Here There Are Monsters

by Amelinda Bérubé

  “What?” William says behind me.

  “Look. Do you see that?”

  Between the roping black limbs of the roots, here and there, a flat surface is visible—buckled and discolored, but still paler than dirt. The shape of the corridor, however overgrown, is familiar underneath. Man-made.

  “What, for God’s sake,” William says.

  “It’s a hallway,” I whisper. “Like in a house.”

  We stand there peering uselessly into the dark. Somewhere water is dripping. Nothing moves. The ground between the roots has grown spongy, though it’s still hard and steady underneath. Cautiously, I crouch down to touch it. It squishes wetly, fibrous, though too short and regular for grass.

  Carpet. I lurch to my feet, away from it, scrubbing my hand against my jeans.

  “Skye?”

  “I’m okay,” I say. My voice is thin, too high. “I’m okay. I’m fine. This is—this is really fucked up, is all.”

  “It’s their castle,” William says, and though he takes my hand, clutches it, he gives me a frail, uneven smile. “Of course it is.”

  How long is the tunnel we clamber through? It’s an eternity, a maze. Eventually it opens up into a wide cavern, its floor humped and snaking, gleaming in places with water that throws back the blue-white light from the phone. The wall across from us is dimly visible, marbled with green and black. And like the hallway, its bones are vertical.

  At least there’s more space here, though I’m careful not to step in the puddles, reminded of the floor of the swamp, its sudden, unpredictable depth. I don’t question how I know which way to go until I reach out automatically to grasp a wooden post, topped with a familiar polished knob, that stands straight and regular among the grasping roots. At the bottom of a set of stairs.

  I pull my hand away, fold my arms.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I want to say it makes no sense, but that’s not really true, and that’s the worst part. There’s a dream logic to it, an inevitability.

  “We’re in my old house,” I tell him, climbing carefully over the roots cascading down the stairs. “In the basement. Watch your step.”

  He just shakes his head as he climbs after me, holding the phone high. Nothing’s surprising anymore.

  The stairs creak and groan like they never used to, but they’re sound enough. We come up past the landing, where the little window in the back door is choked with dirt, and the glass crunches all over the peeling linoleum, mixed with scattered clumps of spilled clay. In the kitchen, roots have pushed cupboard doors off their hinges, leaving dark gaping mouths. Black water fills the double sink, the tap dripping steadily to form a green trickle that snakes down the face of the cabinet, trailing rivulets of mildew.

  A ghostly predawn glow seeps in from the dining room. It’s empty, just like we left it. Four bare walls, old-fashioned built-in cabinets with the glass doors smudged and hanging ajar, a shaggy beige carpet. But a tree—a white-barked birch—has pushed its way up through the floor, leaving it as slanted and uneven as the earth in the woods. The trunk punches all the way through the roof, reaching for the sky, fracturing the ceiling with cracks like bolts of lightning. The light filters in between the crowded tendrils of some leafy vine that has crawled over the window.

  Past the caved-in fireplace—red bricks and soot spilling out onto the carpet—the big picture window overlooking the garden is still intact, though dark and occluded with grime. Everything beyond it blurs into murky green shadow. Still, I know the neighbor’s chokecherry tree by the tall sweep of its branches; it always framed our view.

  “It still smells like our house.” My whisper is too loud, out of place. “Underneath, I mean. Every now and again. How could they know how my house smelled?”

  “The same way they know everything else, I guess,” William whispers back, pressing his face up to the glass, trying to peer beyond.

  The front door stands open into a strange purple twilight. Outside, the garden I remember has grown utterly wild, transformed into something monstrous and feral. The crowded trees of the swamp have shouldered up through the flower beds, taking over. The smell of peonies hangs in the air.

  The path down to the street is no more than a suggestion, bits of broken concrete slab that protrude sometimes like bones. The street itself is still there, at least as a shadow, a broad shallow bowl of grass interrupting the trees. It’s losing its clean, sharp edges, shaped more like a river now. Even here, out of the trees, William and I cast no shadows in the half light. It’s directionless, a flare of sunset color lighting the edge of the horizon all around.

