ENTRY ONE
The Lafitte Expedition was not off to a good start. Having faith in an old journal was one thing, but the facts were starting to mount against them.
By the time that the couple had arrived in Singkawang the pair had exhausted what little travel funding they had managed to scrounge up from their benefactors, the wealthy Du Prix family.
Borneo was unforgiving and so were their native guides. Already half of them had left the expedition just at the mention of the Paliomembus. Those who remained were of the scrappy or mangy sort. A few had injured themselves in the jungle and two had left to get supplies and had not returned. The expedition of 25 was now down to 9, including the Lafittes.
“Are you sure that we are going the right way, dear?” Amélie said, sighing as she batted away a frond. Speaking English to one another made it so that the guides couldn’t understand their bickering. There was no need in her mind for these people to understand her private conversations
“Yes, dear,” René said, kicking dirt from his shoes as he carried Amélie’s belongings.
Around them, the unforgiving tropical heat bore into every visible part of their body. The sun was still high in the sky, even as it was starting to get closer to a proper day’s night, but it was nothing less than a halo of death above them. Amélie sipped at the canteen that they’d filled only a half hour ago and gulped the last of what was within.
“We need to stop for water again. This heat is unbearable,” she said, walking more swiftly as she walked in step with her husband, “Can these men find us shelter until nightfall?”
“I’ve already asked, darling. The guides would prefer not to.”
“Why?”
“Something about dangers. Creatures roam the jungle with more hunger at night I think?”
“But why?”
“I’m not sure why animals do anything. Oh, if only our colleagues from Maine were here. They would know.”
“They would ignore our curiosity, I’m sure. We were run out of town by those intellectually absent fools!” she said, tossing her canteen into the trees as she threw her hands into the air.
“You kept bugging them about our work, dear.”
“But, we- “
“Hold!” one of the men shouted, “Not safe. Need return. Away.”
“Speak more clearly!” René said in Dutch, a squeal in his voice as he caught up to the noisy guide. The only reason he’d hired these natives, in particular, was that they spoke decent Dutch (both he and his wife spoke it and French wasn’t a popular language in the East Indies), but this one barely passed for that.
“Bersisik-Tinngi place. Not good!” he said, waving his hands as he pointed to what he was talking about. The guide began to mutter to himself in Malay as he paced back and forth. His movements were erratic, his head turning away each time he got a glimpse of the alien ground.
The ground where the guide pointed was changed. It had the look of cooked sand, with the noted difference being that this was definitely not sand and it was impossibly smooth. Two long strips of this material disrupted the jungle for as far as the group could see, puncturing deep into the dense foliage before them. René reached down and felt the material, crunching a little of it in his hands.
“Odd,” René said, “If I didn’t know any better this has the feel of glass or perhaps marble stonework. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the like of it before.”
“No touch!” the guide said as he panicked, pulling at his hair and shaking, “Bersisik-Tinngi will know!”
“Ridiculous. Surely this is artificial and made by some of your more advanced forbearers. I can’t imagine any creature doing something like this.”
For the next few minutes, René poked and prodded at the material. René wrote every detail he could, from the consistency of the ground around it to the taste of the glassy mineral (like rubber cement). The world around him was quiet, save for a few ambient sounds of the jungle. The guide who had moments ago been at the rim of the clearing with him was gone.
“René, dear,” Amélie said, “I do believe now would be a good time to look up from your work.” Her voice quivered as she spoke, a shadow hovering over the two of them as René slowly looked up.
Thump.
The sun was down by the time that René and Amélie woke up from their violence-borne nap. The two of them were in a metal cage on the same glassy ground that they had been inspecting prior to their unconsciousness.
“I do believe we’ve been captured by something,” René said groggily. Lying flat on his back, the cryptologist looked above them. “What happened, dear?” René asked as he gripped his head softly, “and why does my skull feel like someone bore a hole into it?”
Amélie said nothing as she patted his shoulder. “Look,” she said quietly, “I believe we’ve been captured by some sort of creature.”
“I resent being called that,” the ‘creature’ responded, one muscular scaled arm dragging the cage behind him, “It is quite rude.”
“Ah!” Amélie shouted, banging her head against the side of the cage as she attempted to regain her balance, “You can talk!”
“What were you expecting, horny growls of affection?”
“The lack of that somehow makes this situation worse.”
“My dear god, Amélie. Are you seriously flirting with the Paliomembus? Right now?” René said with exasperation. “At least wait until he’s told us more about his civilization.”
“What?” the Paliomembus asked, stopping in his tracks as he looked to the pair. “You can’t be serious.”
“Too forward?” René asked, shrugging and leaning against the bars, “I suppose we’re both being rather presumptuous.”
“Incredibly,” the ‘creature’ said, disgust visible on his face.
