Lily Madwhip

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“My name is Simone Werner,” says the orange-haired girl sitting beside me.

She pulls out a


binder with a picture of a cat on it. The poor kitty is hanging from a tree, and is being told
to just hang in there. Someone should just get the kitten down from the tree. The branch
does not look safe.

Paschar is sitting on my desk. “This is Paschar,” I say. I make Paschar salute. He says hello
but she can‟t hear him.

“Hello, Paschar,” says Simone.

Simone is a new student in Mrs. Carter-Dogbill‟s class. She transferred here from Ohio.
Her father works as a law clerk and her mother is an accountant. I know this because
Paschar told me while Mrs. Carter-Dogbill was having Simone introduce herself to the rest
of the class. The rest of the class only learned about Ohio and that Simone likes geography
and chocolate chip bagels.

Lewis Broady turns around in his chair. He smiles at Simone. Lewis Broady almost never
smiles. It looks unnatural, like if someone drew lips on a church gargoyle. “The last girl
who sat where you are was weird. She used to play with fireworks and blew up another
girl‟s backpack. And her face was all messed up.”

“In what way?” asks Simone.

“Yeah, Lewis, in what way?” I stare at him.

Lewis blushes. “She just... looked--” He stutters something and then turns back around.

“Her name was Meredith, and her face wasn‟t messed up. She had scars from being burned
in a fire, but she was one of the nicest people,” I tell Simone.

“Scars don‟t make people ugly, just unique,” she says. Oh, I like her. Not like Lewis
obviously likes her, but I really hope that she doesn‟t start hanging out with Lisa Welch and
her crew of jerk girls. They‟ll probably try to get their claws in her because she‟s got a
pretty face and has a cool backpack. They might reject her because of her crazy orange hair
though. It sticks out all over the place like it‟s trying to escape.

“Are you allowed to have your doll out like that?” she asks me.

“Yeah, he helps me with my anxiety. It‟s in my five-oh-four.” That‟s not true. I don‟t even
know what a “five-oh-four” is. I just know that when I got Paschar out at the beginning of
the year, Mrs. Carter-Dogbill asked me if having him with me was in my five-oh-four to
help with anxiety, and I said, “yes.” So now that‟s what I say whenever anyone asks.

At lunch, I sit by myself. Mom packed me a salad with little tomatoes, chopped celery, and
cucumber slices, but she forgot the lettuce, so it‟s just that stuff. And a piece of bread. My
thermos is empty. It‟s the third day in a row that my thermos has been empty. I told her
after the second time that I wanted to pack my own lunch and she said, “No, I can pack
your lunch! Just as good as your father does!” so now I‟m thirsty and eating rabbit food. I
wish Meredith was here with some Oreos.

After the events at the Red Moon Hotel, Meredith moved away with her foster parents.
They didn‟t say goodbye, and I wasn‟t told where they were going. I tried to think of where
would be a safe place for her. Maybe someplace wet like an underwater base in the middle
of the ocean or down in the Amazon Rainforest. Maybe Alaska or Iceland. Actually, I‟ve
read that Iceland is very green and it‟s Greenland that‟s covered with ice. I wonder why
they don‟t just swap names.

Three days after it all, my dad woke up from his coma. The hospital called my mom and
she rushed us over to see him. When we got there, Officer Flowers‟s ghost was standing by
his hospital bed. She didn‟t look quite so burned anymore, just some patchy bits on her face
like something teenagers get and buy cream to clear up. We didn‟t say anything to each
other, mostly because there was a nurse and my mom in the room, but also there was
nothing to say. She reached out and plucked Dumah‟s badge off my shirt like it was
nothing. Then she shook her head, turned away, took a step, and vanished like smoke. I
can‟t tell you what a relief that was. Dumah does not shut up. Also it‟s weird wearing a
police badge when you‟re taking a bath.

Dad is home now, resting most of the time. They set up a bed in the den so he wouldn‟t
have to climb the stairs. He sees a physical therapist constantly and sometimes struggles
with his words, but we‟re not allowed to finish his sentences for him. Paschar does it
anyway, because none of them can hear him. When Dad is better, I get to take drum lessons.

Jamal got his bicycle back. He thinks he saved the day. I‟m not going to argue with him, his
help was important. He‟s still determined to get my little, plastic paratrooper out of the tree
branches, but I told him that by now the paratrooper has become “climatized” to his new
environment. That means he basically lives there and it would be wrong to take him from
his home.

“What are you doing?”

I‟m sitting on the swings where Meredith and I always hung out. Simone sits down beside
me. I look around the playground. Lisa Welch is watching us from over by the four square
court. She got a new red backpack that her daddy bought her. I wonder if it‟s fire resistant. I
wish Meredith was here to test it, but I think she wouldn‟t want to hurt anyone anymore,
not even Lisa Welch.

“I was just thinking.”


Simone keeps watching me, so I blink a bit and swing to act like normal. “Is it true you can
see the future?” she asks.

“Sort of.”

She stands up on her swing. “Am I going to get hurt if I do this?”

“No.”

“That girl over there with the blonde hair and the funny teeth says you‟re a witch.” Simone
points at Lisa, who‟s still watching us. Lisa turns away when she sees Simone point at her.
Her crew of jerk girls flock around her as if they‟re protecting her from our evil stares. I
can‟t help but laugh because she thinks Lisa‟s teeth are funny, and I know if Lisa heard her
say that her head would explode.

I shrug. “Yeah, I know. I wouldn‟t listen to Lisa Welch. She‟s dumb as they come.”
Dumber, maybe.

Simone sits back down on the swing. “Have you ever read Greek mythology?”

“Those are my favorite.” I like the one about Medusa. She was a pretty woman who got
cursed to turn people to stone. Her hair was made of snakes. Not just the heads but the
whole snakes except for the tails. I guess there‟s no telling where a snake‟s head really ends.
Snakes are all neck.

I think about hopping off the swing, but there‟s a grasshopper on the ground. I better not
jump off the swing or I might crush it. Grasshoppers are cute. I used to catch them just to
hold them and feel them hop around in my hands. Simone jumps off her swing and lands on
the grasshopper. I don‟t think she saw it. Poor grasshopper.

“Have you ever read about Cassandra?” she asks, “She could see the future too.”

I watch to see if the grasshopper is going to come wiggling its way out from under her
sneaker like in a cartoon, but it doesn‟t. As if she knows what I‟m thinking, Simone swivels
around on her heel to look at me, really grinding the grasshopper into the dirt.

“You‟re like Cassandra,” she says, “Cassandra Madrid.”

“Madwhip,” I correct her. Except nobody ever believed Cassandra. At least Jamal believes
me. And Meredith believed me. I‟m sure if I told him something, Felix would believe me,
but the only thing I want to tell Felix is to go burn in Hell. That was what I was going to
say to him that day at the Red Moon Hotel, “Felix Clay, you‟re going to burn in Hell.”
“Well, I believe you can see the future.” she smiles at me. Her teeth are not funny like Lisa
Welch‟s. Her teeth are nice. “Maybe once my folks have got all our stuff unpacked at home,
you can come over some time. I‟ve got two older brothers, but they‟re cool.”

“Okay.” I wonder if her brothers play the drums.

Simone nods and then turns on her heel again and walks off toward the monkey bars. I‟m
pretty sure that grasshopper is toast. I think she even took it with her. She didn‟t seem to be
messing with me, so I guess she‟s genuinely keen on being friends. It‟d be nice to get out of
the house, since my dad is always there and he gets grumpy when he can‟t pick stuff up or
we can‟t understand him when he tries to talk.

After school, I ride the bus home. Mom is sitting with Dad filling out forms from his bed.
They make me give hugs and kisses then tell me to go do my homework and let them be for
the moment. I go up to my room and get my homework done, then sit with some watercolor
paints and decide to paint a picture of Meredith burning Felix alive in an ambulance.
Paschar sits with his watercolors and paints nothing, because he never actually paints, he
just likes to know he can if he wants to.

I ask him, “What‟s going to happen now? Meredith is gone, possibly to Iceland. Felix
doesn‟t have Raziel anymore, and has disappeared to who knows where. Officer Flowers
has moved on and I assume Dumah has been passed on to a new creepy person who I hope
I never meet. Are we done?”

For now, he says. Darn cryptic Angel.

“Do I have to worry about Samael?”

Yes, he tells me, you will always have to worry about Samael. Especially now that he
knows you.

“What will he do with Raziel?” I ask.

I don‟t know.

I feel bad that I handed Raziel over to his scary brother. I never really knew or understood
him, but I hope he‟s okay.

Ever since that day, I‟ve felt like I‟m being watched. I look out the window on the bus
while Greg annoys me and Jamal smacks him in the back of the head, and I see a man in a
white suit standing on the side of the road. It‟s Samael. He just watches the bus go by and
waves his hand. His fingers are long and pointy. I think he needs to wash them, there‟s all
sorts of grit and dirt or something on the ends. He grins at me and his mouth is full of
pointy teeth. Multiple rows of them, like a shark. It looks like he could flip the top of his
head back and have nothing but teeth showing. But then I blink and he‟s not there.
A couple times I‟ve looked out my bedroom window and he‟s been standing in the woods
where all the animals died. He‟s got half a squirrel in his mouth and he‟s chomping on it
like it‟s bubblegum. A second later, the woods are empty. No animals wander through our
backyard anymore. They probably have hazard signs or something. I don‟t know what
animals do to warn each other that this area might be detrimental to their health. They
probably pee on stuff. That‟s animals‟ answer to everything.

The worst was one night after my parents were both asleep. The moon was full and it was
shining in my window, making everything blue. My bedroom closet is always shut tight
because there‟s tons of old clothes from all the way back to when I was five piled up inside,
and if you don‟t shut the door until it clicks that stuff can fall over and spill out. Anyway,
the room was dark and for some reason I couldn‟t sleep. Paschar was telling me to just
close my eyes and think about turtles or something nice. Sometimes he starts droning on
about stuff that doesn‟t matter because he knows the sound of his voice will put me to sleep.

But instead I opened my eyes. When I did, I swear I saw the closet door knob turn and click
and the door opened silently. There weren‟t any piles of clothes inside, it was pitch black,
but I could clearly see Samael standing there in my closet in his white suit and with his
white hair and he just smiled and stared at me until I closed my eyes and pulled my head
under the covers. I peeked out and the door was shut like it always had been.

I can‟t tell if I‟m imagining these things or if Samael is messing with my head. Paschar
can‟t really say either, though he understands that I‟m seeing them. He doesn‟t know when
it comes to Samael just what exactly he‟s capable of. Can he drive a little girl like me
insane? Maybe, is all I get for an answer.

What I do know is that he‟s always going to be there, on the side of the road, in the woods
out back, in my closet, even if he‟s not really there. He knows of me. He knows me. Maybe
I am just imagining him, but Paschar has said the danger is real, and from now on I should
always be prepared for him.

So I‟ll train. I don‟t know how I can use what I‟ve got to my advantage, but Officer
Flowers called me “the knife that cuts the veil” so I guess that means something. I beat a
crazy magician, survived two car crashes, escaped a burning house, and held four totems at
once and came out the other side with just a couple broken ribs and a whole lot of material
for my next therapist to write a book with.

I‟ll be ready.

Homeroom 302, Mr. Boardman

What I Did On My Vacation

By Lily Madwhip
If I had to pick one word to describe this summer it would be: Crazy!

Three things that stood out about my summer vacation are: I adopted a new pet turtle, the
fireworks at the common, and my family reunion.

Describe your three things in detail: First I got a new pet turtle. He is an Eastern Box Turtle.
I named him Donatello. My mom helped me pick out a tank for him and we filled it with
water and put a big rock for him to sun himself on. I made Donatello a little mask to wear
out of a purple ribbon, because I am training him to be a ninja turtle. My dad made me take
it off because he said “turtles don‟t wear masks” and “he can‟t see.”

I am training Donatello to fight crime. I made him a bo staff out of a twig. Right now he
can‟t pick it up because he‟s got no thumbs. Sometimes he chews on his staff. He might be
able to use it with his mouth, but I think he‟s too young. Turtles can live from 50 to 100
years, but ninja turtles have lower life expectancy because of the dangers of crime-fighting.

Donatello does not eat pizza like other ninja turtles. He eats little grubs and spinach. My
mom says he eats better than I do. I eat pizza though, so I think I‟m a better ninja turtle than
Donatello is. I look forward to him growing up with me and adopting some more turtles
and forming a team of crime-fighting turtles.

Second, for the 4th of July they set up a fireworks show down at the Common. That‟s a
park in the center of town. Lots of people came. My mom, my brother Roger, and me all
went and sat at the top of Garrison Hill. My dad couldn‟t sit with us because he plays
keyboard in a band with some other people. They were keeping everybody entertained until
the fireworks started. Roger saw a couple of his friends and went and sat with them, so it
was just me and my mom. I would sit with friends too but my best friend Rachel isn‟t
friends with me anymore. My only friend is Paschar.

We sat around for hours until it got dark. We wouldn‟t have gone so early but my mom
wanted to be “supportive” for my dad and his band. It‟s not his band really, but he plays in
it so I call it his because I don‟t think they have a name. They‟re just “the band.” He always
says he‟s going to be busy because “the band has to practice.”

At about eight o‟clock, I told my mom that I was feeling sick to my stomach. She said we
should wait and see because we had all driven there together. She didn‟t want to drive me
home and then have to come back and get Dad and Roger. I said we should get them both
and all go. Mom refused to interrupt the band, so while she was talking to another friend, I
snuck away and went to the bandstand. Dad was in the back on his keyboard. I waited until
they took a break between songs and then tugged on his pants and told him I needed help
finding Mom, because she had wandered off. He hadn‟t seen where we sat down, so I
showed him a different part of the hill and we walked around looking for my mom who was
on the other side.
Thankfully my dad went with me because there was an accident with the fireworks display.
Someone working the show caught a spark in the eye and knocked over one of the other
launchers. The fireworks got set off and went toward the bandstand where everybody
cleared out and there was a bunch of screaming and shouting. The whole bandstand burned
down and Dad‟s keyboard got destroyed. Mom was in a panic when we finally found her,
but she was relieved to see me and Dad were alright. Roger came back later and said it was
the greatest fireworks he‟d ever seen. Dad was upset because he lost his keyboard.

But the craziest thing I had happen this summer was at my family reunion. Every year my
dad‟s brother, Uncle George, invites us to join them for a week at his log cabin. The camp
is by a lake. Uncle George and Aunt Harriet have a daughter, Susie, who is almost the same
age as Roger. Susie and Roger usually go do stuff together and leave me to draw or catch
tadpoles. I also go down to the beach and dig for jawas and Yodas. See, I used to have
some Star Wars toys, but I made them sand huts on the beach and dug deep tunnels for
them to hide in. Then I got called in for lunch. We had hot dogs. When I went back out, the
tunnels and huts were washed flat by the waves. I never found any of my toys, but I know
they‟re down there somewhere, so every year I dig for them.

The camp has an ATV which is like an adult-sized Big Wheel. Roger and Susie ride around
on it all the time. Mom goes berry picking with Aunt Harriet. Dad and Uncle George drink
and talk about stuff like what life was like when they were kids. I‟m not allowed to sit and
listen. They make me go draw or dig jawa holes.

This year, Uncle George borrowed a motorboat from someone down shore and was letting
Roger and Susie try out waterskiing. That‟s like skiing skiing except there‟s no snow and
you wear a bathing suit instead of snow pants. I was building sand castles on the shore and
digging for jawas and Yodas, but the waves the boat made kept melting my castles and
filling my jawa holes. After a half hour I realized something bad was going to happen, so I
called for them to stop but they kept going. I made up reasons to get Uncle George to come
ashore, but they couldn‟t hear me over the sound of the motorboat.

