1~
Condensation rolled off of the stalagmites on the high vaulted ceiling of the cave and dripped down into the cave's natural, pond-sized pool, disturbing its surface slightly. It went unnoticed by the men below, who worked in and around the pool, which was surrounded by a strong fence for their protection and for ease of their particular work.
Muscular wranglers waded in the center of the pool, eyes alert and bodies tensed for any wayward movement under the water. The soft surface waves of curious motion that could suddenly lead to a deadly strike. These men were the highest paid by the company that owned these particular caves, the risks that took demand such payment, for these men, culled from some of the toughest areas of the Deep South, wrestled alligators for a living.
In the chamber's other surrounding, fenced-in pools, it was the same. Wranglers standing in the center of their pools, waiting.
However, activity was still happening while they waited. Men and women in water-proof jumpsuits and heavy gloves worked around railed loading areas set up near the fences' openings that led into the water.
Once the wranglers subdued the alligators with heavy tranquilizer darts, these "miners" then tagged the gators by which pool they were caught and then loaded onto mine car trains to be brought out for further processing.
In one of the pools, a ripple was seen, and the wranglers were set. Coordination with each other and the shooter was critical. Too many workers lost limbs to show for their hard work, or sadly left loved ones behind as they were dragged down and death-rolled into manageable chunks.
Slitted eyes and flared nostrils quietly broke the surface of the pool. The gator was cautious but curious. So many men to choose from, but numbers also meant security. They could hurt it if they worked together, somehow.
It submerged and thought of its options, then came up with one that its reptilian brain would agree with. Scanning the water, it judged the distance of the men and noticed the legs of one that stood further out than the others. The further in water one was, the deeper into the gator's territory one was, and deep water was the reptile's kingdom.
On top of that, it could smell something in the depths near the standing man, an aroma of dead animal that drew the alligator closer, almost in striking range. Whatever that man was exposed to, it may very well spell the end of him, if he wasn't aware.
The gator's snout took one more whiff of the carcass scent near the man's pant leg, and then he struck, hard, twisting its head to take a herculean bite from its victim and yank him off-balance into the water.
The man made no sound as he was pulled down, so sudden was the attack. The other wranglers, however, didn't move in to pulled him back out, they simply spread out, each holding a section of a wide net into a rough perimeter behind the gator, with the shooter moving forward into position.
It didn't take them long to see what they were waiting for. The infamous death-roll.
Since all crocodilians can't chew their food, they had come up with an ingenious way to make devouring prey easier over the eons of their evolutionary development. By biting a section of the body and then rolling with that chunk of flesh and bone at high speed, they could effectively rip pieces off and eat them at their leisure. Such was the fate of the fallen wrangler.
The shooter quickly lined up her shot, seeing down the sight of her air rifle, and keeping her nerves, eyes and hands steady. She would only get one clear shot at this.
The gator, in the midst of his rolling, met with some resistance from its prey, and momentarily stopped spinning at the worst possible moment, which was when the shooter finally saw her target, the softer, whitish belly of the beast, exposed for all to see.
With a controlled trigger squeeze, the dart was launched into the unarmored stomach, which made the alligator release its food in pain, and splash in confusion.
That was the wranglers' cue. They all cast their wide net over the reptile, allowing its frantic movements of muscular tail, foot and body to help entangle it.
The shooter loaded another dart into the rifle and lined up another shot. The dart's needles were rated to penetrate even the natural armor of an American alligator, but glancing blows during a capture had been known to occur, so she learned to be cautious.
Her finger slipped around the sensitive trigger, ready to pull the fractional ounce of pressure needed to launch another dart, but it soon proved unnecessary.
The hissing gator's tail whips and open-mouth aggression became noticeably slower, its swimming and splashing, more sedate. So much so, that the wranglers, as if of one, practiced mind, decided that it was safe enough to capture, carefully grabbed the ends of the net, and hauled the animal to the loading area, where miners who were watching the scene, waited.
As for the stricken worker whose leg was nearly ripped apart by the alligator, he floated up to the surface of the water. Aside from shredded trousers, there wasn't a drop of arterial blood in the pool. In fact, under closer observation, it could be safely said that the worker wasn't even human.
