Tag Archives: eerie parasites

A grand underground chamber illuminated by eerie green and pink lights. A massive, sleek alien ship hovers, its doors closing as tentacled creatures retreat inside. In the foreground, a rat detective and a monocled frog in a top hat stand victorious, while dazed townsfolk recover from their possession, illuminated by the ship’s glow.

Shadow Street Chapter 11

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

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?

Mr. Curtis smiled and shuffled a deck of cards. I did not know where he’d gotten them from. He fanned them out, stepping closer and closer to the beast, writhing there. I could see friends, some family, our client Mrs. Smith and a ton of rolls and jelly donuts from which all hung tiny little wriggling things all around us. He shuffled them again, then fanned them out again, taking another step forward.

“Pick one, anyone.”

He held them out. As he walked into the middle, I got ready. To do what I wasn’t sure about. The silver ship gleamed, and they looked ready, either for an escape or a vacation, and I wasn’t sure which. They were loading the young onto the ship. People from around town, mice and rats alike, moles and rabbits, a few pigeons, stacked boxes of wriggling young while some lurched forward in their oddly possessed bodies. The larger one I found had a raccoon.

It held out a tentacle and drew a card from Curtis’s deck.

Curtis quickly grabbed it and turned it up. “This is your card? Memorize it!” He shuffled it back in, fanned the deck, then juggled the cards, zinging them through the air until they were landing in the faces of everyone all over the place looking at him.

It’s important when you’re doing a card trick. You do several things, lie to the audience, use misdirection, and tease them. You have to distract them for things like the fey. That this isn’t the deck you just licked your card from that I’m flinging all over the place.

He held up the original deck. Then pocketed it into his waistcoat again.

“But this is a deck of exploding cards I’m going to stop you with.”

Everyone gasped, including me. Several of the cards he was flinging came my way.

“But sorry, I lied again. Just cards, check them. Check them all.”

Everyone with a card turned it over. It was a match. We all had the card.

“That your card?”

Everyone nodded, holding their cards out, and showing them to each other.

“Sorry, I lied again. They explode.”

All the cards exploded, each sending a shower of salt which covered the room at once. The squid creatures writhed and flopped. Then Mr. Curtis was reaching into my pockets and lobbing holy water like they were Molotov cocktails. They exploded over the walls and the ship.

I broke out of my temporary haze and started lobbing my bottles, as well as dousing myself and Mr. Curtis. It seemed to keep them off of us. The room descended into panic. The creatures escaped their hosts, crawling and shooting from their throats. Some bodies hit the floor harder than others, but others just kind of gave a slight hiccup then blinked and saw where they were, which was in the ship, boarding with a box of wiggling jelly donuts, without disembarking, or watching Curtis and his magic trick. Everyone was coated in holy water, and the squid was rolling and trolloping for the ship.

I started checking people. It’s all right, no. Everything will be fine. I don’t know, is that a ship over there? I’m not sure where this is going either. Let’s check your heart and your blood pressure. No, I’m sure everything will be all right. No, I’m not sure. Aliens? In our town? They have little recollection.

They slipped and slimed aboard, and before we knew it, they were taking off.

Through the windows of the ship, I saw defeated, distraught faces and eyes, unsure if they’d gone about this the wrong way or wronged someone. They appeared hurt and stunned, more than angry or upset.

I felt like looking at them; I was sure they were confused and stung by their attack on us. They didn’t think we’d fight back and weren’t sure we knew what they were, which we didn’t.

Mr. Curtis bowed before them. Waving his arms, and laughed as the ship lurched up through what turned out to be one of the larger unused stacks around the city, then he turned and helped me, but not before shaking his fist at the ship as it rose into the air and flew into the sky until it vanished among the other stars in view.

“Take that, Yes. Yes. Take that back where you came from.”

“How’d you do it?”

“The trick?”

“Yeah. They were all aces of spades.”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“Give a demonstration?”

“Well.”

“Never! It’s magic!”

He pulled a coin from behind my ear and threw it up on the ground, and started helping me help people up.

Soon we had about thirty bewildered adults and a rat. I believe his name was frank and were bringing them up through the caverns.

The mushroom cave was lit with phosphorescent light. We walked through it like it was an underwater forest, filled with spiders.

We crawled up through pipes behind Mr. Curtis, who was better at that than I was natural, except sometimes I had to alter the course to accommodate frank. When we found a lantern, a little one, but a nice one, I gave it to frank because he could hold it higher than anyone else.

We climbed ladders, switched, and went down passages, and into actual pipes until we returned to the bakery. We climbed to the top, then stood to help the rest up. Frank was last.

It was a quiet night.

Mr. Curtis and I stayed, as well as a few of Mrs. Smith’s other employees, to help clean up the bakery. We wiped down the counters, cleaned the ovens, mopped the floors, and then Mr. Curtis and I stayed to clean up the dining room while others started getting ready for the day ahead.

Mr. Curtis and I moved into the dining room and set the tables and chairs upright with Mrs. Smith. We went back out to the loading area. Argus was there, with his coach making a morning delivery of supplies for the day’s baking.

“Argus,” I said.

“Morning sir. Lift anywhere soon as these gents unload me?”

“Yes, good morning Argus, stick around a moment.”

“I will,” he barked, shaking his head and fur for a second.

We hammered the last nail into a fresh floor shortly after that, blocking the drain for good, and another crew was sealing it over with gravel and mud before packing it in.

“Nothings ever coming up this way again, Mrs. Smith.”

“Thank you, boys.”

It was already showing the light of morning, so we took Argus’s cab back to our apartment on shadow street.

“Where have the two of you been all night?” said Mrs. Constellation.

She stands in.

“Covered in powder,”

“Flour.”

“Drenched, suits torn and destroyed.”

“Hello, Mrs. Constellation.”

“Get in here and clean up.”

She swept us into the house and batted us towards the stairs.

“That owl from the tower’s been flying around hunting all night.”

“Arthur.”

“Oh, we know his name now, do we? Hanging around with predators when you should investigate for that poor woman at the bakery.”

“Bakery.”

“Right, that’s what I said. Now, off with you. Get cleaned up. I’ll not have you two looking like a couple of roughnecks who are traveling the train tracks.”

“Interesting,” said Mr. Curtis.

“Now, get on..”

She shewed us like a couple of pests up the stairs.

We passed through the parlor and kitchen up to the sitting room Mr. Curtis and I used during business hours, and then up to our floor.

Mr. Curtis turned to me, fanned out a deck of cards, and said, “Pick one, anyone.”

“Curtis, I’m done.“

I was already unbuttoning my waistcoat, my jacket, and what was left of it over my shoulder.

 “No, go on, pick one.”

I sighed and reached out, taking a card at random. It was the king of spades,

“Nice job mate, one of our stranger ones, right?”

“You know it.”

He dropped and sat on the floor in his doorway. I had my door open and was halfway in.

“Aliens? Or whatever. Possessing townsfolk? Odd.”

“Disturbing.”

“Arthur’s nice though.”

“The owl frightens me.”

“Well, he should. He could eat either of us in half a second.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Goodnight James.”

“Goodnight Curtis.”

I closed my door and sat in my second favorite chair, this one a little more comfortable, but a little worse for wear than the one I kept in the sitting room. My bed lay undisturbed, but I ignored it. Its curtains were open. Next to my chair was a small table lit by pale morning light with this journal upon it.

I pulled the shades. Made it as dark as I could, and fell asleep in my chair.

It was nice, the quiet. Even Curtis was still somewhere. Behind my eyelids I listened as deep in the house Mrs. Constellation was bumping around, and out on the street cabs were trotting by and people were getting back out into the city again.

I dropped off.

There was a thin line of light in my room through the shade.

There was a dream that I had. I was on the roof, meditating as a murder of crows swarmed around me, picking up mice in the field I was now in. My clothes were gone, and I was seated with my eyes closed, yet still observing the birds swooping this way and that, never catching me. They’d swoop, dive, catch a fresh field mouse, but I wasn’t there. I’d moved some distance away, without moving. I’d blink, my eyes still closed each time a crow was diving to attack me, and I’d see neither mouse get taken from thirty feet away, the line I simply blinked and teleported across the field. Soon, a second one attacked, and I blinked away. They were swarming all around me, but couldn’t touch me. Beaks snapped, and they made a kill of their prey, but it was never me.

Then I was in three places at once in the field, each watching my other two selves, unable to concentrate on one well enough to see the other, then there were a thousand of me across the world.

I woke up in a cold sweat, panting, naked, holding my tiny samurai sword above my head, unsheathed, aloft, and ready to attack nothing. There was no one with me.

