Chapter 12
Remember when I told you about that squadron of wandering Martian death-bots swooping down in a shower of meteors into the middle of a crowded schoolyard and ray-gunning everybody into extinction? Well, they showed up while Dulsie, Dad, and I were sitting in Nora’s Diner eating ice cream.
Well, Dulsie was eating ice cream and I was watching mine melt while Dad chowed down on his deep-fried grilled cheese sandwich. He was dunking it in a bowl of homemade tomato soup between mouthfuls, drizzling soup drool and cheese strings down the steel wool tangle of his beard.
I’m not saying it was pretty.
What I’m saying is that all three of us were trying our best not to worry about Ottawa. We each did that in our own kind of way. I didn’t feel like eating, so I didn’t eat. Dad ate with the single-minded dedication of a grizzly bear getting ready for an ice-age-long hibernation. As for Dulsie, she was there just to eat ice cream and keep an eye on me, which was probably why she had painted an extra eye directly above the bridge of her nose.
Dad was working on his second sandwich when a bright, shiny, purple minivan pulled up in front of the diner.
“Look, Dad,” I said. “Tourists.”
Dad glanced up at the three strangers walking into Nora’s Diner looking as out of place as a carton of eggs at a steamroller convention. The tall one smiled nervously in Dad’s direction. He cleared his throat with an honest-to-goodness ahem.
Wow.
I thought that ahem-ing only happened in comic books.
“My name’s Bertram,” the tall one said. He pointed at the man and woman standing beside him. “This is Tim and this is Linda. Are you the town sheriff?”
Sheriff?
“I’m the police chief,” Dad said. “Sit down and join us. Nora makes a mean grilled cheese.”
“I’m sorry,” Bertram said. “But we’re vegans.”
“Does that mean you aren’t allowed to eat sandwiches?” Dad asked.
I knew better than that.
Vegans were people from Venus.
“Being vegan means you avoid anything that comes from animals, like meat or leather,” Bertram explained. “We don’t eat cheese because it comes from cows.”
Whoops.
“Nora cooks a lot more than cheese here,” Dad pointed out.
“What kind of oil does she fry with?” Bertram wanted to know.
“WD-40,” I said.
“She drains it from her pickup truck every second week or so,” Dulsie added.
Bertram looked at us with a sort of bunny-in-the-headlights stare.
I guess vegans aren’t big on bad jokes.
“So what are you folks doing in town?” Dad asked.
“We’re a team of cryptozoologists,” Bertram said in the kind of voice you’d expect a court herald to use while announcing the entrance of the Right Royal Duke of Garlic Calzone. “We investigate legendary and unexplained animals like the yeti, phantom cats, lake monsters, and sea serpents.”
Double wow.
Monster hunters.
“You know,” Linda said. “Cryptids.”
“What’s a cryptid?” Dad asked.
“A cryptid is what cryptozoologists study,” Tim explained cryptically.
That didn’t help much.
“A cryptid is an animal that has been reported to exist but whose existence has yet to be proven,” Bertram explained. “The Loch Ness Monster is a cryptid. So is the Alberta lake monster, Ogopogo.”
“Oh, you mean like Bigfoot?” Dad asked.
“The proper term is sasquatch,” Tim said.
“Don’t mind Tim,” Linda added. “He’s a stickler for detail.”
“Actually, I’m a librarian in Halifax,” Tim explained. “Bertram is a waiter, and Linda works at Woozles.”
Wow.
A cryptozoological Woozle.
“What’s Woozles?” Dad asked.
“Only the best children’s bookstore in Halifax,” Linda said with a quick grin.
“So this is just some sort of a hobby,” Dad said.
“Well, there isn’t much money in it,” Bertram said. “Still, we hope the publicity of this new sighting will help us set up a long-term study. We’ve put out a press release to newspapers across the province, and TV and radio stations.”
Wow to infinity!
A press release!
I tried very hard not to grin. My plan was working. If every monster hunter in Canada sent out enough press releases, sooner or later the tourists would have to start coming to have a look at our sea monster. We’d have tourists and money and a future and Mom would give up on her plan to move us to Ottawa.
Perfect.
“What new sighting?” Dad asked.
“The sighting of the Deeper Harbour sea monster,” Bertram said. “We received several reports on our Facebook page.”
Several?
“Oh yes,” Dad said, nodding knowingly. “It seems to me I’ve heard talk of something like that.”
For some reason, Dad was looking right at me while he said that.
“We’ll be setting up a base camp down by the shores of the harbour,” Bertram said, “if that’s all right with you.”
“It’s all right by me,” Dad said, “if you folks want to tent out on the beach and get chewed up by mosquitoes.”
Bertram gave Dad one more of those bunny-in-the-headlights stares before he, Linda, and Tim turned and left.
“Sure hope they see something worth looking at,” Dad said.
I looked over at Dulsie. She stared right back at me with all three of her eyes.
“Me too,” I said.