by Lee Murphy
They drove through a thickly forested area two miles outside of town and turned onto Von Koenigswald Road, which was little more than a glorified dirt path named for the discoverer of Gigantopithecus.
"How much farther is it?" Pearl asked, sounding like a petulant child.
"Don't know," Wayne said, thinking he'd really like to smack this guy, even if Pearl couldn't help the irritating quality of his voice. "From everything I've heard about the house, it shouldn't be difficult to find. It's a three-story Victorian set on an oxbow lake."
Wayne drove up a hillock covered with wild grass and spotted a multi-crowned rooftop just beyond the rise. The house looked like something out of a nineteenth-century Daguerreotype photo; a massive, archaic building taller than the biggest trees around it, majestically set before the rippling black water of a lake that was surrounded by dense forestation.
Wayne described what he knew of its history.
"It was built during the years between 1921 and 1926 by George's father, Harold, for George's mother, Claudette Harris Kodiak. She grew up among Detroit society, the privileged daughter of an automobile company executive who could offer her everything in terms of material wealth. But when she took up with this lowly Indian half-breed, a man physically, mentally, and spiritually beneath her people-- at least in the eyes of her family-- well, that's when they disowned her.
"George is one-quarter Athapaskan Indian, the same lineage that produced the Apache and Navajo tribes. And the original family name was not Kodiak. In 1913 George's grandfather, John, left his tribal home on the Aleutian Islands to find a better life for his wife, who was the daughter of a white fur trader, and their thirteen-year-old son, Harold, George's father. John chose a career in the American military, but upon his induction into the Army a simple-minded clerk was unable to spell John's last name, so he substituted the name of John's birthplace-- the island of Kodiak. John chose not to make a fuss about it, and the name stuck."
Wayne drove up the cobblestone driveway and stopped the BMW in front of the garage. The house's overall exterior had fallen into general disrepair. The grounds were unkept and overgrown with dead grass and weeds. The white paint was peeling and looked more like the color of weak urine. Still, the profile of the estate hinted at a glorious past.
He knew this was the right place when he saw the Dimetrodons: two carnivorous, lizard-like animals that existed thirty-eight million years before the dinosaurs. They were each ten feet long, and recognizable by the tall sails of skin that adorned their backs, and reptilian smiles that bore mouths full of long, sharp teeth appropriate for tearing the flesh off of their prey. The Dimetrodons were set on the front porch much the way other people would place concrete lions. Wayne did notice the evil-looking sentinels were a little too life-like for Pearl, who averted his eyes as he stepped up between them to the front porch.
Nobody answered the door when Wayne knocked, so he waited a few minutes and knocked again. Pearl wondered if the delay wasn't a sign from Above to get away while they still had a chance. But Wayne reached for the door knob. Ordinarily, he didn't like to enter anybody's home uninvited, but it was nearing dusk, and the breeze off the lake was chilly. Besides, he could tell that his companion had had enough of standing between the two hungry-looking Dimetrodons, even if they were only made of fiberglass. The door was unlocked, and as Wayne opened it, Pearl muttered, "Please, God, don't let him have a dog..."
"George?" Wayne stuck his head inside, and his heart skipped a beat at the sight of the place before him. "Wow..."
Inside, the house was enormous; eighteen feet from floor to ceiling. It was a wide open space that made use of hand-carved support beams rather than walls, that lent a feeling of openness to the house.
They came inside and walked down a set of steps into a living room that was littered with bones. Most of these were casts of fossil skeletons Kodiak had purchased from various museums, and were either still in boxes, partially assembled, or just scattered haphazardly about the furniture. Wayne was not up on fossils, so he wasn't able to figure many of them out as he walked through the living room.
As the sun set beyond the lake, its red light reflected off the surface of the water and filled the house with bouncing phantoms of light. Wayne half-expected to hear the lonesome echo of a harpsichord playing from some wing of the house that had been uninhabited for years.
