Well, although I've reached a standstill in my crossover fic and am taking a well-deserved rest, I couldn't resist putting my fingers to the keyboard for a one-shot fanfic. I hope you all enjoy it! This fanfic was partially inspired and enriched by Greg Bear's Dinosaur Summer.
July 24, 1938.
The circus stank.
It reeked of hay, dusty straw, sawdust, elephant and horse manure, sweat, oil, canvas, popcorn and peanuts.
Preston Brown had known these scents since the earliest days of his boyhood, recalling the times when Professor Ralph Brown would decide to put off correcting the latest batch of mathematics assignments that had been handed in by his students for one glorious afternoon or evening. With Papa and Mama Harriet leading, Preston, his brother, and his three sisters would excitedly enter that magical realm contained under a massive canvas tent, ruled by ringmasters and lion tamers.
No, it wasn't these nostalgic odors that caused his steps to falter, and made his spine vibrate as he walked away from the ticket booth and approached the tail end of the line of people filing into the big top, connected to a pair of smaller tents in a Y formation.
Instead, it was the other scents filtering out into the air of Battery Park which did it. It was the aroma of aviaries, of reptile houses in zoos, of parrot and cockatiel and budgie, python and monitor lizard, hawk and rhino and crocodile, impenetrable jungle and open-air butcher shop, all rolled into one indistinguishable, primal current. It was something eons old, from a place forgotten by Time and by God.
For a brief moment, Preston's lips formed a tight, grim line as he looked back over his shoulder at the ticket booth, where a green and yellow banner grandiosely proclaimed, SAMPSON & KLINE'S CIRCUS PREHISTORIC! Under it were the words "Beasts from the Island of the Skull!"
"Remind me why you hauled me into this Lucy," Preston timorously asked, turning to the woman striding beside him as they fell into line. "Is this some way to torture me or what?"
"No Preston," she sighed thinly. "It's because the circus can only hold performances here during the summer, when it's hot and humid enough for its animals-or do you want to go all the way to Savannah or Baton Rouge to see the beasts instead? I don't."
"Monsters is an even more appropriate term than beasts for them as far as I'm concerned," he responded dryly. "And once again, there's a very good reason why I wouldn't have a problem with staying home to look after Jessica while you went by yourself," he reminded her.
Lucy snorted, penciled eyebrows furrowing over her blue eyes. "And be seen in public without my husband? Or with his brother as a substitute escort instead? Preston, do you possibly know how stupid and how vulnerable that makes a married woman feel?"
"Do you possibly remember how terrified I am when I wake up from nightmares or have flashbacks from that awful time?" he appealed.
"Yes, I do," Lucy softly answered. "I have nightmares myself of that night when we 'first met' at Kong's premiere," her eyes growing distant. "I remember how he broke his restraints and how you, a random stranger whom I'd never even heard of before that night, threw me under a seat and covered me with your body as his foot stomped down at the place I'd been seconds before. Nothing like saving a girl's life to make her in love with a fella at first sight," she quipped, smile suffused with a warm gratitude as their eyes met. Abruptly shaking her head as if to break some kind of spell, his young wife soothingly assured, "But all the dangerous ones will be in nice big cages Preston, where they can't hurt anybody one bit."
"That's what my erstwhile boss said about Kong," he spitefully snorted, breaking the talk off to reluctantly hand his ticket to an olive-skinned attendant who, judging from his wiry physique probably doubled as an acrobat in this particular circus.
"Thanks. Enjoy the show," the attendant congenially said in a Grecian accent.
"We will," Lucy said as Preston mechanically nodded.
"Well," she encouragingly continued, picking up where she'd left off, "think of this as a way to face and master your fears."
"It'd better not add to them, that's for damn sure," Preston dryly rejoined as he selected a place among the bleachers that was near-but not too near-the central ring. Taking a seat and removing his tan Gatsby cap to place on his lap, he and his noticeably more eager wife, her deep brown cascades of curls adorned by a sky-blue bow, awaited the spotlights that would herald the spectacle's start.
In the meantime, his eyes swept over the arena, scrutinizing every aspect of it, just as he'd formerly appraised each and every potential venue before Carl would air one of his films or hold a stage production. Enormous cages composed of steel bars as thick as ash trees had been set up on each side of the big center ring, with two smaller cages placed in each of the outside rings. Tunnels of steel bars, covered with tarpaulins, angled away and connected them to the side tents.
The spotlight switching on jolted Preston out of his little reverie, and he and Lucy watched as the ringmaster strode out of the shadows and into the center ring, bathed in the harsh yellow-white light. His name, Preston knew from the papers, was Adam Stelhjes, and his Norwegian ancestry was definitely plain for all to see.
Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore a crimson red coat adorned with silver braiding, a black top hat and tan jodhpurs, tightened around his waist by a brown belt. Standing bolt upright in his black, knee-high boots, Stelhjies grandiosely bellowed to the crowd, "Ladies and Gentlemen!"
"Here we go," Lucy whispered in excitement.
"Tonight," the ringmaster boomed, "it will be our pleasure to show you some of the most wonderful, the most hideous, the rarest, and the most extraordinary creatures on Earth."
"Tonight, for your enjoyment and edification, we at Sampson & Kline Circus present…"
"Animals from the depths of time and from the depths of hell!"
I'll pos-i-tive-ly agree with that, Preston silently told himself.
"Beasts snatched and transported, with great peril and loss of life, from the fabled and terrible Skull Island…"
"Performing in CIRCUS PREHISTORIC…"
"Frank Kline's and Harry Sampson's legendary DINOSAUR CIRCUS!!!"
There was a staccato clanging from the tunnel of bars that led into one of the smaller cages in the right ring, as if something was using them to swing hand over hand from. And indeed, that proved to be the case as a spotlight revealed a huge, silver-furred gibbon, two-thirds as large as a man, coming to the cage's door and sticking a questing arm through the bars. At the same moment, there was a repetitive thump, thump, thump, in the adjacent tunnel as a massive tree kangaroo, weighing about 90 pounds and attractively colored in brown and deep orange, hopped up to the bars.
