The Devil's Assassin Read online

  Linus is exasperated because he knows that every person in his house has the exact opposite opinion of the creature than he does. “All I want, Ms. Dituro is that caution be taken. He is dangerous. I’m sorry I don’t have any evidence to show you right now, but he was on his way into my bedroom, in the dark of night. You can see that. What do you think he was up to?”

  June reply is tinged with anger. “Give us some credit, Mr. Hather. We’re objective scientists. We don’t need laypeople telling us to be careful. We know our job. If he’s dangerous, we’ll determine that and I’ll be the first to let you know.”

  Linus goes into the kitchen, a little angry himself. June follows him.

  “You want some coffee?” he asks her gruffly.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  Linus reaches into a cupboard to get a couple of mugs and pulls out six, figuring he might as well pour everyone some coffee while he is there. He goes to the pot and brings it to the mugs on the table and begins pouring.

  “So what’s going to happen now? You going to take him back to the lab with you?”

  June takes a mug of coffee and wraps her hands around it to warm them. “Yeah. It’d be way more convenient than studying him in your basement. I’m sure you’d get tired of us pretty quickly. You have any milk for this?”

  Linus lets a small smile cross his face. “The milk is in the fridge if you wouldn’t mind getting it.”

  He fills the last mug. “Ms. Dituro…”

  In an effort to repair the apparent breach that’s opened between them she says, “Call me June, please.”

  “June. It may seem a little crazy to hear this from a tough prison guard, but I’m afraid of that animal. There’s something about him I don’t like…. It’s like I’ve dreamt of him. Disturbing dreams. He’s more than he appears, that I’m sure of.”

  June smiles in an effort to put him at ease. “Please trust me, Linus. If it turns out that he’s dangerous, then we’ll take appropriate steps. But right now it’s a very exciting find and until we figure out how safe or dangerous it is we have to keep it quiet. You can’t discuss this with anyone else until we okay it.”

  Linus is incredulous. “How can you keep a new species from the public?”

  “Just for a little while. We have procedures to follow…. It’s a national security issue. It’s not up to me or Doctor Van Houten.”

  Linus takes a sip of his coffee and mulls over for a moment what she has said. A slight smile crosses his face as he says, “Just hurry up with your procedures. My fame and fortune can’t wait forever.”

  June’s smile at Linus’s joke is one of relief. “I’ll do my best.”

  ›

  It is almost noon and Jay and Linus are standing outside near Jay’s car about ten hours after the ordeal started for Linus. The creature had already been placed in a smaller cage and loaded into a van for transport back to Dr. Van Houten and Dr. Dituro’s government lab.

  “I am dead-dog tired, Jay. I’m gonna get some sleep. Sure you don’t want to crash on the couch?”

  “Nah. Enjoy your sleep, buddy. I have two classes and departmental duties today. I will hit the hay later.”

  Jay starts to get into his car. “Maybe you need some company after this unusual ordeal?”

  Linus scoffs, “I don’t need company! I just thought you’d be tired is all.”

  Jay smiles from inside his car, “Well, we’ll stay in touch. I want to be in the loop on this one and I’m sure you do, too. If we leave it up to those government scientists, they’re more than likely to shut us out. I’ll let you know what June and Van Houten are up to.”

  Linus nods his head, then asks, acting as if it is an afterthought, “How do you know June?”

  Jay looks slightly surprised to hear the question. “I used to go out with her a few years back. Before I was married, of course. You interested in her or something?”

  “No! You just seemed like you knew each other fairly well, that’s all.”

  Jay smiles and nods in understanding. Linus pats the roof of the car. “Thanks for coming out so late.”

  “I’da killed you if you called anybody else. I can’t tell you how important being one of the first to see an undiscovered species is to me.”

  “Drive safe, Jay. You want a Coke for the road?”

  “Nah. I’ve had enough caffeine. I’m actually buzzing. Oh, and Linus?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Professor Fozzie’s hair was real.”

