The Gibbering of Killan Pond

To have called Killan Pond a pond would have been too generous. Killan Pond was where the runoff from the corn fields gathered into the lowest depression in the area. It was because of this singular quality that it was known notoriously as one of the most suspect bodies of water in the area surrounding Farrow. Spiked with all sorts of unknown chemical agents and fertilizers, the pond was not the place to let herd animals gather to drink, nor the place to take a quick summer dip. The little pond nestled back into the woods yielded no fish or frogs, no mosquitos nested there, no snake slithered in to hunt for prey. Indeed, Killan Pond was completely hostile to all forms of life. Not to say that the water itself was lethal to the touch, but rather it seemed to harbor its own malignancy unknown and unfound in nature. The pond easily became the stuff of local legend and urban myth; children concocted mysterious and marvelous stories about the disappearance of a foreign exchange student a couple years ago, all of them orbiting and revolving around the murky surface of Killan Pond. Once, a little boy even found a cow head, half devoured by the ravages of necrosis and the tiny nibbles of scavengers. Childhood lore prevailed over all rational adult explanations; the answer to the disembodied cow head and the missing student made it plain and simple in the eyes of a child: the pond was deadly.1

I was in my second year of teaching in Farrow when I heard enough about Killan Pond to finally make some sense of the locale’s myth. I had always been amused by the vividness and saturation in the tales told by children around the lunch tables, by the way the voices hushed to near whisper when anyone over the height of five feet came within sight. I had tried to steal snippets of the tales whenever I was on lunch monitoring duty, but the children regarded the likes of myself with scrutiny, and would not disclose any of the plot. It was almost as if the tales told were a sort of secret guide to salvation, a liturgical document which would surely become forfeit if the wrong type of person was informed of it’s true nature. Through the past two years I had heard enough of the tales to piece a little bit of the legend together.2

It was said amongst the children that in the filthy waters of Killan Pond there lived a monster, a creature armed with nothing less than terror and fear, an entity thirsty for the blood of child and cow alike. This creature did not live at the pond, but rather came only on nights to drink deep of the water and become possessed by it’s power. Then it would spend the nights prowling and hunting on the streets of the little city, becoming strongest on the eve of a harvest moon, as it was innoculated with the power of the devil himself. It was easily the most infamous figure of Farrow, eclipsing the tragic murder/suicide at the Bud and Bug Festival grounds and overshadowing the brutal attack perpetrated by a scorned husband on his wife and her lover. The children of Farrow where the town’s only claim to the future; if they wished to write the town’s legends and history in colorful tales consisting of the hues of a blood hungry visitor of an agricultural runoff, so be it.3

The taller and less imaginative residents of Farrow regarded the stories as laughable campfire tales, worthy of mention only at birthday parties and sleep-overs. It was during my tenure as a fourth grade teacher at Farrow Elementary that I began to notice an interesting phenomenon.4

Whenever the children entered the fifth grade, talk of the creature abruptly died. Its deeds were never spoke of again and the tales of nightly visits to the most outlying houses never left older, more mature lips. Sometime during the summer, the creature was forgotten. Even the adults who had lived in Farrow all their life did not regard the creature seriously, although they all remembered that they too were at once infatuated with the horror that it caused. I found the subject so intriguing that one day during lunch I isolated my star pupil from the last year and asked him why he never talked about the creature.5

“I dunno Mr. Hogan. Maybe its just that the monster is for little kids. After all, we are fifth graders now.  Maybe you should ask some of your students about it.”6

The idea, while novel, seemed to make a special indentation in the back of my brain. I can look back and sheepishly admit that it had not once crossed my mind to question my current students about the amnesia of their predecessors. It was that particular day in September when I decided to broach the subject with my students in class. Again, now that I look back and recollect what was occurring, I can say with certainty that the equinox was approaching and the Farrow night line was about to visited by an orange harvest moon.7

***8

“Hurry up, you’ve only got about forty seconds before the bell rings.”9

The children broke away from their groups and begrudgingly seated themselves back in their desks before the break time bell rang. With no more than twenty seconds left in their break, three students came running into the room out of breath. They returned to their seats with a full ten seconds remaining in their break, their youthful minds overestimating the amount of time needed to make it down the hall. I smiled, it was not too often that students in higher grades showed such respect for time and such disdain for truancy. I was blessed by having that wonderfully fluid year in these student’s lives when their imaginations seemed most alive and all students stood on equal scholarly ground. The intellectuals had not yet separated themselves from the academic pack, the future high school sports heroes still uncoordinated and clumsy. It was magic.10

