You can learn a lot of stuff at camp. You learn how to wiggle an arrow so that it comes out of a straw target without the metal tip coming off. You learn how to make something out of yarn and twigs called a skycatcher, because there’s a lot of extra yarn and twigs in the world, and someone had to come up with something to do with it. You learn how to jam your feet up into the mattress of the bunk above you, while someone is leaning out of it, so that they fall out of bed. You learn that if you are riding a horse and the horse sees a snake on the trail, the horse will stand on its hind legs. Horses don’t like snakes. You find out that tennis rackets are good for chasing bats. You find out what happens if you leave your wet clothes in your trunk for a few days. You learn how to make rockets and you learn how to pretend if someone takes your rocket and stomps on it. You learn to pretend to be asleep when people make fun of you. You learn how to be lonely.
The snow came down and people ran around Honor Lookout. They screamed and waved their arms around and fell down. The monster chased them. It moved so quickly that sometimes it seemed to fly. It was laughing like this was an excellent, fun game. The snow was still coming down and it was dark which made it hard to see what the monster did when it caught people. James Lorbick sat still. He pretended that he was asleep or not there. He pretended that he was writing a letter to his best friend in Chicago who was spending the summer playing video games and hanging out at the library and writing and illustrating his own comic book. “Dear Alec, how are you? Camp is almost over, and I am so glad. This has been the worst summer ever. We went on a hike and it rained and my counselor found a bone. This kid made me put on a dress. There was a monster that ate everybody. How is your comic book coming? Did you put in the part I wrote about the superhero who can only fly when he’s asleep?”
The monster had one Simpson twin under each arm. The twins were screaming. The monster threw them down the path. Then it bent over Bryan Jones, who was lying half inside one of the tents, half in the snow. There were slurping noises. After a minute it stood up again. It looked back and saw James Lorbick. It waved.
James Lorbick shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the monster was standing over him. It had red eyes. It smelled like rotting fish and kerosene. It wasn’t actually all that tall, the way you’d expect a monster to be tall. Except for that, it was even worse than Bungalow 4 had said.
The monster stood and looked down and grinned. “You,” it said. It had a voice like a dead tree full of bees: sweet and dripping and buzzing. It poked James on the shoulder with a long black nail. “What are you?”
“I’m James Lorbick,” James said. “From Chicago.”
The monster laughed. Its teeth were pointed and terrible. There was a smear of red on the dress where it had touched James. “You’re the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Look at that dress. Look at your hair. It’s standing straight up. Is that mud? Why are you covered in mud?”
“I was going to be a monster,” James said. He swallowed. “No offense.”
“None taken,” the monster said. “Wow, maybe I should go visit Chicago. I’ve never seen anything as funny as you. I could look at you for hours and hours. Whenever I needed a laugh. You’ve really made my day, James Lorbick.”
The snow was still falling. James shivered and shivered. His teeth were clicking together so loudly he thought they might break. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Where’s Terence? Did you do something to him?”
“Was he the guy who was down at the bottom of the hill? Talking on a cell phone?”
“Yeah,” James said. “Is he okay?”
“He was talking to some girl named Darlene,” the monster said. I tried to talk to her, but she started screaming and then she hung up. Do you happen to know where she lives?
“Somewhere in Ohio,” James said.
“Thanks,” the monster said. He took out a little black notebook and wrote something down.
“What are you?” James said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Angelina Jolie,” the monster said. It blinked.
James’s heart almost stopped beating. “Really?” he said. “Like in Danny Anderson’s dream?”
“No,” the monster said. “Just kidding.”
“Are you the monster that Bungalow 4 saw?” James said.
“Were those the kids who were here a few days ago?”
“Yeah,” James said.
“We hung out for a while,” the monster said. “Were they friends of yours?”
“No,” James said. “Those kids are real jerks. Nobody likes them.”
“That’s a shame,” the monster said. Even when it wasn’t belching, it smelled worse than anything James had ever smelled before. Fish and kerosene and rotting maple syrup poured over him in waves. He tried not to breathe.
The monster said, “I’m sorry about the rest of your bungalow. Your friends. Your friends who made you wear a dress.”
“Are you going to eat me?” James said.
“I don’t know,” the monster said. “Probably not. There were a lot of you. I’m not actually that hungry anymore. Besides, I would feel silly eating a kid in a dress. And you’re really filthy.”
“Why didn’t you eat Bungalow 4?” James said. He felt sick to his stomach. If he looked at the monster he felt sick, and if he looked away, there was Danny Anderson, lying facedown under a pine tree with snow on his back and if he looked somewhere else, there were Bryan Jones’s legs poking out of the tent. There was Bryan Jones’s head. One of Bryan’s shoes had come off and that made James think of the hike, the way Terence had lain down in the mud to fish for the Simpson twin’s shoe. “Why didn’t you eat them? They’re mean. They do terrible things and nobody likes them.”
“Wow,” the monster said. “I didn’t know that. I would have eaten them if I’d known, maybe. Although most of the time I can’t worry about things like that.”
“Maybe you should,” James said. “I think you should.”
