Monsters

by David Alexander Robertson

  “Cole.” Brady knocked him gently on the shoulder. “Friend. You in there?”

  Cole shook his head, as though he could shake out his thoughts. He tried to ignore them instead. “Yeah, sorry.”

  They were in the boys’ change room. Brady was in his gym clothes, but Cole had no reason to go into the change room himself. He didn’t have any shorts or tank tops or sneakers. He’d only come with Brady because he’d been disappointed with the gym and couldn’t stand to look at it. The floors were worn out, and there were no inflated basketballs (and no pump to fill them with). One of the rims had been ripped down, too.

  “You could’ve borrowed something from me, again, you know,” Brady said on the way out of the change room. He looked Cole over. “I mean, if you don’t want to wear my clothes anymore, we really have to hit up the mall and find something for you.” Brady opened the door and they walked onto the hardwood. “Something without a majestic wolf on it.”

  “I guess,” Cole said.

  “But if you find something with a majestic coyote, definitely pick that one up before it’s gone!” Choch called out. He jogged over to them. Cole looked around desperately, making sure he wasn’t hallucinating—because what the hell was Choch doing here?

  “You don’t see many coyotes up here, Mr. Chochinov,” Brady said.

  “Oh,” Choch said, slapping Brady on the shoulder, “I’ve seen at least one.”

  “What are you doing here?” Cole still felt confused. After going AWOL for so long, why did Choch decide to show up during gym class?

  “Brady, my dear, two-spirited friend, would you please tell Cole what I’m doing here?”

  “You’re the gym teacher?” Brady answered what seemed painfully obvious, at least to him.

  “I’m the gym teacher,” Choch said proudly and, for added effect, he tweeted the whistle that was hanging around his neck.

  “I’m sorry?” Cole held Choch back. “Could you give us a minute?” he asked Brady.

  “Uhh, sure.” Brady nodded, then he continued onto the gym floor towards Eva and Michael.

  With Brady a safe distance away, Cole put both hands on Choch’s shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes. “What do you think you’re doing? You just abandon me, and now you’re going to teach Phys Ed?”

  “I’m the gym teacher. What?” Choch repeated innocently. He removed Cole’s hands from his shoulders. “And you’ve always indicated to me that you’d appreciate some space, so I gave you space.”

  “Yeah, but…” Cole switched gears. “Since when are you the gym teacher?”

  “Ohhh,” Choch looked around thoughtfully and blew a gust of air out of his mouth, “since forever, really. Ask the kids, they’ll tell you.”

  “They’ll tell me what you’ve made them know,” Cole said.

  “Kids are impressionable, aren’t they?”

  “How long, in real life, have you been the gym teacher?”

  “Since…today? I suppose, if we’re being specific.”

  “Why?”

  “In my defense, CB,” Choch put his hands up, “the food is good at the Fish, but one can grow tired of, you know…” Choch paused thoughtfully “…well, I’m not a pescetarian is what I’m saying. Needed a change.”

  “A pesce-what?”

  “Cole, pescetarianism is the practice of following a diet that includes fish, or other seafood, but not the flesh of other animals. I got that from Wikipedia.”

  “You just gave me textbooks and f—”

  “Ah! No swearing. A certain author’s editor advised him not to use the F-word in the sequel.”

  “A certain…what?”

  “Just don’t swear, okay?” Choch said quickly.

  Cole tried to find his calm. “You just gave me textbooks and kissed off.”

  “Much better, but very eighties. I think that’s a Violent Femmes song, maybe?” Choch shrugged. “Anyway, here, I can keep a watchful eye. You have gym…” Choch paused to think. “I don’t have the schedule, but you have gym relatively often.”

  “I’ll skip class.” Cole wanted the quiet back again. He needed Jayne, not more of this crap. He’d forgotten, in Choch’s absence, how infuriating the spirit being could be.

  “And not come to a place where you can play basketball? Please. Unrealistic. Especially with your experience this morning, am I right?”

  “The balls aren’t even…there’s no way to inflate them!”

