“Maybe after school,” my mom continues, “you and your brother can get out the rakes and clean all those leaves off the lawn. Then this weekend you can set up your new pitching toy before it starts to get too cold.”
“Mom, it’s called a pitchback,” says Dean. “And it’s not a toy. It’s for practicing.” Dean and I are both in the same baseball little league—or we will be, in the spring, when I’m ten and old enough to join. The pitchback is a small, stiff net in a metal frame, like a vertical trampoline. You throw the baseball at it and it springs right back to you, so you can practice without a partner.
My mother sighs. “Oh, whatever it’s called.”
The two of them go on talking—my mother of the leaves and the yard and things that need to get done around the house, Dean of baseball and how many hits he’s going to get next season. My father remains lodged behind the newspaper as the minutes tick away. Any moment now, he’s going to stand up and head for the door. He’ll tousle Dean’s and my hair, then give my mom a kiss. “Bye, dear,” he’ll say. “Be good, gents.” Then he’ll be gone. I realize I’m running out of time to be a part of the conversation. When I finally open my mouth, the words burst from me like some sort of confession.
“I saw a monster last night.”
If I was hoping to cause a sensation, elicit some dramatic response, I’m disappointed. My father’s eyes stay on the paper. My mom looks at me in a sort of vague, confused way, like she’s scanning her internal mom playbook for the right thing to say. Only Dean reacts, with a shrug and a snort.
“Bullcrap,” he says.
“Dean,” my mother admonishes him. “Language.”
“It’s real,” I say, both excited that someone acknowledged my revelation and frustrated that it was Dean, and that he doesn’t believe me. “My door was closed, and the shade turned the knob and opened it from the outside.”
“The shade?” says Dean.
“It’s like a person,” I continue, a bit breathlessly, “but totally pitch-black, so all you can see is darkness, but it’s darker than darkness.”
“You stole that idea from Peter Pan,” says Dean. “It’s Peter’s shadow.”
“No, Peter Pan’s shadow was flat.”
“Two-dimensional,” says my mom.
“Right,” I say. “Two-dimensional. It can only stick to walls or the ceiling. The monster was three-dimensional, maybe more.”
“Stupid,” says Dean. “How could it be more than three-dimensional?”
“Well, three at least.”
“If you saw a monster, why are you still here? Why didn’t it eat you?”
“It’s not that kind of monster.”
“What was it doing?”
“I don’t know. Kinda dancing, I guess.”
Dean nearly explodes from laughter, but his mouth is full of milk and cereal, and he desperately tries to keep it shut. His face clenches and turns bright red. The effort to restrain himself makes him laugh even harder, his whole body convulsing silently but violently, until a Cheerio actually pops out of his nose on a thin jet of milk. Finally he bursts, spitting up the rest of his mouthful.
“Dean!” says my mother.
“A dancing monster!” he squeals. “Elliot saw a dancing monster!”
I feel my face flush, like my father’s does when he gets angry. I know this is just Dean being Dean, but it still hurts.
“It’s not a dancing monster!” I shout back.
“But you just said it was.” Dean jiggles in his chair, like he’s about to pee his pants. “You said it.”
He’s got me there. I don’t expect this kind of weaponized logic from Dean, and it stuns me into silence. My face grows hotter, and I feel the tears start to build behind my eyes. My mother notices.
“Okay, you two, that’s enough,” she says. “Dean, clean that up. Elliot, please don’t get so worked up about it. He’s just teasing. No need to get emotional.” She turns to my father, who is still absorbed in the newspaper. “Richard, I think we should get someone to come look at Elliot’s bedroom door. It doesn’t lock properly. Any little draft can blow it open.”
“This house isn’t so drafty,” says my father. “And why does he need to lock his bedroom door, anyway?”
“Because of the monsters.” Dean is still giggling. “And the trees!”
“What trees?” asks my mom. “By his window? What’s wrong? Are they bumping against the house?”
“The ones in the front yard,” says Dean. “Elliot thinks they’re alive.”
“Well, they are alive,” says my mother. “All plants are alive.”
“No, Elliot thinks they’re going to grab him,” says Dean. “That’s why he needs to lock his door. That and the monsters.”
There are so many points I want to argue that I don’t know where to begin. First, I want to tell my mom that the trees did seem alive—I mean really alive, conscious, not just in a plantlike way. Second, I never said I needed to lock my door. Third, I also never said that the trees were trying to get us in some evil way, or that I was afraid of them. Or that the monster was scary. Why would I want to lock it out? But all of these retorts jumble together in my throat and can’t get past my tongue.
I’m still silent, and Dean is still giggling, when time finally runs out. With a deep sigh, my father folds his newspaper, drains the last of his coffee, and stands up from the table.
“There’s no such thing as monsters,” he says.
And that’s the end of that conversation.
The shade only gets bolder after this, though I make a silent vow not to talk about it anymore. It continues to visit me in my room almost every night, sometimes opening the door, sometimes slipping under it. Less frequently, it appears in other places—once, for example, when I’m sleeping over at a friend’s house—but always at night, when it can find the darkest, quietest corners to play in. There are other monsters, too. One is like a sparkling crescent in the corner of my vision. Another takes the face of an old man in the tree outside my window. On Halloween, I peer out from under the covers to find a particularly bold incarnation rummaging through my dresser. It’s a fat man, dressed in black like a burglar. Unlike with the shade, I can see his face quite clearly, and it’s both thrilling and a bit unsettling when he turns and smiles at me, as if he’s been caught stealing and doesn’t really care.
The menagerie is not confined to my bedroom, or even my neighborhood. In January, when Connecticut has sunk into the deepest part of winter, my family takes its first vacation. Though money is tight, my father insists that we go to Florida, because that’s what people do. To be surrounded by snow one minute and on a beach in the tropics the next is a revelation, like waking from hibernation, or crossing into another universe. The monsters feel it, too. They are everywhere—hidden in the palm trees, skipping over the waves.
Dean and I spend more time in the ocean than out of it. My father, prone to sunburn, is often forced to retreat into the hotel’s air-conditioned lounge, so my mother draws lifeguard duty. She doesn’t seem to mind, though after four days she has yet to dip a toe in the water, which seems wrong to me and Dean. After one especially exhausting bout in the waves, we crash on our towels and cajole her until she finally starts to cave.