Here There Are Monsters

by Amelinda Bérubé

  He won’t look at me like that once he knows.

  When the world is ending, everything is permitted. I sink slowly down on the couch to curl up on my side, pillowing my head against his thigh. After a moment, a long moment, he brushes my hair away from my face with warm fingers, rests his hand very carefully on my arm.

  The afternoon slides away from me like sand through my fingers. And eventually the credits roll, and he squeezes my shoulder and tells me he has to go.

  Here we are. I push myself upright, let my head hang, wait for deep breaths to steady me. This is it, this is my last chance. I have to tell him. If I tell him, he’ll tell everyone else, won’t he? Doesn’t that count as telling everyone? I trail helplessly after him as he makes his way to the door. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to say.

  “We can do this again,” he offers, a little too casually. “You know, if it helps.”

  “William?”

  He stops with his hand on the doorknob, alert to the choke in my voice. Do it, I tell myself. Say it. Go on.

  “Yeah?” he says slowly.

  But the words are dying, dry leaves filling my mouth. He’s waiting for me to say something so different. It’s the end of the world, and he has no idea. I shake my head, mop my eyes. All I can get out is “Thanks.”

  * * *

  When I dream that night, it’s of Deirdre, crouched in the garden with her back turned to me. Under the skinny straps of her dress, her shoulders rise and fall, rhythmic—she’s digging, tossing the dirt away into black heaps. I push my way toward her, but branches whip across my path, catch at my legs; my progress is slow, as if I’m floundering through deep water.

  I try to call her name, but my mouth is full of leaves. I spit them out clumsily, and they turn into gold coins, gleaming as they fall, thumping to the ground at my feet.

  Rage boils through me, a helpless fury at being thwarted, enchanted, and I thrash against the grip of the greenery closing over my head, the leaves slowly eclipsing my sister from my sight. I have to warn her. About that thing in the yard. About the voices waiting for her in the woods. I have to warn her not to follow the bell.

  But when Deirdre turns, there’s only carved white hollows where her face should be, a grinning skull, and her hands are antlers, ending in wicked points. At her feet is a gaping pit. A grave.

  “You’ll grow fine roots,” she says meditatively. And the million hands binding me carry me forward, choking, and give me a shove. Topple me into darkness.

  I jerk back into consciousness, sputtering into my pillow, my mouth dry and gritty as if it really was filled with leaves. It takes a long moment to sort out that the floodlight beaming cold light over my face is just the moon.

  The full moon.

  The house is silent. There’s a line of light glowing under the door, all the lights still on, keeping watch for Deirdre. But there’s a chilly edge to the air, a taste of cold, green water standing in deep shade, and my heartbeat doesn’t slow.

  I’ve left it too long. Are they looking for me? Could they get into the house?

  Hugging my blankets, I sit up, scanning the room. No pale lurching creatures. Nothing, nothing.

  Except that one of the doors that hides the crawl space—the doors I helped Dad cut down and install over that creepy cavern of bare concrete—one of them is a little ajar, the latch gleaming.

  I slap the light on, but it’s still true. The door doesn’t move, doesn’t even quiver. I lean cautiously out over the edge of the bed to get a closer look, and find that something pushed it open: some sort of sinuous tentacles. They’ve spilled out over the tiles, little rivulets of darkness against the gleaming squares.

  I fumble to pull my sword from under the bed, almost fall. Are they moving, those tendrils? I don’t think they are. I pad closer, step by step, the tiles icy under my feet, and prod one with the tip of my sword, then smack it. It doesn’t move, but it doesn’t yield.

  They’re made of wood. Roots.

  When I pry the door open, the crawl space is full of them: a thicket of them, knotted into and over one another in a tightly coiled snarl, like a nest of snakes. I let the point of the sword drop to the tiles.

  “All right,” I whisper. The sound is harsh in my ears, unnatural. “All right. Fine. Message received.”

