by Tim Curran
Pettis took the floor. “Another area of extreme interest to us at Cryptodesert is the lore of the thunderbirds and the possibility that there is an extant creature that inspires that lore.”
“A giant bird?”
“Yes, exactly. Obviously, you’re familiar with the subject.”
Shiner grinned. “Why shouldn’t he be? He saw one.”
Pettis briefly explained that for decades there had been a series of unexplained traffic accidents out on Route 50 that generally involved only one vehicle. And it was thought they were caused by a thunderbird-type creature diving out of the sky at passing cars. At least, physical damage to the vehicles in question and eyewitness accounts seem to suggest the same.
“What he’s trying to ask you, Mr. Duchane,” Shiner said, “is if your accident was explainable due to conditions or mechanical failure or if you think a large predatory bird attacked your vehicle. That’s what it comes down to.”
Jim had a strong need to tell them both to mind their own fucking business and act properly incensed and angry because he had lost two dear friends in the accident…but he didn’t. He saw no reason for dramatics. He looked from the questioning eyes of Pettis to the intense eyes of Shiner. They both badly wanted him to say what they already suspected was true.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “It attacked my SUV. I saw it and I think I almost saw it again last night.”
11
It took him nearly an hour to tell the whole story, culminating with what had happened during the night. Shiner, of course, nailed him with questions while Pettis just listened. They recorded everything with a little digital voice recorder.
“Now, you make of that anything you want,” he said. “But remember one thing: you leave my name out. I’m a teacher. If people found out I was running around telling monster stories, I’d probably lose my job.”
“The facts are the important thing,” Shiner pointed out. “Not the person who reported them.”
“Yes, we’ll respect your anonymity,” Pettis assured him.
“Tell us about the creature,” Shiner said, taking out a sketchpad.
“I…I can’t remember much. It was dark, so dark. I can’t be sure if it was a bird or a bat. I don’t know. But it was huge and black, sort of a shiny black like neoprene. I remember that much. Its wings…they were immense. Thirty feet maybe? Forty? I can’t be sure, but I remember the noise they made, that booming sound.” He paused. “Have you ever been out in the woods in the fall?”
“I’ve spent a fair amount of time out there,” Pettis said. No more needed saying.
“Squatching,” Shiner said. “He likes to go out there squatching. Not me, though. I don’t like the woods. Some people think nature is beautiful. I think it’s creepy.”
Jim turned to Pettis. “Have you ever been out there in autumn? When the partridge are getting active and they thump their wings?”
“Yes.”
“It was like that: a drumming sound. But loud. Jesus, so loud I could feel the vibrations going right through me. Those wings are more powerful than you can imagine. I remember those wings…and claws, gray claws. And its laughter.”
“Laughter?” Pettis said in surprise.
In Jim’s head, a voice said: See? See? You thought they were nuts with their squatching and giant beavers. Now they’re looking at you the way you probably were looking at them.
He shrugged. “I don’t know what else to call it. But it made a sort of laughing sound like a laughing hyena…weird like that, echoing, sardonic.”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s all I remember. I’m not even sure how much was real and how much I imagined. I can’t be sure.”
The three of them sat there, drinking their coffee, not saying a thing, but it was building and Jim could feel it. Either he was going to say something maybe he shouldn’t or they were.
It was Shiner who broke the silence. “I guess all that remains is: what are you going to do about it? Do you want to forget it happened or—”
“I want to find it.”
“Do you?” Pettis said.
Shiner grinned that perfectly awful toothy grin that was somehow endearing. “He’s got the fever.”
“I want to find it and I want to kill it,” Jim told them. “I want to track it down and put an end to it. That’s what I want.”
Pettis nodded. “Maybe we can help you.”
12
Jim slept for about five hours after they left. When he got up, he showered and went to see Nina who was sitting in her recliner reading a magazine titled Journal of Kansas Herpetology with a four-foot corn snake called Baby coiled in her lap.
