Jack James and the Tribe of the Teddy Bear (11 page)

TEN

A FAMILIAR NOISE STOLE TAKOTA from his slumber. He stretched his arms, trying to push away the fatigue. That dark little corner of the store didn’t see many people, still he’d felt the need to play the dead game all evening, an exhausting prospect when combined with the day-long stint he had to endure in Jack’s backpack while the boy was at school. It didn’t help, either, when that dog took him for an unexpected ride. Harley got what he had coming, though. What was that pooch thinking, anyway, attacking a Tanakee?

Takota sat in the Lost and Found, giggling at the foolish hound, though at the time it wasn’t so funny.

Then a voice pulled him from his thoughts.

“He’s over here. I can hear him—smell him, too,” Takota recognized Pud’s playful tone.

Sniff! Sniff!

The exaggerated sound dominated the silence, and was getting closer.

Sniff, Sniff, Sniiiiiiffff!

Pud’s stubby, orangish snout poked from the other side of the counter and inhaled a couple more times. Then he took a step forward, locked onto Takota and smiled with his mouth wide.

“Yep,” he announced. “Told ya’ I smelled him!”

“Thank Eteea,” Enola stepped past him. “We’d feared the worst when that child took you.”

“He actually got away,” Cheyton poked between Pud and Enola. “Unbelievable.”

“Is he alive? Is he okay?” Ayita shoved through. “We heard something about a dog. Did it hurt you, are you all right?”

She hopped up to examine him, moving aside shaggy tufts of fur to search for wounds. Amused, Takota allowed her doting.

“Hey,” Pud exclaimed. “I thought you couldn’t stand him.”

Takota glared at him.

“I can’t,” Ayita lifted her arms with her palms facing everyone. She squinted at Takota and leapt to the floor. “I was just worried he might have rabies. We don’t want rabies in here, do we?”

“Or some other disease,” Cheyton added. “Good thinking.”

“Nonsense,” Enola jumped to the shelf alongside Takota. “He doesn’t have rabies. Do you, dear?”

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

“He doesn’t even know!” Ayita complained.

“What!” Pud sprang up to join them. “How can you not know if you have rabies? Are you feverish?”

“No,” answered Takota.

“Are you restless?”

“No.”

“Excitable?”

“No.”

“Aggressive?”

“No.”

“Any sudden mood changes?”

“No.”

“Excessive drooling?”

Takota sneered. “No!”

“Okay, okay. That’s enough,” Enola scolded.

“You’re right!” Pud bounced to the floor. “Enough of this! We’ve been cooped up all day! Time for some FUN!”

He danced clumsily past his friends and did an awkward twirl when he got to the middle of the walkway, casting a glance to the group.

“Who’s with me, huh? Hey! Who’s up for a bike race? I’m starting without you!” he hurried down the aisle.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Ayita charged after him.

“Hey! You’re not cheating this time!” Enola gave chase. She motioned to Takota and Cheyton to follow while she scampered out of sight behind Ayita and Pud.

“What are they doing?” Takota stood and stretched his legs.

“Burning some bottled-up energy,” Cheyton began to follow his friends. “We do this almost every night. The competition keeps us sharp.” 

“You can’t be serious!” Takota stepped off the shelf and caught up to him. “What about this morning?”

“What
about
this morning?”

“How can you stand there and say that? You saw it yourself. We almost got caught.”

“Those kinds of things have happened before,” Cheyton waved. “It’s not a problem.”

Takota argued. “I think it’s a big problem. So many things could’ve gone wrong. We’re lucky that boy wasn’t hurt. Staying here is too dangerous.”

“Listen,” Cheyton said firmly. “We’ve been living here for ten months and everything was fine before you showed up. Yeah, we’ve had the occasional Code Red, but never anything serious. So if you ask me, the only dangerous thing around here is
you
.”

Takota let his eyes drift to his feet. He wanted to tell Cheyton about Savage, but didn’t have the guts. What if he blamed Takota for that, too?

“What was that move you pulled this morning, anyway?” Cheyton reached the end of the aisle.

“What move?” Takota pouted.

“Don’t, ‘what move,’ me. This morning you got to that boy faster than anything I’ve ever seen. That was Eteea, wasn’t it? You used Eteea. How’d you do it?”

“I-I don’t know,” Takota glanced up to find suspicion on Cheyton’s face. “I’ve never experienced anything like it. I don’t know what it was.”

Cheyton stared down the corridor of packages, boxes and cans. “It was Eteea, and it was some advanced stuff, too. So, either you’re a master and you’re not telling me everything, or somehow you got lucky and have a special gift. In that case, it would make two of us.”

“You?”

“Not me. Ayita. She’s the gifted one. She has all kinds of surprises up her sleeves. You’ll see.”

“Oh. Ayita,” Takota rolled his eyes. “Great. What’s she got against me, anyway?”

ELEVEN

“JACK! AMELIA’S HERE!”

Lily’s voice had a way of grating on Jack’s nerves, particularly when he was working. It didn’t matter what he was working on, either. She always found a way to get under his skin.

“Amelia’s here!” she bounced on one leg toward his door, a purple knit shrug clinging to her shoulders.

“I heard you the first time,” he smoldered. “And stop doing that. Stop standing there in the hall, yelling at me.”

“I just wanted to see what you were up to, that’s all! Whatcha doin’!” she raised her voice as loud as possible without getting their mom involved.

“Mom!”

“Lily, stop it!” Liz scolded from somewhere downstairs, probably the kitchen. Jack smelled tacos. “Your brother has company, so be polite!”

“Hi, Jack,” Amelia peeked in, her shoulder length, dark tresses tucked behind a flowery band.

“I am an enchanted door,” Lily used a monotone voice. “To enter the bedroom you must say the magic password.”