  There’s no sign of our guide. But I think I know which way we’re supposed to go. The same way I’ve gone so often in my dreams. The one I can’t forget. It’s not even that far.

  The path leading down to the valley, into violet shadow, stands untouched. The yellow line on the asphalt gleams in the twilight, a long plunge between the banks of trees on either side, the hills looming taller than they should. I clutch the straps of my backpack, unable to look away.

  I don’t want to go down there. Not again.

  “Skye?” William prompts uncertainly. “Where are we? Is this somewhere you know?”

  “Sort of.” The sound bleeds out of my voice, leaves it a whisper. “This way.”

  And I step onto the path.

  Twenty-Six

  Except for the light, I might never have left. Maybe I’m still there, hurrying down to the river ahead of my enemy. My heart thumping in my ears, every instant brimming with what I’m about to do like I’m carrying a cup of water, trying not to let it spill. It feels as if it should be getting darker, or lighter, but the depth of the shadows never changes. Maybe I’ll be here forever, going down and down the ravine toward the river. With William following me. Faithful. Clueless.

  But the path has an end, just like it does in the real world: through the last screen of trees before the river, over the footbridge. Here’s where I turned aside, the narrow, stony track of some runoff channel. It winds down a scrubby slope to the riverbank, slicing through thin whips of saplings just tall enough to swallow us, thick enough to make the bike path behind us disappear.

  Not far from here is the bank where Deirdre and I spent a thousand afternoons in another world. The last time was in the spring.

  * * *

  I lay next to her under the greening willows, my sword tossed in the grass beside me, poking the water with a long stick as she ripped her math notebook to shreds, page by page, grim and systematic. The water devoured the pieces. She’d gotten detention the day before for losing it. When it resurfaced in her backpack, crudely rendered dicks adorned every page.

  Her mouth was marked by an ugly gash, a bloom of bruises. She wouldn’t tell me how she’d gotten it. My heart gave another twist of rage every time I looked at her. They’d never dared to actually lay a hand on her before.

  “It was Tyler, wasn’t it?” I said. It was always Tyler. Never so you could prove it. But it was him, pulling the strings, inventing the names. For no reason, as far as I could tell. Because she was prey. For the lulz.

  It had started with little things. Petty things. Making fun of the way she laughed. Pulling her hair when he sat behind her on the bus, and when she accused him, protesting that he would never; he didn’t want to get fleas. And when all his little henchmen hopped on the bandwagon, sharpening their pitchforks, he thought it was hilarious.

  If I was there to overhear, I could twist arms, dig into pressure points, extract apologies. But I couldn’t be everywhere. They laughed at me too, just more cautiously. And they stayed out of my reach. After I got suspended for giving David Emery a black eye—I’d launched myself into four of them as they stood over her, following her across the yard—they just turned invisible and kept at it. Leaving notes. Stealing things.

  We’d tried telling a hundred times. Sometimes it
had spurred a talking-to, a class lecture on bullying from the guidance counselor, non-apologies delivered with a smirk. After a while, we’d stopped bothering. Like the few kids whose attempts at kindness were quickly exhausted, the adults weren’t really on our side. Deirdre was just too shrill, too brittle, too demanding. No social skills. She brought it on herself. What were they going to do?

  “He’s the warlord,” Deirdre said darkly. “All the goblins dance for him.” She threw the last handful of confetti, dabbed carefully at her face, wincing. “You’re the Queen of Swords. You have to do something.”

  “So maybe we need to capture the warlord.” I said it so calmly. Icy reason. The sun glinted on the water, the unfolding leaves. Everything was so sharp, so clear.

  “And make him sorry.” Deirdre glowered, then sighed. “Yeah, right.”

  “He’s getting cocky. Usually they don’t leave marks. We can’t do anything that leaves marks.” I trailed my stick in the water, ignoring Deirdre’s look of surprise.