As the last tones of the bell faded, I looked out into the small sea of faces looking at me for, thirsting for knowledge in all things regarding social studies. I gave them all a grand smile.11

“Hello class. How was lunch?”12

The words had no sooner left my mouth than a flurry of responses broke into the air.13

“Good Mr. Hogan.”14

“I had a chili dog!”15

“Mikey got sick on the playground!”16

“I did not!”17

“Did too. He blew chunks all over the sidewalk!”18

The sounds of laughter filled the classroom as Mikey turned beet red. I raised my hands to bring them to silence. They quieted down and turned their attention back on me. I went retrieved the social studies book from my desk and moistened my fingers.19

“Please turn to page two hundred and twenty-two,” I said in a voice becoming of a teacher. I waited until the sounds of rustling pages came to a minimum and began again. “This is the chapter twelve pre-test, and I want all of you to go home tonight and practice for the quiz on Friday.” I spoke over the sounds of disappointment, “Don’t worry. Today we’re going to talk about something else, so the quiz will be open book.”20

Returning the book to my desk and grabbing a stack of handouts for the students I continued, “Today we’re going to take a break from the Industrial Revolution and talk about something a little bit different. There was a time in America when we didn’t have TV or movies and people had to read books to have a good time. Who in here likes to read?”21

A few hands were raised but most remained on their desk. 22

“The thing that most people liked to read about were stories about where they lived. Does anybody know about Washington Irving? He wrote a story about a man named Ichabod Crane and a monster named the Headless Horseman. The papers I’m passing out tell the story about Mr. Crane and his time with the Horseman. A lot of people read this story and liked it because it was scary. It happened to take place in a town named Sleepy Hollow, and this town was a lot like most towns in America then. Some people believed that the Headless Horseman was the real thing because it seemed so real.”23

“Why did they believe that? Wouldn’t they know that the story was made up?”24

‘Not if they thought that something like that could actually exist. This is what is called a local legend. A local legend is a story that springs up from the people living in an area about a creature or a monster that is rumored to exist. Does anyone here know anything that might be considered a local legend?”25

The room which was once full of fun loving children suddenly turned solemn. Moments before I was looking out on responsive, smiling faces. Now that mood was shattered and all students seemed to have trouble meeting my gaze. I know now that they all knew exactly what I was talking about, but their reluctance to pass along any morsel of its existence outweighed my question. I broke the silence by asking again.26

“Surely there must be one story that you somebody knows that they can tell me. Anybody?” The room in front of me was as serious as funeral attendees. “Well, that’s a shame because if no one knows anything about local legends in Farrow, I’ll have to assign a paragraph report due tomorrow about some of the people who lived here.” Again there were no sounds issued from my students. “I might even have to bump it up to a page...”27

Still nothing. I was beginning to get desperate. If I could not coerce the kids into telling me the full story about the creature, then I might never get the opportunity to find out what the children spent so much time concealing until they entered the fifth grade and promptly forgot about it. Desperate times call for desperate measures; I would confront them about it now and just get it out into the open.28

“Hmm, I think that instead of a page, it will be five pages long. The topic will be about a certain creature who lives near Killan Pond.”29

An audible gasp was exhaled in unison. The children stared at my wide-eyed and disbelieving at my assignment. One child closed her eyes and started to hum a hymn sung every Sunday at the local church.30

“C’mon now kids. I’m just a little curious about what it is that you talk about all the time. What is the thing that lives in Killan Pond?” I waited for an answer before I turned my back on the class and went to the chalk board. “Fine, five page report due on my desk tomorrow about the legend of Killan Pond. Open your books to page two hundred and twenty-two to the chapters pre-test.”31

“Wait.”32

This one word interjection gave new life to my inquiry. The voice had come from little Amalie, a little girl with a name too pretty to belong in Farrow. I turned again and peered at my student. She was blushing profusely and not allowing me to look at her face. This turned my curiosity into concern. Surely, no innocent tale could illicit such a response from a little girl.33