A third spotlight switched on, revealing and tracking the figure of a clown, dressed like a Victorian tiger hunter and holding a ridiculously big wooden shotgun. Turning his head this way and that as he ran and stumbled up to the cages, as if scanning the tent for a quarry, his attention was caught by a sort of whoop from the massive gibbon.
The gibbon beckoned with one of his hook-shaped hands through the bars of the cage, and the hunter clown obliged, coming closer and lowering his head to the primate's level. With one of his lanky, impossibly long arms, the gibbon reached out and suggestively brushed the lock of his cage with the back of his hand before pointing at the clown's belt.
Unmoved, the hunter clown shook his head. Nothing doing.
At this, the gibbon's face became downcast, and he clasped his hands together as if pleading. After hesitating for a second or two, the hunter clown took a key on a loop from his pocket and opened the cage door.
Long arms drooping, the gibbon walked out. Quick as a flash, he grabbed the hunter clown's fake shotgun by the barrel, snatched it from his hands, and flung it away into the sawdust as hard as he could. As the clown's mouth dropped open in an O of surprise at such a development and he turned in the direction of his gun, the huge silver gibbon swiped the key too. Angry and shaking his finger disapprovingly, the hunter chased the naughty gibbon around the ring as the audience convulsed in laughter.
Putting on a turn of speed, the gibbon ran up to the tree kangaroo's cage, stuck the key in the lock, and let his marsupial friend out. Now the primate's pursuer had two escapees to contend with. Recovering the key, the clown reached behind one of the cages and grabbed a concealed butterfly net, chasing the tree kangaroo with it as he spouted angry gibberish at both animals.
Trapping the kangaroo against the wooden border, he dove for it-and comically fell flat on his face as the marsupial dodged, evading him. Getting back to his feet, the clown chased it past one of the cages, where the gibbon crouched in wait on top. As the hunter ran by, the gibbon plucked his pith helmet from his head and flicked it away like a discus as a red wig puffed out.
Clapping his hand over the crown of his head, the clown growled in exasperation at the gibbon, arms sternly akimbo, before reclaiming his hat and continuing to chase the tree kangaroo. Cornering it once more, he prepared to swing that silly butterfly net. Unbeknownst to him though, the giant gibbon had left his perch atop the cages and was coming up behind him. The hunter had no idea that he was being stalked until the gibbon gave him a nice hard whack across the seat of the pants.
As the clown yelped in surprise, Preston and Lucy joined the rest of the audience in raucous laughter. "Why you little-" the hunter said furiously to the gibbon, grabbing his gun and chasing him all over both the right and central rings, trying to aim his mock-up shotgun as the silvered ape swung and bounced around.
Getting a bead on the primate, the clown prepared to pull the trigger. Then, Preston heard a new sound from near the top of the tent, a guttural yet oddly high-pitched, protracted roaring, almost like a howler monkey trying to hit an alto note. It was a hair-raising sound, one that he and the other men had often heard as they'd smashed through Skull Island's jungle. He'd figured that some kinda flying creature was producing them, but no one had gotten a decent look at the beasts.
Now though, he and the other unnerved audience members got a great view of a trio of these creatures as they flew down towards the startled clown. Known as Howling aero-rats, or simply Howlers, the animals, descended from arboreal rodents, resembled a cross between a gray-headed flying fox and a howler monkey. They had great brown aviator goggle eyes, and were dark gray in color, with a collar and cape of copper fur. Four conical incisor teeth jutted out from their mouths, and their wings were supported by the bone of an elongated little finger. Oddly enough, the other four, free fingers didn't bear claws like a bat's thumbs, but just had simple nails instead.
Gasping in mock surprise and fear, the hunter forgot about the gibbon and crouched down, placing his arms over his head. But his reaction was a little too slow in coming. One of the Howlers, powered by its 4-foot wingspan, rat tail streaming behind, swooped at the clown's head and deftly snatched the pith helmet away with its teeth.
This time, rather than dropping it, the grotesque winged rodent ascended several feet and exchanged the hat with a companion. The Howlers passed the headpiece among themselves at least a dozen times, as if they were playing a teasing game of Hot Potato, always keeping 6-10 feet above the annoyed clown's hands as he spouted more angry gibberish at them and vehemently stomped his feet, chasing them around with the shotgun. Lucy couldn't stop laughing convulsively at the sight.
Taking the hat from another one, a Howler dove down to the clown's eye level and hovered in the central ring, 10 yards away. Scowling under his rumpled red wig, the clown leveled his gun, only to have the big gibbon give him yet another smack in the pants. Startled, the hunter fell on his rear as he fired, missing the winged beast as harmless smoke and a fusillade of raisins and shelled cashews erupted with a bang from the oversized shotgun's muzzle.
All five animals converged on the results, the Howler who'd been carrying the pith helmet graciously dropping it into the clown's lap, and delightedly gobbled up their snack. Then, the gibbon and the Howlers banded together and chased the hunter clown out of the range of the spotlights, all disappearing backstage. Only the tree kangaroo remained, nibbling at a few last raisins as Preston and Lucy joined the other audience members in standing up and applauding.
"See, this wasn't so bad at all, was it Preston?" Lucy whispered off her cuff, a huge grin on her face.
"No. Let's hope it stays this way."
The lights dimmed down, and with his stately gait, Stelhjies walked back into the central ring, near the sitting kangaroo. Affectionately stroking the marsupial's head, the ringmaster said, "Well, well ladies and gentlemen, what a wonderful display to get us all into a relaxed and jocular mood." Abruptly turning stonier, he raked the crowd with his blue gaze and dramatically urged, "Hold onto this mood as if it is the thinnest of ledges and it is all that prevents you from falling to your death!! For if any of you are daring to think that creatures like our Carol here represent the true nature of Skull Island's animal inhabitants…you are dreadfully mistaken."
"But first, before we boldly plunge into the mysterious and monstrous and grisly realm of its fauna, we must take a brief look at the story of Skull Island itself and its discovery by the civilized world!"
