Children of Monsters

By Kellin D. Andrews

When two teens suddenly disappear from the quiet, wooded town of Bradley without a trace and with no apparent connection between them, their loved ones back home are left with a mystery, and a sinister chain of events unfolds. The two missing teens are forced to rethink what they consider home and who the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kellin Andrews
• Release date: Jul 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781778238017

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Children of Monsters

Children of Monsters

Children of Monsters

Kellin D. Andrews

Kellin Andrews

The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls...

― Edgar Allan Poe

Copyright © 2022 by Kellin D. Andrews

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7782380-0-0

EPUB ISBN: 978-1-7782380-1-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Printing, 2022

Prologue

Lou

One Year Ago

It feels like the world is falling down around me.

Just this spring, things were good. They were great. I had just turned sixteen, the snow was finally melting, and I looked forward to the summer on the lake.

Harley, the tiny tourist town full of rental cottages and souvenir shops where I grew up, came alive in the spring. Seasonal businesses opened again, and people came from all over, and the summer was vibrant. Every year, the summer was a montage of barbecues, block parties, art festivals and music and days spent on the beach next to a crystal-clear lake. The breeze was sticky-sweet, and the lake was the perfect escape from the beating sun. June smelled of fresh-cut grass and wildflowers. July smelled of fireworks and char-grilled food and sunscreen. August’s warm breeze and sun-baked concrete melted into September’s campfires and final visits to the ice cream parlour, and then the summer went into hibernation once more.

My favourite part of the summer was the storms. Harley’s summer weather was usually hot and sunny, perfect for all the summer vacationers. But when it rained, it was monstrous and marvellous. Ever since I was little, I liked to sit on the front porch underneath the little awning at our house and stare off into the distance as the hot afternoon snapped and the storm rolled in. The summer breeze held onto its warmth but lost the smell of sugar and sunscreen to take on the drowned scent of the lake and the earthy smell of the woods.

I loved to watch the bright blue sky darken into something sinister and beautiful. Sometimes, it felt like those mid-July storms were like me. I saw myself in the thunderous side of summer just as much as others saw me in the sunshine. When I was really young, I liked to imagine that I was the one making the leaves on the trees turn over, drawing the choppy, violent waves from the lake up onto the beach. My parents finally made me come in as the rain pounded down on the lawn and lightning flashed in purple forks across the sky. My favourite sound to fall asleep to was the pattering of rain against the windows and the ground-shaking rumble of thunder.

The only one who liked storms as much as I did was Cal, who is a storm herself.

Accalia. My best friend and my adopted sister. By the time I turned sixteen, it finally felt like our family was growing into itself. Cal was still angry, with her sharp edges and quick temper, but she let herself be one of us. After five years, I thought that this summer would be the one that I could spend with my family exactly as we always should have been.

I never got to enjoy my last summer in Harley.

Mom got sick. By the time she was diagnosed, it was late. Very, very late. She kept her head held high. She’s the strongest woman I know, and at first, against all odds, she seemed to be getting better. By September, we all thought that she would be just fine.

And then, as if overnight, she got worse.

Now, Mom’s not in and out of the hospital anymore; it’s like she lives there. I don’t think she wanted to go, but Dad and her doctors talked her into it. She seems sicker every day.

When he doesn’t look sad or angry, Dad looks tired. He spends most of his time at the hospital with Mom, and he stays upstairs in their room when he’s home.

Liam doesn’t talk much besides when we go visit Mom. I don’t think Dad knows that he’s been skipping school.

And then there’s Cal. She doesn’t care that Mom is sick. Just when I thought she was finally truly family, she doesn’t care. Amid all the hurt, grief, and fear, it makes me angry.

I don’t know where my family went.

Cal fights with Dad. She doesn’t come with us when we see Mom. She gets into trouble and stays out too late. Dad’s family says taking her in was a mistake, that she’s too much. Too other. They don’t know the half of it. I only hope Dad can’t actually send her back.

Then she gets suspended from school, and Dad’s had enough.

It’s the same old fight, ever since she came to live with us. This time, it’s louder. It shakes the windows in their frames more than any wild summer storm could do. Cal tells Dad she hates him. Dad gets angrier than he ever would with me. I’m stuck in the room with them, and their yelling makes my chest tight, and my eyes sting. I wish they would stop.

