Monster (16 page)

Satisfied with its latest acts of vandalism, the sphinx sat before Greta and asked, “If Train A leaves New York traveling at two hundred miles per hour…”

“Oh, come on,” said Greta. “That’s not even a riddle. It’s a math problem.”

“… and Train B is leaving New York traveling at one hundred miles per hour…”

Greta found a pen and small notebook in her suit pocket and hurriedly scribbled down what she could remember.

“Could you repeat the question?” she asked the sphinx.

The creature frowned and turned its head at an angle, puzzled.

“I missed some of it,” said Greta. “I know I can get the answer if you just repeat the question.”

“Is that your final answer?” asked the sphinx.

“What answer? I didn’t answer.”

The sphinx wheeled and leaped on the car.

“I didn’t answer!” said Greta.

The sphinx seemed not to care. It tore a bigger hole in the roof and reached inside to rake its claws across the front seat. Then it squatted and urinated on the upholstery. With a satisfied grin, it hopped before Greta, who was determined to get the next riddle right, even if it was too late to save her car. She could smell the sphinx urine from here, a heady mix of ammonia and tuna fish.

“What is the final digit of pi?” posed the sphinx.

“I don’t know. Nobody knows,” said Greta aloud without thinking about it.

The sphinx turned toward Greta’s ruined automobile.

“Wait, wait.”

The sphinx glanced over its shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

“Eight,” answered Greta.

The sphinx sat down, folded its wings, and yawned. It didn’t move toward Greta’s car, and in fact, seemed to have lost interest in everything except its own grooming.

“Eight?” said Greta. “Was that right?”

The sphinx wrinkled its nose at her but didn’t reply.

A van pulled up beside her. A man leaned out of the passenger-side window. “We have a call about a sphinx. Is this it?”

Greta nodded. She hadn’t called, but the huge mythological creature sitting just a few feet away answered the question.

The man and his partner, a short, dark-haired woman, exited the van.

“Did you answer a riddle?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Greta. “Then it just sat down.”

“Yup, they’ll do that,” said the woman.

The woman had Greta fill out some paperwork while the man mixed together a potion. He poured it into a squirt gun and doused the sphinx with the green concoction. The sphinx fell asleep and shrank to the size of a house cat. He stuck it in a cage. It all seemed to make some kind of sense to Greta, though exactly what kind, she couldn’t say.

“What demands an answer but never asks a question?” said Greta.

“Telephone,” replied the woman.

Greta completed the paperwork just as a cab appeared.

“Are you the lady who called for a cab?” asked the driver.

“Uh, sure. Yeah, that’s me.” She was just glad to get out of there, away from that weirdness. At work, some people asked what happened to Jeanine and Mary. She had no good answer, only a hazy memory that didn’t really gel. She was ready to get to work and put it behind her.

She discovered her office was inhabited by a flock of miniature gargoyles. They’d opened her drawers and upended her furniture. They’d torn the carpeting to pieces, and two were busy gnawing on her computer.

Quietly, Greta closed the door and decided to take an early lunch.

Some experimentation showed that gaborchends had a particular weakness for Cheez Whiz, and it wasn’t difficult to lure the second goat creature out of the bathroom and onto a transmogrification rune.

“I think this all has something to do with Miss Hines,” said Chester.

“Why would you think that?” asked Monster.

“I don’t know. No good reason. Just an intuition. This crypto surge seems out of place. And it started with the grocery store incident.”

“That’s arbitrary,” said Monster. “I run into cryptos every day. It’s my job. And activity rises and falls. It has to start somewhere. It’s easy to notice a foreign element and jump to a wrong conclusion.”

Chester folded himself a mouth and eyebrows so he could gape.

“What?” asked Monster.

“That was surprisingly cogent,” said Chester.

Monster was half pleased, half annoyed by the compliment. “I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t say that. It’s just strange for you to think things through like that.”

“I have my moments. So I’m right?”

Chester replied, “Probably. Usually a coincidence is just a coincidence. But sometimes it’s not. And maybe this time it isn’t.”

“And maybe it is. Your Judy theory falls apart if you really think about it.”

“I don’t see you coming up with anything better,” remarked Chester.

Monster wanted to disagree but couldn’t find a strong counterpoint. “I guess we should check it out. Just to rule it out.” He put on his T-shirt and pulled a shoe box from under his bed. He rifled through the box’s contents, pulling out a tin car about an inch long and a folded piece of paper.

“What’s that for?” asked Chester.

“Transportation. We’re not going to figure this thing out just sitting on our butts.”

“A little small, isn’t it?”

“Har har,” said Monster blankly.

“They rent cars.”

“That costs money.”

They exited the house, and Monster laid the toy car in the street out front. He unfolded the directions and read the three-minute activation chant. In a flash, the tiny toy became a full-size automobile, depending on how lax your definition of
full-size
was. It was bigger, at least. Big enough to hold Monster and Chester and a passenger or two. The wheels were still made of tin, and it lacked windows.

“You can’t be serious.”

“What are you worried about?” said Monster. “It’s not like you can actually die. The worst that happens is that I have to get you another paper body. Anyway, it’s perfectly safe.”

A goat-headed creature sprang through the windowless gap on the passenger’s side of the car. The gaborchend pounced on Monster. He rolled across the lawn, fending off the creature’s snapping jaws.

“Hang on, Monster!”

