Thoroughly Modern Monsters

by Jennifer Rainey

  One marker had a grimy hand pointing toward Heaven. I wondered if there were any graves to be found with the hand pointing in the other direction and wrote it down in my journal as I stood amongst the graves.

  “Move to your left.”

  “Hmm?” I looked up and found a ghost sitting on the ramshackle wooden fence around the graveyard. He cocked his head and looked at me with empty, dark, dead eyes. I couldn’t see the surrounding forest through him, but I knew he was a ghost as sure as I knew my own name. Humans don’t appear so suddenly, so soundlessly.

  “You’re standing upon my grave.”

  “Oh!” I chirped and shuffled away through rotten leaves. “I’m sorry. Is this yours?”

  He nodded and put his hands on his knees. “Jebediah Wilkes. 1836-1890. I’m afraid it can no longer be read on the grave marker.”

  “Oh. Lovely stone, though. The moss gives it character.”

  Jebediah stroked a woolly moustache and dented his brow. “I suppose you could say that.”

  I cleared my throat and reached for Thoreau in my pocket. “I’m sorry to bother you, though. I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll get going. Reading to do.”

  Perhaps he shrugged. “You’re not bothering me.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “Where do you live?” he asked and brushed invisible dust from his worn suit. It didn’t seem to me as though it had been any spectacular garment even when he was first buried. It was too large, the pant legs rolled up at his ankles.

  At any rate, I was, I realized at that point, being held conversational hostage by a ghost.

  “Five or six miles from here.”

  “Do you love your house?” he pressed. “Cherish it?”

  “My apartment isn’t so bad. We just got rid of the roaches,” I said with a chuckle, but he didn’t even flinch. “Where do you live?”

  He shook his head simply. “Me? … I don’t live anymore.”

  “Ah. Well, where did you live?”

  “Not far from here. Over that hill a way’s away. Pretty old house. Old even then,” he said hollowly, and I noted he said everything that way. I pondered if it would be rude to write the observation in my notebook. That particular week, I was an aspiring horror author after three weeks of an unfortunate affair with science fiction.

  “You liked that house?” I asked.

  “I loved that house.”

  “Why don’t you…?” I flipped through words in my mind, afraid I now walked on eggshells. I was unaware of what was and was not a topic of polite conversation when speaking to a spirit. I’d never met one before. He raised his eyebrows and leaned in. I continued, “You could… stick around, you know.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Why don’t you haunt your old house?”

  He shook his head again and frowned. There was a sudden breeze that made the naked branches of the trees clack together. I wasn’t sure if perhaps he caused it. “I can’t. It’s not the same house these days, and I am not the same man.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Jebediah scratched at his thin, dusty hair, once again leaned forward on the fence and said emphatically, “I’m dead.”

  I decided in that moment that if being a ghost truly meant being this morose all the time, I didn’t ever want to be one.

  “Does death change a person?” I asked, knowing even then that the words sounded naïve.

  “Doesn’t living change a person?” he asked.

  “Not everyone,” I said, albeit weakly. “You can always find the occasional stick in the mud, the developmentally ignorant.”

  There he went shaking his head again, and I found myself already tired of this conversation with a spirit who was always right. “No, people change. Always. As does the world.” He paused and looked off in the distance, toward the hill that one could just barely make out through the trees, toward his old home. “I wouldn’t haunt it even if it hadn’t been… fixed. I suppose the owners think they have fixed my house.”

  “And why is that, Mr. Wilkes?”

  “The new owners would only force me to work. I worked my whole life. I deserve tranquility now.”

  “You know about the monster legislation?”

  He nodded. “I know that once a man dies, the government classifies him as a monster. I know I would be something to stare at, and I would be made to work for humans about whom I don’t care.”

  “And you wish to be alone.”

  Jebediah Wilkes might have smiled. I was not, until that point, aware that he could.

  “If you’re alone, at least you can ignore the changes around you a little more easily. Inner changes are something different entirely, of course, but I don’t always mind those,” Jebediah said. “But you want to read, I see. I’ll leave you to yourself. I’ve had enough human interaction today to keep me satisfied for another few decades.”

