The Mallow Marsh Monster

by Gary Ghislain

  “What?!” she yelled, losing some of her cool.

  My phone had started vibrating inside the pocket of my hoodie. I checked the screen. It was Mum.

  “Dinner’s ready,” she trilled when I answered.

  We’re the dinner, I thought. I could hear loud classical music in the background and thanked my lucky stars that it must have been drowning out the sounds from the Goolz’s house.

  “Tell her to lock her door,” Ilona whispered. “And ask her to go to her window and check our house.”

  “I made savory pancakes, you lucky boy. With béchamel. No mushrooms, plenty of cheese, just the way you like it.”

  “Hold on a second, Mum.” I muted my phone. “If she looks at your house and sees a huge green monster, she’s going to freak out.”

  “Ha!” Ilona shook her head and sighed. “Fine. Don’t tell her anything. We’ll deal with this on our own.”

  I unmuted.

  “Harold? What’s going on? Why did you put me on hold?”

  “Oh, just…stuff !” I tried to sound casual, but my voice was a couple notches too high. “I’ll be home soon.”

  My eyes were locked on the door. I was pretty sure I could hear the creature moving around on the porch. Its paws or hoofs or whatever kind of nightmarish limbs were clickety-clacking against the wooden boards.

  “Don’t be too long. Pancakes!”

  “Yeah!” I cheered weakly, trying to match her enthusiasm. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I hung up and the creature stopped moving. It rapped the base of the front door. I saw the tips of two long black claws slide through the tiny gap on the floor. They moved left and right, exploring the gap, and then disappeared. My heart was pounding so hard that my head moved to the beat. My eyes were locked on the large split running vertically down the front door. Could it sustain another blow?

  It didn’t matter. A window imploded in the living room. The monster had chosen another way in. We heard something heavy land inside and thrash around in broken glass.

  Ilona ran to the living room door, slammed it, and leaned against it. “Harold!” she shouted.

  The monster crashed against the door, nearly tearing it off the wall on the first blow. Ilona fell to the floor as if she had been hit by a car. The Zaporino flew out of her hand. She grabbed it and crawled to me on all fours, then leaned against my legs and pointed it at the door.

  We heard the clickety-clack of the creature’s claws moving around in the living room. Then silence. Then the doorknob started to turn.

  “Don’t you just hate it when monsters have opposable thumbs?!” Ilona complained.

  The lock clicked. The creature pushed on the door. It had fallen half off the hinges, so it got stuck midway.

  “You go back to hell!” Ilona took aim, but didn’t press the trigger. Her hands were shaking. She looked frozen with fear.

  I snatched the Zaporino from her. Something green and scarier than death was leaning into the hall to take a look at us. I saw its head. I saw its jaws. I saw its paws and its claws. I saw its bulging red grapefruit-sized eyes. It roared when it saw us. I aimed the gadget and squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Close your eyes!” I shouted to Ilona.

  I pulled the trigger. There was a long hiss and ZAAAAP!

  The room was flooded with the intense white light of a thousand stars. The creature shrieked so high it hurt my ears. I tried to look at it, to see if the Zaporino had done enough damage, but I couldn’t see a thing.

  “Harold!” Ilona called. I felt her hand pressing against my chest, making sure I was still there with her. “I can’t see!”

  “Me neither.”

  I could hear the creature moving around. My fingers groped for the trigger.

  “Shoot it again.”

  “I’m trying to.” And then I screamed as something tried to drag me out of my wheelchair. I felt Ilona grab hold of my hoodie, but I was jerked out of her grip and hit the floor, landing hard on my back. My fingers somehow found the trigger. I covered my eyes with my left arm and pulled the trigger. There was another long hiss and a radiating ZAAAAP. The monster screeched even louder. I heard it thrashing madly.

  “Harold, where are you?”

  I recovered some of my sight and saw Ilona crawling toward me.

  “I see you,” she said. She leaned over me and touched my face like a blind person trying to figure out my features. “Tell me you’re all right.”

