One of the greatest advantages of being a living nuclear reactor is that the water is never cold—at least for long.
That thought passed through Sormuron's mind as the waves lapped against his clawed feet. He stood at the edge of beach, gazing listlessly into the horizon. The dinosaurian creature fidgeted its claws nervously. Once a while, he would take a step into the waters of the Pacific Ocean. He'd then hesitate and step on to the beach.
This uneasy ritual continued for more than an hour, giving birth to dozens of new tide pools and angering more than a few crabs and mollusks whose privacy had been invaded by Sormuron's ever-deepening footprints. The beast was taking a few more courageous steps into the calm afternoon waters when a familiar growl startled him.
"A penny for your thoughts?"
Sormuron spun around to see a small carnosaur standing on the black volcanic sands of the beach several yards away. It stood about eight feet off the ground—only four feet shorter than Sormuron himself. It was Orthrosaurus, Sormuron's mate.
She walked over to Sormuron and nuzzled her wedge-shaped head against his shoulder. The sensation of her knobby skin rubbing up against Sormuron's own hide soothed his anxiety. Sormuron ran his claw across her toothy snout.
"About to leave again?"
Sormuron grunted and nodded. "Yeah. Interpol called." He didn't feel much like talking, although he knew that Orthra—his pet name for her—would get the information out of him sooner or later.
"And?" It had started.
"They said that they needed me in Baffin Bay." Sormuron sighed loudly, exhaling a thin stream of blue atomic fire. The blast struck sea before them, causing the water to boil and causing more than a dozen fish to float lifelessly to the service.
"Say, isn't that where—"
"Yes." Sormuron already knew what she was going to say. That had been on his mind, too. So much, in fact, that Sormuron was afraid to leave his island home out of fear of what exactly he'd see once he reached those frigid Canadian waters. The urgency that Interpol agent had emphasized in his call had registered in Sormuron's mind as "soul-crushing tragedy" and the monster didn't know if he wanted to find out in person or stay on the island wait until it showed up on the news.
"You oughtta go." Orthra's advice came right on cue. "You know you'll beat yourself up—and probably Acanthus—later on if you stay." Acanthus was the island's resident ankylosaur—although nodosaur would be more accurate, considering that he lacked a tail club. He was also Sormuron's main sparring partner and fight choreographer.
Sormuron grunted. She was right; he never doubted that. "I know. And the island? Will you be able to take care of things while I'm gone?"
Orthra let out a shriek-like bellow that sounded like a lion roar being played backward. "Now you're just making up things to worry about. This island practically runs itself. Nothing interesting ever happens while you're gone—which we both know is quite often." The carnosaur looked away. "Well, except—"
"Except what?" Sormuron's curiosity had been sparked.
Orthra pulled her head away from him. "Oh, a couple of years back when you were at that convention in Chicago, your space clone showed up and tried to get frisky with me in the cave."
Sormuron's upper lip curled into a sneer. "Huh. You never mentioned that. How'd that pan out?"
Orthra giggled. "I indulged him. I mean, he's basically you anyways, albeit with a bunch of obsidian jutting out of his body."
Sormuron laughed. "Didn't know he had it in him."
"Considering that the movie he did with you was…well…what it was, I figured that it was the least I could do. Eh, it was okay, I guess. Poor guy. You'd think your outer space doppelganger would have more of a following."
Sormuron took a few steps into the sea. "Well, if he shows up again, tell him to wait for me."
"Ooh, kinky."
"Actually, I was-oh, forget it." He then shook his head. "I guess I should get going. Don't wanna delay the inevitable more than I already have."
Orthra followed him and rubbed her head against his. "Take care. If you need anything, just let me know."
The monster nodded. Turning his back to Orthra, Sormuron waded farther away from both her and his home. He was soon in open sea and was swimming north by northeast toward the freezing waters of the Arctic Circle.
#
If there was another benefit to being an irradiated nuclear monster, it was that in the water Sormuron was nothing less than a functional nuclear submarine, complete with sonar.
This last characteristic was especially important in his trip through the depths of the Arctic Ocean on his way to Canada's east coast. His trip took through Bering Strait and past the northern edges of Alaska and the Yukon. He them moved to the Beaufort Sea and navigated around the numerous islands of the Northwestern Territories before finally entering Baffin Bay. The trip took Sormuron less than a week, especially since he was able to swim far below the ice and go for long periods of time without coming up for air.
