The Mandela Affection (A Cryptid Chronicle Companion Novel)

Chapter 3

"I think you're right. Nothing as big as a plesiosaur could live in that fishless lake for this long."

Donny nodded. "Exactly, but I believe there could be something in the ocean depths that we haven't discovered yet."

"What about the Chupacabra?"

"Coyotes with mange."

"They say it's a bear with mange in that trail camera photo of the juvenile Bigfoot," I said.

Donny slammed his hand down on the bar. "That's bullshit!"

Patrons looked in his direction, but he ignored them as he took several deep breaths. "Sorry, I get worked up over Sasquatch."

"What do you think they are exactly?"

"I think they are from a branch of the Homo tree, just like Homo Neanderthal, Homo Denisovan, and Homo Floresiensis. You know that we all have some Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in us?"

"I heard that."

"Our whole gene pool is mixed up. Did you know scientists claimed Floresiensis was a Homo Sapiens with a birth defect until they found eight more skeletons just like it, and they had to admit hobbits were real? Scientists suck with new discoveries if they weren't the ones to discover it."

I finished my beer. "I didn't know about the hobbit line of Homo."

Donny nodded. "It's true. They tried to keep it a secret. My money says that Sasquatch is an ancestor of Homo Habilis. There's that one lady in Texas who had all those hair samples tested and said that they came back part human. But the state-run labs lied and said it was deer DNA."

I shook my head. "Why would they lie?"

He cracked open another bottle of beer and traded it for the empty one on the wet napkin in front of me. "Think about it. The public would go nuts if they found out there was a cousin to Homo Sapiens running around the forest who can rip your arm out of the socket. And the government can't control or capture it."

"They can't?"

"No. That's why the Feds work so hard to cover it up. Do you know how many people go missing in our National Parks each year?"

"No." I took a sip from my third beer. "How many? Ten? Twenty?"

'Hundreds."

"Each year?"

"Yes. Each year."

"I find that hard to believe."

"It's a fact. You can look it up."

I made a mental note to do that later if I didn't get too intoxicated, but it was unlikely given how much I had drunk already. With alcohol guiding my tongue, I moved to an even crazier topic. "Speaking of government cover-ups, what do you think about aliens? Are they real?"

Donny rolled his eyes. "They're real. Didn't you see the UFO footage of the Tic-tac ship that was released by the Linkin Park guitarist?"

I nodded. "Couldn't it be advanced technology developed by the US military?"

"If we had that, don't you think we'd be using it against the Russians or the Chinese? If the government has a UFO, it would be an old spaceship that they found buried in the desert like the one Bob Lazar claims we're trying to reverse-engineer. Did you see his documentary?"

"No."

"It's on Netflix. You should watch it. I'm not saying Lazar's story is true, but a few ships from Groom Lake can't account for all the sightings. There has to be more."

"So, who is flying these ships? Little grey men?"

"I think there are several different alien races. Or— ." He pointed a finger at me. "Or it could be humans from before the last ice age, who now live in colonies under the ocean or Antarctica or on the dark side of the moon."

I sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. "I heard there is nothing on the dark side of the moon except a Pink Floyd album."

He raised his chin defiantly. "Are you making fun of me?"

"No. Definitely not."

"Good. Because I thought we were really connecting here."

Truthfully, we were kind of bonding. I couldn't remember the last time that I'd talked with someone this long outside of my parents or a co-worker.

"No, it's just that I heard the Chinese launched a space probe last summer to the dark side of the moon, and they didn't find anything."

"Damn! I didn't hear that. This alien question is a tough one. Give me some more time, and I will figure it out. Just you watch."

"I bet you will."

Donny scooped up the wet napkin that had been my coaster and wiped the spot dry with a small white rag. He tossed the towel in the sink behind him and turned back to face me holding a fresh beer and another napkin. He set them down in front of me.

With a serious look in his eye, he said, "Brian, you're not asking me the most important question of all?"

"What's that?" I asked.

"Do I believe in themultiverse?"