Here There Are Monsters

by Amelinda Bérubé

  “Seriously, Skye. You should see your face. Don’t worry. You were right. So I’m working on something new. Something real this time. You’ll see.”

  She reclaimed the Queen of Wands from my nerveless fingers, pulled the screen aside, and threw her into the fire.

  Twelve

  I’m in my room, leafing half-heartedly through a garden magazine without really seeing it, when Mom yells my name. The urgency in it sends shock waves through my chest. I drop the magazine and run for the stairs. They’ve found something; they must have found something.

  “What?” I call, breathless, as I hurry up to the landing. “What is it?”

  But when I get to the top of the stairs, Mom, Dad, and Officer Leduc are all looking at me with closed, serious faces. And Officer Leduc is holding my sword.

  Disappointment washes over me, a crushing weight settling back into place.

  “Oh,” I manage. “That.”

  I open my mouth to say more, but Mom’s voice lashes across the space between us.

  “You owe us an explanation, Skye!”

  The words scatter from my head. I stare at her, bewildered, but she doesn’t give me a chance to blunder through an answer.

  “You could have compromised the search! You could have gotten lost too—or hurt, or—or—” She chokes to a stop, and Dad puts an arm around her.

  “We talked about this,” he says to me, darkly.

  “But—” I look helplessly from Mom’s tearful face to Dad’s stern one. “I didn’t—”

  “And especially going so deep in the woods. That was dangerous, Skye.”

  It’s like they’ve parachuted in from some alternate universe. I stare at the sword in Officer Leduc’s hands and struggle to piece together what they’re saying.

  “You mean—you found that—”

  “We almost didn’t.” Officer Leduc holds the sword out to me, hilt first. “It was at the very edge of our search area today. The guys who found it were pretty excited at first; they thought your sister might have left it there. Until I told them you had it yesterday.”

  It takes me a second to figure out that I’m supposed to take it from him. The wood is cool and smooth in my hand. The room seems to fall dizzily away from me as I watch the light gleam from its polished golden surface.

  “But—” I can’t get any further than that. This doesn’t make sense. He said they were working their way down the block, searching through the woods piece by piece. He said they’d probably get out past the end of the street today. They found it all the way out there? Especially going so deep in the woods. But it was under the apple tree. I threw it; I saw it land.

  My first electric thought is that it was Deirdre. That she picked it up after I went back inside. But how could she have been literally a stone’s throw from the house, how could she make her way all the way over there—without boots on, without a coat—and leave no trail? They would have found her.

  “I know it’s hard, feeling like there’s nothing you can do,” Officer Leduc says quietly. “But this is a race against the clock, a case like this. We can’t afford to waste time. And your parents need you safe. Understand?”

  I nod dumbly, because they’re all glaring at me. But the sword draws my eyes, heavy, solid, impossible. Undisputable. Maybe an animal picked it up. It’s the only other explanation.

  So why do I suddenly feel exposed, as if something is watching me, wondering idly if I’ll rise to the bait?

  * * *

  Afternoon slides into evening by slow degrees, and I can’t sit still. I throw myself on my bed, and nameless jitters prod me up again, across the room and back. Snapping a kick at the air doesn’t help. It just leads me to memories of Deirdre. Everything does.

  I shoved the sword under my bed, where I couldn’t see it. The harder I ignore it, the more its presence chafes at me, striking little sparks of fear too ridiculous to contemplate. I will not let them set me alight. I will not freak out.

  I’m not like her.

  But what if? the sparks whisper, flying up around me. What if—?

  It’s as if the kingdoms are haunting me. As if Deirdre’s using them, somehow, to reach out to me, pull me in. Which makes no goddamn sense. That was a game. I’ve never thought very hard about the line between real and make-believe. It’s obvious as gravity. Or the difference between awake and dreaming. You might move back and forth between them, but you can always tell them apart. Once you’re back on the side that’s real, anyway.

  But I’m not dreaming now. The sword was under the apple tree. And I’ve never fallen asleep like I did the day she disappeared. What the hell is this? What if—?

