Here There Are Monsters

by Amelinda Bérubé

  To hell with what Deirdre wants me to do. Or what Mom wants me to do. To hell with all of them.

  How’s the party? I text William.

  Just getting started. You okay?

  I pocket the phone again without answering and thump heavily down the stairs, making sure Mom can hear me and assume I’m retreating to my room. Not that she’s listening. Not that she’ll check.

  Instead, I cram my feet into sneakers, open the door as quietly as I can, and slip out into the night. To freedom.

  Five

  August

  Once we were sort of unpacked, our first order of business, Deirdre declared, was to explore. Reluctantly, I agreed. It was irresistible. We’d never had a dominion before. Her kingdoms had always been superimposed over landscapes we visited—campsites, hiking trails, the valley—but they were only ever pitched there temporarily to be gathered up and adapted to the next convenient setting, and always put away in haste when other people approached. The wildernesses we’d wandered through were not places it occurred to us to map or name. We didn’t own them. We kept to the paths laid out for us. Our old yard, an ordinary city lot, was Mom’s territory, and like everything in our house, its rambling exuberance bent to her will. The flowers spilling over rock walls and popping up between pavers were contained. Barely. Cultivated chaos. It was knowable; we had counted every stone, mapped out every good spot for hide-and-seek a thousand times.

  These woods were different.

  Dad said our lot was two acres, stretching back into conservation wetland in a thin spaghetti strip. Looking at it from the house, there was no end to it, a knotted tapestry of gray and green, caverns receding into fathomless distance. There were no paths back there.

  Despite the sticky heat, Mom insisted we wear long pants, long sleeves, rubber boots, and an ocean of bug spray.

  “You’ll thank me later,” she snapped when Deirdre protested its antiseptic smell. “You’ll get eaten alive without it back there. Look out for poison ivy. You know what that looks like, right? Leaves of three, let it be? And stay within sight of the house!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, pulling my shirt away from my back where it was already clingy with sweat.

  Mog darted between our feet to slip out the door as we left, almost tripping me, despite the bell on her collar announcing her approach. Mog was a sleek seal of a cat with scornful yellow eyes. She was Deirdre’s cat—she slept on her pillow, curled up on her hair, and didn’t suffer anyone else to pick her up.

  Since we’d arrived, she’d been unstoppable, the terror of the countryside. On our doorstep, gruesome offerings accumulated, lined up neatly in a row. Little furry things with tails. Once, she left us a bird’s wing, feathers ripped out in patches, minus the rest of the bird. Now that Mom had her wearing the collar and bell, there weren’t as many corpses, but you still had to watch your step going out the front door, just in case.

  We’d seen her drop a victim and let it make a run for it before she pounced and tossed it in the air, her bell jingling cheerfully. She’d nudge it with her claws until it tried to flee again, and then pounce. Repeat. And repeat. When I opened the door to intervene, a little nauseated, Mog just snatched up her victim and trotted off around the corner of the house.

  “She’s a cat,” had been Deirdre’s unconcerned comment. “That’s what they do.”

  We trooped out across the lawn, grasshoppers springing away from our crashing feet, Mog zigzagging after us. One corner of the yard was occupied by a garden patch so overgrown I didn’t recognize it until raspberry canes crunched under my boots. Hard green apples clung to the branches of the stooping tree whose limbs fanned out above us. Beneath it was a gateway; under the eaves of the trees, the ground sloped sharply downwards, like it had been cut with a shovel. Arching fern fronds disguised humped and knotted tree roots.

  We had to feel our way down, step by step, shrill mosquitos whining in our ears. After several feet, we came to the forest floor. Tufts of grass and reeds wove around puddles of standing water, reflecting the pale gray sky and endless layers of leaves.

