The Cryptid Catcher

by Lija Fisher

  Finally Blirgenbach sprang. He came at Clivo like a Tasmanian devil trapped in a hurricane, a force of energy ready to obliterate. When Blirgenbach was almost upon him, Clivo nipped to the side and simply pushed Blirgenbach from behind, encouraging him to go even faster in the direction he was headed. Blirgenbach flew forward, his body thrown off-balance by the sudden absence of a victim in front of him, and ran face-first into a tree. He let out a groan and fell backward, stiff as a plank and out cold.

  Clivo put his hands on his thighs and took some deep breaths. His heart was pumping so quickly that his vision darkened from all the blood rushing through his head. He thought he was going to pass out, but after a few moments the adrenaline left his body and his vision returned. He rubbed his throat, definitely feeling a bruise coming on. He had never been in a life-or-death situation before, and it was an experience he could definitely do without.

  He only had minutes before Blirgenbach would awake. He grabbed the remaining clams and waded as far into the cold water as he could stand. He held the food in his hands, bringing it forward like a sacred offering.

  “Come on, girl. Come get your snack.”

  He kept his arms out, silently calling with all of his being for Nessie to appear. His arms began to ache, but still he waited, hoping for the impossible to happen.

  Just as his arms began to slip to his sides, a movement churned the water in front of him. At first it was just a few bubbles; then the surface of the water stirred and rose up, rolling off some dark, glistening mass.

  Clivo’s breathing stopped as Nessie surfaced before him. She was black as a seal, with a lumpy body the length of a bus and a neck as long as a giraffe’s. She looked right at him with large, blinking eyes that sat on a comically small head. Her wide mouth was chewing the clams and she let out a purring noise like a happy cat.

  Clivo was so surprised he just stood there, amazed by the beautiful creature in front of him.

  Then his body sprang back to life as he suddenly remembered his task.

  He ran to his backpack and grabbed the tranquilizer gun, fitting it with the largest dart available. He knelt down and took Nessie in his sights.

  His finger hesitated on the trigger. Shooting such an amazing being seemed wrong, but he reminded himself that it would just put her to sleep, and if some evil person like Blirgenbach found her, her fate would be much worse.

  “I’m really sorry, but I have to do this,” he whispered.

  He fired.

  A roar of surprise and distress pierced his ears and Nessie collapsed in the shallows.

  Clivo ran into the loch with the blood sampler, not caring about the sting of the cold water against his body. He wrapped his arms around Nessie’s neck, and with a grunt of exertion he set the dial to BLUBBER and pressed the device to her body.

  A click sounded and the screen glowed to life. Clivo crawled to shore and waited anxiously as a drop of bright red blood traveled up the tube. After what felt like forever, the screen finally flashed its message: NOT IMMORTAL.

  Clivo exhaled and collapsed to the ground, all the energy leaving his body. As disappointed as he was that she was not the immortal cryptid, he was also relieved. He couldn’t handle any more excitement in one day.

  He turned to look at Nessie, with her head near the water’s edge and the waves gently lapping against her shiny skin.

  “Hey, girl, don’t worry, you’ll wake up soon,” Clivo said, stepping into the water again and reaching out to stroke the creature’s cold head, which was long and flat like an iron.

  Nessie’s eyes opened just a sliver and the beast glanced at Clivo. Her long neck shuddered and she raised her head. The orbs of her eyes were like black marbles, reflecting the shimmering of the sun. She let out a weak bleat and regarded Clivo with curiosity.

  “It’s okay, I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise,” Clivo said.

  He pulled out his satellite phone and snapped a picture of her to send to Douglas. Then Clivo snapped a selfie with the drowsy monster behind him to show to Jerry later.

  A flash of light caught Clivo’s eye, followed by another and another. He looked up at Urquhart Castle, where tourists were snapping photos from the crumbling ramparts. Picture after picture and video after video were being taken of him and Nessie, and there was no way he could stop it.

