American Monsters by Derek Landy
New York City in the middle of summer. It was hot, but not Florida hot. Not Hell hot. It was a bearable kind of hot, and all kinds of people passed the deli window as she sat there. She’d heard all her life about how rude New Yorkers were. She didn’t find them rude. She found them upfront. They talked fast and they talked loud and it was refreshing to just be here. She liked New York. This was her kind of town.
Kelly came back from the restroom, sat opposite. She had a Sprite of her own that she drank from, slurping noisily with her straw. Kelly didn’t mind if she annoyed people with the slurping. Amber didn’t, either.
Beneath her light jacket, Kelly was wearing her Dark Places T-shirt. The show had been all over the news ever since the attempt on Annalith Symmes’s life and the discovery of three dead people and a dog. There was closed-circuit camera footage of Kelly’s face, and a blurry picture of Amber, but so far no one had recognised them on their travels. The more time passed, the less likely it was to happen. Amber had recently decided that the whole thing was just going to fade away.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” said a man waiting at the counter.
They looked at him. “Sorry?” Amber said.
The man, a quiet-looking guy with neat hair and spectacles, nodded at the TV in the corner. For a moment, Amber thought they’d been recognised and was about to start cursing her own stupidity, but the news report was about the other big story dominating the summer. The police chief’s son.
“The kid who was taken,” the guy said. “That psycho has had him for, what, months? More? Definitely dead by now. Terrible.”
“Yeah,” said Kelly.
The quiet guy shook his head sadly, seemingly content to let the conversation settle right there.
“Takes all kinds,” said Amber.
“I guess it does,” the quiet guy replied. He took off his glasses and cleaned them.
“Ever been up that way?” Kelly asked.
He squinted at her slightly. “Where?”
“Keene. Where the kid was snatched.”
“Me?” said the quiet guy, and put his spectacles back on. “No. Never. Well, I guess I’ve passed through once or twice. Never stopped, though. Looks like a nice town. Terrible that something like this should happen there.”
“Terrible it should happen anywhere,” said Amber.
“True,” he said, nodding. “You never can tell, can you? Like you said, it takes all kinds.”
“It does,” Amber said. “It certainly does. When you think about it, just about anyone could be a serial killer and you’d never know it, would you? They could be your best friend, your neighbour, that lonely guy in the office … Could even be a random stranger you get to talking to while you’re out for a bite to eat.”
The quiet guy smiled sadly and nodded, turned his head to check on his order.
“The thing is,” said Kelly, “they can look just as normal as anyone. They don’t all have to wear blood-stained overalls or freaky masks or carry chainsaws – though there are those, too.”
“That there are,” said Amber. “Those are the easy ones to spot. Oh look, a guy the size of a mountain, dressed in festering rags and holding a machete – I bet he’s the one who’s been killing all those pretty co-eds. Easy, right? But it’s the other ones, the not-so-obvious ones … It’s the quiet ones you have to look out for, isn’t it?”
The quiet guy smiled politely. “I guess so.”
“But here’s the thing,” said Kelly. “Once you’ve met one of them, you’re bound to meet more. It’s the way of things. From the moment you’re touched by darkness, it never lets you go.”
“I guess so,” he said again. He was handed his sandwich and he took it and paid, counting out the exact change. Then he looked at Amber and Kelly and gave them a farewell nod. “Have a nice day,” he said.
“See you around,” said Amber.
He left.
Amber looked at Kelly and Kelly drained the last of her Sprite, and they got up. They went outside, watched the quiet guy walking away.
It was too warm for a jacket, and Kelly took hers off. She would normally have put it in the trunk of the Charger, but that’s where Glen was sleeping, covered in a blanket. So she slung the jacket on the back seat and took the gun from the glove box, clipping it on to her belt, and pulled her T-shirt down to hide it.
Amber locked the car and they went walking. Part of Kelly’s forearm was wrapped in plastic to protect the new additions to her tattoo sleeve. Ronnie, Linda, Warrick and Two, all done cartoon-style, bordering her wrist, keeping the monsters and the killers from sliding off and escaping. It looked good. It looked cool.
They walked hand in hand and didn’t say much. There were a few people who gave them a second look, but they were all gazing at Kelly, and Amber could understand that. Kelly was a beautiful girl, after all – tall and slim and stunning. But what Amber knew, what those people did not, was that Kelly was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. She was strength and love and happiness, despite everything that had happened to her. She was positive. She was a light in the darkness. She was hope.
And Amber needed hope. She needed that light in her life, a light that had been denied her for so long. She had someone to love. Someone to fight for, to fight beside. Maybe she’d never lose all that weight. Maybe she’d never be all that pretty. So what? She’d stopped caring. So long as her smile made Kelly smile and her laugh made Kelly laugh, that was all that mattered.
“What?” Kelly asked. “What are you grinning about?”
“You.”
Kelly looked amused, and pleased, and she raised Amber’s hand to kiss it.
Two young men coming the other way saw the kiss. They didn’t whistle or catcall or leer. They just passed on by.
Amber and Kelly got to the end of the street, and watched the quiet guy climb the steps to his front door and let himself in. It was a nice house, identical to all the other nice houses in that row, the kind with narrow windows near the ground, allowing a little light into the basement.
They crossed the road. There were no cars. They went straight to those narrow windows and lay down, had to wipe the grime from the glass in order to peer through. There was a washing machine along one wall, some odds and ends on an old bookcase, but, apart from that, the basement was empty.
The quiet guy walked into view. He went to the bookcase and pulled. It swung wide, like it was on hinges. Behind it was a door. The quiet guy slid back the bolts and opened it. There was someone there, in the small room. Someone sitting on the floor, drawing their legs in.
