Monsters

by David Alexander Robertson

  Cole reached down into his hockey pants, fumbling around in his pocket as the creature came closer and closer. Cole pulled out his phone, turned on the flashlight, and shone it at the thing.

  It roared again. “You!”

  “Mr. McCabe!”

  It was Reynold, but it wasn’t. His eyes burned red. His lips were thin and cracked. His fingernails were sharp and long.

  “You,” it hissed.

  “Mr. McCabe, it’s Cole! Stop!”

  Reynold rushed towards him. Cole got up and raced, again, towards the dark, where the gun had landed. He sifted through the leaves and dirt. Both of Reynold’s fists hammered down against his back.

  Cole gasped for air.

  Reynold had his hands around Cole’s waist, pulling him away. Cole fanned through the leaves desperately, palms down, feeling the ground. Then he felt it for a moment. Cool steel against his fingertips. “Jayney! Jayney!” he cried. Just give me a second to find it again! She didn’t come. He dug his hand into the ground, then the other.

  “Diiiieeeeeeee,” Reynold hissed.

  Cole inched forward. He dug his hand into another area of the ground and pulled harder. He lifted his other hand and reached. His fingers landed on the gun, and he grasped it around the handle. He let go, and it skidded across the ground. Reynold picked him up, tried to lunge for Cole’s neck. Cole pressed his scarred palm against Reynold’s forearm. Reynold dug his fingernails into Cole’s sides. Cole screamed, felt his flesh tearing. He raised the gun, put the nozzle right against Reynold’s heart.

  Cole pulled the trigger.

  Reynold shrieked, and the terrible sound echoed through Blackwood Forest.

  Cole fell to the ground. When he looked up, the creature, Reynold, was stumbling away, into the woods.

  31

  NÓTÁWÍY (MY FATHER)

  “EKOSANI.” COLE KNELT BESIDE VICTOR’S BODY. He had his hand on Victor’s chest. “Ekosani,” he whispered again.

  Cole picked up Victor’s rifle, secured it over his shoulder, and walked to the fence. The gate was padlocked. He put his hand over it and currents pulsed through his body. Steam rose from his hand. He groaned in pain, but snapped the lock off and pushed the gate open. He walked through the opening and crossed the yard to the back entrance. No need for subtlety here. He kicked the door open, and waited again, looking up and down the fenced perimeter into Blackwood Forest, but not one guard came, and no alarm went off.

  He took off the hockey equipment and left it on the ground before going inside.

  Cole felt a draft. He heard his steps echo through the hallway.

  He went to the front of the building where he looked outside, towards Wounded Sky, and even there, no guards stood watch. But really, he thought, what could be worse than Monster Reynold, anyway? He allowed himself a moment to feel good about the fact that he’d shot it. Him. He was sure the wound had been fatal.

  Cole looked through every cabinet, every drawer, every pocket in every piece of clothing that had been left behind, but found nothing anywhere, not until he came across a security office. There was no high-tech setup, just two small monitors on a desk. A jacket on the computer chair in front of the desk. A bookshelf full of VHS tapes. Cole went to those tapes, and ran his index finger along the spines. Dates. Months and months of dated tapes. But only one tape interested Cole, and that tape might still be in the VHS player. He rushed over to it and pressed the eject button, hoping to be right. The machine hesitated a moment, then spat out a tape.

  “Yes!”

  Cole shoved it back in. The machine whirred as the tape played. The first images that popped up onto the screen were of empty halls, scattered papers. The evacuation had already happened. The scene switched every five seconds to different areas of the building. Fifteen seconds after the tape had started to play, Cole saw Donald and Vikki on the floor. Dead. He fumbled at the controls, and pressed rewind. Cole watched as the scenes played backwards from camera to camera. It felt like slow-motion. Employees started to run backwards, away from the doors, and back into the building.

  Then he saw what he was looking for. He stopped the tape and pressed play.

  A man in a hazmat suit ran across the floor, past Donald and Vikki. The lights started flashing. An emergency.

  The scene changed to another area of the building.

  “Shit!”

  Cole waited until the scene turned back to Donald and Vikki and the man.

  The man turned towards the camera for a moment, but his face was obscured by the suit’s visor. He looked down and started doing something out the camera’s view. Big, metal doors began to close, trapping Donald and Vikki.

  “Look up!” Cole demanded. “Look up!”

  Donald and Vikki got up and ran towards the man. Just as the man looked up, the camera switched again.

  “No!”

  Cole waited. Employees raced for the doors, away from their offices.

  The scene came back.

  The man stood at the doors. He watched Donald and Vikki try desperately to get out.

  The scene switched, and everybody was gone from the whole building. The scene returned to Donald and Vikki.

  They were on the floor. Dying. The man waited, then turned to leave.

  Cole paused the tape. He leaned forward until his nose was right up against the screen. He finally saw the man’s face.

  Reynold.

  That room. He hadn’t seen that room yet. He’d been through the entire first floor.

  “A basement,” Cole whispered.

  Cole ran out of the security office as though he could still save Donald and Vikki, as though the video he watched was in real-time. He found the door to the basement, opened it, and flicked the light switch on. The fluorescent bulbs flickered to life. He followed the stairs down and came to another hallway. The camera that filmed the murder was fixed to the wall just above him, to the right.