“We haven’t even had the decency to introduce ourselves, dear,” Amélie said, “I am Dr. Amélie Lafitte. Professor of Cryptozoology at the University of, of, oh. How forgetful of me. Formerly of the University of Maine.”
“and I am Dr. René Lafitte, formerly of the University of Maine. It is nice to meet your acquaintance, Monsieur…?”
“My name,” the Paliomembus said with a rough and impatient breath, “is not easy for your kind to pronounce. For your convenience, my name is Thaddeus. It is what those red-plumed humans called me.”
Both Amélie and René looked to each other and then back to the Paliomembus. “Thaddeus?” both of them said with a repressed giggle.
“Yes, yes. Now, Doctors, would you please quiet yourselves? I have much dragging yet to do and your yammering is making it more likely I’ll eat you before I get home,” Thaddeus said with a menacing growl.
At that Amélie let out a small whine and shot a warning look at her husband as he made a small gleeful squeak, but otherwise, the pair were silent.
The moon above them shone down softly as the metal cage continued its long journey to whatever was on the other end of the route. The unbearable heat that had dominated much of the earlier day was replaced by a cool breeze that helped the pair further dry off after their earlier excursions.
“Why are you out here, humans?” Thaddeus said with a demanding tone, not looking back as he continued to pull them forward.
“Well,” Amélie said quickly, “we were looking for your kind. Or just you if you are alone. We were following an old journal’s writings about Paliomembus.”
“Why are you here, Doctor? Really?”
“We’ve been dismissed by our colleagues for years for our Cryptozoological Arc theory and we were hoping to find at least one solid clue out here.”
“Really? Seems kind of stupid to come out here for just that.”
“And for both of us to fulfill our darkest dreams!” René hurriedly interrupted. “I mean. How does one politely say this?”
“There isn’t a way, dear,” Amélie said, shushing her husband, “I suppose that as the progressive thinker that I am, I must admit what our, my, secondary goal is. Since my husband is not up to the task, of course,” she said with a glare. “We wish to be the first humans to have intercourse with a cryptid.”
Thaddeus let out another grunt of disgust at that. “Humans never cease to surprise me in their degeneracy,” he muttered to himself, dragging the cage faster as he trudged through the dark jungle.
As they got closer to the terminus of the pathway, Thaddeus kicked or shoved anything that got into his way. This ranged from wild cows that he tipped over to the errant brush that had grown over a small section of the glass-path.
With a short kick, Thaddeus pushed the cage into a cave. The metal box slid for a few dozen feet before clicking into place. A whirring sound emanated from the walls as Thaddeus stood next to the two doctors just as the ground beneath them began to sink.
“Where are you taking us, Thaddeus?” Amélie asked, slowly trying to stand.
“Since the two of you are apparently oh so curious about me and my civilization, I shall grant two of your wishes. However, the wishes have to be two of three of the following: Don’t eat you, learning about my people, or have, ugh, intercourse with one of my kind. What shall it be?”
“One and Two” “Two and Three”
“What!?” both of them shouted, Amélie looking at her husband in disgust as he whistled away non-chalantly.
“We are not being eaten, René,” Amélie said in a stage whisper, clenching her hands as she approached René. “We talked about this when we were searching for Mokele-mbembe. Stop offering your body to be consumed by locals in exchange for information!”
“But we’ll learn so much from watching the dining habits of the Paliomembus!”
“No. And that’s final,” Amélie said, stamping her foot down as she looked at her husband. “If you are so insistent on being eaten, wait until our next expedition and I will graciously allow you to give away a finger. Nothing more.”
“Why are all the humans that try to find me so creepy?” Thaddeus said to himself, moaning a bit in frustration as he cut off the discussion. “No eating then. And I’ll tell you a little about my people.”
“Excellent,” Amélie said, tapping her fingers together as they continued the descent deeper into the earth with her now cowed husband. “Wait, why are you offering this to us in the first place?”
“Personal reasons and fun.”
“What sort of personal reasons?”
“Would you prefer I eat you?”
“No?” “Yes!”
“René, what did I say?” Amélie said with an angry fire in her eyes.
“Sorry. No,” René said, deflating again.
“Then don’t ask,” the Paliomembus said, shaking his head.
With a click, the elevator halted and Thaddeus began to drag the cage further. Soon the trio was in the midst of a vast network of caverns and tunnels, glinting with bright metal covered with the same smooth material that had coated the path outdoors.
“Incredible. I’ve only seen architecture like this described in the works of the renowned Dr. Howard Phillips’ writings on the Mu civilization,” Amélie said, her eyes darting around as Thaddeus moved around the box. Something from the wall in hand, the Paliomembus grunted a few times to himself as he rolled the fiber-like material in his hands. He chewed the fiber for a few seconds and breathed some smoke it produced onto René while she was distracted. With a stuttering and obviously way too aroused gasp, her husband fell unconscious. “Wait, what are you doing?” Amélie asked as she backed harder into the wall of the cage.
