Where Monsters Lie

by Polly Ho-Yen

  ‘Effie, are you all right?’ Finn had said, but as he spoke the cottage door swung open and Rosemary Tanner had come striding out.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, girl?’ she said, and clamped her bony hand to my forehead.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, stepping back. ‘Just feel a little woozy.’

  ‘To bed with you, and drink plenty of fluids,’ she had snapped, and then she had gestured to Finn and said, ‘Go on, take her home! She shouldn’t be out.’

  Finn had looped his arm through mine and we walked on. I could feel Rosemary Tanner’s gaze on us until we were out of sight.

  ‘It was like she was watching us through the window,’ Finn remarked once we were out of earshot.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Rosemary Tanner. The way she came out so quickly from the MacGails’. It was like she was watching us.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I grunted. I didn’t feel like speaking any more; my head was pounding.

  Once home, I had started to feel worse, but had managed to fall asleep – until the soreness in my throat had woken me.

  Now I got out of bed and went downstairs in search of a drink.

  I stopped to check on Tommi, who was sleeping soundly, her arms flung above her head, and paused for a moment outside Dad’s room. The light was on, but I couldn’t hear anything. He must have fallen asleep with his reading lamp on.

  I padded softly down the stairs. The house was still and quiet, apart from the wind beating around outside, sending whistles and whispers through any cracks and gaps that it could find in the walls. I stopped to listen to it for a moment. The windowpanes rattled, which made me jump, but I continued down the stairs, pretending I was someone else; someone who could not possibly be afraid of something like the wind.

  It was darker here; no sliver of light shone as it did across the upstairs landing. The curtains had been pulled to against the night and the light of the moon.

  For a moment I pictured what I would be doing in a few minutes’ time: tucking myself back into bed, sipping a cool drink to soothe my throat. Only the thought that this would be over quite soon allowed me to carry on.

  When I reached the kitchen, I instinctively put my hand out to feel for the light switch. I’d lived in this house my whole life and knew every inch of it, even in the pitch-black.

  The light flashed on, illuminating the kitchen, and for a second I thought I was in a cave.

  A cave that was dark and dank, with walls that glistened with wetness.

  But the next moment I saw it for what it truly was.

  Every space on the wall.

  Every part of the work surface.

  The whole length of the ceiling.

  It was completely covered.

  Covered by the moving bodies of slugs.

  Slugs atop slugs atop slugs . . .

  All I could see was their blackness. They rode aback another. They squirmed in between the spaces beside each other. They blocked out every part of the kitchen with their shiny, slimy bodies.

  I turned to run, but as I did so, one fell off the ceiling, brushing against my cheek. It was cold and wet, and though I rubbed my cheek immediately, I could feel where it had landed; the slime had left its mark upon me. I thought again of the girl twin describing the monsters in the loch, and it made me gasp – a wheezing, terrible breath of fear, pure fear that the monsters were awakening from the depths of the loch.

  ‘Dad! Dad!’ I screamed as I ran out of the kitchen, back up the stairs to the narrow beam of light under his door. ‘Dad!’

  I heard the wind beating against the windowpanes, rattling them as though beating its fist against them, demanding to be let in.

  I flung open the bedroom door, taking in the sight of Dad coming to, of my parents’ wedding album lying open on the bed, entangled with the sheets.

  ‘Dad! You have to come downstairs. They’re in the kitchen. They’re everywhere.’

  ‘Who’s here?’ Dad said, leaping out of bed. ‘Someone’s in the house?’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’ I tried to tell him, but he had darted out of the room, clattered down the stairs. ‘It’s slugs,’ I managed to gasp, but he had already gone.

  The next moment I heard Dad call up to me. ‘It’s all right, Effie, no one’s here.’

  I ran down the stairs again, following Dad’s crashing footsteps, and heard Tommi begin to cry; she’d been woken by the noise.

  ‘They’re in the kitchen,’ I repeated. ‘They were just there.’

  But before I reached the doorway I could see that I was wrong.

