His prayers have been answered, and others must know.
He must tell them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Vera
Vera swirled her strawberry-banana yogurt, her eyes in a dead stare as she pictured Mr. Gonzalez’s face morphing before her, his deep voice, and his thick drool. What happened to him?
“I once had a guy tell me I smelled like lasagna. I had actually eaten lasagna the day before, but I had showered since and brushed my teeth twice. Explain that,” remarked Chelsea, a fellow food service employee, as she bit into a ham-and-cheese sandwich with glowing neon mustard. She was a sophomore at community college and managed to get her girlfriend hired two months ago. Technically, Vera was a third wheel on their lunch dates, but considering she sat alone in her high school cafeteria, this was better.
“I had a lady once ask me to pick food from her teeth. Like, she thought I was going to stick my fingers in her mouth and dig around.” Samantha pretended to gag as she snagged a baby carrot from her girlfriend’s tray.
“You know, I’ve seen that Grim Reaper thing in other rooms,” Chelsea said. “It’s so creepy. The hospital should ban it.”
“I don’t know.” Vera shook her head, the ends of her hair brushing her shoulders. “But the shrine is technically religious expression, so the hospital can’t suppress that.”
“It’s the Angel of Death in a freakin’ hospital. How is that okay?” Chelsea raked her blond hair, pulling long strands loose in her fingers.
“He also, kinda, threatened you,” Samantha added, stealing another carrot as Chelsea swatted her hand.
“Technically, he said it wants me. I’m not sure if that’s a threat,” Vera corrected.
“Well, what’s it? Is it his it? Like, his wrinkled old it? Because that’s sexual harassment,” said Chelsea.
Samantha scrunched her nose, disgusted. “And what about the other stuff he said?”
“Some of it I swear I’ve heard before.” Vera chewed her cheek.
“Yeah, in your nightmares.” Chelsea huffed. “Don’t worry—if you complain, we got your back.”
She and Samantha didn’t live in Roaring Creek. This made them the two people in Vera’s life who didn’t know about her parents’ work, so they treated her like a human being.
“He could have been hallucinating. Maybe it was the drugs from surgery? Or an allergic reaction?” Vera suggested. Typically, Mr. Gonzalez was a smiling old man telling tales of Mexico. He seemed young for his age, strong even.
But she couldn’t conceive of a medical reason for his voice dropping, his mouth decaying, and his pupils swelling right in front of her. She could, however, think of another explanation, a darker one.
I’ve spent way too much time in my parents’ world. Mr. Gonzalez is just sick and the doctors will figure it out.
“All I know is the hospital better take this seriously, because I feel like too many patients are coming in here high out of their minds or completely possessed,” Chelsea griped.
Vera’s eyes shot her way. Hearing the word possessed beyond the confines of her home was like hearing a trying-too-hard politician use eighth-grade Spanish: it might be technically correct, but it didn’t sound right.
“I think he just misses his wife. They were married for over fifty years. Now he’s sick, alone, and grieving,” said Vera.
“We’re all grieving something,” said Samantha. “Speaking of which.” She pulled a hardback book from her backpack with a bright yellow cover featuring an amateur design Vera was pretty sure she could duplicate in Word Art. The large typeface read The Sunshine Crew. “Look what my mom dragged home.”
“Ugh.” Chelsea rolled her eyes.
“I know they’re odd.” Samantha wiggled. “But she’s been looking for the right support group ever since Brian, and this is helping.”
Samantha’s older brother died of an overdose last year. He was twenty-six. During the funeral, people kept muttering how he was “too young,” and Vera watched as Samantha ground her teeth. Working in a hospital meant they were constant witnesses to the lack of sand in the hourglass. Life was always too short. If you miscarry a baby, you wish you could have at least held him. If you rock your daughter to sleep before she passes, you wish you could have seen her first day of school. If you lose your son after graduation, you wish you could have gotten to dance at his wedding. If your daughter dies as a young woman, you wish you could have gotten to meet your grandkids. And on and on and on it goes. They were always too young.
