The one person that made her feel like she wasn’t wasting her breath.
This time it was a man, sitting toward the back. He wasn’t a student; she’d guessed that from his thinning gray hair and stout build. Maybe a professor? It didn’t matter. He was attentive, alert, and seemed to hang on every word that came out of her mouth, and that was enough fuel to keep Emily going.
He raised his brow toward the heckler as if asking her, What are you going to do about it?
Emily rolled her eyes and shrugged. Why could she do? She could go on the defensive, maybe shoot back a sarcastic comment of her own, but from experience she knew all that did was instigate a snippier dialogue than she was trying to achieve.
Thankfully her time was almost up, so she turned, ignoring the moonshine commentator, and began gathering her things. A briefcase, three books she’d written on cryptids in American history including her most recent, and a plastic statue of a large dragon she’d brought along for show. It didn’t really add anything to the lecture; she just figured that since she was speaking about dragons, she’d bring a dragon.
“Miss Nite?” someone in the front asked.
Emily turned, tucking a stray strand of red hair that had broken loose from her ponytail back behind her ear. She smiled politely at the young woman who’d caught her attention, and the girl in turn looked sheepishly at the floor while shifting uncomfortably in her chair. Emily took a step forward, acknowledging her further while recognizing a bit of herself at that age. Shy, compliant, never one to rock the boat. Despite the crowd of skeptics, she could tell this girl wanted to believe, but at the same time she didn’t want to be singled out.
“Yes?” Emily urged.
The girl’s soft brown eyes raised to meet her own, and she asked rather timidly, “Do you really think all this stuff exists?”
Emily’s gaze flickered briefly to the man at the back, who’d leaned forward in his chair to hear their exchange.
Who is he?
“I think,” she beamed, “that not everything in this world has been discovered. That there could exist creatures beyond our understanding that stretch the limits of what we perceive as reality.”
She noticed that it wasn’t only the girl and the man in the back listening now. Her words had grabbed the crowd, giving her the jolt of electricity she needed to finish with a bang.
“Biodiversity scientists estimate that we’ve discovered less than ten percent of the species on earth. Ten percent! In 2015 we discovered everything from ghost sharks in New Zealand, to Dracula ants living deep below the surface of Madagascar. Who’s to say there isn’t a bipedal primate that’s escaped the evolutionary chain roaming the wilderness, or a great megalodon deep in the Mariana Trench? I’ll go one step further and say there could very well be dragons still populating our earth somewhere, hiding, living in a remote part of the world untouched by the footprints of explorers. Remember, every great legend stems from some form of truth, and the truth is…we just don’t know. But me?”
She looked from the girl to the man and out over the crowd of people. Their skeptical expressions shifted, perhaps coming to the realization that maybe—just maybe—this woman knew what she was talking about.
Emily grinned, looking back at the girl in the front row.
“But me?” she repeated, a little quieter this time. “I want to believe.”
She winked, causing an array of kindhearted giggles to rise up as many recognized her familiar words. Laughter was quickly followed by applause, bringing the evening to a close, and students came to the front to thank Emily personally, and get their books signed. They were few in number, but they were at least a number, including the girl from the front row, bringing hope to Emily that the night wasn’t a total loss.
In her line of work it was always hard to tell what she was walking into with one of these lectures. Sometimes she found a crowd to be completely receptive to what she had to say, and other times they shut her down within the first few minutes, being nothing but argumentative for the duration of her time. Once, in Philadelphia, a man called her the anti-Christ before spitting in her face, saying God would never allow such abominations to walk the earth.
She often wondered why those sorts of people even bothered to attend her talks if they didn’t want to listen to what she was saying.
Such was the life of a cryptozoologist.
“Thank you so much, Miss Nite,” the girl from the front row said, handing her a copy of American Dragon. “That was a lot of fun.”
“Please, call me Emily, and don’t ever stop asking questions, okay? Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it never stopped anyone from living an interesting life.”
She signed the book to Sophia Núñez, handing it back to the shy, freckled student, who nodded politely and scurried away.
Continuing to answer questions for the better part of an hour, Emily noticed the man sitting toward the back of the library hadn’t moved. His gaze was still fixed on her as she talked animatedly with students about everything from Loch Ness, to one boy’s experience with a poltergeist—something that also resided in Emily’s wheelhouse because although her official title was cryptozoologist, her interests covered a wide variety of topics, including the paranormal.
