Cryptid Summer: Release The Hound

Jeremiah Church founded Lock Haven. He also founded two other towns, plus Clinton County, traveled the country, and raised a daughter. He accomplished all this because he was smart enough to avoid staff meetings.

"We're reopening in June," said the Boss. "Now that the mask mandate has been lifted and staff is almost fully vaccinated, the board is discussing a full reopening."

I was sitting at the table between Tracey and Barb, my folder in front of me with the UFO stickers on it. I'd been scribbling notes, but they were mostly about Bigfoot, so I almost missed it when the Boss said,"Lou, do you have anything?"

"Well, scavenger hunt upcoming," I said. "And I'm bringing back the tours this summer. I'm excited about that. With the summer reading theme being animals, I have some good stuff coming up, but I'll get to that later."

"Oh, come on," said Mel. "Don't leave us hanging! Give us a few details."

"Yeah, Lou, don't be a tease," said Jim.

I laughed. "Okay, fair enough. I have a couple of animal photo shows, and a class on how to investigate cryptids. I asked the Boss if, for our purposes, cryptids count as animals, and she agreed. I assume she actually listened to the question. So I'll be teaching how to investigate monsters. A summer of cryptids."

"Oh, that's cool," said Mel.

"I'm also planning some bird watching, and I'm working on an event involving the water creature in the Susquehanna," I said. "But I'm not quite there yet."

I did what I always do after a staff meeting. I walked down the main stairs one floor, and then disappeared into the old section of the building. Once an old house, it was full of winding halls and odd staircases. One of these deposited me in my office, right behind my desk.

Which had a stack of yearbooks on it, old ones from Lock Haven High. They hadn't been there when I'd arrived an hour ago, so I followed procedure and shouted,"Okay, who put the yearbooks on my desk?"
"That was me," said Jayne, who was shelving over in large print. "Someone came in and donated them. I thought you might need them."

"I'll check and see what we already have," I said.

I walked back to the circulation area, where Tracey was hard at work doing something. I don't pretend to understand what it is Tracey does. I checked the yearbook shelves, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that we were missing a couple of the ones that had been donated. I filed them on the shelf.

Taking the other two, I walked back out to Jayne. "Good news. We needed two of those; we didn't have Forty-Nine and Fifty-Two. I'm taking the others to the attic as spares."

"Have fun."

I love the library's attic. It's a hundred and thirty-four years old, and looks about that old. It's got all the unused and spare stuff we have stored in there someplace, including a ton of books and files that don't work in the Pennsylvania Room. I added the remaining yearbooks to the stack.

The shelf of Keystone Folklore Quarterly magazines caught my eye, and I pulled a couple down to look at. What the hell, I wasn't all that busy today.

I paged through. Keystone Folklore Quarterly is an old magazine dedicated to old legends; I'd gotten some good stuff out of there before. I found an entire issue devoted to stories from an African-American family descended from escaped slaves. They had some good ghost stuff in there, some interesting old mythical stuff. I read one where a man named Thomas Wood had been buried in a cemetery, and his spirit had turned into a dog to roam the place.

That actually sounded local. Some of the details seemed to match up. I took the magazine downstairs.

I checked the index card for for a Thomas Wood. There was one who had died in the late 1800s, buried in Drury's Run. I pulled the Chapman Township cemetery index and found him---Section Five.

Huh. A graveyard dog.

I've always wanted one of those.

I went downstairs and checked my cell phone. There was a sixty-second message I listened to. Zach was on desk.

"You'll never guess who I just got a message from," I said.

"Who?"

"You remember a couple of years ago, this insane drunk woman came in with a bunch of photos of ghosts and UFOs she wanted me to---"

"Oh god. How did she get your cell number?"

"It's generally printed with my columns. At the time, she claimed that she had photos of the paranormal, but you had to have the same eyeglass prescription to view them."

Zach laughed. "I don't remember that part."

"Yeah, that may have happened after you ran out of the room. Not that I blame you. I will admit, though, that it's nice of the Annual Summer Nutcase to call first."

