Page 4 of Strange Lights

“Eldi,” I snap, tapping my wrist. “Potty watch.”

Her eyes go wide and alarmed, and she hops back inside the Winnebago. Calvin shakes his head like he’s clearing a troubling thought from his mind. Eldi reappears as quickly as she disappeared, this time with Goat in tow and her watch strapped around her wrist. It’s as if her first appearance never happened.

“Morning, Eldi,” Calvin says cheerfully. “How’s Goat?”

“Dead,” Eldi says ominously. I choke on my coffee, torn between annoyance and hysterical laughter.

“Lovely,” Calvin says, remaining unfazed as Eldi glares at him before she wanders to the edge of our campsite and plops in the dirt, digging aimlessly.

Eldi’s watch came with her. It looks like a watch for a toddler, the kind with a timer to remind them to use the toilet for potty training. But this thing isn’t an ordinary timepiece. I can’t figure out much about it⁠—it’s nearly as mysterious as Eldi⁠—but I know it must be some sort of cloaking device. When she wears it, no one questions why she has fangs and reflective eyes. And, more importantly, why she never grows. It’s been a couple years since Calvin’s met her, and he’s never once wondered why she stays perpetually the size and shape of a two-year-old.

I don’t know if the device has made an exception for me or whether that’s Eldi’s own doing, or if there’s something innate about me that lets me see past her mask. I would ask Calvin to help me find the answers, but that would open a Pandora’s box of even more questions, questions I don’t want to deal with. Plus, I’m still not sure how much I trust him. We’re friends maybe, but if he went public with Eldi, outed her on his podcast as he’d surely do, well . . . I don’t want to think about who’d come after Eldi, and who would come after me.

“So a haunted vacuum and a Chupacabra, eh?” Calvin says. “Think the werewolves in Yellowstone will wait?”

“Absolutely, we have a whole moon cycle,” I quip, with only a little tinge of unease at leaving an epidemic unchecked.

Calvin laughs softly.

I don’t tell him the truth. Moon cycles don’t affect werewolves at all. That would be ridiculous.

Interlude

Mangy Coyotes & Escaped Lab Experiments

Transcribed excerpt from The Debunker podcast archives:

Calvin: The Chupacabra is one of my favorite monsters. Maybe it’s because my parents own one of those little hairless dogs that, from a distance, you might assume is a small iguana. He could easily be mistaken for a bloodsucking monster if you met him in a dark alleyway. They’ve even named him Chuppy in honor of his beastly doppelgänger.

The Chupacabra, or the English translation, the Goat Sucker, is most notable for leaving its victims completely drained of blood. It seems to prefer small farm animals, especially goats. Hence the name.

The Chupacabra is a modern-day cryptid that first appeared in Puerto Rico in the mid-1970s. It’s subsequently cropped up all over since its popularization in the 1990s: Mexico, Chile, Texas, Florida. Chupacabras have been spotted as far north as Maine in the United States, and even in other countries across the globe.

The nature of the Chupacabra varies wildly, depending on who you ask: escaped lab experiment gone wrong, extraterrestrial, a plain old vampire.

One aspect of the story I find most intriguing, though, is the consistency of the sightings. Almost all the reports tell of a similar creature. Reptile-like with glowing red eyes and grayish, scaly skin. Some even claim it’s beautiful, with an iridescent tone to its scales. Scales that can shift colors like an octopus. A ridge of spikes running from head to tail, long fangs, and a forked tongue in a snout-like jaw. Sharp claws on overlarge hands and feet. It has the ability to travel bipedally, although it seems to prefer to travel on all four limbs.

Sounds at least as cute and cuddly as my parents’ dog. Sorry to throw you under the bus, Chuppy, but we have to face the fact: Lovable as you are, you’re not winning any beauty contests.

Although I may claim to love the story of the Chupacabra, don’t make the mistake of thinking I believe the Chupacabra exists in its fully fledged monster form that’s well known today. I will admit, the consistent descriptions do sound like they could originate from a biological entity, a flesh-and-blood creature.

But the videos I’ve seen clearly show mangy coyotes and hairless dogs. The DNA inevitably proves only the existence of known canids. You can even see the purple collar on one monster in a popular video floating around. Have you ever seen a picture of a mangy bear? Terrifying, but no monster. It’s always going to be something mundane, not monstrous.

As for the cattle mutilation and the lack of blood in the bodies, this is a case of natural predation appearing creepy and unnatural to the untrained eye. There are too many natural explanations, no matter how unsavory or unpalatable to our sensibilities.

Vampires really exist. But they’re merely another of Mother Nature’s inventions, nothing supernatural. Vampire bats, for example, are actual creatures that could account for the puncture marks and bloodletting. Carrion birds go for the soft eyes first. Hell, there’s even a vampiric bird that lives on the Galápagos Islands. Coyotes, big cats, they know to go in through the other, ahem, soft orifices first. What predator isn’t going to head straight for the juicy and nutrient-packed internal organs?

I know I said “to the untrained eye,” but honestly, even to the trained eye, if you’re looking for the Chupacabra, you’re going to find it. And that’s on confirmation bias.

3

Rogue Roombas

The Chupacabra in Illinois takes all of an hour to debunk. A missing-pet poster and half a hot dog in a live trap later, and the suburbs of Rockford, Illinois, are free from the terror of a bloodsucking nocturnal monster. Or at least free from a scrawny purebred Chinese Crested named Biscotti who has an unfortunate habit of squeezing between fence posts to roam the neighborhood.

I make Calvin keep the shivering, snarling little creature in his Airstream for the rest of the night before returning it to its owners the next morning, since this is technically his case and therefore his problem. He doesn’t seem to mind the mutt. His taste in pets has serious flaws.

I also make sure Eldi stays inside while we’re there. With much grumbling, she eats the overpriced and potentially questionable steak tartare I hunt down for her. But she doesn’t actually fight me too hard on this. She knows she’d be in danger if she were discovered. I’m not sure what she went through before she showed up on my doorstep, but it was something bad.