I know things with Mom aren’t looking good, even though Dad doesn’t want us to feel that way. On the evening of Cal and Dad’s biggest fight yet, Cal disappears while we’re at the hospital. She’s run away before, and Dad mutters about how it’s getting old. She still scares me every time. When the police bring her home from a side street on the outskirts of town, Dad grounds her to the basement for the rest of her suspension. Cal takes one of the five pastel-coloured mugs Mom bought from the row at the back of the kitchen counter, wordlessly lets it fall and smash against the grey tile of the floor.

Mom’s gone before Cal comes back to school, and I don’t think I can hold the rest of us together in her wake.

Chapter One

I

Accalia

It’s four-thirty in the morning. No one will notice I’m gone until seven.

With each stride, I’m reminded of how far I am from home. In each cloud of my breath, hanging in the dark before my face, are words that I wish I had said last night: words that would have hurt more and eloquently expressed my thoughts. I push myself harder, knowing my legs will ache later. I don’t feel my toes when my feet hit the ground anymore. The earth beneath me isn’t frozen yet, but it will be soon.

By the time I circle through the woods and back to the Dead-End sign at the edge of the road, the sun has turned the sky a hazy shade of purple but hasn’t yet pulled itself up over the horizon. My lungs burn.

Nothing on the street moves. I doubt anything has moved since the U-Haul pulled into the driveway last night.

The truck isn’t even unpacked yet, and Derek and I have already fought. The same shouts that echoed around the empty rooms last night play over and over in my head as I walk up the front steps. I want to slam the front door behind me, but Derek’s not even home to hear it.

I shouldn’t waste the energy mulling over just another argument in a long line of them. There’s no point digging my heels into my own silent rage while I think about the things I should have said. I have nothing to say to Derek that I haven’t said dozens of times before. I have no words to say that he would hear.

I sneak inside, closing the door with a soft click. I glimpse Lou’s orange cat, Simba, slinking like a shadow through the living room, and I untie my shoes clumsily, fingers just chilled enough from the October early-morning air to be rendered nearly useless. A car passes outside, headlights illuminating the kitchen with its cheerily yellow walls for a few seconds. A moving vehicle with a living person in it. A wonder, truly.

This town, Bradley, is already suffocating. It’s tiny, and I know what small towns are like. Everybody knows everybody, except for the newcomers. The outsiders. Being an outsider among outsiders, I am familiar with the stares and the whispered gossip. Derek says he’s not going to move us again, so it seems I’m stuck here until I can return home.

I bring my shoes with me to the bathroom to clean the mud off– Lou will freak if she knows I’ve been out. This bathroom door doesn’t squeak on its hinges like the bathroom door at the last place did. The third step from the bottom of the basement stairs does, though.

I leave the lights off and turn the shower on cold. I’m relying on the shock and whatever caffeine I’ll be able to get my hands on later to make up for my lack of sleep over the last week. The coffee maker is still packed away. Going straight back to school – a new school, with new classes and new people to avoid – like this is bullshit. I’ve debated skipping, but it’s not worth having the fight all over again.

I start to doze off – standing up under the cold water – as sunlight starts to creep through the fogged glass of the window. Finally, exhaustion is able to start pulling me under when morning arrives.

It’s a familiar feeling, being tired all the time. Always a few notches from being really awake, body willing to collapse at any moment I’m not burning too hot to stay still. I cut the water off.

Classes blur, and I’m handed a month’s worth of papers to catch up in each one. Each folder gets stacked onto the top shelf of my locker, where I won’t look at them again. I did the last month of classes in Lily Falls. I’m not doing it over.

Lou finds me before fourth period, the only class we have together until the next semester starts in February.

I can’t find the English classroom, she exclaims, half-jogging up to me with an armload of books.

It’s downstairs by the back door to the field, I tell her. I’ve already walked past it twice on my way to and from my morning classes, but all her classes have been upstairs. I lead that way while she chatters about her morning.

Thank God you’re observant, she says as the room number comes into sight. This school is half the size of the Falls, and I’ve already had to ask someone else for help finding a washroom. She shifts her books to one arm and uses the other to push her glasses up, then pushes the stray curls that fall forward over her shoulder.

Oh, and Dad messaged me. He says we have to help unload stuff after school, she says as we find seats at the back of the English room.

I don’t want to see his face today. I don’t want to let him boss me around while unloading furniture from the truck. I’m pissed off and too tired to deal with him.