Chester folded himself into a miniature rhinocerous and charged forward, knocking the gaborchend with enough force to rattle its senses. The gaborchend stumbled around in a daze. Monster jumped on it and pinned it beneath him. The creature was strong, but he managed to keep it held to the ground.

“I’ll get the Cheez Whiz,” said Chester.

Monster pressed his forearm against the back of the gaborchend’s neck as he held one flailing limb with one hand and the other crushed beneath his knee. “Take your time.”

After they finally managed to transmogrify the gaborchend, Monster was more willing to consider Chester’s not-a-coincidence theory.

“What’s going on, Sherlock?” asked Monster.

“I’d say someone is trying to kill you.”

“By sending goat beasts after me?” Monster tossed the transmogrified gaborchend back and forth between his hands. “They’re not very dangerous, really. This is three so far, and I’m not dead.”

“Maybe they’re not trying that hard.”

“That settles it then. It can’t be Judy. She has no reason to want to kill me.”

“She was just trying to deal with her situation and you kept telling her she was wasting her time.”

“She was.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I was being honest.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What? I should’ve lied to her?”

“You could’ve been more… delicate. She was going through a rough patch.”

“And I was helping her deal with it.”

“By being honest,” said Chester.

“Exactly. What’s so wrong with that?”

“People don’t always need honesty.”

“Not my problem.”

“Not to be disagreeable,” said Chester, “but you’ve got a couple of transmogrified gaborchends and a chunk out of your shoulder that say otherwise.”

“So she’s summoning cryptos to kill me. I’ve never heard of anyone who could do that. Much less a light cog.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“Huh?”

“It’s Shakespeare.”

Monster scowled. “I had to read
Julius Caesar
in high school. Had to memorize that stupid Mark Antony speech.”

“Yes, I’m sure the trauma of premature exposure to high literature has left lasting psychological scars,” said Chester. “Regardless, I’m thinking Miss Hines doesn’t know she’s doing this. Not consciously.”

“How the hell did you come up with that?” asked Monster.

“It’s a simple inductive process involving higher-function logic and hyper-observational talents. It’s not something I could explain. Some humans have a lesser version of it. They mistakenly label it intuition.”

“Yeah, I get it. You’re a superbeing from the sixth dimension. Great for you until someone lights a match,” Monster said. “You’re suggesting this comes from her id?”

Chester folded himself a jaw to gape again.

“Hey, I’m not an idiot,” said Monster. “I know some stuff. I’ve read a few books.”

“Comic books?”

“No. I saw it in a movie, okay?
Forbidden Planet
. Great movie.”

“It’s based on a Shakespeare play, y’know,” said Chester.

Monster shrugged. “Well, it’s still a great movie. What do you think? If I find her and apologize, my gaborchend problems will end?”

“Couldn’t hurt. Why don’t you give her a call?”

“I never got her number. I don’t suppose that superior not-exactly-intuition-but-close-enough of yours knows it.”

“It’s not a psychic phone book.”

“And yet you expect me to keep believing you’re a higher being.”

They got into the car. Everything in the interior, including the seats, was made of tin.

“It doesn’t have any floorboards,” observed Chester, pointing to the unobstructed view of the street below.

“Stay in your seat then.”

Monster started the car. Its engine roared as the tin chassis rattled. It was a rough ride, and the car wasn’t even in motion yet. He lowered his goggles and wrapped a scarf around the lower half of his face to keep from swallowing any bugs along the way. The car lurched forward, immediately striking something.

They didn’t have to get out to see what they’d hit. Monster rolled the car forward until a freshly stunned gaborchend passed into view.

Monster just kept going.

The ride was as smooth as could be expected from a car with tin wheels and no suspension. Chester flattened himself against the seat and held on to avoid being blown away by an unexpected breeze, which wasn’t strictly necessary since he didn’t blow away easily. But he wasn’t taking any chances. By the time they reached Judy’s apartment, Monster’s butt had gone numb and his fingers were red from holding on to the thin ring of metal that served as a steering wheel. Next time he’d remember to grab a pillow and some gloves.

They stood before Judy’s ruined apartment, marked off by police tape.

“Really should’ve gotten her number,” said Chester. “Would’ve made things a lot easier.”

The faded troll stench was still strong enough to make Monster wrap his face with his scarf as he ventured inside. He risked only as far as the living room, finding a scrap of sock that should’ve been enough to link a decent tracking spell before returning to the parking lot.

“You’d better be right about this, Chester,” he said. “If Judy isn’t connected to this, then I’ll probably be dead pretty soon, buried under a pile of goat men.”

“It’s just a hunch.”

“What happened to that legendary superbeing hypersensitivity?”

“The thing about that,” admitted Chester, “it works better on my home plane.”

Monster glared. “Stop covering your paper ass and keep an eye out while I write the tracking runes.”

Paulie’s apartment door opened. Shirtless, he emerged with Gracie on his arm.

“Hey, aren’t you that guy?” asked Paulie. “That guy who, y’know, was here when that thing happened?” He stared off blankly for a moment. “Y’know, that thing with the things.”

“That’s me,” said Monster as he drew a circle on the pavement with some chalk and dropped the sock into it.

“You weren’t very nice to Judy,” said Gracie.

“He’s not very nice to anyone, miss,” said Chester.

Monster stopped flipping through his rune dictionary. “Do you know her?”

“Sure,” said Paulie. “Judy’s cool.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Sorry, dude.”

“I know where she is,” said Gracie. “She left a note.”

“She did?” asked Paulie.