  He followed the path of the lens to two glass doors framed with metal—the doors that had shut, trapping Donald and Vikki. Through the glass, Cole saw two skeletons on the floor. Face down. They both had lab coats on. Donald and Vikki. Cole ran to the doors and tried to pry them open. Even with his strength, he couldn’t move them.

  “No!” he screamed.

  He turned away from the doors, looked for something, anything, that would help. On the wall to his right, above an intercom, there was a keypad, and above that, a screen. That’s what Reynold had been facing when his head was down. The only things on the screen were five dashes: _ _ _ _ _

  “It’s a code.”

  He wished Pam was there with him. He even thought about getting her, bringing her back here. It wasn’t safe, though. He knew that. And by the time he got back, maybe the guards would be there, and then he wouldn’t be able to return. He pulled the keypad away from the wall, and started typing in five-letter words. Any words he could think of.

  “Come on!”

  He heard his grandmother’s voice in his head, from back when they were in Winnipeg, before he’d left for Wounded Sky, before all of this had happened. Even I know that a name isn’t the best password. Especially a three-letter one.

  “Eva,” Cole said, thinking about the password to his computer that his grandmother had cracked. But at the same time, his name was four letters long, not five. What could have been as personal? More personal than his name? Then it hit him.

  He typed K-I-D-D-O.

  The screen turned green, and he heard a loud whirring. The doors pulled apart. Cole ran over to the bodies and fell to his knees. He put his hands on his father’s remains, with the short, black hair, messed like it’d been done on purpose. Carefully, slowly, he turned the body over.

  “Nótáwíy,” he whispered, like he was telling a secret.

  “Nótáwíy,” he said through tears.

  He ran his fingers over his father’s skeletal face. Cole covered his mouth, and started to sob uncontrollably.

  “I’m sorry,” he cried. “I’m sorry.”

>   He checked through his pockets for tobacco, to lay it down for him, to pray for him, but all he found were his pills. He took them out and threw them against the wall.

  The bottle shattered. The pills fell across the floor.

  Cole leaned forward and touched his forehead against his father’s chest. He was seven again, sitting on the couch with his dad. They were watching a cartoon together. Little Bear. His dad said, “Isn’t this too young for you, son?” but Cole said it didn’t matter. It was the only thing on. He just wanted to sit there with his dad, put his head against his chest, and fall asleep.

  Click.

  Cole looked up to find a gun pointed at his head, the gun held by somebody in a hazmat suit.

  He couldn’t see who.

  Cole reached for his own gun.

  Pop.

  Cole heard it. He saw the nozzle erupt in flames, felt his head snap back—

  And then he heard nothing.

  Saw nothing.

  Felt.

  Nothing.

  EPILOGUE

  THE CEMETERY GATE CREAKED AS EVA PUSHED IT OPEN. She walked slowly, procrastinating. She hadn’t been there since the funeral, if you could call it that. What would you call a service where seven people show up? Lauren Flett, Pam, Mr. Chochinov, her dad (and an accompanying doctor, which Eva didn’t count), Cole’s kókom, Cole’s auntie, and herself. Everybody else thought he was an arsonist. The last straw had been the X burning down. There’d been no question, to the RCMP, that Cole had done that too. After all, his body had been found in the building’s ashes. Jerry and Lauren concluded that the building had burned faster than Cole expected, and he couldn’t get out in time.

  Bullshit.

  Eva knew it was bullshit, but nobody listened to her.

  She meandered through the cemetery. Walked by almost every grave she could on the way to Cole’s. If she didn’t see his grave, she could pretend he was alive. But she knew he was dead. She knew, as well, because of what she’d seen, that he was somehow…not. Not alive, not dead. She didn’t need a math tutor, she needed an afterlife tutor.

  She wanted him to burn his name onto her forearm.

  Getting to his grave was inevitable. When she was there, standing in front of it, she saw that she wasn’t the only one who’d been there. There were words spray painted and Sharpied all over it. BURN. GOOD RIDDANCE. MONSTER. She would come back again. She would come back and wash it all away, no matter how long it took. And if they came again, wrote words on Cole’s grave again, she would wash it all off.

  Again.

  She reached into her pocket as she stepped forward, and took out a plastic bag full of tobacco. She pulled out a pinch and spread it on the ground. Then she knelt down, knees against the dirt, and touched the grave. It was cold, hard.

  She closed her eyes.

  “I miss you.” She clutched the sweetgrass ring dangling from her neck. “I keep imagining that you’re just in Winnipeg again, and you’re not calling me. And it’s okay that you’re not,” she started to cry, “I’m not mad that you’re not. I just want you to come back. Please come back. I need you back.”

  “Ahem.”

  Eva opened her eyes. There was a coyote sitting next to her, looking at her with its head tilted sadly to the side.

  She tried to say something to it. She swore that it had just cleared its throat. She stared at it until it looked away from her, and it nodded towards Cole’s final resting place.

  “You know,” the coyote said, “I can help you with that.”

