10

As Monster was getting ready for bed, Liz was getting ready for work. She had on a new red suit. It wasn’t as nice as her other one, he noted to himself, but he didn’t admit that to her.

“How was your night?”

“Don’t ask,” he said.

“Poor baby.” She gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. “Don’t wait up. I’m going for drinks after work.”

“Have fun,” he said, but she was already out the door.

Monster slipped into his pajamas. He didn’t feel that tired and decided to recline on the couch, watching some TV until the urge to drift off to bed hit him. There was nothing on. Just morning news shows, which he watched with half interest.

“Twelve dead in a subway fire,” said the stoic news reporter. “Back to you, Brad.”

“Terrible when tragedies like this strike.” Brad nodded sagely. The camera angle changed, and a goofy grin crossed his face. “Now to a story about a woman in Arizona who makes decorative art out of tinfoil!”

The morning-news segues kept everything in check. Twelve people dead, but that didn’t stop seventy-seven-year-old Anne O’Grady from making her shiny masterpieces of crumpled foil. He fell asleep on the couch.

He awoke a few hours later as something rattled around in the other room.

Rubbing his sore neck, he noted his new color: golden. He didn’t have to check in his book for that. When he was golden, he became invisible when his eyes were shut. There was no way to control it. Every time he blinked, he’d vanish for an instant.

There was a clatter, as if the medicine cabinet was being emptied onto the floor.

Still drowsy, Monster rose from the couch and checked the noise.

“Liz, is that you?”

A low growl issued from the bathroom. Monster stopped.

A goat stuck its head into the hallway. The crypto turned its eyes toward Monster and bleated, then stepped into view. It had a goat’s head but a humanoid body, naked and hairless. It wasn’t very big, only about four feet tall, but its squat frame was powerfully built.

Monster kept his cool. “Where did you come from, little fella?”

The goat monster launched itself forward, ramming its horns into Monster’s gut and knocking the breath from him. He fell to the floor, gasping.

The goat grumbled as Monster vanished before its eyes.

“You little bastard.”

Groaning, Monster stood. The goat creature charged forward.

Monster turned to one side and took a glancing blow to his ribs. The goat hopped onto the couch and bleated, baring its teeth.

Monster clutched his aching side. “Look, you little shit. Don’t make me hurt you.”

The goat shifted its weight back and forth in an unfriendly manner. Monster closed his eyes. The goat grumbled. He heard it sniffing for him.

He didn’t know where this thing had come from, how it had gotten into his house. He wasn’t sure what it was. He’d never seen one of these short, goat-headed beasts before. Monster had been handling cryptos for years now, and it was rare for him to run across unfamiliar specimens. But it seemed to be happening more and more lately.

This one didn’t seem that dangerous, but his ribs were aching and he hadn’t caught his breath yet. Having no familiarity, he couldn’t be sure how to handle it. Some cryptos could be scared by a show of force. Others were provoked to attack. It was trying to sniff him out, but he didn’t know if that was because it was aggressive or scared. Probably both. He tried to put himself in the goat’s place, finding itself in a strange environment, confronted by a large, potentially hostile animal. It was probably just panicked.

He opened his eyes again. Just a little squint, which made him semi-visible. The goat was glaring at him. It clicked its long, pointed teeth together with a staccato clicking, but it didn’t attack.

“I don’t want to hurt you, little guy,” said Monster, as softly as possible.

The goat bleated softly. It twisted its head to one side, nostrils flaring, teeth chattering.

“Can’t we be friends?”

The creature’s ears fell flat. It squared its shoulders. Its legs tightened to spring.

Monster shut his eyes, and the goat started sniffing.

He ran through his choices. There was an annoying creature in his house, and he was unprepared to deal with it. He could feel his way through the living room to the front door, then lock the thing inside. Then he could call for backup and have the city send someone to pick it up. It’d be the smartest thing to do.

He wasn’t about to do that.

The goat thing was irritating but not tremendously dangerous so far. As a professional, he should be able to handle this without any help. If he called the CCRS for assistance, he’d end up catching hell from the other freelancers for months. Worst of all, somebody else would get the collection fee, and if this thing was rare, it had to be worth something. He wasn’t sure the world needed angry, naked goat-headed beasts, but if the Preservation Foundation was willing to protect the greater prickly sluggoth and the farting drake, then this goat thing was probably deemed worth saving.

The goat’s suspicious snorts drew closer. It apparently didn’t have a great sense of smell, but it knew he was still here. And it wasn’t happy about it.

Monster decided locking it in the house wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. Then he could come up with a plan to catch it. He tried to remember where he’d thrown his work satchel with his identification guide, rune dictionary, and a few writing tools. And Chester, his paper body folded into a neat, sleeping square.

