A little background material to The Big Mosquito.
A Jason Midnight and His Cousin Caroline short mystery
from Slow Left Turn At Midnight.
Copyright 2006 by John H. Baillie
The Lost Lagoon of Doctor Hota
Part One
I don’t know what the official dictionary definition of nubile is, but I certainly know what the word means to me.
My definition gambols happily all about me at the moment, in ample female number, as I lie here peacefully on the beach with my cousin Caroline, my darting eyes safely concealed behind black sunglasses. I could quite enjoy myself here in the sun, if it wasn’t for the monster and all the other weirdness Caroline is laying on me. I force myself to pay attention to what she’s saying. For one thing, I really have to make certain she really said what I think she just said.
“A giant toad? You’re sure about that?”
“Yep,” Caroline assures me. She also wears big round dark sunglasses, and a floppy enormous blue hat, a green one-piece bathing suit, and a thin peasant skirty type thing over her legs. She’s pretending to read War and Peace like she does every summer, while she lies on her blanket and watches all the young guys go by in their tight bathing suits. “She takes it out for a walk every night after dark. Creeps you right out the first time you see it. Every time you see it, actually.”
I contemplate the image. Takes it out for a walk? “How giant a toad are we talking about? Define giant.”
“Big enough to need a leash.”
Where the hell do you buy a toad leash?
“But not so big it could swallow a cat or something. At least — I don’t think it could swallow a cat. It’s about the size of a cocker spaniel. A really big, fat, ugly cocker spaniel.”
“And this toad is the monster you called me out here to investigate?”
“No no, the toad’s an example of some exotic species from the Amazon Rain Forest or something — just be thankful it’s not a cockroach. The monster comes out after midnight, and it’s terrorizing Annabeth’s and Kent’s cabins. Which includes mine, because I’m renting from Kent, which is why I called you out here because this monster’s annoying me, and I’m supposed to be on holiday for the first time since God knows when. Canadians don’t take enough holidays, you know that? There have been studies. In many ways, we’re still a very backwards people.”
“You get what you pay for,” I caution her.
“Yeah, I know it’s a super deluxe cut-rate cabin resort, way out in the bush miles from anywhere, but it’s all I can afford during the high season. Besides, the beach is nice.”
Three more girls in bikinis bounce by. “Yup. The beach is nice. But it’s the name, you know, more than anything. I just can’t see a resort called ‘Gallows Falls’ really taking off in any season. So Annabeth’s the one with the toad?”
“Yeah, and she’s certainly embarrassed by it. It belongs to her mother, who’s some kind of scientist, and Annabeth’s saddled with looking after it during the summer while her mother’s off on some wild expedition somewhere. That’s why she only walks it after dark.”
Two young ladies, shorter and less buxom than the last trio, laughingly draw a line in the sand right in front of Caroline’s and my blanket and get ready to play badminton between us and the lake. The slightly taller one calls hello to Caroline, who waves back.
“That’s Rodan and Mothra,” Caroline explains. “They’re renting the place next to mine.”
“Rodan and Mothra?”
“Not their real names. They’re vacationing incognito. Rodan’s the taller one, the one posing like a dancer for some inexplicable reason, in the pyjama pants and bikini halter? The one in the white tee-shirt and white bikini bottom is Mothra. I think she’s got some kind of muscular disease, which is why she’s so skinny, and sticks her chest out like that.”
“I noticed. Why are they ‘vacationing incognito’?”
“Hey. I respect their privacy, they respect mine. They saw the monster — Thursday night. God, you should have heard the screaming.”
“Okay, let me get this monster stuff straight. What is it they saw? Not the toad.”
“No. The monster.”
“I caught that part. What does this monster look like?”
“Like some guy in a tacky rubber suit from some bad fifties horror movie. It looks vaguely amphibious, vaguely reptilian. It’s got big yellow eyes, bulging of course, it’s kind of a dark green all over with lime overtones and it leaves big, clawed, flipperish tracks in the sand. I’ve seen the tracks, but not the monster. And it goes ‘RRRRRAGHHH!’ a lot.”
“RRARRGHH?”
“No — ‘RRRRRAGHHH!’. I did hear it. Even though I didn’t see it. According to the girls and the other witnesses, it stomps around going ‘RRRRRAGHHH!’ and trying to carry off people. It walks really stiffly, with its front claws out like this. ‘RRRRRAGHHH!’”
