The Mallow Marsh Monster

by Gary Ghislain

  “Ilona,” I managed to croak.

  The monster focused its bubbly red insect eyes on me. Mr. Farrell’s drawings were impressively accurate. The creature had a mane of purple and green feathers, which opened and spread around its head.

  It approached me slowly, now making a guttural tick-tack-tock-tock sound from deep in its throat. I started shivering. My hand groped for the syringe on my lap.

  The monster leaned over me. It was so close, I could see its scales moving in waves all over its body. I was repeating Ilona’s name under my breath like a prayer as the creature sniffed me through two huge holes in the middle of its face. Warm black goo splattered on my face as it exhaled. I tried to remove the cap from the syringe, but my hands were shaking too much. The monster took my face in its enormous hands and started to squeeze, tick-tack-tock-tocking louder and louder. It cranked my head left and right, like a demented doctor trying to unscrew it.

  MONSTER! it concluded inside my own mind when it took its hands away.

  Apparently pleased with its diagnosis, the creature jerked its head back, and roared, spraying me with another lungful of sticky slime. My fingers found the plastic cap on the syringe. I flicked it away and swung my arm as hard as I could.

  For a moment, the Mallow Marsh Monster and I stared straight into each other’s eyes. Then it looked down at my hand, which was gripping the syringe, which was sunk to the hilt just above its hip.

  “Uh…sorry,” I said. I wasn’t an expert in monster facial expressions, but by the way it opened its mouth and showed me its fangs, I knew it wasn’t too happy about the syringe situation.

  I punched the piston. The monster grabbed the syringe and threw it into the marsh, but I was pretty sure most of the contents had already gone into its body. The creature turned its face back toward mine, suddenly deathly silent.

  MURDER!!! the monster screamed inside my head.

  “Ilona and her father will be here any second,” I told it. “Frank Goolz is nuts and Ilona has more guts than an army of you.”

  The monster didn’t seem to care. It raised both its hands, claws out, ready to shred me to pieces. Its hands went down. But instead of taking my face off, they went to its side where the syringe had been. The monster looked up at me and vomited a bellyful of black slush onto my lap. Its body started to convulse. It fell to its knees and crawled away from me, like I’d become the true monster of the marsh. It looked up, its feathers beginning to wilt, and heaved out another load of slush before running away, ape-like, on all fours.

  “Ilona!” I shouted once I could breathe again.

  No one answered. I took out my phone and used the light to follow the monster, needing to see whether Mr. Farrell’s concoction had worked.

  I slowed down when I saw a dark lump ahead of me. It was Mayor Carter, passed out on the dock, her mirror by her side, reflecting the moon.

  “Hold on, Mayor Carter. I’ll send help,” I said, and continued my pursuit.

  I reached the end of the dock and struggled through the mud to reach the Farrells’ house.

  “Uncle Jerry?” I called as I entered. “Ruth? Beth? Where are you guys?”

  There was no answer.

  “I injected the monster!” I added proudly. “Can anyone hear me?”

  I reached the basement door and looked down the stairs. The lab was totaled, black goo splattered everywhere. The trapdoor was wide open and the cage was empty.

  “ANYBODY?!” I yelled.

  Someone moaned in the kitchen. “Who is that?” I said, lowering my voice.

  I peeked through the doorway. It wasn’t Uncle Jerry or one of the twins. It was a half-monster, half-human creature trying to crawl under the kitchen table. I moved closer to get a better look. Patches of green were flaking off one hand, revealing human skin underneath. It used its human hand to pound the side of its head, dislodging one bulgy red eye and revealing a beautiful human eye, looking at me in fear. The half-monster inserted its human fingers under the scaly skin on its forehead and pulled off its scalp, freeing long black hair. The second insect eye fell off all by itself and rolled right to my chair. It turned from red to gray, then liquefied, and finally evaporated in a cloud of acrid smoke. The monster was gone, the only evidence a few gray puddles on the linoleum around Mrs. Farrell’s human form.

  “It worked!” I said.

  Mrs. Farrell curled into the fetal position, breathing calmly—sleeping, it seemed.

