The Last Monster

by Ginger Garrett

  I held up the phone. We still have this, I was trying to say, if that helps.

  Mom’s face went blank, the way people look in the movies just before they pass out. She clutched her cheek with one hand.

  I dialed 911.

  The emergency operator stayed on the line with me and told me what to do, which was not much. I propped Mom’s head up and fanned her. If she had been a monster, I might actually have had a clue as to how to treat her.

  Police and paramedics arrived seven minutes and eighteen seconds later. One of the paramedics checked Mom’s vitals, then, after a few tests, smiled brightly at us both. I rested my head in my hands, relieved. Mom was okay. They use a very different smile when it’s serious.

  A police officer tried to get me to answer questions while the paramedic wrote on a clipboard. It was hard for me to form words. My brain was like pudding.

  “Do you have any valuables that a thief would want to steal?” he asked again.

  I shook my head. “We don’t have anything valuable.”

  I suddenly remembered: we did have a valuable book, one of the greatest treasures in history. Dr. Capistrano was the only one who had known about it, but she had wanted to help, not stop me. Was she so worried about the curse on the Bestiary that she’d try to steal it?

  I looked around the place again, seeing it for the first time: ragged edges, scrapes and tears covering everything.

  This wasn’t the work of a thief.

  And it wasn’t a monster who had come here looking for help either.

  This was Entropion.

  Olympias had told me she would destroy everything I held dear. She was angry, maybe because I had weakened Entropion’s power when I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw. She was punishing me for fighting back.

  A shudder rolled through my body like a wave. Right behind it something else rose too: anger. Entropion had no right to come into my house.

  I made my way to the stairs as fast as I could, stumbling twice over the debris. A policeman caught me gently by the arm when I tripped for the third time.

  His name badge said “Officer Lopez.”

  I jerked my arm free. “I need to check my room!”

  “Let my partner go first,” he said, his eyes searching mine. He had soft brown eyes, with a few deep wrinkles around the edges, the kind from laughing a lot. His warm, steady hand was still on my arm.

  I nodded.

  After his partner had gone up and declared it safe, Officer Lopez helped me up the rest of the stairs. At the top, he placed one hand on my shoulder, forcing me to pause for a moment. I needed it. Each breath hurt, like my lungs were filled with glass shards.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you,” Officer Lopez said. “People do ugly things sometimes.”

  All my clothes had been ripped from the hangers, torn to shreds. Even my track trophies, which had been hidden in their box, were in bits and pieces. The bedspread was in ribbons, but hanging neatly in the closet was the gray dress.

  Why hadn’t Entropion destroyed that?

  Looking around, I saw a scrap of shredded purple-and-gold fabric on the floor in front of my nightstand. Disbelief drowned out all my other thoughts.

  These were the remains of my track jersey. It looked staged, like I was meant to find them only after I had seen everything else around me destroyed. The edges glistened with saliva.

  I sat on my bed, focused on taking one breath at a time.

  That was the jersey I had worn on my very last run, the one when I fell, literally, into another world called Cancer. Alexis had injured her knee that week, so she was using our run-a-minute/walk-a-minute technique. She had urged me to run ahead. “Not without you!” I argued. “You have to!” she yelled back. So I ran, fast. Running with Alexis had made me strong. I had been right: a little bit of her really had rubbed off. My legs were like springs attached at my hips. I bounded, I leaped, I flew.

  For the last time.

  Entropion had shredded the memory, torn apart any last hope of wearing that jersey again someday, and almost killed my mother from shock.

  Olympias had won.

  I never wanted to see my mother collapse from shock and pain again. I never knew I could hurt like this again either. The track jersey was a scar that Entropion had split wide open. Unless you’ve spent weeks watching your body slowly knit itself back together in ragged seams and thick red scars, you take healing for granted. You get a paper cut and don’t worry. A few days later, without any effort or thought, you notice that your body has quietly healed itself, one more little magic trick for an audience that forgets to applaud.

  But sometimes healing is like being taken hostage in a violent siege. You have to survive each hour passing on the clock. You pray to make it until the next one, or the next pill, without losing your mind, telling yourself that relief can’t be far.

  I couldn’t survive another open wound. I didn’t have the strength to wait for it to close.

  Officer Lopez stood in the doorway while I began searching through the rubble. He was short but really muscular and had thick, dark black hair. “Can I help you find something?” he asked. I shook my head. “Are you sure? You look pretty upset.”

  What could I say? I was looking for a two- or three-thousand-year-old book? That it was the connection to a dead guy and all the monsters in the world? Careful to keep my back turned to him, I bent down to check under the bed. My breath caught in my chest.

  “How about you take a break and I’ll get you a glass of water?” he asked. “Or a Coke if your mom says it’s okay.”

  The book was gone. It really was over. Entropion had everything he wanted. He’d granted me a tiny bit of mercy, though, because he’d left me that gray dress.

