A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.
That was basic detective work, everyone knew that. If the monster in my house had left its mark, then it had to come back to that spot sooner or later — those were the rules. But maybe I could speed the process along by luring it in with food? I doubted the monster wanted to eat cereal or other snacks made for people, but it had to get hungry sooner or later. Sprinkling a handful of tropical fish flakes on the puddle, I did my best to make sure there were enough flakes sitting on top that the aroma would be sure to reach the monster wherever it hid.
Do creatures living in the ocean even have a sense of smell? They definitely had noses, but whether or not scents could move through water I was uncertain. Experimentally, I lowered my face to the flakes. It did not smell particularly of anything, but then again, I was not a fish.
Whether fish could smell or not, the monster would definitely want the fish flakes, and I would be there to catch him when he came out of hiding for a snack. Taking the skateboard with me, I opened the door to a small coat closet and slipped inside.
The closet, with its odd half-door had been a common hiding spot when Maggie and I played hide-and-seek. The nestling nook had become so obvious over the years that whoever was lazy enough to choose it became doomed within seconds of the game starting. Even if I pushed past the curtain of coats, my legs still managed to poke from the bottom.
But, I reasoned, the monster has never played hide-and-seek before, and therefore would never think to look in the closet.
So I buried myself in the coats, leaving the door cracked open enough to keep the puddle in view. I would wait as long as I needed to — without school, I had all the time in the world. I could wait all day to catch a glimpse of the monster, ready to pounce the moment its guard let down. I gripped the skateboard in my hands. It was hard, just the right size to swing like a baseball bat. The knobby wheels and trucks had plenty of sharp bits that would hurt even more. I didn’t like the idea of hurting anything, even a monster lurking in the shadows of my home, but what choice did I have?
There were times when a man had to be a man.
I couldn’t tell how much time passed. Without the hallway clock visible from my crack in the door, the rumble of footsteps downstairs became the only clues that time was passing at all. Once, Christopher cried. His wails went on and on before Mom calmed him down in a murmured voice. This wasn’t going as quickly as I had hoped. I worried that the monster was either not hungry or else the trap had been too obvious.
If I leave now, he’ll know it was a trap and everything will have been for nothing, said the smaller voice in my head.
“Silas, Maggie!” My mother’s voice stopped the thought from reaching its conclusion. I nearly jumped from surprise, almost giving away my hiding spot. “It’s time for ballet practice. Get your things and come downstairs.”
Maggie’s ballet practice. I hadn’t thought of that. Once a week, Mom packed the three of us up to watch my sister practice twirling and standing in uncomfortable looking positions with other girls for an hour. It was boring, and I could not understand why girls were so interested in learning how to dance to piano music in a way that looked completely unnatural. I knew how to dance. I had danced at my aunt’s wedding — it wasn’t complicated. I think people like Maggie liked to make things more difficult than they needed to be.
Usually this didn’t bother me. I would bring a book or Mom would let me play a game on her phone. But today was not the day for sitting around listening to the old woman in the bathing suit play the beginning of the same song over and over. I didn’t want to give up my hunt for the monster — letting it loose to go through my stuff while I was trapped here.
“We’re leaving in three minutes!” My mother’s voice came from the bottom of the stairs a second time.
I sighed, giving in to the lack of freedom that always managed to ruin my plans in one way or another. I pushed through the coats and popped out of the closet, covered in dust.
“What were you doing in there?” said a voice from down the hall. I turned. There was Maggie, no, she was definitely Margaret now, staring at me, ballet bag tucked under one arm. Her hair had been pulled back into a bun that made her look mean — all eyebrows and scowling mouth. She was always complaining about her eyebrows being wrong, and had even convinced Mom to let a woman at the mall pluck them using sharp looking tweezers. She had come home with eyebrows permanently slanted down like the angry character in a cartoon. I found the more she talked about things like getting her brows plucked, the more like those cartoon characters she became.
“Nothing,” I said, by way of reply. I didn’t have a good excuse this time.
“You’re really weird,” said Margaret, straightening her spine to make it look as though she were taller than me. Even though Margaret and I were the same height when measured at the doctor’s office, she looked bigger. Her frizzy hair gave her an extra inch, and when she wore her glasses, it made her eyes look like blue fruit loops in milk.
“No I’m not.” I wished I had a better response. Iron Man always had something clever to say.
“Yes you are. You were hiding in a closet and now you’re covered in dust. You do know what being in the closet means?” she said, raising one of her angry eyebrows.
I didn’t know what being in the closet meant — I guessed it was one of those middle school phrases that implied being weird. I couldn’t reveal that I didn’t know what she meant though, because that would be admitting that I was only in the fourth grade — which was true, but entirely beside the point.
“Of course I know what it means,” I said, making my spine straight too.
Margaret laughed, and pushed past me down the stairs. “I wouldn’t let Mom see you like that. She’s going to make you take a bath and then get mad you made me late for practice.”
She was right. I brushed myself off as best I could, doing my best to shake the dust from my shirt and pants.
