"The kids are upstairs, in Children's," I said.
She nodded. "What are your plans for Sunday?"
I hesitated. This is the way she gets me into home repair, or a three-hour trip to Wal-Mart, or something. "I don't think I have anything going on."
"My cousin is in Maryland. He's up for the week. Want to go and visit?"
"You mean, drive clear to Maryland....."
"I was thinking we could go down Saturday night, after you're finished work," she said. "Find a hotel in Frederick and stay overnight. We can get together with my cousin Sunday."
I considered it. Short notice, but I had nothing going. It kind of reminded me of the stuff we used to do when we were first married, before careers and kids. Taking off for no reason, going exploring just because.
I smiled. "Why not? I'm in."
I walked into the house with the groceries, dropping them on the counter. Paul ran into the kitchen to greet me.
"Hi, Daddy! Are we going on alien patrol tonight?"
"Yes we are, little man. But give me a minute first, okay? Gotta look something up."
I went upstairs to my office. About ninety-six hours to find and plan an adventure in Frederick, Maryland. There had to be something fun I could look into.
I dropped at my desk and pulled out some books. I got The Field Guide To North American Monsters, I got Weird Maryland. I paged through with more interest than I ever had in my college textbooks, looking for something good.
I found it in Weird Maryland.
The Snallygaster.
"The Snallygaster," I said to Tif. "I've always wanted to go after the Snallygaster."
"And what's the Snallygaster?" Tif asked. I was sitting on the porch steps. She and Paul were floating in the pool, because it was about ninety degrees out. I'd found them there when I'd arrived home from my staff meeting, which had been inexplicably short.
"I'm not sure if you'd classify it under a cryptid or an enigmatic entity," I said,"But it's sort of the official state monster of Maryland. Stories go back about two hundred years---It's a sort of dragon thing with wings, a beak, teeth, and tentacles. Almost like it's winning a strangeness contest with the Jersey Devil. They were sighted during the Civil War, and often during Prohibition. Been reading about it for years, but I didn't realize it's more or less specific to Frederick."
"And you're going to investigate this thing?"
"I've had worse Saturday nights."
I walked inside, and up to my office. I got my copy of Weird Maryland and brought it down, showing it to her.
"I need a little break from all the UFOs," I said.
"You own a copy of Weird Maryland?" she asked. "You don't live in Maryland."
"Yes, but I may visit. This came in a set with Weird Virginia. Here, page seventy-two---Here's the Snallygaster."
I showed her the picture. It depicted a weird-looking creature with tentacles and wings. "Mom will never let you get one of those in the Prius," she said.
"Maybe a little one."
"Yay! We are in the hotel!" Paul dropped his backpack, and climbed up on the bed. Paul loves hotels; he treats them with a reverence reserved for sacred ground. We don't even have to be doing anything exciting; just the simple fact of a hotel is enough for him.
I set down my bag. "Tonight, we do the alien patrol in Maryland, little man. And I have an added surprise for you."
"What?"
"Here in Frederick is the home of a creature known as the Snallygaster. It's a sort of dragon thing with a beak. We're going to go look for that when we're out."
"Okay! You want to go now?"
"Let me just get washed up." I pulled my crytopzoology kit out of my bag, and slung it over my shoulder. "Give me just a minute."
Paul and I got off the elevator in the lobby---Like all preschoolers, Paul is the only one permitted to press elevator buttons. Two women were working the front desk; I walked up and leaned on the desk.
"Can I help you, sir?" one of them asked.
I've long since gotten over feeling stupid asking about this stuff. I said,"I'm a writer, dealing largely with paranormal occurrences."
"Paranormal....ooooh." She seemed impressed.
"My son and I are looking into a creature from around here," I said. "It's a sort of weird-looking dragon that's been sighted in Frederick. Are you familiar with the Snallygaster?"
They glanced at each other and gave me blank looks. "No," she said. "I've never heard of that."
The other one shook her head. I said,"Okay, then. Thanks."
Paul and I walked out the door. I said,"Nice night for this. Not too hot. North is that way, it's about nine-thirty."
"There's the moon," said Paul.
"It's almost full. Couple more days."
We walked through the parking lot, around the building, until Paul said,"Daddy? I'm scared. I want to go back inside."
"What's wrong, little guy?"
"I'm scared of the Snallygaster."
"Hey, it's okay. Don't worry." I knelt down and hugged him. "Don't worry, buddy. Look, nothing's going to hurt us. The Snallygaster is probably just a story. Sometimes these things turn out to be real, or sort of real, like the Mothman. Sometimes they just turn out to be old stories somebody made up, and it's our job to find that out, too."
"Okay."
"We'll do one run around the building, check for aliens, see if we can pick out our room, and then go in. Okay?"
'Okay."
"Come on, little man. Let's look for aliens."
