The Mallow Marsh Monster

by Gary Ghislain

  I caught my reflection in the mirror again. It was still smiling. “Stop it!” I said out loud and suddenly it did, in the most surreal way. The entire surface of the mirror turned ink-black and my grinning reflection disappeared. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the mirror again, waiting for my vision to clear and show my own face again. Instead, I saw two little shapes moving in the darkness.

  I leaned forward and brought my face close to the mirror. One of the shapes sharpened. “Oh, crap!” I shouted. The shape was Uncle Jerry and the other was Frank Goolz.

  “Leave me alone, you damn creature!” Uncle Jerry cried.

  An inhuman shriek followed and zoooom! The bathroom, the mirror, everything was gone. I was in the marsh. I was the one shrieking. I was the monster, and I was the one chasing them. I was pushing away high grass, reaching for Uncle Jerry with my claws, ready to tear him apart. And I felt an indescribable joy. Uncle Jerry let loose a high-pitched scream. He turned to me with the Zaporino in his hand. He zapped me and I jolted back to my human body.

  I was in the bathroom again, looking at my reflection in the mirror. The shapes were gone, but I knew it hadn’t been a dream. The smell of the marsh, the sensation of the freezing water against my body, the pleasure of hunting Frank Goolz and his giant friend were all real memories. “No more water,” I muttered and went to the door. I unlocked it, shivering.

  “Somebody help us!” one of the twins screamed behind me. “Please!”

  “Don’t look!” I commanded myself. My heart was punching the inside of my chest.

  “HELP!”

  I couldn’t help it. I turned around and went back to the mirror. It was black again. There were two new shapes behind the glass—the twins, running away from someone or something, screaming as loud as Uncle Jerry had. “Here we go again,” I said, and zoooom! The mirror and the bathroom disappeared. But this time, I didn’t teleport into the marsh. I—the monster me—was in the Farrells’ house, chasing the twins down the stairs at top speed. But I didn’t want to hurt them. I didn’t even want to scare them. I wanted to take them into the marsh with me. I slid my claws down the hallway walls, my enormous green body hardly fitting in the narrow space. I sniffed the air, searching for their scent, then spat out black goo. All I could smell was the unbearable stench of the formalin. The twins had disappeared, and I could no longer sense their presence. I howled in frustration.

  “Harold?” Ilona whispered, knocking on the door.

  Her voice broke the spell. I spun away from the mirror, opened the door, and bolted into the hallway, breathing hard, looking left and right. I was back in my own home, back in my own mind and body.

  “Are you all right?” Ilona asked. “I heard you calling for someone.”

  “I was calling for your dad,” I said, closing the door behind me, as if that thin pane of wood could keep me safe. “And Uncle Jerry.”

  “What!?” Suzie asked from the doorway to my room.

  I told them about the visions, the mirror turning black, the voices, their father running away from the monster in the marsh. I told them it didn’t feel like a hallucination. It felt like the real thing.

  “There are two of them—two monsters,” I said. “I have no idea how I know that, but I do. One is going after your dad and Uncle Jerry, and the other one wants the twins. And…”

  I trailed off. Ilona was watching me with worried eyes. “I sound crazy, right?”

  “Welcome to our world.” Suzie shrugged. “Crazy is pretty standard for a Goolz.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy at all,” Ilona said.

  “What’s happening to me?”

  “You’re becoming one of them. They must communicate that way, sharing one mind. Like a hive thing.”

  She was right. I had high-def multi-monster vision. “And the twins. They disappeared when I was—when the monster was running after them. Where do you think they went?”

  “I don’t know. But Dad is in danger and we have to help him.”

  “Of course we need to help him!” Suzie shouted. “We should never have let him go without us in the first place.”

  “Wait!” I said as she started toward the stairs.

  “What?!” she barked back at me.

  “Mum is never going to let me go out. I mean she’s not even going to let you guys go out now that your dad has put you under her care.”

  The Goolz sisters looked at each other. Ilona nodded like she’d green-lit an idea that Suzie hadn’t even said aloud.

  “Bingo!” Suzie said, running downstairs.

