American Monsters

  She did her best not to throw up as they came close.

  Without a word, the man put his jar on the ground first, as carefully as a doting father would lay a sleeping newborn into its crib. Then the woman placed her jar beside it. A tear rolled down her cheek.

  They walked back to the farm, holding hands, and then they were gone.

  “Do I want to know what’s in there?” Milo asked.

  “No,” Amber whispered.

  He nodded. “Thought not.”

  Amber stood over the jars, made a circle of her blood that caught fire, and delivered the offerings to Fool. She didn’t bother talking to him. She didn’t even glance at Bigmouth.

  She stepped back into the circle and the flames went out and she was by Milo’s side once again. She reverted, went to the bushes and threw up.

  “I need a new job,” she said weakly.

  “THAT’S AN AWFUL LOT of corn,” Amber said.

  Milo nodded. They’d been driving for the last five minutes through endless acres of eight-foot-high corn stalks, rising up on either side of the road.

  “It’s like the Red Sea,” she said.

  Milo glanced at her. “What?”

  “The corn,” she said. “We’re like Moses driving through the Red Sea.”

  “I don’t think Moses drove.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s impressive, is what I’m saying. As far as corn goes.”

  “Right.”

  Silence began to settle.

  “So,” she said.

  Milo kept his eyes on the road. “Yes?”

  “So I’ve looked at the map. I’ve looked at where we’re heading and, uh, and it would appear that we’ll be passing through Montana.”

  “If we keep going in this direction, sure.”

  “Well, y’know, my parents, they’re still, they’re still ahead of us. Montana might even be their destination.”

  “Maybe,” said Milo.

  “I was thinking, though …”

  He looked at her. “You want to go to the Dark Places convention, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said immediately. “Well, I mean, maybe. Since we’d be in the city, anyway, I figured we could spare a few hours …”

  “If your folks are in Montana, and you spend a few hours at the convention, how will you feel if we miss our chance to grab them?”

  “Pretty lousy,” she mumbled.

  “Would it be worth it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “So …?”

  “So we’d probably be better off going after them first,” she said, “and maybe catching the second day of the convention.”

  “We might have to miss the convention entirely.”

  She groaned.

  “Amber …”

  “Shut up,” she said. “I know you’re right. Shut up.”

  She looked out of the window again. A minute passed.

  “Do you know any interesting facts about corn?” she asked.

  “You’re obviously very bored.”

  She turned to him. “But do you? We learned about corn in school. Did you know that archaeologists were able to pop corn kernels that were over a thousand years old?”

  “How did they taste?”

  Amber frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “Is that the only thing you learned about corn?”

  “It’s the only thing I remember.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Corn?”

  “School,” said Milo.

  “Oh. No, I don’t. And I can guarantee you that there isn’t one person in that place who misses me, either. They probably think I’ve been expelled, actually, after that fight with Saffron.”

  “Why did you get into a fight with her?”

  Amber shrugged. “Does it even matter anymore?”

  “I guess not,” said Milo. “Did you win?”

  Amber grinned, and he laughed.

  The road curved ahead and then straightened again, and a covered bridge swept into view. Painted a robust, healthy red, it stood strong and long, straddling a river that divided the forests of corn from the flat lands beyond.

  “Pull over, would you?” she asked.

  Milo tensed. “Your parents?”

  “My bladder.”

  “Ah,” he said, and pulled over.

  Amber crossed the road, walked a few steps into the corn and squatted down to pee. Milo turned off the engine and for a moment the sound of swaying corn was the only thing she could hear. She stood, buttoned her jeans and buckled her belt, listening to another engine getting closer. She had visions of a farmer on his tractor, incensed at the idea that an out-of-towner would dare use his field as a toilet.

  She left the corn, heading back to the Charger with her eye on the covered bridge. The tractor – it must have been a tractor because of the deep, heavy rumble it was making on those wooden boards – kept coming through the dark. And then a pair of headlights opened up like red, staring eyes.

  The Peterbilt lunged from the covered bridge and Amber shifted and ran back into the corn, her arms up in front of her face. She didn’t have to look behind to know that the truck had left the road and was coming after her. Its roars filled the world, the rumble of its tyres both heavy and dangerously fast.

  Amber tripped, almost fell, had to hike up her jeans as she ran. The trucker was playing with her. He was letting her get far enough away so that when he hit her she’d go splat against the grille of his battered, rusted truck.

  She stopped running and turned, crouching, getting her breath back and tracking the sound of the engine through the forest of corn. She cinched her belt tighter as she moved sideways, doing her best not to disturb the corn around her. She became aware of another engine, the Charger, somewhere to her right.

  Amber stopped, and stayed very still. It became impossible to tell where the truck was, exactly. Moving somewhere to her left, she reckoned, but then the breeze wafted through the corn and suddenly it could have been right in front of her.

  Then the world roared and she straightened, spun, the noise coming from all around her, and she chose a direction at random and jumped, right before the Peterbilt charged through the space where she’d just been standing. It clipped her leg on the way past, spinning her in mid-air. She hit the ground and the truck was gone, leaving a flattened trail in its wake.

