Creature Keepers and the Hijacked Hydro-Hide

by Peter Nelson

  “Okay, the gas is definitely working!” Mr. Grimsley’s muffled voice called out.

  “Well, then get your head out of there, Roger!” His mother handed the heavy frying pan to Jordan, then bent over and yanked her husband out by his hips. Then she began pulling the groceries they’d bought out of bags and setting them on the counter. Mr. Grimsley stood and lit a burner on the stove with a match.

  “Now we’re cookin’,” Mr. Grimsley said. “With gas!”

  “Our first breakfast at our future bed-and-breakfast!” Mrs. Grimsley cooed.

  They grinned at each other, then kissed as Jordan stared in horror. “I’m gonna go for a walk, see if I can pick up a cell signal in the neighborhood. I’ll be back for breakfast,” he said as they continued to kiss. “That is, if my appetite ever returns.”

  Jordan stepped out the front door and took a deep breath. The morning air was already thick and humid, but smelled a bit sweeter. He walked through the overgrown front yard and past the iron gate. He pulled out his smartphone and looked down at it. NO SERVICE.

  He headed down the sidewalk staring at his phone. WUMP! Jordan dropped the phone as he slammed into something. It was a rickety table made of old planks of wood. Above it was a sign nailed across two poles on either end. Hand-scrawled in yellow paint it read, Eldon Pecone’s All-Natural Fresh-Squeezed Lemonade. He stared at the relic for a moment, then looked down and around for his phone. His smartphone lay broken in pieces on the sidewalk.

  After gathering it, he stood up to find himself face-to-face with a tall, gawky kid dressed from head to toe in some sort of khaki uniform, holding a small trash can with a recycling logo.

  “Greetings, citizen!” the boy said, saluting him by raising his hand in what looked like a clenched monkey paw to the brim of his hat.

  “What’s that? With your hand? What are you doing?”

  “It’s the official Badger Ranger Badger claw salute! Say, didja bust your walkie-talkie?”

  Jordan stared at this odd-looking kid.

  “Badger Ranger rule one hundred and six: ‘Be aware, or else beware!’”

  “Er, right,” Jordan said, rather annoyed. “Good advice. Thanks.”

  The boy stuck out his hand. “Eldon Pecone. First-Class Badger Ranger, Clan Seventy-Four.”

  Jordan limply shook his hand. “Jordan Grimsley.”

  Eldon’s wide eyes popped even wider. “Goshbegollers! Did you say—Grimsley?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “There used to be a Grimsley who lived around here, a long time ago. Kinda famous.”

  “You’re talking about my grandfather, George Grimsley. I didn’t know he was famous. I didn’t know him at all. We’re fixing up his house, at the end of the street.”

  Eldon went white. He suddenly looked like he might throw up into his recycling receptacle.

  “You okay?”

  “Beg your pardon. It’s just—no one’s been in that house for a long time.”

  “Yeah, well, someone’s in there now, so . . . I gotta go.” Jordan was getting a bit creeped out at the way this kid was staring at him. He gestured over Eldon’s shoulder. “Besides, looks like you’ve got customers.”

  Eldon snapped out of his daze and turned to see a large group of senior citizens ambling closer, like a band of retired zombies. “Dagnabbit! I’m late setting up my stand! I don’t suppose you’d like to help a fellow citizen?”

  Jordan looked at the old, rickety lemonade stand, then at the army of thirsty old people dressed in brightly colored sweat suits. “I dunno, what’s it pay?”

  “Ha!” Eldon pointed to a patch on his sash. “It’s part of my Community Service Badger Badge. Folks might bring me zucchini bread or a pot roast, but that’s up to them. I could never accept their money!”

  “Uh-huh. Well, Eldon, I’m afraid I can’t accept your kind offer to help. See ya ’round the ol’ campfire. Or not.”

  Jordan turned, then remembered what was in his hand. He tossed the bits of what had been his smartphone into Eldon’s recycle can. “Here,” Jordan grumbled. “Recycle this.”

