Temporary Monsters

by CRAIG SHAW GARDNER

  Lenny swore silently. It was high time his gift did something.

  Somebody screamed.

  “Hey, Lenny! How’s tricks?”

  Lenny turned from the console. The pooka had materialized midair, in the very center of the room.

  So Bob had arrived. But from where? Lenny thought about the last time he had seen the pooka, when Bob had gotten himself right into the middle of his second trance. Lenny’s trance, he thought, until Bob showed up.

  Bob kicked up his heels with an energetic whinny. “Wow! These swami spells can turn a pooka inside out. But I’m back!”

  “It’s a talking blue horse,” Sheila remarked. “Now I’m sure Lenny is in the room.”

  “Yeah!” Bob agreed enthusiastically. “Lenny? I know you’re here somewhere, too. Nobody can hide from a pooka!”

  “Quick!” Foo shouted. “We don’t have time for security. Grab the swami scope from the secret compartment. We’ll trap them all!”

  Foo leaned forward to flip the correct switches. The secret compartment opened once again. Lenny inched forward, careful not to brush against Sheila. The hidden compartment, and the first day cover, were almost within reach. If he could just lean forward a little . . .

  Lenny yelped. Bob’s blue snout was inches from his nose.

  “There you are!” the pooka cheered. “A little tough to see, maybe. But not for your friend Bob!”

  Lenny stumbled forward, losing his grip on Phil’s hand. He fell awkwardly against the console.

  “Lenny!” Sheila called by his side. “See, Daddy? I knew he was here.”

  Lenny pushed himself away from the console. He had to ignore Sheila, ignore Bob, ignore everything except for the first day cover.

  “And he’s not alone!” Sheila crowed.

  Lenore popped into sight on the other side of Sheila, only a few feet away. The invisible swami must still be somewhere in between.

  “Dad!” Sheila pointed triumphantly at the Terrifitemps psychic. “Here’s that melodramatic witch that Lenny’s been hanging out with.”

  “Melodramatic?” Lenore glanced down at her all-black costume before glaring back at Sheila. “At least I don’t dress like a slut in some grade-Z spy movie!”

  The two women grabbed at each other.

  “Wait!” a commanding voice came from Sheila’s side. “This has gone far enough!” The mist solidified to form the Baron.

  Foo gasped. “You! I thought I’d never see you again.”

  The Baron shrugged. “I’ve got a new job. Even vampires have to eat.”

  Sheila paused in her girl fight to stare at the vampire. “You two know each other?”

  Foo nodded, perhaps a bit reluctantly. “We made a deal, some time ago.”

  The Baron smiled slightly, showing the tips of his fangs. “Last time our paths crossed, I was not so gainfully employed. You had a certain—problem—you had to deal with.” He glanced at Sheila. “And what a pretty daughter! Lucky for you, my dear, that you favor your mother.”

  Sheila glared back at her father. “How would a vampire know anything about my mother?”

  “I only did what I was paid to do.” The Baron sighed wistfully. “Before this happened, I never thought I could have enough vampire brides. Proves even the undead can be wrong now and then.”

  “You had this vampire? Mother?” Sheila couldn’t finish a sentence. She looked from her father to the Baron and back again. “You mean Mother really isn’t in Miami?”

  Foo offered his daughter a resigned smile. “Sheila. You, I can deal with. Your mother, not so much.”

  Sheila had become the center of attention. Nobody in the room was looking at Lenny.

  He grabbed the first day cover.

  It was still in its protective jar, but just by putting his hand around the glass, Lenny felt a jolt of energy snake up his arm and shoulder.

  “Wait!” His sudden movement had attracted Foo’s attention. The evil genius pointed straight at Lenny. “Put that down now!”

  “Oh boy!” Bob the horse called. “Now thing’s are going to get really interesting!”

  Somewhere, in the distance, Lenny could hear a herd of buffalo, singing.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Time seemed to slow around Lenny. The world surrounding him still moved. Heads turned toward him, hands reached in his direction, but they did so with the exquisite slowness of a late sixties action film.

  Lenny held something in his hands—something much more immediate. The first day cover called to him, entreating him to open the jar and hold the paper in his hands.

  Lenny realized he hadn’t actually touched the valuable artifact, his skin brushing against paper, since that day in his childhood when he had first slid the letter into its plastic sheath. He knew now that was the moment his talent first manifested, if only in small ways at the beginning. His gift had blossomed over the years. Where it had at first brought small events—some perhaps, not even noticed—to his door, the occasions had become larger and stranger and decidedly more dramatic over time. Upon reflection, Lenny realized that having a meteor destroy your workplace was about as dramatic as you could get.

  Lenny’s mind danced from one unexplained event to another, from that minor earthquake in the middle of the night of his senior prom to the day the post office delivered 317 copies of Reader’s Digest. And then there were those mermaids and talking animals (well before Bob the horse) and various other fantastic creatures. Not to mention the singing buffalo.

  And, now that Lenny held the letter in his hand, the buffalo were back.

  His strange talent had grown over the years. What would happen if he physically held the letter in his hands right now?