“Uh, please?” Amelia smiled.

“That is not the magic password,” the blonde, curly-haired girl kept up her emotionless tenor.

“Um, I don’t know, then. How about open sesame?”

“That is not the…”

“MOM!”

“
That’s
the magic password!” she scampered downstairs.

“Right now I’m glad I’m an only child,” Amelia shook her head.

“Believe me, sometimes I wish I was,” Jack hit the escape button and the celestial charts on his computer screen collapsed.

“What was that?” she asked.

“That? Just some data for the Holoversarium. That supervoid, or whatever it was you found yesterday, is intriguing. I’m trying to find out more about it.”

“Jack James, you sure have some interesting hobbies,” she smiled.

He chuckled. “Hey. My life’s not all about weird little creatures pretending to be teddy bears.”

“Um, since you brought that up,” she sounded hesitant. “I hope you don’t mind, but I did a little digging, and you might be interested in what I found.”

She slipped the memory card out of her phone, inserted it into a port on Jack’s computer, and clicked the mouse, opening a folder with pictures, data and video files.

“I had no idea where to start. We don’t know what it’s called. We don’t even know if it’s ever been documented. So I thought about it. This might sound crazy, but you know what I think it might be? A Bigfoot. It looks like a baby Bigfoot, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“There’s a ton of stuff on the internet about Bigfoot,” she clicked a video icon. A shaky, grainy, poorly-framed motion picture of a large, odd-looking primate played on the screen. It lumbered upright several strides through dense forest before turning over its shoulder to the camera. “This is the famous Patterson-Gimlin film taken in California. Everybody’s seen this.”

“That was proven a hoax, wasn’t it?” he squinted.

“Maybe, maybe not,” she clicked and opened a text file. “So many sightings have been reported, not only in the US, but from everywhere around the world. There’s the Native American Sasquatch and Skookum, the Yeren of China, the Yeti in Nepal, and the list goes on. Stories date back thousands of years, though there’s nothing about infant Bigfoot. So I thought about it some more.”

She clicked through several pages, searching.

“What if it’s not a baby Bigfoot at all,” she posited. “What if it’s full grown? A whole different species altogether?”

“A pygmy Bigfoot maybe?” he wondered.

“Exactly!” she opened another file. “And guess what? I found something.”

Jack’s jaw dropped when he saw the picture. “That looks almost exactly like him! He’s brown and gray instead of black, and the fur’s a little different, but that’s him!”

Amelia read. “‘This small primate-like cryptid, similar to Bigfoot, inhabits mainly the forests of the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, though some have been witnessed roaming the plains and prairies of the American West and Southwest. It has been described as tiny, less than three feet tall and weighing not more than ten pounds, with a thick coat which varies in texture and coloration. The animal’s most prominent characteristic is a section of ridged, bare skin below each eye the shape and color of a leaf.’”

“That’s right. They are different colors. And they have those weird green spots on their cheeks.”

She read further. “‘Though it has been referred to by many names such as the Furry Forest Baby and Western Wild Child, the term Native Americans use for the creature is Tanakee.’”

“Hmm. Tanakee,” he repeated, then went again to the picture. “Takota the Tanakee.”

“There’s more,” she continued. “‘The Tanakee are thought to possess strange, almost supernatural powers. Their eyes are described as large and hypnotic, they have been known to lift objects many times their weight, and can run at unnaturally high speeds.’”

“You might say that,” he muttered under his breath.

“Why? What did you see?” she eyed him.

“Let’s just say they’re fast,” he analyzed the screen. “Freaky fast. And strong. He caught me, Amelia. I was falling down those stairs and he actually caught me. And there’s something I haven’t told you yet. They can talk. That’s how I know its name. Isn’t that incredible?”

“Yeah,” she paused. “And if you think that’s bizarre, then this will blow you away,” she closed the file and let the computer sit on a blank screen. “Jack, didn’t you tell me your dad’s working on a machine he claims will let people use the energy from other dimensions?”

“Omnidimensional energy absorption is what Dad calls it, capturing and utilizing excess energy from all other dimensions.”

“Other dimensions, okay,” she clicked another file. “Listen to this: ‘It is well known in the world of cryptoscience that the Department of Defense has been attempting to capture a Tanakee since the early 1960s. Each attempt at holding one in captivity has ended in failure, though, with the creature either vanishing seemingly into thin air or hypnotizing its captors with what has been described as a potent form of mind control. Because of these innate abilities, the Tanakee is thought to be an interdimensional being.’”

“What?” he leaned close to study word for word what she’d just read aloud. When finished, he only managed a stunned, “Whoa!”

“You get it, don’t you?” she sounded excited. “There’s a reason for all of this. You and that Tanakee and your dad’s dimensional machine—you’re all connected.”

“But, but how?”

“I don’t have a clue. Why did it save you? Why did it let you carry it around in your bag at school all day? From what this says, it could have easily gotten away from us, so why did it play possum like that?”

“It says people are trying to catch them,” he began to think clearly again. “What if they’re running from someone?”

“Or something…” she cut herself off, though she didn’t need to say another word. He knew what she meant, and it chilled his skin. They both had seen that strange entity hovering over them behind the store, and though they’d mentioned it to each other at the time, neither one of them dared speak of it again.

“Daddy!” Lily made them both recoil. “Jack, Daddy’s here!”

“I should leave,” Amelia took her memory card.

“No, no,” he assured her. “It’s fine. Don’t go. I wanna introduce you to Dad.”

“But aren’t your parents, like, split up?”

“They’re not divorced or anything like that. They’re just living apart for a while, that’s all.”

“Listen, Mercury’s in retrograde right now. Everybody’s on edge. I don’t wanna get in the middle of something.”