  The kitchen was just as it had been earlier that evening. The dishes were on the drying rack, a jug of wilting daffodils stood on the table.

  And there was not a slug in sight.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  ‘Dad, believe me,’ I said for what felt like the hundredth time. ‘There were slugs everywhere.’

  ‘But how could that be?’ he said again. ‘You must have been dreaming, Effie. That’s all.’

  ‘I would know if I was dreaming, Dad. I would know it. They were all over the ceiling, over every part of the wall.’

  ‘Well, how could they have disappeared so quickly? Where did they go? It’s not a magic trick, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. But they’re not normal slugs, Dad.’

  ‘Not normal slugs! Effie, I’ve heard some tales in the past, but this . . . this . . .’

  ‘They’ve . . . started to attack us,’ I mumbled.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘A slug did this,’ I said, and showed Dad the mark on my finger. ‘It escaped – Finn and I thought that no one would believe us.’

  Dad peered at my finger. There was a mark, but it wasn’t very big.

  ‘Effie,’ he said slowly. ‘Are you saying that you think a slug . . . a slug . . . bit you?’

  ‘Yes. I think they might be something to do with the legend, the monsters, or Mum . . .’ I began, and then wished I’d never started because I could see Dad’s face begin to fall.

  ‘Effie! Who is filling your head with this nonsense?’

  ‘It’s not like that, Dad, and I don’t – I don’t know anything really. Just what’s happened with the slugs and Buster. But the legend—’

  ‘Effie, please stop. You know that the legend is just a silly story that people round here tell because they’ve got nothing better to do. It’s not real. It’s just superstitious nonsense.’

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you, Dad?’

  ‘Effie,’ Dad said, and he took a deep breath too. ‘It’s not about me believing you or not believing you right now. I think . . . I think . . . that we’ve all been through a tremendous amount of stress and sadness and it’s taking its toll on you. Have you thought any more about speaking to the person at school . . . about your mum, and all this?’ He waved his arms around, gesturing to what he thought were my invisible slugs covering the walls and the ceiling.

  ‘That means you don’t.’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ Dad looked around the kitchen as if the answer was written on the walls. ‘I . . . don’t know what to believe.’

  We stayed silent for a moment or two, frozen.

  ‘I’d better get Tommi.’ I could still hear her crying upstairs.

  ‘I can do it,’ Dad said. ‘She’ll calm down soon enough.’

  ‘No – I mean, I’d better get Tommi so we can leave.’

  ‘Look, Effie, you’re tired, I’m tired. Let’s just settle Tommi down and talk about this in the morning.’

  ‘No, Dad. You don’t understand,’ I said.

  I looked around the room and wondered how I could prove that we were in danger.

  ‘We can’t stay here now.’

  I had to spell it out.

  ‘We have to leave.’

  Chapter Thirty-four

  ‘You can’t wake people up like this,’ Dad said, but he didn’t stop me from knocking on Finn’s dark front door. ‘C’mon, Effie. Leave it.
Let’s go home. We can sleep in the same room, if you like.’

  Finn’s house stood quiet and sombre; there was no sign that anyone had heard my knocking.

  ‘No, it’s not safe there.’

  ‘How do you know it’s going to be any safer here?’

  ‘Finn’s only had them at his when—’ I began, but then thought better of mentioning Mum’s binoculars. ‘They’re not at his house. Only at ours,’ I said in the end.

  I rapped again, three times in quick succession.

  ‘That’s convenient,’ Dad said, under his breath.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ I said, but I didn’t get the chance to pursue it because at that moment a light came on upstairs; they were awake.

  ‘That’s done it.’

  I heaved Tommi into a different position on my hip. She had started to nod off as soon as we started walking down the dark path to Finn’s house.

  I knocked again, and soon after that we heard the soft thuds of footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘Effie. Kev. What’s going on?’ It was Rob, bleary-eyed. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Who is it, love?’ we heard Kathleen call from inside.

