The Cryptid Catcher

by Lija Fisher

  Clivo pushed aside his thoughts and focused on getting a ticket. He scanned the counters, not sure which airline to fly, or even how to buy a ticket, so he picked a counter that was staffed by what seemed to be a nice attendant.

  “Welcome to Pangaea Air, how can I help you today?” the chipper woman behind the counter asked. She had so much makeup on that her face was a different color from her neck.

  “Hi, I need to fly to Portland, please,” Clivo replied.

  “Did you book a ticket online?” she asked pleasantly.

  “Um, not this time,” he said. Next time, for sure.

  “Are you flying today, sir?” she asked.

  Clivo tried not to laugh at being called “sir.” “Yes, please.”

  “And which Portland, sir?” The woman looked at him expectantly as her nails clicked away at a furious pace on the keyboard.

  Clivo pulled out the cryptozoology museum’s business card and glanced at the address. “Um, Maine.”

  “How many tickets?”

  “Just me.”

  The woman’s fingers froze in midclick. “How old are you, sir?”

  Clivo swallowed. “I’m eighteen. I’m just short. Still hoping for that growth spurt.” He let out a little chuckle, but the woman kept her eyes trained on him.

  “I’m going to need to see your ID, sir.”

  “Sure.” Clivo pulled out his passport. He’d never traveled, but his dad had insisted he get it “in case of an emergency,” whatever that meant. Clivo wasn’t sure what kind of emergency would cause him to fly out of the country suddenly, but nothing much was making sense nowadays.

  “It says you’re thirteen here,” the woman said, her sweet voice turning accusatory.

  “Oh, does it? Well, I was adopted, and I guess my parents got my birth date wrong.” Clivo gave her a dimpled smile, hoping it would work on this woman the way it worked on Aunt Pearl.

  The woman handed him back his passport. “Sorry, son, you need a parent or guardian to buy your ticket if you’re that young.”

  As the next customer, a portly businessman with a sweaty face, crowded in behind him, Clivo had an idea. He whipped out his Diamond Card.

  “Can I just buy a ticket with this, please? I have the money, at least I hope I do. I mean, money shouldn’t be a problem, and I’m a really good flier. At least, I think I will be when I finally, you know, get to be on an airplane.” Clivo flashed her another big, hopeful smile.

  The woman looked at the Diamond Card and lifted her eyebrows so high her forehead makeup cracked. Even the guy behind him exclaimed, “Wow!”

  “My deepest, sincerest apologies, esteemed sir. We have our daily flight to Portland leaving in an hour. Would you like coach, business, or first class?” The woman reverted to her chipper tone, her fingers resuming their frantic typing.

  Clivo exhaled in relief. He was about to say coach when he caught himself. “Which do you recommend?”

  “First class, of course.” She leaned in closer and spoke in a whisper. “Never should a Diamond Cardholder fly coach.”

  “I’ll take a seat in first class, then, please.”

  If Douglas was going to be yelling at him all the time anyway, Clivo figured he might as well give him something to yell about.

  The woman nodded at him in approval. Clivo was worried the card wouldn’t work or that a group of policemen would suddenly appear out of nowhere and tackle him to the ground for being an imposter. But the woman swiped the card, checked his bag, and handed him his boarding pass. Just when Clivo thought he was in the clear, the woman pressed a red button and a door was flung open behind her, revealing a scowling man—the biggest Clivo had ever seen. The man wore a dark suit that looked like it was about to split at the seams, and his shoulders were so muscular they swallowed his neck. He looked like a professional weight lifter and had one ginormous eyebrow that stretched across his whole forehead like a thick black caterpillar.

  “Serge will accompany you through security, sir. Can we have a car waiting for you at the other end?”

  “Sure,” Clivo said absently, his voice rising a few octaves. He was transfixed by the monstrous man who was approaching him, blocking out the light from the overhead fluorescents.

  “Perfect, sir. Have a lovely flight, and thank you for flying Pangaea Air.”

