THE ZOO

  THE ZOO

  John T. Van Dijk

  John T. van Dijk

  THE ZOO

  PROLOGUE ONE

  The year is still too infantile to even be counted. The setting is a quiet, desolate desert. Suddenly, breaking the absolute silence, comes the determined mechanized hum of an aircraft ... the planet’s blazing sun reflecting harshly off it’s black, metallic exterior as the massive craft finally breaks through the partial covering of clouds sprawled low along the horizon.

  The mute drone of the ship steadily reverberates off the miles of torrid rocks and boulders that lie beneath it. At last, after some hesitation, the craft, denying it’s bulk, darts quickly off in a northerly direction.

  Here, the clime is found to be not quite as thermal. The immense airship slowly glides over lush forests, gentle valleys. and sparkling waters. It is almost as if it were searching for something.

  Decisively, it makes a rapid vertical drop, coming to rest on the solid green turf of a small, peaceful glen. On the ground for barely moments, it departs as quickly as it had come. Seemingly effortlessly, the hulking craft is gone, having ascended straight into the endless heavens.

  It has successfully completed it’s intended purpose.

  It has left something behind.

  PROLOGUE TWO

  Long ago, Gluskabe lived with his grandmother, Woodchuck, near the big water.

  Gluskabe is the one who defeated the monster which tried to keep all the water in the world for himself. He is the one who made the big animals grow small so they would be less dangerous to human beings.

  When Gluskabe had done many things to make the world a better place for his children and his children’s children, he decided it was time to rest. He went down to the big water, climbed into his magic canoe made of stone, and sailed away to a far island.

  Some say that island is in a great lake the people call Petonbowk.

  Others say he went far to the east, beyond the coast of Maine.

  Chapter 1

  Boston Mercilessly slamming the heavy oak door behind her, Samantha Coley automatically took a moment to rattle the brass knob, insuring that it was safely locked (damn door had never latched properly, anyway). Hurriedly skipping down the worn brick steps, she climbed into her Camry without so much as a backwards glance.

  Slipping the car into drive, she cautiously eased her way out into the fast paced weekday Boston traffic.

  "You will not cry!" she fiercely admonished herself, gripping the wheel tightly.

  What was that stupid T-shirt saying? "This is the first day of the rest of your life."

  Finally, safely over the Mystic River Bridge, merging into a thinner line of outbound travelers, Sam allowed herself the questionable luxury of lighting up a Marlboro. Opening the sun roof just a crack (it was still chilly for mid-May)

  she watched as her first, satisfying exhale climbed up into the sky beyond.

  Grimly, Sam thought, "Maybe I should give these up along with Jeff. Sort of like getting all my traumas over with at once." Then she wryly chuckled out loud, honestly admitting to herself that she liked her smokes far too much ....

  certainly more than she liked her ex-husband at the moment. "Bastard." she thought.

  Comfortably settling into a steady 70 mph on I-95 North, Sam flipped on the car radio. "Japanese were asking Saturday why someone would choose Children’s Day, a national holiday of family outings, to try to spread poison gas in one of Japan’s most crowded train stations..." droned the reporter in a well modulated voice. "One of the bags left burning Friday contained sodium cyanide, the other diluted sulfuric acid. Had the vapors combined correctly, they could have formed enough hydrogen cyanide to kill at least 10,000 people in seconds... ".

  Shaking her head, Sam abruptly changed the station, eventually finding a soothing Mozart aria. With nothing to look at but miles of endless trees, Sam unwillingly found her thoughts retracing the past year’s events.

  It had actually started out to be a very good year .... in fact, one of the best.

  Satisfied and secure with her career in the special communications field at MIT

  for the SETI program plus happily married (or so Sam had thought ...) to, as all of her friends constantly reminded her ... "A great guy", life felt like it could not have been much better. But to Sam, the ultimate icing had been put upon her cake that year. After thirteen years of marriage, she’d found herself pregnant. At 36 years of age, it was, without a doubt, a surprise. But not an unpleasant one. True, Jeff was at first somewhat overwhelmed at the prospect of such a huge upheaval in their, by then, well-planned-everything-in-it’s-place lives. But as time went on, Sam believed that he rather began to relish the foreign idea of fatherhood. At least to Sam, he had seemed to begin to act so.

