The Beast House

Abe pulled out a chair for her. She sat at the table, her back to the wall, and saw Captain Frank glance over his shoulder. Then Nora blocked her view of the man.

A barmaid came. As she cleared away a couple of beer mugs and mopped some wet rings and puddles off the table, Nora eyed her costume: cowboy boots, blue denim short-shorts; and a blouse in the pattern of a red bandanna. The blouse was knotted in front, leaving her midriff bare. “What’ll it be, folks?”

“I like your outfit,” Nora said.

“Do you? It’s my own creation. Gives the fellas something to look at.” She winked at Abe. “ ‘Course, Charlie says it’s shameless.” She laughed. “ ‘Struttin’ your wares like a floozy.’ He goes on and on, but we bought us a brand-new twenty-nine-inch Sony TV from my tips, and I don’t hear him squawk about that, do I?”

“Men are just weird,” Nora pronounced.

“Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. You folks on vacation?”

Nora nodded.

“Well, that’s real good. Hope you’re having a ball. Now, what can I fetch you?”

They discussed it for a moment, then Abe ordered two pitchers of beer.

“I’ll be right along with ‘em, and I’ll bring along a nice bowl of popcorn to keep you wanting more.”

When she was gone, Nora said, “I wonder if they’ve got any openings.”

“You just want to strut your wares,” Tyler told her.

With a prolonged stare at Nora’s cleavage, Jack said, “She’s already at it.”

“Get in there!” yelled a man at the pool table. “All right!”

From the jukebox at the far end of the room came the voice of Tom T. Hall singing “I Like Beer.”

“Reminds me of Le Du’s joint in Saigon,” Jack said, looking across at Abe.

“Does at that,” Abe said. “Le Du was a great lover of the old West,” he explained. “Found himself a pair of woolie chaps somewhere, and he wore them no matter how hot it was in that bar of his. He had a ten-gallon hat that must’ve been nine gallons bigger than his head.”

“Was he a half-pint?” Tyler asked.

Abe laughed. “That, and then some.”

“He got what he had coming,” Jack said, grinning mysteriously.

“Oh, no.” Nora wrinkled her nose. “Was he a sympathizer?”

“Yup,” Abe said. “A sympathizer with Hoppy, Gene and Roy.”

“Don’t forget Randolph Scott. That was his favorite.”

“Last we heard, Le Du’s the proprietor of the Hole in the Wall saloon in Waco, Texas.”

“Hope he’s improved his costume,” Jack added as the barmaid approached with a laden tray.

She set out the pitchers, the frosty mugs, and a bowl of popcorn. When Abe reached for his wallet, she said, “It’s already been taken care of. Compliments of Captain Frank.”

Abe looked perplexed. “Who?”

“The fella over there.” She nodded toward the bar. Captain Frank had swiveled around on his stool to face them. “Said the girls are old mateys.”

“Did he?” Nora asked. “That’s sweet. Why don’t we ask him to join us?”

Tyler felt a tightening in her stomach.

“That okay with you guys? He’s probably lonely.”

Shaking her head, the barmaid walked away.

“It’s all right with me,” Abe said.

“Long as he doesn’t try to move in on us,” Jack added. “Can’t have that.”

“I’ll go get him.” Nora stood, and made her way toward the bar.

“Who is this guy?” Abe asked.

“Captain Frank,” Tyler said. “Just an old guy who fancies himself a seaman.”

Abe frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I guess. I just find him a little…strange. You ought to see his bus.”

“If he makes you nervous…”

“Too late, now.”

Nora, holding onto the old man’s arm, was steering him toward the table. He drank from a half-empty mug as he walked. He had on the same faded Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts he’d been wearing that afternoon. His scrawny legs looked out of place beneath his massive torso. He moved with a list.

When they neared the table, Nora found an empty chair for him, and placed it next to Abe. “‘Preciate it, mate,” he told her, and sat down.

Nora made introductions.

As Abe filled the man’s mug from one of the pitchers, everyone thanked him for buying. “My pleasure,” he said in a low, thick voice. “My penance.” He raised his mug, winked and drank, and wiped his mouth with the back of a liver-spotted hand. “Sins of our fathers,” he mumbled.

“You’re a seafarer?” Abe asked.

“Fair and foul. A seafarer. Yes, indeed. That’s me, Captain Frank, old salt. Me and my father before me.” He leaned forward and stared with bleary eyes at Tyler. “God forgive him, he brought it here.”

Tyler, unsettled by his gaze, looked down at her beer.

“Brought what?” Nora asked.

“The beast.”

“The Beast House beast?” Jack asked.

“Aye, the filthy spawn of hell.”

“You’re saying that your father brought it to Malcasa Point?”

“That he did, and I’m here to tell you the curse of it’s a heavy burden to bear. Heavy indeed.” He took another drink.

Nora and Jack exchanged a glance as if they thought the man a lunatic. Abe was frowning.

“The guilt.” Captain Frank held up his thick, calloused hands. “Do you see the blood? I do. I see the blood of its victims, and God alone knows how many. They don’t tell it all on the tour. No indeed. Is my father there in wax? Is my sister Loreen, slain by the fiend seven years before I came wailing into this dreary world? No. You won’t find them on the tour. You won’t hear their names. How many others? Ten? Fifty? A hundred and fifty? Only God knows. God and the beast. People vanish. See their blood?” he asked, slowly turning his hands.

“You think it killed your father and sister?” Nora asked.

“Oh yes. Yes indeed. Little Loreen first. She was a child of three when he brought it home from some nameless forsaken island off the Australian coast. He was first mate, then, on the Mary Jane out of Sausalito. The summer of 1901, it was. They were becalmed, not a breath of wind, day after day, to fill the sails. The food went bad. The water casks emptied. They all thought surely they would die, and it’s a shame they didn’t. But on the thirteenth day of their travail, they spotted land. A volcanic island it was—all hills and jungle.

“A party went ashore. Fresh water was gathered from a spring. Fruit and berries were plentiful, but the men craved meat and found none. Now what kind of jungle is that that has no wildlife? It’s none such as I have ever seen, or any of the men from the Mary Jane. It worked on their nerves, and many were anxious to return to the ship before nightfall. Even my father, as stout-hearted a fellow as ever walked a deck, confessed he greeted the sunset, that night, with unholy dread. But he wouldn’t abandon the island, not until he was certain it bore no wildlife.”

Captain Frank swigged down some beer. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and stared into Tyler’s eyes as if she were alone with him. The noise of the bar—the talk and laughter, the clink of glasses, the clatter of pool balls, the pinging of the pinball machine, Willie Nelson’s clear voice from the jukebox—all seemed strangely distant to Tyler.

“When darkness fell,” he continued, “they surrounded the water hole. Men concealed themselves among the bushes and climbed into trees. Every last mother’s son of them was armed, ready to slay any animal that might come to drink.

“The strategy worked. Near midnight, the creatures came. Twelve or fifteen of them wandered out of the jungle and waded into the pond to drink. My father admits he thought they were humans at first—some primitive tribe—but then he saw their faces in the moonlight. Their snouts. He knew they weren’t human, but loathsome,