The Boy Who Drew Monsters: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

seen a thing. “What is it?”
    “Something out there. On the road.” Tim shifted into park and cut the engine.
    As he stepped from the Jeep, he noticed that the wind had picked up, making a cold night bitter. He took a few steps in the direction of the lighthouse where the creature had fled. Back in the car, the boy watched him, his face a puzzle under the dome light. Tim listened in the stillness but heard nothing but the far-off pulse of the surf against the rocks and the wind wrapping around the fir trees and every upright thing. No sign of it, and the thought of calling out after such an illusion blew away in the breeze. He considered the abstract landscape one last time, not much more than dark contours under a dark sky, and convinced that the creature was gone, he got back into the Jeep.
    “Are you okay?” he asked the boy. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything out on the road?”
    Nick shrugged. “I saw you.”
    “I thought there was—”
    “But I’m okay.” He showed him his neck.
    “Couldn’t be,” Tim muttered and shook his head to rid it of the vision. He flipped on the high beams and drove on, gripping the steering wheel as if it were going to slip out of his hands. At every bend, he imagined another shadowy presence in the darkness, and he could not force himself to relax until they had cleared the horseshoe turn and had the ocean again on their right. Tucked amid the white pines, the Weller home glowed in the December lonesomeness. A string of colored lights ran along the eaves and framed the windows and front door. No other house on this side of Mercy Point had so much as a candle for as far as the eye could see.
    Fred Weller answered the door with a highball in his hand. Despite his jovial rotundity, he had the look of a man who could never get warm in the wintertime. Even indoors he bundled himself in a thick Irish sweater cinched at the waist and woollen socks beneath his slippers. He wore an expression of mild bemusement on his face, as though he wasn’t expecting Nick to return that evening, and indeed, the boy slipped by without a word, shedding his hat and coat as he disappeared.
    With a smile and a wave, Fred drew Tim into the living room. “What’s your poison? Something to warm you up now that winter is finally here?” Fred went over to the bar and poured another Scotch.
    Tim considered the invitation and was won over by the arrival of Fred’s wife, Nell, who appeared by magic at the sound of new life in the room. In an old-fashioned dressing gown, she slunk across the floor, rolling her shoulder blades and hips, and kissed him on the cheek, the smell of juniper warm on her skin. “Timothy Keenan, I did not hear you come in. I hope Nick was no trouble—where is the boy?”
    “No trouble at all, although…”
    She laid a manicured hand against his chest. “Why you’re as pale as an oyster, and your heart is just racing. What’s the matter, dear soul? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
    “That’s just it. I saw something on the way over here. Out on the road down by the lighthouse.”
    Fred handed him a tumbler. “Seems you could use this drink after all. What was it?”
    The first sip was as warm as a match.
    “I can’t say for sure. We were just making the way around Mercy Point when I saw this thing, white as paper, I thought at first, a naked man—”
    A laugh burst through Nell’s lips. “Maybe I should have a drink, too. Naked as a jaybird?”
    “Right, couldn’t be,” said Tim. “A person without any clothes would freeze to death on such a night. Hypothermia in ten minutes flat. So it simply couldn’t be a man.”
    From the bar, Fred grunted his agreement as he ladled ice into a glass.
    “And there’s the way that it moved. No sooner did I see it, but it just skittered up the rocks like a kite that’s snapped its string, and then the wind grabs ahold and pushes it so hard that it vanishes in an instant.”
    Fred handed Nell a small cocktail.