BY NORMAN PRENTISS<\/span><\/h4>\nTroy manned the raft, his oars through guideloops on either side.\u00a0 He sometimes asked Ken & Barb to twist a rudder at the aft, but for the most part he could steer using one oar more than the other.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe were gliding through the water.\u00a0 Gliding.\u00a0 No need for more of Jack\u2019s visions.<\/span><\/p>\nHe\u2019d tried to apologize, whispering again about \u201csubconscious\u201d and \u201cunintentional,\u201d and I whispered back my irritation.\u00a0 We got shushed by the backseat rafters.<\/span><\/p>\nTroy had begun his rehearsed speech about the wonders of prehistoric times, and the regrettable extinction of our planet\u2019s most magnificent, terrifying lizards.\u00a0 He raised an \u201cor are they?\u201d eyebrow, lifting one oar from the water as he steered us around a bend in the stream.\u00a0 \u201cNow I can\u2019t promise anything, but previous tours have gotten lucky.\u00a0 As I said, this secluded location has preserved some rare specimens.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nPreserved them from meteors, or the ice age, or whatever the current extinction theories suggested? I was skeptical, but willing to keep my objections silent.\u00a0 Jack, for his part, seemed to have calmed down.<\/span><\/p>\nThe guide continued: \u201cTo your left, look carefully at that piece of driftwood.\u00a0 Well, maybe it\u2019s not driftwood.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s something from Loch Ness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0While everyone else directed their attention at a floating log, I noticed an instrument panel at the head of the raft — like throttle switches for a speedboat, some dials and slider levers, and the recessed grill of a radio speaker.\u00a0 A manually operated raft wouldn\u2019t need mechanical controls, so my radio guess seemed most plausible.\u00a0 Troy\u2019s right hand lifted from a stilled oar, moved subtly to the controls beside him, and flipped the first toggle switch.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nA slight murmur sounded from the couple behind us, as the driftwood dropped below the surface.\u00a0 Several feet away, slightly closer to our raft, another shape rose slowly from the water.<\/span><\/p>\nAlthough it was about the size of a wooden barrel, this new shape wasn\u2019t driftwood.\u00a0 Fiberglass, I think:\u00a0 the same material used to fashion castles and farm animals on miniature golf courses.\u00a0 Water rolled off the top of the generic dinosaur head, dripped out of the wide, toothy mouth.\u00a0 Unblinking eyes stared in different directions.\u00a0 Green paint, clearly not waterproof, cracked and flaked in an accidental approximation of scales.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI stifled a snort.\u00a0 Especially after the guide\u2019s build-up, the debut dinosaur should have been more convincing.\u00a0 I turned to my right, ready to share my comical disappointment with Jack.<\/span><\/p>\nHe wasn\u2019t looking toward the water.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t looking anywhere.\u00a0 Jack\u2019s head was down, eyes closed.\u00a0 One hand held tight to a looped rope-rail around the raft, and the other white-knuckled the chest seam of his life jacket.<\/span><\/p>\nObviously Jack had taken on more than he could handle.\u00a0 So far, the water had been mostly calm.\u00a0 Not smooth as glass, but with gentle ripples and a rocking sway in sync with the motion of Troy\u2019s oars.\u00a0 And yet, the water stretched out in all directions, its murky depths uncertain.\u00a0 Layers of inflated plastic were our only protection.<\/span><\/p>\nI wondered if Jack was on the verge of getting sick.\u00a0 Behind us came a quick flash of light and the click of Kenneth\u2019s camera.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019d been too distracted to notice Troy\u2019s next subtle movements at the control panel, whether or not he turned a volume dial to its highest setting before flipping a new switch.<\/span><\/p>\nThe animal roar seemed to come all at once from the flake-painted head in the water, from the speaker grill on the instrument panel, and from the lake itself.\u00a0 The raft vibrated with the noise, and my stomach gave a startled lurch.\u00a0 The couple behind us screamed with amusement-park delight.<\/span><\/p>\nIf the sound startled me, Jack\u2019s surprise would have been even more dramatic.\u00a0 I checked next to me, but Jack hadn\u2019t budged:\u00a0 head still down, hands tight to steady himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTroy made another subtle gesture over the control panel.\u00a0 Not to trigger another roar, I hoped.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nKenneth\u2019s camera shutter clicked again, catching a second shot of the dinosaur head before it dropped beneath the water.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe raft jostled as Kenneth replaced his camera within a plastic bag.