The Cryptid Catcher

by Lija Fisher

  “Full,” Charles said, turning the computer to his face, his buck teeth taking up half the screen.

  “Full,” Hernando quietly agreed, pulling the computer to him. “Please.”

  “I can’t do it, you guys,” Clivo persisted. “That’s not my call to make.”

  Stephanie took her computer back. “So whose call is it?”

  Clivo realized he didn’t have an answer for that. Did he need Douglas’s permission to tell them? He didn’t think his dad had told Douglas about the Myth Blasters, so maybe he shouldn’t, either. Besides, he didn’t want to subject them to the nasty man. But his dad also hadn’t told the Myth Blasters about the immortal cryptid. Russell had kept everything a secret, and that had allowed Russell Wren to become the best cryptid catcher out there. Clivo had to make sure he did the same, even just for the reason of keeping them safe.

  “What exactly did my dad say about what he did?”

  Charles stuck his head in the frame. “We told you, dude. That he was an archaeologist who was curious about the local folklore when he went on digs.”

  “And he told you he never found anything, right?”

  Amelia piped in. “Well, yes, but like we said he sometimes acted—”

  “And that’s all you know about me,” Clivo interrupted. “I’m a junior archaeologist who travels the world on digs and you guys teach me about the local lore. That’s it. That’s all we are. Okay?”

  The Myth Blasters all looked at one another. Stephanie hit the mute button so Clivo couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was obviously a heated discussion, with Adam making big swooping motions with his arms. He looked like a convulsing flamingo. Finally, Charles undid the mute button.

  “Sorry, dude. No.”

  “What do you mean, no?” Clivo asked, dropping his head into his hands.

  “First of all, there’s no such thing as a junior archaeologist, so that whole cover story is totally weak. Second, that’s all we knew about your dad. You can’t come in here and adopt what was clearly just his cover story and expect that we’ll trust you the same.”

  Stephanie tucked a stray hair behind her ear and smiled. “Remember, Clivo, your dad was doing things the way that he thought was best. You need to make your own decisions. You need to decide if keeping us in the dark is really the way you want to handle this.”

  Amelia tilted the computer toward her. “If things really have gotten as bad as you say they have, don’t you think it’d be better to have a few more people on your side?”

  “But you guys are on my side, aren’t you?” Clivo asked, getting worried. His days as a cryptid catcher would come to an abrupt end without their help.

  “We were on your side,” Amelia said, casually picking at a hangnail. “Until you put us in danger. Now, we may have to reconsider.”

  “Guys—” Clivo began.

  “The game has changed, Clivo,” Stephanie said, bringing the computer close to her so it was like they were the only ones talking. A candle must have been burning close by, because she had a golden glow bouncing off her blue eyes. “You got us involved. Way involved. It may have been an accident, but that’s where we stand. You’re the captain of this ship, and you get to make the rules now. We might be willing to jump on board with you all the way; we just need to know what trip we’re buying a ticket for.”

  Clivo exhaled. “Obviously you haven’t been working on your jokes, because you still sound like a wise old sage.”

  “Oh, actually I have! Knock knock.”

  “Fine. Who’s there?”

  “Harry.”

  “Harry who?”

  “Harry up, it’s cold out here!” Stephanie laughed. “But I’m serious, Clivo. We can be a team; you just need to tell us everything. We can’t help you fight something if we don’t know what it is.”

  Clivo leaned back in his chair. Stephanie was right. He knew she was. He couldn’t just ask them to keep everything they knew a secret without telling them why. They had a right to know what he had gotten them into, even just so they could protect themselves better. Besides, he didn’t like being a cryptid catcher all alone. Having people he could talk to besides cantankerous Douglas, who sent assassins after him, wouldn’t be so bad. But how could he trust them to keep the immortal cryptid a secret? He figured that that’s how trust goes—you give it to someone and then hope like crazy they don’t throw it away.

