The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Three Eye Man, Part 2 of 2

The weirdness reaches its crescendo as a motley assemblage of South Carolina’s haunts, haints, and hags collide in an epic showdown in the darkness.

Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, All the Time is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is the finale of The Case of the Three Eye Man. Part 1 should be read first.

Content warnings: Violence, Gun Violence, Animal Violence, Death, Mild Swearing, Alcohol Use, Tobacco Use, Creeps

SUNDAY NIGHT, AUGUST 9, 1942
SCAPE ORE SWAMP
LEE COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA

Tannins stung at Lydia's eyes, but she stayed low in the tea-brown water. The hollowed grass shoot she was using as a snorkel whistled so softly with her every breath that she thought she might have been imagining it. Somewhere above her, her prey waited.

Her body ached. She had been still so long, moving so slow, all while as tense as a bowstring. She wanted to be able to explode when she had her opening, to pounce upon the beast that had killed Sherwood. She clutched her 'claws,' rolling her grip slightly to keep the blood flowing through her hand. Her bagh nakh was familiar in her hand, its three steel blades sharp and adamant. When Sherwood's men had started calling her a lioness, Rakesh had given them to her, a weapon from his homeland.

She hunted the Kíngó-Ngóla as she hunted everything: by scent and sign, by tooth and by claw. Unrelenting.

It had been over a month since she found Sherwood's trail, and his body. Her pursuit would end as all others had, of that she could be sure. When she caught that thing, she would sink her talons into its neck, just and it had done to Sherwood.

The creature was was starting to slow, its passage through the canopies growing careless and pathetic. Even more of its feathers had fallen out. The scarlet plumage that covered its neck and gave it its name was gone. The thing looked like it was dying.

Lydia had waited aboard the boat for four days before the Antiquary's representatives arrived and announced that Sherwood had not brought the prize to Ashville. They suspected that he had taken the creature elsewhere to sell it. The Antiquary had been financier of the entire Kíngó-Ngóla expedition, this prey was already bought and paid for. Theft was not an outcome they encouraged. Sherwood's men tried to argue, or betray him, or buy time. The representatives did not humor their objections.

She listened to the slaughter from her hiding place. Rakesh, a fighter and a loyal man, had died first.

The Antiquary's representatives were not hunters, they were soldiers. Lydia was a hunter. She hid, she was patient, she was calm. She slipped off the ship during the butchery and loaded one of their motorcycles with her gear, then roared away. The narrow streets, cobbestoned here and paved smooth there, quickly gave way to brackish marshland draped in deep night.

America was new to her. She had only ever known Africa, and of that, only the bush. She had spent time in villages and trading outposts, but never a city. Sherwood was not welcome anywhere with a large enough population that his face might be known. Thus, neither was she. She had grown up alongside the man. He was all she remembered.

The map she stole let her anticipate Sherwood's route. She had been on enough treks with him that she understood his mentality. He had gotten old, and his need to remain hidden had been blunted by his desire for expediency. He had grown to appreciate the destination more than the journey. By the map alone, she knew which roads were worth going the long way and which he would begrudgingly settle for to save some time. It was nearly morning before she found his van, plowed through underbrush and half-sunk in the mud.

“Sherry,” she had whispered. It the name that only she was allowed to use. The broken back doors and the scrapes within made it obvious that the Kíngó-Ngóla had revived itself. The creature had been nearly comatose when they'd loaded it into the van. It had been deceiving them.

Sherwood had been injured in the crash. There was blood on the dashboard and smeared across the door. An open wound would fester in these conditions within hours. His trail through the swamp was clumsy and easy to follow. He was injured, desperate, and in a rush. He knew what the consequences would be if the Antiquary felt cheated. He would push himself too far and too hard. Lydia found his body less than four miles from the crash site, sunken in the tea-colored water.

Lydia cried once, only for a moment, when she slipped while dragging him out of the mud. It took her some time to find a high enough place to dig. She had watched him lay enough of his companions to rest, she knew how to honor a man who'd fallen on a hunt. She had no brandy to toast him with, but she washed the silt off him and buried him between the roots of a wide tree. She wished Pretty was there, coiled around her neck in the closest thing a king cobra could approximate to a hug, but her pet was long dead. Whatever words she said of Sherwood Temple were lost to her to instant they tumbled from her lips.

