A Monster Calls (11 page)

“No!” he cried out. “No! Not this!”

The mist retreated and he was back in his grandma’s garden again, the monster still sitting on her office roof.

“That’s not my truth,” Conor said, his voice shaking. “That’s just a nightmare.”

Nevertheless
, the monster said, standing, the roof beams of his grandma’s office seeming to sigh with relief,
that is what will happen after the third tale.

“Great,” Conor said, “another story when there are more important things going on.”

Stories are important
, the monster said.
They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.

“Life writing,” Conor said, sourly, under his breath.

The monster looked surprised.
Indeed
, it said. It turned to go, but glanced back at Conor.
Look for me soon.

“I want to know what’s going to happen with my mum,” Conor said.

The monster paused.
Do you not know already?

“You said you were a tree of healing,” Conor said. “Well, I need you to
heal
!”

And so I shall
, the monster said.

And with a gust of wind, it was gone.

“I want to go to the hospital, too,” Conor said the next morning in the car with his grandma. “I don’t want to go to school today.”

His grandma just drove. It was quite possible she was never going to speak to him again.

“How was she last night?” he asked. He’d waited up for a long time after the monster left, but had still fallen asleep before his grandma came back.

“Much the same,” she said, tersely, keeping her eyes firmly on the road.

“Is the new medicine helping?”

She didn’t answer this one for so long, he thought she wasn’t going to and was on the verge of asking again when she said, “It’s too soon to tell.”

Conor let a few streets go by, then he asked, “When is she going to come home?”

This one his grandma didn’t answer, even though it was another half hour before they got to school.

– • –

There was no hope of paying attention in lessons. Which, once again, didn’t matter because none of the teachers asked him a question anyway. Neither did his classmates. By the time lunch break came around, he’d passed another morning not having said a word to anyone.

He sat alone at the far edge of the dining hall, his food uneaten in front of him. The room was unbelievably loud, roaring with the sounds of his classmates and all their screaming and yelling and fighting and laughing. Conor did his best to ignore it.

The monster would heal her. Of course it would. Why
else
would it have come? There was no other explanation. It had come walking as a tree of healing, the same tree that made the medicine for his mother, so why else?

Please
, Conor thought as he stared at his still full lunch tray.
Please
.

Two hands slapped down hard on either side of the tray from across the table, knocking Conor’s orange juice into his lap.

Conor stood up, though not quickly enough. His trousers were soaked in liquid, dripping down his legs.

“O’Malley’s wet himself!” Sully was already shouting, with Anton cracking up beside him.

“Here!” Anton said, flicking some of the puddle from the table at Conor. “You missed some!”

Harry stood between Anton and Sully, as ever, his arms crossed, staring.

Conor stared back.

Neither of them moved for so long that Sully and Anton quieted down. They started to look uncomfortable as the staring contest continued, wondering what Harry was going to do next.

Conor wondered, too.

“I think I’ve worked you out, O’Malley,” Harry finally said. “I think I know what it is you’re asking for.”

“You’re gonna get it now,” Sully said. He and Anton laughed, bumping fists.

Conor couldn’t see any teachers out of the corner of his eye, so he knew Harry had chosen a moment when they could bother him unseen.

Conor was on his own.

Harry stepped forward, still calmly.

“Here is the hardest hit of all, O’Malley,” Harry said. “Here is the very worst thing I can do to you.”

He held out his hand, as if asking for a handshake.

He
was
asking for a handshake.

Conor responded almost automatically, putting out his own hand and shaking Harry’s before he even thought about what he was doing. They shook hands like two businessmen at the end of a meeting.

“Goodbye, O’Malley,” Harry said, looking into Conor’s eyes. “I no longer see you.”

Then he let go of Conor’s hand, turned his back, and walked away. Anton and Sully looked even more confused, but after a second, they walked away, too.

None of them looked back at Conor.

There was a huge digital clock on the wall of the dining hall, bought sometime in the seventies as the latest in technology and never replaced, even though it was older than Conor’s mum. As Conor watched Harry walk away, walk away without looking back, walk away without doing
anything
, Harry moved past the digital clock.

Lunch started at 11.55 and ended at 12.40.

The clock currently read 12.06.

Harry’s words echoed in Conor’s head.

“I no longer see you.”

Harry kept walking away, keeping good on his promise.

“I no longer see you.”

The clock ticked over to 12.07.

It is time for the third tale
, the monster said from behind him.

There was once an invisible man
, the monster continued, though Conor kept his eyes firmly on Harry,
who had grown tired of being unseen
.

Conor set himself into a walk.

A walk after Harry.

It was not that he was
actually
invisible
, the monster said, following Conor, the room volume dropping as they passed.
It was that people had become used to not seeing him.

“Hey!” Conor called. Harry didn’t turn round. Neither did Sully nor Anton, though they were still sniggering as Conor picked up his pace.

And if no one sees you,
the monster said, picking up its pace, too,
are you really there at all?

“HEY!” Conor called loudly.

The dining hall had fallen silent now, as Conor and the monster moved faster after Harry.

Harry who had still not turned around.

Conor reached him and grabbed him by the shoulder, twisting him round. Harry pretended to question what had happened, looking hard at Sully, acting like he was the one who’d done it. “Quit messing about,” Harry said and turned away again.

Turned away from Conor.

And then one day the invisible man decided,
the monster said, its voice ringing in Conor’s ears,
I will
make
them see me.

“How?” Conor asked, breathing heavily again, not turning back to see the monster standing there, not looking at the reaction of the room to the huge monster now in their midst, though he was aware of nervous murmurs and a strange anticipation in the air. “How did the man do it?”