  Clivo took a deep breath. “Okay. Here goes. My dad was a cryptid catcher. His job was to find legendary creatures, photograph them, and let them go. Thanks to your research he found the Honey Island Swamp Monster, a blue tiger, and a chupacabra. All in all, he found twelve cryptids before the chupacabra killed him. My job is to keep looking for the one special cryptid that’s different from all of the others.”

  The gang all dropped their mouths in disbelief.

  Hernando swooned and fainted onto the floor.

  Stephanie was the first one to recover. “I’m so sorry about your dad. You told us he died, but not how. That’s horrible.”

  “Thank you,” Clivo said, mustering a wan smile.

  Charles got up close to the camera. “Did he find the Yeti?”

  “Not now, Charles!” Amelia said, waving him away.

  “I wanna know if he found the Yeti!” Charles whined.

  Stephanie blinked, as if trying to sort through her thoughts. “Okay, so your dad found other cryptids. I think it needs to be stated that that’s—”

  “FRICKIN’ AMAZING!” Adam yelled from the back of the room, where he was once again shadowboxing.

  “I’d use the word ‘phenomenal.’ But why didn’t he tell us any of this?” Stephanie pressed.

  “For the same reason I couldn’t tell you,” Clivo replied.

  “And that reason would be what?”

  Clivo looked at Amelia, who was furiously chewing her lip. “Amelia, any chance you have the lost prophecies of Nostradamus on your bookshelf?”

  “The lost prophecies of Nostradamus? Sure, who doesn’t? Give me a second, will you?”

  * * *

  “All creatures, one blood. Some remain hidden, others come fore. In one who is hidden, the blood is gone, replaced by the spring of life. A silver lightning drop of eternity.”

  Amelia quit reading and looked up at the camera on her screen.

  Apparently she had gotten over her initial shock that more cryptids had been found and had clicked into her scientific-thinking brain. So had the rest of the Blasters, who had sat and listened intently to the prophecy. Even Hernando had recovered from his faint, though the fall had caused him to hit his head on the arm of a desk chair, giving him a welt on his forehead, which he was currently icing with a can of Moxie soda.

  “Okay, so you believe in the immortal cryptid interpretation of this prophecy,” Amelia said.

  “You know that interpretation, too?” Clivo asked.

  “We’re the Myth Blasters. We know everything.”

  “What else do you know about these prophecies?”

  Amelia spun her nose ring around between her thumb and a finger. “Nostradamus was a French apothecary and seer from the sixteenth century. He looked at astrology and determined future events based on how the stars were lined up during past events. A lot of his prophecies came true.”

  “And what else do you know about this particular prophecy?” Clivo asked, relieved to finally have someone to talk to about all this. Already he was feeling better about letting the Myth Blasters in on everything, the way he wished his father had with him.

  Amelia furrowed her brow. “That’s the funny thing. Most people regarded this prophecy as talking about Jesus, so it was discounted as not being a prophecy so much as a poem about history. How Jesus rose from the grave to become immortal. But that doesn’t really fit. Nostradamus didn’t write poems, he wrote predictions. So obviously everyone has been reading this wrong—everyone except us, of course.”

  Clivo leaned in closer. “So, according to this prophecy, do you believe the
immortal cryptid exists?”

  Amelia closed the book. “The Myth Blasters don’t believe anything. We prove stuff. As far as the immortal cryptid being a possibility? Anything is possible. All you have to do is prove it. It’s a shame your dad didn’t let us know that he was looking for the immortal. We wasted a lot of time not researching which cryptid it might be.”

  “But you understand why he had to keep this a secret, right?” Clivo said.

  Adam popped his head in. “What? Keep the power of immortality a secret so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands? Dude, that’s pretty self-explanatory.”

  “Right. So, does that mean you guys are interested in still helping me?” Clivo pressed. “If you want to be on the covers of magazines and stuff, I guess I can’t stop you. You’ll be famous and probably rich. But I won’t be able to work with you anymore, and you’ll be dooming every cryptid out there to being discovered and thrown into captivity, or worse. We need to be a team that works under the radar, on the fringe, kept hidden from those who are also searching for the elixir of life. Like spies who live in the daylight but operate from the shadows. No one can know what you do, or what you know. It could be dangerous, and there will be people trolling for you, hunting you, wanting your information. Your sole mission will be to keep secrets, no matter what the cost.”