The monster scratched its head. “You think so? I saw you guys eating hot dogs earlier. So do you worry about whether those were good dogs or bad dogs when you’re eating them? Do you only eat dogs that were mean? Do you only eat bad dogs?”
“Hot dogs aren’t really made from dogs,” James said. “People don’t eat dogs.”
“I never knew that,” the monster said. “But, see, if I worried about that kind of thing, whether the person I was eating was a nice guy or a jerk, I’d never eat anyone. And I get hungry a lot. So to be honest, I don’t worry. All I really notice is whether the person I’m chasing is big or small or fast or slow. Or if they have a sense of humor. That’s important, you know. A sense of humor. You have to laugh about things. When I was hanging out with Bungalow 4, I was just having some fun. I was just playing around. Bungalow 4 mentioned that you guys were going to show up. I was joking about how I was going to eat them and they said I should eat you guys instead. They said it would be really funny. I have a good sense of humor. I like a good joke.”
It reached out and touched James Lorbick’s head.
“Don’t do that!” James said.
“Sorry,” said the monster. “I just wanted to see what the mud spikes felt like. Do you think it would be funny if I wore a dress and put a lot of mud on my head?”
James shook his head. He tried to picture the monster wearing a dress, but all he could picture was somebody climbing up to Honor Lookout. Somebody finding pieces of James scattered everywhere like pink and red confetti. That somebody would wonder what had happened and be glad that it hadn’t happened to them. Maybe someday people would tell scary stories about what had happened to Bungalow 6 when they went camping. Nobody would believe the stories. Nobody would understand why one kid had been wearing a dress.
“Are you shivering because you’re cold or because you’re afraid of me?” the monster said.
“I don’t know,” James said. “Both. Sorry.”
“Maybe we should get up and run around,” the monster said. “I could chase you. I
t might warm you up. Weird weather, isn’t it? But it’s pretty, too. I love how snow makes everything look nice and clean.”
“I want to go home,” James said.
“That’s Chicago, right?” the monster said. “That’s what I wrote down.”
“You wrote down where I live?” James said.
“All those guys from the other bungalow,” the monster said. “Bungalow 4. I made them write down their addresses. I like to travel. I like to visit people. Besides, if you say that they’re jerks, then I should go visit them? Right? It would serve them right.”
“Yeah,” James said. “It would serve them right. That would be really funny. Ha ha ha.”
“Excellent,” the monster said. It stood up. “It was great meeting you, James. Are you crying? It looks like you’re crying.”
“I’m not crying. It’s just snow. There’s snow on my face. Are you leaving?” James said. “You’re going to leave me here? You aren’t going to eat me?”
“I don’t know,” the monster said. It did a little twirl, like it was going to go running off in one direction, and then as if it had changed its mind, as if it was going to come rushing back at James. James whimpered. “I just can’t decide. Maybe I should flip a coin. Do you have a coin I can flip?”
James shook his head.
“Okay,” the monster said. “How about this. I’m thinking of a number between one and ten. You say a number and if it’s the same number, I won’t eat you.”
“No,” James said.
“Then how about if I only eat you if you say the number that I’m thinking of? I promise I won’t cheat. I probably won’t cheat.”
“No,” James said, although he couldn’t help thinking of a number. He thought of the number four. It floated there in his head like a big neon sign, blinking on and off and back on. Four, four, four. Bungalow 4. Or six. Bungalow 6. Or was that too obvious? Don’t think of a number. He would have bet anything that the monster could read minds. Maybe the monster had put the number four in James’s head. Six. James changed the number to six hundred so it wouldn’t be a number between one and ten. Don’t read my mind, he thought. Don’t eat me.
“I’ll count to six hundred,” the monster said. “And then I’ll chase you. That would be funny. If you get back to camp before I catch you, you’re safe. Okay? If you get back to camp first, I’ll go eat Bungalow 4. Okay? I tell you what. I’ll go eat them even if you don’t make it back. Okay?”
“But it’s dark,” James said. “It’s snowing. I’m wearing a dress.”
The monster looked down at its fingernails. It smiled like James had just told an excellent joke. “One,” it said. “Two, three, four. Run, James! Pretend I’m chasing you. Pretend that I’m going to eat you if I catch you. Five, six. Come on, James, run!”
James ran.
Keep Calm and Carillon
Genevieve Valentine
Turned out the courthouse elevators had been having problems for weeks, but of course they didn’t tell anybody to lay off and use the stairs, and my sister’s elevator was packed when it crashed.
(The cops’ statement said something about the amazing elasticity of the human body and acts of God and relief, and they were going to look into the elevator system right away. They left out that if you felt like contesting that traffic ticket now you’d have to walk up four flights, so you might as well just pay it and shut up.)
When Shelly finally came out, she was at the head of a knot of people who would be nicknamed the “Elevator Nine,” and they were all smiling and talking and really did not look like they had just free-fallen eight stories.
She hugged us (Dad, then me), and pulled back smiling. “We’re starting a handbell choir!” she said.
Shelly had gone in for a parking ticket; Dad had made her go alone to teach her a lesson about responsibility.
