The Devil's Assassin (2 page)

Linus gets out of the car. He is six foot four inches tall
and somewhat burly, though not overweight by much. He still wears his prison
guard uniform and his gun is also holstered at his side. He walks around the
house looking for anything that might be out of place. An inspection he does
routinely upon arriving home.

Satisfied that nothing is amiss, he punches in the alarm code
at the side door, goes inside, and immediately rearms it.

At first glance the living room appears typical, with a
couch, a side table on which sits a lamp and a phone and a model of the
Nautilus, the submarine from
2000 Leagues
Under
the
Sea
. A boom box sits on the only shelf of a bookshelf that isn’t
overflowing with science and paranormal books. A recliner and a TV fill out the
room. But the room is actually anything but typical thanks to the fact that a
large fake tree boasting a wide trunk and limbs takes up one wall of the room.
It casts a Rain Forest Café aura over the living room. On another wall is a
particularly frightening picture of the Jersey Devil (which is said to inhabit
this same part of southern New Jersey). In a corner of the room, near the
ceiling, is a small video camera.

Linus walks through to the dining room which is adjacent to
the living room. This is where he keeps Sava, his lemur. He opens the cage with
a smile, gives the animal a quick pet as it bounces out of the cage, across the
room and into the tree in the living room. Linus walks to the kitchen to get an
orange juice.

On the kitchen table are
Science
and a nature
magazine. Drink in
hand,
he makes his way around the
rest of his house, checking out each room and closet to make sure there is no
one in the house. In his room, he even bothers to check under the bed. When the
in-house inspection is done, he relaxes on the couch. He talks to Sava, who
drops down out of the tree to accept a scratch on the back.

“I don’t know why I go through all this every night. You’d
let me know if anyone was in the house, wouldn’t you, Sava?”

The lemur coots at the sound of Linus’s
voice and Linus smiles as he scratches the animal behind the ear.

›

An hour later it is deep into the night, three a.m. Linus is
on the Internet and listening to music on his boom box. He has an almost empty
bowl of popcorn next to him.

“Well, Sava, I guess it’s bedtime.”

He shuts off the computer monitor, puts away his snack, and
collects Sava to be placed back into the comfortably nested cage. He then grabs
the boom box and carries it still playing to his bedroom. He sets it down on
his dresser and goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth and get ready for bed.

›

Outside Linus’ house, about 100 feet away, someone sees the
bedroom light go out and hears the music go off. Crickets chirp and a wind
chime chimes.

The full moon casts a shadow of the lurker’s form on the
sandy ground as he moves silently toward the house. He stays outside the area
around the house that he knows will trigger the automatic lights. This still
allows him to approach his chosen window with sufficient stealth. At the window
a needle comes up and he slides it in between the window frames to move the
lock. Then the lurker opens the window slowly and silently. He is patient, and
after 10 or 15 minutes of slow work the window is open and the intruder climbs
through it and into Linus Hather’s dining room.

The intruder pauses at Sava’s cage and contemplates the
still sleeping animal for a brief moment. After a short time he considers the
animal as no threat to his mission and turns away making his way quietly to the
bedroom.

In the hallway in front of Linus’ bedroom door, the intruder
pauses before proceeding. The door is closed and has a normal round door knob
on it. His fur-covered right hand moves toward the doorknob. When his hand
touches the knob and begins to turn it, the floor which had been under his feet
is suddenly no longer there. The instant the floor drops away, an electric
shock jumps from the doorknob to his hand so that in surprise and pain, he
shrieks, releasing the knob and falling into the pit below.

At the same time, an alarm begins to sound.

›

Linus is in bed sleeping and upon hearing the alarm, he
springs up from the bed, grabbing his gun from the nightstand at the same time.
He moves slowly through the dark room along the walls and out of possible line
of fire from the door. Soon he is standing to the right of the door, at which
his gun aimed. The switch for the blaring alarm is near the door and he turns
it off. He flicks on the light and squats down to avoid possible gunfire,
readying himself to open the door.

“Throw down your weapon,” he shouts. “I’m armed and trigger
happy!”

Linus pauses as he listens for a response. After a deep
breath, he turns the door knob and swings the door open. The bedroom light
illuminates the hallway and the wood floor in front of the door. It doesn’t
look any different than it did when he went to bed.
Is it a false alarm?
The trap had never captured anything before, but it had been triggered - once
through an electrical surge and once by Sava who had been sufficiently
frightened and stayed away from his room for three days as a result. And once
every month or two he tested the trap to make sure it worked properly.

There is only silence at the moment. Maybe it was a misfire.
Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to go down into the basement and see
if there is someone in the cage.

There is a light in the basement, but to be safe Linus grabs
a flashlight from the kitchen junk drawer and carrying that as well as his gun
he makes his way to the basement door which is closed and locked. He unlocks
it, carefully opens the door and switches on the basement lights with the
switch at the top of the stairs. He listens but doesn’t hear anything.

“Hello?” he says. No reply returns from the bottom of the
stairs. More and more he is becoming convinced that the trap has probably
misfired. At any rate he figures that he still needs to proceed with caution
and he does so by slowly making his way down the wooden steps to the basement
with his gun leading the way, his finger a quarter of an inch from the trigger.
He is not being quiet as his feet land on each step down but he is being
cautious.

Finally, he is on the last step. Off to the left of the
stairs is an open area of the basement filled with boxes of books, Christmas
tree ornaments, and college papers. To his right are a wall and an open doorway
to another room of the basement which holds the water heater, furnace, some
more boxes and a cage in the middle of that room which sits under the hallway
near his bedroom.

Linus takes a breath, girding himself, and turns the corner,
his gun out before him.

The cage is occupied. There is plenty of light in the
basement from the single, bare one hundred watt bulb screwed into the ceiling,
so there is no mistaking what he sees. Linus finds himself looking with
surprise at something he did not expect to see. What he had been expecting to
see was a thug, an escaped prisoner from his nearby prison, or a thief. He
blinks his eyes a couple times half expecting the hallucination before him to
be gone as a result. What he sees in his basement jail does not disappear.

“What the hell?”

Linus couldn’t be more dumbstruck by what stands shaking in
the cage. At first glance it is an animal. It is hairy and short, probably of
the ape family. But it has a long, thin, gray beard – like a dwarf, and a face
more human-like than ape. Something
like
a Bigfoot
creature in the size of a Hobbit.

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.”

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.”