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  John was pretty sure the shots were landing and fully expected the creature to splash down onto the pavement, dead. But, the BATMANTIS??? just recoiled with the impacts and kept flying, vanishing behind the next building.

  Ted sprinted after it. John followed, cold rain battering his cheeks.

  They rounded the building and caught a pale glimpse of the beast. Ted unloaded on it, shooting until the magazine went dry. No effect. Then they were running again, Ted’s boots slapping and splashing, the man frantically scanning the clouds as they pissed on his upturned face.

  The creature was gone. Ted cursed the sky.

  John, thinking quickly, stomped over and jabbed a finger at him.

  “Hey. Listen. We tried to tell you. I get that you pride yourself on being hardheaded, but you see it now? You wanna know what’s taking this town’s kids, well now you know.”

  Ted said, “Why didn’t you tell me that thing was in there? You hopin’ it would rip my head off?”

  “Because we didn’t know. It was waiting in there to ambush us, probably because it knew we were getting close. How the fuck would we get that thing in there?”

  This was of course bullshit, but chasing the BATMANTIS??? seemed like a perfect task to keep Ted out of the way. Still, the questions being asked were the right ones—why in the hell was the thing holed up in the Beanie Wienie warehouse? John assumed either he or Dave had in fact lured the thing in there over the course of their lost weekend. But how? And more importantly, why? Did it have something to do with the silicone butts?

  “Look,” John said, “here’s the truth. We’ve been stalking this thing for months. Learning how to track it. That’s why it tricked your little girl into thinking it was Dave there that night—it’s using its tricks, trying to throw you off the scent.”

  “Wait, then who was Nymph?”

  “They’re one and the same. That’s just another face it wears—a different type of predator, a human one. He transforms, like a werewolf. He’s a were-Batmantis. A Batmantis-man. What matters is that underneath it all, it’s just an animal. It can bleed and it can die. Find out where that bastard nests, you’ll find the kids. Let’s just hope you find ’em in better condition than they’ve been finding the dogs.”

  “The dogs?”

  “It eats small animals. I say you sit down and map all the houses or farms where people have lost dogs and cats and chickens. Then you draw a big circle around all them houses and draw an X in the middle of that circle. That’s where you’ll find your monster and, god willing, that’s where you’ll find the kids. If you got a good relationship with the cops, you might be able to get them to help out. Unfortunately, that’s not our situation right now. The cops want nothing to do with us and we’ve got an agency on our back on top of that. In fact, if you see black trucks prowling around somewhere, driven by spooky assholes in black robes? I bet you’ll find they’re hunting for the same thing.”

  Ted said, “If I find out this is bullshit—”

  “The monster that just flew out here was not made of papier-mâché and pipe cleaners. I’m telling you now, Ted, that thing is going to try to scramble your brain. That’s what it does. Don’t let it. I don’t give a shit if you believe me or not. But if you can’t trust your own two eyes, what can you trust?”

  John was proud that he was able to keep a straight face through that last part.

  Me

  Amy and I watched John trudge back toward us, soaked to the bone. Ted’s partner had already vacated the premises, jogging off through the rain, clutching wounded ribs.

  John nodded sideways and said, “They parked down the street. Hopefully they’ll head off to spend the next month trying to find that thing’s nest. God only knows what it was doing there. Unless one of you know?”

  I said, “Did you see it phase through the wall? It can do that, but it still managed to get trapped in a supply room? I think it’s just an idiot.”

  Amy said, “It started making noise when Ted pointed a gun at us. Maybe it was trying to protect us.”

  “I would love to spend just one day in your world. I know that came out like sarcasm, but it’s not—I seriously would.”

  John said, “All right, we need a game plan.”

  I said, “Well, we have to figure this all out before Ted turns his attention back on us. And before the Maggie thing hatches. And before Tasker figures out how NON can murder us all without consequence. And before the manhunt for those missing kids draws the entire town to the mine. And before the biker gang blames us for all this. And before the Batmantis comes back and eats us.” I raked back wet hair from my forehead and sighed. “Anybody hungry? Didn’t they say Waffle House wasn’t closing no matter what?”

  John said, “We need to go to the mine, right? I mean that’s the root of the problem.”

  I said, “So, let’s say we go there and find ten ‘kids’ standing around. Then what? And don’t say kill them because Amy is going to start screaming.”

  “Whatever we do, it’s better than letting the bikers find them. We’re seeing through their disguises, thanks to the Sauce, but who knows how long that will last? I say we go down there and, I don’t know. We’ve got all that sulfur. Maybe you throw it on them and it breaks the spell or something? Plus we have all those butts.”

  “Would you drop the thing with the butts? You know why you bought those? So that you could bring them up every five minutes.”

  Amy said, “What butts?”

  We piled into the Jeep. I was in the passenger seat and had the sudden urge to pull down the sun visor, even though the morning sun hadn’t showed up for work in a month and was clearly trying to get fired.

  A note fell into my lap.

  John’s handwriting.

  Amy asked, “What does it say?”

  “It says, ‘Don’t let the Batmantis out.’”

