Chapter 34
“A chupacabra,” Jessica repeated. Claire opened her mouth to speak, but Jessica pushed on before she could get a word in. “Here me out!” Jessica exclaimed. She grabbed a different stack of papers, suggesting she had printed out a substantial amount of research on the chubby-wubby—or whatever it was. She continued, “There have been multiple reports of a creature that comes at night and kills peoples’ livestock.”
Claire looked down at the paper in front of her. It had a drawing of some sort of nasty dog-bear looking thing in the center, and the title read: “Chupacabra: Real or Myth?” Claire groaned and pinched the ridge between her eyes with one hand. She felt woozy. This is so much worse than I thought it would be, she thought. It says urban legend on here. My friend thinks she got chased by some sort of chuppa-cuppa and she wants me to help her—what? Catch it?
Claire looked up from the table. Jessica eyed her closely, her eyebrows furrowed. “Can you at least listen to what I have to say before you ship me off to the loony bin?” she snapped.
“I’m sorry. Yes, I will listen. Please, tell me what you found out.”
“Ok, so these reports go back around forty years. But it’s very likely it was around before then, it was just never reported. The first recorded sighting was in 1975 in Puerto Rico. A man said he saw a creature in his farm one night. It killed his goat and drained its blood, but it didn’t eat it. Three more of his goats were killed on subsequent nights, all in the same way.
“More sightings were eventually reported, mostly in Puerto Rico, but there have been reports from Central America all the way through Mexico. It’s MO—its method of attack, I mean—was to kill farm animals, drain their blood, and then leave the bodies for the farmer to discover the following day. In all the reports it was a creature that nobody recognized. Someone said it looked kind of like an alien, but that report was discredited.”
That’s the only thing that was discredited in all this? Claire thought.
“Most people described it as around three feet tall at the shoulders, much taller if standing on its hind legs. Of course no one has an extremely accurate description of it since all the sightings occurred at night. From what I found, a lot of the people described a hairless creature with a long snout, big teeth and claws, and a spiny back.”
Claire stared at her, mouth open. Jessica set all the papers down on the table so she could gesture with her hands. Claire glanced down at the pile of papers, then back up at Jessica.
“Now, what I saw fits a lot of those descriptions. It was about this tall,” she brought her hand to the level of her hip, “when it was on all fours. I didn’t see it standing on its hind legs, so I don’t know how tall it would be then. Probably scary big.”
“Does it stand on its hind legs?” Claire asked softly.
“From what I have researched, it is a quadruped. Kind of dog-like, but bigger . . . and uglier. Some reports said it had wings, but I know that’s not true because I saw it.”
Claire started to rifle through the papers Jessica set down. There were a lot of vaguely similar drawings of some sort of dog-like creature. In the pictures the thing was always snarling, showing off its large canine teeth. None of the pictures depicted it having hair. And in quite a few it had a large ridge along its back, sometimes with spines or spikes. It reminded Claire of that Spinosaurus dinosaur, with the fin thing on its back. Except the Spinosaurus actually did exist at one point, she thought miserably.
Jessica continued to describe her canyon assailant, speaking at a rapid pace and leaving little room for interjection. “It didn’t have any fur, just like the eyewitness descriptions. Well, it might have had a few hairs here and there, but it wasn’t furry like most animals. And that ridge they keep mentioning—that’s the protruding spine I saw. It’s not there because it is emaciated and starving, that’s just part of its anatomy. A spine sticking out like that could be confused for spikes, right? Or, like, a ridge on the back?” Jessica gestured toward her own back, trying to mime a spiky ridge along her spine.
Claire stared at Jessica, dumbfounded, then looked back down at the papers she was holding. There was page after page of different eyewitness accounts. Some villages even had a special name for it, like in Puerto Rico where a small community started calling it El Vampiro de Moca. The Vampire of Moca? Claire had been much more interested in The Beast of Walt Disney, courting Belle with his books and sad eyes. This thing in the pictures did not have sad eyes at all.
Jessica looked at Claire, her teeth gnawing at her lower lip. “Please say something, Claire.”
