Jack Dalton, Monster Hunter, The Complete Serial Series (1-10): The History of the Magical Division

by T S Paul

  Reaching behind him, the first agent grabbed a book from a small shelf and lobbed it at the desk across from him. Landing with a boom, the book bounced off the desk and hit the sleeping man in the head. He jerked awake with a “...the hell?”

  “Nice of you to join us, Simon,” the first agent replied.

  Simon rubbed his eyes and glared at him. “What did I say about throwing things at me, Arthur.”

  The menace in Simon’s voice when he spoke Arthur’s name was clear even to me. I doubted these two would draw down on each other at work, but I was a stranger in a strange land here. I kept a small caliber weapon in a rear holder at the small of my back, and I was seriously considering reaching for it now.

  “That you’d hurt me. But I know you didn’t mean it. We have company.” Arthur pointed in my direction.

  Turning his glare to me, Simon spoke. “And?”

  I blinked at him. “And what?”

  Making a motion with his hand, Simon looked back at Arthur. “Don’t keep me in suspense here. I have a lot to do today.”

  Arthur snorted but answered him, “He’s here about the Bigfoot problem. Remember that order we got from Washington?”

  “Seriously? I thought that was a joke.” Simon reached into one of his desk drawers and pulled out a wrinkled and torn sheet of paper. Squinting at it for a moment, he looked back at me. “Dalton?”

  “That’s me,” I replied.

  “Arthur and I looked into this case and couldn’t find any definitive proof of anything. More than half the reported sightings and ‘evidence’ collected for more than sixty years, if you can believe that, is pure fiction. Fake footprints and men in monkey suits. That’s what this office has concluded in more than one report. As my dad would say, pure hokum. But what Washington wants Washington gets. Those three cabinets behind the door are what you want.” Simon pointed.

  Looking to my left, I could see three overstuffed file cabinets with even more stuff piled on top of them. I shook my head and looked back at the agents. “How far back do they go?”

  Arthur smirked. “Officially? Since 1958 when the Humboldt Times wrote an article about footprints and unusual sabotage at logging and mining sites in the area.” Pointing at Simon, Arthur continued. “Our predecessors did a ton of research into the subject. Not much else to do around here. Our assigned area is pretty boring. Some of those reports go back at least a century. Not sure if you’ll believe them, though. We didn’t.”

  “There is more in our country than just heaven and hell. The Demon invasion should’ve proved that to us. What sort of Paranormals are around here?” I asked them.

  Both men gave me surprised looks. “We don’t have any of those here.”

  “Not possible. Paras are just about everywhere. With this much open space there has to be at least one or two Were Packs,” I informed them.

  Simon shook his head. “I don’t think so. The tribes around here would’ve said something by now. Both the state and national parks take up a huge portion of our area. If they exist, they’re hiding really well.”

  Arthur tapped his finger against his lips, then frowned. “There used to be a small reservation of Weres on the site of Fort Bragg. It was just a couple of buildings that included a really old barrack complex. Nobody had been interned there since the fort was abandoned in 1868. The Mendocino Indian Reservation was closed then, as well. The Army reopened it in the 1920s but closed it when the Magical Act was passed. I assumed that the Weres there left, but it’s possible they might still be in the town.” He looked at his partner for a moment then back to me. “We never thought to check.”

  “So, there might be Weres. What does that matter?” Simon asked me.

  “A lot, actually. Werefolk are very observant, especially when it comes to their territory and hunting grounds. If Bigfoot exists, they would’ve run across it by now,” I replied.

  Simon slapped his desk. “Then why isn’t there a report somewhere about it? We have Weres in the FBI, don’t we?”

  I smiled. “We do. But they, like most other Paras, don’t trust us all that much. We did put them in camps for more than thirty years.”

  Arthur shook his head. “We let them serve in the military and alongside us.”

  “To do that they had to swear loyalty to our government and were not allowed to go back to the reservations and their families for more than five years without permission. We treated them like third-class citizens for years,” I explained.