The ringmaster opened his mouth to say more, and then closed it, as a lost, vacant expression flowed over his face. Looking helplessly around at the audience and making a show of patting his pockets, Adam Stelhjies neutrally declared, "Ladies and gentlemen, it seems that I have forgotten my lines! To make matters worse, I seem to have misplaced my written copy! Can any of you good folks-" At this point, the great tree kangaroo reached out with its clawed paws and tentatively tugged at the top of one of the ringmaster's boots, catching his attention.
"Huh? Oh, do you have something for me?" Stelhjies inquired of the animal. In silent response, the tree kangaroo reached into her pouch and pulled out a cheap billfold, which she then fumblingly handed to the ringmaster before an astonished audience.
"Thank you Carol," he said, opening the wallet and pulling out a folded sheet of paper as the kangaroo herself bounded out of the ring and disappeared into the left side tent as the crowd clapped approvingly.
After making a pretense of quickly scanning the words as the applause died down, Stelhjies returned the paper back into the wallet and placed it in one of the pockets of his jodhpurs.
Curls of white smoke, produced from somewhere in the blackness outside the center rings, drifted around the ringmaster's figure as the spotlights dimmed and he boomed, "Human beings have always had an insatiable love affair with curiosities and mysteries. For thousands of years, before even the time of Ancient Egypt and Babylon, we have been finding and puzzling over the mysterious remains of long-extinct animals, transformed into rock in the soil. Some thought that they were the bones of dragons, or of giants. Others thought that they were exotic, mineral-based plants, or traces of fierce demons."
"Then, around three hundred years ago, humanity realized that the world we know and inhabit now is only the most recent act in a very, very, very long play. The petrified bones and shells encased in rock came from creatures that lived and died during a time long before human history-and gradually, we began to piece together a compelling picture of what Earth used to be like, millions of years before human feet trod soil."
"Around the same time though," Stelhjies conspiratorially said, "as nations began to ply the oceans in earnest, spotty rumors began to filter out, every so often, of another mystery, located in the east-central Indian Ocean near the islands of Java and Sumatra. It was an isle said to literally swallow up castaways, and to be wreathed in choking cloudbanks."
"Indonesian sailors called it Pulau Gunung Tengkorak, Skull Mountain Island, or Pulau Ular Naga, Island of Dragons. The Portuguese knew it as Console dos Demons, or Island of Demons, while the Chinese dubbed it Can Long Dou- Cruel Dragon Island. It was the Dutch though, whose sailors gave it the name we currently know it by, Het Eiland van de schedel- in our tongue, Skull Island!!!"
Just hearing the name spoken again made the muscles alongside Preston's spine tense like springs, and his heart rate quickened. Instead of the sawdust and popcorn, he fancied that he could once more smell humus and blood-and hear screams. When it comes for you, grab Lucy and run like hell, just like in the jungle. Fight or sell your life to it if you have to for her sake, a feral, paranoid part of him thought frantically.
The ringmaster's voice cut into Preston's thoughts as he continued his speech, helping to anchor the younger man back in the present moment.
"-gle one of you knows," Stelhjies was booming, "just five years ago humanity discovered to its quaking amazement that the rumors were real, and living examples of the terrible lizards still lived, on an anachronistic Noah's Ark in the midst of the Indian Ocean! Perhaps most wondrously of all, we discovered that we could bring many of these beasts into our world, train them, make them our companions-or at least make them do our bidding. Ladies and gentlemen…I present to you from Sampson and Kline Circus…THE CAVACLADE OF PREHISTORIC BEASTS!"
A handsome quartet of horses, two chestnuts, two palominos, came running out into the main ring, galloping in a wide circle. At their heels came four Pugiodorsus. Similar in appearance to extinct forms like Dryosaurus and Hypsilophodon, they were slate-gray above and dirty yellow ochre below, flanks and tails banded with the same color. Their backs and napes were armored with a wide strip of bony plates, almost like those of a crocodile, and each shoulder bore a curved, backwards pointing large spike for defense. All in all, they looked like two-legged, hound-sized baby alligators with cow horns grafted onto them. "Take away those spikes and they'd look so darling, wouldn't they love?" Lucy enthused. Preston half-distantly nodded in reply.
Running in the easy, ground-eating yet ridiculously funny manner of ostriches, two Megaptrex, a 10-foot tall species of flightless bird discovered during a '35 expedition to Skull Island, streaked out into the tent. Each one's neck was deep copper in color, with the rest of the imposing bird's body barred in black and white, similar to the Barred Rock chickens that one of Preston's aunts kept on her farm. A lithe, mocha-haired young man, wearing full-length turquoise tights and a bathing top to accent his "beefcake appeal," was perched on one Megaptrex. On the other rode a lovely young woman with strawberry blond curls, her figure filling out a glittering emerald green outfit which exposed her back and stomach quite attractively. As the spotlights shone off her bare arms and legs, Preston's eyes couldn't tear themselves away from her-at least, not until he abruptly remembered that he had to snap out of it, unless he wanted to receive an earful from a jealous wife on the drive back home.
Next, accompanied by a thunderous pounding of feet, came a trio of Sylvaceratops. The gracefully built, streamlined horned dinosaurs were about the size of large white rhinos, and slightly longer than cars. They piqued Preston's interest. While they were obviously related to the Ferrucutus, like the bull that had so savagely attacked their party in his fit of temper at being wounded, these ceratopsians weren't nearly as bulky or huskily, frightfully intimidating.
They only had one horn, essentially just a small, stumpy, no-account cone, and their frills were shaped like tall, rickety elongated double ovals. Nor were their scales the impressive coats of mail and scutes which had resulted in the Latin name for "Iron-hide" being bestowed upon their commanding cousins, their own hides almost having more of a suedelike aspect. Sandy beige in color, the trio of Sylvaceratops were further adorned with black, almost tigerlike stripes on their necks, lower legs, lower flanks, rumps and tails, the feet plum purple against the sawdust.
