Tres Navarre vs. the Chupacabra: Chapter 7--Menger Madness

Tres couldn’t help but think that Hades had become a lot more corporate than when he studied mythology in college.   Just as Ralph said, his validated ticked earned him a trip back across the River Styx and up to street level on Houston Street in San Antonio.   When he emerged, it was a bright morning, a dramatic contrast from the dim recesses of Hades where he had just finished strategizing about the chupacabra with his dead friend, Ralph Arguello.    

As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, he noticed a diminutive figure standing on the sidewalk.     “You again,” he said.   “You keep turning up like a bad penny.   Don’t you have parents who should be watching you?”

“My parents do seem to be terribly negligent, don’t they,” replied Felix.   “However, I really want to see this adventure to the end.   By the way, did you have a nice trip to Hades?”

“It wasn’t that bad.   I have to admit that the tip about rubbing Cerberus’s tummy came in handy.”

“So, what’s next?” asked Felix.   “Is it time to battle the chupa again?”

“Don’t call it that, kid.   Show a little respect.    But yeah, we’re going to battle it again.”

“With penguins?” asked Felix.

“No.  No penguins!” Tres shouted.

“Aren’t you the grouchy one,” said Felix.   “OK, so no penguins.   Is there any other Egyptian magic I can use?”

“Don’t think so, kid,” said Tres.   “We’re gonna do this Texas style.   Or maybe it’s Tex-Mex style.   One of those.  At any rate, we’re in Texas and we’re gonna play it the local way.   Now, here’s what we’re gonna do.”    Tres leaned over and whispered conspiratorially to Felix.   Felix nodded his head several times and said, “It just might work or it might get us killed.”    

Felix walked down Houston Street in the general direction of the Alamo, while Tres went the other direction in search of his truck.   

It was close to midnight when they met outside the darkened Ripley’s Believe It or Not.   “Did you get it?” asked Tres.   Felix nodded yes and pointed to a package under his arm.   They walked the short distance to the Menger Hotel on Alamo Plaza.    Tres explained that the Menger Hotel had been built by German immigrants next to the Alamo Mission in 1859.    The hotel was situated over limestone caverns which extended for miles under the city.   In 1877, the hotel was expanded to include a bar modeled after the pub in the House of Lords.    A series of strange incidents marked the expansion.   Cattle Baron Capt. Richard King took up residence in the hotel to try to solve the mystery.   He died at the hotel in 1885.   

Entering the stately old hotel, Tres made his way to the bar where he sit down and ordered a Shiner Bock.    

Felix made his way to the second floor and positioned himself on a couch where he had a good view of the lobby.    He pulled out what looked like an ipad and began fiddling with it, hoping that no one would notice an unattended youngster.

Every thirty minutes or so, Tres would get up to stretch his feet and would try to unobtrusively tap the floor listening for anything that sounded different.   However, given the creaky floor, pretty much every step sounded a bit off.   

As Felix waited upstairs, a hotel employee came by and asked him if he was all right.   “Sure,” he said.   “My parents just asked me to give them a little privacy.   They should be done soon.”   The man made a sour face and walked away.    

At closing time, Tres left the bar without having finished his Shiner Bock.    He met Felix upstairs and they made their way to a restroom in the lobby.   There Felix opened his parcel and changed into the goat costume that he had picked up from Gibson Costume Shop earlier in the day.    As they prepared to leave the improvised changing room, Tres asked, “Are you up for this?”    Felix nodded yes.   

They walked as casually as a man and a boy in a goat suit could across the lobby toward the bar.   Tres quickly picked the lock and they entered the darkened taproom.  A lone lamp cast a dim ray over the bar and the tables where hotel revelers had sat just an hour before.  From under his coat, Tres produced a Tupperware container full of red liquid and a bottle of Mezcal.  He combined them as Felix rubbed his back against a bar stool in the scratchy goat costume.    

Tres moved the furniture out of the center of the room.   With considerable effort, he pulled back a heavy carpet to reveal a large sheet of iron with a door in it.   He pulled on a handle embedded in the trap door.  Nothing happened.   Tres pulled harder and grimaced as he strained the muscles in his back.   He poured a little of the menudo around the edges of the trapdoor.   This time it reluctantly moved with a massive creak.

“What now?” asked Felix.   

“We wait.”   

They didn’t have to wait long.  A pair of red eyes lit up the emptiness below the trap door.   In single bound, the fiend leapt into the room.

The chupacabra reared up and raised its deadly claws to decapitate Felix in the goat suit.    Tres threw the bowl of mezcal laced menudo into the beast’s eyes.   It gave a hideous shriek as it attempted to scrape the stinging tripe off its face.   It managed to claw its own face in the process resulting in more unearthly howls of pain.   And then it stopped, standing at its full height and slowly scanning the room.

“Run Felix,” yelled Tres.   Felix got up to run but tripped over the goat suit.   He slid on the menudo greased floor.   Tres placed himself between Felix and the fiend and assumed a Tai Chi stance.   The creature advanced slowly and deliberately, uttering a subdued growl as it stalked its prey.    Tres knew that if he could slow the beast down, Felix might make it out alive.    Tres and the chupacabra eyed each other warily, but Tres was armed with only his bare hands and the inner strength of meditation.   

In an instant, the creature leaped over Tres and blocked Felix’s path.   Tres jumped on its back and desperately fought to hold on.    He did not make it anywhere close to the eight seconds needed to qualify for the chupacabra riding contest at the rodeo.   Tres flew into the bar knocking glassware to the ground in a hail of deadly shards.    

