The Tiyanak

The Tiyanak does not appear in The Book of Monsters, but could probably fit into the Shapeshifter class, perhaps as a type of Changeling. It is a Filipino monster that appears as a crying baby to lure unsuspecting victims into the forest, at which point it reveals its true nature, as a horrifying beast with pointed fangs and sharp-as-nails claws, wanting nothing more than to shred you to bits.

This makes me think of Baby New Year, a creature who looks so sweet and innocent as you anticipate the potential of the fresh set of calendar days laid out before you, but that can turn on you fast as your plans crash into harsh reality.

New Year’s Eve was once my favorite holiday. It was all about planning as little as possible and going out and having a great time with friends. It also involved trying to get drunk as cheaply as possible. New Year’s Day was then a blissful recovery day, drifting through the hours in a haze as various football Bowl games played in the background.

What I really liked about New Year’s though, is everyone seemed to be happy. Everyone you met would look to be in a great mood, greeting you with a joyful “Happy New Year!” as they passed by, no doubt reveling in the clean slate the changing of years appears to offer us.

I have since learned that not everyone is happy on New Year’s and some people outright hate it. I still like it, although now that I’m older and have a family, New Year’s Eve generally does not look noticeably different from any other evening, and College Football Bowls are no longer all played on January 1^st, nor do they carry the same weight now that the NCAA has implemented a long overdue playoff system.

But I digress.

Today I meet the 1^st of the year with much the same mix of hopeful anticipation and abject anxiety as the protagonist of THE BOOK OF MONSTERS. (I’ll include a sample so you know what I mean). Although we all know that time is an illusion and January 1^st is an arbitrary “start” day, most of us believe in it. I’m sure many of you ask the same questions I ask myself: “Will this be the year?” “What if it isn’t?” “Will I do anything differently or will I fall into the same old patterns?”

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, but I imagine that’s what they’re about: Hoping this will be the year you change for the better, even though people rarely do.

I reworked my query letter, synopsis, and pitch again. It’s an unsettling experience, like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube blind when you’ve never even gotten more than 1 side with it in full view. I don’t know if anything needs to be changed, or what it is if something does. I’m just guessing and tweaking and hoping something will work, hoping I change the thing that isn’t working and not the thing that is. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s more like defusing a bomb blind.

Right now I feel good about the coming year, though. I do believe that persistence wins, even though I feel like I’ve had to persist for longer than any human should be asked to. Fortunately (?) I have no choice. I am compelled to write, and I am compelled to seek out a global delivery system for my voice.

So here we go again.

(Sample follows below)

From the Book of Monsters, Chapter One:

I shined my flashlight in a circle around me. I did have a weapon—we had each of us brought along a couple of sharpened stakes and a silvered knife, what we thought were standard vampire hunting fare. Tom, the survivalist, had additional weapons, including a larger knife and a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson. I dearly wished I knew where he was.

But what weapon should I prepare? If we were facing a vampire, the stake would obviously be the weapon of choice. If it was merely a crazed townsperson we were up against, or another class of monster such as a therianthrope, the silvered knife might be preferable. I broke into a cold sweat as it occurred to me that I had never been in a fight of any kind in my life, let alone close weapons combat potentially to the death.

I chose the stake. It started to slip through my hand, now thick with sweat. I rubbed the sweat off on my pants and raised the stake again as I scanned the forest either for our prey (who might quickly become the predator, if our guesses about him were right), or for one of my companions.

Another rustling, this time behind me. I whirled around, adrenaline coursing through my body like a bullet train at rush hour.

“We lost him,” said Tom, emerging from the thicket. “Faster than he looked.”

I said a silent prayer of relief that nothing had emerged that I would have had to try to kill, and that I hadn’t tried to impale Tom in my zeal to defend myself.

That relief was short-lived, though, as I watched Tom’s eyes go wide, staring at something directly behind me.

Suddenly, I felt the hot breath of something on my neck. I was momentarily frozen, not sure whether to run or whirl around to fight. It was clear from Tom’s expression that whatever it was behind me, it probably was not friendly.

Tom slowly pulled his gun from its holster. I wasn’t able to discern anything from this choice. He could easily just have forgotten that bullets (even silver ones, which we had taken the precaution of giving him), would be useless against a fiend of the vampiric variety.

My heart now pounding in my ears, I decided if my journey were to end here, I would face it head on. Slowly, I turned.

There, standing directly at me, was a wolf, completely white. It was immediately clear to me that this was no ordinary wolf, even were it not for the wolf’s unblinking red eyes that were boring a hole into my brain.

The wolf growled menacingly. I slowly backed up, towards Tom. I heard a click as he readied his pistol to fire.

“No, wait!” I hissed. “If this is a vampire, you’ll only anger it. Get out your stake.”

Tom understood, and began to change weapons. It appeared he might be too late, as the wolf seemed to be rearing to pounce. I held my stake aloft, hopeful that he would simply pounce on it and save us any trouble.

The creature lurched forward. I am ashamed to say I closed my eyes at this moment.

The next thing I knew, I heard a pained whimper from the creature. I opened my eyes to see Sanjay, who had finally located us, with a cross outstretched.

It was remarkable to witness what happened next. The white wolf, who had seemed so deadly and menacing a moment ago, was behaving like a wounded puppy, continuing to whimper as he backed away from Sanjay.

In retrospect, Sanjay was quite fortunate we were not dealing with a lycanthrope, or for that matter, an actual wolf, as either one of those would surely have torn him and his little cross to shreds and eaten his garlic necklace for dessert.

As it happens, this beast let out a one last mournful whimper and ran off into the forest.

“Should we pursue?” asked Dan, clearly wanting to.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” I answered, hoping I did not register just how clearly I did not want to. “Between the way it responded to the cross, its showing up so soon after that naked man, and the fact that a wolf is a traditional form for an Animalistic vampire to take, I think we can be confident that that’s what we just encountered. No need to take any unnecessary risks. Besides which, we should see where Alex has gotten off to.”

Dan was clearly disappointed, but he quickly recovered and gave Sanjay a hearty slap on the shoulder.

“Well done, my friend!” he said.

“This is what we are here for, is it not?” Sanjay responded with a smile.

We tracked Alex down fairly easily, as he was admiring a tree not far from the path where we had started out. He was clearly quite high, which disturbed me. We were a gang of young men on an international road trip and some partying was to be expected, but being altered when we were on the trail of a monster could prove fatal. I resolved to have a conversation about it sometime in the near future.

Upon returning to the hotel, the mood was quite festive, as we had now felt the quest was truly joined in earnest, now that we had all had an actual brush with a dangerous creature, what we were sure was an Animalistic vampire (see Entry: Vampire, Animalistic) given the circumstances.

Although I didn’t show it, I was not feeling as festive as the others. Our first encounter with real danger and I served as little more than vampire bait. I had expected to feel second class to Dan and Tom in the physical arena, but I was not prepared for Sanjay to leap ahead of me in the playing the hero arena. My only hope was that Alex, the dilettante of the group, who had barely even entered the woods during the encounter, would continue to be detached enough that I could shake the feeling of being the last one picked in gym class.

To mediate these feelings, I got up very early the next morning to focus on my area of expertise, research. I visited a nearby library, and, armed with the knowledge of what we had witnessed the night before, made use of local research texts to flesh out the picture of the Animalistic vampire we had surely encountered.