Monsters

by David Alexander Robertson

  “You mean like GTFO?”

  Choch gasped loud. “Saying that to me, your friendly neighbourhood spirit being?”

  “Can you really blame me? Plus you were being an asshole with the whole man-makers thing.”

  “I was keeping up appearances, CB. No offence intended. What would a class full of teenagers think if I let you get away with coming to class late? Next thing you know, everybody would be coming late, or not at all. You know kids. I mean, look at your poor locker.”

  Cole pushed his back against the locker next to his, staring at the painted bricks on the wall. One, two, three…

  “Well at least you’re actually counting past one now,” Choch said. “And like I’ve always told you, I’m actually very helpful if you listen.”

  “What, exactly, did you want?” Cole didn’t want to listen in the least.

  “I was concerned about you, that’s all. I came to cheer you up.”

  “Awesome job. I feel so much better.”

  “Would you care to brainstorm? Run some thoughts by your old buddy? I’m all ears.” Choch turned his ears into coyote ears, and said, “Huh? Any takers?” and then he twinkled them.

  Cole shook his head. “I’m doing things one at a time. I’m going to get Pam to try and get into the laptop…”

  “For your mission, or for yourself?”

  “Both, I hope,” Cole said. “Then I have to go back to the research facility and try to actually get inside this time. Hopefully, you know, there’s no shadow thing waiting for me.” Cole paused. Choch allowed for this by not interrupting. Then, Cole shrugged. “But maybe I have to kill it anyway, so it might as well be there.”

  “I wouldn’t try to tussle with that thing.” Choch was deadly serious, Cole noticed. “If you don’t mind my advice, I’d find the long way around and avoid that thing altogether.”

  “If it kills me, it kills me.”

  “What is this I hear? Are you giving up so soon?”

  “I’m getting tired. Tired of not knowing, tired of this,” Cole motioned to his locker, “just tired.”

  Choch gave Cole a nudge on the hip with his foot. Cole looked the gesture off. “Come on, let’s go play HORSE. Better yet, COYOTE. That way, we can spend more time together. And I promise I won’t cheat.”

  “I DON’T HAVE BASKETBALL SHOES!”

  Choch knelt down right beside Cole, put his hand on Cole’s shoulder. “CB,” he said quietly, “you really need to find your calm place. If you get all worked up like that, well, we know how your anxiety is.”

  “I took a pill. I can shout as loud as I damn-well want. And no, I don’t want to play COYOTE with you, or HORSE, or whatever game you think of.”

  “Look, all I’m saying, relax. Do some mindfulness. That’s all the rage right now. Cross your legs, close your eyes, concentrate on your breathing…”

  “I do that already.”

  “Have you considered Buddhism?”

  “Considered it how?” Cole turned to the right, away from Choch, as though the spirit being would get the message.

  “As a state of mind,” Choch said. “Knowing that everything is in a state of change, nothing is static. That means everything is connected. People, animals, nature…even laptops.”

  Cole looked at Choch quickly, who winked back at Cole.

  “Well, that might be a stretch. Specifically, manmade things are—”

  “Were you actually just trying to help me?”

  Choch looked at Cole coyly. “Look at the time. I have to go and inflate some basketballs. Somebody came in and deflated them all, if you can believe it.”

  “My fan club.”

  Choch headed back to the gym. On the way, without looking back, he said, “But do try the whole mindfulness thing. I’ve found it very helpful, when I feel like breathing and, well, just enjoying the human experience. It does get stressful managing all my little jobs.”

  “Sorry I’m such a screw up!” Cole called out.

  Choch stopped, turned around. “Look, don’t be so hard on yourself, to echo your friends. Just, I suppose, keep things moving. Yes, the boss is breathing down my neck, but all you can do is try, right?”

  “Right.”

  “If I can say one thing about you, my boy, you do put your heart into it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “See? I’m not all bad.” Choch moved to leave, but he stopped and poised his fingers in a snapping position. “If you decide to, you know, do the thing with the thing at the thing…”

  “The monster, at the research facility,” Cole clarified.

