by Blaire Edens
“I was so damned worried about you. I thought you were dead.”
“I’m so sorry, Spence. I had to do this. My only hope was that you’d get in touch with Bette and solve the riddle. I see that you did.”
Both of them had tears in their eyes, and Lucy felt the emotion getting to her, too. “I’m Lucy,” she offered when they stepped apart. “I’m a Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology and the owner of Carolina Crypto.”
“Walter Watson.” His handshake was firm, and his eyes were warm. Lucy liked him immediately. “You and I are birds of a feather.”
“I hired her to help me find you. Or the Lizard Man.”
“So she’s the brains of the operation?’
“Mostly,” Spencer answered with a boyish grin.
“Come on inside,” Walter said. “We’ve got a lot to discuss.”
In all her years as an anthropologist, she’d never seen a cave quite like this. Technically, it wasn’t cave, but rather it was a dwelling that had been built into the side of a small hill. The walls were stacked stone and the ceilings were domed. The floors were smooth slate, and brass sconces on the wall burned with electric fire. In the den, there was a flat screen, and there was a hot tub in the bathroom.
“This is some place,” Lucy said.
“Might as well enjoy the creature comforts,” Walter said. “Have a seat.”
Lucy sat beside Spencer on the leather sofa. Walter, after placing a tray with lemonade and cookies on the coffee table, chose the overstuffed armchair across from them.
He was tall and had the same clear blue eyes as Spencer, but that’s where the similarities ended. Walter had very sharp features, a hawk-like nose, prominent cheekbones, and a chin that tapered into a “V”.
“You made yourself pretty difficult to find, Dad.”
The older man grinned, a mischievous glint in his eyes, and he looked ten years younger. “That was the plan, boy.” His accent was much thicker than Spencer’s, and each word lazily bumped into the next one. “I want to catch up, but for now, let’s get down to the business at hand.”
Spencer leaned back, lemonade in hand, and said, “That’s what we came for.”
“The first time I saw the Lizard Man was nearly thirty years ago. You were a baby and I’d taken the day off from work, and the three of us went out to Scape Ore. Your mother carried you on her back. We’d nearly reached the bald cypress when we heard a terrible roar. About twenty-five feet away, I saw him.
“Your mother was terrified. She ran, as fast as she could, back to the car. I wanted to stay and look for some evidence of what we saw, but she insisted that we leave. After that day, she made me promise to never tell you, or anyone else, what we’d seen. People might think we were crazy, and you might be too scared to ever enjoy the natural world.”
“Mom saw him too?”
Walter nodded. “She never went back to the swamp again. After that, I didn’t mention him, but I started doing research, going to the library, reading magazines—anything I could get that might have any information about the creature. Before the internet, it was slow going, but over time I built a pretty decent folder on him.”
“I had no idea.”
“I always planned to share it with you, when you got older, but I’d gotten so used to hiding it that I didn’t know where to start.
“Then, a few years after I first saw him, Bette called me about her son. I wanted to help her. I wanted to know if this creature was harming or killing humans, so a new phase of research began. By then, the internet was making research much easier and I was able to gather more and more material.”
“Did you ever find anything that led you to believe he was responsible for Christopher’s death?” Lucy asked.
Walter shook his head. His eyes were sad. “No. Nothing.”
“The day we fought, the day you left, why didn’t you tell me who Bette really was?”
“I couldn’t do that without revealing everything.”
“You could’ve trusted me.” The hurt was so close to the surface it made his voice crack a little.
“I didn’t worry about your trustworthiness. I worried that you might think I’d gone crazy.”
“Tell us about the day you disappeared,” Lucy said. She didn’t want the conversation to spin into emotional territory just yet. She wanted to know what kind of evidence Walter had.
“I wanted to go into the swamp and blow off a little steam. I only took a few things in case I decided I wanted to stay the night. When I got there, it was a little past noon. The sun was blazing and as soon as I set foot in the swamp, I regretted my decision. I was about to turn back, head for the truck, when I heard him.”
Lucy shivered, remembering the ferocious roar that she’d heard. “We saw him, too.”
Walter’s eyes went wide. “You did?”
“We did, but my camera malfunctioned. We didn’t get any real evidence.”
“You have no idea how many times that’s happened to me,” Walter said. “But on that day, with the bright sunlight, I was able to get this.” He picked up the television remote and switched the input to his computer. After clicking a few keys, the jungle-like flora of Scape Ore Swamp came into view.
A ferocious roar bellowed and then, from the left of the frame, the Lizard Man stepped into view. Only fifteen or twenty feet away from the lens, it was strange to see him in such sharp focus. When she and Spencer had seen him, not only had the light been fading, but she’d been scared, flooded with adrenaline from her fight or flight response, and she hadn’t been able to make good scientific observations.