The English teacher is a tiny, bubbly woman with an irritating voice. I tune her out and stare out the window beside me.

Bradley is a small town surrounded nearly on all sides by woods. A singular highway goes out of town into the city, acting as the sole artery connecting Bradley to the heart that is the rest of civilization. The woods are thick and stretch for miles, a blanket of mixed forest over hills and cliffs and rocky ground.

Harley was better. Harley was home. The trees there were taller, stretching up into the sky. The woods were thicker and the sun brighter. Life happened there – good, bad, and awful – and it’s been on hold since we left. Bradley is but a rest stop on my way back.

I’m sorry, a shrill voice says at the front of the room, am I boring you?

She reminds me of Derek, the tone in his voice right before he’s really angry. The voice he uses when he asks what’s the matter with me. Anger runs hot through my body as I turn to face the clean blackboard at the front of the room instead of the window.

I need to go home.

Louise passed almost a year ago now. She was Lou’s mom. Derek’s only gotten worse since then, and I can count on one hand the number of civil conversations we’ve managed to have since she’s been gone. Before she got sick, I thought maybe I’d be able to have a family, but now I’m forever resigned to the role of an unwelcome guest in the Allans’ home. It was Louise who wanted me, not Derek. He didn’t know he’d be stuck with me on his own when he first agreed to take in his then ten-year-old daughter’s best friend like a stray. Maybe he thought we’d be family too.

Trees fly by in an orange-yellow blur outside the bus window, and soon-to-be bare branches grasp at the sky with claws of black and ochre.

I’m not naïve enough to think I’ll get that anymore, not after what happened, what will keep happening.

I ignore a message that buzzes on my phone. I know it’s Lou.

I get off the bus in Charlesborough, the closest city to Bradley, starving. There’s a gas station across from the stop, and I cross the street. My phone buzzes again. This time it’s Derek, and I block his number again without reading his message. I don’t have to read it to know it’s fed up and vaguely threatening and very condescending, like everything else he says to me.

I grab a coffee and two small bags of chips and head back up to the man at the counter. He attempts to make conversation.

Someone’s hungry, he muses with a smirk. He bags the second bag of chips. Quite the snack for a pretty young thing like yourself. I take another bag from the display beside the counter and glare as I add it to the others.

The man chuckles, not getting the hint but ringing through the third bag. Oh, smile, it’s good for you. He forgets to charge me for the coffee in my hand, and I don’t remind him.

I turn left on the sidewalk, keep going until my coffee’s cooled enough to drink, and find a bench. The street smells like French fries and exhaust, and the pavement reflects up leftover end-of-summer heat. The sun warms the concrete in a last-ditch attempt to keep the city warm into the night, but frost will bite by morning.

It’s ten minutes to five, and I’m still a seven-hour drive away from Harley. I won’t make it by nightfall, and I still need to find somewhere to stay. I sit down and flick through the handful of messages I’ve been ignoring. A few texts from Lou, asking where I am and what happened. A couple more from Derek, asking what I think I’m doing and where I’m going. I open my voicemail.

I down half the coffee while listening to the only voice message from Derek, his voice tinny in the speakers.

The message starts with a huff. Accalia Marie, this game of yours is getting old. It’s been old for a long time. I’m done. If you don’t – If you’re not back at this house by six o’clock… he laughs, but it’s a dry and humourless sound. And if you’ve blocked my number again – god – you can be certain you won’t see that cell phone again until you’re in college. I’m sick of this. I don’t ask for much. I asked you for help one time, and this is how you behave because you’re so damned selfish that you-

Oh fuck you, I say, even though he couldn’t hear me. A woman walking past startles at the sudden curse, and I hang up without listening to the rest of what Derek has to say.

I’m selfish. Uncaring. Ungrateful. Cold. Mean. Aggressive. Defiant. Rude. Disrespectful. I’ve heard it all from lots of different people. So many people have been telling me for years what I am, yet he still asks me what’s wrong with me and why I am the way I am.

What is wrong with me? I’d like to know.

Six years ago, he and Louise sat me down and explained how everything would be okay. Since then, it’s been nothing but a disaster, and she’s gone, and he regrets ever agreeing to take me in. I wonder if my mom would have felt by now the way Derek does about me. Probably; I messed up her life too.

