The Devil's Assassin (3 page)

They are inside the house now and Linus shuts the door.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Jay. “We can catch up. So where
is he?”

“He’s still here. He’s been quiet.
Just
sitting there looking like he’s plotting something.
This
way.”

Jay raises an eyebrow at the notion of an animal plotting.
Linus leads his friend to the kitchen. Following Linus gives Jay a chance to
notice the gun tucked into the back of his pants, but he doesn’t say anything.
Linus unlocks the basement door and leads the way down the stairs.

Near the bottom of the stairs he turns around and says,
“Buckle your seatbelt, Professor.”

The creature is sitting in a corner of the cage and growls
as they enter the room.

Jay stops with Linus at a distance and looks at what is
before him with wonderment.

“I do not believe what I am seeing, Linus…. I half expected
you were pulling my leg, but I can … I can see what you mean by apelike. His
hands are sort of
chimplike
, but look at his feet.
They’re practically human feet.”

Linus looks at the creature’s feet. The similarity disturbs
him for some reason. “I didn’t notice that before.”

“And that beard and face,” Jay says. “It just doesn’t fit
the body somehow.”

Jay moves cautiously closer to the caged creature while at
the same time staying a few feet away from the homemade jail. Linus and his gun
accompany Jay in his approach.
“Hmmm.
Have you seen
his teeth?”

Linus shakes his head. “No. But if you’re thinking he’s
a
herbivore, think again. He was on his way into my room in
the middle of the night.”

“You got a carrot?”

“Yeah, I have a carrot.”

Jay waits and finally Linus turns to go get the vegetable
from the kitchen and brings it back to Jay. When the creature sees it he gets
up and holds out his hand. Jay cautiously puts the carrot through the tight
metal weave of the cage. The creature takes it greedily and starts to eat.
Doing so gives Jay a glimpse of the creature’s teeth.

“Well, a quick look isn’t confirmation but he looks like an
herbivore to me. Maybe he was just looking for food.”

Linus shakes his head again. “But look where he is, he
wasn’t about to go into the kitchen. That’s my bedroom up there!”

“What would an animal know about where you keep your food?”

Linus looks skeptically at the creature.

“I noticed your weapon in your jeans. Anything else that
makes you thinks he’s dangerous, besides where he is?”

“I have him on camera brandishing some kind of long spike at
Sava, my lemur.”

Jay looks surprised. “You have a lemur?”

Linus disregards the question. “You want to see the tape?”

Jay nods and follows Linus up the stairs to the dining room
where he first admires the lemur in its cage as Linus sits down to the computer
opening his security program. After he has acquainted himself with Sava he
turns toward Linus.

“Why do you need such an elaborate security system anyway?”

Linus doesn’t look up from the screen. “It’s a bit of a long
story, Jay. But mainly, the prison isn’t far from here and there
have
been prisoner escapes.”

Jay’s first thought is that Linus
can be a bit of a nut-case sometimes, a little off-the-beaten path so to speak,
but then he realizes how wrong he is.

“Linus, I understand the prison
escapee worry. God knows I’d be worried about that myself. But if this creature
is ALL you ever catch it will have made this system well worth your trouble.
This is the find of the century! It’s Earth shattering!”

Jay walks out of the dining room
and into the living room and notices the tree, the model of the Nautilus and
finally pauses in front of the picture of the Jersey Devil on the wall. “I
don’t suppose the Jersey Devil has anything to do with that booby-trap.”

Linus, still clicking determinedly
on the computer, looks up and replies confidently. “Come on, Jay. I don’t
believe in that fairy tale. But I’ll tell you
what,
maybe our furry friend had something to do with inspiring that legend.”

“You might have something there.
They don’t resemble each other in the least, but legends often get distorted
over time.”

Jay looks again at the tree and
picks up the bag he had left near the front door, bringing it to the dining
room where Linus is struggling with the security program, and cursing from time
to time. “Damn it! It’s not here,” he says.

Jay is silent for a moment as he
looks over Linus’ shoulder at the computer. ”It’s OK, Linus. It’s not
important. We have the creature. That’s more useful than any video you might
have.”

After a little while Linus gives
up, frustrated, and walks toward the living room. He sits on the couch. “I
really hate computers, you know that? I must have deleted the security
recording in my excitement, Jay. I’ll have to see if it’s recoverable when I
can focus a little better.”

“That’s fine.”

Linus looks down at his pile of
magazines and books. “I looked up everything I could before you got here about
primates and hominids, but I couldn’t find a reference to anything like this
creature. I have a limited library, though.”

Jay responds with excitement to
his friend. “I doubt you would. I’d say you’ve captured a brand new species
which you’ll soon be famous for discovering. Maybe they’ll even name it after
you – like Homo
hatherus
or something.
Haha
.”

Linus chuckles at the thought as
well.

“I need to make a phone call or
two if I can use your phone. Then I’ll take my laptop into the basement and
record my initial observations of the creature.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll put on
some coffee.”

›

An hour later the ring of the
doorbell brings Linus from the kitchen. Jay bounds up the stairs from the
basement and joins Linus at the door to greet the guests. Four people are on
the doorstep. A long haired, self-important looking man in his mid-fifties and
an attractive brunette in her mid-to late thirties stand in front of the door
and two more men stand just behind. The two in front are already staring at the
huge tree in the living room against the wall.

Jay smiles widely and greets the
newcomers. “June, Doctor. Hope your drive over was pleasant. This is Linus
Hather. He and I were roommates in college. We took a lot of biology classes
together before he switched majors. Linus, this is Dr. Alexander Van Houten,
the head of the lab and Dr. June Dituro, the chief scientist.”

Linus shakes hands with each as
they come in. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Van Houten, Pleased to meet you, Ms.
Dituro.”