  No. What if nothing. It’s nothing. It’s not worth explaining. I’m not thinking about this.

  I’m not thinking as I pull Mom’s rain boots from the closet, not thinking as I slam through the door into the deepening evening. Shadows and chilly silence pool among the trees as I march across the yard toward the empty lot. Browning lawn gives way to tall rustling grass and thistles that catch at my legs. I wade through them up to the bank of the creek, where the water gets deep enough to slice through the reeds in a shining ribbon. I stop there to comb through the grass for a stick. A nice straight one with a witchy fork at the end.

  Stupid. God, this is stupid. I hope she’s good and pleased with herself, wherever she is. I hope she’s satisfied.

  I stab the end of the stick into the muddy bottom of the creek. Twist it around, like a key, as far as my wrist will go. This was how we always opened the gate to the kingdoms. But it’s weird without her. All wrong. I could swear Deirdre is standing right behind me, looking over my shoulder.

  The cop in the nearest car is frowning at me. Wondering what the hell I’m doing. I don’t know what I’ll tell him if he asks.

  I shuffle in a hurried circle, splashing in and out of the water. Three times around the stick in the mud. I’m supposed to say something; I’m supposed to use that oath of hers. Words I haven’t spoken since the spring. I almost turn back to the house, but somehow doing this halfway is worse than trying it in the first place. I close my eyes and inhale slowly.

  “Give her back,” I mutter. “Give her back. I demand it. By…by wood, stone, water, and bone.” There. I pace around the stick again, making it a chant. “Wood, stone, water, bone.”

  I repeat it one more time, walking faster. I lose track of how many circles I’ve made and keep going until I have to stagger to a dizzy halt, the woods tilting in front of me. The wind rustles in the grass. A crow caws somewhere far away. Nothing moves.

  Well, obviously. What was I expecting?

  I yank the “key” free from the mud and throw it away into the grass. I storm back the way I came, and my idiot tears make the house dim and blurry before me. I don’t look back. I won’t.

  Thirteen

  October

  Mom sent me out looking for Deirdre once, a few weeks ago now. I yanked my coat on and stomped outside, scowling. Like I’d even know where to look. The leaves were turning, and the sullen maze of the trees was ablaze in red and gold.

  She didn’t answer me when I yelled, predictably enough. I crunched through the browning grass through the garden, to the edge of the woods. Past the twiggy remains of the rosebushes Mom tried to plant. They’d drooped and wilted within days. It was like the ground had rejected them. I heard somewhere that when they transplant an organ, sometimes the body attacks it, defends itself as if it’s being invaded.

  I teetered down along the tree roots into the shallows of the swamp, branches snagging at my clothes and hair. I pulled my sleeve loose from a clinging branch, and Deirdre’s words to William popped into my mind, as clearly as if she’d spoken them beside me. You’re not welcome here.

  I shivered, folded my arms. The afternoon was tilting into evening, golden light slicing through the leaves. Crows cawed in the treetops, wh
eeling and swirling in the air, black rags against the rosy clouds.

  I made a full circuit of the yard, hopping awkwardly over the ragged ditch where the creek had sunk to a sluggish brown trickle, pushed through the tall dead grass to the castle, threaded my way around the back. Through the leaning cedar doorway, into the chilly shade of the clearing.

  “Deirdre?” I shouted, turning around and around. “Deirdre, you have to come home!”

  Stepping backward, I nudged something with my foot, something that rattled away with a hollow sound.

  A bone, broken and cracked. Worn to a silver gray, almost like driftwood. It was one in a pile. Carefully stacked, thigh-high.

  I shied away from them. There was no telling what animals they belonged to. Here the thin comb of a rib cage, there a long leg bone topped with a blackened knob. I thought I might have seen an eye socket staring out at me—or maybe the hollow of a pelvis—but I wasn’t looking any closer to find out. I just about tripped over the row of stones in my haste to get away from them, hurried back out into the fading daylight.

