“Wow,” I said. “So this was recently?”
“Yeah,” Riley said. “Her parents picked her up from there and brought her straight here to the island for together time. They come every summer. Lauren hates it.”
“Lauren hates everything,” Alex said. “Literally everything.”
Skink shook his head. “Come on, man, not everything, right?”
Alex laughed, ran a hand through his bleached-blond hair. “Right. She loves weed. And trouble. She loves trouble.”
“That’s totally unfair,” said Zoey. “She has an artist’s soul.”
Alex rolled his eyes dramatically.
“So,” I said, “do you have any idea where she is now?”
“She took off,” Riley said. She threw her cigarette butt into the water.
“That’s what everyone’s saying, anyway,” said Zoey, biting her lip. “Like her parents, the cops.” She wrapped her arms around her torso, giving herself a tight hug, mumbled, “But that’s not what happened.”
“So what did happen?” I asked.
“Rattling Jane got her,” she said. She lit another cigarette with shaking hands.
“That’s total bullshit,” Alex said. “That’s what Lauren wants everyone to think. It’s, like, literally brilliant, really. She goes around town telling everyone she met this scary monster lady down by the lake, shows everyone the pebble she got, then disappears. Of course some idiots are gonna think the monster got her.”
“I heard they might get a team of divers from the state police to start checking the bottom of the lake,” Riley said.
Everyone was quiet for a few seconds.
“How did Lauren first meet her?” I asked. “Rattling Jane?”
“She said it was in the sanctuary,” Riley said. “Loon Cove. There’s a little beach there, not a sandy beach but a pebbly one. Sometimes we go there to swim and hang out.”
“So,” I said, “she met Rattling Jane at Loon Cove? Was she alone?”
She nodded. “Loon Cove is kind of hard to get to, and no one ever bothers you there. Like, bird-watchers and hikers show up once in a while, but mostly no one goes. We showed it to Lauren a couple of years ago. This summer she was going there just about every night. Her dad’s a dick. They’d have these huge fights.”
“Do you know about what?” I asked.
“I guess he’d say shit like, ‘I paid money to come to this cabin for family time and you don’t even show up for dinner.’?”
“It wasn’t just that,” put in Zoey. “He’d hit her and stuff, too. He was super controlling.”
Alex nodded. “That’s what she said, anyway. I don’t know. Lauren could be kind of dramatic. Anyway, apparently he and Lauren’s mom thought that being here would magically bring them all together. It just pissed Lauren off to be dragged to a place with no Wi-Fi, no cell service. Away from all her friends.”
I nodded. “I get it.”
Riley continued, “Her dad kept threatening to send her back to the lockup psych ward place.”
“Guy’s a douchebag,” said Alex. “Has some fancy job trading bonds or something. He’s one of those guys who comes here for a few weeks every summer and walks around like he owns the place.”
“Lauren hates him,” Zoey said. “She says he represents everything that’s wrong with the world: patriarchy, mindless consumption and wealth, total lack of creativity and respect for the planet.”
“Right.” I got the picture. “So she’s miserable, fighting with her parents, and she started walking out to the cove every night? Did any of you guys ever meet her there?”
“Sometimes,” Alex said. “But mostly she went on her own.”
“She’d walk there along a path from her cabin,” Riley said.
“Tell her about the tree,” Skink put in.
“There’s a hollow tree there,” Riley explained, “and she kept her weed and cigarettes and shit there—stuff she didn’t want her parents to find. And one day she goes and there’s a flower in there. Then another day she goes and there’s a coin. Then a piece of sea glass.”
Zoey nodded. “Rattling Jane was leaving her gifts.”
“How did she know it was Rattling Jane?” I asked.
“She didn’t,” Zoey said. “Not at first. Not until Jane showed herself to Lauren.”
“So she just went one day and found Rattling Jane there waiting?” I asked.
“No way,” said Riley. “Rattling Jane doesn’t just show up and wait for you! You have to call her!”
“See,” Skink said. “Just like I told you.”
“So she called her?” I asked.
“Again and again, until she came,” said Zoey, still hugging herself, rocking a little. “She came up out of the water all draped in weeds and bones and leaves and shit like that. Lauren asked her where the rock was, if she could get a wish. And she… she whispered that Lauren had to earn it.”
“Earn it how?” I asked.
“She didn’t say,” Zoey said.
“But,” Riley continued, “she kept going back to the cove, and Rattling Jane would come when she called her. And she kept leaving little things for her in the hollow tree.”
“And then Rattling Jane supposedly gave her the rock,” Alex added. “The wishing stone. That’s what she said, anyway. She showed it to us.”
“What’d it look like?” Skink asked.
Alex shook his head, gave a disgusted little laugh. “Like nothing. Like literally just a regular rock.”
I looked out at the water, watched the way the sunlight played on the surface, making it glisten and sparkle as if it were really touched by magic; maybe it really was a place where a creature made of sticks and weeds and vengeance dwelled.
“When was the last time you saw Lauren?” I asked.
“The day she went missing,” Zoey answered. “She was all upset. Said she’d ruined things by talking to us. That Rattling Jane knew and was mad at her for telling and showing people the stone. She wasn’t going to give her her wish.”
Skink kicked at the ground. “Man, you don’t want to piss off Rattling Jane.”
“There is no fucking Rattling Jane,” Alex declared, smacking the wooden boards of the table. “It was all just a stupid story Lauren told to get attention. The girl’s fucked in the head. Fact!”
“But what if it’s not?” asked Zoey. “I mean, what if it’s real? If she really did get taken?”
The question hung there. Behind us, a balloon popped, and a little girl screamed.
“Have you been out there since she went missing?” I asked. “Out to Loon Cove?”
Alex shook his head. “Not me.”
The girls both shook their heads.
“No way,” said Zoey. “I’m not going back there. Not ever again.”
THE BOOK OF MONSTERS
By Violet Hildreth and Iris Whose Last Name We Don’t Know Illustrations by Eric Hildreth 1978
MONSTERS ARE UNPREDICTABLE
Monsters aren’t like us. They don’t think the way we do. They don’t have the same sense of right and wrong. They are not empathetic. Many are void of emotion.
A monster lacks morals.
They don’t follow the same patterns and rules and moral codes that humans do. They live outside of all that.
Monsters are unpredictable. This is one of the things that makes them truly dangerous and must be remembered whenever you face one. You never know what move a monster is going to make next.
Monsters are full of surprises.
Vi
June 18, 1978
THE GLOWING HANDS of Vi’s Timex were both pointed up at twelve.
Midnight.
The hour when all unseen things wake up, come creeping out of the shadows.
She held still, listening, thinking that maybe, if she listened hard enough, she might be able to hear a far-off roar, the gnashing of teeth, or the snapping of twigs.
But there was only the disappointing chirping of crickets, the humming of the big lights outside the Inn, the soft flutter and thump of moths bumping against the lights.
She was by the rear door on the west side of the Inn, her back pressed against the cool brick. She felt like a shadow, a paper doll that could fold in on itself, become nearly invisible.