Wild Spaces by S. L. Coney

Author:S. L. Coney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

III

Monsters, the boy thinks, should always be hungry and slavering, but his grandfather isn’t. When his father cleaned up from the storm, his grandfather offered to help. And when his mother knocks a stack of laundry over, he pulls the washing machine out so she can get to the socks. He wears his human skin and he keeps his shadow-light hidden, but the boy knows what he is, and he thinks his father does too.

The boy’s parents no longer retreat behind closed doors to argue, but it doesn’t matter. Regardless of how the fights start, they all end the same way.

“He’s my dad,” she says, and the back door slams, the boy’s father taking off down the long, twisting drive, his Pumas kicking up puffs of gravel dust as he jogs toward the road.

His mother continually twists her necklace—the one his father bought her for their eighth anniversary—around her index finger until the tip turns a bloodless white and the rest goes purple. His father keeps late nights reading in the hallway. He jokes with the boy about how night is the only time quiet enough, but the boy can see the circles under his eyes, and he can see the burden of his father’s distance in the curve of his mother’s shoulders.

His grandfather disappears down to the beach for hours, leaving them to wait for his return. His mother cleans—dusting, mopping, and vacuuming as if she can wash the pall away. His father starts keeping a couple fingers of Scotch close at hand.

The boy, he keeps waiting for it to happen again. He stares at the mirror, open-mouthed, his tongue and throat white and slick. In the bedroom, he presses at his eyelids and feels his face as Teach anchors him down. He runs his fingers through his hair, making sure it’s still there, and then, in his nervousness, he starts plucking it from his head, creating tender little bald patches around his ears that burn when he goes swimming.

He thinks about telling his parents, or at least his father—he’s pretty sure his mother already knows, that she can see the shadows in him—but in the end he doesn’t. He is a secret, and he can’t bear his father knowing the dirtiness of him.

* * *

While his father mows the lawn and his mother cleans the kitchen, the boy slips down the hall to his mother’s study. The little office is stuffy and dim except for the muted sunrays that sneak through the closed plantation shutters, dust motes dancing in the beams. Teach stretches out as the boy pulls open drawers and combs the bookcases, but there are no false bottoms and no books on sea monsters.

He finds the notes about Madame Cheng on his mother’s desk, written in her looping hand, some sections highlighted in dull yellow, others a neon orange. He no longer fits under her desk—his favorite spot to read—so he sinks to the floor by the chair, Teach’s breath warm against his knee.

When he’s done,

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