  Linus smiles. “Coulda fooled me, bud.”

  Jay smiles and pulls away, and Linus watches as the dust rises off the driveway. The sun is bright as he goes inside. Once in the house he sets his alarm. A general mess remains from the commotion and activity but he doesn’t have the energy or inclination to clean it up now. When he checks on Sava he sees that the lemur is sound asleep. Sava has had a long night, too and he knows the animal was nervous while the creature was here.

  Having reset the trap in the hall, Linus sits on the edge of the bed in his boxers. He tips back onto the bed and one thought will not leave his mind. He must find proof that this creature is as dangerous as he thinks it is. It would really help if he could access the security footage he seemed to have erased, but if not there must be another way. He knew what he saw and even forgetting that, the creature just seemed to reek of malevolence.

  “I’ve got to find them some proof before somebody ends up dead.”

  Chapter 4

  It is the evening of the same day that the creature has suddenly burst into Linus’s life and Linus is in the county public library doing research. He is holding a list and checking it as he goes around adding to the stack of books in his arms. He grabs books on primates, books on paleontology and anthropology, encyclopedias, and books on mythological animals. Finally, he sits down at a table with his stack of books and starts to go through them. He starts with the primate books.

  Linus is looking for something that jumps out at him as being similar to the creature, but he has seen all of these animals in his biology class books in college. There is nothing new in these books. The books on paleontology have the various iterations of humans and prehumans, some of which are the same height and stature as this creature, but none of which resemble the artists’ renditions of early man. No, it’s not Homo erectus, with its large brow ridge or Homo sapiens with its smaller brow ridge. Homo habilis was similar in size, though the head was smaller and the arms longer. The book said that this possible ancestor of Homo sapiens lived two to three million years ago. It made Linus realize that how something looked three million years ago certainly didn’t correlate to how it would look now.

  Giving up for now on the primate books, he turns to the encyclopedias, but they are not much help.

  Moving on from the encyclopedias, Linus opens a book on myth and folklore and looks at the Contents page. He sees a chapter titled “Animals in Folklore and Myth.” Intrigued he flips through the pages in that chapter. He sees various creatures and their descriptions. Among them are the unicorn, Pegasus, the harpy, centaur, mermaids, griffins, and dragons. Nothing in the animals’ chapter comes close to what he needs.

  The “Men in Myth” chapter is next in the book and here he finally finds something of interest. As he is flipping through the pages of the chapter, a picture stops him. On it is a short, dwarf-like man dressed in dark brown and the description there grabs him.

  “This is him,” he says aloud, in his library voice. “I can’t believe how close this comes.” He reads the full story on these couple of pages.

  Excited, Linus leaves the other books behind, checks out the myth book from the front desk, and heads home.

  ›

  Sava’s cage is open and empty, and Keiko Matsui permeates the air with her smooth jazz piano sounds. Now that Sava is out of her cage for the first time since last night, she is conducting her own cautious investigation of the area where the creature had been. She is sniffing the ground and the air of the hallway near Linus’s bedroom with
her long, ringed tail up when suddenly something spooks her and she jumps back, her hackles up.

  ›

  Linus sits in front of his computer, oblivious to Sava’s activity. He types “Lipsipsip” onto a search engine’s search form and clicks on one of the resulting links. It is for The Encyclopedia of Mythica. The website comes up over his dial-up connection after a minute or so displaying the entry for Lipsipsip. This isn’t better than what he has in his checked out library book, but he clicks on a “Related link” for “Maero” at the bottom of the page. The page that comes up has no picture but it does have an intriguing description and he saves the text to NotePad and prints it.

  “I’ll just e-mail this description to Jay and June and see what they think of their harmless little friend now.”

  ›

  A little while later, Linus is sitting on the couch with a printed page in one hand and the phone in the other. “Jay. Hi, it’s Linus. I e-mailed you some info about the Maero.”

  “The what?”