  Clivo looked at the Blasters with anticipation, hoping that his speech had worked. It was maybe a touch overdramatic, but he figured these guys would dig that kind of thing. He was also hoping they wouldn’t be mad at him for involving them in something so dangerous.

  “When you put it like that it sounds kinda awesome,” Charles finally said.

  Stephanie once again pressed the mute button. The Blasters engaged in another heated conversation, Adam gesticulating wildly and going so far as to lift up his shirt and point at his concave chest. He was probably bemoaning his lost magazine covers.

  Stephanie finally turned the sound back on. “Okay, we’re in. What do you need from us first?”

  Relief swept over Clivo. “Thanks, guys. And I’m sorry I put you in danger, I really had no idea. So, I guess this means that we’re officially a team?”

  Adam waved his finger back and forth. “Just to be clear, you’re part of our team. And ‘danger’ is my middle name. Continue.”

  Clivo held his hands up in apology. “Absolutely, your team.” He rubbed his forehead and thought about their next step. “So, I guess that while you try to narrow down who the immortal cryptid might be, I need another one to catch.”

  “You got it, captain,” Stephanie said.

  “Oh, you might want to start looking for the immortal wherever Russian, Arabic, Japanese, and Hindustani are spoken,” Clivo offered.

  Amelia looked puzzled. “Why?”

  “My mom and dad taught me those languages. If they thought I’d become a catcher, I can’t imagine they chose those randomly. They were probably narrowing the search for me.”

  “Okay, I’ll need to record you speaking those languages,” Amelia said. “The specific dialect they taught you could give us a smaller search region. Speaking of which, we only helped your dad find three cryptids. How did he find the other nine?”

  “That’s a good question,” Clivo said, realizing he hadn’t considered that. “Maybe others helped him. I didn’t know about you guys, so it’s possible there were other helpers like you out there. Or maybe he was just good enough to figure it out alone.”

  Amelia furrowed her brow. “I don’t like the idea that there are others like us out there who can find cryptids. Guys, keep your radar up for any groups that seem to know more than they should.”

  “Oh, and if you guys wouldn’t mind finding me a cryptid closer to home and in a warm climate, I’d appreciate it. I’ve had enough of cold and airplanes for a while,” Clivo added.

  “No problem, dude, we’re almost done compiling our Yeti info,” Charles said, rubbing his hands together excitedly.

  “I said a warm climate!” Clivo protested.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Charles said before clicking a button, causing the screen to go blank.

  XV

  Clivo signed off and leaned back in his chair in relief. He had messed up his first catch, but he was now part of a brilliant team that was hot on the trail of the immortal. For the first time since this whole adventure had begun, a bit of confidence was slowly creeping into his bones.

  That confidence quickly scurried away when he realized that he had no idea how he was going to keep doing this without telling Aunt Pearl, not to mention how he could skip school. He couldn’t just drop out; there’d be no reasonable excuse to give for that. And there were only so many salsa-dancing competitions he could send Pearl to. Finding the next cryptid was all of a sudden the least of his worries.

  He was jerked out of his thoughts by a sharp knock on his door. Clivo groaned. What did Douglas want now?

  He dragged himself to the front door like a guy headed to the firing squad and peeked through the window. But it wasn’t Douglas. Standing on the porch were two people, a girl about Clivo’s age and a man who looked to be in his midtwenties. The girl was dressed in a skirt and light sweater, while the guy wore a lab coat with a scarf around his neck. Clivo didn’t recognize them, but was relieved they weren’t Douglas. However, his relief lasted for less than a second when he wondered if they were sent by Douglas to attack him.

  He was about to sneak away from the window when the man saw him.

  “Mr. Wren! Mr. Wren! Can we have a moment of your time? It’s excruciatingly important!” he said in a proper British accent.