  20. THE ASS LETTER

  John wanted to stop by his place to get gear for the mine mission and possible Millibutt showdown, but instead we wound up spending half an hour carrying electronics and furniture up to the second floor. John had some standing water in his yard and garage, but the house itself was up another few inches above the waterline. Still, it felt inevitable—Amy had pointed out that even if the rain stopped, runoff from higher ground would push the flood into his living room. It was going to be like that everywhere; there was just no place for the water to go.

  I said, “What if it doesn’t stop? What if the water just keeps coming, like those floods you see on the news where it goes over the rooftops?”

  John said, “Then it’s all up to the insurance, I guess…”

  “No, I mean … like yeah, I’m worried about your stuff but in terms of the town, what happens? All these moldy waterlogged houses. Would people finally just leave? Just, abandon this place?”

  “Dunno. I don’t know why people stay here now.”

  “Why do we stay here?”

  Amy said, “It sounds like you’re rooting for the flood.”

  “I kind of am.”

  “You could put an end to the whole thing if you’d just buy some boots.”

  John said, “I’m going to dig around in my garage to see what I’ve got in the way of enchanted weapons. Look around for any more cryptic notes.”

  John left and I looked in the fridge; I didn’t find any notes but did find a piece of leftover pizza. I took a bite of it and said to Amy, “Am I crazy or does it smell like perfume in here? You think John’s back on the girlfriend wagon?”

  Amy, as if resuming a conversation she was having in her head, said, “What would you do if it was your last day on earth?”

  “Amy, I’m not worried about this thing killing me, I’m worried about it filling the world with weird monsters. Do you have any idea how many calls we’d get? Tell you what, I’m just canceling my phone altogether if that happens, live like it’s 1995.”

  “I mean, just as a hypothetical. You’ve only got twenty-four hours left, how do you spend it? Like, s
ay the doctor said you just had one day to live.”

  “I’d spend the last day trying to find another doctor. Or researching a cure. There has to be something left to try. I mean, why would I be putting so much stock in some doctor’s opinion? You remember Dutch Vogless, from high school? He’s a doctor now, in Indianapolis. He was a dipshit. Fuck that doctor.”

  “It’s just a thought experiment. Like let’s say you accepted the diagnosis and knew you only had one day.”

  “I’m not confused by the question. The answer is I would spend the last twenty-four hours refusing to accept that it was my last twenty-four hours. I’ll tell you right now, if there’s such a thing as fate, it can eat a bag of dicks.”

  This answer clearly annoyed Amy. I scrambled to think of a way to change the subject but before I could, she said, “I think you should see a doctor.”

  “What? You think I have a terminal illness? If so, that was a super weird way to bring it up.”

  “No. About medication. For your moods.”

  “This is totally not the time for that conversation.”

  “It’s absolutely the time, because you’re up. You’re feeling energetic because you’ve got a project. When this is over you’re going to get planted on the sofa again and when you’re like that it’s like talking to a grumpy log.”

  “Amy, I’m not depressed because of brain chemicals, I’m depressed because I don’t have a job and don’t have any skills or education. Because I’ve wasted my life. There’s no drug that’s going to make me okay with that. Other than alcohol, I guess. The point is, I don’t need a doctor, I need work. I need a reason to get out of bed in the morning.”

  “That’s what the drugs are for, they get you up off the sofa so you can go fix your life, find a job, get out of this cycle where you spend all day in bed because you’re depressed, but the thing you’re depressed about is the fact that you wasted all day in bed.”

  “We’ll talk about this later.”

  “You know for a fact we wo—”

  But I was already heading upstairs, to escape the conversation. I entered the master bedroom. John had a very expensive king-sized mattress and box spring, but kept both of them on the floor, insisting that he never understood what the rest of the bed was for (and I admittedly had no answer for that). There was a television mounted to the ceiling so that he could watch it from bed, the thing looked like it weighed a hundred pounds and would crush his skull if the screws came loose.

  The bed was made. That was not typical.

  A quick glance around confirmed that, yes, a woman was staying here. Girly clothes in the closet, makeup in the bathroom. This was hardly an unusual circumstance, but keeping it from me and Amy was very unusual, to the point that I don’t think it had ever happened before. I would say that maybe he thought we wouldn’t approve but, holy shit, when did that ever stop him? He’s been hanging out with Nicky for more than a decade and I work so hard to avoid her that she hasn’t even appeared in this story yet. She’s got a PhD in some useless subject, and is one of those people who laughs at her own jokes and absolutely no one else’s. Don’t get me started.

  I searched the room for notes from ourselves, found none.

  I made it back downstairs at the same moment John was walking in from his garage, holding a medieval mace with three-inch spikes.

  He said, “Okay, I’ve got Buddha’s mace here. It’s about twenty-five hundred years old but it should still work.”

  I said, “I was actually hoping it’d turn out we had built some kind of superweapon in your garage while we were on the Sauce. A big monster-killing bomb or something.”

  John said, “Well, we’ve got all that sulfur. And the—”

  “The rubber asses, yes. Hey, uh, who’s staying here?”

  “Who’s what?”

