Page 11 of An Invocation of Monsters

Juno: And watch out for monsters under the bed

The last text was accompanied by a little smiley face with wonky eyes facing different directions and his tongue sticking out.

My cousin really did have the most peculiar sense of humor.

4

Elle

It took me three hours of tossing and turning to accept that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep through my first night in the Lodge.

I sprawled out on my back, staring up at the ceiling. The fattening sliver of the waxing moon wasn’t enough to brighten the dark corners of this unfamiliar room.

It wasn’t quite silent. I heard the soft lapping of the lake, the whisper of wind through the pines.

But there was nothing else to give away human presence in this place. No footsteps echoing down hallways, no distant snores.

I somehow felt even more alone than I had back in my gray house in Innsmouth. I might as well have been lying on the surface of the moon.

After another half hour of laying there wide awake, I curled up on my side, my hand blindly questing to find my phone on the nightstand.

The second my fingers brushed the smooth plastic, a furious shriek ripped out through the night, shattering the silence.

I jerked so hard I knocked the phone to the floor, sending it clattering under my bed, and sat bolt upright.

The shriek was gone as quickly as it’d come. I held my breath, pulse pounding in my ears.

Nothing. No one got up, no one called for help.

I scowled up at the ceiling overhead, wondering what games these people were playing. Surely Kase would’ve warned me if the wildlife screamed like that with any regularity.

It’d sounded like someone being murdered.

With a resigned sigh, I slipped out of bed, a shiver going through me when my toes touched the cold floor. I got down on my knees, sticking my arm under the bed and sweeping around to search for my phone.

There wasn’t so much as a dust bunny under my fingertips. I growled low in my throat, straining further.

There. I felt the edge of the glass screen and shoved my whole shoulder under—

The phone was suddenly in my palm.

I froze, my heart skipping a beat or three… because it certainly felt like something had helpfully shoved it into my hand.

Something warm, that had just barely brushed against my fingertips.

Juno’s text jumped back into my brain, but I shook it off.

Monsters weren’t real. I’d gotten over that nonsense at age seven, when I’d left a pentagram made of chocolate chip cookies under my bed and the Cookie Monster had failed to appear at his summoning.

And anyway, my entire arm and half my shoulder were under the bed. If something wanted to eat me, I was already halfway into its maw.

I tapped the screen, lighting it up, and pushed my comforter out of the way so I could see.

Nothing but polished floorboards. No monsters.

Snorting at my own jumpiness, I got to my feet, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, and jammed my feet in my boots.

I left Gillian’s quarters—my quarters now, which felt strange to say—and stepped into the dark hallway lined with windows.

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