  He saw Foo slowly fumble with one of the swami’s special devices, something sort of like (but not quite) whatever it was that had trapped him in his trance—had that only happened a few moments before? Things were occurring much faster than they ever had.

  Lenny frowned in concentration. He wanted to avoid anything that Foo might do to him, ever again. And what else? With a sudden clarity, Lenny’s goals popped one after another into his mind.

  First, he needed to prevent Foo from prevailing.

  Second, he needed to rescue his Terrifitemps team.

  Third, he needed to find a way to restore Ms. Siggenbottom and Withers to their former, sane selves. And maybe rescue Mr. Siggenbottom as well.

  Fourth (although maybe this should rank higher), he needed a way to get Sheila out of his life once and for all. Forever. Permanently.

  And maybe, just maybe, he needed a way forward, with his gift, with his job, and maybe even with Lenore, if she would have him.

  Lenny took a deep breath. He knew of only one way to make these things possible.

  He unscrewed the lid of the jar.

  Lenny looked up as the lid pulled free. Foo was screaming in slow motion. Sheila was yelling directly at him, just as slowly, telling him to stop, he didn’t know what he was—Well, he didn’t have time to listen to the whole slow sentence. The time to act was now.

  He reached in to pull the letter from the jar. His finger touched the edge of the envelope. The electric charge that had run up his arm before jolted through his entire body.

  Lenny blinked.

  It was so close. The whole world, and other, larger things beyond the world. Images flooded his mind; things he had forgotten, small, magical incidents on the edge of sleep; the morning an extra sun had risen in the west, to fade from view a few seconds later; the rocket ship that would visit him in his ten-year-old-child dreams, until that morning he woke up and saw a replica of the ship sitting on the night table beside his bed. He still had that tiny ship on a bookshelf in his apartment. How could he have forgotten where it had come from?

  Lenny saw further still, wondering at oceans made of light, great fields of grain where e
very stalk sang in perfect harmony, and glimpsing large, lumbering things that faded in and out of the night.

  He didn’t remember those. Was he seeing things that hadn’t happened yet?

  Lenny heard a loud crack, like some giant plastic toy being broken in half.

  Time sped up to normal.

  “Security!” Lenny heard Foo shout. “Get that letter away from him!”

  Bruno and the others weren’t paying any attention to their boss. They were still busy slowly walking across the room, waving their arms around in search of additional invisible visitors. Besides, Foo was having trouble being heard over the noise.

  The buffalo were at the door. And their singing was, if anything, even more boisterous than before.

  “I want a girl, just like the girl, that married dear old dad.”

  “Lenny!” Sheila shouted, opening her arms in entreaty. “You don’t know how to handle that letter!”

  The buffalo sang on:

  “She was a pearl and the only girl that Daddy ever had!”

  “And you do?” Lenore demanded of Sheila. “I bet Lenny can handle”—she paused for a second to pick just the right words—“just about anything better than you!”

  “A good old-fashioned girl with heart so true!” the buffalo boisterously bounced along.

  “Oh yeah?” Sheila yelled.

  “One who loves nobody else but you!” the herd thundered.

  “Yeah!” Lenore shouted back.

  The women started pushing each other again.

  “I want a girl . . .”

  “Sheila!” Foo commanded. “Stop!”

  Foo yelled as his daughter pushed him out of the way.

  “I’ve got this, Boss!” Bruno yelled back.

  “Just like the girl . . .”

  Bruno staggered as Lenore hit the top of his head with a handy iPad.

  “. . . that married dear—old—daddddddd!”

  Everyone froze. The end of the buffalo’s song plunged the room into an instant of total silence.

  In the sudden stillness, Lenny could see the large room was changing. He spotted new faces in the crowd. Faces that came from his gift. New sounds erupted from different quarters of Foo’s lair.

  The left side of the room was totally enthralled by a trio of singing mermaids.

  Another group—mostly security guards—were being bashed on the head by a very merry troll.

  Huh. Lenny had completely forgotten about the troll.

  “Hey, Lenny!” A short man in a dirty jumpsuit with the letter “S” sewn on the chest stood before him. “Thanks for having that horse show me how to get out of that trap!”

  “Pooka at your service!” Bob beamed.

  A woman in a lab coat rushed in from the corridor. “We better stay in here! There’s a meteor shower in the hall!”

  Meteors in the hallway? Did the buffalo have to scatter?

  Lenny saw that the Baron had taken an attractive young lab assistant in his arms and was baring his fangs. From the lab assistant’s dreamy smile, she did not appear to be particularly upset.

  Bruno, still holding his head, staggered toward the vampire. “And what do you call this?” the security chief demanded.

  “Lunch,” the Baron admitted.

  Lenny whistled softly. How could this get any more chaotic?

  The swami abruptly popped into view.

  “Lenny!” Swami Phil screamed. “You have to stop this now.”

  “What?” Lenny replied. He could only stop this if he knew how it got started in the first place.

  The troll loomed above Swami Phil, his large and gnarly club held high in the air.

  “Bodder Lenny?” the troll asked.

  Lenny remembered now. When the troll had first appeared all those years ago, right in the middle of an encounter with some schoolyard bullies, he and Lenny had become fast friends.