  ‘It’s Kev and Effie, and wee Tommi too.’

  ‘Well, don’t leave them on the doorstep. They’ll catch their death,’ said Kathleen. ‘Come in, come in, the lot of you. Is everything all right?’

  I knew we’d come to the right place.

  ‘We have a favour to ask,’ said Dad. ‘Well, Effie has a favour to ask,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘Sure,’ said Kathleen, even though it was two o’clock in the morning. I noticed that she and Rob were wearing matching dressing gowns – blue towelling ones that looked soft and cosy.

  ‘Can we stay here tonight?’ I asked.

  They looked at each other for a beat.

  ‘If your dad says you can, then sure,’ Kathleen said. ‘But what’s going on? Effie, look at the colour of you. You look as white as a sheet.’

  ‘I’ve been overruled,’ Dad said. ‘If Effie wants to stay here, then Effie will stay here.’

  Kathleen and Rob exchanged another look. I suppose when you’ve been a couple for as long as they have, you don’t need words to understand each other.

  ‘Dad, you should stay here too,’ I said. ‘It’s not safe in the house.’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Rob said.

  ‘Ask Effie.’ Dad turned away from us.

  ‘Mum?’ came Finn’s voice down the stairs.

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ Kathleen said. ‘Effie’s here. They’re having some . . . they’re having some trouble.’

  ‘Effie?’ I heard Finn muttering to himself and the soft plodding of his steps down the stairs.

  ‘Hi, Finn,’ I said. ‘They were everywhere – they covered the kitchen completely.’

  ‘Oh!’ Finn’s mouth made a wide O of astonishment. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘But . . .’ and I found myself suddenly starting to cry. I swallowed hard a few times to stop myself.

  ‘Are they still there?’

  ‘No, they just vanished. As soon as Dad came down.’

  Suddenly I noticed all three adults watching us, listening in.

  ‘Will someone please explain what’s going on?’ said Kathleen.

  ‘It’s not going to sound like it makes much sense,’ Finn started, ‘but Effie and I have reason to believe that some creatures are trying to attack her.’

  ‘What do you mean, creatures?’ Rob said.

  Dad couldn’t stop himself: ‘Slugs. They think slugs are attacking them. From the bloody legend of Mivtown!’

  ‘Not us,’ Finn said carefully. ‘It’s only Effie. Not me.’

  ‘Finn?’ said Kathleen. ‘I don’t understand. Slugs? The legend?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure if it’s connected to the legend, but the monsters have the same sort of skin as slugs and so we think it is,’ Finn said. ‘They look like slugs, but they’re not. And they’re attracted to certain things. And we just found out yesterday that they can draw blood.’

  I was glad Finn was there. He had a way of explaining things that made them sound reasonable and sane.

  When I spoke, my words had the opposite effect.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  ‘They don’t believe us,’ came Finn’s voice in the darkness, once Kathleen had kissed us both on the forehead and turned off the light.

  Dad had guffawed throughout our explanations. ‘Where are you kids getting this claptrap from?’ he had shouted.

  Kathleen and Rob were quieter. Rob had scratched his head quizzically and kept stopping himself from saying anything. Kathleen just seemed sad: she looked first at Finn and then at me, and then back at Finn again.

  ‘I think your mum does . . . a little,’ I said now.

  ‘Maybe. I think she wants to.’

  ‘That’s worth something.’

  Finn’s breathing gradually turned heavier and deeper. Soon I heard light, wispy snores, and as he slept, I stole from my bed and tiptoed out into the warm glow of the landing.

  First I checked on Tommi. She was flat out, her arms and legs sticking out at her sides. I spent a few minutes listening to the steady rhythm of her breathing, then carefully closed the door so it didn’t make a sound.

  From the landing I could hear our parents’ voices through the slightly open living-room door, but not what they were saying. I silently went down a few steps so I was close enough to hear them, and perched there, ready to flee if the door started to swing open.

  I imagined them all taking sips of amber whisky from their glasses.

