The Cryptid Keeper

by Lija Fisher

  “Jerry, you know I don’t share top secret information with you, so go ahead,” Mr. Cooper responded.

  Jerry winked at Clivo. Jerry knew plenty of top secret things, mainly because he kept stealing the password to his father’s work computer. “Anyway, we have this new machine that analyzes bits of asteroids for living microbes and stuff. You know, to see if there’s smaller life besides big green alien people, or whatever aliens look like, floating around out there. I get to label and tag the asteroid samples before the lab tech gets them.”

  “Just don’t contaminate them again!” Mr. Cooper said. “You were handling the samples with those greasy hands after eating french fries! Wear the gloves! If there were any living microbes on that sample, you probably killed them all, that’s for sure.”

  Clivo paused, his fork over his plate, as a thought came to him. “How do you contaminate something?”

  Jerry sighed. “I’m learning that anytime you introduce something foreign to a sample, you contaminate it.”

  “Like with french fries!” Mr. Cooper said. “Before your goof was discovered, half our team was thinking there was a burger joint floating around in space.”

  Clivo put his fork down, a question forming in his head. Something was happening to the cryptids after he caught them. Was he somehow contaminating them? If he was injuring the cryptids, he’d never forgive himself.

  “Mr. Cooper, can this machine tell if you’re hurting a sample by contaminating it?”

  “Oh sure, sure.” Mr. Cooper wiped his chin with a napkin. “The machine can tell if life is present, and it can also tell if something that’s been introduced to it kills it. Like with french fries!”

  Jerry threw down his napkin in frustration. “I get it, Pa! I’ll wear the gloves! Point received and understood!”

  Clivo continued with his line of questioning. “And, let’s say you had a drop of, oh, say, blood. Could this machine tell if something contaminates the blood and causes real harm?”

  Mr. Cooper pushed his glasses higher up on his nose. “Well, with blood you really just need an electron microscope to see its cells. These are very interesting questions, son. What is your science group working on up there? You’re not hiding a vampire up in the mountains, now, are you?” Mr. Cooper slapped his hand on his knee and let out a guffaw.

  Clivo joined him in the laugh. “No, sir. No vampires. Just maybe a contamination problem.”

  Jerry looked at him with a questioning expression and stood up. “Okay, parents, we’re going to retreat to my man cave for a bit before Dad drives Clivo home.”

  Clivo and Jerry took their plates into the kitchen and then headed upstairs to Jerry’s room, with the dog padding after them. Clivo put his hand on the door to open it and was immediately hit by an electric shock.

  “Whoa!” Clivo exclaimed, jumping back and shaking his stinging hand.

  “Jerry! I told you to dismantle that torture device!” Mrs. Cooper yelled from downstairs.

  “Clivo was my last victim, Ma! I promise!” Jerry replied.

  Jerry pulled a string that was hanging from the top of the door and safely turned the knob.

  “What was that?” Clivo asked, still shaking his hand.

  Jerry had a wide grin on his face. “You haven’t been here in a while, so you haven’t seen my improvements. Ma has started snooping through my stuff, so I’ve set a few booby traps to let her know a man is entitled to some personal space.”

  “Remind me to never get on your bad side.” Clivo gingerly took a seat on the desk chair after first making sure he wasn’t going to sit on anything that was going to electrocute his rear end.

  Jerry flopped onto his bed, Hercules cradled comfortably in his arms. “So what’s this contamination thing you were talking about? Bring me up-to-date with everything.”

  Clivo scratched his head. “The Myth Blasters have discovered that all the cryptids my dad and I caught have disappeared. I’m just figuring out possible scenarios for what’s going on.”

  Jerry rubbed Hercules’s belly. “But aren’t the cryptids, you know, disappeared already?”

  “They’re hidden creatures, for sure, but there’s still sightings of them. But out of all the cryptids my dad and I have found, only Nessie has been seen since. I hope it’s nothing, but I don’t have a very good feeling about it.” Clivo stood up. “Speaking of which, I should probably get back.”

  Jerry rolled a snoring Hercules onto the bed and stood up, too. “You just sat down, but okay.” Jerry spoke the next part quickly, probably because Clivo was rushing toward the door. “But before you go, I was kinda thinking…”

  Clivo stopped at the door. “Yeah?”