  “I think I am,” I said. She helped me to sit up.

  My vision was slowly coming back. I looked around for the monster, but didn’t see it anywhere. “I think it’s gone.”

  We stayed there, silently listening. The only sounds were the wind and the ocean waves—and then my phone vibrating in my pocket again.

  “Harold! Seriously!” Mum complained when I picked up her call. “The pancakes are getting cold and my béchamel is getting dry.”

  “Sorry,” I said breathlessly. “Time flies when you’re having fun. I’ll be there in a sec, I promise.” I hung up.

  The twins’ voices floated down from upstairs.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Is it dead?”

  “Is it gone?”

  We looked up and saw them standing with Suzie at the top of the stairs.

  Suzie took a step down. “Tell us!”

  Ilona turned to me with a smile. “Harold got the monster.”

  She looked so impressed, so proud, so madly in love with me that my throat tightened and words didn’t come out easily.

  “I got it good,” I confirmed.

  6

  THE

  BITE

  “It wasn’t supposed to be so dry.” Mum was stirring her béchamel hopelessly. “It was perfect. And then it got overcooked.”

  I didn’t care about the béchamel fiasco. I was sitting with her at the dining room table, looking out at the veranda, thinking about the monster: Claws. Jaws. Gigantic red eyes.

  “You’re not eating,” she complained. “It’s not very good, is it?”

  “No, it’s delicious.” I soaked a morsel of pancake in the overcooked béchamel and forced it into my mouth.

  It was pitch-dark outside. The windows had turned into perfect black mirrors. The ocean had disappeared, replaced by our own reflections. The monster could be out there, looking at us, and we wouldn’t know it.

  “Harold?” she said. “You’re so quiet. Is everything all right with the Goolz?”

  “Everything’s fine. They’re great.”

  I remembered how Suzie had knelt and dipped her fingers into the black goo on the living room floor. “Is that the creature’s blood?” she’d asked. “Did the Zaporino make it bleed?”

  “Harold!” Mum called me back to the present.

  “What?”

  “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it. I can warm up something else.”

  I put down my fork and smiled at her. “The pancakes are fine, but I’m really not that hungry. I snacked nonstop at the Goolz,” I lied. “Can I leave the table?”

  She sighed and nodded.

  I carried my plate to the sink and scraped the uneaten pancakes into the trash bin. I tried to see the Goolz’s home through the window, but could only see my own face and worried eyes. My mind was racing in circles—from the monster to Ilona’s face, and back to the monster.

  I squinted at the window. “What the hell?” The reflection of my face had suddenly morphed into Ilona’s features. Then I realized it wasn’t a reflection—Ilona really was there on the other side of the window, close enough that I could see her despite the glare.

  She waved and pointed toward the drainpipe she sometimes used to secretly climb up to my bedroom on the second floor. She disappeared into the dark before Mum saw her.

  “I’m going upstairs.” I pushed away from the sink and zoomed to the stair lift.

  “Snacking is not eating!” Mum called as the lift carried me up. “Is there anything the Goolz do right?”

  �
��Scaring people!” I called back.

  “Ha!” Mum sneered and shook her head. “They don’t scare me.”

  I reached the landing and shifted my body into my chair, then went to my room and closed the door behind me. Ilona was already perched outside the window. I opened it for her, and she slid gracefully into the room and brushed the dirt from her dress. I looked out. A light came to life on the Goolz’s porch. Uncle Jerry came out, carrying a bunch of planks and some tools. He dropped them in front of the broken window and got to work boarding it up.

  “They didn’t find Mr. Farrell,” Ilona said from beside me. “Uncle Jerry was terribly disappointed that he missed the monster attack.”

  We watched him nailing a board across the lower part of the window. I could see his butt crack despite the distance. I closed the window, but we could still hear the sharp raps of his hammer.

  “I hope Mum doesn’t ask what happened to your window.”

  “Didn’t she see or hear anything?” Ilona pushed aside some of the mess on my bed and sat down.

  I shrugged. “I guess not.”