  Or, in retrospect, had she just so desperately wanted Jeff to be accepting of the new life that, in reality, she had projected his accidence?

  "Not that it matters now." Sam thought bitterly, flicking her cigarette out the open roof. Nothing really seemed to matter anymore. At least not since last January, a good four months ago. During that stretch of time, Sam had remained carefully devoid of all feelings and emotions. In Sam’s neat analytical mind, the reason for this self-imposed emptiness was very simple. For she knew without uncertainty that if she were to allow any of her pent up sensibilities to seep through to the surface, she would surely become a raving lunatic.

  Bass Harbor, Maine Five grueling hours later, Sam pulled her vehicle into the ferry terminal’s gravel parking lot in the picture postcard fishing village of Bass Harbor, Maine.

  Slowly, unfolding her small frame, she stepped out into a fine, gray mist that smelled pungently of the Atlantic.

  "Take a whiff of that, kid." She said to herself, breathing in deeply.

  Immediately, Sam began to cough. "Got to give those damn smokes up ...".

  Silently, she stoically promised herself a fresh start once on the Island.

  Both mentally and physically.

  She checked her watch, realizing that she had made good time on the drive up.

  The ferry for Swans Island wasn’t due for another half hour. Coffee, she thought.

  Glancing hopefully about, she spotted a weathered sign that read "Bub’s Bait & Tackle" hanging lopsidedly over a door. Gradually working all the tight kinks out of her body from the tiring journey as she walked, Sam headed for the door.

  Inside, there really was the proverbial pot-bellied stove, warmly glowing against the chill in the early spring air. The small store, it’s ambiance caught somewhere between a Seven-Eleven and a 1950 Woolworth’s, was empty with the exception of a matronly looking woman perched behind a battered counter reading the latest issue of The Inquirer.

  Unhurriedly pushing her thick reading glasses up on top of her head, she finally addressed Sam.

  "Help ya?"

  "I’d like a cup of coffee," replied Sam, "to go, please."

  "Only kind we’ve got." Muttered the woman, heaving herself off the stool.

  Shrewdly eyeing Sam’s Barry Bricken tweed jacket as she handed over the steaming Styrofoam cup, she decided to become gabby after all.

  "A little early for summer folk, ain’t it?"

  Gratefully, Sam took the offered cup, putting her change down on the worn counter.

  "Actually," she tried smiling at the sullen woman. "I guess I’m not really "summer folk". I own a house out on the Island that I intend to live in all year round."

  "Ever been out there in January?" Sniffed the gloomy woman.

  Wisely deciding to ignore that barbed lure, Sam strolled about the tiny market, slowly savoring the hot, rich coffee. Unexpectedly, she felt the first genuine surge of emotion in months go through her. God! It felt good to be back!

  Is it really
possible that it’s been fifteen years since I’ve been home? Sam wondered. She and Jeff, both thoroughly immersed in their respective careers, had never really even taken a proper vacation in all of the years that they had been married. But, even if they had somehow been able to find the time for one, Jeff had no desire to "Rough it". A phrase he thought synonymous with Sam’s home state of Maine.

  Sam’s parents, though they had certainly never warmed to Jeff the way that she had hoped they eventually would, had been perfectly content to work their annual visits around their daughter’s hectic schedule. Each June, when the dogwood on the Commons was in it’s full glory, her parents would leave the Island for Boston to stay with them in their spacious apartment on Charles Street. Sam remembered how much they enjoyed coming to "The City", as her dad insisted on calling Boston, much to Jeff’s chagrin. Although looking back now, Sam wondered if her father had used that particular phrase simply because it did seem to cause Jeff such irritation?

