by P. J. Night
“Yes, the claws are the one area in which this drawing is inaccurate.” Mr. Carson sighed. “But—given what happened—I can understand why Lewis left them out.”
“Manfred Lewis drew this?” Jenna asked.
“Indeed he did. You see, during the mid-eighteenth century, Lewis enjoyed a classical education at some of Europe’s finest institutions. But he longed for adventure and, it must be said, had a rather inflated sense of self. He dreamed of coming to the New World and founding a town. When Lewis identified an uninhabited tract in the central plains region, he set out with a band of extended family and friends. The journey was a perilous one; Lewis’s own wife and three youngest children died from fever along the way. But at last the party reached the plains, and Lewis incorporated his very own town—which, of course, he named after himself.”
“Lewisville,” Jenna said.
Mr. Carson nodded. “The settlers had hardly begun laying the foundations for their homesteads when Chief Onongahkan of the Q’ippicut visited them. Lewis made a grave error in approaching the chief with his weapon raised. But Onongahkan had come in peace. As best he could, the chief tried to warn the settlers. He tried to explain the threat posed by the Keuhkkituh. You see, Lewis had founded the town on the very tract of land the Q’ippicut had dedicated to the Keuhkkituh. The settlers had no way of knowing—or even understanding—the danger they were in.”
Here Mr. Carson paused and sighed heavily.
“What happened?” Jenna asked—though part of her didn’t want to know.
“Lewis humored the old chief. I suspect that he thought it was all a story to scare away the settlers. But he couldn’t have been more wrong … and he paid dearly for his mistake. You see, right there in front of everyone, he vowed to protect the town from any ‘beasts’ that attempted to attack it. It was just weeks later that the stillness of the night was shattered by the Keuhkkituh’s cry. And the settlers were still living in tents!
“Lewis set off alone, on foot, armed with a musket. According to his diary, he found the creature in the heart of the forest. As soon as he recovered from his horror at its grotesque appearance, he planned to shoot it in the head. But his musket jammed! He would’ve been a dead man if the chief had not appeared at that very moment, brandishing a spear and a torch. According to Lewis, Onongahkan heated the spear’s blade in the fire of the torch, then struck the Keuhkkituh with what should have been a fatal blow: The chief sliced a four-foot gash through the creature’s belly. Black blood poured from its body, and its howls could be heard all the way back at the settlement. Lewis and Onongahkan left it there to die.”
“Then what happened?” Jenna asked.
“The next morning the settlers and the members of the Q’ippicut tribe returned to the scene of the attack. The dirt was dark and wet with spilled blood, and vultures perched hungrily in the trees, attracted by the smell, likely. But the creature’s body was gone. They searched the woods for five days in hopes of finding it, but it had vanished. There were sightings, from time to time; and all accounts report that a long, puckered wound was now visible on the creature’s belly—giving the Keuhkkituh a new name: the Marked Monster.”
“So that’s why it’s called the Marked Monster,” Jenna said thoughtfully. “Not because it, like, marks its victims.”
Mr. Carson looked uncomfortable. “What I’ve told you so far is pulled from the historical record,” he said slowly. “We have primary documents that chronicle Lewis and Onongahkan’s battle with the Keuhkkituh that night—though for the last hundred years, the town record has more or less been scrubbed of this fact by the town council.”
“How come?” Jenna asked.
“People can be so shortsighted,” Mr. Carson said bitterly. “No one appreciates the importance of living in a place steeped in such unique history. Oh no, they’re worried that these valuable accounts of our history make a mockery of the town or that the settlers had overdramatized a wolf or other such creature! They’ll learn someday. You can ignore the history, but that won’t make it disappear. And there are … stories … about the Marked Monster. Stories that cannot be proven—yet, in their very existence, in their sheer persistence, force us to consider that they may perhaps contain an element of truth.”
“What are those stories?” Jenna said, sitting very still.
