Jarvis Street Chapter 13
James woke up to silence. For a second it was nice, that peaceful stillness of lying in bed, just letting the world slowly filter into his consciousness. But then he realized he hadn’t heard an alarm.
His eyes snapped open and James grabbed his phone. Nine o’clock. And two missed messages.
Shit. Shit shit shit. James leapt out of bed and grabbed the first clothes he found on the ground as he opened the voicemails. The first was from Amelia.
“Hey, James, is everything okay? You were supposed to be here thirty minutes ago and you’re not. Don’t worry, we’re fine. Just call me, okay?”
The second message started as he pulled on some pants. There were no shirts. Why didn’t he have any clean shirts in here?
“James, it’s Madelyn. I’m hoping you just overslept or something, but we’re getting a little concerned. Call us, please.”
His shift started at seven today. He had set his alarm for six before passing out last night, but apparently, he had turned it off in his sleep when it went off. So now he was two hours late for the shift he was supposed to be in charge of.
Not bothering to brush his teeth, James rushed out to the front door, where Graham was pulling on his shoes.
“What are you still doing here?” Graham asked.
“Overslept,” James said as he grabbed his own shoes and stuffed his feet in without bothering to untie them. “I was supposed to be there two hours ago.”
“Oh, shit.”
Wallet. Where was his wallet? Why hadn’t he left it in the bowl by the door like he did every single other morning? James ripped through the old receipts and car keys sitting in the little wicker bowl, but his wallet wasn’t there.
“What do you need?” Graham asked.
“My wallet.”
“No idea. Do you need cash or anything?”
James shook his head. “Nah, thanks.”
“I’m leaving today,” Graham said. “I’ll be back in three days. Don’t forget to put on a shirt before you leave.”
Right, he was going on that business trip for the college. Some conference. As Graham stood up and grabbed his bag, he gave James a nod goodbye.
James waved. “Drive safe,” he said, feeling compelled even as he tore through the mess on the coffee table for his wallet.
“Will do.”
Graham left and James gave up on the wallet. He grabbed a white t-shirt off of the couch and pulled it on. His car keys were in the basket, so he grabbed them and hurried out to his car.
He called the Headquarters main line as he started driving. It rang twice, then Amelia picked up.
“North County Branch, Amelia speaking.”
“Amelia, I’m so sorry.”
“James!” Amelia exclaimed. “Oh thank God, I was getting worried.”
“I slept through my alarm. I’ll be there in like five minutes.”
“Don’t hurry,” Amelia said. “We’re fine here.”
He rushed anyway, weaving around cars on the two-lane roads and trying not to scream at slow drivers downtown. About ten minutes later, he was pulling into the driveway behind Bradley’s car.
He rushed up the stairs and opened the front door, kicking off his shoes as he got inside. “I’m here,” he said, hurrying up the stairs. “Shit, I’m so sorry.”
Amelia and Bradley were sitting at the computers in the living room. Both looked up and stared at him.
“What?” James asked.
“You, um…”
Bradley seemed at a loss for words, which was a first for him. James looked down at his shirt and realized he’d grabbed one of Graham’s awful shirts from those stores on the Hampton Beach boardwalk. An arrow pointed up at his face, labeled THE MAN. Under that was THE LEGEND, with an arrow pointing down at…
“Fuck!”
James scrambled out of the shirt as both of them watched, wide-eyed. “I grabbed the first thing I saw, and it was my roommate’s, and…”
He let out a long, defeated sigh, ready to die now. “Do you have any shirts here?” Amelia asked, clearly trying not to laugh for his sake.
He almost appreciated her effort. But right now he was half-naked in the main room of his work, where he was the boss. After oversleeping by two hours. Bradley still seemed unable to think of anything to say as he tried not to stare at James, which would have almost made this nightmare worth it if James didn’t want to sink into the floor and never come out.
“Yeah,” he finally replied to Amelia. “Um, I think I’ve got one in the bedroom.”
“Go get it,” she said, voice calm despite her twitching lip. “Then go get yourself a cup of coffee and calm down. Everything’s fine.”
James nodded. “It’s fine?” he confirmed.
“Except for the part where my boss is standing shirtless in front of me,” she continued. “It’s been a completely normal morning.”
“Good.”
He turned and hurried down the hall toward the gray bedroom, where he usually kept his things. There was a button-down shirt hanging in the closet and he pulled it on gratefully. He was wearing jeans, which wasn’t the most professional, but after the show he’d put on out there, they might as well be formal wear. As he buttoned his shirt, he looked in the mirror over the dresser. And had to admit he looked like hell.
