Chapter Twenty-Seven

Monster

NO.

It couldn’t be him.

Vincent looked up at Sam, hoping her face would assure him he was just seeing things or this was a trick of her phone flashlight. James couldn’t be buried here. He had come back to their apartment. He had been with him every day since then. Almost every hour. James had killed those men. He had locked Vincent in a bathroom.

He couldn’t be dead.

But Sam’s face only reflected the sinking feeling that was bubbling up inside him. Eyes bulging, mouth pulled together into a thin line like she was trying to contain something, she stumbled back into the dirt wall, dropping her phone as bits of dirt fell on top of her head.

They were consumed by darkness when her phone hit the ground, but there was enough moonlight for him to see James’s pale face. The face he had kissed and loved for three years that now looked far too well-preserved after nearly two months in the ground.

Vincent’s legs were shaking. They’d buckle any moment now. He sat down on the closed bottom half of the casket, examining James’s waxy face. It almost looked like a Halloween mask. He reached out a hand, expecting it to feel like rubber, but when his fingers rested on James’s forehead, they met skin—firm and cold, but still skin. He pushed back James’s hair, and he could feel the uneven bumps of stitches where the bullet had grazed the side of James’s head during the attack. There were probably more stitches closing up the hole in his shoulder.

No mask or costume. This wasn’t an episode of Scooby-Doo where he’d pull off the disguise to find the culprit to be an old curmudgeonly man. The monster was real, and he wasn’t in this casket. He was out there, and James, his James, was dead. He’d been dead since the attack.

Something between a wail and a scream erupted from somewhere inside him. He leaned over so that he was face-to-face with him. Pressed his forehead to James’s and tried to ignore the putrid smell of chemicals that was radiating off him.

James hadn’t come back to the apartment. He hadn’t lain in bed beside him. He hadn’t murdered Tyler or killed the stocky man in front of his daughter or smashed in that kid’s face. He hadn’t hurt Vincent or threatened him or locked him in a bathroom. He’d been dead. Of course, he’d been dead. James couldn’t have done those terrible things. The attack hadn’t turned him into a monster. It had killed him. Left him buried in a casket that Vincent had foolishly dug up, thinking it would be someone else, who would be the key to solving some grand conspiracy.

And all this time, while James had been buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Vincent had been with someone else. Jesus, he’d slept in bed beside him. Made fucking love to him. Helped him murder people. He’d done terrible, unimaginable things for a future with a man who had been dead, and he’d dismissed every bit of evidence that clearly showed this wasn’t the man he’d come to know and love. All so he could live in a fantasy world where James was still alive.

He felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him, and all he could do was sit there, consumed in his own emptiness.

He wanted to climb inside the casket, shut it, and have Sam bury them together. Drift to sleep when the air ran out and lie there with him forever. The possibility was more tempting than any drug, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t hide while this man who looked like James hurt other people. He had to be stopped.

Vincent kissed James’s forehead in the same manner he had after he woke up on that hill and packed his wounds with mud. One kiss that would never be long enough to bring James back or fill the void of his loss.

Vincent got to his feet. He stood up because if he spent one more second with James, he didn’t think he would ever be able to leave his side. He shut the casket lid and forced himself to look away from the dark wood. Sam still stood against the wall, her expression unchanged.

He stepped away from the casket. “You were right.”

“I was,” she said without the slightest ounce of satisfaction.

Vincent picked up her phone and checked the time. Nearly five o’clock. “The sun’s going to come up soon.”

He handed her the phone, and she pocketed it. “Then we need to get to work.”

First, however, they needed to get the stone back over the casket. Sam suggested just dropping it on there, but the sound of the colliding cement would be far too loud. He didn’t like the idea of potentially cracking the lid either. He knew worms could burrow through more than dirt, and he didn’t want to leave them any openings.

Each taking a side, they pulled down on the stone. As soon as it started to tip, Vincent thought it would just crush them both, but somehow, they were able to support it. They slowly knelt in unison, calling out frustrated orders to try to stay at the same level until the stone was back in place.

Dripping in sweat that was grainy with dirt, Vincent looked at the walls around them. Steep and solid. They might as well be two stories high because they seemed too impossibly tall for him to climb over. Without exchanging a word on the subject, neither of them would stand on the vault, regardless of how much easier it would make the climb. They’d just have to use each other.

