Every camp needs scary stories. At least that has been my experience in meeting former camp counselors. Every lake needs a tragic spirit. There needs to be some mythic creature or bogeyman that keeps children in bunks at night. Some are general, passed around from camp to camp, akin to urban legends. There are several versions of the asylum escapee with a hook for a hand and variations on Friday the 13th’s Jason. Yet every camp seems to develop its homegrown stories of fright. Almost all of them involve an era of the camp when staff or children disappeared into the night. I suppose it seems reasonable to children that a program would be satisfied with 95% of its campers making it through the summer. It is often the rule-breakers that disappear, young counselors sneaking into the woods for a tryst, or the child who wanders into the woods without a buddy.
The tale of the ratpike is a story I only heard at Camp Aharah. As an adult, it is absolutely ridiculous. As an eight-year-old first hearing the story, it kept me out of the lake for a session or two. The fact that Jaws had come out around that period didn’t help. Being eight at the time, I had not been allowed to see the movie, but the story was in the air, or at least in every body of water. The two-tone bass line was enough to keep a child out of any pond, lake, pool, or ocean. One summer, a counselor freaked out his campers by telling this story and making ratpike tracks with a stick from the cabin area and down to the lake. Beware the ratpike!
According to the legend, many years ago, before the camp, before the loggers, Lake Pebwama was home to an Ottowa tribe. They lived a peaceful life on the lakeshore. The land around the lake was good for farming just as it is today, with asparagus as far as the eye can see in the summer. Yet, the tribe had not found the joy and profit of those green stalks. They grew corn which they dried and used during the winter months.
At this point, I should point out that these stories have never been vetted for historical accuracy. So, if you are an expert on indigenous history and want to quibble with the events, I am sure you are right, and our story is wrong. You may also find improper logging practices in the story of Stumpy the one-armed lumberjack when we get to it, and I apologize now to all logging historians. Also, if you are a member of the Ottowa nation, I apologize that we appropriated your name and culture with this story just for the sake of a cheap thrill.
Late in the fall of one year, before the water had frozen, the tribe noticed that the corn stores were dwindling. No one admitted to stealing them, so a few people decided to keep watch overnight. Shortly after midnight, they heard rustling in the leaves and watched as a company of rats assaulted their stores. Among them, as though escaping from a local performance of the Nutcracker, was a huge rat who was clearly the king of the rats. This rat was a yard long, not including the tail (perhaps the inspiration for the R.O.U.S. in The Princess Bride). Its eyes were a deep red, its teeth sharp, quickly cutting through the wall of the storage bin.
he village knew that a rat of this size along with its rat minions would devour their winter food. The next night a larger group of villagers waited in the darkness. When the rats appeared, they lit torches and charged at them, herding them toward the lake to drown. Even the king of the rats was afraid of fire, so he ran toward the lake, his long tail dragging behind him.
And now, I must apologize to any ichthyologists reading this story as I do not know if the following behavior is at all accurate. Not too far from shore was a group of Northern pike. The pike is a mean fish that preys mostly on smaller fish but has been known to eat small mammals that fall in lakes. They are also a large species, sometimes growing 4-5 feet long.
The group of pike sensed the commotion and swam closer. As the first rat hit the water, the first pike snatched it up. When the king of the rats hit the water, he was attacked by a monster of a pike, several feet long with extra sharp teeth. The rat defended itself in the only way it knew, trying to bite back and eat its way through the fish. What followed was a long bout of fighting, splashing, biting, squealing, and whatever sounds an angry pike can make. In the end, the two creatures had merged into one: the ratpike, with a rat’s feet and tail, a pike’s snapping jaws and long, scaly body, and the beady red eyes of the king of rats.
Accepted by neither rat nor pike, the ratpike lived a lonely existence, hiding in the deep muck of the lake during the day and sneaking through the woods at night. Always hungry. Always hunting. Always growing. For many years the ratpike dined on small animals. The tribe noticed seasons where rabbits and squirrels were scarce.
The young ratpike hid from humans. Now and then, members of the tribe would tell of visions of deep red eyes shining in the night or find the track of the ratpike’s long tail leading to the water. Over the years, the creature grew bolder, and young men on the lake would swear that they saw a Canadian goose pulled under the water, never to surface.
Decades passed. The ratpike grew. The tribe left, and the loggers came. Still, the ratpike was a secretive creature. The loggers told tales of an unknown something that would knock into the bottom of their rowboats when they were fishing on the lake. An overgrown snapping turtle? A nearsighted beaver? There was something...something big, below the water.
They also found the remains of the ratpike’s excursions by night, deer that had been torn apart, bones snapped by powerful, chopping teeth; a bloody struggle. And were those fish scales in the mix? And what animal left that strange track, a track that, if followed, always led to the lakeshore, trailing into the weeds?
Then the children came. The townsfolk warned the first director about the unknown thing in the lake, but he thought it a silly legend. Then that summer the first child was pulled beneath the water, his canoe tipped by…something, his partner telling a story of red eyes, a scaly body, and those snapping jaws and sharp teeth grabbing, shaking, and dragging the child below. A few weeks later, the camp director’s German Shepherd began barking furiously in the light. The director opened the window, demanding the dog be quiet. He caught the scent of pine trees and something else, something…fishy? In the morning, he found only a bloody collar and fish scales to mark the attack.
They hunted through the woods. They dragged the lake, but they never found the ratpike. Perhaps it went the way of all creatures, its carcass buried beneath the muck. Or did it grow craftier, eluding its hunters? The ratpike hasn’t attacked for many years. But, now and then, a counselor on the night watch will speak of red eyes peering from the woods. And once I swear I found a track that looked as if someone had dragged a heavy rope across the sand and into the lake.
So stay in your cabins at night, and always wear your life jacket on the lake. Perhaps the ratpike is just a legend, but why risk becoming part of the story, another camper pulled into the murky darkness?
#Ratpike: The Movie
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