Page 77 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Deeps

She sighs and closes her eyes for a second, trying to go back into her memories. “My mom said in her stories that the place in the mountains looks like the tip of a dagger and the monastery was located on the sheath?”

At that very moment, I’m glad for my nerd tendencies because this girl looks like she doesn’t even know what a sheath is.

“Do you know the direction we need to drive toward?” Derrick throws out once we make it onto the main road.

I quickly open the glove compartment and rummage around. “Yass!” I exclaim when I discover an old-fashioned folded map. “Good thing you live around a bunch of old people, Derrick. They have a laminated pocket map of the state.”

“Good, give it to Delizah. Delizah, tell us which way to go. I’m about to come up on a highway entrance,” Derrick instructs without taking his eyes off the road. A few headlights come toward us, but not enough to make us suspicious.

“I don’t know how to use one of these!” she exclaims, and I look at her in a different light. She is younger than we are. I shouldn’t have expected it to be this easy. I pull out my phone and hand it to her. “Show me.”

She types in something and tells us that the mountain we’re looking for is about a three-hour drive away. The GPS starts speaking and I take my phone back, placing it in the cup holder between me and Derrick to help amplify the volume.

The trip is quiet, the hum of the road beneath our tires the only thing to be heard. When I look back, Delizah has already dozed off against the side of her seat.

“You feel alright, Derrick?” I ask as I turn back to face forward.

“Yeah.”

“I mean, for real, bruh. Tell me. I want to help. Look, I’m sorry I brought you there. I’m sorry for buggin—”

“Stop, James. Bruh, don’t do that to yourself, okay? You didn’t know that crazy hocus pocus shit was real. I know you. You wouldn’t put us in danger like that. We’ve come too far together.”

“Derrick,” I sigh with guilt, hanging my head in my hands, unable to look at him. “I-I’m sorry, man. When I saw—When that thing—”

I can hear Derrick grip the steering wheel harder. The crackling of the material makes me look up in his direction.

“I heard your voice the whole time. I couldn’t answer, man. I wanted to. I screamed, hollered. I got on my knees inside my mind and prayed to a God I didn’t think was listening. I tried to come back, man. I was clawing to come back to you.”

My heart stutters and I hit my chest with my fist. Guilt as black as my youth’s depression comes at me at full force, threatening to take me back down a road I told myself I wouldn’t go anymore.

Derrick’s hand reaches out and grabs mine tightly. My heart races. “I’m here. I’m back. Stop. I’m right here, man.”

My head feels tight. The emotions of worthlessness and pity swirl inside of me. Flashbacks of my neighbor’s pitiful looks to my mother’s look of disappointment at both our lives cuts me like a physical blade.

I shake my head, astonished that Derrick is still grounding me when I have no idea what kind of destruction the creature is wrecking inside of him right now. I wonder if he is currently in pain and my heart lurches at the constant fear of not knowing.

We change freeways and he shifts the car into a higher gear, increasing our speed. The fate of the world rests on our shoulders, but all I can think about is what the future holds for both me and Derrick after this is all over.

I need to know if he’s okay. I need to know if we’re okay and if he forgives me for pulling him into this mess to begin with.

I distract myself by pulling my hand out of his and checking the GPS on my phone. “We’re ten minutes out.”

Derrick nods and follows the phone’s voice until we pull the car into a flat dirt area close to the bottom of the mountainside.

The gearshift loudly grinds when he puts it into park, waking up Delizah in the back.

“Are we here?” she asks groggily.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “The GPS ended here.”

We all exit the vehicle and look up. “How the hell are we going to get up there?” Derrick asks.

The gears in my mind quickly move and I come up with a plan. The only plan we have. “Lucky for our asses, we got something with us that has wings.”

Derrick looks at me skeptically and I point my thumb behind us at Delizah, who looks at him sheepishly. Derrick was out when she showed me her form, but he was about to be in for a vision he’ll never forget.

Derrick

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