“No one is going to die. Or turn into a monster.” Ilona handed the remaining syringes to her father. “It’s going to work, right, Dad?”
He smiled at her and unbolted the trapdoor. “You—” He pointed at the twins. “In the cage. Everyone else, go upstairs.”
The twins scurried into the cage. Frank Goolz grabbed his satchel and followed them in, then snaked his hand through the bars to turn the key that was hanging from the lock. He removed it and dropped it into his satchel.
Uncle Jerry led the way out of the basement. “You heard the man. Everybody out!”
Ilona grabbed the handles of my chair. “Suzie!”
Suzie ran to the dissection table and grabbed the Zaporino that Uncle Jerry had left there. “Why can’t I stay with you down here?” she asked her father. “I’m way older than when we defeated the Carcassonne Creature. Old enough for cage duties.”
“Forget about it,” Uncle Jerry grunted. “Frank always gets the fun jobs.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky,” Frank Goolz told her. “The monsters might attack from upstairs.” He extended his arm outside the cage and pulled her gently toward him. “Hold on to the Zaporino, my love. It might come in handy. Now go help your sister.”
Suzie sighed and put the Zaporino in her handbag with the Sleep-o-Stick. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she said, but she did as her father asked and came to help Ilona with my chair. I kept my eyes on Frank Goolz and the twins. The cage was tall enough for the girls to stand up, but he had to squat. He showed me one of the syringes. “We’ve got this, Harold. You be good up there.”
I did a mock military salute as we ascended the last step out of the basement.
“Two monsters! Ha! I haven’t been this excited since my beard caught on fire,” Uncle Jerry said, bolting the basement door behind us.
* * *
—
Ilona switched off all the lights except one in the kitchen, so we had just enough light to move around without knocking into things. It didn’t make any difference for me. I was silently and secretly exercising my new monster supersenses. I could sense the locations of people behind me and even in the basement. I could even feel their emotions—fear, excitement, impatience.
Suzie was drumming the Zaporino against her leg. The noise it made was unbearable. Closing my eyes only made it worse. I could hear Ilona breathing. I could hear her heartbeat as clearly as if I had my ear against her chest. I could hear Uncle Jerry grinding his teeth and feel the strong current of cool air streaming into his big hairy nostrils, then blasting out in a hot rush.
Even worse was the plink-plonk of the dripping faucet in the kitchen. Each drop was a nuclear explosion, reminding me that I needed to drink or die.
But that wasn’t the worst. The worst things were the creepy voices inside my mind. They were like frantic ideas that kept bouncing around my head but weren’t mine. Give us back our daughters, give us back our daughters, they repeated incessantly. And each time I closed my eyes, I knew for sure that the ideas came from the monsters themselves and that somehow, since I was becoming one of them, they had a way of broadcasting their thoughts directly into my head, just like they had broadcast their own visions earlier that night.
“You all right?” Ilona asked, noticing that I was closing my eyes.
“A-okay,” I lied.
Suzie finally stopped fiddling with the Zaporino. “Maybe the monsters are busy eating a dog somewhere?” She was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, staring at the basement door.
“They’ll come. I’m sure of that.” Uncle Jerry was posted at the window, a syringe in his hand, scanning the darkness outside for any sign of monster activity.
“How long can we wait before it’s too late?” Suzie asked. Waiting wasn’t her strong suit. She was the type to live in the moment, especially if she could run around breaking things.
Ilona dragged a chair over and sat beside me. She shivered from the cold. Even without looking at her, I could count the goose bumps on the back of her neck, which was both surreal and awesome.
“It’s going to work,” she said. She nervously shifted her grip on the syringe she was holding. I heard the liquid sloshing back and forth.
“I’m out!” Uncle Jerry shouted, making us jump. He threw the last tiny corner of a napkin in his mouth. “Has anybody seen any paper towels? No toilet paper. I don’t chew on that.” He stopped on his way to the kitchen and turned to the basement door. Something inhuman had just shrieked down there.