It was a little past sunrise when the saurian celebrity rose from the depths of the bay and stepped onto the frozen soil of Baffin Island. He was immediately met by several men dressed in thick fur coats and fur caps. They belonged to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Sormuron would've been disappointed that they weren't wearing their review order had he not been so tired from using his energy to keep warm during his journey.
"Well, it's an honor to have you here, Mr. Sormuron," said one of them, enthusiastically.
Sormuron simply nodded and growled. He hoped that they wouldn't start asking him for autographs.
One of the Mounties cocked his head at Sormuron. "I thought you'd be larger, eh? You're pretty tall in your movies."
And here we go again. Sormuron sighed. "It's called special effects." He made no attempt to hide his contempt for the man's observation.
The Canuck apparently didn't know when to stop. "But aren't tyrannosaurs like you supposed to be twice as big?"
Sormuron groaned within himself. He loathed being called a tyrannosaur. "Look, I've been swimming in around in freezing water for nearly a week. Please lay off with the questions." Sormuron clenched his fists so hard that his claws threatened to puncture his own impenetrable hide. "And I suggest you look up the word insular dwarfism in the encyclopedia."
Another one of them—presumably the highest ranking officer—stepped forward. "There's something that we would like you to see, Mr. Sormuron." He beckoned for Sormuron to follow him.
"Of course there is, you dip stick," thought Sormuron. "You wouldn't have asked a cold-blooded creature to come here to admire the mountains and freeze his ass off now, would you?"
Sormuron lumbered behind the Canadian policemen to a large crowd of Innuit people gathered in a large circle. Some of the women and younger children shrieked in horror at the sight of the approaching monster, running for cover. Their flight gave him a glimpse of what had gotten their attention: a large reptile—probably twenty feet in length-sprawled out on the permafrost. Sormuron knew where this was going.
Some the Mounted Police officers dispersed the remaining crowd in order to make way for Sormuron. The people's attention almost immediately went from the creature they had been staring at to the one towering over them now. Sormuron ignored them.
In a few moments, he was standing over the lifeless body of prehistoric beast. It looked like a pelycosaur that had received a head transplant from a ceratosaurus and then subsequently suffered from a botched face surgery. Like the ceratosaurus, a single row of spikes ran down its neck and all the way to the tip of its crocodilian tail. Its scaly body bore dozens of deep wounds, including a set of teeth marks in its neck. That creature wasn't just any beast, however. It was the Dimetrosaur.
Sormuron tapped his toe claws nervously as he gazed upon the carcass of the Dimetrosaur. The peculiar hybrid dinosaur was an old friend of Sormuron's. Moreover, it was the success of his breakout film, The Iceberg Monster, that opened the doors of fame to both Sormuron and his clan.
The atomic reptile reached down and felt his friend's scales. They were cold, nearly frozen in fact. He ran his claws through the deep wounds left in the Dimetrosaur's belly. Suddenly, he let out a loud roar that sounded like an elephant on powerful illegal stimulants playing the French horn. His outburst sent the rest of the island's denizens scuttling away.
"My condolences," said a voice from behind.
Sormuron turned and saw a familiar face: Agent Masahiro from Interpol. Masahiro was dressed in a thick black overcoat. A thick scarf covered much of his face and a pair of earmuffs hid all traces of grey hair on the aging agent. Like most Interpol agents, he wore a pair of dark sunglasses no matter where he went.
Masahiro continued, "We don't know how long he's been dead. The cold water preserved his body. It washed ashore the same day we called you. The Mounties have kept watch to prevent any of the Eskimos from taking it away and trying to sell it."
For a moment, Sormuron said nothing. He continued to look down at his fallen friend. He exhaled slowly, sending waves of faint blue light into the creature's body. His own energy failed to revive it, though.
"Thanks for telling me, Hiro. Do you know who did it?" He clenched his fists and then looked over at the Interpol Agent.
Hiro shook his head. "No. And you know we're usually pretty good at monitoring all your activity—"
"Your" referred to giant monsters, whom Masahiro regularly worked with and kept tabs on. He and Sormuron were both already well acquainted, as Masahiro usually hung around Sormuron's film shoots, especially when it involved monsters who hadn't worked in film before.
Sormuron went back to caressing the Dimetrosaur's body.
His concentration was interrupted by a random remark by one of the Mounties. "Why couldn't he just heal himself like you, eh?"
Sormuron got up and glared at the man. It was the same one who had asked all those annoying question a few minutes before. "Unlike me, he wasn't an atomic monster."
