Entry 4

Mavis Island — Halloween

Late morning, 1130.

I want to begin this blog post by saying that I’m ok. Jacky, CJ, Professor Lopez, and nearly everyone else is ok. Tragically, we did lose a researcher last night.

Halloween. It fell on a Saturday night this year. Naturally, basically all the non-Mavisian workers on the island had some familiarity with the holiday. The natives here experienced Halloween when they were growing up more as something they saw in movies from places like America. They largely don’t participate in the research staff’s Halloween festivities each year, so I’m told, because they see the holiday as something that’s celebrated across the South Dalton Sea and beyond.

I didn’t think to bring any Halloween costume to the island, but I still wanted to dress up as I always had. In my home city of Piègeville, I generally wore the combination of the traditional Piègais costume of a dinquoi-trouvain with the spiritual element of a hatless joursque beast, a flatfooted brintôt, or some kind of common hoofed delvier.

Maria Francesca and I actually met one Halloween when I was dressed as the invented character Piotr Dełarcki, the cursed Polish count of the low country, while she was wearing her best demonic Castonellan recertique outfit. I have to say, I was so moved by fear when I glimpsed her at first by the peach bowl I nearly tore off my (false) bloodstained dinquoi sash and made for an exit. I’m glad I stayed, not only because I met the love of my life but also because if she had been a demonic recertique come back to life, I knew standing my ground would have been my best shot at survival.

On Mavis Island, there are many Americans, Australians, British, Argentines, etc., and they mostly dress to whatever degree they could in pop culture outfits such as movie superheroes or simply an old suit with slicked back hair, which they invariably describe as a costume referencing a TV show or movie.

I heard at least two gasps when I entered the pregame party in the mess hall last night in a highly improvised costume: my newest dinquoi-trouvain character, Baron Chester Richard of Simpletown. (The key to picturing these characters is understanding local lore in Piègeville, which typically takes the form of a cautionary tale in which the honorable dinquoi-trouvain’s body is possessed by a foreign noble intent on plundering our cupboards.)

CJ had seen me getting ready in our bunk, so he just laughed in his Indiana Jones costume when he saw me enter. Just one person hadn’t seen me, as she had old walkman headphones on as a part of her costume.

“Mind if I stake this punch bowl, my gorriline comrade?” I asked Penelope Farris-Washington. Her gorilla mask slowly turned and she saw my costume. She quickly pulled a pistol from a banana shaped handbag and flipped off the safety. She was about to raise the gun at me when Professor Lopez ran over waving her arms.

“It’s just Pierre playing a dinquoi-trouvain!” Professor Lopez shouted. Penelope looked at her, then at me, then back at Professor Lopez. Slowly her shoulders relaxed. She flipped the safety on and chuckled.

“Jesus, Pierre, what the fuck is all this,” Penelope sighed. “Why not just go as Buzz Lightyear or something.”

“Well, technically speaking I am in fact a dinquoi-trouvain by birth,” I said, though I knew that wasn’t the most important fact at that moment. Professor Lopez gave me a hard look at returned to the faculty table.

I poured two punches and took Penelope over to a table to help her calm down while I explained in detail the most important dinquoi-trouvain tales from my country. A few minutes later she began to understand my Piègais culture, I think.

After the punch, I turned to my new favorite spirit: cucumber rye. I had possibly a liter of it, and at some point Penelope wandered off and before long Jacky was in my ear talking about practicing 270-jumpouts in the Mitsubishi and other dangerous field maneuvers. I was tipsy enough to not be too alarmed by the mere suggestion, but I was never going to agree to another turtle jump in any state.

“Jacky, you’re a top drawer scholar and one hell of a singer,” I said between sips as hypnotic Mavisian music filled the room, “but the only way I’m getting on that Mitsubishi is condescendingly, insultingly, by taking it down a peg or two. Because at the end of the day I don’t trust that machine. I mean it.”

I didn’t mean it. It was the cucumber talking. Jacky knew.

“Oh Pierre,” she whispered menacingly into the fourth false ear on my dinquoi sash, though I could hear her nonetheless as she was starting to exhibit the effects of cucumber consumption and speaking quite loudly. “If I promised to get you behind the Tertis and in front of some misbehaving boltus falliver, you couldn’t resist, could you?”

I didn’t flinch.

“Or even,” she said so lowly into a different false ear I had to actually lean down to hear her new proposal, “a lupus dragonicus?”

It wasn’t a yes. But it was no longer a no. “I’m going to go listen to the new song CJ wrote,” I said to Jacky at a normal volume, and got up from the table. The Mavisian band was playing the traditional island song I already knew so well, “If I could count your ideas,” and I was feeling adventurous.