  It takes fifteen minutes to track down Dad’s little utility saw, buried in the heap of tools on the workbench in the laundry room. It takes me an hour to saw through all the ropy coils that have crept over the threshold, so I can close the door again. It doesn’t help that I keep imagining the twitch of ragged white cloth at the window. Every click and creak of the house settling in the night is pointed bone on glass, unwelcome footsteps staggering overhead.

  I pull Deirdre’s necklace from the pot on the shelf and put it around my neck. It’s cold and heavy, gleaming hard-edged and bright as a sword. Or a coin.

  None of it matters. I don’t care. I can’t afford to care. I’m the Queen of Swords on a mission, and I’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll deal with whatever ruin I have to call down on us. On me. I suppose I deserve it, anyway.

  Seventeen

  I’m awake before my alarm, opening my eyes to gray dawn from a shifty, ashen sleep. Determination is a cold rock in my belly. I remember this feeling. It means that today I’m going to do something terrible. Today I’m wearing an iron crown.

  Mom stands at the window, looking out into the woods, hugging a mug of coffee, tapping her nails against it without drinking. She doesn’t turn around when I come into the room. The computer’s open on the table, the screen crowded with red-lined graphs.

  “It’s been a week,” she says, without inflection. Like a ghost. “Almost a week.”

  “She’s still out there, Mom.”

  The quiet strength of my voice surprises me. But after all—after everything—that’s one thing I know, now. One thing to cling to. Even if I can’t explain it. Mom presses a hand to her face.

  “They said we have to—we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility—”

  “She is.” Mom looks around at me, finally, her eyes brimming with wanting to believe me. “I just know it, okay? She’s out there, and she’ll be fine. It’ll be okay.” I swallow. “I promise.”

  She sets the coffee down on the table, sloshing a little bit over the side, and wraps her arms tight around me.

  “You always looked after her,” she says into my shoulder. “I shouldn’t have blamed you, Skye. You—you’ve been really brave, you know that?”

  The words burn. “I have to go,” I mutter. “I’m going to miss the bus.”

  She pulls away, frowning.

  “You’re going to school?”

  “You’re writing code.”

  “It just—helps take my mind off things. Well. Not really. But it’s something to do. And it supports our family. It’s my job. Anyway, the social worker said she’d come by again today, and you should really spend some more time with her.”

  “There’s some things I have to do.” I pick up her coffee from the table—it’s cold—and down half of it in a long gulp. It’s black and bitter and does nothing to chase the taste of leaves from my mouth. “I’ll talk to her later, okay? I have to go.”

  I flee from the house without even bothering to put on a coat. The morning is wet and roaring, with a wind that knifes through my sweater and lashes the bare branches. A white sun sifts through the clouds, a pale and ineffectual circle, and vanishes again. It’s one of those drowned end-of-fall days that promises ice and winter following close behind.

  I duck my head, fold my arms, and soldier up the hill. My ears are already aching from the knives in the wind. I will not falter. I will not doubt myself. I will not listen to the voice in my head still crying out that none of this can be real, that I’m about to spill my guts for no reason.

  A flash of black
feathers bursts across the road—a crow, riding the wild wind. It swoops down among the branches that lean out over the creek, a thicket of silver birch and fuzzy branching sumac, and comes to rest on a bare branch.

  A branch that moves. A branch connected to a torso of rough bark. A spiky fur cloak. A long, skeletal face.

  The ground seems to tilt beneath my feet, sending me stumbling back, fear sending tingling runners through my chest and arms. But the monster makes no move toward me. It stands there, immobile as the bones of the forest, utterly silent. After a long moment, it jerks into a bow, the crow still clutching its outstretched twiggy arm, flapping a wing for balance. Watching me.

  The monster straightens again and twitches its arm skyward, launching the crow back into the air to alight in the trees just down the road. And when I look back to the creek, the figure has vanished.

  I draw long, shaky breaths, darting glances into the shifting labyrinth of the woods on either side of the street, pulling my hands inside my sleeves. The crow hangs ahead of me in the trees, a silent scrap of black. Finally, I haul my gaze back to my feet and keep moving.