The Mountie shrugged. "Wasn't he hit by an A-bomb?"
Anthropophagy was looking mighty appetizing to Sormuron at that moment. He walked over to the Mountie and placed his clawed hands on the visibly-frightened man's shoulders. "There is a big difference between being an atomic bomb blowing up and melting the ice you were encased in, and being irradiated by one. Do I make myself clear?"
The man nodded.
"Good." Sormuron turned to Hiro, who was shaking his head. "Any leads?"
The Interpol agent nodded. "We examined the tooth marks—the distance between the individual teeth and the width of the mouth-and came up with a rough sketch of the shape of the murderer's head."
A second agent ran up to Sormuron and handed him a piece of rolled-up paper. Sormuron brought it up to his face and stared at it closely. The head was round and frog-like, albeit with a mouth full of inward-curving teeth. For a moment, the picture failed to register with the monster.
"No, it can't be!" Sormuron was overtaken with so much emotion that he nearly crumbled the frail sheet of paper in his claws. He quickly apologized and handed it back to the agent.
"What's wrong, Sormuron?" asked Hiro. "Can you tell us anything?"
Sormuron growled. "You know me well enough to know the response. This is personal business, Hiro. If I need your help, I'll let you know."
"Yeah," said the same Mountie who had annoyed Sormuron a few moments before. "Let the monsters destroy themselves. Less work for us to do."
Sormuron turned the Mounted Police officer. He placed a finger to one of his nostrils.
Ahtchoo!
The dinosaurian beast sneezed, accidentally releasing a blast of atomic energy. The man was enveloped in a shower of blue light. A second later, a naked skeleton stood in his place. It took only a fraction of a second for the skeleton to crumble, leaving behind only a pile of off-white dust.
The other Mounties quickly drew their pistols. Agent Masahiro and his partner quickly stepped between them and Sormuron.
"Was that really necessary? What am I going to tell my superiors?"
Sormuron simply shrugged. "Accidents happen."
The dinosaurian mini-behemoth descended into the bay.
#
Like most of his travels, Sormuron's only company was his own thoughts. As he left the cold waters of Baffin Bay and entered the not-quite-as-cold waters of the North Atlantic, Sormuron reminisced about the Dimetrosaur. He remembered how much his friend had tried to promote his films whenever they were released in North America. Although Sormuron had become far more popular than the Dimetrosaur ever did, the latter always took it in stride and did whatever he could to help.
"As long as they remember one of us, the other will never be forgotten," the Dimetrosaur used to say.
When Sormuron's career went on hiatus in the late 1970s, he used his free time to promote Planet of the Saurians, a low-budget affair that was the Dimetrosaur's last screen appearance. He was able to secure the film's release in a few Asian markets, if nothing else. It had been his way of repaying the Dimetrosaur for all he had done for his own career.
Now all of that was gone.
He didn't want to believe the possibility of the murderer being whom the picture had suggested. Nonetheless, he had to be sure, and there was only one other monster who could help him.
Finding him wouldn't be difficult. Sormuron had the equipment for the job—one of the benefits of being an atomic beastie was that Sormuron was his own Geiger counter. This was especially helpful in tracking down Leviathan, the nuclear scourge of the British Isles. Sormuron followed the subtle increases in radiation until it led him to a series of underwater caves in the English Channel. His internal readings were soon going through the roof, which was good for two reasons: One, he had found the Leviathan's lair. Two, he needed a pick-me-up.
Sormuron felt refreshed as he stepped out of the water and into the cavern. It was a bleak place, reeking with the smell of dead, rotting fish and burnt, festering flesh. The lair was sparsely furnished, the pièce-de-résistance being a television and VCR that would've been cutting edge in the early days of the Reagan Administration. A few naked light bulbs hung from the ceiling, powered by a generator that Leviathan himself ran.
The Leviathan was a radioactive monster, much like Sormuron was, although the radiation had affected him differently. The sauropod aberration had become a living harbinger of death; any animal in its immediate presence died a horrible death due to the ionizing radiation that leaked uncontrollably from the monster's body. Leviathan suffered from a unique case of radiation poisoning, in which nuclear materials in his body alternately burned and restored his tissues, making him immortal in the worst possible way.
"Ah, sweet sustenance," cooed Sormuron as he gobbled up the irradiated fish that littered the entrance to the cavern.
A screech that sounded like a cougar undergoing electrode therapy echoed through the chambers.
"You have company, Job!"