In the background, she heard Walter’s heavy breathing, and a shiver ran up her spine. “You must have been terrified.”
“I was,” he admitted. “But I’d been trying to get evidence for so long, three decades, that I couldn’t miss the chance.”
There was no doubt the creature on the video was the same one they’d seen in Scape Ore Swamp. The three of them watched the rest of the nine-minute video in silence. When the screen went black, Spencer said, “That’s amazing, Dad.”
“It’s not the only evidence I have.”
Lucy’s mouth dropped. The video was crystal-clear and it was clearly not altered. “What else?”
“This,” he said, rising and taking a small baggie out of his front pocket. He handed it to Lucy.
Inside, there were several black hairs. “These came from—”
He nodded, a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin on his face. “Sure did.”
The possibilities were mind-boggling. The video, along with the physical evidence, gave them all they needed to test DNA, get some rough data about anatomy and habitat. It was the motherlode of cryptozoology. “Can we have this DNA sequenced?”
Walter sighed. “That’s the reason I’m here. When I got this evidence, I contacted the Division of Natural Resources, they connected me to the South Carolina Wildlife Research office, a group I’d never heard of. When I asked if we could set up a time to talk about what I’d found. They immediately got suspicious, told me not to come into the office, that they’d come to me.”
“That sounds fishy,” Spencer said.
“Not if you consider what their goals are.”
“What are they?”
“The way they treated me told me one important thing: they’ve known about him all along.”
“Why would they conceal that information?” Lucy had long thought that the paranoia and conspiracy theories that abounded in crypto circles were the main reason that serious scientists got lumped in with lunatics.
“Two reasons: to make sure there’s not widespread panic and to keep the folks who might be able to profit from the creatures out of the area.”
Lucy had heard those reasons before and both were valid. Most of the creatures, if they were real, would be located in wilderness areas where humans had little impact. Once their existence was confirmed, the argument contended that folks would want to see them for themselves, like the bears at Yellowstone or
the gators in the Everglades. While Lucy was sensitive to these concerns, she had a hard time believing that all but the hardiest of backpackers and naturalists would search for wild creatures that might be lethal. On the other hand, she knew you could never count out the handful of crazy people who would go to any length to generate some publicity.
“You think the wildlife people might harm you if you leak the information?” Her mind flashed back to the office. “The office had been broken into twice since you disappeared.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” He shrugged. “Who knows what lengths they’ll go to? It worries me. I’m an old man. I want to live the rest of my life in peace. Take care of my wife. If she ever speaks to me again, that is.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“This story might help your career, Lucy,” Walter said. “Might bring you some business. It also might get these wildlife folks, whoever they are, off my back.”
“You want me to leak it?” Her heart skipped a beat.
“Not only that, I want you to take complete credit for it, so I can go back to living a normal life. See if maybe the missus might like living in Arkansas.”
The article, if well written and sold to the right outlet, might change everything. “I don’t want to take credit for your research. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Not if you stole it. I’m asking you to do it.”
She looked at Spencer and he nodded. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. I have a marriage to save, and that’s much more important than this.” He ejected the flash drive from his computer and handed it, along with the small baggie of hair, to Lucy. “I hope this makes your career.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I only have one question. “Why didn’t you carve the “X” so Spencer would know you were okay when you left the swamp?”
“I wanted to create enough doubt to buy myself some time.”
“You’re smooth,” she said.
Walter winked.
As soon as they got back to the hotel room, Lucy booted up her laptop and started sending emails. After all the years of penning articles for the crypto magazines, she had an impressive list of contacts. The editors all knew her name, her credentials. They knew she was credible. In less than half an hour, three magazines had made her offers for an exclusive on the story. Each offer promised more money than she’d ever see in a year’s worth of teaching.
The best offer was from It’s REAL!. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the DNA sequencing, which was a costly affair, would be on their dime. It was enough to live comfortably for a couple of years, long enough to get her business running and turning a decent profit. Lucy swallowed hard. If she took the offer and sold the piece to them, she could forget going back to academia. Even though Walter’s evidence was solid and effectively proved the existence of the Lizard Man, no university would ever credit it as a reliable source.
There was another choice. She could take the video to the dean at Alamance State, lay out the case for the existence of the Lizard Man and hope he could see past any prejudice he might have and hire her.
“I’ve got some offers,” she told Spencer when he got out of the shower.
“Already?” He had one white towel wrapped around his waist and he was drying his hair with another.
“This is the first big discovery since the Giant Squid was confirmed. It’s huge. After watching the video and adding what we saw to it, I’m convinced we’ve found a new species, if not a new genus.”
