Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (29 page)

“Come on, James, wear the dress, okay?”

“Keep the dress on! Do it, James!”

“I dare you,” said Bryan.

“I dare you,” James said.

“What?” Bryan said. “What do you dare me to do?”

Terence was floating on his back. He lifted his head. “You tell him, James. Don’t let Bryan talk you into anything you don’t want to do.”

“Come on,” Bryan said. “It will be so cool. Come on.”

So everybody in Bungalow 6 went swimming except for James Lorbick. They splashed around and washed off all the mud and came out of the pond and James Lorbick was the only kid in Bungalow 6 who was still covered in crusty mud. James Lorbick was the only one who still had mud spikes in his hair. James Lorbick was the only one wearing a dress.

The sun was going down. They sat on the ground around the campfire that wouldn’t catch. They ate the rest of the hotdogs and the peanut butter sandwiches that the kitchen girls always made up when the bungalows went on overnight hikes. They talked about how cool it would be in the morning, when James Lorbick came running into the dining room back at camp, pretending to be a monster.

It got darker. They talked about the monster.

“Maybe it’s a werewolf.”

“Or a were-skunk.”

“Maybe it’s from outer space.”

“Maybe it’s just really lonely,” James Lorbick said. He was sitting between Bryan Jones and one of the Simpson twins, and he felt really good, like he was really part of Bungalow 6 at last, and also kind of itchy, because of the mud.

“So how come nobody’s ever seen it before?”

“Maybe some people have, but they died and so they couldn’t tell anybody.”

“No way. They wouldn’t let us camp here if somebody died.”

“Maybe the camp doesn’t want anybody to know about the monster, so they don’t say anything.”

“You’re so paranoid. The monster didn’t do anything to Bungalow 4. Besides, Bungalow 4 is a bunch of liars.”

“Wait a minute, do you hear that?”

They were quiet, listening. Bryan Jones farted. It was a sinister, brassy fart.

“Oh, man. That’s disgusting, Bryan.”

“What? It wasn’t me.”

“If the monster comes, we’ll just aim Bryan at it.”

“Wait, what’s that?”

Something was ringing. “No way,” Terence said. “That’s my cell phone. No way does it get reception out here. Hello? Hey, Darlene. What’s up?” He turned on his flashlight and shone it at Bungalow 6. “Guys, I gotta go down the hill for a sec. She sounds upset. Something about her car and a Chihuahua.”

“That’s cool.”

“Be careful. Don’t let the monster sneak up on you.”

“Tell Darlene she’s too good for you.”

They watched Terence pick his way down the muddy path in a little circle of light. The light got smaller and smaller, farther and farther away, until they couldn’t see it any more.

“What if it isn’t really Darlene?” a kid named Timothy Ferber said.

“What?”

“Like what if it’s the monster?”

“No way. That’s stupid. How would the monster know Terence’s cell phone number?”

“Are there any marshmallows left?”

“No. Just graham crackers.”

They ate the graham crackers. Terence didn’t come back. They couldn’t even hear his voice. They told ghost stories.

“And she puts her hand down and her dog licks it and she thinks everything is okay. Except that then, in the morning, when she looks in the bathtub, her dog is in there and he’s dead and there’s lots of blood and somebody has written ‘HA HA I REALLY FOOLED YOU’ with the blood.”

“One time my sister was babysitting and this weird guy called and wanted to know if Satan was there and she got really freaked out.”

“One time my grandfather was riding on a train and he saw a naked woman standing out in a field.”

“Was she a ghost?”

“I don’t know. He used to like to tell that story a lot.”

“Were there cows in the field?”

“I don’t know, how should I know if there were cows?”

“Do you think Terence is going to come back soon?”

“Why? Are you scared?”

“What time is it?”

“It’s not even 10:30. Maybe we could try lighting the fire again.”

“It’s still too wet. It’s not going to catch. Besides, if there was a monster and if the monster was out there and we got the fire lit, then the monster could see us.”

“We don’t have any marshmallows, anyway.”

“Wait, I think I know how to get it started. Like Bungalow 4 did with the bat. If I spray it with insecticide, and then—”

Bungalow 6 fell reverently silent.

