Free Nocturnal Emissions by Jeffrey Thomas Page B

felt, Maria, can’t you? Here, my brain gushed, is the Loch Ness Monster’s cousin, at last! Here is the source of the Sea Serpent, Olaus Magnus’
    Soe Orm…the Moby-Dick of every half-demented cryptozoologist like your dear old Dad. Reeking, deteriorating, but solid, corporeal, irrefutable flesh!
    The thing is greenish in color. There are fifteen segments, I would say; I’ll have to verify that. On one end, and in the middle of the body, there are about seven pairs of small nubs. These, also, are segmented…and can only be legs, suggesting a creature that dwells on the bottom of the ocean, and which with its soft body would decompose down there where no trace of it would survive to wash ashore intact, under normal conditions.
    Most amazing of all…most bizarre…is the thing’s head. Again, the body is decaying, and the animal’s features are somewhat unclear, but it has the most uncanny appearance! There are mandibles (as I assume), one above the other, and similar to the legs, which suggest a protruding human nose and chin. The thing’s mouth, a horizontal slit with lips, so help me, rests between the two protuberances. And the eyes …
    You’ve heard me say how advanced, how sophisticated, are the eyes of squid, on so primitive an animal? My dear, these eyes are even more remarkable. I could almost imagine that someone had removed them from a human being, and grafted them onto this worm-like creature.
    If you are free, I would urge you to come and share in your Dad’s adventure. It isn’t so terribly far. Well, yes, it’s about an eight hour drive, but still…you remember the way to Bar Harbor , don’t you? This is a remarkable find, Maria. At last, at long last, I have more than just plaster casts. Vague bits of hair and feces. Blurred photos, raspy recordings. This is a monster, daughter of mine. It is a sphinx, a griffin, a unicorn, as amorphous as it is. It is, in fact, the very embodiment of my life long dream.
    Call me on my cell phone. Tell me you’re coming. I’d love to see you, despite those unfounded rumors.
    – Dad.
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    To: Villa, Maria
    From: Villa, Abraham
    Subject: Synchronicity
    Date: Sunday, 4 August 2002, 4:05 PM
    You may get this email before you receive my letter of yesterday. So reading it out of context may be confusing to say the least, but I couldn’t wait to tell you of the latest development. When you get my letter, you’ll be able to piece my enthused ramblings together…
    Today, Mike Finney and I went beach-combing, so to speak, along Sand Beach in the area where the worm was discovered. Hoping to find some smaller remnants of the thing. It began pouring, like that time I hope you still recall when you and I walked along the same beach, cringing under one umbrella, and it was raining so hard that you joked (a little nervously, I’m sure) the ocean would swell and drown us. I said it was like Alice, who nearly drowned herself in her own tears because she had wept them when she was nine feet tall. Your favorite bedtime story. I remember, my love. I can still recite bits of it by heart. I know I’m embarrassing you. I know you’re rolling your eyes. Your cursor hovering toward the DELETE button. You must wait.
    You must listen…
    In the surf, half buried in a great clump of black kelp, Mike discovered what I took to be a lamp at first. Part metal, part crystal. Battered by the ocean.
    And like some indistinct animal itself, it had a kind of long tentacle growing out of its side.
    It was a hose, Maria. Mike said he saw one of these devices in Istanbul , once, where they have bars for such things if you can believe it.
    It’s a hookah.
    Do you understand what I’m saying? No, you mustn’t. You’ll know better when you read my letter. When you read about what I now think of as a caterpillar.Mike doesn’t suspect a connection between the hookah and the beached carcass. Nor do I—in a literal sense. But I believe in synchronicity. In an intri-cate cosmic web