I remember Roger was sitting in an inner tube, waiting for his turn on the skis. Susie was
on the skis, trying to stay upright, but her foot must have slipped or something and she
bailed out. Uncle George turned the boat around and went to pick her up, but she had swam
toward the boat, so instead of getting alongside her, he ran over her with the boat. There
was like this loud thump and then a sound like a garbage disposal. Then there was a lot of
yelling and screaming. Uncle George started yelling and Roger was screaming. Susie
wasn‟t yelling or screaming, she was just floating there in the water, sort of getting pulled
behind the boat a bit. Dad came running down from the camp. When he saw what happened,
he ran back up and called for help on the phone. He dragged me along with him so I
wouldn‟t see, but I already saw.
Dad made me run to go find Mom and Aunt Harriet who were supposed to be berry picking
but they were actually sitting in the berry bushes smoking. Aunt Harriet flipped out when
she heard what happened. So did Mom, but not quite as bad. An ambulance went by while
we were running back to the camp. Aunt Harriet and Uncle George went with the
ambulance and Susie to the hospital, but everybody knew she wasn‟t going to make it.
Mom and Dad insisted on us gathering our stuff and getting over to the hospital to be with
them. I had to pick my stuff up off the beach so it wouldn‟t wash away and I saw the lake
foam was kind of pink and one of Susie‟s fingers washed up on my sand castle lump. I
didn‟t touch it, but I told Dad and he put it in a ice cooler to take with us.

So my cousin Susie died on our family reunion. We went to her funeral. Everyone cried,
even Roger. Susie got cremated, which means they burned her up into ashes rather than
bury her. I guess that saves space. Uncle George and Aunt Harriet took the ashes back to
the camp and they sprinkled them on a stump that Susie and Roger always used to like to
play around when they were little. It was raining, so even the sky was crying. I wanted to
say that God must be crying for Susie, but Uncle George is an atheist, which means he
doesn‟t believe in stuff like God, so I didn‟t say anything.

What are you looking forward to this school year?: This school year, I hope to make some
new friends. Paschar says friends are important. For show and tell I‟m going to bring in my
turtle Donatello. He bites, so Mom says I have to make forms for people to sign if they
want to try to touch him. She says I don‟t want to get sued. Also, this year I‟m hoping to
build my ninja turtle army. My Uncle George gave me a real valuable Pokemon card that
belonged to Susie, and maybe I can sell it to buy a bigger tank and adopt three more turtles.

I‟m Lily Madwhip and I‟m being followed by a big, black dog.

“Hey, do you know whose dog that is?” I ask Jamal. We‟re sitting on the bus and I‟m
looking out the window at the big, black dog that has been following me since I left the
house ten minutes ago. It‟s long and thin, with short fur and a pointy nose. Judging from
how it looks I bet it‟s hungry. I spotted it first parked on its butt in the Tennison‟s front
yard staring at me and I thought it was doing its doggy business. I‟m not a fan of watching
animals do their business, so I looked away, but as I rounded the corner onto Smiley Ave, I
looked back and it was still there, just watching me walk away.

“What dog?” Jamal asks.

“The big, black dog.” It‟s peeking out from behind the old, dead tree by Mr. Lawrence‟s
house. Lightning struck the tree four years ago and split it down the middle. Mr. Lawrence
had the two halves propped up and tried to hold them together by nailing boards up it like
stitches. I think he thought since the boards were made of wood and the tree was made of
wood, it would reabsorb the boards or something. It didn‟t. Half the tree was dead and it‟s
all rotten and dried up now. The other half is fine though, so it looks like a weird tree with
boards leading up to the branches, half of which have no leaves. Like a ladder to the lamest
treehouse.

“What big, black dog?” Jamal looks out the window with curiosity, but he seems to look
everywhere but where the dog is.

I point at the dog peeking out from behind the weird tree. “The big, black dog peeking out
from behind Mr. Lawrence‟s weird tree.”

Jamal keeps looking in the wrong places. He pauses. “Wait, who‟s Mr. Lawrence?”

I give up. “Alright, well this has been fun, thanks.”

The bus drives off and the dog watches us go. I watch the dog watch us go. It‟s a watching
party.

Sixth grade has been hard to deal with. Particularly the “no toys allowed” rule, which
means I have to leave Paschar at home every day. I can‟t even try to smuggle him into
school in my backpack. I still see things before they happen from time to time, but without
Paschar, I don‟t always know what‟s going on. I have to be on my guard all day until I get
home. It‟s nerve wracking.

“You seem tense,” Simone tells me. Simone is one of my best friends. She‟s got orange
hair but people call it red or ginger. I don‟t know why they don‟t just call it orange. I guess
that sounds too much like the color a clown‟s hair would be or something. We sit in the
back of the class during social studies because Mr. Hasan doesn‟t assign seating like the
other teachers do. I like Mr. Hasan. He always wears a bow tie. Most days it‟s red, but
some days he likes to throw everybody for a loop and wear a black one. Once he wore a
green one and I swear Hayden Brickowski nearly had an aneurysm.

“I saw a dog at the bus stop.”

“Do you not like dogs?”

“I don‟t think anybody else could see this one.” At least, Jamal couldn‟t. Then again,
maybe he was looking from the wrong angle. Of course, this all wouldn‟t bother me if it
didn‟t mean something. I‟ve learned to trust my instincts when they tell me something‟s not
right.

Simone covers her mouth in mock surprise. “Maybe it was a ghost dog!”

“You know... you joke, but you have no idea what I have to deal with sometimes.”

Actually, she does. I told Simone all about fixing things for the angels, my dad getting
kidnapped by a magician with a grudge, meeting the angel of death, and all the awful stuff
last year regarding Meredith and Felix and Officer Flowers. She listened to it all and never
asked for any proof. She just took me at my word. But sometimes I think she thinks I
imagined some of it, or maybe she thinks I‟m a bit of a loon.

There‟s no recess in sixth grade, but we have gym outside on the soccer field. That‟s where
I see the big, black dog again. I‟m holding Simone‟s feet as she tries to do a sit up. How
can you not do one full sit up, Simone? I don‟t ask her, I just pretend that each halfway sit
up counts and she thinks she‟s done ten. The big, black dog walks out from around the side
of the school where they keep the dumpsters. I wonder if it‟s a stray and happens to be
wandering through town. Maybe this is a completely different dog. What are you saying, of
course it‟s not a completely different dog, Lily.

“Hey,” I say to Simone as she flops back down onto the grass, “there‟s that big, black dog.”

She turns to look. “The ghost dog?”

“Yes, the ghost dog.” Maybe I‟ll just call the dog Ghost from now on. That‟s certainly a
good name for it. It kind of looks like Officer Flowers‟ ghost, all black and charred, only
it‟s not charred it‟s just furry.

Simone sits up on her elbows and nods. “Yeah, I see it.”

I feel a sense of relief. “Really?”

“No.”

Okay wait, I hate it when she does this. “Are you kidding that you see it or that you don‟t
see it?”

“I don‟t see it,” Simone says. She looks at me apologetically. “Sorry.”

Crud.

The rest of gym class, the dog and I have a staring contest. After exercises, we practice
dribbling soccer balls and passing. Eventually, Mr. Betty our gym teacher blows the whistle
to have us go in and change. I take one last glance over at the big, black dog and there‟s
someone kneeling beside it, petting it gently. It seems happy to be petted. I can‟t really
make out who the person is petting it, as they‟re all hunched over and wearing some sort of
hoodie. My first thought goes to Officer Flowers once again, but I haven‟t seen her in
almost a year, and I‟d like to think she‟s moved on, not haunting me with some weird ghost
dog.

Today we have art class with Mrs. Zimmerman. I love art class. Last month I brought in
one of my still lifes I did at home and Mrs. Zimmerman said I have a good eye for details.
Today we‟re using pastels to make a zoology collage to hang in the hallway. I‟ve been
working on this herd of giraffes since last week. I want to put a crown on the king of
giraffes but that would be “unprofessional” as my mom always says.

Mrs. Zimmerman comes by to check our progress. She leans over and looks at Todd
Gambil‟s drawing of piranhas and nods but doesn‟t say anything. That‟s her way of politely
avoiding a conversation with the principal and Todd‟s parents about why she made their
son cry. I saw Todd‟s piranhas earlier and they look like a bowl of Fruit Loops.

“Very good giraffes, Lily,” she says. She hovers over me so close I can smell her perfume.
She wears a lot of perfume, but nobody says anything. Todd Gambil is laying on his
drawing of piranhas and I can‟t tell if he‟s trying to get in close for the real fine details or
Mrs. Zimmerman‟s perfume knocked him flat out.

“Is that a panther in the background?” Mrs. Zimmerman asks.

“What?” I look at my drawing. I don‟t see a panther, I see one, two, three, four, five
giraffes. Uh... I had drawn six. Oh there it is, laying on its side back by the treeline. Wait,
did someone change my drawing? No, I literally was just working on it and the sixth giraffe
was drinking out of the pond. Why is it all covered in red pastel? Oh my God-- my giraffe
drawing has been murdered. Near the giraffe‟s corpse sits a big, black-- oh it‟s the dog. Of
course it‟s the dog.

“The big, black dog is in my drawing,” I say without thinking.

Mrs. Zimmerman leans back, “That‟s a tad macabre but very realistically rendered, Lily.”

Did I draw the dog without thinking? But the giraffe... how did that change? I run my
thumb over the paper to confirm its just a drawing, and I smudge the king of giraffe‟s neck,
making it look all zig-zaggy. Crud. Mrs. Zimmerman makes a “hmm” sound and wanders
off to the next table. I lean in close and stare at the dog on my drawing.

“You better stop killing my giraffes,” I whisper at it. To emphasize my point, I jab the dog
drawing with the end of my orange pastel. It doesn‟t yelp or run away because it‟s just a
drawing and the idea that it might is of course utterly ridiculous. I take some green and try
to cover the dog with it, but I can still see its dark shape underneath and now it truly looks
like a ghost dog.

After school, we pile into the bus home. There‟s a lot more kids on the bus home from
middle school than there was from elementary school. If you don‟t get on early, you gotta
hope you find a seat next to someone decent. The big kids from eighth grade claim the back
every day, and dispense wedgies or overturn your entire backpack if you try to move in on
their territory. Jeffrey Baker learned that the hard way on our first day. I‟d never seen
anyone pick on Jeffrey Baker before, so it was really satisfying to watch him waddle back
toward the front trying not to cry while at the same time not let his underwear ride up any
further.

I like to sit by one of the front wheels. When the bus hits a bump in the road, kids by the
wheels get launched the highest. It‟s kind of like jumping on a trampoline, only you‟re
sitting on your butt the entire time. And there are a lot of bumps in the road around here.

It‟s while I‟m sitting there in the seat by the wheel, looking out the window that I see an
odd reflection in the building we‟re passing. The building‟s side is made entirely of
windows, and in them I see the bus I‟m in, only there‟s faces of other people looking back.
We‟re going by kind of fast, and the glass of the windows warps the reflection, but I can
definitely see the faces. They all appear to be adults with sickly gray skin and sunken eyes
and they are all looking directly back at me like some sort of ghost tour bus visiting the
land of the living. I glance around but nobody else is even looking out the window who
might also see this, they‟re all talking to each other or the kids in the seat behind them.
Well, okay, there‟s one girl who‟s looking out her window, but she‟s on the other side of
the bus, so that doesn‟t count. I look back out, but the building is passed and there‟s cars
and a side street we‟re going by.

Something inside me says, Get off the bus. I‟ve learned to listen when something inside me
speaks. I excuse myself past Hanna Glass who had sat next to me earlier with a clear face
of disappointment that there wasn‟t another seat available. She gladly moves to let me out
so I can creep up the aisle to the front of the bus. We‟re not supposed to stand up while the
bus is in motion, but Ed our driver never pays attention to what‟s going on in the back
unless people start getting too loud. Of course, even as I think that, I see him look up and
stare at me just as I get to one of the half empty seats right behind him.

“Sit down, Lily.” he says sternly.

I sit behind him and lean around the chair. “Ed, I need to get off the bus.”

“You shouldn‟t be calling me Ed, Lily. Sit back.”

“Mr. Ed, I need to get off the bus, please.”

Ed narrows his eyes at me. I like to think he knows me well enough to know when I‟m
serious, because that‟s all the time. I can see he‟s going through the typical adult list of
questions, number one being, “Is she goofing?” His expression hardens.

“Just sit back, Lily,” he says, “I can‟t let you off before your stop. You‟ll be home soon.”

“Please!”

He gives me one more uncertain look. “Sit back.”


I sigh. “Fine.”

I think about going back to my seat by the wheel, but Hanna Glass has already convinced
someone else to take my spot. We exchange looks for a moment when I glance back, and
then she goes back to talking to her friend. That‟s fine, I‟ll just sit here up front and be the
first one off the bus if it catches fire.

We go several more minutes and a couple stops, dropping kids off. The seat over by the
door clears, so I move to it because the boy I was sharing a seat with smells like he works
at a pet store and doesn‟t bathe. Maybe he does work at a pet store. Paschar would know.
He‟d know if the boy doesn‟t bathe too, but that‟s not really something I care about. Just
the smell.

The bus drives past Holy Oaks Cemetery, where my brother Roger is buried. My parents
got a plot for him by a willow tree. In fact, the only type of trees in the cemetery are
willows. I wonder why they named it Holy Oaks instead of Holy Willows? I guess Holy
Oaks rolls off the tongue better.

I hold my breath, as you are supposed to do when driving past a cemetery so you don‟t
inhale a person‟s ghost. Several other kids who know the rule do the same. Some of the
loud mouth eighth graders in the back start dramatically huffing and laughing, “Oh! Oh! I
just sucked up someone‟s spirit!” someone shouts.

A moment later, a big kid plops down in the seat next to me. He‟s super tall, like maybe
five foot ten, with long, dirty blond hair and the start of a mustache that looks like only
every other hair grew out. There‟s a gold loop in one of his ears, and he‟s wearing torn
jeans and a Pantera t-shirt. When he looks down at me his eyes are weird, kinda glossed
over like someone whited them out.

“Lily,” he says. I wait, but that‟s it.

“Yes.” I nod. “That‟s me.” I try to act calm, but inside I‟m praying he doesn‟t twist my
head off. I don‟t even know who he is.

“It‟s me, Roger.”

I‟m nervous and confused, but I manage to squeak out, “It‟s nice to meet you. My brother‟s
name was Roger.”

He frowns. “No, assface, I am Roger.”

“Roger?” I look closer at him but beyond the dirty hair and the dirty clothes and the... dirt...
he looks nothing like Roger. Then it hits me. “Oh my God, Roger, did you get sucked up by
this kid?”
Ed glances at us in the mirror with the same expression my mom gets when I start talking
to my doll Paschar in the middle of one of her parties she hosts for work.

Roger shakes his head. Or rather, the kid with Roger in him shakes his head. Roger makes
the kid he‟s in shake his head. The kid‟s head. Not Roger‟s-- you know what I‟m saying.

“I‟ve got a message for you.”

“Are you in purgatory?” I ask him. Paschar told me Roger was in Purgatory. That‟s where
you lie in your body until someone comes to get you.

“Not anymore,” he says, “I took a deal. Give you this message and I can finally get out of
that hole.”

The bus stops and a couple other big kids walk by us to get off. They look at me and the kid
with Roger inside him with confused and disgusted faces. I can‟t blame them. This is all
confusing. And maybe a little disgusting.