By the time everyone had cleared out, the clock on the wall was pushing 8:30, with roughly 30 minutes of daylight left to burn on the warm July night. Emily placed her dragon statue in a tote bag, grabbed her briefcase, and turned to leave, only to find herself blocked by the man from the back, who was now very much in front of her.
“Miss Nite?” he asked, though it was rhetorical. They both knew who she was.
Emily fixed her eyes on his weathered face, and though it had seen a good sixty years at least, there was no trace of an elderly haunch to his posture. No sign of weariness to him at all, really. She’d been wrong about him. He wasn’t stout. Quite the opposite. He was heavy, sure, but from the looks of this man his heaviness could be attributed to muscle rather than the comfortable, soft mass someone of his age might’ve accumulated over the years. Dressed in a dark suit, he reminded her of a decorated general. Someone stately and defined.
“Yes?” she answered.
He smiled. Not with his mouth, but with his eyes. They squinted ever so slightly into warm almonds that glowed back at her, sparking a hint of recognition, and prompting her to think that this man could be anyone’s grandfather.
“Do I know you?” she followed up.
This time the smile showed on his face. Thin lips curled up into a mischievous grin as he stuck out his hand. Emily took it, her fingers dwarfed by his.
“No,” he said. “But I know you. I’m an old friend of your father.”
She flinched. Her father? The two hadn’t spoken since she left home at 17. It had been a while since she’d stopped to dwell on their severed relationship, but now those memories crept into her psyché, flooding her with feelings of anger, remorse, and fear.
“Yeah, well, if you knew my father then you know why I left.” There was a bite to her tone she didn’t mean to display, and she instantly regretted it. Still, after all these years, he could do that to her.
The man held up his hands in mock surrender. “Easy. I’m not here to talk about your father, Emily.”
“Who are you?”
“Frank Tempo,” he said. “I enjoyed your latest book, American Dragon. Quite the fascinating read. I’ve always had a thing for dragons, you know. Such remarkable creatures. Did you know that in the Celtic tradition if your power animal is a fire dragon it will help you overcome any obstacle?”
“It also serves as a protector,” she added, much to the delight of the elder man. “Bestowing the qualities of leadership and mastery, as well as—”
“I see a lot of that in you,” he interrupted. “The way you take control of a crowd when you’re speaking. Oh, maybe not tonight, but that wasn’t your fault. Some people just aren’t ready to hear the truth, but I was at your lecture two summers ago in
Colorado, and I saw it, Emily. You had those people on the edge of their seat like only a good leader can. Yes, I’d say you definitely have some fire dragon in you.”
She felt the redness of an instinctual blush creep into her cheeks. Compliments weren’t her strong suit, so when she received one it always made her feel out of place, like she hadn’t worked hard enough to deserve it.
Frank Tempo waved away his words as if they still hung in the air between them. “Listen to me, huh? The ramblings of an old man.”
Emily offered him a pleasant nod, appreciating the compliment even if she didn’t know what to do with it. She shifted her weight awkwardly from foot to foot. “No, it’s okay. Thank you.”
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” he asked.
She looked around the barren library, at the stacks of books and the few staff who were prepping to close up for the night. “Aren’t we already talking?”
A brisk laugh escaped him. “Indeed we are, but I’m afraid what I have to discuss requires a little more privacy.”
Although he didn’t strike her as someone whose mind might be going, Emily had been approached by men like Frank before who’d wanted to talk, and at first she’d obliged them, but after listening to crazy conspiracy jargon about fake moon landings and presidents able to control the weather one too many times, she promised herself she’d reserve her time for those who had a more controlled approach to the world.
The verdict was still out on this man.
“Mr. Tempo,” she sighed, “it’s been a long day, and as much as I’d love to sit and talk with you about dragons, I really do have to be—”
“You misunderstand me, Emily. I don’t want to talk about dragons.”
She cocked her head to the side, a bit confused but admittedly still somewhat intrigued by his presence. He knew her father, knew about her work, obviously knew his folklore, but if he didn’t want to talk about dragons, then…?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What is it you want to talk about?”
Please don’t say aliens. Please don’t say aliens. Please don’t say—
“Spiders,” he said. “I need to know everything there is to know about spiders.”
Crazy Eights is available from Amazon here!
Tempest Outpost Page 11