by Dan Wells
Mom did have a point, though. I glanced at her quickly—the tired face, the worn clothes—and thought about how much she looked like Lauren. How much she looked like me. She understood what I was going through, not from experience, but from pure, uncluttered empathy. She was my mom, and she knew me, but I barely knew her at all.
“Why don’t we start with something easier,” I said, picking at my pizza. “I’ll, you know, get to know you, and then move up from there.” I looked at her again, expecting some kind of derisive comment about how talking to other people was “moving up” from her, but instead I saw surprise. Her eyes were wide, her mouth was tight, and there was something in the corner of her eye. I watched as it developed into a tear.
She wasn’t sad. I knew my mom’s moods well enough to tell that. This kind of tear was something I’d never seen before. Shock? Pain?
Joy?
“That’s not fair,” I said, pointing at the tear. “Getting emotional with me is cheating.”
Mom stifled a laugh, and grabbed me in a big hug. I hugged her back, awkwardly, feeling stupid but kind of content. The monster looked down at her neck, slim and unprotected, and imagined what it would be like to snap it in half. I glowered at myself and pulled out of the hug.
“Thanks for the pizza tonight,” I said. “It’s good.” It was the only compliment I could think of.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“No reason.”
As the weeks turned into months, the investigation continued, but eventually they realized that the killings had stopped for good, and Clayton County slowly crept back toward a semblance of normality.
Still, speculation was common, and the theories grew wilder with time: maybe it was a drifter or a thrill killer; maybe it was a hit man harvesting organs for the black market; maybe it was a devilish cult that used the victims in unspeakable rituals. People wanted the explanation to be as big and flashy as the killings themselves, but the truth was far more terrifying: true terror doesn’t come from giant monsters but from small, innocent-looking people. People like Mr. Crowley.
People like me.
You’ll never see us coming.