part0006

Every night since had been the same: I would awaken at midnight screaming for Iggy, the stuffed iguana I’d hugged as a child. Then I would lie awake for hours, continuing to scream. The man who lived in the apartment above me would also lie awake for hours, or so he told the landlord before I was forced to move to a place with a thicker ceiling.

The worrying had aged me. Not only was my voice hoarse from screaming every night, but my hair had turned white, and my face had grown deep wrinkles. My fingers had grown deep wrinkles, too, but that was because I was taking a very long shower.

I knew what I had to do. First, I needed to turn off the water. Then, I needed to travel to the St. Aves Zoo and visit the penguin exhibit. I needed to find the penguin caretaker. I needed to hear what happened next in his long, dark story.

I soon found myself driving down the winding avenue that led to the St. Aves Zoo, armed with a briefcase filled with tissues. People tell me that, because of my severe animal allergies, I should never have started a job working with zoos. “Nonsense,” I tell them. “I am not allergic to all animals, only those with fur. Or legs.” In another life, I might have worked at an earthworm farm.

But that was neither here nor there. As I stepped out of my car, I sneezed and wiped my nose on my briefcase, before opening it to grab a tissue. It was already dusk; the trip had been a long one. I stared at a menagerie of idle trucks, cranes, and bulldozers.

Earlier in the day, these vehicles must have been loud and the action chaotic. Now all was still except for an angry ostrich hopping around the vast parking lot. Any workers who had been here before were gone, as were the walls of the zoo. The entrance sign lay on the ground along with broken wire fencing and crumpled gates. I stared down at that sign, now with a big crack down the middle:

“What’s going on? Where is everyone?” I asked a tall man scurrying across the lot. He wore a safari hat, a tan hunting jacket, and a long frown.

“What does it look like?” the man replied, his frown sinking deeper into his chin. He adjusted his monocle. “Everyone is gone for the day. They will finish demolishing the zoo tomorrow.”

“The St. Aves Zoo has closed? Why?”

“Why did the Hindenburg burn? Why did the Titanic sink? Why did the Great Chicago Fire take down a city?” he asked.

“Electrostatic discharge, an iceberg, and Mrs. O’Leary’s cow,” I answered.

“Exactly,” said the man. The angry ostrich dashed toward us on its thin gray legs and pecked him.

I thought about assisting the monocle-wearing man as he sprinted across the parking lot, trailed by that deranged bird. Being pecked by an angry ostrich is no laughing matter, or at least only sort of a laughing matter. But I had more pressing concerns. I hurried into the zoo, leaping over a stack of iron posts that had once been part of the front gate and racing down a winding cobblestone path.

I knew the route well, having walked through this zoo months earlier, and every night in my nightmares since. In those dreams I would sprint past Lion Lane and Alligator Alley, past Bison Boulevard and Hippo Highway and, finally, down Penguin Pass. At the end of the pass, among faux glaciers, wacky fish slides, and ceramic walrus statues, was the world’s greatest collection of penguins. But, in my dreams, I did not find a bounty of cute waddling birds. Instead, my nightmares were infected by an abnormally large creature with blood-red eyes, bushy eyebrows, twin horns, and a desire to eat me.

A werepenguin. A creature born to terrorize the night.

The penguin exhibit I found now at the St. Aves Zoo was not the one I had dreamed of, or remembered from my previous visit. The walrus statues were gone, as were the slides. The faux glaciers were broken apart so they looked more like giant faux ice cubes. There were no penguins.

The penguin caretaker, the man I had met during my last visit, stood next to a small maintenance shack, one of the few buildings left standing. He shook his head and gripped some of the strands of black hair on his mostly bald head. He was still short and round. He still wore, as he had when I last visited, a long black overcoat, a black scarf around his neck, and a white shirt, so that, if you squinted, he looked like a penguin.

As soon as I saw him I waved, then sneezed.

“Hello, friend,” he said. “It is good to see you again.” He smiled at me but could not completely hide his distress.

“What happened here?” I asked, sniffling and gripping my tissues tightly.

“A zeppelin crashed into us, all of the zoo’s money was lost at sea after a freak iceberg boating accident, and one of the cows burned down half the zoo.”

“So I heard. But what will become of you and your birds?”

The man sighed. “Your guess is as good as mine, my friend. My birds are zoo penguins. They are not used to foraging for food or battling sea lions. But I will do what I can to help them. In a way, they are my family.”

I had been commissioned by a large zoo, a new zoo, to find the best creatures in the world for its collection. That was what had brought me here previously. I had not succeeded in procuring the St. Aves penguins then, and had not yet found penguins of equal quality.

So perhaps my coming back here had been fate! I could give these penguins a home. I could provide the St. Aves chimpanzees a home, too, and the St. Aves llamas, elephants, hyenas, okapis—although I wasn’t sure what okapis were—and all the other animals. Each and every creature would have a new place to live.

Well, every creature except that mean-spirited ostrich in the parking lot, unless it took anger management classes.

No, even it!

“Where are the penguins now?” I asked.

“In a refrigerated storage facility near the boatyard. I will join them in the morning. But where we go from there, I do not know.”

“Perhaps I could be of service to you. Do you recall why I was here last? I can escort your penguins to my zoo.”

The man arched his eyebrows. It was an impressive arch, and I was jealous because I have never been able to create eyebrow arches with any skill. Still, I took his expression as a good sign.

But before I would give his penguins a home, I needed something first.

“I must hear the rest of your story,” I said to him. When he looked puzzled, I continued. “You told me of Bolt, and how he was adopted by an evil baron and turned into a werepenguin. But the story ended with him swimming off with his penguin colony, doomed to be a werepenguin forever.”

The man nodded. “I remember.” He briefly turned away and shook his head as if to say, How could I forget?

“I must know the rest,” I answered. “Tell me the entire story, and then I will take you, your penguins, and all the other St. Aves animals to my zoo.”

“Even the mean ostrich?” he asked, and I nodded. “Your offer is beyond generous, but I cannot accept. For it is a long, dreadful story. A story best left untold; a story I would rather forget than repeat. Ask anything else of me. But do not ask me to tell that .”

I folded my arms and stomped my foot, the latter of which was a mistake since my shoes had thin soles and I stepped on a sharp rock. “That is the price of admission. You must tell me what happened after Bolt fled Brugaria.”

“Please. Anything else.”

But my tightly folded arms showed that I would not budge from my request. I stared at him firmly and then sneezed, but dared not wipe my nose and break my stern gaze.

The man bowed his head. “I will tell you about the revenge of the werepenguin. But your hair looks whiter than I remember, and the rest of you seems more wrinkly. Let me ask you this: Have you had nightmares since you saw me last?”

“Every night,” I admitted. “And I also take very long showers.”

“After hearing the rest of my tale, you may never fall asleep again.”