GIVE US BACK OUR DAUGHTERS! a terrifying voice screamed inside my head.
“It’s coming through the trapdoor, like Ilona said it would.” On top of receiving its thoughts, I could sense its presence and see the creature crawling out of the well.
Suzie jumped to her feet, and I approached the basement door. I put my hand on it. “It’s staying away from the cage. I think it knows it’s a trap.”
“How do you know?” Suzie was holding the Zaporino with both hands, pointing it at the door.
“I just do. I can see it in my mind. I can even hear its thoughts. The monster knows exactly what your father is trying to do.”
There was a terrifying cry, followed by a terrible KABOOM. I knew the monster had picked up the dissection table and thrown it against the cage with tremendous force.
“We’ve got to help them!” Suzie shouted.
“Frank!” Uncle Jerry reached for the lock. “I’m coming, buddy.”
“No!” Frank yelled from the basement. “Do not open that door.”
And the monster shrieked horribly.
“Guys,” I said, backing away from the door. I flipped around on my back wheels to look at the dark corridor upstairs.
GIVE US BACK OUR DAUGHTERS! GIVE US BACK OUR DAUGHTERS! two different voices kept screaming in my head.
“There’s another one on the roof,” I said.
Ilona took up position beside me, syringe in hand, ready to inoculate whatever came our way. “Where is it, Harold?”
“It’s trying to find a way in.” A window exploded upstairs.
“It found it.” Uncle Jerry gulped down the last morsel of paper in his mouth and coughed when it got stuck in his throat. He took the plastic cap off his syringe, and a moment later Ilona did the same.
The alien voices in my head suddenly stopped. It seemed that the creatures could choose when to broadcast their sinister thoughts and when to go silent. Still, I could sense their physical presence and feel how the one upstairs was slowly crawling toward us in the darkness.
“It’s going to attack,” I said.
“Harold, I am not one hundred percent sure that my plan was such a great idea,” Ilona whispered helplessly. The goose bumps on her neck had doubled, and it wasn’t from the cold.
“I got this.” Uncle Jerry was pointing the syringe toward the stairs, his hand shaking like crazy. “Where is it now, Harold?”
“It’s upstairs, looking down at us.”
“Should I zap it?” Suzie aimed the Zaporino. Her hand was steady.
The twins screamed downstairs.
GIVE US BACK OUR DAUGHTERS!
The monster leapt down the stairs, aiming for Suzie.
“Suzie! Zap it!” I shouted. “Zap it NOW!”
Zaaaap! The room glowed a pure white light, and pain exploded behind my eyes. I screamed. The monster screamed. The twins kept screaming. It was a real symphony of terror.
“Ilona, it’s burning me!” I covered my face. It felt like the skin was being torn from my body. “I’m burning!”
I felt something oozing off my eyes and sliding between my fingers.
Ilona dropped her syringe on the floor and her hands found me. “Suzie, don’t use the Zaporino again! It’s hurting Harold!”
“It blinded me!” Uncle Jerry shouted. “I can’t see a thing. Can anyone see?”
The burning pain was radiating in waves from my face and hands.
“Where’s the monster?” Suzie asked.
“Come here to me, child,” Uncle Jerry told her.
“Okay,” Suzie said.
A moment of silence followed, then Suzie screamed. “Uncle Jerry! It’s got me! Ilona! Harold!”
A window exploded in the hall. Uncle Jerry shouted a stream of curse words. Suzie called Ilona’s name again and again. Her cries started fading away.
And then, everything went still. Uncle Jerry switched on a light.
“Suzie!” Ilona called desperately. “Suzie! Where are you?”
Suzie didn’t say anything. Suzie was gone.
12
CHASING
SUZIE
“It knew it was a trap.” Frank Goolz threw on his coat. He and the twins had come running upstairs as soon as they’d heard Ilona shouting for her sister.
“It destroyed the lab.”
“Broke everything.”
“When our dad sees that…”
“Our real dad.”