  His body seized in a panic. Nessie was a majestic creature who deserved to be left alone. What would happen if people got ahold of her? They would throw her in a zoo! Clivo looked at the peaceful being and sprang into action. As people began to run from the castle to get a closer look, Clivo started hooting and waving his arms, startling Nessie, who sleepily retreated farther into the water. He splashed after her, shouting with all his might, ignoring the frigid water that wrapped around his limbs. As soon as they were far enough out that Nessie was floating on her own, her body shimmered and disappeared. Clivo waded back to shore, saying goodbye to a being he hoped nobody would ever see again.

  Friday

  XIV

  Roughly twenty-four hours later, Clivo was getting a lecture.

  “The Loch Ness Monster is currently on the cover of every single newspaper in the world. One of the most mysterious legendary creatures ever to grace our imaginations is now making bigger headlines than the moon landing did.”

  Douglas’s voice was miraculously calm. Clivo kept expecting the old man to yell or throw stuff or at the very least to hit him with his cane. Instead the old man slowly wandered around the den in Clivo’s house, poking his stick at the books on the shelves while quietly musing to himself.

  “Thousands of years the creature has lived. Undisturbed, unmolested, free to float around its giant bathtub in naïve bliss. Then you send one stupid kid in there to do a simple job and the whole thing goes to Hades.”

  “Mr. Chancery—” Clivo began.

  “Mouth closed!” Douglas interrupted, pointing his cane in Clivo’s face. “You may not speak. You have lost the privilege of speaking.”

  Clivo grunted and sat back in his chair. Douglas continued walking around the room, shaking his head and muttering to himself. The roaring of the furnace reverberated through the brass vents and Clivo was grateful for the blast of hot air, even though it sounded like a ghost rattling its chains. After the chill of Scotland it felt like he was never going to be warm again, so he had cranked up the heat even though it was warm outside.

  “It’s fairly simple. Find legendary creatures without letting the rest of the world in on the secret. Straightforward. Easy. Your dad didn’t have a problem with it. But you. YOU!”

  Clivo flinched as Douglas threw a newspaper at his feet. It featured a photo of Nessie taken right before Clivo had tranquilized her. Fortunately, the photo was from far enough away that Clivo’s face was a blur, and the paper didn’t mention his name. The headline simply read LOCH NESS MONSTER NO MATCH FOR MYSTERIOUS TEENAGER. Clivo’s heart sank with the realization that he had blown the lid off a legend thousands of years old.

  “You call that being secretive?” Douglas bellowed. Finally he was raising his voice. That made Clivo more comfortable. It was the silent, deadly Douglas that made him nervous. “Well? Speak!”

  “Mr. Chancery, I did the best I could! Considering that creepy catcher from Luxembourg was trying to kill me, it’s a miracle I made it out of there alive! How Blirgenbach found me, by the way, is a total mystery.”

  Douglas heaved his body down into the chair next to Clivo. “Bah, I told him where to find you.”

  Now it was Clivo’s voice that turned deathly quiet. “You did what?”

  “Had to see what you were made of. Had to make sure you didn’t turn yellow at the first sign of trouble. If you couldn’t handle the Luxembourger I would have lost all faith in you. The guy’s harmless.”

  Clivo couldn’t believe his ears. “Harmless? He’s a master in tae kwon do!”

  “And you’re a master in jujitsu. Hardly a fair matchup, wouldn’t you say?”

  Clivo wasn’t sur
e how to take the compliment. “He hit me in the head with a tree branch!”

  “And you ran his face into a tree trunk. Sounds like someone’s being a sore winner.”

  Clivo gave up. Obviously he wasn’t going to get any sympathy from Douglas. Heck, Douglas had sent Blirgenbach to attack him.

  Clivo rubbed his eyes, wishing he could erase the last twenty-four hours from his mind. After making sure Nessie had safely vanished before the throng of tourists from the castle arrived, he’d done the only thing he could think of. He’d gathered his stuff and run.

  He’d left nothing behind at the inn, so he simply hitched a ride to Inverness, where he caught a cab to the airport and booked a flight through London back to the States. Nine hours in coach on his flight over the ocean made him never want to fly again, especially sandwiched between two heavyset, hairy men who both seemed averse to wearing deodorant.