He helped Sam out first, and in turn, she helped him. However, even with her assistance, pulling himself out of the grave was far more painful than he had anticipated. His cracked ribs felt like they were separating into small, piercing bone shards, and his wrist was in a bidding war with them for the most pain-inducing injury. When he finally got out, he lay on his back, clutching his chest and trying to reintroduce his lungs to air. The morning sky had already begun to chase away the moon.

Sam was just as out of breath as he was, but she wasted no time on a break. He hadn’t been on the ground more than a couple of seconds when the sound of the shovel piercing dirt filled his ears. He was too exhausted to even react to it. He lay there, listening to the dirt and rocks rain down on the vault like hail on a tin roof.

He had to get up. She couldn’t do it alone. He stole a few more breaths and staggered to his feet to help her. The small trowel was of little use at this point, so he scooped the dirt up in his hands and tossed it into the hole. When his arms tired, he pushed mounds in with the side of his shoe. He felt like he was fighting with it, punching and kicking it. Beating it until it fit back into the hole in the earth they’d created.

The ever-brightening sky was enough motivation to continue working without speaking or taking a break. By the time Sam was patting the top of the filled grave with the back of her shovel, it was light out. Vincent brought the shovel and trowel back to the woodshed and came back for Sam, who had stayed at the grave, staring at the marker.

“I guess we got our answer,” she said, lighting a cigarette. She crumpled up the empty pack and stuffed it in her back pocket.

“More questions than answers,” Vincent said. His worst fears had come true. Not only was the man he had been with for almost two months not James, but they were also no closer to the truth than they had been last night.

Sam held the cigarette out for him. He took it and inhaled deeply on it, letting the smoke fill his aching lungs, before he exhaled. They needed to leave. He wasn’t sure what time groundskeepers started their day, but it wasn’t safe to be here, in front of a grave, covered in dirt.

But there was less urgency now. Perhaps exhaustion had calmed him, or he just didn’t know what the hell they were going to do when they left, and he wanted to delay it.

“None of this makes any sense,” he said, passing the cigarette back to her. “How could someone look exactly like him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I could even believe it if I didn’t see it for myself.”

He wished he’d just imagined it all and that he and this imposter hadn’t left a path of destruction in their wake. “And how could he be impervious to bullets and incredibly strong?”

Sam shrugged. “What if he isn’t a person, but a thing?”

Vincent looked up at her, waiting for a smirk to reveal that she was joking, but she just took a drag of the cigarette and handed it back to him.

He’d considered this man a monster for the terrible things he’d done, but he’d never actually thought he was a literal monster. The only monsters in the real world were people like the stocky man and the tall man whose heinous acts inspired legends. They became immortalized in bedtime stories people read to their kids to prepare them for the evils of the world.

But people in the real world didn’t have the strength to pull open locked metal doors without breaking a sweat. People in the real world died when they were shot in the chest. Sam was right. Whoever or whatever they were dealing with, it didn’t seem to come from the real world, but from some story he’d read in his Myths, Legends, and Folktales class.

That’s when it hit him. He sucked on the cigarette and handed it back to her. “I think I know someone who can help us.”

“Yeah?” The cigarette was close to burning out. Sam took a small drag and passed it back.

“Dr. Cowart. He’s one of my professors. He teaches about this kind of stuff.” He’d planned on avoiding the man for the rest of his life, but he was the only person Vincent could think of who might have the slightest clue about what was going on.

“Works for me.”

He took one last drag on the cigarette, twisted it into the dirt to put out the flame, and set it beside Greta’s cigarette butt at the base of James’s marker before they left.

 

HE STARED AT the poster on the door. The same one he’d read the last time he’d waited outside Dr. Cowart’s office:

I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality. —Jean Cocteau

The irony wasn’t unappreciated. He knocked on the door. No response. Through the opaque glass, he could see the silhouettes of two people sitting across a desk from one another. Probably another student whose meeting Dr. Cowart refused to interrupt. Vincent took a seat on the floor across from the office door and propped himself up against the wall.