  IX

  As it turned out, Clivo was glad to have burly Serge by his side going through security because Serge escorted him to a special lane for first-class passengers that had nobody waiting in line. The long line of grumpy coach passengers all scowled at him as he passed. He’d had no idea that he had to take off his shoes, belt, and sweatshirt before walking through some kind of x-ray body scanner. Serge was actually a really nice guy who spoke in a surprisingly high-pitched voice for someone so large.

  “So, Serge, why am I getting such special treatment?” Clivo asked as he tied his shoes after going through security.

  “Only VIPs have Diamond Cards,” Serge said, his eyes swinging back and forth as if he expected someone to jump them. “Some of them are so important they’re in danger of being kidnapped, so I make sure they get safely on the plane. I’m sorry, we didn’t know you were coming or I would have met you outside.”

  “Oh, well, I’m not really an important person,” Clivo said, hoping he wasn’t in danger of being kidnapped.

  “Your Diamond Card says otherwise,” Serge said, gently putting his balloon-like fingers on Clivo’s shoulder and leading him toward the gate. The terminal was crowded with people running for flights and smelled like Uncle Ernie’s Buttery Pretzels.

  Clivo thought about that. He certainly wasn’t important, but maybe Douglas was. “So, what kind of people have Diamond Cards, anyway?”

  Serge scratched his chin, which was as square and chiseled as a brick. “Oh you know, billionaires, movie stars, kings, sheiks, prime ministers. Then there are people like you, not as young as you, of course, who don’t look like any of those. Those are the guys who work in government stuff.”

  “Government stuff?” Clivo asked.

  “Yeah, you know, like undercover spies.”

  Clivo wondered if Douglas really was a spy. He definitely wasn’t a movie star or a sheik. Maybe he was just a bored billionaire with nothing better to do than spend his money searching for the immortal cryptid.

  “Well, I’m not any of those, so hopefully nobody will feel the need to kidnap me,” Clivo said with a nervous laugh.

  Serge looked at him, his fuzzy eyebrow crinkling with worry. “Like I said, Mr. Wren, if you have a Diamond Card, someone thinks you’re important, which usually means someone else thinks you’re dangerous, so watch your back.” Serge handed Clivo his boarding pass. “Here’s your gate. I’ll wait here to make sure the plane takes off safely, and your driver will be waiting for you in Portland. After that, be careful.”

  Clivo got on the plane, feeling nervous about Serge’s warning. He knew he was racing the bad guys for the immortal cryptid, but he didn’t think he’d actually come face-to-face with any of them.

  Clivo’s nervousness dissipated as he entered the first-class cabin. It really was the lap of luxury. At first he felt out of place in his cargo pants and oversized sweater while surrounded by businesspeople in fancy suits who stared at their computers as if their lives depended on it. But the perky flight attendants treated him like everyone else and gave him hot towels to wash his face with, a fancy breakfast of eggs and buttery croissants, and more juice than he could handle. He even asked for a third serving of the little foil-wrapped chocolates.

  The five-hour flight went really quickly. Clivo spent the first hour looking out the window in awe at the fields and cities that passed below him in miniature scale. He watched dark rain clouds rise up in the distance and giggled as the plane bounced through some turbulence, because it made his belly feel like he was on a roller coaster. Finally, he reclined in his comfy seat and flipped through the hundreds of television, movie, shopping, and music channels offered on his ow
n personal screen. The whole trip was so enjoyable that he was almost disappointed when the plane began its descent into southern Maine.

  It was early evening by the time he arrived at the Portland International Jetport. Clivo followed the signs to the baggage-claim area. He descended on an escalator, and next to the flight’s baggage carousel he saw a handsome young man in sunglasses holding a sign that said MR. C. WREN. The man was wearing a black leather jacket and stood with the straightest spine Clivo had ever seen.

  “Hi, I’m Clivo Wren.”

  The man looked down his thin nose at Clivo, obviously expecting someone else. Probably someone older, without chocolate smeared all over his face.

  “Run along, kid,” the man said.

  Clivo had learned his lesson at the ticket counter in Denver. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and held up the Diamond Card.

  The driver’s manner changed instantly. “Excuse me, sir! My name is Nate. Follow me, please.”