  Students were watching them now. Both Cole and Choch noticed, and lowered their voices.

  “I’ll inflate a ball for you,” Choch sung.

  Cole stood there, silent, and looked over the spirit being, with his Wounded Sky High School sweater, whistle, matching sweat pants, and perfectly white sneakers. Ridiculous, as usual. At least he wasn’t wearing a suit. Cole sighed. “Could you at least try to be less annoying or something? Difficult? Whatever?”

  “What do we say?” Choch straightened up, raised three fingers, switched it two, and then back to three, “I can never remember how many fingers Scouts hold up. Or is it Cubs? Anyway, we’ll do our best, dob-dob-dob. You dyb-dyb-dyb. Do your best. That’s all I ask.”

  “Fine. I kind of wanted to ask you some things about—”

  “Great!” Choch stuffed his whistle into his mouth and blew it, and the shrill tweet echoed through the gym. “Okay, everybody find a partner! We’re going to be working on our lacrosse skills today.”

  Choch left the students to pair up while he went to grab equipment from the storage room. Cole watched in disbelief as Choch walked all the way across the gym, and by the time he looked away most of the pairings had been made. Notably, Eva and Brady were already together—Cole’s first and second and only choices. He suspected this to be a common occurrence, and looked around for somebody else to buddy with. Michael, whom Cole might’ve asked just to generate some more good will, had partnered with Lucy.

  “Hey.”

  Cole felt a tap on his shoulder and found Pam standing behind him.

  “Found your footing?”

  “Yeah, Dr. Captain talked me down, I guess,” Cole said. “And you.”

  “Wanna be my partner?” Pam asked.

  “Sure.” Cole might’ve felt good—acceptance!—but a quick glance showed that they were the only two single students left.

  “The good thing is, if you have another spell, you can just use your lacrosse stick for support.”

  “Convenient.”

  “I’m practical. What can I say?”

  Cole and Pam found an open spot on the gym floor.

  “Hold on a moment, kids!” Choch emerged from the storage room, his arms full of lacrosse sticks and balls. Cole and Pam stopped. “I was hoping to get Mr. Harper here paired up with Mr. Captain. No offense dear, I just think they’d match up better together. For the drill.” Choch called across the gym in Michael’s direction. “Mr. Captain, you’re going to pair up with CB over here, please.” Cole read Michael’s lips, which didn’t take much skill, while Choch instructed Lucy to join up with Pam.

  “Match up better?” Cole whispered to Choch. Pam and Michael switched places, both of them looking none-too-pleased with their new partners. “I know you haven’t talked to me, but you know what’s been going on. Michael and I?”

  “You literally just thought getting paired with Michael would generate some good—”

  “I know what I thought, but now that it’s happening I don’t want to.”

  “You do sound whiney sometimes, CB. Anyway, friends close, enemies closer, am I right?” Choch said.

  “He’s not my enemy.”

  “But he’s not quite your friend, either.”

  “You suck.”

  Oh, what Cole would have given for an inflated basketball. Racket sports were not his thing. He held the lacrosse stick in his hands, placed firmly against his palm scars, and gave it a long look. It was a racket sport, wasn’t it? There was a handle, and netting. What else would it be? He twirled it around, back and forth.

/>   “Let’s go, Cole.” Michael was about fifteen feet away from him, the lacrosse stick cocked back, ball in the net, ready to launch.

  “Is lacrosse a racket sport?” Cole asked.

  “What?”

  “I was just wondering if it was a racket sport or not.”

  “I don’t…” Michael pursed his lips and breathed out through his nose. “…look, I’m not giving you a history lesson, okay? And stop talking like we’re still friends.”

  “I thought we were getting along this morning,” Cole said, then quietly added, “a bit.”

  “I was being civil for Eva, that’s it.”

  “Eva told you to be nice to me?” Cole shot a look at Eva, who was either ignoring him and Michael or so into passing the lacrosse ball with Brady that she hadn’t heard them talking.

  “Can we just get this over with?” Michael asked.

  Cole nodded. “Sure, fine.”