Caroline imitates, wiggling on her butt and sticking her arms out Frankenstein-like in front of her. A badminton birdie bounces off my head.
“Sorry!” Rodan — no, Mothra — scurries up and picks the birdie up off the blanket. “Oh, cool! Are you doing the monster?”
“RRRRRAGHHH!” Caroline lunges at her.
Mothra sticks out her claws and returns the gesture. “RRRRRAGHHH!” Not to be outdone, Rodan stalks stiff-legged up behind Mothra, grabs her around the waist, lifts her off the ground with a “RRRRRAGHHH!” of her own and an ear splitting shriek from Mothra, and tries to carry her off back to the badminton line in the sand. But they fall over and now they’re both screaming, but I think it’s supposed to be laughter.
“I see panic has overrun the scene,” I comment to Caroline.
“Chill out, we’re on holiday. Give us a break. You’re lucky I even phoned you about this.”
“I am?”
Caroline’s counting on her fingers. How she’s managed to run her own successful textile store for the last ten years is a mystery to me. “So that makes seven — no, six — no, seven! Seven people who have actually seen the monster in all.”
“Seven people have seen this thing, and you call me in to get rid of it? Why not the cops? Or at least the forest rangers, or whoever. If you’ve got that much verification.”
“Get real. Who’s gonna believe a whacko story like this? Only a total nutcase would investigate something like this, a real lunatic, someone without any kind of grip on reality at all.”
“Okay, I get the point. Me or no one. So who’re these seven witnesses?”
“Annabeth. Rodan. Mothra.” She’s counting them off on her fingers, one by one, to be certain. “Kent Wesley, the guy I’m renting the cabin from. Dr. Prufrock — ”
“Dr. Prufrock?”
“Don’t interrupt, this is hard. Henry Henry, his assistant — ”
“Does that count as one or two?”
“One — who’m I forgetting? What am I up to?”
“How should I know?”
She does a rapid recount. “That’s — oh, and Lucky Levesque and Moose Norwood. That’s all seven.”
I hold my head. Sigh. “Eight, Caroline. That makes eight.”
“Get out! One, two — oh, shit. Okay. Eight witnesses then, and I personally have heard the beast and seen its tracks.”
Two old guys wander up in hideous coloured shorts and ask Rodan and Mothra if they can join them in the game. “That’s Lucky and Moose,” Caroline explains. “They’re butterfly hunters from New England, and they’re renting the cabin on the other side of me from Rodan and Mothra.”
The birdie comes straight for my nose — I dodge just in time. “They’re also really godawful badminton players. Who’re the other three guys you mentioned, Prufrock, Henry Henry Henry, and Wesley Kent?”
“Two Henrys. Henry Henry and Wesley Kent. I mean, Kent Wesley. Look. Let’s call him Kent.”
“And we’ll just call Henry Henry. ... I mean — ”
“I know what you mean. Dr. Prufrock is a nuclear physicist and also holds degrees in genetics research, and Henry is his rugged, crewcut assistant. Henry does all the heavy lifting. Prufrock’s kind of boring, but Henry’s fun.”
I can’t stop myself. I sigh again. “And they’re vacationing here too? Or are they investigating nuclear radioactively induced genetic mutations, like the other two guys are butterfly hunting?”
“You know, I never thought to ask. It’s hard to tell, with Prufrock.”
“That’s okay. Tell me about Kent Wesley. Or is it — ”
“No, it’s Kent. Kent is slightly older than me, kind of handsome, in a gravelly, stretched out kind of way, and he’s a frustrated movie director who’s trying to eke out a living renting cabins in the Gallows Falls cottage resort. He’s very high strung, but in a manically appealing kind of way. He got hit on the head as a child, and now suffers from a rare sight disorder that causes him to see the world only in black and white and the occasional shade of grey.”
“Let me guess. He was the first one to see the monster.”
“Yeah! How did you know?”
“I’m good at what I do.” I know a whacko when I hear one described to me. “That’s also why you called me, remember. Is there anyone else I should know about?”
“Yeah — Gary. He hasn’t actually seen the monster yet. He works for Kent. Gary’s kind of a nerdy teenager who likes to race ATVs up and down Devil’s Gully late at night. He’s the one who came up with the idea for the resort mascot, and built it with his own hands — the big one out in front of the cabins? You couldn’t have missed it. It’s supposed to be a roadside attraction, drawing attention to the resort.”