I sheathed the sword, the only thing of my fathers I still possess, and placed it quietly back into the closet, hearing it thunk against the sidewall, and got out a fresh suit.

I washed up in my basin and dressed in a fresh shirt, waistcoat and jacket, and left to go downstairs.

The sword. I hadn’t thought of it in four years, not since starting up with Mr. Curtis, doing our brief investigations around town. It always stayed closed in the closet, behind door after door. I wasn’t a weapon guy. I didn’t have any training. When I found the sword in his things, I couldn’t believe it. It only had a note, a warning to keep it well, to take care of it. Every time I tried to sell it, I’d lose it. Each time I became agitated, it’d get in the corner.

I don’t move it around. I think it moves. I don’t talk about it much. Best I think to just keep it in this journal for now.

A cavernous underground chamber, dimly lit by eerie green and pink lights. Stacks of wooden crates are piled high, with strange tentacled creatures shifting them. In the distance, a sleek white alien ship looms. Two crates crack open slightly—inside, a rat detective and a monocled frog in a top hat peek out.

Shadow Street Chapter 10

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

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?

“So, are you ready then?” said Arthur from the roof of our townhouse. Mrs. constellation had a foot in Mr. Curtis’s back, cinching a leather strap tight to keep him and all the holy water tied to his body. It looked like he had an extra leather jacket worth of bags strapped to him. Tying the cinch off made his tongue lash out and almost hit me in the face.

“Curtis!”

“Sorry,” his tongue was still recoiling into his mouth,

His arms bulged out over the bags and he checked the hound could get could reach into the strange pockets.

“Yes, Arthur,” I said, as Mrs. Constellation yanked a strap and pushed her foot into my back, causing me to add an auuuggghh to the end.

“Indeed,” said the owl, looking more at the moon, and raising a wing to judge the air. “Let’s get this over with. You say you can get these things to vacate, then?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said.

“Good, then let’s get on with it.”

Mr. Curtis reached up and pulled a coin from Arthur’s ear, and smiled.

“See there?” said the frog. Even covered in strange bags of holy water, I can still do magic.

“Nice. You know I’m an owl, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“And I have a superior hearing?”

“Well yes, okay.”

“I could hear you flip the coin out from between your fingers.”

This stopped my friend for half a second.

After a moment he bowed, and said “magic!”

Mrs. Constellation pulled another strap holding in a half a pound of salt under my arm. It made me wheeze and my eyes bug out.

“Just about there,” she said.

She did it again before I could say anything.

“Thank you,” I said in a whisper.

“Let’s get on with it, then. The bakery is only a couple of blocks away.”

“Yeah, let’s get out there.”

He swooped up into the air and crossed in front of the moon in a great shadow.

“Arthur?”

Then he came down swiftly, and I felt like prey, open talons coming for us, Mr. urticaria and my vagabond to run life or lives depended on it. It wasn’t rational; it was just moon, owl, talons, run! And off we went, with Mrs. Constellation watching us, disapproving with her hands on her hips.

Then he grabbed us by the big leather bags strapped to us, and talons closed silently over our shoulders, strong and snug, but not tight enough to kill us, and we were airborne.

Above us, we could see nothing. Everything was feathers, down and to the sides of stars and rooftops. He was still keeping low, mostly gliding, with a few beats of the wings to get where we were going.

Below us, the streets were empty except for the occasional staggering person possessed by one creature. What was I doing, even fighting this? I struggled, pulling at Arthur’s foot, and trying to drop my salt. I was going to climb up and I don’t know escape. Land on a roof nearby and skitter away?

Arthur just gripped him harder and said none of that, squeezing an “Okay” out of my lips.

Mr. Curtis hat his arms out wide, his eyes slightly loses and his tongue hanging out just a little. I think he was having airplane putter noises, but I couldn’t tell you for sure because I was still so afraid for my own life at the moment.

The second time I looked, he had three playing cards in each hand, acting like they were flight feathers of his own, I expect.

“Isn’t this outstanding!” He yelled.

“Yeah, great.”

Arthur swooped, and I held onto my hat, pulling it over my eyes, and felt the rush of the wind until the gravelly texture of the roof over the bakery was under my feet trying to tear my furry toes off.

He laid us down as gently as he could, and I thanked him by hugging his leg in desperation. He kicked me off. I rolled to the side and got up sharply, dusting myself off. One of my salt bags started leaking, but that was okay. I’d run and create a trail, anyway.

Mr. Curtis popped a cork out of one of the holy water bottles. I don’t know how h did it with a mouth devoid of teeth, really, but it was done. Maybe he grabbed it in there with his tongue or something, but quickly he was spitting two corks out and smiling.

“All right then?” said the owl.

“We’re good from there.”

“All right then. Later.”

He flew into the air.

The main chimney was there. Now that I could see Arthur flying off into the distance, I was happy it wasn’t too tall for us to climb.

I scrambled up it, and Mr. Curtis jumped to the top in one leap.

“Ready?” said the frog.

“Not really,” some came out of my mouth.

“Good,” he said, then he pushed me in and jumped behind me.

We slid down the chimney and landed in a hornet’s nest.

They surrounded us, covered in soot, and we rolled into the middle of them. Mrs. Smith was there, her face open, and the tentacled creature clearly in charge, with several of who looked like other folks from town, also being operated in line, they were little vehicles for yellow squid guys. They were loading something into bags, and it looked like they were putting them into the dough for tomorrow.

“To effect, infect more?” I said without thinking.

They stopped everything and dropped what they were doing and got holy water in the face from Mr. Curtis. Who said “Tally-ho!”

I took the cue and started throwing handfuls of salt in all directions. I threw it at people, on-the-floor, in directions that made no sense, and off across the room where nothing but sweeping up would happen later, anyway.

I jumped over the counter. Salt in Mrs. Smith’s squid face. Everyone was wet. People were steaming. It was getting harder to see. I realized a second later that they were tossing so much flour into the air that everyone was getting pretty sticky.

Out came the first octopus. It slid off the face of one guy. There was holy water and salt all over the place. It scrambled. I lost track of it.

“The ovens,” I heard one say. “The bake,” I heard another one say, then more salt slinging. I was getting it everywhere. The bag at my side was leaking fast now. I got the rest in my hands and went after Mrs. Smith.

She scrambled in and over counters, and I got her from behind when Mr. Curtis turned to the oven and got her attention.

She turned in a split second to scream when he turned it off then I salted her probably a little too well.

The squid slid out and left her body behind.

It wasn’t a husk. She was breathing, but the yellow squid guy wasn’t happy either. Covered in salt that was destroying his body and holy water that was steaming, it could escape. It crumpled to the floor. The others we’d encountered were in similar shape. Now three left, stranded in seas of salt and holy water in little patches on the floor.

“Mrs. Smith?” I shook her gently. To my surprise, her eyes opened. Whatever the creatures were doing, it wasn’t permanent, at least at this stage.

“The ovens,” she said saintly, smiling up into my eyes.

“Yes, Mrs. Smith?”

“Incubators for their eggs.”

Then she passed out, unconscious in my arms.

“Mrs. Smith, I…” I laid her down, to rest on the salt and wet flour-covered floor. It was already in all the furs. I got one of the other guys, recovering to look for her while Mr. Curtis spread holy water and salt all over the counter.

“What’s up, partner?” I said.

“Here,” he said.

He took the largest squid and plopped it on the table. He and I followed with the others. They couldn’t move, and I dragged up a chair from the dining room and sat down heavily.

“What’s going on?”

“Invasion.”

“No need to possess people.”

“Our world is dying, dead.”

“Nice. We don’t want to be.”

“There’s more. We’re not alone.”

All his answers were coming directly into my mind. He didn’t seem to have a real mouth for speaking, just his beak.

The salt and holy water were melting them. They bubbled, then flopped. In the end, one of them said “ship.”

“They have a ship.”

“Come on, Dr. James,” Mr. Curtis grabbed me by the arm. I didn’t realize what he was up to until we got to the drain. The tentacles were there, drawing the boxes down into the tunnels.

“It’s the buns,” said Mr. Curtis. “The buns.”

“The buns what?”

“Incubators.”

“What?”

More boxes went down.

“They are growing their babies in the bread!”

“Oh god, and when we eat them,…”

“Then they take over.”

“Simple plan. Rake over enough to facilitate the work, and a few others, and get them down the drain.”

“What’s down there then?”

He smacked me behind my neck.

“The ship dummy! They are packing the ship with young, all warmly covered in a nice roll or donut to eat as they mature.”

“We’ve got to get down there,”

“Right!”

“In a box?”

We scrambled into boxes and sat by the others. Every few moments, another couple of boxes went down. Soon it was our turn, and everything turned upside down.

