A Monster Calls Read Online Free PDF

“What do you know about
anything
?”
    I know about
you
, Conor O’Malley
, the monster said.
    “No, you don’t,” Conor said. “If you did, you’d know I don’t have time to listen to stupid, boring stories from some stupid, boring tree that isn’t even real–”
    Oh?
said the monster.
Did you dream the berries on the floor of your room?
    “Who cares even if I didn’t?!” Conor shouted back. “They’re just stupid berries. Woo-hoo,
so scary
. Oh, please, please, save me from the
berries
!”
    The monster looked at him quizzically.
How strange
, it said.
The words you say tell me you are scared of the berries, but your actions seem to suggest otherwise.
    “You’re as old as the land and you’ve never heard of sarcasm?” Conor asked.
    Oh, I have heard of
it
, the monster said, putting its huge branch hands on its hips.
But people usually know better than to speak it to me.
    “Can’t you just leave me
alone
?”
    The monster shook its head, but not in answer to Conor’s question.
It is most unusual
, it said.
Nothing I do seems to make you frightened of me.
    “You’re just a
tree
,” Conor said, and there was no other way he could think about it. Even though it walked and talked, even though it was bigger than his house and could swallow him in one bite, the monster was still, at the end of the day, just a yew tree. Conor could even see more berries growing from the branches at its elbows.
    And you have worse things to be frightened of
, said the monster, but not as a question.
    Conor looked at the ground, then up at the moon, anywhere but at the monster’s eyes. The nightmare feeling was rising in him, turning everything around him to darkness, making everything seem heavy and impossible, like he’d been asked to lift a mountain with his bare hands and no one would let him leave until he did.
    “I thought,” he said, but had to cough before he spoke again. “I saw you watching me earlier when I was fighting with my grandma and I thought…”
    What did you think?
the monster asked when Conor didn’t finish.
    “Forget it,” Conor said, turning back towards the house.
    You thought I might be here to help you
, the monster said.
    Conor stopped.
    You thought I might have come to topple your enemies. Slay your dragons.
    Conor still didn’t look back. But he didn’t go inside either.
    You felt the truth of it when I said that you had called for me, that you were the reason I had come walking. Did you not?
    Conor turned round. “But all you want to do is tell me
stories
,” he said, and he couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice, because it
was
true. He had thought that. He’d
hoped
that.
    The monster knelt down so its face was close to Conor’s.
Stories of how I toppled enemies,
it said.
Stories of how I slew dragons.
    Conor blinked back at the monster’s gaze.
    Stories are wild creatures
, the monster said.
When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?
    The monster looked up and Conor followed its gaze. It was looking at Conor’s bedroom window. The room where his grandma now slept.
    Let me tell you a story of when I went walking
, the monster said.
Let me tell you of the end of a wicked queen and how I made sure she was never seen again.
    Conor swallowed and looked back at the monster’s face.
    “Go on,” he said.

THE FIRST TALE
    Long ago,
the monster said,
before this was a town with roads and trains and cars,
it was a green place. Trees covered every hill and bordered every path. They shaded every stream and protected every house, for there were houses here even then, made of stone and earth.
    This was a kingdom.
    (“What?” Conor said, looking around his back garden. “
Here
?”)
    (The monster cocked its head at him curiously.
You have not heard of it?
)
    (“Not a kingdom around here, no,” Conor said. “We don’t even have a McDonald’s.”)
    Nevertheless,
continued the monster,
it was a kingdom, small but happy, for the king was a just king,