“Wow. That’s awesome, Bryan. They should have a special merit badge for that.”

“Yeah, to go with the badge for toxic farts.”

“It smells funny,” James Lorbick said. But it was nice to have a fire going. It made the darkness seem less dark. Which is what fires are supposed to do, of course.

“You look really weird in the firelight, James. That dress and all the mud. It’s kind of funny and kind of creepy.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, James Lorbick should always wear dresses. He’s so hot.”

“James Lorbick, I think you are so hot. Not.”

“Leave James alone,” Bryan Jones said.

“I had this weird dream last year,” Danny Anderson said. Danny Anderson was from Terre Haute, Indiana. He was taller than anyone else in Bungalow 6 except for Terence. “I dreamed that I came home from school one day and nobody was there except this man. He was sitting in the living room watching TV and so I said, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ And he looked up and smiled this creepy smile at me and he said, ‘Hey Danny, I’m Angelina Jolie. I’m your new dad.”

“No way. You dreamed your dad was Angelina Jolie?”

“No,” Danny Anderson said. “Shut up. My parents aren’t divorced or anything. My dad’s got the same name as me. This guy said he was my new dad. He said he was Angelina Jolie. But he was just some guy.”

“That’s a dumb dream.”

“I know it is,” Danny Anderson said. “But I kept having the it, like, every night. This guy is always hanging out in the kitchen and talking to me about what we’re going to do now that I’m his kid. He’s really creepy. And the thing is, I just got a phone call from my mom, and she says that she and my dad are getting divorced and I think maybe she’s got a new boyfriend.”

“Hey, man. That’s tough.”

Danny Anderson looked as if he might be about to cry. He said, “So what if this boyfriend turns out to be my dad? Like in the dream?”

“One time I had a dream James Lorbick was wearing a dress.”

“What’s that noise?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Terence has been gone a long time.”

“Maybe he went back to camp. Maybe he left us out here.”

“The fire smells really bad.”

“It reeks.”

“Isn’t insect stuff poisonous?”

“Of course not. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to sell it. Because you put it on your skin. They wouldn’t let you put poison on your skin.”

“Hey, look up. I think I saw a shooting star.”

“Maybe it was a space ship.”

They all looked up at the sky. The sky was black and clear and full of bright stars. It was like that for a moment and then they noticed how clouds were racing across the blackness, spilling across the sky. The stars disappeared. Maybe if they hadn’t looked, the sky would have stayed clear. But they did look. Then snow started to fall, lightly at first, just dusting the muddy ground and the campfire and Bungalow 6 and then there was more snow falling. It fell quietly and thickly. It was going to be the tenth of July tomorrow, the next-to-last day of camp, the day that James Lorbick wearing a dress and a lot of mud was going to show up and scare everyone in the dining room.

The snow was the weirdest thing that had ever happened to Bungalow 6.

One of the Simpson twins said, “Hey, it’s snowing!”

Bryan Jones said, “I don’t believe this.”

James Lorbick looked up at the sky, which had been so clear a minute ago. Fat snowflakes fell on his upturned face. He wrapped his crumbly mud-covered arms around himself. “It’s kind of beautiful,” he said.

“Terence! Hey Terence! It’s snowing!”

“Nobody is going to believe us.”

“Maybe we should go get in our sleeping bags.”

“We could build a snow fort.”

“No, seriously. What if it gets really cold and we freeze to death? All I brought is my windbreaker.”

“No way. It’s going to melt right away. It’s summer. This is just some kind of weather event. We should take a picture so we can show everybody.”

So far they had taken pictures of mud, of people pretending to be mud-covered zombies, of James Lorbick pretending to be a mud-haired, dress-wearing monster. Terence had taken a picture of the bone that wasn’t a cow bone. One of the Simpson twins had put a dozen marshmallows in his mouth and someone took a picture of that. Someone had a digital photo of Bryan Jones’s big naked butt.

“So why didn’t anyone from Bungalow 4 take a picture of the monster?”

“They did. But you couldn’t see anything.”

“Snow is cooler anyway.”

“No way. A monster is way better.”

“I think it’s weird that Terence hasn’t come back up yet.”

“Hey, Terence! Terence!”