He switched between rereading the poster and watching the silhouettes to keep his mind from wandering back to Greenwood Cemetery and to fight the urge to fall asleep. He’d been up for over twenty-four hours at this point. After leaving the cemetery, he and Sam went back to her mother’s house in Fox Chapel to clean up. They both thought returning to their apartments would be a mistake. Plus, her mother left for work before six o’clock and wouldn’t even notice that they’d come and gone.

Vincent showered first, and there were an oversized T-shirt and a pair of jeans waiting for him when he got out. Apparently, some previous boyfriend of Sam’s mother’s hadn’t gotten his shit out of the house. He looked deflated in the clothes and needed to borrow a belt to keep the pants up, but at least he was no longer covered in dirt.

Once Sam had washed up, she dropped him off outside Posvar Hall. She offered to come with him to the history department on the third floor, but he needed to do this alone. He had a feeling what little sympathy Dr. Cowart had for him would completely diminish if he needed a friend to hold his hand through their meeting. Still, as the voices in the office crescendoed and the silhouettes raised from seated positions, he wished she’d joined him.

He hadn’t seen Dr. Cowart since the day of the attack when he’d gone to him for help on his final project. His professor had been far from sympathetic then. Add all the unanswered emails he had from him, and there was no way this visit would go well.

Who cares? he told himself. You need information from him. Nothing else matters.

Dr. Cowart opened the office door. “Just try reading it with that in mind. If you still have trouble, then come talk to me after class tomorrow.”

“Will do. Thanks again.” A young woman, who had the nervous, overwhelmed eyes of a freshman, hurried out of the office and down the hall.

Dr. Cowart had a faint smile on his face, and it fell when he spotted Vincent, lowering his coarse rigid goatee with it. “Vincent?”

Vincent blanked on whatever introduction he’d prepared. He got to his feet with a stifled grunt of pain and said, “Hi. Ah. Do you have a minute?”

The professor looked back into his office, apparently searching for an excuse. “Sure. But I have class in half an hour, so you’ll have to make it quick.”

“Great.” Vincent walked past him into the office before he could shut the door in his face. The morning sun blinded his eyes, and he was quickly reminded that the opposing wall was made up of three floor-to-ceiling windows. Black spots clouded his vision, and he blinked them away, taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of his desk.

Dr. Cowart cracked the door and sat down. He looked expectantly at Vincent, as if to say, “Well, get on with it.”

Vincent looked down at his lap. Whatever subtle way he’d devised to gently bring up the question he needed to ask had escaped him. His hands were shaking, and he interlocked his fingers to steady them. He had just dug up a casket. This should be a piece of cake. But there was no way he could ask what he wanted to outright without sounding as mad as he probably looked. “Do you, ah, believe in legends and myths and whatnot?”

“In what sense?”

Vincent tried to think of another way to phrase the question. “Like do you believe these stories might have some truth to them?”

“Of course,” Dr. Cowart said, shifting his weight. Vincent almost got his hopes up until his professor finished his statement. “As you should know from class, even the most fantastic of tales contains a kernel of truth.”

“I mean like beyond morals,” Vincent said, unsure of how else to say it.

Dr. Cowart looked over his head. Vincent followed his gaze to a clock hanging on the wall. Dr. Cowart cleared his throat. “Look, I have to be in class in twenty-five minutes and that includes the two blocks between here and there. So, if you have a point, I’d get to it.”

He had to just come out and say it. “Do you know of any myths or legends about something that is strong and invincible? Looks like someone who passed away.”

Dr. Cowart’s brow furrowed. “Like a ghost?”

“No, a physical being.” Vincent searched his mind for any characteristic that might make this a little clearer. He’d been with this imposter for almost two months. There had to be something else strange about the way he acted. “One that’s very protective.”

“Is this somehow connected to your final paper? Because, as I discussed in my emails, between your absences in class and incomplete assignments, I don’t think turning in this final would keep you from failing. I’m not sure if you got them, though, since I never received any responses.”

Vincent wanted to dive across the desk and wipe that self-righteous look off the prick’s face. Let him know just how little he cared about his fucking class. But he squeezed his fingers together and took a few deep breaths instead because he still needed this asshole’s help.

“Sorry I haven’t responded to your emails. Been a little busy lately. A lot has happened.” He tried to sound sincere, but even he could hear the anger seeping into his words.