  Her father died five years ago. And, as so often happens when a couple spends a companionable lifetime together, her mom lived barely a year beyond that. Sam, being an only child, was heartsick and forlorn at losing the only family that she had. It was shortly after that, at Jeff’s continuous urging, that Sam finally sold her family home on Swans Island, painfully facing the fact that she and her husband would never use it as a restful, quiet retreat.

  She had turned the property, furniture and all, over to an enterprising young couple from Hackensack, New Jersey who were eager and thrilled to have their own little piece of Maine. They had extravagant plans to turn the lovely old Queen Anne style home into a prosperous Bed & Breakfast.

  Unfortunately, the logistics of their dream were totally impractical. This was something that the inexperienced man and woman fully realized some two years later when, after only nineteen paying guests (they really couldn’t count family and friends) they were both not only bored but broke as well.

  When they had sheepishly contacted Sam, she had, without first consulting Jeff, happily made the arrangements to take back the mortgage on her parent’s old property. The thoroughly relieved couple literally jumped the first ferry back to the mainland and Sam made the necessary arrangements to have the house closed up for the interim.

  Now, the big, old house situated on a couple of rocky, rambling acres with assorted outbuildings in sundry stages of disrepair was to become her final sanctuary.

  Peering out one of the store’s dirty window, Sam could just make out the incoming ferry off in the distance.

  "See?" she thought caustically, "You really can go home again."

  Chapter 2

  Swans Island, Maine It was the purest light Sam had ever seen. Much brighter than white, yet inexplicably, it didn’t seem to hurt her eyes to look into it. Gradually, as her consciousness returned, she became aware that she was unable to move any part of her body with the exception of her head. Lifting it slightly, Sam was able to see down the length of her torso and locate the problem. She was lying on some sort of a hard, metal table. Her body was completely encased from her shoulders to her toes in what seemed to be a transparent, moldable covering of some kind.

  It certainly looked pliable enough, yet when she tried to move her legs, Sam was surprised to find it as unyielding as steel.

  Don’t panic, she soothed herself, taking a deep breath. It’s just a bad dream.

  It was than that she realized she was entirely naked under the translucent material. NOW you can panic, she told herself in alarm. Wildly, she looked about her surroundings and it was only than that Sam saw that she was not alone.

  For standing off at a distance in this room that was seemingly without beginning or end, were ..... WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY, ANYWAY? Shapes, Sam decided. Yes, a few yards from where she lay stood a group of ....... shapes. Sam gaped at them in disbelief. They were absolutely towering! Even allowing for the fact that she was prone, they were still exceedingly tall in height. The shapes were garbed in what seemed to be long, voluminous gowns of a flowing, gauze like textile. Sam stared, her eyes wide open now.

  It wasn’t really their immense stature or even the way in which they were attired that made Sam start to shake uncontrollably. It was the simple, terrifying reality that, although they plainly appeared to have heads, they had no discernible facial features.

  Sam opened his mouth to scream but it was cut short by a sudden, intense pressure on her left breast. Gazing downward, she grimaced in pain as a sinister looking coiled instrument of some type wound it’s way heavily to the right side of her body. Pausing over the area of her heart for a brief moment, the oppressive, twisting apparatus started to slide lower across her swelling stomach. This is a dream ....... I’m going to wake up now! thought Sam hysterically.

  Thoroughly terrified, trembling violently, she sensed the encroaching device between her legs before she actually felt it. As the ominous implement began to corkscrew it’s way up into her body, Sam finally started to scream. Her entire being was giving way to an agony never before imagined, let alone experienced.

  Just before permanently sinking down into the murky, blessed nothingness of unconsciousness, Sam moaned desperately, "My baby ......... ."

  Sobbing uncontrollably, Sam bolted upright in bed, snapping herself out of the dream. Clammy and shaking, she sat amidst the twisted sheets tightly hugging her knees to her chest, waiting for her breathing to slow and for reality to set in.

  The problem being, she thought as she lit a cigarette with a somewhat shaky hand, that her reality was the nightmare.

