THE CRYPTID MENAGERIE: PART I

ALVA Keel had another Nightmare last night, and he’d decided to take a walk today to enjoy the solitude of nature and hopefully clear his head.

The dreams had become so intrusive that he’d been fearing sleep for almost a week now. He would drink Coffee until there was no more left, and then to combat the anxiety he’d drink tea. He knew his parents would scream at him about these matters when they awoke, which was good. It made him more apprehensive, and hence kept him up longer.

He couldn’t remember much of his dreams after he awoke. They mostly involved people. He’d dreamt a kid from School wanted to play football with him, so his Father – a dark figure driving a suspiciously antique car – drove him down to a deserted, grey road. He heard the gravel crunch, a strange detail for a dream, and then when the kid he was with left the range of light things went wrong.

His face warped. His mouth and lips became too wide and big, his pupils expanded to take up his whole eyes, his teeth grew, shrank and became crooked. His hair grew longer, brighter, stranger. Al didn’t stop, either. He followed the boy into the darkness, where he then woke up screaming in the Night. His parents were convinced he was too old for night-lights, so the screaming continued until one of them went to get him.

“This walk’ll clear my head,” he said to his empty house as he brought a pitcher of some blue grape-flavored drink out onto the back porch. It was the most generic brand and thus the closest to his price range. He felt like he deserved Gatorade or at least Powerade for all the work he did around the house and lawn. But after he’d deducted things from the 20 bucks a week he was getting, this run-of-the-mill cheap imitation brand was all he could afford.

“Purple stuff beats Sunny D anyday,” he said as he closed the sliding door behind him and plopped down in the Lawn Chair.

He’d started going on walks like this every weekend. His parents worked, he had nothing better to do, and he wasn’t about to stay in a house without Air Conditioning for 12 hours.

He decided to bring along a guidebook to the native wildlife to entertain himself with. See if he could identify anything spectacular. Though he was sure any of the notable wildlife were things he probably wasn’t gonna see.

“Oh well,” he said.

His house was a Cedar-Shingle, a good six and a half miles from the nearest neighborhood. His Father had picked it out because it was ‘quaint’, because it was ‘secluded’ and because most of all, it resembled the house where he had grown up. The basement wasn’t underground, it was the second level. One had to get to the top level by means of stairs, which led up to a porch that encircled the house. He’d left his window open to let his room air out while he was gone. His cat sat there, looking through the screen at him.

“See ya, Shere Khan. Hold down the fort while I’m away!” And with that, off he was.

He was not yet aware that when his return home would not be at sunset, like he imagined. He was also unaware that he would never return home.

* * *

When one expects something to go one way, it’ll always go the other. Always. What Alva saw had rended apart what he once called ‘real’ and now lay in plain view.

He just didn’t see it yet.

In the calm, cool air of the late afternoon, Al sat and enjoyed the beauty of the clearing. He sat back against the ancient bench, constructed from some forgotten purpose all those decades ago, and simply enjoyed the wind against the grass and the pine trees.

He wondered if he might see a Deer. The lack of Deer in the immediate vincinity was either a very good sign, or a very bad one. If Deer were not common in this area, anything particularly large and dangerous would not linger here without sufficient prey. If Deer avoided this area, it might be because their superior senses of smell could pick up the prescence of something that Al could not detect.

What the Hell, he thought. Nothing nearby except birds that he could hear, so therefore nothing to worry about. He knew, on some level, he was full of crap, but often times being full of crap is the only way to remain sane.

He closed his eyes, tried to relax as much as possible. Which wasn’t much, but it was something, at least. He tried not to fall asleep. He’d gotten almost no sleep the night before, and the fresh air, cool shade and calming breeze tempted him to just lay down there and black out.

He didn’t, however. Not out of fear that he might wake up and find himself alone in the woods at Night, or out of fear that he might awake to find a Bobcat or a Black Bear staring him down.

No, he was scared of falling asleep and having another one of his dreams. That would be truly horrific, he knew.

So he just zoned out, occasionally drifting in and out of that shadowland between wake and sleep.

He breathed more slowly than he could at home. His heart didn’t pulse anywhere near as frantic as it normally did. The world was peaceful, for once.

Like all good things, it was fleeting. A Cicada landed on his forehead, and he bolted upwards. He probably scared the insect as much as it scared him.

“Well, I can check Cicada off the list of animals I’ve seen,” he said, picking up his guidebook and moving into the clearing and away from the bench.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a sort of back-and-forth movement on the rocky outcropping at the other end of the field.

He decided it probably wasn’t anything dangerous, so he thought it might be fun to go up and see what it was. Maybe he could catalogue it in his book on Northwest Wildlife. So, without any thought to the ramifications, he was up and through the grass to get a better look at the animal.

