Until I realized the problem.
These first patients were too old. Their brains did not have the necessary elasticity. Their bodies were too worn to handle the treatment.
What we needed to succeed, to truly succeed as never before, was a child.
Vi’s vision narrowed. She felt the room tilt and spin. But still, she forced herself to keep going, to flip through the mass of records in the file.
The pages ripped a jagged hole in her chest, made her breathing uneven, her head pound in time with her heart. Her tears splashed onto the paper.
A child.
A little girl taken from her home with terrible parents and an older sister deemed a lost cause.
A girl who was the subject of experiments, made to do terrible, unimaginable things.
A girl who had been held in B West for months, while Gran tore her down and tried to rebuild her, make her into something new. It was all there in the files Vi skimmed: records of surgeries, medications, water therapy, hypnosis.
I have, wrote Gran, given this child a new life. A new beginning. I have taken a doomed soul and created a blank canvas, a life full of possibility.
Iris’s story.
And, Vi realized, also the story of how her beloved grandmother, the brilliant Dr. Hildreth, had created her very own monster.
Lizzy
August 20, 2019
MY PACK WAS sticking to my back, my T-shirt soaked with sweat even though the night air was cool.
This is stupid, I told myself. Dangerous.
What was I hoping to find at the tower?
Lauren bound and gagged? The monster standing guard?
The monster who was really my long-lost sister?
And what if I was walking right into a trap? If the monster knew I was coming?
Still, I pressed on through the dark forest, letting myself imagine getting there and saving the girl.
But to save the girl, I’d have to slay the monster.
* * *
“I DON’T THINK you have an evil bone in you,” my sister told me once, long ago. “I’m not even sure you’d be able to kill a monster if you met one.”
“I could so kill a monster,” I’d retorted, furious, defensive.
“Tell me,” she’d demanded. “Tell me how you’d do it.”
“It depends on the kind of monster,” I’d said, proving my expertise; proving that I didn’t just help create the monster book, I’d memorized it. “A vampire gets a stake through the heart. A werewolf a silver bullet.”
“What if you don’t know what kind of creature you’re dealing with?” my sister asked.
“You make your best guess. You bind it with a spell, with salt and holy water, and you hurt it any way you can. A magic dagger. A silver bullet. And most monsters can be killed if you cut off their head.”
My sister laughed. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s not. Killing a monster is never easy.”
* * *
I CARRIED MY monster-hunting backpack, the little revolver tucked inside it, just in case.
My flashlight illuminated the narrow path through the trees. I stopped occasionally to shine the light on the map Skink had drawn for me and his notes. Take the path from the campground to the Silver Trail. Turn left. Follow the Silver Trail to the Tower Trail on the right.
I was on the Silver Trail now.
It was quiet in the sanctuary, only the low hum of insects, the occasional call of a loon. I couldn’t see the water, but I could smell it, feel it all around me: a dampness in the air, the vaguely ruined scent of decaying weeds, water lilies, and old leaves floating on the surface.
I swept the beam of my flashlight along the trail and spotted the sign up ahead: TOWER TRAIL. I turned right, following it, a narrow path covered with little pebbles that rolled under my feet like marbles.
The wind blew through the trees, seemed to whisper a warning, a warning like the old gods once whispered: Danger, danger. Turn back while you can.
Sometimes monsters dwelled in enchanted places.
Was this one of those places?
Had I crossed a veil of some kind?
Yes, the wind whispered.
And your human weapons will do no good here.
You can’t win.
The trail took me steeply uphill, my feet slipping on the stones.
I felt it before I saw it, stepped into the thick, dark shadow it cast.
The tower was massive against the moonlit sky, built of stone and mortar; it seemed to be leaning slightly to the left. No wonder I’d mistaken its image for a lighthouse—it was tall and round, slightly wider at the base than at the top.
I heard a soft rustle. Feet against stone.
Had it come from inside?
Was the monster in there, watching, waiting?
I remembered playing hide-and-seek when we were kids, counting to fifty with my head buried in the living room couch cushions, rushing up the stairs to search for my sister: Ready or not, here I come!
I could see a yawning doorway and five little square windows, staggered.
I approached the tower, listening hard. No more sounds came from inside. No sound came from anywhere.
It felt as if the whole world was holding its breath.
There were two boards nailed up over the doorway and a sign: DANGER! TOWER CLOSED! NO TRESPASSING!
I shone my light inside, saw a metal spiral staircase, rusted through in places. On the cement floor were smashed bottles, a stained T-shirt, leaves and sticks and candy wrappers. The remnants of a small fire, which was complete idiocy—who would light a fire in there? Old dry wooden timbers jutted out, tied into the metal stairs. And all those old leaves and sticks would go up like a tinderbox.
ENTER AND DIE was written on the wall in red spray paint, with a pentagram drawn next to it. And beneath it, another message sprayed in white paint: Rattling Jane Was Here!
I smelled old crumbling cement. Earth. Stale beer. Urine.
And cigarette smoke. Faint, but recent.
I swallowed down the lump that was starting to form in my throat and carefully unshouldered my pack, opened it, and took out the little .38 Special, then shrugged the knapsack back on. I ducked under the warning boards crossing the doorway, the gun in my right hand, the flashlight in my left.
My boots crushed glass, and little sticks and leaves popped and crackled under my feet like tiny bones.
I tested the first metal step with my weight. It seemed solid. I stepped to the second, testing, then the third, which seemed to shift slightly beneath me.
All the spit in my mouth dried up.
I was sure I heard rustling from up above.
Not rustling, footsteps. Dragging, shuffling footsteps.
I shone my light up, saw only the rusting steps, how they’d come loose from some of the metal brackets that braced them to the wall.
Again I thought: This is stupid. I should turn back.
There was more graffiti on the stone walls: SUICIDE IS PAINLESS; MARK P SUCKS COCKS; THIS BUD’S FOR YOU with the outline of a marijuana leaf.
Then, in what looked like colored chalk, a drawing I recognized: a copy of Eric’s chimera from the cover of the monster book. A creature with the head of a lion and the body of a goat, a tail that ended with the head of a snake.
Written under it: The first thing you need to know is that monsters are real. They’re all around us, whether we can see them or not.
My sister had been here.
Was here right now.
I held my breath, listening.
I was about halfway up the stairs when I heard a noise from outside the tower. A thump and a huff, a little groan.
I nearly called out, demanded to know who was there, but I bit my lip, kept climbing.
The stairs shifted and creaked. Concrete rained down from a spot on the wall somewhere above me. I dropped the flashlight as I instinctively reached out to grab hold of the railing.
The flashlight hit the cement floor below with a crash, went out.
Shit, shit, shit!
Should I go up or down?
Up or down?
Tick tock, tick tock.
I felt it, a strong magnetic pull, one I hadn’t felt in a long, long time, drawing me up, up to the top of the tower.
To her.