  “Good. I like your mom, but we have to keep her in the dark, or she’ll never let you out of the house again.”

  She swung her legs up on the bed and leaned against the wall. “The twins are going to stay with us tonight,” she said, adjusting my pillow behind her back. “You know what? I think the monster was going after them. That’s why it came all the way from the marsh to our house.”

  “I’ll be back for you,” I said, quoting the message carved in the truck. “I thought about that too. But how did it know where to find them?”

  She shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “Why is it going after them?”

  “Dunno.”

  I heard Mum’s percolator bubbling downstairs. The smell of brewing coffee drifted into my room. Coffee at night meant Mum was going to be working late.

  I switched on my bedside lamp so we could see each other better. Ilona looked down at my leg and her eyes went wide. “What is that?”

  “What’s what?” I looked down. “Oh, crap!” Black goo had soaked through my jeans and was dripping onto my white sneaker. I checked the floor behind me and saw that I had left an inky trail of black spots from the window to my bed. “Is that coming out of me?!”

  I lifted the leg of my jeans and Ilona got off the bed to squat in front of me.

  “Harold!” she exclaimed. “Did that creature bite you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t have felt it. It dragged me out of my chair.”

  She pointed at a messy circle of gray punctures. “That looks like a bite!”

  I leaned down to look. Instead of blood, the holes oozed black goo.

  “It bit me!”

  Ilona collected some of the goo with her finger. “This looks like the goop the monster left behind after you zapped it.” She sniffed it. “It smells like moldy wood.” She looked up at me. “We have to wash out the wound.”

  “Bathroom!” I barked and made a sharp turn toward the door. I wanted to get rid of that evil slime as fast as possible.

  Ilona followed me into the hall. We stopped, listening for Mum. She was humming while doing the dishes. I nodded at Ilona and we proceeded into the bathroom.

  Ilona took one of the towels hanging by the sink and wet it with warm water. She sat on the edge of the tub, gently lifted my leg onto her lap, and carefully cleaned the wound. In no time, the white towel looked like it had wrestled with a squid—and lost.

  “Is it still coming out of me?”

  Ilona threw the towel on the floor. “I don’t know.”

  She took another towel and patted my leg dry, removing the last traces of black sludge.

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” she said when she was done, but her voice sounded shaky. The little gray dots, no bigger than mosquito bites, had stopped oozing.

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” I repeated. We looked at each other. She looked as scared as I felt.

  We heard Mum coming upstairs, still humming. Ilona pulled down the leg of my jeans and carefully took my leg off her lap. She sprang up and picked up the filthy towel right as Mum passed the open bathroom door.

  “Oh!” Mum cried. “Ilona! How long have you been here? How did you get in?”

  “She climbed through my window,” I said. Ilona gaped at me, but I was too freaked out to think of a lie.

  Mum looked at Ilona, who was holding the two darkened towels behind her back. “I just needed to talk to Harold,” Ilona said. “School stuff.”

  Mum put her coffee cup down on a small table in the hallway and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. She was so busy being annoyed at us and staring down at Ilona that she missed the black spot on my jeans. “This is not okay, you two. Ilona, I’m walking you home right now.”

  “I can go by myself,” Ilona said.

  “You’re not getting off that easy. I’m going to speak to your father about this.”

  Ilona nodded. She dropped the towels on my lap as soon as Mum turned her back to us. I discreetly tossed them into my bedroom as I followed them to the stairs.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Mum stopped on the landing. “No, you’re not, young man. You stay here and wait your turn.”

  “It’s okay, Harold. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ilona said. I nodded and watched them go downstairs.

  Just before going out, Mum looked up at me. “Not cool!” she said and slammed the door behind them.

  I lifted my jeans. The bite was dry. The skin had a reddish glow around it. I touched it. It was radiating warmth. I quickly pulled my jeans over it, as if not seeing it would make it go away.

  “Not cool,” I repeated and waited for Mum to return and reinstate the embargo.