The response was immediate. "Is that who I think it is?"
"You'd better believe it."
Sormuron soon found himself face-to-face with Levianthan. Sormuron threw his arms around the base of the dinosaur's neck, who in turn wrapped it around his friend. He could smell the rancid odor of the raw, exposed flesh on the sauropod's body. It was easy for Sormuron to ignore, however, since just being in Leviathan's presence was akin to going to an all-you-can-eat buffet. The radiation that tormented the British beast served to re-energize Sormuron. In short, Leviathan's suffering was Sormuron's pleasure.
When they broke their embrace, Sormuron saw the look of agony in the monster's face, which resembled a toothy western dragon more than it did the small, sleek head of an apatosaurus.
Leviathan's voice was as genteel as one would expect a British monster to be. "It's been a long time, ol' chap."
"Too long."
"What brings you here?"
Sormuron paused. He and the Dimetrosaur may have been good friends, but Leviathan was practically his brother. It was both heart-wrenching and appropriate to Sormuron for him to be the bearer of bad news. "Dimetrosaur is dead."
Leviathan let out a bloodcurdling howl. He sat down on all fours and buried his serpentine head in pile of dead fish. Sormuron considered comforting his friend, but ultimately decided against it. He had to just wait it out.
A few minutes passed. "How—"
"He was murdered."
Leviathan stammered. "Who—"
"There's one suspect." Sormuron rehearsed to Leviathan the events of the previous day, including the picture that the forensic artist had drawn of the culprit. "That's why I'm here. I want to know about Dimetrosaur's relationship with Moloch."
Leviathan got to his feet. "Moloch?"
Sormuron nodded.
Leviathan was silent for a few minutes. "I know what you're getting at. Yes, he was the first one to come up with the idea of a giant-dinosaur-on-the-loose film. And yes, his script for The Dragon of Lake Huron was about to be accepted when the Dimetrosaur showed up with his screenplay for The Iceberg Monster and ended up getting the contract. But I don't think there was any ever animosity between those two."
Sormuron was perplexed. "We all know that Moloch got the short end of the stick quite a bit during his career. After he got his script filmed as The Naughty Lake Monster, he never got much of a break. Practically every project he got signed on for got cancelled. He could have—"
"Look, Sormuron," said Leviathan frankly. "I know you're playing the 'bitter and confused' card here, but I don't think it'll fly. Everyone who knew Moloch would testify that he was one of the kindest monsters in the business. There's no way he could slaughtered—" Leviathan's voice trembled. "—Dimetrosaur that way. It wasn't in his character. You know that."
There was no choice but to trust his friend. Had there been any ill will between the victim and suspect, Leviathan surely would've known. The "old grudge" motive was the only one he could assign to the murder and if there was none between the two, that left him back at square one. Sormuron decided to head back to the Pacific.
On his way to the opening of the cavern, Sormuron stopped. He glanced at the piles of guano and dead fish that covered the ground. "Do you ever get lonely here?"
Leviathan curled his lip. "Not really. I used get regular visits from the Loch Ness Monsters." Leviathan paused and looked behind him. "They knew Moloch better than I did. You may want to talk to them."
Sormuron opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. Bidding Leviathan farewell, he disappeared into the calm waters of the English Channel.
#
"God bless this fog."
The monstrous radioactive reptile trudged through the thick mists that enveloped the famous Scottish loch. Despite not being able to see more than a few feet in front of him, Sormuron was glad that the fog would allow him enough cover to make it to the lake without having to deal with the locals or worse: tourists. The last thing he wanted was for his investigation to end up his being mistaken for the local legend.
He moved swiftly across the damp, peaty soil. So fast, in fact, that he almost trampled a young boy. He red-headed lad jumped to the side a mere second before Sormuron reduced him to a red splotch.
The monster stopped and helped the boy up. "What in the hell are you doing here at an hour like this?" It was shortly after dawn.
The boy shrugged. "I couldn't sleep." He spoke with a thick brogue; thankfully he wasn't a tourist. "Who are you? Are you Nessie?"
"No. I'm Sormuron."
The boy's eyes sparkled. "Sormuron? I've heard of you! Mum won't let me watch any of your movies, though. She says I'm too young for them."
"Maybe she's right." Sormuron looked around nervously for signs of anybody else who might be roaming around in the fog.
"Are you going to devour me now?"
Sormuron reminded himself that he was talking to a kid. "I don't devour people. I make movies. It's healthier, you know."
