Chasing Cthulhu (Urf Oomons #2)
: Chapter 4

It’s been three days since the incident, and I haven’t seen the tentacle monster. If I didn’t have videos and photos from when I was trying to document it as a new species, I would think that I had imagined it all. But I do have the videos and photos. I keep reviewing them over and over. Now that I know what I’m looking at because I’ve seen it in the light of day, it’s easy to make sense of the thing. The video is good, but it really doesn’t give the whole picture.

This is just amazing. I’m tempted to load a short video up on Tik-Tok just to ask people what they think. Am I going crazy, or will they see this, too?

But, of course, I’m not going to do that. I could just picture this creature going viral and tons of people looking for it. It would be like the Bigfoot of the ocean. And what if someone did find it? They wouldn’t just leave it alone, they would try to catch it.

And social media is what got me into my current situation. There is no reason on this earth for me to log back on.

I close my laptop and look out the window facing the driveway. That big truck is still there. I still have no idea what happened to those guys and no, I have not reported the incident to the police. First, what exactly am I going to say? “These two guys grabbed me and knocked me out somehow, then they disappeared, and I woke up to find my dog attacking a tentacle monster, who I shooed back into the ocean.” Secondly, my experiences with reporting stuff to the police have been very negative so far. At best, they’ve been totally useless, at worst, they low-key blame me for whatever is going on.

I do contact the owner of this rental to have that truck towed, though. Just so I don’t have to keep seeing it.

When the tow comes, the guy sees me lounging by the pool and comes over to ask, “This your truck?”

“No, I don’t know whose it is.” One hundred percent true.

“Ok, well, I’ve been asked to tow it by the property owner,” he explains like I might object.

“Good. Thanks,” I reply. I look up at him from my book. He looks exactly like you might expect a tow truck driver to look. White guy with a dadbod, sunglasses, scraggly brown hair, T-shirt, jeans, and scuffed work boots.

This guy isn’t making me uncomfortable at all and it’s a stark contrast to how I was immediately creeped out by those other two guys even before they got out of their truck. Maybe I have better intuition than I thought, and I should trust it from now on.

He starts to head back toward his tow truck, but then he stops and comes back over to me to ask, “Have you seen anything weird lately?”

“Huh?” I ask. How does he know?

“There’s been a few UFO sightings in the area, you know? Like legit ones, in the news and everything.” He looks a bit embarrassed asking about it.

“UFOs,” I repeat slowly. “No, I haven’t seen anything like that.”

He shrugs. “Well, you should keep a look out,” he tells me then turns back to his truck. “This place is smack dab in the middle of all of it.”

As the guy is pulling the pickup onto the bed of the tow truck, I pull out my phone. I had all the notifications turned off so I could relax on this vacation. Even after everything that’s happened, I’m still trying to stick to that rule. No social media, no news, nothing like that. But I turn it on and search “UFO Florida Keys” and sure enough, the tow truck guy is right. There have been a whole lot of sightings of flying saucer-looking things. Back when the pandemic first started there were a few news articles about UFOs being sighted and government agencies corroborating it, but I wasn’t really paying attention to all that. I guess UFOs, aliens, and stuff like that are real things now, not just conspiracy stuff.

Huh. Aliens.

So, it could be that the tentacle monster isn’t really an undiscovered species that just happened to make its home in this cove. It would make a lot more sense that it is an alien somehow connected to these UFOs.

I would like to get another look at it because it did look more like a monstrous person than an animal. Its head and upper torso looked very human-ish.

I glance over to where the driver is strapping the pickup onto the flatbed of his tow truck, and I see something move behind him on the dock. I squint and shade my eyes to see better and it’s a bald man coming out of the water.

No, not a man. It’s the tentacle monster/alien. It’s bobbing in the water, then grabbing onto the dock. The tow truck guy isn’t facing the right way, but there’s a real possibility that he’s going to turn and see this monstrous thing coming out of the water.

And then what will happen?

My heart rate picks up and I tense with worry. Will the guy scream? Call the police or the news?

I don’t know what I want to happen. This has had me stymied for the past few days. I can’t come to a decision about this tentacle monster situation and if this guy sees it, then it’s out of my hands, isn’t it?

It has pulled itself out of the water and is coming up onto the rocky shore by the dock. I’m suddenly glad that I left Peach in her crate inside. Otherwise, she would be barking up a storm and drawing attention to the creature.

“Ma’am?”

I startle because the tow truck guy has snuck up on me.

“Yeah?” I ask dumbly.

“Here’s my card in case they come looking for their truck.” With that, he hands me a business card.

“Oh, ok. Thanks.” I take the card.

“You take care now.” He tips his hat and I nod back.

The tentacle monster is just standing there on the dock, and I can see that all of its tentacles are kind of moving around even though the top part is standing still. I’m sure the tow truck guy is going to turn and see it.

He doesn’t, he hops right into his tow truck and drives off. Must not have looked back once because the tentacle monster is right-frickin-there. And now I’m alone with it. This was not great planning on my part. I should have said something, kept that guy from driving off.

What do I do now?

I just stand here by the pool, staring through the fence at it for a full minute. It doesn’t come any closer.

Lifting my phone, I start snapping pictures. Then I switch to video.

It waves at me. I swear to God. He moves his hand through the air in a wave just like a human person would do.

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I wave back, holding the phone steady, and yell, “Hello!”

It responds but in a kind of bubbly hiccup sound. Huh, maybe some sort of alien language?

“Can you understand me?” I ask carefully.

It nods, but not very naturally. Its chin moves down too far then up too high, like an exaggerated mimicry of a nod.

Unlatching the gate, I step through, a few feet closer to it.

“Are you an alien?”

Another careful nod.

Wow. Well, that settles that. Here I am making contact with an honest-to-goodness alien. I wonder if anyone will ever believe this? But I suddenly recall Peach and the cut above her eye, and I ask angrily, “Why did you hurt my dog?”

It holds dangerously clawed hands up and I step back behind the fence, but it’s shaking its head back and forth, this gesture more natural than the nodding. It’s burbling in its alien language and its whole demeanor is one of denial.

“You didn’t hurt Peach?”

Careful nod.

“Then who did?”

It waves toward where that pickup truck had been parked.

“The two men who came in that truck?”

Another nod.

“And what happened with them?”

Burbling emphatically, the alien waves its clawed hands. Its skin, previously a dull gray is darkening to black. Around its neck, there is a red splotch that’s spreading across its shoulders. Two tentacles wave up in front of its torso and then slap together once, twice, then make a hurling motion toward the other side of the property where the back yard faces the open ocean.

Holy shit. “You did that?”

A nod. Its color is washing out, returning to shark-gray.

“Are they dead then?”

Emphatic nod.

I glance down at the phone. It’s still pointed at the alien, still recording. I can’t believe I now have a recording of an alien confessing to murder. This is wild.

“Why would you kill them?” I ask breathlessly.

Burbling sounds.

It makes a beseeching gesture toward me and a couple tentacles wave toward where the truck had been, then more burbling sounds.

So, I guess this giant, terrifying alien was protecting me? What am I supposed to do with that? I sure as heck didn’t ask it to murder anyone.

“Um.” I think hard for an appropriate response because I don’t want to offend this violent alien. “Thanks?”

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