The Kíngó-Ngóla was harder to track. In Africa, it moved in a way that no other she had hunted before did. It ran through the treetops, sprinted across the ground, it could glide and swoop on its winged arms and legs. She didn't know if it could swim, but she would not have been surprised.

They had caught it the first time using a trap, and it would take tricks to corner it again. All she had was her bush suit. Its countless knotted ropes and rags dangled from her and broke up her silhouette. She was a swaying shapeless mass, it would not see her as a threat. She had spent hours working mud, vegetation, and scat into the fibers. She stank of the fetid wetland around her, it would not smell her as a threat. The edges of her bagh nakh were freshly honed. Her blades were so sharp that it would bleed out before it realized that she could be a threat.

In its weakened state, in this strange land, the Kíngó-Ngóla behaved differently than it had in the Congo River's forests. Here, it ate what it could, whatever moved. She had found fishbones in its scat, as she had across the ocean, but also fur and feathers. It actively sought prey in an erratic circuit rather than frequenting known hunting grounds.

Lydia had observed the creature moving on a similar route for the last week. It was tired, hungry, and lazy. She let it range ahead, knowing it would return. Her ambush would be simple. It was not as observant as it had once been.

The place she chose was frequented by people, a small oxbow in the stream network that fed this mire. It was concealed from the nearby road by a thick copse of trees that left a wide bank and deep pool before it. The visitors left trash there that the Kíngó-Ngóla eagerly scavenged. It had lost its wariness of humans. The ease with which it had killed one might have bolstered its confidence, but Lydia knew better: desperation leads to boldness. Boldness would become familiarity, and familiarity left unchecked becomes arrogance and carelessness.

So she waited. She lingered below the surface, little more than a vegetal lump in the water. She breathed slowly. Minnows nipped at her bush suit. Mosquitos buzzed around her eyes. Sometimes she would swear that the Kíngó-Ngóla was watching her, toying with her.

The creature's eyes were gold, and betrayed an intelligence that its avian body and mannerisms attempted to conceal. Though it might strut and preen like a rooster, it took in its surroundings like a leopard. Its eyes reminded her of Pretty's. Like Pretty, the Kíngó-Ngóla was a natural killer. And also like Pretty, the Kíngó-Ngóla did not know it belonged to Lydia.

The first time Pretty bit Lydia, Rakesh nearly sliced her head off before Sherwood and Lydia stopped him. He knew she was defanged, but he still did not trust her.

“A killer will always be a killer,” Rakesh told Lydia as he pressed a damp rag to the bruise Pretty's pink gums had left on her cheek. “Just because she doesn't have the means does not mean it is any less in her nature.”

The Kíngó-Ngóla was Pretty all over again. Weak, featherless, hungry. Playing feeble until it needed to not be. All it took was a rake across Sherwood's throat to free itself. It knew patience, so she must as well.

Lydia settled in, and the gloom of the evening settled in around her. The swamp became familiar with her, and comfortable with her presence. Animals began to emerge around her. Rats, lizards, turtles. She stayed so still, the top of her head like a half-submerged log, that a frog perched on her for a while, squeaking at its comrades across the water.

When dusk fell, the people arrived, parking a truck off the road on the far side of the trees. They were loud, laughing. Three boys, perhaps her age, perhaps a little younger. All smaller than her, and white. Small white men were scared of her. Scared men scared her.

Lydia clenched her jaw. They were drinking, they didn't notice the tiny ripple this motion caused. They threw their bottles in the water as they emptied them and opened up paper bags filled with wrapped sandwiches and slices of pie. They plunked all around her, some coming within a few feet of her face. It was dead dark when she heard dry feathers rasping through the canopy. A bubble escaped from her nose and popped on the surface.

“Y'all hear that?” one of the boys hissed.

“Shut up,” another said. He punched the first boy in the shoulder.

“Every damn time,” the third one muttered. “Skunk ape this, three-eyes that.”

“Hey, I ain't kidding around,” the first insisted, rubbing his sore arm. Lydia resisted the urge to move.