I finish the coffee and throw the cup away into an over-filled bin on the sidewalk. I’m not going to make it home. Maybe not ever. Staying out like this overnight tonight would be suicide. I know I’ll be reluctantly back in Bradley by dark. I want to keep running, I always want to run, but I’m never going to get where I want to go. It hurts to know it. There are a lot of things it hurts to know.

I turn back and make my way to the same bus stop I got off at forty-five minutes ago. I don’t want to go back, and I mentally kick myself for going, even though I know I don’t have much of a choice. I don’t want to hear Derek yell the same things again about this game I keep playing and how I need to learn to do as I’m told.

I want to put a fist to the wall of the shelter. It looks like glass, but it would break my hand before shattering. I walk to keep my feet moving and take up the ten free minutes before the bus returns. I carry on down the sidewalk, and to the pace of my feet pressing down on the pavement, anger and frustration threaten to well into tears. I hate crying. I hate that I cry when I’m angry, and I have to hold it in. I hate that I feel trapped.

II

Lou

Cal doesn’t meet me at her locker after class. I stand here with my bag until the crowd of students thins. I text her and ask if she’s coming. I quickly get a "No." in response.

Sometimes I feel alone, even though I live with my best friend.

Dad needs help unloading the rest of the things off the truck, and I know he and Cal are both in foul moods. I don’t want to walk home into the middle of a fight – the same fight as always. I don’t want to hear him explode because Cal snuck out this morning. I know she did. She worries me every time. Maybe Dad doesn’t know. Maybe he doesn’t have the energy to care. Mom would care, but Mom never yelled.

We walked past a café in town this morning, and the breeze carried the smell of pumpkin spice and coffee and salted caramel down the street. I decide to get myself a hot chocolate and imagine a mound of whipped cream on top as I leave Cal’s locker and head toward the school's front doors. I’m not getting anything for anyone else, and the prematurely vindictive decision feels right. I’ll listen to the arguing, but I’ll have a hot cup full of sugar while I do.

Dad and Liam are loading the heavier boxes down out of the truck and through the open front door of the house when I get home, and as soon as Dad spots me, he stops. Where is Accalia? he sighs.

I frown. I thought she came home already.

Where’d you get that? Liam asks, pointing at my half-gone hot chocolate.

That coffee shop in town. He drove to school, so he didn’t pass it with Cal and me.

Jealous, he whispers. I don’t tell him about the bag of freshly baked butterscotch cookies in my backpack. I’m hogging them. I’ll consider giving some to Cal.

Lou, can you put your things down and give us a hand? Dad asks. We’ll need more hands once we get to the couch.

What about Cal?

She’ll get her ass home now, or she won’t, and I’ll deal with her later. I’m tired, Lou.

I don’t argue; just head inside to the bedroom at the far end of the hall that Cal and I will share. It only has our beds and a tote of clothes in it right now. I toss my backpack on top of my messy blankets next to Simba’s curled sleeping form, then sit so I can finish my drink.

I send Cal another text. Where are you?

Unlike before, she doesn’t respond right away. She still hasn't responded by the time I finish my hot chocolate and have eaten all the whipped cream left in the cup that I can get to.

I’m worried. It leaves a familiar feeling in my stomach that knots tighter when I look at Cal’s bed across the room. She goes on her runs, and they seem to help her. It’s been a long time, but what if she ran away again? We’re in a new area, and neither of us knows our way around. Before the feeling in my stomach sinks and makes me feel sick, I stop that line of thought. Nothing has happened. She’s probably out for a run. I try to believe it. Dad told us he wanted us to do something, and I would be worried if she did as asked with a smile. I tell myself not to worry now. She’ll be home for dinner. She will.

She’s not. Cal’s still not home when everything is unloaded and sorted into the right rooms. When we order dinner, and there’s still no sign of her, Dad begins to catch up to my level of worry. He tries to call her a second time after leaving a message the first time, and the call ends before he can leave another. She blocked him. He throws his phone down on the counter in frustration and scrubs at his face with his palms. So fucking tired... I hear him mutter.

I’ve sent Cal several messages of my own, and not one has received a response.

What do we do? Cal’s done this before, and she’s always come back. Most often, she does eventually on her own, except when the police picked her up just before Mom died. I just can’t believe she would do this tonight, of all times. It’s reckless, even for her.

I’m calling the police. Call anyone else she might be with. Dad picks up his phone again and brushes past me to head upstairs.

Is she going to get in trouble?

She’s in big trouble, his voice carries down the stairs behind him, and I don’t clarify that I meant with the police. I hear his bedroom door close heavily.

