The Last Monster

by Ginger Garrett

  “No!” I smiled like that was a silly suggestion. “I was just curious.”

  She stared at me with a confused smile.

  “Because I noticed the counselor’s office is empty….It is empty, right? No one is in there?”

  She frowned, her head cocked to one side.

  I couldn’t tell anyone about the book and I couldn’t tell anyone about the disappearing woman, so I decided to keep my head down and my mouth shut for the rest of the day. I managed to avoid Alexis and Billy in science, although Billy made that easy by getting called to the principal’s office at the beginning of class. Apparently he’d had detention yesterday and something bad had happened.

  After class, I summoned the old power of blending in, hiding in plain sight, fading away, which is also known as sitting in a bathroom stall for as long as possible between classes.

  Mom’s car inched through traffic all the way home while she stole glances at me every few minutes. I counted six churches as she drove. One had a cross that stood taller than all the other roofs, like a stern reminder to be on our best behavior.

  “This city is God-struck,” a neighbor once said when I had asked why we needed so many churches. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded right. They all seemed to have the same basic beliefs, about being kind and honest, but some also thought you should get baptized by being dunked underwater, while others thought the water ought to be sprinkled, while some thought the real secret was to go door to door and interrupt people’s dinners.

  “Did your leg hurt today?” Mom asked, veering around a slower-moving car. She honked the horn, frowning. Speed limits in Atlanta were more like baseline readings. They gave you a general idea where you were starting from. I counted one more church.

  “Not much.” Sometimes I had phantom pains, sharp flashes that came and went for no obvious reason. Part of my brain didn’t believe my leg was gone and misinterpreted nerve impulses. In the hospital, when chatty doctors lowered themselves to sit on the side of the bed during my daily checks, I’d instinctively try to make room for them and move my left leg out of the way.

  Then I’d remember it already was.

  So phantom sensations sounded crazy but felt real, just like everything else right now: a strange girl who told me I’d been chosen, a book that moved by itself, and disappearing school counselors. I had an impulse to stop at one of those churches and ask someone inside how they knew for sure what to believe. How did they know what was real?

  I was making this too complicated. Mom would believe me without any proof. She believed in crazy-sounding things like phantom sensations. She might also believe in books that moved or counselors that disappeared. It was okay to doubt what had happened, but I shouldn’t doubt her. Even if this was all a strange side effect from treatment, I could tell her.

  I drummed my fingers on my knee, trying to think of the best way to start the conversation.

  Her hand rested on my arm. “I’m so proud of you,” she said softly. “You’ve done an incredible job holding it all together.”

  I then realized how exhausted she looked. Her eyeliner was smudged, leaving dark circles under her eyes, and her face was pale and thin.

  “Thanks, Mom.” I tried to smile. “My leg didn’t hurt that much. I promise. It was a pretty good day, overall. I forgot to tell you: I even got an A on my science test. I rocked the extra credit.”

  “That’s my girl,” she said.

  Once we got home, Mom lugged her black leather briefcase to the kitchen table. The other customer service reps just used totes or grocery bags, but Mom said it was important to look the part of a successful businesswoman. Mom was stuck in a job that didn’t pay much, and she was hoping to break out of it.

  “Dinner in twenty,” she said. She went to a peg by the back door and grabbed her apron. I heard her sigh with exhaustion.

  Upstairs, I opened the door to my quiet bedroom. The closet door was still shut. Tomorrow I would definitely tell Mom about the strange things I had seen, and she would tell me it was a side effect. We might even laugh. I would show her the book and she’d take it to the trash, shaking her head and laughing.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, I began the long process of removing my leg. Even considering my hair, I really had been lucky. After the amputation, my oncologist told us that the margins around the tumor were clear and all tests were negative for cancer, which meant I didn’t have to do more chemo. The only time Mom and I had let go and cried together was when the doctor told us the news. Most of the time, Mom tried to cry in the bathroom so she wouldn’t upset me, as if I didn’t already know that trick. Everyone knows that trick. It made me feel worse, actually, when she did that. I cried under my blanket at night. I hoped she didn’t know that one.