“Where are you going to go?” I ask, “Heaven?”

He smirks at me. Or rather he makes the kid smirk. “No way, squirt, they wouldn‟t take me.”

“Oh no, Roger,” I whisper so no one else can hear. Honestly, I should have been doing that
from the start. “You‟re not going to H-E-double hockey sticks, are you?”

“For shit‟s sake, Lily, you can say „HELL‟.”

“Are you going to Hell?”

Roger... the kid.. Look, I‟m just going to call the kid Roger and you‟ll know what I‟m
saying. Roger leans back and puts his hands behind his head like he‟s relaxing on a beach
instead of sitting in a cramped bus, or rather sitting in the body of some greasy thirteen year
old on a cramped bus. “Nope, I‟m joining a whole new pantheon.” He looks over at me.
“You know what a pantheon is?”

“A marathon of pants?”

Roger sighs and closes his eyes. “No, dumbass, it‟s like a different religion.”

“Ohhh...” I look out the window at people on the street for a moment before turning back to
him. “Are you Jewish now?”

“No.”

“Buddhist?”
He sits up and waves his hands. “No, look, I don‟t have time for this. I‟ve got to give you
this message before my stop. Before this kid‟s stop. You know what I mean.”

“Okay.”

He leans toward me and I can smell the flavor of the gum the kid must have been chewing
on his breath. It was orange gum, in case you were wondering. I bet he swallowed it when
he was huffing in Roger back at the cemetery. That‟s not good for you. “Don‟t swallow
gum,” my mom always says, “it sits in your stomach for years.”

“Two things, squirt. One: she‟s coming, and two: be careful.”

We stare at each other for a moment.

“That‟s really vague,” I tell him.

He grins. “I know, right? And now I get to go join this new pantheon and be done with all
this Christianity bullshit. Can you believe they were going to leave me rotting in the ground
until the end of time?”

“I love you, Roger.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I look past Roger just in time to see Ed the bus driver make a face in the mirror like he just
saw a two-headed racoon scooting across road. The smelly kid in the opposite seat is sitting
there staring at me and Roger with his mouth hanging open and the same expression as Ed.
Well, there goes what little reputation I had.

Roger spasms suddenly and coughs twice right in my face, then blinks several times. When
he‟s done, his eyes aren‟t all whited out anymore, and he immediately reels back like I‟m
the one that just covered his face with spit instead of vice versa. So gross.

“What the Hell?” he snarls. “What are you doing back here?”

He looks around and seems to realize that it was he who was in the wrong place, not me.
“Shit, I must have hyperventilated or something.” and with that he gets up and walks back
to where he came from at the back of the bus, followed moments later by more cussing
when he realizes the stop we just made that he walked to the back during was his own.

When the bus finally gets to my neighborhood, I hop off with the others from my street and
who should be waiting for me but that big, black dog. It sits next to a row of hydrangea
bushes and watches intently as we cross the street in front of the bus, just staring coldly at
me. I think about approaching it, but you‟re not supposed to approach strays, and as if it
reads my mind the dog curls its lip back in a quiet snarl.
“Fair enough,” I say to it, “I was just told to be careful after all.”

I walk home with the big, black dog keeping pace far behind me, close enough for me to
know it‟s there but far enough back to not feel threatening. Every now and then I look back
and it stops and sits down and cocks its head at me. I am quickly becoming not a fan of
dogs.

Once I get home, I go straight to Paschar and ask him about the dog and Roger. He tells me
that what Roger said is true, that there are other religious pantheons. He even spells the
word out so I can look it up, which is good because I thought you spelled it with an „i‟. He
says that while he is aware of other pantheons, he is limited only to what humanity knows
of them. In other words, Gods and angels of different religions don‟t usually mingle.
Paschar says Roger is outside of their “jurisdiction” now, which I also looked up and that
means they can‟t judge him--?

“So does this mean all the big books of mythology I read are true?” I ask.

Probably not, Paschar says, not even everything you read in the Bible is true. It‟s like a two
thousand year game of telephone. Someone said something at the dawn of time, and it got
told to someone else, and someone else, and each time slightly changed from the last until
you get here and things are vastly different.

“But you would know, wouldn‟t you?” I ask, “You were there when it first got said, right?”

No.

“Oh,” I scratch my head. “Okay. So... do you know who „she‟ is?”

I have no idea, Paschar admits, I don‟t know what pantheon Roger joined. Take his word
for it though, and be careful.

“I‟ll be careful. But I‟m sure whatever happens, I‟ll see it coming.” I force a smile and hug
Paschar. He can‟t hug me back because he‟s just a doll.

The rest of the afternoon and evening goes by as it usually does: my dad lets me play drums
in the garage on Roger‟s old drum set for a while. Good thing Roger‟s been stuck in his
coffin all this time, because if he had ever found out I was using his drums, that
conversation on the bus would have been a lot different I think. He probably would have
really twisted my head off. Dad makes tuna noodle casserole for dinner, which is super
gross. I eat it, but I don‟t like it, and I have to drink some milk with every bite just to keep
from gagging.

At bedtime, I feed Dr. Fishy and Dr. Brown. Dr. Fishy is a Siamese fighting fish. If you
have more than one, they kill each other, so Dr. Brown is a little algae eater who floats
along the bottom of the tank and sucks up stones and spits them out again. Siamese fighting
fish don‟t attack algae eaters, so the two doctors make a great team. I‟ve had them for four
months now and they‟re still alive which is probably a record for me.

After I read for a bit from the book I‟m doing a report on, Mom and Dad come in and kiss
me goodnight and then turn out the lights. I don‟t tell them that I talked to Roger. Once
they‟re gone, Paschar who lays next to me in bed starts reciting the lyrics to old hymns you
can‟t find in church anymore. His voice is always so calm and soothing that it helps me go
right to sleep.

It‟s after midnight when I wake up sweaty and confused. I was having that dream again
about the summer my cousin Susan got run over by a boat and chopped up by the rudder. I
never tell anyone about the dream because they‟d just sign me back up for therapy. Paschar
is still beside me in bed and he‟s immediately aware that I‟m awake, so he starts reciting
hymns again quietly. But there‟s something wrong in the room. The moon outside the
window is making everything blue, and I can kind of see most of my stuff. In the corner by
the closet door, there‟s a shape that‟s not supposed to be there, not very tall, maybe half the
size of a person, unless it‟s a hunched over person. Please don‟t be a hunched over person.
As if in response, I see them: two shiny eyes reflecting light from outside, staring at me.
They‟re not human eyes, they‟re doggy eyes. Like the eyes of a big, black dog that should
not be in my bedroom.

“Paschar, the dog is in my bedroom,” I whisper.

He stops reciting hymn lyrics. I can‟t see it, Lily he says.

This isn‟t good.

“Go away!” I hiss at the dog.

It responds by standing up. For a moment I think it‟s going to pounce on me and tear my
throat out, but instead the hinges of the closet door creak as it begins to open. I know I shut
it tight because closets freak me out ever since I saw the movie Poltergeist. The door opens
a crack and the dog walks slowly into it, disappearing into the darkness inside.

Something just opened the closet, Paschar says, Was that the dog?

“I don‟t know.”

Suddenly, the closet door swings wide open into the room. I frantically pull the covers up
to my chin, waiting for the dog to come back out or something worse. Maybe a billion
spiders. No no no, neon glowing robot made of spinning blades and shooting flames.
Zombies... pet zombies.. Zombie versions of every pet that died in this house. That‟s--
that‟s horrifying. Why am I thinking about that? Stupid imagination. Maybe it‟s clones of
my mom and dad, with black holes for eyes and blood pouring out of their mouths. Stop!
Stop thinking of things!

Paschar sounds suddenly scared too. Maybe it‟s Samael, he says.

Oh... oh crud. Someone, something in the closet is getting into our heads. It‟s flipping
through the rolodex of our nightmares, and trying to pluck just the right one to introduce
itself to us with.

Lily, Paschar says urgently, Clear your mind! Focus on one thing and keep it in your head!

I start thinking of a brick wall, just focusing on the brick wall. Bricks. Lots of bricks. How
tall is this wall? This brick wall? How brick is this wall? So many bricks.

Paschar starts singing the hymns he was droning on earlier. He doesn‟t stop, and when one
ends he goes right on into the other. He actually sounds really nice. I guess you could say
he has the voice of an angel.

Bricks, bricks, bricks.

The closet door slams shut angrily. A minute later, my father comes stomping and shouting
down the hallway and barges into the room, flipping on the light. I sit up and rub my eyes.

“What‟s going on in here?” he demands.

“I have no idea,” I admit. “I was asleep and then something loud woke me up. It sounded
like a door slamming.”

My dad eyes the closet door suspiciously. For a moment I see him in my mind, opening the
door and the big, black dog leaping onto him and tearing him to pieces. No, stop that, brain.
Don‟t open the closet, Dad. Please, don‟t open the closet.

He looks at me. “Go back to sleep.” Then he flips the lights off and leaves the room,
shutting the door quietly behind him.

I do not sleep a wink the rest of the night.

I‟m Lily Madwhip and I feel like a walking corpse.

“Jesus, Lily, you look like a walking corpse.”

“Thanks, Greg,” I say.

Jamal smacks Greg. I don‟t really blame Greg for thinking so though, because I certainly
feel like one. Probably because I didn‟t get any sleep last night. Or the night before. In fact,
the past three nights have been about waiting for the thing in my closet to come out and kill
me. It‟s hard to close your eyes when there‟s something in your closet that might want to
kill you.

Saturday I spent outside in the front yard, drawing in the dirt with a stick. Fun, I know. I‟d
go around back and play in the woods, but my dad has some secret project he‟s working on
in the backyard and he told me I‟m not allowed to go back there until it‟s done. I‟m not
even allowed to look out the windows to peek. He says if I see it, he‟ll just stop working on
it. “And I mean it.” He really does mean it. He‟s not like one of those dads who says he‟s
going to do something if you don‟t do what you‟re told and then you don‟t do what you‟re
told and he talks his way around doing the thing he said he was going to do. I know kids
who have dads like that... they‟re all spoiled. Probably because they know that even if they
do the thing they‟re not supposed to, they won‟t get in real trouble for it. Lisa cough Welch.

On the other hand, maybe the thing Dad is doing in the backyard isn‟t something I want
him to do, in which case seeing what it is and causing him to stop it could be a good thing?
I don‟t know. He‟s probably building me a treehouse, judging from all the lumber he‟s been
going out and buying. Even Paschar won‟t tell me what it is. I never thought Paschar would
conspire with my dad.

Sunday I stared at a book and pretended to read it for a couple hours. I think I completely
fooled Mom. Normally I‟d spend Sunday in my room doing a still life at my art table, but
there‟s a thing in my closet that I think wants to kill me, so I stay out of my bedroom except
at bed time. Then I sit in bed until I hear Mom and Dad go to sleep, at which point Paschar
and I hurry down to the living room and try to sleep on the couch. Except I can‟t sleep
because I feel like even from there, the thing in my closet is reaching into my brain with
long, invisible tentacles and trying to get my nightmares, and I have to think about brick
walls and oceans and the names of every pet I‟ve ever had until the sun comes up.

The worst part of all this is I think I ate a grapefruit this morning by accident. My dad put
something in a bowl on my placemat at breakfast and I remember scooping it and it tasting
sour but I was in such a haze of sleep deprivation that I just ate it without thinking or
looking.

Dad even asked me, “You don‟t want any sugar on that, hon?” and I just said, “Yes,” and
finished it and then gathered my backpack and lunch and walked out to the bus stop.

“Can you die if you don‟t sleep?” I ask Jamal.

Jamal shrugs. “Maybe.”

Greg sticks his orange head up over the seat and blinks at me several times. “I saw a Star
Trek episode where they went crazy from lack of sleep.”
Okay, well, you can‟t dispute the science of Star Trek. I‟m going to lose my mind I guess. I
look out the window and I think I see a big, black dog wearing a funny hat driving a little,
red car alongside the bus. It looks at me and cocks its head like dogs do. I blink a couple
times and there‟s not even a car there anymore. This must be it, the beginning of my
descent into madness.

At school, I stand at my locker and mess up the combination three times. The bell rings for
people to be in class and I‟m still trying to get my locker open. Right 13, left past 13 to 42,
then all the way around to 6. How am I screwing this up? (P.S. Please don‟t memorize my
combination.) Finally I get it and look around only to realize the hall is empty. Everyone‟s
in class, and I‟m just starting to put my backpack away and get the right book out. I‟m even
blanking on the name of my homeroom teacher, or where to go.

I‟m just so tired. I close my eyes for a second, kind of like blinking only I don‟t follow
through on the second part where you open your eyelids again, and next thing I know I‟m
tipping forward and banging my head against my locker. Maybe I‟ll just go see the nurse
and ask to lie down.

The nurse‟s office smells like formaldehyde. That‟s a liquid they use for preserving bodies.
I smelled it at my brother Roger‟s wake. They had him laying in his coffin, dressed up in a
suit he‟d never wear when he was alive. I want to say he wouldn‟t be caught dead in it, but
he was dead and we caught him in it. When I went to say goodbye to him, he smelled like
pickles. I thought that was really weird, like maybe the funeral home people had had
pickles with their lunch and accidentally spilled some on Roger, but Paschar said I was just
smelling the formaldehyde.

Nurse Halifax is restocking some of her medical supplies when I come in. She looks like
she‟s thirty years old, going on a hundred. Her hair is shock white, which I think means
you‟d be shocked to hear her real age after noticing her white hair. Honestly, she‟s got a
baby face like some of the college kids I see sometimes at the mall, but I guess she‟s been
alive a long time because my dad remembers her being the nurse when he went to school
here. She squints at me. “What are you doing here, Lillian?”

“I felt really dizzy so I was hoping I could lay down for a bit.”

“Do I need to call your parents and have them come pick you up?” she asks.

Oh please no. “No, I just need to rest a moment if that‟s okay.”

She checks my temperature with the back of her hand, which I don‟t think is really the most
effective method. It‟s not like I‟m trying to weasel my way out of school, I just need a nap.
Besides, after homeroom we have English and I already know English good.
“Alright, you can go lie down in room two.” she waves me off and goes back to
reorganizing her tongue depressors.

The nurse‟s office has three rooms for kids to lie down in if they‟re sick, each with one of
those padded tables like a doctor‟s office. I go into room two, shutting the door behind me
and turning off the light. Ah, blissful darkness. It‟s not pitch black though, because of a
single-watt bulb over the sink. I‟ll leave that on for a bit of comfort. I can hear it humming
as I lie down on the padded table and take a look around the room before closing my eyes.
There‟s a chart on the wall with a detailed drawing of all the muscles and bones in the
human body. It stares at me with its cartoon eyes, so I roll over to face the wall and go to
sleep.

I dream about standing at the top of the hill in my backyard, looking out into the woods.
There are people standing among the trees and they‟re all looking at me. I can‟t make out
their faces but I can feel their eyes on me. One of them raises their arm and points at me
with a weird, gnarled finger like some witch out of a bad movie. A big, black dog appears
at the person‟s feet, flaps its mouth like its barking but no noise comes out, and then starts
dashing up the hill toward me.

The sound of a door creaking wakes me up. How long was I out? I can‟t tell as there‟s no
clock in the room. I sit up and look to the door, expecting to see Nurse Halifax checking in
on me, probably to tell me it‟s time to go back to class. The door is closed. The other door,
however, is opening. You know... the door that wasn‟t there before. It‟s set in the wall at
the end of the padded table and I swear I‟ve been in one of these rooms before and there
was no other door in it. It would have to open into the next room, but instead it opens into
utter darkness. There‟s a poster hanging on the other side of the door, and I recognize it
because it‟s my Beatles Yellow Submarine poster that I hung up in my closet.

