{"id":17146,"date":"2022-06-01T07:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/?p=17146"},"modified":"2022-05-31T23:06:38","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T03:06:38","slug":"free-fiction-canyon-terrible-lizards-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/free-fiction-canyon-terrible-lizards-5\/","title":{"rendered":"FREE FICTION: The Canyon of Terrible Lizards” (Part 5) by Norman Prentiss"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Photo from The Lost World (1925)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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

When we last saw Jack and Shawn<\/a>, they joined another couple on a \u201cDinosaur Safari\u201d tour, their guide Troy leading them downriver. After a (real? fake?) dinosaur sailed beneath their raft, nearly capsizing it, a massive whirlpool threatened to pull them underwater. They escaped, only to find themselves on a strange beach\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

THE CANYON OF TERRIBLE LIZARDS, PART 5
\n<\/b>(A HAUNTED ATTRACTION WITH YOUR OTHER FATHER)<\/span>
\nBY NORMAN PRENTISS<\/span><\/h4>\n

Troy was no longer at the helm.\u00a0 At some point he\u2019d peeled off his damp shirt, and now stood waist deep in water, his bare torso straining as he pulled our raft towards the nearby shore.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The water was calm and clear.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Behind us, the other couple murmured complaints about the rough ride, as if we\u2019d simply been on a plane that suffered a bout of turbulence.<\/span><\/p>\n

I lifted my head and noticed that the two of them were sitting up.\u00a0 Meanwhile, I was still sprawled ungracefully over Jack.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLemme up, will ya?\u201d he said, and I tried not to shake the raft too much as I teetered into a seated position.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack made a strange non-verbal sound, a cross between a <\/span>harrumph<\/span><\/i> and an <\/span>ahem,<\/span><\/i> which I guess expressed the awkwardness of the situation.\u00a0 Though it might have been a coded compliment to our newly shirtless guide.<\/span><\/p>\n

Troy leaned back as he neared the shore, his heels digging in, and the front edge of the raft brushed against land.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGuess that\u2019s our cue to get out,\u201d the guy behind us said, followed by a shifting of weight in the raft, then a splash.\u00a0 Kenneth held his hands out for his girlfriend to follow.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack didn\u2019t need any help.\u00a0 In his most graceful move of the day, he rolled out of the raft and waded to dry land in two long-legged strides.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our guide kept pulling the raft, and I could swear he almost gave it a twist to hurry me out of it.\u00a0 I half-stumbled, then joined the rest of our group on shore.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNice little cove here.\u201d Ken removed his camera from the Ziplock bag and snapped a quick picture.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNever seen it before,\u201d Troy said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd I know this region like the back of my hand.\u201d\u00a0 He pulled the raft fully from the water, dragged it along the small crescent of sandy beach and wedged it tight between a tree and a smooth-sided boulder.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s part of the tour,\u201d Kenneth said, reassuring his girlfriend.\u00a0 \u201cIt has to be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Troy didn\u2019t respond. He shouldn\u2019t have needed to. Each blink of my eye registered new, impossible details. The strange rusty color to the sand and sky; the thick-trunked trees with heavy, fan-shaped leaves. The rising wall of rock that formed a barrier beyond our small inlet, with a similar cliff-wall on the other side of the stream we\u2019d just exited.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pterodactyl gliding across the sky overhead.<\/span><\/p>\n

#<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a kite.\u201d Kenneth turned to our guide. \u201cDon\u2019t think we haven\u2019t seen you pushing those buttons and making things move and roar.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s nowhere near the buttons.\u201d His girlfriend stared at the sky in awe, although the flying dinosaur had drifted out of view beyond the cliff edge.\u00a0 A low throated squawk sounded in its passing, creating a strange echo in our secluded cove.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s on a wire,\u201d her boyfriend persisted, \u201cand some kind of signal lets it loose.\u201d\u00a0 He held his arms out straight, like he was playing airplane. \u201cThen it floats in a straight line, slow enough so we all have time to notice it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Barb looked around, rather than crediting his explanation. He\u2019d made a reasonable guess, considering the other fake things we\u2019d encountered on our journey — the chiseled footprint, and the dino busts coated with cracked paint — but we\u2019d clearly slipped off the pre-determined path of our low-rent tour. She was beginning to grasp the possibility now, her eyes wide, head turning to take in the surroundings, ears perked for any new, fantastical sounds of a forgotten world.<\/span><\/p>\n