  I wiggled the leg off and then bent down to peel away the stocking that protected my stump. “Stump” was an ugly word but better than “residual limb.” That made it sound like a hygiene problem. Anyway, I was done with all of that…at least until my next appointment with Barnes. Before that, I had another round of blood work, but the lab techs never talked about the leg. I’m not even sure if they knew I had a prosthesis.

  Outside, the sun was setting. Shadows shifted on my walls, illuminating dozens of little jagged holes where I had ripped off my track and cross-country ribbons. Only my Doctor Who poster remained. I had hidden the ribbons and team jersey in a box under the bed. Someday, I’d be strong enough to throw them out. For now, it was like that wistful feeling you get when you hang up your Christmas stocking. Some part of you still wants to believe in Santa, and some part of me still wanted to believe that none of this was real.

  The crack under my closet door glowed. The light was green, like someone had just turned on a string of Christmas lights.

  My closet didn’t have a light inside.

  I stared at the light, my heart beating rabbit-fast in my chest.

  Something thunked against my bedroom door and I gasped.

  “You left your crutches in the bathroom,” Mom called. “Dinner in ten!”

  Resting my head on my hands, I tried to tell myself to get a grip. It wasn’t fair to my mom to freak out over an unexpected side effect like this hallucination. She’d have to put me back in the hospital, and she had been through so much already.

  I didn’t need her help to ignore this. I gritted my teeth, ready to get this over with. Once I knew it was all in my mind, I’d feel so much better.

  The closet doorknob twisted, first to the left, just slightly. I exhaled once, then sucked in a breath and held it, counting to ten. The knob returned to center.

  I let my breath out slowly. My shoulders contracted like someone had punched me, slow motion, in the chest.

  It twisted again, right.

  The door swung open, sending goose bumps across my skin.

  The book stood upright, like it was staring at me.

  Green light rolled from the book like fog, making a faint hissing sound as it crossed the carpet. The fog felt warm as it touched my ankle, probing it. Then it wrapped itself around me, as if it was making sure I was real. I couldn’t breathe; my eyes watered from holding my breath, this time by accident. Hallucinations weren’t supposed to touch you, were they?

  As the book moved across the floor toward me, the cracked leather corners caught on the carpet. I tried to raise a hand to warn it to stop, but my arm was deadweight. I managed to exhale, a little shrill wheeze of panic.

  The book’s cover opened slightly, revealing a strange gold and green and blue etching inside. It might have been of an animal; I wouldn’t get closer to check.

  It seemed to be waiting for me. I was so polite even my hallucinations had manners.

  There was one way to know for sure if I was imagining this. If I couldn’t grab it, it wasn’t real.

  With a fast shallow breath, I flung my hands down and grabbed the book’s spine. It wriggled against my grip, like a big fat animal that had to be dragged from its den.

  The book w
as real.

  My physical therapist said I had weak core muscles. She was right. I had to adjust my grip twice before I could lift the book up next to me on the bed, and I was panting from the effort. Or maybe from anxiety.

  I edged one finger under the cover and paused.

  Nothing happened.

  Biting my lip, I flipped the cover open. Green light flooded my room, but it wasn’t a scary, venomous green light. No, this was the green of spring, of grass and leaves and iridescent hummingbirds, a green I had almost forgotten, one I desperately needed to see again. When they released me from the hospital, it had been a shock to find that it was winter and the whole world was dead and gray. Now I longed to see life, and spring, return to the cold world.

  The next page was made of leather. It was thick, with ragged edges and stitching on the sides.

  In the center were words in fancy black script.

  Beneath this was a beautiful image of a great winged bull. I had no idea what a bestiary or Xeno was, but I had heard of Aristotle. I had once thought they named a clothing line after him, but that, Ms. Kerry had told me gruffly, was a company called Aeropostale. Aristotle, she said, was a famous ancient philosopher who loved to document every animal he could find. He wrote endless descriptions of all the lives he found in nature, and many scientists consider him the first biologist. He founded his own school and loved teaching.

