This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?
The owl ruffled its feathers and peered down at us with large orange eyes that tore my soul out of my body. I felt weak in the ankles and held onto Mr. Curtis by the hat to keep from falling over. Trouble was, he was jumping up and down, trying to get us killed.
“Freeze, frog,” I said, trying to hold him still, but he got out from under my grasp and jumped up onto a pile of old newspapers the owl must have been keeping.
“Mr. Curtis!”
Nothing. He stood up, took his hat off, and bowed before the great owl.
The owl flew down to a bar closer to us. His eyes seemed to glow in the dark.
“Greetings,” said the frog.
“Save it,” said the owl. This caused Mr. Curtis to step back a little, even if slightly.
The owl flew closer again, now face to face with Mr. Curtis. I realized I was closer to the owl now than I could imagine. I felt like lunch on a stick, running around in front of him like an idiot.
“Arthur,” said the owl.
“What?” I said, without knowing it.
“Sorry, Sir. Arthur,” said Curtis. He bowed again.
“I assume you’ve got something to show me?” Arthur shook out a wing and pointed to Mr. Curtis’s hat on the floor.
“Yes, here. We encountered these in a bakery nearby, and I was wondering…” he handed one bun up, and the bird snatched it in its beak and ate it so quickly that I fell to the floor.
As he chewed, he looked over at me, where I was cowering, and still expecting to be eaten any second. “What’s his, um, problem, Mr. Curtis?”
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” said Mr. Curtis.
I struggled to my feet as Arthur chewed, and looked at the ceiling, then quickly back at me. He jumped to the floor and crouched down to look through my eyes and into my brain. He finished the roll. And opened his beak and stretched it. I survived, as I’ve been able to chronicle this adventure, so I stood my ground. He turned his head to look at me a different way and smacked his beak one more time.
“I’ve tasted this evil once before,” said the owl. He flew back up to a more comfortable perch for him and turned around after shaking his tail feathers at us. One of them fell to the ground at our feet.
“Take that. Throw it in a fire if you need to see me, and it’s an emergency.”
I picked up the feather and tucked it in my jacket pocket, unsure exactly what he meant by that.
“Curtis, have you seen anything like this before. It’s not as simple as a curse or common magic. I believe we are looking at something from beyond.”
Arthur twisted its head to something on the floor. It was Mr. Curtis’s hat. One roll fell to the floor and was wriggling away, little tentacles growing through the dough.
It shot one out at Mr. Curtis and wrapped around his legs, knocking him down. He struggled, and I watched, unable to move as it got larger and larger. It was crawling up to the frog’s gaping mouth, where he was trying to breathe and get control. He scraped at the floor, right as Arthur landed, his talons ripping directly into Mr. Curtis’s belly. No, not Mr. Curtis, the tangled tentacle-bun. The owl squished it to shreds, never arming my friend.
I helped him up.
“Have you got another one in there, Mr. Curtis?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Give it to me. I’ve got something to check, please.”
“Here it is,” he said, handing it up, and putting his top hat back in place.
“I’ll be in touch Curtis. Be careful. This isn’t your ordinary mystery.”
Arthur gently took the roll in its talons, hopped toward the crack in the inside of the clock face, and flew away, out across the city.
“Well, I knew that, didn’t I?” said the frog.
“You almost got us killed.”
“Arthur, no. He’d never kill me.”
“I’m not talking about you, you numskull. Do you see all this around us?”
“Bones, I know how owls eat.”
“Bones of rats and mice.”
He blinked and looked around at the tiny piles of bones around, behind the stacks of newspapers.
“Oh,” he said. He could comprehend if you worked with him sometimes.
“How do we get down out of here?”
“Back this way.” He hopped through piles of decimated, broken bones, and newspaper clippings, and I followed him down the path to the elevators we had come up. It seemed more morbid on the way out than on the way in.
We got into the elevator and took it down to the ground floor, and went back out onto the street. Above us in the sky, Arthur circled, spied with his exceptional eyes, and glided away until we could no longer see him.
We stepped out onto the pavement, and Mr. Curtis jumped and leaped his way down the street.
“I say, Mr. Curtis.”
“Come on, no cabs this close to Arthur’s tower.”
“Oh, no.”
I carried on after him. I could run pretty quickly, but only in short bursts. Every once in a while I had to run behind something, more an instinct than anything, and hide, then. I was back on his trail again. We got back out to Main Street, and traffic picked up again. Dogs pulled cabs as they barked about pests in their fur and what kind of treatment they were going to eat when they got home.
I stuck out my hand and waved down a dachshund, pulling a cab.
“Hello, there gents.”
Mr. Curtis hopped up. “Heading down Main Street to Mrs. Smith’s bakery. You know it?”