  Storming home in a funk, Jordan passed dozens of residents of Waning Acres as they slowly stepped out of their near-identical houses and shuffled toward Eldon’s lemonade stand. Some carried baked goods, some had way too warm-looking knitted scarves, and one old lady had her own FOXY GRANDMA mug. But all of them were ancient. Great, Jordan thought. Looks like the only people under the age of a million around here are me, Buzzcut Badger-Boy back there, and my stupid, evil sist—

  “Busted, you worm.”

  Abigail stood just inside the opened iron gate of the house, dressed in her usual black, staring daggers at him through thick eye shadow. “Way to try to weasel out of working. You missed breakfast, when Dad handed out chores. But don’t worry—I volunteered you to haul the trash out of the attic. If I have to work, you do.” Jordan walked past her, toward the house.

  “Where’d you go, anyway?” she asked.

  “Just meeting the neighbors. They’re like the walking dead. You’ll fit right in.”

  A loud blasting sound came from just inside the front door. Jordan’s mom and dad were in the living room, dressed in some kind of space suits, complete with goggles, booties, and gloves. They looked as if they were handling highly radioactive nuclear waste. They attacked the walls and floors with a sandblaster, sending dust everywhere. Although he couldn’t see their faces, Jordan just knew they were both grinning ecstatically under their masks.

  Jordan climbed the creaky stairs, thankful that at least he’d be alone. The second floor was lined with more small bedrooms. At the end of the hall, Jordan found the pull-down attic ladder and climbed the rickety rungs. The confined space was cluttered with piles of crumpled paper, rags, and cardboard. Bonk! Jordan bumped his head on the sloped ceiling that followed the angle of the roofline. He was at the tippety-top of the house, so it was about a billion degrees. Already drenched in sweat, Jordan tried to open a small window at one end of the attic to get some air, but it wouldn’t budge. He pressed his nose against the glass, and gasped at what he saw.

  High above the backyard wall, Jordan stared out at the vast Okeeyuckachokee Swamp. It stretched as far as he could see, its tangled roof of treetops and thick vines keeping whatever lay beneath hidden from view.

  From that angle, he could also see down into the tops of the tall hedges lining the sides of the backyard. Where one of the hedges met the back wall, he noticed a large, cracked opening. It opened to the Okeeyuckachokee. And it looked big enough to walk through.

  4

  From the ground, the secret opening Jordan had spotted was completely hidden within the hedge. Jordan walked to the point where the hedge met the back wall, then pushed through the thick greenery. He found himself standing in a hollowed-out center of the hedge. And there before him, as he stood in the sunlight filtering through the branches above, Jordan saw the passageway.

  He approached cautiously and leaned out of the dappled sunlight, closer to the shadows on the other side of the opening. The air felt cooler inside, and the strange swamp noises were quieter and more distant sounding. If it weren’t so creepy, it would’ve been peaceful.

  “Jeepers, this is some secret fort!”

  “Aaah!” Jordan spun around. Eldon’s head was poking through the hedge, grinning at him. “What are you doing, sneaking up on me like that?”

  “I didn’t mean to spook you,” Eldon’s head said. “I have something for you.” Outside the hedge wall, Eldon fished for something in his khaki pocket. “Your walkie-talkie. You asked me to recycle it. So I did.” Eldon’s hand jabbed through the hedge and handed Jordan his smartphone. The pieces had been crudely slapped together with wood, wire, and a few rusty screws. It was a FrankenPhone.

  “Wow. Thanks, I guess.”

  “Happy to help.” Eldon grinned proudly. Then he noticed the wall. “Say, you’re not thinking of going in there, are ya?”

  “I was just curious.”

&nb
sp; “Well, curiosity killed the cat, Jordan.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not a cat, Eldon.”

  “Ha! I know that.” He pointed to a patch on his sash. “Animal Classification Badger Badge, Level Four. So I think I can accurately differentiate between Felis domesticus and Homo sapiens, thankyouverymuch.”

  “Okay, Mr. Level Four, so what kinds of animals live in this swamp?”

  “Mammals: Florida panther, marsh rabbit, rice rat, Florida black bear—”

  “That must’ve been it.”

  “Must’ve been what?”

  “My dad hit something big, black, and furry yesterday. Stinky, too. Had to be a black bear.” He peered back into the opening. “Hope the poor thing is okay in there.”

  Eldon looked at Jordan. “Boy, your grandfather sure wouldn’t have thought it was a bear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what I’ve heard he was supposed to have been . . . y’know, crazy.”