Tentacles grabbed us, and our boxes went flying. We tumbled, though carefully. The handlers didn’t want to disturb the contents. We sailed down, rocking against the sides of the box, sliding around like not a roll, but a large cake, maybe.

I held my arms out and tried to steady myself, knowing Mr. Curtis must do the same on his own, trying not to fall out before we get noticed.

Everything stopped.

My box stopped tumbling. It had set me down.

I lifted the lid on my box of donuts and saw it.

I was next to Mr. Curtis, who was also peeking out. We saw each other, which meant I needed to be a lot more careful.

We were in a cavern, large and lit with green and pink lights. The floor looked slick and stacked up were maybe fifty other boxes, just like ours. In the distance was the ship. The outside was stark white with silver highlights, and a day line of windows curdled circled the top.

Through the windows, I could see the big squid.

I wish I could stop calling them. Squid iron octopuses. They were neither, but I didn’t have a good name. It was large.

I quickly closed my box. Someone was going by. I felt like I wasn’t the only one moving. All the surrounding boxes were wiggling. One by one I could tear boxes opening and closing a few moments later, noon one at a time, maybe two or three at a time. Everything was jumping, so I started jumping. Why were we jumping?

It was feeding time. I was in a sea of boxes of vast creatures, and soon it would be my turn. What was I going to do? Crouch, okay, no. Act like a dinner roll? No amount of method acting was going to get me there.

They opened our boxes.

All eyes were on us. They were around us.

The big one in the ship trained eyes on us.

 I stood up, my fur still covered in flour.

Mr. Curtis took off his magic top hat. “Want to see a trick?”

A Victorian apartment interior, dimly lit by candlelight. A rat detective and a monocled frog in a top hat prepare bags of salt and holy water. A massive owl perches on the windowsill, its feathers ruffled. Outside, through the fogged window, shadowy figures with glowing eyes lurk in the streets.

Shadow Street Chapter 9

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

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?

We scrambled down the road. It looks as though everyone on the street but us has a tentacle hanging from a nostril, ear, or mouth. They stagger about, but some of them are getting a grip and walking upright.

Mr. Curtis shoves the key into our apartment on shadow street and we practically fall in, locking the door behind us.

“The kitchen!” said Mr. Curtis.

“Salt!” I said, scrambling around behind him.

“That will be enough, gentlemen,” said Mrs. Constellation. She turned, wearing a long black dress, and with tentacles pouring from her mouth, nose, and ears, she opened her mouth wide enough for her head to appear to split open so the creature inside could get both eyes out, and use its mouth, though it continued speaking with her voice.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind.”

She whipped out a tentacle and stopped me from making the kitchen. Beak or no, she smiled a weak, prim smile at me. “I want you to know it’s nothing personal. The invasion is in full swing, and from here there is nothing you can do about it.”

“Nothing?” said Mr. Curtis. “I’ve never known nothing I couldn’t do something about.” He grinned and shot his tongue past her into the kitchen, where a small salt shaker sat by the tea tray.

“You!” she said, then whipped it away from him, and right towards me. His smile faltered, but only for a second, and while I was watching the salt shaker fly at me in slow-motion, spinning like a top and spreading salt everywhere on the parlor floor, I watched him jump on her head and pull her skirt back and cover her head.

I caught it.

“Good man!”

The shaker had plenty left in it, so I started shaking, while Mr. Curtis started hitting the tentacles coming from Mrs. Constellation that were still visible with drops of holy water.

The creature had burns on its skin. It hissed and pulled back with each drop.

Again, it hissed.

“No!”

“Invasion? What invasion?”

“We’re coming!”

“Looks like you’re already here.”

Drop. Hiss. It shrank back from him. I started salting my way up the stairs.

“Come on now.”

“Through the food. Germinating in the bread. We traveled the stars for eons. Ages and ages.”

“Why not ask for help?”

“We need hosts to…”

“To?”

“To grow. You’re just a child, aren’t you?”

Mrs. Constellation fell to her knees.

“Sorry, need her back before she dies.”

“No, don’t..”

He poured a measure of holy water over her.

Mrs. Constellation fell to the floor, writhing in agony. She clutched her throat, screamed, and then relaxed as the creature escaped from her mouth and ran for the door.

It skittered through the salt, limping in its tentacles with pain before it got to the door, where Mr. Curtis opened it, and let it out.

He croaked and lashed his tongue up to straighten his hat.

“You let it go.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

“Mrs. Constellation. I wanted it out of here long enough to revive her.”

She lay still on the floor.

“Come on, frog, she’s dead!”

He held up a finger. “Bullfrog.”

“Right. She’s dead, face it. The whole town is about to go under now. Look outside, they are everywhere.”

“True, but she’s not dead.”

“Of course she is. There’s the corpse!”

“Have you checked her pulse, Doctor?”

“No, I, uh.”

“Go on, check her.”

I reached down, mostly watching my bullfrog friend make sure a tentacle didn’t fall from his mouth. Her pulse was there. I checked it again.

“She is alive.”

“Thank you, Dr. James.”

“Help me.”

We picked her up and put her on the chaise. She opened her eyes, and they were wild. “You boys have no right. I’m going to kill you both!”

She sat up on her elbows and continued to fuss.

“You are never bringing me such a terrible breakfast ever again, and you, Dr. James, I need you to quit spreading the bloody salt all over the place. I’ve got a mind to take you out back and hog…”

“I love you too, Mrs. Constellation. You’re back to normal. I’m glad.”

“Back to… I went nowhere. I’m going to…”

Mr. Curtis pulled back the curtains in the front window.

“Hey, I never leave those…”

“I know,” I said, and led her forward to see outside.

“Down the street, that’s Phil Coleson from the farmer’s market. What’s that coming out of his nose, spaghetti?”

She looked up the street, “Martha Wright. Why is she stumbling around? Her mouth!” More noodles were dangling there.

“The salt?”

“They can’t cross it.”

The frog held up one of his empty flasks.

“Holy water?”

“Yup. Evicts them pretty much on the spot.”

She sat down at her writing desk. She reached out, grabbed a fountain pen and got it going, grabbed a piece of velvety stationery, and started barking.

“Where from?”

“Under The bakery.”

“How?”

“They get into the bread dough.”

“And there?”

“They germinate or develop somewhat.”

“Until?”

“They get eaten.”

“We think so. They get into the digestive system and then…”

“They take over, start driving.”

“Animal bodies.”

“What’s the point?”

“Invasion?”

“That’s stupid. They look like what, squid?”

“Little yellow octopuses.”

“Only have five tentacles, though.”

“Except the big one they use in fights. They keep one down their throats.”

“Right.”

“We need to get into that bakery again,” said Mrs. Constellation. “Undetected. Unnoticed. Without getting caught.”

“Yes, Mrs. Constellation?”

“Then we need to get the salt into the…”

“Around the tank and into the tunnels.”

“And the holy water?”

“Into the dough.”

“Into all the dough.”

“When the holy water is in their system?”

“Gets ugly. Creature escapes, usually through the mouth.”

“Breakfast is going to be ugly.”

“You know it is.”

“Have we any more salt?”

“There’s a box in the kitchen.”

“Okay. That’s good.”

“Let’s get our stuff together.”

“Arthur?”

“We’ll see. Not sure he’d help us.”

Mrs. Constellation slept on the couch rather than go home, which did not surprise me. We had decided our best shot was to go by midnight, and I was the only one who could not sleep. We worked for a further hour on plans and crazy schemes, trying to figure out the best way to get that holy water into the creature’s food supply. Not interested in killing them outright, we were detectives, not superheroes, but merely to free those we knew from them and make statements. Assuming we weren’t dead in the morning anyway, maybe we could make a difference.

I’d sent Arthur a message, with no way of knowing it got to him, telling him where we’d like him to meet us at midnight. We could do it without him, but his help might make things smoother.

Mrs. Constellation helped us get our gear together, fresh suits, because fresh suits, shoulder bags to carry salt, and holy water. It turned out we had two boxes in the townhouse. If I found more at the bakery, I’d take that too.

Mr. Curtis sent another note to Argus, his cab driver. We would need a good and fast getaway if I was right. No idea if he got that message, either.

Mr. Curtis always kept a network of younger frogs to help him gather information. He called them the tadpoles. They seemed clean. I just hope the dog or the owl doesn’t eat them.

Mr. Curtis went to his room after that. Soon I heard his regular chanting. Each night he meditates. He usually talked to himself tonight about our business kicking off and being more successful than it was. He was carefully going over the plan, over and over, including waking up at a proper time, and everyone getting their messages well and on time.

