Forget This Ever Happened Read online

  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.

  “No, that’s good.” Julie smiles at her again. It’s a nice smile, genuine and warm. Not like Audrey’s weird strained smile. Audrey. She didn’t say anything about monsters either. “If it can talk to you, that means I can talk to it. Should have it cleared out within the next few minutes.”

  “It won’t hurt you, will it?”

  Julie looks up at her. “We’ve got an arrangement.”

  Claire doesn’t know what that means: Julie has an arrangement? Or the town does? Is that why no one’s ever said a word about the monsters to Claire before? But Julie doesn’t explain, only opens the door. Heat rushes in. Through the window, Claire sees the monster stick its head up.

  “Hey there,” Julie calls out, swooping down to pick up the cage. She ambles outside and pulls the back door shut, but Claire can still hear her, her voice muffled and fuzzy. “You know you’re not supposed…” And then Julie moves too far away from the house, and her words become too indistinct.

  Claire leans up against the window, her chest tight. Julie drops the cage in the grass. Stands with her hands on her hips. The monster lifts its head a little higher and bares its teeth. Claire tenses, certain the monster’s going to attack—but no, it’s only speaking.

  Julie gestures at the cage. The monster stares at her. She crosses her arms over her chest, hitches her shoulders. Points at the cage again. The monster doesn’t move. She throws her hands up. Her voice raises, loud enough that certain tones seep through the window, but not so loud that Claire can make out what she’s saying. Claire realizes that she’s no longer frightened, exactly. She watches the window like she’s watching TV, with a morbid, confused fascination. Julie’s trying to negotiate with a monster, with some—animal. Claire doesn’t think there’s any way this can work, and yet it’s clear that Julie has done this before.

  Julie crouches down in the grass. The monster perks up its head and tilts it at her. Julie slaps one hand down on the top of the cage. Points off into the distance. Shrugs.

  And then, to Claire’s amazement, the monster trundles into the cage.

  Julie closes the latch without any rush. She picks the cage up with one hand and sets it down on the patio. The monster’s curled up inside like a cat, head resting on its claw, staring forlornly off into the distance.

  The door opens and Claire jumps away from the window.

  “Christ, it’s hot out there.” Julie wipes her forehead. “Not much better in here, though. No offense.”

  “My grandma doesn’t have air-conditioning.”

  “Aw, suck.” Julie points her thumb toward outside. “Anyway, I got it. I’ll haul it off to the power plant. I’m not sure why it was down here. They aren’t supposed to come into town. Part of the deal, you know?” She shrugs.

  Claire stares at her. She understands each individual word, but all strung together like that they become gibberish. Power plant? Deal?

  Julie’s staring at her and frowning. Heat rushes into Claire’s cheeks. She looks down at her hands. Her heart’s beating a little too fast, even though she’s not scared anymore.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” Julie says.

  “What?” Claire looks up at her.

  “About the monsters? You said you’re just here for the summer?” Julie shakes her head. “This stupid town. They expect everyone to just know when they pass the city limits.” She rolls her eyes.

  Claire stares at her. “No,” she finally says. “No one ever told me anything. I mean, I’d been coming here for Christmas, and my mom grew up here—”

  “Oh, well, it would’ve had to be Mrs. Sudek who tells you.” Julie shifts her weight from foot to foot, looking antsy and uncomfortable. “The farther you go from town, the more you forget.”

  “Forget?” Claire stares at her.

  “The monsters, yeah. I don’t know how it works. Just that people who leave, when they come back—we have to remind them. And no one does because everyone in this town’s an asshole.” She sighs. “Basically, we’ve got these monsters that live out in an old power plant on the edge of town. They’ve been here since forever, pretty much. Way back in the day they made a deal with the townspeople to stay on their own spot of land.”

  “But—” Claire shakes her head, trying to piece everything together. “So they’re endemic? Just in Indianola?”

  “Dunno,” Julie says. “Probably not, since they aren’t anywhere else around here.”

  “So where did they come from? They had to come from somewhere!”

  “Yeah, no one really knows. They’ve just sort of—always been here. That’s what my dad told me. Anyway. They aren’t supposed to come into town, but sometimes one of ’em disobeys. I’m authorized to round ’em up and take ’em back to the power plant.”

  “Power plant,” Claire says slowly. “So…but…maybe that’s where they came from?”

  “Nah, they moved there in the thirties, I’m pretty sure.” Julie shrugs. “No big deal. Makes it easy to stay away from them, you know?”

