Cryptid

Two years shy of the turn of the 17th century, Dutch admiral Wybrand van Warwyk discovered the Dodo bird living on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. The bird was large, flightless, and entirely free of natural predators. With nothing to prompt its evolutionary caution for the unknown, potentially threatening creatures, it welcomed the arrival of men with disinterest, an utter disregard. Sailors, in a pinch, can name strange animals as well as scientists, it would seem, and though anatomically incorrect, this ungainly, island-bound bird could otherwise suitably be referred to as a sitting duck. Men, for their part, destructive through the ages, did then what they still do now: gathered oars, lengths of blunt driftwood, sizable rocks, and got to work. The dodo, in the end, went the way of the dodo.

When Europeans discovered the incomparable platypus, an eccentrically built, east coast Australian mammal, they did not know what to make of it. Specimens were sent to England, where George Shaw, caretaker of the natural history collection of the British Museum, determined the creature to be real, an authentic beast of nature, not some macabre prank stitched and puzzled together by the crude hands of man. Shaw eyed the uncanny animal and did his best to assign it a suitable name. In the end, he chose Platypus anitinus, “flat-footed duck.”

In the 6th century AD, an abbot of Iona Abbey detailed the first narrative to feature the Loch Ness monster in his written work, Life of Saint Columba. In his Dark Age account, a man had been savaged and killed by a “water beast,” which afterwards was confronted by Columba, who repelled the aquatic demon by issuing the holy sign of the cross. A dozen centuries later, in 1933, the sighting of an aberration in the Loch Ness waters was reported in The Inverness Courier, describing a whale-like beast which prompted many, subsequent sightings including a photograph shot by gynecologist Robert Kenneth Wilson. Even today, his picture remains famous, widely known as the “Surgeon’s Photograph.”

In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World of the Americas. Astoundingly, the thousands upon thousands—probably millions—of native inhabitants had yet to discover their own land. Perhaps they weren’t looking?

In 2022, 13-year-old Peggy Albright whittled away countless hours on YouTube, watching mini-documentaries and travelogues on various discoveries of artifacts, lands, and most of all, species. Many was the night she watched programs on her phone while comfortably buried under her bed sheets, kept awake by the riveting and mysterious stories about cryptids, animals whose existences are unconfirmed, often disputed. When Penny would finally drift off to sleep, sometimes as late into the night as to almost fade into dawn, she dreamed of strange beasts, mythical animals, like “Nessie,” the Loch Ness monster, or Bigfoot, the North American equivalent to the Himalayan yeti.

Throughout her summer vacation, Penny slept in, often as late as lunchtime. She’d skip breakfast, go straight for a sandwich or microwavable corn dog, begin her day with lunch, or, depending on how you look at it, an unconventional, lunch-like breakfast. Even though it was an otherwise late start to the day, she’d spend the remaining hours of the long, summer daylight scouring her Minneapolis suburb for evidence of cryptid habitation. She’d wander around, eagle-eyed, looking to verify rumors of a two-headed snapping turtle living in the golf course pond, try and sniff out that bastard her neighbor Ronny told her lived in the dumpster behind the FreshMart.

If she was really lucky, Penny would spot a chimera at the edge of some over-manicured, landscaped copse, a phoenix reborn in the flames of her next door neighbor’s George Foreman grill, a leprechaun at the end of the rainbow made from the community center sprinkler as it labored to hydrate brown grass into a verdant, respectable lawn. Who knows? Penny could really strike gold. Maybe discover a unicorn, even a yeti.

* * *

A quarter-mile northwest of Penny’s residence, Orson Brown enjoys skirting the edge of Minnehaha Creek, dipping his toes in the cool, shallow waters, drinking cans of semi-chilled Pabst Blue Ribbon encased in a brightly colored koozie with the slogan “Don’t Worry. Be Hoppy.” On his excursion, he has lugged both bait and tackle, hoping to catch a smallmouth bass, maybe a walleye or a northern pike, maybe that two-headed snapping turtle his neighbor Mason swears he saw the other day. Who knows, maybe there are mermaids beneath these gentle rapids. Maybe Orson will fish out a suitable wife. If only like would be so kind. But really, Orson would settle for anything. If he is truly lucky, he may bag himself a man-sized sturgeon. It would feed him for half of the summer. It would look killer mounted on his wall.

