Christopher Moore - The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

A woman’s voice cut the fog, “Lord, we have heeded your call and come unto you. Forgive us our casual attire, as our dry cleaner did close for the weekend and we are left sorely without outfits with matching accessories.”

It was the school prayer ladies, Katie and Marge, although Molly wouldn’t be able to tell which was which. They were wearing identical pink jogging suits with matching Nikes. As she watched, the two women moved closer to Steve, and Molly could see a rippling across the dragon trailer.

“As our Lord Jesus did give His life for our sins, so we come unto Thee, O Lord, to giveth of ourselves.”

The end of the dragon trailer lost its angles to curves, and Molly could see Steve’s broad head extending, changing, the door going from a vertical rectangle to a wide horizontal maw. The women seemed unaffected by the change and continued to move slowly forward, silhouetted now by Steve’s jaws, which were opening like a toothed cavern.

Molly ran around her trailer and up the steps, reached in and grabbed her broadsword which was leaned against the wall just inside the door, and dashed back around the trailer and toward the Sea Beast.

Marge and Katie were almost inside of Steve’s open mouth. Molly could see his enormous tongue snaking out the side of his mouth, reaching behind the church ladies to drag them in.

“No!” Molly leapt from a full run, slamming between Marge and Katie like a fullback leaping through blockers to the goal line, and smacked Steve on the nose with the flat of her sword. She landed in his mouth and rolled clear to the ground just as his jaws snapped shut behind her. She came up on one knee, holding the sword pointed at Steve’s nose.

“No!” she said. “Bad dragon.” Steve turned his head quizzically, as if wondering what she was so upset about.

“Change back,” Molly said, raising the sword as if to whack his nose again. Steve’s head and neck pulled back into the shape of a double-wide trailer.

Molly looked back at the church ladies, who seemed very concerned with having been knocked into the mud in their pink jogging suits, but oblivious to the fact that they had almost been eaten. “Are you two okay?”

“We felt the call,” one of them said, either Marge or Katie, while the other one nodded in agreement. “We had to come to give ourselves unto the Lord.” Their eyes were glazed over and they stared right past her to the trailer as they spoke.

“You guys have to go home now. Aren’t your husbands worried about you or something?”

“We heard the call.”

Molly helped them to their feet and pointed them away from Steve, who made a faint whining noise as she pushed the church ladies away toward the street.

Molly stopped them at the edge of the street and spoke to them from behind. “Go home. Don’t come back here. Okay?”

“We wanted to bring the children to feel the spirit too, but it was so late, and we have church tomorrow.”

Molly smacked the speaker across the butt with the flat of her sword, a good two-handed stroke that sent her stumbling into the street. “Go home!”

Molly was winding up to smack the other one when she turned and held up her hand as if refusing a refill on coffee. “No thank you.”

“Then you’re going and you’re not coming back, right?”

The woman didn’t seem sure. Molly turned her grip on the sword so the edge was poised to strike. “Right?”

“Yes,” the woman said. Her friend nodded in agreement as she rubbed her bottom.

“Now go,” Molly said. As the women walked away, she called after them, “And stop dressing alike. That’s fucking weird.”

She watched them until they disappeared into the fog, then went back to where Steve was waiting in trailer form. “Well?” She threw out her hip, frowned, and tapped her foot as if waiting for his explanation.

His windows narrowed, ashamed.

“They’ll be back, you know. Then what?”

He whimpered, the sound coming from deep inside, where the kitchen would be if he were really a trailer.

“If you’re still hungry, you have to let me know. I can help. We can find you something. Although there is only one hardware store in town. You’re going to have to diversify your diet.”

Suddenly an electric guitar screamed out of the fog, wailing like a tortured ghost of Chicago Blues. The dragon trailer became the dragon again, his white skin went black, then flashed brilliant streaks of red anger. The bandages Molly had spent all day applying shredded with the abrupt shape change. His gill trees hung with tatters of fiberglass fabric as if toilet-papered by mischievous boys. The Sea Beast threw back his head and roared, rattling the windows through the trailer park. Molly fell in the mud as she backed up, then rolled and came up on her feet with the broadsword poised to thrust into the Sea Beast’s throat.

“Steve, I think you need to take a timeout, young man.”

Such a short period of time to have so many new experiences. In just the last few days, he had coordinated his first major missing person search, including talking to worried parents and the milk carton company, whose people wanted to know if Theo could get a picture of Mikey Plotznik where he wasn’t making a contorted, goofy face at the camera. (If they found a better picture, Mikey would end up with great exposure on the two percent or nonfat cartons, but if they had to go with what they had, he was going on the side of the buttermilk and would only be seen by old folks and people making ranch dressing.) Theo had also had to deal with his first major fire, the hallucination of giant animal tracks, and opening a real live murder investigation, all without the benefit of his lifelong chemical crutch. Not that he couldn’t nurse at his favorite pipe, he’d just lost the desire to do so.

Now he had to decide how to go about investigating Bess Leander’s murder. Should he pull someone in for interrogation? Pull them in where? His cabin? He didn’t have an office. Somehow he couldn’t imagine holding an effective interrogation with the suspect in a beanbag chair under a hot lava lamp. “Talk, scumbag! Don’t make me turn the black light on that Jimi Hendrix poster and light some incense. You don’t want that.”

And amid all the other activity, he felt a nagging compulsion to go back to the Fly Rod Trailer Court and talk to Molly Michon. Crazy thoughts.

Finally he decided to drop by Joseph Leander’s house, hoping he might catch the salesman off guard. As he pulled into the driveway, he noticed that weeds had grown up around the garden gnomes and there was a patina of dust on the Dutch hex sign over the front door. The garage door was open and Joseph’s minivan was parked inside.

Theo paused at the front door before knocking and made sure that his ponytail was tucked into his collar and his collar was straight. For some reason, he felt as if he should be wearing a gun. He had one, a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver, but it was on the top shelf of his closet, next to his bong collection.

He rang the bell, then waited. A minute passed before Joseph Leander opened the door. He was wearing paint-spattered corduroys and an old cardigan sweater that looked like it had been pulled out of the trash a dozen times. Obviously not the sort of attire that Bess Leander would have allowed in her home.

“Constable Crowe.” Leander was not smiling. “What can I do for you?”

“If you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you. May I come in?”

“I suppose,” Leander said. He stepped away from the door and Theo ducked in. “I just made some coffee. Would you like some?”

“No thanks. I’m on duty.” Cops are supposed to say that, Theo thought.

“It’s coffee.”

“Oh, right, sure. Milk and sugar please.”