Monsters in the Mist

1

The windows of the Third Keeper’s home at Graving Lighthouse quivered, restless in their frames as the wind outside crept against their edges and tried to sneak in. White fog swirled, tendrils snaking together to form two gaping holes at the center of the window. A small slit grew beneath them, almost as if a thin smile were widening beneath night-black eyes. The fog grinned at Glennon McCue.

Walking into the dining room on soft-soled shoes, Glennon’s mother set down the last part of supper before him—a casserole dish with an assortment of vegetables he didn’t want to eat. The scent of brussels sprouts and green beans combined with the tang of wet lake air outside. It mixed into a sickly-sweet scent that made his stomach churn.

Lovely evening out, isn’t it? Mom poured tea for herself, placing one delicate hand atop the pot to hold the lid steady.

Glennon glanced dubiously outside the window. Fingerlings of wind clawed at the windows and rattled the glass.

Wind sprites, Leeunah murmured beside him.

Don’t say that. Wind sprites aren’t real, Glennon said. It was their dad who usually told his sister the difference between real and imaginary, but since he was overseas for work, the job was left to Glennon. Half the time he didn’t know what mythology or folklore Lee referred to, but he did know he was supposed to remind her that magical creatures weren’t real.

I’ll talk about them all I like, Lee said.

Dad wouldn’t like it.

"Dad isn’t here."

He started to tell Lee that just because Dad wasn’t there, didn’t mean they shouldn’t still obey him, but the stairs opposite the small dining room creaked and down the uneven steps came Uncle Job. He was a big man, with shoulders that brushed the edges of door frames when he passed through them. Up until a few months before, he’d worked at a lighthouse on the coast of Lake Superior, but a tremendous storm with massive waves had flooded the lighthouse and broken apart the flooring. That’s how Uncle Job ended up on Isle Philippeaux; he’d been transferred while the lighthouse was being fixed. Harsh red lines roped up Uncle Job’s right arm, scars from the injuries he’d sustained during the accident.

Uncle Job sat at the head of the table. As he did, he glanced at each of the chairs and their occupants beside him. A frown wrinkled the chapped skin between his brows. It was as if he wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up with guests in his home, even though he’d been the one to invite them.

Glennon’s dad had traveled overseas for teaching fellowships loads of times before. Usually when he left, the family moved from their home in Minneapolis and into Glennon’s grandmother’s house. She’d passed away last year, though, and so this time, Mom had moved them north to her brother’s house. Each time his dad left, the length of the trip grew. One week at first, which turned into three on the next trip. One month which turned into two months. This current fellowship was supposed to last throughout the whole fall semester. The McCue family had arrived at Graving Lighthouse on Isle Philippeaux at the beginning of September and were supposed to leave on December 20th—just four days away—before the ferry stopped running for winter and before their dad would get home for Christmas.

Mom set her teacup on its tiny saucer and then placed her hands in her lap. Lee sat much the same way, her back straight, as if she could sit still and proper for as long as needed. Glennon itched inside, all of his rigid muscles begging to be let loose and wiggle every which way. He felt ready to burst. Everyone waited, until at last, Uncle Job heaved a gusty sigh and tucked into the food spread across the table.

Glennon missed his dad. He always filled the dinner table with chatter. Without the distraction, all Glennon heard was the howl of wolves outside the house. It’s not wolves. He pierced a bean with his fork. It’s the wind.

But still, the high-pitched, yearning wail that slid through the cracks in the window frames set the hairs on the back of Glennon’s neck upright.

GA-ROOOO! The massive foghorn in the lighthouse not two hundred feet from them blew. The sound ripped through the air, and Glennon clapped his hands over his ears.

Lee jumped. All of her proper posture slid straight out of her, her frame turning into crinkled paper, elbows folding in and back hunching over and mouth snapping closed to suck air through her nose. Lee collapsing in on herself happened nearly too fast for Glennon to track; a blur at the edge of his vision revealed her tucking her skinny body beneath the table.

Mom’s china rattled with the force of Lee’s disappearance. She placed one long-fingered hand atop the pieces to stop their shivering while Glennon looked beneath the table for Lee. She was already gone, though, vanished from the dining room as if she hadn’t been there to begin with.

The foghorn sounded again. GA-ROOOO! When Lake Superior covered the isle with mist, lighthouse keepers used the horn so sailors could identify Isle Philippeaux’s location and avoid running into the island.

Uncle Job’s massive hand appeared before Glennon. Resting in the center were two pairs of bright purple disposable earplugs. Glennon shoved two into his ears, and the ugly sounds outside dampened. Uncle Job shook his hand, making the remaining earplugs dance in his palm, and glanced in the direction Lee disappeared. At home, no one was supposed to check on Lee when she gave into her panicked flights; she was supposed to figure out how to calm down on her own. This was Uncle Job’s house, though, not his dad’s house, and an entirely different set of rules existed here. Muscles tense, he reminded himself that no one would yell at him for helping Lee, snatched up the two other earplugs, and left the table to search for Lee in the coat closet beneath the stairs.

