Monster (5 page)

Since he was up already, Monster decided to drop off his scores. In addition to the yetis, he had eight other transmogrified cryptos that he hadn’t cashed in yet. He stopped by the Animal Control offices, gathered the stones in a sack, and carried them inside.

He didn’t use the front door. That only led to the cats and dogs section. He went around the side and down the alley into a small back door bearing the Cryptobiological Containment and Rescue Services logo, a muzzled dragon skull. The CCRS lobby was a drab gray room without furniture or decoration. The only door in or out was the one he’d used. There was a small plastic window where the payout clerk sat.

She wasn’t sitting there now.

Monster pressed the buzzer beside the window, then paced the empty room a few times. The cameras mounted in the four corners of the ceiling followed him.

Monster pressed the buzzer again. He held the button down until the grinding hum of the device exhausted itself and sputtered to a halt.

The payout clerk appeared in a flash. It wasn’t much of a flash. More of a pop, like a lightbulb burning out, accompanied by the smell of ozone, cigarette smoke, and too much cheap perfume.

“All right already,” she said. “Jeezus—what do you want?” Charlene was a fallen goddess, and the only remnants of her divine nature were her omnipresence and her third eye, accentuated by too much bright blue mascara and adorned with the cheapest false eyelashes available to woman or goddess.

“What took you so long?” he asked. “Coffee break,” she said. “Union rules.”

Charlene’s union was only her, but there was a lot of her to go around. She was the sole employee of the Department of Motor Vehicles, half the city’s health inspectors, and had positions in several other departments. Monster was also pretty sure he’d heard her voice on the other end of a phone sex line one time, but he preferred not to dwell on that.

“What do you have?” she asked.

He emptied the sack and laid his collection in a row on the desk. She appraised the specimens, checked her computer, and prepared an offer. In the background, he heard the distant, ever-present sound of barking dogs and the screech of a green cockatrice. Something howled as if in terrible agony.

“Wraith,” said Charlene. “Damn thing hasn’t shut up since it was brought in.”

“Isn’t that a Spirit Supervision job?” asked Monster. “Yeah, well, they’re full up so they had to transfer it over here. Like we have the room for it.”

She cut a check and handed it to him through the slot. “What about that dead yeti I turned in for alchemical processing last night?” he asked.

“It’s in there,” she said. “By the way, you’re also getting three demerits on your license for that.”

“What? But it wasn’t my fault.”

She fixed him with a vague stare that clearly indicated she couldn’t care less.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he grumbled as he pocketed the check.

The loudspeaker in the corner near the ceiling blared with shrill static.

“Monster, we’ve got a call for you. If you want it.”

It was Charlene’s voice. One of her other selves was probably sitting in some office right now, staring at him on a grainy monitor. He glanced at the Charlene sitting at the payout window. She sucked on a cigarette, running a file across her nails and looking supremely bored.

“I don’t work days,” he said.

He glanced at Charlene to see if her lips moved as the loudspeaker voice replied, “One of my best day guys had a run-in with a gorgon. Until they de-petrify him, I’m shorthanded.”

Monster hesitated. He still felt half-asleep, but he was here already. He might as well take the call, grab a few extra bucks.

“Sure.”

“Great. We’ll have Dispatch send you the details.”

In his van, Monster woke Chester. The paper gnome didn’t unfold all the way, only allowing his head to poke out of the square. “What time is it, boss?”

“Early. We’ve got a call.”

Chester said, “I believe the terms of service were eight p.m. to six a.m. Three personal days a year, Hanukkah and Arbor Day off, and one floating holiday.” He stretched. His body crinkled as the wrinkles smoothed out.

“Quit bitchin’ and get the paperwork ready. If I’ve got to work, so do you.”

Charlene came over the radio. She sounded a little more bored than usual, if that was possible, as she gave the details. Something small and hairy had popped up in a closet.

It took longer than it should’ve to reach the call. Monster wasn’t accustomed to daytime traffic. He got stuck in a freeway jam, and it didn’t improve his mood.

The Oak Pines apartment complex was a blankness that defied description. Four blocks of brick with eight apartments each. He parked his van and rummaged through the supplies in the back.

“That’s odd,” said Chester. “Yeah.” Monster found a five-by-five piece of cardboard. “What’s that?”

“Trees can be either oaks or pines. I don’t think they can be both.”

“Fascinating.” Monster gathered half a dozen markers of assorted colors and stuck them in his pocket. “I’ll be sure to notify the management.”

Someone pounded on the van’s back door. Monster threw it open and stepped out to confront an angry apartment manager. He leveled a finger at Monster and snarled.

“You can’t park here. Residents only.”

Monster glanced around. There were plenty of spaces available.

“The city sent me,” he said.

The manager glowered suspiciously. “I didn’t call the city.” Chester said, “Excuse me, sir, but we’ve been called about a possible closet infestation in apartment twelve. Possibly a troll or a wodwose.”

Like any incognizant, the manager refused to acknowledge that he was talking to a paper man. Monster sometimes wondered how that worked, how the incogs perceived the universe. Did the manager substitute an easier image, like making Chester into a really short, very thin guy? Or did he just glance over the details and not even bother subconsciously making excuses? Even the cognizant weren’t sure how it worked—not exactly. It was like trying to imagine how a bat used sonar to see the world. The result was easy to observe. The wiring wasn’t. It wasn’t really important to know, but Monster couldn’t help but be curious sometimes.

However the manager justified or ignored it, he snatched the paperwork from Chester and spent a minute fuming over it. It satisfied him without lessening his unpleasantness.

He showed them to an apartment. He grew grumpier with every step, which was saying a lot. By the time he knocked on the door, he was a tense knot of awkward rage.