After that he passed out on his desk, snoring loudly, his tongue lay loosely at his side in the inkwell, and one of his knees was up, pointed into the air. He remained fully dressed and ready to go but otherwise looked as relaxed as possible. One of his arms lay curled around his magic hat.

After checking on him, I returned to my room across the hall from his. It was quiet, aside from the random scrapings of the possessed people out learning how to drive their bodies out there on the streets.

Light snow hit my window, and I kept little more light than a single candle for journaling, which I did most nights. Most nights, I was usually occupied with thinking over our cases and documenting them. I’m not sure why anyone would be interested, but then again, this one…

I put my pen down and took a drink of tea. Both Mr. Curtis and I laced everything we drank or ate now with little drops of holy water.

When someone tapped on my windowsill, I put the glass down.

I went to the window, waving my candle a little too much, and opened it. I could see owl talons.

“Fool!” said Arthur. “What are you coming out early for?”

“But you scratched on the…”

“I did not. Is the frog ready?”

“He will be.”

“And you?”

“I haven’t slept since the war, at least rarely enough to talk about. I don’t even keep a bed in my apartment.”

The owl leaned for a quick look. “Nice plush chair.”

“It’s good for sleeping when I can get some.”

“Night owl like me?”

“Good time to write.”

“I love you, Dr. James. You’re stupid.”

“I say.”

“You do?”

“Look, I’m in love with the night, but after what I’ve seen lately…”

“Experienced…”

“Right. It’s all over the place. Never thought I’d be helping anyone do anything like this.”

“It’s good to know you will tell us.”

“Of course, I will. I like it here in town, and I don’t like calamari. “

“Arthur does that mean…”

“No, I don’t hunt the likes of you, Dr. James. I only hunt the dumb, and I mean people that are still animals, not the intelligent.”

“It’s almost time.

“Get suited up.”

I closed the window, left, took my candle with me, and opened his door again.

“Mr. Curtis?” He was right in my face, hat on his head, and eying me through his monocle.

“Is it time now?” He had me by the lapels of my jacket and swung me around. I backed up to a dart board he commonly used for practicing his knife throwing.

“What? Yes.” He threw a knife. It landed by my left hand, pinning my jacket. “It’s time to get ready.” He threw another. It came close to my head. Where was he getting them from?

I quickly detached my wrist and got down from his target.

“Good goose then, Let’s get going,” he said, putting another one into the practice target, in the middle.

“That was a good one.” He took the lead and headed downstairs. “Mrs. Constellation, we’re ready.”

She quickly saddled him with the holy water, two gigantic bags of little bottles that clanked. She stuffed them with cotton. They still clanked, it just wasn’t obnoxious. For me, two-shoulder bags full of salt. It was a combination, of rock salt, some kosher, and some table salt.

“Nice.” I put some on my tongue.

“Still not possessed?” said Mr. Curtis.

“Seems like it.”

“Good then, do me.”

I held out some salt. He licked it off my hand and thought for a second. “Me neither?”

“No, I suppose not. The owl’s upstairs.”

“Let’s go.”

“Get out of here, you two idiots.”

Inside a grand, dimly lit cathedral, towering stained-glass windows cast eerie red and blue light over the stone floor. A massive owl, Arthur, lies weakened, partially consumed by writhing yellow tentacles. A rat detective and a monocled frog in a top hat stand over him, preparing to purge the parasite.

Shadow Street Chapter 8

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

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?

Up we went, grabbed and yanked into the sky. Clutched around our dangling arms and legs were the strong talons of an enormous beast. It flew silently. I could see brown and white in the feathers. I can’t otherwise see anything. Feathers are on my face. Those silent soaring wings. Mr. Curtis’s legs dangled below me as I watched our street fall away from us and the smoky city leave us behind.

They dropped us. I assumed it was to our deaths. I thought for sure that Mr. Curtis’s legs next to me were lifeless. We landed roughly on a tiled rooftop and rolled.

Mr. Curtis’s hat flopped by. I picked it up and sat up, then turned around quickly as a shadow crossed over me.

“What? Who?”

“It is I.”

It was Arthur, the owl.

Mr. Curtis stood up next to me and took his hat. I gave it to him, forgetting for a moment that I thought him dead just a moment before.

“I uh,” I said.

“No need,” said the owl.

Mr. Curtis reached into his hat and found another fresh outfit and started putting it on.

“Where’d you get…”

“This old thing…”

It looked freshly pressed.

The owl paced. Every few moments a ruffle would send fresh down feathers upon us. I brushed them out of my face.

“You boys,” said the owl. I swear his eyes lit up, but I don’t think they did. “You boys may be in way over your heads here.”

“What are we up against?” said Mr. Curtis, tying his tie.

The owl scraped the roof, sending tiles plummeting down to the ground below.

“I thought it might come to this.” The bird turned around. He was pacing. I thought he was preparing for liftoff.

“The bakery must be closed and cleansed. The tunnel must be closed that leads into the cave, and that will not stop them.”

“What will?” I asked.

“We’ll eventually have to find their lair and storm it. No one is safe, but in the short term, we can keep things under control.”

“How do we cleanse the bakery?”

“Salt. Holy water. Don’t eat the…” he coughed.

“And blocking the…”

“The drain…”

The owl tripped and landed in front of us. One eye was wide, the other tightly shut. He wasn’t breathing well. His beak opened, but it wouldn’t open wide enough for the creature inside to make its way clear. The first two sickly yellow tentacles pushed forth, trying to open his mouth.

I watched them in awe. We felt lost. “The surrounding town, Mrs. Constellation, the bakery, everybody, now this.” Mr. Curtis didn’t flinch.

“Thank you, my friend,” he said to the body of the owl lying before us, the creature inside trying unsuccessfully to take control of his large body. The failing eye winked at him as Mr. Curtis replaced the monocle in his left eye.

He handed me a flask and pulled quickly from his hat. It was a small one, glass with a stopper in the top

“Water?”

I saw the frog had in his hand a small salt cellar. He opened the lid, bidding me to do the same with mine. I popped it open.

“Holy water?”

“I thank you. You’ve told me enough. Now let’s cleanse my friend here.” He sprinkled the tentacles with salt. They retreated into the bird’s beak.

“Quickly friend,” he said to me.

I sprinkled some of the water onto the bird’s face, getting as much as I could on the beast.

“That’s right.” He did some more salt, going around the roof a little too. I did some more, following his lead.

The owl’s body convulsed. It flipped over. It shook. I poured a measure down the owl’s throat. The creature slowly emerged after it choked. It slid out and flopped to the rooftop, but it couldn’t cross the salt sprinkled around.

It was yellow, slimy, and pale. It resembled an octopus, but it had five tentacles instead of eight, and couldn’t easily supply support for its body weight. It blinked, looked around with a single bulbous bright blue eye, and stared us down. The person looked around.

“Looking for a way yet?” said the frog. “I’m onto you.” He faced the creative eye to eye, closing one of his own.

I carefully stepped away from them.

“I want you and your friends to leave,” said Mr. Curtis. “It’s hard enough being a frog or a rat in a world like this.”

“There’s room enough for all.”

“While true, I’m afraid I can’t condone parasites attacking my friends and neighbors.”

“We just… we must…”

“James, can you please?” Arthur was stirring. I ran to see him and helped him up.

“Of course,” I said.

“It’s just…” said the squelching squid.

“Can you live long outside of a host?”

“Yes, but not for long, and not above the surface.”

“Then I’m going to have to kick you out and ask two things.”

“What?”

“No coming above the surface.”

“And?”

“If you do, find a host that at least likes it.”

“Curtis!” I said.

“What? Somebody might.”

“Doubtful.”

“And if we don’t?”

“You may as well come kill me first next time so I won’t get in the way.”

It eyed me, where I was listening to Arthur’s heartbeat, and saw it, the place where we hadn’t sprinkled salt.

“We will come for the surface.”

It slid from me. I tried to climb the owl. Arthur just knocked me to the roof.

“Dr. James! The holy water!”

“Oh, yes!”

I pulled it from my breast pocket and uncorked it with my teeth. It reminded me of tossing grenades during the war. I tossed the bottle where it hit the creature, and mostly bounced off, but not without the contents spilling out all over the creature.

Where it spilled, what was later to be burned into the creature’s skin? It lost a tentacle, dissolving completely, then another one as it tried to run. Mr. Curtis chased it to the edge of the roof with the salt cellar, shaking handfuls of salt at it. It dodged this way and then rolled down the pitch of the roof like a ball. Its tentacles flopped and flapped like fettuccine that hadn’t quite seen enough boiling water and it fell from the roof, landing with a splat on the ground below. It opened its eye and looked up at us and I could hear in my mind. “We’ll be back. There are more.”