The closet door stood open a crack. Far in the back beneath the jackets and behind the shoes, Lee huddled with her arms wrapped around her knees. Back home, she always hid in the small nook between her bed and wall, a blanket over her head. Here, though, she didn’t have a small nook, she had a closet.

This version of Lee was so different from the one that normally existed. She seemed years younger than Glennon, instead of fourteen—one year older him. Normally, she reminded Glennon of their dad: she could argue Glennon in circles until his mind tripped over itself, and she was sure of herself in a way Glennon didn’t know how to be. But this part of her—the quiet, anxious part that folded in on itself—made the other part not exist, at least for a little while.

I’m going to touch your ears and put in the plugs to help quiet the sound of the horn, Glennon said, giving her warning before he put the plugs into her ears.

After, he pulled his raincoat off its hanger and slid it over his shoulders before closing the door. He needed to get out of the house.

Glennon returned to the dining table, noticing that Uncle Job had disappeared. Mom sat drinking tea as if everyone hadn’t left. The delicate wrist of the hand holding the cup bent at a slight angle, looking like the crooked twig of a tree.

How’s Leeunah? she asked, her words dampened by the plugs in Glennon’s ears.

Lee’s Lee, Glennon said, as if that explained his sister.

His mother nodded, understanding, just as the foghorn let loose another belch.

Glennon jumped.

Mom didn’t so much as flinch. Be grateful for this roof over your head, Glennon. She held her teacup outward, as if she were clinking the glass in celebration with an invisible guest who sat beside her.

I’m grateful, Glennon said, though being grateful seemed an entirely different thing than being happy, and what he wanted was to be happy. I’m going out.

Don’t talk to strangers, but if you do, make sure you mention your uncle’s name, so people know you belong on the island and—

That I’m not a stranger myself. I know, Mom. It was the same warning she gave every time he or Lee went out.

Glennon backed away from the dining room, uneasy with the lonely picture his family made: Mom sitting alone at the table and Lee crying alone in the closet. He didn’t understand how to help either of them, and it made him hurt in a way he didn’t know how to fix.

He wrenched open the front door and dove outside. The wind grabbed him up, plucking at the edges of his coat and wrapping around his ankles. Behind him, fog butted up against the tall cliffs of the peninsula on which Graving Lighthouse had stood, though it didn’t yet completely cover the lighthouse keepers’ homes. Three houses stood in a row beside Graving. One for the First Keeper, and one each for the Second and Third Keepers, the last of which was Uncle Job’s. Surrounding all three was a pine and birch forest, filled in with twiggy shrubs and fallen leaves and barren trees ready to sleep for winter.

Stopping at a small shed, he took out his bike. Back home in the city he’d had streetlights to see by when he went out with his friends in the evening. There was hardly any electricity wired on Isle Philippeaux, though, and certainly not any in the woods between Graving Lighthouse and the only town on the island, and that was a good thirty miles away. It was as if the entire island were stuck in 1909 instead of 1989.

He hopped on his bike and flicked on the flashlight he’d taped to the front handles. Gravel bumped and rattled the wheels of the bike, but he pushed at the pedals and headed away from both Lake Superior and the lighthouse. Once in the woods, he was mostly protected from the wind that raged over Superior. The quiet of the forest pressed tight around him. Frigid air burned his lungs and all of a sudden, the decision to bike away from the warmth of the Third Keeper’s house seemed like a terrible one.

Something always felt wrong about Isle Philippeaux when he left Graving’s protection, and because of it, he stopped peddling quite so hard. He coasted, taking a moment to scan the forest. Treetops leaned over him, their skeletal fingers stretching toward his hair. A breeze slithered against his exposed cheeks and neck. Vapor crept over the sky, seeping off Lake Superior to cover the isle. And inside that sky, with the fog and the skeleton hands made of tree limbs, a face started to appear.

Nope, Glennon thought to himself. There was no part of him interested in dealing with faces in the mist. Skidding to a stop, he wheeled his bike around and started to pedal once again, furiously hurrying back toward Graving and the windstorm. The gravel beneath his bike felt slippery and strange, as if he rode over patches of ice.

At the edge of his vision, a rat emerged from the woods and scurried across the road, heading straight toward him. He wrenched on the handles of his bike to try and keep from running it over—yuck—and it darted right between his bike wheels.

Glennon’s bike skidded over the pebbles in the road. He straightened the wobbling bike, and there, in the middle of the road five feet in front of him, huddled a boy. Mist sizzled off his shoulders, and his eyes reflected the beam from Glennon’s flashlight, an intense green, the same sickly color the sky had once turned right before a tornado blew through his city.

Panic shot up Glennon’s spine. He twisted his bike sideways and flew straight through the place the boy had been. Freezing cold washed over him, as if he’d plunged straight into the depths of Superior. A sharp pain snagged the middle of his chest.

He landed hard on the road with the bike flopping onto his leg. Gravel bit into his skin and shredded his pants. He stopped moving and lay still, panting in the shadows of the woods and listening to the thump-thump of his heartbeat in his ears, magnified by the purple plugs. The feeling of freezing cold faded until only a small, twisting throb echoed right in the middle of his sternum, only a tendril of the pain he’d felt a moment before.