The place was also cluttered with books-- hundreds of them. Books on prehistoric life and natural history, comparative anatomy and zoology, as well as several dozen books on unexplained phenomena. What didn't fit on the wall shelves was stacked into dusty piles on the floor and on the furniture. Kodiak had even used four piles of books to support a makeshift coffee table in front of a sofa.
On the walls were hung original artworks by Charles R. Knight, a turn-of-the-century artist famous for his classic reproductions of the prehistoric world.
They walked across the living room to a huge fireplace that was constructed of rocks bearing the fossil skeleton of a Mosasaur; an aquatic reptile that looked something like a thirty-foot crocodile, with large flippers in the place of its legs. And mounted over the mantle was the six-foot Coelacanth fish Kodiak had caught off Madagascar fifteen years earlier.
Wayne turned on a chandelier light over the dining room table when he heard Pearl gasp.
Erected next to the stairs, where Kodiak had removed a section of the second floor for additional space, was the partially re-constructed skeleton of a forty-eight foot Tyrannosaurus rex. Nearly the entire body was put together except for several bones still in crates on the floor.
They stared in awe as they walked underneath the Tyrannosaurus, absorbing its almost unreal dimensions. Its vast rib cage loomed eight feet above their heads and was large enough to encase three adult horses. Wayne shuddered as he imagined the horror this thing's prey must have known in those last few seconds of life, and he solemnly thanked God for its extinction. He also thought to ask Kodiak about letting him bring his nephew out here for a look sometime.
"This place is like a vampire's house." Pearl placed his hands on his hips, clearly impressed. "I'll bet National Geographic would love to do an article on this guy."
"Get in line," Wayne replied. He cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, "George!" His voice echoed throughout the house, but there was no answer. "Of course," Wayne said, turning to face Pearl, "there is no reason for him to have expected us, since we did show up unannounced."
"You didn't call him?"
"He chooses not to have a telephone."
Pearl was flabbergasted. "What kind of person doesn't have a telephone? How does anybody get a hold of him, especially in this day and age!"
Wayne sighed. "I don't imagine he could be far. The lights are on. And the furniture looks comfortable enough. All we have to do is move a couple boxes of bones and maybe a stack of books out of the way and wait for him to show up. But first, something to drink."
***
Kodiak stopped at the mouth of the sink hole, thirty-five feet below the surface to decompress. Compared to the jagged, rocky walls of the two hundred-foot well beneath it, the bottom of the lake was smooth and sandy, with a few rocks and plants, but no fish.
When he was finally able to break the surface and wade ashore, he saw the figures of two men watching him from the edge of the water. He recognized the short one with the Stetson hat and the lit cigar as Wayne Monroe, who said, "What do you say, George? This here is Ron Pearl."
Pearl nodded. "How ya' doin'?"
Kodiak didn't say anything as he hoisted the air tank off his shoulders and removed his face mask.
Wayne said to him, "You might wanna do something about that booger you got hanging from your nose. Looks like you got a damn banana slug climbing down your face."
***
Kodiak took them to the Hell Hole, a place that boasted the finest dining in all of downtown Hell. It was a dark hole-in-the-wall, with the odor of stale smoke heavy in the air and on the red naugahyde fu
rniture. The decor of the place was tropical and gaudy, with towering South Pacific demons carved from lava rock, and wooden tiki masks adorning floral-papered walls. Again with the devil stuff, Pearl thought, as he followed Wayne and Kodiak over to the bar.
One object that caught Pearl's eye was the plaster cast of an eighteen-inch footprint mounted on the wall behind the bar.
"It's the one thing everybody's got an opinion on," the bartender told them about the Sasquatch print Kodiak had given him several years ago.
"More for or against?" Wayne asked him.
The bartender shrugged. "That usually depends on what that particular person thinks of George." He laughed, and Kodiak smiled.
"Obviously more against. Thanks, Jack." Kodiak took a pitcher of beer and three glasses, and led them to the back of the tavern where they could speak in private.