The quiet guy didn’t move inside. He was talking. He held out the sandwich and a bottle of water, then stepped in, put them on the ground, and stepped back again. He rubbed his palms on his legs like they were sweaty, then came out, closed the door and bolted it. He swung the bookcase over and stayed there with his head down for a moment. Amber and Kelly ducked back before he turned. They took a peek a few seconds later and he was gone.
They went round the side of the house, looked through the kitchen window. The quiet guy stood at the sink, eyes closed. He was muttering to himself. He looked angry.
Finally, he calmed down, and washed his hands. He took forever. When he was done, he started making dinner. He was fastidious. Every chop was precise, every measurement exact. Every bit of leftover ingredient was added to a plastic bag at the end of the worktop. When the bag was full, he tied it off, took it to the back door.
Amber nudged Kelly and they hurried round the corner, watching the quiet guy take the bag to the trash. They went quickly over to the door while his back was to them, making it inside before it completed its slow swing closed. Keeping low, they passed through the kitchen, went down the corridor, got to the basement door. Amber turned the handle. It was unlocked. They hurried through, hearing the back door close.
Amber led the way down the steps. She tried pulling the bookcase back. It rattled slightly, but didn’t move. She skimmed her fingers over the spot she’d se
“We’re here to help,” she said quietly. “There are two of us – we’re going to get you out of here. When I open the door, I don’t want you to make a sound, okay?”
There was a moment of silence, and then a soft, tentative, “Yes.”
Amber opened the door, the diffused light spilling into the darkness. The boy was on his feet, the half-eaten sandwich in his hand. He stood on a thin mattress and he had blankets wrapped around his shoulders. The police chief’s son.
“Come on,” Amber said, holding out her hand.
He shook his head, pointed to his ankle, where a thin chain was binding him to the wall. Amber nodded, stepped into the room. The boy didn’t shrink back.
“Hey there,” Kelly whispered. “My name’s Kelly. Are you injured? Are you hurt?”
The boy looked at Kelly while Amber hunkered down behind him and gripped the chain with both hands. She shifted, snapped the chain and immediately reverted before the boy looked down.
“All done,” she said, straightening up. “Let’s go.”
He frowned at the chain, but nodded, and she took his hand and led him out, and they followed Kelly up the steps and out of the basement. They turned for the front door. The quiet guy stood in the doorway to the kitchen, looking at them, his eyes wide in surprise. He had a large knife in his hand.
Not a word was spoken. He looked at Kelly, then at the boy, then at Amber and back to the boy again. His gaze settled on Kelly. She was the closest. He didn’t know that she had the gun on her hip, but, if he ran at her, Amber didn’t know if she’d be able to draw and fire in time. Kelly wasn’t a quick draw, not like Milo.
The quiet guy shook his head. He started crying. He raised the knife, pointed it at them like he was going to say something, but all he did was cry. Then his face contorted, flushing in anger, and he took two steps towards them and broke into a run. Amber pushed the boy behind her, was about to shift when Kelly drew the gun at her hip and fired twice. The quiet guy’s legs went out from under him as he ran, and he sank to his knees and toppled.
Keeping the gun trained on him, Kelly kicked away the knife. She didn’t bother shooting him in the head. This wasn’t a killer who’d made a deal with a Demon, the kind that popped back up just when you thought they were finished. This was just your garden variety, made-in-America serial killer.
Takes all kinds, as the man said.
They left the house, and Amber and Kelly walked back to the deli, the police chief’s son between them. He went inside and they hung around for a few moments until they saw everyone make a big fuss over him, and then they got in the car.
Kelly put the gun back in the glove box as Amber buckled her seat belt. As Kelly buckled hers, Amber started the engine. The radio sprang to life, zeroed in on an eighties music station. ‘Here I Go Again’ by Whitesnake.
They had a lot to do. Somewhere out there was seven-foot homicidal clown who needed to be stopped. Somewhere out there was a homeless girl with a broken mind who needed to be helped. Somewhere out there was a fresh horror waiting to unfold.
Amber checked the mirrors, then swung out on to the road and drove. They took the Lincoln Tunnel out of town.
Meet Skulduggery Pleasant: detective, sorcerer, warrior. Oh yes, and dead.
Click on each cover to read the dead famous, bestselling Skulduggery Pleasant series
Four god-killer weapons scattered around the globe. Seven sorcerers hunting them down in a desperate effort to save humanity. Their only obstacle?
Tanith Low and her wicked band of outlaws, misfits and monsters.
It’s a good day to be a bad guy.
Click on the cover to read more.
The ULTIMATE story collection for Skulduggery Pleasant fans.
For the first time, every Skulduggery Pleasant short story, plus two novellas – Get Thee Behind me, Bubba Moon and The End of the World – is collected into one magnificent volume. But that’s not all …
This collection includes fourteen short stories – three of which are AWESOME NEW stories written exclusively for this edition. Two of them delve into the things that our old friend Billy-Ray Sanguine gets up to between books, while the third pits Skulduggery and Valkyrie against a serial killer, a desperate ghost, and a swarm of very nasty insects.
So it’s business as usual, then.
Introduced by Derek, these are the hidden stories of the skeleton who saves the world … and the girl who’s destined to destroy it.
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The Demon Road trilogy:
Demon Road
Desolation
American Monsters
The Skulduggery Pleasant series:
Skulduggery Pleasant
Playing With Fire
The Faceless Ones
Dark Days
Mortal Coil
Death Bringer
Kingdom of the Wicked
Last Stand of Dead Men
The Dying of the Light
The Maleficent Seven
A Skulduggery Pleasant story collection:
Armageddon Outta Here
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Derek Landy, American Monsters
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