  “Maero. That’s what the Maori of New Zealand call this creature we captured in their legends. The Finns have something similar in their folklore called the Maahiset. Listen to this description of the Maero, Jay:

  According to the legends of the Maori, the fearsome maero, or wild people, often kidnapped people and fought them to the death. Short, hairy and unkempt, they had especially long, bony fingers. After spearing their prey with a long, needle-like appendage, they then ate the unfortunate person or beast raw. The creature lived in forests to which they moved when humans arrived from Hawaii. A man named Tukoio once came across a particularly hairy Maero, whose beard dragged on the ground. This Maero was spearing birds with his needle. He attacked Tukoio and fought with him fiercely until Tukoio cut off his arms, legs, and head. As he returned home with the head it spoke “Children, I’m being carried off!” Tukoio dropped the head and ran. He returned with other people from his village, but the head was gone, having joined with the rest of its body parts and returned to the forest.

  Linus finishes and listens for Jay’s reaction to the tale.

  Jay chuckles and says, “Linus, that’s a fairy tale if I ever heard one. Where’s the similarity? We haven’t seen a needle, well, I haven’t, and this Maero apparently eats meat, whereas the animal we found greedily eats carrots and apples!”

  “I would eat carrots and apples, too, if I was hungry enough,” says Linus. “Let’s look at the similarities. Short, hairy, man-like, beard, and needle, which I did see. I think these people saw the same animal we did, Jay. Maybe they exaggerated a little, but there’s a myth for you. Listen, I have another description, this one from Celtic folklore:

  To the Celts this dwarf, known as a Farrabeigh, was renowned for his hatred of man. According to the legend this hatred stemmed from his small stature compared to man’s and his envy of human comforts, namely: a roof over his head, a warm bed, and meat on his plate. According to Celtic tradition, Farrabeigh hunted and killed people when they were most vulnerable, such as in their beds or going about nature’s business. And he carefully selected his targets to be sure of his own advantage. He is seen in early Celtic literature and art with a short rapier.

  “You put those two together,” says Linus, “and maybe you have a clearer picture of one creature.”

  Sava arrives on the couch and sits nervously near Linus who offers the animal a comforting petting.

  “Or two fantastic pictures of two absolutely fictional beings,” says Jay. “It is true that the creature has a tenuous connection to these myths, Linus. But as you suggest yourself, people extrapolate from what they know, exaggerate. Of course people will have run across this creature at some point and made up stories about it. Doesn’t mean all that negative stuff is true.”

  “Doesn’t the similarity make you wonder, give you pause for thought?

  “What do you want me to do?” asks Jay.

  “Just give June a call and tell her not to dismiss the information out of hand.”

  “Okay, Linus. But I don’t want you to come out of this looking like a crackpot.”

  “When have I ever worried about what people think, Jay. Just tell her. If they show just an extra ounce of caution, then I’ll feel better.”

  “Why not trust them to discover whether he dangerous on their own?” asks Jay. “They are professionals.”

  Linus scoffs at the very idea. “Pah. This is the government, Jay. The same government that poisons and irradiates people with and without intent. You may think I’m overreacting, but this could be a worldwide problem. What if this creature is on every continent stabbing helpless people?”

  “Yeah, I’d say you’re overreacting! They’re not going to listen to you at all if you throw out theories like that.”

  “Which is why you’re going to caution them for me. This thing was going to my bedroom in the middle of the night and if it weren’t for my habitual overreacting I’d probably be dead.”

  Jay scrounged around in his brain for a way to placate Linus so that he could get off the phone. “Well, if what you saw was a sharp appendage like this “maero” had then I’d say you’re right. That’d be proof enough for me. I’ll mention it as something that June could look for in her study of the creature.”

  Linus smiles, “Ah, what a friend. Let me know what happens, okay?”

  “Will do, Linus. Take care.”

