Monsters Read online

  MONSTERS

  COLE HARPER is struggling to settle into life in Wounded Sky First Nation. He may have stopped a serial killer, but the trouble is far from over. A creature lurks in the shadows of Blackwood Forest, the health clinic is on lockdown by a mysterious organization, and long-held secrets threaten to bubble to the surface. Can Cole learn the truth about his father’s death? Why won’t Choch give him a straight answer? Where the heck is Jayne? Oh, and high school sucks.

  Monsters is the second novel in The Reckoner trilogy.

  ALSO BY DAVID A. ROBERTSON

  THE RECKONER TRILOGY

  Strangers

  GRAPHIC NOVELS

  Will I See?

  Betty: The Helen Betty Osborne Story

  7 Generations: A Plains Cree Saga

  Tales from Big Spirit series

  Sugar Falls

  FOR CHILDREN

  When We Were Alone

  NOVELS

  The Evolution of Alice

  ©2018 by David A. Robertson

  Excerpts from this publication may be reproduced under licence from Access Copyright, or with the express written permission of HighWater Press, or as permitted by law.

  All rights are otherwise reserved, and no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise—except as specifically authorized.

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

  Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 million de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

  HighWater Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Province of Manitoba through the Department of Sport, Culture & Heritage and the Manitoba Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), for our publishing activities.

  HighWater Press is an imprint of Portage & Main Press.

  Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens

  Design by Relish New Brand Experience

  Cover Art by Peter Diamond

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Robertson, David, 1977-, author

  Monsters / David A. Robertson.

  (The reckoner ; 2)

  ISBN 978-1-55379-748-7 (softcover)

  I. Title. II. Series: Robertson, David, 1977- . Reckoner ; 2

  PS8585.O32115M66 2018jC813’.6C2017-907839-9

  2423222120191812345

  Also issued in electronic format:

  ISBN: 978-1-55379-760-9 (ePUB)

  ISBN: 978-1-55379-761-6 (PDF)

  www.highwaterpress.com

  Winnipeg, Manitoba

  Treaty 1 Territory and homeland of the Métis Nation

  TO ANYBODY LIVING WITH THEIR OWN MONSTERS,

  BIG AND SMALL. I HAVE THEM TOO.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. X Marks the Spot

  2. Mr. 87%

  3. Vitamins

  4. Easy, Tiger

  5. Gym Class Hero

  6. They

  7. Assembly

  8. The Thing

  9. Jagged Vacance

  10. Hello Again

  11. Kiddo

  12. Burnt

  13. #Shitcoledid

  14. Outside In

  15. Mwach

  16. My Normal

  17. Firestarter

  18. Getaway

  19. All Over Again

  20. Discovery

  21. Pam

  22. Say It Ain’t So

  23. Here Lies…

  24. Donald

  25. Vikki

  26. Fallout

  27. No Surprises

  28. Target Practice

  29. Hockey Night

  30. He Who Lives Alone

  31. Nótáwíy (My Father)

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  HOURS AFTER VICTOR HAD ENTERED BLACKWOOD FOREST, he hadn’t yet caught any game. Not a moose, not a muskrat. And it wasn’t ineptitude—Victor had always been a successful hunter—but he hadn’t even seen game. Old tracks led nowhere. New tracks were impossible to locate. He’d meandered through the entire area he’d frequented since he was a child, and stopped only for a bagged lunch.

  Crack.

  Victor took a quick breath, and peered through the darkness, towards the sound. It was faint, but in the quiet of the woods, unmistakable. He walked silently in the same direction, expertly navigating over twigs and roots and fallen branches. He saw a clearing in the distance.

  Crack.

  He waded through the black as though he were a part of it. Rifle raised, letting the muzzle guide him. Close to the clearing, he crouched down, squinted his eyes, and tried to make out a mound in the middle of the open space, where the cracking sounds originated. But he couldn’t figure out what it was. It just looked like a big pile of blackness.

