F. Wilson - The Last Rakosh

Then he spotted her skinny eight-year-old form darting toward him, her face a strained mask of white, her blue eyes wide with fear. When she saw him she burst into tears and held out her arms as she stumbled toward him. Her voice was a shriek.

“Jack! Jack! It’s back! It’s gonna get me again!”

She leaped and he caught her, holding her tight as she quaked with fear.

“What is it, Vicks? What’s the matter?”

“The monster! The monster that took me to the boat! It’s here! Don’t let it get me!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said soothingly in her ear. “No one can hurt you when I’m around.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gia hurrying toward them. He gently peeled Vicky off and transferred her to her mother. Vicky immediately wrapped her arms and legs around Gia.

Gia’s expression fluctuated between fear and anger. “My God, what happened?”

“I think she believes she saw a rakosh.”

Gia’s eyes widened. “But that’s-”

“Impossible. Right. But maybe she saw something that looks like one.”

“No!” Vicky cried from where her face was buried against her mother’s neck. “It’s the one that took me! I know it is!”

“Okay, Vicks.” Jack gave her trembling back a gentle rub. “I’ll check it out.” He nodded to Gia. “Why don’t you take her outside.”

“We’re on our way. After what I’ve seen here, I wouldn’t be half surprised if she was right.”

Jack watched Gia slip through the crowd, holding her daughter tight against her. When they were out of sight he turned and headed in the direction Vicky had come.

Wouldn’t be half surprised myself, he thought.

Not that there was a single chance in hell of one of Kusum’s rakoshi being alive. They’d all died last summer in the water between Governor’s Island and the Battery. He’d seen to that. His incendiary bombs had crisped them in the hold of the ship that housed them. One of them did make it to shore, the one he’d dubbed Scar-lip, but it had swum back out into the burning water and never returned.

The rakoshi were dead. All of them. The species was extinct.

Next to a stall containing a woman with a third eye in the center of her forehead that supposedly “Sees ALL!” sat an old circus cart with iron bars on its open side, one of the old cages-on-wheels once used to transport and display lions and tigers and such. The sign above it said “The Amazing Sharkman!” Jack noticed people leaning across the rope border; they’d peer into the cage, then back off with uneasy shrugs.

This deserved a look.

Jack pushed to the front and squinted into the dimly lit cage. Something slumped in the left rear corner, head down, chin on chest, immobile. Something huge, a seven-footer at least. Dark-skinned, manlike and yet... undeniably alien.

Jack felt the skin along the back of his neck tighten as ripples of warning shot down his spine. He knew that shape. But that was all it was. A shape. So immobile. It had to be a dummy of some sort, or a guy in a costume. A damn good costume. No wonder Vicky had been terrified.

But it couldn’t be the real thing. Couldn’t be...

Jack ducked under the rope and took a few tentative steps closer to the cage, sniffing the air. One of the things he remembered about the rakoshi was their reek, like rotting meat. He caught a trace of it here, but that could have been from spilled garbage. Nothing like the breath-clogging stench he remembered.

He moved close enough to touch the bars but didn’t. The thing was a damn good dummy. He could almost swear it was breathing.

Jack whistled and said, “Hey you in there!”

The thing didn’t budge, so he rapped on one of the iron bars. “Hey-!”

Suddenly it moved, the eyes snapping open as the head came up, deep yellow eyes that almost seemed to glow in the shadows.

Imagine the offspring of a tryst between a giant hairless gorilla and a mako shark: cobalt skin, hugely muscled, no neck worth mentioning, no external ears, narrow slits for a nose.

Spike-like talons, curved for tearing, emerged from the tips of the three thick fingers on each hand as the yellow eyes fixed on Jack. The lower half of its huge shark-like head seemed to split as the jaw opened to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth. It uncoiled its legs and slithered across the metal flooring toward the front of the cage.

Along with the instinctive revulsion, memories surged back: the cargo hold full of their dark shapes and glowing eyes, the unearthly chant, the disappearances, the deaths...

Jack backed up a step. Two. Behind him he heard the crowd “Oooh!” and “Aaah!” as it pressed forward for a better look. He took still another step back until he could feel their excited breaths on his neck. These people didn’t know what one of these things could do, didn’t know their power, their near indestructibility. Otherwise they’d be running the other way.

Jack felt his heart kick up its already rising tempo when he noticed the wide scar distorting the creature’s lower lip. He knew this particular rakosh. Scar-lip. The one that had kidnapped Vicky, the one that had escaped the ship and almost got to Vicky on the shore. The one that had almost killed Jack.

He ran a hand across his chest. Even through the fabric of his shirt he could feel the three long ridges that ran across his chest, souvenir scars from this thing’s talons.

His mouth felt like straw. Scar-lip... alive.

But howl How had it survived the blaze on the water? How had it wound up on Long Island in a traveling freak show?

“Ooh, look at it, Fred!” said a woman behind Jack.

“Just a guy in a rubber suit,” said a supremely confident male voice.

“But those claws-did you see the way they came out?”

“Simple hydraulics. Nothing to it.”

You go on believing that, Fred, Jack thought as he watched the creature where it crouched on its knees, its talons encircling the iron bars, its yellow eyes burning into him.

You know me too, don’t you.

It appeared to be trying to stand but its legs wouldn’t support it. Was it chained, or possibly maimed?

The ticket seller came by then, sans boater, revealing a shaven head. His cold dark eyes gleamed with a strange glee. He carried a blunt elephant gaff that he rapped against the bars.

“So you’re up, ay?” he said to the rakosh in a harsh voice. “Maybe you’ve finally learned your lesson.”

Jack noticed that for the first time since it had opened its eyes the rakosh turned its glare from him; it refocused on the newcomer.

“Here he is ladies and gentleman,” the ticket man cried, turning to the crowd. “Yessir, the one and only Sharkman! The only one of his kind! He’s exclusively on display here at Ozymandias Oddities. Tell your friends, tell your enemies. Yessir, you’ve never seen anything like him and never will anywhere else. Guaranteed.”

You’ve got that right, Jack thought.

The ticket man spotted Jack standing on the wrong side of the rope. “Here, you.

Get back there. This thing’s dangerous! See those claws? One swipe and you’d be sliced up like a tomato by a Ginsu knife! We don’t want to see our customers get sliced up.” His eyes said otherwise as he none too gently prodded Jack with the pole. “Back now.”

Jack slipped under the rope, never taking his eyes off Scar-lip. The rakosh didn’t look well. Its skin was dull, and relatively pale, nothing like the shiny deep cobalt he remembered from their last meeting. It looked thin, almost wasted.

Scar-lip turned its attention from the ticket man and stared at Jack a moment longer, then dropped its gaze. Its talons retracted, slipping back inside the fingertips, the arms dropped to its sides, the shoulders drooped, then it turned and crawled back to the rear of the cage where it slumped again in the corner and hung its head.