The Devil's Assassin Read online

  Suddenly, the hairy creature stops shaking and looks at Linus confidently. Then he starts testing the cage, as if looking for weaknesses. Linus relaxes a little now and lowers his gun. He knows that he is in no immediate danger from this short, hairy, funny-looking creature.

  “That, my friend,” he says to the intruder, “has been built to withstand the punishment of a muscular, 350 pound convict, which you aren’t. But feel free to test it.”

  The creature pauses a moment to look at Linus and then, appearing to ignore him, in fact, looking almost as if he disdains him, goes back to his inspection.

  “You’re a persistent creature,” he says with a smile. “What the hell are you doing in my house? And for that matter, WHAT are you? . . . I suppose you can’t speak, whatever you are…. Ahhh, surveillance tape will tell me how you got in here at least.”

  Linus, confident that the creature is securely caged in his basement trap and with his gun still in one hand and the flashlight in the other turns around and walks back up the stairs. He closes the basement door and locks it just in case. He heads to the dining room where his computer is and sees his lemur safe in its cage, but awake and nervous.

  “You okay, little buddy? You look a little nervous. Everything’s okay now.”

  He moves away from Sava and turns on the computer monitor. The CPU is already running. He sits down at the desk and clicks on a security icon. His security program comes up and gives him several options (video surveillance, alarm system, lights control, call 911). He moves the pointer over the call 911 icon but changes his mind and moves the pointer to the video option and clicks. He is given some more options and chooses to view the last 15 minutes and runs it on fast forward.

  “Let’s see what we have here.”

  For the first few minutes there is darkness and then something appears on the monitor. Linus rewinds a little and then restarts it at normal speed. One outside camera has captured the creature clearly as he slides a needle into the window, unlocking it and then climbing in.

  “How’d he know that window didn’t have an alarm sensor?”

  An inside camera shows the creature stop in front of Sava. It is dark, but Linus gasps as he sees the creature suddenly holding a white-ish needle, though it is not clear where it came from. He fears for Sava when he sees this. Then it is gone and he breathes again in relief. The creature moves with cautious purpose toward the bedroom, his movements tracked by another camera in the hall. The intruder stops in front of the bedroom door, reaches for the door knob and the instant he touches it, the floor opens up, appearing to swallow the surprised creature. Then the floor closes, concealing his captured and unwanted guest.

  Linus goes into the living room, still carrying his gun. He sits down on the couch next to the phone, picks up a personal address book near it, looks through it for a name and number, and starts dialing.

  “I hope his number’s still the same,” he says, waiting about six rings before someone answers.

  “What?” says the tired and annoyed person who answers.

  “Hi, Jay. It’s Linus. Linus Hather. Sorry to call so late.”

  Jay responds still tired, but less annoyed. “Don’t worry, Linus. Wow, it’s been a long time. Is something wrong?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘wrong’ so much as unusual, Jay. You’re going to think I’ve gone off my rocker.”

  For a moment there’s no response. “Too late for that, Linus. Hit me.”

  “I’ve captured some sort of creature in my house. Dangerous too, I think.”

  “Huh? Creature? What kind of creature?”

  “It’s an unusual species, Jay. Something I’ve never seen.”

  This statement cuts through Jay’s sleepy fog. “Oh? What’s it look like?”

  “Well,” says Linus. “He’s very short and hairy, apelike, but human in the way he stands erect.”

  “A hominid?”

  “I suppose,” Linus says. “It has a beard like a Middle Earth dwarf and the face looks a little leprechaunish.”

  “Oh it does, does it? And a beard? Do you have any Lucky Charms? He might be hungry.”

  Linus is silent for a moment.

  “I swear on Professor Fozzie’s toupee that he is right here and looks just as I say.”

  “Hmmm. That is a pretty solemn oath. Is he restrained?”

  “Locked up tight in a cage.”

  “Okay, don’t call anybody. I’m on my way over. Can you wait an hour and a quarter?”