  He moved forward methodically, patiently, inch by inch. It happened this way. The hunt. It had happened this way since he was a little boy.

  Crack.

  Louder. Crisper—and something else: Breathing. A low, almost indistinguishable growling, coming from behind the mound. An animal that had found better luck than Victor. He repositioned his rifle.

  The smell. It thrust into his nostrils. Flesh. Tinny blood. Death. Feet away, Victor saw what the mound really was: a collection of dead animals—carcasses, stacked one on top of the other. Moose. Muskrats. Prairie chickens. No wonder he hadn’t seen any game. A pile this wide, this high. He moved around it, inch by inch, methodically, patiently. He tried to think of what animal would do this. What animal would kill all this game? And keep it like this?

  Crack. Snap. Rip.

  The sound of bones breaking, flesh and tendons tearing. The source: a dark figure, squatting on two legs, working away at a large bone. In front of the figure lay another carcass. Victor could make it out in the clearing, with the northern lights shining overhead. Two legs. Two arms. Well, one and a half arms. The dark thing had the other half in its mouth.

  “Upayokwitigo,” Victor breathed out, low enough that the creature didn’t hear him, too intent on eating its prey.

  He backed away, sliding each foot along the ground. Methodically. Patiently.

  Snap!

  A small twig under Victor’s foot. He gasped.

  The thing raised its head.

  Victor fell backwards. He scrambled on his elbows and heels until his back hit a bush.

  The thing moaned. It moved towards him.

  “Awas! Awas!” Victor yelled.

  It neared him. Growling. Hissing. It moved like water on its hands and feet.

  “Move,” he whispered to himself.

  It was at his feet now. He felt its saliva drip against his legs. The creature reached forward.

  Victor clutched at the ground and dug his fingers into the dirt.

  “Awas,” he whimpered. “Awas.”

  The creature’s head jerked backward, then forward, and then it screamed.

  Victor pushed back with his heels—into the bush, through the bush. The thing lunged at him and swiped wildly with one of its hands. He felt a rush of wind as it missed him by a hair. Victor scrambled to his feet, turned, and ran. He didn’t look back, even as the awful screams burst his eardrums. He shot his rifle into the air as he ran, again and again, trying to scare it away. He ran hard and fast for what felt like hours until he burst out of Blackwood’s tree line towards the only building that was lighted.

&n
bsp; The Fish.

  1

  X MARKS THE SPOT

  COLE COULDN’T REMEMBER A TIME WHEN Wounded Sky First Nation offered this brand of quiet. Not when he was a child, and not since he had returned to the community after ten years away. If he were to believe Choch, it was the calm before the storm. Cole was waiting for the storm, but it hadn’t come. Yes, he had used his remaining anti-anxiety pills over the past week, but not because he’d encountered any stormy incidents like murder or a flu epidemic. Rather, he’d taken a pill upon his return to Ashley’s trailer, for his friend’s wake. The memory of Ashley being shot right in front of him had appeared, thick and fresh. He’d taken his last pill during the gathering for Alex, as guilt reared its head at Cole’s inability to save her, and as her brother, Michael, sent a barrage of glares in his direction. Deserved glares, Cole had thought, not only because he was the last person to see her alive, but also because Alex had kissed him, and Michael knew it.

  Deserved, but still not easy to take.

  Cole hoped the stillness of the community was the quiet after the storm, not before. A collective sigh. A long breath out. Choch had been quiet, too. Cole hadn’t heard from the spirit being since they’d met at the ruins, when he’d given Cole textbooks instead of a ticket home—and when he’d told Cole that school started Monday in Wounded Sky. This was the first clear direction the spirit being had ever provided. Of course, the calm—the non-spirit-being-related peace—could’ve simply been that it was early in the morning. Cole shrugged, as though involved in a deep conversation with somebody other than himself. A boy could dream, right?

