Chapter 2, The Strangers and the Sea Serpent:
It was a stormy, summer night in Historic Downtown Jersey City. On the shore of the Hudson River sat Hamilton Park, a park made up of walking paths, a veranda, memorials, and old iron-wrought fences. New York City could clearly be seen covering the opposite shore of the river. It glittered brightly like a metropolitan jewel in the night. It was a familiar sight well to these inhabitants of New Jersey.
Just outside the western edge of the park sat a long row of red-brick brownstone homes. These homes sat still and silent in the night, except for one: 35W Hamilton Place. A small lamp shone out from the main-level window and the shadow of a figure could be seen behind the door. The figure then opened the door and stepped out onto the concrete steps. He then walked down to the street with a large suitcase trailing behind him.
The man was hunched over, with the collar of his large black overcoat turned up against the wind. He had long black hair that fell down the sides of his face and stark grey eyes, with an unkempt short beard hanging from his rough face. He wore old black tennis shoes and deep red leather gloves that gripped the suitcase. Quickly, New York City came into view for him. He stopped at the overlook and gazed at the skyline. It filled him with mixed emotions.
The man's name was Adam Barr, and he worked as an Electrician for the state of New Jersey. Adam had moved to 35W Hamilton Place alone ten years ago right after he graduated from Syracuse University. He had jumped across the river from his childhood home in New York City to his new home in New Jersey in order to get away from his family. His experiences with them near the end of his time there were terrible. So much so, that the idea of returning to his childhood home was repulsive to him. Still, a part of his heart always yearned to go back and re-experience all of the good times, the times when his family's insanity felt a world away.
The madness that haunted his family was cultivated many decades ago, back in the early 1900's. They believed in the conspiracy theories, but not just those made by others. They made their own, and to them, everything was connected. From Crop Circles to Sasquatch, they believed in it all. The United States, to them, was filled with all kinds of fearsome critters, spirits, and monsters. They even believed in a hidden society that lurked just beneath the surface, a society that was responsible for all of the weird and unexplained things that happened all over the country.
Adam had spent most of his childhood being ridiculed by those around him because of his family. Slowly, it had leaked out to the public that almost off of Adam's older family members passed away while stuck in an insane asylum. The more he was ridiculed, however, the harder he tried to step out of the shadow cast by his family. Regardless, their sickness persisted, until Adam cut off all communication with his family entirely. It wasn't just an effort to leave his troubled past behind, but to prove something to himself: that he wasn't like them.
That night, Adam was taking a ferry across the Hudson River to stay with an old friend of his, Eric Sterne, for a couple of days at his home in Harlem. He wanted to catch up with Adam and re-live the old days. They were both twenty-eight years old now, and they haven't seen each other for over a decade. Adam jumped at the chance to see him again, as he had no other close friends. Most days, Adam would sit alone in his house watching TV and reading books alone. He didn't know his neighbors, but he never seemed to care. It was when Eric had contacted him that he realized just how alone he truly was. Adam still remembered the first day that he had met Eric.
A ten-year old Adam was sitting alone in the cafeteria, eating a disappointing Sloppy-Joe sandwich. Suddenly, he was approached by a group of young boys led by the worst kid in his class: Dale Benson. They sat down all around him and started calling him names. Stupid, Unstable, Mentally Ill, and more. Suddenly, a young boy with a messy mop of blonde hair forced his way in and slammed his hands onto the table.
"Leave him alone!" he yelled.
The entire cafeteria immediately fell silent. A teacher with a stern look on her face then approached the table, but not before Dale and his gang had walked off. The teacher pulled Eric aside and scolded him for causing a scene. When he had finished scolding him, Eric walked back to the table where Adam was sitting. He looked sad, but defiant. When he saw Adam staring at him, he smiled and introduced himself.
"Hi! My name's Eric!"
Adam walked past Weehawken Waterfront Park and took a right at the first intersection towards the Hudson River. As he did, he approached the Lincoln Harbor Light-Rail Station. A man was sitting there alone on a bench, waiting for a train. What drew Adam's attention to him was the large pointed hat that he wore on his head. As Adam passed by the station, he looked the man over.
