The Children on the Hill(91)

Vi tilted her head. “We’re showing them how to save themselves,” she said.

I was quiet, taking it all in.

“And now I need your help,” Vi said.

“My help?”

“I need you to walk away from all of this. To not draw attention to the monsters and the girls.”

“So you’re asking me to stop hunting monsters?”

She laughed. “No. Not all monsters. Just me.”

“How will I know that it’s you?”

“You’ll know. You’ll be able to feel it, won’t you? Isn’t that how we ended up here?”

I looked at her. Here she was, the monster I’d been chasing for so long.

“Are you disappointed?” Vi asked. “I’m not what you expected?”

“No… I just…”

“Do you ever think about it? About what might have happened if you’d come with me back then?”

My eyes burned with tears. “All the time.”

“Me too.” Vi nodded. “You broke my heart that night.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but didn’t know what: I’m sorry? I’d do things differently if I could go back?

Lauren and Skink returned. “Just making sure no one’s shot anyone yet,” Lauren said.

“Lizzy,” Skink said, “we were all wrong about this. Lauren’s been telling me what’s really going on. She was in some serious shit, like scary bad stuff I didn’t know about—”

“And I’ve been given a second chance,” Lauren said.

“I still don’t understand,” I admitted. “Why not just go home and start over there? Why leave everything behind?”

“Because that’s the way it has to work,” Vi said. “My rules. To be reborn, you have to die. Cut all ties. Let go of your old life and the hold it had over you. It might seem extreme, but it works. Time after time.”

“What if the girls don’t want to change?” Skink asked.

“Then they go back home. It doesn’t happen very often. I choose the girls carefully. Only the ones in truly dire straits make the cut. The ones who really are out of options. The ones who already feel like there’s nowhere they belong.”

“Like we were once,” I said.

Vi smiled. “Exactly.”





AFTERWORD





Lizzy

September 5, 2019




HOW’S THE WENDIGO hunting?” Skink asked.

“No sign of it yet, but I interviewed an eyewitness today. A reliable woman—works at the town hall. Swears she saw this creature grab her dog and carry it off when she was out jogging a couple of weeks ago. Not a small dog either, a husky.”

The story had unsettled me: a pale humanoid creature nearly ten feet tall, half skeletal with huge black eye sockets. “And it stank,” the woman had told me, “like putrid, rotting flesh.”

“Yikes,” Skink said. “Sure you don’t need any backup out there?”

I laughed. “You’ve got school. Your dad would kill you if you got on a plane to the wilds of Wisconsin.”

Skink laughed too. “I don’t know. I kinda think he’d want to come with me. He talks about you all the time. He’s been checking your blog every day and listening to all the podcasts. I think he’s listened to some twice now.”

“That’s a lot for a nonbeliever.”

“He wants to know when you’re coming back to Vermont. He says to remind you we’ve got lots more monsters here for you to investigate. He says he could take you out to Lake Champlain on his boat, go hunting for Champ.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Maybe next summer.”

“You still heading out to California after Wisconsin?” Skink asked.

“I’m gonna stop in and see my brother for a little while first. Then, yeah, I promised Brian I’d at least meet with him and the team and hear about this new show they’ve dreamed up.”

“I think it’s an awesome idea: Lizzy Shelley, Monster Hunter!”

“God, I hope they’ve come up with a better name than that!”

“You’d be an idiot not to do it, you know?” Skink said. “If your mission truly is to educate people about monsters, you’ve gotta do what gets the most sets of eyeballs on you. Plus, you’re good at it. People loved you in Monsters Among Us.”

I sighed.

I was in my van camped at the edge of the Point Beach State Forest in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. It was dark now, and when I glanced out of the windows, I saw only myself reflected. The van was full of the cozy glow of LED lights and my laptop screen.

Skink was quiet.

“So how are you doing, really?” I asked.

“Okay,” he said, blowing out a long, slow breath. “It’s weird. Not being able to tell anyone that Lauren’s okay—not even my dad. And I just worry about her, you know?”

“She’s fine, Skink. She’s in good hands.”

“I know. I just wish…”

“That things were different?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “Me too.”