  “What?”

  Eldon looked at Jordan’s angry expression. “Oh. I’m sorry. I thought you—”

  “You just said my grandfather was crazy! Take it back before I give you a badger patch in getting a bloody nose!”

  “Badger Badge. And I said I was sorry. I thought you knew what everyone knows. That your grandfather went—well, cuckoo.”

  Jordan felt a rush of heat go to his head. He dropped his smartphone and made a fist. The next second, his fist flew through the air. KA-POW! Eldon’s head popped back out of the hedge, and Jordan heard him hit the ground outside. Jordan caught his breath. He’d never hit anyone before in his life. He stepped out of the hedge and onto the sidewalk outside.

  “Gosh! Now what’d ya do that for?” Eldon sat up, pulled out his Badger Ranger hanky, and held it to his bloodied nose. “Very poor citizenship skills!”

  “That was for calling my Grampa Grimsley crazy. Don’t do it again, got it?”

  Eldon studied Jordan. A tiny smile peeked out from behind his handkerchief. He got up, turned, and walked off. Jordan watched him go, his hands still shaking.

  A rustling noise behind him caused the hair to stand up on the back of his neck. Jordan slowly approached the hedge, then, mustering his courage, stepped back inside. He peered through the opening to the swamp. Standing a good distance inside was a shadowy figure. It seemed to be staring at him. Jordan stared back, waiting for it to move. Finally, he shouted, “WHO’S THERE?”

  The shadow didn’t move. Jordan leaned as close to the opening as he dared. Maybe it’s just my imagination, he thought to himself. He turned to step back out but remembered something. He looked down to pick up his FrankenPhone and froze. It was gone. He looked back into the swamp. The shadow, whatever it had been, was gone, too.

  Hauling the trash out of the hot, muggy attic soon had Jordan dripping with sweat. With each trip back from the garbage bin in the front yard, he’d stop and take a peek out the tiny attic window at the swamp below. And each time he’d wonder what creature beneath that endless canopy of tangled treetops had his FrankenPhone.

  His last load was one he’d avoided all day—a large pile of nasty-looking rags wedged deep in a far corner of the attic. He crawled on his belly across the grimy floorboards, then reached out into the crevice and grabbed hold of the rags. One pull told him they were snagged on something. He tugged harder, then repositioned himself for leverage—and heaved as hard as he could. WUMP! Whatever was holding the rags was hard and heavy, by the way it felt when it bonked into Jordan’s head. He dragged it out of the crevice and pulled the nasty coverings off. It was a small suitcase. It had been wrapped in a sheet and jammed into the attic corner, then hidden under the mountain of rags.

  The suitcase was worn and beat up, and above the plastic handle were two gold initials: “G.G.” Jordan placed his thumbs on the latch-release buttons. The latches popped open with a click! He flung open the suitcase and screamed.

  “Aaaahhh!” A horrible black, eyeless gorilla head grinned up at him. It took Jordan a second to realize it wasn’t a gorilla, or even a head. It was a mask—cheap and furry, with rubber teeth, rubber ears, and a pair of eyeholes. Jordan tossed it aside to see what the menacing monkey mask was guarding.

  First, he found the rest of the costume. There was a white stripe running down its back, but otherwise it looked like a typical adult-sized ape suit. Jordan set it aside as he found something even stranger—a large, apelike rubber foot, attached to a stick.

  He set down the foot. All that was left was a bunch of old newspaper clippings lining the bottom of the suitcase. One of the clippings showed a blurry picture of a large, black shape walking behind a swamp tree. Jordan picked it up. The headline read: LOCAL MAN GETS GLIMPSE OF FLORIDA SKUNK APE IN OKEEYUCKACHOKEE SWAMP!

  Jordan scanned the article. Then another. And then another. Each one was from the Leisureville Daily News and was dated from the summer of the same year. Or as they all described it, SKUNK APE SUMMER! Jordan was amazed at how many sightings of a large, black, stinky creature there were. As he read headline after headline, he noticed the story line begin to change. As that summer wore on, more and more people claimed to have seen the creature, and not just in the swamp. By the end of that summer, the sightings had grown quite common within Leisureville:

  Soon, the articles began to report that the Skunk Ape might be a fraud:

  And finally, an article claimed proof that Skunk Ape Summer had been a massive hoax.