“We’re just kicking back,” she announced as if it was the most ordinary domestic scene imaginable.
He grabbed a chair and told her everything that had happened from his experience in the desert to the Cryptodesert.com people stopping by for a chat.
“Would I be overstepping my bounds if urged you to practice caution?” she said.
“Caution?”
“Yes. There’s some very fringe individuals out there, Jim. Just be careful. Don’t let this become an obsession.”
“I have no intention of that.”
Which was bullshit because it was already very much an obsession.
“And if there is such a creature, it could be extremely dangerous. Have you factored that in?”
“I have.”
“And?”
“I’m going after it anyway.” He laughed with a humorless sound. “I’m going to get that thing. I’m going to destroy it. And when I do, I’m going to drag its carcass back and dump it in front of the Sheriff’s Department. I want them to see it. I want them to smell it. I want to see the looks on their faces when the media starts taking pictures of them with it. That’s my goal.”
She nodded, gently stroking her snake. “Just be careful. I’ve dealt with some of these crypto people and some of them are way out there.”
She related a story about some cryptozoologists pestering her about a twenty-foot Western Diamondback Rattlesnake found dead on a road in Nevada. She examined the carcass and the snake was an eight-footer, large, but hardly a monster. “They didn’t care for my answer, so they made one up. They quoted me as saying it was at least twenty-five feet long. I had to threaten them with legal action to have my quote removed. Regardless, I got my fair share of ribbing from my colleagues. After that, I had nothing to do with those people and their fantasies.”
Jim felt more than a little deflated. “My bird is no fantasy, Nina.”
“No, I don’t think it is, Jim. Don’t get your back up. But be wary of these people. Just because they say they won’t use your name on their website, doesn’t mean they won’t. And if they do, you can get them to retract it but, alas, the damage may already be done to your career. Just keep that in mind.”
It was worth considering…yet, he couldn’t help liking Pettis and Shiner. There was something intriguing about them. Pettis was skeptical and Shiner was anything but. That made for an interesting balance. He didn’t necessarily trust them, but then he had no reason to be suspicious either.
“Are you still up to going out there with me?”
“I’m ready any time you are. As long as it’s just you and I and not the crypto people.”
“Agreed.”
13
But there was one other little thing that he had to do first. Pettis and Shiner wanted him to meet a woman that evening who’d had a similar experience. They arranged a meet at Pizza Hut downtown. Jim got there a few minutes early and took a table in the back, telling the hostess that he would be joined by another.
Then he waited.
And waited.
After the waitress asked him like three times if he was ready to order, he felt foolish so he told her to bring a large Pepperoni Lovers thin crust and an order of breadsticks. He was on his second Labatt Blue by then and starting to feel increasingly stupid. The good thing was he saw no one he knew; the bad thing was t
hat he was starting to think he had been set up.
Then a young woman that he’d seen loitering over near the counter made a straight beeline to his table and sat down. Her hair was black as Dracula’s cape set with neon red streaks, black eyeliner laid thick as road tar around her dark eyes. She wore a red plaid skirt, blue nylons with fashionable holes, leather nut-busting boots, and a tight Punisher skull T-shirt with no bra beneath, her breasts jutting like warm, ripe grapefruits and her nipples standing out like pushpins. The lights gleamed off the multiple piercings in her nose, lips, and eyebrows.
“Um…can I help you?” Jim said.
“Help me? No, I’m here to help you, boyo.”
At that point, the waitress showed with the food and punk rock girl had no problem digging right in, licking sauce off her black lacquered nails. “You’re the one, right? Sure, man, I got the feeling right away when I walked in and scoped you. I knew you must be the one the crypto-dicks were jawing about. Spooky Route 50 and Big Bird. It ain’t the way to Sesame Street, boo.”
This was the woman Pettis and Shiner wanted him to meet? She looked like one of his students, albeit a bit older and with a lot more attitude and tattoos. I’ve dealt with some of these crypto people, Nina had said, and some of them are way out there. Yes, maybe he should have listened to her. He was really getting the feeling that he had stepped in the shit here and he would never be able to wipe it off his shoe.
