Creature Keepers and the Perilous Pyro-Paws

by Peter Nelson

  “He doesn’t have a family,” Jordan said.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Grimsley said. “You didn’t tell us that.”

  “Well, he kind of does,” Jordan said. “But it’s not a particularly usual type of family.”

  “No family is perfect,” Mr. Grimsley said. “Even ours. Although we’re close. We’re very, very close.”

  “Again,” Abbie said. “You have no idea.”

  Jordan continued. “The thing is, I think he feels like his family might be slipping away. He was hoping to come here to find a long-lost member of that family. I think maybe he was hoping that might help him feel like his family was still growing and maybe he could keep it together. But it turned out to be a dead end.”

  Mr. Grimsley set down his fork. “Listen to me. He should never give up on family. No one should. Never, ever. Believe me. I know what I’m talking about.”

  He looked down at his plate but didn’t take a bite. Mrs. Grimsley placed her hand on her husband’s. “Tell them, Roger,” she said gently.

  “Tell us what?” Abbie said.

  Mrs. Grimsley looked at her husband, who was still looking down. She turned to Jordan and Abbie. “The truth,” she said. “Your father didn’t decide to move us all to Florida just to help Doris with the home. That was part of it, of course, but—”

  “The truth is I realized there’s something special about that old place,” Mr. Grimsley said. “It didn’t hit me until we got back to the city, but there’s a feeling of being connected. To Grampa Grimsley. To what he made. I know it’s silly, but it’s all I have.”

  “Wow, Dad,” Abbie said. “That’s . . . kind of cool.

  “The thing about it is, everyone thought my father was crazy, including me,” he continued. “And maybe he was. But I’d give anything, including being called crazy right along with him, if only I could be by his side, just for one day.”

  They sat there in silence for a moment. Mrs. Grimsley spoke up. “So we decided to do something crazy ourselves: quit our jobs and run a retirement home in the middle of a swamp!”

  They both chuckled, then clunked their fruity coconut drinks together. Jordan and Abbie smiled at this.

  Finally, Jordan cleared his throat. “Dad, there’s something you should know. Grampa Grimsley wasn’t crazy.”

  Abbie glared at her brother. Then she kicked him under the table.

  “I know,” Mr. Grimsley said. “Crazy is an ableist term. Let’s just say he was . . . eccentric. My point is, you tell that friend of yours not to give up on the people he loves. Because someday they’ll be gone. You’ve gotta enjoy your time together, while you can. That’s what Grimsley Family Fun Time is all about.”

  Mrs. Grimsley raised her coconut again. “To Grimsley Family Fun Time!” Jordan and Abbie raised their glasses, too, and the four Grimsleys toasted.

  “And to Edweirdo,” Mr. Grimsley said.

  “Eldon,” Jordan corrected him.

  THUD THUD THUD! Someone pounded on the door marked B-14 as the sun began to sink into the Gulf of Mexico.

  THUD THUD THUD! A fist slammed the cabin door again. This time, Eldon opened the door and fell backward in horror, tripping over his packed backpack and falling on his rear end.

  Abbie stood in his doorway in full scuba gear: fins, mask, tank, mouthpiece.

  “What in blazes are you doing?” Eldon said, pulling himself to his feet. “You nearly scared me more than that fake, homemade dragon critter!”

  “Wflbm tkrflu skrbling!” Abbie said.

  “Sorry. What?”

  Abbie pulled her mask off and spit out her mouthpiece. “We’re taking you scuba diving.” She tossed a pair of flippers at him. “Now suit up and meet us on the pier, Creature Keeper Pecone! That’s a direct order!”

  Abbie, Jordan, and Eldon bounced around inside a rickety old taxi cab as it rumbled through the darkening jungle. It made Jordan miss Sam’s open-air jeep.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what this is about,” Eldon said. “You know as well as I do that there’s nothing to be found out here. You two feel bad for me so you’re just trying to be good friends.”

  “So not true.” Abbie smiled at him coyly. “I would never be a good friend.”

