The hill, the church, the graveyard were all gone, even the sun had disappeared,
leaving them in the middle of a cold darkness, one that had followed Conor ever
since his mother had first been hospitalized, from before that when she’d started
the treatments that made her lose her hair, from before that when she’d had flu
that didn’t go away until she went to a doctor and it wasn’t flu at all, from before
even that when she’d started to complain about how tired she was feeling, ever
since before all that, ever since forever, it felt like, the nightmare had been there,
stalking him, surrounding him, cutting him off, making him alone.
It felt like he’d never been anywhere else.
“Get me out of here!” he yelled. “Please!”
It is time, the monster said again, for the fourth tale.
“I don’t know any tales!” Conor said, his mind lurching with fear.
If you do not tell it, the monster said, I shall have to tell it for you. It held Conor
up closer to its face. And believe me when I say, you do not want that.
“Please,” Conor said again. “I have to get back to my mum.”
But, the monster said, turning across the blackness, she is already here.
The monster set him down abruptly, almost dropping him to the earth, and
Conor stumbled forward.
He recognized the cold ground under his hands, recognized the clearing he was
in, bordered on three sides by a dark and impenetrable forest, recognized the
fourth side, a cliff, flying off into even further blackness.
And on the cliff’s edge, his mum.
She had her back to him, but she was looking over her shoulder, smiling. She
looked as weak as she had in the hospital, but she gave him a silent wave.
“Mum!” Conor yelled, feeling too heavy to stand, as he did every time the
nightmare began. “You have to get out of here!”
His mum didn’t move, though she looked a little worried at what he’d said.
Conor dragged himself forward, straining at the effort. “Mum, you have to run!”
“I’m fine, darling,” she said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Mum, run! Please, run!”
“But darling, there’s—”
She stopped and turned back to the cliff’s edge, as if she’d heard something.
“No,” Conor whispered to himself. He pulled himself forward some more, but she
was too far, too far to reach in time, and he felt so heavy—
There was a low sound from below the cliff. A rumbling, booming noise.
Like something big was moving down below.
Something bigger than the world.
And it was climbing up the cliff face.
“Conor?” his mum asked, looking back at him.
But Conor knew. It was too late.
The real monster was coming.
“Mum!” Conor shouted, forcing himself to his feet, pushing against the invisible
weight pressing down on him. “MUM!”
“Conor!” his mum shouted, backing away from the cliff’s edge.
But the booming was getting louder. And louder. And louder still.
“MUM!”
He knew he wouldn’t get there in time.