Claire held up one of the printouts, her expression a mixture of concern and disbelief. “The goat-sucker?” she asked. “You’re telling me you got chased and nearly killed by a mythical beast called a goat-sucker?”
“Well, that’s just what it means in Spanish,” Jessica explained. “Because some of the witnesses saw it when it killed their livestock. It drank their goats’ blood, so that’s how it got that name. Chupacabra . . . goat-sucker.” She shrugged. “They started calling it that in 1995.”
“But a lot of these people said it just drank the animal’s blood. I don’t see anything about shredding them into bits.”
“Well maybe it’s changed, Claire! Maybe it has evolved. Maybe just drinking some blood isn’t good enough anymore. Have you ever heard of Darwin and his theory of evolution?”
“Yes, of course I have heard of Darwin,” Claire said, rolling her eyes. “What about it attacking people instead of animals? All these reports are about livestock.”
“I’m sorry that the eyewitness accounts I uncovered aren’t as thorough as you want them to be. It’s not like I could go to the zoo and study the damn thing.” Jessica sat back down. “And there’s still something you haven't considered yet.”
“What’s that?”
“These are only the accounts of people who saw it and survived. From the looks of how vicious this thing is, I doubt many people who saw it lived to tell the tale. Maybe these farmers and villagers were the lucky ones—they had animals and livestock outside for the chupacabra to go after instead of the villagers themselves. Do you think a lot of the people living out in Wasp Canyon have livestock?”
“No,” Claire snorted. She couldn’t help but laugh thinking about all those rich bitches going out at five in the morning to milk the cows and feed the chickens. In their Prada shoes and their Versace bathrobes, no less.
“What’s so funny?”
“Oh, just thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Millionaire tending to their livestock in their Gucci loafers.”
Jessica giggled and took a long pull from her wine glass.
Claire was relieved to hear her laugh. “Ok, well riddle me this,” Claire said. “All these accounts are from Mexico and Central America. Hell, Puerto Rico is a freaking island. How the hell did this chupa-gupa get into southern Arizona?”
“Chupacabra,” Jessica corrected. “And there have been sightings in Arizona, although not many.”
“But how did this one suddenly appear? How did it get here?”
“I have the answer to that as well.” Jessica started looking through more of her papers.
“Man, if you had this many answers during your SATs, you could have gone to Harvard.” Claire poured some more wine into her glass, tipped it toward Jessica as if to cheers her, and then took a sip. “Full scholarship,” she added.
“Oh, shut it,” Jessica said, looking up from her papers. A small smile appeared at the corner of her mouth. “Here it is,” she said, setting down a printout of a topographic map. “This is Tucson. You can see us here.” She pointed to a spot on the northwest corner of the map. “And here are all the mountain ranges surrounding the city.” She made a wide circle around the city of Tucson with her finger. She then moved her finger to the mountains on the western side of the page. “These are the Tucson Mountains. And,” she moved her finger an inch to the south, “this is where all the attacks occurred in 1987.” Jessica glanced at Claire to
make sure she was paying attention, then returned to the map. “Now these,” her finger slid across the page to the mountains on the northeastern side of the map, “are the Santa Catalinas. And that dark line right there, that’s Wasp Canyon.”
Claire studied the map. Maybe it was the wine or lack of food—or a combination of the two—but she was actually starting to get intrigued to find out where Jessica was going with all this. She could see the mountains outlined on the map, lighter in color in areas of higher altitude and darker at lower elevations. There was a dark crevice cut into the Santa Catalina range that came out right where Jessica’s finger was.
Jessica followed the dark crevice of Wasp Canyon with her finger. It went on until she came to the edge of the page where the map stopped. Claire looked up at Jessica. “Well, where does it go?”
“From what I can tell it goes all the way through the mountain range. I looked at a broader map, and it winds through the mountains instead of just cutting straight through. And as you can see, it appears to go through various mountain ranges. Where one range stops, the canyon picks up at the start of the next one. It must have formed way back when the mountains formed, I guess. And it looks like it goes clear into Mexico. At least I’m pretty sure it does.”
