Part 1: Going Home

It was July, gloriously hot, with the sun glinting blindingly off the waters of the Connecticut River behind the Moore Dam where they pooled deep and blue. Herb Armstrong grinned fiercely as he leaned his Triumph 650 into a curve of the road that followed the shoreline of the artificial lake created by the dam. His hair and beard streamed backward in the wind, and damn if he didn't feel eighteen years old again. But that was a time gone by.

As he rode, he drank in the sights he'd been away from for so long. There's nothing, he told himself, quite like home. And it would be good after all these years to get back. The road left the edge of the water, and Herb followed the twisting, hilly pavement into the town of Littleton, New Hampshire, where he'd been born. He cruised up the Main Street, noting with pleasure the sights he remembered, an occasional frown at changes he didn't like.

Herb tooled the highway-chopped bike into a parking space in front of Jeremiah's Tavern, one of his favorite old haunts. He put down the kickstand, dismounted, and grinned up at the giant frog leering down at him from the sign.

"Jeremiah was a bullfrog," Herb voiced his thoughts softly, remembering a line from an old song by Three Dog Night.

Shaking his head with delight, Herb walked in the door and paused to remove his sunglasses, letting his eyes adjust from hot brightness to the cool dim of the tavern. Momentarily he strode past the tables crowded around the dance floor and slid onto a barstool at the nearly deserted bar. The bartender turned to take his order, and Herb recognized him as an old friend.

"Hey, Jamie, how's it going?" Herb laughed at the surprise on the other's face, and held out a hand.

"Herb! Well I'll be damned!" The bartender was short and slim, but gripped Herb's hand in a hippie's handshake with a strength not indicative of his outside appearance. "When'd you get back into town? I haven't seen you in, oh, seven, eight years."

"Just got in, not five minutes ago. How about a draft? I need to wash some of this highway dust out of my throat."

"Sure." Jamie drew the beer and set it in front of Herb on the bar, waving away the dollar Herb was holding out. "On the house. What use is a guy who can't buy a beer for a buddy he hasn't seen in years?"

"Cheers." Herb drained half the glass in a single gulp. "Ahhh, now that's better. Even if it's not as strong as English beers."

"That's right, you've been in England, haven't you? Heard you got married and stayed there when you got out of the Air Force. What'd you do over there?"

Herb sipped at the beer and shrugged. "Writing mostly. Beats working for a living."

Herb smiled inwardly at Jamie's downeast accent - the soft "r's" in the words, "there" pronounced "thaya". Just like the accent Herb himself spoke with before he left New Hampshire for the Air Force. Fourteen years of being other places, eight of them in England, had worn down the edges of his accent until very little of it remained.

"How's your wife and kids?" Jamie was asking.

Herb frowned. "We got divorced a few weeks ago. Something happened... Well, I won't go into it, but she got convinced I was crazy and left me." He swallowed the rest of the beer and set the glass aside. "Took the kids, moved in with her parents, and filed for divorce. Got a restraining order on me, too. I can't even go see them."

"That's rough." Jamie was sympathetic without prying. Herb was thankful for the habit among Down East Yankee's to leave someone alone unless he wanted to open up. "Another Beer?"

"Best not. I've got to look for a place to live. Know about any houses for rent in town?"

"A-yah. You know the old Lindsey house on Chiswick Avenue? It's been empty for about six months, ever since old lady Lindsey died. I hear her grandson, Alan, is trying to rent it out so he can pay the taxes on it. You know where he lives?"

"Still over on Union Street?"

"A-yah." Jamie held out his hand as Herb stood up and the two men shook again.

"Later, Jamie. Thanks for the beer," Herb said, turning for the door.

"Hey, stop in again," Jamie said, putting Herb's empty glass under the counter. "It'll be like old times."

"Sure."

Herb put on his sunglasses before stepping back out into the glare of the afternoon sun. Outside he swung a leg over the leather seat of the bike, kicked up the kickstand, and thumbed the electric starter, feeling the four-stroke engine come to life. He eased out onto the street and followed an old familiar route to Union Street to find out about the Lindsey house.