In her expression, I saw a child\u2019s wonderous gaze of expectation, an openness to the impossible, an eager thirst for new experience.\u00a0 These are the moments we live for when travelling, and I envied her. I\u2019d dwelled in skepticism, drifted into worry for Jack\u2019s sake, then had plummeted into fear when our raft got tossed through raging waters. Now that we were safe on land, I should follow Barb\u2019s example and enjoy the magic of the moment.\u00a0 Her jaw dropped, her eyes opened even wider. The best comparison I can make is when kids gets really excited, and they pump their arms and actually jump up and down in place, because they can\u2019t wait to see what happens next.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no goddamned wire!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(Oh. I\u2019d completely misread her. She was actually building up to a tantrum.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell the difference between a <\/span>kite<\/span><\/i> and something that\u2019s alive, Kenneth.\u00a0 If.\u00a0 You. Think. That this piece of crap tour could come up with something that <\/span>real, <\/span><\/i>then you\u2019re dumber than a box of prehistoric rocks.\u00a0 Does this feel like Arizona to you, Kenneth?\u00a0 Remember how a giant, tentacled fish attacked our raft, we spun around like a turd in a giant toilet bowl, and somehow we got <\/span>flushed<\/span><\/i> here into this canyon that\u2019s <\/span>nothing like<\/span><\/i> the scenery we floated past earlier, the sky above us red like I\u2019ve never seen, and these trees and these rocks like something from another planet, and that smell, I swear to Christ it\u2019s like dust and sweat and raw meat, and the air\u2019s half-choking me, and you\u2019re telling me it was a <\/span>kite?<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 I saw its goddamn wings flap, you stupid ass.\u00a0 They flapped.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

(She kept going, Celia, and she might have dropped in some stronger curse words along the way.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t even look at her boyfriend, she was burning him so bad.\u00a0 Jack and I did that silent shared glance couples do sometimes, sort of a <\/span>Boy, she\u2019s really giving it to him<\/span><\/i> smirk, with a hint of <\/span>We\u2019d never carry on like this in public, would we?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The nice part about Jack\u2019s wry half-smile, though, is that it confirmed he\u2019d mostly recovered from the trauma of our water-ride.\u00a0 We were back to normal, even if the world around us was not.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s go on the dinosaur tour.\u201d\u00a0 She deepened her voice here, adding an artful bit of strut-in-place to complete the imitation of her boyfriend.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019ll be an adventure we can tell everybody about back home.\u201d\u00a0 Then, dropping the caricature and resuming the full-throated diatribe:\u00a0 \u201cWell, maybe we don\u2019t effing <\/span>get<\/span><\/i> home, but at least we got to shit-swirl down the toilet time machine.\u00a0 And we were lucky enough to see a kite, a goddamn kite, before some gator-jawed monster crashed through the trees and ate—“<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cQuiet,\u201d her boyfriend said, and I winced, knowing full well how that tactic usually worked. A gentle <\/span>Honey, you\u2019re kind of losing it in public<\/span><\/i> reminder usually has the exact opposite effect than intended, making hackles rise — and voices.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve since learned, it\u2019s the same reason librarians no longer bother to <\/span>shush<\/span><\/i> their noisy patrons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the tactic actually worked this time. Not\u00a0 because she realized she should take a few deep breaths and calm down, but because she noticed something new in her boyfriend\u2019s expression. She could tell that he\u2019d abandoned his wire-and-kite theory, and now agreed with her panicked assessment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe cliff,\u201d he said. \u201cHalf way up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We all followed the angle of his outstretched arm to see where he pointed.\u00a0 A large section of protruding ledge seemed precariously balanced, ready to snap and tumble down at the slightest gust of wind.<\/span><\/p>\n