  Linus smiles. “No problem. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  He hangs up the phone and thinks about the creature which inhabits the steel cage in his basement. He decides to go downstairs again to check on the creature. When Linus appears in the basement, the animal stares at large man as if he planning in his head what he will do when he finally does get out of the cage.

  Linus speaks to the creature loudly. “You look pretty smug for an ape in a cage. Maybe you’ll end up in the Philadelphia Zoo soon with some of your better-looking cousins. But wherever you end up my friend, your breaking and entering days are over.”

  Chapter 3

  Linus Hather is sitting on the couch amidst a scattered pile of magazines, books, and encyclopedias. He’s been looking for information about this creature or anything vaguely like it in his small “library” and he has so far come up with nothing. He hears a car pull up the driveway and looks out the window to see his college friend, Jay Miele, get out of the car and move quickly toward the door. The outside light is on, having been turned on by the motion of the car. Linus opens the door as his friend comes up the walk and the two shake hands.

  “Good to see you, Linus!” Jay is tall, blonde-haired with a sand-colored beard and glasses. He has a white button-down shirt on and blue jeans.

  “I’m very happy to see you, Jay,” says a beaming Linus. “It pays to have zoologist friends, I always say. Sorry I haven’t called in so long.”

  They are inside the house now and Linus shuts the door.

  “Don’t worry about it,” says Jay. “We can catch up. So where is he?”

  “He’s still here. He’s been quiet. Just sitting there looking like he’s plotting something. This way.”

  Jay raises an eyebrow at the notion of an animal plotting. Linus leads his friend to the kitchen. Following Linus gives Jay a chance to notice the gun tucked into the back of his pants, but he doesn’t say anything. Linus unlocks the basement door and leads the way down the stairs.

  Near the bottom of the stairs he turns around and says, “Buckle your seatbelt, Professor.”

  The creature is sitting in a corner of the cage and growls as they enter the room.

  Jay stops with Linus at a distance and looks at what is before him with wonderment.

  “I do not believe what I am seeing, Linus…. I half expected you were pulling my leg, but I can … I can see what you mean by apelike. His hands are sort of chimplike, but look at his feet. They’re practically human feet.”

  Linus looks at the creature’s feet. The similarity disturbs him for some reason. “I didn’t notice that before.”

  “And that beard and face,” Jay says. “It just doesn’t fit the body somehow.”

  Jay moves cautiously closer to the caged creature while at the same time staying a few feet away from the homemade jail. Linus and his gun accompany Jay in his approach. “Hmmm. Have you seen his teeth?”

  Linus shakes his head. “No. But if you’re thinking he’s a herbivore, think again. He was on his way into my room in the middle of the night.”

  “You got a carrot?”

  “Yeah, I have a carrot.”

  Jay waits and finally Linus turns to go get the vegetable from the kitchen and brings it back to Jay. When the creature sees it he gets up and holds out his hand. Jay cautiously puts the carrot through the tight metal weave of the cage. The creature takes it greedily and starts to eat. Doing so gives Jay a glimpse of the creature’s teeth.

  “Well, a quick look isn’t confirmation but h
e looks like an herbivore to me. Maybe he was just looking for food.”

  Linus shakes his head again. “But look where he is, he wasn’t about to go into the kitchen. That’s my bedroom up there!”

  “What would an animal know about where you keep your food?”

  Linus looks skeptically at the creature.

  “I noticed your weapon in your jeans. Anything else that makes you thinks he’s dangerous, besides where he is?”

  “I have him on camera brandishing some kind of long spike at Sava, my lemur.”

  Jay looks surprised. “You have a lemur?”

  Linus disregards the question. “You want to see the tape?”

  Jay nods and follows Linus up the stairs to the dining room where he first admires the lemur in its cage as Linus sits down to the computer opening his security program. After he has acquainted himself with Sava he turns toward Linus.

  “Why do you need such an elaborate security system anyway?”

  Linus doesn’t look up from the screen. “It’s a bit of a long story, Jay. But mainly, the prison isn’t far from here and there have been prisoner escapes.”

