Here There Are Monsters

by Amelinda Bérubé

  “Ow. Fuck.”

  I lean away from him, my arms folded. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “Bullshit,” he retorts. “You owe me.”

  I can hardly argue with that. We sit in silence for a while, footsteps creaking overhead.

  “You weren’t supposed to get involved,” I tell him eventually. “None of you were.”

  He’s silent, and I steal a glance at him. He’s looking back at me. Wary. Puzzled.

  “I’m trying to figure this out,” he says. “They’re saying you were attacked by some sort of animal.”

  He quirks his brows to say we both know what it really was. I look away.

  “They’re saying William could have died. And that you brought him out of the woods. They’re saying you saved him.” He waits for me to say something. “Is that true?”

  I sniff, sweep my hair out of my face. “Ask him.”

  “I did. But he was…pretty confused when I talked to him. High as a kite. You know. His face…he got pretty messed up.”

  I’m not going to ask for details. I don’t want to know. A memory flashes through my head: William sitting beside me. His hand on my arm. I don’t hate you. But following close behind it is the memory of his sleepy, hypnotized, poisoned voice. I understand. You had to. Words I made him say. Words Deirdre made him say. What’s the difference?

  “What happened?” Kevin asks. “For real.”

  Am I the only one who remembers, then? Is it up to me to decide what’s true, what gets erased?

  “It’s—some of it’s true. More or less.”

  “But it’s not the whole story, is it?”

  There’s no more damage left to do. I’ve already burned everything down. Suddenly I can’t bear the weight of another secret. It might crush me.

  “You were right,” I grate out. “About everything. I…I had a choice. Between him and Deirdre. And I chose wrong.”

  The silence is dense and heavy. A black hole. Explanations, excuses, lies couldn’t fill it. Not in a million years.

  “I brought him back, though,” I whisper. “I did bring him back. I chose to bring him back. In the end.”

  The bed creaks as Kevin’s weight shifts beside me.

  “So was it worth it?” he asks.

  It burns, hearing that question spoken aloud. The one that’s been spinning through my head, half-formed, for days. “What the hell am I supposed to say to that?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me it meant something. Tell me you’re sorry.”

  Not sorry enough to make Kevin think he has that kind of power over me. I study my hands in my lap.

  “You are sorry, though.” He says it slowly. As if he’s working through a riddle, a tangled knot. “Aren’t you?”

  I wish he’d stop looking at me. “You think so?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

  “Well, so what if I am? What good does it do?” My stone face is cracking. I hide it behind my hands. Isn’t he satisfied yet? Why is he still here? “Jesus, Kevin, what do you want?”

  Another long silence. Beside me, he swallows.

  “You want to hear a story?” He waits a few heartbeats for me to respond, but when I don’t, he continues anyway. “So. Let’s say there’s this guy. He’s pretty clueless. He’s too—I don’t know, he’s too fucking nice. And his hair’s not right, and his skin is bad, and…he just kind of needs someone to look out for him.

  “Well. So, there’s a princess. And, say, a knight. And they try to keep him from getting hurt. But there’s this…I don’t know, a dragon after him. A monster. Who keeps pulling…stupid shit. Calling him a fag. Knocking him down. You lose people’s respect, you know, when you let that go on.”

  I blink. “Wait. The monster’s after the knight?”

  “No. The guy. The knight was protecting him.”

  “So some asshole was after you?”

  “No, no, not me, it was”—Kevin rakes his hands through his hair—“oh, fuck it. The asshole was called Jared, okay? He had it in for William. And Bill—you know what Bill’s like. He just kept telling William he needed to man up, grow a pair, fight back. Blah fucking blah. Except William wouldn’t kick a dog if it bit him. So. Someone had to fight back. Right?

  “So our asshole Jared was going out with…this girl. And he was in, like, sloppy, ridiculous, puppy-dog love with her. It was pretty nauseating, actually. So I told Sophie I saw this girl hooking up with someone else at a party. Someone I didn’t know, conveniently, one of Dave Jablonski’s friends. Sophie trusts me. It got around. And when Jared heard, of course he believed it. Because, you know, asshole. They had this big dramatic breakup. And then—then I told him. That it was all fake. Because by then, he couldn’t even apologize to her, he’d already blown everything up.” Kevin sits back, his arms folded. “He tried to beat the shit out of me for it. And that got him kicked out of school. Zero tolerance for the fucking win. And nobody ever knew.”

  “Right.” A firelit memory flickers past: Kevin defending someone. Sort of. Don’t call her that. “Except that now the girl—what was her name, Brittany?—she’s the official Lanark Centennial slut. Isn’t she?”

  His mouth tightens.

  “Collateral damage. I thought I was doing her a favor. Breaking them up. I didn’t think…I didn’t know people would take it like that. I didn’t know they’d hang on to it for so long.”

  “But you didn’t tell anyone you lied about her either.”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good. It’s not the sort of thing you can take back.”

