Destroy All Monsters

by Sam J. Miller

  “I . . . ,” he said, but didn’t finish the sentence. I took two more pictures.

  “Screw you,” he hollered, and he sounded like a little kid—but like a guilty little kid, one who’d gotten caught when they didn’t think they would. He took a step toward me, and stumbled, and fell to his knees. Everyone laughed.

  This was where I went too far. I knew it; I just couldn’t help myself. The tingle in my spine was back. I could see him through my lens, his face angry and embarrassed, and his body . . . His body was covered in shadow-spiders—fat, oily, gruesome creatures. Their spiky bodies and pincer jaws dripping with poison. They swarmed his face, poured into and out of his mouth.

  Irrational hatred, uncontrollable anger. That’s what I read.

  I took his picture.

  He took another step forward, and stumbled again. Everyone laughed, and that made him holler into the darkness.

  “You think you’re so fucking smart,” he said, and picked up a big red jug of kerosene. “So much better than any of us. But you’re no different. You’ll burn just like anything else.” He uncapped the kerosene. A couple people gasped. Someone else laughed.

  “Chill, bro,” said a voice from the far side of the fire, and Bobby told them to shut the fuck up. Which they did.

  You think people are decent. You think, Okay, maybe they’re idiots or macho jerks or they’ve got a chip on their shoulders because of whatever they’ve been through, but at the core, underneath it all, they’re decent. They’ll come through in a crisis.

  But they aren’t. Not all of them.

  Bobby splashed kerosene into the fire and onto the sand in front of me. It sizzled and burned there. I opened my mouth to say something smart, but of course I couldn’t. All my words were gone. No one had my back. He could set me on fire and none of them would lift a finger to stop him.

  Fear paralyzed me.

  But fear also made me remember. Opened something inside me. A bridge, to the last time I felt so afraid.

  Twelve years old. Going to see Solomon. Summer twilight; the air smelled like someone cooking pork chops. Ringing his doorbell—Connor’s doorbell. Getting no answer. Going around back, calling his name up to the treehouse. Still no answer.

  Climbing up.

  Seeing Solomon.

  Little twelve-year-old Solomon turned around, startled by my arrival. Caught. Horrified. Frightened. His mouth a wide dark circle of terror. And then . . . I fell.

  I don’t know how long we stood there, Bobby and me and the jug of kerosene. It couldn’t have been too long. The flames of the bonfire were frozen in time. Sheffield’s eyes had never been so big. His face was wide open, taking this all in. What Bobby did, what I did. I couldn’t be sure what I saw there on Sheffield’s face, but it was pretty damn close to pride. Like he’d engineered this moment, and it was turning out better than anything he could have imagined.

  That was Sheffield’s thing. Controlling people. Manipulating them. He liked to be the boss. I saw it, and I shivered.

  And then time sped up, again. And Bobby roared, an ugly inarticulate garble-sound of idiot rage, and he swung the jug.

  Two people screamed.

  And the jug—stopped. In midair. Midswing.

  No one saw Solomon coming, or knew how long he’d been standing there. In the dark. Watching. Waiting.

  Or had he just arrived, his timing perfect to reach out one strong arm and grab hold of Bobby and stop it? To take the kerosene jug out of his hand, and hurl it into the Hudson River? The splash sounded super–far away. A bell tolled, out on the river. Solomon stomped out where the sand was still burning in front of me.

  “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand for mine. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Twenty-Four

  Solomon

  A bell tolled, from a buoy out on the riversea. I had no idea how long I’d been wandering like that, through the crowded streets, deaf and dumb to the world around me, trying to pretend like I hadn’t just watched a monster get murdered.

  Shouts jolted me back to reality. A bunch of kids, taunting a green dragon. Screaming at it; running up and poking it and running away.

  Most monsters in Darkside are pretty chill about random antagonism. But this one was pissed. All the monsters were on edge that morning. What had happened to the chimera—they could smell it in the air. And people were messing with monsters everywhere.

