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It’s right then we hear it, this low moan but with a force behind it, like it’s coming from far away but loud enough to get to us. James begins to run toward his shanty and that’s when the monster comes into camp. It’s not even like the stories say it should be; it is shaped like a man, but terrible, awful I tell you, enormous, burning and moaning its way into our clearing, its long, black muscled arms nearly dragging on the earth, and eyes red and its teeth gleaming. Vaara and that ox have fused together. James is already in the shanty to protect his wife and the monster throws one of those long arms out into the side wall, wood explodes, and that’s when I feel myself running toward them, which is opposite, because every other man in the camp is screaming and running away.
The shanty is burning by the time I get to the door and when I pull it open I can see that James is already in the arms of Vaara, amid a fire, that the monster’s torn through the wall, and that the woman, Martha, is crouched near the bed, and she sees me and my eyes are wide and she holds the baby out toward me, and I scream, “Run outta there!” and see in the corner of my eye James smashed up into the ceiling of his shanty by the monster, and he is on fire, he is a rag doll, his neck’s already broken, but she only thrusts the baby into my arms and backs farther into the smoke and chaos of that place coming apart, and a piece of the porch collapses beneath me with this baby in my arms and then I am only running, not looking back and not hearing the sounds of her screams as I plunge into the woods.
I look out the window at the bare trees in the wind and the yellow lamp lighting my street corner, and of course the I is not the right I, that baby was my great-grandfather, directly above me, or so the story goes. I am not lying to you when I imagine the real ending to be Vaara trundling down Winchester Avenue in Chicago. Up into our building. He finds us in our new bed and takes us with him as well.
I cross the room and go down the hall to the bedroom door, and through the crack I can see her asleep in the bed.
I go back out to the window.
Once the baby comes, it will pass. I believe. We’re safe.
Even so I hear myself whisper, then, still watching the clicking trees. I tell the night, “Vaara, I’m sorry, I’m sorry but it wasn’t me.”
Patrick Somerville’s collection of stories, Trouble, was published by Vintage last year.