Felix freed himself from the goat suit but found his path blocked.    He raised a chair to defend himself but the chupacabra smashed it into splinters.   He dove under a table only to find the beast lift it effortlessly over its head.   

Tres, still reeling from being thrown, lifted himself over the bar.   In the process he cut his arm on the broken glass.   The chupacabra seemed to smell the fresh blood and turned toward Tres.   Felix ran to Tres’s side and began chanting a protective incantation.   

However, before he could get three words out the beast was on them.   Tres held his wounded arm trying to staunch the flow of blood which was turning his clothes an ugly shade of red.    The beast’s fiery red eyes put fear in Felix’s heart and stopped his chanting cold.    

Time stood still as the angry creature and the unlicensed private investigator faced each other.    The room seemed to cloud up in a dense fog.    It was not fog but cigar smoke, the indication that another combatant had entered the fray.

Through the smoke, Tres glimpsed the sight of a flamboyantly-dressed spectral figure wearing a long purple jacket with wide lapels and padded shoulders, pleated pants and a fedora hat.    He clenched a cigar between his lips belching copious acrid clouds and held a box in his hand.   The smoke seemed to freeze the chupacabra in its tracks.    Its eyes blazed as it slowly turned to stare at the newcomer.   

The man in the zoot suit opened the box which was filled with dominoes.   He tipped the box to one side and a string of dominoes tipped into his other hand.   The dominoes defied gravity as they swept back and forth between his hands.    The flying arc of dominoes increased in speed until they blurred into one line going from hand to hand.   He raised his hands up over his head and the whirling string of black followed.   Bringing his hands down over his head, he sent a whirring loop over the chupacabra’s head and pulled it tight.   He leaped onto the beast’s back and rode it back down into the pit from whence it had emerged.    The floor closed up behind them.    

As the smoke cleared amid the wrecked room, Tres saw his old friend Ralph, his white guayabera shirt gleaming and his black ponytail glistening.    “Son of a,“ Ralph started, but caught himself at the sight of the young Felix.  “Son of a gun,” he said.   “My abuelo really did know how to fight the chupacabra with cigar smoke and dominoes.”

His shock at seeing his deceased friend above ground turned to anger as Tres sputtered, “What was that whole thing about the menudo about?   That was the worst advice ever.   It did nothing.”

“You weren’t supposed to use it on the chupa.   That was just something for you to eat for courage.  Didn’t I mention that?”

“Always with the excuses, Ralph.”

“Hey, at least I got my abuelo to help out.”

 “That guy in the purple suit was with you?”

“Yeah, that was my abuelo, Francisco.    That was the same zoot suit he was wearing when he first encountered the chupacabra in El Paso in the 1940s.”

“And he defeated it back then, too?”

“No, man.  He ran away.   But he spent the rest of his life studying the monster.   He died fifty years ago today without ever getting a rematch.   Now he and the chupa can fight each other til Hades freezes over.”

“Excuse me, sir,” came a small voice.   “I am a bit confused with the whole abuelo/abuela thing.   How is that relevant to what just happened here.”

“Sure, little man,” said Ralph.   “Abuelo is the Spanish word for grandfather.   Abuela is your grandmother.   You see, when Tres came to see me, I didn’t want to tell him that I hadn’t really paid attention to the stories my grandparents used to tell, so I told him about my abuela’s special menudo brew.   When she got wind of what I had done, she marched me off to my abuelo and made us come up here to set things right.   So here I am.”

“But how did you escape from Hades?”

“Listen kid, you’re the one who deals with all that Egyptian stuff and making penguins out of mashed potatoes.    You should know, there’s always a way.   It’s time for me to get back.   Vaya con Dios.”  

Author's Note:

Long before Rick Riordan started his mythology series, he was writing his Tres Navarre stories.    I was a huge fan.   My daughter is a fan of his Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles series.    In October 2013, I decided to do a Tres Navarre/Percy Jackson crossover story. I was particularly attracted to the character of Felix from the Kane Chronicles because of his love of penguins.    I used to write ridiculous stories for my high school and college newspapers, but my muse had grown dark since then.   I started the story about eighteen months ago then set it down and misplaced my outline.   I started again in earnest this past Christmas.

One of the things that I liked about Rick Riordan and Jay Brandon, another San Antonio author, is how they set their stories in places that are familiar to me in Central Texas.  I did the same thing here.  The Menger Hotel, the Majestic Theater and even the penguin enclosure at Sea World are all places that I have enjoyed in San Antonio.  Every year my family meets after Christmas at a dude ranch in Bandera which is why I set the first battle with the chupacabra there.    UTSA, Los Barrios and Gibson Costume Shop are all real places as well. 

As I began the story, I tried to remain true to the nature of the characters are created by Rick Riordan.  I fear that as I made my way through the story they took on more of my nature.   I apologize to Rick Riordan for hijacking his characters.   Tres Navarre fans may catch one major inconsistency in my story.   This story is set after the events in Mission Road in which Ralph Arguello is killed.  In my story, Tres is still a freewheeling bachelor.  However, at the end of Mission Road, he proposes to the pregnant Maia.   Quite frankly, I had forgotten this detail when I started writing.   Since Maia appears as Tres's wife in Rebel Island, we know that they went through with the wedding.   Perhaps they got divorced or perhaps Maia and daughter were just on an extended trip visiting family.   I leave it for the reader to decide.   

We haven't since Tres Navarre in print since Rebel Island in 2007.    I hope that Mr. Riordan returns to him in the future.