  I called out, “Dumb move, kids. They’re vegetarians, but you still don’t want to piss them off.”

  “Shut up, monster!” one of them hollered.

  “Yeah!”

  “Your funeral,” I said, and kept walking.

  But then I stopped. Turned around.

  It wouldn’t kill them. But it might slap them with its tail, give them a gentle kick, and the last thing this powder-keg city needed was a couple crying kids talking about how a monster attacked them.

  I looked at the coffee cup in my hand. It had gone cold. I did not even remember buying it. Any other day, kids harassing a dragon would have amused me. Like ants annoying an elephant.

  But now, I wasn’t amused. I was afraid.

  The dragon let loose an angry roar. Fear spiked, made me dizzy, unstable. But fear also made me remember. Opened something inside me. A bridge, to the last time I felt so disoriented.

  Twelve years old. Wandering through the Palace halls. Going to see Ash. Summer twilight; walking the ramparts high above the city. Black clouds piled high like a cliff in the distance. Air smelling like someone roasting a pig. I knocked on the door of Ash’s room. Got no answer. Remembered it was time for her daily combat session with her nine soldiers.

  I headed for the Magic Rooms. I climbed up to the High Tower.

  I saw Ash.

  Little twelve-year-old Ash turned around, startled by my arrival. Standing, with her nine bodyguards seated in a circle around her.

  Their faces: horrified. Frightened.

  And then, as one, their nine faces went from horror to anger. Fury. They stood up all at once.

  Thunder boomed outside. The night had suddenly gone from clear to stormy. Rain fell in heavy battering sheets.

  That storm. The Night of Red Diamonds.

  Just two days before my abrupt eviction from the Palace.

  The memory went no further. It faded out, like the smoke dispersed by the wind as soon as I breathed it out. What did it mean? And why was I remembering it now?

  I looked at my cigarette. Sucked air in, watched the little fire blaze up.

  And saw . . . something else. Some other place.

  Smoke billowing up from a bonfire on a chilly beach. The fire lighting up the faces of strange men—overgrown boys, really—making them look feral and wild and exaggerated. A bell tolling, from one of the buoys out on the river. Lights glimmering on the far side of it—but how was that possible? No one could see to the other side of the riversea. What was I looking at? Was this a memory, or a vision?

  Whatever it was, Ash was there. I saw her standing in the wind. Unafraid. Unsedated.

  My other side. That’s what I was seeing.

  I didn’t even try, this time. Didn’t try to fight it, didn’t try to force it. It just happened. That’s the only explanation I can offer, for why I might have been able to access my ability in that moment, without going into a full-body freak-out. The fear I’d already been feeling, over what I’d seen the night before, was amplified by the fear I felt at seeing Ash in peril.

  My spine shivered. I let it. I let the tingles roll all through me. A long low moan escaped my lips.

  And then, a second moan sounded, this one from above me.

  The dragon wasn’t angry anymore. It was afraid. And animals who are afraid are the most dangerous of all. It reared up onto its hind legs, kicking at nothing with its forefeet. It lowered its neck to bellow at the kids, who as far as I could tell hadn’t done anything new to annoy it. In fact, nothing had happened that could have turned its anger into fear.

  Nothing except . .
. my own fear.

  It roared again, and swung its tail, shattering the plate-glass window of a shiny luxury shopping center. The sound of breaking glass was so loud.

  “Calm down,” I whispered, as much to myself as to the dragon. I took one deep breath in, and then let it out slow. Did that nine more times.

  The dragon blinked, and lowered a foot that had been set to kick out at the kids. Went back to calmly munching eucalyptus leaves.

  Had I . . . changed its mood? Its mind?

  Holy.

  Shit.

  Twenty-Five

  Ash

  “Tell me more,” I said, stroking Solomon’s hair. He lay on his back with his head in my lap, looking up at the stars.

  “I don’t know where to start,” he said.