  The two men hang up the phones and Linus is still smiling, confident his friend will go to bat for him with June and Van Houten. He continues petting Sava, who is greatly appreciative of the attention. Linus looks over to the wall on which the picture of the Jersey Devil leers menacingly out at him. He gets up and pulls it off the wall and puts it into the coat closet in the hallway. He’d hung it there in the living room as a conversation piece, and considering his location in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, an apt piece of historical memorabilia. Kitschy, in the same way as 1950s horror flicks were anything but horrifying. Though the picture has never bothered him before, for a reason that he can’t explain at the moment, he is relieved not to have to look at it.

  Chapter 5

  Dr. Mike Huggins is attempting to take a blood sample from the creature as it lies strapped to an examination table at the Princeton Primate Research Lab in Princeton, New Jersey. Dr. June Dituro is there as well as a young woman scientist. The three wear gloves and surgical masks and caps. The restrained animal reacts violently when it sees the needle, as if afraid for its life. The three scientists back away and Huggins puts the syringe out of sight.

  Attempting to calm the frightened animal he shows it his empty hands. “Okay. Gone, see?”

  The animal settles down slowly and then starts to get groggy again as it falls back into its drug-induced stupor.

  “I’ve never seen an animal react so violently to a syringe before,” says June. “You’d think he had a previous bad experience with one.”

  “It doesn’t seem possible,” says Dr. Huggins. “To get him in the cage initially we shot him with a dart and since it was in his back he never saw it. Maybe he’s hallucinating from the effects of the ketamine. What are we going to do now? We need to have a blood sample.”

  “We’ll have to give him more ketamine,” say June. “When he’s asleep we can get blood, weigh him, do some x-rays, stuff he won’t let us do when he’s awake.”

  Sahar, a female scientist with brown hair and Egyptian ancestry scoffs at the idea that he’s any problem. “I don’t think we should tranquilize him so soon after the last dose. He could go into a coma. Anyway, he’d been pretty docile until he saw the needle.”

  The creature is quiet now, and half-awake.

  “June’s right, Sahar,” says Dr. Huggins. “Even though he hasn’t given any other indication that he’s dangerous, he could injure himself if we allow him to get that frightened again.”

  Though she is a junior scientist, Sahar is still not convinced. “But can’t we put off the blood test until tomorrow?”

  “No,”
says June. “We have direction from the DOD to get answers about this animal as quickly as possible, and I don’t like to argue with a source of significant funding for my laboratory. They especially want the DNA test ASAP.”

  Sahar is disappointed but realizes where the funds for her job come from. She and the other two scientists go about preparing to put the animal to sleep again. June and Dr. Huggins agree to use the Hauptner syringe, as it looks more like a hot glue gun than a typical needle. The two women scientists distract the creature while Dr. Huggins administers the dose to the animal’s shoulder from behind.

  ›

  The creature’s arms and legs are still belted to an examination table and the scientists have given the animal enough time to be sure he’s asleep. EKG wires are hooked up to him and an electrocardiograph displays his heart’s vital statistics. Huggins is drawing blood from the prone animal. Sahar moves a portable x-ray machine near the table. The scientists step away and she shoots two or three pictures. Once the x-rays are done, Huggins pulls a hook down from the ceiling which he attaches to the table. He presses a button and it lifts the top portion of the examination table and the animal up an inch or two.

  “Thirty-seven kilograms,” he says.

  June writes this down on a clipboard she is holding. She starts removing EKG contacts. “Looks like we’re finished,” she says. “At least he cooperated and stayed asleep. Let’s get him back into his cage before he comes to.”

  “If he comes to,” says Sahar under her breath.

  June pretends not to have heard but a slight smile crosses her face that Sahar cannot see. Sahar reminds June of her younger self. She really appreciates how much Sahar cares for the animals that come through this lab.

  Sahar moves the x-ray machine away. Huggins moves the portable tray table away from the examination table, then positions himself near the head of the creature, June goes to the feet. Sahar is near the belts with the Hauptner syringe.