“I’m Reese, like the peanut butter cup, and you’re…?”
“Jim,” he said.
“First off, Jim-Bob, I can see that same look on your facial gob I’ve seen all my life. Reese here to stab me and steal my wallet or offer me a ten-dolla-make-you-holla? Neither, my little friend. I’m a freako, so what? Get over it and move on, change the record. I don’t sleep in a coffin and I shit just like you do, okay?”
She grabbed another slice and wolfed it down, licking the sauce off her chin with a sweep of her tongue that she made sure he saw. She was probably in her early twenties. She was attractive, but, yeah, she was out there. He couldn’t decide if he was turned on or frightened. Or both.
“Listen, Reese—”
“Eat,” she said. “I’ll talk. Petty and Shineboy told me what happened to your sorry life. Somebody ran into my feathered friend out on 50. One of many. This person lived to yap about it, but not the others they were with. Hearts and flowers. That’s good and that’s bad. They told me you would be here and needed to talk, so I came to straighten you out before it’s too late.” She munched a breadstick and dipped it into the plastic cup of marinara sauce, sucking it off the end and making him feel more than a little uncomfortable. “Anyway, here I am. They didn’t tell me who you were or your name or even whether you had an inny or an outty. See, they were conducting a little acid test. They knew I’d find you like a fly always finds the juiciest turd in the barrel because someone who survives the thunderbird has a psychic odor to them that I can sense. Soon as I walked in, I picked you out like a green pickle.”
If she was telling the truth, then that was probably amazing given that there were thirty other people in the restaurant and several were lone occupants, business people grabbing a quick supper. Chances were, she was full of shit.
“But I’m not.”
“Not what?”
“Making it up or lounging in my own fecal slop. Because that’s what you think.”
She told him that two years before she was out on Route 50 with her boyfriend. Something came out of the sky and hit their little rusty Escort like four or five times, knocking them into a ditch. The car was totaled. When she opened her eyes, she saw an immense black shape with wings. It sheared the roof off like an orange peel with claws that would have given Pumpkinhead the cold sweats and whimmy-whammies (as she put it). It plucked her boyfriend out like pimento from an olive. It ripped him apart and dumped his body thirty feet away. The police found it in seven different cookie cutter pieces and said he hadn’t been wearing his safety belt. That he had been catapulted through the windshield like a bullet from a gun, ending his flight on the desert floor in a mangled mess.
“But that’s bullshit, Jimmo. I saw what happened. They wouldn’t believe me…or so they said. But you know what? I could see it in their eyes. What I was saying was nothing they hadn’t heard before.” She shrugged, her eyes glazed with memory. She took his beer and swallowed it down in one drink, belching so loudly that an old woman at the next table jumped. “That’s my bedtime story for tonight, kiddies. Sleep tight. Now let me tell you yours, Jimmo. Petty told me what happened. Same old, same old. Grab-and-hack. Raptor with a mouse. Happened to a lot of people. Difference is, you survived. Okay. Now here’s what’s going on. You lived and it’s marked you like a dog pissing on a tree. Believe me, it has. Same way it marked me. Now you’ve seen it somewhere since—maybe up in the sky or swooping your car or in your backyard, but you’ve seen it or you’ve felt its mighty wind. Am I right?”
She was. But she could have gotten that from Pettis. He smiled. “So you’re like a psychic or a medium or something?”
She rolled her eyes. “None of the above. I’m not into that New Age tie-dyed shit. I don’t believe in anything. But since Tweety Bird made me his bitch, yeah, I can smell another survivor. That’s how I located you. You can think that’s rank horseshit or a lucky guess on my part, but down deep you probably know better. So why don’t you snap your yap shut and quit eye-fucking my tits and admit the same, Jimmo.”
Jesus. What a girl.
