“No way,” Patty said, voice firm.
“Come on, will you at least be a lookout? I’ll have the keys, I’ll just need to know the coast is clear.” She stared at Patty. “I’m gonna do this with or without you. If you help me, I’ll tell you what I find when I go downstairs. If you don’t, I’m gonna keep it all to myself, and you’ll just have to go on guessing about what might be down there.”
Patty shook her head. “You’re a little shit, you know that?”
“I know,” Vi said proudly.
Lizzy
August 20, 2019
DO YOU REMEMBER Gran’s lighter?” I asked as soon as Eric (Charlie!) picked up the call.
“Huh?” He sounded like I’d woken him up from a nap. He was the sort who took naps. Something I, always wired and unable to turn my brain off, couldn’t fathom.
“Gran’s lighter,” I repeated slowly, unable to hide the irritation in my voice. “You remember it, right?”
“Sure. With the butterfly.”
“Describe it.”
“Lizzy, what’s this—”
“Just describe it. Tell me what it looked like.”
There was silence, then a long sigh. “Let’s see. It was gold-colored. Tarnished. There was a butterfly carved into the front. Etched, I guess. And her initials were on the other side in kind of a curly old-fashioned script.”
“Right. Do you remember where she got it? Or anything else about it?”
“No. She just always had it. As long as I could remember.”
I was outside at the campsite, sitting at the picnic table, the lighter, note, and stone in front of me. I took a long sip from the bottle of beer I’d opened.
“I found it,” I said.
“What?”
“Gran’s lighter.”
“Wha-at?” he stammered. “How?”
“She left it for me.”
“She who?” Charlie said.
Who else could it be?
“I was right, Charlie. It’s her. She’s the one! The one taking the girls, using the other monsters. That’s how she gets to the girls. She pretends to be these other monsters, she makes contact. And it’s not just random. I think she chooses the girls carefully. She must—”
“Lizzy, please,” he said. “Stop.”
“I know it sounds crazy, and I’m still trying to get my head around it, but I’ve got Gran’s lighter! I’m holding it in my hand right now! It’s proof! And she left me a note. I think she—”
“You’re right,” Charlie said. “It does sound crazy. I’m starting to get really worried here, Lizzy. I think you need to see someone. Like a professional.”
I barked out a laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”
“You need help, Lizzy. Listen to yourself, will you? You’re starting to sound, I don’t know, delusional or something.”
I hung up on him, fuming.
How dare he?
I took a big gulp of my beer, spun the lighter on the table.
I shouldn’t have told him. Should have known he wouldn’t believe me, wouldn’t understand.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I muttered.
He called me back, and I let it go to voice mail.
Then he texted: I’m sorry. Really. Call me back, OK? I’m worried about you.
I turned off my phone.
* * *
I WAS STILL sitting at the picnic table in front of my van, working on my second beer, when Skink walked up, a hangdog look on his face. I slipped the lighter, note, and stone into my pocket as I watched him approach.
“Hey,” he said.
I was surprised he’d shown up at all.
“Your father is a cop? And you didn’t think to mention this little fact to me?”
He shrugged, looked down at the ground. “Constable,” he mumbled.
“Huh?”
“He’s the town constable. He’s not like… like a real cop. I mean, he has a day job running fishing charters. The only real constable duties he has are serving papers on people, delivering notices to people who haven’t paid their taxes, and cruising around breaking up keg parties and stuff.”
“He sounded enough like a real cop,” I told him. “He asked me to stop looking into what happened to Lauren, to stop talking about it to people.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s not like he has any real power or anything. He doesn’t even have a gun or handcuffs. If he finds any actual trouble, he calls the state police. He couldn’t even arrest you or anything.”
“Oh, well, that’s comforting! All he’ll do is call the state police, is that right?” I shook my head. “And I can’t believe you told him about the monster-hunting stuff.”
“Well, yeah, I kinda had to, didn’t I?”
“You made him watch Monsters Among Us?”
Skink shrugged. “Just a couple clips. You know, just to show that you were the real deal.”
I shook my head.
“I can’t believe Zoey caved and spilled everything,” Skink said. “My dad is pretty pissed at me. I’m supposed to stay away from that whole group, and from you too.”
Me and Constable Pete agreed on one thing, at least.
“So? What are you doing here then?” I asked irritably.
“I came to see if you went out to Loon Cove. That’s where you were going, right? Did you find anything?”
I shook my head. “No. I went but didn’t find anything. Just some old beer cans and cigarette butts.”
There was no way I’d mention the lighter.
I found this lighter from my childhood. I think my sister, who I haven’t seen since I was thirteen, is actually the real monster I’m searching for, the one who took Lauren.
“Did you check the hiding spot in the tree? Maybe Lauren left a note or something? Some kind of clue.”
“I found the tree, but there was nothing. No note, no cigarettes, no weed. If she was keeping stuff there, she grabbed it and took it with her.”
Maybe my brief acting career was paying off—I sounded convincing, even to myself.
“So, what? Now you think she ran away, too?” He gave me a disappointed look.
I took a sip of beer. “Beats me.” I was done sharing my theories with this kid. The son of a cop.
He came over and sat down at the picnic table. He eyed the six-pack, like he was waiting for me to offer him a beer. “Are you going back to the cove? ’Cause I could, like, go with you. Do a monster stakeout kind of thing.”
I laughed an are you kidding me right now? kind of laugh. I was about to tell him to get lost.
“We’d just have to be really careful. My dad’s been patrolling the sanctuary nearly every night lately. Ever since the fire in the tower.”
The skin at the back of my neck prickled. “Wait? The tower?”
I thought of the message the Monster had left for me:
An old dream, a dream of endings and beginnings.
A dream of fire.
Of a lever pulled and a world of bright white light, crumbling ruin.
A single line spoken: “We belong dead.”
Do you share the same dream?
Do you dream it with me?
A reference to Frankenstein’s Bride. The movie me and my sister watched at the drive-in so long ago.
That line at the end the monster spoke: We belong dead, just before he pulled the lever and blew up the tower.
Could the tower be where she’d been hiding?
“Tell me about the tower,” I said, my voice a little too frantic.
“There’s this old stone tower in the wildlife sanctuary. My dad’s always telling me how it’s historic ’cause the Civilian Conservation Corps built it back in the 1930s or whenever. They did work all over Vermont in parks and stuff: built dams, bridges, towers. They put in stone steps in the wildlife sanctuary—you probably noticed the ones going down to Loon Cove, right?”
I nodded.
“They also built this stone tower—it’s kind of an island landmark. There’s a replica of it on the town green. And my uncle’s even got it on the campground sign. You didn’t notice?”
“I thought it was a lighthouse,” I admitted.
“Kind of a lighthouse-looking tower, I guess? I think it was originally built as a fire tower—you know, to keep an eye out for smoke in the woods around the lake? It’s pretty tall—maybe fifty feet or so. But it’s in bad shape. They’ve been trying to get funding in place to rebuild it, fix it up because it’s a historic landmark and all that. Right now it’s all boarded up. But people still sneak in. My dad goes out there pretty regularly to kick people out. Just last week, someone lit a fire up at the top.”