\u00a0 He moved more than was necessary, though, and I turned my head to give a disapproving glare.\u00a0 I was planning to throw back Barbie\u2019s line from earlier — <\/span>Do you mind holding still?\u00a0 Thanks.<\/span><\/i> — but it turned out the two of them looked almost as nervous as Jack.\u00a0 Their heads were down, too, staring at the raft itself, or imagining something may have moved under it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJack\u2019s life-jacket hand was now clamped tight on my upper arm.\u00a0 We all sat still and expectant, as if our own lack of motion would steady the raft.\u00a0 Our guide\u2019s eyes widened, and he shot exaggerated, nervous glances to the water on either side.\u00a0 I tried to convince myself it was the fake-fear tour guides sometimes assumed, to add excitement for their most gullible patrons.<\/span><\/p>\nHonestly, I didn\u2019t think Troy could be that good an actor.<\/span><\/p>\nThe water was dark and murky, as I said, but a large patch to our right rippled even darker, a wave of gray-brown froth preceding it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat wave rushed towards our raft, a shadow in its wake:\u00a0 a submarine shape with the suggestion of fins or reptilian arms.\u00a0 Its arched back rose above the surface for an instant, revealing a rough-scaled back, a hide as tough as a tortoise shell.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cBrace yourself.\u201d\u00a0 Our guide barked like an army commander, as if Jack or any of us needed the warning.\u00a0 The frothy wave hit on Jack\u2019s side of the raft, and my arm was around him, and I tried to find a string to pull or nozzle to blow into to inflate my life jacket, because I was sure the impact would capsize us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThen the shadow shifted, sank.\u00a0 The tail end of it — perhaps literally a tail — rose out of the water like a tentacle — perhaps literally a tentacle -=- then swayed in the air before slithering below the surface.\u00a0 The raft rippled beneath us, and the gray-brown wave and murky shadow continued past on the other side.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cRow,\u201d Jack says to our dumbfounded guide, and I remember being proud that my boyfriend was the first among us to gather his wits. Considering how scared he was about water, Jack\u2019s mental command was pretty impressive.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHe still held to the rope-rail, though, and my upper arm felt sore from his renewed vice-grip.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTo our guide\u2019s credit, Troy went at those oars like an Olympic contender.\u00a0 Even in the midst of my anxiety I admit to being freshly impressed by the muscles of his arms, the veins that stood out on his thick neck as he rowed.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to objectify him, though, and mostly should praise his efforts to get us out of harm\u2019s way.<\/span><\/p>\nExcept, some of his movements were a bit jerky.\u00a0 His elbow might have slipped at one point and flipped one of those toggle switches again, prompting a second massive animal roar from the speaker grille.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHad that same mechanical roar summoned the underwater beast in the first place?\u00a0 A hunter\u2019s call that simulated the heated cry of a potential mate?<\/span><\/p>\nI became uneasy about the sound, and where it originated.\u00a0 The speaker was my hopeful estimate, because the roar was so loud.\u00a0 So clear and close.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIf the sound was different than the earlier roar, if it came from the water behind us…<\/span><\/p>\nI didn\u2019t dare turn my head.<\/span><\/p>\n#<\/span><\/p>\n(Of course I did, Celia. My adventures with your other father trained me to look directly at the worst possibilities. Here\u2019s what I saw:)<\/span><\/p>\n#<\/span><\/p>\nThe head of a dinosaur, mouth wide, teeth wet and gleaming.<\/span><\/p>\nNothing more than a fiberglass head, covered with chipped, peeling green paint.\u00a0 And safe in the distance, bobbing like a warning buoy.<\/span><\/p>\nWe were in the clear.<\/span><\/p>\nThen, a spread of larger, wider jaws emerged beneath the weather-worn attraction, closed over it, raised the fiberglass head into the air above frothing waters, and then swallowed it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOur guide had rowed us quickly from our previous stopping point, and we\u2019d navigated into a tighter gully with overhanging trees on both sides, foliage partially blocking my view.\u00a0 It\u2019s possible my eyes played tricks on me. Nobody else on the raft seemed to have noticed, and I certainly wasn\u2019t going to speak up, demand that we turn around to verify the spectacle I alone had seen. \u00a0 Whatever it was, the bottleneck we\u2019d passed through would keep it from coming after us.<\/span><\/p>\n(Now Celia, I see you think you\u2019ve figured things out.