Why is my bedroom closet following me to school.

“Are you fudging kidding me?” I mutter.

As if in response, a thin woman steps out, walking with a strange limp, one leg thumping
heavily on the floor. Her skin is so pale it almost glows. People tell me I‟m pasty white but
this lady could almost be made of paste from the way her skin looks. She‟s wearing tattered
brown pants that are held up with an old piece of rope, and her shirt seems like it‟s made of
mummy wrappings. Her hair is almost as white as Nurse Halifax‟s. Maybe she‟s her secret
albino daughter that she keeps locked up. In my closet. That shouldn‟t actually be here.

The pasty lady turns her head like its locked into place on her neck and looks at me with
big, bulging eyes. Her nose is pinched and almost flat on her face, and her mouth is thin
and crooked. She says one word at me. “Lily.” and then she grins and all her teeth look like
little cat fangs. It‟s like her head was once a jack-o-lantern until somebody made her into a
real girl.

I don‟t say anything back because frankly I‟m hoping I‟m still dreaming and I just need to
wake back up and also because DON‟T TALK TO STRANGERS, WHAT IS WRONG
WITH YOU? Why do all these creepy people just show up and have to ruin my day
constantly?

“Do you know who I am?” she asks. Her voice is soft. Not like a whisper, more like that of
someone you‟d meet at the park who‟s trying to convince you to get in their van because
there‟s a puppy in the back but your parents are just five feet away.

“You‟re the bogeyman,” I say without thinking, though I have no idea who she is.

Her eyes roll back in her head for a moment, appearing back around the other side. “That‟s
a good name. We‟ve heard it before, my sister and I.”

I look at the door to the main section of Nurse Halifax‟s office. The bogeywoman stands
between me and it, just off to the side but close enough that she could easily grab me if I
made a dash for it. The hair on my arms is prickling me and there‟s a sharp ringing starting
in my left ear. I‟m afraid to look back at her, to make contact with those weird, bulging
eyes and their tiny pupils. She reminds me of a shark. Like a person had a baby with a
shark. I don‟t know if the shark had the baby or the person had the baby. Maybe the person
was swimming with sharks and kissed one without thinking about it. I‟m not stupid, I know
how babies are made.

“I prefer the name Onokole,” she says. She gestures back toward the darkness beyond the
door she came through. “I‟m here to bring you to meet my mother.”

I shake my head. “I‟m not going in that closet with you.” I turn toward the other door and
shout as loudly as I can. “NURSE HALIFAX, HELP!”

“She can‟t hear you,” the bogeywoman says with a smirk. She runs her tongue over her
little cat fang teeth. “At the moment, she doesn‟t even remember you‟re in here.”

I try to focus, to visualize the future the way Paschar taught me, to try to get some hint of
how to proceed, but all I see is darkness. It‟s not the first time I haven‟t been able to see the
future when I‟ve tried to will it. Stupid gift likes to make my life difficult. Ten bucks says I
wouldn‟t even be sitting here on this padded table about to get eaten by a shark-human
hybrid bogeywoman in the nurse‟s office if I couldn‟t see things before they happen.

The bogeywoman holds out her hand to me. “I know you have no idea what‟s going on, but
I‟m not here to take you to Hades or anything. Although, if you‟d rather, my sister can
come for you instead. She‟s been known to eat a child or two.”
I tuck my hands in my pockets. “Why are those the only two options?”

She shakes her head with amusement. I hate it when creepy people are amused. “Last
chance, little one. Come with me, meet my mother, or we‟ll send Lamia. Maybe she‟ll just
bite off a finger or a hand when you fight. Do you want to see what she looks like? My
sister. I can show you.”

Her face starts to melt, slowly at first, but quickening like someone held a blow torch to a
clay sculpture. Her body bends like its made of taffy, stretching her mummy bandages.
They don‟t rip or come apart at all, it‟s more like they‟re a part of her body. I want to
scream as I watch every recognizable feature of her warp and twist, puddling in on itself.
For a second, I see a beautiful face, prettier than the one she had before she started
morphing. It turns and looks at me with hollow eye sockets and opens a mouth with several
rows of teeth. Remember earlier when I said she looked like a shark and a person had a
baby? Well I was wrong... now she looks like a shark and a person had a baby.

“Is this what you want?” the thing hisses. It‟s got at least three elbows on each arm, and
four arms sprouting out of it. I can‟t even tell where its legs are, it‟s more like a giant stalk,
like it‟s growing out of the floor rather than standing on it.

“Can we have a do over?” I yell, covering my eyes. There‟s a sound like somebody
slapping a wet towel around and smacking people with it. My brother Roger used to do that
whenever we went swimming. He‟d get the towel soaking wet and then snap me with it. A
wet towel really hurts when you get snapped with it. I heard someone once lost an eye from
getting snapped with a wet towel right in the face. Mom and Dad always told Roger not to
snap me with his towel, so he just waited until they weren‟t looking to do it. I wonder
where Roger is right now?

When I look again, she‟s turned back into the gaunt, pale woman she was before, although
her white hair is now a bit blonder and longer, and one of her eyes is a little off-center. It‟s
kind of distracting, but I don‟t mention it because I don‟t want her to feel self conscious.

“Shall we go?” she asks.

“Look,” I say, “I don‟t want to get eaten by your sister, but I can‟t go right now. I‟ve got
school.” English class is looking so good right now. I wonder what Simone is doing? She‟s
probably sitting in class wondering what I‟m doing.

The bogeywoman shakes her head. “Time works differently where we‟re going.”

Well isn‟t that wildly convenient. “Where exactly are we going?” I ask pointing at the door,
“Just right in there in the closet?”

“We‟re going to the crossroads, where my mother lives.”


“Your mother lives at a crossroad?”

The bogeywoman nods and grabs me by the hand, pulling me off the padded table. Her grip
is cold and clammy, like I‟m being tugged at by a fish. I stumble to my feet.

“I‟ll explain on the way.”

I don‟t want to go, but I feel strangely compelled to let her lead me into the darkness of the
closet. My closet. In the nurse‟s office. This doesn‟t make any sense. I‟m dreaming. Lily,
wake up.

The door slams shut behind us. At the same time, the inside of the closet is lit by fire. I
panic for a moment, before realizing that we‟re not actually standing in a little closet, but in
a stony hallway with rough-looking sides. There are little bowls nailed into the rock walls,
and each one has a little bonfire inside it that lights up the whole place. The hallway goes
on seemingly forever, and the flickering fires make me feel dizzy again, but not like banged
my head against my locker dizzy, more like I‟m losing a sense of which way is up kind of
dizzy.

The bogeywoman holds my wrist with her fish-cold hand and walks awkwardly down the
passage, one foot thumping hard on the floor every other step. As we go, she starts talking
like a tour guide.

“We call it the crossroad. Think of it this way: your existence is like that door we just went
through. You live on one side of the door.”

I run my hand along the stone wall. It feels wet and slimy, and I‟d swear it just twitched
when I touched it. Maybe this isn‟t stone at all. Oh God, please don‟t be inside a living
thing.

“When you die, it‟s like walking through the door, to the other side.”

“You mean like the veil to the afterlife?” I ask.

She turns and looks at me, still clopping along. Actually, I take that back, her head doesn‟t
turn, but her eye moves around the side of her head to look back at me. I gag a little
watching it swim around in her skin.

“Yes, the veil. The crossroad is the veil.” she says.

“What do you mean?” Actually, I have more important questions, like-- Jesus, does this
hallway ever end? How long are we going to be walking here? When you said time works
differently, did you mean that we‟d be walking down this creepy, fleshy hallway forever?
Also, am I going to die?
“When you walk through a door, you‟re passing through a plane.”

I don‟t know how we got on the subject of airplanes, but okay.

“That plane is like another form of existence. We live on that plane. And my mother lives
where your plane and our plane meet. At the crossroad. At the veil.”

“You live on a plane?” I can‟t even imagine trying to live on a plane. You‟d just be flying
everywhere constantly. I wonder if they have their own stewardesses? Maybe that‟s who
this lady is. Her and her sister might be stewardesses. Does that mean her mother is the
pilot?

“We‟re almost there.”

I look past her at the endless hall and the flickering fires and the wet-looking walls. I don‟t
see any other end to it. Maybe not having both eyes looking forward is confusing her vision.
But a moment later she goes, “Ahh, here we are at last,” and reaches out into the emptiness,
twisting her wrist as if she‟s turning a knob. The hallway moves like it‟s a painting on a
wall and opens away from us into a deep purple glow. Pretty.

The room we step into looks like one of my dreams after I had pizza for dinner. You ever
have pizza for dinner and then have really weird dreams? Maybe they just drug my pizza or
something. Anyway, the purple glow comes from these shiny, crystal rocks that are glued
onto the ends of metal poles standing around the room. There‟s no corners in here, it‟s just
one big circle. Or rather a cylinder I guess. It‟s like we‟re in a big soup can. I mean a really
big soup can. Like a house-sized soup can.

“This does not look like an airplane,” I mutter.

The bogeywoman lets go of my wrist finally and thumps away from me on her heavy leg.
She walks over to one of the walls, bends down and makes a motion like she‟s unzipping
the side of a camping tent. I went camping one summer when we were visiting my Uncle
George‟s cabin, before he had finished getting an addition built onto it. Roger and my
cousin Susie got to sleep on the porch, and I got put out in a little pup tent in the front yard.
Roger and Susie tormented me all night by making werewolf noises from the porch until
our parents came out and told them to shut up. The wall unzips, just like my pup tent did,
revealing an arch into another hallway.

“Follow me,” the bogeywoman says, looking back at me with a cat-fang grin, “mother is
waiting.”

Lily, you are not in Kansas anymore.

I am in so much trouble right now, I don‟t even know where to begin. I wonder if Nurse
Halifax has checked on me yet and found the room empty, or if what the bogeywoman said
is true, that she‟s forgotten entirely that I was even in there. Or if time is frozen while I‟m
here in... wherever I am. What if I get back and find that a hundred years have passed?
What if I don‟t get back? Oh, Paschar, will you wonder whatever happened to me? Can you
even sense that I‟m here?

I follow the lady down another hallway, this one made of actual stones, not weird, fleshy
stone-looking material. It‟s like someone actual built this hallway, rather than carved a
tunnel through a meat mine. There are other doors in the walls, no two seem to match. I
wonder if this is how the bogeyman --or bogeywoman-- gets into people‟s bedrooms. I
wonder if one of these doors leads to Lisa Welch‟s room. Maybe I can talk them into eating
her.

We zig and zag down hallway after hallway of doors. I‟m honestly lost at this point, not
that I wasn‟t lost before. I mean, I‟m not sure I could get back home on my own even if I
tried. The bogeywoman doesn‟t seem worried that I might run away. I imagine things work
differently here than back home.

Finally, we enter another large, round room. This one is even bigger than the last one, and
it‟s got other people in it. There are huge pillars sticking up floor to ceiling, and stone
chairs that seem like they grew up right out of the floor. The other people sit and look at me,
their eyes shining like cat eyes. A huge chandelier hangs from the ceiling in the center of
the room and has at least a hundred candles in it. I wonder who has to light all those
candles? I do not want that job.

In the middle of the room is a big stone chair. There‟s a lady sitting on it, raven-haired,
with shiny eyes like the rest. She‟s got on a long, white dress, and the big, black dog that
was following me on Friday sits by her side while she pets it.

Everyone except the lady on the big chair stands when the bogeywoman and I enter the
room. There‟s a murmur through the lot of them, but I can‟t understand what they‟re saying.
I think it‟s another language. Oh boy, if we‟re not speaking English here I‟m in trouble.

“Welcome, Lillian,” the raven-haired woman says. It‟s in English, whew. She doesn‟t
sound like she means it though. Welcome, that is. If anything, her tone sounds like she
actually means the opposite. What‟s the opposite of welcome? Like, what do you say to
greet someone who you want to not be there?

“H-hi,” I stutter. The people around me sit back down with a rustle. The bogeywoman
walks over to stand on the other side of the woman‟s chair. “Can I pet your dog?” I ask.

“You may not.” She pets it herself.

“Oh.”
The woman stares at me. She doesn‟t blink. I don‟t blink back but I don‟t feel comfortable
staring at her so I stare at the dog instead. The dog stares back at me too. God damnit. I
stare off into space. Space can‟t stare back at me.

“My name is Hekate, Lillian. Do you know me?”

“Hecka--what?”

“Hekate.”

“No,” I admit.

“Well I know you.”

“Oh.”

At this point, I feel like I‟m known by way too many of the wrong people. It would be nice
to have maybe someone cool like that kid from The Goonies know me. The one with the
asthma. Not some woman who sits in a big, empty room doing nothing, surrounded by
people doing nothing, all doing nothing in a big, empty room together in the middle of a
maze of hallways with doors to people‟s closets.

“You are the knife that cuts the veil,” she says. Her words ring in my ears because I‟ve
heard them in that order before. Officer Flowers called me that. “The knife that cuts the
veil.” I didn‟t understand it then, and I‟m still confused by it now.

“I don‟t know what that means,” I tell her.

“It means,” the woman says, standing up and taking her hand off the big, black dog, “that
one of us is going to have to destroy the other.”

I‟m Lily Madwhip and things have gone terribly wrong.

Destroy is a heavy word. Can you imagine being ten years old and some random woman
who surrounds herself with creepy monster people says she‟s going to destroy you? I mean,
kill is one thing. But destroy? It reminds me of when my parents and Roger and I went to a
Thanksgiving party that my mom‟s company was putting on and Charlie Butterman, the
CEO‟s son ate so much of the turkey that Mom said he demolished it. The visual you may
get is of a turkey stripped of all the meat, but it was even worse than that. Charlie was a
wrecking ball-- a turkey-consuming wrecking ball.

So when Hekate tells me she‟s going to destroy me, all I can imagine is her jumping on me
and tearing me apart like Charlie Butterman on a Thanksgiving turkey. Bones and Lily bits
everywhere.
“But I‟m only ten years old!” I yell and make my eyes water a bit. It‟s a cheap tactic I know,
but it usually works on adults.

Hekate does not look the least bit bothered by my tears. “Oh please,” she says, waving her
hand at me like my father does when I tell him I‟m too full to eat the green beans on my
plate, “do you really think crying is going to sway me? Do you know how many like you
I‟ve dealt with in my years?” Jeez, she asks a lot of questions.

“Thirty eight?” I guess.

She smirks at me. “Eleven.”

“Oh.” For some reason I thought it would be higher. I don‟t know why she‟d smirk at me
for her number being lower than my guess.

“May I eat her, Mother?” hisses someone. It‟s a lady sitting at the foot of Hekate‟s chair.
She‟s dressed in a black gown kind of like the bogeywoman‟s, and she wiggles around like
she‟s uncomfortable. No, I guess the word would be writhes. She writhes around on the
steps in front of Hekate, who apparently is her mom. It takes me a moment to realize that
the lady‟s legs aren‟t simply weird and unnaturally curvy, they‟re a single leg. In fact, it‟s
not a leg at all, it‟s a scaly-looking tail like a giant snake. She‟s got a snake butt. I almost
laugh when I think that. From now on, she will be known as Snakebutt.

Snakebutt is facing me, but I can‟t tell if she‟s looking at me because she‟s got no eyes, just
a pair of dark, empty sockets. Her mouth is hanging open and I can see a pair of rather long,
pointy fangs sticking out, and beyond them another row of teeth, kind of like a shark. Yikes.
She is the complete package if you ordered “Nightmare Babysitter” from Sears. My parents
always say if you leave your mouth hanging open, a fly will get in. Something about
Snakebutt makes me think she‟d enjoy that.