He ordered more beers. He nibbled at a slice of pizza, but his appetite was gone. What if she’s for real? he thought. Then what? Two more bottles of Labatt Blue showed and he pulled off one until it was nearly half-drained. “Tell me a few things,” he said.
“That’s why I’m here,” she said with a mouthful of pizza.
“You said you needed to straighten me out before it’s too late.”
She nodded. “That’s for sure. Listen to my voice; it speaks in tongues. You got attacked by this beast because you were in its territory in the middle of the night during one of its hunting phases. You were a threat. It took you out. It killed your friends but it didn’t grind them up like Gaines-Burgers as you might suspect from your late night monster viewing. It could have, but it didn’t. It was making an example of them. It let you live. Why? I don’t know anymore than I know why it let me live. Maybe it was my lovely legs or my sparkling personality or your lack of the same. Maybe it wanted you and me to worship it like an idol with a stone cock the way our red brothers did back in the dog days of yore, offer it well-oiled virgins and bright-eyed waifs to slake its primeval appetite for things both salty and chewy. Maybe it wanted to awe us with its power of what it could have done. I don’t know.”
“You make it sound like a demon.”
“It is. Oh, it’s got biology like you and me. It’s not supernatural…but it is smart and if not that then cunning with instincts sharp as needles. It’s very something. I believe it’s very old and that age has brought wisdom. But maybe I just like to hear myself talk. Maybe I feel the need to entertain you with great wit as I sponge your beer and scavenge your delectables.”
“Help yourself,” he said.
She did. “Listen: It found out where you lived same way I found you, I guess. It sensed you. Maybe it smelled you. Who knows?”
This was getting wilder all the time. “So I’m marked? For what? To kill?”
“If you leave it be, it’ll leave you be. If you go nosing into its business, you’ll be like the little gray mouse that extended its middle finger to the ornery old tomcat in a last act of earthly defiance—it’ll rip your ass up and over the top of your head.”
“You’ve never nosed into its business?”
“I’ve got sense. Maybe not in my pockets, but upstairs my purse is full, Jimbo. I know better. Now here’s my advice: walk away from it, skip off into the sunshine of your middle years and middle class existence. You told your story to Petty and Shineboy. Now their
wee little dicks are hard with crypto-lust and they won’t stop until they leg-hump the bird. Cool. But stay out of it and let them handle it. They were born stupid and reckless and you were not. Give praise.”
He sat there in silence for maybe five minutes while he watched her eat. She was a tall girl, but thin, very thin. He was amazed at her wolfish hunger. It was as if she hadn’t eaten in days. She had the oddest affect on him…he was intimidated by her personality (which was so over the top it was at the bottom), aroused by her blatant sexuality, ashamed because she seemed to know his every impure thought, and amazed that someone like her even existed.
“Well,” she finally said, tonguing more sauce from her fingertips (the first knuckles of which all sported tattooed Tau crosses). “Say it. Say what you gotta say, Jim. Tell me of your heartbreak and woe. Render it at my feet. Give unto me that which is mine by divine province or just exceptionally shitty timing.”
So he did.
He told her pretty much everything he had told Pettis and Shiner and she hmmmed a lot at it, nodding now and again.
“They didn’t tell me all that, but I suspected. The check has arrived. Let’s go outside, Jimmo. I want to show you something.”
14
What she showed him was her car and it wasn’t the drive he expected, but a very conservative little Dodge Neon with a very un-conservative vanity plate that said POLE SLIDER. When Reese saw him eyeing that up, she said, “Not my place to shit on your teenage boy porno fantasies, Jimmo, but pole-sliding ain’t my obsession but my former job. Stripper, that’s me. I used spread my legs and flash my hoo-hah and shake my tee-tees for hard cash. Paid well. I worked more greased pole than Jenna Jameson. But…all good things come to an end and my career fizzled. Maybe it was my choice of a stage name: Summer Eve. Could be.”
Half the time he couldn’t be sure if she was joking or just laughing at him.