From inside his backpack, wedged in with the warming beers, Orson wrestles out a pairs of snowshoes that he wears more in the summertime than in the winter. He doesn’t really find much value in trudging around in the snow, even less so in his fairly urban, suburban neighborhood where the streets are regularly paved, the sidewalks shoveled and salted. But Orson does find the snowshoes useful for finding traction ion the muddy shallows of the creek. Their wide, spread-out bottoms allow for decent leverage when leaning away from a big catch, keeping balance when pulled forward or from side to side. They are like flippers, in a way, which leads Orson to consider why he doesn’t just invest in a pair of flippers. When he walks on the soft mud and wet sand his steps leave unsightly, large prints, broad, substantial depressions.

Fishing goes as it often does for Orson. An hour elapses with nothing to show for it but two or three dozen mosquito bites. A sturgeon was wishful thinking. A mermaid, just plain silly. Instead, Orson reels in a sandal, one of those many Birkenstock jobs. It has been ruined, of course, having spent too much time resting at the bottom of a creek. Besides, there is only one to the pair. Worthless, he throws it to splash back into the creek.

Orson gives up, walks for a while, bumps into a Mexican family that have caught an entire wheelbarrow full of fish. When Orson congratulates their success, acknowledges he’s impressed, they shrug and laugh, telling him they catch as much each time they visit the creek. Orson doesn’t say anything else, but it must be plain enough in his expression because the patron of the family offers him a medium-sized smallmouth bass. Orson accepts it with a smile, gives the man and his wife a Pabst each, offers one to their oldest child too. He allows the teenage boy to keep the koozie to sweeten the deal. He waves to the family and bids them well. Orson heads home a happy man.

In his “workshop,” an unfurnished basement with bare, concrete floors and mounds of childhood relics, unused, forgotten items inherited from deceased grandparents, Orson guts his smallmouth bass, readying it for preservation. An amateur of taxidermy, he has whittled away countless hours on YouTube, how-to videos and careful walkthroughs detailing the art of preserving mammals, birds, and most of all, fish.

Orson wastes little time, knowing time is of the essence. Decay is quick, and time is the enemy. Using a taxidermy scalpel, he skins the fish, carefully cutting through the laters lines of its body. Delicately, he cleaves the skin from the meat. Working his way from tail to the gills, he pulls the length of intact skin over the head of the fish and ends with a complete, undamaged hollow of the animal. Next, Orson removes the brains and eyes. He whistles tunelessly to fill the silence. He cleans away any remaining meat or muscle clinging to the inside of the skin. He prepares a syringe with embalming fluid, injecting the fish liberally, finishing the job by powdering both the inside and outside of the flesh with a healthy coating of borax. Moving on, Orson sees up the fish halfway to the gills. He stuffs the tail end with dry sawdust, working his way, once again, toward the head, making sure to cram each and every available space, each nook and cranny, with more sawdust. After sewing up the fish, Orson manipulates its malleable form, works his fingers along its body, massages the sawdust within to assume the desired shape.

In the end, it looks like a dead fish. But it will do. Cleaned from the outside, mounted on a pinked-stained, treated slab of pine, Orson proudly takes in his work. He washes his hands, investigates the mini fridge and unburdens it of one of its many cans of Pabst, cracks open his beverage and drinks deeply, allowing the cheap beer to wash away the tension of concentration, to commemorate his success.