“‘Woody, the Sixteen-Foot Woodtick’? I bet he just reels them in.”
“Hey! Woody keeps the rates down, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You got the hots for Wesley?”
“I’d jump his bones in a second, if he gave me the chance. I told you he’s high strung.”
“Look out — “ Incoming birdy again, followed by incoming Rodan, who lands face down on the blanket, wildly waving her racket. Mothra screams. Jee-sus, that’s annoying. Rodan runs off, laughing. Good thing she’s cute.
“So, we have four sort of scientists who’ve seen this monster,” I get back to Caroline. “What’s their explanation for what it is? Especially the genetics expert. He must think something.”
“Yup. But he goes along with the general opinion. If there’s something weird happening at Gallows Falls, it’s because of Dr. Hota.”
“Oh God, not another mad scientist.”
“Oh no. The other guys aren’t mad, they’re just on holiday — maybe. Well not really. Well I don’t know. But I do know that Hota is — or was — definitely mad.”
“And what’s the basis for this unarguable fact?”
“Everyone says so.”
“ ... Well, there you go.”
“You see, Dr. Hota’s family used to run a Christian Revival Sun Camp somewhere around here in the 1930s and 40s. But when Dr. Hota inherited the camp, he turned it into a medical research centre combined with a nudist colony.”
“ ... All right, he is mad.”
“‘Dr. Hota’s Naturalist Resort for Decent Young Men and Women’, it was called. Is called. You see, rumours are, it still exists. It’s for young men and women, ages eighteen to twenty-two, to prove to themselves they can co-exist naked and if they’re pure enough in thought, nothing — untoward — will happen between them. It was meant to be some kind of psychological-sociological grand experiment.”
“That definitely would raise the tension in the area. Eighteen to twenty-two year old boys, living with naked women the same age, and nothing’s going to happen? The guy wasn’t mad, he was nuts. What happened to this camp?”
“No one’s ever found it. Apparently, it was populated by invitation only, so its location has never been widely circulated, as no one in Gallows Falls itself was ever deemed worthy of admission. It’s supposed to be located at some lagoon out in the bush somewhere, only accessible by canoe. Popular belief is that the camp still exists, and maybe Hota himself is still running it as well, because there have been periodic sightings of Vixeena in the forest during the last three years.”
“Vixeena?”
“The Doe-Girl.”
“What, like the Pillsbury Dough Boy? This is too much. Some pale skinned, fat white chick in a chef’s hat running naked through the jungle?”
“No! Doe! Doe!”
“Who you calling a dodo?”
“D-O-E! Not dough. Doe. The Doe Girl. Vixeena. She’s Dr. Hota’s wild girl daughter.”
“Stolen at birth by a band of mercenary chipmunks and raised by a deer in the forest, that kind of wild girl? The prairie Tarzan type, as opposed to the pregnant-at-thirteen type wild girl?”
“No one knows Vixeena’s true origins,” Caroline says ominously. “But she’s a wild one — an exotic appearing, black-maned creature with alluring eyes and an awkward speech pattern. And I think Kent’s secretly in love with her. Drives me nuts.”
“She’s nude too? That would explain his attraction to her.”
“No, she wears some kind of jungle bikini. Pretty skimpy apparently, but it does cover the essentials.”
“This is nuts. We’re in the Canadian Shield here, not on some tropical Island of Dr. Moreau. She’d freeze to death in the winter. Or in the fall and spring, even. For that matter, so would all the other nudists.”
“Which is proof that Dr. Hota must still be alive and up to his deranged machinations somewhere in the forest then, right? He obviously has some kind of no doubt impressive all weather mansion and laboratory at that lagoon, where the ferile nudists and his mad daughter Vixeena take shelter for the winter.”
“Ferile’s not a word. You mean feral.”
“Who’re you calling a mean feral? I am not!” Caroline’s irate.
“No, I mean — oh, never mind. You started it. So what does some whacko mad doctor, his crazy exotic daughter, and a bunch of naked but spiritually tight-assed teens have to do with this monster in a rubber suit lurking around terrorizing the Gallows Falls’ beach resort?” Wow. It was good to get that out.
“Since Vixeena and the nudists can’t survive on their own, Dr. Hota must still be running things at the Lost Lagoon. And if he’s still in charge, he’s obviously still carrying out mad experiments. It’s his metier, right?”
“You know metier, but you don’t know feral?”