“Of course you can‟t eat her,” Hekate smacks the woman on the top of her head. Snakebutt
flinches and snarls for a second like a cornered dog. “Why do you always ask if you can eat
them? I know it‟s been over sixteen hundred seasons since one was last before us, but the
rules haven‟t changed.” Hekate looks at me and tries to smile but she‟s clearly not any good
at it. “We are not uncivilized here at the crossroads.”

Uncivilized? Lady, your daughter has a snake butt. I don‟t want to say what that implies
you did with a snake, but if somebody was caught doing it at the zoo, I don‟t think the word
“civilized” would come up in the police report.

“Why can‟t we just leave each other alone?” I ask. “I didn‟t want any of this, I just want to
go to school, play with Simone, come home, practice drums, talk to Paschar, have dinner...”
I‟m leaving a lot of stuff out, but none of it involved going in my closet and getting messed
up with monster people.
Hekate clicks her tongue at me dismissively. “The prophecy states that the only--”

No way, a prophecy? “There‟s a prophecy?” I ask excitedly.

“Yes, now don‟t interrupt.”

“Sorry.” Oh man, I‟m part of a prophecy. Eeee!

“The prophecy--” she waits a moment, looking at me like she expects me to interrupt again,
but I know better. “--states that the only way for my reign here at the crossroads to end is
for my life to be taken by the knife that cuts the veil.”

Thaaaaat‟s me. Gulp.

“You see, long ago when my people flourished in the old country, the crossroads came to
be, creating the veil that separated mortals from immortals. Some of those separated by the
veil tried several times to end me. Always they failed.”

Wait a second... am I getting a history lesson? I just came from school, I don‟t need this.

The people around Hekate nod as she talks, except for Snakebutt who hangs her head like
she‟s heard the story a hundred times. Or, maybe even a thousand times. She seems to
sense me staring and winks an empty eye socket, then licks her lips. For some reason, I
can‟t help but wonder how snakes go to the bathroom.

“When they found that brute force was inadequate, they decided to use their limited wits. A
hundred years went by before they had trained another to confront me. For their impudence,
I cut him into little pieces and scattered them across the land; then my darlings salted the
ground where his bits were buried so he could not even fertilize the Earth.”

That sounds a bit excessive. I look at the stone tiling on the floor. Some of the stones are
polished and dark, others are lighter but dull. Maybe this place was the inspiration for the
checkerboard? I used to play checkers with my dad, but he told me my strategy of knocking
the board over and storming off when I lost wasn‟t allowed, so we played Pop-O-Matic
Trouble instead.

“Are you listening?” I look up. Hekate is glaring at me. The black dog at her side curls its
lips back to bare its nasty teeth.

“I understood the part where you cut the guy up and salted his bits, but the rest of what you
just said made no sense to me.” I can‟t look her in the eyes, so I play with my fingers and
look at them and pray quietly that she doesn‟t just walk up and tear my head off. Please,
Paschar, if you can hear me, save me.
“Oh for the love of--” the bogeywoman steps down from beside her mother‟s seat. “Look,
little girl, long before you were born, or your grandparents or their grandparents or anyone
even closely related to you, my mother was destined to live here at the crossroads between
life and afterlife. But those beings --your “angels”-- on the one side of the veil didn‟t like
being separated from the rest of you, so they started plotting a way to break the divide.” she
pauses and looks at me with her hands out in that, “Do you follow what I‟m saying?” kind
of way that teachers like to do after they‟ve written a math problem up on the board and
nobody raises their hand to solve it.

“Okay.” I say, though really this is still only making partial sense to me. Why would the
angels want to get rid of the veil? We had a neighbor once, Mr. Barkley, and he didn‟t have
any curtains on his windows. Or shades. So everybody walking by or driving by no matter
the time could just look in and see Mr. Barkley walking around his house eating his dinner
and staring at the TV and doing his business. I can‟t imagine every day having anybody
who wanted to be able to just look in and watch you eat or sit in your underwear and watch
TV, which apparently Mr. Barkley did a lot. Like a lot a lot.

The bogeywoman sighs with a little relief. I guess she‟s not really a bogeywoman, but at
this point I can‟t remember the name she told me when she first stepped out of my closet. It
started with an „O‟ I think. Ohno-something.

“Your angels have been training you to break through the veil so that they can coexist
among you once again,” Ohno says.

“And that‟s... bad?” I ask. Would that make Heaven an actual place we could go I wonder?
I heard a song once called Heaven is a Place on Earth. I didn‟t think it was literal, but
maybe once long ago Heaven and Hell were actual places you could visit. I know my dad
thinks Hell exists on Earth because I‟ve heard him talk about Columbus, Ohio.

Hekate stands up from her chair. Her raven hair is floating in the air like there‟s some sort
of fan behind her blowing on her. Nobody else‟s hair is reacting to it. Oh my God, she has
magic hair. That is so cool. I can‟t help but quietly go “oooo...” as I watch.

“The crossroads is the wall separating you and them, do you not understand?” she sounds
kind of angry. Snakebutt grins all her rows of teeth and claps her hands excitedly. I get the
bad sense that the whole “destroying me” thing is about to go down and I once again
picture Charlie Butterman demolishing an entire turkey. Here comes the wrecking ball...
woo woo! No wait, that‟s a train. What sound does a wrecking ball make? Uh... woosh, I
guess.

“When you punch a hole in the wall, you are destroying that wall!”

She floats down the steps from her chair and I realize her feet aren‟t even touching the floor.
She‟s literally floating. When I said she floats down the steps I meant it in just the delicate
way she moved, but no, she‟s actually floating. With frightening speed, she crosses the
room and gets right up in my face, making me flinch. Instinctively I tense up further,
expecting to get punched in the arm for it, but I don‟t think they play that game here. Only
Roger ever seemed to play two for flinching.

Hekate grabs my wrist. Her hand is really cold. I start to tell her that, but she pulls me away
from the rest of the group, none of whom rise to join us. They just sit there in their stone
chairs in their checkerboard room and watch us go. I guess they know not to follow. Or
maybe it‟s pretty gruesome when she destroys people. Oh God, why‟d I think that? My
knees feel like jelly, and I trip as she pulls me. I start to cry for real.

“What on Earth are you doing?” Hekate asks, more with annoyance than rage.

I sniffle. “I don‟t want to be destroyed like a turkey!”

“What?”

“I don‟t--” I grab my arm and start pulling to try to get out of her grip. “Uhn! --want to get-
- erg! --destroyed!” Wow, she‟s... she‟s got a pretty solid hold there. Once when I was six...
or maybe it was seven... my dad took Roger and I to a water park. Roger and I had a blast
and we swam and slid down water slides for hours. We also got so cooked from the sun that
I would scream whenever I was out of the water. I was afraid to go home because I knew
the moment I got out of the pool it would burn, but my dad insisted because the park was
going to close soon, so he ended up physically dragging me out of the water and back to the
car. I remember his grip on my arm felt like iron. Well, now I think maybe it was more like
a softer metal. Maybe gold? Gold‟s supposed to be pretty soft, although it‟s also heavy.
Yeah, that sounds like my dad, soft and heavy. But Hekate, she‟s got an iron grip that puts
my dad‟s to shame.

Hekate continues to drag me across the stoney, checkerboard floor and out of the room,
back into the twisty, turny hall of hallways that Ohno and I came from originally. I try to
stand again but she‟s floating so fast I can‟t even get a foot up. My arm starts to hurt from
all my weight hanging on it. I only weigh around sixty pounds, but it still feels like my arm
is probably going to rip off entirely and then she‟s going to float on without noticing that
I‟m laying on the floor bleeding to death.

“Can we --ugh-- stop a moment?” I beg. Some of her long, fantastic, magic hair whips me
in the face and I don‟t know whether to be bothered by it or honored. Who gets slapped in
the face with magic hair these days? Just me. Just Lily Madwhip, that‟s who.

“I want you to see what you‟ve done already.”

“I haven‟t done anything!” I yell, “I just got here!”


This place is dark and dreary despite the torches, but the doors we pass are everything from
butt ugly metal doors you‟d find in the back of a grocery store freezer to majestic, polished
wood covered with bronze work in swirly patterns and leaves. I want to tug myself free and
try them all. I want to see if there‟s a door that takes me to Australia. I bet you can tell the
Australian doors from the regular doors because they‟re upside down.

Hekate turns a corner and I get thumped against the wall as she drags me around it. She
wrenches my arm and pain shoots up to my shoulder. I can‟t believe my arm is still in its
socket. Arm, when we get out of this... if we get out of this, I will give you an Oreo as a
reward. Three comfort Oreos. I promise.

The hallways twist again and again. How the heck does she keep track of where she is
around here? Hekate keeps talking at me as she floats along. Show off. “Three seasons ago,
you sundered my realm. I admit, I had gotten lax. It had been a long time since they tried.
Maybe deep down I hoped that they were done, that they had accepted the veil for what it is.
And then... this.”

She throws me to the floor at her feet. My arm is screaming with pain, but to be honest, I
was in a car accident last year and had some broken ribs and that was a lot worse. I can
handle how raw my arm feels. Just gotta compare how bad things are to how bad they could
be!

Speaking of how bad things are... the hallway ahead of me is... well, let‟s just say it looks
like a Godzilla-sized Charlie Butterman thought it was a Thanksgiving turkey. The floor
goes from smooth and straight to torn up and up and up. The stones almost form a staircase,
like a staircase if the designer was drunk maybe. There‟s a wooden door with a crystal knob
like the ones at Nana‟s house, and it‟s floating and rotating slowly in the air as if it‟s
drifting in outer space. Why someone would shoot a door into orbit, I don‟t know. There‟s
broken rock and boards and they‟re all defying gravity, which cheeses me off since I‟m the
only thing here right now that isn‟t defying gravity and I kind of wish I was.

Beyond where the hallway looks Butterman‟d, there‟s nothing. Just nothing. It‟s like an
empty chalkboard. Not one of the green ones. The bits of stone and some other doors are all
tumbling off like I‟m looking down into a pit rather than forward into a hall, and it‟s a little
dizzying. Also, there‟s this howling sound... not like a wolf or the wind, but kind of like
when you‟re at a school concert and they have the whole chorus singing Silent Night and
before anyone starts clapping at the end the whole auditorium is humming a bit and you
aren‟t sure the song is over because it kind of sounds like people are still singing or maybe
it‟s your ears ringing because you‟re standing next to the shrillest girl in the whole class
(guess who that is? cough LISA WELCH cough).
“Look what you did.” Hekate says in the same tone my mother uses when she finds chewed
gum stuck under the sofa cushions. I wonder if they teach classes to prospective moms on
how to perfect that tone of voice?

“I didn‟t do this,” is all I can think to say. To be fair, I don‟t understand how I could have
done it. I wasn‟t even in this place.

Hekate floats past me and hovers in the middle of the mess with her arms out. “Three
seasons ago, did you not attempt to bring someone back from the other side?”

I have to think about that. Did I? A lot happened-- how long ago is three seasons anyway?
She must be talking about when I had to deal with all the angels and their mucked up
destinies. I don‟t recall trying to bring anyone back from... wherever. There was Officer
Flowers, but she was dead and stayed dead. The only other time I had anything to do with
dead people was when--

oh.

“Do you mean Roger?” That‟s right, Samael tried to convince me to save Roger from
getting turned into mashed potatoes. He even sent me back somehow to stop the car crash
from happening. But I didn‟t. “That wasn‟t me.” I tell her.

“It was you, you filthy, little liar.” She glares at me, and she‟s got a heck of a glare, I‟ll give
her that. Her stare would probably make any other little kid wet their pants. Me, I can glare
back though, so I do. Hard. Not as hard, because I think she‟s got a lot more years
experience.

“Samael did that.” I grit my teeth to try to look mean. “And I refused to go through with it.”

“Lies!” Hekate screams. She floats at me like a horrible banshee. That‟s an Irish ghost, I
think I‟ve explained this before. Grabbing my arm again, I feel her lift me off my feet.

She hisses in my ear, “Maybe I shall teach you what it‟s like to see your world torn apart,”
and next thing I know I‟m being tossed like a doll into the nothing beyond the Butterman‟d
hallway.

Ohhhhh God, I‟m falling through space. I can see Hekate watching me go every time I spin
back around. My tummy is in a huge knot. I don‟t remember what I ate for breakfast but I
think I‟m about to get a reminder.

Hekate watches silently, her face full of anger. Eventually, she turns and floats off out of
sight. I keep falling... or floating. I said I wanted to float earlier, but I changed my mind. I
want to go back to the hallway and talk this out. I hope Nurse Halifax remembers me soon.
I wonder if they can send a search party into my closet, like in this one movie I saw where
ghosts kidnapped a little girl into their ghost dimension and her mom went after her through
the closet with a rope tied to her. That was a scary movie, but Paschar told me that sort of
stuff doesn‟t happen in real life. Oh yeah, Paschar? OH YEAH?

The tumbling goes on until I can‟t see the light of the torches back in the hallway.
Everything is dark and silent. I think about humming to myself to keep from going crazy,
but I can‟t think of a good song to hum while falling through space forever. Maybe Crazy
Train.

Suddenly, I hit something hard. Like I hit hard, and the something was hard. I still only see
darkness, but a moment later I hear the sound of someone‟s footsteps clopping on tiled
floor and then there‟s a jiggle of a knob and a creaking sound and-- light! Oh, I‟m on the
floor. And this is the nurse‟s room at school. And there‟s Nurse Halifax, looking down at
me on the floor. Hi, Nurse Halifax. I smile because I‟m so glad to see her. Unless this is a
hallucination brought on by my dying brain. I read that when you‟re dying, you see things
like your whole life, or a tunnel of light, or sometimes you just imagine things.

“Are you alright, Lily?” she asks, bending down and offering me a hand.

“I--” I‟m not sure what to say. “--had a bad dream?”

She helps me up and brushes me off even though that‟s not necessary. My arms still work. I
can brush myself off, thank you.

So what just happened? Was I really dreaming? Am I dreaming now? I pinch myself like
they always say to do and yeah that hurts.

Nurse Halifax gives me a look. “All rested? Do you think you can get to class by yourself?”

“Yeah, but...”

“What is it, dear?”

“My arm hurts.” It does hurt. A lot. There‟s a burning sensation in my shoulder. I don‟t
know if I got dragged by my arm by a woman with magic hair or if I twisted my arm when
falling out of bed.

Nurse Halifax takes my hand and turns my arm over. There on my wrist, the skin is red and
angry-looking. Once, I was helping my dad make spaghetti and I grabbed a pot off the
stove without wearing oven mitts. Always wear oven mitts. Trust me. I got burned and
dropped the spaghetti sauce all over the floor. Dad rinsed my hands off, but even after we
put stuff on them, the skin was red and angry just like it is on my wrist. There‟s a pattern to
the burn, almost like I got branded. It looks like a circle with a squiggly line inside it and a
pointy star in the center.

“What on Earth is this?” she asks, “Did somebody do this to you?”


“I don‟t know,” I lie. Hekate did this. She marked me. It wasn‟t a dream.

I try to get through the rest of school without having a panic attack. Nurse Halifax has
wrapped my wrist up in some bandages after putting some of the same ointment my dad
used on the burn. It smells kind of like a jungle. I think. I‟ve never been to the jungle, but
it‟s definitely got an odor like I would imagine the jungle smells like. Like tigers and big,
wet fronds.