He rubbed at his chest, and even though he hadn't felt the impact of colliding with the boy, he said aloud, Did I kill you? He blinked into the dwindling evening light. No one but him lay in the road…except—

You stupid cat! he shouted.

Seamus, their family cat, sat on a large flat rock beside the road. He was massive, with long gray fur that Lee liked to brush. He held one of his white-socked paws in the air and licked it until it shone. Staring at Glennon, his green eyes glowed in the night.

Glennon folded up his legs and rested his forehead on his knees. He sucked air into his lungs to try and settle the adrenaline racing through him.

Be rational, his dad always said when Glennon was scared. Be rational, Glennon told himself. There hadn’t been a boy in the road, after all. He’d only seen his cat.

Feeling bruised all over his body, he forced himself to stand, then picked his bike off the road and hobbled toward the Third Keeper's House. Seamus lead the way.

After a few steps, he stopped walking, sure that something followed them, but no—when he glanced over his shoulder, the road was empty except for the rat he’d almost squashed. It sat on the rock Seamus had vacated.

Glennon shuffled faster, heading back to Graving Lighthouse, filled with the eerie sense that something trailed close behind.

2

As soon as Glennon limped into the safety of Uncle Job’s house, his heart rate slowed. Now that he was back, he felt ridiculous. His dad always told him that at thirteen, he shouldn’t get scared so easily.

Seamus snuck inside the house behind Glennon, his ears flattened against his head and fur twisted in odd whirlies from the wind. Glennon had tried to carry the cat across the yard where the wind was the fiercest, but Seamus had hissed as soon as he reached out—Seamus had never exactly liked Glennon, but he’d never hissed before.

Before he could close the door, wind shrieked through the opening, making him cringe. He shoved against it and pushed hard to latch the bolt.

Something’s wrong with this place. You feel it too, don't you? Lee said from behind him. Turning, he found the closet door open a sliver. One of Lee’s eyes blinked in the space. Tears paved bright streaks down her pale skin and her one visible eye was red-rimmed and glossy. Glennon was always surprised at how she came out of her fear-jags as quickly as she went into them.

He took out his earplugs to hear her better but refused to tell Lee that she was right, that something did feel strange about Isle Philippeaux. It wouldn't sound rational if he did.

It’s probably banshees, Lee said, pointing to the door and the screaming wind outside. Seamus butted his head up against the crack in the closet door. She let Seamus in, and the cat faded into the darkness of the closet.

"It’s not banshees," he said, even though he didn’t know what banshees were. Leave it to Lee to explain away any sort of wrongness on the isle with monsters. Glennon had never been all that smart—unfortunately, he hadn’t inherited those particular genes from his dad—but at least he didn’t have Lee’s wild imagination. First you think wind sprites are outside, then you think there are banshees. Make up your mind.

Why can’t both exist?

Because neither do. Glennon sat hard on the steps, exhausted and hurting from the bike crash. Sitting like this, he could no longer see her. How do you know about all these creatures anyway?

I watch movies.

I watch movies too, and I’ve never heard of banshees.

"You watch movies like Indiana Jones. I watch movies about things that are actually useful."

What, like movies about monsters?

Yes, said Lee, then shut the door with a thwack. After a pause, though, she said through the door, "By the way, you have a giant hole in your pants, and you look terrible."

Glennon glanced to find she was right; a finger-length tear was ripped in the seam of his left pant leg right beside the ankle. He felt terrible and that terribleness settled deep in his chest. He rubbed at his aching sternum and tried to understand if the terrible feeling inside him was due to the crash or if it was something else. He felt almost as if something awful was about to happen…or already had happened, and he just didn’t know what it was.

Ga-roooo, went the foghorn outside. It had almost faded into background noise, by now.

Digging in his left pocket, he pulled out a folded-up postcard from his dad. The curls and flourishes of his dad’s handwriting sometimes made it difficult to read. It reminded Glennon of the waves of Lake Superior, folding over itself on the top and hiding darkness beneath.

Brussels has a wonderful history museum! was the single sentence his father had written. The front of the postcard showed an image of the university in Belgium where he was teaching for the semester.

It’s a wretched spit of water, Glennon dad’s had said when he’d learned Mom was relocating the three of them to Lake Superior for the fall.

Lake Superior likes to sink ships, Lee had said.

Glennon's dad had tried finding Isle Philippeaux on the atlas at home, but the map didn't include the island; it was too small. He'd shut the atlas with a snap and said to Lee, A lake cannot like to sink ships, Lee. A lake merely exists, and it exists within weather patterns. Superior is well known for its horrible storms. It’s also well known that sailors are notoriously terrible at predicting weather. Ships sinking is a fact, not a thing a lake likes to do.

Glennon shook free of the memory and said, Seamus is such a mean cat. He scared me, as if he were actually talking to his father.

Fear is an animal instinct, his dad would say if he were there, just like he often said when Glennon woke from nightmares. We aren’t