  “Yeah, the thing at the thing, like I said,” Choch said. “If you do decide on that, I only ask that you attend to that, err, situation, heavily armed. See you later.”

  Choch snapped his fingers, and the students moved instantly. A kid dumped a bottle of water on Cole’s head.

  “Cool off, pyro!”

  Cole didn’t even resist. He just sat on the floor, stared at the wall, and counted painted bricks. He counted bricks up and to the right, until he stopped at the clock.

  How long would it take Pam to finish?

  22

  SAY IT AIN’T SO

  COLE STAYED THERE, ON THE FLOOR beside his locker, and endured the abuse he was getting. Kids repeated the words that had been written all over his locker. Kids kicked his feet on purpose, or stepped on them. Glared at him. Threw stuff at him. Pencils, pens, erasers, spitballs, paper balls. He endured all of this until Eva showed up. She just stood in front of Cole’s locker, staring at it, staring inside it, her arms crossed, eyes darting back and forth, looking at the damage, reading all the words, and then doing it all over again.

  “Hey.” Cole got up and stood beside her. He mirrored her, arms crossed, staring at the locker.

  “Cole…”

  “Things kind of went downhill last night, after I dropped you off.”

  “You keep running into trouble,” she said. “Maybe you should try running the other way next time.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “What happened?”

  Cole walked over to his locker and shut it as best as he could. The metal was warped, though, and it stayed ajar. Cole just shook his head at Eva’s question. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, you know, so when anything happens, anything, I have to do something. If I don’t…”

  She shook her head, too, mirroring him. “How’d you get there so fast?”

  “Reading the group text?”

  “Just trying to understand.”

  “You don’t think…”

  “No, no of course not. It’s just, God, Cole, you must be the unluckiest person ever.”

  Cole nodded and moved back beside Eva. They both kept staring at the locker. He read the graffiti over and over during the silence. Fake. Kept reading that word. Fake. What did that even mean? Fake. Fake hero? Somebody shouldered him. He turned around, but it was impossible to tell who. Everybody was looking at him. There were so many kids walking by.

  “So where’s Mike?” Cole asked.

  “I don’t know, not answering my texts. Maybe he’s sick.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to admit that he broke your window.”

  “There’s less evidence for that than there is against you, Cole,” Eva said, and it made Cole feel small, like he should’ve kept his stupid mouth shut. “Deflect much?” she added.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No,” she said, “I’m sorry, I…I feel so guilty about what we did.”

  “What we almost did.”

  “I wanted to, that’s enough.”

  “I wanted to, too.”

  “Like Mike needs that. Like he needs that right now.”

  “I know.”

  Eva looked around, like she was expecting Michael to show up just then. Somebody threw a paper airplane at Cole’s head. “Listen,” she said, “I’m going to get to class, okay?”

  She wasn’t inviting him to join her. He didn’t blame her. He didn�
�t blame anybody for staying away from him.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m going to, I guess, just clean up this mess a bit.”

  But she was already gone, already off to class. ELA. Cole approached his locker, opened it, crouched down, and started to pull items out. His shoes. His gym clothes. He started in on the ripped up textbooks when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned quickly, aggressively, and shouted, “What?”

  Lucy flinched, but recovered quickly. She kept her hand on his shoulder long enough to pat him twice, and smiled with her eyebrows raised.

  “Sorry,” Cole said. “It’s been a rough morning.”

  “How bad is it that I totally want to make a joke about you being hot under the collar or something?”

  Cole shrugged. Lucy took a step closer.

  “Are you a closet bad-ass, Cole?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Hey, you’re getting shit on by people who think their shit doesn’t stink, and you decide you’ve had enough. No judgment here.”

  “It’s not like that.” Cole wasn’t sure if her proximity or attitude made him feel off-balance. The bell rang for class. Cole started on his way there, hoping that she’d leave him, but she followed him.