  Floor wasn’t really the right word, it turned out. It wasn’t solid. Even places that looked grassy and safe could suck your foot down unexpectedly. Nothing else walked upright in this place; we had to push through the interlacing branches, and they resented every step, snagging at our long clothes with a thousand clawed hands. Our progress was slow and blundering. Before long, my jeans were soaked and muddy to the knee, water sloshing in my boots. Only Mog threaded the labyrinth with ease, padding up the sloping trunks of fallen trees, hopping delicately from one patch of dry ground to the next, stopping to watch us disdainfully before loping on ahead. Trying to follow her was hopeless—she was much lighter than us, and she could jump farther. After a while she gave up on us and disappeared into the trees. We tried to balance on fallen logs for a while, but those weren’t trustworthy either, creaking dangerously under our weight or flaking and crumbling wetly, mushrooms snapping under our boots.

  I swore and slapped at mosquitos biting my neck. Deirdre didn’t even notice, looking around enraptured, craning her neck and turning around and around to see it all.

  “There’s a whole kingdom here,” she breathed. “Can’t you feel it, Skye? It’s magical.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I growled. “It’s populated by vampire bugs.”

  “It makes the valley look so tame.” She sloshed forward, undeterred. “It’s like it’s been waiting for us. It feels alive. Like a dryad forest. You know?”

  I crossed my arms against a prickle of goose bumps, despite the heat, and pushed past her without answering. The maze whispered around us, layered with singing insects, secretive more than peaceful, dense as a closed fist.

  After an eternity of crashing through the muggy, airless brush, Deirdre struggling along behind me—“Skye! Wait up!”—I stumbled into the creek that cut between our lot and the next one over. It was sluggish, choked with cattails, its bottom murky and indeterminate, sucking at my boots. But at least it was a space between the trees, a gap in the endless thicket of branches. Even there, they leaned over me, reaching across the sky.

  “Skye!” Deirdre called after me, protesting, as I started to slosh through the water. “Not that way! I want to see what’s back there!”

  “We have to stay within sight of the house!”

  “Since when do you care what Mom says? And anyway, we can’t get lost if we’re following the water, it’s—”

  “Come on,” I yelled over my shoulder. After a long moment, she fell into step behind me, muttering under her breath. Eventually, reluctantly, the cedars parted to reveal the house on our right. All that, and we’d only crossed the yard. The empty lot on our left rippled with knee-high grass, interspersed with spires of silver thistles, delicate sprays of Queen Anne’s lace, blue fireworks of chicory. It blended gradually into the woods, a swelling tangle of small trees and bushes. On the far side, rising out of it, was a huge mound of dirt, one and a half times taller than either of us, wide as the house. Its peak was tufted with grass and weeds, one side left raw and bare, like a cresting wave.

  Deirdre pushed through the reeds that flanked the creek and headed straight for it. I shoved my sweaty, tangled hair out of my face and followed her. Crickets fell silent in our wake.

  “This is amazing!” Deirdre’s voice drifted back to me as she disappeared behind the dirt pile.

  “Deirdre, can we go home already please?”

  She levered herself up to the crest of the pile, stood carefully, and walked along its edge, her skinny arms flung wide—not for balance, but in a gesture of ownership.

  “We should call it something,” she yelled down to me.

  “What?”

  “This! Doesn’t it look like a castle? With ramparts and everything! Come on, Skye, you can climb right up the back!”

  I followed her, grabbing handfu
ls of yellowing grass and digging my toes into the crumbling soil until I could plunk myself down beside her, my feet dangling over the edge into the air. I had to admit, I could sort of see what she meant. The dirt pile backed up against the edge of the forest, and the block spread out before us: the empty lot full of dancing grass, the black twist of the creek, the trees encroaching in a ragged line where the bulldozers must have stopped. The road running away from it, up the hill, disappearing around a corner.

  If it was a castle, it was a ruined one. Haunted, maybe. As if at the smallest lapse in vigilance—if you slept, if you blinked—the woods would surround it, flowing around it like a snake. They’d swallow it whole.

  Undeterred by my silence, Deirdre scrambled up and down the slope, hunting through the grass, and returned to me, panting, with a fallen branch, snapping off little twigs to make a single, slightly crooked stick with a feathery crown of browned cedar fronds.