I squeezed my head, trying to get him out of there, thinking my body was quickly being taken over when I realized he was gone, squelching in the mud down a drain.

“Thank you, Arthur,” said Mr. Curtis.

“I’m never taking a roll from you again, Mr. Curtis.”

I walked back.

“What do we do?” I said.

“What? Do we?” Said, Arthur. “You, and you know.”

“Holy water and salt?”

“Where do we?”

“Come with me,” said Mr. Curtis. And he jumped down the drainpipe.

“I hate the drainpipe.”

I jumped down it and tried to keep my descent to the ground under control, but I couldn’t manage it. I slid out onto the dirty streets and with all the fluff, closer to the rat I know I am than the gentleman I see myself as. The tweed hid most of the dirt, so I straightened my coat as best I could. At least I’m in the shadows of the building.

“This way,” said the frog.

“What’s this way?”

“St. Albert’s cathedral. Holy water.”

I realized I’d used all I had on the poor thing.

“And salt?”

“The bakery,” said Mr. Curtis. “Besides, I still have some. Where’s the salt? Poor fellow, must I spell everything out for you?”

“No?”

I took off after him. The cathedral was several blocks ahead but faced the corner at one intersection. I could see it. It was the only place nearby where the stained glass was in red with blue and yellow. Skylights swallowed enough light at strategic angles to light the entire building with a certain glow. The morning streets were moving, but he kept on hopping rather than flagging a cab. The closer we got to it, the less I felt like flagging one down, either.

There were massive front steps of Stone, that also had a blue or red tile inserted every so often to keep up the motif, there was no sign for St. Albert’s only a large red cross in a field of yellow glass in the front with a blue letter A on each side. One was upside down, the other right side up.

We climbed the steps. It seemed like there were too many of them.

At the door, this early in the morning, I expected it to be locked. It wasn’t.

Mr. Curtis opened it and swung it wide. Giving me a look to the side. He hopped in and I followed. The door closed quietly behind us.

The tile was immaculate. I walked, hearing my footfalls echo down. “Mr. Curtis, how much exactly do you keep in that hat of yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“You always seem to have what we need in it.”

“I like to be prepared.”

“Unlikely.”

“I’m doing my best here. I was never good at magic.”

“No?”

“Much better doing this. I’d rather not be on stage. What about you?”

“You know, I’d see patients.”

“You’re retired though.”

“Doesn’t Mean I…”

Something clattered ahead of us.

“What was that?”

We ran down and found him on the floor. He was a mole, dressed in a monk’s habit, lying on the floor near a grand basin before three sets of tall solid oak doors that led further into a sanctuary.

We ran up to help him up.

“Thank you, Thank you.”

“Is this the holy water?” I asked.

“It is,” he said. One of the sanctuary doors quietly closed.

“We… need…”

“How much?”

The frog just looked at him, then back at the monk. “All of it?”

“I understand.” He reached under the basin, touched a switch, and brought out two bottles. They looked like vodka bottles, with crosses on them.

“Ah.”

“Take ‘em.”

The frog smiled. I kept one under my arm, and Mr. Curtis slid the other into his hat.

“Come on,” said Mr. Curtis.

“Not here,” said the monk, “don’t disturb him here. Yes, I know he’s here.”

We pushed through into the sanctuary. It was darker than the previous hall. He was sitting there in the front row, breathing and huffing.

We walked down the aisle and sat in front of him on the steps before the altar. His tentacles hung there without touching the floor.

“You can’t just take who you want,” I said.

“I know.” Again, the response was in my mind.

“Just let me rest.”

We sat down.

“Where do you come from?”

“Here? The deep? Depths. It’s been so long. All we know is dark.”

“Do you have a leader?”

“We have. He tells us to break free. We must take the surface back.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s too much trouble.”

“It’s not worth it.”

He perked up. “Oh, it’s worth it. I just don’t know if the cost will simply be too heavy.”

“I’d like it to work out. Is there any other way?” I said, while Mr. Curtis sprinkled salt under him all over the side floor around him and then started hitting the surrounding pew.

“We just get a host. It’s the only way we know.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Curtis.

The frog doused him. I didn’t even see him pour the glass.

A foggy Victorian street at night. A rat detective and a monocled frog in a top hat stand frozen on a doorstep as an eerie figure looms in the doorway—Mrs. Constellation, her body wrapped in writhing yellow tentacles. Her eyes glow, and a sinister beak-like maw emerges from her mouth.

Shadow Street Chapter 7

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

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?

“Mr. Curtis, what happened?”

We ran up to him where he was standing there, covered in donuts, his hat to the side. His monocle still hung from his eye and he had the silliest smile on his face.

“What?” said the frog.

There was a blank expression in his eyes.

“Let’s get them off of him.”

We started pulling donuts off him, popping them over his wrists, and then after pushing him to the ground with the cushion of baked goods around him, onto his back so we could disentangle his feet. Soon he lay there on the ground.

“Here’s your hat at least,” I said, putting it back on his head. This seemed to clear his mind ever so much and he seemed to look at us for the first time realizing…

“Well, then!” He reached into his hat and pulled out a long nightshirt. “That’ll do.” He rummaged for a second longer and pulled out a pair of red bedroom slippers. He put his feet in them, then wriggled into the nightshirt and put his hat back on. “Good as new! Come on, this way.”

He hopped down the hall, left and right.

“Which way are we going?”

“Listen, Dr. James, the singing! This way!”

He pointed in one direction and completely hopped in another. Mrs. Smith and I did our best to keep up, following his hopping flapping body in as best a serpentine fashion as we could.

“Wait, I can hear it,” said Mrs. Smith, and faint, I thought I could as well.

“It must be this way,” I said.

We scrambled around, down in the tunnels, and came around to a small balcony overlooking a large room. I covered the ceiling with glistening stalactites hanging from it. Lights from a fire pit below shined on it. There were several other small balconies like this one across the way, but they were all dark.

Down below, around the fire pit, were several folks, mostly moles, and a couple of mice, again with strange octopus creatures holding onto their faces. Each extended two tentacles, one to the left, the other to the right, and they were touching each other as they danced, or used their possessed bodies to dance around the fire pit.

“Do you recognize anyone down there?” I said.

“Anyone? I recognize all of them!”

“They all come to your shop?”

“Yes, I’ve seen all of them recently.”

“In the last few days?”

“I don’t know, but I think I’ve sold things to all of them.”

“What do we do?” said Mrs. Smith.

“Nothing yet. We’ll have to watch them,” I said.

 Curtis was back down from crawling over the edge. “No jumping just yet, friend.”

“Humph.” Mr. Curtis folded his arms.

“Cut it out.”

I peaked over the banister’s edge and looked down, but all I could see were people dancing in the dark around a fire, and what seemed just a few people at that. I pulled a small pair of binoculars out and peered down below, and got a look right into one of their mouths.

“Yeah,” I said, then looked again. They were dancing around, holding onto each other’s tentacles, and swaying around, their arms hanging by their sides, to no music I could hear, and then they released each other in unison and I watched as the creatures slowly retreated into their mouths. A moment later, they were blinking and staggering around, and the fire went out.

“Now,” I said.

Mr. Curtis jumped over the side, giving me a wink on his way over.

“What? Mr. Curtis!” said Mrs. Smith. She ran to the edge to see Mr. Curtis deftly land and slide the rest of the way down to them, on a random stair banister. He landed in his pajamas and wandered into their midst, waving his arms and acting as disoriented as they were.

“How do we?” I said.

“This way.” Mrs. Smith took me by the hand and dragged me around the corner where the stairs were. We ran down to find Mr. Curtis helping a young mole up.

“There you go.”

The mole looked at us. “Where are we?”

“No idea,” lied Mr. Curtis. “Do you know?”

“This way everybody,” said Mrs. Smith. “This way.” She waved her arms. “Link Up everybody, link up.”

Everyone took a hand, and she led us out, occasionally I took the lead for a couple of turns, and mostly, Mr. Curtis kept up the persona of a dazed fool who didn’t know where they were, like the rest of them, on one or two occasions he sent us in the right direction when no one was looking.

“This way,” said Mrs. Smith, as we passed the mushrooms.

They passed under strange pipes and up to a strange mossy set of stairs. Above them, a gas lamp, covered in metal and glass, burned and flickered, casting strange shadows on the ground.

“This way everybody, follow me,” said Mr. Curtis. He hopped cheerfully up the stairs and found the door locked, but his face didn’t falter. He twisted the handle, and it rocked, but remained still.

He pulled a fine feather from his hat and jiggered it in the lock as the other folks were climbing the stairs. It clicked with a satisfying thunk and then twisted the knob and opened it as if it belonged to him personally.