  “I’ll burn this place down with you, whaddya say?”

  Her eyes were fiery and fearless. Cole at once felt scared and envious of that. If he were that way, all of this crap now wouldn’t hurt him as much. “Hard pass,” he said, “since I didn’t set anything on fire.”

  “Yeah but, what about now? You may as well have a target on your shirt.”

  “And what’s different for you? You don’t hate me?”

  “Nah,” she said, “I’ve been in your shoes. I’m in your shoes.” She kicked him on the side of the foot in stride.

  “Because your dad is…”

  “Because my dad is, yeah.”

  “That sucks.”

  “It is what it is,” she said. “You get used to it. Trust me.”

  “When?” Cole asked, maybe a bit too desperately. “When do you get used to it?”

  “Just wait until my dad does something dumb again. They’ll forget all about you. Patience, Cole. Dad’s good for it, believe me.”

  They got to class. Cole gave Lucy a genuine smile, and then he turned to head into the room, wondering if he’d get hit with a paper ball or a spitball first. Lucy grabbed his arm.

  “Hey,” she said, “there’s that debate tonight. My dad and Anna Crate. At the community hall.”

  “I hadn’t heard about that.”

  “Wanna come with me? You can do something actually lit.”

  “Very funny,” Cole said. “No thanks. Big crowds and me don’t mix. Especially now.”

  Lucy’s shoulders slumped dramatically. “What’s a girl have to do to piss off her dad?”

  “Sorry,” Cole said, “not interested in getting knocked out again.”

  “God, do you play hard to get. Suit yourself.” Lucy pretended to brush some dust off her shoulder, then she pushed past Cole into class.

  Cole waited outside of class for a moment, opened the door a crack, and looked inside at the students in the room. All of them, except for Eva, and maybe Lucy, were ready to make the next hour a living Hell. Just because he was used to it, it didn’t make it any easier. So, instead of going in, he closed the door quietly and turned away. He moved down the hallway, to the back door of the school, and left. He walked across the field and found a spot just outside of Blackwood Forest, at the edge of the school grounds.

  He sat there and tried not to think about anything that had happened, any word that his classmates had said or written, and not about the things he still had to do, or the things he had done. He just sat there and waited. He closed his eyes, and breathed. In five seconds, out seven seconds. Sometime after that, maybe minutes, maybe an hour, maybe more, Cole felt his phone buzz in his pocket. As it turned out, it was close to noon.

  PAM: Where you at?

  COLE: Hiding.

  PAM: So are we playing a game or do you want your laptop? If I’m “it” I’m cool with that.

  COLE: Back of the field.

  PAM: You suck at this game.

  A few seconds later, the back door to the school opened, and out walked Pam, the laptop bag hanging from her shoulder. She handed him the laptop bag once she’d crossed the field, then she sat down beside him. “I thought you were going to give me something hard to do.”

  “Wow, thanks. I thought it would take all day.”

  “Cole,” she said glibly. “All I had to do was use a Hirens Boot CD.”

  “Right, a Hirens Boot CD. Obviously.”

  “I’m just being a shit. I know you don’t know what that is. But it was easy.”

  “This seriously made the day not so shitty.”

  “But still pretty shitty.”

  Cole shrugged. He opened the bag and pulled out his dad’s laptop. Fired it up, and found that it was no longer password protected. “Awesome.”

  “I should leave you to it,” she said, and got up.

  “You don’t…”

  “Yeah, I do. This was your dad’s, Cole. You need your privacy. It’s cool.”

  Cole stood up. “Hey, thanks.” He gave her a hug, and patted her on the back.

  “Let me know how it turns out,” she said, and then she headed back towards the school.

  “’Kay,” Cole said with Pam already too far to hear. He sat back down, clicked on his dad’s first name, Donald, and got to the home screen. Whatever the desktop wallpaper used to be couldn’t have been important. Cole laughed when he saw that Pam had taken the liberty to change the wallpaper to a shot of her, in her computer room, flashing devil horns at the camera, her tongue sticking out. He stared at it for a solid ten seconds before starting on his search for information. He checked the browser history first, but there was nothing of interest there. His dad was interested in NHL and NFL, movies, MySpace, and medical sites like the Mayo Clinic.