It’s a funny thing that happens, the reaction people have when they see what shouldn’t be. “The Delusion of Reality is Universal,” a wise man once said, and he was never more right than here.

It was a bird. A standard bird, like a Condor but not that species. The coloration was all wrong. Not a Vulture, either. The head was leathery and featherless. A long, pseudosaurian neck craned to view the clearing. It stretched its wings, closing its eyes and yawning with its black, jagged beak. The parts of its wings where the arms would be were a startling white, while the ends were black and the undersides were the same frightening crimson as its head and neck.

What didn’t hit him yet, but would soon, was the monster’s size. Perched there on the blocky and black outcropping, it recalled a poster Alva had once seen of a Thunderbird. An old book on ‘mystery animals’ depicted one carrying off a youth. Supposedly based on something that had actually happened.

“Maybe I’ve discovered a new species”, he said to himself, and moved to the edge of the clearing.

So stunned was he that when the animal spread his wings, he did not think to back away into the woods. He tried to estimate the size of the thing, thought maybe its wingspan was in the area of fifteen to eighteen feet. Somewhere in that range.

“Mother of God,” he whispered to himself.

When it dropped from the precipice, his heart sank, and a single panicked though filled his mind.

IT’S ESCAPING! His conscience screamed at him. He reached into his pack for his Camera; hoping to at least snatch a picture of it before it flew away to that hidden realm where Modern Megafauna must hide and thrive away from the peering eyes of Man.

When he brought his head and his Camera back up, he saw the animal wasn’t flying away. Contrary, it was swooping down, nearer to the Earth.

Directly towards him.

He darted his head away, scanning the open for a hiding place. The woods were too far away now, the bird would be upon him before he could reach the relative safety of the woods.

He saw a dead tree on the ground, grey and cracked and fallen. He shot his gaze back to the descending Raptor and saw its Ebon Talons outstretched towards him like the hands of some twisted and dried-out corpse.

He sprinted, purposely trying to kick up as much dust as possible. He kept low, ducking, hoping it didn’t come down too close…

He dove behind the log, his shirt ripped open by the Talons of the massive bird. He felt the wind beneath its wings blast him, smelled its strong and tear-jerking odor; the stench of its last kill, probably reduced to bones somewhere in the rocks up there.

His heart raced and he felt drenched in sweat. He clung to the ground, realized with a sudden, smack-across-the-face terror that it might come back, and forced himself to look up and ahead.

It flew back to where it had perched, its wings still raised. ‘Is it stretching, or is that a territorial display?’ He wondered.

If it was the first, it would plunge back at him either way; if it was the other, it simply wanted him to run away, meaning it wouldn’t carry him off and kill him it struck again.

Just as he stood, it had taken off for him once more. It let out an odd, gurgling call, something he’d never heard from a bird before or even a reptile. He saw it, gliding towards him as if in slow-motion, its yellow eyes focused on him, its narrow snout poised like a jagged dagger ready to rip his chest open and devour all his innards.

He jumped over the log, his eyes shooting to every possible location. He wouldn’t make it to the woods if he ran, it’d be upon him before he could even get halfway there. Even if it didn’t carry him off at first, it would wound him badly. He might be lacerated, or he might escape only to bleed to death before he reached help. He couldn’t Just leap over the log, the bird would land and corner him.

Still it came, swooping, red-black wings flapping and soaring as it dove down to kill him.

He stared it down, challenging it, provoking it, on the verge of beating his chest and shouting it down to face him.

When it was close enough for him to smell, he jumped over the dead tree.

The monster gripped the trunk with one foot and raised the other to kill, but its intended prey had sprung off the ground. Instantly, using mankind’s best tried-and-true defenses, Alva launched a handful of dirt into bird’s face, blinding it.

Uncoordinated and perhaps even a little frightened itself, the Thunderbird swung both its feet at the now fleeing boy beneath it. One put a pair of slashes in his back, tearing his shirt off. The other push a gash in the side of his face, almost piercing his cheek. The wrenching smell of the giant Raptor and the guttural, choking noise stayed with him long after he’d begun sprinting, putting one foot in front of the other, trying to put distance between him and the thrashing thing that was now regaining its bearings.

He had reached a tree when he heard it beat its great wings again, launching itself skywards; searching and possibly angry now.

He panted, felt the blood running down his neck and back and legs and almost feeling the life spilling out of him, as though his soul was escaping.

He begged whatever forces had launched him into combat with a gigantic, near-extinct flying predator to either let him out of it or let him die swiftly. These thoughts were annihilated the instant the Thunderbird rounded the tree, its Talons gripping the trunk and its red snake-head rasping and snapping for him.

He sprinted again, the airborne terror flying from tree-to-tree, tracking him, seeking to rend him apart.

