The Cryptid Catcher

by Lija Fisher

  “Yep. You were the only witness to this transaction, so we needed your signature to make it legal and binding.”

  Clivo rolled his eyes and walked to the hall closet, where he got Douglas’s coat. “There’s just one thing wrong with your story, sir.”

  “Enlighten me,” Douglas growled, struggling into his heavy jacket.

  “That my dad cared enough to want me to follow in his footsteps. He got away from me every chance he got.”

  “You kids are so needy nowadays,” Douglas spat. “Daddy—excuse me—Russell was off saving the world, and the only thing you were concerned about was that he wasn’t there to watch your boring T-ball game. You probably didn’t even notice all the time he spent training you.”

  “What training?” Clivo asked, turning his back on Douglas to open the front door.

  The next few seconds went by in a blur. Douglas suddenly swung his cane at Clivo’s head. Instinctually Clivo blocked the stick with his left forearm. Next Douglas’s left fist came at him, which Clivo deflected as well. But Douglas wasn’t done; his left leg swept under Clivo’s feet, knocking him onto his back. In half a second, Clivo tucked his legs underneath him and sprang back to standing, one hand grabbing Douglas loosely but threateningly by the throat.

  Douglas smiled with satisfaction. “That training. Let me guess, martial arts classes since you were, what, three or four?”

  “Two and a half,” Clivo said, his breath coming in gasps, both from exertion and adrenaline. The man had just attacked him!

  “None of that karate crap, I hope.”

  “Jujitsu,” Clivo said, confusion coursing through his mind.

  “Archery?”

  “Starting age five.”

  “Shooting?”

  “Six.”

  “Survival skills?”

  “Like going winter camping in subzero temperatures? Age seven.”

  “Languages?”

  “Five. Japanese, Hindustani, Arabic, Russian. And English.”

  “Hindustani?” Douglas asked with disgust. “Well, I’m sure Russell had a reason for it. I learned long ago never to ask him his reasons for things. If something ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Douglas carefully removed Clivo’s shaking hand from his throat. “And I suppose you never wondered why your father taught you such things?”

  Clivo swallowed. “He said every kid needs structured activities. Helps keep us out of trouble.”

  “Structured activities? Bowling is structured; learning Hindustani is like being waterboarded.” Douglas peered closely at Clivo. “Oh, yes, I see the wheels turning now. Things clicking into place, are they? So, why don’t you mull that over for a bit. When you’re ready to start work, give me a call. You have my card.”

  “The card was practically blank,” Clivo said, his mind trying to process too many things at once.

  “Just wave it in the air three times and I’ll call you,” Douglas said, opening the front door to another bolt of lightning and crack of thunder. Without another word he scurried to his big black car.

  Clivo pulled the card out of his pocket and looked at it as Douglas’s car retreated through the rain. He held on to it for a moment, a small part of him daring to believe that what Douglas had said was true, that his father had been carving a path for him. But after a quick moment, Clivo folded up the card and tossed it out the door and into the forest. He would believe that mythological creatures existed before believing his father had cared enough to do that.

  Monday

  III

  “This math book will be your god for the next twelve weeks.”

  The thump of the large textbook on the metal desk startled Clivo. He lifted his cheek from his hand and tried to focus on the teacher in front of him. The guy was in his fifties and had an extremely bushy mustache and eyebrows and the nickname Professor Owl because he looked like a shaggy old coot.

  “You are all here since, well, let’s be honest, you are not the brightest bulbs of the bunch. But I am here to change all that! This may be called ‘Remedial Math for Dummies’—oops, forget the ‘for Dummies’ part, that’s just a joke between myself and the other teachers. Ahem, this may be called ‘Remedial Math,’ but I am here to turn your frowns upside down. My goal is to change you from kids who are one D-minus away from being the future burger flippers of America to being … crime fighters!”

  Clivo looked around at the other fifteen students scattered throughout the sterile classroom. Some were paying close attention, but the majority had their heads down, either doodling on their notepads or checking their phones beneath their desks. It was the first day of school and already everyone was bored.