  “Here.” She stabbed the stick into the earth between us so it stood upright. “I declare this our stronghold. By wood, stone, water, and bone.” She looked up at me expectantly. I looked away. “Come on, you have to say it too.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “But you’re the Queen of Swords!”

  “I’m not playing that anymore,” I snapped. “You know that.”

  She stared at me.

  “I thought moving would help,” she said, turning petulant. “What’s wrong with you? Ever since you captured Tyler—”

  The name was like a slap, and I reeled away from it.

  “Don’t talk to me about that.” I focused on my muddy knees. Didn’t look at her. “I told you not to ever talk to me about that.”

  “I don’t know what your problem is,” she huffed. “He deserved it.” That sent me to my feet, but she continued anyway, raising her voice into a full-on whine. “And now it’s like you’re abdicating, you won’t even—”

  “That’s right. I won’t. I’m going home.”

  The jump to the ground jarred through my legs, and I almost fell. I didn’t look back to see if Deirdre was following.

  * * *

  She chattered on endlessly, those first few weeks, grafting the kingdoms on to the wilderness outside, trying to draw me in. I stonewalled every attempt. There was no more Queen of Swords—just Skye. And I was sick of waging war.

  I was measuring dish soap into a teaspoon, following instructions in a garden magazine, when she came galloping into the kitchen.

  “Skye! Come be the Queen of Swords! I need you!”

  What she needed was a shower. I could smell her from across the room. “I’m in the middle of something,” I said, tipping the soap into a spray bottle and swishing it around.

  “Come on,” she said breathlessly, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “It’s amazing out there. You’re not even going to believe it. Here, I found your sword. Come outside!”

  She held the taped-up hilt out to me. Nudged my arm with the pommel.

  “Ow!” I yanked it away from her. A crown of wild daisies and chicory and dandelions drooped lopsidedly over her sweaty forehead. Her gold necklace, the one engraved with the tree design, sparkled against the dirt-smeared fabric of her dress. One of these days, she was going to lose it somewhere. God, it was like she was still nine years old. I dumped the sword on the counter with a clatter and aimed a jet of soapy water at the little yellow bugs that had taken up residence in the leaves of my cyclamen.

  “You go ahead,” I said, as neutrally as possible. She stomped her foot.

  “It’s not just me! It’s our kingdom, Skye, it wants to meet you! Pretty please?”

  “I’m busy.”

  “You’re just messing around with your stupid plants!”

  “At least plants are real.” Unlike Deirdre’s obsessions. Plants are full of marvelous secrets you can witness and chart. I watched a YouTube video once of time-lapse footage of morning glories growing. As their heart-shaped leaves open and expand, climbing tendrils whirl around in place until they latch on blindly to something. Miraculous and silent and utterly unobserved, unless you’re paying attention.

  “This is real. It’s right out there waiting for us. If you would just—”

  “I’m not interested!” I flung the words at her. “And you’d better not let Mom see that stuff in your hair. Remember what she said about ticks?”

  She hesitated a moment longer; then she tossed back a fine! and stormed from the room.

  I waited until I heard the front door slam behind her. Then I set the cyclamen aside and picked the sword up from the counter.

  The garage was even hotter than the yard, its shadowy depths stifling. Light leaked under the door in a molten line, and a couple of intrepid crickets creaked through the dark. I hurried down the stairs and tossed the sword into the corner beside the pile of firewood the previous owners had left.

  I slammed back into the kitchen, turned the tap on, let a sparkling trickle wash the soap off the leaves. I couldn’t make her grow up. If she was going to disappear into her imaginary world and make herself a target all over again, it wasn’t like I could stop her.

  But she wasn’t keeping me in there with her. Not anymore.

  * * *

  Dad had been making a determined effort to meet the neighbors, marching up the hill from house to house to offer laid-back charm and a handshake. Look at us, such a nice, normal family. He must have been convincing, because a hubbub of voices spilling down the hall announced the arrival of the Wrights, repaying his visit.

