Page 11 of Only a Monster

Joan didn’t fancy gatecrashing anything either. Nick offered his hand. Joan hesitated, but took it. Touching hands was safe, she reminded herself. It felt good to touch him—an echo of the shivery feeling from the kiss.

‘We can go out the back way,’ Joan said. She led him up the library. ‘They won’t even see us. They’ll come in from—’

She stopped, staring through the open doorway.

In the passage outside the library, a man was stepping out of thin air with the casual stride of someone out for a stroll. He had shoulder-length black hair and a long, vulture-like face. He was half turned away from Joan. As his back foot appeared, he brushed at his suit with finicky care.

If he turned even a little, he’d see them. Joan squeezed Nick’s hand, willing him to stay silent. Willing him not to have seen what she’d seen. But Nick had. He was staring, eyes wide. The man had appeared out of thin air. Nick squeezed her hand back hard.

Those black cars. Joan remembered now where she’d seen cars like that before.

Two years ago, she’d arrived at Gran’s place for the summer and found a buzz of energy in the air. And not the usual buzz of good humour among the Hunts—the house had felt alive with tension.

‘The Olivers are in town this year,’ Ruth had explained to Joan. ‘Everyone’s on edge.’

‘What do you mean?’ Joan had said.

‘The Olivers,’ Ruth had said, as if Joan should know what that meant. When Joan had looked at her blankly, Ruth had added: ‘Another family of monsters. Posh gits who drive around in black Jaguars. They hate us and we hate them.’

‘Another family of monsters?’ Joan had said. ‘Monsters like us?’

‘Not like us,’ Ruth had said. ‘The Olivers are really bad. Cruel.’

Joan had seen those cars once later that summer. As she’d walked down the street, three of them had rolled past, sleek and black. Inside the last, Joan had glimpsed a grey-suited man in the driver’s seat, wearing a proper chauffeur’s hat. In the back seat, a boy had sat alone. He’d been around Joan’s age, golden-haired and beautiful. And as he’d passed, Joan had seen that he was sneering, as though he despised the whole world.

Cruel, Joan thought now. What would the Olivers do if they caught Joan and Nick here?

A woman appeared beside the vulture-faced man. And then more and more people were popping into existence—in the passage and in the rooms beyond: the Yellow Drawing Room, the Gilt Room.

Joan couldn’t shut the door—not without making a sound. It was old and creaky and whined when it closed. She could only step back into the library, careful not to touch the creaky floorboard. She coaxed Nick back with her, hoping their movements would be masked by all the arrivals.

As she stepped back, there was a sound behind her. A third footstep—a footstep neither she nor Nick had taken.

Joan turned slowly. Where the library had been empty, now there were people all down the long gallery. Joan heard Nick breathe in, sharp and shocked.

A man grabbed Joan’s shoulder with a heavy hand. ‘Why is it,’ he said, ‘that whenever we come to this time, we find the place infested with rats?’

FOUR

They were monsters.

If Joan had fostered any doubt about the truth, she couldn’t doubt it anymore. They’d appeared out of thin air. Joan must have looked just like that yesterday when she’d travelled from morning to night.

Seven of them were standing in the long gallery, elegantly dressed in early-twentieth-century suits and gowns. Joan’s eyes caught on details. A white silk scarf draped over a black jacket. Silver beading on a blue dress. Black leather shoes with a mirror sheen.

‘Did you see that?’ Nick whispered to Joan. ‘Did you see them appear out of the air?’

Joan felt sick. ‘Yes.’ She wished she could tell him what was happening. She wished she knew more herself. She couldn’t stop thinking of Ruth’s words. The Olivers are really bad. Cruel.

In the silence, footsteps sounded, slow and deliberate. The vulture-faced man stepped in from the passage. His shoulder-length hair was as black as a raven’s wing.

The man behind Joan gripped her shoulder tighter. ‘Lucien. These two were here when we arrived. They saw us arrive.’

Joan shivered at the way he said it. She had a horrible foreboding feeling. You must never tell anyone about monsters, Gran had said. And now Nick had seen them. What did that mean?

‘We’re—we’re volunteers here,’ Nick said. ‘We clean the house. We catalogue the books. We don’t have anything you’d—’

The man who’d spoken struck Nick hard across the face.

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