  ‘It’s been a long, long time since they did it,’ I heard Kathleen say.

  And then Rob said something: something about slugs.

  I crept further down the stairs.

  Dad was speaking now – something about monsters, I think, but he was mumbling.

  ‘That’s the thing,’ Kathleen said. ‘You saw their faces. It doesn’t seem to me like they’re lying.’

  I was in the hall now, only steps away from the living room. ‘They believe in what they’re saying so much that they don’t think they’re lying any more,’ Dad said. ‘They’ve forgotten about the part where they made it all up.’

  ‘It’s not like before,’ Kathleen insisted. ‘When it happened before, I could see it in Finn’s face: he’d be expecting you. It wasn’t like that tonight; he was as surprised as we were.’

  What did they mean by before? What had happened before this? I shivered in my pyjamas, but was unable to prise myself away.

  ‘I suppose you have a point, love,’ said Rob. ‘Finn did seem pretty out of it. Remember the first time it happened? He kept begging us to stay up just a little longer. We didn’t know what had got into him – normally he’s out like a light. He kept saying, Please, just five more minutes, five more minutes. And then we heard the knock on the door.’

  ‘God, Tori was beside herself,’ said Dad. ‘She tried everything. Anything to settle her down. But no, Effie wouldn’t have it. She wouldn’t stop until she was marching over to your house in her slippers and dressing gown. She kept saying, It’s not safe here – we have to go to Finn’s, over and over until she wore us out.’

  ‘What was it she said had happened? I’ve forgotten now,’ asked Rob.

  ‘A ghost in her cupboard tried to eat her.’

  ‘And they couldn’t get in here because of the force field,’ Rob said, remembering.

  ‘Her screams – I thought they would raise the whole village. As soon as we suggested something – anything other than sleeping here – she’d start to scream. It was easiest just to bring her round here for the night.’

  ‘You know, I’d forgotten how bad it was. Effie’s such a grand little lass now. I’d forgotten how wilful she could be,’ said Rob.

  ‘Wilful? Stubborn, more like,’ said Dad. ‘And determined. Tori was in such a state, saying what a rotten mother she must be. That Rosemary didn’t help
when she heard what had been happening. She kept coming round at bedtime, dropping in to get a front-row seat. In the end Tori just stopped answering the door to her. But I told Tori that she should stop blaming herself. She should look at the little girl we’d created: we’d never need to worry about her future – she knew exactly what to do to get her own way. She wouldn’t let anybody or anything stop her.’

  I swallowed hard. There was a mirror in Finn’s hallway, an old-fashioned thing set into a funny wooden dresser, so when I looked up I could see my reflection. Was I this person they were describing? I looked at myself: the hazel-brown eyes, the fringe hanging down over my forehead. The picture that Dad was painting was of someone monstrous, someone spoiled and horrible, someone I wouldn’t like. I started to tiptoe back up the stairs, but I could still hear the voices. I wished I could make them stop.

  ‘It wasn’t an easy time,’ Kathleen said. I was glad that she had spoken. I hoped that she didn’t see me like this; that maybe she saw something else. ‘I think it got to Effie.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Dad said, in a dangerously quiet voice.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said lightly. ‘It’s just that, you know, we all know it’s not easy being a parent.’

  ‘No, I don’t know. What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing, Kev, nothing.’

  ‘You must have meant something or you wouldn’t have said it.’ I could almost hear the whisky in Dad’s voice, thick and dangerous, rising like a tall wave in the sea.

  ‘Oh, Kev. You knew about it – we all did . . . Tori, she was . . . I mean, I loved her to pieces, but she was very protective of Effie.’

  ‘Kathy,’ said Rob, like a warning.

  ‘Are you saying it was Tori’s fault? That it was Tori who drove her to make up stories to come over here?’

  ‘No, not at all. I just meant it’s hard, you know. And then that business with Rosemary . . . I’m just saying it was hard. For everyone. And I can’t imagine how Tori must have been feeling last year – I can’t imagine.’