  Cursing with the pain, Amber got up, started hobbling, and there was another roar beside her and she flinched, almost fell, but the corn stalks swayed and parted as the Charger slid to a stop.

  She threw herself in, yanked the door closed, and Milo gunned the engine and they surged forward. He wrenched the wheel to the right and she glimpsed the Peterbilt pass within an arm’s length of the trunk.

  Milo took them on a wide loop through the corn. They found a scarecrow but no truck.

  Milo turned off the engine for a moment, and they listened to the Peterbilt driving away from them. The Charger crept out of the corn.

  “Is he gone?” Amber asked, still rubbing her leg.

  “I think so.”

  “Which way?”

  Milo nodded to the covered bridge.

  “Aw crap,” she said. “We’ve got to follow him?”

  “At least for the next ten miles or so. Then we have our pick of roads.”

  “So he’s got ten miles to hide in and wait for us to drive by.”

  Milo didn’t answer, he just pulled out on to the road. They passed through the covered bridge and carried on.

  As they drove, Amber took it upon herself to scan their surroundings, 360 degrees. Behind every dilapidated shack they passed, she expected to see the Peterbilt lurking. Every clump of trees became a hiding spot. Every bend in the road an ambush point. And every few seconds she’d check the road behind.

  “Amber,” Milo said softly.

  She looked straight ahead. A car was parked at the side of the road. They slowed, taking in the damage done to the car’s exterior. The driver was slumped in his seat. br />
  “Should we stop?” Amber asked. Her voice was so quiet. “I don’t know if we should stop. That’s probably what he wants us to do.”

  “Yeah,” said Milo, and kept going.

  Amber called for an ambulance and hung up when she was asked her name.

  A few minutes later, they passed a family station wagon, its back end crumpled up like an accordion. Its doors were open. No sign of the occupants.

  Two miles farther on, they rolled by a pickup truck on its side. The driver had managed to get out and he’d tried to run. He hadn’t got very far. They passed his body in the middle of the road.

  The Charger drove on.

  Past a motorcyclist who’d never stood a chance, a farmer whose truck had come apart upon impact, and a girl with a novelty licence plate on her twisted, wrecked, brand-new Mini.

  And then, on the long road straight ahead of them, the Peterbilt. It wasn’t speeding, it wasn’t swerving, it was just trundling on like it hadn’t just left a trail of destruction and death in its wake.

  “He wants us to catch up with him,” said Amber.

  Milo chambered the first round into his gun, flicked the safety on and handed it to Amber. “Hold that,” he said.

  They started to speed up.

  When the Peterbilt was close enough for Amber to just about make out the mud-splattered licence plate, the trucker indicated he was about to pull over. Milo eased his foot off the gas as the Peterbilt kicked up clouds of dust, rolling to a stop in the emergency lane.

  “Now what’s he doing?” Amber muttered.

  Milo took his gun back, flicked the safety off.

  “Wait,” said Amber, peering through the swirling dust. “There’s someone there, on the road.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Milo said. “He’s picking up a hitchhiker.”

  His foot hit the gas. They shot forward, speeding to the truck, and they got close enough for Amber to see the face of the smiling girl climbing into the cab.

  Clarissa.

  Milo pounded the horn, but the door was already closing, and the Peterbilt took off in reverse. Milo cursed and wrenched the wheel, but the back of the truck slammed into them and the Charger left the ground and the world flipped around it.

  Amber barely glimpsed the Peterbilt driving on.

  THAT NIGHT THEY MADE it to Roundup, Montana. The Charger was injured, wheezing and clunking, but it got as far as the parking lot of the motel and gratefully sank into a deep, dark sleep. Amber went to her room and showered. Her demon-self was waiting for her when she got out.

  “Clarissa’s dead by now,” her demon-self said.

  Amber ignored her.

  “How’s that feel, to have her blood on your hands?”

  Amber shook her head. “It’s not my fault.”

  “Of course it is,” her demon-self said, laughing. “She was doing fine. Sure, she was homeless. Sure, a life like that has its risks. But it was your friendship that steered her on to the Demon Road.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “You’re lying to yourself.”

  “We’ll find her,” Amber said. “We’ll find her and that truck and we’ll—”

  “When?” her demon-self asked. “Before or after you’ve found your folks? Before or after you’ve cheated the Shining Demon? Face it, Amber, Clarissa is last on your list of priorities, so just forget about her. Put her out of your mind. She’s already dead. She was dead the moment you met her.”

  Amber turned, ready to shout, but her demon-self had vanished.

  She heard her laugh, somewhere in the distance.

  She slept without dreaming.

  She woke, and dressed. She wasn’t in the mood to eat so she skipped breakfast, went straight out to find Milo already sitting in the shining, immaculate Charger.

  “She feeling better?” Amber asked as she got in.

  “Much,” said Milo. “How are you?”

  “That trucker guy taking Clarissa … that’s my fault.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I involved her in this crazy life, and from now on craziness will seek her out. That’s how the Dark Highway works, right?”