Now, nearly 365 days had passed since Brian’s death, but it might as well have been three or three thousand; the wound would always be fresh.
“You know how much I care about you and your mom. What you’re going through is awful.” Chelsea lightly touched Samantha’s hand. “But those people are the walking dead.”
“No, they’re not.” Samantha scoffed.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” said Vera. Given her bookshelves practically needed a rolling ladder, she was surprised she didn’t recognize the cover.
“Yes, you do!” Chelsea said. “It’s that self-help crap all over town. You know the posters, with the eclipsed sun? They’re all black and yellow, and way too dramatic. It was started by the Durands.” Chelsea whispered the name like cancer.
“Oh, that group!” Vera’s eyes lit with recognition.
Seven years ago, a gas explosion at the community center killed eighteen people. It was the worst tragedy to ever strike Roaring Creek. It was accidental; at least, that’s what most people believed. But there was one gas works employee whose remains were found inside the building—Seth Durand. An investigation determined his “human error” may have caused the explosion, but there was no definitive proof either way. Still, saying Seth Durand three times in a mirror while spinning in a circle was a popular activity at Roaring Creek sleepovers. (Not that Vera had ever been to one.)
Despite that, his son, Anatole, had an immense following. He started a group whose members were identified by matching yellow hats; Vera was fuzzy on the details. From what she remembered, Anatole had been twelve years old and on the brink of death from some terminal disease the day his dad died in the explosion. Then, against all odds, the boy lived.
“That family is twisted,” said Chelsea, unknowingly echoing exactly what was said about Vera her whole life. “I don’t know why anyone would take advice from him.”
“Because he survived. Amid all that tragedy, he lived, and now he’s dedicated his life to helping the people his father hurt.” Samantha sounded impressed.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re getting into this!” Her girlfriend yanked away her hand.
“No.” Samantha shifted awkwardly. “I’m not buying a yellow hat or anything, but my mom spent five hundred dollars on a seminar about grief and ‘self-actualization,’ which I thought was nuts, but she said it really helped.”
“Self-actualization? What does that even mean?” Chelsea’s face twisted.
“Finding your potential,” Vera explained. She’d read a few self-help books in her day. But five hundred dollars?
“No, it means joining the Manson Family,” Chelsea mocked.
“Shut up!” Samantha nudged her shoulder. She was smiling, but still, she shoved the book into her bag.
“Okay, back to Old Spooky McSpookerson.” Chelsea crumpled her trash. “When does he get discharged? Because I don’t wanna serve him any time soon.”
“I think it was supposed to be in two days, but who knows now.” Vera shrugged.
“Well, if he goes Grim Reaper–crazy on me, I’m busting out the garlic.”
“Isn’t that for vampires?” Samantha mocked.
“Good enough.” Chelsea giggled, her hazel eyes shifting to something behind Vera. Then her face morphed into a smile—not the happy kind, but the this-is-gonna-be-go
od kind. Samantha’s gaze immediately took on the same expression.
Vera craned her neck. If there is an old man in a hospital gown standing behind me…
Only, the person she found was even more shocking.
Hovering inches from Vera’s face was Maxwell Oliver.
He was staring. Again.
“Um, hey, could we talk?” he asked.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Max
She looked shocked, which made sense. While their last names were pretty close in the alphabet—Oliver and Martinez—and over the years they’d sat relatively near each other in a few classes, they’d never spoken. She caught him staring yesterday, and he’d wanted to talk to her; only not in school.