  7

  THE

  MONSTER WITHIN

  I woke up feeling great.

  I sat up in bed and pushed away my duvet with a rare energy. I was so full of beans, I felt like giving myself a high five and woot-wooting for joy.

  I remembered the monster and the bite and Mum scolding me about Ilona, but none of it seemed to matter. “This is awesome!” I shouted, without even knowing what exactly I was so happy about.

  I checked my leg. All traces of the monster bite were gone. I pressed down on the skin—it wasn’t even sore. It was like it had never happened.

  I shifted my body into my wheelchair and went to the window to check for any unusual activity at the Goolz’s house. The sun came in so hard when I opened the curtains that I felt like it had slapped me. I threw the curtains closed. Back in the darkness, it took only a nanosecond for the feeling of unlimited strength to flow back into me.

  I picked up the soiled towels from the floor and stuffed them in my backpack, planning to trash them on my way to school. “Sorry, guys. You didn’t survive the monster attack,” I told them and zipped the bag. I picked up my jeans next. I studied them and decided that the dried black spot wasn’t odd enough to alarm Mum. “You, you survived it,” I said, and dumped them in the laundry basket on my way to the stairs.

  I stopped in the hall to take in the lovely scent of pancakes and bacon coming from downstairs. “Wicked,” I said. I was ravenous. Suddenly my goal in life was to stuff my face with food, and pancakes and bacon seemed perfect.

  “Did you sleep at all?” I asked Mum as I rode the lift downstairs.

  Mum turned around, and I had my answer. She looked exhausted, her eyes empty, her bathrobe defeated, her shoulders slumped like they were pulled by an excess of gravity.

  “I did an all-nighter,” she said. “My brain is mush.”

  She set a plate in front of me as I pulled up to the table. “Accounting is not for the faint-hearted.” She yawned. “This is a pancake rerun. I had so much leftover batter.”

  “Awesome! The award for best mum in the world goes to YOU.” I also wanted to high-five her and woot-wooted some more.

  She dropped a few pancakes and strips of bacon onto my plate. I looked up at
her as she covered them in syrup. Smiling, she looked less tired. She was really pleased with her best mum award.

  I grabbed my fork and got to work.

  “Hey, easy there, try to chew them at least.”

  I gave her a thumbs-up as I swallowed a strip of bacon whole. Chewing was for wimps.

  “Good to see that last night’s shenanigans didn’t kill your appetite.”

  I didn’t care that she’d found out Ilona sneaked in or that she’d reported it to Frank Goolz. Knowing him, he’d probably congratulated his daughter for it. As for me, I’d gotten away with nothing but a talking-to. She’d made me promise that from now on, Ilona would use the front door. And that was that.

  “I really don’t like that strange man living with them.” Mum sipped her tea, looking at the Goolz’s house through the kitchen window. “He nearly attacked me when I asked him a few simple questions.”

  She was, of course, talking about Uncle Jerry. He had called her nosy and told her to mind her own business when she’d asked about the window.

  “Who falls through a window anyway?” she asked me, since Frank Goolz had told her that his giant guest had tripped on their porch and fallen through the glass.

  “He’s big and clumsy,” I said, using my finger to mop up the last traces of syrup on my plate. “Could you make more pancakes? I’m really starving today.”

  She gave me a surprised look and went back to the stove to start another batch.

  I sat back, waiting for some sort of relief from the food I had devoured. But the hunger wasn’t going away. “More bacon, too,” I said. “Please,” I added when she gave me a look.

  I went to the fridge as she poured batter into a sizzling pan. I opened it and stared in awe. “OJ. You’re dead!” I told the bottle and grabbed it with an evil monster laugh.

  * * *

  —

  After eating enough pancakes to slow down a strong pony, I got ready for school. Ilona was waiting out front, schoolbag in hand, when I went out to the porch.

  “Suzie’s not coming?” I asked as I joined her on the road.

  “She’s faking sick again. She wants to stay with the twins. She loves weird people.” She looked down at my leg. “How’s the bite?”