She turned back to him, almost ready to resume her attack, but she kept her comments to a whisper. \u201cKenneth, I\u2019m not going to start an avalanche, okay?\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to break rocks with my—“<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a rock,\u201d Jack said, being the first of us to dare enter the couple\u2019s dispute.\u00a0 \u201cIt moves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt blinks,\u201d Kenneth said.<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t see any blink, not at first, but a long red snake slithered out, testing the air, then retreated beneath the section of rock.\u00a0 The end of that snake reminded me of the forked tongue I\u2019d seen in the cage this morning, as the rattler prepared to strike at my hand.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was time to adjust my sense of proportion.\u00a0 Not a snake, but the outstretched tongue of a much larger lizard.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For a moment, we all played a panicked variation on cloud watching.\u00a0 The creature\u2019s eye blinked, and I filtered natural crags and clefts from organic shadows, found patterns of chameleon scales amid the random bumps of the cliff\u2019s weather-worn facade.\u00a0 Some of us perhaps saw a legless creature covered with bark, like a thick tree trunk battened to the side of the cliff. Some might have counted the sweep of eight thin legs as a hard-shelled spider scurried sideways across rough, perpendicular terrain. Eventually, for all of us, the image settled into a large four-legged lizard, spiny backed, with sharp talons digging into the rock as it moved.<\/span><\/p>\n

We gasped at different times, as the approaching shape became clear to each of us. <\/span>Saurus Stinkbugus. <\/span><\/i>The hard scale armor on its back was the color and spiked texture of the carapace on a stink bug, on a much larger scale and with the addition of imposing reptile features. It was climbing headfirst down the cliff.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack rushed past our open-mouthed companions, almost pushed our tour guide aside, to scavenge the stored raft for potential weapons.\u00a0 He pulled each of the oars from their guideloops, handed one to Troy and kept the other for himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Yes, Celia, I felt slightly insulted at the time. In hindsight I acknowledge our muscled guide would fare better with a blunt weapon.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack found an emergency kit fastened beneath the raft\u2019s control panel, and he unstrapped the plastic box and gave it to me.\u00a0 In addition to small bandages and single-use cleaning pads, I found a flare gun.\u00a0 But no ammunition.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOh, the flares got wet last season so I threw them out,\u201d Troy explained.\u00a0 \u201cBeen meaning to replace them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The lizard moved lower on the cliff, passing the tops of nearby trees.\u00a0 Its spiny body became more clear in contrast to the rich, green leaves.\u00a0 I kept hoping it would eat part of a plant on the way down, reveal itself as a harmless herbivore, but the lizard\u2019s appearance — the worst features of an iguana and an alligator, with the size and agility of a lion — suggested meat-eater all the way.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kenneth moved ahead of his girlfriend as if he could protect her bare-handed.\u00a0 I wondered if her angry shouts had drawn the lizard to us, or if it had waited on the cliffside all along, still and invisible, planning to surprise oblivious victims.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t we just go back in the water?\u201d the woman said.\u00a0 The option seemed sensible, but I knew why it hadn\u2019t occurred to Jack.\u00a0 He\u2019d want to stand our ground, staying <\/span>on<\/span><\/i> the ground.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Which didn\u2019t exactly move beneath us when the heavy lizard-weight dropped, but there was a definite crunch of twigs and thump against hard sand.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d been dreading the auditory confirmation.\u00a0 A stealthy predator would take pains not to announce its approach — but the same level of silence came from Jack\u2019s typical hallucinations. Since a mental projection couldn\u2019t harm us physically, I was still holding out hope that this was one of Jack\u2019s visual-only glamours.\u00a0 The fact that others could see the lizard, too, made that hope unlikely — as did Jack\u2019s own obvious fears, and his preparations for battle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then that confirming thump. An open, gator-mouth and that searching tongue. A snake hiss and a deep roar, and a pause that could only signal tension before a charge forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

