3 Rogue Roombas
Rogue Roombas
The Chupacabra in Illinois takes all of an hour to debunk.
A missing-pet poster and half a hot dog in a live trap later, and the suburbs of Rockford, Illinois, are free from the terror of a bloodsucking nocturnal monster.
Or at least free from a scrawny purebred Chinese Crested named Biscotti who has an unfortunate habit of squeezing between fence posts to roam the neighborhood.
I make Calvin keep the shivering, snarling little creature in his Airstream for the rest of the night before returning it to its owners the next morning, since this is technically his case and therefore his problem. He doesn’t seem to mind the mutt. His taste in pets has serious flaws.
I also make sure Eldi stays inside while we’re there.
With much grumbling, she eats the overpriced and potentially questionable steak tartare I hunt down for her.
But she doesn’t actually fight me too hard on this.
She knows she’d be in danger if she were discovered.
I’m not sure what she went through before she showed up on my doorstep, but it was something bad.
Calvin is disappointed the investigation doesn’t take longer.
“I wanted to get an episode out of this one, but this will barely make for an introductory teaser,” he complains on our way out of town. I’d stopped at my favorite truck stop, and he caught up to me waiting in line with Eldi and an armful of snacks.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “If it turns out the vacuum really is something extraordinary, I promise I’ll guest star on your show.” I have no intention of following through with this promise, of course.
“Sure,” he mutters. He isn’t fooled; he knows I’ll never let him interview me for the show. A million times he’s tried to convince me, but I prefer anonymity to notoriety.
I set Eldi down to pull out my wallet and pay. Midway through the transaction, a cattle truck pulls into the lot. I can tell we’re in trouble when the front door swings open and Eldi inhales sharply as the scent of livestock blows in.
“Don’t even think about it,” I say.
But it’s too late. Eldi bolts out the door.
She makes it halfway across the parking lot before I reach her.
By the time I’ve returned to the store with a struggling Eldi in tow, reassembled the toilet paper display she knocked over during her great escape, and am retreating to the Winnebago in embarrassment, Calvin appears holding my wallet and my bag of groceries.
“I’ve always heard toddlers are quick, but I didn’t realize how fast. And you really bought goat jerky?” he says skeptically.
“Ew. Burned,” Eldi says, wrinkling her nose. Eldi likes her food raw, but that’s hard to come by some places.
“You’ll like it,” I assure her, ripping open the package and taking a bite to prove my point.
“Good?” Calvin asks.
“Delicious,” I say, lying through my teeth.
“Yuck,” Eldi says.
I’m still stubbornly chewing the piece of goat jerky when we pull up to a nondescript house in the middle of Nowhere, Illinois, and I park behind Calvin, discreetly spitting my bite into the trash before leaving the Winnebago.
Ours is a strange little caravan. Calvin’s Airstream is vintage but sleek and thoroughly remodeled and maintained.
He’s got reasonable parents who planned and saved up cash for him.
It’s why he’s so disgustingly down-to-earth and well adjusted.
I met his family once, and it was painful for me.
All-American and Midwestern charm that should have been irritating, but they meant it so genuinely, I couldn’t hate them.
Calvin’s interior-design style is similarly normal.
The Airstream is neat and organized, with occasional pops of personality strewn throughout.
Like his ukulele and banjo, tiny instruments for a tiny house, and his collection of X-Files DVDs to match the Mulder and Scully bobbleheads he keeps on the dash of his truck.
My Winnebago is old—I think. And I’m never sure how she’s still running.
I joke with Calvin that she’s cursed. He doesn’t realize I’m serious.
She always starts up fine in the winter cold, but if I complain about the muddy yellow color of the exterior stripes, I might find the engine won’t start up in time to make my next appointment.
I tried to redecorate for a while and thought I had a poltergeist. Everything kept reverting back to 1970s chic when I slept.
So I gave up. Winnie at least lets me keep my cactus on the windowsill.
But the Winnebago’s after-market additions make up for her aesthetic sensibilities.
They are all very high tech and incredibly useful.
The windows and walls are bulletproof, though I do try not to utilize that feature.