Simone sees the bandages on my arm and asks me what happened. I tell her that I burned
myself at breakfast. She‟s impressed that I cook my own breakfast. I don‟t even remember
what I had for breakfast. The rest of the school day goes by in a haze. I think I answered a
math problem. Maybe even two. We had music class and the teacher Ms. Patty had us sing
some pop song but I couldn‟t focus so I just mouthed the words to a different song and
pretended to sing. All I keep thinking about is that lady Hekate and her daughter Snakebutt
and her other daughter Ohno and all those people sitting in that empty throne room in the
dark in an endless hallway full of closet doors. In my mind, their faces are all twisted and
warped like Ohno did with hers, their eyes melting down their cheeks and their mouths
splitting at weird angles and lots of little teeth inside. They‟re all looking at me in my mind,
all grinning at me, except Hekate, who‟s angry, and her beautiful, magic hair is waving
around like the Little Mermaid‟s, except she‟s not underwater. Are they there now,
watching me?

I‟m on the bus home, looking out the window at imaginary people on the sidewalk whose
faces are melting like wax, my arm screaming with pain from the burn. I don‟t know what‟s
going on, and I need to talk to Paschar.

He‟s waiting in my room when I get home. I don‟t even yell to Dad to let him know I‟m
here, I just run straight upstairs and pick up Paschar from the art table. He hasn‟t painted
anything, but I know he could paint anything if he wanted.

Lily, he says in my head, What happened? I sensed you at school, and then it was like you
were just... gone.

“I saw her, Paschar,” I say, “The woman Roger warned me about. She lives in the veil.”

That‟s not possible, Lily. The veil is not a place.

“I went there. That‟s why you couldn‟t sense me. I was in the veil. It‟s like a maze. They
have doors to everywhere. I think. They have a lot of doors, that‟s for sure.”

A labyrinth.

“Yeah, like the minotaur.” I peel the bandages off my arm and show him the burn. “Look, I
think she marked me.”
I don‟t see anything.

I look at the raised, sore red circular mark with its squiggly line and star. “Right-- right here.
On my wrist.”

I believe you, but I can‟t see it, Lily. I‟m sorry. Whatever it is, it‟s beyond me.

I turn and look over my shoulder at the sound of a door creaking... it‟s the closet. Oh no, it
might be Ohno. Quickly, I run over and pile some toys up in front of it. And LEGOs, strew
LEGOs all over the floor so she steps on them if she tries to come in here, because she
doesn‟t wear any shoes. And my bookshelf! I push my bookshelf, but it‟s full of books and
it‟s heavy. Okay, no bookshelf. Something else?

“What are you doing?”

My dad is standing in the doorway to my room, watching me try to pull my dresser over to
block the closet door. It‟s too heavy though, probably heavier than the bookshelf. Dang it.

“I‟m trying to keep the bogeyman from coming out of my closet.” I explain.

“Oh, okay,” Dad‟s face takes on that expression he gets whenever I try to tell him about
angels or ghosts. You know, the one that says, “I had two kids and this is the one that
lived?” I‟m used to it. Just like he‟s used to me doing stuff like this regularly.

“Well, come downstairs and get your homework done. I‟ve got to leave for work. I put all
the stuff for dinner in the microwave, you just have to heat it up when you‟re hungry, okay?”
He turns to leave.

What?

“What do you mean you have to go to work?” I ask.

Dad stops and turns around. I only just now notice that he‟s wearing some sort of suit.It‟s
like a dark gray sports coat and a white shirt. He‟s even got a black tie on. My dad never
wears ties. Except at Roger‟s funeral. Even Roger wore a tie to that.

“I‟ll be back after you‟re asleep, as usual.”

“Where are you going?” What does he mean as usual?

“I don‟t have time for games, Lily. Come do your homework and give me a hug. I‟ll check
on you when I get home.” He opens his arms for a hug. I walk up and hug him, but I‟m so
confused. My dad hasn‟t had a job since Roger was born. Not one he had to dress up for
and go out at night to do anyway. His job has been taking care of us and, lately, writing
dirges. And playing in the band when they have a gig, but that‟s usually only around
holidays.
Dad kisses me on the top of the head, ruffles my hair, and then turns again and walks out of
the room. I hear him go downstairs whistling a tune and a minute later comes the sound of
the front door shutting, his car being started, and him driving away.

I‟m still standing in my room, holding my doll, staring at the empty doorway.

“Paschar, where did my dad just go?” I ask.

To his job at the hotel, he says, What‟s wrong, Lily? Something seems off...

There‟s a lump in my throat. “When is my mom coming home?”

Lily, what‟s going on? Paschar sounds concerned. I don‟t like it when Paschar sounds
concerned. Roger and your mother passed away in a car crash over a year ago. Do you
remember the crash?

“Not her,” I whisper. The bottom falls out of my stomach and I‟m tumbling through space
again. My wrist flares up with pain, and I clutch it, dropping Paschar. I can hear that
howling again, the one that was coming from the darkness beyond Hekate‟s ruined hallway.
It doesn‟t sound like children singing though, it sounds like laughter... like a dark, torch-lit
room of people with shark grins laughing as they watch their ruler destroy my life piece by
piece.

“Not her.”

I'm Lily Madwhip and when it rains, it pours.

I‟m standing in the rain, looking at the names on this polished gravestone in Holy Oaks
Cemetery. There used to be one name on the marker, just ROGER T MADWHIP in all caps
with “Beloved Son” in cursive underneath. Now, it says ROGER T and there‟s another
name above it: KATHERINE B. Our family name MADWHIP is big and bold at the
bottom. Somebody put some flowers in a little plastic vase beside the gravestone. I wonder
if my dad did that. Maybe I did. This new me.

I should have brought an umbrella.

“Mama,” I say to the stone, “It‟s me, Lily. I wrote you a letter, but it got all wet in the rain.
I‟m just gonna read it. Okay? Dear Mama, I miss you. I‟m sorry I made you die. I promise
I‟ll fix this. Please don‟t rot too much. Love, Lily.” I pause. “Roger, I didn‟t write you
anything, but you‟re not there anymore anyway. Where did you go? Are you with Hekate
somewhere? Oh right, you can‟t hear me saying this. Uh... love, Lily.”

I put the wet soggy letter under the plastic vase with the flowers in it.
“Hey, Lily, you want my umbrella?” asks Jamal, coming up behind me. He walked with me
to the cemetery, which was a really long way to go but it gave me time to tell him about the
bogeywoman and Hekate and the veil. I also told him that my mother hadn‟t died, that she
had survived the car crash and that Hekate had done something to change things. I don‟t
even remember her funeral. If you can‟t remember it happening, it‟s almost as good as if it
didn‟t happen. I worry though... what if I wake up one day and remember it?

“I don‟t deserve an umbrella.”

Jamal holds his black umbrella over my head. He‟s got on his yellow slicker and galoshes
so the umbrella wasn‟t even crucial to him staying dry anyway. “You can‟t fight a witch
queen if you‟ve got pneumonia.”

I sniffle and can‟t help but cry quietly, making sure not to shake or nothing so Jamal can‟t
tell I‟m doing it. “You sound just like her,” I tell him after I‟ve wiped my eyes.

“Sorry.”

“Don‟t be.”

We walk back in the rain together. Jamal lets me hold his umbrella. “I like feeling the rain
on my raincoat anyway,” he says, “next time you should wear a raincoat. Do I sound like
your mom again?”

“Yeah. You can stop now.”

At least I wore my boots. If I‟d worn my sneakers, they‟d be sopping wet and my socks too.
I hate the feeling of wet socks squishing inside my shoes. Some rain got in the tops of my
boots, but not enough to make my socks sopping wet. They‟re just a little damp. Damp is
okay, squishy is not. Neither is pneumonia.

As we get near the neighborhood, I see a dark shape at the corner of my street. It‟s dog-
shaped. I feel a bit of panic at first, but as we get closer I realize it‟s just a fire hydrant. I
guess it wasn‟t really dog-shaped. Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me. Mom would
say I‟m seeing what I want to see, but if that were true, I‟d see her standing at the door
when I get home, but I don‟t.

I give Jamal back his umbrella once I‟m on my porch. “What are you going to do now?” he
asks, still standing in the rain. He tilts his head back to drink some rain right out of the air.

“I don‟t know yet.” That‟s not entirely true. I have a bit of an idea, I‟m just not sure how to
do it.

“Well, if you want any help, let me know.” He starts to walk away, then turns. “I wish I
could see the things you see.”
Jamal runs over to his house. He looks back at me and waves once he‟s there. I think he
thought I was watching to make sure he got home okay, but he lives right next door and it‟s
like forty feet from the porch to his house, so I wasn‟t too concerned. I was just thinking
about how I wish I couldn‟t see these things, and I‟d gladly give it up and let him have it if
I could. I wave back and head in.

Inside, I finish getting out of my wet boots and jacket. I peel my socks off and toss them by
the laundry room door. That‟s probably not where they go, but I don‟t care right now.

My dad is waiting in the kitchen with his jacket on. He‟s got a look on his face like I let the
cat out again, but we don‟t have a cat and never have, so I don‟t know why he would be
making that face. Maybe we have a cat now? And I let it out because I didn‟t know it was
there. I would think there‟d be food bowls and water if we had a cat. I‟m going with no cat.
I wish we had a cat.

“Where have you been?” he asks.

“Uh...” I don‟t really want to tell him where I was. “I was puddle-jumping with Jamal.”
Smooth.

“I walked the entire neighborhood, Lily, you weren‟t anywhere nearby.” he hands me a
towel. It‟s purple and smells like flowers. I rub my face in it and imagine I‟m covered in
flowers. “You‟re soaking wet too. We don‟t have time for this. Get your boots back on. We
have to be at the therapist‟s office in ten minutes and it‟s a twenty minute drive.”

Oh great, I have a therapist again? Lovely. Maybe it‟s the same one, Ms Kristie, who I used
to go see only she died of an allergic reaction to something she ate. Maybe I warned her in
this new reality. Wouldn‟t that be something... Ms. Kristie is alive and my mother is dead.
That makes me sad to think about. Stop thinking sad things, Lily.

“Can I bring Paschar?”

“What are you talking about?” he frowns. “Of course not.”

That makes me sad again.

I get my stuff back on and we hop in my dad‟s red VW Beetle. It‟s an ugly car. After my
dad‟s old car got wrecked, he and Mom bought a minivan. I wish we still had the minivan,
but I guess we don‟t need a minivan when it‟s just me and Dad. I hope when I figure out
how to fix things and bring my mom back, we still have the minivan. This car looks like
half an apple puttering down the road. And now that I think about it, Dad drives a lot
slower than I remember. He seems almost nervous about being at the wheel. I wonder if he
blames himself for Mom and Roger.
He looks at me in the rearview mirror. “How many times have I said not to wander off
without letting me know where you‟ll be?”

I think. “Eleven?”

“Fifty four.” he states matter-of-factly. That‟s... that‟s a lot. And I thought maybe guessing
eleven would be high. I don‟t know if he actually has said that fifty four times or not. I‟m
surprised he‟s managed to keep track. I would have lost count after three probably. “I don‟t
like you playing with Jamal either. He encourages your make-believe too much.”

“Make believe?” What does he mean by that? He knows it‟s all true. We had everything
worked out after Dad almost died last year and I basically saved his life.

Nineteen minutes and thirty seconds later, we pull into the parking lot of a small, brick
office building. I‟ve never been here before. Or maybe I have. I don‟t know anymore.
That‟s something that worries me. I‟m afraid that one day I‟ll wake up and I‟ll remember
all the times we came here, all the days between the car accident and now that have
changed. And who‟s to say that‟s where the change occurred? Maybe whatever Hekate has
done to me, this new reality, maybe it goes back to the day I was born. I don‟t even know
what stuff I don‟t know anymore. It makes my brain hurt thinking about it.

My dad gets out of the ugly ladybug car and leans back in to look at me. “Are you coming?
Dr. Clay is waiting.”

“Dr. Clay?”

We walk into a nice office. Everything looks like it‟s made of wood. I mean, some stuff is
obviously made of wood, but then the walls have wallpaper that looks like wood. Or maybe
it is wood. But from the outside the building is brick, so I‟m guessing this is fake wood.
Again, I‟ve never been here. I think I would remember this place. All the chairs are shaped
to look like you‟re sitting on a big hand. Like giant hands are sprouting up out of the carpet
and you sit your bum on them. Some poor giant got his hands cut off and now kids sit and
fart on them while waiting to talk to a therapist about why they wet the bed. I‟m not one of
those kids, don‟t get the wrong idea.

A little old lady with white hair and glasses sits behind a big, oak desk. She seems to be
typing at a computer that‟s twice as big as her. Her glasses are equally large. It looks like
someone took a child, aged her a hundred years, and plopped her down in adult-sized
clothes in front of adult-sized equipment. When she sees me, she looks down her nose
through her glasses at me. They make her eyes look ten times bigger than they actually are.

“Oh, hello, Lily,” she says in a squeaky voice, “Running late today?”

Dad mutters something to her that I can‟t make out.


The little lady smiles at him in that way that all sweet, little old ladies smile at normal,
grumpy people. “Is the rain bringing everybody‟s spirits down?”

Just as I‟m about to say something about how much I like the rain --because I do. I love the
rain. Even when it‟s that slimy kind that comes down and sticks to everything, I love it. My
favorite though are Summer showers when the sun is still peeking out and the clouds are
rumbling because they‟re hungry... or because God is bowling as some have claimed--
where was I? Oh right, just as I‟m about to say all that, who walks out of the other office
but

--FELIX WEASELMAN.

His hair is neatly combed and he‟s got on a pair of glasses that actually make him look kind
of smart, but it‟s clearly him. He‟s here in front of me, with his weasel chin and weasel
nose and beady little weasel eyes. Except he seems somehow less weasel-like. I don‟t know,
maybe the gray business suit he‟s wearing instead of a nasty, old, dirty shirt and pants is
what‟s done it. Or the way he‟s clearly taken a bath and brushed his teeth. He smiles at me.
I want to hiss in reply. I don‟t know, it‟s like I‟m looking at a different version of Felix.

“Hello, John. Hello, Lily.” he says.

“WEASELMAN!” I yell, and dash behind my dad. Dad reaches behind himself and tries to
guide me back around but I will NOT be the human shield here. No sir. You shield me, you
are the adult.

Felix cocks his head and reaches into his coat for a moment and just looks at me like he‟s
having a vague sense of deja vu. That‟s where you see or do something that you feel like
you‟ve seen or done before, but you can‟t remember where. I get that all the time when I
see things before they happen. A moment later though, he seems to shake it off and smile at
me with amusement.

“Feeling playful are we?” he asks. He can‟t mask that nasally voice. If anything else about
this made me question whether it was actually him, the voice of the man who tried to kill
my best friend Meredith is unmistakable! Well, okay, she was more like my third best
friend.

I hold my hands up like claws. I don‟t know what good it will do, maybe I can rake out his
eyes or something. My dad isn‟t exactly putting up much of a defense, but then again
maybe he doesn‟t recognize the man who kidnapped him, locked him in the trunk of his
own car and then crashed it into a tree, putting him into a coma. “What are you doing here?”
I snap at him, “Where‟s Dr. Clay?”

Felix puts a hand on his chest as if to say, who, me?. But he doesn‟t say that. Instead, he
asks my father, “Has there been some regression?”
“I‟ll show you regression!” I snarl, and make to kick him in the privates. Rule number one:
always go for the privates.

Dad puts his arm out and blocks me from stepping in front of him. “What‟s gotten into
you?” he says, glaring down at me. Then he turns to Felix. “She‟s been acting out for
several days now. I thought things had been going well and then suddenly she came home
from school and seemed confused, kind of lost, didn‟t seem to remember things...”