"Good placement of the bait dummy, guys," the lead wrangler said to his team. "He didn't know what hit 'im."
Two miners hauled the animal over to a prep table and worked over the captured beast, one tightly securing its mouth closed with electrical tape, and the other pinning a tag, with the number of that pool, number three, into one of the plates on its back. Once that was done, they both heaved and dropped the gator into a waiting mine car that was already filled with other comatose alligators pulled from the body of water, their great tails hanging impotently out of the car.
"Okay, Lou, take 'em out," called out Miner #1 to the mine car engineer, who started his engine and hauled the small train of mine cars out of the pool chamber and towards the mine's exit. After he wiped the prep table clean of water and gator essence, he spoke to his friend, Miner #2.
"Can't wait 'til quittin' time," he told him. "Gotta get my costume ready for the Pageant. This year, I'm going for a really cool look this year. I'm going as Pretre du Marais."
Miner #2 scoffed. "That ol' storybook character? Good luck getting any of the girls to talk to you looking like that."
"Hey! I'm appealing to the ladies' inner need for security with this," Miner #1 explained, cockily. "It's like takin' a trip through the tunnel of love. They love to be scared so they can have somebody to cling to. Basic Love Psychology."
So focused were they on their conversation, neither of them noticed the mine's foreman marching up behind the two of them, after overhearing them.
"Hey, you two!" he barked. "How about a trip through the tunnel of gators, instead! The boss is really crackin' down on low productivity. We've gotta make up our quota this quarter."
"Hey, boss," Miner #2 asked, jovially. "If four quarters make a dollar, how much is four quotas?"
"I don't know, Miller," the foreman admitted. "Maybe you can call me from the unemployment office and tell me, ya knucklehead. Now, no more loafing!" Satisfied that he got his point across, the foreman stomped off, heading for the chamber exit.
Chaffing from the scolding, Miner #2 whispered to #1, "I'll show him loafing. I'll bet we'd get more gators outta this mine if we use better bait." He gave a meaningful glance at the foreman's general direction.
Miner #1, chuckling, said, "Now you know we have to have the highest quality gators coming out of here. What'll you think'll happen if we feed him to the gators...and the gators get sick?"
Both gave a well-needed laugh from that, and were seeing the wranglers and shooter head back out into the water again, when a voice was heard echoing across the stone walls of the cave.
"Good point," the voice said, which betrayed French origins with a soft sibilance. "We could always try you."
They stop laughing and then they, and indeed, every other worker looked around for the speaker. The cave's interior lighting flickered for a moment, and then someone resembling a shaman, quietly appeared from a green cloud bank of smoke that filled the mouth of the chamber.
The foreman, being the closest to the exit, gasped in sudden fright at the stranger's appearance, recovered, and then, angrily, walked up to engage the unexpected guest.
The visitor was chalk-white, thin, almost lanky, and dressed in what looked like the tattered, weather-beaten remnants of a Catholic priest's robes, held closed with a length of rope that supported a series of gourds. In one of his bony, dirty-nailed, claw-like hands, he brandished a long, moss-covered wooden staff, adorned with beadwork that held feathers, a coin, and a small rodent's skull.
Shuffling on barely held together sandals, the visitor walked further into the chamber as the foreman approached, but the foreman wouldn't know what this person thought of him via expression, because the guest's head and face was masked under a huge, weathered alligator skull that was ornamented from behind by a full plumage of red-tipped, white feathers.
The shaman regarded the irate man, seeing him through the alligator skull's eye sockets. However, to the foreman's discomfort, those sockets glowed with a verdant, intimidating light.
Nevertheless, the foreman stood his ground, staring hard into the glowing eyes. "Hey, you're not allowed in here. If you want to play dress up, wait until the pageant's in full swing and then knock yourself out. In the meantime, get outta here!"
Miner #1, not appreciating some joker interrupting their work time, especially one dressed as he was, chimed in. "You tell him, boss. Besides, he stole my costume idea."