Aside from his pointed hat, he wore a long grey coat that reached down to his knees and a had a small cane that he held at his side. Adam couldn't see his face, as it was hidden in the shadows cast by his hat. The man was otherwise featureless. The man noticed Adam staring at him and took off his hat in order to greet him.
"Hey there, stranger!" he called to Adam. "You here for the train?" Adam turned to him and gave him a wave.
"No, I'm off to Lincoln Harbor to catch a ferry!"
The man put his hat back on and laughed. "I see. Well, make sure you don't run into Captain Sandovate's ship! I hear that he's making his way up the Hudson tonight and he's in a pretty bad mood. That five-hundred and sixty-year-old geezer wouldn't take kindly to any No-Majs messing with his ship! It helps that his ship is invisible" the man laughed again.
Adam stopped in his tracks, stared at the man, shook his head and kept walking. "Crazy old man" he whispered under his breath. Adam crossed the street and kept walking, but the man called out to him again just before he walked out of view.
"You know when the train's coming?" he asked.
Adam stopped and looked up at the sign hanging above the platform, where the time of the next train's arrival would usually be listed. To his surprise, the sign was blank.
"Sir, I don't think there's another train coming tonight" the man scoffed.
"Nonsense! The time on the sign says 11:58, and I'll have you know, the Express Train always comes to pick me up at midnight. Sure, I'm not at Newark Central Station like I usually am, but it should still make it here sooner or later!"
Adam scoffed. "Whatever" he said to him before walking off again down the road. Once he reached the end of the street a block away, however, the sound of a train reached his ears. He turned back towards the station and looked for the train. To his surprise, he didn't see any train. Thinking that he just missed it, Adam kept walking down the road until he finally reached Lincoln Harbor.
Adam made his way onto one of Lincoln Harbor's many piers that jutted out into the river. After walking through the maze of walkways and docks, he found his ferry. It was a large, two-story boat that appeared to be quite old and battered. Just in front of the boat sat an old, grizzled man with a large amount of stubble covering his wrinkled face. A flat, plaid hat sat on top of his messy grey hair and he wore a large leather coat. He was fingering a small pistol in his hand with a small bullet in the other. The man's eyes darted back and forth warily, as if he felt like he was being watched.
"Hello there!" Adam called out as he walked towards the man.
"Who's there?! the old man yelled out. He jumped up from his stool and began to wave his gun around wildly, until he noticed Adam and pointed it directly at him. "Who are you supposed to be?!"
Adam put up his hands in defense and stopped in his tracks. "I'm Adam Barr. Mr. Miller, we talked over the phone last night?" he held his hands up in defense. "You still remember me, right?"
The man, Harold Miller, suddenly calmed down and slowly nodded, dropping his gun down to his side. "Oh…yes of course, Adam. Sorry for the scare" he rubbed the side of his head as if he had a headache. "Follow me" he gestured for Adam to follow him into the boat.
Adam walked up onto the main deck and made his way towards the small set of stairs to his right. He politely waved at some of the crew before making his way down the stairs and into the cargo hold. The cargo hold was surprisingly empty, but what was there was shackled and chained to the walls, as if the captain didn't trust a single person aboard the ship. He set down his suitcase in an open stall and walked back up to the main deck. After a couple of minutes, the crew and the captain had pulled the ship out of Lincoln Harbor and they started to make their way across the Hudson.
After a while, Adam found a dry chair on the starboard side of the ship, just outside of the Captain's Cabin. He then sat down and pulled out a small book from inside of his coat. It was one of his favorites books: The Crucible. He pulled out a small pair of reading glasses and began to read the broken lines of speech, imagining the story in his mind as if it unfolded on a stage. Adam was a fan of the play and genuinely found stories about the Salem Witch Trials to be very interesting. There was always a part of him that admired the bravery of those who took a stand against the witches and how they fought hard for their freedom against the demonic forces appearing in Salem, freeing their town from the evil of witchcraft. Most of the journey passed by in silence. The only sound for a long time was the lapping of the Hudson River against the hull of the ship.
