When the last grain finally slid through its narrow glass neck, into its gorged belly, there was a subtle sense of movement in the frame. For a moment, it appeared as if the many golden snakes that decorated the hourglass slithered in drowsy circles.
The next moment, the hourglass was gone.
Two sounds immediately echoed across the courtyard. One was a set of keys that jangled to the ground. The other, the bang of a tuba case hitting the pavement.
Brian Skupp, however, was never heard from again.
The Long-Necked Dog
From the New Rotterdam Wiki Project
Despite its name, the New Rotterdam cryptid best known as the Long-Necked Dog has never been confirmed as a dog, wolf, or any other canine. Also called the Cold Beach Skulker and Scuttling Rex, it is a stooped and skeletal figure that walks on four needle-thin legs, according to witnesses. It sways back and forth in the air as it moves—as if perpetually off-balance—yet maneuvers with unsettling speed.
The Long-Necked Dog is always sighted at Cold Beach, foraging along the shore after dusk. Its strange, skittering movements have been described as reminiscent of a dock spider, making it easy to spot against the sand in the waning light, even as precise details are more difficult to pick out. Accounts generally agree that it is mottled and dark, and has a long, stooped neck that hangs low to the ground, the origin of its popularized name.
Due to its evasiveness, the cryptid has become something of an unofficial mascot for the Cold Beach waterfront, with many shops along the shore selling T-shirts and hats bearing its striking silhouette.
The Long-Necked Dog unofficial logo
Only one witness has ever claimed to get a close look at the Long-Necked Dog. In the winter of 1991, beachcomber and self-described detectorist Ashton Guyver was scanning the shore with his metal detector when he reportedly came across the creature feeding on a beached shark.
According to Guyver, as his flashlight caught it, the creature raised its long neck, which he purported wasn’t a neck at all—but another leg. The “dog,” as he claimed, actually had many more than four legs tucked into its body, and many, many more than two eyes. Those eyes, he said, glowed with a milky light beneath the flashlight’s beam.
Here, Guyver’s account becomes confused, a rambling and sometimes contradictory account of the creature speaking to him before retreating to a burrow hidden under the docks, dragging the bloated shark behind it. In an interview with local news station WROT-13, he claimed that the Long-Necked Dog told him of a fabulous treasure buried in secret caverns beneath the beach—of gold and jewelry collected over countless years. Guyver welcomed any fellow treasure hunters to join him in looking for an entrance to the caverns, promising to split the riches.
As far as anyone knows, not a single person took him up on his offer—which is probably for the best. Guyver disappeared the next evening after heading off toward the beach alone. Only his metal detector was ever recovered, its sinewy neck bent into a ruin.
1
“It’s still too early.”
Emrys Houtman sighed from behind his binoculars. He and his friend Hazel were perched on the dunes, peering down at Cold Beach below. They’d been there for an hour already, passing the binoculars back and forth, searching for signs of movement on the sand.
So far, the Long-Necked Dog had yet to appear.
Emrys lowered the lenses and frowned at the horizon, where an enormous thundercloud churned balefully. It was like the sky had grown a great purple eye with which to watch them. Lightning flickered between the clouds, made safe and pretty by its distance. But soon enough all that electricity would make it to shore and come crashing down over New Rotterdam.
The town was rainy more often than it wasn’t, though this coming storm had made the news. It would be a bad one. Emrys had counted at least a dozen waterfront shopkeepers boarding their windows that afternoon.
“We should get back,” Hazel said, as if reading his thoughts. She frowned into the distance, her pale-white face nearly gray under the stormy sky. “The weather’s gonna hit before dusk does. We can try another day.”
“Yeah …” Emrys said dejectedly.
Though Emrys had only recently moved to New Rotterdam, he and Hazel had been friends for years. Sometimes it felt like they shared a brain. They’d met at camp when both were in third grade and formed an immediate bond over their love of scary stories. The moment Emrys was allowed an email account, Hazel had been the very first person he messaged.
He could barely believe it when she’d told him she lived in New Rotterdam, a regular top contender for America’s Most Haunted Cities. If Salem was famous for its witches, and New Orleans for its ghosts, New Rotterdam was a hot spot for urban legends. The Laughing Man, Headless Kate, the Shadow in the Mirror—Emrys and Hazel knew all of the city’s cryptids and creepypastas by heart.
Even before he’d moved there, Emrys had been an active participant in the New Rotterdam Wiki Project, a shared compendium of supernatural sightings. In fact, it was he and Hazel who’d discovered the lost WROT-13 interview of Ashton Guyver buried in the far reaches of the internet, and added it to the entry for the Long-Necked Dog.
The wiki mods had gone bananas when they saw that. They tore Emrys and Hazel’s writing to shreds, of course, but once they’d put it back together again, the two of them were rewarded with special admin status. They could contribute to any entries they liked without restrictions. Emrys had hoped to wow the mods again with an actual sighting today—maybe even a photo—but the cryptid proved elusive.
In fact, he hadn’t seen much of anything since moving to New Rotterdam. Sure, the Faceless Founder statue in Centennial Park was creepy, but even after hours of reconnaissance, it hadn’t budged an inch. And no matter how many times he rode the carousel at the Foghorn Fairgrounds, Headless Kate never appeared atop the rusty unicorn. At least the popcorn had been good.
Emrys had spent the final weeks of summer before school began combing every supposedly supernatural inch of town—the Shallows shopping district, purported nesting ground of the Orchid from Outer Space; the downtown Five Points District, where one could accidentally stumble through a hidden gate to hell!
So far, he’d remained firmly in the real world. Emrys had to remind himself that was probably for the best.
He stowed his binoculars in his backpack. “Ready?” he asked.
Hazel nodded. They stood and trudged toward the parking lot.
A lone hybrid minivan idled among the empty rectangles painted onto the pavement. Despite being the only person in the lot, Emrys’s father had parked perfectly between the lines. He sat now in the front seat, a worn paperback mystery novel propped against the steering wheel.
Though his parents were both avid readers, Emrys had yet to open a book he didn’t immediately want to put down. Try as he might to see a forest through the spindly trees of text—to connect with the story, as Emrys’s teachers had suggested—his whirring mind always seemed to whir away from what he was reading.
It would happen before he even realized he was doing it. One moment he’d be settling into a corner with a steaming cup of honeyed tea, a baggy sweater, and several fluffy pillows—all very cozy, readerly accessories. The next, he’d be at his computer in his underwear, with twenty-seven tabs open on WikiQuery about rising sea levels in the Arctic, a phone game chirping in his lap, and his dog, Sir Galahound, licking bread crumbs from a plate at his feet.
A year ago, Emrys’s family doctor had diagnosed him with ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. At the time, it had summoned to mind images of people bouncing off walls. But Emrys’s doctor told him it was actually a common neurodevelopmental condition for both kids and adults. ADHD made it hard for Emrys to focus on tasks for very long, especially ones he didn’t find interesting.
But on ones he did find stimulating, it could have the opposite effect. Sometimes Emrys became hyper-focused—like with the wiki—spending hours on a single task, to the detriment of his other responsibilities. Both were just qualities to keep an eye on.
As he opened the door, Emrys caught the tail end of a news piece about the city’s mayor, Selwin Royce. Mayor Royce was giving an interview on the radio.