#<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBack between the trees,\u201d Jack shouted. He and Troy acted as our first line of defense, raising their oars.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I dropped the useless Emergency Kit and did as I was told.\u00a0 Barb and Kenneth followed suit.<\/span><\/p>\n

The plan seemed okay for us, since the trees were spaced too tight for the lizard\u2019s gnashing head to fit through.\u00a0 Jack and Troy weren\u2019t as protected.\u00a0 Our guide was muscular, and attractively shirtless, but he no longer seemed physically imposing as a giant lizard scampered toward him.\u00a0 For his part, Jack was tall and agile, brimming with confidence — but he didn\u2019t have the practice, or the muscle tone, to back up his bluster.<\/span><\/p>\n

I watched between two tree trunks. I watched between the fingers of hands held nervously over my eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only positive outcome I could imagine was a lingering, half-hearted wish that the dinosaur might still be a hallucination. A ghost image, dispersing through the air in the moment before physical contact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lizard feet stamped audibly through sand as the beast quickly crossed the small crescent of beach. As it got closer, the spine-scaled dinosaur seemed even larger, while Jack shrank to a spindly appetizer, our tour guide serving as the stocky, gristled entree.\u00a0 After the meal, the lizard could pick its teeth with the oars.<\/span><\/p>\n

I felt helpless.\u00a0 Perhaps I should have grabbed a rock, made a prissy throw at the lizard then squealed as it bounced harmlessly off the hard-shell hide.\u00a0 Ken and Barb cowered behind a nearby pair of trees, similarly helpless. None of us had a plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I feared Jack and Troy didn\u2019t, either. I hadn\u2019t overhead them whispering strategy to each other. They hadn\u2019t, as the sportsmen say, called an audible at the last instant.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack and Troy clacked their oars together, as if to intimidate the rampaging beast. They formed a united front, their feet planted firm in the ground as they braced for impact.<\/span><\/p>\n

They were just going to stand there and let the lizard choose its meal.<\/span><\/p>\n

The dinosaur\u2019s mouth opened wide, its sharp teeth gleaming wet, and it looked like it was going to swallow them both at once.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be continued\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

#<\/span><\/p>\n

AUTHOR\u2019S NOTE: ON DINOSAURS<\/b><\/span><\/h4>\n

I\u2019d spent a couple of years away from this story, and one of the sections that surprised me on rereading was the over-the-top rant Barb delivers when her boyfriend tries to explain away the Pterodactyl. I think it\u2019s my favorite moment in the whole story — a comical nod at that horror-movie trope when a character refuses to accept the supernatural, despite clear and present evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pterodactyl is itself a nod to the first full-length dinosaur movie, 1925\u2019s <\/span>The Lost World,<\/span><\/i> with stop-motion effects by Willis O\u2019Brien (who later brought King Kong to life). When Professor Challenger and his crew reach a secluded island, the flying dinosaur is one of the first signs they\u2019ve traveled to a world where prehistoric animals survived. Challenger points to a distant cliff, where a wire-suspended model glides overhead: \u201cA <\/span>Pterodactyl \u2013– <\/span><\/i>proving definitely that the statements in poor Maple White\u2019s diary are <\/span>true!\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

There are better moments to follow: an Allosaurus attacking their camp at night, a dinosaur stampede, and a Brontosaurus brought back to London where it escapes and terrorizes the city (as a giant ape will terrorize New York City eight years later). My younger self grew fascinated with movie-magic dinosaurs, particularly the stop-motion kind, which had a strobing unreal movement that enhanced their fantastical impact. If a movie promised dinosaurs, I\u2019d happily sit through an hour of tedious build-up until the big lizards showed up (as long as they weren\u2019t <\/span>actual<\/span><\/i> lizards with fins pasted on their backs. I\u2019ll never forgive an episode of <\/span>Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea <\/span><\/i>where Admiral Nelson points to a stock footage iguana and said, \u201cThere\u2019s a Stegosaurus.\u201d Uh, <\/span>nope.<\/span><\/i>)
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