It was lucky, Herb reflected, that Alan Lindsey wanted to rent the house out furnished. He was sitting on the porch, smoking his pipe and enjoying the sunset. Herb felt comfortable here; he had known the Lindsey family all his life, and had been in this house many times before. He leaned back in his chair and savored the peace. Maybe here he could put out of his mind the horror that had plagued him for so many months now - a night in the graveyard of an ancient English church, when a nightmare turned real and he was caught in the middle of a battle between two ages old sorcerers and the demons they controlled. The police hadn't believed a word that he, Scott Swanson, and Ron Quantrell had told them. They had laid the blame for all the destruction on the three of them. Being foreigners, they made ideal scapegoats.

But Herb was a bit better off than his friends, being married to a British citizen. Scott and Ron were deported as soon as arrangements could be made. And when Herb tried to explain to his wife what had really happened, she thought he'd gone mad, and left him. With the legal actions facing him, she'd had no trouble divorcing him, and he, too, had been deported.

Now, back in the area where he had grown up, Herb wanted to put it all behind him and get a fresh start on life and get back to writing. Suddenly a voice calling from the street interrupted his reverie.

"Herb? Herb Armstrong? My God, when did you get back?!"

Herb peered at the red Toyota that had stopped in front of his newly rented house. The woman's face looked familiar, and after a second it clicked.

"Liz Williams. Of all people." Herb laughed, and stepped down from the porch to meet her as she burst out of the car. She was short and slim, with long dark hair and a wide mouth that now lit up her face in a happy smile. They met on the sidewalk and embraced, their minds going back fifteen years to high school.

"Herb!" Liz grabbed his ears and kissed him soundly. It was a custom of her's that Herb was glad to see she still had. "What are you doing here? When did you get back?" She stepped back and looked at him, suddenly serious. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"You could always tell," he grinned at her. "Shut your car off and come sit on the porch."

Herb waited while she did, and together they walked up the steps and sat in the old wooden chairs. Liz's eyes beamed at Herb as he stoked another bowl of tobacco in his pipe, and after lighting it, he looked over at her and smiled.

"Must be ten, no, eleven years since we last saw each other, Liz. Don't tell me I haven't changed in all that time."

Liz laughed and reached out a hand to lightly brush his hair. "Not really - just a bit gray at the temples. But you still look like the same old hippie." And she turned serious again. "I'd heard you were married, and living in England. Where's your family?"

Herb's face clouded over. "My wife divorced me, and I had some trouble with the English authorities," Herb said softly, and seeing the concern in her eyes, he quickly added, "Nothing serious, Liz. Just a misunderstanding. I'll tell you about it sometime, if you like. But how about you? How's New Hampshire's best biochemist doing these days? Still doing research out of MIT?"

Liz nodded. "I'm up here doing a project on medicines used by the Coos Indians. They had, and still use, some pretty amazing herbal remedies. But I don't want to talk about that. I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you sitting here."

"I know what you mean," Herb agreed. "It blew my mind, too." Herb glanced at his watch, then back at Liz. "Hey, look, have you had dinner yet?"

She shook her head and smiled. "I know what you're going to ask, and the answer is yes; I'd love to have dinner with you."

"Great. Let's go see if the Clamshell is as good as it use to be." Herb grinned widely. "Shall we take your car, or do you want to hang on for dear life on the back of my bike?" He looked at her skirt clad legs and winked.

She laughed again. "No, you haven't changed a bit. The car, please, as I'm not dressed for biking."

"Fine, I'll just grab a jacket and lock the door, then." Herb did so, and they got into the car and drove off, reminiscing.

On the porch Herb's forgotten newspaper laid by his chair rustling in the breeze, the pages open to a story he hadn't seen, a story that would've brought a chill to his blood. The headline read MOORE DAM MONSTER? and showed photographs of reptilian footprints caused, claimed by the local Indians, by a creature which lived in Moore Dam Lake, and which was responsible for the deaths of several farm animals in the area in recent weeks. The article treated the Indian's claims as superstitious nonsense, and went on to speculate about bears and packs of ky-dogs. Herb wanted the supernatural all behind him now, but he couldn't even suspect how embroiled he would soon become in this matter he now knew nothing of.