  Jerry stuck his hands in his pockets and looked bashful, which was not a common look for him. “Well, I was kinda thinking that maybe I could come up and, you know, help you guys. You’re always so busy now with everything, I hardly get to see you.”

  Clivo pouted his lips and said in baby talk, “Aw, do you miss having me around?”

  Jerry punched him on the arm. “Shut up, Wrenmaster! I’m just saying that if you’re going to be off saving the world, you’re gonna need more than just nerds on your team. And yes, I’m man enough to admit that I miss hanging out. There, you happy?”

  Clivo rubbed his arm where Jerry had playfully hit him. He was going to be black and blue from the visit if he didn’t get out of there soon. Still, he thought about what Jerry had just said and realized that he really had been ignoring his friend. Sure, he had been involved in important stuff, but what was the point of saving the world if he didn’t preserve the friendships that were in it?

  Clivo sighed. “I’m sorry, Coops. I know I haven’t been around a lot. My mind has just been elsewhere. I’d really like for you to be a part of the team, I just don’t really know what you could do.”

  A flash of hurt crossed Jerry’s face. “No, no, I get it. I’m not the smart guy and I can’t speak five languages. I can run a football, but that’s about it.”

  Clivo had never seen his confident friend look so disconcerted. Jerry was obviously struggling with where he fit into Clivo’s new life with the Blasters. Clivo suddenly remembered something Stephanie had told him the previous fall: There are many different ways to be smart.

  Clivo looked around the room, wondering how Jerry could possibly fit in with the team. He rubbed his fingers together, still stinging from the electric shock, and a thought struck him. A smile spread across his face as he thought more about it. It was perfect and used all of Jerry’s skills. “Actually, now that the Myth Blasters’ headquarters is in the house, we could probably use some more security.” Jerry lifted his eyes to Clivo’s, seeming interested. “I mean, my dad kept the house off the grid so nobody could find us there, but still. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few booby traps around.”

  Jerry’s face lit up with excitement. “Booby traps! Oh man, you know I’m the best at booby traps! I will make your house so safe that not even Houdini could break into it!”

  Clivo held up his hands before his friend could get ahead of himself. “Okay, but you have to promise to let Pearl and the Blasters know where the traps are. Aunt Pearl can’t get suspicious, and the Blasters need to be focusing on finding the immortal, not getting electrocuted.”

  Jerry’s face squinted in disappointment. “That makes it less fun, but okay. I’ll keep a master map of all the traps.” He bashfully shoved his hands into his pockets again. “Thanks, man. Thanks for bringing me on board. I was worried I had lost you to nerdville.”

  “Hey, we’re the original team, right? We’ll always be Wrenmaster and Coops,” Clivo assured him.

  Jerry smiled, his grin stretching across his face. “Till the end of time, man. Till the end of time.”

  * * *

  Mr. Cooper dropped Clivo off at home, and Clivo ran downstairs to the Blasters, who were hard at work, as always.

  “Charles, I’m not sending Clivo after the Yeti unless you have some shred of evidence that it might be
the immortal,” Amelia was saying. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “And too AWESOME!” Charles countered. “How can it not be the immortal? It’s so wicked!”

  “Hey, guys,” Clivo said, entering the dimly lit room.

  “Hey!” Adam said, kicking his gangly legs off his desk. “How was dinner with what’s-his-name?”

  “Jerry? It was really good. I actually thought of something regarding the missing cryptids.” Clivo had decided he would wait to tell them about Jerry’s new role. They had agreed not to add anybody new to their team, but they knew Jerry from when he gave them secret access to a SETL satellite, so hopefully they wouldn’t get their undies in a bunch over it. They might make Jerry go through some kind of initiation, but Clivo would worry about that later.

  “What did you discover, Clivo?” Stephanie asked, turning away from her computer, where it looked like she had hacked into a satellite and was steering it over a massive sandy desert.

  “I was thinking about what every cryptid had in common, apart from being caught by me or my dad,” Clivo began.

  “They’re totally awesome, that’s what,” Charles said. Amelia shot him a glare to tell him to be quiet. “Sorry, continue.”