Claire felt a few hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Her mind went to the crude drawings of the chupacabra from the eyewitness accounts—its heavy build and lips pulled back into a menacing snarl. The weird protruding spines on its back, or maybe just an elongated spinal column if Jess is right . . .
Stop it, Claire. You can’t let yourself get sucked into this. Even so, Claire felt knots tightening in her stomach. She decided to blame it on too much wine. She didn’t like the prospect that there could be something else making her stomach churn and the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
Claire studied the map, focusing on the mountains on the western side of town. She looked at the neighborhood Jessica had pointed out earlier, and then went up an inch to the mountain range. There was another dark crevice etching its way through the white splotches that represented the mountain peaks. Another canyon, no doubt. The unease in her stomach grew, this time laced with a feeling Claire could no longer deny: fear.
“I’m guessing this is a canyon that goes somewhere into Mexico, too?” Claire asked.
“You got it sister.”
Claire let out a long, wine-scented breath. “So what’s the prognosis on our little mythical hellhound?”
“It’s not a dog, Claire.”
“Yeah, I know. Well, whatever the hell it is. Based on your ample research,” Claire waved a hand at the papers littered across the table, “what happens next?”
“Well, if it is anything like the first time . . .” Jessica pulled one final paper from the stack and set it down in front of Claire. “This is a map of Wasp Canyon Estates.”
The page was a screenshot from Google Maps. It showed a satellite view of Wasp Canyon Estates starting from the border of the Santa Catalinas and going south to Orion Street, which ran parallel to the mountain range. Wasp Canyon Road was off of Orion Street, heading north and then veering east toward the mountains. A lot of the image was brown with specks of green—an unmistakable desert landscape. White, man-made structures littered the brown and green—the tops of large houses set far apart and away from the road. These were the residences of Wasp Canyon Estates—sixteen in all, eight on each side of Wasp Canyon Road. The road dead-ended near the base of the Santa Catalinas into what appeared to be a small parking lot.
“So what does this mean for Tucson’s elite?” Claire asked.
“Probably the same thing it meant for Tucson’s undocumented workers down south,” Jessica said. “Right here,” she pointed at a dark green area at the base of the mountains, “that’s the entrance to Wasp Canyon. The trail works its way through the desert and comes out here,” she snaked her finger across an expanse of brown on the map and stopped at the little parking lot.
Claire looked at the green, tree-covered entrance to Wasp Canyon. She couldn’t help imagining how pretty it must be in there, with all that green. Tucsonans didn’t see a lot of green when it came to the landscape. Mostly it was a lot of brown, beige, and taupe.
Claire followed a beeline from Wasp Canyon to the first white square on the map, the most-northern house in Wasp Canyon Estates. And by the looks of it, it was definitely the biggest one, too. From there, the white squares became closer and closer together, although there was still a substantial distance between each one. She followed along, heading south house by house, until she reached Orion Street. She quickly glanced at the Tucson map, wondering how far it was from the intersection on Orion Street to where she lived, some four miles away. She hoped Jessica didn’t see her check.
“You think it’s gonna work its way down, house by house?” Claire asked.
“I don’t really know,” Jessica said. “I think it will head further and further away from the canyon, growing bolder and more aggressive as it does.”
“And it’s going to keep going until the rain stops?”
“If it is anything like the attacks in 1987, then yeah. Maybe the canyons become uninhabitable when it rains this much. Or the normal things it feeds on don’t go into the canyons during a big rainy season. So then it has to venture out for food. Humans are pretty easy prey, after all.”
Claire and Jessica sat in the kitchen, drinking their wine in silence. Claire had one more question to ask, and it was the one she was dreading most of all. She set down her glass. She still wasn’t sure if she believed any of this—she liked to think that she didn’t, and that she was just placating a friend in need. Her gut told her differently, though. Then again, she never was one for listening to her gut. God, just look at her love life.
“Alright then, final jeopardy question,” Claire said. “How do we stop it?”
Jessica laughed, although there was little humor in it. “So far, I’ve got chase it with a UV light.”
“Like the things they use to grow pot?” Claire asked.