  To be concluded…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SECOND STORIES IN TRILOGIES ARE TOUGH. There’s no beginning, and no end. You’re asking the reader to have a lot of faith in you, and the story you’re trying to tell. In this way, Monsters is the scariest book I’ve written. The title is apropos. I hope the story is scary for you as well, but in a different way.

  As always, I want to thank my wife and kids for the sacrifices they make that enable me to do my work. My wife is a true superhero. Keeping it in the family, I want to thank my parents: My mom for her unwavering, decades-long support, and my father, for his wisdom, guidance, and for lending me a couple books on the ‘W’ word, so I could get it right. As much as this is an Indigenous supernatural mystery, it’s imperative I am culturally appropriate and sensitive. In that vein, I want to thank Warren Cariou, my mentor and friend, for reading the book and giving me feedback. I listened to you (mostly). Finally, thanks to my editor, Desirae Warkentin, for the work she put in to ensure my story was the best that it could be. And, you know, as a writer, you never think it’s done, so thanks Dee for telling me when to stop.

  I want to end by acknowledging somebody out there who might be reading this. At its heart, this book is about the monster of anxiety. I live through it, in my body and my mind. Many do. Sometimes, we think we’re alone, that nobody could possibly know what we’re going through, and there’s nothing we can do to get through it. I’ve been there. I’ve found that it helps to know that you are not alone, to share your story, and to hear others’ stories. To do things that your anxiety tells you are impossible. Getting out of bed. Writing a book. Even though we might feel weak, we are not.

  We are strong.

  Ekosani, Dave

  PROLOGUE

  “LUCY!”

  Reynold had managed to open the front door, but he struggled now. He had one hand pressed against his chest, trying to stem the flow of blood from the bullet wound. His other hand was sliding against the wall, keeping him upright.

  “Lucy!”

  He finally made it to the living room, then fell forward, tumbling onto the couch. He heard footsteps scrambling above, on the second floor. They rushed down the stairs, as Reynold’s vision started to fade.

  He gasped for air.

  “What the hell happened to the walls?” Lucy ran into the living room just as he felt consciousness slip away. “Dad?”

  “UNNNH.”

  Reynold tried to sit up, but there was too much pain, and his head collapsed onto the couch’s armrest. His eyes blinked open to find Lucy perched on the edge of the coffee table, as far away from him as she could possibly sit. She stared at him with grave concern, and something else. Fear. He patted around at his chest and felt it bandaged.

  “Thanks, my girl.”

  She didn’t respond. She had her arms crossed and was furiously chewing at a fingernail.

  “Cole Harper shot me in the chest, Lucy. If you’re wondering—”

  “No,” Lucy shook her head vigorously, “no, that’s not it. Your goddamn blood is blue!”

  “My…” Reynold looked at the bandages, and saw splotches of blue seeping through them “…blood?”

  Lucy covered her face with both hands, and her body started to shake. Reynold watched her, unsure what to say, unsure what to think. When she’d calmed enough, she lowered her hands. “And it’s cold. Your blood, it’s…it’s like ice.” She stood up and backed away, until her calves hit a dining room chair, and sat down there. “Why is it like that?”

  “Lucy…”

  “Are you sick?” she asked. “Tell me!”

  Reynold did sit up now, back against the arm of the couch. Blue, ice-cold blood, she’d said. But there was something else. “I’m not sick,” he said calmly.

  “Then what? If I were Cole, I would’ve shot you too!”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You’re—” Lucy looked ready to vomit, her face drained of colour. Somebody knocked at the front door. She jumped at the sound, almost fell off the chair. Looked at her dad for direction.

  She was still his girl, he thought. Even now.

  The knock came again.

  “Answer it,” Reynold said.

  “But…” she started to say.

  “Do it.”

  She left the room, almost in a trance. The front door opened. Lucy screamed and ran back into the living room.

  “What…the…fu—”

  A person in a hazmat suit w
alked into the living room.

  “—what is happening! Who the hell are you?!”

  Lucy stumbled backwards against a bookshelf. Reynold was unfazed. The man walked around the couch, then dropped a gun onto the coffee table.

  “Lucy,” Reynold said, “would you excuse us, please?”

  Lucy didn’t say a word. She walked away, keeping her eyes on the suited figure. Reynold, staring at the man as well, listened for Lucy’s footsteps up the stairs, down the second-floor hallway, and into her bedroom. A door slammed.

  Alone now, Reynold’s gaze fell to the gun on the coffee table. He picked it up and rested it on his chest.

  “Please don’t be so dramatic as to damage my furniture,” he said.

  A thick silence fell over them as they stared at each other.

  Finally, Reynold asked, “Is it done?”

  “Yeah. It’s done.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DAVID A. ROBERTSON is an award-winning writer. His books include When We Were Alone (Governor General’s Award-winner), Will I See? (winner Manuela Dias Book Design and Illustration Award), and the YA novel Strangers (Michael Van Rooy Award). David educates as well as entertains through his writings about Indigenous Peoples in Canada, illuminating their cultures, histories, communities, and relevant contemporary issues. David is a member of Norway House Cree Nation.

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  cover art by Peter Diamond