  He disappeared after that. He didn’t fade as the books always said ghosts did. I blinked, and he was gone. To me, it was more unnerving than if he had simply faded. I ran from the graveyard and toward home. Thoreau would once again have to wait.

  For years, I wondered if I should write about Jebediah, but even if I changed his name, his appearance, his location, it still felt wrong. At the time, I couldn’t put my finger on why, but each time I sat before a blank page with every intention of writing even vaguely about him, the page stayed blank.

  In the end, I realized I didn’t want to give Jebediah Wilkes more attention than he wanted.

  This afternoon, a man with a comically large backpack came to my house and asked for directions to town. He was the first person I’d spoken to in nearly two weeks. People don’t often come back toward my neck of the woods, and I don’t often go into town. Hell, if I didn’t need to eat, I imagine I’d just stay back here with the cats forever.

  People have told me they’re scared of my old house. Not this bastard, apparently.

  The man asked at first if my husband was around. I told him I didn’t have one, never had one, and he blushed. I was happy to see him blush. He deserved any embarrassment he felt.

  I sent the man with the backpack on his way and returned to my sculpture of Benjamin Franklin in the parlor-turned-studio.

  I occasionally see Jebediah in the mirrors of this ancient place when I suppose I should see my own face. He never smiles, but nods at me simply, always at the exact time I nod at him. People like me and Jebediah Wilkes understand each other. I may not have understood back then, but I do now. People like me and Jebediah Wilkes live in graveyards and old houses.

  The Perils of Coming Home

  Present Day.

  Jae Lynn did not immediately recognize the bearded man in flannel standing on her doorstep as she turned the corner onto Maple Street.

  “Great. Another political douche. No one in the house votes, asshole. You’re wasting your time,” she muttered under her breath and adjusted her backpack on her shoulder.

  He timidly looked in the window and knocked on the door again before stuffing his hands in his pockets. He shuffled in place. The guy looked more awkward than the science fiction club president at a Homecoming dance, she thought.

  “Can I help you?” she called.

  He turned around and flipped up the brim of his battered hunting hat. “Well, I’ll be damned. You look just like your mother.”

  “Uncle Harold? Jesus!”

  “Nah, just me. I would’ve brought Jesus, too, but he was a little busy,” Harold Bosley chuckled, and Jae Lynn embraced her uncle. “And why aren’t you in school?”

  “I got sent home. I punched Ashley Funk in that ugly face of hers. She looks like a damn hammerhead shark, anyway,” Jae Lynn said proudly. She planned to change her tone to something more ashamed later when she had to tell her father, but Uncle Harold was a different story.

  At that point, she couldn’t remember why she started fighting with Ashley in the first place, but it didn’t take long before Jae Lynn had shoved her to the cafeteria floor and smeared crea
med corn in her blonde extensions.

  “Well, if that’s the case, maybe you did her a favor,” Uncle Harold said.

  “And I don’t look like Mom.”

  “The hell you don’t.”

  “Dad always says I ended up looking like you,” Jae Lynn proclaimed and led her uncle back to the door. She reached for a tarnished key under the doormat that said Welcome Hoe since the M had worn off in the rain.

  “Does he?” Uncle Harold said quietly and carefully removed his hat as though he were wandering into church for the first time in a while.

  Jae Lynn took it from him and tossed it on the couch. “Don’t worry. He’s not home right now. Anyway, he’s not as mad as he was. For one, he doesn’t turn off the TV every time you’re on anymore.” She dropped her backpack to the ground, knowing well enough that she wouldn’t touch it again until she went back to school, whenever that was. Grandma always said homework took a backseat to family, and who was she to question her grandmother?

  “Is that so?” The plastic cover on the couch crinkled as Uncle Harold took a seat. He clasped large hands nervously.

  “Mmm-hmm!” Jae Lynn rushed to the kitchen to fetch two glasses of iced tea. Ringo stared at her with his tail swishing. A thin layer of hair covered the table. “Cat, get down from there or I’ll skin you,” she hissed as she hurried back into the living room. Ringo did not obey.