Conor could feel the monster close behind him, knew that it was kneeling, knew that it was putting its face up to his ear to whisper into it, to tell him the rest of the story.

He called
, it said,
for a
monster
.

And it reached a huge, monstrous hand past Conor and knocked Harry flying across the floor.

Trays clattered and people screamed as Harry tumbled past them. Anton and Sully looked aghast, first at Harry, then back at Conor.

Their faces changed as they saw him. Conor took another step towards them, feeling the monster towering behind him.

Anton and Sully turned and ran.

“What do you think you’re playing at, O’Malley?” Harry said as he pulled himself up from the floor, holding his forehead where he’d hit it as he fell. He took his hand away and a few people screamed as they saw blood.

Conor kept moving forward, people scrambling to get out of his way. The monster came with him, matching him step for step.

“You don’t see me?” Conor shouted as he came. “You don’t
see
me?”

“No, O’Malley!” Harry shouted back as he stood. “No, I don’t. No one here does!”

Conor stopped and looked around slowly. The whole room was watching them now, waiting to see what would happen.

Except when Conor turned to face them. Then they looked away, like it was too embarrassing or painful to actually look at him directly. Only Lily held his eyes for longer than a second, her face anxious and hurt.

“You think this scares me, O’Malley?” Harry said, touching the blood on his forehead. “You think I’m ever going to be afraid of you?”

Conor said nothing, just started moving forward again.

Harry took a step back.

“Conor O’Malley,” he said, his voice growing poisonous now. “Who everyone’s sorry for because of his mum. Who swans around school acting like he’s so different, like no one knows his
suffering.
”

Conor kept walking. He was almost there.

“Conor O’Malley who wants to be punished,” Harry said, still stepping back, his eyes on Conor’s. “Conor O’Malley who
needs
to be punished. And why is that, Conor O’Malley? What secrets do you hide that are so terrible?”

“You
shut up
,” Conor said.

And he heard the monster’s voice say it with him.

Harry backed up another step until he was against a window. It felt like the whole school was holding its breath, waiting to see what Conor would do. He could hear a teacher or two calling from outside, finally noticing something was going on.

“But do you know what
I
see when I look at you, O’Malley?” Harry said.

Conor clenched his hands into fists.

Harry leaned forward, his eyes flashing. “I see
nothing
,” he said.

Without turning around, Conor asked the monster a question.

“What did you do to help the invisible man?”

And he felt the monster’s voice again, like it was in his own head.

I made them
see
, it said.

Conor clenched his fists even tighter.

Then the monster leapt forward to make Harry see.

“I don’t even know what to say.” The Headmistress made an exasperated sound and shook her head. “What can I possibly say to you, Conor?”

Conor kept his eyes on the carpet, which was the colour of spilled wine. Miss Kwan was there, too, sitting behind him, as if he might try to escape. He sensed rather than saw the Headmistress lean forward. She was older than Miss Kwan. And somehow twice as scary.

“You put him in
hospital
, Conor,” she said. “You broke his arm, his nose, and I’ll bet his teeth are never going to look that pretty again. His parents are threatening to sue the school
and
file charges against you.”

Conor looked up at that.

“They were a little hysterical, Conor,” Miss Kwan said behind him, “and I don’t blame them. I explained what’s been going on, though. That he had been regularly bullying you and that your circumstances were … special.”

Conor winced at the word.

“It was actually the bullying part that scared them off,” Miss Kwan said, scorn in her voice. “Doesn’t look good to prospective universities these days, apparently, accusations of bullying.”

“
But that’s
not the point!
” the Headmistress said, so loud she made both Conor and Miss Kwan jump. “I can’t even make sense of what actually happened.” She looked at some papers on her desk, reports from teachers and other students, Conor guessed. “I’m not even sure how one boy could have caused so much damage by himself.”

Conor had
felt
what the monster was doing to Harry, felt it in his own hands. When the monster gripped Harry’s shirt, Conor felt the material against his own palms. When the monster struck a blow, Conor felt the sting of it in his own fist. When the monster held Harry’s arm behind his back, Conor had felt Harry’s muscles resisting.

Resisting, but not winning.

Because how could a boy beat a monster?

He remembered all the screaming and running. He remembered the other kids fleeing to get teachers. He remembered the circle around him opening wider and wider as the monster told the story of all that he’d done for the invisible man.

Never invisible again
, the monster kept saying as he pummelled Harry.
Never invisible again.

There came a point when Harry stopped trying to fight back, when the blows from the monster were too strong, too many, too fast, when he began begging the monster to stop.

Never invisible again
, the monster said, finally letting up, its huge branch-like fists curled tight as a clap of thunder.

It turned to Conor.

But there are harder things than being invisible
, it said.

And it vanished, leaving Conor standing alone over the shivering, bleeding Harry.

Everyone in the dining hall was staring at Conor now. Everyone could see him, all eyes looking his way. There was silence in the room, too much silence for so many kids, and for a moment, before the teachers broke it up – where had they been? Had the monster kept them from seeing? Or had it really been so short an amount of time? – you could hear the wind rushing in an open window, a wind that dropped a few small, spiky leaves to the floor.

Then there were adult hands on Conor, dragging him away.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” the Headmistress asked.

Conor shrugged.

“I’m going to need more than that,” she said. “You seriously hurt him.”

“It wasn’t me,” Conor mumbled.

“What was that?” she said sharply.

“It wasn’t me,” Conor said, more clearly. “It was the monster who did it.”

“The monster,” the Headmistress said.

“I didn’t even touch Harry.”

The Headmistress made a wedge shape with her fingertips and placed her elbows on her desk. She glanced at Miss Kwan.