“Dad!” I snap, “This is the man who locked you in the trunk of your car last year! He
kidnapped me! Don‟t you remember?”

Felix shakes his head. “We‟re back to this story, Lily?”

“It‟s not a story! Well, okay, it is... but it‟s a story about the truth! It‟s non fiction!”

“Can we take this inside?” my dad asks, looking nervously around the office. There‟s
nobody else here except the little old lady, so I don‟t know who he‟s afraid of overhearing
everything. Besides, NOT going into the closed room with the guy who burned down my
third best friend‟s house --TWICE-- and killed her family as well as a police officer is kind
of my goal. I‟m not budging from this spot. I cross my arms.

“I‟m not going in there.”

So of course Dad picks me up and carries me into Felix‟s new death lair.

This is a nice death lair though. I guess he has a cleaning service. He has lots of books on
his shelves. They all have long titles and weird author names. And there‟s a photo on his
desk of him at some sort of beach posing with two others. He‟s in swim trunks -- oh Jesus
he is pasty-- and there‟s a little boy with him and a lady with blonde hair and a smile on her
face. The smile looks genuine, like she‟s actually happy to be there next to a man who
looks like a weasel. I recognize the boy. I saw him once in a locket that Felix kept on him.
It‟s his son, who died in a fire accidentally caused by Meredith.

“Have a seat,” Felix gestures toward one of the chairs. They don't look like giant hands. I
guess they ran out of giants.

“No.”

Dad grits his teeth. “Lily...”

“This guy almost killed me last year! I can‟t believe I‟m even having to say this! He should
be in the electric chair!”

“Jesus Christ. You see what I‟m talking about?” Dad says to Felix gesturing at me like he‟s
offering me to him as a meal. Maybe he is. Maybe he brought me here so Felix could eat
me like the big bad wolf. This is a nightmare. I‟m in a room full of books with my father
and the weasel-faced killer, and they‟re acting like buddies.

Felix strokes his chin. “Have there been any incidents that might have brought this on?”

They both sit down and then look at me as if they‟re waiting for me to join them, but I
won‟t. I‟m not going to let this be normal. I‟m going to go stand over here by the door and
wait for them to not be paying attention so I can escape.

“Well, like I said, she came home from school a few days ago and seemed confused. She
didn‟t say that anything happened at school, but I don‟t expect her to, even if something
did.”

Felix nods as he listens. I hate that he looks like an average person and not a greasy snake.
He looks at me and smiles. Oh yuck, don‟t smile at me. I scowl back at him and stare
daggers. DAGGER STARE.

“Lily, did something happen at school this week?”

Stare, stare, stare. They want to know what‟s going on? Okay, I‟ll tell them. “You want to
know? Fine, I got attacked by a witch in her closet realm when I went to the nurse‟s office.”

Both of them raise their eyebrows and look at each other. Then they look at me again.
“Why didn‟t you tell me this before, pumpkin?” Dad asks. His face says, Of course you did,
sweet Lily, you don‟t sound crazy at all. Here‟s a needle, we‟re going to stick it in your arm
and put you in a quiet room where the walls are made out of pillows. Nighty night!

“Because you never believe me.”

“What was the witch‟s name?” Felix crisscrosses his fingers and rests his head on his hands.
I can see from his expression that the tone of concern in his voice is fake. FAKE. He‟s a
phony pretending to be a doctor.

“Hekate.” I mutter. “And you want to know what? She blames me for her hallway
exploding because of you-- YOU! Because of all that stuff last year where you tried to kill
Meredith!”

Felix opens his mouth like he‟s about to say something back. Maybe he‟s going to say,
“I‟m sorry.” Yeah, right. Instead, he says nothing, but pinches his mouth between his
fingers and leans back in his chair and nods over and over again like one of those
bobblehead dolls people put on the dashboards of their cars. I wish he was a bobblehead, so
I could just pull his head right off and watch the spring stick out the top of his neck. He
reaches into his coat for a moment like he did before and seems to search for something. He
sees me watching him do it, and for a moment I see a hint of anger, then he pulls his hand
out and scrunches up his mouth in thought.
“I see...” he finally says. “So that‟s how this ties in to your previous fantasy.” he nods at my
dad. “I am once again the antagonist of her story.”

“It‟s not a fantasy!” I run over and grab Dad‟s sleeve. I give him my strongest stare. On a
scale of 1 to 10, this stare would be like a 9. Maybe even a 9.5. We‟re doing decimals in
math class. I don‟t care if Felix pretends to be a therapist, I just need to convince my dad.
Come on, Dad, please, for once in your life, believe me!

He looks at me with the same sad face he always used to have. Before Hekate, we had
finally bonded. We were getting along. He was teaching me drums. Now it‟s like all of that
has vanished.

Felix pulls out a folder from one of the drawers in his desk and starts thumbing through it.
He glances up at me every now and then, making sure his glasses are down his nose a bit so
he can look down his nose at me. I think he‟s doing it on purpose. Nobody‟s glasses keep
slipping down their noses like that unless they got the wrong glasses on. “Has she been
taking her medication?” he asks.

Dad looks at me with concern again. “I think so.”

“You think so?” Felix turns his nose to my father. Ha ha, Dad, now you‟re getting the look
instead of me!

“Well, my job keeps me out late.” Dad shrugs sheepishly. That‟s a weird way to describe it,
because sheep can‟t shrug. I don‟t think they even got shoulders. I can‟t imagine not having
shoulders. How would you even indicate to someone that you don‟t know or care about
something if you got no shoulders to shrug? “I haven‟t been home when she went to bed
most nights. She said she was taking the pills.”

“What pills? I‟m not on any medication.”

Dad sighs.

“Oh boy,” Felix says, closing the folder and leaning back in his chair again. “Lily, we
talked about this. The pills were helping you focus.”

“I don‟t know what you‟re talking about!” I look at Dad, but he looks away. “This isn‟t
how things are supposed to be! Hekate changed everything!”

Felix clears his throat, then holds up some papers from the folder he had out. “How about a
brief refresher? Ahem. Lily has developed a fantasy where her mother survived a fatal car
wreck--”

“Should I be in here for this?” Dad interrupts him.


“You should probably go, yes.”

“No!” I yell, and pull Dad, trying to make him sit down again. He stands up anyway
because he‟s an adult and I don‟t have the strength to hold him down. “Dad, stay!”

He kneels down and hugs me, then looks me in the eye and gives me his strongest stare.
Mine was a 9 --9.5 if I‟m being honest-- but his is like a 12. I want him to teach me how to
stare like that. “You need to stay here and talk to Dr. Clay, Lily. Do what you‟re told.”

“But, Dad--”

“Do it, Lily.” He uses his tone that says I will take everything you love that you have left
away if you disobey me. I know it well. And then he gets up, looks at Felix, nods, and
walks out of the room to the other room with all the wood and the little old lady. I want to
be the one out there, not in here with this new version of Felix... Felix who tried to murder
my third best friend Meredith.

Felix waits for him to shut the door, then looks at me. “Shall we continue?” he starts
reading from the paper again, sounding like he‟s droning off a shopping list. ”Ahem. Lily
has developed a fantasy where her mother survived a fatal car wreck a year and a half ago.
She imagines divine voices warn her of imminent danger to those around her, and that she
has met others with similar superpowers who she--”

“It‟s not a superpower,” I mutter, “it‟s a gift. You know that. You have one too.”

Felix looks at me quietly for a long moment, then his expression changes to that of a dog
trainer watching their dog pee on the floor instead of the doggy pee pads. “Apologies,” he
says, “others with similar gifts who she has teamed up with to fight an overarching nemesis
by the name of Samuel.”

“Samael.”

He makes a pity face at me. I can‟t stand seeing Felix “weaselface” Clay look at me with
pity.

“I know how this sounds,” I tell him, “and I‟m not stupid. I know what‟s going on. You
aren‟t you because you‟re new you. And my mom is dead now but she wasn‟t before. But
I‟ve still got Paschar, which means Meredith probably still has her melted angel Barbie
whose name I forget.”

Felix starts scribbling down notes on the paper he was reading from. “Yes, Meredith,
you‟ve mentioned her before.”

“So you probably have Raziel still in your locket.”


Felix pauses and scrunches up his forehead.

“Did you say I have rice cereal in my pocket?”

“What? No.”

He blinks, then shakes the confused look off his face. “I thought that was a rather strange
thing to declare.”

“I said you have Raziel. Zee. R-A-Z-E-L. In your LOCKET. The one with the photo of
your son Joey in it.”

Felix stops writing and slowly looks up at me. “Where did you learn about my locket?”

I cross my arms and glare at him. “You showed it to me when I was at the hospital with
MY MOTHER getting my brain examined last year.”

He reaches into his jacket again. That‟s what he‟s been doing this whole time... touching
the locket. He always keeps it on him, except when he threw it at me when we finally faced
each other last year. Then Samael took it from me to give to someone else. But that was
then, and this is now. He must have it again.

“You still have it, don‟t you?” I ask him.

Felix pulls out the locket and holds it in his hand, looking at it, then me, then it, then me.
His eyes seem to glaze over for a moment, like I get at the pet store when I‟m looking at the
animals I want to adopt. Then he snaps back to looking normal, but gives me an utterly
confused look with a level 2 stare. “I‟ve never shown this to you. I would ask if you went
through my personal items, but--”

“--but you already know. Because you know things. Things people don‟t want to tell you.
Secrets.”

“What is this?” I didn‟t think Felix could get paler, but he gets paler. Like super pale. If
paleness were a superpower, he‟d be like the Incredibly Pale Hulk. He starts tracing the air
with his eyes as if someone put a giant book in front of him and he‟s trying to read it. But
there‟s nothing there. “I don‟t-- I don‟t understand. I could sense it when you came in the
door today. We‟ve been having these sessions for over a year, but I knew... I knew the
things you told me were your imagination. And yet, today... today I know they‟re not.”

Oh God, I hate what I‟m about to do.

“Mr. Weaself-- I mean, Dr. Clay... I need your help to stop Hekate.”

Felix nods and looks at me grimly. “Yes. Yes, you do.”


I'm Lily Madwhip and I'm Learning About Monsters.

I‟m at the library, which is called Winslow Library, reading a book on mythology. Winslow
Library is named after Miles Winslow, who donated books to the town after the original
library burned down... because Miles Winslow accidentally set it on fire. It‟s a long story.
Short version is, Miles Winslow was a crazy fellow.

After I told Felix everything about Hekate, he asked me if I knew anything about Grease
and I told him I saw the movie five times, although I didn‟t know what that had to do with
anything. Also I never understood why their car turned into Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang at the
end. It turns out Grease is a country too, and that‟s where mythology comes from. Felix
suggested I go to the library and “brush up” on the subject, because apparently Hekate was
around way back when people rode chariots instead of cars and everything was dirt and
olives.

I already know about the minotaur, which is a person with a cow for a head. Not the whole
cow, just the head. He lives in a maze. I also know about Medusa, who was a lady with
snakes for hair. Not the whole snake, but most of it. But other than those two, I‟m not a
mythology know-it-all.

It turns out people from Grease were obsessed with mixing up animals. Besides the
minotaur, there‟s also centaurs, which is where the other half of the cow went. Then there‟s
harpies, which are ladies with vultures for butts. Not the whole vulture, just the butt. I
didn‟t know those were myths though, because I‟ve seen commercials on TV where people
admitted they had harpies and were taking medication to get rid of them.

Then there‟s the chimera. That‟s like a lion-goat-scorpion. I don‟t even know where to
begin. Like, where did someone think they saw this thing? Was it like they were walking
along and saw a lion looking out from behind a tree, but there was also a goat behind it and
they mistook the goat‟s butt for the lion‟s butt? And where the heck did they see a scorpion
big enough for its tail to look like part of this mess? I think people in Grease just drank a lot.
My Uncle George drinks a lot, at least since my cousin Susie got run over by a boat. I don‟t
think he ever saw a lion and a goat at the same time though, and thought they were the
same animal.

I have a yellow pad of paper for taking notes, but I have no idea what kind of notes to take,
so I just draw in it. First I draw a chimera, because it‟s the weirdest animal I‟ve read about
yet. Then I try to draw a harpy, but I‟m not any good at drawing people, so I give it the
body of an alligator. I call it an alligarpy. Eventually I‟m not even reading the book
anymore, I‟m just doodling imaginary animals combined with other animals.

“What are you drawing?”


There‟s another kid in the library. He‟s taller than me, so he‟s probably older. He‟s got
crazy brown hair and freckles... or maybe his face is just dirty. I wish I had freckles. And
he‟s wearing old, velcro shoes. The velcro is so old that it doesn‟t even stick together
anymore and the straps just hang loose. Still, velcro shoes are nice. I wish I had velcro
shoes. So jealous right now.

I look at my most recent piece. “It‟s a... pigapotomus. It‟s from mythology.” That‟s not
actually true, I just made this one up. “That‟s stories from long ago about superheros and
monsters.”

“I know what mythology is.” he wipes his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie. I can see the
snot streak go up to his elbow. There‟s other, older, crustier streaks up both arms. Ew. He
may know what mythology is, but I bet dollars to doughnuts that hygiene isn‟t in his
vocabulary.

The kid keeps standing there, snuffling occasionally and wiping his runny nose. I stare at
him, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn‟t.

“Can I help you?” I finally ask.

He‟s got dead eyes. I don‟t normally see those on other kids. Dead eyes are something you
typically only find on adults. There‟s no shine in them anymore. It‟s almost like they just
stop reflecting light. Usually it goes with people who have given up on enjoying life and
have settled for living day to day. You can tell who loves life, because they got the glint in
their eyes. This boy has no glint, just empty dead eyes.

“Nobody can help me.” he sniffles, still staring dead-eyed at me. He‟s got some sort of
strange accent I can‟t place. I want to say he‟s from overseas or maybe North Dakota. I
don‟t know what people speak like there, but I imagine it‟s like me, but with a weird North
Dakota accent.

I look around, but there‟s nobody else in this part of the library. Winslow Library isn‟t the
preferred library to use as it is. Most people go to the one over in Northfield. They‟ve got a
multimedia room there with movies on laserdisc. My parents took Roger and I once and I
got in trouble for wandering off to the laserdiscs and signing out a weird movie called The
Shining. There‟s a scene in that movie where a guy hugs and kisses a dead lady in a bathtub.
People come up with strange ideas for movies.

The gross boy leans forward across the table and whispers, “Do you know what a mirage
is?”

“That‟s where you park cars.”

He frowns. “No, it‟s an illusion.”


I don‟t argue with him but I know they‟re real because we have one attached to the house.

He nods at my mythology book. “You read about the sphinx yet?”

I sure have. The sphinx is a person with a lion for a body. Not the whole lion, just the body.
Or maybe it‟s a lion with a person‟s head. It‟s a lion/person mishmash, basically. And it
asks riddles. If you get its riddle wrong, it eats you.

“Yeah, I‟ve read about the sphinx.”

He wipes his nose again. It looks red and sore, probably from all the wiping. “Well I‟ve got
a riddle for you, like the sphinx--”

“You won‟t eat me if I get it wrong, will you?” He kinda looks like he might actually try.

“No.” The grimy kid closes his eyes. Maybe he‟s trying to remember how the riddle goes.
It sucks when you try to tell a riddle or joke and screw it up. I have this joke about a bunch
of people in a crashing airplane who don‟t have enough parachutes, but I always get it
wrong. “Where can you be somewhere and nowhere at the same time?”

