The Anything Box

The rain was slanting icy wires now that stabbed his face and cut through
his wet jacket. He stood on the rough foot bridge across the creek and leaned
over the handrail, feeling the ragged bark pressing against his stomach. He
held his clenched fists up before his face and stared at them.
'This is it,' he thought. 'Our last chance—My last chance.' Then he bent
his head down over his hands, feeling the bite of his thumb joints into his
forehead. 'O God, make it true—make it true!'
The he loosed the hand that held the hook, tapped the soggy wad of Kleenex
to make sure it was still there and lowered it cautiously toward the roaring,
brawling creek, still swollen from the afternoon sun on hillside snow. He
rotated the ball slowly, letting the line out. He gasped as the hook touched
the water and he felt the current catch it and sweep it downstream. He yelled
to the roaring, rain-drenched darkness, 'I believe! I believe!' And the limp,
tattered line in his hand snapped taut, pulling until it cut into the flesh of
his palm. It strained downstream, and as he looked, it took on a weird
fluorescent glow, and skipping on the black edge of the next downstream curve,
the hook and bait were vivid with the same glowing.
Crae played out more of the line to ease the pressure on his palm. The line
was as tight and strong as piano wire between his fingers.
Time stopped for Crae as he leaned against the rail watching the bobbing
light on the end of the line— waiting and waiting wondering if the Grunder was
coming, if it could taste Ellena's tears across the world. Rain dripped from
the end of his nose and whispered down past his ears.
Then out of the darkness and waiting, lightning licked across the sky and
thunder thudded in giant, bone-jarring steps down from the top of Baldy. Crae
winced as sudden vivid light played around him again, perilously close. But no
thunder followed and he opened his eyes to a blade of light slicing cleanly
through the foot bridge from side to side. Crae bit his lower lip as the light
resolved itself into a dazzling fin that split the waters, slit the willows
and sliced through the boulders at the bend of the creek and disappeared.
'The Grunder!' he called out hoarsely and unreeled the last of his line,
stumbling to the end of the bridge to follow in blind pursuit through the
darkness. As his feet splashed in the icy waters, the Grunder lifted in a high
arching leap beyond the far willows. Crae slid rattling down the creek bank
onto one knee. The swift current swung him off balance and twisted him so that
his back was to the stream, and he felt the line slip through his fingers.
Desperately, he jerked around and lunged for the escaping line, the surge of
the waters pushing him face down into the shallow stream. With a gurgling sob,
he surfaced and snatched the last turn of the winding strip from where it had
snagged on the stub of a water-soaked log.
He pulled himself up onto the soggy bank, strangling, spewing water,blinking to clear his eyes. Soaked through, numbed by the cold water and theicy wind, with shaking hands he fashioned a loop in the end of the line andsecured it around his left wrist, his eyes flicking from loop to line, makingsure the hook and bait were still there. He started cautiously downstream,slipping and sliding through the muck, jarring into holes, tripping on rises,intent on keeping his bait in sight. A willow branch lashed across his eyesand blinded him. While he blinked away involuntary tears, trying to clear thedazzle that blurred his sight, the Grunder swept back upstream, passing soclose that Crae could see the stainless steel gleam of overlapping scales,
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serrated and jagged, that swept cleanly down its wide sides to a gossamer tailand up to a blind-looking head with its wide band of brilliant blue,glittering like glass beads, masking its face from side to side where eyesshould have been. Below the glitters was its open maw, ringed about withflickering points of scarlet.
Crae squatted down in the mud, staring after the Grunder, lost, bewilderedand scared. He clasped his hands to steady the bobbing steel-like ribbon ofline that gouged into his wrist and jerked his whole arm. Was the Grundergone? Had he lost his last chance? He ducked his head to shelter his face fromthe drenching downpour that seethed on the water loud enough to be heard abovethe roar of a dozen small falls.
Then suddenly, without warning, he was jerked downstream by his left arm,scraping full length along the soggy bank until his shoulder snagged on astunted willow stump. He felt the muscles in his shoulder crack from thesudden stop. He wormed his way up until he could get hold of the line with hisright hand, then, twisting forward, he braced both feet against the stump andheaved. The line gave slightly. And then he was cowering beneath lifted armsas the Grunder jumped silently, its tail flailing the water to mist, its headshaking against the frail hook that was imbedded in its lower jaw.
'Got it!' gasped Crae, 'Got it!' That was the last rational thought Craehad for the next crashing eternity. Yanked by the leaping, twisting, fightingGrunder, upstream and downstream, sometimes on his feet, sometimes draggedfull length through the tangled under-brush, sometimes with the Grundercharging him head on, all fire and gleam and terror, other times with only thethread of light tenuously pointing the way the creature had gone, Crae had noworld but a whirling, breathless, pain-filled chaos that had no meaning orpoint beyond Hold on hold on hold on.
Crae saw the bridge coming, but he could no more stop or dodge than arailway tunnel can dodge a train. With a crack that splintered into a flare oflight that shamed the Grunder in brilliance, Crae hit the bridge support.
Crae peeled his cheek from the bed of ooze where it was cradled and lookedaround him blindly. His line was a limp curve over the edge of the bank. Heavywith despair, he lifted his hand and let it drop. The line tightened andtugged and went limp again. Crae scrambled to his feet. Was the Grunder gone?Or was it tired out, quiescent, waiting for him? He wound the line clumsilyaround his hand as he staggered to the creek and fell forward on the shelvingbank.
Beneath him, rising and falling on the beat of the water, lay the Grunder,its white fire dimming and brightening as it sank and shallowed, the wide blueheadband as glittering, its mouth fringe as crimson and alive as the firsttime he saw it. Crae leaned over the bank and put a finger to the silveryscales of the creature. It didn't move beyond its up and down surge.
'I have to stroke it,' he thought. 'Three times, three times the wrongway.' He clamped his eyes tight against the sharply jagged gleam of everyseparate scale.
Rip hell outa your hand first stroke, but three it's gotta be.
'I could do it,' he thought, 'if it were still struggling. If I had tofight, I could do it. But in cold blood—!'
He lay in the mud, feeling the hot burning of the sick thing inside him,feeling the upsurge of anger, the sudden sting of his hand against Ellena'sface, her soft throat under his thumbs again. An overwhelming wave ofrevulsion swept over him and he nearly gagged.
'Go ahead and rip hell out!' he thought, leaning down over the bank. 'Ripout the hell that was in it when I hit her!'
With a full-armed sweep of his hand, he stroked the Grunder. He ground histeeth together tight enough to hold his scream down to an agonized gurgle asthe blinding, burning pain swept up his arm and hazed his whole body. He couldfeel the fire and agony lancing and cauterizing the purulence that had beenpoisoning him so long. Twice again his hand retraced the torture— and all the
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accumulation of doubt and fear and uncertainty became one with the physicalpain and shrieked out into the night.