* * *

About a mile from her home, walking along the southern edge of Minnehaha Creek, Penny is on the lookout for a two-headed snapping turtle, watchful for anything untoward, perhaps a gryphon drinking on the water’s edge, a gnome shading itself under the umbrella of a toadstool. Along the southern bank, brazenly out in the open, depressed in the soft mud and leading up to the grass and the clapboard homes beyond, there is a trail of what Penny believes might be elephant prints—no, dinosaur—or maybe Sasquatch, Bigfoot, an NBA superstar, someone, something, with big-ass feet. Upon closer inspection, surveying the width, the shape, the nitty-gritty details, drawing on mental images from YouTube docuseries, Penny believes she has discovered the footprints of a bona fide yeti.

She knows the yeti to be as elusive as any other hard-to-find species on the planet. They are so elusive, in fact, so antisocial and taciturn, that they have avoided human discovery altogether, just like the fairies and gremlins, like Santa or the boogieman. Still, she knows the truth when it hits her over the head, when it is stamped into the soft earth at her feet plain for her to see. She follows that truth, one massive footprint at a time. It leads six or seven houses further down the creek. It leads her to Orson Brown.

* * *

In his workshop, in the subterranean bowels of his home, his dingy, dusty basement, Orson drinks another can of beer. His shirt is wet with fish guts and embalming fluid, so he removes it, throws it to the corner where he may or may not retrieve it today, or ever. He looks at the adequately preserved smallmouth bass drying out on the mantle. He notes the slight imperfections of his work, but reasons the fish was imperfect, too, in life. He chugs a third Pabst and opens another. Cream-colored foam cascades down his thick, black beard, across his bare chest and down to pool in his navel. His copious body hair becomes matted with the celebratory booze. Orson doesn’t mind. He smiles, considering the perks of life as a bachelor.

Across the room, in the peripherals of his admiring gaze for his stuffed fish, he sees a shadow creep past the dead leaves and detritus at the base of a window-well. He turns to look, but whatever it was that cast the shadow is no longer there. He begins another beer.

* * *

At the end of the trail of elephant or dinosaur or Paul Bunyan’s footprints, most definitely yeti footprints, Penny stares at the closed door to an average-looking home for the neighborhood. She tries the handle, and to her surprise, the door opens. Inside, the place smells of beer and fish guts, microwaved corn dogs or maybe Hot Pockets, definitely the type of smell produced by a brute, a monster, a Sasquatch or yeti.

Afraid to encounter the beast in these confined, close quarters, Penny closes the door quietly, tiptoes the perimeter of the premises, stealthily skirting the property to peer through windows, hopefully to obtain a clear photo of the rare animal inside. About halfway around the house, Penny comes across a window-well teeming with fat toads and last year’s dead autumn leaves. From below, through the dirty windows, in what looks like an animal’s cave, there is movement, a sign of life; perhaps a werewolf hiding from the light of day, a deranged chimpanzee, or, most likely, a yeti.

Down on her tummy, stretched across the lawn and leaning downward into the window-well, Penny shields her eyes against the white glare on the glass and peers inward into some grotesque, dimly lit cavern. Below, she witnesses what she suspected all along, though more terrifying than she had ever imagined. Before her very eyes, a fish carcass mutilated before it, damp from its swim in the creek and foaming at the mouth with rabid, bestial menace, the ever-elusive, mythical, unproven ape-man of the Himalayas so very far from its home, or maybe on second thought the North American equivalent, a genuine Sasquatch, Mr. Bigfoot himself.

The savage beast turns himself toward Penny but she is already on her feet and running. She is already gone. She runs as fast as any healthy, adrenaline-pumped, ecstatic 13-year-old might: pretty fucking fast. She runs for a quarter mile until she arrives at her home, only stopping when she reaches the top of the staircase outside of her room. There, she inspects the photo on her phone, which much to her disappointment reveals nothing beyond the bright white of a flashbulb reflected back on glass.