“Yeah. You think your ex will let us borrow his?” Jessica grinned.
“Shut it,” Claire said. “I didn’t know about that until at least a month into the relationship.”
“Didn’t stop you from dating him for another two months.”
Claire laughed. She looked at Jessica across the table, her best friend forever since middle school. Recently, Jessica had been to hell and back, and apparently she had brought a hellbeast back with her. Claire doubted it was true—hoped it wasn’t true—but she knew Jessica was going to see this thing through whether she helped her or not. Claire supposed it would be better if she was there, if only to comfort Jessica when it turns out to be nothing but a pissed off cougar after all. Andrea had asked Claire to look out for Jessica, and going along with all this seemed like the best way to do that for now. She doubted Andrea would agree, but oh well.
“Ok, I’m in,” Claire said, then added: “And I’m also drunk.”
Chapter 35
Carl Moser leaned against the hood of his car, wishing badly for a smoke even though he had quit fourteen years ago. His police cruiser was one of many parked in the large, circular driveway of 1639 North Wasp Canyon Road. There was also a fire truck, an ambulance, a coroner's van, and one goddamn news helicopter that had just materialized overhead. He expected quite a few news vehicles were already at the gated entrance to the Cuthbertson residence back on Wasp Canyon Road, but thankfully the long driveway that led from the road to the house kept them a blissful half-mile away. Can’t do anything about the damn chopper, though, he thought. I sure as hell hope they got the body covered up by now.
Moser patted the perspiration from his brow with a handkerchief he drudged up from his pocket. Hotter than Satan’s asshole out here, he thought. The summer sun beat down on his shoulders, and the humidity felt like a suffocating hug. Fucking monsoons. I moved here to get away from the damn humidity. It feels like Florida out here.
The o
fficer that answered the call to check on the Cuthbertson woman was a rookie. Good lad, happy to be on board and eager to please. Jimmy Contrell, that’s his name. Ol’ Jimmy had answered the call that morning to check on an elderly woman that hadn’t shown for some doctor appointment. Easy gig really. Drive up to the mega mansions, ring the doorbell, make sure the old woman hadn't broken a hip. Call the paramedics if she had broken a hip. The end. Bada bing bada boom.
Instead, poor ol’ Jimmy stumbled into a goddamn slasher movie—one of the ones that care more about gore than plot line or acting skills. When he got no answer at the front door Jimmy went around to the back of the house to try the patio door. That’s where he found the old broad, spread out in the sun and torn up like a dog’s chew toy. Poor woman was in her bathrobe, her blood-splattered slippers found in a bush on the other side of the patio.
Jimmy hadn’t taken it all too well. He was practically blubbering when he called in for backup. And now he was just sitting in one of the cruisers and staring straight ahead, sweat standing out on his forehead and dripping down his cheeks. As far as Moser was concerned it was sweat that was running down Jimmy’s cheeks—not tears—and no one would ever convince him to say otherwise.
Moser surveyed the driveway, filled with cars and people in uniform. It seemed like the whole damn department had come out. Men walked to and from their vehicles in hushed silence, no one wanting to talk about what had been discovered by poor Jimmy Contrell. In fact, the only real noise was from the motor of that damn news chopper overhead.
Fucking vultures have no respect for the dead, he thought as he looked up at the helicopter. Channel 8 News Now was printed on the side. Moser suspected they were broadcasting live on all the local stations. Christ almighty.
The forensics team was still looking for signs of foul play inside, but so far it sounded like it was a bust. The theory still went that the woman went outside for whatever reason and was attacked by an animal on the back patio. Moser planned to go have a look at the scene as soon as the medical examiner finished up, but really he just wanted to put off seeing the body for as long as possible. From the look of Jimmy Contrell—sitting in the cruiser with that blank stare—Moser didn’t want to see what was done to the old widow. He’d have to go over the crime scene photos of course, and read the autopsy results, but he saw no reason why he had to see the body roasting in the midday sun. God, the smell alone must be enough to set you off your lunch. However, he was the lead detective, and he was acutely aware of how bad it would be perceived if he didn’t go take a look at the scene.
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