  Clivo spoke slowly, trying to arrange his thoughts. “It’s possible that they’ve all gone into hiding because we scared them. Or—and I really hope this isn’t it—what if the tranquilizer I used on them is somehow contaminating them, making them sick? Or worse?”

  Amelia twirled her nose ring between her fingers. “It’s a solid theory. We know so little about the physiology of the creatures that who knows what could happen when a foreign substance is introduced. Now we just need to prove or disprove it. Any chance you have some cryptid blood lying around here?”

  Clivo held up the blood sampler that had been crammed into his backpack since his trip to Russia. “Would a bit of Ugly Merman blood do?”

  “Nice!” Amelia said, taking the sampler from Clivo. “Charles, does your magnifier have enough power to see red blood cells?”

  Charles went to his workstation, where he pulled out a large microscope. “Not a problem. Just give the doctor a minute, then I’ll be ready for the patient.”

  Charles exchanged a lens in the device for another and put a glass slide underneath it. He pulled a bright red sweatband from a drawer and put it around his head to pull his frizzy hair away from his eyes. After a few rolls of his neck, he peered through the microscope at the slide. He held out his hand, like a doctor asking for a surgical instrument. “Blood, please.”

  Amelia rolled her eyes, but unwrapped a sterile eyedropper and extracted a bit of blood from the sampler.

  Charles placed the drop on the glass slide and adjusted a few knobs. “Oh, yeah, this baby is kicking. Lots of squirming thingies moving around. Next patient.”

  Amelia unwrapped another dropper and this time filled it with some liquid from a tranquilizer dart. “Not too much,” she said, carefully passing the dropper to Charles. “We don’t want to drown it.”

  “I got it, I got it,” Charles said, bringing the eyedropper close to the blood.

  “Hang on!” Adam suddenly shouted. Charles paused, his hand above the blood.

  Adam ran to a closet, where he pulled out several pairs of goggles. “For all we know, this baby could explode once that tranquilizer touches it.”

  Everyone put on the goggles, and Hernando casually stepped to the back of the room and hid behind a chair.

  Charles continued with his task, though his hand had begun to tremble, and delicately placed a tiny bit of the amber liquid onto the red dot of blood.

  Clivo peered over Charles’s shoulder as the colors swirled together, but no explosion happened. The liquids blended and melted into each other, the colors mixing together like ink. He was worried the colors would all of a sudden go black or begin smoking, providing proof that he had somehow poisoned the cryptids, and maybe even killed them. But eventually the mixture stopped its movement and became a single still dot on the glass slide.

  Charles lifted his head from the instrument and wiped his forehead. “Everything’s fine, dude, the red blood cells are still squirming around. You haven’t done anything to hurt the creatures.”

  Clivo exhaled in relief. “Good. Thanks for doing that, guys. I didn’t want to tranquilize another cryptid until I knew for sure it wasn’t injuring them.”

  “And perfect timing, too,” Amelia said, holding up some pages from a printer. “We’ve identified your next catch.”

  “Already?” Clivo asked, amazed. He’d been hoping to have a few more days of rest. “Please tell me it’s somewhere warm.”

  Stephanie pointed to her computer screen, which showed a satellite image of what looked to be pyramids sticking up from a vast desert. “Yep, you could definitely say that.”

  IV

  The next day, Clivo was on a plane waiting to take off for Cairo, Egypt. Actually, it was a plane bound for JFK International Airport in New York City, where he would transfer to a flight to Amsterdam, where he would then catch a flight to the land of the pharaohs. The itinerary alone made him tired, but he was sitting comfortably in first class, sipping from a glass of orange juice. Douglas, his boss, had made him fly coach at first, but now that Clivo had proven himself to be a good cryptid catcher, Douglas had grudgingly allowed him to upgrade his travel, for which Clivo was very grateful. Catching cryptids was hard enough, but being wedged in coach for fourteen hours made the whole experience even more challenging.

  Speaking of Douglas, Clivo’s satellite phone suddenly rang, its loud torpedo warning shattering the peace of the cabin. Clivo fumbled for the phone and spoke quietly into it. “Hi, Mr. Chancery. Nice to hear from you, as always.”

  “Where are you headed now?” Douglas growled. Clivo could just picture the cranky old man with his red, bulbous nose and flyaway mane of gray hair.