  The world’s been invaded by dream logic. Monsters living at a power plant, people losing their memories. Were there monsters back in Houston, and Claire can’t remember them, now that she’s come here? She feels dizzy and sick. She wants to talk to Josh. He’d tell her the truth. He’d tell her if monsters were real or not.

  “They shouldn’t bother you again.” Julie smiles. “And if they do, all you’ve got to do is give me a call.”

  Claire nods. She thinks she might throw up. The world’s been uprooted. The rules are broken. She understands nothing.

  CHAPTER

  Three

  JULIE

  The girl living at Mrs. Sudek’s place is pretty cute. Innocent-looking. Sweet. Like she spends all her time studying and worrying t
hat she’s not going to make straight A’s on her report card. Julie wonders if she’ll see her around again. Probably. It’s a small town.

  “I could pay one of you to hang out in her yard,” she says to the monster. “Then I’ll definitely get to see her again. What do you say to that?”

  The monster’s still curled up in its cage, which she strapped into the front seat. She’s supposed to stash them in the back of the van, but sometimes she lets them ride shotgun. This one’s not particularly chatty.

  “Girl,” it says, in that low hissing voice they all have.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m a girl, she’s a girl.” Julie pulls up to the blinking red stoplight at the edge of town. “Figures I’d have to take shit about it from y’all too.” She guns the van forward, out toward the highway that leads back into civilization. Only one direction out of town, unless you have a boat.

  “Girl,” the monster says.

  “Christ, learn a new word.” The van’s the only car out on the road. People don’t drive this stretch of Highway 316 that often, since it takes you past the power plant where the monsters have made their home. Instead everybody takes Comal Road around the bayou, even though it adds about thirty minutes to the trip. “Is this some new trick?” she asks, glancing over at the monster’s cage. “Learning one word so that you qualify for sentience and I have to waste time hauling you back to the power plant?”

  “Girl,” the monster says.

  Julie sighs. Honestly, she still hasn’t bothered to learn all the rules and bylaws governing the relationship between the good people of Indianola and the monsters who made this spot of Texas their home; no one else in town seems to care, and Julie has big plans to get the hell out of Indianola as soon as she graduates. What do you need to know about monsters once you leave the county limits? Nothing, that’s what, because nothing is exactly what you’ll remember about the stupid things anyway.

  The monster turns around in the cage and settles its head down on its paws. Weird that it had gotten so far away from the power plant—the ones who can’t talk usually stay close, since they’re considered vermin and can be exterminated. A threat to the human population, that’s what the official documents say. Julie doesn’t like the idea of killing them, even though it was the monsters themselves who said it was okay, that it’s like killing rats or deer. It almost never happens, and she’s never had to, but still.

  They drive on. The edges of Indianola disappear into the fields of pale grass, already turning yellow in the summer heat. The radio station crackles and then disappears, the way it always does—once you pass the power plant it’ll kick up again, as strong as ever. Julie switches it off, though, because she knows from experience that sometimes you hear voices in the static.

  The power plant materializes on the horizon.

  Julie has seen it dozens of times, but it’s always a surprise, and it always leaves her with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. It looks like a painting on the poster for a science fiction movie, a convoluted tangle of gray pipes, twisting and winding on top of one another. At night the pipes twinkle with amber lights. Julie’s only seen that once. She knows you don’t come out here at night.

  There’s smoke today, a thin trickle of it seeping out of the plant and flattening against the pale sky.

  “So what do y’all got cooking in there?” Julie asks, trying to deflect her nervousness.

  “Girl.”

  Julie shivers, her chest tightening. “Jesus, I hope not.” She pulls up to the entrance gate. The KEEP OUT sign’s still there, dotted with rust. It’s not the sign that keeps people away. Not even dumbass football players try breaking in here. Everyone in town knows it’s bad news.

  And yet her father won’t give her a job at the video store like she keeps asking, and so here she is, punching in the access code.

  The gate screeches open. Julie eases in. The monster shuffles in its cage, trying to sit up.

  “Almost got you home,” she says, cruising down the narrow main road. The power plant rises up on both sides, hemming her in. Julie clenches the steering wheel tighter. The van and the smoke are the only things moving in the entire plant.

  Finally, she makes it to the main building, where Aldraa spends his days. She parks in the usual spot, climbs out, heaves the monster’s cage out with a grunt. It’s hotter here than in town, the sun reflecting off all these acres of asphalt. When it catches the metal in the pipes, it throws off broken shards of white light.

  Julie takes a deep breath, puts in her earplugs, tells herself nothing’s going to happen, and then goes inside.

  Being inside is even worse than being outside. The monsters have the buildings fixed up the way they like, warm and humid and crawling with strange dark green plants that look sort of like moss. Julie does her best not to look at those plants, because when you do, you see that they twitch and pulse like they’re breathing.