There isn’t anyone Cal would go to. I rack my brain, but she isn’t the most social; there’s no way she would have already made friends in town, and aside from me, she’s never really had any friends anywhere else.

Liam emerges from his bedroom with an empty takeout container and his phone. "I called grandma and grandpa Allan and Wright, and aunt Ellen. None of them have heard from her."

I frown. She wouldn’t go to any of them.

Liam throws his hands up in a shrug, then drops his container on the counter. It’s something. Where would you start?

I don’t know, I sigh. I try not to sound as close to crying as I am, but my voice wavers.

Is she dating anyone?

No.

Any friends back in the Falls?

I shake my head. Liam huffs, just as lost as I am.

Do you think she’d go back to another family she was with? he asks after a long moment of consideration.

Cal wasn’t in the foster system long – less than six months while my parents fought to adopt her after her mother died – and she doesn’t talk about it much. From what I’ve heard, she didn’t speak a single word to the first family she lived with and communicated minimally with the second while she was there. She wouldn’t contact them again. Once she came home to us, her time in the system wasn’t afforded a second thought.

Damn, Liam whispers. He sits down at the table. She’s pushing it. It’s getting late.

She’ll come back. She’s not stupid; she’ll be back by dark.

Hope so.

She’s not.

Dad said that the police won’t bring Cal home. I’m furious. They said well, she told you she wasn’t going to meet you, so she had a plan. They said she’s a serial runaway, but she’s old enough now that we can’t force her to come back.

I don’t have a good enough reason to believe that she didn’t run away this time. I don’t have a reason that anyone will listen to. I’m tired of being told there’s nothing we can do.

Mom would know what to do. She wouldn’t think I’m overreacting or worrying too much. However, I don’t think Cal would have ever run away to begin with if Mom was still here.

There’s a single knock on the open doorframe, and I turn to see Liam leaning in the doorway. He nods at the worn notebook in my lap. You still writing to Mom?

I close the book and shove it back where it belongs between my box spring and mattress, instead busying my hands by scratching Simba between his ears. Sometimes.

Has she responded? he asks. I glare at him, and he lets the smirk on his face fall. I’m joking. He invites himself in and sits down on my bed beside me. The cat bolts out of the room at the movement. Staring at the wall across the room, Liam says quietly, sometimes I come home from school and expect her to be here.

Silence.

What did Dad say? he says, changing the subject. About Cal when you came home.

I shrug. They’re not doing anything.

Nothing? Seriously?

Okay, well, he said that they’ll try and track her down so we can be sure she’s okay, but they won’t bring her home if they find her. They think she just ran away.

I mean, Liam reasons, she does do that.

But overnight? She’d never stay away for that long. Especially last night.

Yeah. I can hear in his voice that he’s puzzled too. It’s bull. If I were Dad, I would be searching for my kid on my own already.

He’s trying. Sometimes I’m not sure if I believe that. Does trying usually include anger and fighting? If he was really trying his best, would Dad let his and Cal’s fights escalate to the level they do?

Liam rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything else. Instead, he stands and crosses the room to the window seat. He brushes his hand against a fluffy pillow and then marks a crude smiley face into the fur with one finger. Do you want Chinese food for dinner? Dad won’t be home.

Later, in front of the living room TV, Liam and I have worked our way through most of what we ordered for dinner. It’s an absurd amount for two people. I’ve been contemplating something for a few hours, and between bites of orange chicken, I bring it up to Liam.

Do you think it has to do with what happened?

He looks away from the TV at me, his eggroll skewered on a fork suspended in front of him.

Cal disappearing. And that weekend, camping, I clarify.

How would it? Nobody knows.

I don’t know. But I talked to the kid next door whose friend went missing recently too, and what if he knows all about it and it’s all connected? It would all fall into place and make perfect sense, but we’re just too afraid to talk about it.

Liam raises his eyebrows and chomps half of the eggroll in one bite. He speaks around it. Cinematic. Unlikely. Don’t tell anyone.

"I know. But it’s all weird."

He finishes his eggroll in one more bite and turns back to the movie on the screen, and I think that’s the end of it.

That other kid is missing at the same time, and they didn’t think they could be connected at all? he asks.

I sigh. "That’s what I’ve been saying. But, apparently, no one put any more thought into it because the two of them have never met, there’s no connection between them, and she’s considered a runaway, and