Drawing ahs and ohs and wows of awe from the crowd with their massive, imperious yet graceful beauty, the herd of horned dinosaurs ran in single file, a larger animal that Preston figured was a bull leading what seemed to be a pair of cows. The horses confidently split apart on reaching them, two running on each side, and the Pugidorsus, with a daredevil's spunk, actually ran right under the line of horned dinosaurs, the audience holding their breath in amazement as the quartet nimbly swerved among those rhino legs. It seemed nothing more than just a game to them.
Just as impressive was the sight of the man and woman, legs tightly clamped around their avian mounts, directing the Megaptrex in tandem, heading right at the Sylvaceratops bull in what seemed like a collision course-then, at the last possible instant dodging to each side and slapping an outstretched hand against the striped flank of each animal as it would swing its head in a fruitless attempt at retaliation. Every single spectator applauded and cheered wildly at the sight.
Last of all came an adult male Hebeosaurus, a lumbering, 18-foot forward sloping herbivore even more massive than the Sylvaceratops bull and a nondescript medium brown in color, with a double line of scutes running down his spine, two small bony triangles projecting from his lower jaw. A pair of little black eyes, stupidly, myopically gazed out at the world from a stretched-out iguana head. As the horses deftly swerved around his colossal form, and the Pugiodorsus streaked under it, the Hebeosaurus plodded into the ring just far enough to be out of the path of the Sylvaceratops trio.
There, he stubbornly, mulishly planted his feet and would not go any further. From the shadows on the perimeter, a trainer appeared with an elephant goad in hand, a blunt steel hook on a thick wooden handle. Dusky skin and slick, coal black hair telling of his Hindoo ancestry, he cut through the procession and jabbed the hebeosaur in the back of his knee, urging him into the central ring. The enormous reptile uttered a sort of hooting quack, like some giant cross between an owl and a farmyard duck, turning his head to give the trainer a sort of sidelong look and raising one of his tensed back legs, as if warning against such shenanigans. But he obeyed, going further into the ring and coming to a stop between the two cages. There, the trainer clipped two great shackles, on the ends of two short chains, to each of the stoic hebeosaur's ankles before returning to the perimeter.
At this, the Pugiodorsus quartet broke free from the procession and ran to the hebeosaur, each leaping up onto his head, then running onto his back, where all four arranged themselves in a line, shifting from food to foot. Seconds later, the young man expertly dismounted his Megaptrex mount, allowing the bird to run free around the ring as the woman did the same with hers. Then, to Preston's astonished disbelief, both of them, the man leading, tore right for the oncoming Sylvaceratops!
"What are they doing?" Lucy gasped in horror. "This is ridiculous! They'll be killed!"
Preston thought so too, and winced in expectation-but as the bull lowered his head in annoyance, the man sprung up into the air like a cat, landed on the bridge of the dinosaur's muzzle, seized the top of the animal's frill with his hands, somersaulted up and over, then tumbled down his scaly back to a point midway down the thick tail, where he leapt to his feet once more and vaulted off to come down onto the head of the next dinosaur and clutch her frill in his hands. Preston's flabbergasted attention was torn away from the incredible feat when the woman acrobat herself bounded up onto the bull's snout, and never left that shapely figure as she somersaulted down each Sylvaceratops' shoulders and back, never faltering, in what was unquestionably the most enchanting, beautiful, dynamic and fantastic display of acrobatics he'd ever witnessed.
Attaining the tail of the last Sylvaceratops cow, the man sprung off it like it was a diving board, hit the ground running, and caught one of the cantering chestnut horses. Grabbing the horses' mane, he swung his muscular, sweating body up and over the animal's shoulders, seating himself bareback. His partner did the same almost immediately after, muscles taut as she mounted one of the palominos. Both acrobats, flushed and panting, raised their arms in victory as the crowd leapt to its collective feet and detonated in one great prolonged roar of clapping and cheering.
At that, the Pugiodorsus suddenly became alert, standing on tiptoe and blinking. Then, they all leapt off the Hebeosaurus as one, and ran up a ramp placed near one of the cages. Two of the small dinosaurs streaked off the ramp and landed on the back of the other palomino horse as it passed by, clutching its mane in their clawed fingers. The horse whinnied in surprise and reared briefly, baring its teeth, but ran on, with the dinosaurs riding. As the other chestnut horse ran underneath, the remaining two Pugiodorsus also jumped onto its back, joining their pals in this surreal parade.
The whole bizarre, inconceivable train-two Pugiodorsus riding one horse, two more riding another, the woman riding hers, the man riding his, two gawky black and white, copper-necked great flightless birds, and three dirt-pounding Sylvaceratops, with a shackled Hebeosaurus vacantly taking it all in from the center- circled the cages twice more at a fast gallop, a finale for the delighted audience before the horses, still carrying their passengers, trotted out of the ring and into the left side tent, while the Megaptrex and the Sylvaceratops exited stage right, the bull stopping momentarily to face the crowd, give a chuffing snort, and a bob of his head, as if saying goodbye before taking his leave. Everyone appreciatively broke into another thunderstorm of applause at the dinosaur's gesture.
The spotlights seared into all three rings now, revealing clowns juggling bowling pins, tennis balls and other assorted objects as a diversion for the audience while the roustabouts wheeled the imposing runways back out into the central ring and hooked them back up to their respective cages with loud, prison-door clangs. From the left side tent, something gave a cry. It sounded like a cross between a bellowing alligator and a huge, hoarse, screeching shrew.
Preston knew right off what sort of beast made that sound, and the panicky terror welled up inside of him, just like it had half a decade ago when he'd been running for his life from its kin, smelling of ripe flesh and frenzied for the kill. Without stopping to think, he suddenly found himself jumping to his feet and turning, starting to run…
A warm object closed on his belt, right above his buttocks, and began to pull downward. "Ahh!" he gasped inarticulately, kicking out.
"Hey pal, what's the sudden hurry?" a man's voice half wryly lisped from his right.
"Nothing is," Lucy bluntly assured him as she turned her husband back around. "He just…forgot something that's still no skin off my nose if we don't have it."