  “Well. Nice story.” Is he just trying to put me in my place? At this point, any secret he tells me is safe. If I tried to use it against him, nobody would believe me, anyway. “What am I supposed to do with this information?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe I’m just…trying to be nice. You know? A better person.” He stretches his leg out in front of him, grimacing. “Maybe I’m trying to make up for being a dick. I never trusted you. But maybe…maybe I’m not that different.” He hesitates. “Maybe you were right about me too.”

  “Sophie said bullshit was your superpower.”

  Kevin snorts. “Yeah. That sounds like her.”

  I deal in bullshit too, though. “Why’d you do it, Kevin? For real.”

  My question is soft, but it nettles him into a glare. “I told you,” he says, “I was protecting William. He was your collateral damage, wasn’t he?”

  I know how to take a punch. I don’t flinch; I don’t let up. “Who told you that was your job? Who signed you up for that?”

  “Why the hell does that matter? Nobody else was doing it. I took care of it.”

  “But why? Why like that?”

  “Because, okay?” He draws a breath, lowers his voice. “Just…because. Because reasons.”

  “Because you could,” I whisper. “Because you wanted to.”

  We stare at each other. Recognition. It’s ashy and awful.

  I’m the one who looks away first. “So now what?”

  “How should I know? I won’t mess with you if you don’t mess with me. And stay the hell away from my friends.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” I clench my fists in my lap. “I just…how do you go on? You know? When you know how far you’ll go?”

  His turn to look away.

  “I have a choice, don’t I?” I’m pleading. I can’t help it. “I came back. I did. So how do I stop? How do I not be this person anymore?”

  Kevin grabs his crutches, lurches to his feet.

  “If there’s a secret to it,” he says, “let me know.”

  * * *

  When I walk into school, my shoulders hunched, I part the crowds with a wedge of sharp-edged silence, leaving whispers and stares in my wake. Sophie hobbles past, leaning on a cane, without so much as looking at me
. When someone sidles up to her, whispers something while glancing my way, she just shakes her head, her jaw set.

  Between Sophie’s icy silence and my supposed heroism, they don’t know what to make of me. I can practically see the rumors swirling in the air. Funny how everyone got hurt except me. Funny how Sophie ended up in the hospital right after she crossed me. But I rescued William, didn’t I? If I really rescued William, would Sophie be freezing me out?

  Either way, the line between us has hardened, become impermeable. Me and them.

  The whispers intensify as I slide into a seat in homeroom. Fucking creepy sifts through them, settles over my shoulders.

  “Hey, shut up,” Kevin says somewhere behind me. “Leave her alone.”

  And like magic, the whispers subside into a giggly, uncomfortable pause before the conversation turns to more normal things.

  I twist around in my seat. Kevin’s eyes flick up to meet mine, the barest acknowledgment, not even a nod.

  Truce.

  * * *

  I’m at my locker, pulling it open, when a familiar laugh drifts down the hall. It’s self-conscious, infectious. Inviting you to smile too.

  The books slide from my hands to sprawl in a heap on the floor, and I run, shoving my way through the bodies milling across my path, ignoring the protests and scowls I leave behind. There, coming through the double doors from the parking lot, heading for the stairs.

  “William!”

  He turns in surprise just in time for me to throw my arms around him hard enough to make him stagger. His cheek against mine is cold from the walk outside. He smells faintly of vanilla. It’s him. It’s really him.

  “You’re all right,” I gasp. “You’re here; you’re okay—”

  I stop short of clasping his face between my hands. He looks back at me with one gray eye, the other hidden under a white bandage. A livid red seam winds out from underneath it, across his cheek, down his jaw to the corner of his mouth. Fading yellow bruises follow in its wake.

  “William,” I whisper. “Oh my God—”

  He doesn’t speak, but something passes between us as he steps out of my embrace. Something not quite seen, a shape underwater. Its shadow crosses his face. He backs away from me by a step, another.

  “William,” I plead.

  “I’m…” His gaze flickers to the door, then back to me again, as if it’s drawn unwilling. “I’m gonna go.”

  “William!”

  He ducks away from me, slams back through the doors. Outside, he keeps walking, his shoulders hunched, the snow sifting into his hair, his steps as long as he can make them without running. Like that guy in the story—what was his name?—emerging from the underworld with a ghost trailing behind him.

  He walks away like he’ll lose everything if he looks back.

  * * *

  In the snow, twilight comes early. The woods, a band of shadow at the back of the yard, soften and blur behind a curtain of fat, drifting flakes that kiss my face as they tumble past. A fluffy few inches creaks under my shoes as I hurry across the yard.

  The trees tower over me, mantled in white. Ice crusts the slate-gray water standing at their roots. I pace back and forth at the border, across the same shelf of rock where I first called the monsters.

  But it’s not the same at all. Something has turned its back on me. Some terrible attention has withdrawn into utter, blank indifference.