Then the bacon incident happened, and Max had to do something. He saw two choices. Option 1: He could take his mom to the hospital and get her looked over, but every instinct inside him shouted “No!” His mother loathed doctors, and Max feared what would happen to him and Chloe if the hospital admitted her, especially if it were for something (he hated to even think it) addiction-related. Besides, he’d searched the house for pills and liquor last night and found nothing. That left him with Option 2: Vera Martinez, the girl whose parents were so often whispered about they almost didn’t seem real. He’d never given much thought to the rumors before; in fact, he figured most of it was elaborate bullying. But now his mom was morphing into a different person, with a disturbing voice, face, and smell. If he lived in a different town, somewhere far, far away, he probably wouldn’t even consider this possibility. But he lived in this town, with this family, and this girl.
“I know we haven’t spoken much.” Max searched Vera’s face. Her friends across the table gawked at him but wore smiles. Vera didn’t. “I hope you don’t mind. The front desk staff said you were working today and usually take lunch at this time. I was hoping we could, maybe…”
“You came to see me?” Her brows crumpled above big brown eyes.
“Well, yeah.” He rubbed his neck, now heating to what was likely a blotchy shade of red. Her friends smiled wider, nudging each other as they watched him squirm. Great. “Do you think, like, maybe we could talk, you know…somewhere?”
“About what?”
Max swallowed (his pride as much as his nerves). Vera wasn’t making this easy, but not too many people were ever easy on her. He cracked his knuckles, and her friend, the blonde, stifled a laugh. He did not want to have this conversation in front of two older girls he didn’t know, who were kind of pretty. In fact, if he were being honest, so was Vera. What did Jackson call her before? “Undercover hot”? Max hadn’t noticed until now. But her eyes had this cool way of turning up at the corners like a cat’s, and they were flecked like warm apple pie.
His face flushed more. “Um, I think I need your help, or maybe your parents’ help. It’s about my mom, and I know that your parents…”
Vera stood up so fast that her blue plastic chair nearly toppled to the tiles. “Um, yeah, sure, we can go somewhere.” She snatched her purse from the back of her chair, bright roses blooming on her cheeks. “Follow me.”
* * *
They sat on a splintered wooden bench in the shade of trees speckled with bright white blossoms. Tiny round petals snowed into their laps with the breeze, and his throat itched at the sight of them.
“Thanks for talking to me.” Max coughed slightly.
“You didn’t give me much of a choice. You showed up at my work.” Vera’s lips were tight.
“I wasn’t sure where else to find you.”
“So the one hundred and eighty days of school we had together this year weren’t enough?” Vera tilted her head, dark waves falling over her shoulder. “Because I don’t exactly remember you chatting my ear off, you know, since kindergarten.”
Touché. “I couldn’t say this at school. It’s about my mom. She’s been acting strange, and, well, your parents—”
“Look, I don’t know what you think you know about my family,” she cut him off, “but we’re not a 7-Eleven. We’re not open twenty-four hours to serve you whatever you need whenever you need it.”
His chest clenched. He may not have hung out with Vera much (or at all), but he knew what a girl’s face looked like when she was pissed, and this was it. When they didn’t get a chance to speak in English class, or, more accurately, when he couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to her in front of his friends, he thought he’d uncovered the perfect opportunity. He diverted from his jog to learn her schedule and even waited until her lunch break, thinking it was the polite thing to do. Besides, her friends didn’t look annoyed by the interruption. Wait, her friends…
“Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have come to your work.” He thought of all the school lunches where Vera ate alone. “I didn’t mean to involve your friends, but I really need to talk to you.”
“Of course.” Her tone was flat. “That’s why I’m here, in case you really need me.”
Max squinted, his head throbbing. What was he supposed to do? He spent the last couple nights sleeping on the floor of his sister’s room, not to fend off the nightmares, but to fend off their only surviving parent, who was now acting like a stranger. Like a threat.
No. He was blowing this out of proportion. He had to be.
He shook his head, throat squeezing tight.
A hand touched his arm, fingers light on his skin. “I was rude,” Vera said, her voice softer. “I just like to keep my coworkers separate.”