  I sat on the bed and cried, opening my mouth to take in big gulps of air. I wanted to be angry, but strangely, I felt as if a big weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I hadn’t been a great Guardian, not like Xeno wanted, but at least I hadn’t quit. Someone stronger had beaten me, and that was different. I wished, for one second, to be the kind of girl who would get angry and vow revenge, but that type of girl would never really be me. At least I didn’t have to try anymore.

  Officer Lopez offered me a fresh tissue. When Mom came up to see the damage, he rested a hand on her arm and was really nice to her too. She looked like she wanted to collapse against him. He seemed like he could handle it. She held the phone in her hands, as if she needed to call someone but couldn’t remember who it was.

  I wiped the tears from my cheeks and took the phone, setting it on my bed. I wanted her to scoop me up in her arms like she used to when I was little. But she didn’t look at me, not really. She picked her way through the stuff on the floor, looking around in dismay.

  “At least they didn’t get this,” she said, touching the gray dress and stroking the soft fabric with her fingertips. Empty hangers swung on either side of it, but she seemed mesmerized as it sparkled in the ruins of my closet. She didn’t act like she knew I was even in the room, so I didn’t reply, neither of us understanding why the dress hadn’t been destroyed. It didn’t make sense. Olympias had promised to destroy everything I held dear, and I loved that dress. It made me look flawless.

  “You are going to be so beautiful. I can’t tell you how happy I am that you still have this.” She turned to me and smiled, tears shimmering in her eyes. “We still have that to look forward to.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Officer Lopez said again. “Strange things have been happening ever since this little girl showed up at the hospital with bites from an animal she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—describe. Then an animal attacked an office near the hospital. Weird, even by Atlanta standards.”

  Mom dabbed at her eyes. She wasn’t listening, but I was. They thought an animal had broken into Dr. Capistrano’s office? No animal could tear a door off its hinges.

  “Do you think we should get a dog?” Mom asked. She wrung her hands, looking around like she was lost, even though she was standing
in my room. Officer Lopez stepped closer and gently nudged her toward the stairs before he gave me one last reassuring smile.

  “Please let me get you a glass of water or something,” he said to her. “You should sit down and take all this real slow.” They walked out of the room, speaking in hushed tones.

  I kicked one of my broken trophies with my prosthetic leg. A piece of it cut through the material and got stuck right in my big toe.

  The fake stuff is never as strong as it looks.

  Neither of us wanted dinner. Mom poured herself a glass of wine and wrapped herself up in a blanket to sit outside on the patio. I don’t think she wanted to look at the house anymore.

  It was strangely quiet. Without monsters, the world felt dead.

  I grabbed another blanket off the tattered couch and followed Mom outside. I scanned the night sky.

  “What a day,” she muttered. She was standing in front of our patio swing, staring straight ahead.

  I nodded.

  “The locksmiths will be here in a few hours. It’s nice that they agreed to come out so late.” She didn’t sound like she was really talking to me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Officer Lopez was a big help.” He had called in a favor to get them to agree to do the work after hours—it was already past dinnertime.

  Neither of us said anything for a while. Things had been so awkward between us lately. Mom didn’t understand why going right back to our “normal life” had felt like a death sentence to me. And all I knew was that the old me was gone, and I had been trying really hard to find the new me.

  Mom broke the silence. “Girls your age push their moms away. It’s normal,” she said. “Healthy, the experts say.”

  “I’m not pushing you away.”

  She laughed under her breath and sat down on our patio bench.

  I groaned. “I’m really not.”

  “I can’t understand everything you’ve been through,” she said. “I know that.”

  I touched my prosthesis, without even meaning to. She and I locked eyes.

  “I just want to try,” she said softly.

  “I’m not pushing you away, I promise.” I sighed. “I just can’t explain everything to you right now. Some things I can’t even explain to myself.”

  She gently waved a hand to dismiss the conversation and took a sip of her wine.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll wait till you’re ready. That’s what moms do. We give you everything we ever wanted for ourselves.” She took another sip. “We give you the life we once wished for, and then we discover it’s not what you needed after all. My worst fear is that you’re nearly grown and I’ve wasted all my chances to be a good mom.”

  I sat beside her as she opened her arms to wrap the blanket around me too. She never really talked about her mother or childhood. I wondered if she had her own secrets.

  “You’ve been through so much,” she whispered. “You deserve a Cinderella ending to your story.”

  I giggled softly. I had been Cinderella for a while, hadn’t I? Except that songbirds flocked to her window, but man-eating monsters slithered through mine.

  An owl flew above us, hunting something we couldn’t see. The bats were still hibernating, so the owls currently ruled the skies at night.

  The phone rang, but Mom didn’t move. She just stared at the sky, so I went inside to answer it.

  “You broke my nose.”

  I gasped. “Billy?”

  “Who else did you punch today?”

  “Did I really break it?” I cringed. “I didn’t punch you. I smushed you. Accidentally.”

  “That’s why I’m doing this over the phone. In case of another accident.”

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  “Officially breaking up.”

  “You can’t break up with me. We aren’t dating.”

  “Not anymore we aren’t. My dad won’t let me take you to the dance tomorrow night,” Billy said. “He thinks you’re a bad influence. Seeing as how you nearly killed the entire student body on the bus today and then broke my nose. You were supposed to catch the orange, you know.”