Almost undetectable security cameras fully surveil her exterior and link to a multiscreen system down in the basement and a live feed to one channel of my bedroom TV that came preinstalled.
My acquisition of Winnie wasn’t strictly legal, so I don’t know much about her origins or life story.
I have fake paperwork, obviously, in case I get pulled over.
Her previous owner found her in a used car lot in Texas in the 1990s, and she sat in a garage for years until I commandeered her.
I might not be the Winnebago’s legal owner, but I sure as hell have paid a price for the thing.
The Winnebago holds many secrets, but she and I have an unspoken understanding, and I’m allowed to live here, another skeleton for one of her closets.
I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface of her mysteries, but the Winnebago’s hidden back rooms are the main reason I chose her for my mobile life-support vehicle.
Behind one of the wall panels, stairs descend into an impossible space.
Rooms and rooms, a maze of them that shouldn’t fit inside a mansion, let alone an RV.
Functionally endless, they accommodate anything I bring inside and inexplicably expand for any purpose I might undertake.
When I say Winnie has everything I could ever dream of, I mean it.
Wandering those rooms is like shopping the world’s most eclectic thrift store.
Or like exploring the house of an eccentric immortal hoarder.
There’s a greenhouse filled with a range of specimens that would make a botanist’s entire year.
Poisonous and medicinal plants and fungi, many unidentifiable specimens of unknown origin, a vine that mimics human hand gestures, even a terrarium with a label claiming its contents come from another planet.
A room dedicated to cryptids has a taxidermy jackalope, yeti hair, a chunk of kraken tentacle in formaldehyde, a vial of Jersey Devil blood, a dragon egg that’s been incubating since the 1500s.
There’s an armory filled with ancient and modern weapons from all around the world, a room like an apothecary with herbs and powders and medicines.
The library might be the most intriguing and useful room.
I’ve got books bound in human skin, books filled with arcane and ancient knowledge, magical tomes, untranslated books in unknown languages, even a book that I suspect time-travels or dimension-skips because its text occasionally changes, but it always reappears for me at least once a year.
Between my library and Google, I can find information about almost anything.
But it’s a big universe, and there’s still much I can’t find answers to.
If it isn’t the library, the laboratory might be the competitor for the most useful room. I haven’t yet found an experiment that I don’t have the equipment to run. There’s enough hidden in the depths of the Winnebago to keep me busy researching for the rest of my life.
The disorientation of the rooms is further amplified by the creatures and beings that make the place feel alive.
I’m not the first stray the Winnebago has taken in.
There’s a mannequin (I call him Manny) that wanders the rooms aimlessly.
Occasionally, I’ll find him in the strangest places, but his favorite spot is in an old dental chair in a room filled with medical equipment.
There’s a haunted doll that tries to escape once a year (always on May 9).
She lives in a miniature dollhouse behind a tiny door at the back of a room filled with rusty electronics and parts.
And there’s the taxidermy raccoon named Bandit who lives in an ancient bourbon barrel and who’s always stealing anything small and shiny left in plain sight.
I’m also 97 percent sure a poltergeist from a case in Pennsylvania is the stowaway who enjoys constantly reorganizing the collection of uranium glassware and interfering with the Geiger counter.
Once, I found a pay phone tucked away in a back room, ringing and ringing.
I spent an afternoon wandering the labyrinth, tracking the sound, until I answered the call for help.
That little adventure took me to the strangest haunted house in a very mysterious town I’m not sure I could find my way back to.
At least the Winnebago ensures I’m never bored.
Not until Winnie honks loud and long do I realize how deep I have drifted into contemplation land. I jump, and so does Calvin, outside already. Sentient, I swear. Winnie’s hazard lights blink, and the click of the indicator sounds like she’s scolding me.
“All right, all right, keep your hubcaps on; I’m going,” I mutter.
Outside, Calvin ducks as Winnie sprays windshield wiper fluid enthusiastically, the blades flying at hyperspeed.
“Hit the wrong button or what?” Calvin asks as I struggle to strap Eldi into the baby carrier on my chest, Winnebago lights still flashing madly behind me.
“Electrical problems or something,” I say. “She’s elderly; cut her a break.”
“Want me to take a look and see if it’s anything I can—”