  Jordan unfolded the map they’d purchased earlier that day. “Look, we know it’s a long shot. But we started thinking about what the girl who sold us this map had said. These cenotes aren’t just swimming holes. They’re all interconnected by a maze of underwater tunnels and caves along the rim of that crater. Who knows how deep or how far they go?”

  “And that crater was caused by an asteroid that slammed into the earth and wiped out all the dinosaurs, like, a bajillion years ago,” Abbie said.

  “An extinction event,” Jordan added.

  “We knew all this when we rode through the jungle to discover an oversized piñata,” Eldon said. “It doesn’t explain how a real cryptid could ever live in such a touristy place for a bajillion years without being spotted once. Impossible!”

  Jordan folded the map. “Maybe you’re right. But impossible is exactly what I would have said a year ago if you’d told me there was a big black, furry creature—who you could smell a mile away, by the way—living in a swamp behind a retirement community in Florida.”

  Eldon thought about this. “I must say, it is strange of Bernard to send you on a family vacation for no reason.” He shook his head. “But no—how could he even know about something like this?”

  “He couldn’t,” Jordan said. “Unless another creature he’d been visiting told him. A creature who knew the location of every single cryptid on earth and years ago shared that sacred information with our grandfather so he could protect them.”

  Eldon looked up at them both. “Wilford.”

  “We’ve hung out with that old Yeti,” Abbie said. “Trust me, he isn’t that wise and all-knowing. You can’t tell me it’s impossible he overlooked one lousy cryptid.”

  Eldon was starting to come around. “A cryptid whose special gift might just be staying hidden, maybe even deep beneath the very crater that created him.”

  “Or her,” Abbie said.

  “Of course, you couldn’t really blame Wilford for the oversight,” Jordan said. “I mean, Wilford may have the power to blow his reflective crystals anywhere on the planet so he can see everywhere and everything at anytime. But he doesn’t have what we have.” Jordan smiled at his friend. “A First-Class Spoorer.”

  13

  Night had not yet fallen when the taxi dropped Abbie, Jordan, and Eldon off at the entrance to Cenote Park. But deep in the jungle it was getting dark, even if the sky above the treetops was still lit up orange by the fading sunset.

  A large sign that read Cerrado told them the park was closed. They flipped and flopped right past it in their scuba gear, along the path toward the edge of the first cenote.

  The sinkhole looked like it had been cut clean out of the rocky surface by a giant paper hole puncher. Covered in overhanging green jungle plants, its edges dropped off and straight down, disappearing into blackness.

  The three of them switched on powerful waterproof head lamps and looked down. The basin lay hundreds of feet below them and spread much wider than the hole they were peering into. Vines hung down from the edges, and there was a carved-out stone stairway and path circling the pool below.

  The water itself had appeared black at first, but when they shined their lights in the same spot, they could see it was deep and very clear. They could almost make out the sandy bottom of the beautiful, natural swimming pool.

  “Golly,” Eldon said. “I can see why so many people come to swim here.”

  “And this is just one of hundreds that line the edge of the Chicxulub crater,” Jordan said. “If they’re all connected, there’s bound to be some hiding spot big enough for a cryptid to live in.”

  “Okay,” Abbie said. “Are we gonna blab, or are we gonna do this?” She leaped, flippers first, off the edge of the cenote, plunging into the crystal-clear wat
er.

  Eldon and Jordan glanced at each other. Then they smiled. Then they jumped.

  The water was chilly but not terribly cold. Looking up at the circle of stars through the opening to the cenote overhead, Jordan could see the size of the pool was at least two or three times the size of the hole at the surface, extending deep below the ground.

  This swimming hole was clearly no secret. There were stone steps with a rope-fenced path that ran around the edge of the water, with signs and instructions, rules and restrictions for people who came to swim. One of the signs leaped out at Jordan immediately: Peligro: Submarinismo Estrictamente Prohibido.

  Jordan couldn’t translate exactly, but the picture below of a skeleton in a scuba mask made it pretty clear—for whatever reason, this was not a place to be scuba diving.

  “Hm,” Eldon said, tightening his mask while looking at the sign. “I don’t think your grandfather would have minded breaking a few rules searching for a never-before-seen cryptid, do you?”