“What are you going to do?”
She shook her head. “No idea. On the one hand, I’d like to use it to get a teaching job. They totally blackballed me, questioned my credibility, made me look like a fool. I’d like to watch them eat crow. On the other hand, I like chasing these creatures. I could get used to these adventures.”
“Me, too,” Spencer said. He sat on the foot of the bed. “There’s no way I can go back to being a nine to five lawyer after this.”
“Really?”
“I’ve caught the bug.”
“Then maybe we can have the best of both worlds,” she said, walking over to the bed. She leaned down and kissed him softly. “But we’ll have to work together.”
“If it involves tents, I’m in,” he said, kissing her back.
EPILOGUE
She chose to write the article.
Even though the article was originally published in It’s REAL!, it quickly grabbed the attention of more well-known, well-respected ones like Science Today and Anthropology Finds. Lucy’s cell phone rang constantly.
Not only was she a guest on a couple of national morning shows, the Unearthing Channel sent a crew to Cheldron to interview her so they could produce a one-hour special featuring the Lizard Man and the evidence supporting his existence.
The Lizard Man was now known as The Carolina Magnalizard and taxonomists were still trying to decide what to call the new genus and species.
She’d never known it was possible for a physical anthropologist to become an overnight success, but Lucy was living proof. Being in front of the camera wasn’t comfortable for her. She didn’t like the makeup or the lights.
But she loved it when the dean of Alamance State had to call her, hat in hand, and offer her the newest position at the college: Professor of Cryptozoology.
She gladly accepted. After she gloated.
She’d be glad to get back into the classroom where she could connect to students and back into the lab so that she could begin real research on other creatures of legend.
Carolina Crypto had a new manager. Spencer, having caught the crypto disease while tracking down the Lizard Man, planned to run the business while she taught. It was the perfect solution.
He’d closed his law office in South Carolina and moved to the mountains. He rented a small house on the outskirts of town with a huge back porch and a view of the Blue Ridge.
It beat the hell out of a tent, especially now that it was winter.
Although she often spent the night with Spencer, Lucy was still living at her mom’s. While she liked the direction the relationship was taking, she wasn’t quite ready to move in with him yet. She wanted to see how they’d get along when they saw each other nearly every day.
Alone in the office, she was packing the last box of books she planned to move to her new office at the college when the office phone rang. “Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Hey, Walter. How are you? Spencer went to pick up food.”
“I was looking for you anyway. Am I on speaker phone?”
“No. Why?”
“Last night, I got a call from a man who needs your help. It would be a great addition to your research.”
As the new professor of Cryptozoology at Alamance State, she now had the freedom to research creatures on their time, but before she launched into a new investigation, she wanted to settle in, take a breath after all the publicity the Lizard Man had garnered. “I need a break, Walt.”
“Hear me out, first.”
Lucy stretched tape across the top of the box and taped it down. “Why not?”
“A friend of mine, I guy I met on one of the forums, he’s got hard evidence of the Chupacabra.”
“No way. People have tried to prove he exists for decades.”
“This is the real deal, and he needs your help.”
“Where is he?”
“Puerto Rico. If the local people there get word of it, they might try to put the lid on it.”
She looked out the window. Snowing. Windy. Cold. Even if they didn’t find anything but sand, it would be nice to ditch the wool hats for a week or two.
“You think it’s legit?”
“Absolutely.”
“Tell him we’ll be there by the end of the week.”
“I’ll email you the details.”
“Thanks.”
“And, Lucy, look after Spence, will you?”
“You know I will,” she said. She couldn’t stop the grin f
rom spreading across her face.
Coming Soon
Carolina Crytpo: The Chupacabra Chase
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Blaire Edens
Blaire Edens lives in the mountains of North Carolina. She grew up on a farm that’s been in her family since 1790. Of Scottish descent, her most famous ancestor, John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch and Guardian of Scotland, was murdered by Robert the Bruce on the altar of the Greyfriars Church at Dumfries.
She has a degree in Horticulture from Clemson University. She’s held a myriad of jobs including television reporter, GPS map creator, and personal assistant to a fellow who was rich enough to pay someone to pick up the dry cleaning. When she’s not plotting, she’s busy knitting, running, or listening to the Blues.
Blaire loves iced tea with mint, hand-stitched quilts, and yarn stores. She refuses to eat anything that mixes chocolate and peanut butter or apple and cinnamon. She’s generally nice to her mother, tries to remember not to smack her bubble gum, and only speeds when no one’s looking. She’s the award-winning author of Wild About Rachel, The Witch of Roan Mountain, and The Fairy Bargain.
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