  “What is she going to do?”

  “It’s okay, Harold. It’s really harmless.”

  “What’s harmless?” Then suddenly I knew what Suzie was going to do. She’d taken her handbag with her. “Suzie! Don’t you dare!” I shouted, moving at high speed toward the stair lift.

  Mum was relaxing on the sofa, a cup of steaming tea in her hand. She looked up from her book. “What’s going on up there?”

  Suzie had already taken the blowgun and the chopsticks out of her handbag. “Miss Bell, can you put down your cup? I don’t want you to burn yourself.”

  “Don’t you dare Sleep-o-Stick Mum!” I yelled, sliding into the lift and starting my slow descent.

  “She’s just going to go to sleep and wake up all happy and rested.” Ilona said from behind me.

  “No!”

  Mum put her teacup down on the coffee table. Suzie plucked the pellet out of the leather pouch with the chopsticks and dropped it in the opening of the blowgun.

  “What on earth are you doing, Suzie?” Mum asked, standing up.

  “It doesn’t matter what I tell you, Miss Bell. You won’t remember anything that happens for about ten minutes before the pellet gets you.”

  “Pellet? What pellet?”

  I was almost downstairs.

  Mum looked at me. “Harold?”

  “Suzie, don’t!” I looked back at Ilona. “Don’t let her do it!”

  Ilona looked deep into my eyes and then nodded. “Suzie, don’t do it,” she said. “Harold doesn’t want us to.”

  “What!?” Suzie took the blowgun away from her lips. “What do you mean don’t do it? Oh, you guys are such killjoys!”

  She lowered the blowgun and the pellet fell out. It bounced on the floor, bling-blinging as it rolled all the way to Mum’s feet.

  “What on earth is that?” Mum crouched down.

  “Mum! Don’t!”

  She pinched it off the floor and looked at it. “Oh,” she said softly, letting it go. It bling-blinged and rolled back to Suzie’s feet.

  Mum sat down. “Your father is going to hear about this.” And, poof, she gently fell back on the sofa, fast asleep.

  Suzie looked back at us. “I didn’t do it.”

  “You Sleep-o-Sticked Mum!” I had reached the bottom of the stairs. I let go of my chair and shifted my body into it.

  Suzie shrugged. “I didn’t! You saw it. She did it to herself.”

  “YOU! SLEEP! O! STICKED! MUM!” I approached the sofa, pointing at Suzie and then at Mum with both hands, like a deranged puppet controlled by a hyperactive puppeteer.

  Mum’s eyes were half closed, her mouth wide open. She was snoring away.

  “She’s just sleeping, Harold.” Ilona gently closed her eyes.

  Suzie picked up the pellet from the floor with her chopsticks and dropped it back into the leather pouch. “It was an accident, okay?”

  “It was anything but an accident. I can’t believe you did this!” I wailed, touching Mum’s hand. “Mum?”

  “Let me rephrase it for you, Harold.” Suzie zoomed toward the front door. “It was a very lucky accident. Because Dad’s in danger and he needs us.”

  Ilona put on her coat. “Harold, she’s right. Your mother will be fine. She won’t remember anything that happened. We have to go now.”

  I let go of Mum’s hand and joined them in the hall.

  “You have to admit it was sort of fun. Your Mom’s face when s
he picked up the pellet!” Suzie made a silly face, opened the front door, and ran out.

  “You people are maniacs,” I said.

  Ilona shrugged. “ ‘To be alive is to be reckless. To be dead is to be safe,’ ” she said, quoting one of her father’s novels. She gave me a bittersweet smile.

  “Hey, lovers! Time to fight monsters, remember? You’ll have to hold hands later,” Suzie called.

  I took a last look at Mum. She was sleeping safely on the sofa. I closed the door and followed the Goolz into the night.

  10

  MIRROR,

  MIRROR

  We were halfway to the marsh when we saw a beam of light ahead of us. Someone with a flashlight was coming our way. We had to hide—otherwise someone might ask us questions or even take us home and find Mum in a coma.

  We got off the road and disappeared into the maze of yards and houses. We found a nice discreet hiding place behind Ms. Collingwood’s toolshed and huddled together.

