Shadow Creatures

by Andrew Lane

It occurred to her, somewhere between one latte and the next, that she could easily go and get her passport from her room, head for Heathrow, stand in front of the ticket desk and say, ‘I’d like to buy a return ticket to Hong Kong, please.’ Nobody would miss her. The dream lasted while she got up and left the coffee shop she was in at the time, but after a few steps she stopped. The tickets for Rhino, Gecko and Natalie had been paid for by Calum, from his own seemingly inexhaustible funds, just like the flights to Georgia a few months back. Tara didn’t have the money to jet off around the world. She was a poor student.

  She felt that familiar crushing sense of loneliness falling over her again like a dark blanket. The more things changed in her life, the more they stayed the same.

  She headed for yet another small coffee shop that she knew, where they made cheap ham-and-cheese bagels and would let her sit for several hours nibbling at her food without disturbing her. Passing so many laughing families and groups of friends on the way made her loneliness feel more acute.

  Once she got to the coffee shop, she ordered a bagel and a drink and curled up in a corner seat, taking her tablet out of her bag. While she was waiting for her order, she thought she’d see if Rhino or anyone had mailed from Hong Kong. They hadn’t, but there was one from Tom Karavla waiting for her. Suddenly Tara didn’t feel quite so alone.

  Hi Tara!

  I was thinking about what you said – you know, about people making modern-day films and TV programmes with dinosaurs in them and assuming that no evolution had taken place in the meantime, and you’re right. The creatures would have changed quite a bit in the intervening time. For instance, there’s a biological law that says that animals living on an island or in an isolated area like a plateau tend to get smaller over thousands of years, because smaller animals need less food and tend not to starve. Well, it occurred to me that if any diplodocus had survived from the prehistoric era then they might have naturally grown smaller so they were the size of a dog now, or a triceratops that had shrunk to the size of a large horse. Wouldn’t that be great? You probably know about the dwarf elephant fossils that have been found in various places around the world – elephants that had naturally reduced in size over many generations until they were smaller than a person (well, smaller than some people, anyway). There’s supposed to be a group of these dwarf elephants still living in the rainforests of the Kerala region of southern India. The locals called them ‘kallana’, and they say they avoid associating with the ‘normal-sized’ Indian elephants (well, you would if you were less than a quarter of their size, wouldn’t you?). I keep hoping that thelostworlds.com will put up a photograph by some tourist or researcher showing that the kallana actually exist, but that hasn’t happened yet. (I don’t suppose that Calum Challenger has some images tucked away in a drawer somewhere that he hasn’t got around to using yet? That would be awesome!)

  Thinking about it, the other thing that gets me about dinosaur movies is that they only use the dinosaurs we know about. Given the infrequent way that bones get changed into fossils, and the difficulty in actually finding those fossils in the rocks, there’s no way we’ve found all the dinosaurs that ever existed yet. In fact, I saw a statistic recently that suggested we’ve only identified 30% of the types of dinosaur that ever existed. And yet whenever a dinosaur appears on film or TV, it’s one we already know about, rather than a new one that the special-effects guys could have come up with themselves. In fact, if you remember the film Jurassic Park III, the film-makers there used a type of dinosaur called a spinosaurus that had only recently been characterized. Funny, that.

  Sorry – I’m going on a bit. I tend to do that when I get excited about something. I’ll go now, but I just wanted to say that I live in London, so if you’re ever in the area let me know and I’ll buy you a coffee and talk about extinct animals that might not be extinct . . .

  Cheers,

  Tom

  He was in London? Instinctively, Tara looked around to see if there was anyone watching her, but of course there wasn’t. Everyone was minding their own business. He wasn’t there.

  London? She shook herself. Wow Yes, they could meet up for coffee. Tom sounded as if he had a very similar kind of mind to hers, and it would be nice to deal with someone like that on an equal level. Now she came to think about it, she still felt like a bit of an outsider with Calum and his friends. Every now and then, in her darker moments, she wondered if they were just using her for her computing skills – in a nice way, of course. Having a new friend who wasn’t part of that group would be great.