  “If it’s none of my business, just say so, it’s fine. I just, you know, normally you’re open about it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

  “There’s plainly a woman living here. Her clothes and stuff are in your closet. Unless they’re yours, which again, the only thing that would bug me is that you didn’t feel like you could tell me.”

  John looked confused and more than a little alarmed. He stomped up the stairs past me, mace in hand. We followed him up and watched as he flipped through the skirts and tops in the closet, then examined the pile of makeup and face washes on his vanity.

  “That stuff was not here before.”

  Amy said, “Well, is this some kind of monster-related thing or do you just have a squatter? Maybe one of your girlfriends got flooded out and came to stay?”

  John said, “Not without letting me know. They’d have been incinerated.”

  “Well, maybe they did let you know, while you were tripping on the Sauce. And you just don’t remember.”

  John gestured toward the clothes and said, “No, look.”

  Amy studied the clothes and said, “Hmm.”

  I said, “What?”

  She said, “These don’t belong to anyone we know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve never seen these outfits before. I know what John’s friends wear, David.”

  “You do?”

  “This black skirt with the slit going halfway up the hip? Try to imagine any of the girls we know wearing that.”

  “Okay, give me a minute.”

  John said, “No, she’s right. This is weird.”

  I said, “It certainly is. Crazy how your day can start off perfectly normal and then something like this happens.”

  “Yeah. All right, let me run to the bathroom, then we’ll go.” He was going to the bathroom with the owl jar above the toilet. John would smoke weed in front of me, but not meth. Weird the little boundaries people have.

  The moment he was out of earshot, Amy said, “So let me get this straight, if you were confronted with a life-ending crisis you’d fight it to your last breath, but you’re perfectly fine with slowly drowning in a warm pool of your own ennui?”

  “My own what?”

  “What if I told you that you were possessed by, like, a powerful sadness demon and that it was feeding off your life force? Would you fight it then? How about if I told you it was coming for me next?”

  “What are you talking ab—”

  We heard John burst out of the bathroom. He charged into the room, breathless, and said, “Dave, I need to see your ass.”

  I stared at him for forty silent seconds.

  “Why.”

  “I found the next note. In advance, this time. It’s written on my penis, in Magic Marker. It says, ‘Check David’s ass, there’s an important message written on it that contains valuable information.’”

  I said, “It clearly does not say all that.”

  “You want to see? You won’t even need to get too close, because the font is—”

  Amy said, “David, will you show him your butt?”

  I gritted my teeth and glared at John. “You did this. You’re the one who Dude, Where’s My Car’d this shit.”

  “I have no memory of that.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of the point.”

  “Why are you yelling at me instead of showing me your ass?”

  “You stay here. I’ll go check it in the mirror.”

  A minute later I stormed back to the kitchen. “It says, ‘Don’t let them’ and then the letters S, C, R and a scrawl across to the other cheek. As if I woke up to find someone writing on my ass and then violently slapped their hand away.”

  John said, “Shit. Don’t let them scr … Don’t let them scream? Screw? Scrape?”

  Amy said, “Guessing is pointless, since we don’t know how much more there was to the message.”

  “Well it’d have to be enough to fit on one human ass. Screw the pooch? Script a sitcom pilot?”

  “Scrawl things on your butt?” offered Amy.

  I said, “Goddamnit, we’ve wasted like an hour and we have nothing to sh
ow for it.”

  Amy said, “And we had so much to show from the previous eighty thousand hours before that.”

  John got a notification on his phone and said, “Marconi’s here. They’re parking at the vacant Walmart, says it’s on pretty high ground.”

  I said, “Good for him.”

  “He says he wants to meet.”

  I threw up my hands. “We might as well! Anybody have anything else they want to do before we go fight the monster? Anybody need to run to the DMV, get your license renewed?”

  Amy said, “You want to swing by the doctor?”

  21. WE ALL MUST LEARN FROM KURT RUSSELL’S TRAGIC MISTAKE

  Marconi traveled in two huge RVs he used as tour buses, one for the man himself and another for his production crew. He was even less interested in anonymity than John—his enormous face was airbrushed on the side, though I noted it was on the production crew’s bus, where Marconi’s was a nondescript white and gold. Meaning, if a crazed fan tried to force their way onto the bus to murder Marconi, they’d likely get the wrong one. I wondered if he kept a bearded assassination double in there.

  John, Amy, and I we were sitting pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped office in the rear of the bus, which it turned out was where he’d taken our Skype call earlier. The wall with the accolades was in fact the least interesting of the four—the rest of the room was stuffed with exotic artifacts. Whether these were genuine items collected from haunted houses and dig sites or cheap props created to look good in the background of his TV show, I didn’t know. If it was the former, I was guessing it wasn’t exactly legal to take some of them from their countries of origin. There was a crystal skull, a golden chalice, and an ancient-looking spear with a head of chiseled obsidian. Alongside these were seemingly random items—a Raggedy Ann doll, a clay bust of Lionel Richie, and in the corner, a one-armed concrete snowman covered in bird shit. On his desk, Marconi’s pipe was leaning against an antique figurine that looked like some kind of Egyptian god, only it had an enormous, erect penis almost as big as its torso, the figure’s left hand wrapped around the shaft.