  Water doesn’t leave marks.

  “I’ll take care of this,” I said.

  I levered myself to my feet and waded out into the current, ignoring its knife-cold edge slicing through my shoes, and plunged the stick into the water.

  “I will. By wood, stone, water, and bone.”

  I left the stick wedged upright among the stones, a seal on a compact. A promise.

  * * *

  I hardly notice the round rocks turning under my feet as I lead William down through the thicket to the black rush of the water. Onto the riverbank. The one I know so well. The water, flowing fast and deep here, glints choppy rose-gold, reflecting the false directionless sunset, bordered all around by shadowy brush.

  On the narrow strip of shoreline is our guide, collapsed into inanimate pieces, a sad heap of wire and debris scattered among the river stones, eye sockets winking in the half-light. A signpost: This is it. End of the line.

  “What the hell?” William pants.

  Breathe, I tell myself. Keep breathing. Almost there. That was then. This is now.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper. “Hang on.”

  I pull one of the monster’s stick arms loose from the wire knotted around it, pick my way to the edge of the water, stab it into the silty earth among the rocks, twist it around as far as my wrist will go.

  “Open up,” I tell it. “By wood, stone, water, and bone.”

  The water swirls past, indifferent, as I stomp in a hurried circle around the twig.

  “Wood, stone, water, bone,” I pant. My kick at the pebbly riverbed sends a spray of water onto the bank. “Goddammit! Wood, stone, water, bone!”

  “Is…something supposed to happen?” William ventures.

  I turn to face him. And here we are. There’s a price; there’s still a price to pay. I sink to my knees. I can’t catch my breath. I can’t breathe. I can’t do it. I can’t do it again.

  “Skye? Skye! Hey!” I try to push him away, but he grips my shoulders, gives me a little shake, kneeling down to look me full in the face. “Come on, don’t fall apart now. You’ve got this. Okay? We’re good. We’re fine. We just need to figure out where to go, all right? We can go back to the path. It keeps going, doesn’t it? Or should we follow the water?”

  “I don’t know,” I sob. Because I do know. It’s laid out before me, what I have to do. One way forward. What they wanted all along. Then and now collapsing into each other, no difference left between them. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know—”

  “Hey,” he repeats helplessly, pulling me close, and I press my forehead into his shoulder and cry like I’ve never cried in my life, in sheer stormy desperation. Someone stop me. Someone wipe this out. Make it a bad dream. I’m hurtling down the tracks, falling from the sky.

  Eventually I hiccup into hopeless silence. William shifts a little against me, but only to get comfortable, and leans his cheek against my hair. The water chatters endlessly past us.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper into his shirt.

  “It’s okay,” he murmurs back.

  “It’s not. I dragged you down here, and now—and now—”

  “You didn’t, though. You told me to go home. Remember?”

  I can’t answer, and when I stay silent, he presses on.

  “Look, I made a choice. A stupid one, probably. But, well, here I am. So let’s just get through this. Together. Okay?”

  “You’re a way better person than me, William.” I push myself away from him, brace myself against one of the skinny trees instead. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Nobody should be here,” he returns, unfazed. “So let’s go get your sister and get the hell out already. Right?”

  When I shake my head, he puts his hands to my face, his fingers sliding warm into my hair, his eyes on mine bright and earnest in the twilight.

  “Seriously,” he says. “Who knows what use I’ll be, but you’re the girl who’d survive the zombie apocalypse. You can do this, okay? I know it.”

  I clutch his hand against my cheek, without a word to say. If everything is permitted, then I’m allowed to accept this. I’m allowed to pretend it will be all right for a few more minutes. He leans toward me, hesitant, every bit closer a question, until his lips meet mine.

  When my mouth opens under his, he draws a shuddering breath, and I pull him closer, tangle my hands in his hair as his slide up my back. This is where I’ll stay, where I’ll lose myself, where I’ll stop time.

  But it doesn’t work like that, of course. And eventually he pulls away.