\u00a0 I have to clarify again that our large sea creature didn\u2019t fit the pattern of Jack\u2019s previous illusions.\u00a0 His powers only conveyed visual sensations.\u00a0 Although the raft\u2019s speaker panel could have been the source for each accompanying animal roar, there\u2019s no way Jack\u2019s images could have shaken the raft while the prehistoric shadow passed beneath us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAt the time, I considered the Ouija Board effect:\u00a0 rather than spirits, nervous fingertips move the glass planchette via power of suggestion, seance participants pushing subconsciously from one letter to another until they spell the very words they\u2019re most afraid of.\u00a0 Applied in this case, all of us on the raft tensed up, our hands along the rope rail conspiring to pull the raft one way and another, mimicking the jostle of some great beast passing beneath.<\/span><\/p>\nLike amateur spiritualists, we\u2019d come on this dinosaur tour expecting a thrill, and we manufactured it.<\/span><\/p>\nI quickly realized the flaw in this theory.\u00a0 My special connection to Jack — which I sometimes thought of as my curse — was that his monstrous visions appeared to me alone.\u00a0 I should have been the only one freaking out, while other passengers remained calm. \u00a0 Instead, everyone aboard had seen the large murky shadow that terrorized our raft, the prehistoric tentacle-tail that rose from the water then slithered beneath.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOur full group couldn\u2019t have experienced one of Jack\u2019s visions.\u00a0 Which could only mean we\u2019d narrowly escaped being swallowed by an authentic, prehistoric sea creature.)<\/span><\/p>\n#<\/span><\/p>\nNow that the danger had passed, Troy prompted us back to the regularly scheduled, cheesy tour.\u00a0 He shrugged off the earlier glitch with a quick phrase — <\/span>Not sure what happened back there, but…<\/span><\/i> — then resumed his scripted remarks.\u00a0 Encyclopedia snippets about Cretaceous vs. Jurassic eras, plant-eating vs. carnivorous dinosaurs, the etymologic derivation of dinosaur, which means <\/span>terrible lizard<\/span><\/i> in Latin.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAs I mentioned,\u201d he said, \u201cthere\u2019s no guarantee we\u2019ll encounter many actual dinosaurs on this tour, but previous groups have been lucky.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nWe drifted into a larger lagoon, with no perceptible current.\u00a0 Troy barely touched the oars, yet we were able to glide across the water.\u00a0 The motion was subtle enough, that even Jack calmed down a bit.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nProbably we were all busy denying what happened — or might have happened — moments earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cSome of the biggest dinosaurs are as gentle as household pets.\u201d\u00a0 Troy raised an arm, pointed to the tallest trees on a nearby shore.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nClassic misdirection.\u00a0 While we craned our necks toward where he pointed, Troy quickly brushed against another toggle switch.\u00a0 A low rumble sounded, more mechanical than organic, and two tree tops began to shake. \u00a0 After a rattle of chains, like an anchor being dropped off a yacht, a giraffe-high neck emerged from the foliage.<\/span><\/p>\nThis time, the cracked paint on the fiberglass was purplish blue, rather than green.\u00a0 The eyes were painted on, but so was the closed mouth.<\/span><\/p>\nThe whole effect was incredibly fake, like a cartoon figure.\u00a0 Even less realistic than a mini-golf obstacle, or something preschoolers would climb over on the playground.<\/span><\/p>\nA rip-off.\u00a0 I felt outrage that the tour presented mostly-hidden dinosaurs — a head from the water, a long neck from the trees — to avoid the expense of building the entire massive animal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTerrible Lizards<\/span><\/i> indeed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNot that I wanted a replay of our earlier terror.\u00a0 But it would have been nice to look up with child-like, open-mouthed awe — to pretend for a moment that we\u2019d been safely transported back in time, to the <\/span>Lost World<\/span><\/i> of the movies, to <\/span>One Million Years, B.C.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nJack sat close to me on the raft, silent.\u00a0 I realized his body had shifted into a different kind of tension:\u00a0 not from fear, but from anger.\u00a0 He was as agitated with the tour as I was.<\/span><\/p>\nYet Troy continued with his ludicrous script, prompting pre-recorded snippets from the control panel.\u00a0 This time, the speaker emitted cooing sounds, as if the ersatz Brontosaurus were a cuddly puppy or friendly dolphin.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnother flip of the anchor-switch, and the dinosaur head and neck went in reverse, retreating between the trees.