“This way, this way.” He reached in through the door and found a candle on a holder which he lit, and picking it up by the little ring holder, he went in and proclaimed everything okay. “Through here, yes, right this way.”

He led them through and into the next room, which was someone’s front parlor connected to a ballroom. All the lights were otherwise out and there was a coating of dust on the floor that was sticking to my furry toes.

“I say, Mr. Curtis…”

“This way,” said the hopping frog. He led them right to the front door, and out into the night streets. Corners were lit with gas lanterns and a couple of cabs were still on the road.

I shared a look at Mrs. Smith and then with Mr. Curtis, and we hailed three of them for our woozy friends. I paid for the coaches and Mrs. Smith and Mr. Curtis gave them all scratches behind the ears. A black pug pulled one, and Scottish terriers pulled the other two. Mrs. Smith gave them all tickets for a roll and a coffee after we sent them home. After we walked Mrs. Smith back to her shop, we wanted to see if we could see them again.

We were stepping up to her front door and about to enter when she hacked, coughed, and held her neck.

“Mrs. Smith?” I said.

“Oh dear,” said Mr. Curtis.

We held her by her arms, one draped over my shoulder, and another in Mr. Curtis’s hand, when she erupted like a spring, spitting yesterday’s lunch from last Tuesday all over the steps. She sprayed like a faucet and soup coffee and dinner rolls splattered across my vest.

“Dr. James, I… Dr. James… Mr. Curtis…”

Then the tentacles erupted from her face. They splayed out like a pinwheel in the wind and wrapped around her head. Eyes came out of her upturned mouth, with a snapping beak, and her teeth and jaw hung slack. Her eyes were dark, and staring into nothing, lids loose and unfocused.

“Mrs. Smith! Mrs. Smith!” I said.

Mr. Curtis held her hand, aiding me to support her now relatively limp body.

“Mary-Anne!” I screamed.

“Friend, I think it’s taken her.”

She shook out of our arms and staggered away, shuffling like a zombie with a broken foot, back out towards the street, then the tentacles reached and touched the ground, and pushed her feet up off the ground. It carried its body-shell with it and headed down the street, her feet trailing behind her.

“By Jove…”

One tentacle, sickly yellow and pale in the moonlight, reached up, and they carried her up and over a building, and through the chimney tops.

It left us standing in the street in front of Mr. smith’s bakery.

“It’s in the rolls,” said Mr. Curtis.

“I’m realizing that now.”

“I wonder how long we have before one takes us, too?”

“I’m not sure, but I would certainly like to know what we can do.”

“How many people have they taken already?”

“Could be hundreds?”

“More than that shop here.”

“And it’s not just here. Who knows where else this is happening?”

“This is much larger than just us.”

We were already walking home, we just didn’t realize it. We made our way around the corner and back down the hill toward shadow street.

“I think I’m going to need a change of clothes,” I said, looking at my vest.

“Me too,” said Mr. Curtis. It’s not like I keep another suit in my hat. I’ll have to think of that for next time.

“How much can you keep in that thing?”

“It’s a magician’s hat. What do you think? I don’t know. I think it would bust the illusion for me to tell you.”

“Of course.”

We hiked down shadow street, past a line of businesses on the corner, then larger residences, then into townhouses, and straight up.

“Mrs. Constellation will not understand what we are up against here.”

“No, we’ll have to explain.”

“Pale slimy creatures of the night, erupting from the mouths of our friends and neighbors.”

“A strange ritual underground.”

 “That we are likely to see next.”

The clock tower rang in the distance at one o’clock. Even from this far away, you could still see it, the face illuminated pale and dim, but there, a circle in the distance, you could count on more reliably than the half-moon above them.

Something passed in front of the moon, silent as the night. It was only briefly darker for a second, a shadow passing over them.

We looked for the source, but couldn’t see anything.

“Here we are.”

We stepped up the front steps, and I opened the door with my key, Mr. Curtis’s having been lost earlier. I had to find it, fishing through a pocket Mrs. Smith had vomited on. I gathered it, opened the door, and behind it stood Mrs. Constellation, covered head to toe in stringy yellow tentacles coming from her mouth.

The creature controlling her stared us down.

Her body was not slack, but her muscles were tense. She looked like a walking full-body muscle spasm.

“Mrs. Constellation…” I said.

“Is no more,” came from the creature. I could not tell where its mouth was until it revealed its beak the next moment and said, “And soon you too, and then the world.”

She shut the door on us. We were out in the cold. These creatures had infected our client and so many other locals, and we were certainly next.

I stayed on the first step.

Mr. Curtis went and banged on the door again. He was indignant. He beat on the door with his fists, calling over and over for Mrs. Constellation to open up. I thought him mad.

Then the door opened, and the creature trailing Mrs. Constellation’s body behind it stepped out.

“Who are you?” he demanded, standing there in his nightshirt and magician’s hat. “Tell me what you want!”

“We are coming to the surface. We are coming up from underneath, where we have lived for so long, in the shadows.”

“We know something about that. It doesn’t give to be hostile.”

“It’s the only way we’ve ever known.”

“Come on, try it.” Mr. Curtis’ face gave a wide smile, then croaked accidentally. “Excuse me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

It slammed the door on him again, then he came to sit with me on the first step.

“You know where else we can get a change of clothes?” I asked.

“I got nothing,” said the frog. He sat, looking with one eye into his hat. “Not a rabbit in sight.”

A dimly lit underground tunnel glows with eerie bioluminescent slime. A rat detective and a mouse baker stand in shock, staring at a monocled frog in a top hat, who sits covered head to toe in donuts. Strange yellow tentacles slither into the shadows as an unsettling silence fills the cavern.

Shadow Street Chapter 6

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

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?

“Come here, come here,” said Mr. Curtis. He danced at the end of the counter.

“Let’s get this thing started,” I said. I made my way with Mrs. Smith around the counter.

“Help me with the boxes,” said Mrs. Smith. She waved to me, and I reached up above a cabinet and retrieved a stack of boxes, each made of thick paper, and about the size of a single-layer cake.

“Sorry, we closed earlier than usual. We’ll probably need more than that.”

I laid them on the counter. There were seven.

“Where are they?” said Mr. Curtis.

“Next to the ovens.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Mr. Curtis jiggled by me, swinging around, and disappeared into the kitchen. We heard clang after clang as he went for the wrong things. Each time Mrs. Smith would wince.

Bang! “Sounds like the pans.”

Clang! “The tea sets.”

Smash! “Oh goodness.”

“I found them!” He called from the back.

She looked at me. “You must have a strong friendship.”

“Why do you say?”

“Because I think I’d wring his froggy neck if it were just me.”

I smiled. “It’ll be all right. Assuming we’re not all dead already,” I said.

Her smile faltered. For a moment, I knew she either thought she was cracking down the middle or we were, and she wasn’t sure who it was.

Mr. Curtis appeared with a pile of the boxes in hand and running among the counter dropped them all at Mrs. Smith’s feet, then put his hands on his hips and stood there, either like a pirate or like some kind of superhero. I wasn’t sure what he was up to.

“Thank you, Mr. Curtis,” she said, gritting her teeth just a little. “Let’s get started.”

We opened the first three boxes onto the counter in a line, then she started by filling each one with a pile of muffins.

“I can’t sell anything else, so anything you think you could eat, feel free.”

“You mean of this? That’s safe.” I said.

“Quiet.” She covered her mouth.

For Mr. Curtis it seemed that for every third muffin that got put in his box, one went into his hat. I couldn’t keep up and lost count, but it seemed like a lot. There were a few rolls left behind, and they went in there as well.

We set those boxes on the counter and opened three more. Into them went scones and biscuits, crackers, and bread sticks. They filled the boxes evenly with various assortments, then after moving those boxes away, we set about doing what turned out to be the last five, full of donuts.

They were cream-filled, cake, glazed, and chocolate. Some were covered in sprinkles. Some were shiny, others dull, but they all smelled wonderful.

Alone of what was there, I kept one of the plainer donuts and fixed us all strong coffee as we helped Mrs. Smith empty the coffee and tea services.

“Here we are. Let’s take them back,” said Mrs. Smith. We each took a box and brought them to the back by the loading door, just as she always had. We set them down, then continued the journey until all eleven boxes were back there, all ready to go.

She dragged a small table back from the dining room and Mr. Curtis followed her in with three chairs held aloft, but unable to see. He seemed to be trying echolocation to find his way based on the amount of noise he was making. I quickly helped him and took two of his chairs away so he could see again.

“Oh, hello there,” he said.

“My goodness, let’s sit down.”

