Brad crept through long grass, knees in the mud, squishing toadstools and slugs. Above him, the stars and the black sky. Somewhere ahead at the old farm a monster waited. He’d heard its cry before, just yesterday, for the second time in his life. A low growl, like a moan. Brad and his parents moved from this place decades ago, but that monster’s cry was the same distinctive sound he’d heard as a child, half wolf howl, half baby’s squall.
At age five, he stared out his bedroom window under the full moon. A huge apelike shadow squatted atop the giant lava rock at the bottom of the farm driveway; its hoary face held in its huge trembling hands. The sound came from between those hands. Was it sobbing? Or raging? Brad, just a child, opened the window and the creature moved its head to look towards him, its blue eyes flaring like sapphires out of the dark, it’s voice crying upwards.
“I am here, I am here, come to me, for I am the one they call the Wetiko.”
The eyes absorbed young Brad, into dreams of forests and mountains and winter snows, scenes of savage combat, into the creature’s rage against the changes in the world and the destruction of its wild habitat. Through the Wetiko’s eyes, Brad saw it through time immemorial, hunting and killing and surviving on the land. Doing what it had to do.
“Come down,” the creature said with its eyes. “Come to me, for you are mine.”
But he had not. He had simply stared. He knew that if he obeyed the Wetiko, he would become a victim of the monster himself.
His legs trembled, he could hardly stand, as the Wetiko’s eyes beseeched him. Descend to the rock, climb up here and be with Wetiko. Make things right and help stop the poor monster’s sorrow. Brad kept staring, exercising all his will power to look away. His hands gripped the window ledge; he bit the side of his cheek so that it bled, that forced him from the Wetiko’s gaze, as swallowing his own blood he flung himself back into his bed.
The visions imparted to him that night burned in his mind throughout Brad’s life. He grew up practicing to be strong. If anything like this monster appeared again, he’d be able to defend himself. He became a martial arts master, always in command of his aggression, then a high-powered lawyer, using the courts to test his wits against opposing attorneys. The work was stressful, it wore him down, he was always fighting to win but he never cracked.
“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known,” said his wife, Joanne.
Three decades from that first encounter with the Wetiko, Brad stepped from his car at the end of the old farm driveway.
He’d parked well back from the big rock with a giant “No Trespassing” sign duct-taped to its surface. All the old buildings of his childhood lay smothered with moss, green and brown under a grey sky.
He was about to take a photo when a car pulled in behind him. A thin-faced young manwith long blonde hair all round his face yelled out the window “This is private property,” and leaped from the vehicle. A buck toothed boy with horn rimmed glasses jumped from the passenger side.
“Yeah, I used to live here, just taking some photos for nostalgia,” Brad tried to smile.
“I don’t care where the hell you used to live,” the blonde man said.
The buck toothed boy wore a long trenchcoat; his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
“This is private property. We have a right to chase you off,” he shouted in a high, reedy voice.
“Yah, well, just on my way,” Brad said.
Then he heard it. That same low growl crossed with a moan, coming from somewhere down in the property. He hesitated at the car door.
“What’s that?” he said.
“I told you get out of here!” Blonde Man swung around the front of Brad’s car and gave it a kick.
Brad hopped in his vehicle, reversed at speed, drove away staring in the rearview mirror at the buck toothed boy with his middle finger up.
And as his car sped up, he heard the Wetiko’s cry once more, howling on the wind.
A week before, his wife Joanne fell down the stairs. Brad found her unconscious, maybe seriously injured or dead at the bottom. For the first time in his life, he panicked. He’d abandoned everything, hurling himself from the house and the scene he could not face. He leapt into his car, sped across the country without sleeping, barely eating, travelling back to this place of his youth.
Yes, it could have been an accident. She could have turned the wrong way and tripped. That night, she seemed so upset. Was he responsible? He didn’t remember. The last thing his mind pictured was her voice at the top of the stairs, yelling at him “All this time, I never really knew you.”
And then she fell.
All Brad wanted to do then was get away.
“This isn’t like me,” he kept telling himself. “I’m not a fleeing animal.”
Yet wild impulse ruled, a complete change from the control he’d exercised his whole life.
What happened there on the stairs?
He would return to the farm to find the monster of his childhood. This time, he would offer himself in front of its accusing blue eyes and discover what its verdict would be..
“The Wetiko will decide,” he told himself. “If I am guilty or not.”
Ahead of him lay the old hay barn, with some renovations to the roof, glass or greenhouse panels. Light shone up from that glass, beaming into the night sky. He heard a low humming coming from inside. Brad slipped across the yard and around the big rock in the middle, where the creature once crouched. Could be the two thugs he met yesterday kept the Wetiko in that barn. He would show himself and set it free.
He slipped in through a half-open door at one end, stood there a moment to let his eyes adjust.
The brilliant light inside fell on row after row of marijuana plants, big fans circling slowly above to move the air. Above his head, a set of security cameras.
“I should have called the cops,” Brad thought.
He looked up at the cameras and then for a place to hide, but before he could move, from the edge of his eye he noticed the blonde-haired man come running at him from one side of the barn, wielding a baseball bat. The man ran stealthy and low to the ground, like a coyote. Brad’s years of martial arts training kicked in. Survival mode! He booted the bat out of the young fellow’s hands and delivered several kicks to the head with his hiking boots. The coyote like man went down.
Brad turned again to see the buck toothed boy dashing down the other way, armed with a gun. The boy stopped, raised the firearm to his shoulder and fired. The bullet tore into Brad’s upper leg. Regardless, he twisted his body, grabbed the blonde man’s fallen baseball bat and smashed the gun from the buck toothed assailant’s hands. Though he felt his strength fading, he whacked his second attacker in the head with the bat over and over. The young man fell and Brad himself sank to the ground.
It was then he heard that crying again, that sound between a growl and a baby’s squeal.
So loud and close it was! It filled the air around him.
It took him a while to understand.
The sound didn’t come from outside of him, it was Brad himself, moaning on the barn floor, holding his injured leg.
The marijuana lights flickered around him and went out. He found himself whirling through space and time, to another reality, another dimension. Through the open barn door, he glimpsed the crescent moon.
What was he doing in this place? From the recesses of his mind came one thought. There was someone who must see him. Someone very important. He began to drag himself from the barn, toward the rock in the middle of the driveway. A vague thought came, then strengthened. There would be a boy at a window.
He continued to moan, to pull himself towards the rock, which he must climb to show his presence.
This is what he understood.
“I am the Wetiko, and that boy must come to me.”
∼ Harrison Kim
© Copyright Harrison Kim All Rights Reserved.