“You're soused, A.B.,” the second boy said. “Eat a sandwich, you're drinking on an empty stomach.”

“I ain't soused. Like I could eat with that stink anyway,” A.B., the first boy, pouted, but he unwrapped a sandwich nonetheless. She knew they smelled her suit, but they couldn't smell her. Their noses, and the Kíngó-Ngóla's, were detecting everything in this swamp except the hunter beneath.

Lydia watched A.B. drunkenly wolf down his sandwich and her stomach gurgled at the sight. The most filling thing she'd eaten in a week was a skewer-roasted frog. Something rustled the dry branches above.

“What the hell?” the third boy shouted. Lydia caught the shape moving in the trees, lithe and predatory. Feeble until it needed not to be. The Kíngó-Ngóla saw what it wanted and would wait no longer. It dove from its hidden perch, leaping straight at the boys and their food.

The time would never be better for her.

Lydia surged out of the water, her bush suit dragging and draining gallons behind her. She clutched her bagh nakh tightly, its three long blades extended between her fingers.

“What the hell!” the third boy shouted. He was pointing at her, falling on his rear and scrambling away as she lurched at the creature. He was so terrified of her inhuman appearance that he did not even react to the Kíngó-Ngóla tearing through his dinner not an arm's length away. She pounced on it, slashing with her claws, raking the creature's thigh.

The Kíngó-Ngóla was thin as a walking stick, bald and peeling like an old melon left in the sun. Still, it moved like Pretty, faster than Pretty. Its long tail whipped around and knocked Lydia off balance, then it leaped into the copse, toward the scampering boys and their truck. Lydia caught herself and charged after it.

The creature bounded into the screaming boy's truck bed as they gunned the engine. The wheels spun and kicked up gravel. Lydia ignored the spray of sharp stones. She was so close.

The truck lurched forward just as she reached it. She swung her bladed hand like a lion, batting the life out of a wounded zebra. Her blades pierced the vehicle's metal skin like it was soft flesh. The boys within screamed even louder. She hoped to anchor onto the quarter-panel, but her blades were too sharp. They dragged back through the soft metal, carving a trio of parallel grooves all the way down the length of the truck until they slid out smoothly.

The Kíngó-Ngóla squawked from the truck bed. It lunged and snapped at Lydia's face, its toothy beak coming within a hand's breadth of her exposed eyes. She fell backward, slamming into the rutted road. She covered her eyes; high-speed road dirt and gravel pelted her as the truck peeled out.

“No,” she whimpered. She watched the truck roar away. Her prize, Sherwood's prize, stared at her with those golden eyes for a long while. It knew her. It knew her from the trap in Africa, from the voyage over the Atlantic. It knew her and it knew why she was there. Just as the careening truck leaned into the road's first curve, the Kíngó-Ngóla leaped free and disappeared back into the trees.

Lydia slumped down. She was tired. Filthy, hungry, and worn to her marrow. She was unhurt by her fall, the woven cane armor that formed the base of her bush suit had taken most of the impact. She allowed thirty seconds to feel sorry for herself, then pushed herself to her feet. There was no question in her mind. She trudged back into the swamp, between the trees, dripping and dragging her suit with every step. The boys had ran so fast that they had forgotten one of their number. He was up a tree, trembling and smelling of urine. She left him where he was and let the brown water swallow her back up.

Sherwood had died in those waters in pursuit of this thing. She didn't understand why. They had traveled up and down the spine of a continent together, accomplished great things, pitted themselves against nature and man and had won. If he would die for this, it must mean something, it had to. All she knew was the one thing he had taught her: that she was a hunter.

She had to hunt.

SATURDAY NIGHT, AUGUST 29, 1942
SOMEWHERE BENEATH THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA

“Should've brought the gun,” Sheriff Harper Hoke muttered to himself, still half-asleep. He clutched a crumbling brick tight to his chest and shuffled ahead, following what he thought had to be the Lizard Man's trail. Just his luck, it was headed straight for all the damn screaming.