The man seemed to accept this, and Preston reluctantly allowed Lucy to sharply plunk him back down onto the bench. Blue eyes glaring, she snapped under her breath, "You pull yourself together. Now"
"But Lucy honey, you don't understand what those monsters are capab-"
"Yes I do!" she savagely hissed back. "You've told me many times about how they were like on Skull Island, and what they almost did to you. But this one is going to be in the sturdiest cage I've seen for goodness sake's, and I'm sure there must be fellas with rifles hidden all over this big top in case it escapes!"
"They'd better have a damned good idea of what creature they're dealing with," Preston responded gravely, shaking his head even as he mentally curled into a little ball.
"Of course they do Preston Brown, so get a grip on yourself and remember that it can't get at you!" she hissed as stealthily as possible before turning back to the circus ring, now totally vacant. Apparently, the Hebeosaurus had been led away itself while they'd been speaking.
Right then, all the lights in the circus tent went out, leaving nothing but a humid blackness. Once more, that feral, guttural yet slashing sound from the darkness. This time, the unmistakable, haunting howl of a wolf joined in. The hair on Preston's nape prickled, and both he and Lucy instinctively touched each other's sides for reassurance.
The ringmaster's voice bellowed out into the blackness, making them both jump.
"Many would, in their arrogance and ignorance, call Skull Island's hosts of killers nightmarish or savage. But in truth, they are just extreme examples of players in an eternal contest, one as old as life, stark as fang and claw, in which the victors devour the flesh of the vanquished. We shudder at the thought of becoming just meat-all our life, our accomplishments, our thoughts being reduced to lunch for a wild beast-how horrific! Yet we thrive on flesh as well…that is the way of things."
Impatient yet plaintive, the primal sound from the stampede of titans.
"Gaze upon the predator…and her prey!!!"
All the spotlights flicked on, an explosive flash that dazzled Preston's eyes and made him wince in agony. When they adjusted, he saw that in the central ring, separated by a barrier of bars, were two huge dinosaurs. One was a Ligocristus, a duckbilled dinosaur about 30 feet long and colored a drab pinkish brown with some darker brown blotching along the spine and on the tail. A single spike, barely curving forward, jutted out from the back of its skull, a great ribbon of lemon yellow skin streaming back from the back edge almost to the withers. Preston had heard of him. This was Matthew, so gentle and docile that children could hand feed and even ride on him.
In the other cage, eagerly staring at the Ligocristus, was something that haunted Preston's dreams and memories. It was something huge and sleek and magnificent and awful beyond words, a warm brown and burnt orange dragon with high-perched, flashing yellow feline eyes. It stood alert and tensed on two legs, corded muscles taut and shifting under that sleek, sequined crocodilian hide. Its feet, each armed with a terrible sickle of a claw, restlessly scratched the earth under the cage, like it was some monstrosity of a turkey. The beast's impossibly long, partly rigid tail, the rear half dipped in cobalt blue, curved back and forth, the tip forcefully strumming the rearmost bars. Folded neatly under its chest were lean, powerful arms with three-fingered hands, each digit tipped with a lacquered black knife.
Preston stared at the dinosaur. Even if he'd never even clapped eyes on Skull Island, he still would've wanted to run. The entire crowd seemed to feel the same way, tension infusing the air like some toxic gas. Yes, it was a wise thing for the scientific community to have recently changed this dragon's name to Aquliasuchus, or "eagle crocodile" which was what Jack had called them from day one. The initial name of Venatosaurus, "hunter lizard" couldn't possibly start to do such a polished, primal, monster justice. Lucy leaned into his side, and sharply gasped, trim pale fingers clutching the bench's edge like a hawk's talons. Their eyes met, and Preston knew that at long last, she understood.
She'd seen the mounted specimens in the American Museum of Natural History. She'd seen photographs and even newsreel footage of the reptilian beasts. They'd all impressed and awed her, but nothing could convey the absolute savagery, the cunning malice, of a living, breathing member of that race.
Now, seated just 20 yards away, she too, was able to smell the cloying, monitor lizard/chicken hawk perfume, and be transfixed, like her husband, by that snout and those jaws, serrated razor teeth protruding from the upper jaw in a satanic, malevolently knowing leer. No crocodile, no tiger, no bear, no wolf, could compare to this captive from Hell's jungle.
Stelhjies knew and had worked with this dragon many times before, yet Preston noticed that the ringmaster wasn't exactly foolhardy about how closely he approached the dinosaur's cage before stopping. The theropod gave a churring growl, but Adam's voice, for a brave wonder, lost none of its power and certainty as he dramatically announced, "Here, ladies and gentlemen, you see Aquilasuchus impavidus, the indomitable eagle crocodile, one of Skull Island's bigger carnivores…but by no means the biggest…or the most grotesque. Observe how she rapaciously gazes at what would constitute a week-long feast, a large Ligocristus bull. Without the assistance she would receive in a pack, who can say how that match would ultimately end?"
"Not very pleasantly for that poor duckbill, no doubt," Lucy pronounced squeakily.
Preston decided that maybe if he tried to view the Aquilasuchus through the eyes of an intellectual, and not as a lunch escapee, he'd be able to control his fear better. Using both the ringmaster and the gaps between the bars as a frame of reference, his eyes flowed over the animal's cruel snout, that S-shaped muscular neck, those supple shoulders, that scale-studded trunk, lightly muscled and narrow, yet still thicker than a sturdy pony, and that tendon-stiffened tail, waving back and forth like a drugged python-20 feet.
The theropod growled again, then opened her jaws and softly clacked them together twice, giving everyone in the audience a good look at those ivory weapons. It reminded Preston of how, ironically enough, Herb had told him tales about filming two sequences of polar bears being captured around Hudson Bay. Each bear had displayed the exact same jaw-clacking behavior after being subdued, apparently as some kinda defiant threat. Whether this animal was expressing defiance or not, clearly she was very sore at being forced to be in plain view of all these people and the Ligocristus, abundant prey that she could never bring down.