“Never mind. The Monster of Gallows Falls Beach must be the result of one of those experiments. It has escaped, and is now trying to carry off more young men and women to join the tight-assed nudist colony.”
I stare at her. “And you came up with this all by yourself?”
“No, I had help. There are some very educated people staying at the resort this year, you know. Dr. Prufrock, and Henry Henry and Lucky and Moose, and Kent of course, and Annabeth and her toad all think that that’s the likeliest interpretation of events. We came up with the theory together. Well, the toad didn’t actually contribute much, but —”
The birdy lands right between us, and Rodan slams down on top of it a moment later, followed by Mothra. Screaming, of course. By the time we get rid of them, to my own regret I’ve come up with a plan. Caroline’s still focused on my last recorded statement of doubt.
“You don’t believe me, do you? You, of all people, don’t believe me. How do you have the nerve not to believe me, with all the crap you’ve expected me to accept over the years? I’ve seen and heard this monster myself! Its footprints, anyway. How can —”
“Hold on, hold on. You chill out. I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. I just implied you sound like a crazy person, telling a story like that.”
“Apology accepted. So — what are we gonna do?”
“I’m going to need a really big net. And lots of help. Get the boys and girls together, and tell ‘em Jason Midnight’s leading them on a monster hunt tonight.”
“So what if all the evidence does lead back to this lost nudist colony at this weird lagoon?” she asks.
“We’ll have to infiltrate it and find out what’s really going on, naturally. Go undercover.”
“How do you go undercover at a nudist colony?”
***
I’m out behind Caroline’s cabin just before sunset, checking out the fishnets strung together that Caroline’s buddy, Kent, got for me. Caroline and Kent are out rounding up the rest of the volunteers, as we prepare for the night’s ambush. A tall, lanky looking guy in white pants and a well-lived in blue shirt comes up and stares over my shoulder at what I’m doing. Haven’t seen him before. I try to go on with what I’m doing nonchalantly, as if there’s nothing out of the ordinary happening here. I really don’t want to have to explain myself.
“What’re you doing, then?” the fellow asks. He’s got a lilting sort of Irish accent.
“Uh ... getting a net ready.”
“Oh. Yeah. You would be, then.”
There’s a long pause. He doesn’t go away. I wait for it.
“What’s the net for, then?”
I take a deep breath. “We’re gonna try to trap a monster in it.”
“Oh. ... Big monster, is it?”
“Uhhh, yeah. About man size. That’s pretty big.”
“It is. Big, indeed. You’ll be needing a hand, then?”
“Many as I can get.”
“Good. What should I do, then?” He squats down beside me.
“Oh. Okay. Check to make sure all these smaller nets are laced together tight. I don’t trust the guy who got the net for me. He’s not very mechanical.”
“Not caught a lot of monsters, has he? I know the type.”
“Right.” Between the two of us, we repair all the weak links in the net chain Kent’s given us. We work together well, silently, getting right to it. I like this guy.
“Got a name?” I ask.
“Yeh. For quite some time now.” Silence.
“Uh — so what is it? Your name.”
“Oho! Sorry — I thought you were offerin’. Patrick.” He holds out a hand for me to shake.
“Jason Midnight, Private Investigator.”
“What? Do you mean like a detective, or do you mean someone who investigates — “
”Detective. I’m investigating this here monster, and the Lost Lagoon of Dr. Hota.”
“Well done. Why?”
“Because this monster is annoying my cousin.”
“Can’t have that —” We’re interrupted by Caroline returning with Kent.
“What’s going on? What are you doing? What’s wrong with my net? Did you break it? Auggh! I can’t take the tension!” Caroline’s right. Wesley is highly strung.
“Everyone else should be here in a minute or two,” Caroline reports. “All seven of them. Annabeth, Rodan, Mothra, Lucky, Moose, Dr. Prufrock, Henry and Gary. Who’s this guy?”
“That’s eight, Caroline. This is Patrick. He wants to help.”
“That makes ten then. Pleased to meet you.”
Patrick shakes hands with Caroline. “Pleasure. Hear you’re huntin’ monsters.”
“Yeah. Thanks for helping.”
“You’ve got a grand night for it.”
“Don’t you just love it? I love this time of day, when the sun’s just about to set over the lake ... It’s so romantic, don’t you think so, Kent?” she says, very pointedly.
Kent explodes. “Am I the only one around here who thinks what we’re doing is desperately weird!”
