April Krampus Brings May Shrampus

Barclay turned around and went back to the kitchen.

He had planned to spend as much time as possible hiding in either the kitchen or his bedroom, but he couldn’t resist poking his head out into the lobby when they arrived. A herd of late-middle-aged paunch, a couple of gangly twenty-somethings. And one who was Barclay’s age, or at least the age he appeared to be, and movie-star handsome, with dark, neatly-combed hair.

The handsome one was the first to arrive for breakfast the next morning. Barclay delivered him his coffee in the otherwise-empty dining room, sunlight streaming through the windows, and the bigfoot hunter smiled so winningly that Barclay froze. He could smell the pleasant pomade the guy used to slick back his hair, and dared to glance down at his elegant hands: no ring.

Barclay cleared his throat. “So, why do you believe in bigfoot?”

“Faith. It’s not like there’s evidence.”

That was patently false. Ned Chicane’s video, for one.

“I’m Joseph, by the way,” the bigfoot hunter said when the silence stretched a moment too long.

“Barclay,” said Barclay. “Good to meet you. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you around.”

Later he overheard one of the other bigfoot hunters gossiping that Joseph was independently wealthy, and Barclay wondered vaguely if Joseph lived in a mansion with a hot tub in it, and whether he might like someone to keep him company in it.

--

Joseph Stern was far more impressed with the accommodations than with his fellow bigfoot hunters. Amnesty Lodge was comfortable, the food was amazing, and looking at the lobby decor was enough to keep him entertained during even the most directionless of the anecdotes told by his fellow hunters. And the eye candy, oh lord, the six-and-a-half-foot Bounty paper towel man in the kitchen.

Once he’d been to a gathering at the house of a woman who hung food up in the trees outside her house and took its absence come morning as proof of intelligent, bipedal forest-dwellers rather than, you know, raccoons being able to climb.

At least he was being paid to be here. Not that any of the other bigfoot hunters knew that, of course. He’d explained his brand-new state-of-the-art equipment by telling them he was the heir to a frozen-dinner fortune, a cover story he was rather proud of.

This morning was his turn to check the camera trap they’d set up in the woods. He sat in the lobby, the camera plugged into his laptop, and clicked through the pictures the device had taken. Lots of birds and squirrels, a few times the camera had gone off for no apparent reason. A herd of deer, including a rather adorable fawn.

And then - a bipedal creature, captured in three images as it moved across the frame. Auburn fur, long, powerful limbs. Joseph could tell from the angles of its body that it was sprinting full-tilt. He could just see the edge of its face from the angle of the camera, and… but surely not.

Joseph allowed himself a moment to admire it, and then pressed the delete button three times.

“You don’t want to find bigfoot.”

Joseph jumped about a foot in the air and looked around. “Christ, Barclay, you scared me.”

Barclay gestured. “You just deleted the evidence.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Those three pictures.”

“The pictures of a bear?”

Barclay looked at him like he was trying to read his mind, and Joseph struggled to maintain the expression of a frozen-dinner heir who honestly believed he had not just seen bigfoot.

“Come with me.”

Joseph got a little too quickly to his feet. Barclay’s warm hand closed around his and tugged him into the kitchen off the lobby. When they were both inside Barclay shut the door behind them. Joseph’s heart was pounding as he looked up into Barclay’s face.

Barclay pulled the hempen bracelet off his wrist. “You don’t want to find me.” His body lengthened, the hair on his arms and visible at the collar of his shirt thickening. Without a doubt, this was what Joseph had seen on that camera trap.

“Oh,” Joseph breathed. Up close he was even more magnificent, tall and powerful. Then he cleared his throat. “No, I don’t want to find you. I’m actually an employee of the FBI, in the Unexplained Phenomena division, and public knowledge of your existence would cause problems. So I think we have the same goal, really.” Joseph tilted his head. “But why would you intentionally show yourself to me?”

Barclay fidgeted with the bracelet in his hand. “Because I like you,” he said, and closed the bracelet around his wrist. His brown eyes were soft.