  Jordan smiled. The two of them put their regulators in their mouths and dived, following Abbie’s trail of bubbles.

  Swimming below them, Abbie looked like she was floating in midair—until she exhaled. A beautiful burst of silvery-white bubbles engulfed Jordan’s head, racing toward the surface. Then all went still again, returning the sensation of gliding nearly weightless through a cool, crystal-clear ether.

  The experience of flying deep beneath the jungle floor was surreal, but Jordan had to focus on what they were looking for. He spotted Eldon inspecting a nearby wall that curved upward toward the surface while Abbie was making her way deeper. Jordan flicked his feet and darted toward a small crevice in the wall just beneath Eldon.

  He shined his head lamp inside the crack and noticed a familiar glimmering. Abbie and Eldon swam to him as he reached his hand in to snatch it. It was smoother than the surrounding rock and felt to be about the size of a golf ball. It was also stuck. Jordan shook his head to the others, and Eldon took a knife from his fanny pack and handed it to him. Jordan worked the blade into the crevice. With some prying, he dislodged it, and pulled it out of the crevice.

  Twinkling there in his hand was the same type of ruby-red gem as the one that he’d found in the snow and had since faded in his bedroom. He looked up at Abbie and Eldon. Their eyes were wide behind their masks. Abbie pointed beneath them. Embedded in the wall farther down were a few more red stones.

  Jordan worked to dislodge those gems as well and pocketed the knife as he handed the collection to Eldon. As Eldon slipped the stones into his fanny pack, one fell through his fingers. They watched as it sank slowly through the crystal-clear water toward the floor. But rather than coming to rest on the dusty bottom, the red stone disappeared, passing right through it. The three divers glanced at one another, then swam down to inspect.

  The floor seemed to be more of a murky river upon closer inspection, like a layer of foggy particles floating at the bottom of the cenote. Eldon reached out and pushed his hand through. His wrist, then elbow, then upper arm, disappeared just as the stone had. Jordan tried it next. The first thing he noticed was how the water beneath the strange, smoky layer was ice cold, much chillier than the water around and above them. Abbie pushed the others aside. Just as she’d leaped from the surface into the pool, she lunged, disappearing through the misty floor. And just like before, Jordan and Eldon followed.

  The frigid water immediately sent a chill through Jordan’s body. He had to squint through his mask to find Abbie—the water beneath the strange haze was much murkier. He and Eldon swam in the direction of Abbie’s head lamp. Floating debris swirled around them, revealing small currents, which grew stronger the deeper they went. The rocks, too, were rougher and craggier, jutting out in all directions, forming caves and crevices everywhere, more like the bottom of the ocean than the tranquil pool above.

  Jordan pulled his regulator out of his mouth and peeked the tip of his tongue out. They were no longer in fresh water. This was a salty, subterranean sea.

  Jordan spotted the stone. It lay on an algae-slimed rock below him. He swam to it and picked it up, proudly showing the others before stuffing it into his pocket. Even through their masks, Abbie and Eldon seemed unimpressed. They pointed at something behind him. A large natural entrance to a tunnel or cave glistened with dozens of red crystals embedded in its walls. It looked like a giant gaping mouth speckled with tiny ruby teeth.

  As they swam closer to the dark, gem-spotted cave, a cold current from inside gently pushed them back, like an invisible hand warning them to stay away. Abbie, Jordan, and Eldon pumped their fins just to stay in the same spot until the gentle force subsided.

  Without warning, the current violently reversed. The force that had pushed them away from the entrance suddenly sucked them in like a riptide. Bubbles exploded from all three of their regulators as they panicked, swimming and pumping their fins, scrambling to grab hold of the slick rocks around them. Eldon reached out for one but was too late—in a split second, he disappeared into the dark chasm. Jordan couldn’t believe his eyes. He looked over to his struggling sister. He grabbed her hand, but his grip on an algae-covered rock was weak and slipping. He held on as tightly as he could, but the stronger his clutch, the faster it slid off the rock. In an instant, he and Abbie were sucked into cold, terrifying blackness.