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cGee,\u201d Troy said, \u201cI wonder what scared the big fella away. Maybe we shouldn\u2019t stick around to find out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAnd I knew, I just <\/span>knew,<\/span><\/i> that the last phrase meant we were going even cheaper with the next dinosaur — no neck, no head, but simply another sound-effect.<\/span><\/p>\nOur guide grabbed the oars again, rowed with a steady enthusiasm that contained no hint of authentic panic.\u00a0 The raft glided smooth and straight across the lagoon, picking up speed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTroy lifted the oars above the water, briefly letting the raft continue on its own momentum.\u00a0 He made a quick move at the control panel, and the drumbeat of heavy footsteps filled the air, followed by a thunderous roar.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt was presumably the roar of a Tyrannosaurus Rex — the one we\u2019d never see.\u00a0 A deep leonine growl, a gurgle like rocks avalanching down a cliff, and the hiss of a tremendous serpent.<\/span><\/p>\nWe looked behind the raft, all of us, but the shoreline trees didn\u2019t move.\u00a0 The imaginary monster growled and gurgled and hissed, but didn\u2019t make an appearance.<\/span><\/p>\nTroy\u2019s went back to active rowing, shifting course to the left.\u00a0 I noticed that he exerted the same muscular effort with each arm, so it seemed odd that the raft was turning.\u00a0 Perhaps Barb and Ken were being helpful, adjusting the rudder without being asked.<\/span><\/p>\nThe gurgle and hiss continued from the speaker.\u00a0 Possibly louder, though I hadn\u2019t caught Troy adjusting the volume dial.\u00a0 A mist of lake water dampened the left side of my face.<\/span><\/p>\nThe roar.\u00a0 Like the rush of water.<\/span><\/p>\nOur raft curved further to the left, but Troy was fighting it now, arms straining, mist and sweat mixing on his brow.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cA whirlpool!\u201d Kenneth said, confirming that we were all seeing the same thing.\u00a0 Our raft circled the edge of a wide, frothy swirl, getting pulled closer despite our guide\u2019s frantic efforts.\u00a0 A spray of gritty water filled my mouth — the texture of coffee grounds and the flavor of rotten fish.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI threw my body to the opposite edge of the raft, covering Jack, locking him beneath me and my hands tight to the same rope-rail he\u2019d been gripping the whole time.\u00a0 My head lay close to his, lips to his ear where I whispered the things anybody would say in such moments:\u00a0 expressions of love and fear, assurances we\u2019d be all right or at least we\u2019d die quickly, that I\u2019m glad to be with him no matter which.<\/span><\/p>\nI didn\u2019t see the whirlpool, but I felt its effects.\u00a0 Water hit my back like it was thrown from buckets, and the raft spun faster, kept turning. \u00a0 I lifted my head, looked over the edge of the raft to get my bearings.<\/span><\/p>\nBut I couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 We moved too fast, the trees a blur along the shore.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt seemed like the trees were swaying.\u00a0 They performed a tantalizing dance, their tops bowing in unison as if to wave good-bye.<\/span><\/p>\nThe horrible lurching of the raft would never end.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n(In college, when we had classes together, I\u2019d sit behind Jack and often stared at his neck, the wavy long patterns of hair that reached almost to his shirt collar. \u00a0 To fight dizziness now, I focused on the back of Jack\u2019s neck.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOn the feel of his body beneath me, too.<\/span><\/p>\nSorry Celia.\u00a0 I try not to let these stories get too graphic in front my kids, but I\u2019m also trying to tell the whole story.\u00a0 What I meant to convey was:\u00a0 I forgot the other passengers for a moment.\u00a0 Jack and I weren\u2019t trapped on a sinking raft.\u00a0 We were huddled together, safe in our own private world.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd that\u2019s when the raft stopped moving.)<\/span><\/p>\nTo be continued\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n#<\/span><\/p>\n
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Haunted Attractions with your Other Father\u00a0<\/i><\/a>by Norman Prentiss is the sequel to his\u00a0Odd Adventures with your Other Father<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>and continues the horror\/fantasy road trip adventures of Jack and Shawn as they fight monsters and homophobia in the \u201980s. Cemetery Dance is proud to publish this new novel (with an e-book version now on sale at Amazon for 0.99!<\/a>), and to celebrate we\u2019re serializing a new novella featuring the characters from the books!<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Cover-with-Dinosaur-Head.jpg?resize=350%2C269&ssl=1\")
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