“You live like a woman on the run,” Eric (Charlie!) had told me not long ago. “You’re never home more than a few days at a time, always on the move.” I’d just smiled, bit my lip to keep from saying, And you, little brother, live like a man stuck in quicksand.
I set the recording equipment and headlamp on the desk and turned to the stove to heat water for coffee, which I made with instant powder from a jar. Once I’d downed the first gulp of thick, sludgy coffee, I turned around again, pulled out the stool under my desk, and flipped open my laptop. I figured I’d spend a little time getting the eyewitness interviews and swamp sounds imported from the digital recorder onto the laptop and start editing. Then I’d need to record my introduction, talking about the history of the monster, my own experiences in the swamp. I’d tell my audience about the groan that had woken me from sleep, about how I’d gone out to search and startled a gator. I was good at this: telling stories, building suspense.
My computer booted up and I took another sip of coffee, then clicked over to check my email before starting to work on the podcast.
First I heard the blood thrumming in my ears.
All the hairs on my body stood up as if lightning had struck close by.
An alert had come in.
I clicked through and scanned the article.
Green Mountain Free Press
August 18, 2019
Girl Missing from Chickering Island
Police are searching for 13-year-old Lauren Schumacher, who was last seen at her family’s summer cottage on Chickering Island on the afternoon of August 15. Her family believes she may have run away. She reportedly told friends she’d met the Island’s legendary ghost, Rattling Jane, just before her disappearance.
Schumacher was wearing cutoff denim shorts, a black hooded sweatshirt, and black Converse sneakers. She is 5'3", weighs 100 pounds, and has brown eyes and blond hair with dyed purple tips. Anyone with information is asked to call the Vermont State Police.
I read the article, then reread it. I searched for any other news about the case, but only came up with the same information.
I opened the calendar to double-check.
Yes.
The little tingle at the back of my neck turned into a buzz.
August 15 had been the full moon.
The girls always went missing on a full moon.
How many girls had it been now?
I didn’t need to check my notes: nine. Lauren Schumacher from Chickering Island would make ten. Always in a different part of the country. Always on a full moon. Always from a town with its very own monster. And always, just before disappearing, the missing girl had told someone she’d had an encounter with the local legend.
And always, it was a girl who didn’t raise big alarms. A girl from a troubled family; a girl who hung out with the wrong crowd; a girl who skipped school and smoked cigarettes; a girl everyone assumed would come to no good; a girl who had every reason to run away.
A coincidence, some would say: the girls, the monsters, the full moons.
But it was no coincidence.
I was sure that this was the work of one very clever, crafty, shapeshifting monster.
The most dangerous monster of all, the one I’d been chasing my whole life, who always managed to elude me. Except in dreams. She always came back in dreams. In real life, I’d gotten close a time or two. But only because the monster had let me. It was a game we played. Cat and mouse. Hide-and-seek. Just like we had when we were kids.
Me and my once-upon-a-time sister.
THE BOOK OF MONSTERS
Violet Hildreth and Iris Whose Last Name We Don’t Know Illustrations by Eric Hildreth 1978
Monsters are real. They’re all around us, whether we can see them or not.
There are two main types of monsters.
The first type know they’re monsters. They may not be happy with it. They may loathe what they are, but there’s no denying their monster selves. They’re in monster form all of the time and are often hideous and scary and people run screaming when they see them.
The second, more dangerous type may not even understand that they’re monsters. They can pass as human. They hide in plain sight. They can be charismatic, like vampires. They can be tricksters who change form like werewolves and shapeshifters. This is the far more dangerous type of monster because there could be one next to you right now, one sleeping in your house even, and you might not know it.
Vi
May 8, 1978
VI HELD HER breath as she recognized the footsteps in the hall. Gran always wore low clunky heels, her doctor’s shoes. As soon as she got home, she’d take them off and replace them with slippers.
Then she heard Gran say, “This way. That’s right. Come in.”
Someone was with her.
Most likely Old Mac with his gun. He’d come to take the rabbit back and Gran wasn’t going to stop him.
He’d kill it after all. Vi imagined how pleased he’d be, licking his toady little lips, smiling. Won’t be eating any more of my lettuces, will you now, you little devil?
She stood frozen for a moment, still clutching the wires, then shoved them and the battery under the table. The rabbit hopped forward atop the kitchen table, heading toward the edge, and Eric grabbed it.
“Violet? Eric?” Gran called from the hall.
“Ow!” Eric yelped, jerking his hand away. “He bit me!”
With all the wild animals he’d rescued, he’d never been bitten.
“Crap,” Vi said. “Let me see.”
Eric held out his hand. The bite was small, barely bleeding. “Do you think I’ll get rabies?”
“Maybe,” Vi said. “Twenty-one shots in the stomach.”
His eyes got huge and he looked like he might start crying again.
“But I doubt this little guy’s got rabies,” Vi said, giving the bunny a stroke on the head.
“My lovelies?” Gran called. “Where are you?”
It was no use hiding.
“In the kitchen,” Vi called. “Eric brought home a baby rabbit. It’s hurt, and we’re trying to fix it up.”
There was mumbling—Gran, talking in a low voice.
“We won’t let them take you,” Eric whispered to the rabbit, leaning over it protectively. “Old Mac will have to shoot me first.”
A minute later Gran appeared in the kitchen, dressed in her day-off clothes: a tan cotton pantsuit with a wide belt that made her look like she was going on safari—all that was missing was the pith helmet. She had a green scarf tied jauntily around her neck; Gran loved her scarves. She held a cigarette. Her gray hair, curled and held in place with Aqua Net, made a frizzy halo around her head. Her fuzzy yellow slippers, which she called her house shoes, were on her feet. “All right. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“Vi saved it!” Eric said. “Old Mac shot it, but Vi brought it back to life! You should have been here, Gran. You should have seen.”
Gran stepped closer, looked at Vi with her eyes narrowed through the haze of cigarette smoke. “Is that so?”
Vi laughed. “Not really. We thought it might be dead at first, but it was just stunned. In shock. I’m more worried about Eric. The rabbit bit him.”
Gran came over and inspected the bite. While she looked at it, Vi threw Eric a warning glance: Don’t say another word. This is our secret: yours, mine, and the bunny’s.
She kicked the battery farther under the table.
“It doesn’t look too bad to me. We’ll get it cleaned up and bandaged,” Gran said. “Give you an antibiotic just in case.”
Then she peered down at the rabbit on the table. With sure hands, she probed at the wound on its haunch. “There’s a gash and a burn from the gunshot. She’ll need a few stitches.”
“It’s a girl?” Eric asked.
“Most definitely,” Gran said.
“Do I get to keep her?” he asked.
Gran gave him a tender smile. “For the time being.”
“If we let her go, Mac will kill her,” Eric said, eyes filling with tears again.
“We won’t let that happen,” Gran promised, giving Eric’s shoulder a gentle squeeze.