The young boy scratched his head. " Strange. A dinosaur like you definitely looks like one that'd eat someone."
Sormuron grinned and showed off his long, sharp teeth. "Disappointed?"
The boy's eyes widened. He remained silent, just shaking his head.
"Good. Which way to the Loch?"
The frightened tot pointed to his left.
"That's a good boy." Sormuron patted him on the head, being careful not to snap his neck. "Now get goin', you rapscallion."
The little kid scampered away, disappearing into the fogbank. Sormuron followed the kid's advice. In a few minutes he was diving into the cold waters—Sormuron couldn't wait to get the hell back to his island—of Loch Ness.
Finding the Nessie family's home was no easy task, considering the depth of the Loch and maze of submerged canyons that made up the bottom of the lake. Making things even more complicated was that the Nessies weren't by nature radioactive, so Sormuron couldn't use his built-in Geiger counter. Moreover, the waters of the Loch were so murky that he could barely see in front of him, making him rely on his sonar to prevent himself from crashing into one of the basin walls—at least more than once.
It took Sormuron more than three hours to find the entrance to the Nessies' cavernous tunnel. He cursed the family of Scottish water monsters and their insistence on hiding from the public.
"When it comes to making crappy movies, you're easy to find. Otherwise, nooooooo." That was one of Sormuron's complaints. "Bunch of hicks," was another.
Unlike Leviathan's lair, which was a barren chamber that smelled of dead fish in various stages of decomposition, the cave of the Nessies was conversely more appealing. Lichens and green algae adorned the walls of the cave and the air was alive with the sounds of small crustaceans skittering about. The stale, musty scent of blood hung heavily in the air. Sormuron tried to convince himself that it was probably some unlucky animal—or person—who had gotten lost in the fog and become Nessie chow. Sormuron didn't have much of a problem with monsters eating people, although he sort of hoped that they wouldn't. That usually brought negative publicity to those like him who were smart enough to avoid the armed forces and vengeful relatives by getting into the movie business.
The smell of rotting flesh permeated the air and grew more and more overpowering with each step the monster took. It wasn't rotting fish, either. Sormuron was already plenty accustomed to that particular smell. No, this stench belonged to something a little higher on the evolutionary ladder. Sormuron grew dizzy and his stomach began to churn. Suddenly, he belched a beam of atomic energy, which struck a bed of algae. Its green tissues and sizzled and burned, releasing a scent that helped Sormuron press forward.
It was when he stepped into the next chamber that he immediately turned his head away in disgust.
Every square inch of ground in the grotto was drenched in gore. Sormuron's intestines tied themselves in knots as each step brought with it a sticky sensation, as if he were stomping through gelatin. Streaks of red and brown bodily fluids transformed the walls of the cave into a macabre work of abstract art. Hundreds of large pill bugs scuttled through the bloodstained moss to gorge themselves on the putrid carrion that filled the chamber.
The only thing Sormuron could hear was his own breathing and the constant chattering of the cave's resident isopods. Sormuron examined one of the "fresher" bodies up close. Small bulges rose and fell beneath its skin as the armored crustaceans moved around inside of it. Sormuron noted a series of holes in its neck. They were identical to the bite marks that he saw on the Dimetrosaur.
The far wall was obscured by a series of large stalactites, obstructing Sormuron's view. He noted a number of red splotches on the wall, though. Thinking that there were some more bodies stacked at the edge of the grotto, Sormuron navigated around the stalagmites. He stopped a few feet from the wall when he saw that the red stains were more than mere collateral splatter.
Written in blood were the words: "THERE WAS ROOM FOR ONLY ONE LAKE MONSTER."
#
In emergencies like this, one of the great advantages to being an invincible nuclear monstrosity is that when you have to take the shortest path from point A to point B, you simply jump into the nearest volcano and travel underneath your problems.
As soon as he had discovered the writing on the wall back at Loch Ness, Sormuron had scrambled to inform both Interpol and Orthra of his discovery. He neglected to tell them that Moloch was behind all of it, but he emphatically warned them at any monster whose signature film involved a lake should be protected. Agent Masahiro had assured him that any and every lacustrine creature would be looked after.
Sormuron had decided to confront Moloch himself before anyone else was killed.
It took the gargantuan reptilian three days to travel to Japan from the Icelandic volcano he had entered. Emerging from the Earth's crust in the mountainous region of Northern Japan, Sormuron quickly made his way to a small village at the edge of an otherwise inconsequential lake at the foot of the ridge. His speedy entrance caused the simple homes to shake violently, thus garnering the attention of the village chief.
