The Monster Catchers--A Bailey Buckleby Story

by George Brewington

  Bailey smiled like he had a secret, which of course he did, and it was exciting to finally be able to share it with somebody. He was glad that somebody would be Savannah. He dropped his skateboard to the sun-bleached asphalt and pushed himself down Oceanview Boulevard. Savannah Mistivich grinned and, without another word, put her board down and followed.

  The afternoon was blue and the Pacific fog had burned off. Vacationing families that had just seen the magnificent ruins of San Francisco had heavy hearts and some nice photos and now wanted to stroll down the sidewalks of Whalefat Beach and maybe find a tasty barbecued whale blubber sandwich. Kids wore foam whale hats and parents wore beach-ready shirts they had bought that morning. Bailey saw that there were customers in the front room of their shop as he and Savannah skated up. The faeries’ shrieking, Abigail’s chirping, and Henry’s bass-drum barking could be heard from the front door. The mothers and fathers from out of town looked simultaneously curious and concerned, but Savannah giggled like Halloween had just been rescheduled for this very afternoon. Dougie Buckleby, sweating and overwhelmed, could not work the cash register.

  “Oh, thank goodness, Bailey. I need your help, son. This register refuses to cooperate with me. We’ll be right with you, good folks. You will love that hot sauce, ma’am, I guarantee it’s delicious on pizza. We’ll ring you up here in a moment—BAILEY!”

  “Hold on, Dad.”

  While Bailey jumped over the counter and took over for his bewildered father, Savannah dropped her board by the door and floated down the aisles like she was in a dream. Without hesitation, she drifted past the confused tourists, past the T-shirts and flip-flops and fake whale blubber, to the source of the sounds that she knew instinctively did not emanate from cats or dogs or an extra-large parrot.

  Bailey rang up the twelve-pack of gift-sized Whalefat Beach Blazing Bonfire BBQ Sauce bottles while simultaneously watching Savannah’s hand reach for the purple curtain. The family of four left the shop as quickly as possible to escape the terrifying noises that inclined them to drive straight back to Idaho without taking a single rest stop. Bailey watched Savannah pull back the curtain and reach for the doorknob of the thick oak door that lay behind it.

  Of course, the door was locked.

  Bailey’s father gave a friendly nod to the next customer in line as Bailey rang up her hermit crab purchase.

  “Your girlfriend is the curious sort.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend, Dad,” Bailey said, rolling his eyes.

  His father waited for the line of customers to finish before he said any more.

  “Bailey, I’ve always known that eventually you would want to share the world we know with a girl. But it’s important you understand that girls are going to come and go, and for a handsome, intelligent boy like you, they’re going to fall in love with you quite easily.”

  “Dad, you can stop now—she’s just a friend from my class.”

  His father grabbed Bailey’s head with his meaty four-fingered hand and shook it like it belonged to a teddy bear who was immune to concussions.

  “A monster hunter leads a dangerous life. He has to protect his heart, so take one piece of advice from your old man—women can be more dangerous than monsters, so don’t fall in love until you’re at least thirty.”

  “DAD!”

  His father stood up straight, chuckling at his son’s embarrassment. He gave Bailey one raised eyebrow and then marched proudly to the thick oak door.

  “Let me unlock that for you, young lady. Bailey will be happy to show you around. Watch your fingers.”

  His father held open the door and unlocked the wrought iron gate on the other side. Savannah stood up on her toes and Bailey scooted by both of them so that he would enter first and be the one to show Savannah what lay beyond. His father squeezed his shoulder as he passed. Bailey tried to play it cool, but he was excited to see just how she would react when she saw them all.

  And when she did see them, all she could do was put her hands together and whisper with pure joy—“Yes.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHIRP CHIRPETY-CHIRP

  “DOES SHE FLY?”

  “She flies,” Bailey said.

  “Does she speak English?” Savannah gasped.

  “No. She just chirps like crazy. All day long. See the white feathers on her belly and her wings with black tips? My dad thinks that she and the sea osprey have a common ancestor. It’s his theory anyway. I don’t know what Dr. Frederick March would think.”

  “Who’s Dr. Frederick March?” Savannah asked.

