Creatures

Chapter One

I ran until I reached my street. When I turned the corner I slowed down. Usually, this was as far as they chased me. My sides hurt from breathing hard. I looked back, but I didn’t see the pack of monsters that had followed me from the bus stop. I began slogging through the snow. I was almost home.

In between glances over my shoulder, I looked up at the dark clouds overhead. The January sky was gray, as it tended to be in our backwoods town of Camden, Oregon. It had been snowing all week, and it was snowing now. My boots crunched and the snowflakes fell from the sky to sting my cheeks one by one. Each snowflake burned my skin for a moment as it melted away.

Just as the street curved and I saw the lamppost up ahead that marked my house, the creatures rounded the corner behind me. They paused, spotted me, and then came fast, loping and galloping and hopping. I started running again. I had to make it to my door before they caught up.

The things on the icy sidewalk behind me weren’t human. They weren’t animals, either. They were something in-between. They snuffled the ground like animals, and they ran on paws and hooves and claws, but as they chased me they winked and grinned to one another. The grins on the dog-types were particularly disturbing as their black lips curled up to display white, curved fangs.

I thought about stopping and growling at them myself. I thought about bashing Danny, the one that looked like a Rottweiler, right in the snout with my backpack. But I knew there were too many of them. They would bite at the backpack, yank it way, tear up my homework papers.

I made it onto my porch with seconds to spare. One of them made a joke and they all laughed, their laughter sounding like coughing to my human ears. The things were laughing at me, of course. They, my own cousins, had chased me all the way from the bus stop to my front door. I slammed it in their faces, and they howled and scratched and chipped the paint. They poked their horns and snouts and paws into the brass mail slot and snarled fiercely.

“Connor,” shouted my older sister Heather from upstairs. “Don’t let your idiot friends mark up the front door again. Mom will be mad. And remember it’s trash night!”

I twisted the lock and relaxed a little. I looked into my backpack. Homework. A book report. I sighed.

“Answer me, Connor!” shouted Heather again.

“What?” I shouted back.

“Don’t get mouthy, Mom left me in charge. And don’t you dare turn on the TV or the computer until every wrapper and empty soda can is outside.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Outside, the snarling pack echoed: “ Answer me, Connor… Yeah… ” in the warped voices their animal throats made.

I waited quietly while they knocked things over on the porch and begged me to come out to play. Eventually, the pack wandered away. The game had ended for today.

I went outside cautiously with a big white plastic bag of trash slung over my shoulder. The wind whipped up the snow into flurries, making me jump, but there seemed to be nothing hiding in the growing shadows of dusk.

They had ganged up on me because I was different. I couldn’t wait until I became a monster like everyone else. I really wanted to go through the change, even though it might turn out badly.

I’d heard all about it from my relatives, of course. One lonely night, most likely a night when the moon was full and yellowy and hanging up there in the sky like a fat streetlight, I would feel the change coming on.

At first, it will be an itchy feeling. That’s what everyone tells me. This might start on the tip of one finger. Or the side of my nose. Or maybe in the middle of my back in a place I can’t reach. It will be an itch that keeps returning, like the itch caused by a haircut that sprinkles some tiny hairs down the back of your shirt to prickle your skin.

So far, I’ve felt that itch, but I haven’t changed. Not yet. All of the other kids have changed by now. They know what kind of monster they are, but I still don’t.

The last bag of trash, the big one from the kitchen, never made it into the garbage can on the street. I heard jaws click and a plastic ruffling sound. The bag ripped open like a busted pinata. A dark goat-shape ran off, laughing. Trash spilled out onto the snow. Greasy paper towels and dripping soup cans rolled about on top of a pyramid of chicken bones and orange peels.

“Come back here! I’ll make you eat this junk, Zach!” I shouted.

The only answer was a strange, gargling laugh.

I sighed and began picking up bits of trash from the snow. My fingers were soon slimy and freezing cold.

I thought about Sarah, who had turned just last month. One morning she woke up in her bed and realized she was a blue jay. Just a normal-looking blue jay too, not something horribly warped like a huge plucked bird with blue skin. Her mom had to gently help her out of the blankets. Right away, she had hopped out the window and flew into the sky. Of course, her parents had freaked out and worried she would crash or that a cat would catch her while she tested her new wings. But she came back in one piece.

I think about Sarah’s change, sometimes. Turning into a blue jay is a pretty good deal, really. I mean, she gets to fly and everything and people don’t even get upset when she shows up. She can go to the park and squawk and hop around and even get a picnic handout if she wants to. She’s one of the lucky ones.

Heather, my sister, changed three years ago. She got lucky too. She’s a cat, when she wants to be. She loves cats anyway, and now, for a few nights every month she’s out there prowling around the neighborhood rooftops with the rest of them. Her fur is an orangey color with tiger stripes. An orange tabby cat, that’s what they call her.

And then there’s poor Jake, my best friend. He’s a toad! A crummy toad, poor kid. He doesn’t even look like a normal toad, so he has to hide it. Sometimes, the change strikes people differently and they don’t change all the way. Jake was one of those who hadn’t learned to change completely. Who wants to see a hundred-pound toad with human arms and blue eyes hopping around the garden? Everyone laughs at him.

I can’t laugh at him, however. Because I don’t know yet what I’m going to become. And there are worse things than oversized toads in my family history, let me tell you. Much worse.

My name is Connor Ryerson, I’m twelve years old, and I still don’t know what my life will be like. I still don’t even know what I am.

Everyone in my grade has changed now… Everyone but me, that is.

I’m still waiting.