Monster (14 page)

Monster sat up and found himself face-to-face with his opponent. It sneezed one last time, and snot spattered his face. Monster doubted becoming invisible would work this time.

He spotted a devil doll sitting on the coffee table’s edge. With one arm he fended off the snarling goat and seized the doll in the other. He pushed the doll into the goat’s face, and, having not learned its lesson with the pillow, it snapped off the doll’s head in one bite.

The devil doll’s retribution was swift and effective. Every particle of down and dirt in the air wrapped itself around the goat in a thick coating, covering the creature from head to toe. It broke away from Monster and clawed at the layers. Every bit it tore away only bounced back to stick to it anew. Every furious snort and growl was an exhalation of feathers and dust, orbiting briefly before being drawn back into place by supernatural gravity.

Monster straightened. It was some small miracle that the devil doll hadn’t included him in its curse. He’d been close enough and just as responsible for its destruction. But minor devils weren’t picky, or especially bright. They didn’t care who they hexed so long as they got to hex somebody.

The goat, looking very much like a stuffed animal wandering drunkenly around the living room, stumbled back and forth, bumping into the walls, tripping on its slippery, feather-coated feet.

Monster checked his shoulder. The wound was shallow, but bloody. He hoped there wouldn’t be any side effects coming his way. The bites were always the most dangerous. He’d known a crypto handler who’d been bitten by a sea serpent and now had to drink ten gallons of water a day. And another who could only speak in riddles after a nasty run-in with a sphinx. Monster’s own condition wasn’t so bad compared to that.

The goat was incapacitated for the moment, but Monster wasn’t taking any chances. He grabbed his satchel, limped outside on his bruised shin, closed the front door, and sat on the porch. A quick glance through his guide identified the goat thing as a crypto rarely seen outside of Ireland. And not often there either.

Monster found Chester and woke the paper gnome.

“Damn it,” said Chester. “It clearly states in my contract that I get—” He unfolded himself. “Wow, what happened to you?”

“Gaborchend,” said Monster. “It’s still in the house.”

“This is your house, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“Isn’t that a little… odd? A cryptobiological rescue agent being attacked by a crypto in his own home?”

Monster hadn’t thought about it. He’d been too busy fending off the gaborchend at first and too tired afterward to care. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“Pretty odd coincidence, boss.”

“All coincidences are odd. That’s what makes them coincidences.”

“Guess you’ve got a point there,” said Chester. “We should get you patched up.”

“What about your time off?”

“I’ve got a couple of minutes to spare.”

“Uh-huh.”

Chester folded his hands on his hips. “You’re supposed to say thanks now.”

“Thanks.”

Monster found a healing elixir in the refrigerator. The best-used-by date had expired a little more than a month ago, but it was all he had. It tasted awful, and he didn’t get the expected energy boost. But his wounds stopped bleeding and the rejuvenation magic tingled.

The stumbling gaborchend wasn’t cooperative, but the curse of stickiness had grown to include a lamp, a throw rug, and several magazines. It was fairly simple to draw a transmogrification spell and slide it under the blind, stumbling creature. The curse didn’t end with the transformation, though, and Chester attempted to pry the lamp from the transmogrified stone while Monster checked his wound in the bathroom.

The elixir was working, though it wasn’t helping with the pain. The wounds hurt, but he could deal with it. He’d been bitten and scratched enough in this job to get used to it.

Monster returned to the living room just in time to see Chester yank the lamp off the gaborchend, only to have it fly across the room and shatter on the floor.

“Sorry.”

Monster appraised the damage to the living room. It wasn’t terrible. Might’ve looked worse, but nearly all the down and dirt was still stuck to the transmogrified crypto. There was some blood on the couch, though. Liz wouldn’t be happy about that. Or her fern.

Chester struggled with the throw rug. “I’m telling you. Something’s up.”

“There are a dozen crypto incidents a day in this town,” said Monster. “Just the law of averages that some would happen to an off-duty rescue agent.”

“I’d buy that if this were an isolated incident,” Chester said. “But after these last two days, I’m not so sure. First, there’s that supermarket score. Three yetis in one spot. Then there were the trolls and kojin in Miss Hines’s apartment. Now this. Anything else strange happened recently?”

“No, nothing. Except that walrus dog at the diner while you were asleep.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” said Chester. “Technically, when I’m in this particular quantum state, I’m closer to sleep than anything else. Really, your world is more of a dream to me.”

“So I’m your dream?”

“Could be.” Chester grunted and wrestled with the rug, working it half free. “And I myself am very likely merely a dream of a much higher entity. And so on and so on and so on.”

“Where’s it end?”

“What?”

“The dreamers. Which dreamer is the last?”

“There isn’t a final dreamer,” said Chester. “It goes on forever.”

Monster plopped down on the couch, right on top of the feathers and blood and gaborchend drool. He squirmed before reaching behind him and throwing aside another of Liz’s damn extraneous pillows. “It can’t go on forever.”

“Why not?”

“Because nothing lasts forever.”

“Who says? Your mistake, indeed the mistake of your inherently finite senses, is to view the universe as an extension of yourself. You expect that, like you, it should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But what you fail to understand is that everything you consider to be you, except for that rather silly imaginary part you call consciousness, is merely bits and pieces borrowed from the universe, and to the universe it will all return. You had no beginning, and you will have no ending. Everything that is you has always been and will always be.” Chester stopped philosophizing and thought for a moment. “Unless, of course, your entire universe is just a shared dream of my species’ universal unconscious, in which case you’ll probably cease to exist if we’re all ever awake at the same time.”

“And what if the dreamers of your universe ever wake up?” asked Monster.