I shrug. “It’s your resort.”
“I know! All I ever wanted to do was make movies! All I ever wanted to be was the Canadian Roger Corman! But, no-o! Instead, I have to own some kind of stupid cottage resort that’s haunted by monsters and idiots that come out after midnight trying to carry off my customers!”
“You sound resistant,” Patrick points out kindly. “I’d’ve thought you’d appreciate someone tryin’ to do somethin’ about the problem.”
“I can’t help you with the idiots, but we will do something about the monster tonight, I guarantee that,” I tell Kent. I wonder which idiots he’s referring to? “Hello, you must be Dr. Prufrock and Henry Henry Henry Henry. I’m Midnight.” Two male figures loom up out of the increasing gloom. One is a dignified, balding older man, smoking a pipe, and the other is a pug-nosed crewcut guy with tiny eyes and a big heart, you can just tell.
“Yes, pleased to meet you.” Prufrock holds out the hand without the pipe in it, and there’s more handshakes all round.
“I already know you!” Wesley shrieks, jumping away from the Professor.
“Get this guy outta here, will you?” I mutter to Caroline. “He’s going to scare away the monster. So Doctor — what brings a nuclear physicist slash geneticist out to a garden spot like Gallows Falls? Business or pleasure?”
“Well, we thought we were getting away for a quiet holiday, but now that this monster’s turned up, I am taking more of a professional interest in events.” He has a deep, well-modulated, slow voice, and doesn’t seem to be at all perturbed by what he’s saying.
“So you believe in the monster then?”
“Oh yes. I saw it. Twice, actually.”
“What’s your opinion of its origin?”
“Obviously an evolutionary experiment run amuck by that madman, Dr. Hota, you know. I must say, I’m rather affronted by the whole affair. This is the kind of behaviour that gives science a bad name.”
“Yeah. It must be tough enough already for you guys, eh?” I sympathize. “Keeping up that front that radiation is good for us. But speaking as a geneticist, what sort of ‘experiment’ do you think actually produced the monster? Assuming Dr. Hota is responsible for him.”
Prufrock takes on a scholarly tone, as if lecturing in a classroom. “The beast appears to be amphibious, slightly reptilian, with large, bulging yellow eyes, and very impressive claws on its hands, and vaguely flipper-like feet. I have to admit, I’ve never encountered anything quite like it before. I suspect it might be some sort of prehistoric missing link between man and fish, perhaps preserved in isolation from the rest of civilization in a neighbouring glacier possibly. Or, as I suggested earlier, the result of an evolutionary experiment gone wild.”
“And you say that with a straight face?”
“I take my science very seriously.”
“I think it looks like a guy in a rubber suit,” Henry Henry spoke up. “But what do I know? I’m not a scientist.”
A nerdy looking kid runs up, out of breath, wiggling around so much he looks like he’s gonna explode. “Hi! I’m Gary! You haven’t caught it yet, have you? I want to see it! I wanna be there when you catch it! Can I? Can I?”
I stare at him. “I think we’ll use you as the bait.”
“Awright! Cool!”
Caroline and Kent come back with the butterfly hunters, Lucky and Moose — Moose? The Butterfly Hunter? — and with Rodan and Mothra. More hellos, etcetera. Gary runs up excitedly to the girls.
“Mothra, Mr. Midnight said he’s gonna use me as the bait for the Monster!”
Rodan and Mothra scream. Naturally.
“What? No way!” Wesley’s off again. “Look, this kid is annoying, but he’s the only help I can afford to hire this summer, and he’s the only one who knows how to keep the damn boats and air conditioners and TVs and VCRs and DVD players working! I can’t afford to have him carried off by the Monster if something goes wrong!”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” I assure him. “Actually, I think we’d be better off with a male and female out here as bait, preferably two of the younger people. So I need someone to stay out in plain sight with Gary. Rodan? Mothra?” I plug my ears in anticipation.
They scream. I don’t think it’s in agreement. I also have second thoughts about either of them being able to fill the role properly, if they’re going to keep this racket up all night, even before they see the Monster. Where am I going to find another willing young nubile this time of night?
My city-bred instincts alert me to something weird happening off to my right. I whirl and stare in that direction. There’s a path there, between the trees, leading off to the rest of the cabin area of Gallows Falls, not owned by Kent Wesley. I see the silhouettes of a somewhat chubby female and a squat, cube-like pendulous thing on a rope. The thing takes a ponderous hop towards us. Rodan, Mothra, Caroline and Kent all scream.