The ragged intruder ignored the worker, but spoke loud enough so that everyone got the message.
"The insult zat iz your pageant and your crimes against ze noble gator will end soon enough, mes amis," the stranger hissed with malevolent promise. "In ze meantime, the Ghosts of Gators Past will educate you on ze folly of your ways!"
The man took one of the gourds from his rope belt and poured some soft, greenish powder in his pale hand, then, without preamble, he threw it into the foreman's face.
The foreman coughed quietly in the small cloud that was created, just as the powder formed a faint green mask on his face. A face that twisted in annoyance and anger.
"Oh, you like to throw things, huh?" the mine boss asked, balling up his work-worn fists. "Well, watch how I throw a punch."
A fist flew, but before it could connect satisfactorily with his attacker's skull-covered face, something seen drew the foreman's attention, and the fist stopped short of the target.
Suddenly, impossibly, flowing from the ground and slipping through the solid walls of the cave were the dark phantoms of hungry, angry alligators, snapping, hissing, growling, and lunging at him.
The foreman wanted to stay, to kick this fool out of their mine, to be the leader he was hired to be, but he was soon having trouble. He tried to make his mind rationalize what he was seeing, but the longer he stood there watching these ghostly predators approach, the more his brain told him to run...run from the cave in a screaming panic.
And so, he did just that.
Seeing the unlikely, and to some workers, the impossible, just occur, the miners took immediate issue with this man. As one, they all stopped working, and together, rushed at him, in vengeance of their boss.
"Ghosts of Gators Past, come to my aid. Your champion calls you!" the ragged man called to the ceiling of the cave.
Incredibly, the miners and wranglers began to slow and stopped their running, in confused groups. Their solidarity dying as fast as they feared they would, when the workers, all of them, began seeing ghost gators crawling quickly towards them, jaws open for an eager and fatal crunch.
Some miners fell to the ground, apparently not quick enough to evade the otherworldly reptiles, and struggled in desperate, pitched battles with their invisible opponents.
Miner #2, rolling on the ground and dodging the jaws of his attacker, turned his head around at the proper moment to see their tormentor laughing loud and free at the chaos.
Focused, he managed to twist away from his ghost and got up, saw his friend, Miner #1 on his back, struggling, and ran to him.
He pulled #1 to his feet and ran with him towards the exit. From Miner #2's horrified brain, he had no other explanation for all of this, save one.
"It can't be!" he howled to his friend, in disbelief. "It really is Pretre du Marais!"
The throng of miners and wranglers all swerved to avoid otherwise unseeable animals coming at them, but eventually, they all ran, pell-mell, for the daylight, in primal terror from these spirit saurians, the peals of cruel laughter following in their terrified wake.
"Tell your masters," Pretre du Marais crowed, his words echoing from the cave. "That the Age of the Gator has come!"
Winslow Fleach's decades-old, four-door sedan wound through the road outside of Crystal Cove that late Friday afternoon.
He was proud of the fact that his car's continued service through the years was made possible due to his good and steady stewardship. Other people would have bought another car as soon as the windshield wipers failed, but not him. Proper maintainance not only made him appreciate his car more, but it saved him money, in the long run. The spendthrifts of the world could take a lesson in that, he thought, as he made another turn on the road.
Marcie just looked out from the open front passenger window, thinking about who the mystery man was, as the pines of California went by.
It felt like the longest couple of weeks Marcie ever endured, waiting for an attack that she felt was sure to come. Looking over her shoulders in school, at work at the park, and even at home, on occasion, it was a stressful hell that she debated telling her father about. But in all of that time, nothing had happened. No letters, no clues, no strangers asking for directions, only to take her into a dark alley and end her days. Nothing.
So, she was more than willing to go on what looked like a short vacation with her father, if only to get out of town for the weekend.
"I'd like to think that I inherited my strong sense of work ethic from you, Dad," Marcie said, watching the scenery go by. "But only you would take one of the few times you'd actually go on vacation, and turn it into some sort of busman's holiday."