  “I need to find Uncle Jerry,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear me.

  “Uncle Jerry!” I called, rocketing down the hall. I went back outside, scanning the soggy yard as I continued to yell his name.

  “Harold!”

  “Over here!”

  “Behind you.”

  “In the truck.”

  The twins were in the cab of the pickup truck, knocking on the windshield to get my attention. Uncle Jerry opened the rusty passenger door and unfolded his bulky body from the seat.

  “The monster attacked us,” he said. “And I saved the twins.”

  “We couldn’t get in the cage with him.”

  “He was too big.”

  “Like we said.”

  “So when the monster attacked…”

  “He punched it—”

  “Real hard—”

  “Twice!”

  “And the monster got all dizzy.”

  “So we ran out—”

  “Fast!”

  “And we hid—”

  “Here!”

  Uncle Jerry puffed out his chest. “Not the first time I had to one-two a monster, kids. I practically knocked out that one!”

  I looked down at my hands. They were still shaking from my encounter with the creature. They were also losing patches of skin, revealing green scales underneath.

  “Where is the antidote?” I asked. “I need it. Now!”

  I pinched my palm, tearing off a large patch of human skin. “I’ve gotta stop doing that.”

  “Yes, stop doing that, Harold!” Ilona said from behind me.

  I turned around, dropping the patch of skin on the ground. Ilona was stepping off the dock, followed by her father, but no Suzie.

  “The antidote works.” I nodded toward the house. “I injected one of the monsters and it turned back into Mrs. Farrell.”

  I looked at the twins. “Your mother’s in the kitchen. She’s fine.”

  “Mom!” they screamed and ran inside to see her.

  Uncle Jerry followed them. He stopped at the doorway, and pointed a finger at me. “Frank was right about you. You’re a good kid.”

  I was still scratching my monster hand, discreetly removing more skin. Ilona took out a syringe.

  “You’re sure this works?” she asked.

  “Positive.”

  She removed the cap, pulled the neck of my hoodie aside. “This might hurt.”

  I closed my eyes and she injected the antidote into my shoulder. A wave of fatigue washed over me.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Drowsy,” I said. I felt my eyes drifting closed.

  “He’s passing out.” I opened my eyes to see Frank Goolz hunched over me. He lifted me out of my chair. I looked down at my green monster hand dangling against his coat as he carried me into the house.

  Frank Goolz put me down on the sofa. He turned to Uncle Jerry and told him to take my wheelchair and go collect Mayor Carter on the dock before she rolled into the water.

  The twins’ faces appeared right above me.

  “You saved our mother.”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “Naked.”

  “But she’s fine.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  Ilona’s face appeared beside theirs. They looked like three fairies bent over a cradle.

  “You’re going to be fine too, Harold,” she said.

  “You know what?” I mumbled, my words falling one by one into a bottomless pit. “I beat the monster,” and, poof, I passed out.

&nb
sp; 14

  A PACT

  IN THE

  WIND

  I woke up and checked my hand. It was normal—pink, familiar, and entirely human.

  I looked around. My eyes landed on my Hulk poster, and I realized I was lying on my own bed in my own room. The curtains were drawn, but I could see from the light around the edges that it was a sunny day. Ilona was sitting cross-legged on my desk.

  “You’ve been sleeping forever,” she said, giving me a tired smile.

  “How did I get here?”

  “Dad carried you.”

  She came to sit on my bed and looked at me closely. “It’s over. You’re cured.”

  I instinctively ran the tip of my tongue where my fangs used to be. “No more spiky teeth.”

  “You spat them out. I tried to keep them to show you, but they dissolved.”

  “No more monsters’ voices in my head, just…my own thoughts,” I said, looking at her and noticing the fear in her eyes.

  “Suzie!” Suddenly I remembered everything that had happened and shot up in bed. “Where’s Suzie? Did you find her?”

  She shook her head. “Dad and Uncle Jerry are waiting for me downstairs. We’re going back to the marsh to look for her. They searched for her all night, but I stayed here to make sure you were okay.”

