Anton Strout - Deader Still

“This is why you came here?” I said. Godfrey nodded.

There had to be more to this. He had stopped here, of all places. I pulled out the map and consulted it again. I found the tourist icon for the Guggenheim, then the one for the boat at the pier. Running in a straight line between them was the very spot where we had found the body of Dr. Kolb. The chupacabra hadn’t been after Dr. Kolb. The good doctor had merely gotten himself in the way of its direct beeline for the museum. I put the map away.

“Follow me,” I said, and started walking around to the side of the building. If the chupacabra had come to this spot, I doubt it had gone in through the main entrance of the museum. I doubted they could open doors, anyway. There had to be another opening. I crept along the wall and tried every door I found, only to find each and every one locked. At the end of the building, however, was a gated area and the gate was slightly open. The door inside of it sat oddly ajar as well. I ran over to it.

“We’re not going in there, are we?” he said, his eyes widening like a fifth-grader spying an ice cream truck.

“Not we,” I corrected. “Just me. This is where you get off.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I nodded.

Godfrey looked nervous, scared, and a little relieved that his field trip was about to end this way. I had no other choice but to send him back to the offices. I wouldn’t put him at further risk. Using him like a lightning rod for what I was looking for would probably get me in trouble anyway.

I reached for the door just inside the broken gate but pulled away from it.

Up close, the door wasn’t just open, but its lock had been busted by force. I looked for whatever security system was attached to it, only to find that someone had already looped the exposed circuits in an expert manner so there would be no danger of setting off any of the alarms. Professional work, something I was pretty sure a chupacabra couldn’t do.

I turned back to Godfrey.

“Listen,” I said. “You can’t breathe a word of this to Connor or the Inspectre, okay? They’d just get pissed off or worried. But if I’m not back in the office by six or so, let them know where I went. Got it?”

Godfrey nodded and backed away from the gate. He gave an all-too-enthusiastic thumbs-up at me. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I returned it before entering and closing the door behind me.

With my power back, I could certainly handle a little re-con with just my bat by my side, couldn’t I? After all, it was just a museum in the daytime.

The interior of the Guggenheim corkscrewed downward underground the same way the museum proper did upward. A set of dimly lit stairs ran down into the depths of the abandoned part of the building and I followed them, contemplating the finer differences between bravery in the face of potential danger and stupidity. I blamed my time with the Fraternal Order of Goodness for blurring the line so much.

As I crept downward inside the museum, I tried my best to keep as quiet as I could. Muffled sounds came from farther down the corridor. I quietly pulled my retractable bat out and cupped my hand over the end of it as I slowly extended it, hoping to hide my own sounds from whoever might be listening. The wall of the downward-spiraling corridor opened up to an archway off to my left. I could barely make it out in the little amount of light in this subterranean area, but the noise definitely seemed to come from that direction. I hugged myself to the curved wall and moved closer to the archway.

As I approached, the sounds I heard became more familiar. It was the sound of someone digging through packing materials, without a doubt. Given the state my living room was often in, with all its own half-packed antiques and art finds, I could hardly mistake it. I chanced a peek around the corner of one side of the arch.

The room before me was so dark and long that it disappeared into the shadows. Wooden packing crates marked with symbols both arcane and simply illegible cluttered the entire area, reminding me of the government warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark . At first glance I didn’t notice anyone, so I quickly slipped around the edge of the arch and sank into the shadows of the piled crates. As I crept forward, my mind began to play tricks on me in the darkness.

Be vewy, vewy quiet, I thought. I’m hunting chupacabras.

Row after row of crates formed a labyrinth as I proceeded toward the sounds. Within several minutes my sense of direction was shot to hell. I had zero idea of which path actually led back to my escape route after the first few turns, but I supposed I’d improvise if a hasty retreat were called for. Knowing my luck, it would probably be hastier than not.

I peeked around one corner and spied movement up ahead, and for once the sound didn’t seem muffled anymore. Light, however, was not at its best here, and all I could make out was shadowy movement against the backdrop of three half-opened crates that looked like they had been searched through in haste. I pressed myself against the opposite row of crates as hard as I could and moved forward, keeping the bat hidden on the far side of my body to prevent it from catching any light on its metallic surface by accident.

As I got closer, a lone figure came into view, but before I finished closing in on it, I was able to identify it by the curvaceous shape of its dark silhouette.

“Mina,” I hissed.

Mina Saria bolted upright from the crate she was leaning halfway into, fistfuls of crumpled packing paper in her hands. She brandished them at me like weapons. Then she squinted, realized it was me, and threw the two handfuls back into the crate, looking relieved.

“Jesus, Simon,” she whispered. “For a second there I was almost scared.”

I pulled my bat out from behind me. “I’m still holding a bat, you know.”

“As if you’re gonna brain me,” she said, then turned back to the crate and began rummaging around again. “Didn’t I just save you from the walking dead last night?”

My jaw ached with a phantom pistol-whipping just from seeing her again.

I closed the distance between the two of us, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her back up to standing position. I pushed the end of the bat up under her chin.

“I owe you one,” I said, trying to sound as threatening as I could.

Mina looked me straight in the eye. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of smacking her around, and she knew it.

“Give me a break, Simon. It’s not in your nature to beat down a lady.”

“Maybe in your case I’ll make an exception,” I said, then tried to flash her as intimidating a look as I could, but it was no use. I lowered the bat. “Fine, although there’s some argument to be made as to whether you qualify as a lady. My jaw thinks otherwise.”

Mina considered this. “You wound me,” she said, “but in all fairness, I did pull you out of there. I could have left you to those . . . those things. Now, if you’ll just stand guard, maybe I can find what I came here for.”

She dove back into the crate, almost falling into it as she leaned over to check deeper down inside it.

“Mina, what are you doing here?” I asked. “You were supposed to leave town.”

She ignored me.

I sighed and gave a nervous look around. Dark and dangerous nooks and crannies were everywhere. If the chupacabra was here, I’d have to get Mina out fast, if only to beat her senseless later myself.

“Mina, trust me, you don’t want to be messing with whatever’s going on here. There are things going on that you don’t understand, that I barely understand. Just get out.”

All I could imagine was an evil, red-eyed attack from one of the creatures I had seen sketches of, the same one Dr. Kolb’s spirit had described to us and that I’d seen for a brief moment when I was the DJ.