  “Okay, Dad.” Cole searched through the folders on the desktop. There were lots of “medical and research type documents” in those folders (as Cole put it), but nothing he could understand, and nothing, from what he could tell, that was anything like the files he’d found at the camp. Still, showing Dr. Captain all the documents wouldn’t hurt. He’d throw them on a jump stick and give them to her when he had the chance.

  Next, Cole checked his dad’s email. Most of the messages were to and from co-workers at the research facility. He also found short emails between his mom and dad. Cole read them over and over again. They weren’t about anything, really, but that didn’t matter. He could hear his dad’s voice, his mother’s, and that was enough.

  DONALD: Hey, can you bring me an extra sandwich for lunch? I didn’t eat anything this morning.

  BEV: Yes. Cole will probably eat another, too. You need to remember to eat, Don. Especially when you aren’t sleeping!

  DONALD: It won’t always be like this. It’s just busy right now. We’re close.

  BEV: You’ve been close forever.

  To Cole, all of these emails were like poetry, like songs with the most beautiful lyrics. It was a while before he moved on from them, and he only did because he saw other emails exchanged between his dad and another woman. Vikki Folster.

  DONALD: I think we should do it tomorrow. Why do you keep waiting, Vik?

  VIKKI: He’ll know. He’ll find out. I know he will. I can’t do it tomorrow. I don’t know if I should do it at all.

  DONALD: You said that last week, too. If we’re going to do this, we have to do it. It will never feel like the right decision, but it is.

  VIKKI: Have you talked to Bev? Does she know?

  DONALD: No, she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t have to. It’s safer that way. It’s just between us. When people have to know, they can know.

  VIKKI: I’m too scared. What about my girl?

  DONALD: I have a place where you can both stay. I can see you there until we can get you somew
here more permanent.

  VIKKI: He’ll kill me, I know he will.

  DONALD: I’m worried about what he’ll do if you don’t leave.

  VIKKI: He doesn’t know about you. If he doesn’t know, then I’m safe, and so are you, and so is my girl. We should just leave it, and forget about this.

  DONALD: You know we can’t do that.

  VIKKI: Fine. Okay. Tomorrow.

  The last message had been sent the day before his dad died. Cole closed the laptop shut slowly, as though if he shut it with any force it would explode.

  Everything looked different. Every-goddamn-thing about his father. Cole was only seven at the time, but how the hell could he not have known, not have noticed anything? How could his mother not have known? Did she know? Somebody had to have known. The timing was too perfect. Too horribly perfect. The woman his dad had died with was Vikki, and their death wasn’t, couldn’t have been an accident. Whomever Vikki was talking about, the person that was going to find out about them, killed them.

  Nothing else made sense.

  23

  HERE LIES…

  COLE WALKED TOWARDS THE SCHOOL IN A FOG as the bell rang for lunch. Kids poured onto the field, making camp on the grass to eat their food. Tossing the ball around with lacrosse sticks they borrowed from the gym. Kicking the soccer ball. Listening to music. Yelling profanities and accusations. None of this registered with Cole. He just kept going, step after step, hardly aware of what was happening around him. Nothing felt real. Maybe he was dreaming. He wanted to be dreaming. Maybe it was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare.

  “Cole.” Eva was walking beside him. “Where were you this morning?”

  Step. Step.

  “Are you mad at me? Don’t be mad at me.”

  Step. Step.

  “Cole! What’s gotten into you?” She grabbed his wrist and tried to hold him up, to turn him towards her.

  “No.” He shook his head and pulled his wrist away from her hand. She kept walking with him.

  Step. Step.

  “Seriously. You’re scaring me.”

  Cole didn’t answer. He looked ahead, and walked ahead.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me? What can I do?”