  “But I got a dress!” I blurted. “I went shopping with Candy for it!” He couldn’t back out now. “We made a deal,” I added.

  “The deal was you would agree to go with me. And you did.”

  “Is this because of the fight with Alexis?” I said. My body tensed. I wanted to punch him for real now. “You told me to fight for myself, and now you don’t want to go to the dance with me?”

  “Try to pay attention. I do want to go with you,” he said. “My dad won’t let me. I have to stay out of trouble at this school. My mom is threatening to send me to military school if I get expelled again. I think she’s only mad that I’ve ruined the illusion of having a perfect son.”

  “I didn’t know you had a mom,” I muttered. That came out wrong, like everything else I said. I had seen his family picture, but he never talked about her.

  “Did you think I was hatched? Of course I have a mom.”

  “I just didn’t know if she was still around.” I moved to sit on the couch, searching for a cushion that was still intact.

  “She’s not. But at least now she might feel guilty about it.”

  Neither of us said anything for a long time. Silence made talking again even harder. A thousand thoughts went through my mind all at once. Nothing I wanted to say sounded right. The longer we were silent, the more important it seemed to say something perfect.

  “On Christmas morning two years ago,” Billy said, “I opened a present that didn’t have a label. I just assumed it was mine. My mom got this funny expression on her face. She hadn’t meant to put it under the tree. It wasn’t for me. It wasn’t for my dad either. When New Year’s rolled around a week later, she was gone. She had a whole new family.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said weakly.

  “That’s not the worst part,” he said. “She always told me I was the ideal son, and we had a picture-perfect Christmas that year; she even said so. Everything in our house looked like it came out of a magazine. We had all this amazing food, we went to a candlelight church service, we sang Christmas carols at the neighborhood party…and it was all a lie. Maybe she thought she could have both, but in the end she had to choose.” He sighed. “The funny thing is, it wasn’t her lies that nearly killed me. It was finding out the truth.”

  “So you wanted a friend who saw what was real.” I thought about my test answer and why he loved it so much. “So you wouldn’t get hurt again.”

  “You were supposed to be my early warning system,” Billy replied. He sounded exhausted. “As long as I could see the truth about people, I wouldn’t get hurt.”

  “You know what’s funny?” I asked. “The only part of me that doesn’t hurt is the fake part. It doesn’t feel anything at all.”

  I could hear him exhale.

  “Billy, I think that, sometimes, getting hurt is the only way we know what’s real.”

  “Tell that to my nose.”

  I laughed so hard I snorted.

  “My dad says I have to go,” he said, “but remember, I said you had to learn to fight for the right things.” He paused before going on, like what he was going to say next would cost him something. “Alexis is one of the right things. You need to fight to hold on to your friendship. Don’t worry about me right now, okay?”

  Then he said good night.

  We had just broken up, and now we were closer than ever. How was that even possible? Boys were the strangest discovery of all.

  The locksmiths left a little before ten. Every hour or so, a police cruiser silently rolled past our house, and the walls lit up in red and blue. When Mom and I hugged good night, she held on for a long time. Or maybe I held on to her. She wanted me to sleep in her bed, but I was worried that I might start crying if I thought about the house, and I didn’t want to upset her. She found an old quilt for my bed and then a couch pillow downstairs that was still in one piece.

&nbs
p; An hour later, I lay there, unable to sleep, waiting for the next wave of lights, staring at the silver-gray dress hanging in my closet. The price tag twirled whenever the heat vent turned on.

  A noise startled me. I turned my face to the window.

  Thick fingers gripped the windowsill, followed by a hand the size of a dinner plate, the skin rough and gray.

  “Golem!” I whispered, sitting up and reaching to open the window the rest of the way. My heart bounced in my chest. I scanned the street below. No police car was in sight, no stirring in the trees or bushes. Entropion wasn’t there, but he had already made his point. Maybe he didn’t think I would be strong enough to care about anything but myself now.

  One massive foot, which looked like a big gray brick, came through the window first. Then the leg followed. He repeated the process slowly with the other leg, and I tried to see what was making him move so carefully.

  When the Golem was completely in the room, he wasn’t able to stand up to his full height, but instead hung his head. He was holding his left hand against his chest. I looked him over quickly but saw no wounds or marks.

  “If you’re hurt, I won’t be able to help you, Golem,” I said. “I’m not the Guardian anymore. The book is gone.”

  I braced myself to stand up by grabbing his arm. With one hand, I lifted his chin up so I could look at his face. A tear from one of his dark eyes splashed near my lip. On impulse, I licked away the tear with my tongue. It tasted salty, just like every other tear.

  “Oh, Golem, what is it? What’s happened?” I asked.

  He lowered his left hand, opening it to let me see.

  A baby sparrow lay in his palm. It was bald and raw, and then I saw what made Golem weep.

  A sharp white bone protruded through its leg. The leg was swollen twice the size of the other one and bright red, filled with blood. The baby had its eyes closed, taking shallow rapid breaths.