I set my bag down and went to the basket on the front table. It was piled high with mail and there was a note from my part-time assistant, Frances. She came once a week to assist with email, the website, speaking requests, and basically whatever I needed help with. When I was away, Frances would come by to bring in the mail and make sure the house was still standing. I scanned the note:
Welcome Home!
The Monsters of the Ozarks Conference emailed to confirm travel arrangements and dates （September 28 & 29） and they want to know what AV equipment you’ll need for your presentation.
UC San Francisco wants to know if you’re interested in doing a guest lecture in October （details in email）。
Reminder: Your article for Crypto Cryptids is due next Wednesday.
AND… Brian’s called and emailed about a hundred times. He’s threatening to come to Asheville next week to take you to lunch and make you an offer you can’t refuse.
I set down the note and shook my head. Brian Mando was the producer of Monsters Among Us. I’d been one of the three researchers on the series last season, and according to Brian, I was a fan favorite. They wanted me back for next season. Brian also said he had a new idea to pitch to me—a solo show of my very own. He wanted to take the idea to the network. So far, I’d avoided talking to him about the new show and said I wasn’t interested in next season’s Monsters Among Us. I loved doing my podcast, writing blog posts and articles, even lectures and talks. But I’d never been comfortable in front of a camera. The lights, all the people telling me where to go and what to do—it all felt so artificial.
I picked up my bag and carried it up the stairs to the loft where my bedroom was. I unzipped the bag, dumped my dirty clothes into the hamper, and started to repack.
I wanted to move fast, get back on the road as soon as I could. I hoped to be on Chickering Island before noon tomorrow.
My bedroom walls were covered in unfinished tongue and groove and decorated with old monster movie posters: Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man. There was a bed, a little table, and a window with a cactus sitting on the sill （the only plant I could keep alive, being away so much）。 The large skylight above my bed allowed me to go to sleep looking up at the stars. I often thought about the constellations we’d invented when we were kids lying in the backyard: the Hunchback, King Kong, Vampires—a sky full of monsters.
Once I’d repacked, I carried my bag back downstairs.
The house had a tiny but functional kitchen （I wasn’t big on cooking）， the single bedroom, a bathroom with an old claw-foot tub, and a big combination living room and office where I spent most of my time. There were more old movie posters hung down here: Dracula with Bela Lugosi, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy. I’d also put up a poster of Shadow People, the documentary I’d been in two years ago. Brian had sent me a life-size cardboard cutout of myself, Jackson, and Mark—the three researchers in last season’s Monsters Among Us. We stood in the corner of the living room: Jackson holding a flashlight, Mark with his night-vision scope and camera, and me holding a microphone and digital recorder. The pose was very Ghostbusters. At the bottom, beside the title of the show, was the tagline: They’re real and they’re here.
I’d wanted to take the cardboard figures straight to the recycling center, but Frances talked me into keeping them. I looked now at the TV version of myself with makeup, clad in my usual uniform of Levi’s, black T-shirt, beat-up leather jacket, and boots. “Fan favorite,” I said aloud, shaking my head.
On the wall above my desk hung my degrees from UNC Chapel Hill, where I’d majored in anthropology and minored in psychology before going back for a master’s in folklore—the title of my thesis was What Our Monster Stories Tell Us about Who We Are. Beside the degrees hung other photos: a snapshot of me with a group of people dressed as monsters at a convention; me standing next to Rachel Loveland, the director of Shadow People; me on the stage doing a TED Talk on the role of monsters in modern society. And last, my favorite, me and Charlie hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains a couple of summers ago when he came to visit.