You know what? I don‟t like riddles. I‟m supposed to be doing research, but instead I‟m
letting this weird kid with his runny nose ask me nonsense questions. I pretend to think for
a moment by pushing my lips out and tapping them with my finger. This is how some
grownups switch on their brains. Finally, I stop and look at him again. “I don‟t know.
Where?”

He presses his finger into the table. “Right here.”

“At the library?” I don‟t get it.

He cocks his head. “Are you at the library?”

I look around carefully. “Yyyyes?”

The kid stands back up straight and shakes his head. “You just think you are. I know. I‟ve
been lost here forever.”

“At the library?” That would be awful. How does someone get lost at the library? Don‟t the
librarians check to make sure nobody‟s still inside when they lock up?

The boy sighs. “No, here. Here. Where we are.”

I am so confused. Then again, this kid doesn‟t seem like he‟s got all the cards in his deck.
He acts like he bet all his marbles on a hail mary play and lost. He‟s definitely not from
around here, judging by his accent.
He continues to talk. Something inside him got switched on and activated the connection
between his brain and his mouth and now whatever bizarre thought passes through one
spills out the other. “You lose track of time. I did. And eventually you give up, you see
through the mirage and you know where you are, and that‟s when it stops trying to pretend
to be anything other than what it is. It all just goes away.”

“You can‟t see then. There‟s no sun, no candles, nothing. You start to wonder if you even
exist anymore. Are you breathing? Are you hearing yourself breathe, or are you imagining
it? Was there ever really anything to begin with? Your mother... did she ever really exist?”

“My mother?” My mother existed. How would I have been born if she didn‟t exist? I miss
my mom. I want to cry now.

“And then suddenly there‟s the sun, and there‟s the ground. But everything‟s different.
People are different. The world is different. It‟s not your world anymore, it‟s someone
else‟s. Someone else has come along after so long you don‟t even remember what it‟s like
to exist anymore. And they believe in the illusion. So it changes to suit them and all you
can do is... is... I don‟t know. I don‟t know what to do, because I want the dream to
continue, but I know it‟s just a dream--”

“Are you sure you‟re okay?” I ask. His dead eyes have got a spark of life in them now, but
they‟ve got a bit of a crazy look in them too. I wouldn‟t be surprised if he started grinning
and clacking his teeth together and his eyes bugged out like one of those creepy wind-up
monkeys.

The boy is panting, he‟s been talking so fast at me. He sounds kind of ragged, like he
gargled some asphalt and washed it down with salt water. “I‟m okay. I‟m okay now.
Because you‟re here.”

“But here is nowhere,” I say sarcastically.

“Yes!” now he claps happily, which makes a cloud of flaky grossness come off his filthy
shirt sleeves. “You understand! But don‟t make it go away. Don‟t let the sun go away.
Maybe together we can find a way out.”

I‟d say this kid already found a way out, if you know what I mean. I pull my yellow pad of
paper close to my chest and stick my pencil behind my ear. I keep a close eye on this
whacko kid as I close the mythology book. “Look, I gotta go talk to someone else, but this
has been fun. Maybe I‟ll see you here again. Here being nowhere.”

I tuck the book onto a nearby shelf. That‟s not where I got it from, and I‟m not supposed to
do that, but I just really want to get out of here and away from the fruitcake in the crusty
hoodie.
As I walk backward down the aisle toward where the reference desk and the card catalogs
are, the boy watches me quietly and his smile uncurls back into a straight line. “If you get
out without me, tell Paschar that Ambrose says hullo. Ambrose Viccars. You tell him I
didn‟t run away.” He starts wiping at his eyes with his crusty sleeve. “Tell him, I‟m still
here. But please-- please don‟t go without me.”

Once I‟m far enough away, I turn and sprint to the check out desk. There‟s a librarian there,
Sean. We know each other. I like books about earthquakes and he likes nose rings and red
striped shirts that make him look like Waldo.

“What‟s the rush, Lily?” he asks me. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Can I have a day without weird stuff happening? Just one day, please?” I lean against the
counter to catch my breath. The weird kid is nowhere to be seen. “I think there‟s a teenage
hobo living in your history section.”

Sean pushes his glasses back into place and looks in the direction I came from. “Did
somebody give you trouble?”

“No, just... wanted to make sure you knew there‟s someone else in the library besides me.
You know, in case you close up early or something.” I don‟t know if they can even do that,
close up early. I think they‟re required to be open at certain times. Does it matter? There‟s a
snot-covered boy hiding by the 201 books, and he may not be all there.

And he knew Paschar.

It takes me an hour to get home, because I was halfway there when I realized I left my
backpack at the library and had to go back and get it. No sign of the weird boy, Armbone or
whatever... thank goodness. Also, I stopped by the bridge over the Dog River and played
Pooh sticks. That‟s where you toss a stick in the river on one side of the bridge, and then
watch for it to come out the other side. You‟re supposed to play it with other people, so I
just tossed in a bunch of sticks and placed bets with myself on which one I thought would
appear first. Wouldn‟t you know it, I won.

Once I‟m finally home, I walk in the door and Paschar is sitting on the dining room table
with a note from Dad about dinner. This has become the new normal, as they say. That
means it wasn‟t normal before, but now you treat it like it is, even though it isn‟t. I hate the
new normal. I would like to go back to the old normal. Old normal didn‟t have weird,
smelly kids coming up to me at the library and babbling about... I don‟t even know what.

Paschar asks me what happened at the library. He can tell by my expression that I‟ve got
something I need to talk to him about.
“There was this gross boy at the library.” I stare at Paschar to try to read his expression but
I don‟t know why I‟m bothering because his face is made of plastic and it never changes.
“He said to tell you hello.”

You told him about me? Paschar asks.

“No, he knew you. Not like Felix, who knew of you because of his angel Raziel. This boy
knew you like he knew knew you. He said his name was Angelo something. Or Andrew.
Amber Victor?”

Ambrose? Paschar‟s voice sounds uneasy. Not scared, like when he talks about Samael, just
sort of like he‟s wary about saying the name. Ambrose Viccars?

“That sounds right.” I drop my backpack and get out my yellow pad of paper to check to
see if I wrote it down. There‟s nothing but doodles on it. I‟m not sure if this was a
successful visit to the library. Felix will probably look at my notes and make me go back
and read more. I can‟t believe I‟m taking notes on mythology for the weasel. Old normal,
where are you?

Ambrose Viccars can‟t be alive.

“Well, what can I tell you?” I shrug, “This is the new normal, remember? Oh wait, that‟s
right... you don‟t remember. This is the old normal to you.”

No, Lily, this is not normal in any way. But maybe it makes sense, if the things you say are
happening to you really are happening. Ambrose Viccars disappeared over four hundred
years ago. He did not die, he simply vanished.

You know, looking at it in better light, this is a really good pigapotamus. I should make a
book full of imaginary animals. I wonder if I could create my own mythology?

Lily, focus. Paschar sounds annoyed.

“Sorry.” I put the pad of paper down.

Oh, that is a good pigapotamus.

I blush. It‟s nice that he noticed.

Paschar continues what he was talking about. Ambrose was the youngest person we‟d ever...
“recruited” you could say, before you. It was a really difficult time back then.

“What was that, pilgrim days?” I ask. “Did they even have plastic dolls back in pilgrim
days?”

My totem was made out of a corn husk. Paschar chuckles.


I visualize Paschar with a corncob head and I laugh. It feels good to laugh. I don‟t think
I‟ve laughed since I found out my mom was suddenly dead. Oh. I shouldn‟t have thought
about that. Why did I do that? I stop laughing and look at my feet. They remind me of
standing in front of her grave, so I cry a little. Just a little.

Sorry, Lily, Paschar says. Listen, Ambrose and his mother and almost everyone they knew...
they simply vanished without a trace. No death, though disease and other bad things
happened a lot back then. We would have known if they died. They didn‟t, they just ceased
to exist. One moment he was there, the next he wasn‟t. And then she wasn‟t. And then they
weren‟t. We never found out what happened. Believe me, we investigated. Several of us
even crossed the veil to look into things first-hand.

“You mean you were here? On Earth? In the flesh?” I wonder what Paschar looks like.
Does he look human? Maybe he looks like a cricket with a top hat, like the one in
Pinocchio.

Yes, because Ambrose was my connection, I came over. As did Dumah, because of course,
if they were dead, he would know. With us was Zaphkiel and Metatron, neither of whom
you‟ve met. They were mostly there to observe and report.

“Observe and report what?”

The lost colony. Over a hundred people, gone without a trace. You say you saw Ambrose at
the library?

“Yeah, he was wearing a hoodie covered with snot and had velcro sneakers. Did they have
velcro and snot four hundred years ago?” I become suddenly very aware of my own habit
of wiping my nose on my arm when it‟s runny. I should stop doing that.

Paschar puts on his bossy voice. Take me to the library.

“But it‟s almost dinner time and I haven‟t even read this note my dad left--”

Lily, Paschar interrupts, if Ambrose is truly here, we need to know where he‟s been all this
time. And more importantly, is he here as a harbinger of another vanishing?

I don‟t know what that means but it sounds bad. I grab Paschar and stuff him in my
backpack so his head is sticking out. He likes to see as we go. When I was little, I didn‟t
listen as well and I‟d just stick him in my backpack and he always complained when I got
where I was going and pulled him out. There‟s little snack bags of pretzels in the cupboard,
so I grab one to munch on along the way. I wish they had more salt. A pretzel‟s not a
pretzel if you don‟t salt it. Also a pretzel‟s not a pretzel if you don‟t knot it.
Just as I turn to go, there‟s a knock at the door. Why didn‟t they just use the doorbell? I like
the doorbell, it sounds jingly. Knocking on the door is startling. I peek out the mailbox slot
but all I see are someone‟s legs in brown pants. That‟s no help.

“Lily?” Oh, it‟s Felix. He must have come by to find out what I learned at the library.

I unlock the door and open it. Felix is standing on the porch in regular clothes. I‟m still
blown away at him with combed hair and glasses and dressed like he‟s a professional with a
job and not some weirdo stalker guy you‟d expect to see crouching behind a garbage can in
a dark alley. Of course, I don‟t say that because it would be rude. Paschar knows I‟m
thinking it though, which means ehhhhh... Felix probably knows I‟m thinking it too, since
that‟s his thing.

“Sorry, Dr. Clay,” I tell him, figuring he knows what I was just thinking.

He ignores it. “Lily, I hope you don‟t mind me coming by. Is your father home?”

“Yeah,” I lie, because you should never admit that you‟re home alone, especially to a
weasel who tries to murder people. But this isn‟t that person, this is a therapist. This is my
therapist. I don‟t know if it‟s wrong to lie to him.

“You‟re lying,” he says matter-of-factly.

Oh right, he can just... see that. I look at the porch floor. We got a squeaky board with a
loose nail and I always step on it without thinking.

Felix steps back, giving me a bit of breathing room. “It doesn‟t matter, I‟m not here to see
him. I need to show you something important. Have you done your research that I
suggested yet?”

“Yeah, I was actually on my way back to the library because--” I stop. Do I want to tell him
about Ambrose? Oh, right, it doesn‟t matter, because if I don‟t tell him, it‟s a secret and he
knows it anyway.

As if to emphasize the point, Felix stares through me for a second and then says simply,
“You‟ve met someone.”

“Yeah, um... I‟ve got to go find him. It‟s kind of--”

“Important. Okay. We‟ll go together. I can give you a ride.” He pulls out his car keys and
jangles them in front of me. He‟s actually got a lot of keys on his keychain. Car, office,
house I assume, maybe an apartment. What are all the other keys for? Adults keep lots of
keys. When I grow up, I‟m going to have just two keys. That‟s all I think I‟ll need.
We should just walk there, says Paschar, but Felix takes my backpack and tosses it in the
open window to the passenger seat. Well, I guess that‟s decided then. My legs are tired of
walking anyway. I‟ve already walked there, then halfway back, then back back, then all the
way back home again.

Felix‟s car is black and shiny. He must get it cleaned regularly, because it smells like it just
got picked up from the dealership. I climb in the back because I‟m not old enough to ride in
the front seat yet. Felix seems baffled by this at first. He looks around before getting in the
car, like he‟s not sure where I went. I wave at him so he‟ll see me, but he doesn‟t wave
back, he just gets in, buckles his seatbelt (as you always should), starts the car and drives
off. I think I see a silhouette in the window of Jamal‟s house. I wonder if he was watching.
I hope I don‟t worry him, getting in some stranger‟s car and letting them drive me away.

Getting a ride to the library should cut my travel time down to just minutes, that is, if we
were going in the right direction.

“We‟re going the wrong way, Dr. Clay.”

I see him look back at me in the rearview mirror. “I know, honey, but I need you to meet
my son, Joseph.”

Joseph. The boy from Felix‟s locket. The one Meredith accidentally killed in a fire, which
set off the whole disaster that was last year. But that was of course in the old normal. Not
this new normal where Felix isn‟t a magician and a nutjob.

“Why do I need to meet Joseph?” I ask.

Felix sits there, driving quietly. I can hear other cars rush by. I don‟t know where we are
anymore. I‟ve never been to this area. I don‟t think we‟re even in the same town. It didn‟t
occur to me that Felix might not live nearby. In the old normal, I‟d say that was a good
thing. Maybe he lives near Meredith. I wonder if there even is a Meredith in this new
normal.

Several minutes go by.

“Dr. Clay, why am I meeting Joseph?” I repeat.

“Because I need you to understand why I can‟t let you face Hekate.”

“What? But you said you were going to help me!” Dang it! Why did I get in the car with
the weasel? I am so so stupid. I should have walked like Paschar suggested.

“I am going to help you, Lily,” he says with that same awful voice that tormented me last
year. I realize now that it was always there, I just ignored it because he was clean-cut and
dressed nice and didn‟t look like a greasy strangler. “I‟m going to help you understand that
things now are better this way.”

His hands are shaking on the steering wheel. Maybe he‟s got tremors. That‟s a thing my
Nana had. Her hands used to shake so bad she couldn‟t hold a teacup without wearing it.

He starts sounding more manic and frustrated. “I‟ve seen the reality you knew. I‟ve seen
what I am there. I know what you think of me. But most importantly, I know what happens
to my Joseph. Your mother is gone, Lily. She‟s not coming back. But my Joseph is here.
He‟s alive. And if I help you, he won‟t be. He‟ll die horribly. Would you really let that
happen to him, knowing you could do nothing and save him?”

“I‟m sorry, Dr. Clay, but... maybe there‟s a way I can get Hekate to make it so my mom‟s
alive and so is Joseph.”

He stares at me with his weasel eyes from the rearview mirror. “I can‟t risk that.”

“Well, introducing me to Joseph isn‟t going to change my mind.”

He turns the car off the road we‟re on and onto one that‟s not as well-paved. The ride turns
bumpy and I‟m getting tossed up and down, kind of like when I‟m riding the bus. I want to
throw my hands up and yell “whee!” but I‟m just not feeling whee-ful at the moment.

“I thought that might be the case,” Felix says. He isn‟t looking at me anymore. He‟s staring
straight ahead and focused on the road. Or maybe he can‟t look at me. “That‟s why I rented
this car.”

Paschar looks at me from the backpack in the front seat. Lily, he says, when the car slows
down... pull the handle and run.

As if he can hear him, Felix turns and looks at the doll. Of course he can‟t hear him, but the
moment Paschar tells me what to do, Felix knows what I‟m planning. I hate his gift of
knowing people‟s secrets so much. Stupid, stupid angel gift. Felix grabs Paschar and stares
at him for a moment. He probably looks like I do when I‟m having a conversation with--

“You can go now, Paschar,” he snarls, then throws Paschar out the open window.

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