  She set both teas on the stained-glass coffee table and curled up in her grandmother’s splotchy velvet armchair. “Nah, there’s nothing to worry about. Dad’s not as much of a bastard. He can’t turn you away, anyway. You’re his brother. You’re family.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  Uncle Harold didn’t touch his glass of iced tea, but Jae Lynn drained half of hers in one gulp. “So, what brings you back home? New York too much for you?”

  “Needed a break.”

  Jae Lynn giggled. “From busting crime?”

  “It’s not that fun. You make it sound like a comic book,” Uncle Harold chuckled and looked out the window with uneasy eyes. “It’s not.”

  “Sure it is! Catching bad guys, television appearances. Hey, I saw you on The Today Show after your unit helped take down that drug dealer in Brooklyn. The anchor was checking you out, Uncle Harold.”

  Uncle Harold’s broad shoulders relaxed just a bit. “You see, I thought she was, too, but none of the other guys believed me.”

  “They’re jealous,” Jae Lynn said with a firm nod. “You’re the star of the show.”

  “I’m the star of the show when they give me Moonlight serum,” he said bitterly.

  Jae Lynn cleared her throat and sat in the chair properly. She reached for her tea again but sipped it delicately this time. “What’s that stuff like, anyway?”

  Uncle Harold shook his head firmly and finally took his own iced tea. “You don’t want to know about that stuff, Jae Lynn.”

  “What? Is it secret werewolf business?” she asked. She looked over her shoulder and played with her ponytail. “What makes you think I wouldn’t want to know about it?”

  “It’s vile, goddammit. It’s obscene,” Uncle Harold muttered. “It’s damn near mind control. They make me go wolf whenever they need me to, whenever a case gets rough.” He swallowed a mouthful of iced tea. “I’m telling you, they don’t pay me enough.”

  Jae Lynn nodded and shoved herself to her feet. Ever since her fight with Ashley Funk, she couldn’t sit still. She walked to the window and pulled back the sickly pink curtains. “You got a girlfriend back in NYC?”

  “Nah. Law enforcement ain’t good for girlfriends.”

  “But being a werewolf?” Jae Lynn pressed. “Does that affect your love life?”

  Uncle Harold shrugged. “Not so much. Occasionally. Why?”

  “Nothing. Just wondering. Where is Grandma? She’s going to be so excited to see you!” Jae Lynn tossed the curtain back again and skipped back to the armchair. “She’s gonna want to make something good for dinner. Pork chops. Do you still like pork chops?”

  “Does a bear shit in the woods, girl?”

  Jae Lynn smiled, took out her ponytail and then put it back in again.

  “You heard from your mom recently?”

  She felt her smile weaken, but still she tried to hold onto it. She stood up again to take her own glass to the kitchen. “No, not for a long time. I don’t even know where she is.” Ringo looked to Jae Lynn and cocked his head. He didn’t regard her the way he used to. He was always cautious now. Sure, he’d hop up on Grandma’s lap, Dustin’s lap, Dad’s lap if he was feeling particularly adventurous but not Jae Lynn’s. These days, he’d narrow his eyes at her, consider her, but not visit her.

  She turned and leaned on the doorframe between the kitchen and the living room before saying, “I’ve been meaning to write you about something.”

  “Have you?”

  “I’ve been thinking about things. I’ve got a problem.”

  Uncle Harold looked pale all of a sudden. He sniffed loudly and looked into his iced tea like it would swallow him up if he wanted it to. “What kind of problem?”

  “Look, you’re the only one I can really talk to about this. Grandma said I’m not supposed to talk to Dad or Dustin about it, and I don’t want to, anyway,” she said and crossed her arms over her chest, gently drawing circles in the dirty carpet with the toe of her shoe.

  “Well, tell me what’s on your min—”

  “It’s not a big deal. It really isn’t. I just want to talk about it.”

  “Well, if you don’t—”

  “And it isn’t about boys, for God’s sake. That’s what Grandma always assumes. Dammit, I hate boys almost as much as I hate girls.”

  “Spit it out, Jae Lynn,” Uncle Harold said with an uneasy smile, and the front door opened behind him.

  “Harold! Would you look at that! Is that Harold Bosley in my living room! You get over here and give your mother a hug.”

  Jae Lynn rolled her eyes and stared out the window as her grandmother damn near squeezed her uncle to death like a flowery sweatshirt-wearing python just back from bingo.