  Except that he would want to be part of that group. He had already made it clear that he loved thelostworlds.com and the kinds of things that Calum was into. Well, she would just have to manage that as and when it happened. It was a risk.

  There was another risk, of course – the risk that Tom wasn’t what he seemed to be. Everybody had heard terrible stories of girls arranging to meet in real life people they’d previously just met online, only for them to disappear or turn up dead. Tara didn’t want to become another statistic.

  Maybe she could subtly find out where he was going to be at a particular time – maybe say she might be able to meet up, but no promises. She could go along and watch out for him. If he was the guy from his photo, she could head over and introduce herself. If not, she could leave and never communicate with him again.

  Before she could have second thoughts about the dangers of this plan, she typed a response:

  Hi Tom,

  Thanks for emailing. I agree with everything you say about dinosaurs. It’s kind of interesting the way that they’ve been portrayed in films over the years – in those old 1950s and 1960s stop-motion films the T-rexes all stood upright, and the triceratops all had their legs sticking out to the side like crocodiles, which is the way the Victorian palaeontologists put the skeletons together, but more recently the tyrannosaurs have been horizontal, with their tails balancing their extended necks, and the triceratops have their legs beneath them like cows. Latest research indicates that some dinosaurs might have been covered with hair, or things like early feathers. I mean, we don’t even know what colour they were! Tyrannosaurs might have had bright red and yellow stripes, for all we know!

  I’m in London quite a lot. Let me know where you tend to hang out, and if I’m passing I might be able to pop in and introduce myself!

  Regards,

  Tara

  She felt a bit guilty, misleading him like that, but it was necessary. She needed to check him out without him knowing she was there.

  Who knew? If he was real, and if they got on together, maybe the relationship would lead to something on a different level. Which, she thought ruefully, would be a first for her.

  Calum stood in the middle of his apartment, wondering what to do now with his new-found mobility.

  The walk out to the park and back had been incredible; he’d crashed out as soon as he’d got home, and Tara wasn’t there when he woke up. He’d tried to check in with Rhino, Gecko and Natalie, but it looked as if they were still travelling. Desperate for someone to talk to, he’d even tried to call Gillian Livingstone so he could tell her how wonderful it was to be able to walk again, and how grateful he was, but her number went straight to voicemail. Knowing her, she had meetings stacked up with various scientists, technicians and potential investors.

  He looked around. There was always the website – thelostworlds.com. He hadn’t spent much time on it recently, not now that Tara had been given administrator privileges, but it was always possible that someone had emailed in with a new report of some cryptid somewhere in the world.

  He was just kidding himself. He wanted to keep walking. He wanted to revel in the unexpected luxury of actually being able to move around without hanging from straps or using crutches.

  He glanced over at the window. The sun was low in the sky, but the weather was good. He could always go out for another walk. The moment the thought crossed his mind, he recoiled from it. He’d spent so long cooped
up in his apartment since the accident that the idea of actually talking to strangers, or being somewhere unfamiliar alone, was scary.

  Briefly he wondered about heading over to see his Great-Aunt Merrily and showing off the new bionic legs to her, but he knew he’d have to stay for hours while she chatted, and he wanted to be sure that the legs were going to be a full-time solution before he went public with them.

  So, what could he do?

  His mind flicked back to the moment earlier that afternoon when he and Tara had walked – walked! – down the stairs and left the warehouse. They had passed the door to the bottom floor of the warehouse, where his great-grandfather’s possessions and artefacts were stored. There were crates of them, all labelled, from the many expeditions that Professor George Challenger had made between the years 1899 and 1933. Calum had always wanted to take a look around. Before the crash he’d never found the time; since the crash he’d not had the mobility – and he certainly wasn’t going to send anyone else down there on his behalf. But now . . . now he could simply wander down there and take a look for himself.