Winslow gave an bemused smile at that. "Ah, you say that now, but Fleach's Folly Factory is going to be even more festive than ever when I learn how Gatorsburg plans its Pageant of Gators celebration. Think of it, Marcie. A night time carnival every night. We'll call it "Sundown Celebration." Lights, music, a small parade with beautiful floats going through the park. It's genius. Anybody can have roller-coasters, but how many parks will have a nightly carnival event like ours?"
Marcie gave a wan smile at his infectious determination. She realized long ago that their family's amusement park was, if anything, a work in progress for him. There was always something more to add or change to make it better, and once he knew that neighboring Gatorsburg was having its yearly celebration, Winslow knew he had to come.
"Well, it's ambitious, I'll give you that, Dad," Marcie said, supportively.
"Well, Marcie, it's like I always said," her father reminded her, which was often in her life. "If it's not ambitious, it's not worth doing. Don't worry, it'll be great."
No citizen living would have believed that their beloved Gatorsburg had once been a played-out husk, a land of dead mines and even more dead dreams, a sepulchral ghost town in another, more darker time.
Under a perpetually cloudy sky, fog-choked, dead tree-lined streets played solemn host to dark, useless, empty buildings that smelled of wet rust, peeling paint, the past, and hopelessness.
With the death of the Evil Entity, Gatorsburg had been transformed. A town that had long since rotted and carried the presence of death in its bones, was now vibrant and active again. Where lonely streets once meandered, people now bustled along its clean, hilly thoroughfares and cobblestone walks. Businesses that had once been decrepit and defunct, were now profitable, self-sufficient enterprises that catered to a satisfied public.
It wasn't too long afterwards that The Fleachs' sedan finished the three-mile drive to the town, drove past the billboard proclaiming "Welcome to Gatorsburg. Population: 30,000," and entered the town's city limits.
The sedan cruised through the avenue, allowing father and daughter to take in the local sights. Essentially, Gatorsburg's city plan was based on earlier maps that were, in fact, based on a local newspaper's humorous picture and article jabbing fun at the town's history in the 1800's, depicting a sleeping alligator, surrounded by some pine-covered mountains and wetlands, curled up in an almost spiral shape. Proud city planners took inspiration from the joke and created what would come to be the quarters of modern Gatorsburg.
At the moment, they were moving through the entrance of town, its oldest and outermost section, the Tail Quarter, marked by its Creole Townhouses and their Spanish moss-covered balconies, that shared their city blocks with other homes and business concerns.
Jutting out from the Tail Quarter was, like the illustrated gator's back right leg, was the poorer neighborhoods of the Right Hind Quarter, called simply, Right Hind, by the folks, therein, composed of its sprinkling of California Bungalow-style houses, tight, orderly blocks of even older Shotgun Houses, and the odd empty lot or two.
Angling out from the other side of the Tail Quarter, in the same orientation as the inward-pointing rear left leg, was the industrial neighborhoods of the Left Hind Quarter.
On what would be the gator's curving body was the Middle Quarter, holding the schools, small businesses and suburban residential blocks of Double-Gallery Houses and Creole Cottages that served the upper-middle and middle class citizens of town. Along the quarter's outer edge stood the wide highlands of cemeteries and the various mansions, some owned and some abandoned, that housed the town's old money.
The more affluent business center of town was the gator's broad head, and was, therefore, called the Head Quarter. It was said, with some jocularity and perhaps more than a little truth, that the businesspeople there, were like the typical alligator, the most aggressive, the most hungry for success.
"Blast it all," Winslow swore while he waited for his light to turn green, looking from one side of the street to the other. "We need a map to find the hotel we're staying in."
"We passed a gas station on the way over here," Marcie advised him. "Why don't we just turn back and get one there?"
"Good idea."
The light turned green and Winslow was about to take a side street to turn around and return to the fill-up station, when Marcie spoke up.
"Hold on, Dad. Let's pull into that restaurant, and I'll ask for directions. It's quicker," she said.
Her father looked to where she gestured and saw, on the corner of the side street, a retro-styled diner with the name "Gator Burger" proudly elevated on the roof in green neon. Lounging against the restaurant's exterior mascot, a smiling, cartoonishly-designed alligator, was a waitress, on break, sipping a soda.