  The man’s dark hair was disheveled and he wore a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. He was very small, with a tiny head, and was carrying an official-looking black briefcase, which was handcuffed to his thin wrist. There was something familiar about him, though Clivo couldn’t place exactly what.

  “Who are you?” Clivo asked suspiciously through the glass.

  “As if we’re going to shout that out here where every spy could hear us, Mr. Wren! If you could please just let us in—”

  “Did Douglas send you? If so you can tell him—”

  “Who in bloody heck is Douglas? Look, I’m Thomas J. Forthwit the Third and behind me is Lana Hampton,” the man said.

  “Oh. What do you want?”

  “For the love of Buddha and his belly, that’s what we want to tell you! If you could just let us in—” Thomas’s voice was nearing hysteria.

  Lana stepped forward and spoke, her voice calm and also distinctly British. She had auburn hair pulled up in a sleek bun and seemed like a nerdy intellectual save for the vampire-red lipstick that stood out on her pale face. What sort of parents let a girl walk around with that kind of makeup? Obviously, British ones.

  “Mr. Wren, we’re from the International Secret Order of Mythological Beasts, Legends, and Cryptid Catchers, and we’d like to speak with you regarding—”

  Thomas stepped in front of Lana and continued his tirade. “Something that can only be spoken about inside!”

  Lana leaned toward Thomas and attempted to calm him down.

  “Thomas, we agreed that we would approach Mr. Wren nicely, in a way that wouldn’t frighten him,” she said in a hushed voice.

  “I am asking nicely!” Thomas yelled, almost dropping the briefcase. “I’m asking as nicely as I can, considering that humanity is about to be doomed to extinction!”

  “That’s great. That’s not frightening at all.” Lana sighed. She looked at Clivo and gave him a reassuring smile.

  Thomas took a deep breath and shook his head as if he was cracking his neck.

  “Mr. Wren, might it be possible for us to enter your abode to speak with you calmly about how we need your help immediately to stop the destruction of life as we know it?”

  “Much better,” Lana said, giving Thomas a condescending pat on the shoulder.

  Clivo’s palms got sweaty. Now what was going on? If Douglas hadn’t sent these people, Clivo knew he should probabl
y defuse whatever problem there was before the cranky old man got a whiff of it.

  He opened the door and Thomas plowed inside, not waiting for an invitation.

  “That’s better. Now, it should be in southeast Alaska, but it’s not. It just disappeared!” Thomas slammed the briefcase on the dining room table, the handcuffs’ chain clanking on the wood.

  “Thomas, I think we should probably start from the beginning,” Lana said as she calmly stepped inside. She looked at Clivo with an incredibly penetrating stare, as if she were trying to read his mind.

  “Fine, start from the beginning, and while you chitchat I’ll try not to hear the doomsday clock ticking in my head,” Thomas moaned.

  Lana clasped her hands in front of her. “Mr. Wren, we’re here because you found Nessie, yes?”

  “The Loch Ness Monster?” Clivo scoffed. “No, that wasn’t me.”

  “Then why were you checked in at Nessie’s Hideaway the same day she was found and why are you wearing the same sweatshirt as the kid in all the pictures who found her?” Thomas yelled, shaking a newspaper in Clivo’s face.

  Lana took the paper away from Thomas. “What Thomas means to say is … congratulations. You’re officially a cryptid catcher.”

  Clivo pursed his lips. He was still totally thrown off-balance about who these people were, how they knew it was he who had caught Nessie, and what they wanted.

  Thomas snorted. “Although you did make Nessie front-page news. No offense, but your skills at going undetected pretty much stink.”

  Clivo glared at Thomas but didn’t say anything.

  “Anyway,” Lana said, shooting Thomas a glance, “due to the success of finding your first catch, we’d like to welcome you to the International Secret Order of Mythological Beasts, Legends, and Cryptid Catchers.”

  “Or ISOMBLCC for short,” Thomas agreed.

  “Although we just call it the Order,” Lana added.

  Clivo stared at the weird pair in front of him. “Not that I know a lot about the cryptid-catching world, but I’ve never heard of you guys.”