A Monster Calls

by Patrick Ness

  Conor could feel the monster close behind him, knew that it was kneeling, knew that it was putting its face up to his ear to whisper into it, to tell him the rest of the story.

  He called, it said, for a monster.

  And it reached a huge, monstrous hand past Conor and knocked Harry flying across the floor.

  Trays clattered and people screamed as Harry tumbled past them. Anton and Sully looked aghast, first at Harry, then back at Conor.

  Their faces changed as they saw him. Conor took another step towards them, feeling the monster towering behind him.

  Anton and Sully turned and ran.

  “What do you think you’re playing at, O’Malley?” Harry said as he pulled himself up from the floor, holding his forehead where he’d hit it as he fell. He took his hand away and a few people screamed as they saw blood.

  Conor kept moving forward, people scrambling to get out of his way. The monster came with him, matching him step for step.

  “You don’t see me?” Conor shouted as he came. “You don’t see me?”

  “No, O’Malley!” Harry shouted back as he stood. “No, I don’t. No one here does!”

  Conor stopped and looked around slowly. The whole room was watching them now, waiting to see what would happen.

  Except when Conor turned to face them. Then they looked away, like it was too embarrassing or painful to actually look at him directly. Only Lily held his eyes for longer than a second, her face anxious and hurt.

  “You think this scares me, O’Malley?” Harry said, touching the blood on his forehead. “You think I’m ever going to be afraid of you?”

  Conor said nothing, just started moving forward again.

  Harry took a step back.

  “Conor O’Malley,” he said, his voice growing poisonous now. “Who everyone’s sorry for because of his mum. Who swans around school acting like he’s so different, like no one knows his suffering.”

  Conor kept walking. He was almost there.

  “Conor O’Malley who wants to be punished,” Harry said, still stepping back, his eyes on Conor’s. “Conor O’Malley who needs to be punished. And why is that, Conor O’Malley? What secrets do you hide that are so terrible?”

  “You shut up,” Conor said.

  And he heard the monster’s voice say it with him.

  Harry backed up another step until he was against a window. It felt like the whole school was holding its breath, waiting to see what Conor would do. He could hear a teacher or two calling from outside, finally noticing something was going on.

  “But do you know what I see when I look at you, O’Malley?” Harry said.

  Conor clenched his hands into fists.

  Harry leaned forward, his eyes flashing. “I see nothing,” he said.

  Without turning around, Conor asked the monster a question.

  “What did you do to help the invisible man?”

  And he felt the monster’s voice again, like it was in his own head.

  I made them see, it said.

  Conor clenched his fists even tighter.

  Then the monster leapt forward to make Harry see.

  PUNISHMENT

  “I don’t even know what to say.” The Headmistress made an exasperated sound and shook her head. “What can I possibly say to you, Conor?”

  Conor kept his eyes on the carpet, which was the colour of spilled wine. Miss Kwan was there, too, sitting behind him, as if he might try to escape. He sensed rather than saw the Headmistress lean forward. She was older than Miss Kwan. And somehow twice as scary.

  “You put him in hospital, Conor,” she said. “You broke his arm, his nose, and I’ll bet his teeth are never going to look that pretty again. His parents are threatening to sue the school and file charges against you.”

  Conor looked up at that.

  “They were a little hysterical, Conor,” Miss Kwan said behind him, “and I don’t blame them. I explained what’s been going on, though. That he had been regularly bullying you and that your circumstances were … special.”

  Conor winced at the word.

  “It was actually the bullying part that scared them off,” Miss Kwan said, scorn in her voice. “Doesn’t look good to prospective universities these days, apparently, accusations of bullying.”

  “But that’s not the point!” the Headmistress said, so loud she made both Conor and Miss Kwan jump. “I can’t even make sense of what actually happened.” She looked at some papers on her desk, reports from teachers and other students, Conor guessed. “I’m not even sure how one boy could have caused so much damage by himself.”

  Conor had felt what the monster was doing to Harry, felt it in his own hands. When the monster gripped Harry’s shirt, Conor felt the material against his own palms. When the monster struck a blow, Conor felt the sting of it in his own fist. When the monster held Harry’s arm behind his back, Conor had felt Harry’s muscles resisting.

  Resisting, but not winning.

  Because how could a boy beat a monster?

  He remembered all the screaming and running. He remembered the other kids fleeing to get teachers. He remembered the circle around him opening wider and wider as the monster told the story of all that he’d done for the invisible man.

  Never invisible again, the monster kept saying as he pummelled Harry. Never invisible again.

  There came a point when Harry stopped trying to fight back, when the blows from the monster were too strong, too many, too fast, when he began begging the monster to stop.

  Never invisible again, the monster said, finally letting up, its huge branch-like fists curled tight as a clap of thunder.

  It turned to Conor.

  But there are harder things than being invisible, it said.

  And it vanished, leaving Conor standing alone over the shivering, bleeding Harry.

  Everyone in the dining hall was staring at Conor now. Everyone could see him, all eyes looking his way. There was silence in the room, too much silence for so many kids, and for a moment, before the teachers broke it up – where had they been? Had the monster kept them from seeing? Or had it really been so short an amount of time? – you could hear the wind rushing in an open window, a wind that dropped a few small, spiky leaves to the floor.

  Then there were adult hands on Conor, dragging him away.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” the Headmistress asked.

  Conor shrugged.

  “I’m going to need more than that,” she said. “You seriously hurt him.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Conor mumbled.

  “What was that?” she said sharply.

  “It wasn’t me,” Conor said, more clearly. “It was the monster who did it.”

  “The monster,” the Headmistress said.

  “I didn’t even touch Harry.”

  The Headmistress made a wedge shape with her fingertips and placed her elbows on her desk. She glanced at Miss Kwan.

  “An entire dining hall saw you hitting Harry, Conor,” Miss Kwan said. “They saw you knocking him down. They saw you pushing him over a table. They saw you banging his head against the floor.” Miss Kwan leaned forward. “They heard you yelling about being seen. About not being invisible any more.”

  Conor flexed his hands slowly. They were sore again. Just like after the destruction of his grandma’s sitting room.

  “I can understand how angry you must be,” Miss Kwan said, her voice getting slightly softer. “I mean, we haven’t even been able to reach any kind of parent or guardian for you.”

  “My dad flew back to America,” Conor said. “And my grandma’s started keeping her phone on silent so she won’t wake up Mum.” He scratched the back of his hand. “Grandma’ll probably call you back, though.”

  The Headmistress sat back heavily in her chair. “School rules dictate immediate exclusion,” she said.

  Conor felt his stomach sink, felt his whole body droop under a tonne of extra weight.

  But then he realized it was drooping because the weig
ht had been removed.

  Understanding flooded him, relief did, too, so powerful it almost made him cry, right there in the Headmistress’s office.

  He was going to be punished. It was finally going to happen. Everything was going to make sense again. She was going to exclude him.

  Punishment was coming.

  Thank God. Thank God–

  “But how could I do that?” the Headmistress said.

  Conor froze.

  “How could I do that and still call myself a teacher?” she said. “With all that you’re going through.” She frowned. “With all that we know about Harry.” She shook her head slightly. “There will come a day when we’ll talk about this, Conor O’Malley. And we will, believe me.” She started gathering the papers on her desk. “But today is not that day.” She gave him a last look. “You have bigger things to think about.”

  It took Conor a moment to realize it was over. That this was it. This was all he was going to get.

  “You’re not punishing me?” he said.

  The Headmistress gave him a grim smile, almost kind, and then she said almost exactly the same thing his father had said. “What purpose could that possibly serve?”

  – • –

  Miss Kwan walked him back to his lesson. The two pupils they passed in the corridor backed up against the wall to let him go by.

  His classroom fell silent when he opened the door, and no one, including the teacher, said a word as he made his way back to his desk. Lily, at the desk beside him, looked like she was going to say something. But she didn’t.

  No one spoke to him for the rest of the day.

  There are worse things than being invisible, the monster had said, and it was right.

  Conor was no longer invisible. They all saw him now.

  But he was further away than ever.

  A NOTE

  A few days passed. Then a few more. It was hard to tell exactly how many. They all seemed to be one big, grey day to Conor. He’d get up in the morning and his grandma wouldn’t talk to him, not even about the phone call from the Headmistress. He’d go to school, and no one would talk to him there either. He’d visit his mum in hospital, and she’d be too tired to talk to him. His dad would phone, and he’d have nothing to say.

  There was no sign of the monster either, not since the attack on Harry, even though it was supposed to be time for Conor to tell a story in return. Every night, Conor waited. Every night, it didn’t appear. Maybe because it knew Conor didn’t know what story to tell. Or that Conor did know, but would refuse.

  Eventually, Conor would fall asleep, and the nightmare would come. It came every time he slept now, and worse than before, if that was possible. He’d wake up shouting three or four times a night, once so bad his grandma knocked on his door to see if he was all right.

  She didn’t come in, though.

  The weekend arrived and was spent at the hospital, though his mum’s new medicine was taking its time to work and meanwhile she had developed an infection in her lungs. Her pain had got worse, too, so she spent most of the time either asleep or not making a lot of sense because of the painkillers. Conor’s grandma would send him out when she was like that, and he got so familiar with wandering around the hospital he once correctly took a lost old woman to the X-ray department.

  Lily and her mum came to visit on the weekend, too, but he made sure he spent the whole time they were there reading magazines in the gift shop.

  Then, somehow, he was back at school again. As incredible as it seemed, time kept moving forward for the rest of the world.

  The rest of the world that wasn’t waiting.

  Mrs Marl was handing back the Life Writing homework. To everyone who had a life, anyway. Conor just sat at his desk, chin in hand, looking at the clock. It was still two and a half hours until 12.07. Not that it would probably matter. He was beginning to think the monster was gone for good.

  Someone else who wouldn’t talk to him, then.