His match had burned down almost to his fingertips. Walking these tunnels by this little bit of flickering flame was precarious at best. Still, it was the best he had. He fumbled with the match box, trying to find a fresh one to strike,

“Should've brought a flashlight, too,” a woman said right behind him. Hoke about jumped out of his boots. He spun around with the brick, ready to clean whoever's clock. The woman stepped out of his reach and his swing missed by a mile.

“Now see, if that had been a gun you would've tried to shoot me,” the woman pointed out. She fiddled with whatever she was holding, which let a cool blue light fill the tunnel. It was the same weird torch Malloy and Gator carried. She was white, had to be six feet tall, with graying braids and a cast on her arm.

“Sorry about that,” Hoke squeaked. He paused to get his voice back down to lawman octaves. “You can't be sneaking up on a body like that. You got to be Doctor Ogden.”

“Call me Birdie, and I'm sorry about your matches,” she said. Hoke looked down to find his whole matchbox soaking in a muddy puddle. “You know me, so can I assume you're with Agent Malloy? Did he ever find what he was looking for?”

“What, the Lizard Man?” Hoke asked. “He caught it, then he brought it here after a little trouble. I was the one that lost it. Harper Hoke, sheriff, Lee County.”

“It's nice to meet you, sheriff,” she said. She smiled, her freckles peeking through here and there from behind the patina of dust and dirt on her face.

“You really didn't hear about the Lizard Man? Every paper in town reprinted their morning edition to cover it today.”

“I consulted Mickey before he went looking, but I thought it must've been an alligator,” she replied. “I have been down here for a while myself, I haven't had a chance to visit a news stand.”

“I thought it was going to be a gator, too! You been down here two days, right? What the hell for?” Hoke asked.

“For a story, and I got close,” she said. A man's scream echoed down the tunnel, followed by a trio of gun shots. “Sounds like they got closer.”

Before Hoke could add anything, she took off. He couldn't just watching the only friendly face he'd seen in this maze run off with the only reliable light source so he sprinted after her.

He nearly ran into her back. She'd cut her light off and was pressed up against the tunnel wall, peering around a corner. She put a finger to her lips to keep him quiet, then tapped her ear and pointed at the darkness ahead.

“I know you're hunting me!” a voice cried out. It was young man, his voice warbling like he had a screw or two loose. “You know I can see you, what you really are. And I can smell you.”

“Smell?” Hoke whispered. He took a deep whiff, something he'd been trying to avoid since he'd entered the moly old sewers. They stank of rotting plant matter, rancid sweat, and a deep, pervasive musk. He'd smelled that smell before, on the road after Malloy and Gator had gotten attacked by that massive hairy thing on its motorcycle.

“Skunk Ape,” he hissed. Birdie glared at him like she wanted to physically pinch his lips shut.

“Your friends are bleeding very badly,” the man called again, mocking. “Their skins are, anyway. We wouldn't want them to have to infest a new body, now would we?”

Birdie tensed up, utterly rapt.

“I've almost freed them,” the man taunted. Someone moaned in pain, and Hoke heard a kick thump against a ribcage. “Just an incision or two would be all it takes. We can take apart what you've done in them.”

“Put down the knife,” a voice called back. This man boomed like a falling tree, his words shaking the walls around them. He hardly sounded human.

“It is my instrument of rebellion,” the first man countered. He punctuated his claim with a mechanical whir, eliciting a weak yelp from someone nearby. “You know what I can do with this. I can end your plans, show everyone what you've grown inside. Why don't you come out? Do I have to dig you out like the worms you are?”

“You want me?” the voice boomed again, shaking the foundations of the dank place. “Why don't you - !”

The man was cut off with a very-corporeal yelp. Sparks erupted in the darkness, illuminating a gigantic figure raking steel claws against stonework. Below it, a huge man in all black had barely dodged its blow, keeping his head in the process. Agent Malloy. He was pressed against the wall of a side tunnel, ducking under the surprise attack. In the main channel, a skinny man in a reflective silver jumpsuit with three circular red eyes recoiled in surprise, then disappeared as the shower of sparks faded. Hoke thought he'd counted four crumpled shapes lying at his feet.

“What in the world?” Birdie gasped.

“Skunk Ape,” Hoke said again, like that provided any additional insight.