I went upstairs. I didn't want to be around people for this next part. Every summer, we get at least one lunatic who comes in and causes a scene. They tend to return all summer, say and do all sorts of crazy things, and because I'm a paranormal investigator, they cling to me. A couple of years ago, we'd had a weird guy in white robes come in venting about the government. Last year, we'd had a homeless guy trying to sleep on the picnic tables who'd swear at you when you told him he wasn't allowed. They never went away on their own, so I had to get this next part over with.

I called back. The phone picked up, went immediately to hold, and then came up with a TV blasting in the background. "Yeah?"

"Hi, this is Lou....You left a---"

"Oh, yeah! Thanks for calling me back!" At least she sounded somewhat sober this time. "You remember me? It was, what, two or three years ago when I came in and showed you some pictures. You said you couldn't see it unless you wore my glasses."

"That's not actually how I remember the conversation going."

"I just got off the phone with NASA. They told me to find a local paranormal investigator to look at my pictures. Do you know anyone?"

"Uh....."

"I mean, I guess I could call the newspapers....."

"They'd just refer you to me. I tend to be the big name around here for the paranormal; everyone you talk to will tell you to contact me. I'll tell you what. If you'd like to bring the photos back in, I'll take a look and get a statement from you."

"Oh, that'd be great! I'll come in as soon as I can," she said. "Thanks so much for returning my call. Everyone else tells me I'm nuts."

"Your children," Michelle said as I sat down to dinner,"Used your sound-thingie in the yard today."

'The rifle microphone?" I asked.

Paul nodded. "Yeah."

"What were you using that for?"

"To listen for the ice cream truck."

"Well," I admitted,"That is an appropriate use of the rifle microphone." I turned to Biz, sitting next to me. "You know anything about graveyard dogs?"

"The legend, you mean? Or the band?"

"There's a band?"

"I don't know. Probably. I know a little about graveyard dogs. They're usually ghost dogs that stand guard over a cemetery, also called grims. They come from a dog---Or maybe a person whose ghost took the form of a dog---The first burial in the cemetery, usually on the north side."

"Why are you asking about graveyard dogs?" Tif asked me.

"Think I found one in Renovo."

The phone rang. I walked into the other room---I still have a phone in the other room---And picked it up. It was Chris.

"Hey, Lou," he said. "You know that article you wrote for the Express on the mine accident in Bitumen in 1888?"

"Yeah, it ran last Saturday."

"There's been some talk online about it. Some people in a Bitumen group are criticizing it; they want to know where you got the photo of the mine that ran with it."

"Hell, that was a stock photo the art director chose to fill space."

"A lot of people in the Bitumen group are debating whether it's a real photo of a Bitumen mine. They're kind of upset that you didn't reach out to them and use a historic photo."

"Hell, I don't do photos. I write a hundred articles a year; I let the editor handle the graphics."

"You want me to add you to the group so you can respond?"

"Hell no. I avoid online groups as a way of handling my own blood pressure. I'll let them work it out; they don't need any comment from me."

Chris laughed. "Okay, then. You in the library tomorrow? I need to come in and do some research."

"I should be, yeah."

It was a Tuesday when we fully opened the library for the first time in a year. I was wearing my cryptids mask and the shirt with nine different monsters on it.

"I'm going out for my break," said Zach. "Back in half an hour."

"Have fun. That leaves me remarkably unsupervised."

Zach grinned. "Don't burn the place down, that's all we ask."

"No promises."

With Zach gone, I was the only person in the library at the moment. But the doors were open. Anyone could come in.

Finally.

I walked through the building, looking at the place. Somehow, it looked brighter, more cheerful. It seemed like such a long time ago when we'd shut down for COVID---March of 2020. Well over a year ago, I'd helped shut down the library and went home to teach survival skills to my son. Concentrated on what I could do from home, or by myself. A year of ghosts at home, UFOs within a block, lonely cemeteries.

My cell phone was ringing, inside of my backpack. I answered it.

It was, of course, the Annual Summer Nut.

"Hi, Lou. I'm not going to be able to come in today. I got too spiritual, and it just wore me out."
I'm never exactly sure how to respond to statements like that. Probably I should plan something in advance.

"That's fine; you can come in whenever."

"The same thing happens when I give psychic readings. I just need to rest for a few days."

