playful. Purposeful, solemn, creepy little geeks. Watching me and
studying the house, not out of curiosity but with some agenda.”
What agenda?”
Bobby shrugged. “They were so strange………
Words seemed to fail him, so I borrowed one from H. P.
Lovecraft, for whose stories we’d had such enthusiasm when we were
thirteen: “Eldritch.”
“Yeah. They were eldritch to the max. I knew no one was going to
believe me. I almost felt I was hallucinating. I grabbed a camera but
couldn’t get a picture. You know why?”
“Thumb over the lens?”
“They didn’t want to be photographed. First sight of the camera, they
ran for cover, and they’re insanely fast.” He glanced at me, reading
my reaction, then looked to the dunes again. “They knew what the
camera was.”
I couldn’t resist: “Hey, You’re not anthropoinorphizing them, are
You?
You know-ascribing human attributes and attitudes to animals?”
Ignoring me, he said, “After that night, I didn’t put the camera away
in the closet. I kept it on a kitchen counter, close at hand. If they
showed up again, I figured I might get a snapshot before they realized
what was happening. One night about six weeks ago, it was pumping
eight-footers with a good offshore, barrel after barrel, so even though
it was way nippie out there, I put on my wet suit and spent a couple of
hours totally tucked away. I didn’t take the camera down to the beach
with me.”
“Why not?”
“I hadn’t seen the damn monkeys in a week. I figured maybe I’d never
see them again. Anyway, when I came back to the house, I stripped out
of the neoprene, went into the kitchen, and got a beer.
When I turned away from the fridge, there were monkeys at two windows,
hanging on the frames outside, looking in at me. So I reached for my
camera-and it was gone.”
“You misplaced it.”
“No. It’s gone for good. I left the door unlocked when I went to the
beach that night. I don’t leave it unlocked anymore.”
“You’re telling me the monkeys took it?”
He said, “The next day I bought a disposable camera. Put it on the
counter by the oven again. That night I left the lights on, locked up,
and took my stick down to the beach.”
“Good surf?”
“Slow. But I wanted to give them a chance. And they took it.
While I was gone, they broke a pane, unlocked the window, and stole the
disposable camera. Nothing else. just the camera.”
Now I knew why the shotgun was kept in a locked broom closet.
This cottage on the horn, without neighbors, had always appealed to me
as a fine retreat. At night, when the surfers left, the A sky and the
sea formed a sphere in which the house stood like a diorama in one of
those glass paperweights that fills with whirling snow when You shake
it, though instead of a blizzard there were deep peace and a glorious
solitude. Now, however, the nurturing solitude had become an unnerving
isolation. Rather than offering a sense of peace, the night was thick
and still with expectation.
“And they left me a warning,” Bobby said.
I pictured a threatening note laboriously printed in crude block
letters-WATCH YOUR ASS. Signed, THE MONKEYS.
They were too clever to leave a paper trail, however, and even more
direct. Bobby said, “One of them crapped on my bed.”
“Oh, nice.”
“They’re secretive, like I said. I’ve decided not even to try to
photograph them. If I managed to get a flash shot of them some night
.
. . I think they’d be way pissed.”
“You’re afraid of them. I didn’t know You got disturbed, and I didn’t
know You were ever afraid. I’m learning a lot about You tonight,
bro.”
He didn’t admit to feeling fear.
“You bought the shotgun,” I pressed.
“Because I think it’s good to challenge them from time to time, good to
show the little bastards that I’m territorial, and that this is, by
God, my territory. But I’m not afraid, really. They’re just
monkeys.”
“,Amd then again-they’re not.”
Bobby said, “Some days I wonder if I’ve picked up some New Age virus