  Michael whipped the ball at Cole’s head. Cole ducked out of the way.

  “What the f@#&?” Cole glared at Michael, and then retrieved the ball as it bounced off the wall behind him.

  (Sorry, dear readers, CB will get used to the whole no-swearing thing. The book’s still suitable for middle years. Promise.)

  “You’re supposed to catch it with your stick, not your head,” Michael said.

  “I know we’re not seeing eye-to-eye or whatever, but we don’t have to do it like this.”

  “I just threw you the ball, Cole. Get over it.”

  “I thought Eva told you to be nice to me.” Cole no longer felt annoyed at Eva for giving Michael that direction. He wanted Michael to listen to her.

  “What can I say? She’ll forgive me.”

  Cole sighed and tossed the ball at Michael. It lobbed through the air. Michael caught it, then twirled it back and forth in the net like it was second nature. “You’re actually awesome at that,” Cole said reluctantly.

  Michael threw the ball at Cole again, harder than the last time. This time, Cole caught it with his right hand. He didn’t even flinch. “Dude, fricking stop!” Cole walked over to Michael, and dropped the ball into his hand.

  “How the hell did you do that?” Michael asked.

  Cole felt dumb for catching the ball. Could he not have just ducked, like the first time? What would he do next? Dunk the basketball in front of everybody? He walked away from Michael, shaking his head. To others, he looked mad at Michael, but really, he was mad at himself. There were more important things going on (he thought, anyway) than carrying on some stupid fight with Michael. Especially over a girl. Cole lifted his lacrosse stick. “Can we just play? Please?”

  Michael tossed his racket to the ground. “You’re not a hero; you’re a freak.” He walked across the gym, jumped up onto the stage, and sat beside his bag.

  Cole didn’t move. He stayed there, standing, with his racket up, like he expected Michael to produce a ball from his gym bag and throw it to him from across the gym. He saw everybody looking at him and Michael. He didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t go to the change room. He didn’t have anything to change into.

  “Cole Harper!” Choch blew his whistle for good measure as he walked over to Cole. “I don’t tolerate tomfoolery in my class. Give me ten man-makers now.”

  “What?” Now Cole threw his stick down. “That’s bullsh@t, Mike started it!”

  “That’s bullcrap, Mike started it,” Choch mimicked Cole in a baby voice. “Make it twenty! And stop swearing!”

  “What the heck are you doing?” Cole shout-whispered. “I thought you were here to watch over me.”

  “I’m trying to keep up appearances. Just go with it,” Choch whispered, looking positively delighted with himself. “Thirty! That’s enough of your lip, Harper!”

  After that, Choch added a wink.

  “You know I don’t get tired.” Cole walked over to the baseline.

  “Oh you will, Harper. You will.” CB, sorry that I’m in your brain, but did that not sound exactly like Yoda in Empire Strikes Back? I know you can’t get tired, but I’ve just been dying to say something like that.

  Cole thought, stick to Jedi mind tricks, and then he stood there waiting. “Well? I know you want to—”

  Choch blew his whistle.

  “—there you go.”

  Cole took off running to the free-throw line and back. Centre line and back. Opposite free-throw line, back. Opposite baseline, back. Twenty-nine more to go. Eventually, kids started tossing their lacrosse balls around again. But not Michael. He sat there on the stage, staring at Cole. During each man-maker, all the way from thirty down to one, Cole tried his best not to look at his former friend.

  6

  THEY

  “SO, LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. THERE’S REALLY NO SPECIAL?” Cole had been studying the menu as if for a final exam. Rebecca stood at the edge of the table chewing a piece of gum, shaking her head, and tapping her foot. “And there’s never been a special?”

  “Cole, you ask that every time we come here, lately.” Eva lowered Cole’s menu and gave him a stern look. “Just order.”

  “And Choch has never—”

  “Worked here!” Brady said. “He’s been the gym teacher for a hundred years. Stop being ridiculous.”

