Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff Read Free Book Online

got into my dreams, and in my dreams, it wasn’t scary. I’d be like clutching this phone in the dark, petrified because the janitor was coming for me, and then the voice would say my name, “Jane Charlotte,” and there’d be this waveof relief, because somehow, dream logic, I’d know the voice was good, and it was on my side, on the side of all good people. And it was more powerful than the Angel of Death.
    So I dreamed about this stuff for a few weeks, and then the dreams started to taper off. The janitor hadn’t come calling on me, nobody at school or in town had seen him, no more kids had gone missing, and while I still knew the guy was guilty, more and more it seemed like that was somebody else’s problem.
    Then one evening my aunt and uncle drove down to Fresno to visit some friends of theirs. Originally I was supposed to go with them and catch a movie while they played bridge or whatever, but the day before, I’d gotten busted for cheating on a test, and after the school superintendent called home to narc on me, my aunt went from talking about “when we go out tomorrow night” to “when your uncle and I go out tomorrow night.”
    They left around six. Storm clouds were blowing in from the west, and I was pissy enough to hope they’d get caught in a downpour. By seven the sky was overcast and lightning was flickering on the horizon, but there was still no rain.
    I read a few chapters of Nancy Drew—I’d worked my way through most of the series by now, so I’d had to start rationing the books that were left—then ate the cold meatloaf my aunt had left me in the fridge. After I cleared my plate I sat back down at the kitchen table to work a crossword puzzle from the Fresno Bee. This was another Phil-type activity that you couldn’t have paid me to do back in S.F. But with no TV, a looming Nancy Drew shortage, and Señor Diaz hanging up the phone every time I tried to call Carlotta, my entertainment standards just kept getting lower and lower.
    It was a hidden-message crossword, which they did sometimes: certain of the clues were highlighted, and if you solved them and strung the answers together,they’d form a saying or a quotation, like RED SKY AT MORNING, SAILOR TAKE WARNING, or THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL US MAKES US STRONGER. Usually the special clues were hard enough that you had to finish the whole crossword to get them, but sometimes, like tonight, you could solve them directly.
    The first highlighted clue, 1 across, four letters, was “Defunct Life magazine rival,” and I knew that was LOOK. The second clue, 9 across, five letters, was “Opposite of over,” or UNDER. The third clue—and this one was so easy I almost laughed—was a fill-in-the-blank, 13 across, three letters, “Winnie ____ Pooh.”
    There was a rumble of thunder and the rain finally started. It was the downpour I’d wished for and then some, but instead of making me happy it set me on edge. I went down the hall to the front door, flicked on the front-porch lights, and spent a long time looking out, making sure that the hiss of the rain was just rain, and not tires creeping up the drive.
    The next clue was the only one I didn’t get right off the bat: 20 across, four letters, “Where the NC gun is hidden.”
    NC gun?
    Capital N, capital C. I thought it might be a typo, so I moved on to the next clue, 24 across, four letters, “Tarzan’s girlfriend.” My scalp prickled a little when I saw that, but what really made my hair stand up was the last clue, 31 across, nine letters, “The loneliest Brontë.”
    Now, ordinarily I wouldn’t have gotten that one either, but it just so happened that we’d been reading Jane Eyre in class that week, and the teacher had given us the rundown on the whole sorry Brontë family, so I knew that the loneliest Brontë was CHARLOTTE. After Branwell and Emily and Anne all died, Charlotte was the one left over, the one left alone in the house, kind oflike I was right now. And so if you added it