Monsters in May: hamerkop

It was just past nine o’clock in the morning, and Samuel had plenty of time.

A college student, he just needed to pop in to the library for twenty minutes to print a paper for class, and he would be on his way. Class didn’t start until 11, which meant he would have more than enough time to take the long way around campus and avoid the creepy American international student who was always fixated on Folgers instant coffee and his own sister.

Just pop up the stairs and in the front door of the library.

At the top of the stairs sat a hamerkop. It was a peculiar-looking brown waterbird with a backward-pointing crest and long bill that combined to make it seem like the bird was swinging a hammer as it stared at him with small black eyes.

The eyes were the strange thing about the hamerkop.

Samuel had heard of birds with eyes that sparkled like black diamonds, and others that were smooth and dark, like obsidian. He’d heard of eyes described as onyx, and he’d heard of shades of black like velvet, like onyx, like the night.

The hamerkop had eyes like Nothing. Looking at them was like staring into the void. They were like the event horizon of a black hole where space and time alike disappeared.

The bird swung its head once, twice, three times; and with that Samuel walked inside the library and went to the bank of computers to print his paper.

The library was unusually busy for so early in the morning. Around him swarmed other university students, reading news periodicals, checking the stacks and quietly working at their laptops in the work areas. Frustratingly the university computers networked with the printers already were taken, and it took fifteen minutes before one opened up and he was able to print his paper.

That was when the clock on the computer screen caught his eye. It said it was 12:20 p.m.

“The network is off,” he said. “It thinks it’s past 12!”

“What are you talking about?” the student next to him said. “It IS past 12.”

“No,” Samuel said. “It’s just past 9.” And he showed her his watch.

“Your watch is slow,” she said, and she stood up to go.

Samuel looked around for support. But the clock on the library wall agreed: It was 12:20.

Confused, he grabbed his paper and headed outside to go to class. The sun was high in the sky, where you would expect it to be at midday, and not at 9.

And to make matters worse, the creepy American international student was coming his way.

“Samuel, guess what?” he said. “I get to go home for December to see my sister. I’ll be her Christmas present this year! I wonder if she’ll make me some Folgers instant coffee …”

Samuel felt the world spin. Somehow he had skipped three hours.

And behind him, the hamerkop took a step and with a soft rustle, it flapped its wings.