  Jay’s first thought is that Linus can be a bit of a nut-case sometimes, a little off-the-beaten path so to speak, but then he realizes how wrong he is.

  “Linus, I understand the prison escapee worry. God knows I’d be worried about that myself. But if this creature is ALL you ever catch it will have made this system well worth your trouble. This is the find of the century! It’s Earth shattering!”

  Jay walks out of the dining room and into the living room and notices the tree, the model of the Nautilus and finally pauses in front of the picture of the Jersey Devil on the wall. “I don’t suppose the Jersey Devil has anything to do with that booby-trap.”

  Linus, still clicking determinedly on the computer, looks up and replies confidently. “Come on, Jay. I don’t believe in that fairy tale. But I’ll tell you what, maybe our furry friend had something to do with inspiring that legend.”

  “You might have something there. They don’t resemble each other in the least, but legends often get distorted over time.”

  Jay looks again at the tree and picks up the bag he had left near the front door, bringing it to the dining room where Linus is struggling with the security program, and cursing from time to time. “Damn it! It’s not here,” he says.

  Jay is silent for a moment as he looks over Linus’ shoulder at the computer. ”It’s OK, Linus. It’s not important. We have the creature. That’s more useful than any video you might have.”

  After a little while Linus gives up, frustrated, and walks toward the living room. He sits on the couch. “I really hate computers, you know that? I must have deleted the security recording in my excitement, Jay. I’ll have to see if it’s recoverable when I can focus a little better.”

  “That’s fine.”

  Linus looks down at his pile of magazines and books. “I looked up everything I could before you got here about primates and hominids, but I couldn’t find a reference to anything like this creature. I have a limited library, though.”

  Jay responds with excitement to his friend. “I doubt you would. I’d say you’ve captured a brand new species which you’ll soon be famous for discovering. Maybe they’ll even name it after you – like Homo hatherus or something. Haha.”

  Linus chuckles at the thought as well.

  “I need to make a phone call or two if I can use your phone. Then I’ll take my laptop into the basement and record my initial observations of the creature.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll put on some coffee.”

  ›

  An hour later the ring of the doorbell brings Linus from the kitchen. Jay bounds up the stairs from the basement and joins Linus at the door to greet the guests. Four people are on the doorstep. A long haired, self-important looking man in his mid-fifties and an attractive brunette in her mid-to late thirties stand in front of the door and two more men stand just behind. The two in front are already staring at the huge tree in the living room against the wall.

  Jay smiles widely and greets the newcomers. “June, Doctor. Hope your drive over was pleasant. This is Linus Hather. He and I were roommates in college. We took a lot of biology classes together before he switched majors. Linus, this is Dr. Alexander Van Houten, the head of the lab and Dr. June Dituro, the chief scientist.”

  Linus shakes hands with each as they come in. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Van Houten, Pleased to meet you, Ms. Dituro.”

  Van Houten is dour and unsmiling, while Dituro smiles pleasantly. She introduces the other two men. “Mr. Hather, this is Dr. Sheeran and Dr. Huggins, also from the lab.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sheeran… Mr. Huggins.”

  Jay lowers his voice and chastises Linus. “It’s Doctor, Linus.”

  Everyone, except Linus and Dr. Van Houten are uncomfortable that Jay has said this. But Linus responds. “I can call you all 'professor' if you like, it’s just that I reserve the appellation ‘doctor’ for medical doctors. Nothing against your hard earned Ph.Ds.”

  Van Houten is visibly impatient but strikes a diplomatic tone. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Hather. We’ve run across the problem before. So how about we see this mysterious animal that Jay is raving about?”

  Jay inserted himself into the conversation before Linus could increase the tension even more. “I think you’ll be very pleased when you see it, Doctor Van Houten.”

  Linus leads them from the front door and through the living room where all eyes wonder at the huge tree there, then into the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement.

