Gigantic

Ashley Stokes

Description

"I wasn't sure you would get this far, so thanks a million already. You opened the mystery bag... Inside the bag, along with this letter, is a dossier that describes the whole story."Kevin Stubbs is a Knower. He knows life hasn't always treated him fairly. He knows he wants to be allowed access to his son again. But most of all, he knows that the London Borough of Sutton is being stalked by a nine-foot-tall, red-eyed, hairy relict hominid - the North Surrey Gigantopithecus.Armed with a thermal imaging camera (aka the Heat Ray) and a Trifield 100XE electromagnetic field reader (aka the Tractor Beam), Kevin and his trusty comrades in the GIT (aka the Gigantopithecus Intelligence Team) set out to investigate a new sighting on the outskirts of Sutton. If real, it will finally prove to the world that the infamous Gartree-Hogg footage was genuine, and a British Bigfoot is living in suburban London: FACT. But what he discovers undermines everything he believes in - and forces Kevin to face up to his own failures, and the very real, very scary prospect that he might have got it all terribly wrong.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Folclore
• Folklore

Informations

• Publié par: Unsung Stories
• Date de parution: 02 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912658152
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

“A very funny account of cryptozoological shenanigans on the edge of urban Banstead. It's not often these days that I laugh out loud when reading a book, but this one is rich with brilliant comic moments. Loved it.”
Gareth E. Rees, author of Unofficial Britain and Car Park Life
“This tale of what happens when a hobby becomes an obsession is unlike anything I’ve read before. Absurd and inventive, Gigantic made me laugh and shake my head in equal measure, and the ingenious way in which the story unfolds had me gripped.”
Lucie McKnight Hardy, author of Water Shall Refuse Them
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Published by Unsung Stories
3 Rosslyn Road
London E17 9EU, United Kingdom
www.unsungstories.co.uk
First edition published in 2021
First impression
© 2021 Ashley Stokes
Ashley Stokes has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of their Work.
This book is a work of fiction. All the events and characters portrayed in this book are fictional and any similarities to persons, alive or deceased, is coincidental.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912658-14-5
ePub ISBN: 978-1-912658-15-2
Edited by Dan Coxon
Proofreading by Jonathan Oliver
Cover Artwork © Nicolas Ruston 2021
Cover design by Vince Haig
Text design by Cox Design Limited
Typesetting by Vince Haig
Printed in the UK by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
Dedicated to the Memory of the 1970s
CONTENTS
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 1
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section one
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 2
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Two
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 3
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Three
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 4
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Four
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 5
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Five
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 6
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Six
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (I)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (II)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (III)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (IV)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (V)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (VI)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (VII)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (VIII)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (IX)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (X)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (XI)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (XIII)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 7
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Seven (XIII)
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A): SECTION 8
Report #214: THE FACTS by Kevin Stubbs: Section Eight
30 August XXXX
Dear Mate,
I wasn’t sure you would get this far, so thanks a million already. You opened the mystery bag. Many wouldn’t have had the conkers to open the mystery bag. The world is made up of two types of people: those who creep through life, terrified of the mystery bag; and those who ride to the edge of human knowledge just to get a peek of what’s inside the mystery bag.
I’m one of the riders now. Kevin Stubbs is one of those guys.
Inside the bag, along with this letter, is a dossier that describes the whole story. I expect you’ve already heard about it, given it all kicked off in our home town.
I notice you don’t live there anymore. You escaped to somewhere nice and safe where the great mysteries do not peep at you from behind the trees in the dead of night. If you had stayed, you could have been in on it from the start, the Great Confirmation.
You used to be into this stuff, remember? I remember. Of course I remember. It’s still all lit up for me. Always will be.
You must recall that my mum was very religious, a proper Jehovah’s Witness. I wasn’t allowed to read or see anything that wasn’t basically The Watchtower . I especially wasn’t allowed exposure to any of what she called ‘inappropriate’ or ‘fanciful’, or ‘demonic’ – anything good, basically, that I liked. I can tell you now, because I’m not ashamed of it anymore, but my earliest memory of her is being in a shop and throwing a proper wobbler because she wouldn’t buy me the Ladybird Dracula . ‘It’s not appropriate,’ she kept saying, over and over until she was shouting and we were asked to leave. I just about got away with reading those terrifying C.S. Lewis Narnia books because she read somewhere they were Christian really. She’s passed on now, so I can do what I like.
But when we were kids, you were the lifesaver. Without being friends with you at school and being allowed round your house sometimes, I wouldn’t have known anything. I would have stayed ignorant. We used to go to the library together and get out all the books about weird goings-on, remember? You used to hide my stash of magazines like Omni and The Unexplained , anything that had articles about mysterious creatures, especially the yeti or the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot sighting at Bluff Creek, California. That was always the big one, the film that started it all.
We first saw it round your house, on Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World . There it was: gigantic, hairy, with long, swinging arms and a cone-shaped cranium. I was on fire. I was amazed. The world wasn’t like it was explained in the Bible and The Watchtower . Monsters were real, and not only were they real, they were good.
We went over all this like proper investigators, remember? Talked about how we wished this stuff happened where we lived, south of the river, north of the hills, and not always abroad in foreign countries. That’s when it started for me.
I wanted to see things.
You wanted to see things, once.
Then: you remember, yonks ago, you must have come back on a break from your studies, and you and me, old mates, we bump into each other in the Butterchurn pub, aka The Churn. And I come over, hadn’t seen you since school, and we get chatting. And I told you. I told you it was HERE. It was not just in America and the Himalayas; it was HERE, in SUTTON. I had seen it on TV. I had tracked down the men who filmed it. I had joined up, gone looking for it with them. I had seen it myself, TWICE, once in the cemetery and once outside the hospital, FACT.
And what did you do? You said you were getting me a drink. Did you get me a drink? No. You legged it.
All is forgiven, though. I’m putting all my trust in you by letting you in on what we call the Great Confirmation. What you’ve got here in this dossier is the truth and the lies, the official and the unofficial versions, the cover-up and the true story. You get her side of things, Maxine Cash’s official report, and then I comment on her theories with what I believe is the true, factual story.
If you don’t hear from me in three months’ time, you’ll want to make three copies of this document. Post one to the Daily Mail and one to Oliver Koch at the Department of Fortean Zoology in Exeter. Hold on to the third copy.
This is the important bit.
I don’t trust the postal service where I am now, so I’ve put a letter to my boy inside the mystery bag as well. I want you to stick a postage stamp on it and put it in a post box so he gets it tomorrow.
You will hear from me again, but if you don’t and three years go by, send the third copy of the dossier to my boy. He’ll be old enough then.
As I say, there is no one else I can trust. And, remember, as you read through it: this is not a hoax, FACT.
Best wishes
Kevin Stubbs
GIGANTOPITHECUS INTELLIGENCE TEAM
REPORT #214 (CATEGORY A)
SECTION 1
Submitted by Witness: Monday, 8 July XXXX
SUMMARY: A man filming a children’s party on common land reports sighting a large ape-like biped moving through nearby trees
NEAREST TOWN: Sutton, Surrey
REPORT #214:
THE FACTS BY KEVIN STUBBS:
SECTION ONE
The first throb of Report #214 buzzed against my thigh at the same time as my internal sonar picked up two sets of footfalls heading towards my work