Middle of the night. I woke up in the hotel. I'm at that age where I don't sleep through the night like I used to. Little by little, I'm turning into my father. Except cooler. I padded over to the bathroom, and then set down in the chair by the window for a while. I was wearing my Lake Erie Monster pajamas.
The clerks hadn't heard of the Snallygaster. Neither had the maid I'd asked on the way back in. So what did that tell me? Usually, people in these places are very familiar with the local legends, and willing to share. The people in Erie had been very open about the vampire grave. Up in Salem, you can't get them to shut up about witches. But nobody here knew what I was talking about.
So what did it mean?
"Can you connect to the internet on that thing?"
My wife was sitting on the bed with her phone. She looked up at me. "Sure. Why?"
I was pacing the room with my coffee. We'd slept until nine-ish and then hit the lobby for the free coffee, and went back to the room to pack up. I hate smart phones; I absolutely despise them. The words in any language do not exist to explain just how much I hate those things. But I'm not above letting someone else use one for me, if pressed.
"Find out something for me. Check and see if Maryland is a red state or a blue state."
"You mean, who they voted for...."
"Yeah. Find that out."
She began tapping on her little screen, a gesture that is foreign to me. "You planning to boycott the whole state, or what?"
"No, just some research. The Snallygaster has a tendency to show up in times of national crisis, and the legend sort of keeps things under control. During the Civil War, stories of it were used to frighten escaped slaves. In Prohibition, Snallygaster sightings were used to scare the feds away from stills. In fact, there was a story of a Snallygaster drowning in a whiskey vat. We're sure as hell in crisis now, and I wondered about that."
Michelle looked up. "They voted for Hillary."
"Hmm. Odd. How about just Frederick County? Can you find that?"
She looked for a moment more, and then said,"This county? Trump."
I nodded. "That explains a lot. It's why nobody I talk to has heard of this thing; usually that's not the case. The legend gets popular in times of crisis, but Frederick County doesn't feel like it's in crisis. They support Trump, the dumb bastards."
"The legend really works like that?"
"It's not the first time a president has played into it. Teddy Roosevelt hunted the Snallygaster in 1909."
Paul was leaning against the window. "Daddy! I'm looking for the Snallygaster out in the trees!"
"Good, little guy. You keep an eye out. We have a surprise for you on the way home."
"What is it?"
"You'll see."
Paul was splashing in the pool of the other hotel, where we'd met up with Michelle's cousin Michael. The little guy had been desperate to go in a pool somewhere, and Michael's hotel was much nicer than ours. This can happen when the company is paying for it. This may surprise you, but nobody goes into the field of either paranormal investigation or freelance writing to get rich.
"So what do you do?" he asked me. He'd been talking about trucking for half an hour, which I really didn't mind. I'd spent the time sipping a glass of water with lemon and relaxing.
"Little of everything, more or less," I said. "Librarian, writer, tour guide, paranormal investigator."
"I envy you," he said. "Love the paranormal TV shows. Ever see Bigfoot?"
"Not really, but I'm not ruling it out, either. Remember, panda bears, platypuses, and gorillas were all considered mythical until someone actually captured one. I don't know for sure about Bigfoot either way, but I'm not going to commit and say he's definitely not real."
"Ever catch any ghosts?"
"Occasionally. More often, I find some conclusion that fits what we know. That's the thing with paranormal investigation---You check every possibility, and try to rule things out. Sometimes you wind up with a mystery, but I'd just as soon solve one."
You can get from most of Pennsylvania to most of Maryland by simply staying on Highway 15. We were riding up the highway in the afternoon, going north, heading back home. Paul was in the back, amusing himself by asking,"What's my surprise?"
"You'll see in a minute, little man," I said. "We're almost there."
I looked over to the east, along the mountain range, and pointed. "Lenticular cloud." It was a big, lens-shaped cloud over the horizon. "You remember I mentioned them when I talked about Hiram Cranmer last week? That's what he was looking at."
"Oh, yeah," Michelle said. "I've never seen one before."
"They're fairly uncommon. A lot of people mistake them for UFOs, especially around sunset."
"I don't blame them."
"Must be some turbulence over the mountain."
I watched the cloud as we rode past, going north.
"Here's your surprise, Paul," I said as we turned into the park.
Paul looked over the playground. "Aww....There's no slide."
"Oh, guess again, pal." I got out of the car as we parked, and let him out the back door. "That big, tall thing there? That's the slide."
He gasped, looking at it. The thing looked like a covered bridge set up on one end, and had to be sixty feet tall. He said,"Can I go on it?"
"Of course, little man. That's why we came."
He ran for the entrance, and I followed. I asked him,"You want me to come with you?"
Paul looked up the slide. "Maybe the first time."
We walked up the ramp to the top of the slide, sat down, and looked down. The slide reached out below us, stretching down to the ground.
I looked at Paul.
"You ready?"
He grinned.
"Yeah!"
And we launched.
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