The Boy Who Didn't Cry Wolf

There was a boy who lived on a farm.  The farm had a pond behind the house.  The pond was a great fishing pond for years.  The boy’s father kept it well stocked.  His attitude was that when he went fishing he wanted to catch something by God.  The serenity of fishing was all well and good but there was no serenity in being shutout when fishing in your own pond.  But lately the big ones weren’t biting despite the extra attention the farmer paid to keeping the pond full of big ones.

Although the fellas at the hatchery knew this particular farmer was adamant about keeping his pond stocked, they all thought he went overboard.  He was constantly ordering more fish.  He claimed they weren’t biting despite the fact that he had purchased so many fish so frequently over the years that he should have been able to cross the pond on the backs of shoulder-to-shoulder fish.  The hatchery workers asked him if he noticed a lot of dead fish floating on the surface or washing ashore.  No the farmer had answered.  The county extension agent ran tests on the water to determine if there was something in the pond that was killing the fish.  That wasn’t the answer either.  The only odd thing about this particular pond was that it was unusually deep for a small farm pond.  The cause of the disappearing fish eluded the farmer and the local experts for months.  It was left to a child to uncover the truth.

The farmer’s son was a good boy – respectful, kind, and loving.  He worked hard on his father’s farm.  He didn’t talk back and he didn’t lie.  He was also an inquisitive little boy.  He was imbued with a powerful desire to get to the bottom of things.  “Why,” was his favorite word.  “Because,” didn’t satisfy this cat’s curiosity.  “That’s the way things have always been done,” didn’t appease his unquenchable thirst for answers.  In other words, he didn’t give up on getting to the bottom of the mystery of the disappearing fish.  This insatiable hunger for answers led to his discovery of the terrifying truth behind the mystery of the disappearing fish.  Curiosity killed the cat and nearly killed the farmer’s son as well.

When library research, daylight observation, chemistry experiments, and plain old sitting and thinking crapped out, the boy determined that a stakeout was in order.  The family camcorder was dusted off and mounted on the tripod that was practically growing into the drywall of the hall closet.  Camcorders are one of those things you can’t seem to live without until you own one for more than a week or two.  Then they become a permanent citizen of the purgatory closet waiting for salvation or damnation.  But from time to time they prove their worth and renew your faith in modern technology and electronic gadgetry. 

The boy’s bedroom window faced the pond.  So every night before turning out the lights he put a blank tape into the camcorder, hit record, and went to sleep mulling over a million possibilities.  The stakeout was unfruitful for weeks.  The tapes only recorded four hours of video so the compiled evidence was incomplete.  Perhaps the teleportation of fish to Planet Pisces occurred in the wee hours of the morning.  A fresh approach was needed.  Plan B was quickly formulated.  The requirements for Plan B consisted of an alarm clock and the determination of a twelve-year-old boy to arise, hit record, and go back to sleep.  Plan B worked.  It worked quickly.  And it nearly got the boy killed.

*

“Time for bed son,” called the farmer.

“Okay Dad,” the dutiful son replied.

The boy readied himself for bed, turned out the lights, and waited patiently for the light creeping under his bedroom door to disappear.  Then he slipped out of bed like a thief in the night and sat down in his desk chair by the window that looked down on the pond.  He was both thrilled and terrified at what he was going to witness,  or at least what he hoped he was going to witness.  The videotape had revealed the likely cause of the disappearing fish.  Either that, or someone had perpetrated an elaborate hoax on an inquisitive little boy for no conceivable reason.  Either way, this cat was reaping some satisfaction tonight.

  On the third night of Plan B’s implementation the boy had recorded the likely culprit.  If this weren’t the culprit then he would hate to meet the real one.  The boy had to watch the tape several times before he could wrap his young mind around what he saw.  What he saw was like nothing he’d ever seen.  Heck, it was like nothing anyone had ever seen.  It was some kind of genetic mutant or extraterrestrial being.  Perhaps it was a long undiscovered species.  Whatever it was the boy had no desire to meet this thing face to face but his inquisitive nature overruled any of his desires or intentions.  This inquisitive nature was a brutal dictator.  It quashed any resistance.  It imprisoned any naysayers.  It murdered its opponents.  So the boy staged the stakeout to end all stakeouts.

The best time to view the creature was between three and three-thirty a.m. but the boy didn’t want to take any chances.  His stakeout commenced at eleven p.m. and wouldn’t end until the special guest star’s appearance or dawn’s early light.  At eleven p.m. all systems were go.  The boy had a six-pack of Mountain Dews (he couldn’t stomach the idea of drinking coffee to stay awake), a telescope, and a fluttering feeling in his stomach that consisted of fear and excitement and a lot of dread.

At three a.m. the shimmering of the pond alerted the dozing boy to the entrance of tonight’s special guest star.  At first the movement of the pond’s surface was very subtle but it quickly grew tumultuous.  The source of the bubbling, rippling water slowly emerged from the formerly serene pond.  It was straight out of a B-movie from the ‘50’s.  It was part Creature from the Black Lagoon and part “genetic experiment combined with nuclear testing gone horribly wrong”.  It had gills but it walked on two legs like a human.  It had huge fish eyes but also had arms and legs.  It had webbed hands and feet and a fin running up its back (which the boy noticed when it rose to its feet as it reached shore).  But it also had a huge mouth and what looked like ears on the side of its head.  Whatever it was it was not the sort of thing you’d want to meet in a dark alley.

Inquisitive nature or not the boy was still just a boy.  Upon sighting the abomination emerging from the pond he let out a scream.  His father burst into the room.

“What?  What is it?” the father cried.

“It’s a monster Dad, a monster in the backyard!”