  So they’re watching. They said they would be.

  The whole thing seems more and more impossible the farther I walk. This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. Maybe I imagined everything. Maybe I should go home and tell my parents I’m seeing things. Tell them Deirdre’s been kidnapped by monsters. They’d summon the social worker. Call the psychiatrist. Ship me off to the hospital, even. They’d take all of this out of my hands.

  I could still do it. I don’t have to tell. Do I?

  Voices drift through the air as I trudge around the last corner. Talking, laughing. They fall silent as I approach: Kevin, Sophie. William.

  “Hey,” Sophie says, all concern. “How are you doing? Did they find her?”

  Awkward silence falls when I shake my head. They exchange glances.

  “Are your parents seriously making you go to school today?” William says. I can’t look at him. I clench my teeth.

  “No. I just—I have to.”

  Sophie winces in sympathy. Kevin shifts a little, looks at his feet. William shuffles over on the rail beside the mailbox to make room for me to perch beside him in my usual spot. I shrug my backpack to the ground so I have something to look at besides them, so my brittle shell won’t crack and betray me. When I hop up and settle myself on the rail, William actually puts an arm around me, as if to keep me warm, and I just about come undone.

  I can’t do it. There has to be some future where they don’t hate me.

  But with an explosive snap and ruffle of black wings, a crow sweeps down in front of us, its feet meeting the rail across from us with a clang. Everyone jumps.

  “That,” Kevin says with a nervous laugh, “is a big fucking bird.”

  He feints a lunge at it, trying to scare it off; it flaps one wing and stays put, eyeing him. I edge away from it, remembering the one that attacked my window.

  “Leave it alone, Kev.” Sophie tugs at his arm, looking uneasily at the crow. “What if there’s something wrong with it?”

  “What’s it going to do,” Kevin counters, smirking, “peck me to death?”

  The crow cocks its head, studies us. Studies me. As if it’s waiting.

  Kevin picks up a rock and pitches it, despite Sophie’s protest—“don’t!”—and the bird stands stone still, unfazed, as if to prove it doesn’t care, before it gives us a last disdainful look and takes off. It doesn’t go far, though, just flutters up into the branches of the huge willow drooping over the eaves of William’s stone house across the street.

  “Did you ever hear that crows can recognize people’s faces?” William says into the silence. “There were these researchers catching crows to put bands on their feet, and they had to wear masks because otherwise the crows would dive-bomb them for weeks afterward.”

  Sophie looks up at the crow, tugging her hat down lower over her ears. “Nice job, Kevin. Now you’ve probably pissed it off.”

  “Oh come on, it didn’t even do anything,” he scoffs.

  “That was creepy, though,” Sophie insists.

  Round and round they go, back and forth. Their voices rattle down around me without meaning. That was real. They saw it too. It’s not just me. I can’t pretend. My teeth are clenched so hard, my jaw aches. I’m running out of time; the bus will be here soon. What I have to say is a weight crushing down on me. They used to execute people like that, piling heavy stones on their chests until they broke.

  I just have to start talking. I just have to start somewhere. Anywhere. Get it over with.

  “I almost drowned somebody once,” I say loudly.

  Put like that, it sounds weirdly casual. Like it was an accident; like it was no big deal. But it gets their attention. They all turn to frown at me, the conversation shattered like a reflection in a pool.

  “What?” Sophie says, like she’s not sure she heard me right.

  “Uh—” William begins, his eyebrows up in a baffled line. I shrug my way out from under his arm.

  “His name was Tyler,” I bite out. “He was in my year. And he wouldn’t leave Deirdre alone. She said I had to do something, I had to make him stop. I always had to make them stop. It was practically my job. But with Tyler around, nothing I did made any difference anymore. I gave this one guy a black eye once.” I whip a punch at the air to demonstrate. William twitches away from me, startled. “It just got me suspended.”

  “Um,” Kevin interrupts, looking uncomfortable, “I don’t know what your point is here, but—”

  “Shut up, Kev,” William says.

