Following my stunning defeat in a gunfight with an unarmed Muppet, I retreated to the last room that had yet to be almondized—Beth’s home office. I locked the door, blocked it with an end table, and then flopped into her desk chair.

As I rocked absentmindedly in the chair I bumped the desk, shifted the mouse, and woke her computer up. I blinked at the sudden brightness of the Google screen and almost thumbed off the monitor. Instead, I typed in “almond monster”.

The search proved pretty pointless. I received results of almonds and monsters but no combinations. My first instinct was to give up, which is something I enjoy doing, but I was locked in my wife’s office, in the middle of the night, and too terrified to sleep. Hence, I opted to keep searching various wordings of almond and monster.

After countless dead-ends, hilarious pictures, and some really weird pornography, I happened upon a website called Eaters of the Dumb. It chronicled the work and experiences of a paranormal researcher referred to as “Professor ‘Spuds’ Potet”. It was mainly a collection of urban legends mixed with some cryptozoology folklore. The scant evidence provided seemed dubious at best—grainy pictures, second-hand accounts, and rumors—but I felt my story would fit in here with just as much believability.

I skimmed through sections on Bloody Mary, the famous spirit who would appear in mirrors if her name was repeated. There was the Chupacabra, which was some kind of vampiric Mexican coyote or something. Following these were mythical mainstays Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster. One that caught my attention was a demonic spirit known as Pigman the Butcher. Apparently, people could sic this violent demon on their enemies by tricking them into eating cursed bacon. The lists were as exhaustive as they were ridiculous. Or maybe not so ridiculous anymore I had to admit.

While there was no mention of a situation quite like mine, I figured it wasn’t far off. I located an email address for the professor—[email protected] It wasn’t a handle that gave me much confidence, but I was pretty desperate and there weren’t any other, more legit sources of help to turn to.

I fired off a probably-too-quickly-written email, detailing my experiences. I tried to not go too over-the-top, as I assumed this Professor received a lot of messages from crackpots and I wanted to seem believable but not insane. Hoping to speed up a response I included my phone number.

Apparently, Professor Potet didn’t have much going on as my phone rang within the hour.

***

The professor had been very intrigued. So much so that he enthusiastically agreed to make the five-hour drive from Philadelphia just to meet. He claimed that he had some knowledge of my particular situation that may be of use to me. In retrospect, I should have quizzed him more, but I was so exhausted, and it felt good to talk, even briefly, to someone who seemed to believe me.

So, five hours later I wandered into the agreed-upon coffee shop and spotted a giant of a man with a long, braided beard. He was the only one looking around like he expected someone, so I made my way to his table. He really did look like a Viking, so I understood his email address (although the potato thing still made no sense).

“Professor Potet?”

“Max O’Brien?”

Despite his looking like a Viking, there was something sloth-like about him. All of his physical mannerisms were just slightly slowed—the way he sipped his coffee, how he reached across the table to shake my hand—each just seemed to take too long. Even his blinks were inefficient. Instead of an immeasurably quick snap, his eyes would slide shut for one to two full seconds, which was maddeningly long for a blink.

“Now, Max, I need you to start from the beginning and just tell me everything.”

I very nearly immediately spilled my guts, but I was still apprehensive. I didn’t know this guy. This could be a big joke to him, and I couldn’t help but glance around to see if anyone was filming us for a prank show. “Sorry Professor Potet, but how do I know that you have any information? Is there anything you can tell me first, so I know you’re not lying?”

“Of course, and please, my friends call me Spuds.”

“Well, friend, I’m not your friend, friend.” I thought that sentence would make me sound intimidating, but it just came out in all sorts of jumbled stupidity.

Professor Potet looked hurt. “That’s not a very nice thing to say to someone you just met.”

And now I felt guilty as well. “Sorry. I haven’t been getting much sleep. Kind of stressed out. Spuds it is.”

A large, friendly smile parted his beard. “Excellent. And I understand your concern.” He opened his satchel and set a closed folder on the table. “Describe this creature to me and then I can present my evidence.”

I described the almond monster in as much detail as I could remember. Spuds listened intently, doing his sloth-nod and his sloth-blink along with my speech. When I was finished, he opened the folder, removed a piece of paper, and slid it across the table. On it was a pencil drawing of the creature. I caught my breath. It wasn’t a perfect recreation—more like how a police sketch of a wanted suspect would be just close enough to the real thing to recognize. Above the picture was written one word.

ALmond.

“That’s it. That’s the little bastard.” I was equal parts relieved and terrified to have its existence verified. “You’ve seen it to then?”

“Me? Hell no. I’m just a researcher and smart enough to maintain a safe distance from my subjects. You don’t need to stick your head in a shark’s mouth to learn about its teeth. But I’ve talked to a few survivors.”

“A few?” These words bothered me.

He sloth-nodded grimly. It took way too long. “I haven’t had much experience with ALmond, only a couple of survivors were willing to share anything. Everything else I’ve collected is second-hand stuff.”

I leaned across the table. “What is this thing?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know really. Most of these creatures can’t be specifically classified. Is ALmond a demon? Or a rogue spirit? A curse? A boogieman? Probably a combination of many things.”

“C’mon, those things can’t be...”

“Real?” he cut me off. “Please tell me you’re not still in denial. You can’t afford to be at this stage of the game.”

The professor was certainly correct there. “Okay, good point. Tell me what to do.”

Professor Spuds pulled out a notepad and pen. “How many almonds have you found?”

“Thirty-two.”

He sloth-nodded again. “Has ALmond physically attacked you?”

