He was walking to school on a particularly gloomy morning, a cold drizzle soaking everything that wasn’t covered. Up ahead there was a lady hurrying along, bundled in an oversized parka. A kid walked behind her, also bundled against the cold. There was something odd about the kid, Levi thought, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Maybe it was just that it was school hours so he didn’t expect to see any kids around. But no, that wasn’t it, the kid moved strangely, he wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something odd about that small figure’s movements, even at this distance.
As he watched, the hooded figure closed the distance with the lady, almost pressing up against her. Then it dropped back before darting into an alleyway off to the right. What was that? He’d thought it was her kid following her and he almost called to her. But he stopped himself; something was off.
He quickened his pace, feeling deep down that something was off. Coming around the corner, he saw the kid sliding into an open basement window of the adjoining building, his suspicion growing. He crept up close, peering through the grimy glass for any sign of the kid. He couldn’t see much at first. The only light came from the three narrow windows, and on this overcast day they weren’t much help. As he strained to discern the interior of the basement, he began to make out details. The place was filled with clutter: stacks of boxes, lamps, desks, and bookshelves, creating a veritable maze for the kid to hide in. And there was no sign of the kid anywhere.
He was about to give up when a movement from the far corner of the room caught his eye. There, in the gloom of the far corner, a figure was stooping over an open drawer. The kid had lost the coat and, without it, it was even more apparent that there was something really off about the kid. They were all hunched over and doing this shuffling sort of dance back and forth, their shaggy head bobbing with the movements.
Was this even a kid at all?
His adjutor hadn’t flared up but something still seemed monsterish about all this. The strangest thing of all was the way it was muttering to itself in a kind of chittering jumble that Levi couldn’t make out. It had left the window open and the noise was loud enough that he could hear it clearly, but whatever it was saying was complete gibberish.
Suspicions which had begun to ferment, now grew more definite. To test the theory, he drew the adder stone from inside his shirt. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh; the rough fabric of his coat scratched against itself loudly, a sound that made him freeze his movement. A glance though reassured him. The figure didn’t seem to notice. Slower and more carefully now, he drew the stone to his eye.
The creature he saw through the stone wasn’t a child at all. It wasn’t even human. It was… Actually he really wasn’t sure what it was. It was about as large as an eight year old child and it stood on two legs, but that’s where the comparison to a child ended. It had coarse hair sticking out from gaps in ill fitting clothing, that might have been rummaged from a dumpster. Even from the back he could see its large ears sticking out on either side of the oversized head. Its body was all wrong too, its torso looking too long for its strangely bent legs. Its arms though were maybe too long, and ended in large hands with long slender fingers. Even stranger was a long, curved tail that peeked out from under its rags. He leaned over to get a look at what it was rummaging through, but bumped the window as he did so, wresting a groaning shriek from its rusted hinges.
In a flash the thing turned, and Levi had a sight of its face, a yellowish wrinkled face that looked more like a chimpanzee than a human. It saw him and screamed, throwing something at him that glinted as it flew. The projectile shot out through the gap and onto the asphalt in front of him. It was a sequined lady’s wallet. Was that from the lady earlier? Another inhuman scream made him decide he didn’t care. Scrambling to his feet, he darted out of the alley, leaving the monkey kid and the wallet behind.
Out on the sidewalk he paused to catch his breath, his heart still pounding in his chest. A glance at the sign over the door made him pause --it read Feodore’s Antiques. Not a surprise, not really, but still…
So what to do? Last time he’d brought this place up to Connolly he’d been told to mind his own business. But this wasn’t like last time either; his adjutor hadn’t flared up or anything. Actually it never so much as twitched when he walked by this place and hadn’t since that time with the smoke. That meant it wasn’t dangerous, didn’t it?
He went to class still mulling it over and walked out an hour later without a clue what to do.
###
Study group 9 --now their official name-- met up every few days to go over monster stuff and usually it was fun. Today though things felt a little tense. It wasn’t just Levi’s problem from that morning, it was just a bad week altogether. The weather had been miserable for starters, then there were the midterms. Then Liz had caught a fever and hadn’t been around.
She was the one that usually pulled them out of a bad mood; she even got Alice to loosen up. They were wading through some dark stuff and her absence was felt. Not all that the guides showed them was wonderful. Most of what they’d been studying recently was pretty gruesome.
The challenges themselves were getting tougher too. One of his challenges was like living in a memory puzzle. Objects or scenes from that day would appear on the book, one after another, and he’d have to identify where he’d seen them. It had taken over two weeks before the guide let him move on. Still, every now and then the guide would throw one at him; blocking his progress till he could figure it out. But, he had to admit, his observation skills were getting a lot better. He could see that being useful for a hunter.
