By Ed Staskus

   The first time Oliver saw the Aitvaras it was sauntering through their family kitchen. When it got to the sliding door leading to the patio it walked right through the screen door without opening it. The screen wasn’t torn or fazed. Once on the patio it transformed into a black dragon and flew away, its tail glowing like a comet.

   Oliver, who was the Unofficial Monster Hunter of Lake County,  poured himself a glass of apple juice and went upstairs, walking into his father’s home office. His father was an electrical engineer. Ever since the 19 pandemic he split his time working in his Beachwood office and working remotely at home. He was home today, blinking at his laptop, scratching his head, and taking notes.

   “Dad, did you and mom invite a rooster over?”

   “No, we didn’t bud,” his father said. “Why do you ask?”

   “I was just in the kitchen when a rooster with blue legs and a fiery red tail walked in. It went out on the patio, changed into a dragon, and flew away.”

   “Was it smoking a pipe?”

   “I think so,” Oliver said.

   “That’s an Aitvaras. They’re from the homeland, from Lithuania. If you see it again don’t let it in the house. If you see it in the house, kick it out. If you’re outside and it has shapeshifted into a dragon, be careful. He will roast you with his fiery breath at the drop of a hat. On top of everything else, his breath is as bad as a tar pit.”

   “OK,” Oliver said going back to the kitchen to put his glass away.

   His mother was the German side of the family. His father was the Lithuanian side of the family. Oliver and his sister Emma were 100% birds of a feather. The Aitvaras was 100% Baltic pagan. What he was up to was not a mixed bag. Whatever he was up was bad.

   Oliver crept into Emma’s room in the middle of the night and shook her awake. She was his right-hand man. She was a heavy sleeper. Oliver, on the other hand, always slept with one eye open. He knew full well one too many monsters knew where he lived.

   “Do you hear that?” he asked. There was a scratching noise downstairs followed by a pecking noise.

   “What is it?” Emma asked.

   “I think it’s the rooster.”

   They snuck downstairs, Oliver leading the way with his flashlight and Emma gripping her jackknife. It was a special operations operation. They skipped the step near the bottom that creaked. They were quiet as worms.

   The most secretive Lithuanian Special Operations Force units are squadrons that go by the codename Aitvaras. Nobody knows who they are. Sometimes even they don’t know who they are. They carry out top-secret classified missions.

   There wasn’t anything downstairs except an extra toaster on the kitchen counter. They didn’t know Aitvarai can shapeshift to resemble household objects. A line of crumble feed on the floor led from the kitchen past the bathroom down a hallway and into the garage. When they turned the garage light on, they were taken by surprise by the sight of it filled with stolen goods. There was Tommy One Shoe’s bike, Jimmy the Jet’s best skateboard, their next-door neighbor’s Cooper Mini, and somebody’s brand new Sabre gas grill.

   Back in the kitchen they decided not to tell their parents anything until morning. It started raining. Suddenly the extra toaster morphed back into the Aitvaras. It went through the closed window above the sink and turned into a serpentine-bodied dragon. The window stayed where it was. The dragon opened its mouth and started drinking the rain. Soon all the rain for miles was flowing their way and going down the gullet of the beast.

   “That thing will cause a drought if it stays that thirsty,” Emma said.

   There were more than a dozen nurseries and fruit farms around their hometown. If the Aitvaras drank all the rain, all the showers and thunderstorms, they would end up in big trouble. Besides that, Oliver and Emma would be out of fresh fruit. They both ate at least one apple a day.

   In the morning their mother called the Perry police department about the stolen goods while their father made a list of the hot stuff and took pictures of everything. “Aitvarai are born thieves,” their father said. “They can turn themselves into black crows and black cats. But if that happens Sly will take care of it.” Sly and the Family Stone was the family’s guard dog cat. “This one is probably living in the forest and wants to be our family guardian. That’s how they trick you. We can’t let that happen. We would become his slaves. Sneaking in is one thing, but once we invite him in it will be almost impossible to get rid of him. They are beasts that bring good fortune by ill means.”

   “It was a toaster last night,” Oliver said.

   “They like to lay low behind stoves,” his father said. “We’ll leave him an omelet every morning, so he doesn’t get his dander up in the meantime. If we mess with him too much when he’s in the house, he will infest all of us with lice.”

   Emma started scratching herself in spite of herself. Oliver chewed on his thumb. He was trying to come up with a plan. Emma turned the TV on. “Ollie, look,” she shouted pointing at the flat screen. “It’s that lawyer boss man from the White House, the Rudy man. He’s on ‘The Masked Singer.’ He’s dressed up in a rooster costume and he’s singing ‘Bad to the Bone.’”

   The next morning, after their father dad had gone to his office in Beachwood, and their mother was at the grocery store, Emma whipped up a special omelet in an eight by two cake pan. It was loaded with Valerian root. She would only be nine years old in a month, but she handled herself in the kitchen like an old pro. She covered the cake pan with aluminum foil to keep it warm. Jimmy the Jet put on oven mitts. He was going to carry it into the forest and tempt the Aitvaras out of the woods.

   “Don’t forget, stay ahead of him and don’t let him catch you until you’re back here in our backyard,” Oliver said. “I want him on the stone patio.”

   “I brought my longboard instead of my skateboard,” Jimmy said. “He won’t catch me.” Longboards go faster than skateboards. It’s because they have larger and softer wheels than skateboards so they can go over gravel and twigs easier. Their bearings are higher quality, too, allowing for faster speeds.

   “Why do you want him on the patio?” Jimmy asked.

   “Because they can heal themselves by digging their spurs into earth, but not stone. I want you to leave the cake pan on the picnic table there.”

   Ten minutes later Jimmy the Jet burst out of the forest like a bat out of hell with the dragon from hell hard on his heels. Jimmy serpentine zig zagged to keep the beast away from him. When he got to the patio, he threw the cake pan down and raced away for his life. The dragon skidded to a stop and sunk his snout into the omelet.

   Valerian root is an herb but it’s a drug, too. Once it gets into your brain it makes you sleepy. There was enough Valerian root in the omelet to make all of their hometown go to sleep all at once. The dragon was out like a light before it took a half-dozen bites. It plopped down on the sandstone patio pavers and was soon gurgling like a baby.

   Oliver had run a wire from a lightning rod he stuck in the middle of the field behind their house to the patio. He wrapped his end of it around the dragon’s gnarly big toe. The rooster was snoring like an old geezer.

   Aitvarai are born from falling meteorites. They come to life as sparks when the meteorite burns up in the atmosphere. It started to rain. A thunderstorm was rolling in off Lake Erie. Oliver and Emma slipped inside the kitchen. The sky got inky dark. Lightning bolts boomed and flashed over the roof. When one of them hit the lightning rod the Aitvaras lit up like the 4^th of July and exploded. All that was left of him was a single spark.

   Oliver ran outside and nudged the spark into one of his mom’s Ball jars. He screwed the top down tight and wound electrical tape around it. The jar got as bright as a bonfire. They could hear the spark squeaking.

   “What are you going to do with it?” Emma asked.

   “I’m going to ask dad to mail it to the Devil’s Museum in Kaunas,” Oliver said.

   That’s what he did in the morning and it was where his father sent the Aitvaras, back to the homeland, where he was displayed in a bulletproof glass case, and became the star of the show.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

A New Thriller by Ed Staskus

“Cross Walk”

“A once upon a crime whodunit.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books

“Captures the vibe of mid-century NYC.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRPSFPKP

Late summer and early autumn. New York City. A Hell’s Kitchen private eye. The 1956 World Series. President Eisenhower at the opening game. A killer in the dugout.