Max opened his eyes. Roaring Creek wasn’t exactly kind to this girl. Neither was he. If the roles were reversed, how would he react if she showed up at his work one day, in front of everyone?
“Something’s obviously wrong,” she went on. “You came all the way here, so what’s up? You said it’s your mom?”
Max nodded.
How should he put it? It felt like a betrayal even saying it.
He took a deep breath and collected his thoughts.
“The past couple weeks, she hasn’t been herself. It started small. She forgot to pick up Chloe from school—that’s my sister.” He looked at Vera, and she nodded like she already knew, which of course she did. Chloe’s birth had been a bright spot after the explosion. She was headline news. “Then she started showing up to work late, then forgetting to place orders with our vendors, then she stopped coming in at all. I’ve taken over her job completely. At first, I thought she was sick. She’s been sleeping a lot—”
“During the day?” Vera interjected.
“All day.” He watched Vera check off a mental note. “But now her behavior is…bizarre.” He didn’t know how to put it. “It’s gotten to the point where I’m afraid to leave Chloe alone with her. Then yesterday…”
He steadied himself and described the incident with his sister at the stove.
“Her voice was different?” Vera asked.
Max nodded.
“And she was laughing?”
“At the end, yeah.” Max confirmed. “But it wasn’t a happy laugh. It didn’t sound like her at all. I don’t know how to describe it.”
Vera’s cheeks twitched like she was considering something, or maybe remembering something.
“And you’re sure there was no alcohol? Pills?”
Max clenched his jaw. “She’s been sober for four years….” She has, right? Max knew the signs. “There was no alcohol on her breath, no slurring, no puking. And the stuff she was saying, it wasn’t like she was drunk…. It was like it wasn’t her.”
“When was the last time she saw a doctor?” Vera tried to sound official.
“She had her annual checkup on her birthday last month, blood work and stuff. Everything was fine.”
“A psychiatrist?”
His gaze narrowed. What was this? Just because she was wearing scrubs (in black, no less, which was a little odd) didn’t make her Vera th
e Teenage Doctor. Besides, he’d Googled every medical possibility, and nothing fit. That was why he came to Vera.
“She’s seen a therapist, on and off, since…the explosion.” He hated talking about his dad. Just brushing up against the memories of that day caused his body to tense.
“Depression can manifest in many ways, and it can be compounded with other illnesses. After everything your family’s been through…”
“This is not about my dad!” Max slammed the wooden bench, regretting it the moment Vera flinched.
He hung his head, panting. He hadn’t slept well in so long, and he was perpetually tired of the world pinning everything wrong in his life back on that one day. It had been seven years! It wasn’t always about that.
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
Or maybe it was, at least in this town.
Half the residents had been flooded after the hurricane, and the basketball game was intended to raise funds for recovery efforts. Max’s dad was captain of one of the teams. He and his mom were on their way to cheer him on, driving back from a “stress test” at the obstetrician’s office. Mom was in her third trimester carrying Chloe.
When they arrived, the community center had already exploded. A mountain of tangerine flames roared so high Max could hardly see sky. Police were everywhere, screaming into walkie-talkies. Sirens blasted, firehoses spewed water, and crowds shoved and sobbed. Loved ones desperately clung to one another, to strangers, to anyone, pleading for help. Max stood on the sidewalk holding his mother’s hand, helplessly watching the deadly inferno as it seared itself into the core of who Max would become. Then his mom went into labor, right there outside the blazing building. Chloe was on the front page of the paper. miracle baby! But what came next wasn’t a miracle.
His mom healed, physically, from the emergency C-section, but the pills kept flowing. Max was too young to understand, but he noticed the alcohol. He raised Chloe during those early months, a ten-year-old warming bottles, changing diapers, and popping a pinkie finger into a shrieking mouth. Eventually, his grandparents came. Then the threats. Then the accident. And all of this because of a freak gas leak.
Small Town Monsters Page 4