From the Grave by Cynthia Reeg

Author:Cynthia Reeg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: North Star Editions
Published: 2015-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Monster Rule #73: Monsters don’t remember what they would rather forget.

MALCOLM’S TALE

Later that night, while Mom read Nelly nightmare stories and put her to bed, I slipped from the apartment. I slid into the darkness like a swamp monster eases into a pool of green muck.

I shivered. There it was. That nearly forgotten memory. Me slipping into the icy wetness. The one I had tried so hard to forget. The picture bobbed and swayed. Now fuzzy. Now clear as moonlight. Too awful to watch. Too disturbing to be real. In the vision, I swam alongside my dad, both of us gliding through the murky water.

I shook my head to stop the nightmare scene. Trolls do NOT swim. Never have and never will. It was only a silly dream—a nightmare vision somehow embedded in my brain. I grunted and plunged into the evening darkness.

In next to no time, I stood outside Doubledose Tankster’s slanting shanty near the cemetery. I pulled on my lone lock of hair. I needed to know what had happened to my dad. I needed to hear it from someone I could trust. Someone other than Frankenstein Gordon.

I pounded on Doubledose’s door. Faint flickering light illumined the cracks in the wood. I knew Doubledose was here. Candles were never lit and left.

No answer. I stomped my right hoof into the doorstep dirt, then kicked the door, rattling its rusty hinges.

“Boogers and bat brains! I’m coming.” Doubledose’s deep voice rumbled through the door. “Don’t get your tails in a tangle. You’re early tonight.”

I grunted and stepped back. Doubledose’s footsteps approached the door. A lone wolf’s howl carried on the wind. I shivered once again. I didn’t want to know if the howl was a good omen or a dire warning.

“Huh?” Doubledose stuck his hairy face through the opened doorway. His golden eyes blinked into the blackness. “Who’s there?”

“Malcolm. McNastee.” My voice squeaked. I snorted in disgust.

Doubledose pulled open the door. “Roary’s boy?” Doubledose stepped closer. His baggy overalls hung on his skinny frame. His hard hat sat on the table, most likely discarded as soon as he had returned from his job at the Haunted House Factory. I knew he worked there with Ghoulbert’s dad.

“Yeah.”

Doubledose scratched his shaggy head. “Should have known. You look just like him.”

I couldn’t help but squirm. My tail too twitched out of control. All my monster wiles I’d practiced for so long seemed to have disappeared. I snorted again.

“Haven’t seen you . . . ,” Doubledose paused.

I could smell something, spicy and hot then. Something like fear. Monsters have keen senses for detecting fear, heartbreak, anguish. For drinking them up. Feeding on them. Drawing power from them.

Doubledose’s paw rattled the doorknob. “Why are you here?”

“Did he really die?” The words shot out. I pushed myself into the pale pool of candlelight. “My dad. In the fire.”

“Isn’t that what I said. Back then, so many years ago. How’s a monster supposed to remember?” Doubledose seemed to nearly trip on his words, tumbling them out.

The pungent fear burned my nostrils now.

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