Without a photo, she relies on her memory, the mental image captured in her mind’s eye of the hideous, hulking beast raving within its filthy den. The shape of a man, yet as large and hairy as a bear, covered in a think carpet of what resembles a scorched and blackened, unkempt lawn, a shaggy ape drenched in the foam of its rabid fever. Hoping to incapacitate the monster, yet avoid, at all costs, killing it, Penny puts on her thinking cap, milling over potential options, strategies to lay claim to her historic discovery.

Retreating to her bedroom, she paces the small, carpeted space, and formulates ideas. She consults her Magic 8 Ball, ultimately unimpressed with its limited variations of yes and no answers to her open-ended questions. Next, Penny, turns to YouTube, finding little when she types “how to knock out a yeti” beyond a comedy sketch performed by eleven-year-old kids in Sydney, Australia which proves to be neither funny nor informative. She closes her laptop. She sets aside her phone. In the end, the idea comes to her on her own.

Penny knows that her mother takes medication to help her sleep. Insomnia, she calls it, though Penny can never remember the name of the condition, referring to it in her head as in-zombie-land. All she knows is her mother takes two pills with some water each night before bed. “A couple blues for some Z’s,” she says and upends her glass to wash down the pills. The pills are blue. “Z,” no doubt, indicates “zombie.” Penny has cracked her mother’s code. Now all she needs is to filch some blues.

When Mother is busy downstairs watching the doctors on the television save lives and fuck each other, Penny ransacks the unguarded medicine cabinet. She finds the blue pills among the white, pink, yellow, and reds. She reads aloud, or tries to, an alien language across the tube: benzodiazepines. Penny deduces it is the zombie translation for sleep. Her mother takes two four a sound, 8-hour slumber. For a yeti, she reasons 12 will be sufficient, adds three more to make it a round 15.

Next, the plastic pouch with a needle and syringe, one of many for Mother’s “insolent” needs, something that helps with her diabetic—or is it diuretic? Maybe Pathetic?—requirement. Downstairs, on the television, the doctors have successfully concluded the risky surgical procedure, and after a volley of women’s deodorant and Huggies diaper ads, are now sharing a bath and soon to be fucking away the workplace stress.

Penny leaves her mother’s bedroom, creeps down the stairs, runs out of her house with a syringe filled with warm water diluting 15 blue pills. Mother, glued to the passionate romances of beautiful surgeons, is oblivious to her daughter’s presence, her hasty retreat, her thrilling exploits. Running the full length of a quarter mile with everything she needs, Penny smiles in the bright, summer sun.

* * *

Orson is well drunk on what he cannot recall is either six or seven beers, possible eight. The room is spinning, swimming, and with it, a smallmouth bass among the whirlpooling current. Coming from upstairs, he hears someone open the front door. He hears stop footsteps walk across the floorboards above him.

At the top of the stairs, the basement door opens slowly, yet loudly, creaking on hinges in desperate need of oil. As if gazing through someone else’s thick, prescription lenses, Orson deciphers an ape-shaped creature at the top of his stairs. Whatever it is, beast or demon, it bears a long, silver claw, dripping with venom. With intent to kill, it descends the stairs to take his life. Emboldened by the booze in his bloodstream, Orson welcomes the conflict. He takes up a pink-stained slab of treated timber balancing an adequately preserved smallmouth bass. He raises the crude implement high, waiting to strike. If he kills this invading, marauding type, he will endeavor to preserve it, mount it on his wall.

* * *

A grown man, sufficiently inebriated, and a juvenile, 13-year-old girl hellbent on discovering monsters that do not exist engage in a struggle halfway up a basement staircase. Pushing, clawing, reaching for each other’s throats, they stumble, together, and both strike their heads, falling unconscious upon the cold concrete floor. There is Orson with his drunken rage, his lack of clarity, his crude, pink plank of wood that mounts a preserved, dead fish. There is Penny with her lethal dose of benzodiazepines, 15 blues worth of “zombie-juice,” a hollow needle to inject at the ready. There is the wild yeti and the intrepid explorer.

Which one will wake up first?