"And now…a man who has spent four years hunting, capturing, and training Skull Island's great reptiles, who knows as much about the ways of these astonishing beasts as any man in the world! Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present to you, our Master Monster Trainer…Nathoo Singh!"
On cue, the Hindoo trainer who'd been working the Hebeosaurus strolled out into the central ring a spotlight's beam trailing him as Stelhjies returned to the darkened perimeter. Now dressed in khaki jodhpurs, shiny black shoes, and a warm brown coat, the light played off his obsidian hair as he grinned at the audience, holding a riding crop in one hand, and a large metal hoop with stiff paper stretched across in the other. At heel, excited and panting gently, was a magnificent silver wolf.
When the spotlight stopped, at the same place where Stelhjies had stood, Singh halted, coolly saying, "Genghis, sit." After a few uncertain looks at the Aquilasuchus, the great wolf obeyed, dwarfed by the larger carnivore as he kept his eyes locked on the trainer's.
"Gaze upon Genghis, the wolf," Nathoo declared in a mildly accented voice. "Not six years ago, his tribe was viewed by many as the fiercest of all predators in the world, a byword for malice and bloodthirsty savagery."
"But now, that has changed! Behold the new king of pack hunters, Aquilasuchus impavidus! The species name speaks for itself. She is indomitable. We've known each other for four and a half years now, ever since I helped capture her in Skull Island's terrible jungles-"
"Then you are as insane as Carl. I thought so," Preston mumbled.
"-and I have a very healthy respect for her-but unlike Genghis here," Singh added, bending to briefly stroke the wolf, "she feels nothing even approaching respect for me."
Black gaze swooping over the audience, he proclaimed, as if in warning, "Smell the promise of violence and death in the stifling air! Hold onto your children and wives, feel your legs tense with terror and dread constrict your spine as you smell the steely scent of blood! I introduce you to Countess Bathory, the name we've given to her!"
Abruptly, as if realizing he was becoming far too carried away, Nathoo paused, saying meditatively, "I suppose my speech is becoming too bloody-minded and horrible for your liking." Quite a few heads in the crowd fervently nodded. "Well, never fear, I can soon banish the tension with some spectacle," he assured them.
Taking the paper-sheathed hoop and telling the wolf "Stay," the trainer walked to the left for about 40 feet, then came to a stop. Extending his arm to the side, the one holding the hoop, Singh slapped the riding crop hard against his thigh. Immediately, Genghis broke into a run, padded paws striking the earth as the wolf ran at his trainer, coiled his leg muscles, and leapt, grizzled silver body punching through the paper with a tearing rip.
Switching the hoop in his grip, the trainer flicked the riding crop once more. Again, the wolf leapt through the proffered hoop. Letting the hoop drop to the ground, Nathoo went right up to Genghis and snarled at him, white teeth shining like alabaster against his dusky warm brown face. The wolf snarled back in response. The trainer answered with another snarl. This went back and forth, trainer and wolf touching such heights of challenge that Preston became seriously worried that Genghis would sink those massive fangs into Singh's face at any moment.
Then, Nathoo relaxed, and commanded Genghis, "Roll over." Instead of snapping or disobeying, the wolf instantly went soft again and rolled in the dirt as Countess Bathory turned in her cage, claws questing between the bars. "Open," the trainer commanded the wolf, which obligingly opened his blocky, formidable jaws. To everyone's gasping incredulity, Singh put his forearm crosswise into the wolf's bone-crushing jaws and kept it there for several seconds. Genghis could've pulverized it in a flash if he so chose. Yet he calmly stood there, as if trying to get the award for most well-behaved dog at a dog show.
Singh pulled out, stood up, then wheeled around, his entire demeanor changing in an instant as his black eyes raked the audience, scornful and profoundly judging as he almost yelled, making Preston damn near jump out of his skin, "Do you expect Countess Bathory to do the same as Genghis just did? Do you expect her to allow me to put a leash on her neck and take her for a walk around the circus grounds? Do you expect to see her, like a lion or tiger, perching on boxes or jumping through hoops, batting at my ridiculous whip and passively allowing me to put my head in her mouth? Bathory recognizes no master, refuses to be trained in any form or fashion, waits only for the day when she will escape her cage and run with her own kind once more at speeds of 32 miles an hour-twice as fast as the best sprinter could hope to run-through the sweltering jungles and across the tortured terrain of Skull Island, immersed once more in everything she knows and loves, fulfilling all her deepest desires…"
"Except maybe to sink her teeth into me, her enemy, to crush my skull like an egg and gut me like a fish!"
The crowd grimaced and sucked in its collective breath in a gesture of extreme distaste. "Can't he just stop saying such horrible things, that sick-minded cad?" Lucy fretted, close to tearful panic as Preston gulped and clenched his jaws.
"Oh yes, we can well believe that Countess Bathory wants to take revenge on the human race for her capture, her imprisonment, these four years of being ripped away from Skull Island…just as the great Kong demonstrated half a decade ago in Times Square to us, the human rats."
"And don't I know it," Preston grimly muttered, hugging Lucy.
Breaking from his talk, Genghis trotting behind him, Singh then magisterially strode across the ring to the cage containing Matthew, the Ligocristus, and opened the broad, high door of steel bars. The hadrosaur calmly trotted through the door and out into the ring, crested head bobbing up and down like a horse's as he approached the trainer. As some audience members gasped and fidgeted, uncertain about their own safety, Matthew focused his goat-pupiled eyes on the trainer, baring his turtlelike beak and giving a bassoon cry to express his agitation and disapproval at once more having to be placed so close to his natural enemy. Then, the Ligocristus broke off to sniff at Genghis, who didn't seem all that sure about having a four and a half ton dinosaur smelling him.
Nathoo gently tapped the horny beak with the riding crop's handle, and Matthew expectantly turned toward him again, beak opened once more. From his pocket, the trainer produced a large orange, shoving it into the bull's mouth. He then offered a large dog biscuit to the wolf, who happily accepted as the Ligocristus shut his yellow-brown eyes in something approaching ecstasy as he chewed, lifted his head to let the juice run down his gullet, and gave a bison snort.