  “Still, they do take the same oaths that we do,” Simon stated.

  “They do, and they respect them. What takes precedent for you, family or government?” I asked him.

  “Family,” Arthur blurted out even as Simon said, “Government.” Both men glared at each other.

  “See? It’s a hard choice for some. I was raised by a Pack in Texas, one of the few humans to even do so. Most Weres trust Pack, family, friends, and then government.” I explained to them.

  Simon cocked his head to one side and gave me a strange look. “How did that come about? Being raised by them.”

  I chuckled, “It’s a long story, but one I’ll tell if you help me move these into one of the conference rooms.” I hooked a thumb at the file cabinets.

  “Now, that’s just not fair, but you’ve got me interested. Come on, Arthur, let’s get our exercise for the day.” Simon stood and motioned to the other agent.

  Moving the cabinets took the better part of an hour because we couldn’t find more than one hand truck. Walking them from side to side wasn’t feasible as they were so heavy. Once we got them moved across the hall, I told them all about my dad, his service in the war, and the Texas Pack I was initiated into.

  “So they just accepted you, like that?” Simon snapped his fingers.

  “Pretty much. My dad was considered to be family by his men. Have you spoken to any Demon war vets?” I asked him.

  “Just my own father, but he was in an artillery division, not on the front lines,” Simon replied.

  Pursing my lips, I nodded. “Not exactly the same thing. There’s a saying that there are no atheists in a foxhole. According to my dad, that’s how it was, fighting Demons. It was non-stop contact with the enemy. They were able to rip a tank open like it was made out of paper mache. Only the Weres in his unit kept him alive. The average lifespan of a tank crew was just under three days. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Knowing. Knowing for sure that your death was coming and that it would only be a statistic. Fighting for the greater good of humanity. That’s what my mother told me was the justification for throwing troops into the maw of Europe. Don’t get me wrong. I respect our government, but some things were just wrong. The Weres are what saved us. Something about their makeup or abilities enable them to kill Demons and make sure they stay dead. Four tanks were ripped from his personal unit. Four. When it was all said and done, the men that fought with him loved and respected him as much as anyone they grew up with. And when the last battle finally came they gave their all to keep him alive with their last breath. The Battle of the Line. It was the allies’ last great push against the large mass of Demonic forces threatening France. No matter what the newsies say, or the historians portray, we, as in our government, didn’t know what the Russians were planning. Like throwing a switch, they destroyed the Demon Gate and just about every Lord and Prince along with it. But it came too early to save my father and most of his crew. Tank number four was cut from beneath him and his men. In the aftermath they swore to protect and care for his family.” Casting my eyes downward, I drew a mystical symbol on my chest with my finger. “We didn’t know that at the time. So, you can imagine my mother’s surprise when she got an invite to Texas. It seems that one of his crew was a Pack Alpha. The rest, as you say, is history.”

  “My dad and grandad don’t speak of that time.” Simon shook his head. “Dad spent several months in the hospital after the war ended. I don’t know why. It’s some big secret in the family.”

  “Demon shock. It
was pretty common among those who served. In a few rare cases, there were possessions. Most of those were sent to secret army hospitals run by army intelligence or the VA itself,” I explained.

  “Really?” Simon asked me. He looked stunned.

  “Pretty much. The Pack that took us in numbered among them a great many veterans. I had a good education on the supernatural world. It’s one of the reasons I was selected for this job. I’m only starting to really see that now, actually,” I answered.

  “It was the Pack that suggested I join government service instead of the military. Because of Dad’s service, I could have gone to West Point or the Citadel. I went to the Academy at Quantico instead. The mixed one, not the strictly human one. It was the first year for it.” I leaned back against the conference room table. Rubbing my hands to shake off the dust, I looked over at Simon. “I like to think I made the correct choice. At least I get to see the country,” I mused.