“What is it Amalie?”34

“I’ll tell you about him.”35

Mikey turned back in his chair and spoke loudly, “Shut up Amalie.”36

“Mikey, apologize to Amalie right now.”37

He looked at me with such disdain that I would be hard pressed to find an adult’s facial expression equivalence, “Sorry Amalie.”38

I looked over to the little girl who appeared to be on the verge of trembling, “Go ahead.”39

“The man who lives by Killan Pond was a child. He says that he was once a child, but his family died and he was left by himself to try and survive. He says that the townspeople kicked him out into the outskirts because he was so ugly. He goes by the water each night to drink the water because it was were he grew up. He-” her trembling lips caused her to pause and finally look up at me.40

“Go ahead Amalie.” 41

“He drinks the water because it’s the waste that is left over from the townspeople. He tells all of us that he will kill our animals, and kill whoever wanders out there. He says that he42

will kill us and eat us up. He scares all of us. He talks to us through our dreams.” 43

“Shut your damn mouth, Amalie!” Mikey said out loud again. “He’s gonna get you!”44

“Mikey! Go to the principal’s office right now. I will be down there in a minute. Go!”45

While Mikey left the room, I looked out across the vast sea of faces. They were as ashen as porcelain masks, and just as expressionless. Amalie had started crying. It seemed that Mikey had reminded her of a sin that was unforgivable. I knelt down to her level and chose my words carefully before I spoke.46

“Its okay Amalie, its just a story. There isn’t really a man who lives by Killan Pond.”47

Bless the poor child’s heart, she could not bear to meet my gaze.48

***49

That night my sleep was haunted by a man armed with a sharp instrument and wickedly jagged canines. He stank of stagnant water, blood, and cold sweat. My mind was never given a full view of the thing; it seemed to exist only in the shadows, causing my heart to explode in terror whenever it ventured forth into the light to be seen and wondered at. It moved about with lightning quick speed, methodically circling before going in for the final kill, the only thing visible were its awful, hungry teeth and its perfectly sharpened bone...50

I awoke wrapped up in my damp sheets, arms flayed out every which direction. The alarm clock that was steadily buzzing beside me created such a grating noise that I picked up the device and threw it down in frustration. The dream had unnerved me greatly; all I could picture was the thing, slowly growing and shrinking with the shadows. I sat up, turned the clock off, and tried to scrape off the sleep from my eyes. The images of the nightmarish encounter with the thing replayed again when I closed my eyes. Like most dreams I ever had, this one was fading quickly. I had already forgotten the most terrifying details.51

I took a few hesitant steps to test my balance and then headed for the bathroom, ready to partake in the early morning ritual of the porcelain bowl. I closed the door, relieved myself, and then stripped naked before I turned the nozzle to the shower on to its highest temperature setting. Steam began to fill the bathroom, filming over the mirror. I entered the stall, and at first shrank back from the hot water, slowly testing the temperature and making sure that it was warm enough to offer a nice wake up. I plunged myself into the water and let the hot trickles flow down my body, from my hair to my chest, from my legs to the soles of my feet, the water was leaving such a sensation that I got goose bumps. I raised my arm to my hair and a sharp, aching pain resonating from my shoulder made itself known. The dream must have affected me in more ways than one; my mind was exhausted from it, my body aching from imagined injury. Now that I began to fully move around, I realized that my whole body felt incredibly sore. I was distressed about the origin of such discomfort; surely a dream cannot make a body sore.52

I dropped to my knees and brought my face down to allow the water to massage my back. The warmth of the water was comforting and the gentle drops alighting on my spine almost lulled me back to sleep. I had my eyes closed when the scent first wafted into my sinuses.53

I have personally only smelled a rotting animal up close once or twice in my life, but the aroma has a certain quality that makes it easy to remember. The fetid stink was slowly drifting into the shower stall, strong enough so that when I opened my eyes in wonder, tears immediately welled. While the smell was easily identifiable with decomposition, there was something else in the air; an undertone of a scent that wasn’t as easy to place. Finally, the metal image popped into my mind that perfectly defined the second, more subtle smell: an undisturbed puddle of water, rank with stagnation. I was so disgusted by the smell that I stood up quickly. I had no sooner risen, than the smell disappeared. Intense curiosity drove me back down to my knees to try and determine where the smell had come from. The smell was overwhelmingly strong at the lowest level of stall, where my head had been positioned inches away from the drain.54