They slipped into a booth and Ron Pearl was able to take a good look at George Kodiak. His impression was of a wolf. A big alpha male who was getting on in years, but could still take on any adversaries who dared challenge him. He was slower with age, but one slip or miscalculation on the part of his opponent, and the consequences would be swift and merciless. Pearl had heard many stories about George Kodiak that would confirm the need for caution. Yet, here he was in person, and he seemed pleasant, even amiable when he said, "I don't get many visitors. What is it that brings you boys to my little slice of Hell?"
Pearl let out a breath, composing himself, then said, "Well, George, if I may call you that, I'm sure you're familiar with Emory Pittman?"
"Passingly." Kodiak was being facetious. Emory Pittman was a billionaire land developer who got his start building tract homes in the 1950's, to now owning some of the largest buildings in the world. His picture had been on the cover of almost every magazine at one time or another, including Mad.
Pearl was embarrassed. "You're right, of course. It was a stupid question."
Wayne poured the beer into the glasses and passed them out.
Pearl continued. "I work for Mr. Pittman. I represent his interests, so to speak. Mr. Pittman is a philanthropist who has been instrumental in serving as something of a diplomat on behalf of the United States to countries where we might otherwise be denied an audience, so to speak."
Kodiak said, "The same kind of thing Armand Hammer did with the Soviet Union."
"Exactly." Pearl continued. "Mr. Pittman has become aware of your desire to arrange a joint American/Vietnamese paleontological expedition. It turns out he has some interest in the subject and is giving serious consideration to financing the trip. Mr. Pittman has, of course, financed previous expeditions between the two countries, but those were to search for the remains of American MIA's. This is an entirely different project-- in the spirit of scientific cooperation." Pearl held up a large paperback book titled Hunt for the Living Gigantopithecus. It was one of Kodiak's books. "This book has convinced Mr. Pittman that the Sasquatch is a reality, and he's particularly interested in the Gigantopithecus-Sasquatch theory. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your father was something of a paleontologist, wasn't he?"
"Paleoanthropologist, yes," Kodiak stated. "I learned most of what I know from him and others. He was a personal friend of Ralph Von Koenigswald."
"The man who first discovered Gigantopithecus. Is that how you came to consider that animal as a possible candidate for the Sasquatch?"
Kodiak told him, "More than fifty years after Von Koenigswald discovered that first tooth in Hong Kong, some fifteen hundred Gigantopithecus teeth have been found, as well as four fossilized jawbones-- but nothing else. I want to go to Vietnam to try and find a complete Gigantopithecus skeleton. I'm hoping a complete skeleton might finally solve the Sasquatch riddle."
"So, why Vietnam?" Pearl asked. "In this book you state that some of the richest Giganto deposits found so far been in southern China."
Kodiak answered him. "The Chinese sites have been badly stripped of fossil material by the apothecary industry, and the Chinese don't readily welcome ventures of this nature. While the Vietnamese have no serious interest in the fossil trade, they are most anxious to make a connection with the West. Why would Emory Pittman want to be involved in all this? It seems odd that he would be associated with such things as unknown animals."
Pearl shrugged and took a dainty sip of beer, as though he were trying it for the first time and did not know whether or not he would like it. "I have known Emory Pittman for more than thirty years, Mr. Kodiak, and I probably know less about him now than I did back when he first hired me. Who can ever figure the idle rich?
"All I know for certain is he would like you and Mr. Monroe to come out to his place in Arizona. If you're agreeable, he can have his private jet at Detroit Metropolitan first thing tomorrow."
Hunt For The Living Gigantopithecus
Mildred Hunnicut lived in Washington State's Olympic National Forest for thirty-seven years, where her late husband had built their home. He had worked as a forest ranger for thirty years and was retired only one year when he died of a massive heart attack. While she missed him as much as any human being could miss another, living alone in this beautiful wilderness never bothered her.
Until two nights ago.