  Simon snorted. “From what I know about you, I guess that’s true.” Nodding toward the door he gave Arthur a nudge. “We’ll be down the hall if you have a question.”

  “Ok, thanks,” I answered with a small wave of my hand. They closed the door behind them, leaving me alone with the files.

  “Where to start,” I mused as I scanned the drawers. They were labeled by year with the earliest being 1958. Using that as a starting point, I dove in.

  “Whoever these guys were, they were really meticulous,” I said as I closed the bottom drawer of the first cabinet. I could see where someone, possibly the two Agents who’d signed off on the initial reports, had been collecting this information for years. As Simon had stated, there were news articles and police documents going back to at least the turn of the century. Many, many, years before the great reveal in 1914. From what I knew of Paranormal society in that time, just these reports even existing was a rarity. I’d need to ask the guys down the hall who Gannon and Friday were.

  The really early reports were from the 1800’s. They consisted of Native American myths and legends. Many tribes believed in a wild man of the woods. Those in this area called the creatures Stick Indians, Bush Indians, shampe, siatco, and sasquatch. So far, my favorite of all the legends listed in the files was the one from the Lakota. Chiye-Tanka was the name given to what they called the shaggy men of the woods. “Big elder brother” is the literal translation. All the legends agreed on one thing. The creatures in the woods were non-violent spirits of nature, guardians of the woods.

  So jump ahead a century or so and the reports change. European settlers and travelers took the legends and twisted them. No longer a guardian of the woods, the Chiye-Tanka was now a “woodland ape” or monster that kidnapped young girls or attacked trappers and miners. In 1860, a German explorer came across the name “Wendigo.” He took this to be a version of the Sasquatch legend and propagated it. In his reports, the Wendigo was a monstrous creature that consumed those he caught in the woods. More a Demon than a woodland guardian. My own research, both at the FBI in Virginia and in the files, Anastasia gave me, claimed that the Wendigo was something else entirely. Something that I was sure to run into eventually.

  In 1924 a group of miners in Washington state reported that they were attacked by a “group of seven-foot-tall ape men” that tossed rocks at them. The men were exploring the area looking to start a gold mine and spotted the creatures. One of the men, Fred Beck, fired off a shot and the apes attacked. The large creatures threw themselves at the miners’ makeshift cabin and tossed boulders into the camp. The men claimed it was the ape men’s revenge for being shot at. They moved their operations farther south. Later, investigators searched the canyon where the men had been encamped and found nothing credible proving the story. The site of the campground is now called Ape Canyon as a result.

  There wasn’t a credible report until 1958, but there are many unverified stories. Loggers and miners up and down the Pacific Coast were reportedly attacked and sabotaged by tall shaggy creatures that were able to move thousands of pounds of equipment at will and left large footprints everywhere.

  A Northern California newspaper called the Humboldt Times printed a story about someone who’d found enormous footprints. They jokingly reported that the Abominable Snowman now had a cousin. Yeti was the name that indigenous people in the Himalayas called their own race of shaggy mountain people. The creatures, similar to Bigfoot, were supposed to live in unreachable areas and leave large tracks. Considered sacred by many, there were no known pictures of them. Agents Friday and Gannon gave the Asian reports little credence, but the Humboldt report was just the beginning. The Northwest was suddenly seized by Bigfoot fever and footprints were showing up everywhere!

  Now there were new tracks, complete with pictures of a site in Weitchpec, up on the Klamath River. They were found by an orthopedic doctor who swore the tracks weren’t a hoax. This was the report Anastasia referred to when she assigned this case to me. The doctor and his family had some pull in Washington and made it known that he wanted the instance to be investigated. Hence the reason I was here. But first I needed to talk to the guys down the hall.

  Simon and Arthur weren’t surprised, and actually anticipated my questions.