“Doctor Lafitte, I am drugging you,” the Paliomembus said with a tone of cruelty as he grabbed her by the shoulders and blew the smoke into her open mouth.
The blackness of sleep covered the husband and wife team as more time went by. For both, flashing images of Paliomembus in the midst of daily habits interrupted their dreams. Time was imperceptible to the pair. Images of scaled creatures climbing over their oddly shared consciousness were twinned with thoughts of clothing, far away stars, and vast cities filled with creatures of every sort scaled, covered in furs, or vaguely familiar shapes. Bright lights dominating tall skylines, moving at speeds as-of-yet unseen on Earth.
Then came the ruder aspects of their dream. Visions of younger Paliomembus shoving cows and playing childish pranks on humans as their parents shook their head in dismay, even as they carelessly murdered and butchered humans and cow alike as if they were the same creature shook the Doctors psyches.
To the Pallen Race humanity was another creature to kill and to laugh at.
Inferior.
A pest to exterminate at their leisure.
“Ah!” Amélie shouted as she woke up from her dream. Light filtered through the trees down to the clearing that she and her husband were in. As she looked around she found herself clutching something oddly phallic. A dried out tail of something resembling their captor’s limply hung in her grip.
René spoke next. “Dear. I do believe we are repeating the Lake Victoria incident,” he said with an incensed whine. “Where are we?”
Amélie opened her mouth to reply, but the environs were only vaguely familiar. Not quite familiar enough to give an answer so she said nothing.
“Doctors Lafitte?” a voice called out from beyond the clearing.
A bespectacled man wearing a pith helmet and round glasses dashed into the open, followed by a few exhausted looking local guides. They seemed to still be in Borneo at least.
“It IS you!” said the man as he approached the pair. “Just as I was described by that drunk at the port. Where have you been?”
“And you are?” Amélie said shakily as she stood.
“Oh, of course, how rude of me. I am Sir John Kelsey. I was hired by the Du Prix family. It has been a devil to find you, what with the Japanese occupation of the island. It has been a spot of trouble, but nothing I could not handle with a little hard work.”
“Japanese occupation?” René said, interjecting as his wife struggled to respond, “I wasn’t aware that the entire island had been occupied.”
“Truly? We must be deeper in the jungle than I thought. It’s been over a year since Borneo fell to the Japanese. Of course, they gave us a little trouble when we tried to dock, but a few terse words and they were willing to let us through.”
“We blew up two of their boats,” said one of the local guides with a smile.
“Anyways, now that we’ve gotten that trouble out of the way, the Du Prix family are waiting in Australia for you.”
“Not in France?” René asked, Amélie weighing the desiccated tail in her hand.
“Why would they still be in France? Oh, right. You left in the January before the War. You wouldn’t know.”
“Wouldn’t know what? What war?”
“No worries, Doctor Lafitte. I’ll explain everything once we get back to the boat.”
Doctors René and Amélie Lafitte returned with Sir John Kelsey to Australia with the Paliomembus Tail that they’d managed to procure. Their book,
Personalities of the Pallen Race Beyond the Stars, would eventually prove to be a cult classic among cryptozoologists, inspiring science fiction writers in the coming decades.
Doctor René Lafitte would receive next to no money from the publication of the book. He developed an opium habit for the remainder of the war and died on June 8th, 1945 from shitting himself to death. His only regret was not getting at least one part of his body eaten.
Doctor Amélie Lafitte received the entirety of the royalties for the book due to a last minute conversation with their publisher. She didn’t make much on the book, but during the publication tour, she became closer to Sir John Kelsey and shortly after her husband’s death she remarried and became Doctor Amélie Kelsey. She would have three children with Sir Kelsey and would die due to complications of pneumonia on October 19th of 1976.
Only one of the guides that the Lafitte Expedition had left with survived the war. He would spend the rest of his days drinking and moaning about torture at the hands of the Bersisik-Tinngi for the rest of his days. That was until President Suharto personally shot him in the face for barfing on his shoes during a tour of the port.
Sir John Kelsey would eventually settle down with Amélie in Australia. He later served with distinction as a bodyguard to Prime Ministers and the Queen when she visited, but would later be dismissed for failing to protect Prime Minister Harold Holt from REDACTED. He later served as Lord Mayor of Darwin until his death in May of 1982 at the hands of one of his Alderman during a disagreement.
Thaddeus would never be found again by humans. Amateur Cryptozoologists wishing to find where he had been found would only find patches of hallucinogenic mushrooms in the pattern of a middle finger.
The Du Prix family would hold onto the Paliomembus Tail until it was confiscated by police during a drug raid of their family manor. The remnants of the family Du Prix would eventually move back to France, forgetting their past riches to become traveling performers. The tail remained in storage for fifty years until a bureaucrat accidentally reclassified it as fossilized wood to be turned into paper. Today it is a part of thousands of government documents.