“It dropped a freaking ceiling fan on me. Does that count?”

“No. I mean, has it clawed or bitten you yet?”

“No.” I paused. “What do you mean, yet?”

Spuds ignored the question and kept writing. It was the one thing the man did with speed. His hand moved like a scribbling blur. “This is crucial. Did you take the trash out? Mail anything? Loan anything to anyone? Donate clothes?”

I shook my head to all of these.

“Good. ALmond will hide them anywhere in the house and if accidentally get rid of some you’re screwed. Most of ALmond’s victims make a crucial misstep early on—like throwing an almond in the garbage—before they realize what’s going on. I felt the worst for them. After that, it must have been like playing chess against a grandmaster with only pawns. They didn’t have a prayer of winning and the game was only halfway over.”

“Is that what this is? A game?”

“Kind of. To put it simply, if you find the hundred almonds then the creature will move on to some other random person. If you don’t, it will kill you and then move on to someone else anyway. Rinse and repeat.”

I tried to wrap my head around the concept. “But why? What’s the point? What does it want?”

“Max, you have to accept what you’re dealing with. ALmond doesn’t want to win. It doesn’t want to lose. It doesn’t want to kill you, nor does it want to let you live.” He paused for a slow sip of coffee that must have taken fifteen seconds and had me dying to slap the cup from his hand. “It doesn’t want. It’s incapable of desire or emotions. It just does what is in its weird demented nature to do.”

“But why almonds, of all things?”

Spuds stroked his beard in a wizardly fashion. “Well, it’s common knowledge that many cultures, as far back as the Mesopotamians, worshipped almonds and regularly used them in their various religious rituals. Including human sacrifices.”

“Common knowledge? Really?”

He smirked. “No. Not at all. I just made that up.” He then ahem’ed into his fist when he saw my non-amused reaction. “Sorry, just trying to add some levity to the moment.”

This guy would fit so well in between Paul and Eric to form an annoying sarcasm sandwich. “I don’t need levity. I need answers.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. Sadly, I don’t have any solid answers. Just my well-researched and compelling theories.”

“Fine. I’ll take those.”

Spuds smiled broadly, and I got the distinct notion that not many people volunteered to listen to his ramblings. “When you received the almond, what was your first reaction?”

That was easy. “Confusion.”

“Bingo,” he said and pointed at me. “If someone had sent you a traditional death threat—a note detailing how they would kill you, or a picture of you with your eyes punched out, or a severed body part, or a melon with your face drawn on it and a knife stuck in it or...”

“I get it.”

“Right. Anyway, if you received any of those your response would be predictable. You’d be afraid. You’d take action to protect yourself. You’d probably not even bring the offending threat into your home. But if it’s something as innocuous and odd as a nut, well, you’ll just be puzzled. You’d bring it inside, wonder about it, tell it to people as a weird story that made them chuckle. And that is what this spirit is counting on—you bumbling around, solving the mystery, while it puts down its roots.”

I know this guy didn’t know me, but he pegged me pretty well with the “bumbling” description. “So, what do I do?”

“As soon as you get home, arm yourself.”

“I’ve tried that.”

“I know. Don’t bother with firearms. ALmond is pretty much impossible to hit. Use more physical weapons. Clubs, hammers, shovels, a crowbar. Any blow from one of those should buy you some time.”

“Some time?”

He leaned forward. “You can’t kill it. You know that, right? It’s not alive, not in the sense that we are. It's more folklore made solid. An urban legend made real. It can't be destroyed. But a good shot with even a baseball bat will make it retreat. It doesn’t like getting hit. Of course, even achieving that is easier said than done.”

Great, now it was unkillable. “And what do I do with this time I have to earn?”

“That’s when you search.”

My frustration level was spiking. If Spuds wasn’t twice my size, I would have just started slugging him and not stopped until the police came. “Why don’t I just search first?”

“Max,” he said my name consolingly as if he were a doctor about to diagnose me with something terrible. “This will get bloody. You have to be ready. The more almonds you find, the more active the creature will get. The closer you get to one-hundred the more violent the encounters will become.”

My mind drifted to ALmond’s talons and sharp teeth and my stomach started to hurt.

“It’ll be a running battle. You’ll be searching and searching, while at the same time fending it off. When you get into the nineties it’ll get really nasty.”

“I don’t suppose you want to come over and help?”

“No one can help. If someone were to try and intervene in this little game, ALmond would make short work of them. If you care about people, don’t involve them any further.”

I tried to think if I had any friends I didn’t care about that I could throw at ALmond, but I came up empty (probably a good thing). “So, I battle my way to one-hundred and ALmond will go away. Just like that?”

“Pretty much. Present each and every almond and it will move on to its next victim.” He could see on my face I didn’t like the term next victim and he moved to preemptively console me. “Don’t worry about the next ones. There’s nothing you can do. You can’t stop the cycle. All you can do is survive.”

I finished my coffee and slipped on my coat. “Any last words of advice?”

He tapped his pen against his cheek ever so slowly. “It’ll toy with you. It likes to play, to show off. It may be oddly kind to you, even going so far as to help you along. But don’t let that fool you. In the end, it will kill you if you don’t find them all.”

I nodded, super-fast so he could see how it’s done, and got up to leave.

“Max!” he called after me. “I nearly forgot. Listen for the music. When the music starts that’s the final countdown.”

“Music? What music?”

“I don’t know what it’ll be for you, but it’ll be something you’re familiar with. When the song starts you have until the end to find the last almonds. One survivor referred to it as ‘the last dance of the night.”

Great. I hated dancing.