“Manfred Lewis had a daughter,” Mr. Carson said. “Her name was Imogen, and she was fifteen when her father founded Lewisville. Two months after Lewis and Onongahkan attacked the Marked Monster, Imogen went berry picking in the woods. She did not return by nightfall.”
“What happened to her?”
There was a pause while Mr. Carson struggled to find the right words. “When her father found her, she was wounded—she had a grave injury to her leg. The flesh had been sliced open nearly to the bone, and Imogen was out of her mind with pain and delirium. Lewis carried her home and began the slow process of nursing her back to health, but Imogen never recovered. Lewis’s diary is filled with entries that chronicle not only his anxiety about her health, but the progression of her illness—the wound that would not heal; the way she sat awake all night, wild-eyed with fear, claiming to hear sounds that no one else heard and raving about monsters. In her delirium, Imogen scratched at the walls until her fingers bled.”
Jenna’s mouth was so dry she had to swallow twice before she could speak. “What—what happened to her?” she asked again.
“One night Lewis was called away to settle a dispute,” Mr. Carson said quietly. “When he returned to the cabin that he’d built, the door was hanging from its hinges, and Imogen had vanished. A search party banded together immediately, but Imogen was never found.”
“She disappeared?” Jenna asked. “Without a trace?”
Mr. Carson looked uncomfortable. “Well, there was one trace,” he replied. “Winter had come to Lewisville, and there were several inches of snow on the ground. The snow in the clearing—the one where Lewis had attacked the Marked Monster—was freshly soaked with blood. A great deal of red blood, not the black blood of the Marked Monster. At that time, there was no way for the settlers to know if it was human blood, but if it was, it’s safe to assume that, if the blood belonged to Imogen, the young girl had exsanguinated.”
“Ex-what?”
“Bled to death.”
Mr. Carson took one look at Jenna’s face and immediately changed his tone. “Now, now, don’t be frightened!” he said. “This is just a story. Manfred Lewis wrote nothing about it in his diary, except that Imogen disappeared in the night and was not found, despite many searches.”
“Then how do you know about it?”
“Rumors. Stories, as I said, passed down through generations. For example, the area where the Marked Monster was attacked by Lewis and Chief Onongahkan—and where all the blood was found after Imogen disappeared—earned a nickname. Settlers called it the Sacred Square. You can see here, on this old map, where it was. Lewis forbade anyone to use it for any purpose. Curiously, it was reported that nothing grew there, even many years after the earth had been soaked with blood. Of course, that wouldn’t have surprised the Q’ippicut; they always maintained that every part of the Keuhkkituh was poison.
“There was even a rumor that Imogen herself kept a diary … but it was never found. As the decades passed, sightings of the Marked Monster became far less common, you know. There have been no reports of anyone seeing it for nearly fifty years.”
Just then a librarian poked her head into the archives room. “Mr. Carson? The copier’s jammed. Would you mind taking a look?”
“I’ll be back,” Mr. Carson told Jenna as he eased himself off the chair. “And I’ll copy some materials you can use in your research.”
“Thank you,” she said gratefully, her mind still whirling as she tried to process what the archivist had told her.
As soon as he was out of the room, she remembered something—the soft thud she’d heard inside Manfred Lewis’s desk when the lid banged down. With a quick glance toward the door
, Jenna hurried back to the desk.
The lid still wouldn’t open more than two inches, but it was wide enough for her to slip her hand inside. She wiggled her fingers around, trying to find …
Well. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she might find. But she wanted to know what was in the desk; what had fallen and made that noise.
Then Jenna’s fingers brushed against something solid—something that inched across the wooden panel when she pushed it. It was smooth, small, and rectangular in shape; she could tell without even looking.
Slowly, carefully, she pulled her hand out of the desk and discovered that she was holding a small journal.
Jenna opened the book. On the first brown-spotted page she found an inscription that made her heart pound so hard she could hear it in her ears. But before she could read another word, she heard the clump of Mr. Carson’s cane clunking across the floor.
He was on his way back to the archives room.