  “What about Mum?”

  “She’s still sleeping like a log.”

  Ilona went into the hallway to get my wheelchair. I shifted myself into it and we went downstairs.

  Mum was curled under a blanket on the sofa. I put my hand on her arm and she stirred, then opened her eyes. “Oh, no!” she cried, sitting up. Her hair looked like an explosion had gone off. Her eyes went from me to Ilona to the veranda and back. “I fell asleep!”

  I nodded.

  “I slept in my clothes!” She tried to stand, then wobbled and sat back down. She was still Sleep-o-Sticked.

  Frank Goolz came in through the open front door. “Ilona, we’ve got to go now.”

  Uncle Jerry was standing behind him on the porch. They both looked exhausted and were still covered in dried mud.

  “Frank!” Mum said in surprise. “You look awful.” She shook her head like she was struggling to stay conscious. “Oh boy, do I need coffee.”

  Mum’s second attempt at standing was more successful. She zigzagged to the coffeemaker. “Where’s Suzie?” she asked, struggling to open the tin of coffee.

  “Around…” Ilona said, putting on her coat. “Thank you for letting us stay over.”

  Mum managed to pop the lid of the tin and ground coffee spilled on the counter. “Clumsy!” She sighed and turned to Ilona. “I don’t even remember falling asleep.”

  “It’s all right, Miss Bell. Sometimes, you just need to sleep.”

  I followed them to the porch. Uncle Jerry was already getting into his weirdo-mobile. He looked as concerned as Frank Goolz. Ilona lingered beside me. “We have to search every inch of the marsh, Harold.”

  We knew it was a job she couldn’t do with me, but neither of us said anything.

  Uncle Jerry’s car shuddered and coughed into life, spitting out a nasty cloud of fumes. Frank Goolz opened the passenger door. “Ilona!”

  I had never seen him look so worried. He was normally confident and even excited in the midst of horror. Not anymore.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Ilona said. “Suzie needs me, Harold.”

  “I know,” I said, but I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want us to be apart. My mind was working on overdrive, trying to think of a way to stay together.

  We looked at each other silently for a long moment. There were so many things I wanted to tell her. I thought she wanted to tell me a bunch of things too, but she had no time. She had a father and his crazy friend waiting for her and a sister to save from a monster.

  She started to walk backward toward the car.

  “Ilona.”

  She stopped, giving me a few extra seconds.

  And then, it came over me in a blast of clarity, like a sunrise chasing away the night. “We can do this.”

  “What?”

  “Suzie. We can find her together.”

  “Harold.” She suddenly looked sad.

  “I made a promise,” I said, struggling with each word. My throat tightened, but I kept talking anyway. “I made a promise to myself last night, and I will keep it.” I looked her straight in the eyes. “There’s nowhere you will go that I won’t go with you.”

  She looked back at the car. Her father called her again and Uncle Jerry rolled down his window and knocked hard on the outside of the door.

  “I have to go, Harold.”

  “Mayor Carter!” I shouted in a flash of inspiration. I had begged the universe for the perfect solution and it had just popped into my mind.

  Ilona tilted her head. “The mayor?”

  “Yes, Mayor Carter.”

  “What about her?”

  “The horn from her museum. That old mirror she was carrying. It’s the same mirror we saw in those old drawings. She knows something. Something that might help us find Suzie.”

  Frank Goolz and Uncle Jerry called her again. It was a windy day. Her hair was dancing furiously around her face. It blew into her eyes, but she kept them wide open.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay, Harold,” she repeated and walked to the car.

  I shivered in the cold while she spoke to them. Uncle Jerry gave her one of the syringes. She stepped back and the car sped away.

  She walked back to me once Uncle Jerry’s mad-mobile had disappeared in the distance and the wind had carried away its stinking cloud of gray smoke. “We stay together,” she said and my heart exploded in my chest. “We can go to Mayor Carter and see if she knows something we don’t.”

  I was blinking, ready to blame the wind if a tear ran down my face.

  “Breakfast?” Mum called from the porch. Her mad hair got madder in the wind and she shivered.