Dr. Cowart sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I understand, Vincent, I do. But it’s not fair to the other students who have been working all this time for you to get a pass when I’ve done everything in my power to accommodate your situation.”

Fuck you.

The words were on the tip of his tongue. Like a dog in a cage, they whined for freedom. He could just tell him to fuck off and leave. There was no way Dr. Cowart was going to help him anyway. His professor couldn’t see anything outside the scope of his class. That’s when he had an idea, and he wanted to ignore it because Dr. Cowart deserved every obscenity that Vincent wanted to call him, but he had to try. He owed it to James to do everything he could to stop the creature who’d stolen his appearance.

Trying to steady his voice, he said, “I want to finish the final anyway. I don’t care what grade I get on it. I need to finish this for me. Please?”

Dr. Cowart glanced at the clock again. “Okay, but let’s make it quick. What do you want to know?”

“I’m looking for a story about a being that’s strong and invincible. One that is very protective and can look like someone else who has passed away. One of my articles talked about a creature that had those characteristics, but it didn’t name it or the legend.”

“Wasn’t your paper on Hansel and Gretel? I’m failing to see the connection between the fairy tale and what you are describing.”

“Long story. I just need a little help figuring out where this monster comes from to complete my paper. Please.”

“Those are fairly vague parameters. I honestly can’t think of anything that would have all those characteristics, especially imitating the looks of someone who has died.”

“What about the strength and protection?” He was reaching, but he needed something. Anything that could help him stop that thing.

“The idea of protection makes me think it might be a gorgon.”

“A what?”

“They’re believed to have originated in Greek mythology. They’re often carved into objects, like shields or sacred buildings, for protection because their gaze can turn men to stone. This is all information that you can find if you research them.”

“Like Medusa?” That didn’t sound right. If that creature was one of them, Vincent would have been a statue when it first appeared in his apartment.

“She is considered a gorgon, yes. I should be going.” He got up to leave.

“But I don’t think that’s what I’m looking for.” The desperation was apparent in his voice.

Dr. Cowart sat back down. “Maybe a gargoyle?”

Vincent knew that one. The imposter didn’t have wings so that didn’t seem right either. “More human-like, if that makes sense.”

Another glance at the clock.

Vincent wanted to smash the damn thing to pieces.

Dr. Cowart tapped his fingers against the desk as he thought. His eyes were unfocused. He seemed to be searching through his mind for another answer as if his knowledge of myths and legends sat on bookshelves—like the ones behind him—and he was running his brown fingers over the spines. He must have found his answer somewhere in there because his focus returned to Vincent, and he said, “It might be a golem.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard about that one.”

“Then you’ll have to research it. I’m out of time.” He picked up a worn leather briefcase from beside his desk and stuffed a stack of papers inside it before getting to his feet.

Vincent remained seated. “What if it’s not a golem?”

Dr. Cowart grabbed the coat he had hung over the back of his chair. “Email me then. Let’s go.”

He waved Vincent toward the door.

Vincent stood up. He didn’t want to leave without a definitive answer, but he didn’t have much of a choice. He had a feeling that any email he sent would surely be ignored—if only to teach him a lesson about all his unread correspondence. “Could I call you?”

“I don’t hold office hours over the weekend, but you can leave a message, and I’ll get it Monday morning.” He led Vincent out of the office and turned to lock the door behind him.

“It’s just that this is time-sensitive. I want to get it done this weekend. Please. I’m trying.”

Dr. Cowart turned back around to look at him. “I don’t give out my personal number to students. Email me, and I’ll get back to you. Excuse me.”

“Thanks.” Vincent stepped aside.

“Better be one hell of a project,” Dr. Cowart said, walking down the hall to the elevators.

More than you’ll ever know.

A student rushed past Vincent to the escalators at the end of the hallway. Tired as he was, he didn’t want to ride down on one of the elevators with Dr. Cowart, so he opted for the escalators. He had just stepped onto it when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and, seeing the beginning of Sam’s name on the half of the screen that was still working, he answered it. “Hey, I’m coming out now. Don’t know if I got much—”

“Shut up. Just stop talking. Listen to me.” Sam’s voice was stern, but there was a hysterical edge to it that made him freeze in place. “James—that thing—is here. I don’t know how he found us, but he just walked into the building. Vincent, you there? Hello?”

The monster, whatever it was, had found him.