spiny skeleton effectively screened the creature crouched beyond it.
I didn’t think I was going to be able to pick out the beast at all, but
then I spotted it because, although it was a shade of brown similar to
the woody veil in front of it, the softer lines of its body contrasted
with the jagged patterns of the bare hedge. Through the interstices in
he many layers of boxwood bones, I fixed the beam on our quarry,
revealing no details but getting a glimpse of eye shine as green as that
of certain cats.
This thing was too big to be any cat other than a mountain lion.
It was no mountain lion.
Found, the creature bleated again and raced along the shielding dead
wood with such speed that I couldn’t keep the light trained on it.
A break in the hedgerow allowed a walkway to connect a bungalow with the
street, but Big Heador Big Foot, or the wolf man, or the Loch Ness
monster in drag, or whatever the hell this was crossed the gap fast, an
Before I could respond, something screamed. The cry was eerie but
instant ahead of the light. I didn’t get a look at anything but its
shaggy ass, and not even a clear view of that, though a clear view of
its ass might not have been either informative or gratifying.
All I had were vague impressions. The impression that it ran half erect
like a monkey, shoulders sloped forward and head low, the knuckles of
its hands almost dragging the ground. That it was a lot bigger than a
rhesus. That it might have been even taller than Bobby had guessed, and
that if it rose to its full height, it would be able to peer at us over
the top of the four-foot hedge and stick its tongue out at us.
I swept the spotlight back and forth but couldn’t locate the critter
along the next section of boxwood.
“Running for it, ” Bobby said, braking to a full stop, rising half out
of his seat, pointing.
When I shifted my focus beyond the hedgerow, I saw a shapeless figure
loping across the yard, away from the street, toward the corner of the
bungalow.
Even when I held the spotlight high, I couldn’t get an angle on the
fast-moving beast, whose disappearing act was abetted by the intervening
branches of a laurel and by tall grass.
Bobby dropped back into his seat, swung toward the hedgerow, threw the
Jeep into four-wheel drive, and tramped on the accelerator.
“Geek chase, ” he said.
Because Bobby lives for the moment and because he expects ultimately to
be mulched by something more immediate than melanoma, he maintains the
deepest tan this side of a skin-cancer ward. By contrast, his teeth and
his eyes glow as white as the plutonium-soaked bones of Chernobyl
wildlife, which usually make him look dashing and exotic and full of
Gypsy spirit, but which now made him look more than a little like a
grinning madman.
“Way stupid, ” I protested.
“Geek, geek, geek chase, ” he insisted, leaning into the steering wheel.
The Jeep jumped the curb, flashed under the low-hanging branches of two
flanking laurels, and crashed through the boxwood hard enough to rattle
the bottles of beer in the slush-filled cooler, spitting broken hedge
branches behind it. As we crossed the lawn, a raw, sweet, green odor
rose from the crushed grass under the tires, which was lush from the
winter rains.
The creature had disappeared around the side of the bungalow even as we
were blasting through the hedge.
Bobby went after it.
“This has nothing to do with Orson or Jimmy, ” I shouted over the engine
roar.
“How do you know? ” He was right. I didn’t know. Maybe there was a
connection.
Anyway, we didn’t have any better leads to follow.
As he swung the Jeep between two bungalows, he said, “Carpe noctem,
remember? ” I had recently told him my new motto. Already, I regretted
having revealed it. I had the feeling that it was going to be quoted to
me, at opportune moments, until it had less appeal than a mutton