He jumped to another tree, and this time stumbled, falling onto something he’d tripped over. He rolled to keep his eye on the beast, and inadvertently found the decider of this hunt.

What he’d tripped on was a stick. One as long as he was tall.

He held it up, holding it like a baseball bat. Tried to get as much of a grip on it as possible in his moist hands, tried to gain leverage.

When the landed Thunderbird spread its wings and jumped for him, closed his eyes, wished hard, and swung.

A sickening crack became the only thing Al could sense in his tight-shut eyes.

Snapping them open, he saw he’d landed the luckiest shot of his life in the creature’s skull. It shook its head and flapped his wings, trying to ward him off. Attempting to scare him so as to give it another opportunity to attack.

But Al, unthinking, wrenched the stick back, screamed with fury, and landed another blow into the monster’s head.

Now the beast fell over, making distinctively wounded sounds, clawing and flapping on one side.

Alva watched for the Talons, ran to the beast’s head, and reared up like a cave-man of old, shrieking with all his thirteen-year-old might.

With both hands on one end, he brought the heavy stick down.

The monster’s head cracked open and its jaws were severed. Its legs convulsed momentarily, and then went limp.

Al, a thirteen-year-old boy, alone, out in the woods, shirtless and wounded, now stood triumphantly over the once-mighty Thunderbird. Blood running from the cuts the flying terror had inflicted upon him, the hunter’s blood on his stick, he raised it to the sky and let loose a roar of conquest. He was man, master of this world. His mind and hands the most brutal weapons that two billion years of Evolutionary refinement on this planet had ever produced.

Had he not been drunk on his savage mastery of the world and his own testosterone, he’d have heard the footsteps behind him. He might’ve avoided a gun-butt to the back of the head, which, he discovered a few seconds later, would have been nice.

“YOU GODDAMNED FOOL!” A Woman’s voice with some kind of accent was shouting at him. “YOU GODDAMNED STUPID LIL’…” She launched a long string of obscenities at him, while he tried to fend off the gun she was beating him with. As he was near exhaustion, he was not able to defend himself at all. Funny, he thought – he fells a monstrous hunter and another human brings him down, for what reason he had no idea.

After about five strikes from the gun, they suddenly stopped. He kept his arms over his face and eyes, but he heard more people coming – at least two – and heard arguing above him. One of the voices was distinctly male, older and with either a cockney or Australian accent of some kind.

“It’s a kid, Sanderson, Jesus! If it weren’t for your the T-bird just go at ‘im an’ at ‘im, he wouldn’ta killed it! Either way he’s seen the Goddamn thing now, there’s no use in turning him loose!”

He looked up and saw a tanned and toned man with tattoos up and down his arms. He wore Khaki Shorts, a vest and a hat all colored camouflage, except for the hat, which was green-yellow. The hat had teeth inlaid; it reminded Alva of one he’d once seen Steve Irwin wearing. His hair was dirty-blond and came down to a little below his jaw. He had a necklace with a shark-tooth, was wearing at least five weapons on him (not including the automatic Shotgun in his hands), and had a look of disgust in his bright, green eyes. There was a scar on the right side of his face.

“He’s a bloody child, Terry. Geeze. I know you pour a lot of money into these bloody monsters but couldn’t you at least have a little bit of compassion towards another human being?”

The woman he was speaking to was a little over five feet high and equally tanned. Freckled marked her face and she had dark, straight auburn hair down to her chest. Her face was teardrop-shaped with a narrow chin, a thin nose, and angry, watery-blue eyes.

“Dammit, Shuker, do you have any idea how much money I’ve just lost?! That ‘Monster’ was 1.5 million, at least! All gone thanks to this! This!” She was indicated Alva, who she then kicked in the face and stomped in the chest.

He coughed, spitting, and pulled himself up on unsteady legs. The Hunter had pulled her back, thrashing and howling and spitting like more of an animal than the one he’d just killed.

“Well, what do you propose, Sanderson?” The Australian Hunter asked. “You’d never let him loose after seeing that, now would you? You have any ideas?”

“Gimme that Hatchet or your Machete, I’ve got oodles of ideas.” She said, her eyes locking with Al’s.

“He’s a kid, and he’s badly injured. We let him go and eventually somebody’ll find ‘im, and those wounds clearly ain’t from a Mountain Lion.”

The Woman seemed to have calmed down, though she was still severely disgusted with what just happened. Her face was in her hand, rubbing her eyes.

“O.K., O.K., O.K.,” She said, eyes closed in thought and her arms motioning to the kid beneath her. “I’ll guess we just bring him back to the Compound and fix him up, figure out what to do with him then. Right?”

The Hunter Shrugged. “Whatever you want, you’re the one payin’ me for it.”

She nodded, turned towards Al and, with a single blow to the side of his head, knocked him out cold.