  “My role model. He’s the author of the book on monsters that I read from today. And kinda who I want to be when I grow up.” Although Bailey felt that familiar guilt for contradicting his father as soon as he said it.

  “You really are a beautiful lady, Miss Abigail. I’m very happy to meet you. Can I feed her?”

  “Sure. She goes nuts for sardines.” Bailey reached for a tin from the cupboard, stopping a moment to listen to the intercom. If he heard a faint crackle of static, it meant that his father was listening with a cloth over the speaker, a method of eavesdropping that his father believed, incorrectly, was clever enough to fool his son. But Bailey heard nothing, which meant the back room was entirely his kingdom to show her.

  He rolled back the tin key and she removed a slimy sardine without hesitation.

  “You like sardines, beautiful lady? Look how she cocks her head! I think she understands me.”

  “I don’t see how she could,” Bailey said. “She’s half bird, which means she’s half as dumb as a bird, which means she’s not smart enough to understand English.”

  “What an awful thing to say!” Savannah punched Bailey hard in the shoulder. “Bailey Buckleby, don’t you call her dumb! She has a bird body but a human head, which means she must have the best features of both. She has a human brain in that beautiful lady head, don’t you, beautiful Miss Abigail?”

  In fact, Savannah was entirely correct. Abigail did have a bird body but a human brain and did have sufficient faculty for the interpretation of language. What neither Bailey nor Savannah nor even Abigail knew was that a harpy has a syrinx in her throat rather than vocal cords. So although the rest of her anatomy from the neck up, including her brain, was human, her syrinx was entirely bird, allowing her to chirp, sing two notes at the same time, and even breathe in while singing out. She was a talented creature. She did not have the capability to speak English or any other human language, but having spent the past two years with the Bucklebys, she was starting to understand English quite well and was excited to now have Savannah’s attention. Madly, she sang Savannah all of her concerns: Where am I? Is this mirror in my cage the portal to a parallel universe where another one of me remains captured? Will I ever be set free so I can return to Greenland? And could I have more sardines right now, please?

  Of course, these concerns formulated in her human brain but were expressed through her bird syrinx, so all Bailey and Savannah heard was chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp chirpety-chirp?

  “She seems to have a lot to say,” Savannah said, handing her another sardine.

  “I wish we could let her out to spread her wings, fly around, and get some exercise, but she would probably fly off and never come back.”

  “Would that be so bad?” Savannah asked. “I bet she misses her family.”

  Abigail responded in the positive. Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp CH-CH-CHIRP!

  “My dad would be furious. He traded a ten-foot-tall one-eyed Redwood sasquatch for her.”

  “But what if she has children?”

  “You mean chicks?”

  “Or boys.”

  “No, I mean—”

  She left Bailey mid-thought to walk down the aisle toward the faeries, each of which tried to impress her. One gnashed its crooked teeth at her, one spit at a candlewick, sparking it into flame, another yelled “Hee-yaw!” and kicked a ball of its poop out of its lantern prison right at her nose. She dodged the poop ball ins
tinctively and effectively.

  “These little guys are nasty,” she said.

  “Very nasty,” Bailey agreed. “Some monsters can be tamed, but not these guys. They’d rip your face off the first chance they got.”

  Bailey showed her the hoop snakes and how you could pick one up and turn its end to its mouth so that it would clamp on to its own tail with its jaws and then stretch itself into a perfect circle. He set a clamped hoop snake down on the floor and it whizzed to the other end of the room. Savannah laughed as the snake did a 180 and came careening back toward them like a wild tire. They lifted their left feet to let it pass, then their right as it returned, then their left again until it tired itself out and Bailey put it back in its terrarium to chill out.

  “Who are these little cuties?” Savannah asked. She had found the ratatoskers, which had rat bodies and ivory tusks that curved up, stretching their upper lips into sneers.

  “They’re originally from Norway and can travel for hundreds of miles. If you give a ratatosker a letter, it won’t drop it for any reason.”

  “How does he carry it?”

  “You puncture the letter on his tusk and then he knows he has something important to deliver.”

  “How does the little guy know where to go?”

