The Devil's Assassin (4 page)

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.”

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.”