  Part of his mind tried to point out that wandering around by himself with a new and relatively untested pair of bionic legs was not a good idea, but another part responded that there might well be crates containing stuffed or preserved cryptids, found in various remote locations, and what was the point of going to Hong Kong in search of one when there might be an example of it less than a hundred metres away? Would the DNA still be viable? Well, he wouldn’t know until he checked.

  He left his apartment, setting the security system behind him, and headed cautiously down the stairs. At the bottom he turned right instead of heading straight on to the front door. There was another door there, in the shadow cast by the stairs. It was made of riveted metal, like the door to Calum’s apartment, and it had a similar alarm system connected to it. He typed in the security code. Fortunately he’d had it changed to match the upstairs one when he’d moved in and upgraded the whole system. The door clicked, and opened an inch.

  He pushed it further open and entered the room beyond.

  It was less of a room and more of a cavern. This was the original warehouse space, unmodified: a huge area filled with piled-up wooden crates of various sizes. Aisles had been left between the stacks: a winding maze of narrow canyons running between wooden cliff-faces. The windows were boarded up, but stray beams of sunshine penetrated through chinks in the boards and formed a diagonal lattice of light across the entire area. Motes of dust drifted through the glowing lattice and glittered for a few seconds before they vanished again.

  Just to one side of the door, tucked out of the way, was the metal bulk of the ARLENE robot that Gillian Livingstone had provided the team for their trip to Georgia. It was about the size of a horse, with six legs instead of four, but its ‘head’ was a collection of cameras, sensors and lights, and its ‘skin’ was metal plating. He shuffled past it, patting it on the side as he went.

  In the light trickling in from outside, Calum could just about read the words that had been stencilled in big black letters on to the sides of the nearest crate.

  PROFESSOR GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER

  SOUTH AMERICA EXPEDITION

  APRIL 1912

  CRATE #233

  CONTENTS: ASSORTED PTERODACTYL EGGS (BROKEN)

  Pterodactyls? This had to be some kind of mistake, surely. Professor Challenger might have found some fossils that he thought might be pterodactyl eggs, but they wouldn’t be real eggs. That would be . . . insane.

  He looked at the stencilled sign again. Crate #233 of Professor George Challenger’s April 1912 South American expedition. That meant there were at least 232 other crates, and that was only in the unlikely event that he’d accidentally stumbled across the last box.

  He moved further down the row. The next crate in line also had a label stencilled on it, but this one was slightly different.

  PROFESSOR GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER

  SOUTH AMERICA EXPEDITION

  APRIL 1912

  CRATE #232

  CONTENTS: ASSORTED PTERODACTYL EGGS (INTACT)

  DANGER! DO NOT STORE AT TEMPERATURES ABOVE 30° C!

  Why not? What were they going to do – hatch?

  Smiling to himself, Calum walked along the aisle. Many of the crates were from the 1912 South American expedition, but there were other expeditions there as well: a 1909 Siberian expedition, a 1915 Arctic expedition, a 1925 expedition to the South China Seas. His great-grandfather had obviously spent an awful lot of time away from home. Pity his poor family.

  He came to a junction, and on a whim turned left. The crates along that aisle didn’t seem to be associated with any expeditions. One was labelled:

  PROFESSOR GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER

  CONTENTS: SAMPLES FROM DRILLING THROUGH EARTH’S CRUST

  DECEMBER 1927

  CRATE #5

  Another, a little further along, said:

  PROFESSOR GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER

  CONTENTS: SAMPLES OF SOPORIFIC ETHERIC GAS BELT

  JANUARY 1913

  DANGER! DO NOT OPEN WITHOUT

  RESPIRATORS/OXYGEN SUPPLY

  Next to it was a much larger crate labelled:

  PROFESSOR GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER

  JANUARY 1929

  CONTENTS: DISINTEGRATION MACHINE

  EXTREME DANGER!!

  DO NOT CONNECT TO ANY ELECTRICAL SUPPLY!

  A disintegration machine? That had to be a joke, surely.