  “You never write!”

  “I’m sorry, mama.”

  “You never call!”

  “Sorry, mama.”

  “Ain’t you got e-mail in New York City?”

  “I never check it.”

  She dropped her bag lady purse on the couch and motioned to Jae Lynn. “And I see you’ve been talking to Jae Lynn. Jae, what are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Got in a fight. Aunt Hatty signed me out.”

  “Again? Harold, this girl is a mess of trouble, but ain’t she pretty? Skinny little thing. Won’t wear make-up, but she looks like her mama. You get your uncle some iced tea?”

  “Sure did, Grandma,” Jae Lynn muttered.

  “And the biscuits? You offer him a biscuit?”

  “Dustin ate all the biscuits.”

  “Darn it, girl, your brother is a bottomless pit,” Grandma said and reached for her lighter and a cigarette. She pursed her crinkled lips around the cigarette and puckered up as she lit. “Have you asked Uncle Harold about your wolf problem?”

  “What?” Uncle Harold asked.

  “Jesus, Grandma!”

  “She’s a werewolf. Jae Lynn is. Been for what? Five months now?” Grandma asked and gently lowered herself into the armchair. She held her pink lipstick-stained cigarette between her fingers. “She’s doing pretty good keeping it under control, but I figured you could give her some pointers.”

  “For God’s sake, Grandma, I was going to tell him, but I was going to do it a little more delicately! Jesus.”

  “Hey, you stop with that. He’s our Lord,” Grandma said and shook her head.

  Uncle Harold said, “Calm down, Mama. She doesn’t mean anything by it. Jae Lynn, how did this happen?”

  She eyed her grandmother, making certain the old woman would let her tell her own story. She just sucked on her cancer stick like it was a lollipop. Jae Lynn said,
“I was watching football tryouts five months ago. Greg Bryson, of all people, made a move on me, and I told him to fuck off—”

  “Jae Lynn!” Grandma spat.

  “—and next thing I knew, he bit me. Bit me. I was just mad at first…”

  “Then the full moon came,” Uncle Harold finished with a sympathetic smile.

  She nodded, keeping her arms tight over her chest. “He won’t talk to me at school. We reported it to the cops, but didn’t press charges. His parents won’t return our calls anymore. I hear he’s moving.”

  “Where do you go when you change?”

  “Grandma’s been sending me to Aunt Hatty’s. Dad doesn’t talk to Hatty, so there’s no chance of it getting out.”

  Uncle Harold nodded and looked over his shoulder and out the window. Jae Lynn wondered if he expected to see his brother coming up the walk. “You have to tell him sometime, Jae.”

  “I can’t tell him. You know what he’ll do. No offense, Uncle Harold, but I don’t want him to treat me the way he treats you.” Her uncle sighed heavily. “I mean, at least you could leave! At least you have a career because you’re a werewolf. I’m sixteen, for God’s sake. I’m stuck with him for at least another two years.”

  Uncle Harold frowned and sat back on the crinkling sofa. Ringo sauntered past Jae Lynn and dramatically leapt onto Grandma’s lap. The cat’s eyes darted apprehensively from Jae Lynn to Uncle Harold and back again. “And your brother?” he asked.

  “Oh, Harold, that boy is just not bright. I don’t want Dustin getting involved,” Grandma muttered and waved her hand around. Smoke snaked through the air, and Ringo turned his back to Jae Lynn. “He’s got a girl coming over tonight.”

  “Dustin?” Jae Lynn asked. “Who?”

  “Lyla Paulson, I think her name was.”

  “God. Grandma, that girl is a skank.”

  Uncle Harold laughed behind his hand, and Jae Lynn stood up a little taller.

  “Look, we’ll talk more later,” Grandma said and smashed her cigarette into the antique ashtray at her side. “Harold, how do you feel about pork chops for dinner?”

  Lyla Paulson was the only girl in school, Jae Lynn decided that evening, who would wear a pink mini skirt and rhinestone-covered flip flops to meet a boy’s family. Her eyes were emptier than Jae Lynn’s wallet. She was the perfect match for Dustin, who kept trying in vain to brush his hair into his eyes because that was apparently how boys were supposed to look.