The Self-Proclaimed Cryptozoologist's Way of Life

This was not how Siobhan Teague expected to spend her summer internship. Professor Anders' truck barreled down the winding, nameless road in the West Virginia Appalachians, each turn threatening to careen off the mountainside, slam into the black woods, or throw Siobhan from her position in the unoccupied sliver of bed at the very back.

With one hand, white-knuckled, she gripped the body of the truck. In the other, she had the shotgun. At her feet was a case of ammunition that had started the expedition with two hundred fifty rounds of buckshot, but by one thing or another, there was maybe a fifth of it left.

The frantic cackling echoed off the mountains and through the trees. It was everywhere and nowhere, but it sounded like it was getting closer. Hopefully fifty rounds would be enough to make it to the dawn.

***

A week earlier, Siobhan met up with Professor Anders at LAX, ready in her mind to go on a camping expedition with extra science. West Virginia wasn't exactly her idea of a retreat, but as a biology major looking to become a veterinarian, the chance to work with wild animals was wildly appealing. True, that chance was coming from the kookiest professor in the school if not the state, the self-proclaimed cryptozoologist Charles Danforth Anders.

The most common word to be spoken about Professor Anders was “tenure”. He was an older man, a silver-haired sixty-year-old whose psuedoscientific appellation and love of outdated tweed jackets and clashing plaid suit pants made it hard to understand any way he could have held the position of a professor of biology unless he had gotten tenure before any of the symptoms of his peculiar nature began to show. That said, Siobhan was far from the only undergrad who enjoyed his classes. He had a jovial manner, and he kept to the proper topic for the majority of class time. Of his cryptid hunting, he often said that the most important element of scientific inquiry was keeping an open mind, and he came off less as a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist and more as a professional troll aiming to keep the faculty and perhaps scientific community honest by asking stupid questions and offering absurd answers.

The flight was relatively normal, aside from traveling with a scarecrow-like fashion criminal even whiter than Siobhan's Irish heritage made her, but after landing things started to get strange. There was no rental car waiting for them, and the professor had only a single bag that could barely hold a spare set of clothes, compared to the rather complete kit that Siobhan had in her roller suitcase. He led the way confidently to the front of the airport, and proclaimed that Old Joe would be there any minute.

Given the location, Siobhan had formed a particular image of Old Joe before he arrived, only to be greeted by a bizarre sight. A massive, beat up old pickup truck with a perfect vintage motorcycle tied down in the bed pulled up and stopped in front of him. Then, the driver got out. He was an absolute mountain of a man with the height for basketball and the breadth of a linebacker, a solid brick of muscle that would have made anything smaller than the massive pickup look like a clown car as he emerged from it, who barely fit into an outfit that looked like a stage-play cowboy costume, from the ten gallon hat down his craggy face with deep-set eyes and a jet-black horseshoe mustache to the fancy plaid button down, fringed leather jacket, immaculately pressed jeans and fancy sequined boots with heels and spurs. His age and race were and would almost certainly remain mysteries; his skin was a brown like milk chocolate that might have come from any of a countless number of lineages or combinations thereof, and worn and weathered with deep wrinkled grooves, pits and pocks, but his hair was jet black. Siobhan would have guessed he was the professor's junior, but by how much was impossible to say. This, as professor Anders addressed him, was Old Joe.

“I've got everything you asked for ready, friend,” Old Joe said. His English was without discernible accent, and his voice a low but smooth base that he didn't raise beyond a volume fit for conversation in a polite and quiet place.

“Excellent,” the professor said, “excellent. May I see what we have to work with?”

“Of course,” Old Joe said. He moved carefully, and with a fluid grace that was practiced in spite of his bulk. He produced, and laid out in the bed of the truck alongside the bike a massive handgun, a long-barreled shotgun, and an army surplus ammo case that he opened to reveal boxes of buckshot and one, that he removed, of ammo for the handgun. Then he produced a third gun, a specialized dart gun, and a half dozen syringe rounds to go with it. Tranquilizers, Siobhan guessed, and more what she'd expected to see.

“You're sure you don't need more?” Old Joe asked.

“We only have myself and my intern.”

Old Joe nodded.

“A new one, I see,” he said. “You can't seem to keep them.”

“Nobody needs the same course credit twice,” the professor replied.

“In any case,” Old Joe said, withdrawing a slip of paper from his pocket, “I left the pen there. The ties I used for the bike should do.”

“Good man,” the professor said, “always a pleasure.”

“All mine, I assure you,” Old Joe said. Then he regarded Siobhan for the first and last time. He nodded his head, and tipped his hat.

“Good luck, little lady.”

Then he released the bike, pretty much hefted it from the truck to the pavement, got on, and roared down the highway and out of sight.

The professor held out the shotgun to Siobhan. She stared at it like it was a venomous snake, but ultimately, gingerly, took charge of it when it was clear that the professor didn't share or understand her trepidation around firearms.

“That thing could be your best friend,” he said as he moved around to get in the cab of Old Joe's truck, “you should make yourself familiar with it before you need to be.”

From there, they went to a nearby yard and picked up an animal pen, tying it down in the bed of the truck. It was shorter than the bed, so the doors could open outward even if the tailgate was closed, and higher up it was more or less open, meaning the driver could still see out of their rear view with the pen in place.

“You know, professor,” Siobhan said as they got back on the road, “you've been pretty sparse about what exactly we're to be on the trail of. From all the buckshot, you'd think we were hunting deer.”

“Not-Deer,” the professor said.

“I know that,” Siobhan replied.

“Well, then why did you ask?”

“Just because I know it's not deer doesn't mean I know what we're looking for. I'd be a lot more help if I did. Or is it just to find any unexplained mysterious animal in the region? I'd think camera traps would be better for that than... this.”

She indicated the shotgun with obvious distaste.

“Not-Deer,” professor Anders said, “a new name for an old phenomenon.”

“You mean the thing itself is called a Not-Deer?”

“It's been called a lot of things, but that's the name that's caught on of late, and in my mind it's the best one so far. Because the unifying trait of the sightings is that whatever the people have seen, it's not a deer.”

“That seems a pretty broad category.”

“It's not a deer,” professor Anders affirmed, “and is related that way because the deer is the closest thing in terms of the impression it might give. The Not-Deer, you could say, is a creature that is almost like a deer without being one. Or, almost but not quite entirely unlike a deer, but certainly like nothing else that anyone can say.”

“I think I follow you,” Siobhan said, “But camera traps would still seem to be in order.”

“Cameras are no good,” Anders said, “when it comes to cryptids, they're things people don't want to see, So if you bring back a photo, no matter how clear it is, they'll say it was blurry, and if they can't say it's blurry they'll say the thing was edited and have a good laugh.”

“I see.”

“The next best thing for a naturalist would generally be a carcass,” professor Anders said, “but I've found that most of the creatures that remain unexplained share an unfortunate trait where they don't keep, so returning physical evidence that way has been fairly meaningless. Hence, the tranquilizer gun and the pen. If we're going to bring a Not-Deer to light, we'll need to capture one alive.”

“What about all the buckshot, then?” Siobhan asked.

“There's liable to be more than one threat to life and limb in the Appalachians,” the professor replied, “as in every dark corner of the world. The best way to be sure you come home safe is to have a trusty firearm and an itchy trigger finger.”