  I turned the page again. The next one felt thinner. It wasn’t made of leather, but it wasn’t exactly paper either. It was like a thin fabric. Every page seemed to be different, as if added at different times.

  I didn’t recognize the language, but thankfully someone had scribbled a translation beneath the original wording.

  Year 436, Ab urbe condita

  “To Aristotle’s disciples, to the healers, and to all who love Truth,

  Though our Master, Aristotle, is now dead, murdered at the hand of our enemy, I carry on.

  Herein are the secrets about the oddities of this world, the forgotten, the misused, and the feared. You and I are called as witnesses to their Truth, which is our Truth, and the Truth of the human condition. For we know ourselves best only when we see through the eyes of the strangers among us.

  Do not misunderstand. These are not playthings, pets, or wild animals that may be tamed.

  These are monsters.

  Xeno

  Outside my window, a mournful howl rose from the belly of some awful beast. I shivered and snapped the book shut.

  The room went dark.

  Wednesday, February 26

  I huddled on the school steps in the morning cold, my teeth clacking. Mom had dropped me off early at my request. She was shocked that I’d asked, of course. And since I’d never gone at that time before, neither of us realized the school wouldn’t actually be open.

  Last night she’d popped into my room unexpectedly and practically dragged me down the stairs for dinner. She thought I was sitting on my bed with the lights out because I was depressed. She hadn’t noticed the book next to me, maybe because my room was dark. The book had stopped glowing when I shut it.

  When I finally climbed into bed at nine-thirty, the book was nowhere to be seen. Mom tucked me in and I lay there, eyes wide open. Nothing moved in the darkness, and I fell asleep working through the details of a plan.

  Thankfully, my school had a good library. If I was hallucinating, it meant my subconscious wanted to tell me something. Or I was crazy. Either way, I needed to know if there was any truth in the book. I didn’t believe in monsters, but this was Atlanta, and it was a city with very old secrets.

  People forget that Georgia was one of the original thirteen colonies, and when the English arrived, they discovered that the Native Americans believed this area to be a hive of supernatural activity. To the northeast of Atlanta, there is a canyon with a name that translates as “terrible,” because tribes believed evil spirits lived there. It isn’t far from Blood Mountain, which the tribes fought a horrible war for control of. It was believed to be the home of powerful and good spirits called the Immortals.

  Plus, compared with other American cities, especially the ones we studied in school, like Boston and Philadelphia, all the buildings around Atlanta appear new. You have to look hard for a glimpse of the past. That’s because General Sherman and his men burned the city during the Civil War. The city’s history is in the ashes buried under our feet. When you’re in Atlanta, you’re always walking on the dead.

  So Atlanta is a mysterious city with weird weather.

  This winter especially had been unexpectedly brutal. The morning cold snuck in between the tiny stitches of my sweater. My skin stung all over, even on my head. If I had worn a wig instead of my favorite bandana, my head wouldn’t feel like an ice cube. Mom had bought me a wig, but apparently she thought hairstyles were like wingspans, and that a larger size offered an evolutionary advantage. I refused to wear it. I didn’t like hats either, because when you pulled a hat off, the bandana came off with it.

  Now, with nothing to do but wait, I remembered the last time I had been this cold and alone. Instinctively I reached down and touched my left hip. The only place that was colder and lonelier than an operating room was the hallway just outside it. I had been left there while they prepped the room, drowsy from the pre-op drugs, when I heard a child wailing in pain somewhere in the hospital. My blanket had slipped from the bed and I had shivered in fear, drifting in and out of consciousness.

  Suddenly, the track team burst around the corner of the school, moving in a pack. They always left the track and ran one last lap around the school before hitting the showers. Alexis was easy to spot, with her ponytail swinging side to side as she ran. I ducked my head and pretended I didn’t see her.

  The metal bolt slid back behind me and I turned to see Mr. Reeves opening the door. “Sofia! Come in! It’s freezing out there!”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled, wondering if my lips were blue.