The Caucasoid man emerged from a hut and approached Sormuron. His upper lip was extensively tattooed and he wore clothing not generally associated with Japanese culture. There was a reason for that: The entire village belonged to the Ainu people. Moloch was one of their gods and had been worshipped by this villa for thousands of years. When Moloch had finally sold his screenplay for The Beast from the Holy Lake to a Japanese studio in the late 1950s, he was able to get the filmmakers to film part of it at that exact village.
"Greetings, Sormuron."
Sormuron bowed reverently to the chief. "Greetings."
"I assume you're here to visit Moloch?" Nothing in the man's tone gave Sormuron any indication that he suspected what his "god" had been up to.
Sormuron nodded. "Has he left the lake recently?"
The chief looked at his feet and shook his head. "I'm afraid not. We haven't heard from him in a few years." His voice was grave. "Moloch was never the same after the studio cut him out of the film you two were supposed to do together."
The chief had referred to Sormuron's epic film, Attack of Monster Gods and Spirits. The movie had been written as a comeback film for Sormuron, Acanthus, and Moloch. It was supposed to have been the greatest giant dinosaur bash of all time. Unfortunately for Moloch, the producers got cold feet at the last minute and had him and Acanthus cut from script, switching them for other, more marketable monsters. Acanthus was kept onboard as the film's fight choreographer, but Moloch left the production altogether. Sormuron could recall the dejected look on Moloch's face as if it were yesterday.
"That was unfortunate. I need to see him." Sormuron did nothing to hide the urgency in his voice.
"Of course, Sormuron. You're always welcome here, you know. The entrance to his cave is on the south end of the lake." The chief pointed to the forest behind them.
Before he knew it, Sormuron was entering the cavernous sanctum of his old colleague Moloch. The monster struggled to organize his thoughts as to what he would do once he came to face to face with him. If it were any random monster, he'd simply launch into a fit of accusations and challenge him to personal combat. But Moloch did not fit that particular bill. If he did accuse him, and Moloch accepted responsibility, then what? Kill him? Turn him over to Interpol, who'd probably do the same thing?
To his surprise, he found the Moloch's living quarters in tip-top shape when he arrived. For being a murderer, the man knew how to keep his home tidy. There were pictures in frames hung up all over the walls. Several bookcases were full of films and books, both of which were organized alphabetically. A few oversized coffee tables were covered with stacks of paper, as was a large desk in the far corner of the cave.
Sormuron let out a sigh. It didn't look like the home of a vicious killer.
"Moloch!"
Silence.
"Moloch! It's me!"
There was no response.
"Maybe I've come too late." Sormuron looked down at his feet and shook his head. "Might as well have a look while I'm here."
Sormuron walked around the room, looking closely at the pictures on the wall. He saw a publicity shot of Giant Monsters Must Die, which showed Moloch teaming up with Sormuron and a dozen other monsters against hostile space aliens—the shot never occurred in the film; Moloch's role was reduced to a brief cameo at the very end. A second picture featured Moloch and Sormuron standing next to one of those same aliens for another movie that got canceled before filming began. The latter had been meant to be Moloch's comeback film.
With a loud groan Sormuron turned away from the pictures. He shuffled listlessly to a bookcase and ran a finger across the numerous VHS titles that filled it. The tip of his claw fell on an old Styrofoam case for The Arctic Monster. Glancing in both directions, he removed it from its place. A crudely-drawn tyrannosaur bursting out of an iceberg constituted the cover art. To his surprise, he found a message in the bottom corner of the box.
"To Moloch, one of the most original dinosaurs to grace the big screen."
Sormuron's claw trembled as he slid the movie back in its place. He distanced himself from the shelves and lumbered into another section of the cave. More pictures of Moloch with other monsters, including every denizen of Sormuron's island, adorned the walls. He closed his eyes and continued through the granite-walled corridor until he reached what he remembered to be Moloch's sleeping chamber.
He was prepared for many things, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw in the chamber. Sprawled out on the sandy ground before him was the body of Moloch himself. There was not an ounce of life in the prehistoric lizard. His knobby scales clung so tightly to his skeleton that Sormuron could see every bony contour on Moloch's hide. The single row of tall spines that ran had grown brown and brittle. They looked longer than before, now that the desiccated skin around them had shriveled and shrunk.
