Authors: Nero Newton
The two visitors had come on behalf of the health ministry doctor who had been at the logging camp a couple of months earlier, but Tall Guard had no way of knowing that, and the visitors had no reason to tell him. The only information they revealed was that they possessed evidence that would help to land Tall Guard in a snake
pit of trouble.
One of the visitors leveled a 9 mm pistol at him. The other approached and presented photographs of Tall Guard and two other men engaged in a lively and athletic orgy with a couple of very zoned-out backpacker girls they’d picked up at the Sanderson Free Forest Campground. Tall Guard hadn’t known it at the time, but one of the girls wasn’t really a backpacker, wasn’t really just passing through Equateur. She was the fifteen-year-old daughter of a British diplomat living in Prospérité, and had gone to the campground after hearing wondrous things about the endless party life there. She was pregnant now, and had told her father that her condition was the result of a drug-assisted abduction and rape, although she could not remember her captors’ faces very well. The British government was on the warpath about it, and even Sanderson would not be able to save the perpetrator from justice if his identity were ever proved.
Tall Guard figured it must have been Marcel who had supplied his visitors with the photographs. The former foreman, who had just disappeared, was one of the few people who’d seen the pictures, which the boof merchants had merrily passed around over drinks more than once. Tall Guard still had no idea who had gotten the jump on him just as he was about to take Marcel out, but it seemed likely that today’s visit had some connection to that event.
He began blustering
about how no one could prove that those photographs were real, that in fact they weren’t real, that he would never give his visitors a single centime, and on and on and on, until one of them said, “We don’t want money. All we want is information about Sanderson’s organization. We know that you know about the schedule for shipping the animals, and about Sanderson’s personal movements, and you need to pass all of that information on to us. When and where the animals are going, when Sanderson’s leaving the country, who he’s meeting, and when he’s coming back. All you have to do is call the number that’s written on the back of that photograph and leave a detailed voice message that includes all of the information you’ve gathered. Follow it up with weekly reports that include everything you’ve learned since the last one. Each report should be thorough, and all the information has to be true. If you lie to us, we’ll find out, and the British consulate will get this photo along with several others taken the same afternoon.”
Tall Guard was wary,
but the deal didn’t really seem all that hard to take. The alternative, on the other hand, sounded spectacularly awful, so he promised to cooperate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Amy had Andre’s “latte burner” in the pocket of her baggy green shirt.
She had seriously considered shocking Stephen Stokes, showing him the gun and saying,
You know why I carry this? It’s because I’ve had my life threatened twice in less than two months, and at least one of those times was because I’ve been looking into these animals. Probably both times. I’m afraid this isn’t just an episode of Adventures in Art History anymore.
But when Stephen sat down across from her in an Oakland diner, she realized that she could never have carried out that plan. It was just too weird a thing to spring on anyone, and she didn’t need this guy to think she was a flake – or dangerous.
Besides, it might be easier than she’d expected to bring him out of an academic mindset and into a practical one. None of the nerdy, bookworm modesty she’d sensed on the phone showed in his dark eyes, or in the sharp features framed by his dark brown beard. It was a full, dense beard, not a goatee. He was tall and somewhat athletic-looking, a runner, maybe. He looked no older than her, maybe a year or two younger. He ordered a beer and Amy did likewise.
Her decision to drive north earlier than planned had come the night before, at the end of her second day living in the place Rita called “the safe house.” She’d called Stephen about an hour outside of town, and he’d suggested meeting at the diner because they could sit there right through the dinner rush and be ignored if they wanted to.
Stephen pulled a flash drive out of his pocket and handed it to her. “The whole package, as promised. Everything I was able to photograph from the Baja envelopes.”
Amy pushed aside the ketchup bottle and sugar shaker and the little stand with the laminated ad for the week’s specials, and made room for her laptop.
“I’ve also printed copies of everything that’s on that flash drive,” he said. “Here’s a set for you.” From an army-style duffel bag on the seat beside him, he produced a stack of folders about ten inches thick, fastened with rubber bands. It felt to Amy like at least fifteen pounds of paper. “There are translations of more than half the texts. The others I haven’t had time for yet.”
While they waited for the files to copy from the flash drive, Amy filled him in on the break-in at her place and the email from Equateur. His expression told her that he grasped the implications of both events.
“What drives me crazy is that I saw a chimp in the bathroom window, but I swear there was something else on the big guy’s shoulders, something with a tail.”
Amy
looked through the folders as she spoke. There must have been a couple hundred images. He’d printed close-ups of many, sometimes placing two or three on the same page for comparison. Descriptive captions were added to about a third of them. He’d been busy.
“And speaking of shoulders,” she said, looking at a close-up of a paw, “this reminds me.” She slid off the long-sleeve shirt, leaving only her tank top. With her shoulders exposed, she explained how the claw marks had gotten there.
“You didn’t mention this on PrimateWeb.”
“I left it out on purpose. I figured that saying I’d actually been attacked by the mystery beast would only make the story sound crazier than it already did.”
“Probably a good call.”
“Here’s another thing about that night in the truck cab when I got clawed. After I read about ‘ruby’ on that forum, and figured out that the drug probably comes from our animal, I also realized I must have been sprayed. I woke up when the thing’s claws dug into me, and the smell was already there. Just as I shook the thing off, the stink disappeared all at once. After that, the air smelled like a steamy bathtub, which was exactly where I was dying to be.