“Best biscuits in town, with a nice water dish out back.”
“That’s the one,” I said and got in. Mr. Curtis tipped his hat at the dog and gut in, closing the door behind him, and we were off.
The streets were uneven, and I just held on and dealt with it. Beside us several folks passed us, riding reigned rabbits. They were leaping in and out of the other cabs and plenty of people, other rats, frogs, moles, and the occasional possum going here and there.
We pulled up to the bakery. We got out and just as I was trying to pay the dog, his eyes widened and he bolted down the street.
“Hey, I…”
Mr. Curtis tapped me.
“What?”
He tapped me again, and I turned around to see someone walking down the way, a gentleman, certainly a rat, wearing a dark suit, and clutching at his neck, his throat, gagging.
“Dr. James?” Said Curtis.
“Let’s go.”
I was already running across the street when I said it. I ran him down, and got to him, just as tendrils, like the ones we saw coming from the rolls came from his mouth. He clutched at his throat as the tendrils wrapped around his face and neck. It reached around and buried itself into his ears, and covered his eyes with rounded nods that slowly opened, first the left, then he could no longer breathe.
I jumped back, as did Mr. Curtis, got back up, and blinked silently at me, his head now covered by this octopus-like creature.
“Oh, dear. That man.”
“That is freaky!”
“Curtis!”
“What?”
The man, with the creature attached to his face, straightened his jacket and walked away like there wasn’t a yellow creature there at all.
“You ever seen anything like this before?” I said.
“Nope,” said the frog. He caught a stray fly as they watched him amble up the way.
He sort of shambled to the left and ambled to the right, and skidded into the wall. His arms were limp at his side, but one tentacle stretched out from the side of his head and pushed against the wall with a pair of suckers.
“What on earth is that?” I said.
“I don’t know, but it’s interesting.” He hopped on, behind the man, weaving in and out, trailing behind him. I watched from a distance. Two yellow tentacles wrapped around and back down his jacket. They weaved around keeping balance, as one near the front felt around for the ground.
“I say,” said Curtis.
He followed him, three steps behind, watching the tendrils wave as he weaved around.
“This is outstanding James, look!” He reached up, under one tendril to pull on it.
“No!” I said, running to catch up with him before… and he grabbed it, anyway.
The rat turned around, with the octopus plastered to his head. It opened its beak in the center of its face, its maw, which was surrounded by smaller twitching mandibles, and squealed.
I ducked. Curtis’s mouth opened wide in excitement, and a large, thick shaft of a rubbery fist, an arm ending in curved, spiked fingers, flew out of the middle of nowhere between the jaws of his beak. It slid out and punched the frog squarely in the jaw. He flew back into the road, his legs sprawling in all directions. He landed on his rear and his hat rolled into the middle of the street where a dog driving a cab ran over it and missed it entirely. It swirled around and flew back into the frog’s hand. It was a total fluke, but he acted like it was all part of the plan.
“That was amazing!” He stood up and ran after him.
“No, Curtis, no!”
He ran after the guy, who was turning the corner.
I huffed my way around there in time to see him reach out with four tendrils and start climbing up the side of the roof.
“What the,” I said.
“Isn’t he Interesting?”
“Curtis, I…”
“What did you expect, murders and missing kittens?”
“I don’t know, I… never thought…”
“With me, it’s the weird stuff!”
Mr. Curtis bounded after him, jumping up to the roof. He was an exceptional jumper. He looked as shrewd-footed as a brilliant dancer, yet going from chimney to roof peak to another. I just sight of him, but from the ground. I couldn’t see well enough, but Mr. Curtis got him from behind, pulled, pulled, and used his feet to leverage the rest, and yanked the creature free of the man’s face.
He flung it far, and I saw it swing wide and dive into a chimney with a puff of wild smoke.
The rat heaved a breath of life and Mr. Curtis took hold of him by the shoulders. Looking around, he said, “what am I doing up here?”
“It’s okay, this way down.” He guided him down the easiest possible way. “That’s right, one at a time there. Come on. This way. Here you go. You remember what happened?”
I came up by their side.
“I was, um, coming out of the bakery, and headed over to the watch shop when I…”
“Headed off the roof?”
“Yeah. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, fine.” He checked his watch, which was not working, and put it back in his pocket.”
He looked around.
“You sure?”
“Oh yeah. Thank you.”
He turned, and with a nod, headed up the street.
“Well then,” I said.
“Well then,” he said back.
“What the heck are we up against?”
“Heck is the wrong address, my friend. I think we’re dealing with something much larger than that, and much scarier.”
He motioned up at the bakery window, where during a very busy lunch hour, roll after bun after cupcakes were being sold left and right to a happy, unsuspecting crowd.