  Now exuding eagerness, Nate picked up Clivo’s backpack and led him into a waiting elevator discreetly located in a back corner of the large room. Inside, he pulled a key on a retractable chain from his pocket and inserted it into an unlabeled keyhole. He turned the key, pressed a button, and the elevator descended.

  “Where are we going?” Clivo asked.

  Nate had been silent the whole time, and after Serge’s warning about Diamond Cardholders being kidnapped, Clivo was starting to wonder if he should have asked Nate for some sort of ID.

  “To pick out your mode of transportation, sir.”

  “Oh, okay. Like a taxi or something?” Clivo asked, noticing that Nate’s hair gel smelled distinctly like cauliflower soup.

  Nate looked at him and laughed, as if Clivo had just made a joke. Clivo spent the rest of the ride in nervous silence.

  The elevator opened into an underground parking garage, or, from Clivo’s point of view, heaven. The concrete room was filled with fancy lighting and even fancier cars. They were lined up neatly in slanted rows, the lights glinting off the spotless metal and chrome. Clivo had never thought he’d see cars like this in person, never mind in a private showroom. There was even a pair of motorcycles along the far wall.

  Clivo looked, bug-eyed, at Nate, who gave him a wink.

  “Time to choose your future, young man,” he said.

  “From … these?” Clivo asked, barely able to speak.

  “Reserved for Diamond Cardholders only. Today we have the Ferrari 812 Superfast, an Aston Martin Vantage, and the Porsche—”

  “A Porsche 918 Spyder,” Clivo said.

  “That’s right. I apologize that the Lamborghini is out of service today … A client came through just yesterday and took a drive along the Maine coast a little too fast and furiously.” Nate chuckled at his little joke. “But I hope something else here can suffice.”

  Clivo nodded, unable to tear his eyes from the embarrassment of riches in front of him. Douglas definitely hadn’t said anything about not renting a luxury sports car, Clivo reasoned. He scanned the room, and it took him just a moment to decide. “The Spyder. I’ll go with the Porsche 918 Spyder, please.”

  Nate took a deep breath and placed his hand on Clivo’s shoulder in a congratulatory gesture. “Your taste is exquisite.”

  * * *

  Minutes later, Nate squealed the silver convertible out of the parking garage with Clivo strapped into the passenger seat. Once again Clivo was certain that a gang of policemen was going to appear out of nowhere and pull them over for impersonating a VIP. But his fear was overpowered by the elated smile plastered to his face.

  When Clivo had told Nate his destination, the young driver gave him the news that the Cryptid Collection was no more than a ten-minute drive from the airport. Clivo had been hoping for at least an hour’s joyride.

  “Unless you are not in a rush,” Nate prompted, obviously noting the crestfallen look on Clivo’s face.

  “Well, the museum only seems to be open at night, so I might have a little time to kill,” Clivo said.

  With that, Nate powered them smoothly up and down winding roads along the Atlantic coastline north of the city before whipping back to town on a divided highway. It was an overcast evening, and for the first time in his life Clivo smelled the ocean. It was sweet and salty and gave him a yearning for clam chowder that didn’t come from a can.

  He mentioned this to Nate, who said he knew just the place. At a fish shack beside a little cove Clivo tasted the creamy goodness of real New England clam chowder and gobbled his first lobster roll, then immediately ordered a second. Thus far, the life of a cryptid catcher wasn’t too bad.

  * * *

  His stomach was full and the sky was pitch-dark by the time they pulled up outside the cryptozoology museum, where a light was burning brightly over the entrance.

  “I may be in here for a while; is that okay?” Clivo asked Nate.

  “I could spend the rest of my days in this Porsche and ask nothing more from life,” Nate said, lovingly stroking the leather steering wheel.

  Clivo assumed that meant it was fine.

  The museum occupied a small corner storefront and advertised itself with a large window painting of a tusk-toothed fish. Clivo entered, paid the seven-dollar admission to the enthusiastic cashier, and walked into a crypto wonderland. He seemed to have the place to himself.

  The walls and display cases were filled with information about every cryptid imaginable. Fur supposedly from the Yeti sat in one case, plaster footprints of a Loveland frogman sat in another, and all the famous photographs of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, were displayed in one corner.