“Oh, God, it’s that freakin’ toad,” Wesley gasps after a closer look, clutching his chest. “You just don’t get used to it …"
Rodan and Mothra rush forward. Their screams were apparently of delight this time. “Humphrey! Oh, how is ‘oo, you gorgeous little hunk of toad, you!” They’re actually hugging the thing. Humphrey endures their affection in dignified silence.
I stare at it, trying to make up my mind whether a bulldog would be uglier or not. I can’t decide. I shake my head. “How grotesque,” I comment.
The woman with the toad blushes and gathers the neckline of her shirt. “Ohh, God! I knew I shouldn’t have worn this blouse." Huh?
“No, no! The toad. You’re quite pretty.”
She goes into shock. She’s about twenty-six, give or ... nah, she’s either twenty-six or thirty-one, there’s no give there. Her hair is swept back in a short ponytail, she has blue eyes in a pleasant face, and she’s probably no more than thirty or forty pounds overweight, emphasized by the tight black shorts she’s wearing under her coral coloured blouse, but seemingly an all round nice person, I’m certain. Despite the toad. I’ll leave the all round bit out if she asks me how I really think she looks.
But she’s still completely stunned by my calling her pretty. Her eyes bug out. She’s blushing again. She sounds like she’s about to have an asthma attack, she’s gasping so hard.
“Look. I didn’t mean to upset you — “ I begin, but Patrick interrupts. He steps up and takes her free hand, the one without the toad tied to it.
“No, no, what he means is, we were just sayin’ how we need a pretty young girl to stay out with young Gary here and act as decoy for the beastie we’re hunting tonight, and out of the forest you walk fittin’ the bill completely. You will help, won’t you.” He gives her an utterly charming grin.
She’s thrilled. Obviously doesn’t get out much. “Of — of course!” She laughs.
Hmp! Okay. “Well, now that we’re all assembled, and everybody’s been assigned their roles, let me explain to you exactly what we’re doing here.”
Rodan and Mothra scream.
***
“Where did you find that guy?” Caroline asks me about Patrick.
“He found me. Just wandered along.”
“He just about charmed the pants off Annabeth, and I mean that literally, with her figure. She’s usually very shy and insecure.”
“I caught that. Who knows where he’ll take her before the evening ends? The night is young.” Famous last words.
***
By 1:45 a and I do mean m, I’m ready to pack it in. Annabeth and Gary have been sitting on a big rock on the beach, looking out over the lake since 10:30, waiting for the Monster to appear. The rest of us have been cleverly concealed, watching and waiting. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting …
“You know, the beast may be more clever than we thought,” Dr. Prufrock announces sententiously.
“Or maybe we just thought we’re clever,” Caroline says, with a significant look at me.
“I’m going to the can,” I tell her. “We’ll give it till two, then we’re packing it in. Here — hold Humphrey’s leash.” We couldn’t leave the toad with Rodan and Mothra, they were making too much noise cooing over it.
“Actually, the toad’s name is Arthur,” Caroline tells me.
“What? Then why do the girls call him Humphrey?”
“Mothra thinks Arthur looks like her uncle. Her Uncle Humphrey.”
I’m outta here.
I go into Caroline’s cabin to use the facilities. This is crazy, I decide. What makes me believe this particular group of seven, or eight, or however many of them there are, vacationing lunatics are reliable witnesses regarding anything? Butterfly hunters? Nuclear physicists? Two young women “vacationing incognito” as Japanese horror flick monsters? And Wesley — an overstrung brain damaged frustrated Roger Corman wannabe who only sees the world in black and white? There’s no monster out here, I’m certain of it.
When I’m done, I go out the back door of the cabin, and there’s the Monster, standing waiting for me.
“RRRRRAGHHH!”
Caroline wasn’t kidding. The thing lunges for me — I dive under its claws, rolling on the grass. “Back here! Back here! It’s back here!” I yell, jumping up. The Monster swivels and swings at me again, quicker than I expected.
“RRRRRAGHHH!”
Noises of general confusion erupt from my intrepid troop of monster hunters. Rodan and Mothra scream, but anyone could have seen that one coming. Annabeth and Gary tear up from the beach to see what’s going on, as they apparently are the only ones presently not entangled in my net. “Run, you fools!” I try to shoo them away. The Beast swings at me again.