“Then we’re both screwed.”

With a final determined grunt, Chester wrenched the carpet loose. It sailed free and smacked Monster in the face.

“Sorry.”

“Do me a favor, Chester. Dream me a beer.”

The paper gnome retrieved Monster’s beer. “Maybe someone put a curse on you.”

“I think I’d know if I’d been hexed,” said Monster. “And there’s no hex that can summon a bunch of cryptos. Not one that I’ve ever heard of anyway.”

“Maybe it’s a new development. We should check your body for any marks.”

Monster didn’t feel like getting off the couch, but he supposed Chester was right. If someone had hexed him with some kind of crypto attraction curse, it would be better to know. It wasn’t the worst curse for a crypto handler to have, but if it kept interfering with his off-hours, then it’d have to go.

He went into the bathroom and took off his shirt. A glance in the mirror confirmed nothing on his chest, back, or arms. He took off his pants and checked his legs. Nothing out of the ordinary there either. If there was a curse, there should’ve been some kind of mark.

Monster pulled down his underwear and had Chester take a look at his ass. “See anything?”

“Nope. Wait. Nope. That’s just a mole.”

Monster pulled up his pants. “See? Told you. No curse.”

“It was just a theory.”

Something thumped in the bathtub, as if someone had thrown an anvil into it. Monster pulled back the shower curtain. A gaborchend was in the tub. It wasn’t the same one. Its left horn was cracked and chipped, and it seemed as shocked to find itself there as Monster was to see it. It bared its teeth and growled.

“I suppose that’s just a coincidence too.”

Judy went back to Paulie’s place, but either he wasn’t home or he wasn’t answering his door. After banging on the door for four minutes, then waiting another ten, she decided she’d probably have to find someplace else to crash today. She wished she’d taken the time to actually have a few friends.

She couldn’t remember when she’d become so isolated from the rest of the world. It wasn’t that long ago, during her first and only year of college, that she’d had plenty of friends. So many friends and parties and good times that her grades had gone to hell. She’d failed to meet her scholarship requirements, and her dad couldn’t afford to help with both Judy’s and her sister’s tuition costs. There just wasn’t enough money to go around, and Judy wound up the loser in that deal. Now here Judy was, nine years later, no education, a crappy job, no apartment, and no money. It’d all gone wrong somewhere. How could she have made so many stupid decisions? It couldn’t all be her fault. Not all of it.

She waited another half hour for Paulie. He never showed.

* * *

Judy didn’t call ahead. She knew everything Greta would say, and Judy knew that she would have to hear it all. No way around that. But if she had to hear the “talk” on the phone, odds were that Judy would just get disgusted, hang up, and end up in a cheap hotel for the day. If she was going to be annoyed, she might as well get something out of it.

Greta lived in a perfect house. It had a perfect yard, perfect flower beds. The driveway was perfect too. Not a single crack in the smooth, unstained concrete. There wasn’t a fleck of falling paint on the perfect walls, and even the lawn gnomes were perfectly arranged in the four corners of the front yard. It was the house that Barbie dolls lived in. Judy had always been more into G.I. Joe. Her ideal house would look pretty much the same as Greta’s, except there’d be a secret lever you could pull to reveal a command center, a helipad, and maybe an anti-aircraft gun or two. Greta probably had all that hidden in there somewhere. Greta had everything.

Judy rang the doorbell, which chimed a lilting tune. Something classical. Probably Beethoven. The door wasn’t answered right away, and Judy wondered if Greta had already left for work. She found herself hoping Greta was still home as much as she hoped she was gone. All possible futures involving the answering or non-answering of the door before her seemed equally fraught with peril.

The door opened. Greta was in her power suit.

Judy forced a smile. “Hi.”

“What’s wrong?” It was more of an accusation than a question.

“Nice to see you too, sis.” Judy wrestled with her grin, trying to keep it from transforming into a scowl. “I need a place to stay for a couple of days.”

“Okay. Sure. Come on.” Greta stepped aside and made a half hearted welcoming gesture. “But you’ll have to put that out first.”

Judy took a final drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out in the potted plant on the front porch. She crossed the threshold with a shudder. Greta’s house was more like a museum exhibit than a home. Weird art hung from the walls, and strange sculptures occupied the corners.

“You’ve redecorated,” said Judy.

“Three years ago,” said Greta, sounding again as if Judy had done something wrong.

Judy ignored it. She had enough experience. “I miss the masks. So where are Chuck and Nancy?”

“Nancy has already left for school, and Chuck is out of town on a business trip until Tuesday.” Greta went into the kitchen and began going through papers, adding some to pockets in her briefcase, removing others.

Judy went to the refrigerator and picked through the inventory. There weren’t any leftovers. The disposal of day-old foodstuffs was a religion for Greta. There was no place for them in her neat and tidy universe. There was nothing to eat or drink.

“Don’t you have any soda or anything?”

“We don’t drink processed sugar in this house. Chuck has an allergy, and it makes Nancy hyper.”

Judy found a bottle of orange juice. She was tempted to drink directly out of the bottle, but the only reason to do that would’ve been to annoy her sister. And Greta was giving Judy a place to crash, so she could at least play by her rules.

“How’s the kid?” asked Judy. “She’s—what—ten now?”

“Nine.”

“She can read, right?”

“At a tenth-grade level.”

“Cool.” Judy poured the juice into a tumbler and gulped it down in a long swig. “That’s good, right?”

Greta sighed. “So what happened this time?”

“I lost my apartment.”

“You could’ve asked me for help if you couldn’t make your rent.”

“No, I mean I
lost
it. As in, it was destroyed.”

“What do you mean, destroyed?”