  “Julie Alvarez.” Aldraa’s voice booms through the room, rattling like thunder, reverberating across her eardrums. It hurts even with the earplugs. “You are here.”

  He always knows who it is. “Yes, I’m here.” Julie sets the cage on a clear patch of floor, where she can see the speckled tile from when this used to be a place for humans, and peers into the thick, dingy dark. “One of your boys got out.”

  A pause. Julie’s heart thuds. She wants to drop off the monster and leave, the way she’s supposed to. Except today she’s got some questions for Aldraa.

  “I’d like to speak to you.” Her blood rushes in her ears. “I need to ask you something.”

  Another pause. Aldraa’s breathing somewhere in the recesses of the lobby. The monster rattles against its cage, and Julie kneels down and opens the latch. The monster shoots out, scurrying into a tangle of plants.

  The floor shakes. Once, twice. Footsteps.

  Julie straightens up. She braces herself.

  Aldraa appears.

  He’s enormous, almost as tall as the high lobby roof, and shaped like a person but not quite. His proportions are off, his arms and torso too long and twisting, his head too small. Julie tries not to look straight at him, but still she feels the beginning throb of a migraine in her right temple.

  “What do you want?” he says.

  “You’re in violation of the agreement,” Julie says, keeping her eyes on a spot just above his left shoulder. There’s something about him that makes her dizzy, like he’s much more solid, much more there, than the things around him. And that includes her.

  “I haven’t left the power plant in forty-nine years.”

  The headache surges in time with the beat of his voice.

  “I realize that. But the monster I just brought in was at an Indianola citizen’s house. In town.” She points off at the undulating vines, her hand shaking. “The only thing he could say was ‘girl,’ so he could have been exterminated.”

  “But you didn’t exterminate him.” Aldraa kneels down, the floor shuddering beneath him. He opens his mouth and reveals the rows of sharp gleaming teeth through which he makes a rattling noise that bores deep into Julie’s brain. She cries out, digs the palm of her hand into her temple.

  The monster from Mrs. Sudek’s house slinks out of the plants and scurries up Aldraa’s arm.

  “Why did he say ‘girl’?” Julie asks, drawing herself up, trying to eke out her bravery. She tells herself that she’s protected, that no harm can come to her.

  “Why do you assume there’s a reason?” Aldraa does something with his mouth that’s meant to be a smile; it’s something he learned from humans but doesn’t work with the muscles of his face. Seeing it sends a wave of nausea rushing through Julie’s stomach and she has to take a deep breath to stop from throwing up.

  “Because,” Julie starts. The nausea worsens; her thoughts are becoming gummy and loose like melting candy, turning to slime in the room’s humidity. He’s doing this to her. Aldraa. “Because there’s a girl there, a new girl—you aren’t going to hurt her, are you?” She can’t re
member much about the new girl. Only a flash of green eyes, a gleam of pale skin. The phone call—Brittany saying Got a monster down at Mrs. Sudek’s.

  “Stop,” she says. “Please, whatever you’re doing with my head, just stop screwing around with me.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Yes you do.” Julie takes a deep breath and concentrates.

  “Are you certain Lezir was in the town?” Aldraa strokes the monster’s back with his long vine-like fingers. Gray fur ripples through them.

  “Yes. Dammit, Aldraa, stop. Answer my question.” Her voice sounds far away and muted. “You know you have to. It’s part of the treaty, if I think something’s wrong, or that someone’s going to be hurt—”

  “We are going to hurt no one!”

  His voice lashes out like a thunderstorm, and Julie stumbles backward, clamping her hands over her ears. The monster from Mrs. Sudek’s house dives off Aldraa’s arm and disappears into the green darkness, and the plants rustle and sway around her, despite the absolute stillness of the air.

  “We’ve done nothing wrong,” Aldraa says, softer this time, even though she can still feel his voice inside her bones.

  “I’ll go to the mayor,” Julie spits out.

  “We’ve done nothing wrong,” he says again, and Julie knows she can’t be in the building with him much longer, that if she keeps hearing him and seeing him, her mind’s going to shatter.

  “You better not hurt her!” Julie says before she turns and bolts out of the power plant.

  Outside, the air is as hot as it was inside, but the sea breeze is up, whistling forlornly through the pipes and smokestacks of the power plant. Julie collapses on the asphalt, sucking in deep breaths of air, trying to calm her racing heart. With trembling fingers she takes out the earplugs. Her eardrums ache, but being out in the bright sun, away from Aldraa, is already starting to soothe her migraine.