  After we left the party, we’d gotten into my car and I’d driven us south. Parked by the river; walked out along the Germantown waterfront. A group was there cooking fish they’d caught that day, over a fire in a barrel. And drinking, apparently, and breaking beer bottles. After what I’d just been through, dumb drunk kids should have scared me, but I wasn’t afraid of them. With Solomon at my side, I wasn’t afraid of anything.

  “But I’m a princess,” I said. “I want to be superclear about that part.”

  He laughed. “You are.”

  “And I have superpowerful magical abilities.”

  “Probably. But no one knows what they are. Because you’ve been under an evil spell.”

  I clapped my hands. “I always wanted to be under an evil spell.”

  He turned over onto his side, so that the back of his head was against my stomach. Looked out across the river.

  “How did you know?” I asked. “Where I was? That I was in danger?”

  Solomon shrugged. “I don’t know how it works. I was . . . elsewhere. Over there, the Darkside. Wandering the streets. Drinking coffee. And then I was back, and standing by the bonfire.”

  Of course, I wasn’t really a princess, and there were no brontosauruses blocking traffic anywhere that I knew of. But the spiders I’d seen, crawling into Bobby’s open, angry mouth; the guilt that had helped me connect him to the break-in at Jewel’s? The fact that Solomon found me, at precisely the right moment?

  Something strange was happening.

  I kept telling myself it was impossible, but it was harder and harder to deny. Something was changing in the very air around us, and I had to follow it to the end—whatever that was.

  “Some lady with a clipboard was sniffing around the brakeman’s hut when I came back this afternoon. Luckily I saw her before she saw me. I could run away. And then the next thing you know, I was on that beach. . . .”

  October wind made me shiver, which made him shiver. “Tell me more,” I said again. I could have listened to him for hours. Because it was fascinating, and because I could tell it made him happy to talk about it. And because when he stopped, I’d have to tell him that I was the one who called Child Protective Services.

  “Darkside is the only place where monsters and humans can coexist. The queen’s great-great-great-grandmother brokered a magical truce among all the sentient species to create a safe place for everyone.”

  And then there’s this—and I think once again that we’re just going crazy in tandem.

  “Do you ever write this stuff down?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You should.”

  “It scares me,” he said. “I don’t mind talking about it with you, because you’re part of it, but the more I think about it, the more confused I get. Like, right now, while we’re talking, I’m fine. Magical truce, whatever. But when I stop talking? When I look off into the distance? And I can hear the wind, and the cold, and the dark? It gets blurrier. Especially if I shut my eyes. Like I come unanchored.”

  “So keep them open,” I said. “Look at me. I’ll be your anchor.”

  Or we’ll come unanchored together.

  He nodded, rolled onto his back again. Our eyes locked. He smiled; so did I.

  “Thank you, Ash.”

  “I think . . . I’m seeing things too. Only when I look through my camera lens.”

  “I told you,” he said. “Everything is changing. The balance is being upset. Something terrible is coming, and if we’re gonna stand any chance of stopping it, we need to see it clearly.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the book he held, only partly because I wanted to change the subject.

  He handed it to me: Out of the Dark, by Helen Keller.

  “Did you know she was a socialist?” he said.

  “I didn’t know anything about her, except that she was deaf and blind and mute and I cried like a baby at that movie about her.”

  “Back then, lots and lots of disabled people got that way because of accidents and diseases that only happened to them because they were poor. Children who’d lost hands in the factories where they were forced to work. Children who went blind from syphilis they had contracted at birth from mothers forced into prostitution. Helen saw that poverty was the real evil, and believed that the only solution was to overthrow all the powerful men who exploited people.”

  This was the old Solomon. The kid so smart it was scary. Crazy, that he could coexist with the one who believed in sky whales.

  “She was a revolutionary,” he continued. “Like you.”

  “Would that be Princess Me, or Boring Me?”

  “Both. There’s really only one. I saw what you were doing, down by the river.”

  “What was I doing?”

  “You were gunning for them. The bad guys. They were afraid of you.”

