Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Linda looks about as she blows into cupped hands. It’s been a brutal November, and the forecast is that it’ll be a white Christmas from everything freezing over instead of snow.
She glances at Will.
“So what’s a polinismum again?”
He gives her a withering stare.
“‘Polynex Quismirum’. A living fossil. My grandfather believed it to be the root of all werebeast myths. My father thought it some sort of changeling analogue. They were both right.”
Linda frowns.
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of your father, would it?”
Will nods.
“He went out to catch one. It caught him.”
“They never found a body, though?”
“Exactly. When people disappear, we make up stuff to explain why they left. When people are found as partially eaten bodies, we get up in arms and start looking for whatever did the eating.”
“Ignoring the implied intelligence underpinning your argument, are you saying this poly-whatever is big enough to consume an adult human and leave no trace?”
Will shrugs, looking unhappy.
“That’s the simplest explanation, but it doesn’t sit right with me. Sort of like there being a single Loch Ness Monster. Unless it’s the ghost of cryptid, there has to be a more than one.”
Linda grins.
“Not a fan of the ‘extremely long-lived last example of its kind’ theory, then?”
He grins back.
“About as much as it being a bio-submersible piloted by alien lizards.”
She presses her hands over her mouth, her laugh escaping as a snort.
“I hadn’t heard that one.”
Will touches her arm and whispers, pointing with his other hand.
“There.”
Linda stares towards the old bus shelter, looking for the looming threat in the light from the streetlamp above it. She’s about to ask him ‘where’ when she sees a movement.
The bench inside the shelter is compacting itself, the slats of the seat and back moving together while the legs at either end extend! Like some headless, tailless creature it shakes itself in a very dog-like manner, then stretches like a cat, alternating raised ends. That done, it settles back into looking like a seat.
She leans closer to Will, trying to stop herself shaking.
“Are we safe?”
“Yes. It’s an ambush predator. I’ve been watching it for a week, and I think it’s a juvenile. Certainly not big enough to take an adult human.”
“What do we do now?”
“Approach slowly, then use the graphene net to catch it.”
“What if it tries to, I dunno, roll away?”
“The net has tethers. We’ll spike them to the ground. Should hold it until the catch team arrives.”
Linda nods. He takes an end of the net protruding from the laundry sack he picks up. She grabs the other end.
“Chat as we approach. Wonder about the last bus. You know.”
“Gotcha.”
They approach casually. As they get between the pretend bench and the streetlamp, Will shouts.
“Now!”
They pull the net out and get it over most of the bench before it deforms, extruding a pair of greyish pseudopods to prevent them covering it.
“Pin it down!”
Linda shouts and leaps. He follows.
Will lands, taps his phone to call the catch team, and grins at her. Her eyes widen. The shelter itself closes about them. Brief, muffled screams go unheard.
The catch team arrives a few minutes later. There’s a torn laundry sack lying by the streetlamp. Of Linda, Will, and the bus shelter, there’s no sign. The search lasts for hours. It ignores the long, grassy hummock that’s appeared in the grass verge on the other side of the road.