The Skunk Ape kept up its assault, thunking its sharp claws into Malloy over and over, each impact reverberating like a hatchet biting into solid oak.

“Gator,” Malloy grunted. Something snapped like a bowstring, followed by a cracking impact just over Hoke's head. Something soft dropped onto his neck.

“What the hell!” he shouted, jumping and brushed the thing off him. It was stretchy and long, but firm and dry.

“More of you!” the Three Eye Man squealed. The mechanical whirring started up again, and Hoke heard footsteps coming for him through the tunnel's accumulated muck.

“Take this!” Birdie shouted. She popped around the corner and leveled her flashlight at the Three Eye Man's face, getting him right in his red eyes with the blue beam's full intensity. The odd man stopped in his tracks. He was dressed head to toe in a crunchy metallic silver jumpsuit that covered his head. His three red eyes glowed back at her, set into some sort of mask that covered his face above the nose. Only his mouth and chin were exposed. He was white, young, and smirked cruelly.

“Stop that,” he hissed. “I already see you.”

Wires ran from his mask to a battery on his back, one that also powered the whirring device in his hand. He lifted it and waved her off. It was a mechanical carving knife. He squeezed the trigger again, revving the serrated blades and spraying Birdie with a hot red mist. Blood dripped from its housing and oozed all the way down to his elbow.

“I knew I recognized you,” Birdie said. She wiped the spatter off her face with her sleeve. “You're that physics assistant.”

“I am no assistant!” he snapped. He reared back with his humming blade, then brought it down at her. Birdie stumbled back, avoiding slash after slash until she found her back to the wall. The Three Eye Man smirked, then brought his blade down in one final chop, aiming right for her neck.

Birdie countered the blow with her weird flashlight. It took the impact for a moment. The carving knife howled and ground against its housing. Hoke almost thought it would hold, but then it burst into pieces in her hand. Instead of shattering into batteries and wires, it burst like a broken bottle. Blue goop sprayed all around, glowing intensely and lighting up the whole tunnel. Some landed on the Three Eye Man's exposed face and in his open mouth. He staggered backward, scraping at his lips and tongue with a mittened hand.

“Poison me?” he gagged, spitting glowing globs with each hack. He stumbled away, furious and distracted. The blue illuminated everything: the scrawny, odd attacker, the arched brick steam tunnel, and the bodies of four men lying in the standing water, some still, some moaning in pain. One of them, a blood-soaked police officer of some kind, grabbed at Thee Eye Man's ankle. He swung his carving knife at him, sawing a fresh gouge into the fallen man's arm.

“Jesus,” Hoke snapped.

“Stay still,” Malloy grunted from where the Skunk Ape was wailing on him. He was blocking every slash with a heavy club, but the fury of the attacks was wearing him down.

“Hey, ugly!” Gator tried to throw the thing aside, but it was so much larger than him that it simply bounced him off the wall with an errant backhand. He slumped over, out cold and out of the fight.

Hoke snatched up the thing that had narrowly missed his head. He recognized the thick rubber band that the agents had used to catch the Lizard Man in the first place. Her wrapped the pink band around his knuckles three times and then squeezed his hand into a fist.

The Three Eye Man was still busy hacking up whatever glowing gunk he'd swallowed, so Hoke went for the Skunk Ape first. He bolted as quick as his two legs would take him and came in hot, leading with a rubber-knuckled haymaker. He connected with the mossy mass that sat atop the Skunk Ape's shoulders, what he could only hope was its head. It took the hit like it had a skull that could be cracked and a brain that could be rattled.

The Skunk Ape staggered, then spun around and set its sights on Hoke. Its eyes practically glowed where they were embedded in the blackness below its brow. It held its hand out to the side and advanced on him. Its claws shined blue in the weird light. They were curved like an eagle's talons, engineered to cut through flesh.

Hoke squared up with it. He'd done a little boxing in the merchant marines. Sure, the Skunk Ape had weight, reach, speed, and weapons, but he was... present. That's about all he had going for him. That, and the hulking form of Mickey Malloy rising from the ground behind the Skunk Ape with his club that looked heavy enough to hammer railroad spikes. The big man was moving incredibly slowly for a guy watching his new pal and colleague get menaced by a murderous swamp monster.