  There was even a tiny movie theater where video footage of purported cryptid sightings was playing. Blurry images of Bigfoot and Nessie danced on the wall, though most of them were comical. The Bigfoot sightings were obviously people in gorilla suits (one with a visible price tag still on it), and one sighting of Nessie was clearly a sailboat with a fake dinosaur head on its mast.

  Clivo spent a half hour reading the identification cards at as many exhibits as he could. The information was interesting, and some of it was downright entertaining, especially the firsthand accounts of people who made ridiculous claims. One woman claimed that she was the Feejee mermaid but would only transform if nobody was looking, and another guy claimed the Jersey Devil was really his mother-in-law.

  When Clivo’s eyes began to sting from so much reading, he realized that none of it told him exactly where to find a cryptid. His dad must have had more information to go on.

  “Excuse me,” Clivo said, startling the young teenage cashier, who was engrossed in a comic book.

  “Sorry. What can I help you with, dude?” he asked, quickly closing the comic and placing it beneath the register. His name tag said CHARLES and he looked like a kid from the ’70s, down to the curly blond hair and faded Izod shirt. His buck teeth made him look like an angry rabbit.

  “This is going to sound kind of strange,” Clivo began.

  “Please, you’re standing in front of a skunk-monkey; everything is strange in here,” Charles said, waving his hand as if shooing away a bee.

  “Okay, well, I’ve read a lot of the exhibits, but I’m looking for more specific information. Like exactly where to find a cryptid.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Charles said, once again waving his hand in front of him. “For Bigfoot over there, just head to the forests of the Pacific Northwest and look for its scat. There’s tons of it everywhere. Like, that guy must just eat and poop all day.”

  “Wow, okay. What else?”

  “That guy over there. The chupacabra.” Charles pointed to a drawing of what looked like a kangaroo mixed with a lizard. Clivo’s stomach dropped when he saw its sharp claws. He imagined his dad fighting with the creature, but quickly shoved the image out of his mind. “It’s only been seen since around 1995, so it’s more of a contemporary cryptid, with the first sightings coming out of Puerto Rico. Go there and look for dead goats. It’s kno
wn for being a goatsucker, and they’ve found tons, I mean piles, of goats just sucked dry. Like this thing just sticks a straw in them and sucks the blood out like a milk shake.”

  Charles puckered his lips and made a loud sucking noise, making his eyes wide to emphasize the point. A couple with a loud kid who had wandered in as Clivo was browsing exited the museum just then, looks of disgust on their faces.

  “Oh, hey, thanks for coming! Does your kid want a lollipop? No? Okay, hope to see you again soon,” Charles called to them, putting down a sucker that he had grabbed from below the counter. “Anyway, yeah, to find a chup, look for the goats. There’s no way a human could drain that much blood that quickly. I mean, unless you’re Dracula, but that dude lives in Transylvania. Too much sun in Puerto Rico. Ha! Could you imagine the count with a tan! That’s just so wrong!” Charles let out a laugh that sounded halfway between a bark and a snort.

  Clivo politely joined him in the laugh. “That’s interesting stuff, definitely. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, only the mother ship. The big kahuna of cryptids. The one that I’d give my comics collection to see. I’m talking about the Abominable. The Yeti. The wicked snow dweller in the Himalayas. That dude is nothing less than prehistoric. And way remote. Sir Edmund Hillary saw its tracks while climbing the tallest mountain in the world, Everest. That Yeti dude is fierce—it survives in frigid temperatures where absolutely nothing grows.”

  “So what does it eat?” Clivo asked out of genuine curiosity.

  “It, like, eats whatever it wants! It probably devours the climbers that don’t make it down from Everest. You know their corpses are just left to freeze up there, right? When you climb up, the route takes you past all sorts of dead climbers from decades ago.”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Clivo replied, making a mental note to never climb Everest.

  “Totally! So, like, right now, if I were to climb Everest, which I totally could ’cause I run track, I would see just like a highway of frozen bodies all the way up.”

  “Or maybe you wouldn’t since the Yeti would’ve eaten them,” Clivo offered.