The Cryptid Conspiracy

# The Taxidermist's Gift The fluorescent lights in the basement of the Cryptid Museum hummed at a frequency that made Adrian's molars ache. He'd been cataloging the Himalayan wing for six hours—or maybe seven. Time moved differently down here, pooling like stump water in the corners. He stood before the Yeti display: matted fur the color of old newspaper, glass eyes that didn't track movement because they were, as his photographic memory helpfully supplied from the museum's acquisition records dated 1987, *definitely not real*. The fur had been chemically treated to look aged. He could see the inconsistency in the color saturation, could recall the exact shade from a National Geographic spread about synthetic materials used in costume design. His brain was a filing cabinet with a photographic label maker, and right now it was screaming that something didn't fit. Adrian bit the inside of his cheek. Blood, thin and metallic, pooled against his molars. "You're doing it again," Elena said from the doorway. He didn't turn around. Elena had a way of materializing when he was on the edge of something, like his anxiety was a beacon. They'd worked together for three months—Elena, a research assistant who actually went outside and talked to people without sweating through her shirt—and she'd learned to read the set of his shoulders. "The Yeti is synthetic," Adrian said. "But the acquisition records list it as authentic. Purchased from a Sherpa guide in Kathmandu in '87. That's... that's not right." Elena stepped closer. Her reflection in the glass case appeared exactly where it should be, a half-second after her actual movement. Adrian's breath caught. He watched the reflection again. No. No, it was normal. Probably. The lights down here were making him see things that weren't there. "Dr. Voss said all the displays were verified," Elena offered, but her voice had that careful quality it got when she was lying for his benefit. "Dr. Voss says a lot of things." The museum's curator was a soft-spoken man in his sixties with the kind of face that suggested he'd never experienced a strong emotion in his life. But Adrian had photographic recall, and last week he'd noticed Voss standing alone in the main gallery at 2 AM, staring at the Chupacabra case with an expression that looked like grief. Or maybe hunger. Adrian wasn't good at faces. Faces were complicated. Faces lied. But physical evidence didn't. Adrian turned to Elena. "I need you to help me with something." "Adrian, no. Whatever you're thinking—" "The research library. From the original estate. It was supposed to be sealed during the 1994 renovation. They found it, didn't they? It has to still be here somewhere. If the displays are being replaced with forgeries, then the original documentation—" "Is probably destroyed," Elena finished. She looked away. "Adrian, if Voss finds out you're investigating—" "Then we don't let him find out." The museum had closed at six. It was now 11:47 PM, according to the battery-powered watch Adrian wore because he didn't trust his phone's time. Didn't trust phones. Didn't trust most things, really, but facts were reliable. Data didn't lie. Data couldn't hide in the shadows of poorly lit basement corridors. They started in the east wing, running their hands along walls that felt simultaneously too warm and too cold, the kind of temperature that made your nerve endings report conflicting data. Adrian's photographic memory supplied the blueprints from the renovation plans he'd memorized three weeks ago. The library should have been somewhere behind the current Cryptid Artifacts display, a room roughly twelve by fifteen feet, sealed with plaster and determination. The wall was smooth. Seamless. Professionally done. "Maybe they really did destroy it," Elena whispered. Her voice sounded thin down here, undernourished. Adrian's eye twitched. He could feel the edge of something large and terrible approaching, like a weather system moving toward him from the horizon. His hands had started to shake. "No. No, it's here. It has to be here. The documentation, the original observations from—" "Adrian, breathe." He breathed. In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth. In through the nose. His therapist had given him the technique. It didn't help, but it was something to do with his hands besides clenching them into fists. "The ventilation system," Adrian said suddenly. "The original blueprints show an air intake duct that would have serviced that room. It has to connect somewhere." Elena looked at him with an expression that made him want to apologize for existing. "That could be anywhere in this building." "No. It can't." Adrian closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids, the blueprints resolved themselves with perfect clarity. He could see the ductwork, could trace it through three floors of the building, could follow it to the laundry room where it emerged from the wall above the ancient industrial dryer that nobody used. "It's in the laundry