He smoothed his hair down as best he could, but there wasn’t really anything he could do about the rest of it. So he took a moment to catch his breath, then swallowed his pride and walked back out.
Amelia and Bradley were still out there and Amelia looked up as he came out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee a moment later. “I liked the other one better,” she said.
Still shaking with adrenaline, James flipped her off with his free hand, then sat down and let out a shaky breath.
“Alright,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Amelia replied. “I was being honest. There’s not really anything we can do just yet for the Jarvis Street case, so we’ve been checking in on other stuff. We’ve been looking for any bear thing sightings in the area and there’s nothing on social media. West Middlesex County has some activity over in the Minuteman National Park that they’ve got under control, but us and Suffolk County are both staying in contact with them just in case.”
“What kind of activity?” James asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Exactly what you’d expect,” Bradley said. “Revolution ghosts. But some of the musket shots seem to be real.”
James nearly choked on his coffee. “Excuse me?”
“It seems to be happening at night,” Amelia explained. “They’re getting reports of musket balls embedded in trees. No shooting actually heard the night when the team was there. But the EVPs are ridiculous. Listen to them when you get a chance.”
James was disappointed that Gabriella wasn’t still here. She’d worked the night shift with Madelyn last night, but she would have loved to stick around for something like this.
He was about to say something about it when the phone rang. James stood up to grab it, but Bradley got there first.
“North Worcester County branch,” he said.
There was a pause as he listened to the person on the other end. James strained to hear anything, but he couldn’t make out what the other person was saying. Bradley nodded as they spoke.
“Got it,” he said. “Send the details to McManus.”
He hung up and turned to James. “It’s on campus right now,” he said.
Nearly sloshing coffee on his second shirt of the day, James stood up. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Wait, what’s the plan?” Amelia asked.
Right. “All three of us go,” James said. “Stay on the comms. I know they don’t want captains in the field, but we need to cover the whole campus. Grab the tranq gun and tasers.”
“I’ll carry the gun,” Bradley muttered as he headed for the supply closet.
“No, I’ll do that,” James said, reaching past him for the small dart gun that was hanging on the wall.
He took down the gun and strapped the holster around his waist. “That reminds me,” James said quietly, adjusting the buckle on the holster strap. “We still haven’t discussed the molly.”
“My days off are my business, remember?” Bradley said.
He pulled out a taser and turned it away from both of them. He turned it on to test it and James jumped as the crackling jolt came to life for a second. Then Bradley let go and handed it off to Amelia, who took it a little sheepishly.
A few minutes later, they were in the van and Bradley was screeching through traffic on the back roads toward Fitchburg State University. The campus was located downtown in Fitchburg, the next city over, so traffic got heavier as they got closer to their destination. James shifted impatiently in the passenger seat as Amelia scrolled through social media lists.
“Yeah, the students are posting about it now,” she said. “There’s at least six photos.”
“Oh God, the Foundation is going to be pissed,” James said.
They weren’t exactly charged with keeping the paranormal a secret, but it was ideally an open secret at best. They didn’t go around advertising their work and it was going to be a lot harder to keep this off of the internet when the thing they were going after appeared to be on a squirrel-eating rampage in broad daylight.
Finally, they drove up the small hill to the campus entrance. “Where was it last seen?” James asked.
“Um…” Amelia scrolled quickly. “Natural sciences building.”
“Right.”
Before James could give Bradley directions, he turned and began driving toward that particular building. The campus was still fairly empty since the semester hadn’t started. But there were enough students around that he could tell there was a commotion as they pulled up to the curb outside of the building.
“Alright, be careful,” James said as they got out of the van. “I know things went badly last time, so just stay focused, be careful, and we’ll be done soon. The guys from Creature Containment are on their way. They said they’re about ten minutes out. We knock it out, bind it, and stay with it until they get here. Hopefully we can have it ready for them before they arrive.”
He held the dart gun by his side as they hurried down the sidewalk. Bradley and Amelia were just behind him and, based on the students hurrying down the sidewalk toward them, they were heading in the right direction.
“Don’t go over there,” one kid, a small girl in a heavy jacket despite the hot weather, said as she passed. “There’s some fucked up animal. I think the police are coming.”
“Thanks,” Amelia said to her.
James heard it as soon as they rounded the corner of the building. It was tucked at the top of the stairs, just outside of the main entrance, growling and slobbering over the tattered remains of a squirrel. But as they slowly made their way toward the staircase, the front door opened and Graham hurried out, looking at something on his phone as he headed toward the steps.