Jenna didn’t even think. She acted entirely on instinct as she hid the journal in her notebook and fitted them into her backpack.
Many hours later, pecking away at the keyboard while the rest of her family watched TV across the room, Jenna stretched and yawned. It felt fake to her—sounded fake, even—but must have been convincing enough, since Dr. Walker glanced at the clock on the DVD player and said, “It’s getting late, Jenna. Will you be able to finish in fifteen minutes?”
Jenna knew she had to argue—at least a little—to be convincing. “Mom, it’s not even nine o’clock!”
Dr. Walker sighed. “Yes. And fifteen more minutes on the computer, fifteen minutes getting ready for bed, fifteen minutes figuring out what you’re going to wear tomorrow—it will be past nine thirty before you know it. Let’s not have this argument again, please.”
“Fine,” Jenna said.
But secretly, she smiled to herself.
Never before in her life had Jenna rushed off to bed as quickly as she did that night. Alone at last in the solitude of her bedroom, she turned off all the lights and crawled into bed with a flashlight and the mysterious journal she’d smuggled out of the library.
It was just as she’d remembered.
The smooth grain of the leather cover.
The tear ripped across it.
Those suspicious, sickening splatters across the first page.
And, of course, the inscription:
THE DIARY OF IMOGEN LEWIS
AGED 15 YEARS, 4 MONTHS
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1767
Jenna’s excitement at finding the diary of Imogen Lewis—from the very year in which Lewisville was founded; from the very year in which Imogen herself had disappeared—wasn’t strong enough to overshadow her creeping sense of guilt. She could still hardly believe that she’d just taken the book like that. She had never done anything like that before in her life, and the more she thought about it, the worse she felt. It’s a library, she told herself. The whole point of that entire building is for people to borrow books. That’s all I did—borrow a book. And I’ll bring it back as soon as I’m done with it.
But in her heart, Jenna knew that she was just making excuses. She hadn’t borrowed the diary. She’d stolen it. And promising to bring it back didn’t change the fact that she didn’t have the right to take it in the first place. So she quickly pushed the thought from her mind, because she was obsessed with finding out whatever secrets Imogen might have recorded in her diary.
Jenna scrunched down under the covers and turned the page.
June 1, 1767
We have arrived at our new home! My eyes filled with tears of joy today as Papa planted the flag and announced in a most solemn voice: “I hereby proclaim these lands incorporated as the Town of Lewisville, and by the blessing of God may we prosper here as is only fitting for a people dedicated to hard work and the Holy Word as it is writ in the Bible.” But I must be honest in this diary, if nowhere else, and confess that my tears were also for Mother and James and Mary and little Teddy. Never did I dream that they would not be standing with us on this day, and though Papa never speaks of them, never, I could tell he felt their absence as keenly as I did. When we first set out for
Jenna started flipping the pages. Not that she wasn’t interested in the earliest days of Lewisville’s founding … but a pressing sense of urgency forced her to skip ahead. In the middle of the diary, she came to several blank pages, and her heart sank.
Had Imogen stopped writing in her diary before the attack?
Some force compelled Jenna to keep turning the blank pages, and then, nearly three-quarters of the way through the journal, she found another entry, written in a shaky, unstable script.
August 30, 1767
With good reason I have abandoned my diary for more than a fortnight now, and I have left the preceding pages blank so that I might, at some later date, record all that has happened in greater detail. For now, an abbreviated account must suffice. It pains me to commit these words to paper. I am unwell and advised not to exert myself. But if I do not write it, who will understand what has happened, when Papa has forbidden me to speak of it?
I erred grievously when I set off to pick wild blackberries in the woods. I thought I would make a pudding for Papa, as a surprise, but I should never have gone into the woods. I was warned. We all were. I should never have gone!
My ramblings took me off the path, through the thicket, and I was so preoccupied by the plump sweet berries that I—stupid!—did not realize how close I was to the forbidden Square, and I was not even quiet, but hummed to myself, and surely alerted the creature to my presence. I must have lost all track of the hour as I suddenly realized it was later than I expected, and night was fast approaching.
