Free The Sea of Ash by Scott Thomas Page B

that he felt as if he were sleepwalking, and
somehow knew just where to go. He stopped in front of a dense waist-high bush
and waited.
    The bush rustled as if a hidden
bird had startled. Metallic light winked through the shadows and leaves --
something began to emerge from the foliage.
    "I watched as a hand came up
through the leaves like the head of a cobra. It was a pale hand, and its
slender fingers were wrapped around a silvery antique pistol, offering it to me
butt-first. I reached down and accepted the smooth ivory handle as the fingers
released. The hand slid back into the shade, whispering through the foliage.
    "I examined the weapon; it
was gracefully primitive, a nickel-plated pocket revolver from the late
eighteen-seventies. The cylinder was loaded -- the bullets poking out from
their shell casings were cast from a strange coppery metal, and imprinted with
a vague texture that made me think of fish scales. I held the pistol up in the
sunlight. It gleamed like Excalibur."

 
     
     
    13. THE PUZZLING JOURNAL
     
    It was at about that time, nearing
the end of summer in 1920, that Pond's journal became convoluted. The entries
from then are often spotty, descriptively speaking, and less frequent overall.
When the handwritten original made its way into the hands of his friend, Nigel
Wagner (who later published it), entire pages were missing.
    This final section of the journal
has always compelled me the most, even though I find it unnerving. The fact
that there are missing parts to the story just adds to the appeal for me. His travels
are like the Loch Ness Monster in that they dip down into dark waters, so to
speak, tantalizing, making us eager to learn more, or to get a better look. I
suppose it's like burlesque in that sense. How interested would we really be in
Nessie if she were stuffed, stretched out in a glass case at a Scottish museum,
her mystery expunged by genetic science?
    The journal
does inform us that Pond did quite a bit of traveling in late August and early
September, putting many miles on his trustworthy Nash. The old-fashioned pistol
accompanied him, tucked in his waistband. He only shares glimpses of some
places; for instance, the site called Burnt Stream. The preceding page was
gone, so I have no way of knowing what New England state Burnt Stream was (or
is) in. In the published version of the journal Wagner inserted blank pages to
signify where leaves in the original were absent.
    At any rate, Pond wrote: " --
detected a certain charred smell by the banks of the fast, ash-colored water.
On the night in question, the farmer heard strange noises coming from the wood
that encloses the stream. He imitated the high, hollow sound, and I was put in
mind of coyotes, which, he insisted, were not responsible for the cries.
      "Back at his house, I examined the
dark lengths of seemingly human hair, and the photographs of other things he
had fished from the water...the small copper fish, and the larger oddity, like
the emaciated grey torso of a two-year-old child, all ribs and slick tendrils.
It looked as if it never had possessed a head. The creature had survived for
several days, the old man told me; it lay there on his sofa with its multiple
limbs whipping, slowing in their movements as it darkened and died and
eventually turned into what he called tar."
    Pond's host took a photograph of
him, the last known picture ever taken of the doctor. It is the picture I now
possess, along with the burnt image of Arabella's baby. I purchased them for a
hefty price at the annual auction held by the little-known Society of Esoteric
Antiquities.
    The photograph shows a man who had
seen much, a man who had suffered war and loss. Yet his eyes revealed an
unflinching determination. Turning back was not a consideration.
      Pond was in New Hampshire on the sixth of
September. He stayed at a Concord hotel which, he suspected, contained a
speakeasy in its cellar. His amazing new protuberance, secreted beneath his
garments,