I was startled and almost lost my balance when  brown, muddled water started to defy gravity and began to pump its way up out of the drain. The smell was stronger than ever now, causing tears to run down my face and my brow to wrinkle. The invading water seemed to have a conscious mind of its own, ignoring the clean water rushing down the drain and steadily increasing in volume and amount. I was backed up against the very end of the shower now, trying to avoid the advancing muck, never thinking to that escape was as easy as getting out of the stall. Instead, my heart pounded a rhythm that was ragged and scared. I felt all the strength go out of my knees, and I supported my weight by will alone; there was no way that I was going to allow myself to touch the water. Some primordial and primitive instinct within my mind spoke volumes about the dangers of the water, all of them unspoken but yet incredibly persuasive. I was about to try to plug the drain out of panic-driven desperation when the water stopped advancing. From the drain air bubbles began to rise, releasing more noxious air into the bathroom. From the depths of the plumbing, a single object floated to the surface of the putrid mess that shared my stall with me: a tiny scrap of meat, unidentifiable, but all the more terrifying because of it.55

***56

The bitterly cold wind cut right through the small jacket that I had worn to protect me from the elements. On the starlit sky, a harvest moon painted itself so near to the ground, it appeared that all an admirer had to do to own it was to reach up and pluck it from the dark skies. Abnormally large and eerily orange, the moon cast an amazing sort of light across the fields around the town of Farrow. Almost all was revealed in stunning clarity; I almost didn’t need my flashlight to distinguish what was going on around me. The events of the past hours had moved with surreal speed, seeming propelled by unknown forces intent on bringing me to this particular field, on the eve of this particular moon. Looking back, I can recollect how I got here and the things that I could have done to ensure that I would never have had to see the things that I saw. But hindsight is always twenty-twenty as they say. And all the coulda, shoulda wouldas in the world couldn’t change that now.57

After I had cleaned up the mess in the shower stall, I had gone to grab a cup of coffee and tried to eat something in the kitchen. The toast was hard to stomach because the scent of the water seemed to be imprinted onto my sinus cavity now. Instead of forcing myself to choke down the last piece of buttered toast, I turned on the TV. I caught the tail end of the top story. Apparently, a little girl had gone missing in the little town of Farrow. She disappeared sometime in the night, abducted from her room after she had gone off to bed. I was shocked when the picture of Amalie was brought up. The anchor was encouraging any people with information concerning the abduction of Amalie to call the police station. I held the toast in my hand, digesting what I could of the news story before rushing to the phone, calling work to tell them that I would not be coming in today, and then calling the police station to relate to them the story that had been described yesterday. The idea that her abduction and the existence of this mysterious man living by Killan Pond had nothing to do with each other was absurd. My mind kept echoing Mikey’s words to Amalie: Shut your damn mouth, Amalie. He’s gonna get you.58

While the police regarded this story as one would regard any scary story told at the campfire, the agreed to let me help with the search for Amalie. We had lined up in the corn fields surrounding the town in a single file. Hounds were placed intermittently in the ranks to help with the search, all of them given little Amalie’s scent. Then almost without any official beginning we began to march. We searched for the better part of the day, until exhausted we returned to Farrow.59

The whole time that we had searched, I couldn’t stop thinking about Killan Pond, the myth among the children of the man, and disgusting cocktail that had backed up into my shower. I had got in my car to drive home when I made the conscious decision to instead go to the pond to see the subject of all the conjecture and talk amongst the smallest residents of Farrow. I passed the lonely roads of the town one by one, from King Street to Barker Street, from Barker Street to Koontz Avenue. All of them lonely and deserted, children having been plucked into the houses before the kidnapper could strike again.60

The ride out to the pond had been quiet, and now that I was out in the woods that same silence seemed to pervade the marrow in my bones; even the rhythm of my breath became hushed and the quiet, ka-thump thump of my heart wasn’t even audible. I worked and delegated my way through the tangled trees as quietly as I could, trying to find the most silent path through a maze of gnarled limbs and outstretched fingers. And then, with no real climax, no spike of orchestral movement, no real scare or tension, I came upon Killan Pond.61

