The Yeti Uprising: An IPMA Adventure for Christmas 2013

By P. Edward Auman

This story was originally begun under the National Novel Writing Month Organization (NaNoWriMo.org) for 2013. Now enjoy the completed story.

Join the IPMA agents on another Institute for the Preservation of Magical Artifacts adventure, this time at the North Pole during Christmas 2013 to help quash a hostile takeover. The Yeti clan of North America have decided to take Santa's workshop for their own and will use magic, their ferocity, and their sheer numbers to make it happen. Who among the IPMA agents can stop them?

Something fishy was up, Joshua knew it. What were the little fuzzy white hair balls that could seemingly use magic to grow to fifteen feet tall in the blink of an eye doing? Were they migrating north for the Holidays? And who were these men in black suits at his doorstep when after he tried to report what he'd seen on the internet.

Will he be the key to preventing a hostile take over of Santa's workshop by the Yeti? Will the agents of the IPMA trust him to unlock the secrets of defending the North Pole if he is?

As a follow up to "The Old Silk Hat", "Seeing Devils" and "Troll Brother" see what happens in a magic vs. technology battle to save Christmas Morning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: P. Edward Auman
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310926273

P. Edward Auman

Born in California.Grew up in SF Bay Area and the Detroit Suburbs.Graduated in English Teaching in 1990's.Spent most of his career as a Computer Support technician.Briefly worked as an English Teacher, and as a Finish Carpenter in a family company.Spent the first two years of college in the Theater & Film department, specializing in set design and special effects.He, his wife, and 6 children presently live in a small town in the Rocky Mountains.Builds his own cars and built his own home.Drag races both cars and motorcycles for stress relief.

Book preview

The Yeti Uprising

An IPMA Adventure for Christmas 2013

By P. Edward Auman

Copyright 2013 P. Edward Auman

Smashwords Edition

Cover Art Image by Albert Ziganshin - Fotolia.com

Internal Art Image by Melanie Auman - 2014

ISBN: 9781310926273

Discover other titles by P. Edward Auman at online e-book retailers, in print, and www.PEdwardAuman.com.

Learn more about stories featuring the IPMA (The Institute for the Preservation of Magical Artifacts) at www.TrollBrother.com.

Follow the creative media company founded upon Eddie’s works: www.IPMACreative.com in 2014

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedicated to those would-be authors who braved the 2013 National Novel Writing Month event with me, and for kids of all ages that remember the magic in Christmas. See NaNoWriMo.org or more information.

MEMORANDUM

December, 27th

To: Board of Directors, Institution for the Preservation of Magical Artifacts

CC: Dr. Wilhelmina Rheinhart, President

From: P. Edward Auman, Historian

IPMA, Eastern U.S. Regional Offices

Subject: Yeti Infestation of Known North Pole Facilities, December 21, 2013, Event # 2013-W-768

Dear Madam President and Members of the Board:

As you were initially alerted by internal Command Center alerts, we experienced an event at the North pole at one, Belschnickel, aka: Saint Nicholaas’ facilities involving an uprising and attempted coup de’tat by the Yeti clan thought to normally occupy northern Manitoba, Canada. Many agents, too many to be identified in this memorandum, were involved in the dispatching of this infestation and gratitude will be expressed to each via our normal IPMA channels for employee recognition. Please anticipate full details, including the names of all participating agents in our full briefing scheduled for the regular quarter review the first week in January.

For now, per your request, I am providing a detailed narrative of the event according to the witnesses at the North Pole and those agents who have so far been debriefed. Please note Agent Peter Samuel’s significant commitment and attentiveness to resolving this issue in time for said Belshnickel delivery of holiday artifacts.

Thank you.

Chapter 1

December 17

Wentworth Tree House Club, Rouge River, Troy, MI

Joshua knew his friends wouldn’t be by the tree house on this day. Much too cold for them. The last week and a half had seen temperatures in the twenties overnight so much of the shoreline of the little portion of the Rouge River that flowed by his neighborhood had frozen along the edges. It had climbed to about forty degrees for high temps but still snow had fallen at times and it lay in a thin mat, crusted on the top by the melting days and re-freezing nights. The day before he’d even charged up his little RC kit car and ran it across the top of the ice just to see what would happen. It slid around and presented an altogether new sport to conduct with it, trying to avoid sliding right off the patch of lawn in front of his house and onto the dry driveway, only breaking through the crust here and there on occasion, usually along the edges near the brush and trees.

Nope. This particular Tuesday afternoon after one of the last few days of school before holiday break was going to be left to him. So he enjoyed it. He whipped out the parody magazine his mother bought and started in the middle with the bit about spies hunting each other down in silly ways. Then he started one of the comics stories.

With the sun settling at right around 5:00PM Josh enjoyed the last few minutes and then used his cell phone to light the page he was finishing. Then it was time to get home for supper. His mom wouldn’t mind him out by the river on his own. She’d always told Dad, boys will be boys after all. But Dad really didn’t want him there, and had a way of teasing him a bit about disappointing him that dug at his emotions with a little guilt. He’d once tried complaining to his mother that his father was bullying him, but he didn’t seem to get much sympathy there. Apparently her feeling was if he didn’t want to get in trouble with Dad then he should obey Dad’s rules.