Outside, CJ and Penelope were singing a duet of his new song. CJ was on guitar and Penelope had a Michigan noventus flute. “Devil December, I have your number,” he scatted. I always assumed in conversations in the bunk about his music that he was more of a crooner. I remember thinking, well I can get down with scatting, too.

“Your new song sounds great, CJ, it just needs one thing,” I said, trying to sound as earnest as possible.

He looked a bit hurt, but curious to know what I recommended. Maybe he was feeling self-conscious about scatting rather than crooning. “And what’s that, number 30?” I haven’t figured out yet why he calls me number 30.

“A little more… lubrication?” This was a University tradition.

“Ha, no! I’m gonna beat you both!” He put down his guitar and Penelope quickly followed suit with her Michigan noventus flute, and the three of us ran exactly 11 laps around Base Camp before diving at nearly the same time, fully clothed, into a full vat of plactowater. It’s harmless at this temperature. I was second in the lukewarm brew. CJ, as promised, was first. But I think Penelope let us both win.

After an hour of playing drisple, we got out and started letting our clothes dry. Much of the false blood on my costume had washed off, giving me more of the appearance of a mundane delvier rather than a joursque on the hunt, or something else a bit more exciting. But for the non-Piègais party, it was more than enough to impress. CJ had stashed or simply found a bottle of cucumber rye, which we passed around as we speculated what the night’s mysterious main event would be.

It had to have been at least 2100 when I heard gravel crunching in the distance, in a dark patch of the compound between the floodlights mounted above the conference room and mess hall. I reached for the telerod I had in my costume, which was both helping support my dinquoi sash and serving as a reminder to tomorrow-Pierre that I needed to repair it. It wasn’t a weapon, but it was all I had.

Jacky Nelson stepped out into the light and we all burst out laughing. I lowered my telerod. Jacky was walking straight and seemed fine, but had a mostly empty bottle of cucumber rye. “Delgado,” she said cooly. “On the Tertis, let’s go.”

I glanced at CJ and Penelope. They were still laughing about Jacky’s arrival, but I don’t think they were thinking entirely straight at that point. “Pierre Delgado, that’s you a lotto!” CJ said, and laughed so hard he stopped making audible noises and laid back, flat on his back, kicking the ground repeatedly as he shook. Things were getting a little weird.

“Sure,” I said to Jacky, getting up, “I’ll come with. But let’s not do anything too crazy.”

Jacky motioned for me to follow as she rolled her eyes. “Relax, Delgado. I’m not taking you up to Cape Stanwell or something. Just a little ride around the compound.”

“What would Professor Lopez think?” I said as I trotted to caught up, realizing I wasn’t even sure if my advisor was asleep or still at the pregame. Or if she had gone ahead to the main event already. I remember noticing how bright the compound’s flood lights seemed at that moment.

Jacky groaned. “Professor Lopez is in the underground lab, as she is this time of night every day we’re out here. Without fail. 2100, she’s in the lab.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, badly attempting to feign knowledge of the routine. Jacky stopped and looked at me blankly. She knew I was bluffing. We continued.

I climbed on top of the Mitsubishi and started priming the dapris canisters on the Tertis. I stumbled on something and started to regret my decision, but realized it was just a loose demi-groton CJ had forgotten to deplug during the last loadout.

I couldn’t believe how fast Jacky got the Jess needles calibrated and ready to go, but before I knew it she gave the order: “flaps up, eyes out,” she called through the central hatch. I now think she might have actually calibrated the Jess needles before fetching me from the vat of plactowater. She obviously knew me better than I realized. I wasn’t her first Baryllisman, after all.

Jacky smartly left the floodlights off as she guided the Mitsubishi through the compound, but I could see well enough from the ambient light from the Base Camp, and from the stars. It was a cloudless night. I flipped the Tetris on, just on quiet mode. I was determined not to let Jacky get me into trouble. But I felt like I couldn’t afford to miss an opportunity to impress a field researcher of her stature.

Outside the fence, she flipped on the communication duct, a rudimentary speaking tube which helps us communicate more easily when underway. “Light up that gertis gertis,” she said flatly, slowing down the Mitsubishi in front of a relatively small growth. I bleeped it briefly. Not much happened.

“Oh come on, Delgado. You can do better than that.”

I flashed a leaf for a full ten seconds, watching it wrap into the shape of a barletts vow. Tertis rays are harmless to the plant. It’s just a silly parlor trick field researchers do to kill the time out in the field. Still, Professor Lopez doesn’t like us using the equipment that way.

“That’s better, Pierre. Now go loud and let’s see what you can do.” She pulled the vehicle onto a small dirt track leading from camp. The lights were disappearing behind trees and gertis gertis growths behind us. I was starting to get worried about Jacky. Was there a side of her I needed to know about and watch out for? Maybe I should have followed CJ’s lead back at the plactowater vat, and either been too drunk or acted to drunk to do more than writhe around in my drying dinquoi-trouvain suit, laughing at my own jokes.