  Mr. Reeves wanted to say something more. I saw his mouth open and heard him take a long breath. People did that around me, like they were about to dive into another world where they couldn’t breathe the air.

  “I have to get to the media center,” I said before he could find his voice.

  I hustled through the foyer and turned down the hall to my left. A basketball whizzed past my head. I ducked to avoid it and lost my balance, stumbling right into the path of two girls from the basketball team who were chasing the ball. The girls fell and I got slammed back into the lockers.

  The team was using the long, empty hallway for passing and dribbling practice. The coach blew on her whistle, hard, screeching at the girls to get back up and continue the drill. The girls went right back to practicing, leaving me standing there, stunned. They were so focused on the ball that they hadn’t even noticed me. That was exactly what I wanted, so even if my back was bruised and stinging, I should have been happy. The tear rolling down my cheek was just misinformed.

  Thankfully, the media center doors were unlocked. Ms. Hochness, our librarian, was already at work sorting returned books. She was a really curvy woman the boys had secretly nicknamed Ms. Hotness. Her wispy blond hair swirled around her head like a personal cloud.

  “Good to see you, Sofia. What do you need today?” She didn’t hyperventilate when she saw me, which I appreciated. She glanced up to make sure I had heard her, smiled, and went back to work sorting a stack of books about sweet girls who loved shy ponies.

  “I need to know everything about Aristotle,” I said. He was my starting point, since I had already heard of him. The rest I would Google.

  “He’s dead,” she said flatly. “I hope you can account for your whereabouts.”

  I blinked, not really getting the joke.

  “Just a little librarian humor,” she sighed. Then she nodded and crooked her finger at me, motioning for me to follow, and walked toward the nonfiction bookshelves.

  “How’s your mother?” she asked, not looking back, just walking and expecting m
e to keep up.

  I took my first deep breath of the morning.

  “She’s good.”

  “Still nervous about you being back at school?” Ms. Hochness asked. “With all these germy kids?”

  “Completely,” I laughed. Ms. Hochness made it okay. I didn’t know how. She just had that odd magic some adults have. “Thanks again for those books you sent me at the hospital. They were great.”

  I wondered if she knew I was lying. I had stopped reading right after my diagnosis. No one here knew.

  I used to love books, and carried one everywhere. I enjoyed anything except the kind written especially for girls. That was weird, I know, but those books seemed to be softer and sweeter, and I couldn’t be soft, not when I was in middle school, where bullies might try to slam your fingers in your locker or snap pictures with their cell phones when you changed for gym class. That hadn’t happened to me yet, but I had to be ready since I wasn’t even remotely popular.

  After the diagnosis, when Mom and I spent every day together, she finally noticed that I had stopped reading but blamed the meds and the nausea and exhaustion. It wasn’t cancer’s fault, though. I stopped reading because I had never felt so alone, and books weren’t helping. Books are like messages in a bottle washing up on a deserted island. It horrified me to know how many people were struggling to be heard, like they were stranded and calling out for help.

  The realization had started back in September, in science class. Nothing ruins your life like the facts.

  Let’s start with color. What I call the color blue—that may not be what other people see. If you’re color-blind, you don’t see the same colors. You literally don’t see the same world. And some people have extra color receptors in their retinas; they see about ninety million additional colors. The colors really do exist, but no one else can see them.

  I remember sitting in class and wondering, do I see what no one else sees or do they see what I can’t? We’ll never know.

  And then there’s taste. When Alexis and I split a bag of chips, were we tasting the same thing? No one knows, because no one has the same number of taste buds. Some people have a ton, so they can taste flavors other people can’t. Some people don’t have many, so they can’t taste much; oatmeal tastes about the same as a chocolate chip cookie, which I find deeply disturbing. Alexis likes broccoli because it tastes good to her, but to me it tastes like a dirty diaper left in a hot car. So when Alexis and I split a bag of chips, we thought we were sharing the experience but we weren’t.