The Skunk Ape came at Hoke quick as a cat, slashing and advancing, its blue-blazed eyes never leaving him. He dodged one swipe of those metal-shearing claws, then another. He saw an opening and shot his rubber-wrapped fist at the thing, only for it to squirm around him and press forward. The claws moved faster than he did. Hoke's blood ran cold. It would slice him open and leave him holding his own guts.

“Get away from it!” Birdie shouted. She snagged Hoke's waistband and hauled him back, throwing him across the wet floor. The Skunk Ape's claws cut the front of his shirt to ribbons as he fell, but his insides stayed inside.

Malloy loomed at his full height, reared back with the club, and immediately caught a wide, soggy foot in the chest. The Skunk Ape knew he was coming, and kicked back without even looking. Malloy slammed into the wall, nearly dropping his weapon.

“Hey!” Malloy grunted. He steadied himself and charged again, only for the Skunk Ape to spin around and face him. Malloy skidded to a halt, club ready but unsure how to take on the thing head-on.

“Stay back,” the Skunk Ape hissed. Her voice was volcanic.

“That's a person!” Hoke realized. A woman, even. He had had no idea what they were dealing with when he'd hit her with his truck. When the Skunk Ape had gotten up, she had bolted into the woods. Hit by a truck or not, he'd never seen a person move through the brush like that before.

“What do you want?” Malloy demanded.

“The Kíngó-Ngóla,” she snarled. “Now.”

“The what now?” Hoke asked.

“She wants the Lizard Man,” Mick said. He didn't let his eyes leave the woman standing before him. She was coiled like a spring, ready to bury those claws into any one of them and rip them right back out. Mick froze with a start and looked past her: “Hoke, what the hell? You're supposed to be watching it.”

Hoke could've killed him for that one. That got the Skunk Ape's full attention on him. She studied him with those two glowing blue pinpoints of light nestled in the blackness that covered her face.

“The thing is, I thought it was about dead. I fed it, gave it some water. It was almost calm when I locked it up,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm and even for her. No sense in getting the Skunk Ape more worked up. He stood up on his toes and tried to explain to Mick over her shoulder: “But then it started going wild. I figure it must've smelled something...”

He nodded at the Skunk Ape, careful to keep his hands visible for her. He continued:

“It clawed down the damn door and bolted. I chased after it 'til I lost it down here.”

“It is here?” the Skunk Ape demanded. Hoke started to nod, but was cut off by a screech.

“All of you, shut up!” the Three Eye Man shouted over them. He'd smeared most of the goop of his face by then, leaving only a few luminescent streaks down his chin. “I know what you are. I know what all of you are.”

“Young man,” Birdie started, taking a few tentative steps toward. “Why don't you just calm down?”

“Calm down?” he stammered. “If you could see how I see, you would never be calm again.”

“Bly stil,” the Skunk Ape snarled. She grabbed something small from within the the tangle of her fetid pelt. Mick recognized it from the road, the thing that had blown his tires out.

“And you,” the Three Eye Man ranted, pointing at the Skunk Ape with his whirring knife. “I have near seen anything like you before. They are infested, but you... you are subsumed.”

“Birdie!” Mick growled to warn her. The Skunk Ape untied a band around the small ball and tossed it at the ranting goon.

The ball unraveled in an instant, changing shape and snapping open as if spring-loaded. In an instant it had extended and flattened into a wide disc nearly two meters across. Birdie ducked below it, but the Three Eye Man was not quick enough. Its hard, sharp edge caught him in the face with such force that it shattered his goggles and threw him off his feet. The disc clattered to the ground next to him, and he collapsed among his victims.

With that distraction dealt with, the Skunk Ape turned back to Hoke.

“Where is it?” she demanded.

“The Lizard Man? I don't know,” he told her. She took another step toward him, flexing her gleaming claws.

“I will take the Kíngó-Ngóla, and I will leave,” she said.

“Lady, I don't even know that word,” Hoke insisted.