So, it was on that late December Tuesday before Christmas that Josh happened to be sitting in a grove of trees along the upper, smaller portion of the Rouge River, nestled between grassy fields just beginning to bend with the weight of snowfalls for the winter that were about to be claimed by housing sub-divisions, when a suspicious faerie folk moved by his position. The little Yeti was humming and chirruping to himself. Not that Josh recognized the fuzzy little ball of white hair that stood only ten or twelve inches tall as an actual Yeti. He’d always heard that a Yeti was basically a snow-bound version of Sasquatch and should likely be six, eight or even twelve feet tall. So of course calling out to the creature, or possibly trying to capture it much like he had several dozens of turtles along the riverside during summer, was an entirely natural reaction.

Hey! Josh said, swinging his legs and watching the thing move quickly past thorny, bare shrubs. What are you doing little fuzzball?

The hairy little thing halted immediately mid-stride and haunched up its shoulders. Hands were seemingly frozen in position as well. Josh wondered if the thing thought it was hiding like a baby might simply by closing its eyes. Finally its hairy head craned slowly around. Large, glossy blue eyes blinked at the human boy a couple times and took in the scene. Clearly, the little Yeti hadn’t counted on a human being suspended from a rickety collection of wood twenty-five feet above him.

Before Josh could jump down the combination of branches and nailed-in ladder steps he and his friends had used as their entrance and exit to the tree house and chase down the latest prized animal find, the fuzzball hopped around to face the human, raising its arms and arranging its stubby pink fingers like clawed hooks and growled. Before Joshua’s eyes the beast seemed to grow in stature until he was almost big enough to place his hands upon Josh’s feet and pull him down. A tremendous howl emanated from the monster and it bared large pointed teeth.

Oh, crap! the human boy screamed. He clattered back onto the tree house platform and towards the back as far as he could yet leave the monster in view.

And then it was gone. The huge monster had disappeared and in the distance along the river, up by the next grove of tall slender trees Josh could just make out a tiny fuzzy, white fur ball with pink hands and nose rushing through the brush to its destination.

It was several minutes before Josh’s breath seemed to rejoin his body. His head ached from the rapid flow of blood and he was nervous about trying to climb down while he was feeling light-headed. What was that thing? he pondered.

But it wasn’t long before he had a plan for finding out. It wasn’t worth doing a search on his smart phone, he needed multiple screens up and figured it would take a while to get the right answer, as he’d never even heard of such a creature as the one he’d seen…either small or ginormous sized.

Quickly he packed his bags, climbed down the tree and made a bee-line for home.

~~~

It seemed all through dinner Joshua’s knee bounced up and down uncontrollably. His mother had him talk to the doctors more than once but even though he thought Josh might have a bit of ADHD he didn’t need any medicine for it. That’s good! Josh’s mother had said at the time because she’d heard from a friend that their child got headaches all the time with the medicine he’d been prescribed. But the excitement of the little fuzzy thing was too much to keep in.

Josh couldn’t tell his mother, nor his father. It just didn’t feel right. No, this was something he thought he’d need a professional’s help with. Perhaps a teacher, but no, he didn’t want to wait until the next day in Mr. Faber’s science class and be made a laughing stock if his teacher didn’t believe a word he said. So the cube steak and mac n’ cheese was shoveled in at an alarming rate, causing his father to scold him and remind him to chew one-hundred times for each bite.

Finally supper out of the way, Josh dashed upstairs to the den and booted up his mother’s computer on which she did her book keeping. While it booted over what seemed like an eternity, the little boy couldn’t help but peek out the window repeatedly just to make sure he wasn’t missing something extraordinary like he nearly might have early that afternoon if he hadn’t been attentive to the slight movements and rustling noises.

The glass was frigid cold and his breath fogged quickly and then started to freeze near the old seals on the pane. He wiped absent-mindedly at the opaque covering and stared into the cul-de-sac and beyond the houses across the way into the small line of trees that grew along where Rouge had narrowed to almost stream status.

Where was that thing going? He wondered. Then finally the operating system on the computer had booted and played its little jingle that indicated it was now awake and ready to grant all the answers to the universe. Quickly he opened three separate windows and began a search in each one. On one he started a search based on descriptive words: hairy, small, white. And then as he thought for a moment he added the word, magic. In the second search engine he started a search for mysterious creatures of lower Michigan. And on the third he had to consider for a moment. As thoughts played across his mind various cartoons and television shows he’d seen flashed across his quickly moving memories and thoughts. Among all the inputs a word crept to the forefront. It was a word he knew he’d heard in a cartoon but couldn’t quite place a finger one which on. It was cryptid. What he wanted to know about was a cryptid: an animal that has been generally considered real or possible but not by any scientific community.

The little fuzzball must be a cryptid. Joshua was one-hundred percent sure the thing was real, even if it’s explosion in size meant something fishy was going on. So he figured that meant others must have seen it too. Maybe, if he were lucky, most people just hadn’t spoken up about it, afraid of being embarrassed. But he knew that on the internet, there’s always someone to be found who is willing to talk about the unbelievable. So for search number three he entered the following: cryptid, small, white, big foot.

He wasn’t sure why he threw in the words big foot but he was beginning to formulate in his mind as he glanced through page link after page link on each of the searches an idea that maybe the reason sasquatch were so hard to find proof of them was that they weren’t really what they seemed. Could it be that there really are sasquatch, but that they were magic? The whole giant-sized version seemed to fit his developing theory perfectly. After all, he knew real creatures like the cobra, the frilled lizard and even various birds and rodents would puff themselves up to look bigger.

Josh considered the puffer fish and decided to start a fourth tab on his browser to search for: cryptid animals that grow in size as a defense. If he’d never seen a puffer fish before in an aquarium he’d