They all yelled for Terence for a few minutes. The snow kept falling. They did little dances in the snow to keep warm. The fire got thinner and thinner and started to go out. But before it went out, the monster came up the muddy, snowy path. It smiled at them and it came up the path and Danny Anderson shone his flashlight at it and they could all see it was a monster and not Terence pretending to be a monster. No one in Bungalow 6 had ever seen a monster before, but they all knew that a monster was what it was. It had a white face and its hands were red and dripping. It moved very fast.

You can learn a lot of stuff at camp. You learn how to wiggle an arrow so that it comes out of a straw target without the metal tip coming off. You learn how to make something out of yarn and twigs called a skycatcher, because there’s a lot of extra yarn and twigs in the world, and someone had to come up with something to do with it. You learn how to jam your feet up into the mattress of the bunk above you, while someone is leaning out of it, so that they fall out of bed. You learn that if you are riding a horse and the horse sees a snake on the trail, the horse will stand on its hind legs. Horses don’t like snakes. You find out that tennis rackets are good for chasing bats. You find out what happens if you leave your wet clothes in your trunk for a few days. You learn how to make rockets and you learn how to pretend if someone takes your rocket and stomps on it. You learn to pretend to be asleep when people make fun of you. You learn how to be lonely.

The snow came down and people ran around Honor Lookout. They screamed and waved their arms around and fell down. The monster chased them. It moved so quickly that sometimes it seemed to fly. It was laughing like this was an excellent, fun game. The snow was still coming down and it was dark which made it hard to see what the monster did when it caught people. James Lorbick sat still. He pretended that he was asleep or not there. He pretended that he was writing a letter to his best friend in Chicago who was spending the summer playing video games and hanging out at the library and writing and illustrating his own comic book. “Dear Alec, how are you? Camp is almost over, and I am so glad. This has been the worst summer ever. We went on a hike and it rained and my counselor found a bone. This kid made me put on a dress. There was a monster that ate everybody. How is your comic book coming? Did you put in the part I wrote about the superhero who can only fly when he’s asleep?”

The monster had one Simpson twin under each arm. The twins were screaming. The monster threw them down the path. Then it bent over Bryan Jones, who was lying half inside one of the tents, half in the snow. There were slurping noises. After a minute it stood up again. It looked back and saw James Lorbick. It waved.

James Lorbick shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the monster was standing over him. It had red eyes. It smelled like rotting fish and kerosene. It wasn’t actually all that tall, the way you’d expect a monster to be tall. Except for that, it was even worse than Bungalow 4 had said.

The monster stood and looked down and grinned. “You,” it said. It had a voice like a dead tree full of bees: sweet and dripping and buzzing. It poked James on the shoulder with a long black nail. “What are you?”

“I’m James Lorbick,” James said. “From Chicago.”

The monster laughed. Its teeth were pointed and terrible. There was a smear of red on the dress where it had touched James. “You’re the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Look at that dress. Look at your hair. It’s standing straight up. Is that mud? Why are you covered in mud?”

“I was going to be a monster,” James said. He swallowed. “No offense.”

“None taken,” the monster said. “Wow, maybe I should go visit Chicago. I’ve never seen anything as funny as you. I could look at you for hours and hours. Whenever I needed a laugh. You’ve really made my day, James Lorbick.”

The snow was still falling. James shivered and shivered. His teeth were clicking together so loudly he thought they might break. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Where’s Terence? Did you do something to him?”

“Was he the guy who was down at the bottom of the hill? Talking on a cell phone?”

“Yeah,” James said. “Is he okay?”

“He was talking to some girl named Darlene,” the monster said. I tried to talk to her, but she started screaming and then she hung up. Do you happen to know where she lives?

“Somewhere in Ohio,” James said.

“Thanks,” the monster said. He took out a little black notebook and wrote something down.

“What are you?” James said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Angelina Jolie,” the monster said. It blinked.

James’s heart almost stopped beating. “Really?” he said. “Like in Danny Anderson’s dream?”

“No,” the monster said. “Just kidding.”

“Are you the monster that Bungalow 4 saw?” James said.

“Were those the kids who were here a few days ago?”

“Yeah,” James said.

“We hung out for a while,” the monster said. “Were they friends of yours?”