"No problem. I'm at the library all the time anyway; you don't really need an appointment to come and talk to me."

"I was arranging my photos last night, and on TV, a news show about UFOs came on. I was like, whoa! Isn't that weird?"

The government had recently declassified some UFO files, so it would be a bit weird if this wasn't all over the news. I chose to skip the question and said,"I'll be back in on Tuesday. Feel free to come in after that."

"Okay, I will."

I hung up before the conversation could continue.

I went to the microfilm and pulled Thomas Wood's obit. He'd been an Irish immigrant, and a soldier in the Civil War before getting employed by the railroad, like most of the people in Renovo in those days. I was looking at the cemetery records when Chris walked in.

"Hey Lou. Anything new on the Bitumen thing?"

"Yeah, one guy finally e-mailed me to ask about the photo. I explained that it was a stock picture selected by my editor, and he said that he didn't realize the press had the right to deceive people like that. I left it at that; there's not gonna be any convincing that guy."

"Of course," Chris said. "Anything else interesting?"

"Looking into a graveyard dog."

"A graveyard dog? You've wanted one of those for a while."

"Discovered a mention in an old folklore magazine. I've found the grave it's connected to, a Thomas Wood up in Renovo. Now, the interesting thing here is that the story seems to have adapted to the grave itself."

"How's that?"

"Graveyard dogs are said to be at the first grave in the cemetery, usually to the north. It's an English legend---Thomas Wood was Irish, but I'd have to think the folklore would spread over there. Now, get this---Wood was buried on the north end of the cemetery in 1894."

"In that area, he couldn't have been the first grave there, though. Could he?"

"No way; the cemetery was around long before that. But here's the thing---It was founded by the local Catholic church. They built a new church in 1892 in downtown Renovo. This grave wasn't the first in the cemetery, but it was the first for the new church. It checks all the boxes---That's where the story of the graveyard dog came from."

On Memorial Day, I did what I always do and fired up the grill. The whole family loves it when I grill; Tif usually starts begging for it around mid-March. Paul helped me with some of the recipes, and we wound up with chicken, hot dogs, peppers, corn on the cob, carrots, and asparagus. We sat around a folding table in the back yard, with Duke and Rosie tied up in the grass.

"So this summer, we have camping trips and some cool stuff," I said. "With the summer reading theme being animals, I'm going to be giving a couple of tours and classes on monster hunting. Got some good stuff planned. And with the vaccines, we'll be able to do more. Some camping and a few trips, maybe go visit some relatives for the first time in a while."

"A summer of cryptids," said Tif.

I nodded. "A summer of cryptids."

"You may experience some side effects," said the pharmacist. "You might get some pain in this arm, maybe some flu-like symptoms. Chills, a headache. It should all go away in a day or two. Left arm okay?"

I nodded. "Let's do this."

He stuck the needle in my arm, just under where I had my "Bigfoot: Social Distancing Champion" shirt rolled up. It only took a second, and then he was applying the band-aid.

"You're bleeding a little."

"I'm gonna tell people I got in a fight."

"Stick around for fifteen minutes, and then you can head out. That would be two-nineteen."

"I brought a paperback. I'll be fine."

A little while later, I was home. Paul and Rosie were asleep on the couch. I went up to my office. I had the first mask I'd worn the one my wife had made for me over a year ago, when I was doing an archaeological dig in the back yard. Little Christmas trees and an alien patch on it. At the time, I'd been expecting to retire it in two weeks or so.

Now, I had a collection of masks with ghosts, Bigfoot, and aliens on them.

I hung it up on the trophy shelf. The symbol of this whole terrible, traumatic year....Now coming, finally, to an end.

For the first time in almost two years, I stood in front of a crowd for a summer history tour. Seven people and a dog, all turned out for my event. I smiled as I looked around at everyone.

"Thanks for coming, everyone," I said. "It's good to be back at this again. This is the first summer tour I've done since 2019, so bear with me if I seem a little uneasy. Also forgive the hair; I been cutting it myself for a year and a half."

Laughter. I continued,"Tonight's tour is Water Street. So, if you'd like to follow me, let's go on out to the sidewalk. It's a nice night. Let's learn some history."