  Once the taxi from the Denver airport had driven up the dirt driveway to his house, he’d thought he could finally get some rest—until a knock at the door as soon as he had put his backpack down ruined that idea. He’d known he was going to hear from Douglas; he just hadn’t been expecting a personal visit.

  “Well, since I passed your test, can you please promise me no more surprises?” Clivo begged, running his hands through his greasy hair. He was in desperate need of a shower. “Making it through the day without tranquilizing myself is hard enough; I don’t need martial arts masters from every country coming after me, as well.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, are you under the assumption that I still need your services?” Douglas asked a little too innocently.

  That made Clivo freeze. “Well, yeah. I mean, I know I messed up a little bit with Nessie—”

  “A little bit?” Douglas looked at him in disbelief.

  “Okay—a lot. But I found her, Mr. Chancery. I did find her. You have to give me some credit for that. Now we know she’s not the immortal. And what about the contract? Don’t you have to work with me?”

  Douglas casually polished the top of his cane with a handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “I agreed to work with you because your father promised you’d be good. If you’re not, the contract is null and void, and I’m free to find someone who’s actually competent. I think at this point even your father would tell me to go hire someone else.”

  Clivo stared out the window, Douglas’s words stinging him. Maybe if his dad hadn’t lied to him his whole life, he’d be better at this.

  “Well,” Douglas began, pushing himself to his feet, “if you think you can actually do your job without screwing it up this time, I’ll give you another shot. But only because your father was the best and I’d like to believe his gene pool didn’t totally dry up with you.”

  Clivo stood up as well. “Thank you, Mr. Chancery. I won’t let you down this time.”

  Douglas eyed him head to toe. “See that you don’t. The name of Wren has great prestige in the cryptid-catching world. The greatest. Don’t let it go to waste on you.”

  Douglas turned his back and hobbled toward the front door.

  “My dad believed I could do this, Mr. Chancery. I know he did.” Clivo didn’t know why he yelled that at Douglas’s back; maybe he just needed to hear himself say it.

  Douglas stopped, but he didn’t bother turning around. “Did he tell you that?”

  “No, not exactly. But—”

  “Yeah, he never said that to me, either.”

  Douglas slammed the front door, leaving Clivo standing alone in the dark house.

  * * *

  Clivo wanted to take a scalding-hot bath and go to bed, but it was only early evening. If he went to bed now, he’d probably wake up at three A.M., and the last thing he wanted was to wander around the deserted house in the middle of the night. Part of him longed for Aunt Pearl to come home, just to hear the squeaking of her rocking chair as she did her nightly reading. Even having a clinging cat around to pet didn’t sound so bad. One cat.

  He turned on as many lights as he could to rid the house of shadows and grabbed a soda, hoping the sugar would keep him awake a bit longer. He wanted to talk to Jerry, but he figured his friend would still be at work. Clivo settled for e-mailing him, just to let him know that he was okay.

  After a good, hot shower, Clivo sat in the living room, which was eerily quiet, save for the occasional rattling of the basement furnace. His mind was jumbled with fatigue, jet lag, and the miserable awareness that his first catch had been a disaster. Clivo wished that Bernie, the coat of armor, would come to life just so he had someone to talk to.

  After a long hour of feeling like the walls were closing in on him, he realized he hadn’t touched base with the Myth Blasters. He riffled through his wallet, which was still soaked from the loch, and pulled out Stephanie’s Skype address. It was getting late two time zones away, but they were all probably eager for the inside scoop.

  He opened his computer and the screen shortly lit up with Stephanie’s face, the other Myth Blasters ecstatically crowding behind her.

  “Dude! Took you long enough!” Charles exclaimed. “We’ve been dying to know what happened in Scotland!”

  Adam elbowed his way in front of the camera. “She could turn invisible with her radioactive skin, couldn’t she?”

  “She went invisible all right,” Clivo confirmed, the excited energy of the group perking up his spirits a bit.