  “Well, Dr. March says ratatoskers have the best sense of smell of all monsters. So if you have any piece of clothing worn by the person you’re trying to reach, a ratatosker can pick up the scent. Then you let him loose and off he goes to deliver your letter. Ratatoskers have internal GPS systems, kind of like how birds know to fly south, and they’ll swim across an ocean or cross a whole bunch of mountains to get to their destination. Nothing will stop them from delivering your message.”

  “I like them.” Savannah smiled, rubbing each of their soft heads. “They’re like fuzzy miniature mail carriers.”

  When they came to Henry, he was already jumping up and down, ready to meet a new friend, his fists on the floor to hold him steady, his tongue wagging and wagging.

  “Look at this big blue boy!”

  With too hard of a squeeze, Henry could crush Savannah into jelly, but she showed no fear as Bailey unlocked the door to the former freezer and Henry bounded out, licking their faces.

  “He smells the ocean,” Bailey explained. “It gets him wound up for a run. Let’s go.”

  Roump, roump, roump!

  Savannah couldn’t believe her luck. “We’re going to the beach? With him? I’ve pretended to have a monster to play with my whole life. I never dreamed I’d get to for real!”

  Bailey smiled proudly as he took down the leash, the trench coat, the giant sunhat, and the oversized goofy sunglasses. Savannah practically fell on the ground laughing as Bailey held up the coat so Henry could slip his tree-trunk arms into the sleeves, missing them twice in his excitement.

  “This blue guy is something else.”

  “Henry’s our favorite for sure.”

  “I like him, too,” Savannah said with a grin.

  Bailey pressed the red button on the intercom.

  “Dad, we’re going to walk Henry.”

  “Okay, son,” his father said from just behind the wrought iron gate, where he had been spying on them the whole time. This annoyed Bailey a bit, but Savannah didn’t seem to care. She kept patting Henry on the shoulder.

  “You wanna go for a walk, boy? Go to the beach? You’re a happy blue boy, aren’t you?!”

  Roump roump roump!

  Henry wasted no time showing off his strength, pulling both Bailey and Savannah by the leash as he lunged forward on all fours. He practically dragged them down Oceanview Boulevard, through the seagrass and gravel and onto the damp sand. His tongue-wagging determination nearly made Savannah trip and fall, so Bailey scolded Henry, yelling, “Henry, calm down, you maniac!” He couldn’t wait to show Savannah how much Henry loved the beach and the ocean no matter how cold the water was.

  Until he saw who was there.

  Axel Pazuzu, in his black wet suit, stood where the water met the sand. The cynocephaly faced twelve goblins bobbing in the water, each one of them wearing snorkeling masks.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE UNIVERSAL CURRENCY

  STANDING TALL and with excellent posture, Axel raised his dog head proudly. With his black wet suit on and a patch to cover his Frisbee-damaged eye, he looked like a formidable pirate as he barked orders at the goblins.

  “Duck down, you scrubs! You have to get used to the cold water and the waves. Dive! Dive! Dive!”

  Seven of the goblins dropped down below the surface of the water. The other five didn’t hear or were just too scared to obey. “Dive!” Axel Pazuzu barked again, and Bailey could see that the goblins were also wearing wet suits as well as human-child-sized oxygen tanks on their backs. The wind demon was teaching the goblins to scuba dive.

  Henry splashed into the surf in pure happiness, lapping up the sea foam.

  “Whoa! Who are you? I love your ears!” Savannah said, running up to the cynocephaly as if there could be no possible threat. Axel bowed deeply to her.

  “Keep back, Savannah. This is a dangerous, lying wind demon,” Bailey said, but Savannah wasn’t scared of anyone and she had never seen a dog-headed man before.

  “Axel Pazuzu, miss. And who might you be?”

  “Savannah Mistivich.”

  “An honor to meet you, Miss Mistivich. And young Mr. Buckleby—so good to see you again,” he said, bowing to Bailey as well. “Though you gave me such a shiner, I fear I may never see out of this eye again.” He lifted the eye patch so that both Bailey and Savannah could see the bulging red tomato that was once, but no longer, a functioning dog eye.

  “You did that to him?” Savannah gasped.

  “Yes. This demon tried to kill my father.” Bailey unclipped a Frisbee from his belt.