  Deirdre scowled and shut herself in the bathroom, the lock clicking behind her. Well, that was just fine with me. This was my first contact with whatever alien life-forms I had to go to school with. It would be easier without her.

  Bill Wright was a jovial barrel of a man with a neat gray beard and a crushing handshake. Mrs. Wright—Angie, she insisted I call her—had a polished smile and an even, golden tan at odds with her track pants and the pencil fastening her hair in its loose bun. Trailing behind their parents, quiet and awkward—maybe bored—were a girl I could only describe as shiny, with nails and lip gloss gleaming, and a boy whose long hair was pulled into a thick ponytail, little strands escaping around his face and sticking to his temples. Behind a pair of glasses, his eyes, meeting mine, were lively and gray.

  “This is William.” Bill clamped an arm around his shoulders, jostling him a little.

  “Junior?” Mom guessed.

  “The fifth, actually. Carrying on a long tradition, eh?”

  William Wright V gave a tilted, faintly pained smile, straightened his glasses, and stepped out of his dad’s embrace to extend his hand to me. “Just William. Nice to meet you.”

  His palm against mine was warm, a little damp. “Skye.”

  “This is my sister, Christina,” he said, since the adults were drifting up the stairs without us. The shiny girl gave a little sigh and rippled her fingers at me in a wave before folding her arms again.

  “You’re at Hillcrest, right?” I asked her, making my voice bright and friendly. “What grade?”

  “Eighth.”

  Same as Deirdre, then. Defensive dismay washed over me in a hot, familiar wave, but I pushed it down, kept my smile on. It was preordained: They were going to hate each other. It wasn’t like I could prevent it. It wasn’t my problem.

  I led them upstairs after our parents, trying to think of something else to say. Bill was regaling Dad with neighborhood history—the Wrights, apparently, were the first family in the area—while Mom exclaimed over the character of their stone house at the top of the hill. Angie laughed and said something rueful about how the place was in constant danger of falling apart.

  “Our youngest is feeling a little shy,” Mom explained, leading everyone into the kitchen, casting a pointed glance back at me over her shoulder. “Skye, could you go see what Deirdre’s up to? Please?” S
he said it casually, but there was a faint steely edge to the words that suggested Deirdre was getting included whether she liked it or not. “Maybe you guys could start one of those board games she likes, that ought to get her attention.”

  I left William and Christina to make small talk with the adults and hurried down the hall to our room. Deirdre was kneeling on her bed, leaning on the windowsill. She was fiddling with something, whispering to herself. A little Tupperware container sat at her elbow, full of—what, pebbles? Shells?

  “Deir, do you want to play Catan or something?” She didn’t answer. “Deirdre. Mom wants you to come out. Come on.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with them,” she shot back sullenly.

  “Who, the Wrights? You haven’t even met them yet.”

  “I don’t have to. I’ve heard all about them. They’re invaders.”

  “Will you please just drop whatever stupid game you’re—”

  “It’s not a game! I don’t want them here!”

  The floor creaked behind me, signaling William’s arrival. He stood at my elbow, flashed the same self-conscious smile.

  “Hi,” he said cheerfully to Deirdre. She looked around at us, sidelong through her hair, and didn’t answer.

  “Come on.” I started toward her, trying not to speak through my teeth. “Mom will be after you next, so you might as well—Jesus, Deirdre, are those—”

  At my approach, she’d extended her hand, displaying two yellowing little ovals cradled in her palm. Tiny skulls, frail as eggshells.

  “I think they were mice,” she said matter-of-factly, ignoring my recoil.

  “Where did you even—those aren’t Mog’s, are they?”

  “Did you know that when owls eat their prey they throw up the fur and bones afterward?”

  “Oh, gross, Deirdre—!”

  “They leave these little dried-up pucks around. Like under the trees beside the castle. Or in the long grass. If you take them apart, the bones are inside.”

  “Cool,” said William from the doorway. God, he actually sounded interested. “Can I see?”