  He looked at her, and shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “So it’s on me. Something else to hate myself for. That’s fine. I can handle it. Clarissa is now on my list of things to sort out. I’ll get to her. But we are here, in Montana, to scratch my parents’ names off of that list. That’s how we’re gonna start.”

  Milo nodded. “Okay. How far away are they?”

  “Hard to tell, but I’d say about an hour. They’re not moving. Maybe they don’t know we’re this close, or maybe it’s a trap. Either way, that’s where we’re going.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Milo said, and started the engine. The Charger roared its health, like a great beast waking from slumber, and they left the parking lot and joined the light Sunday morning traffic.

  By 10am, Amber’s internal compass had brought them straight to the Dark Places convention.

  “Shit,” she said.

  Milo stopped the Charger. They watched a long line of weirdly-dressed people pass through the doors.

  “They’re somewhere in there,” she said.

  Milo exhaled. “Then it’s a trap.”

  “Obviously.”

  “We’ve already walked into one of their traps,” Milo said. “It’d be unbecoming to walk into another quite so soon.”

  “We don’t really have a choice,” said Amber.

  A convention volunteer walked by, waving fliers. Amber rolled down her window and took one, and the volunteer wandered off. Amber rolled her window back up.

  She showed Milo the flier. “Look, the con’s divided into two halls. You take the south hall, I’ll take north.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  He took the flier from her, glanced at it, and handed it back. “The north hall is where all the celebrities are,” he said.

  “Fine,” said Amber. “I want to see some. Maybe. In passing.”

  “We’re looking for your parents.”

  “I’m well aware of that. But, if I happen to catch a glimpse of some of the stars of my favourite TV show, I’m gonna glimpse them. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You’re sure you won’t be distracted?”

  “Positive.”

  “They’re planning something, Amber. To come here, to wait for you … they’re planning something big. We’ll be split up, so you’ll have to be extra careful.”

  “So will you,” she said, “or need I remind you just which one of us they held at gunpoint last time?”

  “I’m going to be on my guard,” he said. “Call me if you see them.”

  “Likewise,” she said, and headed for the north hall. As she stood in line, waiting to pay to get in, she saw Milo at the entrance to the south hall. He wasn’t paying, he was just talking to the steward. They laughed, and the steward let Milo in, free of charge.

  Amber scowled, and moved forward a single step.

  A few hundred single-steps later, she joined thousands of people in the north hall. The aisles between the stalls heaved with people. Some wore costumes from the show. Some wore costumes from other shows. People were taking selfies everywhere.

  Amber recognised every single actor giving out autographs. The popular ones had lines that stretched back until they were absorbed into the crowds. The other actors, the less popular ones, sat at the table, chatting with friends, tapping on phones or staring into space, alone in their misery. Amber tried not to make eye contact with those ones.

  “Amber?” came a voice from behind her.

  She whirled, teeth bared, ready to shift, and a man with a soul patch jumped back, startled.

  Amber’s eyes widened. “Warrick.”

  “Heyyyy,” Warrick said, his smile returning to him. “Hey there, Amber. What’s happening?”

  “Warrick, Jesus … You scared me.”

  “Likewise, Amber. What are you doing here?”


  “I’m looking for my parents.”

  Warrick looked surprised. “Your parents are at the convention?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said.

  He frowned. “Are they fans? Kind of a weird thing to do, what with them being on the run and everything.”

  “They’re not fans,” she said. “I don’t know why they’re here, but it’s probably got something to do with drawing me into a trap of some sort. Why are you here?”

  Warrick leaned closer. “We’re on a case. There have been some spooky goings on and innocent lives are in danger.” He paused. “Also Kelly wanted to come.”

  A spark flared in Amber’s chest. “She’s here, then?”

  “The whole gang’s here,” said Warrick. “Ronnie and Linda should be back at any moment. Two’s still out in the van – they’ve got a crazy No Dogs Allowed rule, but I’m gonna sneak him in the moment the coast is clear. And I mean, yeah, Kelly is here, too. She’s the one you actually … She’s the important one, let’s say, from your point of view.”

  Amber tried to look indifferent. “That’s ancient history.”

  “Really? It was only a few weeks ago.”

  “A lot has happened since then.”

  “Right,” he said, nodding. “So are you still Astaroth’s henchman?”

  “I prefer henchperson.”

  “Are you still his henchperson, then?”

  “I’m joking. I don’t like anything with hench in it.”

  “But are you?”

  Amber sighed. “I guess.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “It’s a little sickening.”

  “Hard to sleep at night?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “What’s the case?” she asked.

  “Okay,” said Warrick, “so six Dark Places fans from around the world have all died in mysterious circumstances in the past month. They don’t know each other, have never met, they’re from different backgrounds and cultures, they’re different ages … but they have one thing in common.”

  “Dark Places,” she said.

  “Two things in common, then. Dark Places and Dark Places fan fiction.”

  “Oh. I wrote fan fiction.”

  He shrugged. “There is some good stuff out there.”

  “Not mine. Mine was terrible.”

  “Theirs was pretty good,” said Warrick. “Well, some of it was. But their stories had one common theme, and that was pairing off the characters of Gideon and Uriah.”