  Clivo sat alone, as usual, in the corner. Even though he had gone to school with these kids since first grade, he didn’t have many friends. He had been homeschooled by his mom, but after she died, his dad was gone too much to continue it. Aunt Pearl had gamely tried to homeschool him for a bit, but she didn’t know much about history or geography or math or really anything except the Bible, her secret dancing, and how to properly brush a cat. So Clivo had joined the regular school partway through the year, where he quickly earned the title of “That Weird Mountain Kid.” Before Pearl took over buying his clothes at Palace of Pants, his wardrobe had consisted of items his dad had brought back from his travels. Long cotton shirts from Turkey, harem pants from Bangladesh, a jade necklace from China. For the first year, all of the kids had pretended he was a foreign exchange student and spoken loudly and slowly in his face as if he didn’t know English. Clivo’s habit of accidentally blurting out words in other languages just made the kids laugh at him more.

  A turning point had come during his first show-and-tell, when he brought some shrunken heads his dad had procured in Ecuador. Everyone freaked out (including his teacher, Mrs. Tuttle, who promptly threw up in a plant) except for Jerry, who asked to borrow one and hung it in his parents’ shower to startle them. Jerry had pledged his allegiance as Clivo’s best friend after that. Indeed, Jerry became the only kid allowed to play at Clivo’s museum-like home (the other parents had turned their cars around the second they saw either the naked Polynesian statues out front or Russell practicing tai chi moves in a traditional outfit). Unfortunately, Jerry had ended up at a different middle school in sixth grade, leaving Clivo to once again sit alone at lunchtime.

  “Remember, if you master math, you can—eventually—master accounting; if you master accounting, you can fight crime,” Professor Owl continued, his breath blowing through his mustache. “The great gangsta Al Capone was finally sent to prison not because of his violent crimes—nay!—but because of the heinous atrocity of tax evasion. Even players get played.”

  Professor Owl laughed at his attempt at humor, but the class just stared at him with glassy eyes and slackened jaws. Not that the professor noticed as he joyously continued on with his spirited lesson.

  Clivo stifled a yawn. He looked at Dan, the redheaded kid next to him, who was engrossed in a comic book that was strategically propped inside the math book. A fly was buzzing around Dan’s head, so he dropped a hand from the book to shoo it away, allowing Clivo to see the comic’s cover: Chupacabra Man! The inside showed brightly colored drawings of what looked to be an enormous humanoid lizard wearing a trucker hat and karate chopping some bad guys.

  Clivo sniffed and turned his attention back to his textbook. But the damage was done. A picture of his father dueling with the chupacabra flashed through his mind. Clivo groaned and rubbed his eyes. Ever since Douglas had come to him the day before with the news about his father, Clivo had done everything in his power not to think about it. The part about his father chasing cryptids was just plain nuts, no two ways about it. But the part about his father training him for something was stuck in his head.

  “To read a well-prepared tax return and unearth a hidden money-laundering scheme is nothing less than numerical poetry,” Professor Owl hooted.

  Clivo stared at the textbook, but his mind drifted again. Why had his father ta
ught him so much stuff that, so far, didn’t seem to have a purpose? Not many other kids could pick off a soda can at three hundred yards with a single-shot Winchester rifle. That wasn’t something other parents did with their kids on the weekends, followed by a conversation in Russian at the local Cosmic Burger. Clivo had always thought the things his dad taught him were a little bizarre, but his parents had been bizarre.

  A blur caught Clivo’s eye and he saw Dan swatting furiously at the fly that was now bombarding his bowl-cut hair. Clivo tore a piece of notebook paper, rolled it up into a tight ball, and tossed it at the fly, knocking it out in mid-air.

  “Thanks, Clivo,” Dan said under his breath. “Just don’t try to sit next to me again at lunchtime, okay? I don’t hang out with kids whose clothes cost five bucks. You look homeless.”

  Clivo looked down at his blue-striped polyester sweater and oversized cargo pants, courtesy of Palace of Pants. “Okay. But just so you know, these clothes only cost two bucks.” Clivo chuckled at his own lame joke.