"All right," Winslow said, pulling up to the curb in front of the eatery.
Marcie leaned her head out of the front passenger window and called out to the sipping waitress. "Excuse me, ma'am. We're trying to get to the Dancing Gator Hotel on 1 Hill Street. Do you know where that is?"
"Well, you're on Hill, now," the waitress pointed out in the town's local Southern drawl. "The hotel's way up the street, at the end."
The woman pointed in that direction. In the distance, the street, eventually, rose up the side of a tall hill, and sitting on its peak was a hotel, or what looked like one from Marcie's reckoning.
Marcie looked over at another Creole Townhouse that sat next door to the diner. Judging from the descending street numbers on the buildings next to Gator Burger, it appeared that the top of hill was the beginning of the street, as well as the inspiration for its name.
"Thank you," Marcie said to her, and soon the duo drove off.
The waitress heard them drive further and further away, and then said, dismissively, under her breath, "Tourists."
The Dancing Gator Hotel, formerly the Drowsy Gator, sat on the same hill that it had in its previous life. The surrounding dead trees that looked like black, skeletal hands rising from the property, were replaced by a quaint copse of magnolias that lined the ascending path towards the edifice.
From its geographic perch, the hotel gave commanding views of the bustling streets below, and its elevation afforded the patrons some peace and quiet from those same streets, behind the shelter of the flowering trees.
Driving past the lone Creole Cottage at the hill's base, the sedan gradually wound its way up the small, tree-lined path, until the grade finally leveled off, and they reached the small parking lot set off to the side of the hotel's flowered walkway.
Soon after, Winslow and his daughter disembarked from the car, each with a shoulder bag filled with, for him, toiletries, stationary, and a change of clothes, and for her, the same, except for the addition of a miniature chemistry set, and walked up to the front doors of the Victorian-style hotel.
The ringing bell over the opening doors signaled the front desk of Marcie and her father's arrival.
Dappled sunlight softly illuminated the foyer as Marcie and Winslow walked in. The lobby was wide, tastefully appointed in antique furniture, and beautifully gothic in its Victoriana. Even with its carved alligator heads on the newels of the winding staircase's banister and elsewhere, it still felt inviting, if a little odd. It felt to Marcie as though she was walking through an old hunting lodge.
The duo walked by the lounge and its fireplace, then approached the front desk, where a thin, pale man with dark hair obscuring one side of his angular face, met them with what looked like a predatory smile. On the lapel of his suit was a brilliant pin that proclaimed that his name was Gunther Gator, General Manager.
"Hello, there," Gunther greeted the two. "Welcome to the Danccing Gator Hotel. My name iss Gunther Gator. How may I help you?"
Marcie could swear there was something of a hiss in the back of his words.
Winslow shifted his overnight bag around on his shoulder to get more comfortable and told him, "Ah, yes. Winslow Fleach and my daughter, Marcie. I reserved a room last week for the Pageant of Gators festival."
Gunther went to the small desktop computer that sat off to the side of the main desk. After a short concerto of keystrokes, he soon found the needed confirmation.
"Ah, yess, Misster Fleach, we have you right here. Now, as you were given the ruless of the hotel when you made your reservation, men and women are to be given sseperate roomss, sso you have been given Room Sseven and your daughter will be given Room Eight. Will that be ssatisfactory for you?"
"Um, yes," Winslow said, trying to get used to Gunther's sibilant lisp.
"Will you need a bellboy to take your bagss?" Gunther offered.
"Oh, no, that's all right. We only came with these," Winslow said, showing him the strap of his shoulder bag. "But thanks, all the same."
Gunther brightened at that. "Not at all, and thank you for giving us your patronage, Misster Fleach, and pleasse, you and your daughter, enjoy your stay here at the Danccing Gator."
After receiving their room keys from the strange, yet pleasantly professional man, Marcie and Winslow walked up the winding stairs.
"You have to admit this isn't like you to just run off and leave the Factory like this," she said. "Way too spontaneous."