Sormuron knelt down beside the Moloch's mummified remains. Once in a while, he extended a claw to touch the remains of his friend, but he always stopped a few inches a way and drew his arm back.
Finally, he rose up on his hind legs and silently left the chamber. Back in the living room, Sormuron headed to the bookcase that housed Moloch's VHS collection and thumbed through it. He came across the tape of the American version on The Beast from the Holy Lake and put it in the antique VCR that was hooked up to his television.
For the next 70 minutes, Sormuron asked himself why he had chosen that particular film to watch. It was terrible by any definition of the word. The robust score had been excised. The inserted scenes of third-string American actors were so divorced from the monster action that nobody could ever figure out the point of them being included in the first place. Even Moloch's wondrous roar was replaced with…well…nothing. What was this? A silent film? Sormuron grew angrier with each minute of the film.
"Bastards!"
Sormuron let loose a stream of atomic energy. The television exploded and all of its components were immediately reduced to powder and vapor. Molten rock as red as blood poured from the wall of the cave. He picked up one of the coffee tables and hurled it at a bookcase. Sheets of paper rained on Sormuron as he watched the two pieces of furniture collide in a tempest of splinters.
After the smoke cleared, Sormuron searched the house for a telecommunication device. Finding one, he punched in a few numbers with his awkward fingers. He waited a few moments before the screen came on. A monster that looked like a love child of a styracosaurus with a caiman showed up on the screen. It was Acanthus.
The armored monster let out a loud honk that shook Moloch's home. "Sormuron! Where are you?"
"I'm in Japan. Is Orthra there?"
"She's busy right now. Do you want me to tell her anything?"
Sormuron sighed. "Sure. Tell her to get everybody together and come here to Moloch's place." The lizard paused and thought of how he could break it to Acanthus. He opted for bluntness. "He's dead."
#
The question of the identity of the murderer still lingered in Sormuron's thoughts. It obviously couldn't have been Moloch. He had been dead too long to have committed all those murders. Sormuron nonetheless had a nagging feeling that he was involved, even if only tangentially. If there were any clues to be found, Sormuron had to act before the place was swarming with JSDF troops and Interpol agents. But where could he start?
Moloch's desk was as good a place to start as any other. A large stack of papers held down by a large geode lay at the edge. Shoving the crystal aside, he snatched up the papers and thumbed through them. He stopped and read an excerpt from a sheet:
"…it is imperative that we not judge those oversized lizards, or 'slurpasaurs,' as they are commonly and pejoratively known. To them, show business was the only way to escape vivisection in some university laboratory or worse, the hunter's rifle. While most big studios rarely hired them, as their budgets could afford more 'authentic' prehistoric monsters, many independent and fledgling outfits saw them as the only way they could ever make anything remotely resembling a dinosaur film."
So Moloch's last attempt at contributing to the genre that had shunned him so hard was a book about it.
Sormuron slowly set the papers back on the test and set the paperweight back in place. He noticed the papers that his blind rage had scattered on the ground. He gathered them up and looked through them. Fan letters. He glanced through all of them, stopping only when a certain letter caught his eye:
"Dear Moloch,
Thank you for letting me stay at your other place. It was pretty spacious and the natives were really kind to me; they always talked about you. I really owe you one. You've been nothing but kind to me over the past year. I hope I can get out of the rut I've been in for the past few years. Small steps, I suppose.
Enclosed in this letter is a copy of my first movie. I had to move heaven and earth to get it, but it should help you to complete your collection. Hope to visit you soon."
There wasn't a name written on the letter. Sormuron ran back to the bookcase, knocking over two coffee tables with his tail as he did so. He scrutinized every title on the list, occasionally stopping to pull a tape from the row and examine it. Obviously, all of his films and those featuring his friends could be discarded. A moment later he set his sights on a mythology film called Goliath and the Giants. He grabbed and it looked at the back cover. Sormuron sneered and set it apart from the others. Scanning the collection again, he noticed a transparent clamshell case in the "S" section.
Sormuron glanced at the title, which bore the name of a familiar lake he had just visited.
"So that's who you are," he said.
A whispy voice from the cave entrance startled him. "It looks like you got me."
Sormuron spun around. A large lizard stood at the mouth of the cave. The emerald green scales that beautified its thin, agile body sparkled against the blue light that emanated from Sormuron's scales. Its front and hind legs ended in long thin digits with equally-long claws curving out of their extremities. Dozens of thin, crescent-like spines ran down the animal's back. Its head was obscured by a mask that looked as if it had been fashioned by the skull of a creature belonging to the same species as Moloch.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't the Photographically-Enlarged Iguana…or should I say, the original Loch Ness Monster." Sormuron chucked the tap he had been holding at the iguana's feet. The title of the tape was The Enigma of the Loch.