  Cole had a hockey stick resting against his shoulder, and a pair of skates fastened onto the stick, bouncing against his back with every step. He’d borrowed the hockey equipment from Brady, who had become something like his counselor, with Elder Mariah still recovering from the sickness at the clinic, and had remained something like his landlord as Cole continued to sleep at Brady’s place. The skates fit about right, although there remained a legitimate concern as to whether they’d remain intact. Brady hadn’t worn them for years, long enough that they had trouble finding them in his closet. “This is like an archaeological dig,” Cole joked while they searched. The bigger problem? Brady was left-handed and Cole wasn’t, never mind the fact that the stick was made of wood.

  Cole knew where to find another stick, with the right curve for him, too. And another set of newer skates that may have fit better. But Cole couldn’t bring himself to use Ashley’s equipment, or to ask Brady if it would be okay, or to go back to the trailer. So, he made his way to the arena with Brady’s skates and stick, and he didn’t much care if the skates fit or if the stick had the wrong curve.

  The sun began to rise over Blackwood Forest and the lights were on in the community hall. Cole felt drawn to it. Over the last week he kept an eye out for anything strange, a clue as to why he’d been told to stay here even though he’d stopped the murder spree and cured the virus. An influx of staff from Mihko Laboratories had definitely caught his attention. They were mostly at the clinic—descending upon it after those afflicted by the illness had become healthy (thanks to Cole’s blood). But they were around the community, too—at the Fish, the mall, and the community hall, where they’d been sleeping and where the lights were on right now.

  Cole took a slight detour. School didn’t start for a while, and he wasn’t in a rush. A security guard met him immediately upon his arrival at the community hall’s front doors, and not one of Reynold’s employees, either. No RMS—Reynold McCabe Security—anywhere on the man’s clothing.

  “Can I help you?” The man’s warm greeting belied his presentation, dressed all in black and his body hard and sharp like he’d just come from working out. Like all he did was guard things and lift weights.

  Cole tried to look over the man’s considerable shoulders, but each try was thwarted as the guard tilted his body to obscure Cole’s view. “I was just…” he started blankly, more concerned with assessing what he saw. But there wasn’t much to assess. From his vantage point, all he could see were cots. Some of them were made crisply, and with precision. Others were still occupied: human-shaped mounds under blankets.

  “You were just what?” the guard prompted.

  “I’m just…” Cole moved Brady’s hockey stick to his other shoulder and noticed the guard flinch “…wondering why you need to guard the hall? I can see why there’s guards at the clinic and facility, I guess.”

  The guard looked around as though worried about company, and then he breathed in, and out, deeply. “You’re Cole Harper, right?”

  “Right.” It failed to surprise Cole anymore when a stranger recognized him.

  “Right,” the guard nodded, “so you know what it’s like to…” he searched for the right words “…lack trust.”

  Cole shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Yeah, you get it. So, Mihko, they have a history here…I’m sure you know that, Cole.”

  “You mean that huge lab accident that killed my dad? That history?”

  “That history, yeah. So, they’re not really popular here, and neither are you, right?”

  “I’m slightly more popular now, if you haven’t heard,” Cole grumbled.

  “Well, they haven’t had any public meltdowns or anything since they’ve come. So, we’ll call it even, how about that?”

  “I guess there was the clinic…” Cole grimaced at the memory of the community turning on him, turning into an angry shouting mob and blaming him for the deaths and murders only because he’d come back to the community “…and the quarry.” The quarry. Yet another reason for Michael to glare at him. Cole had knocked Michael out right after he’d found out Cole had walked Alex home and Alex had kissed him.

  “They’re trying to build trust,” the guard said, “coming here to help after all that’s happened. The murders, the sickness…”

  “Yeah, I’m kind of more popular because I stopped those murders.”

  “…but until they have that trust, if they need guys like me to make sure they can help without interruption or interference, well…” the guard half-grinned.

  “What are they worried about? Somebody’s going to come and do something in their sleep? Do you think we practise, like, guerilla warfare or something?”