  The flashlight was just passing in front of us when my stomach gurgled noisily. Oh, no, I thought as a huge balloon of gas pushed painfully against my chest. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “About what?” Ilona asked and I burped like a nuclear bomb.

  Whoever was carrying the flashlight froze.

  “Hello?” someone said, and the beam of a light brushed over us. “Who’s there?”

  I recognized Mayor Carter’s voice. She was cursing under her breath. I had never heard her use that type of language before.

  “Hello?” she repeated. “Show yourself.”

  She cursed some more.

  My next burp bubbled up inside of me. I clamped both hands over my mouth to contain the eruption.

  My chair moved back. All by itself.

  I looked over my shoulder. Ilona was pulling me backward. She put her finger over her lips. Suzie was tiptoeing beside her. We were retreating toward Ms. Collingwood’s house, inching along the wall as Mayor Carter left the main road, pointing her flashlight at the spot we’d just abandoned.

  “I hear you!” Mayor Carter called. “I know you’re here.”

  Ilona kept pulling me back. My wheels were making an awful lot of noise on the gravel path. “We are so busted,” Suzie whispered.

  I wanted to whisper back that I totally agreed with her, but instead of murmured words, a gigantic burp with all the acoustic characteristics of a demon having a bowel movement exploded out of me.

  “Son of a gun!” Mayor Carter yelled and turned her light toward us. We all quickly shielded our eyes.

  “Harold?!” Mayor Carter blurted. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Can you stop pointing that light at us?!” Suzie snapped.

  The light moved away from our faces. As she approached us, I noticed that Mayor Carter was holding what looked like a Ping-Pong paddle.

  She put the paddle on the ground and patted my shoulder. “This is not a good night for a stroll, Harold. There’s a wild animal roaming through our town.”

  Mayor Carter was very fond of me. I was a regular at the public library and we often discussed books. She always recommended great ones. Sometimes I told her about authors and books she hadn’t heard of, and she would read them and tell me what she thought.

  “Does your mother know you’re out here?” she asked.

  “Yeah?” I lied.

  “She totally does, and she’s cool with it,” Suzie said defiantly. “And if you’re out here looking for the monster, well, that’s not us, right? So can we go now?”

  “A monster?” Mayor Carter gave a nervous laugh. “I’m not looking for a monster. There’s no monster! No monster at all. I’m doing the same thing you are…just taking a walk.”

  I looked down at the paddle and saw my face reflected back at me. She definitely wasn’t on her way to a nighttime Ping-Pong game. The paddle was an old handheld mirror with a silvery frame and a faded reflecting surface.

  Mayor Carter picked up the mirror. “You kids shouldn’t be out here,” she said, hiding the reflective surface of the mirror against her jacket.

  “We were on our way home,” I said, and suddenly tasted blood in my mouth. Lots of blood. I wanted to spit it out, but I swallowed it instead, hoping it wouldn’t show on my teeth.

  Mayor Carter nodded. “You kids do that.” She looked too tense for someone just taking a stroll with an ancient mirror. “Do you want me to walk with you?”

  “We’re fine. Thank you. We’re going to go that way.” Ilona pointed at the path beside Ms. Collingwood’s house. “Shortcut. Safer.”

  Mayor Carter nodded and looked at the main road. She looked at it for a long while, then wheezed out a worried sigh and gave me a little tap on the shoulder with her flashlight. “I’ll see you at the library, Harold. Bring your new friends.”

  “Will do.” We watched her walk away.

  I put a finger inside my mouth and touched my new teeth. They were bigger now. Fully grown. Larger and sharper than my normal ones. “It’s getting worse.”

  “Good thing you didn’t turn in front of her. Wrong audience for that.” Suzie pressed her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll give you another tip, Harold. I learned it the hard way over years of hunting strange creatures. Don’t hide and burp!”

  “Noted,” I said and turned to Ilona. “Did you notice the mirror?”

  “I did.”

  “It’s like in the old drawing we saw. Remember?” I kept my eyes on Mayor Carter. The night swallowed her until all I could see was the dancing beam of her flashlight. “The guy running away from the monster held a mirror exactly like hers.”