I smelled it before I saw it; the same equal mixture of one part rot, one part stagnation that had invaded my bathroom, only now it was tenfold its intensity. The sinuses and stomach were assaulted so quickly that nausea rose within me. My innards would not stand for this attack and openly revolted against my will. I unburdened the packed lunch that was made for the searchers from my stomach. Even this act of retching and vomiting was done in a fashion that was gratingly silent. I rose from my knees and wiped away the remains of the sandwich from my lips, trying to ignore the sour taste of bile that coated my mouth. The rotten stagnation was now joined by a new scent: that of spoiled lunches and churning stomach acid.62

I walked over to the pond’s sloped banks to get a handful of water to rinse off my mouth, when suddenly a smell that electrified my senses and screamed at me to leave entered my nostrils. Ever so subtly the dark, rich, thick smell of sweat and body odor attacked my overworked senses. The end product of all these hellish scents was almost catastrophic; I slipped on the gentle curve and fell back first onto the dead leaves bordering the water’s edge. I skidded all the way down, my foot breaking the fragile surface tension of the water and causing a light plop to sound while sending ripples to opposite bank. It was these ripples that brought my attention to the twisted event taking place in the torturous orange glow of the moon.63

I saw it: a shriveled, pruny looking thing no higher than the tallest pygmy in the jungles of the Congo. It was a man-child, naked and completely developed, but not suffering the disproportionate limbs that dwarfs or little people were burdened with, a perfect replica of humanity with the exception of scale; it rose no higher than my waist. The folds that wrinkled its skin were an ashen gray that were completely unnatural, and even more frightening, the thing was completely hairless. The thing’s face showed no sign of a beard, its scalp no shadow of hair, its armpits hid no growth, its groin devoid of  pubic hair. The light of the moon held much greater horrors for me and the reason that it had not heard the plop issued from the water’s edge was because it was busy munching noisily on something hidden from view. Mustering all my strength and courage, I pulled myself up to my feet as soundlessly as possible and looked to see what it was grasping in its clutches. The sight made my mouth go dry and my heart to explode in a new pulsating rhythm.64

There along the banks of Killan Pond, this hairless, hellish man-child was holding little Amalie by the head and was busying itself with her imminent decapitation; a process that was being facilitated by chewing through all the tendons, arteries, and organ within her throat. It was chewing greedily, intensely, gluttonously, all the while making light smacking sounds and little grunts of pleasure.65

The light of the harvest moon revealed everything to me, the color of blood, the pale gray of the thing’s skin, the expression of little Amalie’s face; all these things and more were swathed in a maddening orange glow. Insanity bubbled up from the pit of my gut, like air that rose from the bottom of an unimaginable abyss at the ocean surface. Reason departed and left sheer, desperate panic holding the reins of my heart and mind. I did the only thing that was left to do: I screamed from the bowels, letting loose a yell rivaling the cry of Satan himself. I screamed until my lungs burned, and all the oxygen departed from within me. I screamed until I felt my vocal cords snap under the pressure of such an exclamation. And as suddenly as the urge welled up within me came, it departed, leaving behind only the cold stare of thing across the pond.66

Its rotten eyes bored deep within my skin, its expression an unmistakable mixture of surprise and pleasure. It let go of Amalie’s head, allowing it to smack against the hard wood of the tree that she had leaned on before she died. I saw everything happening in an instant, yet at the same time, it moved in slow motion. It grabbed a sharpened bone and darted  towards the water, and just as it reached the edge it dived into the murky waters of Killan Pond. Its movements were masked by the water’s darkness, and while the survival instinct of fight or flight demanded me to make some kind of move, I stood rooted to the ground, no more able to move than if I had been one of the trees planted from decades ago. 67

