by Lija Fisher
“Don’t pay attention to Adam. He’s trying to wean himself off of Ritalin, so he’s a bit high-strung right now. Welcome to our club; we call ourselves the Myth Blasters. We research the existence of creatures that appear in legends and literature and have first-person visual accounts but have never been officially recognized by science,” said a girl with golden hair tucked into a knot on her head. She blushed furiously, accentuating her slight case of acne.
“That’s a pretty intense after-school club,” Clivo replied. He noticed that the girl was really pretty, with the lightest-blue eyes he had ever seen.
A short, brown-skinned girl with a pierced nose stood up from a chair.
“Yeah, we tried the drama club. Wasn’t really our speed. Too much enthusiasm.”
Charles introduced the girls with a sigh.
“Clivo, this is Stephanie and Amelia. We tried to keep Myth Blasters an all-boys club, but Stephanie’s parents let us use their basement for headquarters, so we kinda had to let her join. And you know girls, they always have to do things together, hence the Amelia presence.”
Stephanie blushed again. “They were meeting at a Taco Comet before, so this place was really a step up.”
“And their research methods were crap until we sorted them out, so that’s a bonus, too,” Amelia added.
Clivo sneezed. The scented candles were overpowering, and Adam was doused in some kind of strong cologne. “So you guys actually believe that legendary animals exist?”
“No, we don’t believe they exist.” Amelia sighed.
“Oh.”
“We know they exist.”
“What do you mean? Like you have proof?”
Amelia eyed him. “Of course we have proof. We’re the only group, at least in the Lower Forty-Eight, that does.”
“Why do you think McConaughey is up in our grill all the time?” Adam sneered.
“So, you’ve actually found one? You’ve found a legendary creature?” Clivo was having a hard time believing that this group knew anything beyond the usual theories and discoveries. They were kids in a basement on laptops, how much could they possibly know? Clivo made a mental note to check with McConaughey in Vermont in case he could provide any better help.
Amelia blew through her lips.
“Find one? Let’s see, I’m a middle-schooler who works at the local bookstore ten hours a week for less than minimum wage. Yeah, that should totally cover the cost of a plane ticket, hotel, and crypto-research manual.”
“What’s a crypto-research manual?” Clivo asked.
Adam held up his hands to stop anyone from speaking.
“Hang on, hang on. Now listen here, tough guy, you come in here with your good-looking dimples and thick head of hair and think you can just flirt with the women—”
“The women,” Hernando quietly concurred.
“And you gain access to our secure fortress by passing an un-passable initiation, yet you pretend to know very little about what it is we actually do. Just casually fishing for information, are you? Well, think again, scummy spy! Boys, get him!”
Adam pointed, as if fully expecting Charles and Hernando to rush Clivo. But the two boys held their ground. If anything, they backed up a few steps.
Adam grunted with frustration and rushed Clivo himself. Clivo instinctually took a crouching stance, both hands in a striking pose, once again his body responding of its own accord. Adam immediately stopped a few steps away and bounced up and down, like a boxer preparing for a fight.
“Someone give him some Ritalin,” Amelia said with a groan.
Adam did a few fake punches, making odd yelling noises as he did so. Clivo didn’t recognize any of the moves and wondered if Adam actually knew any martial arts. Then Adam finally made his charge, attempting to punch and grab Clivo at the same time. Clivo quickly stepped aside and tripped the kid, who did a spectacular fall face-first into a beanbag chair.
“Luke, I am your father,” Adam said, his voice muffled by the stuffing.
“Are those his safe words?” Clivo asked.
Charles nodded. “It’s a bit long, but he insists on it.”
Before anyone could tackle him again, Clivo reached into his wallet and pulled out a picture of his mom and dad. The photo was old and faded, but he kept it because he had always thought his mom looked beautiful in it, her face aglow from the sunset on top of Lookout Mountain near their home.