  It was obviously Deirdre who’d put them there. Who else? The stone circles were Deirdre all over. The bones, though—that was a whole new level of creepy, even for her. The thought of what Mom would say about it settled over me, cold and sickening.

  Whatever. That wasn’t my problem. I was done. I’d done my job. It would be dark soon, anyway. Gray twilight pooled under the eaves of the forest, in the hollows and the depths, slowly rising.

  “Mom,” I yelled, slamming into the house and kicking off my boots, “Mom, I can’t—”

  “Can’t what?” Deirdre asked coolly, passing the stairs on her way to the kitchen.

  “There you are,” I sighed, and scowled at her. “Mom sent me out looking for you.”

  “Well, I’ve been home for, like, ten minutes,” she shot back, tossing her hair.

  “You could have at least answered me,” I snapped. “I know you heard me calling.”

  “Sorry,” she said, clearly not sorry.

  “Yeah, well, I went stomping all over the yard looking for you.” I glared at her pointedly. “Like behind the castle? In the trees there?”

  Her face went blank and still, though her eyes didn’t leave my face. I shrugged off the memory of her staring at me in the dark, unblinking.

  “Yeah.” The light from the kitchen made her half a silhouette, unreadable. “And?”

  It was a challenge. A dare. Whatever she was trying to drag me into—again—I refused. I pushed past her. Our shoulders clashed, each of us refusing to cede the space.

  * * *

  Then came the night Mog didn’t come home.

  It was the first time Deirdre knocked on the door of my new room, asking if I’d seen her. But none of us had. There had been no squeaking paws at the balcony doors—or at my new window. We called her from the balcony, over and over again; we pulled out a bag of her favorite treats to rattle enticingly. But no lithe shadow came bounding out of the dark to greet us; we stood side by side at the rail, listening, but the twinkling sound of the bell on her collar never came.

  The sound of the back door closing pulled me from dreams of our old street, dark and icy, the lights of the houses shining down from higher hills than I remembered, gleaming secretively between trembling evergreen boughs. I lay in bed, muddled and dizzy for a moment, trying to figure out if the sound had been part of my dream somehow. But then a shadow slipped across the pale wash of the neighbor’s far-off porch light, a thin fleeting silhouette.

  I started upright, but it was only Deirdre. The ghost of her voice carried through the glass, crying out.

  I threw my sweater on and hurried upstairs, through the garage, to lean out the back door. The light from the garage spilled out into the yard, catching Deirdre standing under the apple tree, facing into the woods. Her long nightshirt flapped around her bare legs, a pale flag.

  “Deirdre?” I called.

  “Mog,” she wailed. “Mog! Here, kitty! Here, kitty, kitty!”

  I hugged my sweater close and hurried out toward her.

  “Deirdre! Deir, come inside!”

  I tried to put an arm around her bare shoulders. Her skin was icy under my hand. But she pulled away, sniffled, went back to calling for the cat.

  “Deirdre, come inside,” I repeated helplessly. “You’re going to freeze out here. She’ll come back eventually.”

  “You don’t understand,” Deirdre said tearfully. “There are things out there. We have to find her before they do!”

  “Mog has cattitude,” I tried to reassure her, but her panic pinched my heart. “She’s always made it back before.”

  “You don’t understand.” She stormed away from me, her arms folded over her chest. “This is my fault. I have to find her. I should never have let her out—”

  When I caught up to her again, grabbed her arm, she started to sob, sagging in place like a broken doll. I hugged her, holding her up, bewildered.

  “Deirdre, that doesn’t even make any sense,” I protested. “Mog goes out all the time. She’s a cat. It’s not like you can give her a curfew.”

  Deirdre buried her face in her hands.

  “I wish we’d never come here,” she moaned. “I wish we’d never left. I’ll never see her again, never, never.”

  “Oh, Deirdre, you don’t know that—”

  But she just pushed away from me, ran back to the house, leaving me behind. Inside the garage, the door opened and closed with a bang.