“You ain't going anywhere,” Malloy growled. His voice had changed. He had a black bandanna pulled over his face, only letting his steely eyes show. At his full height, he looked like a bulldozer in all black. Even though the Skunk Ape had three inches on him, he looked like he could fold her in half. He hefted his wrecking ball of a club. When he spoke, his voice grated like a bridge collapse: “Drop the knives.”

The Skunk Ape realized with a start that she had never been the apex predator in those tunnels. Hoke was suddenly invisible to her.

“It is mine,” she said, but compared to Malloy she almost spoke in squeaks.

“Drop the knives,” Malloy rumbled again. He would not ask a third time.

“You don't know what she - !” the Three Eye Man groaned from the floor, only to get cut off when Birdie rushed over and clocked him out with her cast. She picked up his carving knife, unplugged it, then snapped the blade over her knee for good measure.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said meekly.

“Give me the Kíngó-Ngóla and I will leave,” the Skunk Ape repeated. Her blades stayed in her hand.

Malloy didn't repeat himself. His club struck like a blockbuster. The Skunk Ape took the full brunt of the hit and staggered. Her hat or hood or whatever it was twisted around, askew. She reached up to fix it, but Malloy was relentless. He knew she was on the ropes and he pressed her. He landed hit after hit, blows mighty enough to topple statues. Still, the Skunk Ape stood against him.

Even in a hurricane, there are moments of calm. The Skunk Ape found one. Her terrible claws flashed in the blue glow, then surged upward, splitting Malloy's belly open like a fish. He stumbled back, his club forgotten, clutching his abdomen together like he could keep the puffy white filling from tumbling out.

“That was downright ugly of you,” he snarled after a shocked moment. He lurched back after her, letting his wrecking ball fists lead the way. She deftly side-stepped him and kicked his feet out. He landed in a pile, splashing through muck and mud. He wheezed. When he tried to get up, his boots slipped out from beneath him. That was all the opening she needed.

The Skunk Ape crouched over her fallen foe, her claws ready to bleed him like a shot deer.

The Lizard Man hit her like a bullet.

The feathery, leathery thing pounced from the darkness and hit her claws first. The pair rolled and scrapped together, hissing and yelling as they tore into each other. They nearly merged into a single entity for a moment, a ball of shouts and squawks with eight limbs and a tail.

They separated after only a few seconds, but both were broken when they did. The Lizard Man was bleeding heavily, and the Skunk Ape was moving slow, with the kind of limp that isn't ever just a sprain. When she recovered enough to set her sights on her quarry again, she found Malloy, Hoke, Birdie, and a half-dazed Gator standing behind it, various weapons at the ready.

“Stront,” the Skunk Ape spat, almost in a sob. She pulled another ball from the hidden pocket in her pelt and tossed it over the Lizard Man's head where it landed between it and the sheriff. Hoke didn't have time to think, he just punted it right back at her. The ball burst open in her face, its hard edge slamming her in the forehead. The disc it formed was so wide that it blocked off the entire width of the tunnel, even askew.

Malloy recovered quick and made as if to shove the weird wall aside, but the Lizard Man hissed at him and snapped before he could get past.

“Okay, buddy,” he said. He back off, his hands up in the air.

“Let me try,” Hoke said. He sat on the wet floor and beckoned the thing to him. “Hey little guy, come here.”

The Lizard Man sniffed and warbled, then it limped over to him. It nearly collapsed onto the floor. Hoke scratching the top of its long head. Malloy slipped past and began shoving against the disc. It wouldn't budge. He risking catching a claw in the side of the head and pressed his ear against it. He could hear dragging footsteps receding.

“Hey!” he shouted, banging on the disc. It was some kind of springy wood, woven together and reinforced with ribbing. It was like knocking on a solid oak door. He gave up after a few seconds. He informed the rest of his bedraggled crew the Skunk Ape was high-tailing it. They were too distracted by the weird creature that was nuzzling the sheriff.

“What the hell?” Gator muttered.

“Missus Hoke's jerky, gets 'em every time,” the sheriff said, then fed the creature a nibble's worth of salted, dried beef out of his palm. He let the Lizard Man eat in silence for a moment, then pointed up at Malloy and his bisected torso. “And 'what the hell' me? 'What the hell' this guy? Shouldn't you be dead as a doorknob?”