I’ve found more online commentary about it, and one of the things the ‘ruby’ users all agree on is that the stuff only smells bad until you’ve experienced its effect; after that, it smells like whatever you want most.”
“So maybe what you remember as a chimp looking in the window was actually one of the blood rats
. And it wasn’t a dream; you were really awake, trying to get that door open and let it inside.”
“That has to be it
,” she said. “Until the other night, I would have said it was impossible to mistake one of those things for a chimp. But unless there were two different animals at my house during that break-in….” She slapped the tabletop. “Oh. And after I left the truck and walked up the logging road, these really sick-looking chimpanzees started to follow me, sniffing like crazy at my shirt. Definitely chimpanzees that time; I’m positive. It was broad daylight, I saw them from multiple angles, and there’s no question that they were big adult female chimps. They were only interested in the side of the shirt that would have been hit by the spray if it came from the slightly open window the night before. Some of the spray must have dried on it, and it was driving these chimps crazy. They were rubbing their faces all over that fabric. I think they were addicted to boof, and smelled it on me.”
“How did the right side of your shirt smell to you?” Stephen said.
“Clean,” she said. “Freshly washed. When I held it to my face, it felt like I was in my back yard in the foothills on a sunny October day. Exactly where I wanted to be. I don’t think there’s another substance out there like this stuff. The online talk is that it’s addictive like smack, but also produces long hallucinatory trips like psychedelics. And just like with acid, it can occasionally trigger a real breakdown, or shift in personality – depending on things like your mental state at the outset, any personal crisis, or who you’re with and where you are.”
Stephen drained his beer, then held up the empty glass to signal for another. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you decided to show up early. I’ve discovered some interesting things about the nature of the animals, but that can wait until tomorrow, if you’re tired from the drive.”
“All I feel is wired. I’m a lot more interested in listening than in sleeping.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” He shuffled through the folders and
found a drawing that depicted a Catholic priest addressing a throng of Native Americans gathered in the courtyard of a mission. The priest was pointing to an animal bound upright to a wooden post atop a mound of firewood. The top half of the creature’s face looked nearly human, as though a man’s head were erupting from within an animal’s, but otherwise it was definitely one of the mystery animals.
At the bottom appeared a lengthy caption in Latin, which Stephen translated. It declared that God, through His servants, hereby demonstrated the power of the Holy Church to defeat the demons these Indians had been worshipping for centuries. Merciful God had delivered one of the wicked creatures into the hands of His messengers, who would today destroy it on the very site of its own temple, a hilltop now purified and consecrated in the Holy Spirit.
The signature, which consisted of several cursive letters scrawled over and around one another, looked like a squished and dried-out dragonfly.
“Is this a picture of the place you visited? Where you found all this stuff?” Amy asked.
“No, no. This is way bigger than that little mission in Baja. Probably somewhere in central Mexico, maybe near present-day Mexico City or Puebla. The drawing’s got to be from the 1600s, maybe even the late 1500s.”
A few native people at the front of the crowd, wild-eyed and frantic, reached out toward the creature as though to save it from the flames to come. They were blocked by a much taller indigenous figure in the cloak of a Church novice, extending one arm in the universal traffic cop’s gesture for “stop.”
“Funny how the face looks partly human,” Amy said. “You suppose it’s meant to represent the hallucinations that the spray causes?”
“
No. The drug was mainly used in the preparation for the shows. They would nab some of the native pagan priests and hold them for a while, lock them up and expose them to a blood rat or two, so they’d not only get hooked on the spray, but they’d also associate the animal with the fix they were craving. In this scene we see the native priests shivering in the throes of withdrawal, shrinking from the light, and at the same time, reaching out to the animal that’s tied to the stake. Smells awful to everyone else, but the pagan priest is drawn to it.”
“Clever,” Amy said. “That would
have made it easier to convince people that the animal really was some evil spirit.”
Stephen nodded. “An evil spirit
that the native priests had been communicating with. The pagan deities would be equated with this smelly little monster.” He looked intently at her and drew a slow breath. “A little off the subject, in the last couple of days I’ve discovered some things about the nature of the animals that—”
A loud crash and some angry shouting erupted over at the diner’s long counter. From the snarled words that followed, Amy gathered that a homeless man had been arguing with the waitress about her refusal to serve him beer, and a very drunken customer had intervened on the waitress’s behalf.
She turned back to Stephen. “Maybe we could go somewhere else?”
“Okay,” he said. “The libraries are all closed, but some of the coffee houses over at the waterfront stay open pretty late. Or there’s my apartment, which isn’t in the most elegant neighborhood, but it’s about a two-minute drive away. I walked here, so there’s only your car….”
“Your place sounds okay,” she said. “You don’t seem like a psycho killer so far.”
“Thanks.”
***
It was close to nine o’clock when they parked curbside next to a graffiti-covered concrete light post. The light above wasn’t working. Stephen led Amy to the front of a two-story late Victorian flat that looked like it had never been repaired in the hundred-thirty-odd years since its construction.
“I’m on the upper floor,” he said.
Amy looked up and saw that lights were on behind all of the visible upper-story windows.
Stephen started up the stone steps to the wide front porch, then stopped.
“Something wrong?” Amy asked.
“I don’t know.” He nodded toward a white-haired Hispanic woman in her fifties or sixties who was standing on the porch, barely illuminated by one of the few working street lights. She clutched a bathrobe to her tightly.
“You know her?”
“She’s my downstairs neighbor,” he said. “I’ve never seen her out after dark. And she’s looking at us. She never looks at me.”