  Adam pumped his fists in triumph. “I’m so smart, it’s actually painful.” He disappeared from view.

  “So, I guess the Nessie news is everywhere?” Clivo asked.

  “You could say that,” Amelia said, excitedly joining the conversation. “It’s all over the internet, and the crypto chat rooms have totally exploded.”

  “It’s big, man. Really big,” Charles chimed in. “This is the first confirmation of a cryptid in, like, forever, man! As soon as you vouch for us we’re gonna be total celebrities now! When is the ‘mysterious teen’ going to come forward?”

  Adam ran back to the camera and shoved Charles out of the way. “We’re already thinking about quitting school and turning this into a business. For a hefty fee we’ll send people a package that contains info on where to find the creature of their choice. It’ll be a whole new level of adventure tourism.”

  “And we’re hoping to be on the cover of Scientific Secrets magazine,” Charles said, pushing Adam out of the way. “We’re thinking, like, a military-style cover, with us looking totally Rambo, standing on a tank or something. We’re going to have fangirls everywhere!”

  “Whoa, you guys,” Clivo said, holding his hands up. “I’m staying out of the spotlight. We can’t let anybody know that other cryptids actually exist!”

  “What are you talking about, dude?” Charles snorted. “That’s the whole point of doing this, right? To prove that cryptozoology isn’t a pseudo-science, but an important branch of actual science? I mean, man, we found something the scientific community brushed off as being a fabricated legend. And we can find more. This is the beginning, man. You just opened up a realm where legends are real, and trust me, we will be at the forefront of that exploration. It’s our dream come true.”

  “Yeah, we want to be known as the crypto experts,” Adam added. “Even just so McConaughey’s clan can bow down to our dominance.”

  “And that’s exactly what you can’t do,” Clivo said, trying to keep his panic at bay. “The whole point of what I do is to find these creatures in secret. Most of the world considers them legends, and it needs to stay that way.”

  Stephanie spoke up. She seemed to be the only Blaster not totally carried away by their potential new celebrity. “Why, Clivo? Why go through all the trouble of finding something only to keep that information to yourself? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Yeah, dude, you’re going to have to give us some pretty good reasons why this strapping body shouldn’t be on the cover of every magazine,” Adam said, motioning to his skeletal frame.

  Clivo rubbed his hands over his face
. Now he understood why his father had never told the Myth Blasters about the creatures he caught—he’d known they’d spill the secret the first chance they got. “You guys, I can’t tell you the exact reasons. All I can tell you is that it is extremely important that nobody knows more cryptids exist. And nobody, I mean nobody, can know that you guys helped me. If word gets out about this, it could put you in a lot of danger.”

  The last sentence seemed to subdue the group a bit. They looked at each other with concern and Charles glanced at his chest, as if expecting a gun laser to be pointed there.

  Stephanie was the first one to speak. “What kind of danger?”

  Clivo grimaced at the fear in her voice, and at the thought of Blirgenbach storming the basement to attack them. If the boys tried to use their bush-league karate moves on the Luxembourger, a few measly safe words wouldn’t help them. And according to Douglas, Blirgenbach was the least dangerous of the other cryptid catchers. Clivo hated that he had inadvertently put his new friends at risk.

  “All I know is that there are some other people out there who do what I do, and none of them are nice. If they discover you can find cryptids, they’ll come after you.”

  “But, if that happens we’ll just give them the information,” Amelia said. “I mean, if people are going to storm in here all mean-like, we’ll give them what they want and send them on their way.”

  “And if you do that,” Clivo pointed out, “you could be putting humankind at risk.”

  “Putting humankind at risk?” Stephanie asked, her voice quiet. “Aren’t you being a little dramatic?”

  Clivo shook his head adamantly. “I’m not. I promise. I can’t tell you more than that.”

  Adam grabbed Stephanie’s computer and held it up to his face. “Okay, listen, buddy. In just a few minutes you dash our dreams of international stardom while saying the fate of the world is in our hands and, oh yeah, our lives are also in danger. Sorry, pal, this calls for full disclosure.”