The creature’s ears perked up. Graham looked up and froze in horror as it tossed the squirrel aside and stood up to its full height, coming up to Graham’s midsection. James paused. He wanted to yell, they were so close, but doing so might make the thing charge.
But if he didn’t do something, it was going to eat his roommate. The nice one, who spotted him money for utilities and bought really good beer.
He pulled out the dart gun and aimed it at the creature, hoping the shot was as clear as it looked. But before he could pull the trigger, it jumped toward Graham.
And then Graham‘s arm moved so fast that it was blurry as he pulled out a can of pepper spray and caught the cryptid in the face.
The bear creature fell to the top of the stone steps in agony, moaning and writhing as it scraped its face against the ground in an attempt to get away from the pain. Graham hurried away from it as James ran up and shot the tranquilizer dart into the muscle of its hind leg. Seconds later, the creature fell still as the drug kicked in.
Graham stared at James, letting the hand with the pepper spray fall to his side. Slightly breathless, James looked back at him.
“Research, huh?” Graham said, raising an eyebrow.
James grimaced. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s, um, it’s hard to explain.”
Graham’s gaze moved from him to Amelia and to Bradley, then back again. “So this is what you do? Not restoration?”
“Yeah.”
“You catch monsters.”
“Kinda. I guess that’s part of it.”
“You like it?”
James shrugged. “I do, yeah.”
“Are you hiring?”
James blinked at Graham. “What?”
Graham shrugged. “Just a thought.”
“No, no, I know. I mean, I don’t know? But we’re desperate for more people, so if our Foundation will hire you, then yes please.”
Graham laughed and James joined in, knowing he sounded a little wild but not caring. “Tell you what,” he said. “Our bosses are located in Boston. Talk to them, okay?”
“Yeah,” Graham said, clapping James on the shoulder with a shaky hand. “I’ll do that.”
He glanced at his phone. “Shit, I have to get going,” he said. “I’ll talk to them when I get back from New York.”
“Good luck,” James said. “Thanks for macing our target. I’ll water your plants.”
“Thanks. Hopefully it’ll be the last trip anyway,” Graham said.
He started walking down the stairs. “Nice to meet you,” he said to Amelia. “Graham, James’s roommate.”
“Amelia,” she replied. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard stories.”
“Same.”
Graham passed Bradley and nodded. “Bradley.”
And then he hurried off. James looked at the creature, who was sleeping peacefully at his feet. It was an ugly thing, with remnants of squirrel dangling off of its lips.
“You got the restraints?” he asked Amelia.
She handed him the equipment, and he quickly tied the creature up, wincing as the bristly fur rubbed against him. It smelled terrible, like mold and blood. And now they had an audience, no matter how much Bradley tried to clear people out.
Graham would be a good addition to the team if the Foundation hired him. He was smart. And based on how he whipped out the pepper spray in the face of the paranormal, very effective. And honestly, while any warm body would be an improvement right now, Graham was sounding better and better with each moment that passed.
Finally, the converted hearse that was the Creature Containment unit’s vehicle pulled up. Two bulky men and one very small old woman got out of the car and strode over to where James, Amelia, and Bradley were waiting.
“There it is,” the first man said, shaking his head as he looked down at the sleeping creature.
“Nice aim,” the second one said to James.
“My housemate got it with pepper spray so I had the advantage.”
The man turned to Bradley. “That you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Craig, you get the cage,” the woman said. “We’ll have this fella out of your hair in a few minutes.”
“What’s going to happen to it?” James asked.
The woman looked up at him, kindness in her wrinkled face. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We look out for them. He’s gonna get tagged, checked over, and released somewhere safe.”
James didn’t realize he had actually been concerned until the relief settled in. The woman winked at him, then turned to help her crew load the creature into the car.
They drove off, leaving the three of them alone on the sidewalk. Amelia looked at James. “Graham might come work with us?” she asked.
James shrugged. “Maybe?”
They started walking toward the van. “So first your cousin, then your housemate?” Bradley said. “What’s next, McManus? Are you going to bring your mother on board?”
James hopped into the passenger seat as Bradley got into the driver’s seat and Amelia slid into the back. “Brad,” he said. “You’d be lucky to have my mom on this team.”
Amelia snickered, and Bradley rolled his eyes. As they started driving, James pulled out his phone to check his messages. He still felt a squirm of guilt for messing up this morning, and he tried to push it aside as he looked through his work email. No signs of the modules and nothing about Jarvis Street School. He’d have to turn his focus over to that one once they got back. The cryptid had been a straightforward case, but that one was getting more complicated and he really wanted it done before even more cases arrived.