Catherine was the high school secretary and was there for a custody hearing with her ten-year-old Danny. I think she and Danny had a lot of problems before the elevator, but afterwards they just stood around smiling and hugging each other in front of the cameras like a laxative ad.
Jake was one year older than I was, and to celebrate his college acceptance, he’d wrapped his dad’s Beemer around a tree. He probably should have wrapped himself around it while he was at it; he was a jerk before the elevator and he stayed one, shoulder-gripping Danny and saying things like, “Man, it’s just, like, awesome!” every time the cameras turned on him.
Judge Thomas Warner had been on the bench for seventeen years, and when he announced his resignation to play handbells with a bunch of strangers everyone thought that was normal enough. The clerks threw him a big party; he’d been a decent judge.
Morgan was really thin and pulled her hair compulsively, blonde strands one by one. She never told anyone what she was there for, but because she was on TV for days staring at the camera and dazedly talking about how life is precious, people got curious. When whatdidmorgando.com launched, the top two most-voted guesses were “institutionalized” and “witness protection.”
Eugene was in the courthouse to check on the status of his green card, and he joked to reporters that he’d better get one now, since elevators never broke in Belgium and he might go back. He had a green card in six days, and that got the county into more trouble than the elevator had, because if a green card only took six days, how come people had been waiting eight months?
Grace worked at a think tank and was on jury duty for a zoning thing. Grace never made it on TV because she wasn’t as pretty as Morgan, and I figured she’d have something to say about that, but every time the cameras clicked off and they group-hugged, Grace was right in there with the rest of them.
Steve was a mechanic, and he never set foot in front of the cameras and never said a word to the papers. He just asked for access to the scene before the construction crew began, and he spent four days poking around the elevator shaft. When I asked Shelly what he could have been looking for, she shrugged and said, “He had his eyes closed.”
Dad and I were beside Shelly nonstop during the little Elevator Nine tour, since Shelly was a minor and had to get Dad’s signature for all the interviews. The first big flurry died out after a week or so, but then Eugene got his green card and it all came back up again, and then Danny’s dad paid his deadbeat child care and tried to leverage it into an interview with People about the importance of being a good guy, but the Judge made a few phone calls and put the stopper on that story in about ten minutes, and that turned into a whole thing about judicial powers until Catherine pointed out that People magazine folded like a greeting card for any publicist in the world, and it took about three months for everything to settle down.
By then Dad had forgotten about the handbell thing—it sounded like the sort of thing you said when you were in shock, so I guess I don’t blame him—and he was surprised all over again when Shelly reminded him that the first practice was on Thursday and she needed white gloves.
(I’d wanted to learn guitar since I was twelve, and that didn’t really pan out, which—Eugene’s nice and everything, but I understand how people got angry because they’d been waiting for a green card for eight months and Eugene got his in a week. I’m just saying.)
Shelly got assigned middle C and the B-flat above it, but switched to F-sharp from B-flat because Danny kept making jokes about her chest. By the time they got together for their first practice, there was already talk of adding another octave, but Grace was the only one who could line up five bells and remember where they were in time to ring them. Shelly insisted she could handle the G too, but when Grace handed it over Shelly got nervous and sounded the C during scales when it should have been the G.
They tried scales for three hours without getting it right—even Jake managed to mess up, and he only had the one huge bell that took two hands to gong—but after all that the Judge called to arrange the lease for the bells and everyone hugged and smiled and went home.
“I can’t wait to start practicin
g,” Shelly said on the way home, and Dad said, “That’s great, honey,” and he must not have been paying attention, because come on.
I took up theatre, not so much because I liked the theatre, but because it would keep me out of the house when she was practicing. I got to be in The Importance of Being Earnest as Lady Bracknell, which they said was because I looked “mature” for seventeen. They meant I looked old; living with Shelly gave me gray hair.
Every day when I came home she was standing in the dining room, frowning at the sheet music propped up on the dining table, ringing middle C and F-sharp at random intervals with big sweeping arm motions that looked like she was shoving the bells through molasses. Sometimes she clapped one bell against her chest to cut off the note, and I heard a quick thud, then nothing.
Shelly didn’t have to go to school because of the trauma, and when her friends came over she would sit around and be nice for a while (nicer than she had been) and then say, “Hey, I play handbells now! Wanna hear?” They always said yes, because they thought she was just coping, and they’d wave to me on the way out like nothing was wrong, and it was comforting to know that Shelly’s friends were as clueless as they had always been.
We ate dinner together since Dad had nearly lost one of us. I had to explain to the director, and he got angry and made Dad come in and explain it, but after Dad mentioned the elevator a few times they made an exception for me, since I wasn’t in the middle of the play anyway. I would go onstage, run home, eat, and come back for the big finish.
Shelly would always ask, “How’s it going?” and no matter what I said she’d say, “That’s so cool! Like my handbells!”
“She’s getting really good,” Dad would put in, every time, and as soon as he said it, the phone would ring, every time, and it was one of the Elevator Nine. (Dad used to forbid phone calls during family dinner when we even had it, but now everyone was fine except Jake, who kept hitting on Shelly right in front of Dad, and even Dad noticed that, so, no calls from Jake.)
Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters Page 26