But luck was on my side, and Christopher ended up distracting Mom by crying most of the way to the ballet studio. I left the fish flakes in the puddle, thinking that at the very least it could serve as an experiment to see whether the monster liked tropical fish flakes or not. I could hide the flakes in other places around the house, trying again as many times as necessary.
The class dragged. I had forgotten to bring a book, and Mom sat texting someone, a serious expression on her face deepening every time the phone buzzed in her hands. I decided it was probably smarter not to ask to play on her phone, meaning that I was stuck watching Margaret and the other girls practice standing on awkwardly splayed feet.
The teacher would come down the line every few minutes, lifting a shoulder, twisting a hip, doing her best to make sure every girl lined against the mirrored wall looked exactly the same. Each girl had her hair in the same tight bun, just like my sister. Once the teacher was certain they all looked and stood identically, she announced that they were going to spin in a circle one at a time. No matter how much they tried, and no matter how circular their spin looked, there was always some imperfection to be corrected. The teacher would tell one girl to pick her chin up, another that her hands were not tucked properly. I looked down the row of moms facing the equal row of daughters. They, too, were all in matching positions — each with phone in hand, heads down, faces blank.
I wondered what would happen if someone wrote about people the same way they wrote about fish. There were enough fish in the ocean to fill an entire book, each getting their own page with exciting words like sexual dimorphism. But I didn’t think people would be able to fill enough pages for an entire book.
See the sister. I thought, watching the line of girls. They want to dance and to go to dances. They go to middle school and pluck their eyebrows.
Then, looking at the row of moms.
See the mother. What sisters become when they get old enough. Their job is take care of sisters until they are ready to be mothers. This cycle continues over
and over.
It wouldn’t be a very interesting book.
One circle of life later, the class came to an end. Margaret separated herself from the glob of girls, and Mom packed the family back into the van. We were quiet on the way back. Christopher had fallen asleep, and though Mom tried to make conversation with Margaret she did not seem to be getting anywhere. I could have told her that — Margaret did not like talking about subjects that weren’t Margaret.
Twenty grindingly slow minutes later, we finally made it home, and I rushed up the stairs to check my trap. The puddle had shrunk again, and the flakes had mostly dissolved, no longer floating on top of the water-like liquid.
What’s the problem? He had the whole house to himself all afternoon. He could have come to eat anytime he wanted.
I could not think of why the monster had not taken the bait, especially when he must have seen the four of us leave the house unattended. Sinking glumly within myself, I trudged back to my room, feeling outsmarted and small.
I spent the rest of the afternoon in bed, flipping through picture books at random, unable to concentrate. The feeling of failure did not sit well in my stomach, and without an obvious next step, the knot clenched even more tightly. Eventually, Mom called up the stairs that it was time for dinner. I hadn’t heard the garage door open downstairs, which meant Dad would not be joining us.
It turned out maybe Dad had been the lucky one to not be home for dinner tonight. Mom was in a sour mood and snapped at me for making everyone wait even though Christopher wasn’t even fastened in his high chair yet.
Dinner was lasagna — the microwave kind. I could tell because the cheese turned bubbly at the edges without the crispy texture that made lasagna worth eating. I wasn’t a picky eater like Margaret was, though, so I ate while my sister sat complaining.
“I don’t know why you won’t just eat your dinner like a normal kid,” said Mom after Margaret clattered her fork on the plate for the third time.
Because you aren’t giving her food that she likes. You know she doesn’t eat tomatoes, I thought, wishing I could be back upstairs in my room.
Margaret gave some kind of rude reply that made my mother’s face turn the same red as the tomato sauce, but I wasn’t listening. I was staring at the sauce mushed around on my sister’s plate.
That’s not the type of food it wants.
Whether it was my sister or a monster from the depths, everyone liked certain types of food, that was obvious. Of course the monster wasn’t interested in fish flakes, I had already been shown what type of food the monster hiding in my house wanted.
The food it wants is Dad.
A new plan was beginning to take form in my mind.
Chapter Four
It was after seven, but my father had still not come home from work. This was probably for the best, though, because I was going to need to borrow a few of his things without asking. As soon as dinner ended, I dumped my plate in the sink without a word and ran upstairs as quickly as my legs would allow. The monster last night had been trying to eat something out of my father’s head, that much was certain. The thing was a hunter, just like I was, only it didn’t know that it had turned the tables in my favor with its mistake.