  I cleared my throat and quickly wiped my eyes. “We already had breakfast,” I lied. “We’re going to the Heritage Museum.”

  “Lovely place,” Mum said. “Since you’re going there, why don’t you get Ilona a library card?”

  “Yeah, why don’t I?” I went back in the house to grab my jacket, then Ilona and I headed toward the path by the beach.

  The twins came out of the Goolz’s house as we passed. They waved and Ilona waved back. She told me that they had spent the night at their place with their recovering mother. “Dad said that the monster will come after them again tonight, and every night, until the whole Farrell family becomes a bunch of monsters.”

  “So, we end this today,” I said.

  “Together.”

  Forever, I thought, but left it unsaid, focusing on the road ahead.

  * * *

  —

  At first, Mayor Carter’s wife didn’t want to let us in. “She’s exhausted, guys. She doesn’t want to see anybody today.”

  We begged until she relented and invited us inside.

  Mayor Carter was sitting in the dining room, looking at the ocean through a large window. Their house was furnished with antiques and smelled of coffee.

  “I wasn’t all that brave last night, was I?” Mayor Carter said. She had a blanket over her lap and her hands were shaking. She was turned away from us, and the little of her face I could see was pale.

  “You were very brave going all by yourself into the marsh,” Ilona said. “Armed with only a mirror to fight the Mallow Marsh Monster.”

  She finally turned toward us. “Your father and his friend told me that it took your sister. Did they find her?”

  Ilona shook her head. “They’re at the marsh looking for her right now.” She looked at me. “We’re searching for Suzie too. We’re just following a different lead.”

  Mayor Carter brought her cup to her mouth as if the effort pained her. Whatever had happened last night had changed her.

  “They won’t f
ind the monster in the marsh,” she said. “It hides somewhere else. Ed Farrell knew that. That’s how it all started.”

  “Mayor Carter,” I said, “if you know where the creature’s hiding, you need to tell us.”

  “Even if I did, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “We would,” Ilona said. “We would believe anything you say, because we know it’s all real. The Mallow Marsh Monster is real, and we need to find it to save my sister.”

  She set her cup on the table. “You’re right. The monster is real. And it’s my fault that it’s back, terrorizing our town after all these years.” She stood up. The blanket fell to the floor. She looked like her legs could hardly hold her up.

  “The story I’m going to tell you,” she said, her hands flat on the dining room table as she leaned toward us, “will make you think I’ve lost my mind.”

  15

  DOOM

  ISLAND

  We were rushing toward the marsh on the road to Newton. Mayor Carter had given us most of the clues we needed to find the monster and Suzie.

  She had given us her old mirror too. It was stuffed in the kangaroo pocket of my hoodie, the handle hanging out.

  Mayor Carter was absolutely right about one thing: No one would believe her story.

  Except us, of course.

  “Do you think it’s still in there?” Ilona asked as we reached the path leading to the Farrells’ house.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Ilona parted the curtain of high grass for me and we reached the wrecked pickup truck in record time. It wasn’t so spooky anymore. It almost felt familiar.

  I struggled through the muddy terrain. Ilona ran ahead to the house, and by the time I made it to the front door, she was already coming back out.

  “I got it,” she said, brandishing the black horn.

  “We’ve got to find your dad and Uncle Jerry now.”

  “If we can’t, we’ll have to find Suzie on our own.” Ilona started walking toward the dock and I followed her without hesitation.

  I was thinking about what Mayor Carter had told us. She had confirmed that the horn known as the Hand of Chaos used to be in the Heritage Museum—until the Farrells showed up.

  “My grandfather gave it to my father, who gave it to me. He told me to never use it, or let anyone else use it,” she had told us. “He said it would open a gateway into another world. Another dimension, where the Mallow Marsh Monster used to live. He said that his ancestors had destroyed the creature and all of its kind long ago. He told me never to open the gate and never to go into that magical realm; it was infested with horrible dark snakes, crawling everywhere. If one of those snakes bit anyone, the Mallow Marsh Monster would be back.”