Monsters

by David Alexander Robertson

  “Medical files?” Cole said.

  “If they was medical files, you should’ve gone to the clinic, kid,” Jerry said.

  “If they were,” Lauren said.

  “They won’t let anybody into the clinic!” Cole said.

  “Since when?” Lauren asked.

  “Like, yesterday,” Cole said. “Shouldn’t you guys know that?”

  Lauren looked at Jerry, like he should’ve known.

  “Can we get back to the fence?” Lauren asked. “Do you know how many volts are going through that fence?”

  “Enough to make me look like this?” Cole pulled at his hoodie, on the sleeves, where it seemed like he’d gotten the worst of it.

  “You’d be dead if you touched that fence,” Lauren said. “Remember that kid, like, seven years ago, Jer? Tried to get over that fence…”

  “Blammo,” Jerry said.

  “What? What the hell does ‘blammo’ mean? Is that somebody getting fried to death?” Lauren said.

  “No, it was just…” but Jerry trailed off.

  “The point is, Cole…” Lauren began.

  “I broke the handles on the front door,” Cole admitted.

  “You did what?!” his auntie said, almost shouting.

  “Cole…” his grandmother started.

  “So you did climb the fence, you didn’t just try,” Lauren stated.

  “Yes,” Cole said.

  “Cole, did you open the doors to that facility or not?” Lauren asked. “This is important.”

  “I don’t…” Cole thought back to that moment. He’d broken off the door handles…and then he saw the shadow with red eyes. But he couldn’t remember if he opened the doors or not. “…I can’t remember. I don’t think so.”

  “We have to check that out,” Lauren said to Jerry.

  “Now?” Jerry asked.

  “Freaking yes, now, Jer. You can have your nap after that. Holy shit,” Lauren said. “If those doors are open…is that registering with you? Do you remember what happened when that accident happened?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Yeah, but…”

  “Yeah, but. We have to make sure those doors are closed,” Lauren said. “If they aren’t…”

  “Okay, fine,” Jerry said.

  “That was really stupid, Cole,” Lauren said. “You’re risking…I mean, you do your hero thing, and then this…I just don’t get it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cole said.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Lauren said to Cole’s auntie and grandmother. “Come on,” Lauren said to Jerry.

  Moments later, they were out of the house and Cole was left alone with his grandmother and auntie. He looked at his grandmother, because he knew the look his auntie was giving him. He could hear his Auntie Joan breathing, or rather, trying to moderate her breathing because she was so worked up. Cole could relate to that. He was quietly trying to breathe evenly, too.

  “So this is what you’ve been up to?” Auntie Joan asked following a long silence.

  Cole wanted the silence back. “I didn’t start that fire.” He pleaded to his grandmother for help with collapsing eyebrows.

  “I think Joan and I are more concerned about finding you on the ground outside the house this morning, Cole,” his grandmother said.

  “I what?”

  “When we got here, you were laying across the steps outside.”

  “And if we found you like that the moment we got here,” his Auntie Joan said, “what does that mean about everything else you’ve been doing here? You should’ve never snuck off like that.”

  “If I hadn’t snuck off like that literally everybody in Wounded Sky would be dead.”

  “Oh, Cole, please,” Auntie Joan said.

  “I was trying to help last night!” The pounding in his head got worse.

  “How?!” Auntie Joan got up and faced Cole with her arms crossed.

  Cole stumbled with his response. He opened his mouth to say something, several times, but each time he stopped himself. Everything he’d planned to say was an explanation his auntie would never believe. “You don’t even know what I’ve been through,” Cole mumbled, giving up on any attempt to explain. All they knew at this point was what he’d told them last week, that he’d helped catch Scott, and that he needed to stay longer.

  “Give me one good reason why I should let you stay,” Auntie Joan had said.

  “Because you can’t make me come back,” he said back.

  “You’re right, I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I know you’ve been through enough.” Auntie Joan pulled out her phone and started punching at the touch screen so hard Cole thought she might break the glass. “I’m not going to let you die out here like your parents,” she said under her breath before putting the phone to her ear.