  “Skye,” Sophie puts in uneasily, “maybe this should wait until—”

  “No!” My voice cracks. “No. I have to do this. I have to do it now.”

  They exchange glances. I breathe in, breathe out, my head pounding with adrenaline.

  “Tyler was the ringleader. If I got to him, everyone else would back off. And he knew I could have kicked his ass anytime. But I’d have gotten expelled. And then it would have been open season. She wouldn’t have had anyone left to defend her. So.” Breathe in. Breathe out. “I took it outside of school.

  “I spent a while following him. Figuring him out. He didn’t live that far from us. There was…this valley.” I have to stop and swallow, close my eyes. “He cut through it on the way home. He was so fucking cocky; it never occurred to him it might be dangerous to be out there alone. Boys never worry about that. But I was out there too. And I knew where to wait for him.”

  “Look,” William interrupts. “You were protecting your sister. You don’t think we get that?”

  “You don’t understand!” I push his hand away from my shoulder; my fingers are white and numb from clutching the railing. “There’s a river at the bottom of that valley. It’s fast, and cold, and people drown in it all the time.” The words are tumbling out faster now, a machine set in motion, nothing left to lose, no point in stopping. “I waited for him by the river. And I hauled him down to the water, and I held his head under. Again and again. I told him I was going to drown him. I told him nobody would ever know the difference, nobody would ever know he hadn’t just fallen in. You should have heard him. He cried so hard, he could barely talk.”

  Silence. The wind whistles around us. My heartbeat pulses behind my eyes. I wait for it to sink in, for them to back away, for the mutters of revulsion to start. But all that happens is a touch on my hand that makes me jump: William’s fingers closing over mine.

  “What are you doing?” I demand raggedly. “Did you hear a word I said?”

  Above our heads, the crow gives a warning caw. I’m running out of time. Isn’t this enough? Make them hate you. Haven’t I tried? Is it my fault they can’t take a hint?

  “Skye—” Sophie trades a look with William. “Look, that’s…pretty not okay, but…”


  “I have a sister too,” William says. “I get it.”

  His grip is gentle, but he won’t let me pull away, and my desperate resolve crystallizes into a spike of rage. I seize his hand, twist his arm around so that his shoulder has to follow. He stumbles off the rail with a yelp of pain and surprise.

  “Hey,” Kevin protests, but I ignore him.

  “You don’t get it!” I shout. “You don’t get it at all!”

  “Okay, hang on,” William tries again, massaging his shoulder, one hand out, placating. I jump down off the rail and slap it away.

  “Have you ever hurt somebody, William? On purpose?” He’s backing away from me now, but I stalk closer, my hands in fists, raising my voice to drown out his shaky attempts to talk me down. “It’s easy. You barely need to know what you’re doing. Want me to show you?” Grab, twist, turn, and I’ve shoved him face-first against the mailbox, his arm pinned behind his back. “Another few degrees and I could break your arm. I could do it! Right here! If I wanted to choke you out I could do it in ten seconds. Less! How about it? Is that what it’s going to take?”

  I push his arm a little higher, a little harder, mashing his cheek against the mailbox’s metal face.

  “Ow, ow,” he gasps, “let go, shit, ow—”

  “You think he didn’t beg? You think he didn’t apologize a million times?” Behind me somewhere, Sophie is shouting something, shrill, random sounds that I can’t string together into words. “Imagine if someone was hurting you, and they didn’t want anything from you at all except to see you suffer! To see you pay! That’s what I did, William! Do you think he believed me when I said I’d kill him if he told anybody? You bet he fucking believed it!”

  Kevin pushes his way between us, his eyes wide, his mouth moving, and somewhere far away his voice says things like what the fuck, calm down already, and though I let William scramble away out of reach, I grab the arm Kevin’s put across my chest and twist and heave, sending him sprawling to the asphalt. He doesn’t know how to land, goes down with a cry and a wicked smack of bone against pavement. It’s so easy.