The Seeker
Brandon Barr
On a cold December morning,
a creature from a distant galaxy in another dimension landed at Lakeview Elementary School. The blinding flash of red and yellow light went unnoticed amidst a heavy snowfall at 3:09 a.m. Not a single human in the small Wyoming town lay awake at that hour. Only the creature stirred.
Within its organic pod, one eye slit open, and then the other. In one powerful twist, the great sinewy arms stretched and clawed. The pod tore open with a great ripping sound, but no one lay awake to hear.
Snow landed softly upon the thickly scaled saurian body.
The spindly razors atop its spine extended into the cold morning air, probing, swaying like sharpened leaves. The creature searched, as it had been doing for millennia past. Searching for something it deeply needed, like a beggar after a piece of meat to fill an empty stomach. The creature was ravenous for the thing it had yet to find, and desperate.
A wisp of wind breathed upon the probing blades. At once the spines stiffened. On the air was something beyond the senses, non-physical, immaterial, but it was exactly what the creature had been searching for. Craving. The spines drew it in, as if rolling a morsel over its tongue.
For the briefest moment, a beacon star shown through the clouds, and the creature felt the memories of the planet rise out of the ground, whispering of another star, and other seekers who had followed after it. In that soft white glow lay the brick orifice that was Lakeview Elementary School.
Within moments the creature was inside the school perimeter.
Something like blood coursed through its veins as it stalked the walkways and paths lining the buildings, sniffing the cracks of doors, licking the handrails and running its claws against the symbols inscribed on the outer walls.
A melody of prescience beckoned it. The future swirled in anarchic images...Giant fingers. A little face. A feeding trough. The spines on its back tingled as the refrain grew stronger…until it stopped at Mrs. Norman’s first grade classroom.
This was the place.
This was the time.
The long, long search was through, and the creature collapsed upon its knees before the door of Mrs. Norman’s classroom, and there, it underwent a metamorphosis. By dawn, the creature’s body was no bigger than a child’s toy.
Catherine’s fingers closed over the strange toy lying in front of her classroom. When she brought it up to her glasses for a closer inspection, she gasped, and nearly dropped it to the ground. It looked exactly like the beastie she’d seen in her nightmare last night. Glinting teeth. Long, scary claws. Sharp spikes lining its back. Everything about it made her hairs stand on end…well, almost everything. Its eyes. They looked so real. And so…sad? Almost on the verge of tears. That was it, she thought! It looked like it wanted to cry.
What a strange little toy. Why does it want to cry? she wondered.
“What did you find?” asked a boy, peering over her shoulder.
“It’s a little…monster.”
He leaned close to it. “Ohhh. Creepy! Where did you get it?”
“It was sitting right here in front of our classroom.”
“Who put it there?” asked the boy
She shrugged. “I don’t know?”
“Its almost Christmas, maybe Santa dropped it.” The boy licked his lips. “Can I see it?”
“No,” said Catherine, clutching the toy close. “You wouldn’t give it back.”
He frowned. “Well, what do you want a scary monster for anyway?”
She looked down at the toy, at the sad little eyes that looked so real. “It’s not scary to me…not anymore. It’s sad.”
“Sad?” the boy looked again, “Hey, your right. That’s weird. Whoever heard of a sad monster?”
Catherine’s brow scrunched in thought. “Maybe it’s tired of being a monster.”
“HA!” the boy laughed. “Monsters don’t think like that. They just want to eat everything.”
“I don’t think this monster does. It wants to be good. Maybe that’s why it’s sad. It doesn’t want to eat things anymore.”
“I don’t know? Maybe?” The boy scratched his head. “You can keep it for all I care. I wouldn’t want a toy monster that doesn’t look like it wants to eat things.”
Catherine placed it gently in her backpack. “I’m going to take it home for Christmas break. I have lots of friends the monster can play with to make it happy. Miss Muffy, Beluga the Whale, Kitty Cotton Ears. It can forget about how it used to be a monster and it won’t have to eat things ever again.”
“Gee whiz, it’s just a toy. It doesn’t have feelings.”
“Yes it does,” she insisted. “I think so.”
The boy left snickering, and she cried a while because of it. By the time Mrs. Norman opened up the classroom, Catherine had forgotten the boy’s insulting laughter, and the little toy she’d placed in her backpack. When school ended she raced home, filled with wonderful thoughts of Christmas break, presents, building snowmen, hot chocolate and gingerbread cookies, and maybe best of all playing all day and not going to school again for what seemed to her a very, very long time.
The little toy monster rattled around among the binders and workbooks filling her backpack, until it found itself at the bottom amongst crinkled math worksheets, pencils, crayons, butterfly stickers, and other magical items that dwell at the bottom of little girls’ backpacks.
And there the creature remained, waiting in its shrunken form.
It wasn’t until many days later that Catherine’s search for a missing red marker led her to dump out the contents of her backpack across the living room floor. “Oh!” she gasped. Her hands again closed on the small toy monster. “I forgot about you.”
She inspected it again. “You’re still sad, aren’t you? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to forget.” She petted the monsters head to console it. “I remember, what you needed was a friend. You don’t want to be a monster anymore. You want to stop eating things.”
Catherine pinched her lips together and looked carefully about the room. She peered up at the Christmas tree, with all the ornaments and the golden star at the top. Perhaps it would like to hang alongside all the other ornaments…but no. She looked over at the fireplace. The logs popped and crackled softly, and warm flames licked up towards the flue.
Her eyes drifted up to the mantle and then a smile washed over her face. Within seconds she was on her tiptoes, reaching as high as she could to perch the little monster at just the right spot.
“Catherine?” said her mother from the kitchen. “What are you doing?”
She spun around, guiltily. “Nothing!” came her first response.
Her mother wiped at her hands with a towel and then came into the living room with a bemused smile. “Nothing, huh? What was that you put on the fireplace?”
“Oh, that’s my friend. I found him at school.”
Her mother came up beside her and inspected the toy that her daughter had placed in the nativity scene. The strange figurine was kneeling beside the wise men, facing the manger. A scowl crossed her mother’s face. “You know how easily you get nightmares, dear. Why would you keep a toy like this?”
“It’s not a bad monster. It wants to be good. It wants to stop eating everything.”
“And how do you know this?” asked her mother, unable to keep from smiling.
“Look at the monster’s eyes. They’re sad. I think it came from a very long ways a way to…to find out how to change. It’s tired of being mean and scary. That’s why it looks like it wants to cry.”
Her mother bent close to the toy and frowned. “That’s really strange,” she said.
“What is?” asked Catherine.
Her mother lifted her up on her hip so that the nativity scene was at eye level. “Do you see what I see, Catherine?”
“Oh, yes! I see it.” She giggled and smiled up at her mom. “The monster is crying. I think those are happy tears.”
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Brandon Barr has been writing since his early childhood days. He was first published in 2004 in Gateway SF Magazine. Since then Brandon has had a number of short stories published in Haruah, Christian Sci-Fi Journal, Ray Gun Revival, Residential Aliens, Nova Science Fiction, and Revelation Magazine. He’s also written several editorials for the Wayfarer’s Journal.
Most Recently Brandon has had his new novel published. Co-Written with Mike Lynch; a Sci-Fi epic called Sky Chronicles: When The Sky Fell, it was released just a couple weeks ago by Silver Leaf Books. When The Sky Fell “Follows the adventures of Commander Frank Yamane and his crew as they struggle to determine whether this will be Earth’s finest hour, or the destruction of us all.”
For more information you can find Brandon at his website http://www.brandonbarr.com.