  At the bottom of the stairs, each of the newcomers makes the right turn and stops short, staring with their mouths open. The creature sits still in the cage, looking a little tired. There are some half-eaten fruits and vegetables on the floor near him. The scientists become excited after they process what they see. The dour Van Houten is the first to break the silence.

  “My God, June. Do you see this? It’s earth shattering!” Jay smiles.

  “Yes,” June says. “I’d have to agree. I’ve never . . . Look at his feet; you’d swear they were human. His hands and body are more apelike, except the face reminds me of something else…”

  Linus gives her a moment to try to figure it out and then supplies her with the answer. “A leprechaun.”

  “That’s it!” she says. “A leprechaun. It’s amazing!”

  Van Houten looks at Linus and points to the cage with his thumb. “How’d he end up in this?”

  “He snuck into my house. He threatened my pet with a weapon and then as he was about to enter my bedroom, to do who knows what…”

  “I see,” said Van Houten. “Where’s the weapon?”

  “I haven’t been able to find it.”

  Van Houten nods. The creature picks up an apple core and throws it. Amazingly, it finds its way through the chain link of the cage and hits Linus in the chest.

  Van Houten laughs. “I think your friend here, may not like you, Mr. Hather.”

  “The feeling is mutual, I assure you.” He’s studying the creature, trying to determine if its action was founded by intelligence or if it was just a caged animal acting up.

  “Well,” says June. “It’s a good thing you had this trap in any case. I do wonder what he was doing in your house though.”

  Jay, who doesn’t want his friend to appear foolish to his colleagues, intercepts the statement. “He was pretty hungry when I got here, June. He may just have been looking for food. I looked at his teeth while he was eating. He appears to be an herbivore.”

  The teeth of this creature intrigue Van Houten all of a sudden and he moves in to see if he can get a glimpse of them. Jay joins him near the cage. June moves a little closer to Linus.

  “Where’s this pet you say that he threatened?”

  “In the dining room.”

  “Can I see him?”

  Linus doesn’t answer, but leads the way up the stairs to the dinin
g room. From the dining room, June looks at the tree against a wall of the living room and realizes that it is fake. It reminds her of a banyan tree she had seen in Florida. She notices the Nautilus and the Jersey Devil picture on the wall.

  “Ah,” she says. “The Jersey Devil. I’ve always liked that story. How does it go? Ah yes, Mrs. Shrouds was pregnant with her thirteenth child and with a fed-up slip of the tongue said that ‘It may as well be the devil.’ The child was born some months later with the head of a horse, bat-like wings, a tail, and horns. She screamed and supposedly it flew away up her chimney. It’s haunted the Pine Barrens since then, eating mostly small animals, dogs, cats, pigs, but on occasion, people.”

  Linus is impressed but does his best to show he is not. “Nice. It’s the head of a goat, though, not a horse. That’d be too big for its body.”

  June smiles and chuckles softly and turns to the dining room to see the big cage and the lemur. She is almost as surprised as she was after seeing the creature. “Oh, a ring-tailed lemur! You don’t see that every day. He’s so cute. What’s his name?”

  “Sava,” says Linus.

  “Unusual. I like it. How did you come to have a lemur?”

  “Actually, it’s a long story. I can tell you some other time.”

  “Oh. Yes. That’s fine.” There is silence for a moment as they look at the lemur. “What makes you think that Sava was threatened by that animal?”

  “Because I saw it on video. My surveillance cameras recorded it.”

  From what she has seen, June thinks it isn’t very surprising that this man has surveillance cameras. He is odd in many ways. “Of course. Well, may we see them?”

  “Not at the moment. It seems that I’ve accidentally recorded over it. I’m hoping it’s recoverable.”

  “I see. Then how about this weapon that you saw the animal brandishing? Where is that?”

  “Like I told Van Holder a minute ago, I haven’t seen it.”

  The silence this time is uncomfortable, but June moves to fill it quickly. “Of course we’ll keep in mind what you say about the animal, Mr. Hather. But without any evidence to the contrary I’d have to say he looks pretty harmless, and according to Jay, he has an herbivore’s teeth.”