“You’re right, I don’t know anything about what you guys do. I found out about you from my dad.”
Stephanie took the photo in her delicate fingers. “Russell Wren is your dad?”
“You know him?” Clivo asked, surprised that Stephanie knew his father’s name.
“Sure. He was actually supposed to be here a while ago to buy another crypto-research manual, but he never showed up. Is everything okay?”
Clivo carefully put the crinkled photo back into his wallet. “My dad’s gone. He died, suddenly, a few months ago.”
Exclamations of disbelief rumbled through the rest of the group.
“I’m so, so sorry!” Stephanie said. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“That sucks big toes, man,” Adam said, pushing himself to his feet.
“He was a super-nice guy, dude,” Charles added.
“A good man,” Hernando agreed, blowing his nose into a handkerchief.
“Thanks,” Clivo said, swallowing the lump that was rising in his throat. “So, can I ask what my dad came here for?”
“Information,” Amelia said, her voice somber. “He wanted our research about where to find certain cryptids.”
“He came to you guys for information?” Clivo asked, even more surprised.
“Why the shock?” Adam practically yelled. “Who else is he gonna go to? The Bigger Bigfoot Search Party? They couldn’t help him find the back of his hand.”
“No, no shock,” Clivo assured them. “I’m just having a hard time adjusting to whatever planet I’ve landed on. Anyway, did you give him any information?”
Amelia nodded. “We told him where to find the Honey Island Swamp Monster, a blue tiger, and a chupacabra.”
Clivo froze. His father had found all of those creatures. Either it was coincidence, or these kids really were as good as they said they were. Clivo asked the next question carefully. “What did my dad tell you about what he did?”
Charles thought about it. “Not much. Just that he was an archaeologist who traveled the world going on digs. He liked learning about the mythology of an area while he was stuck there dusting off bones. Said it was a fun hobby, the possibility of finding a living relic while digging for dead ones.”
“And did he tell you if he found any cryptids?” Clivo asked, a pang of jealousy hitting him at the thought that his father had revealed his secrets to these kids, but never to him.
“Nah. He said he thought he came close a few times, though. Maybe saw some blue tiger scat,” Charles said.
Clivo felt oddly relieved. At least he wasn’t the only person his dad had lied to. “So, if you guys are so protective of your information, why did you give it to my dad?”
This time Stephanie answered, her face blotchy from crying. “Well, he was a really nice guy. He paid us a little bit for our work. But our reasons were more selfish.”
“Selfish?”
“Sure. We really believe that these legendary animals are out there. We know where they are, we just don’t have the means to actually find them. Your dad had the ability to do all that. He could travel the world and do the searching, with our information as his guide. It was perfect. He was like our own field agent.”
“And he brought us pizza,” Hernando added.
“And he promised that anything he found, we would get the credit for,” Adam said. “Suck on that, McConaughey!”
Clivo wished he could bring out his dad’s cryptid photo album and show it to these guys—they deserved to know that their research had been right. But if his dad hadn’t told them anything, he figured he probably shou
ldn’t, either.
“So, with my dad gone, it sounds like you guys need a new field agent. Would you be okay working with me?” Clivo tried to keep his voice casual, hoping they wouldn’t notice how desperate he was for their help.
Stephanie looked confused. “I don’t understand. You’re a bit young to be an archaeologist. How can you be our field agent?”
Clivo stared at the group for an uncomfortable amount of time, his mind trying to come up with a believable cover story. Adam began tapping his foot impatiently. “Uh, my dad died without ever finding a cryptid,” he began slowly, carefully crafting his lie. “He left me some money so I could keep looking. As a means to honor his memory, I suppose. He came to you guys for a reason—”
“’Cause we’re the best,” Adam interjected.
“So if I’m really going to find a cryptid, I think I’d better stick to working with you.” At least the last part felt true.
The gang all looked at each other, their faces sparked with excitement. One by one they nodded in agreement.
