The bookshelves were full of books on anthropology, folklore, and monsters. The only thing I’d kept from childhood was Gran’s copy of Frankenstein, which was tucked in there between Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, some passages still faintly underlined: torrent of light.
The bottom shelf was packed with copies of my own book: The Monster Hunter’s Companion, published five years ago. Sales had jumped since my appearance in Monsters Among Us—the publisher had done an edition with a TV tie-in cover, and they’d sold ten times more copies in the last six months than they had in the previous five years combined.
I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Frances: Trip to Louisiana was cut short. I stopped at home, but have to take off again.
Two seconds later, Frances responded: New monster?
A new lead on an old one.
When will you be back?
Not sure. Can you hold down the fort here?
Frances sent back a thumbs-up emoji. Then: What do you want to do about Brian?
I sighed. Tell him I’m away on an important hunt, I texted. Somewhere without cell service and you have no idea when I’ll be back.
You can’t put him off forever.
I’m not putting him off. I’ve already given him an answer—it’s just not what he wants to hear.
He’s stubborn.
Well, I’m more stubborn.
Frances texted back with a smiley face and Safe travels.
I closed with I’ll leave a check for you in the basket, feeling an odd little twinge when I realized that the person I was closest to, the one I spent the most time with on a regular basis, was someone I paid. But this was my choice. Wasn’t it? My life didn’t leave a lot of extra time for socializing for the sake of socializing. And that was the way I wanted it. At least, that’s what I told myself. Because every time I tried to make actual meaningful connections with people, I ended up feeling the way I did when the cameras were on me—like it was all acting, pretending to be something I wasn’t.
I set down my phone, sat at my desk, and opened the lowest drawer, pulling out the thick file folder that contained years’ worth of research: the printed copies of each girl’s face, the carefully gathered facts. Everything I knew about the missing girls.
I might never have discovered the pattern on my own. In 2002, I was in Upstate New York investigating numerous sightings of something described simply as Pig Man. A sheriff I interviewed explained that locals thought the creature was the result of genetic experiments the government was doing to create animal-human hybrids.
I nodded when I heard this. Man-made monsters were their whole own category. I’d investigated many creatures that were the supposed results of government experiments: alien-human hybrids, wolves with human DNA, zombie soldiers who couldn’t be killed by traditional weapons. I’d heard plenty of stories, seen some blurry photos, but never collected any real evidence.
The truth was, I’d never found solid proof of any of the monsters I hunted. I gathered stories, other people’s photographs. I looked at plaster casts of footprints, jars that held tufts of strange fur. I interviewed eyewitnesses, listening to their stories with a trace of envy and deep longing, always thinking, Why couldn’t it be me? I captured the occasional odd sound on my digital recorder: far-off howls and moans, always sounding less frightening than sad. I’d spent hours and hours in the woods, in cornfields, in old mines and abandoned houses, at the edges of rivers and lakes, searching, waiting, willing them to show themselves to me. Year after year, I chased the monsters, feeling just behind them, touching their shadows sometimes, but never able to actually catch a glimpse.
Back in New York, I’d listened to the sheriff’s Pig Man stories and theories: “The body of a man, face like a pig. And he doesn’t speak, he squeals. Folks say he escaped from the government facility on Plum Island and made his way here. We’ve got a lot of thick woods, perfect cover for him.” The sheriff didn’t flat-out admit to believing that this creature existed, but he didn’t exactly deny it either. I asked him if he’d ever seen the creature himself. “You spend enough time out in those woods, you see some strange things,” he’d said, but wouldn’t elaborate. I asked him a few more questions, then listened as he told me about Nadia Hill, the back of my neck prickling. “That girl who went missing last year, she went around telling people she’d been meeting the Pig Man out in the woods. The story the kids like to tell is that he’s the one who took her. Did it on the full moon because that’s when he’s the hungriest.”