  Cole placed the menu on the table. He didn’t know why he kept asking about Choch. He knew what the answer would be. He just wanted confirmation, he supposed. And part of him wanted somebody to recognize something, a meal special, or to recall a memory of Choch in his uniform—so he’d know Choch wasn’t in complete control. As early as yesterday, Brady and Eva remembered that Choch had worked here, and they just figured he’d gone on vacation or something. Today? Poof! Choch was the gym teacher, end of story.

  “So are you going to order, or…” Rebecca looked like she was about to stab her pencil right through the order pad.

  “Yes,” Eva said. She and Brady had already ordered.

  “Alright, I’ll get the fish and chips.” Cole handed Rebecca the menu. “Sorry.”

  Rebecca didn’t respond. She scrawled down Cole’s order, stuffed the menus under her arm, and left in a huff.

  “I’ve got to say, my friend,” Brady said, “I’m glad you’re back and everything, you saved my kókom, but that was incredibly painful.”

  “Seconded,” Eva said.

  “Do you think your kókom looked…tired…this morning just because she’d been sick?” Cole asked.

  “That’s what I thought,” Brady said, “and, when you think about it, she’s an Elder, too. So, being that sick, I guess it takes longer to recover.”

  “But she looked so good the week she got better, even last week,” Eva said. “I thought they might let her go.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Brady conceded.

  “Have they let anybody go?” Cole asked.

  “Not sure,” Eva said.

  “Anyway, they’d let me know if something was wrong,” Brady said, “if she was more than just tired. Right?”

  “Of course,” Eva said as she scrolled through her phone messages. “My dad hasn’t texted me back.”

  “Sleeping, or…” Cole said.

  Eva looked at him matter-of-fact. “My dad doesn’t sleep. Come on.”

  “They kicked everybody out and now they’ve taken away phone privileges?” Brady asked.

  “Looks like it,” Eva said.

  “See? We did set something off over there,” Cole said. “We need to find out what’s going on.

  “And it’s not going to help asking my dad about vitamins,” Eva said. “It has to be in those files. We’ve got to track them down.”

  “Agreed,” Cole said.

  “I was totally chomping at the bit for some more sleuthing,” Brady said, but he sounded sarcastic. “I thought we were done with all of this.”

  “We’re not,” Cole said.

  “Okay, so where do we start?” Eva asked.

  “The last place I saw it, it was at the camp,” Cole said.

  “The
camp,” Brady stated. “The camp, out in Blackwood Forest. Just to clarify. With the…you know.”

  Their silence spoke volumes. They might’ve all been thinking about other possible starting points—Cole certainly was—but there weren’t any.

  “In case you guys don’t know what I’m getting at,” Brady said after a while, “every single person who’s seen that thing has seen it in the woods, at night.” He continued very slowly. “At night, which it is right now, and in the woods, which is where you’re talking about going.”

  “I guess whether it’s Upayokwitigo or not,” Eva said, “it was probably still something, and Victor’s saying it even chased him.”

  “Like, full-on chased?” Cole asked.

  “That’s what he says,” Eva pointed at Victor, who was sitting alone in a booth. “Go and ask him.”

  “Cole, this thing, let me try to help you understand what we’re considering here. It’ll start eating animals, okay? It’ll clean out traps, hunt, whatever. Then, when animals can’t fill its hunger, it will start turning to bigger game.”

  “Humans,” Cole said.

  “And the hungrier it gets, the worse it becomes. I mean, these things end up being giants. Like, huge skeletal monsters. With, by the way, a heart of ice.”

  “But humans at first,” Eva said.

  “That’s right,” Brady said. “That thing could be walking around us right now, okay? Possessed, and super dangerous. And, not to be repetitive, it is also in the woods. At night.”

  Cole looked Victor over, then Brady, then Eva, assessing whether he’d be going out into the woods alone—or with what Lucy had called “The Bloodhound Gang.”

  “So you don’t want to go?” Cole stated the obvious.

  “I’d prefer not to die,” Brady said.

  “I thought you wanted to sleuth again,” Eva said, managing a smirk.

  “I was thinking more of the non-life-threatening kind of sleuthing,” Brady said.