  “What are you doing?” Cole asked, but she ignored him.

  “Joan?” Cole’s grandmother said. Whatever Auntie Joan was doing, she had been kept out of the loop.

  “Yes, hi,” his Auntie Joan said into the receiver. “The next flight out this evening, is there still room for—”

  “No!” Eva. Brady. They’d die. Everybody would die. She couldn’t take him. He wouldn’t go. Cole started to think about how he’d avoid it. He’d run away, stay somewhere else, convince his grandmother to convince Auntie Joan to let him stay….

  “I’m sorry, what?” Auntie Joan looked at Cole differently now, with worry and disbelief. Her face was melting with it. “That can’t be right. We just…”

  Cole tried to hear what the voice was saying on the other end, but the best he could make out was that it was a man.

  “Fine.” Auntie Joan ended the call, and tossed her phone onto the couch.

  “You know I can’t go, Auntie Joan. I can’t leave here, it’s—”

  “Go to your room.” Auntie Joan was looking down to the floor now, her hand on her face. “Now.”

  “I don’t have a room here,” Cole said weakly.

  “Go to Brady’s room!”

  “Holy shit crap,” Cole said, alone in Brady’s room. He was sitting on the bed and staring out the window. He had many thoughts and not enough space in his pounding head to fit them. How bad was the mall? Who would’ve done something like that—and why? More to the point, who would’ve called the RCMP and said they’d seen Cole around the mall, when he clearly wasn’t? By the time the mall was on fire, Cole was likely passed out on the steps. And how was he going to do anything with his auntie here? She’d watch him like a hawk. Worse, she’d find a way to get him out of the community, and that would mean disaster for Wounded Sky. “Shit Crap.”

  “Boy, that escalated quickly,” Choch said, “I mean, that really got out of hand fast.”

  “Could you not talk like Ron Burgundy please?” Cole asked.

  “Well typically it’s been you with the pop culture references, but I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring.”

  “I don’t do that.”

  Choch snapped his fingers. “Right, sorry. Got you confused with somebody else.”

  “I’ll have to meet this person you keep talking about that doesn’t even exist, I bet,” Cole said dryly.

  “Oh, you have a lot in common,” Choch said, “and by the way, speaking of which, I give up. You kids say the S-word way too often and it’s impossible to catch all of them. So, if you could just not say the F-word that would be really helpful.”

  “I’m ignoring that,” Cole said.

  “So!” Choch clapped loudly. Cole might’ve worried about his overprotective auntie hearing the sound, but he guessed that Choch had probably muted the clapping. “Correct, I have muted the clapping for your relatives. Now, I came by because…oh…coffee?” Choch extended a cup, which had just appeared in his hand, to Cole. “Nobody makes coffee like a spirit being.”

  “I don’t drink coffee,” Cole said.

  “Suit yourself.” Choch sipped the coffee, then made an, “Ahhhhh,” sound.

  “Did you want…what did you want?” Cole asked.r />
  “I thought I could help focus you,” Choch said, “in light of the fact that, let me get this straight, you’re looking for files, you’re trying to make good with Michael, you’re juggling girls, you’re—”

  “Okay, I get it!” Cole shouted. He felt comfortable shouting, knowing that—

  “What’s going on in there?” his auntie asked through the door.

  Of course, Cole thought. “Nothing, sorry,” he said to his auntie, and then waited to hear her footsteps recede. “Thanks for that,” he said to Choch, “muting yourself but not me.”

  “One still has to have fun,” Choch said. “It’s not juggling girls, but…” Choch tried to hand him the cup again “…it’s decaf by the way. I know how your nerves get.”

  Cole pushed it away. “So you just came to judge me or something?”

  “Au contraire, mon CB,” Choch said, “I’ve always said that you need to find your own way. All I’m saying is that, perhaps you need to focus a little bit. It’s fairly discombobulating. Granted, it’s not all your fault. Certain storytellers might be a bit unfocussed, too.”