Levi’s most recent task was memorizing about a hundred poisons and venoms, who or what they came from, and how to treat them. Most of them sounded made up and that made it even worse. Triffid sap? Manticore venom? Giant sand worm bloat? When would he ever have to counteract cockatrice venom? And the antidotes were even worse. Eye of newt sounded like something out of Shakespeare. Spring dew from spiderwebs sounded awful to collect and where was he ever going to get kettle dragon spines? He supposed he couldn’t go to the local pharmacy for most of it.
“Hey guys, sorry I'm late," Levi said as he entered the study room, "I'm still working on ‘a thousand ways to die from magic poisons’ and it’s tough."
"Yeah?" said Paul, massaging his temples. “It can’t be worse than mine. I wanted to learn how to fight monsters, not become an expert on druidic runes. Why do I need to learn this stuff anyway?"
“Paul, you’re an anthropology major,” said Alice, her tone sarcastic. “Isn’t that kinda your thing?”
“I told you, I took it cause it’s an easy major. Lay off alright. We can’t all have a love affair with moldy old books. Some of us like hanging out with real people.”
Levi hesitated. Mostly Paul and Alice kept things civil, but occasionally they’d start in on each other. When that happened he would bury himself in his studies till Liz cheered them up. Another reason he missed her.
The conversation trailed off as Alice shot acid looks at Paul, while Paul sprawled himself out on his chair and pretended not to notice her.
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He tried tackling Alice this time. “So, uh, what are you up to Alice?”
"Ugh. I’m trying to work out the next section and all it says is 'remember what you lost' which is soo vague. Maybe if I burn this thing it’ll scare it enough to make it show me its secrets. You think these books can get scared?" Levi couldn’t read her; she always seemed serious and he always fell for it, but still, the way she said it, she was joking right?
Paul looked up from his work, his voice oozing with mock sincerity . "Hey, that's great, weren't you saying you wanted something more challenging?"
She shot him a dirty look.
"Challenging, yeah, but how am I supposed to remember something I forgot?"
"Weird,” said Levi, “you talk to Beth?"
“Not yet, I’d rather see if I can do it on my own first but, without more to go on, I don’t think I have a choice. I’m seeing her later today anyway.”
Somehow, despite not having an actual job, Beth Townsend had full access to the campus, and could be found nearby on most days. Levi was forever jealous of Alice’s mentor, especially after one of his fun session with the professor. He didn’t know how he would ever learn anything with the way Connolly dealt out information; as willing to share as a half-starved mongrel. As pleasant too.
Levi settled down to study his poisons. At least the poisons were by region, that way the antidotes usually overlapped. He was working through southeast Asia right now. He was stuck on this thing called Gu, which apparently was made by having lots of poisonous creatures fight each other till one killed and ate all the others. That one was supposed to have the poison of all the others combined. The problem was, without knowing what other creepy crawlies it had eaten, you couldn’t know how to cure it. He couldn't study though, his mind kept wandering back to the strange pickpocket and its connection to the antique shop.
“Hey Levi!”
“Huh, what?” He looked up surprised. Paul and Alice were standing over him looking exasperated.”
“You alright man?” said Paul. “You were totally spaced out there. I said your name like five times.”
Levi sighed. “Yeah I had something weird happen this morning though.”
He related his adventure, while the others listened intently.
“So, I dunno, do I tell Connolly? It doesn’t seem like anyone’s in danger, but I think it’s pickpocketing. I bet it’s got a whole stash down there.”
Paul surprised Levi by looking almost happy. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all week. Finally something interesting.” He slammed the guide on the table. “Let’s go check it out.”
No one argued, though Alice complained about going out in the drizzle.
Twenty minutes later they were standing across the street from the shop, trying not to look suspicious.
Paul eyed the place with a slight frown. “So this is the shop huh? looks pretty dead.”
It did. Of course it pretty much always did and Levi had been staring at that shop for over a month now. He sometimes wondered what sort of hours they kept there since it rarely looked like it was open, and the rundown look of the place made it seem like they didn’t care if anyone came in to their establishment or not. The door was shut and barred, and the windows had heavy curtains drawn over them. The dirty yellowed siding was in need of repair, with bits of insulation peeking through the cracks. The roof was really just a cobbled mess of several patches of different colored roofing, broadcasting the halfhearted effort to keep it intact.
Around the side, there were three windows into the basement, dingy, barred windows that hadn’t been cleaned in years. All were small and would be a tight squeeze for anyone bigger than a child --or a monkey thing. Paul had sauntered down the alley, trying to look casual as he glanced down into the basement, then walked down to the end of the alley and started trying to peek through the slats in the fence behind the building. disappeared from sight.