  Lenny shook his head. “No bother Lenny.”

  “Troll Lenny’s friend!” The huge creature nodded back and smiled a mostly toothless grin.

  Maybe, in a way, all the visitors brought by his gift were Lenny’s friends.

  “All your manifestations are coming together!” Phil shouted at the once-more rising sea of noise. “It’s too much power! Your gift could tear apart the very fabric of reality!”

  Really? Lenny’s first thought was that sounded kind of cool. And how would his friends go about destroying the world, anyway? But his second thought was that he had no way to sew it back together again.

  Wasn’t the swami overreacting to all of this? Maybe the two of them could talk this out, come up with some reasonable solution.

  But, instead of saying that, Lenny found strange words bubbling out of his mouth.

  “Oogleybook,” Lenny spoke as if something outside himself was forcing his lips to move.

  “No! Not that!” Phil clutched at his collar as the large cubic zirconia floated up on the end of its chain, freeing itself from within the Nehru jacket.

  “Nanglytoot,” Lenny’s voice continued, “Osh kosh by gosh. Urpim, burpim, snagglelurpim!”

  “The third spell is starting on its own!” Phil grabbed at the medallion as it swung back and forth in front of Lenny. The swami made strangling noises as the chain whipped around his neck. “We may still—be able to—stop it. Spell can’t—complete without—a spirit guide.” He swiped at the chain. “Both ghost and Karnowski—are still not here. Maybe it—will—just—fizzle out.”

  Bob the horse leaned over Phil’s shoulder. “Spirit guide? Is it my turn at last?”

  Phil gasped for air. The chain was so tangled around the swami’s neck that speaking was beyond him.

  What could Lenny do? Except to watch the jewel sparkle, back and forth, back and forth. He was getting drowsy.

  “I am the ghost of Lennies yet to come!” Bob giggled. “I’ve always wanted to do this!”

  The swami gagged and struggled. Bob danced. The zirconia sparkled and spun.

  Was something terrible going to happen? Or was this what was always meant to be? Either way, Lenny couldn’t keep his eyes open.

  The world was lost in swirling mist.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  He was still in Foo’s control room. But the lab around him was totally still.

  “This is the legacy of Lenny’s future!” Bob called out of the gloom. “This is the direction your life will take if you remain on your present course. Heed you well, lest you come to this sad—hey, who writes this stuff, anyway?”

  So Bob wasn’t going to be able to follow the script. Lenny wasn’t sure if that should be reassuring or not.

  Something groaned from amid the swirling vapors.

  “What’s with all this fog?” he could hear Foo shouting. “This air-filtration system cost me big bucks!”

  Foo yelped as a large, half-seen shape moved in front of him.

  Lenny almost yelped in turn as two very large somethings stepped out of the gloom.

  No, he was wrong. It was one extremely large something. With two heads. One of the heads was definitely male, with a receding hairline and a beard. The other head appeared to be female, with flowing blonde hair and ruby lips.

  “How about that dramatic entrance, huh?” the male head rumbled. “That never fails to get their attention!”

  The female head frowned at that. “You always have to talk first, don’t you?”

  “Thank you, Lenny!” The first head apparently chose to ignore the second’s remarks. “Your actions will lead us ever closer to triumph.”

  “Triumph?’ the female head sneered. “I don’t know why Mother ever said you were good with words. Lenny, your actions shall finally lead us to our goal, the total subjugation of the human race!”

  “This is a pretty crappy future!” Foo yelled from somewhere deep in
the mists. “What happens to all my well-laid plans?”

  “What happens is silence!” the male head rumbled.

  Foo yelped and spoke no more.

  “Know this, Lenny,” the male head continued. “We found you were special. And we guided your every discovery, and showed you the way to power. We are your reason for being.”

  “We haven’t introduced ourselves,” the female head interjected.

  “Of course,” the male head interrupted in turn. “Know this. We are among the most ancient of beings. While great pantheons of immortals fought against the unspeakable terrors that now sleep in places with unpronounceable names, we waited. While ancient civilizations rose and fell, grew famous throughout the known world and then passed from memory, we waited. We are the other immortals, those who will emerge triumphant when all others are pummeled to dust. We are the Overlooked, and we wait no more.”

  “The Overlooked?” Swami Phil enthused from somewhere nearby. “Wow! Who knew your talent would bring this? I wonder how we can use—”

  The swami yelped, and spoke no more.

  “We will let you speak, or not,” the male head intoned.

  “We will let you live, or not,” the female head added.

  Whatever these things were, they were slowly, one by one, silencing those around Lenny. They said they showed Lenny the way to power, but did they control that power? Or was Lenny in control—a control he was only now beginning to realize?

  Lenny knew of one way to find out. He snapped his fingers.

  He heard the buffalo singing, somewhere in the fog:

  “Oh Susanna, now don’t you cry for me! ’Cause I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee!”

  “Already,” the male head acknowledged. “Lenny’s power reasserts itself around us. And we will control that power, and Lenny Hodge, absolutely.”

  “But we still haven’t introduced ourselves—really,” the female head continued. “We are called by the most ancient of names, Hector and Lucille.”