  Dan rolled his eyes and turned his head away. “Whatever.”

  Clivo sighed and went back to his thoughts.

  After Douglas left, Clivo hadn’t been able to resist doing some research. He had discovered that what the old man said was true. The Caparra Archaeological Site was indeed closed to private digs, and had been for years. But Clivo was sure that’s where his dad had said he was going. Why would his father have lied to him about where he went on his work trip?

  “Mr. Wren, perhaps you can recount how learning math can lead you to fighting crime? Unless the little bird on the tree out there has better advice on how you can earn your superhero cape?”

  “Huh? Oh, sorry.” Clivo swung his attention back to Professor Owl, who was staring at him with wide, challenging eyes. The rest of the class was staring at him, too, with a few kids snickering because he’d been caught spacing out. “I can fight crime by learning math because, um, Al Capone didn’t know math very well so he ended up in prison. For tax invasion. I mean ‘evasion.’”

  Professor Owl’s eyes went even wider before his face broke out into a huge grin. “Very good, Mr. Wren. Very good. You may want to consider a rewarding career as a tax auditor. Saving the world from gangsta tax cheats everywhere. Very noble indeed.”

  Clivo wished he shared Mr. Owl’s enthusiasm, but becoming an auditor wasn’t exactly the riveting future he had pictured for himself. Not that he had any clue what his future held—he certainly hadn’t ended up in Remedial Math for Dummies because he was a good student. He’d never had any help with his studies at home. His dad had thought his time was better spent quizzing Clivo on survival skills, like which berries were edible and which were poisonous. Half the time, Clivo’s homework was left forgotten in his backpack, especially because Aunt Pearl’s face would glaze over in confusion whenever he asked her some kind of homework question.

  But Clivo had never once gotten a scolding when he brought home his miserable report card. If his dad was home, he would just puff away on his pipe, look at the Cs and Ds, and let out a little snort. “Try to work hard enough to at least stay in school,” was all he would say. But maybe his dad had been disinterested in his schoolwork because he’d already known that Clivo’s destiny was to become a cryptid catcher.

  Finally the bell rang, signifying the end of the school day. Clivo picked up his books and exited as quickly as possible. There was only one person who could help knock some sense into his head.

  IV

  After school, Clivo rode his bike to Taco Comet, a fast-food restaurant built in the shape of a silver saucer spacecraft, and picked up a paper sack of food that was incredibly unhealthy but totally delicious. He rode onward to the SETL Institute, where Jerry worked. The institute was a nonprofit organization dedicated to the Search for Extraterrestrial Life. Jerry had transferred from Clivo’s school to the middle school across town because it had a better football program—a program that Jerry was quickly suspended from (as punishment for releasing a skunk into the school’s ventilation system). Without football to keep him out of trouble, Mrs. Cooper had insisted she would get Jerry a babysitter to mind him after school, but Jerry had thrown a fit, saying that only babies had babysitters and, at thirteen, he should now be considered a man. So, Mr. Cooper, after talking to his boss about Jerry’s rapscallion ways, created a low-level grunt job for Jerry at the institute. It seemed like a cool thing to Clivo, working at a place that searched for aliens, but Jerry said all he did was empty trash cans and fetch his dad coffee.

  Clivo locked his bike to a scrawny tree outside the nondescript white building on the outskirts of town near the Air Force Academy. It looked like any old single-story office building, save for the myriad of antennas and satellites crammed on the roof. He walked into the polished white lobby and asked the receptionist if he could see Jerry.

  Within a few moments, a loud click sounded and a heavy door opened to Clivo’s right. Jerry stuck his head out, a large tin of Yummy Sniff instant coffee in his hand.

  “Hey, Wren! How you doin’?”

  Clivo smiled and held up the bag from Taco Comet. He knew from painful experience over his monthlong visit with the Coopers that Jerry’s mom had the family eating like extremely healthy cavemen. “Just wanted to bring my buddy a snack. And I have a math problem I could use your help with.”

