David Brookover Sci-fi-horror Author

Demon Key
By David Brookover
Selected Chapter

Brothers Morris and Munro Lapis sat quietly in the their fifteen foot johnboat a hundred yards south of Demon Key and watched their twitching Rapalas on the rain-rippled surface. A five-foot Florida gar's wavy silhouette passed between the boat and a stretch of sawgrass and swamp lilies in the shallows, but didn't strike their bass lures.

Both Lapis brothers were in their fifties, with Munro approaching sixty. They were Everglades fishing veterans from diapers to the present, and they kept a wary lookout for invading alligators that loved to mooch off their fish stringers. So far, there were only three bass on their stringer.

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Munro's pate was sun-spotted clean, while Morris sported a full head of tangled silver locks that reached his shoulder blades. Both were thin and wiry, and clutched a bottle of beer in one hand and a fiberglass rod in the other. Their rugged faces were wrinkled raisins, and their mouths had large gaps between tobacco-mottled teeth.

Morris cast his lure back out into the water. Rainwater leaked through his rain jacket and dampened the front of his blemished white tee shirt. He swore and slowly reeled in the lure. With the water levels high like this, the bass drifted further south in greater numbers than usual. Bites were far and few between. Morris glanced at his stone-faced brother who stared blankly into the sawgrass.

"What's eatin' you?" Morris demanded.
"Nothin'"
"Nothin' shit!"

"If you must know, I was jest wonderin' where all the gators was, that's all. We ain't seen one the whole fuckin' day," Munro replied, with a shrug.

"Yeah, you gotta point. I wonder where the fuck they're hidin'?"
Munro cocked his head toward Demon Key. "Mebbe it's got somethin' to do with that place."

Morris followed his gaze. "Ya mean the monster? Shit, Munro, you're closin' in on sixty, and you ain't never laid eyes on no monster out here."

Munro cast his lure into the swamp lilies and slowly reeled it back toward the boat. "Hey, don't crawl over my shit, hear? I was just wonderin', that's all," he drawled sullenly. "There ain't no law against that!"

Morris laid his empty beer bottle at his feet on its side, opened the mud-splattered blue cooler, and grabbed another brew. He popped the cap from the amber bottleneck with his remaining left molars and spit the cap into the water.

It appeared as if it was going to be a long fruitless day. They hadn't had a strike in an hour. He silently cursed the foul weather.

The creature slid through the slender breach in the notched limestone wall that divided the cavern lake from the swamp encircling the key. It immediately sensed food close-by and swam cautiously in that direction.

A twelve-foot gator resembling a rotting log floated lazily atop the water. Only its protruding eyes betrayed its presence.

The grotto creature immediately spotted the alligator at the surface and silently moved into an attack position so as not to alert its enemy. After swimming within striking range, the creature's tail propelled it upward, and its great jaws seized the gator's armored body and elevated it high into the air. Both dropped back into the water with a tremendous explosion of water.

The stunned alligator thrashed in the crushing grip; its tail frantically lashed out at the creature, but slapped only water. The cone-shaped teeth crushed the gator's armored skin, severing both the head and tail. The creature released the lifeless body, unfit for consumption. It had successfully defended its territory.

It continued quickly south beneath the lake's now placid surface, searching for that meal.

Munro leaped from his seat at the raucous struggle north of them in the mist and nearly swamped the johnboat. "What in the Sam Hill was that? Sounded like a damn plane crashed!" he hollered.

"Dunno," Morris replied, his voice anxious. "Now sit the hell down before you swamp the boat and drop us both into the drink!"

Reluctantly, Munro eased his taut frame onto the seat and rapidly reeled in the lure.

An alligator bellowed loudly as if in terrible agony.
"Jesus, what could be tormentin' a bull gator like that?" Munro shouted. "Let's get the hell outa here."

Morris glared at his chicken-shit older brother. "Have it your way."
Munro realized that Morris was as scared as he was, or he would've pitched a fit at quitting their favorite pastime.

The swamp suddenly fell silent. There wasn't a sound except the rain plinking into the water and the sawgrass rustling in the breeze.

Munro retrieved the muck-glazed anchor from the bottom, and then plucked another sweaty bottle of beer from the cooler. Morris spit on his arthritic hands and vigorously rubbed them together before gripping the pull cord of their antique Johnson 40-horse outboard engine. He was about to yank the cord for all he was worth when a giant shadow swam beneath their boat.