  “Oh, I’m just about to take off for Cairo,” Clivo replied. He knew Douglas tracked all of his expenditures on the Diamond Card he used, so he wasn’t surprised that Douglas knew he had bought a plane ticket.

  “I hope this is for business, not pleasure,” Douglas said, sounding like he was munching on a very crisp potato chip.

  “Yeah, right, I’m going all the way to Egypt to work on my tan,” Clivo replied.

  “Don’t get smart with me, kid. Just because you’ve caught a few cryptids doesn’t mean you’ve lost the potential to be a pain in my rear,” Douglas said, crunching away.

  Clivo had to smile. Douglas was definitely a grump, but Clivo had come to appreciate his sour quirks. And Douglas was one of the good guys whom Clivo’s father had worked with as well. “Is there a reason you’re calling, Mr. Chancery?”

  Douglas went into a coughing fit, as if he had inhaled a piece of chip. When he could finally speak, his voice was raspy. “I just wanted to make sure you had enough tranquilizer darts. You’re running pell-mell all over the place and you must be getting low on supplies.”

  Clivo thought of the five cryptids he had used darts on, as well as the bear, and also the one they’d used to research if he was contaminating the cryptids. But he didn’t want to mention the last two to Douglas, who’d probably accuse him of being wasteful. He also didn’t want to mention the fact that the cryptids he’d caught were somehow disappearing. Douglas wanted the creatures protected as much as Clivo did, and he probably wouldn’t react well to such news. “Um, I could definitely use some for my next catch. Thanks, Mr. Chancery.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll drop some off when you’re back home. Oh, and quit taking taxis every time you come home. I’m not some limousine service. Buy a bike and build some stamina, would you?”

  “Should I flap my arms and fly across the ocean or can I still buy airplane tickets?” Clivo asked with a sigh.

  “Ha! I should make you swim, but I’m feeling generous. Good luck, kid, and remember…”

  “Don’t mess it up,” Clivo said, completing the sentence he knew all too well.


  Douglas let out a raspy laugh. “You’re not so bad, kid, you know that?”

  Clivo was about to respond when he realized Douglas had already hung up.

  The plane took off and Clivo settled into his seat, pulling out his printout of the latest crypto-research notes from the Blasters.

  Salawa Crypto-Research

  Okay, dude (Adam here), this was kind of a rush job since Arabic is spoken in, like, a million countries, and narrowing down which one has the dialect your father trained you in and then narrowing down which cryptids live there and which one might be the immortal took FOREVER. Anyway, here we are with the Salawa.

  The Salawa is super cool because it’s one of the oldest cryptids out there. It’s been around since 3100 B.C. That’s a long time for a dude to be roaming.

  The creature was part of ancient Egyptian mythology as the spirit animal of Seth, who was the god of destruction and chaos. The god of chaos was Seth? What a terrible name. Why not Ace, Blaze, or Argento? Whatever.

  Anyway, the Salawa has mainly been sighted near the town of Naqada, where tons of awesome tombs were built that now lie in rubble. Local lore suggests that the Salawa runs around protecting these tombs, some of which were built in honor of Seth. Does the god Seth reside in one of these tombs? Who knows—once we find the immortal, we’ll turn our attention to the existence of gods, but we kinda have a lot on our plate right now as we deal with SAVING THE WORLD.

  What Is the Salawa?

  The Salawa, according to legend and sightings, is a dog-shaped creature with square ears and a long snout. Nothing too crazy about that. The thing to watch out for might be its stiff tail, which ends in a sharp, pointed fork. This dude has been around a long time, so it might have adapted some wicked protection mechanism we don’t know about. I’d recommend staying away from the tail.

  Another Thing to Worry About

  Hey, Clivo, Amelia here. We have reports of a group of people in the region who call themselves the Wasi (“Guardian” in Arabic) and protect the Salawa. Word in the chat rooms is that if anyone comes searching for the cryptid, they are quickly shown the door in a not so very nice manner. The Wasi protect the creature because they still believe it’s the spirit animal of Seth and that anyone who hurts it will unleash Seth’s wrath in destruction and chaos. So watch out for them. And look out for the forked tail. Other than that, you should be fine.