The Children on the Hill(58)

She pulled out the first file marked HISTORY and opened it:

The Mayflower Project began with a series of simple questions:

Is it possible to take a subpar human being, a person lacking in good breeding, of lower than average intelligence, and—through an experimental regime of surgery, medications, and therapy—turn that human being into something more? Something greater?

Can bad heredity, inferior bloodlines, even a criminal nature, be erased?

Is it possible for a person like this to have a use after all? A greater purpose?

All of our initial experiments yielded disappointing results.

Until I realized the problem.

These first patients were too old. Their brains did not have the necessary elasticity. Their bodies were too worn to handle the treatment.

What we needed to succeed, to truly succeed as never before, was a child.



Vi’s vision narrowed. She felt the room tilt and spin. But still, she forced herself to keep going, to flip through the mass of records in the file.

The pages ripped a jagged hole in her chest, made her breathing uneven, her head pound in time with her heart. Her tears splashed onto the paper.

A child.

A little girl taken from her home with terrible parents and an older sister deemed a lost cause.

A girl who was the subject of experiments, made to do terrible, unimaginable things.

A girl who had been held in B West for months, while Gran tore her down and tried to rebuild her, make her into something new. It was all there in the files Vi skimmed: records of surgeries, medications, water therapy, hypnosis.

I have, wrote Gran, given this child a new life. A new beginning. I have taken a doomed soul and created a blank canvas, a life full of possibility.

Iris’s story.

And, Vi realized, also the story of how her beloved grandmother, the brilliant Dr. Hildreth, had created her very own monster.





Lizzy

August 20, 2019




MY PACK WAS sticking to my back, my T-shirt soaked with sweat even though the night air was cool.

This is stupid, I told myself. Dangerous.

What was I hoping to find at the tower?

Lauren bound and gagged? The monster standing guard?

The monster who was really my long-lost sister?

And what if I was walking right into a trap? If the monster knew I was coming?

Still, I pressed on through the dark forest, letting myself imagine getting there and saving the girl.

But to save the girl, I’d have to slay the monster.



* * *



“I DON’T THINK you have an evil bone in you,” my sister told me once, long ago. “I’m not even sure you’d be able to kill a monster if you met one.”

“I could so kill a monster,” I’d retorted, furious, defensive.

“Tell me,” she’d demanded. “Tell me how you’d do it.”

“It depends on the kind of monster,” I’d said, proving my expertise; proving that I didn’t just help create the monster book, I’d memorized it. “A vampire gets a stake through the heart. A werewolf a silver bullet.”

“What if you don’t know what kind of creature you’re dealing with?” my sister asked.

“You make your best guess. You bind it with a spell, with salt and holy water, and you hurt it any way you can. A magic dagger. A silver bullet. And most monsters can be killed if you cut off their head.”

My sister laughed. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It’s not. Killing a monster is never easy.”



* * *



I CARRIED MY monster-hunting backpack, the little revolver tucked inside it, just in case.

My flashlight illuminated the narrow path through the trees. I stopped occasionally to shine the light on the map Skink had drawn for me and his notes. Take the path from the campground to the Silver Trail. Turn left. Follow the Silver Trail to the Tower Trail on the right.

I was on the Silver Trail now.

It was quiet in the sanctuary, only the low hum of insects, the occasional call of a loon. I couldn’t see the water, but I could smell it, feel it all around me: a dampness in the air, the vaguely ruined scent of decaying weeds, water lilies, and old leaves floating on the surface.

I swept the beam of my flashlight along the trail and spotted the sign up ahead: TOWER TRAIL. I turned right, following it, a narrow path covered with little pebbles that rolled under my feet like marbles.

The wind blew through the trees, seemed to whisper a warning, a warning like the old gods once whispered: Danger, danger. Turn back while you can.

Sometimes monsters dwelled in enchanted places.

Was this one of those places?

Had I crossed a veil of some kind?

Yes, the wind whispered.

And your human weapons will do no good here.

You can’t win.

The trail took me steeply uphill, my feet slipping on the stones.

I felt it before I saw it, stepped into the thick, dark shadow it cast.

The tower was massive against the moonlit sky, built of stone and mortar; it seemed to be leaning slightly to the left. No wonder I’d mistaken its image for a lighthouse—it was tall and round, slightly wider at the base than at the top.

I heard a soft rustle. Feet against stone.

Had it come from inside?