“Not our monster-dad.”
“He’s going to be…”
“Fu-ri-ous!” the twins said.
I finished wiping the black goo oozing from my eyes with a towel. “I can feel what they feel. I can hear what they think. Maybe they can do the same with me.” I threw the towel on the floor. “Maybe they plugged into my mind and that’s how they knew it was a trap.” I turned to Ilona. “It’s like you said. Like a hive mind.”
“Can you see where they are? Do you see Suzie? Do you hear what they’re thinking right now?” she asked.
“I can’t see where they are.” I looked into her eyes. They were full of rage, fear, and even some tears. I was about to make things worse. “But I know what they want.”
I could sense the creatures chattering inside my head about it, the words like noise but their meaning strangely clear to me.
“They want us to deliver their daughters in the marsh, and they’ll give us back Suzie. Unharmed, uneaten, and safe.”
We all turned to the twins.
“No!” they said as one.
“You can’t give us…”
“To them!”
“They will bite us.”
“Eat us.”
“Make us…”
“MONSTERS!”
“Of course, we’re not doing that.” Frank Goolz retrieved the cage key from his coat pocket and gave it to Uncle Jerry. “You squeeze yourself into that cage and lock yourself in with the twins. Try not to squash them.”
The twins didn’t dare protest about his size this time.
Uncle Jerry looked down at the key in his hand. “But, Frank! I want to go hunt that thing with you.”
“Someone needs to stay in the house with the twins and protect them.” Frank Goolz checked his four syringes. “And if the monsters come back, do your best to inject them.”
Uncle Jerry started to protest, but Frank Goolz wasn’t going to waste any time on pointless arguments. “Ilo! You come with me.” He gave Ilona two of his syringes. “You too, Harold! And you stay plugged into their mind and help us find Suzie,” he said and ran outside.
Ilona and I rushed out after him.
I looked back at the house as we reached the dock. Uncle Jerry was standing at the door, grumbling and fuming. The twins stood behind him in the hall, surrounded by mason jars filled with dead things, looking disheveled and strange. They waved at me. “Crap,” I muttered when I realized they were using opposite hands. Somehow seeing them lose their synchronicity unnerved me more than when they moved as one.
“Harold, hurry!” Ilona called. She was running after her father, their leather boots already pounding a frenetic beat on the wood of the dock.
The dock was connected to the muddy ground like a ramp. I got on it easily and charged full-steam ahead until I caught up with them. They had stopped and now stood side by side, scanning the marsh.
“Can you hear them in your head? Can you see them?” Ilona asked.
The moonlight, obscured by heavy clouds, provided very little light. I closed my eyes, trying to see if my monster superpowers could help us find Suzie.
Water, grass, insects, frogs, the dock, Frank Goolz, the syringe in his hand, Ilona catching her breath…They all appeared in my mind with such clarity that I didn’t need to use my eyes anymore.
“Snake,” I said as one slid gracefully into the water maybe fifty yards away.
“What?” Ilona asked.
“Wait.” I sensed something else. Someone was nearby, frightened and alone. “Someone’s over there.” I pointed into the thick darkness eating up the dock ahead of us.
“Is it Suzie?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Frank Goolz gave me a tap on the back and darted forward. We followed him.
“There!” I shouted. Moonlight hit the dock through a break in the clouds, revealing an unmoving shape ahead of us. It was Mayor Carter, balled up in pain and fear.
She rolled onto her back and winced, the old mirror clenched in her hand. “I couldn’t make it look in the mirror.”
“Did it bite you?” Frank Goolz hunkered down to check her body for bites.
“I couldn’t make it look at itself !” she repeated.
“Was the monster dragging a girl? My daughter Suzie? Did you see her?”
She opened her mouth but no words came out. But her bewildered eyes said plenty.
“I don’t think she was bitten or hurt. I think she’s in shock.” Frank Goolz stood up, scanning the marsh again. “Harold, you’ve got to find her.”
