“Jerry! Great job! You saved the show! Now go let Mac-an-t-sagairt know we’re here.”
“Sure, Leroy.” Jerry sneered at Andy and jogged up to the porch.
There was no answer at the house, so Derrick shot several minutes of birds swimming and a few takes of Ted standing in front of them, giving the Birds Monologue. However, none (including Andy, whose reference book Bird Spotter’s Guide to Scotland was used in writing the monologue) was certain what kind of loons the birds were. They wore an ominous black plumage, but (to the unspoken relief of the sharper yet subversively superstitious members of the crew) not the white throat and breast of the boobrie. Still, the coincidence was unsettling enough that the crew decided not to wait for Mac-an-t-sagairt’s return. Derrick, who had (to the benefit of all) taken over map-reading responsibility from Leroy, guessed that it was about another three or four miles through the moor to the King’s House Hotel on the highway A82.
The King’s House and the A82 were amenities that Leroy and Andy had left unmentioned in the documentary in order to create a dark and chilling picture of Rannoch Moor as a dangerous and uninhabitable hell on Earth. There were a few occasions over the last week when the crew waited hours for the clouds to roll in, to capture just the right mood on film. The real gloom existed only in Leroy’s vision and in Ted’s heart.
Ted sat on a tree stump, tossing crackers to the birds. When he had run out of antacid tablets two days previously, he began chewing saltines almost incessantly.
“Come on, Ted,” Leroy called. “Home stretch. A few more interviews, maybe send Derrick to Canada for more loon footage, and our careers are made.”
“No, this is it, Leroy.” Ted felt the last heat evaporate from his body, leaving a chill down to his gut. “I’m signing off. I’ll catch up later, maybe. But I’m done with this picture.”
Leroy was furious, as Ted knew he had every right to be. He had invested a great deal of time, money, effort, optimism and patience into this project, only to be undermined at every point by a moody host. Now, all patience was lost.
“Great! Go! Maybe the Discovery Channel will let you do a followup episode to that show you did on liver spots! We’ve got the interviews and all the footage we need! I can get Liev Schreiber on his cell the minute we land in New York. It’ll be nice working with a professional!”
Leroy turned away without further discussion and hurried the other men along, splitting the gear among the four of them, and leaving Ted to sit on a stump and throw crackers into a pond.
Ted sat alone with the loons, considering his options and his goals. There was still time to change his mind. After all, most of the work had been done already. Besides, Leroy was obviously bluffing about Liev Schreiber. If he could entice a narrator of that caliber, he would never have picked Ted. In fact, Ted knew that Leroy had gone into debt just for the five plane tickets. He began to feel sorry for the young director. But Ted couldn’t force himself to face the embarrassment that he felt this project would certainly be.
Ted had only ever burned one bridge in his life. That was his father’s farm. Thinking on that time, he wasn’t sure at first if the bleating sheep existed in his thoughts or in the air. He had raised pigs as a youth, not sheep, but it was the primal fear that he had sensed before he had identified its species. The bleating stopped with a sick and solid whack. And soon he smelled it: the acrid and bitter smell of blood that defines slaughter day.
He tossed another cracker to the loons. They ignored it. The cracker floated on top of the water. Most of the loons swam away, to Ted’s right. One remained but swam closer to the shore.
It was then that Ted noticed a glimmer in the loon’s mouth. “Is that…is that metal?” Ted leaned toward the diver at the water’s edge to get a closer look. Saliva dripped from the bird’s bill in foamy white specks upon its breast. “What did that halfwit Jerry try feeding you guys?” The ex-farm boy reached for the loon’s beak to dislodge whatever it was that it had gotten trapped in there. It stepped up onto the grass, unafraid.
Hearing footsteps, Ted looked back over his right shoulder, still stretching his left hand out to the loon. Calum Mac-an-t-sagairt approached, dragging the carcass of a freshly slaughtered lamb toward the pond. The old man’s wispy white hair flew like banners in the breeze. “Ye hae aye cawcht me in an untreuth Moran.” Ted wondered what Mac-an-t-sagairt meant by that, but was distracted by the sight of the flock leaving the water, gathering to the ancient farmer.
Those are weird feet, he thought. His next thought was this: Wait. Do birds salivate? Looking back at his straggler, Ted saw it wasn’t metal gleaming in the loon’s mouth at all. Only perfectly sharp little teeth.
###
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MJ Munn is a registered nurse by night. He lives in Nebraska with his wife and children. His influences include H. P. Lovecraft and Dr. Seuss,
And he finds the world poorer
For its want of horror
For preschool-aged readers
(In anapaest meters).
Cover art copyright 2012 MJ Munn, inspired by a painting by DJ Geribo at Eye Help Animals. Please contribute.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends