Vi nodded. “It’ll be important to be able to get good pictures for proof. We haven’t come face-to-face with any monsters yet, but we’ve seen signs,” she explained. “Look at this.” She reached for an old baby food jar on the shelf. Inside was a long tuft of black fur. “We pulled this off a tree a little ways down the creek. It didn’t come from any animal we have around here, that’s for sure.” She handed Iris the jar, watched the girl’s eyes widen.
“And we’ve seen footprints, too. Strange ones. Almost human, but bigger and definitely with claws.” Iris seemed to shiver. “We’ve made some recordings too, really weird screams and howls, but they’re back at home. We don’t leave the tape recorder out here. We can play them for you later.”
Iris was staring into the jar of fur, turning it, shaking it a little like a snow globe. Her orange hat was pulled down, covering the tops of her ears.
“There are two nights every month we go monster hunting: the full moon and the new moon,” Vi told her. “That’s the best time to find monsters.”
Iris nodded.
“We should show her the book!” Eric said, voice bouncing with excitement. He pulled the briefcase from under the folding table. It was an old, hard-sided leather case, scuffed and stained. He undid the tarnished brass clasps and opened it up. Inside were the monster book, a big box of colored pencils, some pens, pencils, erasers, and markers.
The monster book itself was in a black three-ring binder Gran had given them from the Inn. The label on the spine had read ACCOUNTING, 1973, but they’d made a new BOOK OF MONSTERS label and pasted that over it. Eric had made a drawing for the cover showing his favorite monster: a chimera—a fire-breathing creature that’s part lion, part goat, part serpent.
“Vi does all the writing, and I do the drawings,” he explained, flipping through the book, showing Iris the pages dedicated to vampires, to the rules of monster hunting.
“This is a wendigo. They’re creatures that were human once. Now they eat people.” The emaciated-looking creature had its jaws open, teeth sharp, claws out. It was dressed in rags and had black eyes.
“And this,” he said, turning the page, “is a werewolf. You know about werewolves, right? They’re humans that transform on full moons. The worst thing about being a werewolf is that sometimes you don’t even know you’re one.”
Iris looked down at the drawing: a humanoid form with a wolf’s head, red eyes, teeth dripping with blood. She took a step back.
“You don’t need to be afraid,” Eric said. “Not in the daylight like this. And there are things you can do to protect yourself. Magic and stuff. We’ll teach you. We’ll teach you everything we know.”
Iris smiled.
“Can you draw?” Vi asked Iris. Iris shook her head. “Well, then maybe you can help me with the writing. You know how to write, don’t you?”
Vi handed her a red marker and a piece of paper, like it was a test she wasn’t sure Iris would pass. Iris took the marker but held it all wrong, clutching it in her fist, all her fingers wrapped around it.
“Write down your favorite monster,” Vi said, laying a piece of paper on the table.
Iris looked at the marker in her hand, at the blank sheet of paper.
Then she drew a rectangle. About two-thirds up, in the middle of the rectangle, she drew another smaller rectangle. Inside the smaller rectangle she put two small circles.
“What’s this?” Vi asked.
Iris wrote MNSTR in big, messy block letters, then laid the marker down.
“Monster? What kind of monster?” Vi asked, but Iris had turned away.
Vi picked up the monster book, closed it, and looked at the cover where she’d written THE BOOK OF MONSTERS by Violet Hildreth, Illustrations by Eric Hildreth. She picked up a black pen.
“Do you have a last name, Iris?”
Iris gave a small shrug, then shook her head.
“Okay then,” Vi said, printing carefully on the cover, adding and Iris Whose Last Name We Don’t Know next to her own name. She held the book up to show Iris, but Iris was busy going through the things Eric had shown her in the backpack. She held up the binoculars.
“Binoculars,” Eric said. He turned his hands into two tunnels and brought them up to his face. “Hold them right up against your eyes, and that dial in the middle you use to focus.” He shook his head as he watched her. “Not that way—if you do it that way, everything looks smaller and farther away. You want things to look bigger and closer.”
But Iris held the binoculars with the large lenses pressed against her eyes, looking at Eric, then Vi, making them farther away.
And she smiled.
She kept the binoculars pressed against her face as she walked around the room, looking at everything: the spongy floorboards, the shelves, the window with its cracked glass and spiderwebs. She was looking everywhere except where she was going. She walked into the table hard; so hard that it tipped, dumping the monster book on the floor. She fell back against the wall, hitting her head and making a little shriek that proved she wasn’t mute after all.
The binoculars fell to the ground, and Iris’s orange hat came off.
Eric gasped.
Vi clapped her hand over her mouth to keep the scream she felt from coming out.
Iris scrambled for the hat and pulled it back on.
But it was too late.
Vi and Eric had already seen.
The front of Iris’s head was shaved, and a thick red scar, raised and raw-looking, ran all the way over the top from ear to ear.
THE BOOK OF MONSTERS
By Violet Hildreth and Iris Whose Last Name We Don’t Know Illustrations by Eric Hildreth
1978
If you suspect someone you know might be a monster, there are steps you can take to get to the truth.
Expose them to holy water, garlic, silver, and gauge their reaction.
See if they make a reflection in the mirror.
Do you only ever see them at night?
Do they disappear on full moons?
Learn what kind of monster they are. Study their habits, their movements. Learn where they live, how they feed, what their weakness is.
Then make a plan to kill them.
Vi
June 2, 1978
YOU HAVE TO hit back,” Vi said with an exasperated sigh, after she knocked Iris’s block off for the tenth time. They were playing Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, throwing punches by pushing the plastic buttons on joysticks. Vi was the red robot; Iris was blue. But Iris barely threw any punches. She pushed the head of her blue robot back on and waited for it to be knocked off again.
They were set up on the little table in the back sunroom. But there was no sun today. The enclosed porch, with its brown carpet and mustard-colored drapes, felt dismal. The old couch was covered in a crocheted sunflower afghan that Miss Evelyn had made. The beaded macrame wall hanging had been a gift from one of Gran’s patients. And the shelves held pieces of pottery that Vi and Eric had made: misshapen ashtrays and lopsided vases. The landscape with horses that Vi had painted by number last year hung above the shelves. Gran’s gin still bubbled gently behind them.
It was pouring rain, and nothing was on TV but crappy soap operas: The Edge of Night, As the World Turns, Guiding Light. After nearly a month, Iris still hadn’t spoken. Vi was starting to doubt that she ever would, but Gran said not to give up, to keep trying, to be patient and understanding.
Kapow! Vi pushed the button fiercely and knocked the head of Iris’s blue plastic robot off yet again.
This stunk. Winning was no fun when your opponent wouldn’t even try.
Vi shoved her chair back from the table and stood up, looked again through the stack of games on the shelves.
They couldn’t play Battleship or Go Fish. They couldn’t play Clue. You had to talk for all of those.
They’d done a zillion stupid Spirograph drawings and made designs with the Lite-Brite set. They’d already played Operation and Hungry Hungry Hippos and checkers. They’d spent almost an hour hunting for Big White Rat—Gran said she’d seen him when she was making her coffee and that he’d run into the crack between the refrigerator and counter.
“If I catch him, can I keep him?” Eric had asked.
Gran had smiled. “If you can build a cage strong enough,” she’d said. “That’s one smart rat.”
Vi turned from the shelf of games. “What do you want to do now?” she asked.
Iris only shrugged.