I flipped the Tertis on loud mode. It glowed dully in my hands. The Mitsubishi rolled cautiously around a bend in the dirt track and I spun the Tertis to check our six. There huddled two of the biggest boltus falliver I’d ever seen. They were a half a meter high if they were a centimeter.

“Party crashers on our six,” I called quietly through the communication duct, but the Mitsubishi was already slowing.

“Yeah, I see ‘em,” she called back at full volume. “Now would be your time to, how should I put this… shine?”

I clicked the hot switch and levered the demi-groton CJ had left mounted in the side hook of the Tertis before punching out. The instrument rumbled fully to life. I was just about to bleep a warning at the wayward boltus falliver when they stood fully erect. I saw they weren’t boltus falliver at all, but lupus dragonicus. I froze. Even on loud mode this was going to be an ambush. Why the hell were we out there? Stupid, stupid.

The Mitsubishi took off on a side track I hadn’t even seen. Jacky either didn’t trust me to snap into action or knew we were likely outmatched. Two lupus dragonicus showing themselves, fully exposed like that, meant there were two, maybe even three dozen in hiding. They had remained quiet, in order to sneak up on us, but let loose an eerie warning howl. It wasn’t too loud, but it made its point. I suddenly felt very silly up there huddled behind the Tertis dressed as Baron Chester Richard of Simpletown, fake costume blood streaking down my pleated knickers and drying on my sash.

The lupus dragonicus encroachment shocked me. All this seemed very close to the Main Base, but we had taken a couple turns, and we were supposed to respect the rules of the night on Mavis Island. It seemed like I was learning a new one of those.

The lupus dragonicus were hot on our heels and closing in when Jacky made an abrupt turn to the right, into the forest, and back onto another dirt track. Their howling intensified. The lights from Base Camp were starting to light up like fireflies through the trees on the ridge. The lights suddenly got much brighter. Someone must have noticed they were two researchers and one Mitsubishi short. The howling was driving me mad. It was horrible. I couldn’t think straight and I had to remember to breathe. Later when checked the vehicle cameras I saw that in that moment I was I leaned onto the Tertis for support as I plugged my ears, screaming in terror.

We turned back onto the original dirt track we came out on, and just as we were about to exit the forest and speed through the main gates to the Base Camp, Jacky slammed on the brakes. Penelope was standing there in her gorilla costume, holding the gorilla mask under her arm. Her banana sling wasn’t there. She looked confused. Something was up. Jacky had the same thought.

“It’s a lupus dragonicus,” she called through the ventilation duct. “Keep the Tertis trained on it but don’t use it unless you have to. I’ll go around.”

Jacky cocked the steering wheel right and floored it. The vehicle tilted violently to the right. The Mitsubishi was two wheels off the dirt track, splattering through the drainage ditch next to it. The Penelope-looking figure didn’t move. It still looked confused, but didn’t attack or even howl.

The Mitsubishi roared into Base Camp and some undergrads closed the gates and locked them behind us, with Professor Delgado commanding them using standard ISO Desolomer hand signals.

I was still hunkered down on the Tertis when we stopped, partially out of view. “We’re still missing one,” Professor Delgado said to Jacky.

I stood up quickly, glistening in gertis gertis discharge, too tired to shake it off. “I’m here, all good,” I said feebly.

Professor Delgado looked up at me like a disappointed parent. “No, we’re not all good. Penelope Farris-Washington slipped through the gates. She said she thought CJ was with you and ran off before I could stop her. And get down off that Mitsubishi, researcher.”

I automatically climbed down, embarrassed, confused, and feeling somehow perturbed. Why had Penelope gone looking for CJ outside Main Base? Last I saw him, he was lying on his back next to the vat of plactowater, enjoying life to the fullest.

“I saw her,” Jacky said, then corrected it. “We. Saw Penelope. I thought it was a lupus dragonicus that had shape shifted, so I drove around and hot-footed it back to the compound.” She shook her head and said something in a language I didn’t understand that I took to be a swear. “Delgado! Get the Jess needles calibrated, I’ll go back out.”

Professor Lopez grabbed Jacky by the arm. “The hell you are. Hear those howls? We’ll have to go back for her when it’s light. Let’s just hope they don’t give her the cure before we can.”

Jacky pulled her arm away. “The cure? No. This is my fault. I’m going back out.”

“Negative,” Professor Lopez said, “I’m not losing any more researchers tonight. Penelope will probably never croon the same again, but we’ll get her back to her family in one piece. Get some shut eye before sunrise, if you can. We have a long day of planning ahead of us tomorrow.”

Signing off, it’s 1155. Time to get to work. My Chemical Romance.

All glory to the University.

Pierre Delgado

I’m not okay
I’m not okay
I’m not okay
You wear me out