  “Should I even bother to ask if you have any suggestions? I mean, last night, all that other stuff, I was basically just…I didn’t want to go to the research facility, okay, but I went, so…”

  “Oh come on, you like having two girls on your mind. The drama, the hormones, the…well, any boy would like that.” Choch stroked his thumb and forefinger against his naked chin “Except for Brady, I suppose. But you get my point.”

  “Don’t even get me started about how I’ve totally ignored Brady’s feelings about Ashley,” Cole said.

  “You know, if I were to offer advice, out of the goodness of my heart, I might ask you who might know something about those darn files, other than our precious little Jayney-kins,” Choch said.

  Cole thought about who else could know. Who even knew about the—

  “Ummm, could you possibly ruminate aloud?”

  “Fine,” Cole said. “I was just thinking about who else knew about the files, anyway. Dr. Captain, Eva, Brady, Mike, Pam, Lauren…”

  “Aaaaand…”

  “Scott,” Cole said.

  “And you say I never—”

  “I’ve already thought of him, though.”

  “And simply ignored the fact that he could know about the files? Boy, you really do stall, don’t you?”

  “It’s just that,” Cole said, “I figured he’d be guarded like Fort Knox or something.”

  Choch started to pace. “Gee whiz, how would CB ever get through a guard or two?” Then he stopped, turned towards Cole, and whispered, “That was rhetorical.”

  “My skills,” Cole said.

  “Yeah! I mean, you’ve got such great skills,” Choch said exactly like Napoleon Dynamite. “That just might work.”

  “Spirit-being sarcasm is the worst sarcasm,” Cole said.

  “Why do you think I chose you, CB?” Choch started to flex his non-existent muscles.

  “Okay, I get it,” Cole said.

  “The bonus is, readers love break-ins, heists, whatever. That’s worthwhile detective work—exciting, engaging, all that. No other issues need to be addressed.”

  “You’re being weird again,” Cole said. “‘No other issues need to be addressed?’ There’s always something you’re saying that you’re not really saying.”

  Choch took a fast sip of his coffee. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Pfffft.”

  “You brought up all that stuff from last night, and you left out the fact that a fricking—”

  Thank you for not swearing.

  “—creature thing chased me last night. Don’t you think that’s important?”

  “Frankly, I’d call that thing an ‘easily avoided distraction.’ You’ve got other things to do now. Break-in at the clinic? Hello?”

  “What, are you worried I might get killed?”

  “And also,” Choch checked the time, “you’re almost late for school. You do know what’s first period today, don’t you?”

  “Why are you avoiding—”

  “Gym! That’s what! Do not be late, CB. I would hate to have to give you more man-makers, but I will.”

  And with that, Choch was gone.

  “I’m going to have to go back there eventually, you know!” Cole shouted into thin air.

  “Cole! Who are you talking to in there?” He heard his auntie stomp up to his bedroom door.

  “Nobody,” Cole said, and he realized that he needed to get used to his auntie’s intrusions, just like he’d gotten used to Choch’s.

  13

  #SHITCOLEDID

  COLE LEFT BRADY’S ROOM CAUTIOUSLY, like he’d heard a sound in the night and was checking for intruders. He felt stuck in another reality. Seeing his auntie and grandmother sitting at the kitchen table was something he’d seen almost every day of his life since he was seven, up until about two weeks ago, but now it felt unnatural. On the other hand, they had settled right in, eating toast with peanut butter and drinking black coffee. They were talking about him. He could hear them, even though they were whispering.

  “What could he have been doing?” his grandmother asked.

  “It’s not like him to be out drinking. He’s never done anything like that,” Auntie Joan said. “But maybe other kids have had an influence on him.”

  “No,” his grandmother said. “We sheltered him, but we also raised him to make good choices.”

  “What good choice could have possibly brought him to sleep on the front steps?” his auntie asked.

  “Maybe it wasn’t his choice, he—”

  Cole cleared his throat. Both of them turned towards him quickly and tried to act normal, like they’d just been having a normal breakfast conversation and not dissecting his life choices. But maybe that was normal breakfast conversation when he wasn’t around. Who knew?