“You’ve come to the right place, Clivo Wren, son of Russell,” Amelia said. “Now, where would you like to begin?”
XI
Half an hour later, Clivo was sitting on a beanbag chair in front of a digital projector, watching a PowerPoint presentation on Nessie. Amelia clicked through the photos, some in color and others in grainy black-and-white.
“We’ve sifted through all three thousand documented photographs and deemed seventy of them to be real. That is, actual photos of Nessie and not fake ones using toy boats and figurines.” Amelia sounded like a stuffy professor giving a lecture.
“How did you do that?” Clivo asked, already amazed by the smarts of the group.
“That’d be me,” Charles said, raising his hand. “Most are easy to debunk. You just look at forced perspective, examine shadows on the water, pixilate the images, and look for inconsistencies, etcetera. Others are a little trickier, but nothing a night of Moxie soda and energy drinks and Cheez-Its can’t handle.”
Amelia pointed a red laser dot at Charles’s chest.
“Charles is our film and photography expert. Show him any photo or video and he can verify its authenticity within a day.”
“Within a minute, yo. And don’t point that thing at me! It freaks me out, like a sniper’s got a rifle pointed at my chest.” Charles tried to wave the red dot away from him.
“Have you ever had a sniper’s weapon pointed at your chest?” Clivo asked, a bit curious. Ever since he’d discovered that aliens and other cryptids really did exist, his orientation as to what was and wasn’t possible in the world had been majorly out of whack.
“Dude, when you know the stuff that we know, it’s just a matter of time.”
Clivo wasn’t sure about that, but Charles’s intense angry-rabbit look was very convincing.
Amelia clicked the control and hand-drawn pictures of Nessie glowed on the screen. The monster looked like a long serpent with multiple humps sprouting out of the water.
“Next up, going through literature and finding stories, no matter how obscure, that reference the cryptid. Legends always have some grain of truth to them. There are very few that are just pure fabrication.” Amelia grabbed a flashlight and placed it under her chin, giving her face a ghostly glow. “That’s my department. I found over two hundred references to a sea monster in the loch, going all the way back to the first century AD, well before she was documented by photo.”
“But I thought cryptozoology and mythozoology were two totally separate things,” Clivo said.
Adam groaned. “Let me guess, you were on IMythsThePast.com. Those guys are so boring.”
“They kind of are separate things,” Amelia continued. “Cryptids are animals from folklore that may actually exist, it just hasn’t been proven yet. Myths are stories created to explain the world around us, and they sometimes include gods and magical creatures. Now, most people don’t believe mythological beings actually exist. Nobody has seen Zeus, Medusa, or the Minotaur, or at least there are no reliable accounts in the modern historical record. But if we did have a sighting of them, they’d be considered a cryptid. At least according to us.”
“And we’d be after them like stink on a monkey,” Adam said, popping some grapes into his mouth.
Clivo looked around in disbelief. He was officially stepping into territory that made his brain hurt. “You don’t actually believe in Zeus, do you?”
Amelia shrugged. “We’re more science based. We don’t discount the possibility that he exists, but we focus our attention on things that have more data attached to them.”
Clivo opened his mouth, then shut it again. Aliens and Bigfoot were about all he could handle right now. Contemplating the existence of gods would have to wait.
Amelia clicked her control again and what looked to be satellite photos of the loch sprang onto the screen.
Clivo leaned forward in amazement, or as much as he could lean forward while sitting on a beanbag chair.
“Are those satellite photos?”
“Sure are. Miss Hacker over here was able to break into a private satellite and steal a peek from above. As you can see, we found a shape in the water that matches the size and description of Nessie, even with the poor resolution.”
Stephanie spoke next. She was eager but timid, like a mouse delicately sniffing a delicious piece of cheese.