Mick was trying to figure on where the closest chainsaw was to take down the Skunk Ape's instant wall when he realized Hoke was talking about him. He turned and showed off his belly.

“All she got was the stuffing,” he explained. His padded vest had taken her whole slash, spilling cotton rather than entrails. He was more interested in the weird weapon, though. He pointed out its patterns to Birdie, the only person whose attention he could drag away from the Lizard Man. “It's some kind of basket weave. Woven like this then wound up under pressure. Springs 'em open when she needs to nail somebody.”

She examined the weave with a scholarly eye.

“I've seen similar patterns in central African pieces. Very interesting. Do you know who she is?” she asked.

“I do not, but every official in the country is going to be looking for her,” Mick said. He looked at the wheezing, bleeding Lizard Man, then added: “Seems like she's got a lot of questions to answer.”

“What are you going to do with, uh, this?” Hoke asked, stroking the thin feathers behind the Lizard Man's gold eye. The thing was actually calm. It laid all the way down next to him and wrapped its tail behind him. It was breathing shallowly, exhausted and relieved.

“Lots of folks seem interested in it, to its detriment. Since we got no earthly clue where it comes from, we'll hide it somewhere secure, and safe. It won't have to worry about hunting clubs or Skunk Apes, and nether will the folks watching it,” Malloy told him.

“What about that guy?” Gator asked. The Three Eye Man was struggling to stand, but his feet slipped out from under him with each dazed attempt. His weird silvery suit wrapped all the way under his shoes like booties, making them slick on the bottom. His googles were shattered on his face, which the ravenous glowing fungus had gnawed pink.

“Which one was he, again?” Malloy asked.

“The Three Eye Man,” Birdie, Gator, and Hoke all answered in unison.

“Yeah, sure,” Mick grunted. He was sore as hell, and he had navigating a maze between him an a bourbon. “That's, uh, what's his name, right? The professor's helper?”

Gator ambled over and lifted the goggles off the struggling man's face. They fell apart in his hands, eliciting a defeated groan from the sweaty little guy they had disguised.

“Yeah, that's him, the wormy one, Walter,” Gator replied. He squatted and looked close at Wendall's darting, bloodshot eyes. “The kid's hopped up something fierce.”

“Wendall,” Wendall whimpered.

“Wendall, pal, you want to come with us?” Gator asked him.

“You're all worms,” Wendall whispered.

“It's us worms, or them worms,” Gator replied, pointing at the group of wounded campus police. “You'll make it longer with us, I think.”

“You worms,” Wendall muttered, defeated. His crazed eyes darted around. He looked like he was about to cry. Mick tossed Gator the handcuffs, and Wendall meekly let him clip them on. He yelped when Gator pinched his wrists.

“Sorry,” Gator said, “I never been on this side of the process before. It's harder than it looks.”

“That's the legend you were hunting?” Malloy asked Birdie. He leaned back on the woven wall and watched Gator help the disoriented, defeated Wendall to his feet. Birdie posted up next to him, smirking wryly.

“What I was looking for was the genesis of a legend, to actively observe how life becomes mythology, to learn which kernels of truth persevere through oral retelling, hyperbole, misrepresentation, and misinterpretation, and why,” Birdie told him. She smiled and nodded at the bloodied campus cops who'd begun to gather themselves. “That's their part to play.”

“Huh,” Malloy said. “So you want to map how a tall tale can be back-tracked to its origin.”

“Exactly!” she exclaimed. Her smiled was wide, and genuine. Malloy looked strange without a scowl on his face, but his expression matched hers.

Malloy realized after a second that he was beaming like a fool, even though no one else was watching. He cleared his throat and pushed himself off the woven wall. Birdie rolled her eyes, her smile fading into a knowing, exasperated smirk.

“We better get those boys bandaged up,” he said, pointing vaguely at the four severely bleeding men on the ground.

“They wanted to throw us in the river,” Gator snapped.

“True enough,” Mick replied. “We take their guns, then bandage them up.”

“Let them bandage themselves up,” Gator huffed.

“We can't let these boys bleed out, no matter how shitty they are,” Mick said. “They got a story that needs telling.”

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Bruce Conners.