  “I did indeed. I would ask your forgiveness, except that retaliating against your father was simply part of the job for which I have been hired. The Eighteenth Goblin Order of Star Guardians has asked me to protect them and aid them in their quest to put the stars back in the sky. Your father hunted down and captured two of the Order’s members. I am being paid to protect and aid, so I came to the rescue. Unfortunately, I have failed so far, and so these shrewd goblins are withholding my pay. But I assure them and you, Bailey Buckleby, that I will rescue both Canopus and Capella, as well as my beloved Daisy, and provide my fine employers with the means to put the stars they love so dearly back into the heavens. You should really let Capella and Canopus go. They are, after all, just hardworking, innocent goblins.”

  Bailey’s blood was boiling, but he managed to keep his temper in check. This manipulative cynocephaly had badly hurt his father and he did not forgive so easily.

  “So you’re their bodyguard?” Savannah asked.

  “Well, Miss Mistivich, I am their bodyguard but also their adviser. I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two in my long time on this planet. My knowledge is useful to some but comes at a price.”

  “Don’t try to hurt my father again,” Bailey said, anger shaking him. “Or I’ll take out your other eye.”

  The goblins stood completely out of the water now, and they started to move forward, but Axel raised his hand to halt them. It did not appear to Bailey that he was a hired bodyguard. It seemed more that he was completely in charge. Henry, oblivious, chased a seagull in circles.

  “Of course, it is natural for a human like yourself to have such violent instincts, Bailey. You must defend your family, as I must defend mine. Or at least the family that has hired me.”

  “You can’t buy your way into a family,” Savannah said, her voice rising.

  “Can’t you, dear? We are each members of many families. We call our blood relatives family because they give us a roof and meals. Our employers because they give us money. Our neighbors because we share land and mutually hate other neighbors. We fight for those who give to us; we war against those who take from us. I am a very old cynocephaly, so I
have seen many families kill one another over the years. But never have I seen a family take so much as the human family. You humans have taken so much of this world for yourselves, you’ve killed off many of its species and nearly all of mine. I’ve always been a fan of the underdog, and today, I assure you that the Eighteenth Goblin Order of Star Guardians is the underdog in this fight. Rowf!”

  “You only like the goblins because they pay you,” Bailey said.

  “Yes, of course. Well, not yet. They’ve agreed to pay me in gold after delivery of service. Everyone loves gold, especially humans! So it really is the universal currency. Don’t be so judgmental, Bailey. You receive pay to be in your family as well.”

  “My father loves me. My father is my real family.”

  “And your father pays you with kindness, food, and shelter. If he did not, you would be taken away by child protection services. But since he does pay you, you repay him by trying to be a well-behaved son and cleaning up faery poop.”

  “Nobody loved you as a child, did they, Mr. Dog-head?” Savannah asked.

  Axel scratched his doggy chin. “You know, it’s been so long, I can’t quite remember.”

  After a long, horrible pause, Bailey asked, “Did you know the cynocephaly that killed my mother?”

  The wind demon’s pointed ears stood straight up in the air. “Is that what your father told you? We cynocephali are the smartest salesdogs to sail the seven seas, but we are not murderers. But I’m not surprised your father would make such an accusation.”

  Bailey’s blood was hot, and he felt rage flowing through him. “You attack my father and then call him a liar?”

  The wind demon looked at the back of his hand and licked it calmly. “I do indeed call him a liar if the label fits. Seven years ago, my cousin Willard sold a baby to your father for a very handsome price. Your mother, however, thought the sale was unethical, so after six months had passed, she took the baby from your enraged father and fled. Now, once the sale was made and Willard had his gold, he did not care what became of the baby, but he happened to see your mother sailing away from Whalefat Beach as fast as she could with your father hot on her tail. Willard, who is not usually the compassionate sort, took pity on her and called upon a whale to protect her. But your father, in his anger, threw a stick of dynamite at Willard’s boat, and my cousin barely escaped with his life. In the confusion, your poor mother was swallowed by the whale and, I assume, digested. And your father, a man with no ethics at all, took the baby home and told you that he was a troll and not what he really was—a baby sea giant, kidnapped from his parents.”