"Both Genghis and Matthew have learnt to live among us and accept our generosity as men. If he so chose, this dinosaur could savage me like an enormous snapping turtle with that beak, or rear up and trample me like a gigantic horse…yet there is the confidence between us that he never will. In fact, Ligocristus like Matthew are one of the few creatures we've so far gotten to successfully breed in captivity away from Skull Island. We have another one too, which has already performed for your gratification."
At that, Preston's attention was drawn by staccato, crazy footfalls as the two Megaptrex reentered the ring, cantering right up to Singh, who tossed them a couple of handfuls of raisins. The Ligocristus and the wolf didn't seem to be bothered by the black and white behemoths as they eagerly pecked their snacks out of the dirt.
"All the things that these extraordinary, remarkable animals have taught us," Singh went on, "all we have learned of the true nature of the past and of dinosaurs and their kin, we owe to the most remarkable fluke of nature in human history: Skull Island. Thanks to the spectacular isolation of this land apart from time, we have been able to see a living record of the evolution of amphibians into reptiles, reptiles into therapsids, therapsids into mammals, reptile into birds and dinosaurs-especially theropods, ranging from the diminutive Furcidactylus, a lily pad trotting hunter of insects and tadpoles…to the fiercest predator of all, the gargantuan Vastatosaurus Rex, the ravager lizard king! Compare the Aquilasuchus to this fabled and unstoppable beast, tough as nails, mean as the devil, covered in armored scales and sporting teeth as long and thick as my leg, seldom conquered by man's weapons and never captured…Imagine the only beast that could pose a true threat even to the great King Kong, and made even the most hardened big-game hunters quake in their boots and wish the earth would swallow them for deliverance!"
Even if he hadn't heard sweet Ann Darrow, over and over again, relate her profoundly, inconceivably horrific experience at being pursued and then caught up in a battle between Kong and the titanic grinning dragons, Preston would've been able to make the comparison just fine. Countess Bathory looked scary and savage enough.
Stelhjies strolled back into the ring. In the outer two rings, Preston noticed, clowns and roustabouts were going through preparations for another act. Countess Bathory turned restlessly around in her cage, stiff brown and blue tail softly clanging over the bars, her yellow fox eyes sweeping the crowd. The Aquilasuchus opened her mouth to full stretch, showing her triangular carmine tongue and rows of backward hooked, wickedly serrated teeth. The jaws snapped shut, and the she-dragon lowered her head, tensing her shoulders like a lioness and extending her neck as best as the cage would allow. Her jaws and throat muscles briefly worked, and for a few stupefied moments, Preston thought that she'd picked him out of the crowd personally. The animal cocked her great grinning head to one side like an enormous eagle, the light glinting from her vulpine eyes and alligator scales, as if asking Preston a silent question: Are you as swift and as strong and as savage as I?
Then, Countess Bathory cut loose with an ear-piercing screech, seeming to touch the ultrasonic range, following it with a moaning, staccato thundering roar, like a tiger trying to drown out a motorcycle. She snapped her head up and clawed viciously at the cage like some massive fighting cock, first with one leg, then the other. Leaning back on her tail, she grasped the bars with each hand, clawed fingers tightening in a grip that nothing could loosen. Then, in an incredible display of strength, she balanced in that manner for a second before her clawed feet began to march up the bars as well, sickle claws slashing at them like the hind claws of an embattled housecat. Muscles and sinews thick as tree seedlings worked like steel cables as both legs flexed against the bars, as if she was trying to push the entire end of the cage out and down. Then the equilibrium was broken, and the Aquilasuchus' tail gave way underneath her weight, sending her tumbling heavily onto her right side where she lay for a moment, ribs and chest heaving.
As Countess Bathory rolled over and pushed herself up into an upright, seated position with her slender yet powerful arms, uttering throaty sawing noises like some colossal leopard, Nathoo quickly ushered Matthew and all the other beasts into the other cage. The Ligocristus, the Megaptrex, and the silver wolf were unanimous in their decision, and were all too willing to pound down the enclosed runway out of spotlight range, vanishing into the side tent.
Stelhjies took over as the trainer once more approached the Aquliasuchus.
"Ladies and gentlemen, stare in awe at the primal power and fury of raw nature!" the ringmaster grandiosely called. The dinosaur's banging and shrieking virtually drowned him out, but even that couldn't mask the thin quaver to his voice.
As for the dinosaur trainer, he seemed to have totally lost all interest in the audience. He circled the cage, hands resting atop his hipbones as he looked at Countess Bathory meditatively, who in turn was staring into the darkness where the Ligocristus and friends had been swallowed up.
Suddenly, Singh kicked the cage with all his force, a crashing clang ringing through the air. The theropod started herself for once, and whipped around, pulling her fierce jaw into her coiled neck and chest like a shotgun's bolt retracting to admit a new cartridge. Then, fast as a striking viper, she launched her head and neck forward, the bulky jaws forcefully whacking shut like a pair of two-by-fours being clapped together not even 7 feet from Singh's head. The dinosaur trainer stood his ground in an incredible display of courage, and Bathory swung around to hurl herself at him a second time, her rigid tail slapping against each bar in succession like a colossal boy's stick being dragged down an enormous picket fence.
Nathoo turned halfway around to tempt a charge like he was a matador and the Aquilasuchus swiveled with a speed beyond belief, colliding and smashing against her cage, cramming the side of her head tightly against the bars and flicking her scaled arms out between them, razor-tipped fingers spread. This time, the dinosaur made no sound, just a thick grunt of determination and exertion.
To Preston and Lucy's horror, the cage swayed several inches toward Nathoo Singh, and the entire audience rose in unison, preparing to run. Indeed, several people had already listened to their instincts, taking to their heels and tearing for the exits.
The trainer's arm came within a foot of being hooked by Countess Bathory's right index finger claw. The breeze caused by her own muscular arm moving through space actually caressed Singh's shining black hair, making it twitch like thistledown. Singh stepped away from the great cage in a slow, stalking, deliberate manner, and then turned to face the Aquliasuchus, this time from a much safer distance. The dinosaur fell back, and to everyone's inexpressible relief, the cage swung back upright with the tortured squeals of scraping metal.