  “They had pitchforks out for you, didn’t they?”

  “That was different, and I didn’t cause a huge, like, epidemic chemical leak or whatever the hell happened down there at the facility!”

  “That’s kind of my point, bud.”

  “Nobody would’ve done anything to me, and nobody’s going to do anything to them, so what’s the deal?”

  Cole moved towards the front door, but the guard pushed him back, one hand to Cole’s chest. “Kid, I’m losing my patience.”

  “Anybody in my community is perfectly entitled to ask questions of our guests,” Reynold McCabe said from behind Cole. “You’d do well to humour the boy.”

  Cole’s heart skipped a beat. Choch, the friendly neighbourhood spirit being, typically was the one to appear out of nowhere. The last time Reynold McCabe snuck up like this, he’d held a gun to Cole’s head, accused him of murdering Maggie and, by extension, Alex and Ashley. Reynold had knocked Cole on the back of the head and had him arrested for murder. Cole didn’t turn around, but he watched the guard’s face reluctantly soften. Then, Reynold stepped around Cole and faced him and the guard, shifting glances from one to the other.

  “That clear?” Reynold asked.

  “Yes,” the guard said through his teeth, “crystal.”

  Reynold looked disheveled. Cole had only ever seen him completely put together—slick hair tied back into a braid, ironed shirts, sport coats, and crisp new jeans. Weird. Now his hair was loose, uncombed, and falling over his shoulders like broken cobwebs. His shirt and pants were scrubbed with dirt and covered in grass stains. He smelled, too. Like an old, neglected hockey bag. Sweat and mould. Reynold must’ve noticed Cole giving him a good inspection
because he buttoned up his shirt quickly and tied his hair back into a ponytail.

  “You okay, Mr. McCabe?” Cole asked him.

  “I’m fine, Cole, although I appreciate your concern. That’s how it should be here. We should be concerned for each other.” Reynold kept working at his pony tail, smoothing it back as best he could. Cole and the guard waited, and watched, and both of them exchanged curious glances about the acting Chief of Wounded Sky First Nation. Reynold continued: “Anything that happened in the past, happened for the same reason, you understand.”

  “I understand, sure,” Cole said.

  “Now,” Reynold looked at the guard, and Cole watched as the big hulk of a man seemed to shrink before Cole’s eyes, “there won’t be any more problems, will there?”

  “No, sir,” the guard said.

  Cole looked back and forth between the guard and Reynold. Each time he looked at Reynold, he looked him over, head to foot, and everything about this exchange made Cole want to leave now. Forget whatever weird stuff was going on in the hall. It had nothing on this.

  “Good,” Reynold said after both men had not said anything for an uncomfortably long silence, just stared at each other. “Cole,” Reynold nodded.

  “Mr. McCabe,” Cole echoed the same goodbye.

  Reynold tucked his dress shirt into his pants, then walked away like this had been a typical exchange.

  Cole kept standing there, but now it was supremely awkward. No eye contact with the guard either. He almost felt bad for the guy—who’d gone from authoritative to meek in no time. A couple of seconds passed before the guard cleared his throat. “So you’re going skating this morning or…”

  “Right, yeah.” Cole lifted the stick for a moment, and then rested it back against his shoulder.

  “Maybe you should do that, then.”

  “Yeah, maybe I should.”

  Cole tried to shake off the last several minutes as he continued on his way to the X. He felt that if he thought about it too much, Choch might pop into his head. Moments like this were the perfect mental conditions for Choch. Oh, CB’s confused about something? Weirded out? Let me make that worse. But Choch remained silent, as he had been. Silent and, well, just plain absent. He hadn’t been working at the Fish, being the world’s worst and most annoying server and making up food specials that didn’t exist. Jayne, his half-burning ghost companion, hadn’t been around either. He stopped short of calling either of them and walked alone with only his thoughts to keep him company.