I heard the scratching first, and stopped, fearing a bear.
I wish it had just been a bear, for well-fed bears are fat and lazy by the time the hottest days of August arrive, sated on all the bounty of the forest. A bear would not have troubled me so.
A chill of fear gripped my body and I stopped my humming, gathered my shawl around my shoulders, and made haste to return to the settlement. I know now that my fate was already sealed, and at that moment the creature was already watching me from the shadows.
The blow was so swift and so unexpected that I was knocked quite senseless and found myself sprawled on my back, most undignified, staring up through the gloomy pines at a darkening sky. My head was bleeding; I could feel the hot, sticky blood oozing over my left eye. Oh, WHY had I strayed from the path?
Then it appeared over me, the Beast, and so frightful that I cannot bear to write of it. It lifted one of its stumpy arms so that the claw, oh, the fearsome claws, glinted in the moonlight, sharp like knives, and one of them cut through my leg with such searing pain that I could not even cry out. I knew then that it would kill me and eat me.
I knew then that all hope was lost.
But I was wrong, thank God in Heaven, for the creature just sat back and stared at me as I writhed in pain. It lowered its horrible face and drank of the blood flowing from my wound. Then it stared into my eyes. Its own eyes glittered with a level of intelligence that I had never before seen in a beast.
To my surprise, it rose on its back legs and let out such a horrifying sound—a cry or a shriek or a growl or some combination of the three—that my heart nearly stopped from fear. Then it lumbered deeper into the woods, leaving me alone in the clearing.
Of course I tried to crawl back to the path, but I was too weak, and the pain in my leg was so great that I was sick, and I lay in the dirt and waited to die.
Some many hours later, when the August sun was beating down on me at the height of its brutality, I heard dear Papa’s voice calling my name, and somehow found the strength to call back to him, and then his strong arms wrapped me up and lifted me into the air, and I must have passed out from the pain again, for when I awoke I was in my bed, safe, and Mrs. Smythe was pressing a damp cloth to my fevered face.
I am too weak and tired to write more to
night.
September 19, 1767
I am not myself.
The wound festers despite the many poultices that Mrs. Smythe brings me each morning. I have packed it with a hot mash of mustard and chamomile and garlic—how it burns!—and still the wound does not cease throbbing, red streaks like fire racing down my leg. Papa doesn’t say it, but I can see it in his eyes: He fears I shall lose my leg.
October 13, 1767
Papa does not know that I heard his argument with Chief Onongahkan tonight. Oh, I am gripped with fear. The chief said that I have been Marked! Marked for Death! That the wound will never heal. That my blood thickens with a poison secreted from the Monster’s mouth. That the Monster hunts for months in silent stealth and will draw me to it, and if I resist its pull, it will come find me and kill any who try to stand in its way.
Papa was so angry, but I could still hear the fear in his voice as he ordered the chief to leave us and never return. Oh, what shall I do?
What shall I do?
November 1, 1767
It waits for me.
I can hear it scratching, the scratching, the scratching. The scratching that never stops.
It calls for me in the darkest parts of the night when even the moon turns away from me, knowing that I cannot be saved. That I am not worth saving.
Oh, the Monster, out there in the night, waiting.
Its hunger grows, but it will wait. It will wait for me.
Oh God, can no one stop it?
Oh God, can no one save me?
November 9, 1767
This is no mere dream. This is no fevered hallucination. The creature calls me to him. The joy of the kill is prolonged in this way: that I know how I will die, and how it will hurt, and where it will happen, but not when.
What choice do I have in this matter? It knows where to find me. The stink of my rotting leg will guide it to me. There is nowhere for me to hide. There is no escape for me. My fate was sealed the moment I strayed from the path. I am
Jenna’s heart thudded in her chest as she turned the page, but the entry ended abruptly. After that, Imogen’s diary chronicled a descent into madness—undated fragments of writing so shaky that they were hard to read. Jenna pieced together phrases:
