Creatures

  Creatures

  B. V. Larson

  B. V. Larson

  Creatures

  Chapter One

  Monsters

  I ran until I reached my street. When I turned the corner I slowed down. Usually, this was as far as they chased me. My sides hurt from breathing hard. I looked back, but I didn’t see the pack of monsters that had followed me from the bus stop. I began slogging through the snow. I was almost home.

  In between glances over my shoulder, I looked up at the dark clouds overhead. The January sky was gray, as it tended to be in our backwoods town of Camden, Oregon. It had been snowing all week, and it was snowing now. My boots crunched and the snowflakes fell from the sky to sting my cheeks one by one. Each snowflake burned my skin for a moment as it melted away.

  Just as the street curved and I saw the lamppost up ahead that marked my house, the creatures rounded the corner behind me. They paused, spotted me, and then came fast, loping and galloping and hopping. I started running again. I had to make it to my door before they caught up.

  The things on the icy sidewalk behind me weren’t human. They weren’t animals, either. They were something in-between. They snuffled the ground like animals, and they ran on paws and hooves and claws, but as they chased me they winked and grinned to one another. The grins on the dog-types were particularly disturbing as their black lips curled up to display white, curved fangs.

  I thought about stopping and growling at them myself. I thought about bashing Danny, the one that looked like a Rottweiler, right in the snout with my backpack. But I knew there were too many of them. They would bite at the backpack, yank it way, tear up my homework papers.

  I made it onto my porch with seconds to spare. One of them made a joke and they all laughed, their laughter sounding like coughing to my human ears. The things were laughing at me, of course. They, my own cousins, had chased me all the way from the bus stop to my front door. I slammed it in their faces, and they howled and scratched and chipped the paint. They poked their horns and snouts and paws into the brass mail slot and snarled fiercely.

  “Connor,” shouted my older sister Heather from upstairs. “Don’t let your idiot friends mark up the front door again. Mom will be mad. And remember it’s trash night!”

  I twisted the lock and relaxed a little. I looked into my backpack. Homework. A book report. I sighed.

  “Answer me, Connor!” shouted Heather again.

  “What?” I shouted back.

  “Don’t get mouthy, Mom left me in charge. And don’t you dare turn on the TV or the computer until every wrapper and empty soda can is outside.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Outside, the snarling pack echoed: “ Answer me, Connor… Yeah… ” in the warped voices their animal throats made.

  I waited quietly while they knocked things over on the porch and begged me to come out to play. Eventually, the pack wandered away. The game had ended for today.

  I went outside cautiously with a big white plastic bag of trash slung over my shoulder. The wind whipped up the snow into flurries, making me jump, but there seemed to be nothing hiding in the growing shadows of dusk.

  They had ganged up on me because I was different. I couldn’t wait until I became a monster like everyone else. I really wanted to go through the change, even though it might turn out badly.

  I’d heard all about it from my relatives, of course. One lonely night, most likely a night when the moon was full and yellowy and hanging up there in the sky like a fat streetlight, I would feel the change coming on.

  At first, it will be an itchy feeling. That’s what everyone tells me. This might start on the tip of one finger. Or the side of my nose. Or maybe in the middle of my back in a place I can’t reach. It will be an itch that keeps returning, like the itch caused by a haircut that sprinkles some tiny hairs down the back of your shirt to prickle your skin.

  So far, I’ve felt that itch, but I haven’t changed. Not yet. All of the other kids have changed by now. They know what kind of monster they are, but I still don’t.

  The last bag of trash, the big one from the kitchen, never made it into the garbage can on the street. I heard jaws click and a plastic ruffling sound. The bag ripped open like a busted pinata. A dark goat-shape ran off, laughing. Trash spilled out onto the snow. Greasy paper towels and dripping soup cans rolled about on top of a pyramid of chicken bones and orange peels.

  “Come back here! I’ll make you eat this junk, Zach!” I shouted.

  The only answer was a strange, gargling laugh.

  I sighed and began picking up bits of trash from the snow. My fingers were soon slimy and freezing cold.

  I thought about Sarah, who had turned just last month. One morning she woke up in her bed and realized she was a blue jay. Just a normal-looking blue jay too, not something horribly warped like a huge plucked bird with blue skin. Her mom had to gently help her out of the blankets. Right away, she had hopped out the window and flew into the sky. Of course, her parents had freaked out and worried she would crash or that a cat would catch her while she tested her new wings. But she came back in one piece.

  I think about Sarah’s change, sometimes. Turning into a blue jay is a pretty good deal, really. I mean, she gets to fly and everything and people don’t even get upset when she shows up. She can go to the park and squawk and hop around and even get a picnic handout if she wants to. She’s one of the lucky ones.

  Heather, my sister, changed three years ago. She got lucky too. She’s a cat, when she wants to be. She loves cats anyway, and now, for a few nights every month she’s out there prowling around the neighborhood rooftops with the rest of them. Her fur is an orangey color with tiger stripes. An orange tabby cat, that’s what they call her.

  And then there’s poor Jake, my best friend. He’s a toad! A crummy toad, poor kid. He doesn’t even look like a normal toad, so he has to hide it. Sometimes, the change strikes people differently and they don’t change all the way. Jake was one of those who hadn’t learned to change completely. Who wants to see a hundred-pound toad with human arms and blue eyes hopping around the garden? Everyone laughs at him.

  I can’t laugh at him, however. Because I don’t know yet what I’m going to become. And there are worse things than oversized toads in my family history, let me tell you. Much worse.

  My name is Connor Ryerson, I’m twelve years old, and I still don’t know what my life will be like. I still don’t even know what I am.

  Everyone in my grade has changed now… Everyone but me, that is.

  I’m still waiting.

  Chapter Two

  Evil Sister

  Mom gave Heather one of those small digital movie cameras for Christmas. I really wish she hadn’t.

  “And what shape is the loser brother in today? That’s the sixty million dollar question,” said Heather. She approached my bed and circled it.

  I opened one eye and aimed it at her. She had the camera, of course, and she was doing her endless documentary on me, her younger brother.

  “Its head looks normal, if a little bit chimp-like,” she narrated. The little red light on the camera gleamed at me. I glanced at the clock. It was 6:20 AM. I hated mornings in general, and early mornings with Heather’s camera were the worst.

  “Bumpy, nerdy, boy-skin,” Heather continued. She moved the camera very slowly and tried not to wobble it too much. She liked a clear picture so she could show it to her high school girlfriends and have a good laugh later. “The subject’s winter coat has grown in. It has a full head of black hair in a bowl-cut pattern.”

  I tossed a book at her from my bed stand. She sidestepped it expertly and the book made a ruffling sound as it hit the wall and slid down onto my dresser.

  “The creature’s summer freckles are gone now that it�
�s winter. But I’m sure it will grow something new and nasty on its face to replace them very soon. Something like a zit, but worse.”

  “Get out,” I said. My mouth was full of a nasty morning taste. I hated when Heather called me “It”. She did that all the time.

  “Ah,” said Heather. She was now all the way around my bed to the side by the window. “It’s in a bad mood. Could it be covered with fur under those sheets? Or perhaps… feathers?”

  I pulled the covers over my head, but it was no use. I knew what was coming next.

  With a whoop and a flourish, she yanked off my blankets.

  “Hey!” I shouted and snatched at the covers, trying to get them back. Cold air rushed over me and cut right through my thin pajamas. January always left your room so cold it was hard to get up and leave those warm blankets. Camden was out in the boondocks of Oregon, in Harney County, where there were a lot more trees and mountains than there were people.

  Heather gasped. “Oh! Oh no! ”

  She let me have the blankets back and I pulled them over myself. I was happy to feel the warmth again.

  “I’m so sorry. Really I am,” said Heather. She sounded like she’d seen something horrible.

  I cracked one eye back open and looked at her.

  “I just… I just didn’t know,” she said, lowering the camera and looking at me with eyes full of worry and disgust.

  Just for a second, just for a tiny fraction of a second, she had me. I saw the look on her face and I wondered: What if I had changed overnight? The way Sarah had changed into a blue jay. What if for me, it wasn’t anything cute and normal like a happy little birdie? What if I had the body of a snake with thick oily scales?

  Or worse, what if I was part bug? It happened sometimes. I knew that. The adults only whispered about it, but the older kids would tell you about it when there weren’t any parents around to shut them up. Sometimes, the change was bad. Very bad.

  I sat up suddenly and felt around in my bed, felt my body. Skin, hair and pajamas. That was all I found.

  Heather was grinning hugely, and recording it all, of course.

  “Got you!” she shouted and she ran.

  I chased her all the way to the upstairs bathroom, where she slammed the door and locked herself in. No matter how much I banged on the door and yelled at her, all she did was laugh.

  “You have to come out of there someday,” I told her.

  “No I don’t, punk,” she said. Her voice was muffled coming through the bathroom door.

  I waited with my feet freezing. I found my slippers in the hall and jammed my feet into them.

  It hadn’t been this way before our mom had gotten the overnight job. She was a nurse and she didn’t even come home now until after Heather and I had taken the bus to school. Every night and morning Heather and I were on our own. We were always messing with each other. Today, it was Heather’s turn, but tonight… Well, I had ways of getting revenge. I always thought of something.

  I got mad then and sometimes when I get mad I say things I shouldn’t. “I’m going to get on the phone and call Vater. Jake says he knows the number. Vater will straighten you right out.”

  Heather stopped laughing and the door flipped open. I jammed my slippered foot in there before she could shut it again. I was getting stronger now, my kids muscles had hardened into a teen boy’s muscles over the last year. I figured if I pushed hard and long enough, I could force the door open, even though she was still bigger than me.

  “Connor, don’t ever talk like that,” she said, straining as I pushed on the door. My sister was no slouch either and she had her feet braced like a sumo wrestler ready to make a charge.

  “Why not? You think he can hear us?” I asked, still pushing. I felt the door give an inch and a grin that was half-grimace split my face.

  “Don’t say his name!” she said, easing up and showing me her disapproving face in the cracked open doorway. “Don’t ever joke about him.”

  I looked up at her and sighed, knowing she was right, I had gone too far. All my strength faded and my plan of forcing open the door faded with it. I stopped pushing. “Okay, okay, it wasn’t funny. I’m sorry, now let me in the bathroom.”

  “Promise me!”

  “He hasn’t been here since before we were born!”

  “Mom says that doesn’t matter,” Heather scolded me. I knew by the look in her eye, the one eye I could see in the cracked open door, that she was serious. She had turned into mom on me, and I hated when she did that. She was fifteen, and she was technically still a kid like me. But at times like this she thought she was Mom.

  “Promise me,” she said again.

  “Okay, I’ll never make up bull-oney about Vater-”

  “Connor!”

  “Sorry again. I won’t even say that name! Now let me in.”

  “Okay,” she said. She opened the door part-way.

  I took a half-step forward, but she leaned around the door into the hall. “Hey, there’s Bennie! Mom must not have let him out,” she said, pointing down the hall. “Here boy!”

  I turned to see Bennie, our pet dog, walking up to us. His claws clicked on the hardwood floors with each step. The second I turned and took my foot out of the way, she slammed the door, naturally.

  “Hey!” I shouted, “No fair!” I gave the door a kick and it shuddered. The kick stung my toe.

  Bennie stopped to look up at me. He was half-Terrier and half-Pekinese. A fluffy, brown-furred little guy with bulging eyes. I smiled at him.

  Bennie stared at me and cocked his head. He was probably thinking about his food dish, but it looked like he was thinking about me. Maybe he was trying to tell me I was a fool, and that I should just go down to the other bathroom instead of waiting on Heather. I supposed he was right, but I was in a stubborn mood and wanted to annoy her until she came out. It was the principle of the thing.