About halfway through their voyage, a loud crash suddenly broke through the night and the boat dipped towards its starboard side. It sounded like something had crashed into the ferry. Adam slid off his chair and onto the wet deck in surprise. His book slid off the edge of the deck, under the guard rail, and into the river. He growled in annoyance, as one of his favorite books was now lost. But he jerked his head back up as Harold Miller, tapped on the window behind him, motioning for Adam to join him in the cabin.
Adam's muscles groaned as he stood. The main deck was now slick to the touch, and he walked across the wooden deck and to a door labeled "Captain's Cabin". He grabbed the handle and opened the door. He quickly dived into the quarters as another tremor shook the ship.
"Did you want to talk to me?" he asked the Harold, his voice shaking. Harold glanced at him and sighed before returning his gaze to the river.
"You're scared. I can tell" he answered. Adam laughed shakily in reply.
"Gee, what gave you that idea? The fact that this boat is now shaking in the middle of a huge river? Or the fact that I'd rather not die out here on this boat?"
"I just wanted to see if you wanted to keep going or if you wanted to turn back" Harold told him solemnly. "I can give you a refund, if needed".
"Well, first of all, it would really help if you just told me what's going on!" Adam yelled as the boat shook violently gain. Various tools and knick-knacks slid off of shells and fell onto the floor with a load crash and the lights in the cabin began to flicker. Suddenly, a great roar tore through the night. Adam backed up against the wall in a sudden fit of panic. The captain stalled the boat and then ordered the crew members to drop anchor.
"Why are we dropping anchor for?!" Adam yelled as the boat shook again. "We need to get out of here!" Crewmembers were yelling amongst themselves and positioning themselves with harpoon guns. The captain sighed again in defeat.
"Well, there's really no point in running. Trust me, I've tried." The roar echoed again around them.
"PLEASE TELL ME WHAT'S HAPPENING!" Adam roared as the boat shook once again. The crewmembers fired off their harpoon guns with a BANG! The water erupted around them.
"Remember how I didn't want to take you across the Hudson tonight?" he asked Adam. The man had picked up his gun again, which he now loaded with a bullet. The lights were flickering constantly now.
"Yeah?! I'm assuming this is why!" Adam yelled back at him, the boat was now shaking back and forth with no signs of stopping. When Adam had first looked for someone to take him across the Hudson to New York City, no one would take him. They all kept directing him to Harold Miller. When Adam contacted him however, he utterly refused, almost acting like doing so would be a death sentence. It was only Eric had contacted the captain that he was convinced to bring Adam across.
"The past couple of days…" Harold continued, "I've had blank spots in my memory, and it would always happen every time I reach this spot in the river at night. I would normally cross the Hudson at this time every night to get some basic supplies in New York City, but now I've been too frightened to" he said with a shudder.
The sight of what looked like giant fins and a long serpentine body now started to slither up and out of the water.
"Any idea why?!" Adam asked, slowly realizing why Harold kept a pistol with him. Still, it didn't seem like it would do much good against whatever was out there in the water.
"No…I don't" he moaned, putting his head into his hands. "Every time this happens it gets worse and worse. I thought that getting those harpoon guns for the crew would help…but I still don't know if it'll kill that monster…"
"Wait…" Adam interrupted him. "Did you say…Monster?" He turned and out the window and gazed towards the Hudson.
"Yea…that thing out there is the stuff of nightmares" Harold answered.
Silence fell again, with a heavy sense of foreboding in the air. The water had turned calm, eerily calm, and the shaking had stopped. It was as if they were all holding their breath, waiting for something terrible to happen.
Suddenly, a large piercing shriek filled the air and the boat tipped steeply to the opposite side, port side, causing Adam, Captain O'Brian, and the crew members to lurch to the left. When the boat steadied itself, Captain O'Brian ran out onto the main deck.