“What’s going — COOL!” Gary is thrilled. Annabeth freezes, shrieking.
“RRRRRAGHHH!” The Monster sees them. Oh yeah, like they haven’t been out there for the last three friggin’ hours waiting for him, and now he sees them?
“Would you look at that?” Gary goes on. “It is real, after all! This is just so coo—” I tackle him just in time as the Beast lunges for him. Annabeth still stands there frozen, shrieking. Somehow, even though they’re at least thirty feet away, Rodan and Mothra still scream louder.
The Monster goes for Annabeth now, and she’s too petrified to move. I can’t get up in time after tackling Gary — this doesn’t look good.
“RRRRRAGHHH!”
At the last second, Patrick swoops in, picks up Annabeth, and turns to flee, falling flat a few feet afterwards as she’s way too heavy for him. But that gives me time to act.
I’m up again, and I jump onto the Monster’s back. To my great surprise, my attack actually takes the Beast down, with me on top — something falls over the two of us. Ohh, great! Now they get organized with the net.
A moment later, the Monster, me, and, somehow, Rodan, who poses so gracefully but moves so clumsily, are all tangled together in the net. Amidst much screaming, yelling, and yes, I openly admit it, vociferous swearing on my part, Rodan and I manage to squirm our way free. We stare down at our handiwork. Well, we captured the Monster all right. And he’s not too happy about it.
“RRRRRAGHHH!”
“What do we have here?” Dr. Prufrock wonders.
“A man in a rubber suit,” I say.
“Eh?”
“I felt the zipper when I took him down. C’mon. Give me a hand, Moose, Lucky, Henry Henry Henry, Patrick. You too, Caroline. He’s not that tough.”
We untangle and unzip. As we yank down the suit, Rodan and Mothra scream again, even though the guy’s wearing a bathing suit underneath. “Will you two knock it off!” Kent yells at them. They scream at him.
Finally, the de-monsterizing is done, and we’re left with a much calmer, intense looking young man, standing and glaring at us furiously, his arms pinioned by Moose and Lucky, and with Caroline’s strong right arm around his neck. Kent is irate. He charges in jabbing his finger in the poor guy’s face.
“This is who’s been terrorizing my customers? This is the Monster? What’s going on here, anyway! Just who do you think you are? What’s your name, anyway? Who are you? Who sent you? Eh? Eh?”
They guy glares at us, breathing hard. There is a long, expectant silence. Then — the Monster speaks.
“Trent,” he says, in an angry low voice.
“Extraordinary,” Dr. Prufrock observes.
Kent screams.
“So it is human,” Dr. Prufrock proclaims ponderously, working through the chain of events very carefully. “And ... apparently ... neither amphibious ... nor truly reptilian.”
“You would know, Doc,” Henry agrees.
Science on the march. Prufrock leans in close to the guy’s angry face.
“What do you want ... Trent?” he asks, grimly.
Trent’s eyes bug out. He looks positively demon possessed. He’s specifically glaring at Annabeth and Gary now, who still stand beside each other. “Them. Them! THEM!” Trent yells.
“Oh, for —” I’m fed up. “If it’s those two you wanted, why didn’t you come out earlier when we put them out as bait? We all could have got to bed a lot sooner.”
“RRRRRAGHHH!”
Trent reverts to character, and somehow, recovers his beast-like strength. He tosses off Moose and Lucky like — well, like a couple of butterfly hunters, really — and flips Caroline right over his head into Patrick and me. Rodan and Mothra — like I need to say, at this point.
Henry Henry tries to dive in to help, but trips over the damn toad. Kent panics, rendering himself totally useless, while Dr. Prufrock takes his pipe out his mouth and leans in, staring hard, to observe Trent’s behaviour more closely.
Trent flattens Gary with a backhand swipe, scoops up a shrieking Annabeth, and runs lightly off with her over his shoulder into the bush, which is pretty darn impressive considering how Patrick fared earlier with the same load.
Caroline glares at me. “Now look what you’ve done.”
*****
Photography by Renee Beaubien, at Beyond the Prism
on Flickr, at:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/128997372@N08/
*****
REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!
A Victor Coffin/Jason Midnight double-header begins Friday, August 7th with The Big Mosquito, posting number 1 of 49. As always, at:
http://realficone.blogspot.ca/
This week featuring:
Darlene on the dream scene
Decomposition in Sink Series
by Fandango Moberly
#2 of 50