Monster made his way by memory to the other side of the room, away from the goat. He moved slowly so as not to attract its attention. He banged his shins against a potted fern. He’d forgotten about the damn plant. Liz had just gotten it a week ago. She was obsessed with plants. Specifically, trying to keep them alive. Her demonic nature made them all wither beneath her touch. Even a cactus that a florist had branded unkillable had fallen to her care. But she hadn’t given up yet.

The goat leaped across the room and attacked Liz’s latest leafy victim. Bleating and clicking, the goat wrestled with the fern, throwing fronds in the air. The distraction allowed Monster to open his eyes and scan the room. His satchel was by the front door. The goat stood between him and his goal.

It perked up, chewing a mouthful of fern. Monster shut his eyes, but the goat had worked itself into a frenzy. It jumped and managed to grab him. It blindly butted and bit at its invisible opponent. Fangs sank into Monster’s shoulder, and he screamed.

The goat was stronger than it looked, and now that it had him, it wasn’t keen on letting go. Monster spun around the room, locked in combat. He grabbed the thing by one of its horns, keeping its snapping teeth at bay. The goat growled, spraying Monster’s face with sticky saliva. Monster tripped over the couch, tumbled backwards across the cushions. He wrestled with the thing for a minute. He was stronger than it, but it had a hell of a grip.

Monster reached out with his free hand for something to use. His hand fell on a pillow, one of those useless down pillows Liz insisted on keeping on the couch. The kind that cost way too much and constantly had to be moved around when you sat because they just got in the way.

He shoved it in the goat’s face. The creature ripped it to pieces in two bites. White down went everywhere, much of it in Monster’s nose and mouth. The goat hacked and snorted. Its grip loosened and he pushed it away, rolled off the couch, and grabbed the first heavy thing he saw: the potted fern. Sneezing, he swung it down on the goat’s head. The pot shattered. Soil and fluff went everywhere. The goat, protected by its horns and thick skull, barely noticed.

Both Monster and the goat spent another minute sneezing and coughing. Dirt, fronds, and fuzz hovered in the air like a chunky fog. Blinded by all the dust in his eyes, Monster attempted to navigate his way to the front door again. He tripped over the coffee table, which he was certain should’ve been a few more inches to the right.

Monster sat up and found himself face-to-face with his opponent. It sneezed one last time, and snot spattered his face. Monster doubted becoming invisible would work this time.

He spotted a devil doll sitting on the coffee table’s edge. With one arm he fended off the snarling goat and seized the doll in the other. He pushed the doll into the goat’s face, and, having not learned its lesson with the pillow, it snapped off the doll’s head in one bite.

The devil doll’s retribution was swift and effective. Every particle of down and dirt in the air wrapped itself around the goat in a thick coating, covering the creature from head to toe. It broke away from Monster and clawed at the layers. Every bit it tore away only bounced back to stick to it anew. Every furious snort and growl was an exhalation of feathers and dust, orbiting briefly before being drawn back into place by supernatural gravity.

Monster straightened. It was some small miracle that the devil doll hadn’t included him in its curse. He’d been close enough and just as responsible for its destruction. But minor devils weren’t picky, or especially bright. They didn’t care who they hexed so long as they got to hex somebody.

The goat, looking very much like a stuffed animal wandering drunkenly around the living room, stumbled back and forth, bumping into the walls, tripping on its slippery, feather-coated feet.

Monster checked his shoulder. The wound was shallow, but bloody. He hoped there wouldn’t be any side effects coming his way. The bites were always the most dangerous. He’d known a crypto handler who’d been bitten by a sea serpent and now had to drink ten gallons of water a day. And another who could only speak in riddles after a nasty run-in with a sphinx. Monster’s own condition wasn’t so bad compared to that.

The goat was incapacitated for the moment, but Monster wasn’t taking any chances. He grabbed his satchel, limped outside on his bruised shin, closed the front door, and sat on the porch. A quick glance through his guide identified the goat thing as a crypto rarely seen outside of Ireland. And not often there either.

Monster found Chester and woke the paper gnome.

“Damn it,” said Chester. “It clearly states in my contract that I get—” He unfolded himself. “Wow, what happened to you?”

“Gaborchend,” said Monster. “It’s still in the house.”

“This is your house, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“Isn’t that a little… odd? A cryptobiological rescue agent being attacked by a crypto in his own home?”

Monster hadn’t thought about it. He’d been too busy fending off the gaborchend at first and too tired afterward to care. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“Pretty odd coincidence, boss.”

“All coincidences are odd. That’s what makes them coincidences.”

“Guess you’ve got a point there,” said Chester. “We should get you patched up.”

“What about your time off?”

“I’ve got a couple of minutes to spare.”