The father hurried to the window, elbowed his fear stricken son aside, and looked out.  He slowly turned around and stared at the boy. 

“Nothing’s there.”

The incredulous boy leapt from his chair and ran back to the window.  Nothing was there.  The security light mounted on the telephone pole next to the barn bathed the backyard and a scallop of the pond closest to the house in a greenish light.  The light was bright enough that you could have seen a squirrel cavorting across the lawn.  A monster walking upright would have been impossible to miss.

“I…I don’t know where it went,” the boy stammered.

“What are you doing up this late anyway?” asked the father.

“I taped the monster coming out of the pond last night and I wanted to make sure I saw what I thought I saw and I wanted to keep an eye on the creature so it wouldn’t come up to the house and…”

“Go to bed son.”

The seriousness of the voice was enough to cut the boy off in mid-sentence and prevent him from even attempting to explain who, what, when, where, why, or how.  He knew it was pointless.

“Sorry, Dad.  But if you’ll let me show you the tape…”

“Bed.  Now.”

“Yes sir.”

So the boy climbed into bed and his father turned off the lights and shut the bedroom door.  The boy waited a few seconds and then crawled out of bed to continue his surveillance.  He didn’t have long to wait.  The thing must have remained in the shallow water and waited for the lights to go out.  A few minutes after resuming his stakeout the boy saw the creature rise from the pond like some bizarre missing link emerging from the primordial ooze.  Again he screamed involuntarily.  Again his father came rushing in.  Again the creature was nowhere to be found.  The father slowly turned to his frightened son and asked him what he was up to.  Was this some sort of trick he was playing?  If so it wasn’t funny.  It was the middle of the night and he had to get up early the next day.  There was work to be done and juvenile hijinks were not particularly funny at this particular time. 

Resistance was futile.  The boy climbed back into bed.  The father turned out the lights.  And this time he closed the curtains before closing the bedroom door.  The boy watched the lights under the door go out.  He thought about getting up and resuming his post at the window but thought better of it.  Maybe he was imagining things.  Maybe he was cracking up.  Maybe the creature was only visible to him.  Whatever.  The thing had left them alone this long.  He would just have to come up with another plan to catch the beast in the act.  But human nature is a funny thing.  As much he would have loved to go to sleep his inquisitive nature wouldn’t allow it.  He fought it mightily.  He even started to doze off briefly before awaking with a jolt.  He had to get to the bottom of things.  He had to get a close look at the beast.  He had to monitor it to make sure it didn’t advance on the farmhouse.  He had to figure out what it was and what its intentions were.  He fought the urge as long as he could but the compulsion overcame him.  He slowly pushed back the covers and lightly set his feet upon the floor.  If his father heard him getting up there would be hell to pay.  He slowly tiptoed across the floor towards the window.  The thing had to be out there.  It wouldn’t give up so easily.  But why would it leave the pond to begin with?  The farmer had been providing room service to it for months.  Was it out of food?  If so, what would it feed on next?

As these thoughts whirled around his brain like a cyclone the boy slowly advanced toward the drawn curtains covering the window that looked out upon the backyard and the pond.  He mulled his options.  He could go back to bed and forget this nonsense.  In all likelihood it was nonsense.  He was probably half asleep or fully asleep and dreaming when he saw the thing.  The image on the tape could probably be explained with further analysis.  Just go back to bed he thought.  This is stupid.  But curiosity got the better of him and he slowly advanced toward the closed curtains.  As he reached for the curtains he had a fleeting image of the thing’s hellish face lurking on the other side of the windowpane.  The face of a monster a mere one-eighth of an inch from his.  He quickly purged this thought from his still rational mind.  He reached for the curtains and pulled them back slowly.  A scream died in his throat as he viewed the face of a thousand nightmares.  The creature’s face was pressed against the windowpane peering in at the fear-paralyzed boy.  It’s huge fish eyes scanned the entire bedroom as well as the boy’s frozen face.  The thing thrust its web fingered hand through the glass and reached for the boy.  Before the boy could inhale enough oxygen to produce a scream the bedroom door burst open and a deafening blast ripped through the quiet room.  A flash of light and the sound of thunder.  Next came the sound of a blunt object hitting something soft and liquidy.  A primeval scream, a squirt of green goo that was probably blood, and the hasty retreat of the monster.  While the boy sat stone like with his mouth agape his father rushed across the room while reloading his rifle.  As quick as a wink the father was at the window leveling his gun and drawing a bead on the thing as it limped across the backyard seeking the safety of the pond.  The farmer coolly aimed and slowly squeezed the trigger.  The room filled with the deafening sound of the gun.  The monster went down and stayed down.  As the echo of the blast died out, the boy slowly regained his voice. 

“Why?  Why did you come back?” he barely squeaked out.

“Well son, I’ll tell ya.  As I was thinkin’ of ways to punish you the thought occurred to me.  Why would my good honest son lie about something so bizarre?  If he was going to lie he would pick a better time and a better reason to do so.  And also I didn’t believe you would lie.  You’re a good boy and I trust you.  It just took my sleepy head a few minutes to come to the right answer.  When I did, I got my gun because I know if you cry wolf then there is gonna be one hell of a wolf to deal with.”

*

The scientists carted off the monster.  The farmer drained the pond to see if there were anymore creatures lurking in the murky depths.  The pond was unusually deep and it looked like there was a tunnel connecting the pond to another water source but no trace of any more monsters was found.  The boy would occasionally look out his bedroom window before turning in just to make sure the coast was clear but nothing ever came out of the pond again.  If anything did come out of the pond to attack the boy he was lucky to have a father who was willing to believe him.  And the farmer was lucky to have a son he could believe.