“I knew she had a pet in there,” he said to Monster.

A young woman opened the door. The same young woman from the Food Plus Mart. Her gaze lingered on Monster with vague recollection.

“These people are from the city.” The manager jerked his thumb at Monster. “And they say you have some kind of illegal pet in there.”

“Actually, sir, we believe it’s more of an unwelcome pest,” Chester tried correcting. “Miss Hines did call us, after all.”

The man either didn’t hear or ignored it. “You’re not allowed pets.”

Monster and Chester slipped into the apartment, but Judy blocked the doorway to prevent the manager from entering. They started arguing, though Monster deliberately avoided listening. He went to the kitchenette and helped himself to a glass of water, waiting for the discussion to end. The finish came when Judy abruptly slammed the door in the guy’s face.

She fixed Monster with a curious look. “Don’t I know you?”

“Last night,” he replied. “You killed my yeti.”

Slowly, realization dawned in her face. “Yeah, the abominable snowman. That’s right.” She frowned. “You’re the guy with the paper man.”

“Paper gnome,” corrected Chester. “The guy with the paper gnome.”

Judy squinted up at the ceiling. “I’d forgotten all about that. How could that happen?”

“It’s the haze,” said Chester. “Most human minds cannot process magic into their conscious long-term memory. It has to do with a nerve cluster at the base of the—”

“It doesn’t really matter,” interrupted Monster. “There’s no point in explaining it because you’ll just forget it all once we’re gone. Where’s the bogey?”

She led him to her bedroom and pointed to her closet. She’d jammed a chair under the knob to keep the thing contained. “It’s in there. I woke up this afternoon, and there it was. In my closet. Thought something had died in there at first. Because of that odor.”

The moist odor of fresh crap and decaying flesh hung in the bedroom air. She pinched her nose. “Is it supposed to smell like that?”

Monster sniffed. “I don’t smell anything.”

“How can you not smell that?” She suppressed a gag. “Like wet burning dog hair covered in Tabasco sauce.”

Nodding, Monster removed his color code book from his pocket and scrawled
Purple: Can’t smell
. It would explain why Liz’s leftover spaghetti had tasted so bland this morning.

“Can you describe it, miss?” asked Chester.

“I really didn’t see it very well. Kind of looked like a monkey, but with a big head and covered in green hair.”

“Troll,” said Monster. “No big deal. We’ll grab some stuff out of the van and—”

The closet crypto pounded against the door. Stubby, clawed fingertips felt along under the doorjamb.

“It’s not going to get out, is it?” Judy asked. “Trolls prefer the dark. I’ll just get some bait and take care of this.”

Chester went to fetch the bait while Monster laid down the piece of cardboard and began drawing his magic circle on it, checking his rune dictionary occasionally.

“You’re purple,” she said. “I am?” He made a show of looking at his hand. “Wow, thanks for letting me know.”

“Weren’t you blue yesterday?” She dragged the reluctant memory to the surface. “Yeah, you were blue. So why are you purple today?”

“It changes whenever I wake up.”

If there was any further explanation, he didn’t offer it to her, and she was less concerned with the colors than the creature in her closet.

“Is this normal?” she asked. “I mean, this kind of thing with the sasquatches—”

“Yetis.”

“Yeah, that. And now this thing in my closet. Is that normal?”

“Nothing’s normal,” said Monster. “
Normalcy
is just a word people made up.”

“Says the purple guy,” replied Judy.

Chester reappeared with a bag of jelly beans. Monster laid his magic circle next to the closet, poured a few jelly beans on the cardboard, and removed the chair from the door.

“Give it a minute,” said Monster.

The closet door opened and a long crooked nose protruded from it. The large, dripping nostrils flared as the nose sniffed curiously.

Monster tossed a jelly bean beside the closet. It landed far enough away that the troll had to stretch out its arm to reach for it. The limb was even more crooked than the nose, and the fingers were thick and wart-covered. The troll snatched up the candy, shut the closet, and slurped it down noisily.

The door opened again and the troll’s arm protruded farther, probing for more candy.

“Come on, you little bastard,” said Monster. “I don’t have all day.”

The troll stumbled into the light.

Judy grimaced. “God, it’s ugly.”

The beast looked like a chimpanzee with a rat’s face. Its entire body was bent and strangely shaped. Its torso appeared about three inches misaligned with its pelvis. Both its arms were twisted, but the right arm was significantly longer than the left. And its mouth was wide enough to nearly split its head open.

The troll pounced on the jelly beans, shoving them down its mouth. The magic circle beneath it flashed, and the crypto was transmogrified into a small green lump.

“Works like a charm.”

“Uh, boss,” said Chester. “Looks like we’ve got another one.”

A new troll loped forward from the back of the closet. It was a little bigger than the last one. Its nose twitched, and its beady eyes darted around the room. This one didn’t smell any better either.

“I got it.” Chester poured some more jelly beans on the circle. The troll quickly gobbled these down and was transmogrified in the process.

Monster said, “So I’ll just take these off your hands and—” Two more trolls ventured into the bedroom. One was hairless with a bulbous blue ass, and the other was lumpy and pig-like. The trolls rushed Chester, who threw the candy at them and folded himself into a spider and started climbing up the wall. The trolls snarled and fought over the bag.

Growls and an overpowering stench came from the darkened closet.

Trolls of various shapes, sizes, and colors began to fill the bedroom. A few wandered over Monster’s magic circle and were transformed into harmless stones. But the circle’s power faded and at last was consumed, leaving a few dozen wandering around the room.

Something big and red struggled to stick its egg-shaped head out of the closet, but its ears were too large. Its massive fingers wrapped around the doorjamb as it struggled to push its way through.