The explosion of the water on my side of the bank finally startled me to action. I turned without perceiving where the thing had landed and ran. My arms pumped, my legs moved, all driven by a sudden shot of adrenaline and a explosive injection of madness. My heart pumped the blood to all of my limbs and I felt each surge of my life pulsing to its next location. The sound of my muscles moving and contracting were deafening, yet at the same time I heard the two distinct sets of footsteps in the otherwise silent September air. The trees that I had worked so hard to negotiate moments ago now offered themselves to my pursuer’s aid, snagging at me and tripping me up enough to slow me down. I felt each branch scraping my skin, each prick of a thorn in my face. Then without warning I heard the most distressing sound in my life: a split second cessation in the second set of footsteps and the loud grunt of effort coming from my hunter. In my mind’s eye, I saw the thing leaping towards me. And leap it did. The full weight of the pygmy was brought to bear on my right calf where it drove the sharpened bone, effectively bringing an end to not only this chase, but most assuredly my life. The pain was indescribable.68

The tendons torn and ripped, my leg had no choice but to fail, sending me somersaulting along the ground for a few feet until I came to rest on my stomach with my eyes closed, awaiting to be silently devoured in the same fashion as Amalie. But nothing jumped on top of me, nothing landed the killing blow. Instead, I only heard the soft rustle of moving leaves. I squinted, trying to find the hunter, instead only finding the empty night. My mind refused to believe what was going on, and I turned violently, causing the bone impaling my calf to dig deeper into the reservoirs of my life, sending torrents of blood onto the wooded ground. I grunted, trying to locate the whereabouts of the thing, this killer man-child pygmy. Then, I saw it, moving from shadow to shadow with all the speed it had mustered in its sprint to the water of Killan Pond. It moved in an unreal blur, until I lost sight of it. I buried my face down into the leaves and detritus, crying aloud for any help, sobbing at the insanity of the whole thing. I cried out for God, Allah, Jehovah, Christ, Buddha, anyone to save me from this hellish nightmare. And then, I heard the rustle of leaves in front of me.69

It approached, teeth bared and body slick with sweat from the chase. My heart sunk to lows of despair never experienced in my life, and dread took residence in my mind. Heart-stopping fear wracked my body with tremors as the horror of Killan Pond moved confidently in front of me. The complete transaction from rational mind to insanity was purchased by the thing’s withered phallus, visibly aroused at the broken soul laying at its feet. It dropped down to all fours, slithering through the leaves until it was right upon me. The stimuli assaulting me had no mercy for me in the end; the smell of stagnant water and rotten meat, the sight of its wretched body and jagged teeth still coated with the flesh from Amalie’s neck, the sound of the gibberish spewing from its lips culminated in my mind and drove me deep into the thing’s eyes, trying to comprehend the absolute chaos of it.  I didn’t even have the presence of mind to scream as it extended its tongue onto my forehead and tasted me. It bit deep into my scalp, tearing through hair and skin alike until it reached bone. The hushed, whispered gibbering never stopped as it chewed my flesh, tasting me thoughtfully before ending my life.70

Without any indication at all, it spat the detached piece of my scalp out of its mouth and contorted its brow and face into a look of absolute disgust. It brought its eyes down to mine again and spoke one last meaningless phrase and four life-altering words before ripping the bone out of my calf and went running towards the woods.71

Relief did not flood the body as I had expected, only dread and insanity remained. I had been spared from the gibbering horror of Killan Pond, but only on the grounds of one thing.72

“Not child. Not tasty.”73

***74

The days that followed flew by too quickly to have made any impact of my mind. I was tried and convicted by a jury of unanimous peers to the savage murder of Amalie. I was not given a fair trial, but it did not concern me. The only thing that concerned me was the Gibbering, the pygmy cannibal from Killan Pond. It hunted me everywhere, it watched me from the bus windows, it snarled at me from behind the bars of my jail cell, it sprinted towards me at my last day in court. The doctors said that I was suffering from psychosis, that the Gibbering was nothing but a delusion brought on by a trauma long buried from years past.75

They had me institutionalized in the Arquin Institute for Independent Treatment to try to convince me that the Gibbering was something that I made up, that it was really I who killed and tore out poor Amalie’s throat, that it was only myself that stabbed my calf. They said that the Ark was the last place and last shot that I would have for redemption. I was not concerned with any of these things. The only thing concerned me was the ever present Gibbering. 76

In every window I look in, it is there, bald and grinning with wickedly sharp teeth. And in every glass of filthy, brown water that I receive at lunch time, a little chunk of meat bobs at the top.77