Munro's beer bottle crashed to the bottom and rolled on its side, seeping fizzing amber fluid.

"What the hell . . ."

Morris swallowed hard. "Kinda looked like a gator."

"Gator my ass! That tail was more like a Conger eel's."

"And the fucker was near fifty feet long!" Morris exclaimed breathlessly.

The johnboat spun gently in a circle from the creature's powerful wake.

Munro leaned over the edge. "You see it?"

Morris peered over the opposite side. "Nah. Musta kept goin'"

"Thank the Lord!"

Morris wasted little time re-gripping the pull cord. He gave a fierce yank, but the engine only sputtered and coughed oily fumes.

"C'mon, baby" Morris whispered. He pulled again. More choking fumes. More coughs.

"Kick the son-of-a-bitch!" Munro shouted.

Morris shook his head in exasperation. "You think kickin' is the cure for everythin'. That's why you ain't got a wife no more."
"No need to bring up Nelly. She was a no-good louse."
"And you're the no-good drunk who beat her."

Munro knotted his fingers into fists. "Jest shut the fuck up, Morris! You don't know shit. Nelly was a frigid bitch who deserved everythin' she got."

"Except you." He inhaled deeply and tried to put his aching finger joints out of his mind. "C'mon sweet baby."

The engine coughed, vibrated, and finally roared to life."
"Let's put some distance between us and that giant . . . whatever the fuck it was," Morris yelled, over the engine's smoking misfires.

Munro grunted, still piqued from his brother's unwarranted comments. They cut him to the quick, most likely because they were true. He grabbed the sticky beer bottle from the bottom and drained the few remaining swigs as the johnboat lurched forward.

It heard the dull growl and made a swift U-turn, hugging the reedy depths of the next island's southern boundary. The noisy dark shape moved sluggishly above, and occasionally there were strange faint noises like shrieking prey. Edible prey. Familiar prey.

The creature lingered until the chugging object moved directly overhead, before it erupted from the bottom and thrust its open jaws upward at a frightening speed. The grotto creature's inertia launched its head and half of its bluish-gray body out of the water. Its jaws closed forcefully on the johnboat and crushed it into mangled metal in seconds.

Morris's and Munro's arms and legs flailed impotently in the air as they plummeted toward the water. Their eyes were riveted on the enormous monster, as it plunged downward beside them and proceeded to chew their johnboat into aluminum splinters in its elongated, alligator-like mouth.

Morris prayed for salvation, while his brother cursed the monster for wrecking their boat and destroying their tackle. Morris knew their only chance of escaping death was for the creature to regard them as trivial morsels and resume its journey.

Munro screamed at the creature and angrily smacked the water. The monster released the remnants of the johnboat and surged toward the puny surface creature. It sensed the prey's fear, which intoxicated it – amplifying its appetite and honing its predatory instincts like blood exciting a shark.

It seized Munro's legs and torso below the surface and dragged his vulnerable form to the bottom. The creature's powerful mouth repeatedly opened and closed on its victim, and used the four rows of teeth on the roof of its mouth to force the bloody meat further down its throat. Its flexible jaw joints finally parted, and its throat expanded. The creature swallowed Morris Lapis whole, like a local python. The outline of Munro's rigid body obtruded from the seal-like skin at the creature's throat before finally disappearing into its stomach.

Morris swam for all his scrawny ass was worth toward Demon Key, while the monster was busily munching his brother. The shoreline suddenly appeared in the mist like a welcome mirage in the heat-choked desert. If he could only reach it before the beast resurfaced, he would survive the day. Mind-boggling terror spurred his arms and legs to greater effort. He resisted the urge to look back – to see if death was nipping at his heals. Instead, his eyes never left the shore.

His fingers knifed through an armada of lily pads, and then collided with the muddy shore. As Morris scrambled past the cemetery markers on his way up the hillock toward the mausoleum, his feet slipped on the slick grassy surface as if it were green ice.

He was two grave rows from the top and was thinking about relaxing, when he suddenly noticed a vast black stain on the hillock. His feet clambered like spinning tires, but failed to achieve traction.

The fifty-three foot, eighteen-ton creature fell to earth, crushing Morris to a memory and driving the markers down deeper into the graves. After swallowing its crushed snack, it utilized its four wide, flat paddle appendages to push its ponderous frame down the slippery slope and into the mist-shrouded waters.

Its appetite temporarily sated, the creature swam swiftly south toward the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico in search of its new food provider.