“Uh-huh.”

Chester folded his hands on his hips. “You’re supposed to say thanks now.”

“Thanks.”

Monster found a healing elixir in the refrigerator. The best-used-by date had expired a little more than a month ago, but it was all he had. It tasted awful, and he didn’t get the expected energy boost. But his wounds stopped bleeding and the rejuvenation magic tingled.

The stumbling gaborchend wasn’t cooperative, but the curse of stickiness had grown to include a lamp, a throw rug, and several magazines. It was fairly simple to draw a transmogrification spell and slide it under the blind, stumbling creature. The curse didn’t end with the transformation, though, and Chester attempted to pry the lamp from the transmogrified stone while Monster checked his wound in the bathroom.

The elixir was working, though it wasn’t helping with the pain. The wounds hurt, but he could deal with it. He’d been bitten and scratched enough in this job to get used to it.

Monster returned to the living room just in time to see Chester yank the lamp off the gaborchend, only to have it fly across the room and shatter on the floor.

“Sorry.”

Monster appraised the damage to the living room. It wasn’t terrible. Might’ve looked worse, but nearly all the down and dirt was still stuck to the transmogrified crypto. There was some blood on the couch, though. Liz wouldn’t be happy about that. Or her fern.

Chester struggled with the throw rug. “I’m telling you. Something’s up.”

“There are a dozen crypto incidents a day in this town,” said Monster. “Just the law of averages that some would happen to an off-duty rescue agent.”

“I’d buy that if this were an isolated incident,” Chester said. “But after these last two days, I’m not so sure. First, there’s that supermarket score. Three yetis in one spot. Then there were the trolls and kojin in Miss Hines’s apartment. Now this. Anything else strange happened recently?”

“No, nothing. Except that walrus dog at the diner while you were asleep.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” said Chester. “Technically, when I’m in this particular quantum state, I’m closer to sleep than anything else. Really, your world is more of a dream to me.”

“So I’m your dream?”

“Could be.” Chester grunted and wrestled with the rug, working it half free. “And I myself am very likely merely a dream of a much higher entity. And so on and so on and so on.”

“Where’s it end?”

“What?”

“The dreamers. Which dreamer is the last?”

“There isn’t a final dreamer,” said Chester. “It goes on forever.”

Monster plopped down on the couch, right on top of the feathers and blood and gaborchend drool. He squirmed before reaching behind him and throwing aside another of Liz’s damn extraneous pillows. “It can’t go on forever.”

“Why not?”

“Because nothing lasts forever.”

“Who says? Your mistake, indeed the mistake of your inherently finite senses, is to view the universe as an extension of yourself. You expect that, like you, it should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But what you fail to understand is that everything you consider to be you, except for that rather silly imaginary part you call consciousness, is merely bits and pieces borrowed from the universe, and to the universe it will all return. You had no beginning, and you will have no ending. Everything that is you has always been and will always be.” Chester stopped philosophizing and thought for a moment. “Unless, of course, your entire universe is just a shared dream of my species’ universal unconscious, in which case you’ll probably cease to exist if we’re all ever awake at the same time.”

“And what if the dreamers of your universe ever wake up?” asked Monster.

“Then we’re both screwed.”

With a final determined grunt, Chester wrenched the carpet loose. It sailed free and smacked Monster in the face.

“Sorry.”

“Do me a favor, Chester. Dream me a beer.”

The paper gnome retrieved Monster’s beer. “Maybe someone put a curse on you.”

“I think I’d know if I’d been hexed,” said Monster. “And there’s no hex that can summon a bunch of cryptos. Not one that I’ve ever heard of anyway.”

“Maybe it’s a new development. We should check your body for any marks.”

Monster didn’t feel like getting off the couch, but he supposed Chester was right. If someone had hexed him with some kind of crypto attraction curse, it would be better to know. It wasn’t the worst curse for a crypto handler to have, but if it kept interfering with his off-hours, then it’d have to go.

He went into the bathroom and took off his shirt. A glance in the mirror confirmed nothing on his chest, back, or arms. He took off his pants and checked his legs. Nothing out of the ordinary there either. If there was a curse, there should’ve been some kind of mark.

Monster pulled down his underwear and had Chester take a look at his ass. “See anything?”

“Nope. Wait. Nope. That’s just a mole.”

Monster pulled up his pants. “See? Told you. No curse.”

“It was just a theory.”

Something thumped in the bathtub, as if someone had thrown an anvil into it. Monster pulled back the shower curtain. A gaborchend was in the tub. It wasn’t the same one. Its left horn was cracked and chipped, and it seemed as shocked to find itself there as Monster was to see it. It bared its teeth and growled.

“I suppose that’s just a coincidence too.”