  I sighed, shivered, pulled my sweater close around my neck. Behind me, the leaves on the reaching branches fluttered and murmured speculatively. I turned to look up at their pale undersides flickering in the light from the garage. I stood there peering into the dark, every hair alert to the feeling of being watched. Evaluated.

  “Go away,” I snapped, as much to hear my own voice as anything else, and I hurried back to the house, refusing to look over my shoulder. I pulled the garage door closed behind me with a bang and only then, let my breath out in a trembling rush, waiting for my jumping heartbeat to slow.

  I was as bad as Deirdre. At least nobody had been around to see it.

  * * *

  The first few mornings after Mog disappeared, I came upstairs to find Deirdre asleep on the kitchen floor, waiting by the patio doors for the sound of paws on the glass, her head pillowed on a couch cushion. Mom woke her up while I retreated to the bathroom, cranking the water on to drown out the sound of her crying.

  She spent more time than ever outside after that. Most days, she was gone when I got home, her backpack and sneakers left forgotten in a heap inside the front door. She came back just when it was getting dark, never quite late enough for Mom to worry, sticks tangled in her hair, her face smudged with dirt. Mom made a big deal over that, hauling Deirdre into the bathroom, growling all the while about her deadlines.

  “You’re thirteen, Deirdre, for heaven’s sake,” she snapped, jerking the brush through a snarl in Deirdre’s hair. “I shouldn’t have to do this! I don’t have time!”

  Deirdre just let her head yank back, expressionless, and said nothing. She seemed calm, at least. Preoccupied.

  “Are you working on another kingdom?” I asked her at dinner that night, feeling like I should ask. She looked at me suspiciously.

  “Kind of,” she muttered, but didn’t elaborate. I focused on cutting my chicken into little pieces to hide my relief and guilt. I didn’t ask for details.

  The night she disappeared, before Mom came barging through my door, I’d been dreaming about the valley, the path an asphalt ribbon winding down the bottom of the ravine toward the river. I couldn’t do it again. I’d changed my mind. I had to turn back before I reached the dry streambed, the tumbled rocks leading into green shadow between the trees. But the tangled trees of the swamp had closed over the path behind me like gathering cloud
s.

  “Hurry,” Deirdre demanded, crouching down at the crest of the castle to reach out to me, beckoning for me to take her hand. “I’m waiting.”

  Fourteen

  My sleep is shallow, full of scurrying dreams, and my eyes snap open at the sound of something scratching at the window.

  Not like Mog did, with her soft, scrabbling paws. It’s a slow, stuttering squeak, something pressing hard against the windowpane in a long, stiff stroke. It clicks against the glass on contact like it’s pointed. Sharp.

  I clutch the blankets in the dark. I’m not imagining it. The sound is clumsy, dogged. Painful. Repeated over and over again.

  I don’t want to look. But what if it’s Deirdre, trying to get my attention, trying to get me to let her in? If it was Deirdre, she’d knock, wouldn’t she? What if she’s hurt?

  When I finally twist around, a looming shadow lurches away from the glass, making me shrink back in my bed with a little shriek. The porch light leaves it in shadow, no more than a silhouette, but it has a corner that lifts and falls. Like a knee or an elbow. Under cloth.

  I throw the covers off and jump up to look out the window, but the twitching lump of movement steals around the corner of the house and disappears. I run upstairs to the long windows overlooking the yard. Something’s out there, skirting the spill of light from the house. Something upright and faintly paler than the night, making swaying, staggering progress toward the edge of the woods.

  Icy prickles sweep my skin as I watch it shamble across the lawn, but it’s too tall to be anything but a person.

  A person in a dress.

  I cast frantically around for a flashlight. My phone is sitting on the kitchen table, and I grab it and flick on the light, cram my feet into my sneakers, fling myself down the stairs and out the front door. My breath smokes in the pale wash of the LED light. The grass is slick with rain that soaks through my shoes, icy patches blooming against my toes. My circle of light swings wildly over the ruins of the garden, the bare trunks of the trees, as I pelt around the house.