The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls Read Free Book Online

something under our bed," I said to Lori.
    "It's merely a figment of your overly active imagination," Lori said. She talked like a grown-up when she was annoyed.
    I tried to be brave, but I had heard something. In the moonlight, I thought I saw it move.
    "Something's there," I whispered.
    "Go to sleep," Lori said.
    Holding my pillow over my head for protection, I ran into the living room, where Dad was reading. "What's up, Mountain Goat?" he asked. He called me that because I never fell down when we were climbing mountainssure-footed as a mountain goat, he'd always say.
    "Nothing, probably," I said. "I just think maybe I saw something in the bedroom." Dad raised his eyebrows. "But it was probably just a figment of my overly active imagination."
    "Did you get a good look at it?" he asked.
    "Not really."
    "You must have seen it. Was it a big old hairy sonofabitch with the damnedest-looking teeth and claws?"
    "That's it!"
    "And did it have pointed ears and evil eyes with fire in 'em, and did it stare at you all wicked-like?" he asked.
    "Yes! Yes! You've seen it, too?"
    "Better believe I have. It's that old ornery bastard Demon."
    Dad said he had been chasing Demon for years. By now, Dad said, that old Demon had figured out that it had better not mess with Rex Walls. But if that sneaky son of a gun thought it was going to terrorize Rex Walls's little girl, it had by God got another think coming. "Go fetch my hunting knife," Dad said.
    I got Dad his knife with the carved bone handle and the blade of blue German steel, and he gave me a pipe wrench, and we went looking for Demon. We looked under my bed, where I had seen it, but it was gone. We looked all around the houseunder the table, in the dark corners of the closets, in the toolbox, even outside in the trash cans.
    "C'mere, you sorry-ass old Demon!" Dad called out in the desert night. "Come out and show your butt-ugly face, you yellow-bellied monster!"
    "Yeah, c'mon, you old mean Demon!" I said, waving the pipe wrench in the air. "We're not scared of you!"
    There was only the sound of the coyotes in the distance. "This is just like that chickenshit Demon," Dad said. He sat down on the front step and lit up a cigarette, then told me a story about the time Demon was terrorizing an entire town, and Dad fought it off in hand-to-hand combat, biting its ears and sticking his fingers in its eyes. Old Demon was terrified because that was the first time it had met anyone who wasn't afraid of it. "Damned old Demon didn't know what to think," Dad said, shaking his head with a chuckle. That was the thing to remember about all monsters, Dad said: They love to frighten people, but the minute you stare them down, they turn tail and run. "All you have to do, Mountain Goat, is show old Demon that you're not afraid."
    * * *
    Not much grew around Midland other than the Joshua tree, cacti, and the scrubby little creosote bushes that Dad said were some of the oldest plants on the planet. The great granddaddy creosote bushes were thousands of years old. When it rained, they let off a disgusting musty smell so animals wouldn't eat them. Only four inches of rain fell a year around Midlandabout the same as in the northern Saharaand water for humans came in on the train once a day in special containers. The only animals that could survive around Midland were lipless, scaly creatures such as Gila monsters and scorpions, and people like us.
    A month after we moved to Midland, Juju got bitten by a rattlesnake and died. We buried him near the Joshua tree. It was practically the only time I ever saw Brian cry. But we had plenty of cats to keep us company. Too many, in fact. We had rescued lots of cats since we tossed Quixote out the window, and most of them had gone and had kittens, and it got to the point where we had to get rid of some of them. We didn't have many neighbors to give them to, so Dad put them in a burlap sack and drove to a pond made by the mining company to cool equipment. I watched him load