1
The blue station wagon had just come around a sharp bend in the road when the creature stepped out of the woods. Eddie was the first to see it—a blur of black hair and four long, thin legs. It looked at him with red-rimmed yellow eyes and a gaping mouth full of sharp teeth.
“Watch out!” Eddie cried from the backseat.
His father smashed his foot against the brake pedal. The car began to fishtail; the tires squealed. Eddie felt himself jerk forward against the seat belt as several of the boxes stacked on the backseat of the car tumbled onto the floor beside him. The book he had been reading flew out of his hands and smacked against the seat in front of him. Eddie’s mother clutched at the ceiling and let out a yelp. Then came the horrible crunch as the front of the car crashed into the creature, sending it flying into the greenish darkness of the woods. The right side of the car skidded off the road and shuddered over several small shrubs, before lurching to a stop a few feet from a mossy boulder. Through the windshield, Eddie watched steam hiss from underneath the car’s mangled hood.
“Is everyone all right?” asked Eddie’s father after several seconds of stunned silence. Eddie had to think about that—his shoulder burned where the seat belt had caught him. He felt like he’d had his breath knocked out of him—partly because of what he’d seen step in front of the car. Its horrible face was lodged in his mind.
“I’m okay,” said Eddie’s mother.
“Me too,” Eddie managed to say.
“I’m so sorry,” said Eddie’s father. “I didn’t even see it coming.”
“Look at the front of the car,” said Eddie’s mother, removing her seat belt. “How could a deer do so much damage?”
“Too big for a deer … I think it was a bear,” said Eddie’s father, leaning forward over the steering wheel, peering into the trees where the animal had disappeared. He opened his door.
The car sat at the top of an incline, hugging the curve of the wooded, winding road. “Stay inside,” said Eddie suddenly. He was certain the thing had been neither a deer nor a bear. His father looked at him like he was crazy. “Drive away,” Eddie insisted.
“I need to see the damage. The moving trucks are probably already waiting for us at the new house.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Edgar Fennicks, don’t be ridiculous!” said Eddie’s mother. “It’s probably injured … or dead. Your father hit it really hard.” His parents both got out of the car and closed their doors, leaving him alone in the backseat. They marched to the front of the car and examined the bumper. Eddie’s father threw his hands into the air in frustration. His mother covered her mouth and turned away toward the woods. Eddie looked at the woods too. The foliage was dense, but other than the wind rustling the branches, there was no sign of movement in the area where the creature had landed.
Eddie didn’t want to be alone. Reluctantly, he opened his door and stepped into the broken bushes.
It was the beginning of September, and the afternoon air was cool. From the top of the hill, Eddie could see the slate-gray sky hanging over the rolling hills like a tattered blanket. The only sound he heard was the wind through the trees. It sounded like someone whispering a secret. Maybe the thing was dead after all. The thudding sound the car had made when it hit the animal echoed in Eddie’s head, giving him chills. He zipped up his blue hooded sweatshirt.
When he made it to the front of the car, he could see why his father was so upset. The right side had been crushed. The headlight was embedded in the front tire. Tufts of black hair were stuck to the crumpled metal. From the left side of the car, the bumper protruded like a broken bone. “Whoa,” said Eddie. His parents merely shook their heads.
After a moment, Dad wandered back to the driver’s-side door, got in, and started the car. “Watch it!” he called, shifting the gear into reverse. When he pressed the gas pedal, the axle cried out in a loud, piercing whine. He shook his head, turned the car off again, and grabbed his cell phone from the front seat.
As his father called the police, Eddie stood with his mother at the edge of the woods. She whispered, “Don’t worry, Edgar. We’re almost home.”
“I’m not worried,” said Eddie, even though he was, a little bit. His fingertips tingled, and the crunch of the metal resonated somewhere deep inside him. He would have been worried even if they hadn’t just gotten into a car accident, but he figured it was normal to feel that way on the day you were moving to a new town. Everything was uncertain. After his mother had lost her office job in Heaverhill, she wanted a change of scenery. At the end of the previous school year, Eddie had said goodbye to his old classmates without knowing he might not see them again for a while. His parents had made the decision to move quite quickly. He had no idea what his new house would look like, or what his new classmates would be like. Eddie had been feeling pretty overwhelmed all day—all month, in fact—and so on the car ride down from Heaverhill, he’d been rereading one of his favorite books, The Revenge of the Nightmarys. Reading familiar stories was comforting, even stories as scary as the ones Nathaniel Olmstead had written. “Do you really think it’s dead? Because … it looked like …”
“Like what?” said Mom.
“Like … a monster,” said Eddie, “or … or something.”
“A monster?” Mom laughed. “I wish my imagination were half as wild as yours, Edgar. I’d be a bestselling novelist by now.”
“Didn’t you see its face?” “I didn’t get a good look.”
“Hey,” called Eddie’s father, “the cops are on their way with a tow truck. The officer I spoke with said we should probably wait inside the car.”
“Why?” said Mom.
“I told him I hit a bear.”
“What did you tell him that for?”
“Because it’s true!”
“It wasn’t a bear. It didn’t look anything like a bear,” she said, stepping back toward the car. “Edgar seems to think it was a monster. I swear, the two of you are such a pair.”
Eddie was about to follow her back to the car, when something in the distance down the road caught his eye, freezing him where he stood. Across the dip of the next valley, where the road descended, Eddie noticed a simple box of a house sitting on top of a grass-covered hill. A patchwork of tall trees, the leaves of which were turning in the wind, surrounded the nearby hills. The smoky peaks of the Black Hood Mountains were visible on the horizon. He knew he’d seen this place before, but where? A postcard? A book? A dream? The familiarity of the sight was surreal enough to knock away the image of the creature his father had struck with the car. He wandered to the faded yellow line on the road for a better view.
A fat stone chimney, like an enormous gravestone, sprouted from the center of the house’s pitched slate roof. Five small windows spread across the top floor. On the bottom were four windows framing a broken door twisting away from its hinges. Unpainted gray shingles peeled away from the sides of the house. Brush and bushes and weeds obscured the rest of the building.
His mouth went dry as he gasped. “No way,” he whispered to himself, suddenly realizing where he’d seen the house.