  “Nósisim,” his grandmother said.

  “Can I come out now?” Cole asked.

  “Thanks for asking,” Auntie Joan said. “Yes, you can. I made you some toast.” She pushed a plate of food with two pieces of toast slathered in peanut butter towards an empty place at the kitchen table.

  Cole held his stomach. “No thanks, I’m already late for school. I’ll eat a big lunch.” He walked to the front door and stopped there. He stared outside, at the cracked concrete front steps, and pictured himself laying there, passed out. He might’ve thought he’d been drinking, too, if he’d found himself like that. Laying there, exposed to the elements, unconscious and unable to protect himself. Why didn’t the dark creature just kill him then? Would it not come into the community? The research facility lay just beyond the perimeter.

  “Cole,” his auntie said.

  “Huh?”

  “I said that you better be home right after school, got it? Things are going to change.”

  Cole didn’t look away from the spot. “I can’t just be locked up in here, Auntie. I have a job to do.”

  “Which you’ve never explained, and until you do, you will be home after school.”

  “I told you that I can’t explain it.”

  “Cole,” she said sternly.

  “Sure, yeah, home after school, got it,” Cole said, but he figured that unless she literally came to the school herself, took his hand, and walked him home, she couldn’t make him. He’d always listened to her in the city (mostly, anyway) but there, his compliance didn’t affect anybody but himself. Now it could affect the entire community.

  Cole headed to the research facility before going to school. He would be even later, and Choch would give him man-makers, but the spirit being had to know this threat was not a deterrent. He could do a hundred of them and big deal. Besides, Choch would know where Cole had gone, what had made him super late—because he was now headed in the “super late” category—and how could he be upset about that? He was doing his job. There’d be no break-in during the day, but seeing what sort of damage he’d left behind seemed important, if o
nly because it would ensure his ass was covered. Since, because his life wasn’t hard enough, somebody was trying to frame him for arson.

  “Of course.” Cole stopped on the path as soon as the facility came into view. The number of guards had tripled. He wouldn’t be able to just run up and jump over the fence if he were to come back here. And at some point, he’d have to come back here. He could heal from a stab wound, sure, but how about multiple gunshot wounds? Not only were there more guards, but now they looked armed to the teeth. They weren’t just carrying side arms, but rifles.

  But what felt more distressing, because of the allegations he’d heard from Lauren and Jerry this morning, were the front doors. There were some people in what Cole thought looked like hazmat suits talking to Lauren and Jerry in front of the doors, which were perfectly fine, handles and all. He’d been “seen” setting a fire at the mall, and now, to the constables, he’d been lying about what he’d been doing. All he could really hope for there was that Lauren could put two and two together. More guards, guys in hazmat suits? Clearly something had gone down. Jerry would never make the connection. Cole wasn’t sure if he could actually even add two and two.

  “Maybe if Reynold asked him to,” Cole said to himself. Cole took one last, long look at the facility, at the guards, the guns, the constables, the front doors, the handles. “Things keep coming up Cole.” He sighed, and then turned towards school.

  Cole thought being late could be looked at as a blessing. Everybody was in class and the hallways were clear. He didn’t have a bunch of eyes on him, wondering if he tried to burn the mall down. Certainly, by now, news had spread across the community. In particular, his classmates must have heard about it, and been talking about it on the group text. What had Alex said before? #shitColedid. That’s what it would be.

  Gym class would be different. Cole felt like all the kids in his amalgamated class were just standing in there, waiting to jump out like a surprise party—the worst surprise party ever: “Surprise! You’re an arsonist and we hate you!” He could just hear a chorus of voices shouting it. So, he took his time getting to the gym. He sauntered to his unlocked locker and stuck his backpack inside. He changed in the bathroom (not the boy’s change room in the gym) and took his time getting into each new item of clothing, also selected from the slim pickings the clothing store had at the mall: a pair of black shorts and a white tank top. At least his new shoes matched his shorts. Cole shuffle-stepped all the way to the gym and by the time he got to the gym doors, he’d successfully killed ten minutes since he’d entered the school.