“What’s going on out here?” Grammy shambles into the kitchen, her hair mussed from her nap. “Screaming and carrying on—I need my rest.”
“Look!” Claire shouts, jabbing her finger at the window. “Look.”
Grammy doesn’t answer right away, and for one terrifying second Claire is certain that Grammy doesn’t see it, that she’s having a breakdown, that maybe this is the reason her parents shipped her out here, she’s having a breakdown and they know and don’t want to deal with it because it would interfere with their perfect, modern lives—
“Oh, hell,” Grammy says. “They aren’t supposed to get this close to town. You’ll need to call the exterminator.”
Silence.
“What?” says Claire.
Grammy inclines her head toward the window. “The monsters. Probably not the most accurate term, but it’s what we call ’em. They’re a nuisance around here. Not dangerous really, not unless you provoke them.” Grammy narrows her eyes at Claire. “You didn’t provoke it, did you?”
“I don’t—I don’t think so?”
Grammy peers out the window. “Oh, probably not. It’s just staring at the house. Damn things. Call the exterminator, they’ll come clear it out for us. The number’s next to the phone. I’m going back to my nap. My joints are hurting too much for this excitement. Wake me up when you’ve got dinner ready.” She moves to go back to her bedroom. Stops. Looks over her shoulder. In the sunlight her skin is chalky and pale. “You probably want to stay inside until the exterminator gets here. We try to keep our distance from the things.”
“Planning on it,” Claire says shakily.
Grammy nods and leaves the kitchen. Claire turns back to the window. The monster is where she left it, standing amidst the yellowed overgrown grass, swaying like it’s being blown by the wind. She stares a few moments longer, waiting for something to change. Waiting for something to make sense. Nothing does.
She goes to the kitchen phone.
A list of phone numbers is written on a piece of paper with an oil company’s logo plastered on the bottom, the handwriting faded and old. The exterminator is four numbers down.
Claire steals another glance at the monster. It’s still there. Hasn’t moved.
She dials. The phone rings two times.
“Hello, Alvarez Exterminators. How may I help you?” The woman on the other end sounds bored. Claire takes a deep breath.
“I have a, uh, a monster”—she cringes as she says it—“in my backyard and, uh, I was told to call—”
“How big is it?” the woman asks.
“What? Oh, I dunno, I—two feet, I guess?”
“Did it speak?”
“Um.” Claire leans up against the wall. She wonders if she fell asleep out in the heat and this is all some weird nightmare. “Yes? It pointed at me and said girl.”
The woman makes a clucking sound. “And the address?”
Claire tells her.
“Very well. I’ll have someone out there in about ten minutes.” She hangs up before Claire can say anything more.
For a moment, Claire listens to the dial tone, hoping it will wake her up. But it doesn’t.
She sets the phone back in the receiver. Then she goes to the window, and her heart leaps: The monster’s vanished. But no—after a second she sees that it’s just crouched down in the grass again. Her letter to Josh is still out there, her pen and papers scattered across the patio. She’ll have to start over. And figure out some way to tell him about the monsters that doesn’t make her sound insane.
She digs her nails into her palms, even though she doesn’t really think she’s dreaming. Her dreams are never this vivid. They tend to happen in black-and-white.
Claire closes the blinds. Then she goes around to all the other doors in the house and locks them. She turns on the TV with the sound down low so that it won’t disturb Grammy. There are only two stations out here, both local stations that crackle with static. Neither show anything interesting, but she leaves The Golden Girls on to have some noise in the house. Her head buzzes. She’s come to this house every other Christmas for the past seventeen years and not once has she seen a monster. Not even heard someone talk about them.
She thinks about her mother during those trips, fussing in the car as her father drove the family down the highway. Her brother would turn on his Walkman right away, but Claire didn’t always feel like listening to music, and sometimes she listened to her parents’ conversation instead. I hate going to this place, her mother would always say, flipping through the magazine in her lap. You know how it is.
Her father grunted in reply.
You know how it is. Claire always took that to mean that Indianola was dull and backward, a time capsule stuck in the 1960s. Or that her mother hated the way Grammy insulted their life in Houston, complaining that Claire’s mother had to be the breadwinner, that she didn’t have time to maintain a proper home.
But maybe her mother meant something else. Maybe she meant monsters.
Monsters her mother didn’t even bother to warn her about when she dropped Claire off. Although that would be like her, wouldn’t it? She was probably too wrapped up in some client or other to mention it.
Claire kicks at the ottoman sitting in front of the chair and it skitters across the room, just as the doorbell rings.
She switches off the TV and goes to answer it. She expects a middle-aged man in coveralls, or maybe a priest, but instead she finds a girl her own age, tall and pretty and brown-skinned, with tangled black hair and dark liner around her eyes. She holds a big metal cage.
“You called about a monster?” she asks.
“You’re the exterminator?” Claire blurts it out before she can stop herself.
“Yep. Julie Alvarez.” She holds out her free hand. Claire shakes it. Julie grins at her. “Did you just move in or something? Isn’t this Mrs. Sudek’s house?”
“I’m her granddaughter. I’m helping her out this summer.”
“Oh. Tight.” Julie shifts the cage from one hand to the other. “So where is it? Out back, I guess? I didn’t see anything when I drove up.” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder, toward a big white van with a plastic sculpture of a cockroach perched on top.
“Yeah. Out back. You can come through the house.” Claire holds the door open and Julie shrugs and walks in. She’s not wearing a uniform, just hot-pink shorts and a Nirvana T-shirt knotted at the waist. Not what Claire expected at all.
Claire leads her through the house. When they get to the kitchen, Claire opens up the window blinds, her heart pounding. The monster’s still out there, the scaly curve of its head poking out above the grass.
Julie sets the cage on the floor and presses one hand against the window, peering out. She gives a nod like this is all familiar to her. “And you said it spoke?” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a notepad. “Says here it called you girl?”
“That’s what I thought it sounded like…” Claire’s voice trails off. The way everyone, from Grammy to the receptionist on the phone to this girl Julie, is treating the monster like a normal everyday thing just convinces Claire further that she’s having a breakdown.