room." They moved through the museum's corridors like ghosts, or like people who believed they were being watched and wanted to prove it. The walls seemed to remember them passing. Adrian could have sworn he heard footsteps behind them, the whisper of movement in the darkness, but when he turned around, there was nothing. Nothing but the delayed reflection in the glass cases they passed, images that appeared just a fraction too late, as if the mirrors themselves were processing what they'd seen. The laundry room smelled like mildew and the ghost of detergent from a century ago. Adrian found the ductwork intake exactly where his memory insisted it should be. Above the dryer. The duct itself was painted over, hidden in plain sight, but he could feel the seam if he ran his fingers along it. Elena produced a knife from her jacket pocket. Adrian didn't ask why she was carrying a knife. Elena carried a lot of things that didn't make sense until suddenly they did. The plaster came away in chunks. Behind it, the duct opened into darkness that smelled like paper and secrets and something else. Something that made the back of Adrian's neck prickle. He pulled himself up and through. The library was smaller than the blueprints suggested, compressed by time or the weight of all those years sealed inside. Books lined the walls, their leather bindings cracked and bleeding leather dust. A writing desk sat in the corner, piled with journals and loose papers covered in handwriting that became increasingly erratic as Adrian scanned them. He didn't need to read them carefully. His photographic memory was already recording everything: the dates, the sketches of creatures that matched nothing in the museum's catalogs, the repeated references to something called "the watching." One journal fell open in his hands—literally fell, as if it wanted to be read. The entry was dated November 3rd, 1889. *They are not what we thought. The creatures are not animals that have evaded science. They are something else. Something that was here before us. Something that has always been watching. And they are waiting for something. God help me, I think they are waiting for us to remember.* Adrian's hands had stopped shaking. Now his entire body felt hollowed out, replaced with something cold and vast. The manic clarity had arrived, that brief window of time where everything made sense, where all the disconnected pieces of information in his brain suddenly formed a pattern so large and terrible that he had to sit down on the floor or risk falling. "Adrian?" Elena's voice was very far away. "Adrian, what's down there? What do you see?" He didn't answer because he couldn't answer. He was too busy looking at the sketches in the journal, the ones that matched exactly—perfectly, without variation—the creatures depicted in the museum's "authentic" displays. The Yeti. The Chupacabra. The Mothman. The ones that Voss had been replacing with forgeries. Not replacing. Hiding. Adrian's photographic memory supplied the answer before his conscious mind could form the question: Voss had removed the real exhibits and replaced them with fakes. Not to fool the public. To fool the creatures themselves. To make them believe that the evidence of their existence had been erased. To make them think that they were forgotten. But the creatures weren't the ones who needed convincing, were they? Adrian stood up. He was holding the journal. He didn't remember picking it up. "We need to go," he said. "We need to go right now." Elena was waiting at the ductwork opening. "What happened? What did you find?" Adrian climbed through, his movements mechanical, and when he looked at Elena's reflection in the glass case behind her, it was looking back at him. Not a half-second delayed. Watching. "Adrian—" "Don't," he said. "Don't say anything. Don't ask questions. We just need to get the journal out of the building, and then we need to find someone who can explain why Dr. Voss has been systematically replacing authentic evidence of creatures that are apparently real with elaborate forgeries designed to convince those creatures that we've forgotten about them." Elena's expression shifted. The careful lie-face dissolved. "You don't understand what you're dealing with," she said quietly. Adrian looked at his friend—former friend, maybe—and felt the hollow acceptance settling over him like ash. "No," he said. "I really don't. But I'm going to. I'm going to remember everything, and then I'm going to figure out what they want. What the creatures are waiting for." "Adrian, please—" He was already moving toward the stairs, the journal clutched against his chest, his photographic memory recording every detail of Elena's expression so he could examine it later when he was alone and the walls had stopped remembering things he didn't want to know. Behind him, in the laundry room, he heard the sound of the ventilation duct sliding shut with a soft, final click. The fluorescent lights upstairs hummed their three-AM frequency. Adrian climbed toward them anyway.