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?”