Sneaking into my parents’ room, I was careful to keep an ear out for my mother’s voice. I couldn’t have her coming upstairs to find me rummaging through her room without permission, much less borrowing a load of my father’s things. Knowing I didn’t have much time, I grabbed a wrinkled shirt from the hamper, a pair of khaki pants, and a baseball cap from the dresser. Beneath the baseball cap was my father’s red and gold tie crumpled in a ball. Hesitating, I took the tie as well before hurrying back downstairs into the garage. The rake was where I had left it this morning, still covering the aquarium in the darkest corner of the garage. Hiding in the shadows, I pulled the pants of the khakis through the pole of the rake. Using a roll of duct tape resting on top of my father’s tool box, I taped the jeans to the poll. I did the same with his shirt, buttoning it to the top before taping it around the thin pole. The hat was perched on top of the rake, and I wrapped the tie around its neck as a finishing touch. Not knowing how to make the knot around my neck like my father could, I settled for the first step in tying my shoelaces — making a sort of lopsided bump around the shirt. It didn’t look a whole lot like my father, or any human for that matter, but it might be enough to trick a monster.
I carried the rake disguised as my father out of the garage and into the backyard, all the while checking the windows for any sign that Mom had noticed me sneaking towards the line of trees.
Beneath the canopy of my reading tree, the puddle had all but evaporated, leaving the ground cracked where it had once been a gloppy mess. Leaning my rake-Dad against the tree, I turned his body so it looked as though the dummy was carefully studying the trunk. Satisfied with my work, I climbed the first three limbs, invisible to all eyes outside the canopy.
I waited.
Rake-Dad was becoming less convincing the longer I watched him. He was too thin to be a Dad, that much was obvious. My Dad was not fat, but he was certainly more thickly set than a rake. The way his pants hung off the single pole made his posture look all drooped on one side, like an old man trying to walk without a cane. I had been so caught up in the brilliance of my plan — not so brilliant the longer I sat — that I hadn’t stopped to consider if it was a good plan.
This was dumb, I conceded. The voice in my head that scolded me sounded a lot like an older version of myself, but it used many of the same words my mother used.
It wasn’t dumb, I just need to try something else, I told the more mature voice.
A stick beyond the canopy snapped.
It’s only a squirrel, said the older me.
I hoped it was more than a rodent.
Another sound, this time a swish as grass shifted around the slow steps of some unseen figure. Once, twice, and then all in a flash, my eyes caught a dark shape flying across the rocky ground toward my father’s clothes.
I didn’t have time to react, only to feel my mouth drop open with surprise, hands gripping the branches on instinct as a thin shadow latched onto my rake-father.
It worked. The voice in my head was young, excited.
I was so shocked to see the wriggling shadow, solid now, made of something dark and fleshy, that it took me a slow moment to realize I had failed to think through the next step of my plan.
You’ll have to jump.
I had never jumped from this height before. Two or more branches below, no problem. A little stinging in the bottoms of my feet, maybe the back of my legs would stiffen for a moment, but that was nothing.
This is too high. You haven’t done this before.
I’ve never tried to capture a monster either.
I pictured Red Haired Shanks staring down the sea monster. He did not hesitate.
It’s too high.
I jumped.
The ground rose faster than I anticipated, my knees buckling under the impact. I rolled in the rocky dirt, each bump stinging in a way that the bottoms of my feet never had. There was a gasp above me. I looked up to see the shadow staring directly at me.
It had a face, if it could be called a face. There were two eyes, but they failed to line up in the way a person’s did. There were nostrils, but they had drifted away as though not properly attached to its nose. The monster’s mouth was lipless, from which a thin white tongue extended, tangling itself around my father’s tie. Saliva stained the tie, dying it darker shades of red and gold. It was a face imagined in the knots of a tree — something your eyes fixed into a pattern that was more or less random.
The monster gasped and tried to bolt. Its feet sprung away like a frightened frog, but its body was caught by its tongue, still entwined with the tie. I scrambled to my feet, already feeling a trickle of blood where pebbles had torn at my jeans. The monster yanked the tie free of my useless knot and was off, leaping in great bounds away from the canopy.
I was sure that I was going to win, because I knew this neighborhood better than the monster. It may be better at hiding, but I was better at exploring. I knew that at any second the Fullman’s dog, a massive German Shepherd, was going to come bounding out from the house towards us. I’d measured the steps, counted them any number of times while pretending this neighborhood was anything other than the safe, boring world it was meant to be.
The creature passed the invisible threshold. Responding to the presence of two unwanted guests, the dog’s bark signaled the neighbor’s hundred pound alarm system. Larger than either of us, the German Shepherd came bounding out of the garage and across the lawn.
I found it difficult to tell when a dog was being playful and when it was ready to bite. Mom and Dad had never bought us a puppy growing up, meaning I’d never learned to speak the language of pet. Even the monster ahead of me knew those snarling teeth were excited to clamp down on the first living thing they could reach, though. The creature went stiff, its brown, fleshy skin turning the same white as its tongue before bolting towards the tree line. I followed the creature. The dog followed me.
I knew the dog was on an invisible fence, but did not know in that moment if I was going to be able to cross it soon enough. The dog was fast, much faster than I was. I had not turned out athletic like the other kids in school — I couldn’t outrun Trevor even though he was shorter, and I most definitely couldn’t outrun a dog at full sprint. The creature was already in the trees. He bounced off a trunk and kept going, crunching nettles under his bare toes.
Deep, Deep Ocean Page 4