  “Hey,” he heard, whispered in his general vicinity. Making fun of him no doubt. Look at Conor O’Malley, just sitting there like a lump. What a freak.

  “Hey,” he heard again, this time more insistent.

  He realized it was someone whispering to him.

  Lily was sitting across the aisle, where she’d sat throughout all the years they’d been in school together. She kept looking up at Mrs Marl, but her fingers were slyly holding out a note.

  A note for Conor.

  “Take it,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth, gesturing with the note.

  Conor looked to see if Mrs Marl was watching, but she was too busy expressing mild disappointment that Sully’s life had an awfully close resemblance to a particular insect-based superhero. Conor reached across the aisle and took the note.

  It was folded what seemed like a couple of hundred times and getting it open was like untying a knot. He gave Lily an irritated look, but she was still pretending to watch the teacher.

  Conor flattened the note on his desk and read it. For all the folding, it was only four lines long.

  Four lines, and the world went quiet.

  – • –

  I’m sorry for telling everyone about your mum, read the first line.

  I miss being your friend, read the second.

  Are you okay? read the third.

  I see you, read the fourth, with the I underlined about a hundred times.

  He read it again. And again.

  He looked back over to Lily, who was busy receiving all kinds of praise from Mrs Marl, but he could see that she was blushing furiously and not just because of what Mrs Marl was saying.

  Mrs Marl moved on, passing lightly over Conor.

  When she was gone, Lily looked at him. Looked him right in the eye.

  And she was right. She saw him, really saw him.

  He had to swallow before he could speak.

  “Lily–” he started to say, but the door to the classroom opened and the school secretary entered, beckoning to Mrs Marl and whispering something to her.

  They both turned to look at Conor.

  100 YEARS

  Conor’s grandma stopped outside his mum’s hospital room.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” Conor asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ll be down in the waiting room,” she said, and left him to enter on his own.

  He had a sour feeling in his stomach at what he might find inside. They’d never pulled him out of school before, not in the middle of the day, not even when she was hospitalized last Easter.

  Questions raced through his mind.

  Questions he ignored.

  He pushed open the door, fearing the worst.

  But his mum was awake, her bed in its sitting-up position. What’s more, she was smiling, and for a second, Conor’s heart leapt. The treatment must have worked. The yew tree had healed her. The monster had done it–

  Then he saw that the smile didn’t match her eyes. She was happy to see him, but she was frightened, too. And sad. And more tired than he’d ever seen her, which was saying something.

  And they wouldn’t have pulled him out of school to tell him she was feeling a little bit better.

  “Hi, son,” she said, and when she said it, her eyes filled and he could hear the thickness in her voice.

  Conor could feel himself slowly starting to get very, very angry.

  “Come here,” she said, tapping the bedcovers next to her.

  He didn’t sit there, though, slumping instead in a chair next to her bed.

  “How’re you doing, sweetheart?” she asked, her voice faint, her breath even shakier than it had been yesterday. There seemed to be more tubes invading her today, giving her medicines and air and who knew what else? She wasn’t wearing a scarf and her head was bare and white in the room’s fluorescent lights. Conor felt an almost irresistible urge to find something to cover it, protect it, before anyone saw how vulnerable it was.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Why did Grandma
get me out of school?”

  “I wanted to see you,” she said, “and the way the morphine’s been sending me off to Cloud Cuckoo Land, I didn’t know if I’d have the chance later.”

  Conor crossed his arms tightly in front of himself. “You’re awake in the evenings sometimes,” he said. “You could have seen me tonight.”

  He knew he was asking a question. He knew she knew it, too.

  And so he knew when she spoke again that she was giving him an answer.

  “I wanted to see you now, Conor,” she said, and again her voice was thick and her eyes were wet.

  “This is the talk, isn’t it?” Conor said, far more sharply than he’d wanted to. “This is…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Look at me, son,” she said, because he’d been staring at the floor. Slowly, he looked back up to her. She was giving the super-tired smile, and he saw how deeply pressed into her pillows she was, like she didn’t even have the strength to raise her head. He realized that they’d raised the bed because she wouldn’t have been able to look at him otherwise.

  She took a deep breath to speak, which set her off into a terrible, heavy-sounding coughing fit. It took a few long moments before she could finally talk again.

  “I spoke to the doctor this morning,” she said, her voice weak. “The new treatment isn’t working, Conor.”

  “The one from the yew tree?”

  “Yes.”

  Conor frowned. “How can it not be working?”

  His mum swallowed. “Things have moved just too fast. It was a faint hope. And now there’s this infection–”

  “But how can it not be working?” Conor said again, almost like he was asking someone else.

  “I know,” his mum said, her sad smile still there. “Looking at that yew tree every day, it felt like I had a friend out there who’d help me if things got to their worst.”

  Conor still had his arms crossed. “But it didn’t help.”

  His mum shook her head slightly. She had a worried look on her face, and Conor understood that she was worried about him.

  “So what happens now?” Conor asked. “What’s the next treatment?”