Van Houten is dour and unsmiling,
while Dituro smiles pleasantly. She introduces the other two men. “Mr. Hather,
this is Dr. Sheeran and Dr. Huggins, also from the lab.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr.
Sheeran… Mr. Huggins.”

Jay lowers his voice and chastises
Linus. “It’s Doctor, Linus.”

Everyone, except Linus and Dr. Van
Houten are uncomfortable that Jay has said this. But Linus responds. “I can
call you all 'professor' if you
like,
it’s just that I
reserve the appellation ‘doctor’ for medical doctors. Nothing against your hard
earned Ph.Ds.”

Van Houten is visibly impatient
but strikes a diplomatic tone. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Hather. We’ve run
across the problem before. So how about we see this mysterious animal that Jay
is raving about?”

Jay inserted himself into the
conversation before Linus could increase the tension even more. “I think you’ll
be very pleased when you see it, Doctor Van Houten.”

Linus leads them from the front
door and through the living room where all eyes wonder at the huge tree there,
then into the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement.

At the bottom of the stairs, each
of the newcomers makes the right turn and stops short, staring with their
mouths open. The creature sits still in the cage, looking a little tired. There
are some half-eaten fruits and vegetables on the floor near him. The scientists
become excited after they process what they see. The dour Van Houten is the
first to break the silence.

“My God, June.
Do you see this? It’s earth shattering!”
Jay smiles.

“Yes,” June says. “I’d have to
agree. I’ve never . . . Look at his feet; you’d swear they were human. His
hands and body are more apelike, except the face reminds me of something else…”

Linus gives her a moment to try to
figure it out and then supplies her with the answer.
“A
leprechaun.”

“That’s it!” she says.
“A leprechaun.
It’s amazing!”

Van Houten looks at Linus and
points to the cage with his thumb. “How’d he end up in this?”

“He snuck into my house. He
threatened my pet with a weapon and then as he was about to enter my bedroom,
to do who knows what…”

“I see,” said Van Houten. “Where’s
the weapon?”

“I haven’t been able to find it.”

Van Houten nods. The creature
picks up an apple core and throws it. Amazingly, it finds its way through the
chain link of the cage and hits Linus in the chest.

Van Houten laughs. “I think your
friend here, may not like you, Mr. Hather.”

“The feeling is mutual, I assure
you.” He’s studying the creature, trying to determine if its action was founded
by intelligence or if it was just a caged animal acting up.

“Well,” says June. “It’s a good
thing you had this trap in any case. I do wonder what he was doing in your
house though.”

Jay, who doesn’t want his friend
to appear foolish to his colleagues, intercepts the statement. “He was pretty
hungry when I got here, June. He may just have been looking for food. I looked
at his teeth while he was eating. He appears to be an herbivore.”

The teeth of this creature
intrigue Van Houten all of a sudden and he moves in to see if he can get a
glimpse of them. Jay joins him near the cage. June moves a little closer to
Linus.

“Where’s this pet you say that he
threatened?”

“In the dining
room.”

“Can I see him?”

Linus doesn’t answer, but leads
the way up the stairs to the dining room. From the dining room, June looks at
the tree against a wall of the living room and realizes that it is
fake
. It reminds her of a banyan tree she had seen in
Florida. She notices the
Nautilus
and the Jersey Devil picture on the
wall.

“Ah,” she says.
“The
Jersey Devil.
I’ve always liked that story. How does it go? Ah yes, Mrs.
Shrouds was pregnant with her thirteenth child and with a fed-up slip of the
tongue said that ‘It may as well be the devil.’ The child was born some months
later with the head of a horse, bat-like wings, a tail, and horns. She screamed
and supposedly it flew away up her chimney. It’s haunted the Pine Barrens since
then, eating mostly small animals, dogs, cats, pigs, but on occasion, people.”

Linus is impressed but does his
best to show he is not. “Nice. It’s the head of a goat, though, not a horse.
That’d be too big for its body.”

June smiles and chuckles softly
and turns to the dining room to see the big cage and the lemur. She is almost
as surprised as she was after seeing the creature.
“Oh, a
ring-tailed lemur!
You don’t see that every day. He’s so cute. What’s
his name?”

“Sava,” says Linus.

“Unusual. I like it. How did you
come to have a lemur?”

“Actually, it’s a long story. I
can tell you some other time.”

“Oh. Yes. That’s fine.” There is
silence for a moment as they look at the lemur. “What makes you think that Sava
was threatened by that animal?”

“Because I saw
it on video.
My surveillance cameras
recorded it.”

From what she has seen, June
thinks it isn’t very surprising that this man has surveillance cameras. He is
odd in many ways.
“Of course.
Well, may we see them?”

“Not at the moment. It seems that
I’ve accidentally recorded over it. I’m hoping it’s recoverable.”

“I see.
Then how
about this weapon that you saw the animal brandishing?
Where is that?”

“Like I told Van Holder a minute
ago, I haven’t seen it.”

The silence this time is
uncomfortable, but June moves to fill it quickly. “Of course we’ll keep in mind
what you say about the animal, Mr. Hather. But without any evidence to the
contrary I’d have to say he looks pretty harmless, and according to Jay, he has
an herbivore’s teeth.”

Linus is exasperated because he
knows that every person in his house has the exact opposite opinion of the
creature than he does. “All I want, Ms. Dituro is that caution be taken. He is
dangerous. I’m sorry I don’t have any evidence to show you right now, but he
was on his way into my bedroom, in the dark of night. You can see that. What do
you think he was up to?”

June reply is tinged with anger.
“Give us some credit, Mr. Hather. We’re objective scientists. We don’t need
laypeople telling us to be careful. We know our job. If he’s dangerous, we’ll
determine that and I’ll be the first to let you know.”