We arranged the chairs, and brought in the coffee, and what refreshments we believed to be safe. Mostly, Mr. Curtis would remove his hat, pull out a random donut or something, munch on it calmly with the hat firmly back on his head, then he’d get another one out again a few moments later.

“You didn’t have any maggot bread, did you?” He asked, as serious as could be. I thought about apologizing for him but decided he did that, or something like it all on his own with a shrug.

“I’m sorry, no,” she said.

“Darn!”

The lights were dim.

Outside, we could see the carriages going by, each pulled by a competent dog. I thought of our apartment.

“Tell me about yourself, Mr. James,” she said.

“Dr. James,” corrected the frog, a single index finger in the air waving around one of his sticky pads.

“Dr. James, I’m sorry! I understand the two of you share the townhouse you work out of. Is that true?”

“It is,” I said. “It’s mine, left to me by my father. I don’t need the whole place to myself, so I rent the second bedroom to Mr. Curtis.”

“Were you an investigator first?”

“Hardly,” said Mr. Curtis.

“I’m a doctor, I was a field surgeon in the war, and I used to practice General medicine until last year.”

“And you?” She turned her attention to Mr. Curtis.

“I am Curtis the magnificent!” He flared his coat like it was a cloak. It didn’t quite work, and his left hand just sort of poked out. “I’m a magician. Mostly children’s parties, and some other gatherings, but I have a problem. Want to see a card trick?” He pulled a deck of cards, no cover, ready for shuffling, which he did, out of thin air.

“No, I don’t, sorry.”

He shrugged and dropped the cards.

“What’s your problem?” She took the frog’s hand.

“Trouble follows me everywhere. Strange tales. Unusual tidings. Freak theater fires. I developed a knack for figuring things out, though. Patterns emerge, even when you’re not looking for them.”

“Especially when you don’t want them to,” I said.

“Since he’s the detective,” she said.

Mr. Curtis was looking at our pile of boxes of excess baked goods.

“What’s your role in all this?”

“I’m here to keep him on track, and out of as much trouble as I can.”

“Real good at splinting my arm, I can tell you that.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Interesting thing here,” said the frog.

“What’s that?” I took a sip of coffee and a bite of something I can no longer recall the taste of, except it seemed pretty dry to me.

“Didn’t we have eleven boxes here?”

“We did.”

“Well, now we have nine.”

“Nine? We brought out eleven,” she said. I thought she was going to crawl all over me.

“Yes, I count nine.”

I ran over and started counting.

“Need my magnifying glass?”

“I don’t think so. Yes, it’s nine.”

“There it is!” I heard myself saying it, but a lot was going on honestly. There was a yellow tentacle on the floor coming from the large drain. An eye popped up, and it heaved a box up, wrapping around it, and bracing with another appendage, pulled the box down.

“Eight,” said Mr. Curtis.

I dodged out of the way, and it grabbed another one. I jumped out of the way and let it go.

“Seven,” yelled Mrs. Smith.

“I know, yes!” said Mr. Curtis. “This is fantastic!”

“I can’t argue with that.”

Another one shot out and grabbed another box.

“Six!”

Two tentacles flew out and grabbed more, “five and four!”

Mr. Curtis jumped in one box.

“No!” I said.

“Oh yes,” he said back and began emptying one box of donuts as quickly as he could, spilling them everywhere.

“What are you doing?” she and I said together as the other two boxes went.

He closed himself in the box as a dozen yellow tentacles, thin and strong, whipped out not only to grab the box he was in but to clean all the remaining food off the floor. Tentacles whipped out to trip us up. One had three donuts on it, others curled gingerly around muffins and cookies. Both eyes were up, then everything sucked down the drain.

Slime was everywhere. The tentacles slipped away like spaghetti getting slurped up by a toddler. The eyes ducked down, and the last thing I saw before Mrs. Smith and I were alone in the loading room, was Mr. Curtis’s box pop open and an incredibly floppy happy frog wave to us as he found himself sucked down the drain with the rest of everything.

The oil lamp at the side of the room snuffed out, and the table we were sitting at so briefly fell over with a crash.

Mrs. Smith and I were in the dark, standing on the edge of the drain, which was massive now that some creatures below had come through it, holding paws and staring down into the darkness listening as my friend screamed, chortled, and tally-hoed his way down into the tunnels under the town, laughing like an idiot.

“Come on,” she said, and before I could say under no circumstances, she yanked on my hand and we tumbled into darkness. At first, I didn’t understand it, because I expected it to be a short tumble into a deep pipe, but the fall seemed to last for an eon. We slipped, slid, and powered our way down wet dirty tunnels that were covered in phosphorescent paint. With everything lit up in pale blues, pinks and yellows, I realized it must be from the very slime of the creatures we were looking at.

“Here, I’ll help you,” said a voice in the dark. Mrs. Smith helped me up. It took our eyes a moment to adjust to the dark and the new colors surrounding us.

“It’s quite beautiful,” isn’t it?

“Yes, almost as beautiful as…”

“I am?”

“I was going to say the Milky Way, away from city lights, but yes.”

“So, you’re not interested in Mr. Curtis?”

“What? No, he’s like a brother to me. If a frog can be a rat’s brother, anyway. No one is going to believe what’s down here.”

They turned a corner, found a fork in the tunnel, and took the one more brightly decorated.

“I am going to have to take a serious shower after all of this.”

“Your trousers seem dry, and your jacket.”

“Yes, well, I think I’m going to be trying to wipe this memory from my mind later.”

“You do that.” She curled her paw into his elbow and held onto him as the passage both widened, and became somewhat darker, even though luminescent mushrooms were sprouting in here and they were casting a soft glow on the crystalline ceiling up above.

“Have we passed into a cave?”

“I don’t think so. Look, there’s still a curve to the wall, and it joins up down there with other pipes. I just don’t think this gets used much.”

“It’s used by someone.”

“Or something.” She grabbed me hard then by my elbow, and I turned to see her mouth wide open, filled with yellow tendrils and extra eyes. A single tentacle that had to originate at least as deep as the gut shot from her mouth and I ducked it. It flung out and snagged a crystal on the ceiling, and pulled it down, reeling the big one in for another punch.

It breathed.

“Dr. James?” I heard her original voice speaking, fighting with what was inside her.

“Mrs. Smith?”

Then there were two. One Mrs. Smith, with what looked like a sick octopus in her mouth, and the other one, mad and unleashing furious anger, only a cook with too many timers going to know the truth if. She pulled up a huge chunk of crystal and lunged it down on the creature.

It leaped from her mouth.

She or it, or whatever. Something turned inside out and scampered down the hall. It looked like a small yellow octopus with an extra punching arm and eyes. It started around a corner as I took Mrs. Smith’s hand.

“Is it…”

“Injured maybe.”

“Are you Okay?” we both asked at the same time.

We nodded and laughed at each other.

“Is he?”

“I doubt it.”

Then we heard him ahead of us. We dived through a side passage where the sounds were coming from and there was Mr. Curtis. Naked, yet covered head to toe, arm to arm in donuts. His hat lay to the side.

He looked at us, and without skipping a beat said, “you want to see a trick?”

Inside a bustling Victorian bakery, a tentacled pastry bursts to life on a table, sending customers into a frenzy. A monocled frog in a top hat and a rat detective stand ready, while a shocked mouse baker recoils behind the counter. The glow of gas lamps casts dramatic shadows.

Shadow Street Chapter 5

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

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?

“Let’s go,” I said. I patted Mr. Curtis on the shoulder. He croaked, blinked his left eye, and then a second later his right.

“Right.”

We bounded off up the front stairs and pushed our way into the shop. She wasn’t kidding. The place was hopping. It was teaming with visitors, patrons eating a roll, donut, or sticky bun while enjoying a spot of tea or a large cup of coffee during their lunch hour. There were a variety of mice, rats, moles, and a chameleon in the corner, all wearing work clothes, suits, or other daily wear. There was a family of hamsters down at the head of the line, and we could see, behind the counter, Mrs. Smith running back and forth, fulfilling orders and taking care of customers, ordering employees around otherwise surviving the moment.

“There she is,” said Mr. Curtis.

“What do we do about it?”

“This way.”

We fought through the crowd, twisting around them, but couldn’t penetrate the line. A pair of bats who were discussing a meeting they were going to this afternoon turned and stared us down.

I looked at Mr. Curtis.

He apologized, saying “excuse me,” then to me “let’s get in line.” So we did.

Looking around, we could see that all the side tables, and a lounge area next to the fireplace were filled with folks settled neatly into handsome leather chairs.