  Jerry stared at Clivo. The mention of a “math problem” was a code they had come up with while living together. It was an excuse for them to retreat to Jerry’s room and play video games instead of watching old sitcom reruns with Mrs. Cooper after dinner. Now it just meant “I need to talk to you in private, immediately.”

  “Ah, sure, sure,” Jerry said, glancing back over his shoulder before opening the door wide. “Things are a little crazy in here right now, but every guy has to eat, right?”

  Clivo stepped from the white lobby into the dark underbelly of the SETL Institute. The long, dimly lit hallway was glass on one side, revealing a large room whose other three walls were covered with projection screens that showed images of space and what looked to be sound waves. At least twenty people were staring intently at the screens in front of them, and it was obvious the whole room was crackling with excitement.

  Mr. Cooper was standing in front of the biggest screen, his hand scratching his unshaven face. He waved at Clivo as he walked by, but then pointed at Jerry and made a sipping motion with his hands at his mouth, as if he needed more coffee, immediately.

  “Something exciting going on?” Clivo asked.

  “Umm, not really. You know how eager these guys are to find the first sign of intelligent life. It’s probably just some space junk floating around.”

  Jerry opened the door at the end of the hall and they entered the fluorescent-lit break room.

  “Please tell me you don’t have anything healthy in that bag, because if I even look at another vegetable I will throw myself into traffic,” Jerry pleaded, collapsing into a plastic chair. “Last night my ma announced she won’t even allow milk at home anymore. Just almond milk. Almond! Like from a nut. I told her, if my milk doesn’t moo, I’m not drinking it.”

  “Don’t worry, I gotcha covered.” Clivo opened the bag and shook out two overstuffed Taco Comet Supremo Burritos.

  “Sweet, sweet bouncing baby! Wrenmaster, you are very close to making a grown man cry.” Jerry gave his burrito a big kiss before ferociously chomping into it.

  Clivo felt bad for his starving friend, so he handed over his burrito as well.

  “So, I don’t have much time, Pops needs his coffee,” Jerry said between wolf bites. “What’s your math problem?”

  Clivo quickly gave him a rundown of his conversation with Douglas.

  “He claimed your dad was a unicorn hunter?” Jerry asked, barely glancing up from his food.

  “Basically, but apparently they haven’t found a unicorn yet,” Clivo said, cringing at how bizarre it sounded. “It sounds stupid, I know, but there are just some things that aren’t adding up.
”

  “Like what?” Jerry asked, distractedly glancing through the glass door to see what was going on in the main room.

  “Like … why would my dad teach me five languages, jujitsu, and marksmanship?”

  Jerry shrugged. “My dad taught me golf. Doesn’t mean he wanted me to be Tiger Woods.”

  “Come on, Coops. You’ve always thought it was weird I could do all these things. Don’t you think it’s possible?”

  Jerry wiped his mouth with a paper napkin from the bag. “No! I don’t! Wren, listen to yourself. Killed by a chupacabra? It’s ridiculous! When did you buy a ticket to the carnival and not exit at closing time?”

  Clivo took a deep breath. Part of him was relieved his friend was saying this, but another part was disappointed. He hadn’t realized how much he had begun hoping the whole crazy tale was true. “I know, I agree. It just got into my head that, you know, maybe my dad…” Clivo trailed off.

  “I know, man,” Jerry said, starting in on the second burrito. “I know you wish your relationship with your pops had been more solid. I feel you. But believing he had you in some kind of lassoer-of-legendary-animals boot camp is a bit cray cray, dontcha think?”

  “Coops, you’re following your dad into a job looking for aliens! Why is it so weird that I would follow my dad into a job looking for Bigfoot?” Clivo retorted.

  Jerry exhaled heavily. He bundled together the empty wrappers and tossed them across the room toward a wastebasket. They bounced off the rim and landed near Clivo’s feet. Clivo distractedly picked them up and threw them over his shoulder without looking. They landed perfectly in the basket.

  Jerry eyed him and shook his head. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be such a harsh judge. What can I say? It’s possible. Anything is possible, right?”

  Clivo leaned forward again, his excitement gaining steam. “So, I did some research—”

  “Of course you did,” Jerry sighed, once again looking out the glass door.