“What is he doing?” growled Alice. “Someone’s going to notice him.”
Levi agreed, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. A minute later Paul came back, calm as if he were strolling through a park. “Well, I didn’t see anything odd outside, except that the backyard is just a big junk pile. But that basement looks interesting. There’s some weird looking stuff down there, and that’s just what I saw in the window. I can’t say I saw the monkey though, but who knows where it might be if it’s got the run of the place. On the other hand, it could be out pickpocketing or something. I don’t think anyone’s home either, I mean there’s no cars, no lights, no nothing. We could just go right now and I bet no one would see us.”
“You idiot,” hissed Alice, her eyes shifting nervously. “What do you think you’re doing? Anyone could see you wandering around. If they’ve got something to hide and someone is home, don’t you think they’ll notice someone casing the place?”
“Easy, so someone does call in to report on me, what’re they going to say? He’s got dark hair and dark eyes and he looks like a college kid? There’s tons of people around here that fit that description. Relax will you.”
Alice looked like she was trying to incinerate him with her glare, but he didn’t seem to notice. Levi thought she was going to chew him out, but instead she just said, “we’re gonna talk about this later,” jammed her hands in her pockets and started off down the street.
“Fine,” Paul said, grinning at Levi. “We should go to your place and figure out how to get in there.”
Alice rounded on them so suddenly that Levi almostplowed into her. If she’d looked mad before, she looked furious now. “Hold on Paul, you’re talking about breaking and entering.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So? You ever think about anyone but yourself?”
“Whoah, easy there. What’s the big deal? Anyway, we’re not going to steal anything, we just want to stop a burglar. The cops might even thank us for doing their work.”
“Are you serious? We’re caught in someone’s basement and it doesn’t matter what we find down there, their going to arrest us. And then what?”
“They won’t catch us, and even if they did, it’s an old basement with a stash of stolen stuff in it.”
“Then what? It probably doesn’t matter for you. You can go somewhere else if this doesn’t work out, but we get arrested and we’ll get expelled, or at least lose our scholarships and that’s the same thing for me, for Levi too probably.” Levi nodded in agreement.
“ Besides that, what happens to all this if we get expelled and have to leave?” She bared her adjutor, shoving it in his face. “We can’t study with the hunters if we’re not here anymore.”
Paul batted her away, looking skeptical. “I dunno, I’ve had a run in or two with the cops for little stuff like that, and all they did was call my parents. They didn’t press charges or anything. And like I keep saying, if we show them a stash of stolen stuff, they’ll have to let us off. Why’re you freaking out?”
“You wouldn’t get it, alright. You probably haven’t had a real problem in your life. Some of us have to think about what happens if we screw up.”
Paul was getting mad now, his voice rising. Levi couldn’t remember ever seeing him lose his cool. “Yeah, you said it, I don’t get what’s got you all worked up. What’s the big deal alright? There’s something you’re not saying, so say it.”
“I can’t get arrested alright.”
“Yeah, you said that, why?”
“Cause I’ve got a record and I don’t have rich parents to bail me out. Was that what you wanted to hear? Cause that’s why.” She was practically yelling now, and drawing some stares from the few people on the street.
Paul held up his hands in surrender, the anger having suddenly left his voice. “Alright, alright. Sorry Alice, I didn’t know about that. Look, I still think we need to check this out, but you’ve got a point and I don’t want either of you guys gone so you guys can hang out here till I get back alright?”
“Of course I’m coming you idiot.” She said, calming a little as well. “I just want you to know this isn’t some game that you’re playing cause your bored.”
“Hey, it’s not like that. Even though, yeah, I’m kinda bored with life, but this is hunter stuff and wasn’t I just saying we needed some field experience that doesn’t involve giant monsters? It’s a kid sized monkey so how hard can it be? And, like I said, you really don’t have to come.”
“No, like I said, I’m coming. You guys’ll need my help and I don’t want to see your names in the news tomorrow.”
“Alright, cool by me,” said Paul. “What about you Levi? You’ve got a scholarship to worry about too, so I’ll understand if you want to sit it out.”
Levi was tempted. He was more scared of getting arrested than he was of that monkey thing, more so now that Alice brought up the bit about getting expelled. But somehow he knew he couldn’t say no and live with himself. “Yeah I’m in.” He said at last. “This thing is stealing and who knows what else. What if it ends up hurting someone? If we know more about it, maybe Connolly will step in, or at least Beth or one of the others.”
“Alright.” Paul said, his cocky grin back on his face. “Let’s do this.”