  I ran my fingers through his close-cropped hair. I shut my eyes, but I could still feel Solomon’s on me.

  “Solomon,” I said, “I remembered something.”

  I told him what I remembered: seeing him up in the treehouse, caught in the middle of something. Me, falling. As I heard the words come out of my mouth I suspected it was a mistake, but I respected him too much to keep a secret from him.

  Solomon’s eyes widened. He sat up.

  “What?” I said. “Did you—remember—something—too?”

  He stood up. He was breathing heavily. Already, sweat stood out on his forehead.

  “No,” he said. “Oh no. No no no.”

  “Solomon,” I said. “What do you remember?”

  He turned, from staring across the river at a single flickering green light, and looked at me.

  I’ll never forget that look, as long as I live.

  It was utter pain.

  He turned and ran off into the night. Along the river, where I couldn’t follow in my car.

  “Solomon!” I called, even after I knew it was no use.

  My belly gurgled at the peppery smell of grilled fish. A girl laughed. A buoy clanged.

  Twenty-Six

  Solomon

  The street vendor had used too much pepper on my grilled-fish kebab, but it had been a long time since I ate and I scarfed it down in a couple of massive bites.

  “Hey, girl,” I said, arriving at Maraud’s stall in the Underbridge paddock.

  When I stepped into the enclosure, she pushed her head against mine. Too hard, but that’s pretty standard for my big mauve allosaurus. It’s not her fault she’s too affectionate, and humans are so much smaller and more fragile than she is.

  “I know, girl.”

  I had gotten all the fear out of my system, and most of the desperation, but a low-level sadness was still throbbing inside me. She nuzzled me, hard enough to push me back a step.

  “Come here,” I said, and put my arms around her snout. Rubbed her cheek. She shut her eyes and let her breath out in a long slow snort-sigh. Her head was as big as my whole torso.

  I shut my eyes too. Tried to think about anything other than what was happening to my city. To monsters everywhere. Tried to tame my fear, so it wouldn’t touch Maraud.

  “You okay?” asked a voice from the darkness.

  “Niv,” I said, whe
n he stepped into the light. “How long have you been in here?”

  “Couple of hours. Waiting for you.”

  “And she didn’t eat you,” I said, impressed.

  “We’ve been having a great time, actually.”

  “You left Ash alone? Unguarded?”

  He laughed. “Unguarded? She’s with Radha, and I’d wager a lot of money that woman’s a way scarier fighter than I’ll ever be.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “So,” I said, dreading it. “Why were you waiting for me?”

  He smiled. Hopefully.

  I wanted to step back, but I didn’t. I kept one hand on Maraud’s forearm, feeling the tiny feathers across her skin.

  “Can we try this again?” he asked.

  I didn’t speak.

  “I know how hard it’s been for you—out here. I know I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. But I’ve been through stuff too. And I care about you. I think we could be good for each other.”

  I shrugged, feeling a lump in my throat grow bigger and bigger.

  He kissed me. I let him. Put my hands on his chest, as if to push him away, and then just let them rest there. And then I kissed him back. Hungrily, until he pulled away.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said, sliding down to sit in the straw. “Me and Ash. It’s not safe for her, and it’s not safe for your family.”

  I sat too. “Yeah.” And then I remembered the burlap sack I’d dragged in with me, and handed it to him.

  “What’s this?”

  “A present,” I said. “For Maraud. Give it to her.”

  He opened it up, and then winced at the smell, and then laughed. “Here, girl,” he said, and hoisted up the coelacanth steak I’d purchased. She ate it greedily, exactly like I’d eaten my fish kebab.

  “Ash’s personal guard,” I said, because this one detail had been bugging me ever since I regained my memory of Ash in the High Tower. “The nine soldiers.”

  Niv frowned. “Yeah?”

  “What happened to them? They were trained to be by her side until the end of her life or theirs.”

  “Well, then—it sounds like you already know what happened to them,” he said.