"That sounded like Sharla's voice!" he yelled in a panic. One of their crewmembers had been dragged overboard.
The crew was in a panic, hurrying to grab life preservers and rope in an effort to drag her back onto the main deck, but the water erupted again and the continued to shake back and forth. Whatever this monster was, it was large enough to surround the whole boat. It wasn't the creature, however, that caused the boat-man's memory loss, it was what followed.
Suddenly, among the chaos, the sound of a loud CRACK filled the air. It was repeated five more times before the water suddenly exploded with flashing light, just like fireworks. The monster cried out, which was deafening to the crew, Harold, and Adam, before falling silent. The boat then grew still and the waters around them grew calm.
Adam had dropped to the ground during the chaos. He rubbed his head and moaned, accidentally covering his gloves with blood from the cut that had appeared across his forehead. As the black clouds that covered his vision slowly faded away, he steadied himself and rose to his feet. Gazing out of the window towards port-side, he noticed a small group of people walking towards him from across the main deck. They stopped right in front of him and turned towards the water.
The group was comprised of three men and three women, each one of them wearing a shimmering scarf and a long overcoat that reached down to their ankles. Each one of them wore a pointed, wide-brimmed hat, just like the old-man that Adam had seen at the Train Station. Some of them gripped large briefcases in their hands, while others just held thin and slender sticks. One of them waved their stick towards the water, and to Adam's surprise, the woman that had fallen into the river slowly floated up into the air. It was as if the man was controlling her limp body's movements. The man then waved the wand towards him and guided her body back onto the main deck. The same man touched the tip of his stick to her lips and the water in her lungs suddenly bubbled out. The woman then coughed and spit up the rest of the water.
"Stupid beast" one of the strangers muttered. "It's bad enough that Sea Serpents like to play with boats on a regular basis, but we've had an entire herd of them living just outside of Manhattan for the last century" the man then utter a slight hic. A woman laughed in reply.
"You wouldn't be saying all of those things if you weren't drunk off of that bottle of Fire Whiskey you downed just before coming here" Fletchinger sighed before replying.
"What can I say, it's been a long day at the office!" he rubbed his face with his sleeve. "Being the head of the Body for the Protection of Magical Species isn't always fun and games. I got a letter from the Illini Native Americans that are in charge of the Piasa Reservation near Alton, Illinois. Instead of any exciting stories from one of the US's most iconic dragon reserves, it was just a request from wandmakers in Chicago for another shipment of Piasa Horn Shards to be used as wand-cores" the man scoffed before hiccupping again. "How boring! Let me tell you something ms.…ms…" he stopped and tapped his forehead. "What's your name again?"
"Abby Battermole, remember? I'm the recent Ilvermorny graduate that you hired last month?"
He snapped his fingers. "Oh yes, right. Well let me tell you something Ms Battermole, (hic) you may have some spunk…but when it comes to most of these creatures here in the states, Native American witches and wizards know how to handle them far better than we ever did, I say"
With that, Fletchinger asked Abby to pull out something called "Popping Salts", and the others left them behind and walked away, leaving Adam alone with an unconscious boat captain and two odd strangers.
"Well, at least she didn't drown" Abby said. "We managed to draw the water out of her lungs just in time"
"Yeah. Thank goodness" Fletchinger replied. "No Sea Serpent has ever actually attacked any of these boats, but if they did and a No-Maj lost their life, everyone on this team, including myself, would've lost their jobs in an instant" he chuckled before uttering another hic.
"Maybe we should meet with the Federal Creature Reserve Bureau to try and move these Sea Serpents to a reserve in Lake Michigan?" Abby asked. "I heard that there's plenty of room out there for them"
"Nah…" Fletchinger muttered before wiping his mouth again with his sleeve. "The Bureau's got their hands full with a different reservation in Lake Ontario, a Dragon Reservation no less"
"Oh, you mean the Gaasyendietha Reservation?"