“Harold?” Mayor Carter moaned, seeing me for the first time. “You have to make the monster look at itself.” She held the mirror out to me.
“I think Mayor Carter lost her marbles,” I whispered to the Goolz.
“Never mind about that,” Ilona said briskly, scanning the marsh with her father. “Can you hear their thoughts, now? Can you see through the monsters’ eyes? You gotta help us, Harold.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to plug into the monsters’ minds.
It was silent. No thoughts. No vision. No monsters.
“I…”
I opened my eyes when I heard Suzie scream. I didn’t need my superpowers for that. Everyone had heard it, even Mayor Carter, who lifted her head to try to see who was screaming with such terror.
Ilona leaned over the railing on the side of the dock and called Suzie’s name. The clouds moved in front of the moon, plunging us back into darkness. I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight.
“This way.” I balanced the phone against my stomach and moved forward, lighting the way for them.
“Wait! Don’t leave me!” Mayor Carter wailed.
“We’ll be back for you,” Frank Goolz shouted. “After we get my daughter back!”
I was pushing hard on my wheels, my chair throbbing on the uneven boards at a mad tempo.
“Oh, no.” I slowed to a stop. The dock ahead of me had collapsed into the water.
Ilona and her father stopped, too, the three of us right at the edge.
“Can you tell where she is?” Ilona asked.
GIVE US BACK OUR DAUGHTERS, the monsters’ voices said inside my head. I could also sense Suzie’s presence ahead.
“She’s there,” I said, pointing at the submerged boards.
Ilona called for Suzie again. All we heard back was the echo of her own voice fading over the buzzing of the marsh. “Are you sure she’s there?”
“I’m sure.” I brought myself dangerously close to the water. Suzie’s presence was like a knowing rooted deep inside of me. “She’s right ahead.”
“What about the monsters? Are they with her?” Ilona asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t feel their presence right now. But they keep telling me that they want their daughters back.”
“Come on, Ilo! We’ll find out if they’re with her soon enough.” Frank Goolz stepped off the edge. He looked back at me. “You stay here, Harold, we’ll be back with her,” and he sloshed away, hip-deep in the d
ark water.
“I have to go with him,” Ilona said.
“I know.”
She took the syringes from her coat pocket and handed one to me. “Be careful. If one of them comes near you, inject it.”
She jumped into the water. “Hell, it’s cold,” she breathed out, then followed her father, holding the syringe out of the water.
She looked back at me before disappearing from view, her eyes reflecting the light from my phone. I could hear her heartbeat for a long time after I could no longer see her. Then the sound faded away, leaving only the sense of her presence in my mind.
I put on my brakes angrily. I felt rotten. The image of Ilona disappearing from my sight played on a loop behind my eyes. I made a promise to myself then and there that I would never again let her walk into danger without me.
“Dammit!” I yelled.
I looked down at the syringe gripped in my fist. It was shining in the weak light from my phone. I tapped the flashlight off and put the phone back into my sweatshirt pocket.
A board cracked behind me. A piece of wood broke off and splashed into the water. Something had approached while I was distracted over Ilona. “Mayor Carter?” I asked, sensing the new presence. I released my brakes and turned around, dropping the syringe in my lap.
“Oh freaking no!” Something was crawling toward me on the dock. A dark cloud moved in the sky and a ray of silvery moonlight brushed the creature’s slimy green skin.
GIVE US BACK OUR DAUGHTERS!
And then the Mallow Marsh Monster stood up right in front of me.
13
THE
MALLOW MARSH
MONSTER
Moving away from the creature, even half an inch, meant falling backward into the water.
Five short yards in front of me, things looked even bleaker.
The monster spread its long, thin green arms, blocking all possible escape routes. It took a couple of steps toward me, tightening the distance between sheer terror and absolute doom.
I tried to shout for help, but my throat closed on the words. The monster tilted its head back, opened its enormous jaws, and let loose an ear-piercing shriek, which trailed off in a concert of gurgles.
The Mallow Marsh Monster Page 10