  All he could see ahead of him were more and more crates. He could spend hours down here, but he was beginning to realize that doing any serious inventory of the warehouse’s contents was going to take time. At least he’d scoped the problem out, he consoled himself. And done it on his own terms.

  He turned round and headed back to the crossroads where he’d turned left, but instead of turning right, back towards the lobby, he headed straight on, down the right-hand arm. His curiosity was engaged, and he was still revelling in his ability to walk.

  For the first hundred metres or so it was just more and more obscurely labelled crates, but then he came to an area that had been left clear. Well, clear apart from an object about the size of a bus that was covered in a dusty old tarpaulin.

  What the hell? he thought. It wasn’t as if there was a sign saying: Keep Off! Or even: Danger! Keep off if you value your life! So he pulled the tarpaulin away.

  And froze in shock.

  It was a dinosaur. Fortunately it wasn’t moving.

  It was stuffed – that much was obvious from a second’s examination. It had a lumpy look to it, and Calum could see a line of stitching running underneath its belly where two skin seams had been secured together. It was also covered with cobwebs that had been built over the course of probably a hundred years by generation upon generation of spiders. The cobwebs filled the area underneath it with a hazy mass of dusty strands, and gave its head a strange and inappropriate beard. It had been mounted on a wooden base that had to be six metres long and three metres across, and which was barely large enough to take the creature.

  Except that this was a dinosaur like Calum had never seen before. He would have recognized a stegosaurus, a triceratops, a T-rex, a diplodocus and probably seventy or eighty other different types of dinosaur. This particular one had four legs and a long, muscular tail, but its body seemed to be covered with thick armoured plates, and around its neck area was a frill of sharp spines, all pointing backwards. Its head was small and wide and snake-like, and covered with smaller spines. Spiders had built cobwebs between the spines as well.

  By its front right foot was a label that read:

  SPECIMEN OF PREVIOUSLY UNDISCOVERED DINOSAUR

  STUFFED BY PROFESSOR GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER

  DURING THIRD SOUTH AMERICAN EXPEDITION, APRIL 1917.

  PROVISIONALLY NAMED MULTICERATOPS CHALLENGERII

  (AWAITING CONFIRMATION)

  Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

  Calum reached out t
o touch the skin of the creature. It was dry and leathery, and covered with dust, just the way he thought it would be, but the idea that he was actually touching the skin of a real dinosaur was mind-blowing. Especially if it was one that had been missed, apparently, from all the catalogues and textbooks.

  He stared at the creature for a while, marvelling at it, and then covered it up again with the tarpaulin, leaving it the way he had found it. There would be time later for a full examination of the warehouse and its contents – preferably with his friends there to help. For now, he was content in the knowledge that he had a storehouse of wonders located just below his apartment.

  He turned to head back to the lobby.

  Something clattered against wood. It sounded as if it was about thirty metres behind him.

  As he turned, Calum thought he saw something move at the far end of the aisle. It looked as if someone had been watching him, and had ducked into one of the side aisles as soon as they’d realized they’d been seen.

  ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Tara, is that you?’

  No reply. He took a couple of steps towards where the sound had come from. ‘Mr Macfarlane?’

  Still no answer, but Calum thought he could see a shadow cast by one of the diagonal beams of sunlight. It looked as if someone was standing just round the corner of an aisle, hidden by a crate.

  The shadow suddenly shifted. Now that he was listening, Calum thought he could hear footsteps moving away. A sudden flush of anger ran through him like a hot wave. This was his warehouse, and someone was in it!

  He couldn’t run – at least, he didn’t think he could run, not with the bionic leg braces – but he moved as fast as he dared along the aisle back to the crossroads.

  He could see nothing. No movement, no people, nothing. The dust on the floor was disturbed, but Calum had come from there, so he was probably just looking at his own footprints.

  He sighed. Whatever the situation was, he ought to head back to his apartment. If there had been someone here and they had left, then he could set the security lock again to stop them from getting back in. If there had been someone here and they were still hiding, then he would lock them in, and the motion sensors would tell him if they moved. Then he could call the police.