  “Those guys. Yeah…” Simon gave Arthur a look. “They followed Bureau policy to the letter except when it came to the Bigfoot case. Friday was obsessed with the idea of those creatures. He and his partner Gannon spent a lot of off-duty hours working on those files. It wasn’t until we had an upper management change that they were forced to stop.”

  “How so?” I asked them.

  Arthur snorted. “They got caught red-handed with reports piled up in their desks. The new guy just happened to be checking on open and current projects for all agents. You know the rules. No off-duty work in the office.”

  Simon took up where his partner left off. “They didn’t get fired though. Just reassigned.” He barked out a laugh.

  Arthur giggled. “They got volunteered for a Hollywood production. They wanted real-life experience to build on. Do you know how boring and tedious Los Angeles is these days?”

  I shook my head. This was actually my first time in California, not that I was telling them that.

  “We talked about the war already. LA was where most of the refugees went. The army closed down and declared most of Southern California off limits, including most of the valleys surrounding the city. It’s a mess. Most of the big studios lost their back lots to developers, and housing is at a premium there. Television is the next big thing as well. The positions came up and at first it looked good until you factor in the cost of living. Four hundred dollars a month? Even gas is mega high down there. We pay about thirty-five cents a gallon here, but I hear they pay almost fifty cents. Too rich for my blood. Most of my pay would be gone,” Arthur explained. “It was either transfer or quit.”

  “And the files?” I asked him.

  “Government property. Way too hard to delete them. You’re the first to request them since then,” Simon replied.

  “Ok, thanks. I’ll try to do them justice.”

  “The attacks aren’t working, sire,” Cenulf informed his war leader. “The humans continue to encroach upon us. This technology of theirs is too powerful for our weapons. They use cold iron in everything!”

  “Then think of something else. You are far older and smarter than the short-lived fools. Look at the Bans and figure a way. We will not bow to them, Cenulf. No matter what my cousins or the Council says, I will not yield my birthright to them. We were here first!” Jharak Forestbuilder slammed his spear into the ground and glared at Cenulf before storming from the glade.

  Cenulf sighed as his lord left him. For more than a century, he and his scouts had protected the forests and fields from any and all interlopers. The natives of this land were easy to fool. Any sound or strange occurrence was blamed upon the Watchers in the Woods or, as the natives called them, the Guardians. He laughed to himself. Guardians. When his people came to these lands there was nothing here, no
humans, no paranormals, no other Fae. There were reports of shaggy creatures in the woods, but that was a made-up fiction of children. No true sign of any such creature had been found. At least that is what the elders claimed. They made a good decoy against the humans, though. Fae Magick could be both beautiful and deadly if wielded in the proper hands. His hands. The human park rangers and road builders they could divert and wipe their minds but only so many at once. It was the lumbermen and the miners that were the worst dangers. Like most humans, they had little regard for the land and what was here before them. Slash, burn, rip, and mine was all they knew. His recent demonstration near the river hadn’t worked. Maybe his lord was right. More force might be needed after all. Tonight, he would gather his warriors.

  “Ana, this seems so much like a wild goose chase up here. I have the reports you’d requested. They go back way longer than just a couple of years.” I explained to her the personal hobby of the two Agents and the three bulging file cabinets.

  “You still need to try, Jack. This one comes down straight from the Director. The latest victim, a Doctor Charles Johnson, has been screaming at everyone he knows here, and it’s working. For someone from San Jose, he knows a lot of powerful people,” Ana stated. “Just go up to Weitchpec and poke around. Use your judgement and your training. If it’s all a hoax, then write it up and send it to me. But if it’s not, I expect you to do your job. You chose this life, Jack. Live up to it.”

  “Is the Director warming to the idea of the Magical Division yet?” I asked her.

  Ana laughed. “What do you think? He’s obstinate that way.”

  “I really only ask because of something someone here said,” I explained.

  “And?”

  “He said that the bosses here are creating their own fiefdoms beyond the control of Washington and the Director.” There was complete silence on the other end of the line. I couldn’t even hear her breathing.