"That's the one! Those stupid dragons are covered in a chemical that ignites whenever they get agitated, turning them into giant fireballs. A couple of days ago, a man from Quebec was trying to scrape some of that slime off of one of the dragons. Little did he know that the area under their scales, where the sacs that secrete the stuff are located, is the most sensitive part on the Gaasyndietha. It then burst into flames, covered him in burns, and landed him in Ti-Jean Magical Hospital in Ontario"
"Oh, yeah I've heard about that!" Abby said. "They've been rubbing his burns with a mixture of Turn-Root and Juniper ever since"
Adam, who was still hiding in the captain's cabin, was starting to feel something that he hadn't felt for a long time: fear. His hands began to shake, and his palms started to sweat as his sanity slowly started to break down.
"It's a shame that we've had to wipe Harold's memory so many times" Fletchinger told Abby. "It's impressive that a No-Maj could endure ten Memory Charms without going insane"
Adam stopped in place. His hands grew still, and his blood ran cold with terror. It was then that the woman suddenly gained consciousness.
"Wh-wh…who are you?! Where did you people come from?!" the woman asked incredulously. Fletchinger smiled at her kindly with another hic.
"Well, we were just sailing by and we noticed that your boat seemed to be in some sort of trouble. So we decided to make our way over and see if you all were alright. We dropped anchor just off of the starboard side of the ship"
Adam slowly rose onto his knees and glanced out towards the starboard side to get a good look at their ship.
There was no ship.
Noticing movement inside of the boat, Fletchinger turned towards the captain's cabin and peeked through the window. Adam had dropped to the floor before Fletchinger just before he could spot him.
Still, it was too late. Fletchinger had noticed movement inside of the boat and made a move to the door. Before he could open it, however, Adam had reached towards the doorknob and locked the door. Sadly, it wasn't enough. Somehow, the lock slowly began to open, much to Adam's amazement. It was as if the lock was moving on its own. There was no escape from these strangers. With that in mind, he quickly scrambled across the floor and picked up Harold's gun.
Adam quickly turned back towards the door, loaded and primed gun ready in hand. His heart was now beating rapidly like a large drum and his breathing shaky. Right as the door opened, a small and slender stick came into view. Adam opened fire on the stranger, firing off five bullets at the man.
"Stay back!" he yelled. "I'm armed and I will shoot you if you come any closer!"
Silence. Fletchinger had stopped dead in his tracks. For a brief second, Adam wasn't sure if he had hit the man or not with a bullet. As he slowly approached the door, he realized that not a single bullet hit the door. Instead, they all hung suspended in the air. Before he could react, his body crumpled to the floor as the last word he heard was:
"Obliviate"
Magical Creature Profile,The Billdad:
In Maine there exists a beast known as the Billdad. It's as large as a beaver, but it has long, kangaroo-like legs that it uses to fish. When it hunts for fish, it crouches down on the shoreline of a freshwater lake and waits for a fish to come up closer to the surface. When it does, the Billdad darts forward with incredible speed and slams its large beaver-like tail onto it, stunning the fish. The Billdad then takes up the fish in its hawk-like beak before quickly bounding back to shore on its webbed feet. For any average male, they are able to jump sixty-feet out across the water from the shoreline.
The only known No-Maj sighting of a Billdad was on Boundary Pond in northwestern Maine. There, No-Majs would claim to hear the sound of a paddle slapping the surface of the pond each night, while it was really just was the sound of a Billdad fishing. While Billdads are known to be quite shy and agile, a No-Maj named Bill Murphy once caught a Billdad and cooked it. According to eye-witness accounts, upon eating the meat, his body stiffened, his eyes glazed over, and with a wild yell he ran down to the lake and jumped out fifty-yards into the water, just like a Billdad does when fishing. As a result of this tragic event, MACUSA was called in to perform mass obliviations, after which they outlawed any Billdad hunting. Since then, many mischievous witches and wizards in Maine have broken this law and have attempted to sell Billdad meat disguised as beaver meat to unsuspecting No-Majs, with expected (yet no less devastating) results. This would always cause quite a headache for those working in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at MACUSA.