Chupacabra Prepwork: 12 Hours Remaining

After I got offline last night, I got myself acquainted with the details of the case so far. This morning, we went to the mysterious goat patch where the car the girl was in had disappeared.The Goat Patch was more of a goat circle. It was about thirty yards from the Highway where I was pulled over yesterday, and this time around it wasn't dark out and I could actually see straight. The whole area was police taped off. Dead goats who've had their blood sucked dry are a weird thing indeed.

A desert highway with nothing to see for miles except creosote bushes and sun baked sand. I can think of better places to run an investigation. The first thing I did was walk around the taped off area and get whatever vibes I could off of it. The area was thin, as in the veil or barrier between worlds was good and ready to crack. It fit all the signs of a Chupacabra entry and exit point.

People have theorized that Chupacabra are just Coyotes with skin conditions. I'd like to ask you when the last time you met a Coyote that would drink the blood of a goat dry, and leave the goat-meat alone. The thing about Chupacabra, is that they're very unique among otherworldly creatures. They don't actually need to come to earth for anything, but one of them slipped through a hole around 1995, and discovered that goat blood was absolutely delicious. Word spread fast, and now they'll slip into anywhere there's a goat population to get a shot at that delicacy whenever they can. Afterwards, they slip back onto the astral plane and leave none the wiser.

And now I was debating how the hell at least two humans had slipped onto their turf, and how we were going to get them back. Everything that I could try was THEORIZED to work, but no one could say if it did or didn't.

So as I'm squatting down on the ground, thinking about how to deal with this, I found Sheriff Wiseass was next to me. Deputy Smartass (his son), and Deputy Slick (this guy had way too much hair gel) Were looking around for better clues.

And so I found myself asking, "Hey Sheriff. You strike me as the kind of guy who goes to church every Sunday and votes Republican. Why do you think I can help?"

Sheriff Wiseass said, "Well son, when I find a soup-pernatural blogger who has all the gear associated with his blog, following the most recent actions he writes about in that there blog, and ends up about thirty yards from my crime scene in a car just like the one that took a young girl... I think he's either connected to the case, or seven kinds of unlucky. Either way, either you're a crackpot, or you know something. And I'm a moderate. You're right about church though."

My mouth just started moving, "Which is to say you don't believe any of this, but you're willing to jump into the crazy pool if you think it might save your career and the kid."

"Well yeah. Not a bad guess. So what happened here?"

I shook my head and sighed. It was time to get technical.

"Okay Sheriff, lets get to the thick of it, shall we? This should normally be impossible. Humans are anchored to the planet earth. You stick one on another plane of existence, and usually they'll just sink back to earth after a few panicky, insanity inducing hours. Not kidding, a lot of people can't manage seeing in more than four dimensions at a time, and even then the fourth dimension is just half there, observing the passage of time as opposed to time as a whole. It's just not healthy on the mind. Now, if they DID go through our little tear made by Chupacabras here, they're probably half nuts. But why haven't they come back yet? They should have popped up looking like a pair of peyote abusers by now. Now, you're saying that the kid was spotted in the nearby diner, and that she was then pulled into a car like mine? ...but she was missing for four days before that?"

Sheriff Wiseass said, "Yeah, that's the story. Up and vanished for four days, suddenly she's in the local diner."

Deputy Slick was on the other side of the circle at this point, and he was giving us that particular look. You know the one. The one that says "You're all on crack."

I'd seen photos of the girl, and I'd heard about how the guy at the register had called the police when he realized who the girl was. But the part that had worried me was this: every time the guy at the register was asked about it, he would say that he could swear there was somewhere else. When the other people at the diner were questioned, each of them agreed that there was someone else there. Now, here's the part that had both me and Sheriff Wiseass all kinds of worried.

The person that was described changed every time someone described him. Some saw him as six feet tall, another saw him as five foot six...no two people gave him the same height. No two people gave him the same skin tone or hair color. No one could remember him speaking. Everyone remembered him paying for the meal. None of it made any sense.

I was getting that twitchy feeling like maybe it was all about to hit the fan.

Sheriff Wiseass said, "So okay crazy man, what have you got for me?"

I said, "...Well Sheriff, I'm going to try and astral project my sorry ass into another world now. My objective is to grab a kid from the depths of wherever the Chupacabra in this area are coming from, and get her and whoever took her back into your jurisdiction. It will not look flashy. It will take a long time. I will look like an absolute ninny. But I need 24 hours, a topographical map of this part of the city, and a cowboy hat."

I love Dr. Who. I had to rewrite that line for my purposes.

Sheriff Wiseass looked down at me.

"Son. You've got exactly 24 hours to find this kid with your mumbo jumbo. I'll keep watch on you, and my deputies will do some real police work in the mean time. After that, I'm going to have to put you back in the cells. You know that, right?"

I said, "Yeah, you've got a job to do, I get it. Just make sure you and your boys have shotguns ready. If this goes the way I think it will, you'll need them.

That was 12 hours ago. I'm taking a short break, sipping some coffee. I've taken a few Laptop Breaks throughout, but there's something really weird about the Astral Plane on the other side of this damn thin point in the Veil/Barrier. I'm not projecting worth a damn. I've got 12 hours to get this particular ball rolling. Don't worry gents, I'm going to pull this son of a bitch off. I've still got to deal with Mastermind. And I owe you guys some serious history. Oh, and I've got some crazy bitch who only speaks in Haiku and Italics causing trouble.

Some son of a bitch whose face no one can remember has kidnapped a small child and put me in a Neo-classical Shitstorm that I only get out of alive if I can get the culprit and the kid back on Sheriff Wiseass's turf. Can I pull it off with 12 hours and no sleep?

I've got a Topographical Map and a Cowboy Hat. What do you think?