She had settled in for a quiet evening of reading by the fireplace when she heard peculiar noises outside and went to investigate. Raccoons had been getting into the garbage lately, attracted by the smell of discarded cat food cans. This irritated her, because she always washed the cans out and wrapped them in plastic before tossing them in the trash. She wouldn't mind them going through the rubbish, if they didn't make such a mess for her to have to clean up the next day.
She sneaked outside and looked around the corner to see what was rummaging through her trash. Her heart nearly stopped cold when she saw a man bent over her garbage can, looking through the refuse. Then her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, and she really didn't believe what she was looking at. No more than twenty-five feet from where she was standing a Sasquatch was foraging in the rubbish.
In all the years she lived here she had never once seen one. She heard stories about these unusual animals roaming the Pacific Northwest, but even Steve, in all his years as a ranger, only saw footprints, and that only happened twice.
She didn't know what to do. Ordinarily, she probably just would have watched, fascinated, as it went about its business. But there was the story last month about that trailer park on the other side of Lake Crescent that was supposedly attacked by one of them. The rangers said it was really a bear, but she was scared nonetheless, and went as quietly as she could back into her house, locked the doors and windows, and shut out all the lights.
The next day she felt a little foolish, having realized that she was probably not in any danger. Besides, the creature she saw wasn't anywhere near as big as they were usually described. This one stood a little over five feet tall, covered with short, black hair and looked rather spindly, like it might have been a juvenile. She was relieved that nobody from the ranger station in Red Fern bothered to come and investigate after she had called them the previous night.
Two days later, after there was no further evidence of her mysterious night visitor, she felt it was safe enough to feed her cat on the front lawn while she sat on the porch swing to watch the sun set behind the Olympic Mountain Range.
The shadows of the forest grew long across the front lawn and overcame her small gray tabby as it fed on the plate of canned food that was labeled Chunks & Stuff. Whatever the Chunks & Stuff really were didn't seem to concern the cat.
The cool air felt good as Mildred rocked back and forth on the swing, lulling herself into a drowsy state. This was her favorite time of year, as Summer would be winding down soon and Autumn would be here. She didn't know if she had actually dozed off, but when she looked back at the cat, it was gone-- and so was the plate.
Mildred sat up, suddenly very alarmed, and looked wildly around, fearing something happened to her cat. "Kitty-kitty-kitty!" She got up from the swing and lo
oked around. The cat was very good about staying away from wild animals and remained close to the house, but she always feared there might be a time some predator would come along and snatch her pet. She heard the cat hissing from under the porch and bent down to investigate. The cat was there, backed up against the wall, its eyes open wide and its ears pressed against its head. It was looking at the woods beyond the yard and kept hissing.
Mildred looked in the same direction that the cat was looking and saw the plate lying on the grass near the trees, discarded. She walked over to pick it up and froze; twenty feet from where the dish lay she saw two large yellow eyes staring at her from behind the bushes. She blinked once and they were gone.
Three days after her first sighting of the animal, Mildred was visited by two men she had never seen before. They were both young men in their thirties, stocky, with ruddy, sun-tanned features. She figured them for lumbermen, and they neither confirmed nor denied this. One thing was certain: they bore an intimidating demeanor and made no bones about what they wanted. "We hear you're claiming to have seen a Sasquatch?" The one who spoke stood only inches from her closed screen door and looked like he was poised to come barreling in at any second. The other man stood only a couple feet back and glared at her without saying anything.
For the first time since living here, Mildred was scared. "I thought I saw something, yes. Why, may I ask, is that any concern of yours? You're not rangers."
The closest man ignored Mildred's question, and said, "We don't take this kind of nonsense lightly. Your misguided effort to report this can draw an unwanted element to these parts. We take this very seriously and won't tolerate any attempts to invite the kind of trouble this can bring. Do you understand me?" The man seemed to take this personally, and Mildred got the very clear impression he could be dangerous if provoked.