The ringmaster's melodramatic booming had been silenced. He was just as at much of a shocked loss as the rest of them. Obviously, this was one of those events which happened once in a blue moon and without any foreknowledge. Staring attentively at the captive theropod, then the audience, Stelhjies deigned to keep his lip buttoned. It was very appropriate, for any spoken words would've been a clunking, veering profanity, and any attempt to assure the crowd that they were safe-well, they probably weren't. Everything was a swirling, hollow, shocked stupor for those few moments in time.
Singh stood on tiptoe and reproduced the same low, wood-rasp grunts that the Aquilasuchus had made after falling to the floor, staring squarely, penetratingly into her gleaming yellow vulpine eyes, starting to taken on an orangish hue. The predator sidled back. As she did so, Countess Bathory slumped a little, and let out a protracted, desolate-sounding cry, exactly like some great mourning dove. The trainer chuckled, and at that moment, Preston noticed a welt on the side of the predator's head, blood trickling from the damaged skin and down to her nape and shoulders. Drool oozed from her lips and hung from her lower jaw in three crystal ribbons.
Even the clowns and roustabouts had stopped now. The whole tent was packed with people watching this display of human will versus animal wild, and Preston, to his confused dismay, suddenly felt a piercing pang of sympathy for the female Aquilasuchus. She's never allowed to run free, never allowed to hunt live animals, never seen or interacted with another member of her kind for four years, never enjoyed the company of a male, brought night after night into this cramped jail cell for our gratification and amusement…
Her tribe had slaughtered Herb before his eyes, nearly killed Carl and Jack, and nearly killed him. Yet Preston found himself wishing that Countess Bathory could burst out of her cage like Kong had from his shackles, run wild, kill the trainer first, then grab a few smug, self-assured audience members, shake them like a terrier with a rat, carve them up with her claws, bathe in human blood like her namesake…
A distant part of him became aware of Lucy making choking, sniffling sounds. He turned, and saw to his bewildered astonishment that she was fighting back tears.
"So you feel it too?" he sadly told her. "You understand, don't you honey?"
"Yes. Yes," she sobbed, nodding. "He actually enjoys dominating and tormenting her! Jesus Christ, he makes me so sick," she proclaimed, tears shining in her eyes. "That's disgusting."
Involuntarily, Preston found his teeth gritting together and his hands forming fists. He couldn't put his finger on what to call the emotion surging through his blood at that moment in time, but he knew it was something very close to anger. "She must just hate that man's guts for what he did and does to her. Hell, I hate his guts."
"Just like Carl," Lucy growled.
Preston distantly, yet pointedly, nodded as he returned his attention back to the central ring. He saw that a pair of men were just barely visible at the perimeter of the light, each holding a high-caliber rifle. Four roustabouts stood with massive wooden planks in their hands, ready to shore up the cage if needed. Abruptly, the Aquilasuchus seemed to shrug the whole dust-up off. She clacked her jaws again several times, then thoughtfully pawed at the dirt like a curious dog with her feet, and yawned. Her tri-fingered hand came up to the bleeding place on her head, where, in an amazing display of dexterity, she lightly caressed it, as if taking stock of the damage.
The dinosaur trainer drew a deep breath, and then walked along the side of the cage, down the runway into the left side tent. Countess Bathory the Aquilasuchus followed at an easy lope, pounding footfalls receding into the darkness. Once more she shrieked, and then there was silence. Now Preston could breathe easy again.
Nonetheless, the last few acts passed by in a blur as far as the bank clerk was concerned. Even watching Singh put a marsupial sabertooth through her paces, gazing upon a two-and-a-half-foot, specialized egg-eating centipede in its glass terrarium as he accepted a hen's egg and cracked it in his powerful, overdeveloped crab's mouthparts to enjoy the contents, and seeing a half-grown brontosaur, in an amazing display of strength, drag a train of three caged Indian elephants around the ring as the dinosaur trainer tempted him with a bunch of fresh grapes, seemed bland and insipid in comparison, small potatoes.
She had looked directly at them. Did the Aquilasuchus somehow sense that he had been touched by Skull Island too? Did she understand that he'd been a member of the first group of white men to arrive on the isle, reveal it to the greater world, and so held him indirectly responsible for her capture and enslavement? What a ridiculous, odd idea! Maybe she'd just been interested in Lucy's hair bow. Then again, Preston decided, after what he'd seen on that island and from Kong, he would never put anything past an animal ever again. He had a disquieting feeling from the whole experience, like he'd looked up into the eye of a tornado's funnel, and barely escaped.
When the show was over and the ringmaster bid them adieu, Preston and Lucy were both silent for a time as they joined the group of people leaving the tent in a rough double file.
"Lucy darling?" Preston half-whispered at length.
"Hmm?" she responded, head snapping up in the darkness.
"Now can you safely say that you finally understand something of the horror I and the other men went through on that island?"
"Oh yes, Preston, I understand too well now," she said comfortingly, taking his hand as they walked. "You poor, poor fella. No wonder you have nightmares! And there's another thing that I understand too," she added.
"What's that?"
"Not all beasts have fangs or wear scales."
OOOOOO
"A lion is not a lion if it is only free to eat, to sleep, and to copulate. It deserves to be free to hunt, to choose its own prey; to look for and find its own mate; to fight for and hold its own territory; and to die where it was born-in the wild." George Adamson, My Pride and Joy, 1987.
"But why should tigers have to settle for something that is better than nothing? To turn these magnificent animals into slaves, and then degrade them further by making them perform tricks for human amusement shows as much about human abasement as it does about animal capacities. That a tiger is condemned to slow death by boredom unless it finds pleasure in performing is a sad commentary on what humans have done to these magnificent predators." Jeffery Moussaieff Masson, When Elephants Weep, 1995.
As ever, I'd be happy if you R&R. This fic was especially great fun.