  But Bennie wasn’t trying to tell me any such thing, I realized after a few moments. He just stared at me, and then his lip shivered up to show a few teeth. He snuffed, and then sneezed. He barked once, nervously.

  “Hey boy, good morning,” I said to him.

  I reached my hand down toward him.

  Bennie backed up. His lips curled fully back and he sniffed at my hand and rejected it. He gave another sharp bark and one of those throaty little growls that he usually saved for days when the garbage truck was rolling up the street.

  “What’s wrong?”

  His eyes. They got to me. They weren’t the same. Bennie never looked at me like that.

  He looked at me as if I were a stranger. My own dog didn’t know me.

  Chapter Three

  Ruffled Feathers

  Everyone was hoping for a snow day, but it didn’t happen. The bus picked me up in front of our house on Raccoon Street and I was on my way to school. The bus heater droned and blew hot dry air down on my head. My hair ruffled and my eyes felt dry.

  The bus driver, Mrs. Terry, always played bad old music on the radio. I had no idea what we were listening to today. Some old guy with a twangy voice seemed to have lost his hound dog. Or something like that.

  “Connor,” said someone behind me.

  I pretended not to hear.

  “Connor, I’ve got something for you,” said the voice again. I felt hands on the seatback behind my head. I knew those sweaty hands.

  “What, Danny?” I asked, frowning suspiciously over my shoulder at him.

  “You still whining about yesterday’s little run?” said Danny, still grinning at me.

  I just glared back. Thomas was with him, sitting beside him with a big mean grin on his face. Danny and Thomas were best friends and that was good for them because nobody else had ever wanted to be their friends. They could both change into dogs, and they loved to go out together and get into trouble.

  Then Danny lifted something to my face. There was a loud blatting noise and I felt a warm rush of air along with cold bits of wet spray hit my face. They had a balloon, and they
had been holding the end of it pinched. When I turned toward them, they let it blow in my face.

  They snickered. I wiped my face and glared at them.

  “I’ll get you guys,” I said.

  “Oooooo,” said Danny.

  I turned away from them and Danny reached his hand over to pluck at a single hair on my head. I slapped him away.

  Jake, sitting next to me, watched all this without comment.

  “Thanks for all the help,” I grumbled to him.

  “I’ll tell!” said Jake. That was his answer for everything. It never really did any good. But I guess I couldn’t blame him for not standing up to guys like Danny and Thomas. What was he going to do, turn into a toad to scare them? Ha!

  Danny could make himself into a Rottweiler, a big scary-looking dog. Thomas turned into one of those Alaskan dogs. Malamutes they called them. That breed of dog doesn’t bark, which maybe was why Thomas always let Danny do the talking.

  “You know, I hope I turn into something big when I go through the change,” I told Jake.

  “Connor, you don’t want that,” said Jake.

  “I don’t mean something like… You know.”

  “Nothing like a disgusting fat toad, you mean.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Nope, but you thought it.”

  Great, I thought, now Jake was mad at me too. I could hear Danny and Thomas behind me. They were laughing and having a great time, making funny sounds with their hands, mouths and armpits. They had a talent for making funny sounds, those two.

  I looked at Jake, sulking next to me. He had a big mop of blond hair that hung down in very straight lines from a central point on his head. His hair looked like a wig, because it hung down so straightly it wasn’t natural looking. He had chubby cheeks and glasses. I wondered if he wore his glasses when he turned into a weretoad.

  I’d only seen him actually turn into a toad once, and I think my reaction that day made him my friend forever. All I did was not laugh. Everyone else laughed. It was at school, in the cafeteria, and I remember we were all having sloppy joes that day. Suddenly, Jake had grown a huge tongue that spilled out of his mouth into his half-eaten sloppy joe. Then his legs had sort of wriggled, kinking up and firing his shoes right off his feet when the rubbery flippers sprouted. Moments later, the transformation was complete and there, instead of Jake, sat a huge lumpy toad.