“I was only able to gain control of the satellite for a few minutes before I was bumped off. But I’m hoping to increase my time and, someday, get into a government spy satellite. Their visual precision is incredible. I could zoom in from six hundred miles above Earth and tell if you’re wearing contacts. Which you’re not.” She suddenly blushed and averted her eyes, which had been gazing intently into Clivo’s.
“Wait, you can hack satellites?” Clivo’s respect for the group was going through the roof.
“This presentation will go a lot faster if you keep your constant expressions of amazement to a minimum,” Adam offered.
Clivo made a zipper motion with his fingers across his lips.
The screen clicked again and again, showing pictures of boats trawling the loch with various nets and sonar equipment.
Amelia continued, “Hernando here is our information sifter. He takes everything that Charles, Stephanie, and I find and makes sense of it all. Triangulates coordinates, that kind of thing.”
Hernando cleared his throat. “Can I have the laser, please?”
“Huh? Oh sure, sorry about that, Hernando.” Amelia pointed the red laser at his chest. “He also researches previous attempts to find said cryptids and gathers their data.”
Amelia turned off the laser and rubbed her hands together.
“So, once we’ve done all of that, we usually have a pretty good idea if the cryptid is real or not and where to find it.”
Clivo scratched his head. He had so many questions he wasn’t sure where to begin. “So why hasn’t anybody found Nessie? If there have been so many searches, it seems like somebody would have found her by now.”
For the first time Amelia seemed hesitant and uncertain. “Ah, that’s the mystery now, isn’t it? They’re not called ‘hidden animals’ for nothing. Every cryptid is a singular, unique creature that has adapted to avoid detection, sometimes for centuries. They are rare evolutionary mutations that have survived specifically because they haven’t been found. But, just as each cryptid is unique in its evolutionary development, it’s also unique in its ability to hide.”
“Unique in its ability to hide?”
“Perhaps they’re invisible or really good at camouflaging themselves. It’s different for each creature. We know they’re there—the data are sound—they’re just super hard to find.”
“So how do you find them?” Clivo asked.
Stephanie leaned in again, her brow furrowing. “We actually don’t know. That’ll be your job to figure out.”
A voice emanated from the other corner of the room.
“I’ve been waiting patiently over here, people,” Adam said, waving his arms dramatically.
Amelia flipped to the next slide, which showed a maniacally smiling Adam wearing lab safety goggles and holding two flaming glass beakers. Amelia sighed.
“Sorry, he wanted a rather dramatic photo.”
Adam unfolded his gangly limbs and stood up from his chair. “To wrap up this rather dry yet informative session, yours truly figures out how the animal evolved. Like how Peter Parker became Spider-Man. I deduce its origin story.”
“Origin story? Like, where it was born?” Clivo asked.
“Not where it was born, but how it was born,” Amelia said. “It’s possible it was born as it exists today, but it’s more likely it morphed into what it is due to some event.”
“Like Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider: Whammo! We have Spider-Man! Best origin story ever!” Adam interjected.
“Dude! Not even! Captain Marvel is. An ancient wizard named Shazam bequeathing you a lightning bolt is so much better,” Charles argued.
“I’m not getting into this with you, dude!” Adam yelled.
Amelia rolled her eyes and continued. “Keep in mind, most cryptids are hundreds, if not thousands of years old. That’s impossible, unless something cataclysmic happened to cause an anomaly in their biology.”
“Moving along,” Adam said, “once I figure out the origin story, I deduce how they hide. With Nessie, we think she’s evolved to camouflage herself so thoroughly she can basically become invisible. It’s the only plausible reason for why she can exist in an enclosed body of water, completely surrounded by humans yet seen by so few people.”
Charles nodded. “As Sherlock Holmes said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
Clivo shook his head in awe. “How did you guys come up with all this?”
Amelia turned off the projector and flipped on some lights. “We all go to a magnet school for kids with freaky-deaky intelligence. While you were learning long division, we were mastering trig and calculus. Or while you were pondering the rather obvious metaphors in Animal Farm, we were reading Shakespeare’s canon.”