  “Deirdre.” The name dissipates into nothing, like the plume of vapor from my breath. The next time I scream it. “Deirdre!”

  It echoes, fades away. Nothing answers me. No whispers. No movement. Not even the silver chime of a bell. She closed the gate. She said she would. It’s firm and final as the rock under my feet.

  I fold my arms against the pinch of my breath in my chest and the desperate spiral of half-formed explanations. I made a choice. I brought him back. Shouldn’t that count for something? I have to tell him. I have to make him understand.

  But the memory of Deirdre’s shout stops the spiral cold. Do you think he’ll cooperate if you go back?

  I brought him back. But I can’t make him come back to me. I’m not doing that, not anymore. It’s a choice. I can choose.

  That’s not who I am.

  If I walk away from him like I walked away from Deirdre, from her bone kingdom—if I let him go, if I choose to, if I choose again and again—does that change anything?

  Mom’s voice echoes down to me from the house, calling my name. Calling me inside. I’m not supposed to be out here, not with a wild something-or-other on the loose. Eventually I have to turn away from the woods, the gathering dark. No matter how many times I look over my shoulder, nothing stands between the tree trunks. The face of the forest is empty, blind and dreaming, filling up with snow.

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve known since a certain wild winter night, when I was sixteen years old and watching a red crescent moon sink into the treetops, that I had to write something about the creepy, swampy woods that surrounded my family’s home. What emerged at the time was a fantasy-world shadow of this story; I played with it off and on for a few years before finally giving up and burying it. It took me twenty years to figure out how to bring its bones to life.

  So my thanks go out, first of all, to those who helped me wrestle with that first, early attempt: Janet Cover, whose encouragement I’ve always treasured; Nino Ricci and his 1996 summer workshop at the Humber School for Writers; Stephanie Bolster, who gave thoughtful feedback on a couple of different versions; and Rebecca Costello, my first internet friend and critique partner, who gave me the ending.

  This time around, I’m indebted to Harold Pretty, who drew on his RCMP experience to outline for me how a missing-persons case like this might play out; to Kim Steele, once our neighbor, who let me spend an afternoon exploring her backyard; to Eric Workman, who’s always up for answering weird medical questions; to Corey Yanofsky, martial arts consultant extraordinaire; to Liana, Zélie, and Louis Bérubé for sharing their memories of the woods and our old neighborhood; and to Marilyn Weixl, who sprang into action to recruit old friends into helping her daughter research a scary book.

  Nova Ren Suma’s 2016 Djerassi workshop was the greenhouse that got my first draft growing in earnest. My boundless gratitude goes out to Nova for that magical week, for her critique and encouragement, and for one observation in particular that bore wonderful, awful fruit. And thanks to all the amazing Sassy Djerassis—Bree Barton, Shellie Faught, Catey Miller, Jacqui Lipton, Aimee Phan, Melissa Mazzone, TJ Ohler, Wendy McKee, and Rachel Sarah—for their insights and their love.

  I don’t know what I did to deserve the creative fellowship of Allison Armstrong and Zélie Bérubé, but their wisdom and generosity made this book better and scarier, and I am inspired by and thankful for their incisive brilliance every time we meet. Wendy McKee, my sister in spookiness, has showered this story with fierce love, encouragement, and tireless rereading ever since those first twenty-five pages at Djerassi. My SCBWI critique group—Beth Elliott, Sarah Sambles, Chang Hong, Louise Bradford, and Madeleine McLaughlin—gave me the thumbs-up on my first tentative attempts at a few early scenes. And a host of other wonderful readers helped me fill in the gaps and figure out where to go next: Justine Hart, Rhen Wilson, Erica Mendoza Frey, Tracy Derynck, Averill Frankes, Rachel Sarah, Bree Barton, Shellie Faught, and Melissa Mazzone, thank you for being part of the village that shaped this book.

  Thank you to all the wizardly professionals whose expertise and eagle eyes have brought it into the world: Lana Popović, sorcerer agent; and everyone on the Sourcebooks Fire team, especially Annie Berger, Sarah Kasman, and Cassie Gutman. They embraced my monster story, made it beautiful, filed its teeth into deliciously wicked fangs, and set it lurching into motion. It continues to be a joy and a privilege to work with you all.

  Thank you to my own monsters, Rose Bérubé and Dej
i Yanofsky, for brainstorming with me and for always bubbling over with interest, excitement, and weirdness. I’m so glad you’re with me on this wild, winding road.

  And as a final note: The poem that graces the divider pages of this book is “Dark Pines Under Water” by Gwendolyn MacEwen, which has always reminded me of the woods that inspired this story. It is used here with the kind permission of David MacKinnon, the executor for her estate.

  About the Author

  © Mondays with Mac Photography

  Amelinda Bérubé is a writer and editor with a small department in the Canadian public service. She holds a bachelor of humanities degree from Carleton University and a master of arts degree from McGill University. Visit her online at metuiteme.com.

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