  “I’ve wanted to do that since basically forever,” he confesses. His shaky smile might break my heart. It hurts to return it. When I reach out to tuck away the hair falling into his face, he leans into my palm, kisses it.

  “I messed up your hair,” I say, sniffling, and he laughs, yanks the elastic from it so it falls around his shoulders, starts to gather it up again.

  “No, here,” I whisper. “Let me.”

  I push myself up, leaning on his shoulder. Set the backpack carefully on the ground, still within reach. One, two, three steps, and I kneel behind him. Hesitantly at first, I run my fingers through his hair, combing it back.

  “Is it safe here?” He peers nervously into the brush crowding the riverbank. “Maybe we should keep moving.”

  “They’re not coming after us. Not yet.”

  He doesn’t ask how I know, but he trusts me. He relaxes, by slow increments, into my touch, folding his legs, getting comfortable.

  “If you braid it, it’ll stay better.” My voice still trembles. It’s been a long time since I braided Deirdre’s hair, and my fingers are clumsy parting William’s. I have to try a couple of times before I manage to cinch that first plait tight enough to hold. “Why do you wear it so long, anyway?”

  “Because my dad hates it,” he says, and then, trying to look back at me, “Why, do you?”

  “No. It suits you. Hold still.”

  One strand over the other. It goes so quickly.

  “What did they say we’re looking for?”

  “A key. And a bell.”

  “So the stick was supposed to be the key, right? Where was it supposed to take us?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we need the bell first. Did they hide it somewhere, or what?”

  “I’m thinking,” I whisper.

  It takes me longer than it should to secure the elastic. I inhale carefully, flatten my icy hands against his back, slide them over his shoulders, press my cheek to his. He leans into me with a sigh.

  When the crook of my elbow closes around his neck, my other arm pressing him down into the choke from behind, it takes him a second to sort out what’s happening before his hands fly up to break my grip, to push me away, to hit me. To make me let go. And he can’t. He doesn’t know how.

>   It’s not breath this hold cuts off; it’s blood. So for ten seconds, forever, his frantic gasps fill my ears as he flails in my grip. Ragged single words. No. Stop. Don’t. Worst of all: Please.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper into his hair. Over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

  Ten seconds.

  I told him.

  His hands slacken and drop away, his heels stop their grinding scrabble against the pebbly ground, and he sinks back against me, dead weight. I allow myself one sob. And then I let go, heave him awkwardly to one side, let him slide to the ground.

  My hands are numb and shaking, but a razor-edged momentum carries me through every ruthless step of what I have to do, a chasm I can cross if I don’t look down, if I don’t stop. The roll of wire is still in my bag. I loop it around his wrists, one after the other, over and over again until it pinches against his skin, against the white bandage on one arm that’s almost luminous in the twilight. He twitches and shudders under my touch. Not much time left. I can’t stop. It’s him or Deirdre. It’s him or I lose. I tried to warn him. They all did.

  I’m twisting the wire around the nearest sapling, winding it through and around, weaving it tight, when his hands spasm open and closed, and he draws a sharp breath, like he’s waking from a nightmare.

  He tries to move. Tries to roll over. Tries to twist his hands free, to pull them loose. Yanks at them. It makes the leaves of the tree dance and quiver. He twists around, panting, coughing, and finally catches sight of me, standing frozen behind him with the willow branches snagging in my hair.

  I close my eyes, but the look on his face sears into me. In a heartbeat, he’s understood everything. Here it is—the very bottom. The ground rushing up to meet me. The end of the world.

  “Oh no,” he croaks. “No, no, no, no—”

  He jerks at the wire with every repetition of the word, throws his weight against it, but it’s merciless. Stronger than either of us. If I’m going to save Deirdre, this is the price. I have no choice. There’s no going back.

  “You don’t have to do this.” His voice is full of gravel. I must have hurt his throat. “Jesus, Skye, don’t do this. Please. Please. Oh God. Please let me go.”