  This one included a picture of an old man wearing the black furry suit with no mask, being led away by police. The caption hit Jordan like a punch in the gut: Eighty-year-old George Grimsley is accused of frightening the community, disturbing the peace, and impersonating a Skunk Ape.

  “So it’s true,” Jordan said to himself. “Grampa Grimsley was crazy.”

  “THAT’S RIGHT! AND NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED MY HORRIBLE SECRET, I WILL PEEL YOU AND EAT YOU LIKE A BANANA! AAAAAARRRR!”

  Jordan looked up at his sister standing over him, wearing the mask. “That’s not funny.”

  Abbie pulled it off and tossed it at him. “Whatever. Come down for dinner, chimp bait.”

  5

  SLAM! Jordan dropped the old suitcase on the giant dining-room picnic table, nearly upsetting an entire pot roast his mother had just set before the family.

  “Moving out so soon?” Mr. Grimsley asked.

  Jordan popped open the suitcase. He pulled out the Skunk Ape costume, then the large foot-on-a-stick. Setting them on the table, he laid out the newspaper clippings in front of his parents, holding up the last one, with the picture of his grandfather being arrested, in his father’s face.

  “Give it to me straight. Was Grampa Grimsley crazy?”

  Jordan’s parents traded worried glances. His father took a deep breath. “I think a nicer term would be obsessive.”

  “Sure,” Abbie said, looking at the picture. “Obsessed with running around in public dressed like a crazy ape-man. Can we eat?”

  Mrs. Grimsley began serving up pot roast as she eyed her husband carefully. Jordan’s father took a deep breath. “Even as a young man, your grandfather had been obsessed with cryptons—”

  “Cryptids, dear.” Mrs. Grimsley corrected him. “He was a cryptozoologist.”

  “Right,” Mr. Grimsley said. “That’s right. Cryptozoologist.”

  “That sounds made up,” Jordan said.

  “You’re not far off,” Mrs. Grimsley said. “Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience. The study of and search for creatures whose existence has never been proven.”

  “Like, vampires?” Abbie said with a sudden gleam in her eye.

  “Vampires are mythical creatures,” Mr. Grimsley said. “They’re different.”

  “Yeah, different because they’re hotties. And they might be real. Scientists don’t know.”

  “They pretty much know.” Mrs. Grimsley sighed. “Eat your pot roast.”

  “You mean Bigfoot and stuff,” Jordan said.

  “Yes,” Mr. Grimsley
said. “Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, all the ones you’ve heard of, and a lot more you probably haven’t.”

  “Did Grampa Grimsley ever find any of them?”

  “No,” Jordan’s mother said coldly. “Because they’re not real.”

  “And that made him go crazy,” Abbie said. “End of story. Pass the rolls?”

  Mr. Grimsley cleared his throat. “Growing up, I didn’t see much of my father. He’d wander off into the world, searching for his cryptids, leaving us for months. Then one day . . . he didn’t come back at all.”

  “What’d you do?” Jordan asked.

  “As strange and sad as it sounds, I’d gotten used to my father not being in my life. So . . . we went on with our lives. The years went by, your grandmother passed away, your mom and I met, married, had Abbie . . . and right around that time your grandfather suddenly reappeared. Quite unexpectedly.”

  “Quite inconsiderately, too,” Jordan’s mother said. “Abbie was a toddler and I was pregnant with Jordan. We had to drop everything and rush down here.”

  “You’ve been here before?” Jordan asked.

  “How cute was I as a baby?” Abbie asked.

  “Not Waning Acres,” Jordan’s dad said, picking up the newspaper article. He had a sad look in his eye as he stared at the picture of the old man in the ape suit.

  “Leisureville,” Mrs. Grimsley said. “Where the police picked him up. He gave them our name and told them where they could contact us. He’d obviously kept track of us over the years, even though we had no idea where he was.”

  “So what was with Skunk Ape Summer?” Jordan asked. “Why’d he fake all that?”

  “I suppose after spending his life hunting for proof of his beloved cryptids,” Mrs. Grimsley said, “he finally decided to make some proof of his own.”