Silver and Salt(17)

“My mee-maw,” she corrected, several tears running down her face to drip onto the pony and snot gathering on her upper lip. She was scared. She was petrified and I knew I should feel bad about that, but I didn’t. She could be scared or she could be snatched up by the next human monster. We learned in class that the ends didn’t justify the means. Bullshit. We learned wrong.

With the pony back against her chest, her arms wrapped more tightly around it. She either forgot the bogeyman gave it to her or thought she’d saved it from him. “She’s the only one I can tell.” In a quick, jerky movement, she wiped her running nose with her arm before moving it back to cuddle the toy. “My daddy died and mommy is in that place for people who stick needles in their arms.”

Daddy dead and mommy in rehab or prison. The rusty machinery of the world at work. I shouldn’t blame normal people who can’t see. Blood and rust sometimes were too close to know which was which.

Before I could warn her to tell her grandma, an Oldsmobile, old and big enough that I thought they’d all disappeared to make some sort of car Stonehenge far away, screeched up to the curb about thirty feet away. “Mels, honey,” called a voice coarse with cigarettes, alcohol, any sin money could buy, but it was a cheerful voice and that was something. “Come on, kid! Supper’s cooking and it’s dance night at the VFW. Got to feed your scrawny little butt, pick out a dress, and get you to the sitter. Hurry, hurry! Run, little Miss Chickadee.”

Melanie ran quicker than the wind, leaving the sharp scent of the salt of her tears in the air. I yelled after her, “Tell her, Melanie. Tell her about the boogety-man.” But the car door had already slammed after her and the Oldsmobile was pulling away. I hoped she’d heard me. I hoped she’d remember what I told her. Picking a strand of yellow ragweed, the same color as Melanie’s sandals, I tossed it into the wind after her. “Good luck, Mels,” I said under my breath. “Stay away from the ‘boogety-man.’”

I thought she would. I’d scared her. I’d made her cry and I wasn’t sorry. I was…proud. Someone needed help and I’d given it to them. It wasn’t how a normal person would do it, but I wasn’t normal. Right now, that didn’t matter, because I’d pulled it off. I’d done it with a fake monster over the real one, but as long as it kept her away from strangers, she’d be okay. And she had listened to me, her eyes huge on finding out the bogeyman was loose. She believed me. I’d saved her. Me, the half-monster. I’d saved a little girl.

She would run like I’d told her if the invisible man showed up again. There’d been fear in her brown eyes, fear and belief. The monster, the “boogety-man,” had been close enough to touch her. He had talked to her. He could’ve eaten her up. She had more than believed it. She knew it. Yeah, I had faith she’d keep away from him.

And she had.

Too bad for Mels that the boogety-man didn’t do the same for her.



The Boogety-man



A week later, Melanie was found dead in a dumpster behind a fast food burger place five blocks from her house and two blocks from the park. The window to her room had been pried open and Melanie taken…by the “boogety-man” I’d told her wasn’t in her room and under her bed anymore, but out in the rest of the big, wide world. Sometimes, you can’t know what a monster will do, not the real ones and not the lesser, invisible-man kind.

I turned off the TV, blacking out the news from sight a helluva lot easier than I could from my mind. I let the remote fall from numb fingers as Niko finished fixing us supper, his blond braid swaying across his back. Whatever he was cooking was something nutritious—I hated that word—with rice and vegetables sizzling in a pan. He’d been paid; that meant our food would be healthy for a day or two if far less tasty than a pizza. That was good. I wouldn’t have to make up an excuse as to why I wasn’t hungry. Niko’s “nourishing” as he called it, food was excuse enough. I pulled my knees up to my chest and looped my arms around them. I’d thought…I’d been sure Melanie would be safe. I hadn’t guessed he’d go after her if she wouldn’t come out to him. What to do now?

I couldn’t tell the police what I’d seen, as we were on the run. We spent our life on the run, from Sophia’s creditors and knee-breakers to the monsters. They’d put Sophia in prison, no loss. But they’d put Nik and me in foster care until Nik turned eighteen, another year. And I…I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t be with people who didn’t know about the monsters that would circle their house. That didn’t know what would irritate me and what would make me mad and what I could do if I got mad. People who wouldn’t have any idea that I needed help in watching the dark, watching for Grendels, and, if they knew, impossible as that was, wouldn’t care if I needed help or not. Couldn’t be bothered to do it. I’d be alone. Just me, the monsters, and people who’d be eaten because they didn’t know to lock all the doors and windows before night. Who didn’t know to sleep with knives under the mattresses or to keep at least one knife hidden in every room. Stupid, stupid people who didn’t know f*cking anything.

Thoughts tied in panicked knots, I managed to stop myself a second before I would’ve started rocking back and forth. Niko would’ve seen that in a heartbeat and he wouldn’t let it go. Okay. Okay. I had to think. I took a deep breath and didn’t waste time finding it ironic I was more afraid of foster care than supernatural monsters. Taking hold of my emotions and mind, I shook them both ruthlessly. I could handle Grendels, I could handle this. Calmer, I considered the options. The first one I’d already thrown out. No police. What else could I do?