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“Izzy?” Grandma Nerine’s voice joined the fray on a curious note and ended in a scream.
Rhetta threw herself flat and crawled underneath. “I’m too close to the edge,” she said. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “He’s gonna see.”
I grabbed her hand. “Mom,” I said.
“Mom,” she replied and tugged the comforter over the edge, blocking my view except a small section of our open door.
Quiet fled the hall, pursued by a low, gurgling snarl. Footsteps fell padded and eager on the tile.
The hall nightlight multiplied the shadowed horrors as a man-shaped monster limped closer, pointed ears erect, protruding jawline dripping blood. A kitchen knife quivered in the shaggy mane of its neck.
Rhetta covered my scream.
The shadows converged into flesh and fur.
“Don’t,” Mom pleaded from somewhere low and grounded, the wet smack of her palms desperate as she dragged herself along. “Dad, daddy, not the kids. Please. Not my babies.”
The last I saw of Mom was a twitch in the hall. Her diamond wedding ring sparkled brighter than the blood on her wrist.
Rhetta was right about Grandpa, and we were too young and scared to realize our hiding spot was no hiding spot at all. She’d held me so tight her nails tore my palm.
As he reached our doorway, the monster spoke. It was this fact alone that for so many years allowed me to believe Gram when she said there were no monsters, only men. He spoke and more than twenty years later I still heard the strained German accent clear as day in my mind. “Girls,” he called, “You forgot to say goodnight to me. Come on out and give Gramps a big kiss and a hug.”
We kept still and quiet, but with unwavering certainty he tore off the comforter and reached beneath the bed. He took Rhetta. She’d been holding my hand so tight her fingernails tore into my palm as she was wrenched screaming into the air.
My sister screamed and screamed over the grind of teeth against bone, her hair a curtain swaying across discarded toys. When her fingers brushed the floor limply, he flung her on the mattress.
By then I’d pushed myself as far back as I could.
Gramps lowered himself to the floor on hairy knees and elongated forearms. Chin smearing blood across the oak, his head swung almost serpentine from a gurgle in the hall toward the bed’s underneath, blotting the light except what glossed the edge of one patinated copper eye.
Black fuzz sprang over my hands. With the yowl of a compressed squeaker, Samson sank his miniscule teeth into the werewolf’s nose.
Gramps howled, shoved his shoulder against the bunk so hard the frame tipped into the wall. Rhetta’s leg, absent a chunk of calf, popped into view.
A blinding flash. A bang to rattle my ears and knock Samson off his paws. Grandpa’s body fell stone-still, distorted proportions outlined by the nightlight. The bunk rocked itself stable.
A hand came reaching; Samson bit with the same fury—but the ensuing shriek belonged to Gram.
She laid down to see us. Blood seeped beneath her cheek and matted her silver hair. Tears drizzled into the thicker liquid. “Close your eyes now, sweet. You keep your eyes closed and hold Sammy.”
I couldn’t talk. I hadn’t talked, not for days after.
“If there is anything you ever need to do in this world, it's shut your eyes. Can you?”
I could.
I had.
After, when we were trolling the river bank for a suitable marker, she told me she'd loved a monster, but because she loved him, she couldn't bring herself to kill him until it was too late.
???
A mosquito buzzed my neck. I slapped it and in a fit of rage kicked the crate and screamed. The frame shuddered. In the flickering beams of spent batteries, a gleam of metal caught my eye: golden, rather than the storm cloud hue of bullet casings, wedged between mouldered canines.
Gramps was dead, but, his deformed chin tipped in my hand, something unnerving waited in his stillness that made me hesitate as if my forefinger teased the cyclopean weave of a black widow’s web.
I separated his yellow sneer and fished a pair of rings off his withered tongue. The first was his wedding band. The second was designed with the heft of a class ring; steel inscribed with two eagles whose outstretched wings framed a swastika.