  Only when the murky night sky began to streak with a vague silver morning light, did Sam, burrowing in under the thick, downy comforter, let sleep overtake her again.

  Early the next morning, her head fuzzy from the previous day’s long drive and lack of sleep, Sam was just lacing up her sneakers when there was a raucous pounding downstairs at the kitchen door. Her nerves already frayed, the sudden noise made her jump. Frowning, she quickly made her way from the master bedroom down the narrow back stairs. Cautiously peeking through the yellowed lace curtains, she was confronted with a widely grinning face. Fumbling with haste, Sam eagerly unlocked the back door to instantly find herself engulfed in a warm and vigorous embrace.

  "Well, I’ll be damned!" Sputtered the woman. "I didn’t believe the rumor when I first heard it. Had to come look for myself!"

  Sam was finally able to push herself back in order to look into the kind, solid features of someone she’s known since she was four years old.

  "Martha" she cried, "you look wonderful!"

  "Bullshit," laughed her friend, giving Sam another quick hug. "I look old, tired and fat. But Honey, you try having four kids in five years!"

  Inwardly flinching at the mere mention of children, Sam turned away, getting busy with the coffee things. Martha settled herself comfortably into a scruffy press-backed chair at the round, oak kitchen table.

  "My God," she breathed, gazing around the time worn room, "nothing’s changed in here since we were eighteen years old! We sure were hell raisers, weren’t we, Sam?"

  "Dad always did swear that the two of us together were the absolute scourge of the Island." Remembered Sam, placing a steaming Ironstone mug down in front of Martha.

  "I’ll never forget that fall when you left to go to college. I was losing my best friend! Back then, I was pretty sure that my life was over." Reminisced Martha. "But than Kevin and I got married and started having babies. All of a sudden, I had all the life I could handle!"

  By the pride in her voice, it was clear to Sam that Martha considered her children the greatest accomplishments of her life. Would I have felt that way?

  She wondered longingly.

  Martha was still talking. "Can’t wait for you to meet my kids, Sam. They’re worse than you and I could ever have dreamed of being! Kev’s anxious to see you, too. The three of us haven’t been together since high school, for God’s sake."

  She paused to take a sip of her coffee.


  "Tell me about Wanda." Said Sam, referring to Martha’s grandmother. "Is she well?"

  "Nana’s pushing ninety and proud of it. She’s just as mean as she ever was. "Martha grinned. "She’s got the small apartment in the back of the house. My cousin, William, is staying with her for a few months. Do you remember him?"

  Sam could vaguely recall a younger boy who used to tag along after them usually uninvited. As she was trying to remember him, Martha said, "You know Sam, despite all our letters and phone calls over the years, I still feel like we’ve lost touch with one another."

  Martha leaned forward across the table intensely searching Sam’s haunted looking eyes.

  "Really, Sammy, how are you? I haven’t heard from you for almost three months now." Martha paused for a second and than asked politely, "How’s Jeff?"

  "Our divorce was final last week." Sam replied in a monotone.

  Silent for a long moment, Martha finally spoke. "Well, Honey, you know what they always say."

  At Sam’s puzzled expression Martha continued, "There’s always two sides to a divorce ....... yours and the asshole’s!"

  Sam’s giggle burst out before she could stop it. "You never did like him." She accused her friend.

  Martha carelessly shrugged her shoulders. "Wasn’t much to like," she observed dryly. "Pass the sugar." she said, dismissing the thought of Jeff for them both.

  Chapter 3

  So much passage of time and distance had enabled Sam to forget just how enormous her childhood home was. She was fully confronted by that realization later that morning after Martha had finally gone home to her, by then, undoubtedly starving husband and children.

  Feeling that it was as good a place as any, Sam started in the kitchen. Taking the grime covered dishes and platters from the open pine cupboards for a good scrubbing, then wiping the shelves down while the plates air-dried. No shiny, stainless steel dishwasher in this antiquated kitchen! Locating the broom and sponges in the pantry, she lathered and rinsed the old red linoleum floor.