  “I remember.” Ilona started to walk toward the main road. “She’s going toward the marsh. She looks worried. She’s up to something.”

  We followed Mayor Carter’s light at a safe distance. We remained silent until she turned off the road and disappeared into the woods.

  “Should we follow her?” I asked.

  “Let’s go to the Farrells’ and find Dad first,” Ilona decided. “We’ll solve the mirror puzzle with him.”

  Mayor Carter’s flashlight blinked between trees and then disappeared completely, leaving us in absolute darkness. I took out my phone and turned on the light, catching clouds of mini-mosquitoes in the beam.

  “It’s ironic,” Suzie mused, swinging a stick as she resumed walking toward the marsh. “She was probably looking for a monster. She had you right in front of her and she let you go.”

  “He’s not a monster!” Ilona said.

  “Yet.”

  * * *

  —

  “I’m sure there are plenty of good sides to being a monster.” Suzie counted on her fingers as we made our way through the grass. “One: No more school. Two: No more showers. Three: No one dares to yell at you when you break things.” She stopped at three fingers, searching her mind for more perks. “Four…No more vegetables. I think we can all agree that the creature looks more like a carnivore. And, um…well, five: it’s just cool.”

  “You’re not listening to me.” Ilona slapped a mosquito on her hand. “He’s not going to become a monster. I won’t let it happen.”

  My stomach grumbled disapprovingly.

  Suzie rolled her eyes. “Good luck with that.” She split the high grass at the end of the path for me. “Are you still starving?”

  “I could suck in these mosquitoes like they were candy.”

  “Please do.” Ilona slapped a giant one on her neck. It left a nasty smudge of blood on her skin.

  “Do you feel like eating a dog?” Suzie asked, as we passed the pickup truck. “Or something bigger? Like a small person? A kid, maybe? Would you like to kill and devour someone my size? I could point out a few people I really don’t like at school.”

  The rotting pickup looked even more sinister in the crude light of my phone.

  “You never go to school, Suzie,” Ilona pointed out.

  “Exactly! Because there are so many morons there. If Harold ate a few of them, maybe I would g
o more.”

  “Can we talk about something else? I’m seriously starving.”

  Suzie pointed at me. “See? He’s starving. Promise me that if you start eating people, you’ll only eat morons.”

  “I don’t know, Suzie. Do we really need to talk about this now?”

  “Promise her.” Ilona squashed another mosquito on her face. “Or we’ll never hear the end of it.”

  I promised her, and Suzie stopped talking for half a second. “How would you kill them?” she asked.

  “Suzie!” Ilona and I begged at the same time.

  “O-kay! Bor-ing!”

  Ilona stopped to look at the marsh. “Can you see where the monsters are? Are you still having visions?”

  I shook my head and looked at the house. A weak, yellowish glow came from the windows, like the Farrells preferred candles to electricity.

  “Maybe Dad’s inside.” Suzie trotted to the front door and knocked. “Hello! Anybody here? Dad? Uncle Jerry?”

  Ilona went to one of the windows and peered inside. “I can’t see anyone.” She moved to the next window. “There!”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The door to the basement is wide open. There’s some light down there.”

  Suzie tried the door. It was unlocked. She opened it and took a step inside. “Dad? Are you in there?”

  We followed her inside. I quickly put my arm over my nose. The smell from the mason jars was unbearable.

  “Dad!” Suzie called, walking toward the basement.

  Two eerie voices answered.

  “He’s not here.”

  “It’s just us.”

  “There was a monster.”

  “But it’s gone.”

  “Holy zowie!” I said. The voices were coming from the jars! “Did you hear that? Are those things talking?”

  “I heard them too.” Suzie came over to inspect the jars.

  “There!” I shouted as something moved inside a large jar.

  “What was it, Harold?” Ilona asked.

  I pointed my phone flashlight at it. Two pairs of eyes rolled around in two different jars, looking from Ilona to Suzie and back to me. One eye was green, three were brown. “Oh, no! It’s the twins’ eyes!” I said in horror.