  Jordan tucked his knees to his chest in a cannonball position and held onto his mask and regulator for dear life. It was pitch-black as he careened through the deep, watery tunnel, the current flushing him faster and faster. He struggled to stay in the center to avoid bouncing off the rock wall, terrified but thankful for the widening passageway.

  He couldn’t see Abbie or Eldon. All he could do was shut his eyes tightly and hope as hard as he could that they would all survive the frightening ride.

  14

  WHOOSH! Just as quickly as the cold water had snatched him, Jordan felt a sudden warm gush surround his body. He slowed down to a gentle glide and opened his eyes. At the bottom of the sea floor was the crevice he’d been shot out of. Although slightly dizzy, Jordan got his bearings and righted himself, pumping his fins as hard as he could away from the current pushing out of that crevice, afraid that it might change its mind and suck him back in again.

  Eldon and Abbie looked just as disoriented but thankfully in one piece and seemingly okay. They were in open water now, with little or no danger in sight. The surface was only a hundred feet above them. They’d been flushed back out into the gulf. And they were lucky to be alive.

  A hand grabbed Jordan, shaking him from his thoughts. Abbie was staring into his mask, checking to see if he was all right. He gave her a thumbs-up, and she responded with the same.

  They met up with Eldon near what looked like a small forest of massive, branchless tree trunks sprouting up from the gulf floor, breaking the surface of the water above. Beneath it, on the sea floor, was a thick metal drill, bent and twisted, sticking out of a dug-out hole at the center of the strange, sparse, underwater forest.

  Seeing the damaged drill bit, Jordan suddenly realized that the trees surrounding it were not trees at all. They were pier legs, holding up a structure above the surface. Eldon and Abbie were already pulling themselves up along one of the legs. Jordan turned on his head lamp and flashed it at the drill bit. It was bent inside the hole, the sides of which were sparkling red in the shining light. Feeling no desire to enter another tight spot, Jordan quickly swam to catch up with Eldon and his sister.

  The three of them burst through the surface into the cool night air and looked around. They could see el Terminal Remota pier in the distance. Looking up, they realized they were beneath the old offshore wooden oil platform standing on its chunky wooden legs.

  “Over here!” Abbie was trying to reach the lowest rung of a rickety ladder nailed to one of the legs. Jordan and Eldon swam to her and helped push her up. Once she grabbed the high bottom rung, they all worked together to climb out of the water, scaling toward the underbelly of
the old rig.

  Abbie pulled herself through the cutout at the top and helped the two boys through. The three of them collapsed there for a moment, flopping on the wood planks and gasping for breath like fish hauled onto a boat.

  “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” Eldon was the first to stand and look around. They were standing on the old oil rig Sam had told them about. El Terminal Remota pier could be seen across the water, connecting where the Mayan Princess was docked all the way to the beach town of Progreso. And beyond that, in the distance, was the jungle—where their crazy ride had begun.

  “Amazing,” Jordan said. “The current flushed us all the way back from the cenotes.”

  “And nearly drowned us,” Jordan added.

  “At least it saved us cab fare,” Abbie said.

  The three of them glanced at one another, then burst into laughter, happy to be alive and on a dry dock—even an old, spooky, haunted-looking dry dock. They removed their scuba gear as a cheerful noise caught their attention. Across the water on el Terminal Remota, tourists and locals were dancing and singing in the distance, slowly parading up the pier from the mainland.

  “It’s the Alebrijes party,” Jordan said.

  “I think I see our mysterious creature.” Abbie pointed. In the dimming light, a dragon head bobbed among the crowd. “Wait.” Six or seven different different Alebrijes were being carried along the pier, surrounded by revelers. “Maybe it’s that one.”

  “Let’s figure out how we get off this creepy thing,” Jordan said. “Preferably without getting back in that water.”

  They located the broken old footbridge that at one time ran across to the main pier. The ropes were tattered and frayed, and of the few planks that were left, some dangled high above the dark water.

  “Nope,” Abbie said. “No way.” She walked off, along the inside of the fence.