but there may also be sorrow, even charity. After all, it has seen a lot.

Through the span of weary and slow-moving years its ancient memory recalls the downward march of civilizations, for it has viewed the decline of Greece, Rome, Spain, France, the decline of Empires. It has seen legends revised for expediency. It has even seen mountains grow shorter.

At present it moves differently at different times. Beneath the moon it rushes toward the sites of drowned cars. At other times it cruises slowly and communes with itself. A creature of the sea, it has for centuries held an offshore view of land. In olden days it watched lands illuminated by moonlight and occasional watchfires.

These days, though, it has (momentarily at least) abandoned the sea and moved to inland waters. These days it views other lights; headlights, running lights, pink glows of neon signs, blue lights vaporing above barnyards and parking lots, red warning signs atop radio towers. Something in the Creature’s mind has surely changed, some lonely “something” must have persuaded it that loneliness may be only the habit of centuries. Poor crippled thing, drawing smooth and liquid lines across the water, poor crippled thing: is there something; or perhaps someone here you want, someone who, if only for a small space in the unremitting stretch of eternity, could be your companion, your friend?