In the middle of the room was a standing series of tables, where most folks were. They were leaving almost as quickly as they came in, but no one in here seemed to be infected. I was watching everyone closely as I could, but no one seemed in the least bit distressed, except possibly for Mrs. Smith, and she simply looked like someone dealing with a lunch rush worth of people, yet I kept expecting trouble.

Mr. Curtis appeared to be on alert as well. He was behaving strangely, which meant more strangely than he usually did. He kept darting his eyes around, looking under tables, and taking his hat off to look in it, only to put it back on so he could pull it off again to look in it, and then squeeze down onto the floor to look at everyone’s shoes, then hop up and try to spin around, and put his hat back on.

I’m glad it wasn’t just me because a pair of mice ahead of us kept scooting out of his way, giving him dirty looks.

“Curtis!”

“What?”

“What are you…”

“Looking.”

“Stop.”

“James, clues, you know.”

“I think they’ll find us by this point.”

He looked in his hat again.

“What are you looking at in there? I gave to say sometimes I do not know what or how you keep anything in there.”

“I used to be a magician.”

“I know that. Never mind, what are you watching in there?”

“An egg. At least I think it’s an egg.”

I looked in the hat.

“I can see nothing.”

Then he waved his hand over the open hat. I imagine an almost automatic gesture for him, then reached in and pulled one roll out from this morning and showed it to me.

“My goodness Curtis, that’s three times the size it was this morning.”

It was. As they held it up, it dwarfed his gray-green hand. It looked like it was expanding and building up in different directions. Little ballooning pockets. I almost expected one to rupture and explode like a boil, but that’s not the thing you expect from a sticky bun.

He held it aloft and twisted it around for me to see.

“How long has it been doing this?”

“Since we left Arthur’s tower.”

“I say. Put that thing away.”

He dropped it back into his hat and put it back on. I couldn’t see how he could stand knowing that was up there.

“How can you just put it on like that, knowing it’s up in there?”

“Have you ever gotten used to keeping a sparrow in your hat?”

“No, and I’ve known too many to—”

“Well, once you get used to one of them hopping around up there, you can keep anything in your hat without thinking twice.”

“Maybe in your hat.”

“Precisely.”

We stepped up in line.

Mr. Curtis and I were now near a set of chairs by an end table where two fellows and a lady were taking tea. They had a plate of sandwiches between them that had three trays. The top tray was little desserts topped with cream and berries. The middle comprised rolls, and the bottom was cucumber sandwiches.

They were having a wonderful lunch when Mr. Curtis leaned over and said, “Excuse me, I think one of your rolls is hatching.”

“What?” said the lady with wide eyes. She was a mouse in a red dress wearing a tall hat with a purple plume feather coming from it. “Excuse me?”

“Your role there, it seems to be…”

A yellow tentacle popped from the side of the roll she was holding daintily in her right paw.

“Ah!”

She held it away from her and closed her eyes.

“M’lady, please,” said Mr. Curtis. “Please allow me to…” he reached out to take it from her when another squirming, yellow one popped out the other side. She dropped the bun on the floor, snarled, baring her teeth, and stomped on it, skewering the roll with a particularly devastating spiked high heel. She pulled her foot back, and the shoe remained.

Tentacles popped, grabbed the shoe, and twisted around it. She stomped again, then folks scrambled and scattered over tables.

“What is that?” said someone who had just lost their soup all over themselves. Tables fell and folks ran. The doors burst and the place emptied.

Mr. Curtis picked it up by hand in the middle of the chaos. It had closed over the shoe and tightened into a ball. He lifted it, and people around us hit the walls, plastered by fear.

I could hear Mrs. Smith in the background. “Everybody, please stay calm. Everything will be okay… ugh. What? Is? that?”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Curtis. “I think it’s from another world.” He held it up, holding the shoe by the toe. “Very interesting.” He pulled a wooden spoon, I have no from where, and poked at it. The octopus creature squelched and tightened and the heel popped off and fell on the floor and rolled away under a turned-over table.

He poked it again.

It grabbed the spoon. “Eh!”

It dropped the shoe and hung off the spoon from underneath. It started climbing up quicker than I thought it could. I wondered how fast these creatures could move underwater.

It jumped on Curtis’s face. He ducked, and then it headed straight for me. I grabbed a glass from a table, and slinging cold brewed coffee everywhere, I smacked the creature to the floor. It ran from us, dragging two tentacles behind it. And either tripping around or rolling like some kind of insect, closed up and flying down a hill.

Rats ran. Some jumped, and others tumbled. Curtis was running after it, or closer hopping after it, and I was just trying to keep my eye on it while it bounded straight for Mrs. Smith, who was screaming.

“Kill it!” said someone.

“What is it?” said someone else.

“Not breakfast,” said someone else.

People were scrambling in every direction.

It crawled up on the counter-top.

Mrs. Smith screamed.

I slapped my arm down on one side of the counter between it and Mrs. smith, and it turned around, rolling like a ball, its tentacles slapping everywhere back towards Mr. Curtis, who had his hat ready. It rolled right into the hat and he trapped it underneath.

For a second, it was bumping around, trying to get out.

“Is it in there?” I said.

“I’m not sure,” said the frog. He peaked under, then quickly smashed it back down on the counter. “Yep, it’s in there.”

“Close up shop,” I said.

“Right,” said Mrs. Smith.

She jumped over the table and started shooing the people who hadn’t gotten out already. They were ready and willing to escape, tumbling out the door. When the last of them had scrambled out and gotten their hats together, she locked the door and she and I dimmed the lights and shuttered the windows.

“Bring it here,” I said.

“Right ho,” said Mr. Curtis. He brought the hat and placed it on a table in the middle just as I righted it. The three of us drew up chairs, each keeping a hand or paw on it as much as we could.

Someone knocked on the door. “Are you open?”

Mrs. Smith got up to answer it, but I held up my hand and shook my head. “Not yet.”

She sat back down.

“Let’s find out what’s in here,” I said. “Turn it over, Mr. Curtis.”

“Yes. Right.” He flipped the hat over, and each of us stepped back a little. It was dim, but we could see fairly well. The hat was dark.

It rocked a little. It bumped to the side.

An eye popped up on a yellow stalk. It blinked and looked at each of us.

A tentacle tentatively came out to writhe around, then another one, as another eye came up to look at me.

“Mr. Curtis,” said Mrs. Smith. “It’s moving.”

Then it was out. It flopped on the table and the hat went skittering.

“It’s out!” I said.

“Yeah, it’s out!” said Mr. Curtis. It rolled, tucking its eyes in, and splatted to the floor.

“Catch it again!” I yelled.

“Yahoo!” said the frog. He put on his hat and we were off, chasing it behind the counter, and back through the kitchens.

It slid under the counter and into the oven. We were after it with brooms. Mr. Curtis was slapping at the floor with a mop when we chased it into the back room.

“Not the drain, Mr. Curtis!”

It was flipping and sliding, avoiding blows and whipping left and right. We were right behind it. Mr. Curtis threw his hat, trying to trap it again, but it fell short, and the creature made it down the drain.

It slipped through the bars and vanished below the building.

We sat on the floor panting and clutching our chests. At least I was. Mr. Curtis just sat there and burped.

“Mr. Curtis!”

“Yes, Dr. James?”

He burped again.

“Oh, never mind. Let’s help Mrs. Smith clean up.”

Burp.

“I’ll take that as an affirmative.”

We got up and blocked the drain by dragging several bags of flour as many as we could find, and covering it as best we could, and then helped her clean the tables up and bring the dining room back into order.

“What’s left?” I asked.

“The donations for the morning.”

“Right.”

There were still many rolls, buns, and muffins in the case of the lunch crowd. Mrs. Smith lined up several boxes. Admitting was more than usual, and we filled ten with extras to put in the back for pickup the next morning.

I looked over at the pile of flour bags, unsure. I’d seen enough strange things today.

“We should stay here tonight,” said the frog. “Yes, that’s what we will do, if you’ll allow us, Mrs. Smith.”

“What?”

“Yes, we’ll watch and see. Perhaps nothing will happen.”

“But maybe it will,” I said.

“Which will help us all unravel this mystery!”

“Of course. I’ll lock up.” She left reluctantly after Mr. Curtis assured her many times. After most of the lights dimmed, the shutters were closed, and she was gone, headed to her home on foot. It turned to my green friend.

“Now what?” I folded my arms.

He croaked. “We wait.”

A fog-drenched Victorian street at dusk. A well-dressed rat detective and a monocled frog with a top hat stand frozen as a possessed rat, its face covered by a writhing, yellow tentacled creature, stumbles through the lamplight. The eerie glow from a bakery window hints at more lurking horrors.

Shadow Street Chapter 4

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

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.