The iguana menacingly waved a fossilized claw at Sormuron. "At your service."
"I'm tempted to say that it all makes sense now, but to be honest, it doesn't."
The lizard cackled. "And what about it haven't you figured out yet?"
"Well, I can understand why you harbored ill feelings toward the plesiosaur family. After all, that's quite a few movie opportunities that passed you up after filmmakers started hiring them for their shitty Loch Ness monster movies."
"Tut tut. Don't forget Crater Lake—"
Sormuron rolled his eyes. "Oh yes, how silly of me. So yeah, you kill an entire family of monsters whose career eclipsed your big debut. Then you pin the blame on a monster whose career was so shoddy that the authorities would assume it was done out of jealousy. I can swallow that."
"But?" The iguana ran the fossilized claw slowly across his emerald scales. He winced when the claw puncture his skin, allowing a stream of blood to flow through the contours of his scaly skin. Sormuron shook his head.
"Dimetrosaur." Sormuron turned to the bookcase and removed Moloch's copy of The Arctic Monster from the collection and tossed it over to the iguana. "He certainly wasn't a lake monster. He was more of a bay one. Why did you kill him?"
The iguana flicked its tongue out. "I had to do something to show him my gratitude." He picked up the tape with the skeletal claw he carried. After looking at it thoughtfully, he let it drop. Suddenly, the iguana twisted his body and his muscular tail struck the cassette with so much force that it disintegrated in mid-air. "I might as well off the guy who prevented him from ever having a decent career."
Sormuron sighed, reducing part of Moloch's bookcase to cinders. "Earth to lizard! Moloch wasn't bitter sado-masochistic sociopath like you are."
"Says the media-proclaimed 'King of the Monsters.'" The iguana took a step forward. "You saw Moloch! An immortal giant monster, dead of a broken heart. Maybe I should've killed you! Maybe if you had made a little more effort to find work for him, he wouldn't have had the horrible life he did."
"You're as much of an idiot as you are a whack-job. I tried to help, damn it. It wasn't as if I could threaten to burn down the studio if they didn't give him a role now, was it?"
"It wasn't as if I could threaten to burn down the studio—" repeated the iguana with a high-pitched voice.
"For the love of—" Sormuron counted to three in his mind. "Look, it's over. I'm turning you into Interpol. 'Let them decide what to do with a crackpot like yourself."
"—with a crackpot like yourself." The iguana's voice grew shriller. He touched the small wound he had inflicted on himself with the claw and held it up to mouth. He slowly licked the blood from it. "Look, it's over."
There was no getting through to him. "I guess I'll have to settle this the old-fashioned way." He cracked his knuckles, the sound of which caused the entire cave to tremble and shutter.
The iguana burst into laughter. "What can you do? Since when have you proven yourself in combat? I've single-handedly killed an entire family of plesiosaurs. You've won a bunch of choreographed fights. You're not a killer. You don't have the guts."
The twenty-foot lizard hurled itself at Sormuron. With a twist of its body, the reptilian murderer swung its thick, muscular tail at the atomic beast. Sormuron reflexively seized it. He let out a high-pitched squeal as the short tail spines punctured his thick skin. Then he reflexively flung the iguana over his head.
Thunk!
"I'm a mutant fucking carnosaur. Killing is what I do."
Large drops of blood fell from Sormuron's mangled palms. The red luminous liquid lit Moloch's humble home before eating a whole in the ground. A few more followed. A few seconds passed. The dripping ceased, as did the pain.
Sormuron then noticed the weight of the iguana on his back. He squirmed at the first streams of blood that ran down the numerous little grooves in his hide. The inevitable trickle was the most inconvenient part of impaling another monster on one's own dorsal spines. It tickled Sormuron in places that his arms simply could not reach. Nonetheless, the iguana was a relatively light beast and piggy-backing his carcass back to the surface would be an easy task.
It wouldn't be long before the cavalry arrived. He turned toward the entrance and took a step forward. Then, Sormuron hesitated. The dinosaur dragged his feet over to the desk and picked up Moloch's manuscript. Placing it under his arm, the saurian nightmare walked back toward the cool air of the northern Japanese mountains.