"I told you, Marcie, this is just research," Winslow said, with a twinge of anticipation.
"So, when this festival comes, I shouldn't have to worry about some Gatorsburg Jezebel spiriting you off into the night?" Marcie asked in jest, as they reached the third floor where their rooms were.
Stopping outside his room, Winslow, missing the joke, seriously considered such a scenario happening, then thought better of it. "Mmm...no, I don't think so. However, that shouldn't stop you from having a good time at the Pageant. I hear that they have a very comprehensive tour."
Marcie raised an eyebrow quizzically. It sounded like another typically frugal course of action from him. Which usually meant something particularly vexing for her. "Comprehensive or inexpensive, Dad."
"Now, Marcie," Winslow said, pedantically raising a finger to make his point. "Being thrifty is not a sin. There's no sense in spending money like tourists. That's what tourists are for. We can still enjoy the celebration in a practical and fiscally responsible manner."
"Perish the thought," said an approaching, well-dressed woman in a pinkish business suit, from down the hall.
A recreated Greta Gator, she was still the owner of the hotel, and was as plump and redheaded as she was in her previous life, but she had lost her wall-eyed stare and sour disposition, little things that, in the long run, helped to make her a more successful businesswoman.
"Our good town always does especially well, financially, when the Pageant kicks off," Greta explained. "Y'all did come to town for the Pageant, I trust?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am," Winslow said. "Most definitely. I'm an amusement park owner and I'm here to learn how your town arranges this wonderful festival year after year."
Well, I don't like to brag, none," Greta shrugged proudly, "but we folks do like to party and the Pageant of Gators always promises to be the biggest hootenanny of the year. If you want to know how we put it all together, I suggest you get in touch with the Gatorsburg Chamber of Commerce. They'll see you right."
Winslow bowed in gratitude. "Thanks, I will."
Greta glanced over at Marcie. "Is this your little girl?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Greta waved away the formality. "Oh, we don't stand on ceremony around here. You're my guests. Call me Greta."
"Okay...Greta," Winslow complied. "Yes, this is my daughter, Marcie."
Greta leaned close to the girl, as if studying a new species. "Well, hi, there, Marcie," she said, gregariously. "You know, here in Gatorsburg, we got some of the finest restaurants you'll ever see. I guarantee they'll put some meat on those bones, yet, child."
'Why does everyone think being thin is a bad thing?' Marcie thought. She suppressed a weary sigh and smiled graciously at the hotelier. "Thanks, ma'am." Then she added, innocently, just vex their host. "Although I have heard that alligator meat was considered very dry to eat."
"That's just propaganda from the Meat Council," Greta said, quick to defend the pride of her hometown before she said to the two of them, as a friendly reminder, "Anyway, I'm sure my son, Gunther, has already told you the rules. Men and women in separate rooms, oh, and no pets in the hotel."
"No problem," Marcie shrugged. "I'm not much of a pet person, anyway."
"That's fine," Greta said, satisfied. "Well, I won't keep y'all out here with all this jawin'. Remember, the Pageant starts tomorrow, so y'all get a good rest, and, as we say around here, "Eat the day!"
"Die Comedetis!" Marcie translated.
"What was that, hon?" Greta asked.
"Die Comedetis," Marcie attempted to explain. "It's Latin for "Eat the day." You see? Because it sounds like "Seize the day." Y'know, "Carpe Diem?"
Greta gave Marcie a deeply quizzical look that made the girl honestly wish she had kept her mouth shut.
"That's nice, dear," Greta condescended.
"Ugh, never mind," Marcie sulked to herself, as the hotelier shrugged and then left to go about her rounds.
Watching Greta descend the staircase, Marcie said to her father, "Y'know, I think I'll take you up on that tour idea, tomorrow. Besides, it'll give me a chance to think of what else I can do while I'm in town."
Winslow gave a thoughtful nod of approval. "Ah, multi-tasking while on vacation. You're truly a fragment separated from the previous cubicle."
'True,' Marcie thought with an amused smirk, as she went into the room across from his. 'I guess I am a chip off the old block.'
"See ya later, Dad," she said.