The Monster
Some swore that the house was haunted. It was the children, mostly. They would tease one another about the possibility of seeing monsters behind the shutters, which was why when one of them actually did see a pair of glowing eyes peering at him through a dusty window, the shaken child would keep his mouth shut instead of sharing his experience with his friends. Many residents in the town repeatedly had nightmares about the eyes, although only some were able to recognize where this image was coming from; most had suppressed the memory so far down that they chalked up the image to a realistic bad dream.
While many of the parents scoffed at their children’s “overactive imaginations”, they were wary as well. The house just looked haunted. 137 Monroe Avenue was a decrepit old building, constructed out of stained wood and adorned with wasp nests. The windows were boarded up, and the only fragment that remained from its previous life was the towering mahogany door with its lion brass knockers. Some of the older residents could remember the house in its glory day, before the home’s owners died in a boating accident. They could remember when it was a beautiful mansion, towering over all the other homes in the neighborhood, and the host to many glamorous parties. Now, the house sat on an abandoned lot, where the only things to admire were the weeds surrounding the property, always bent down in prayer from the weight of their own buds.
Most of the town people tried to avoid the house at all cost. They would see things they couldn’t explain, and would just chalk it all up to visions, or dehydration, or the light playing tricks on them, even when they knew this was not the case. They would see a soda can on the front porch, a broken lock that had obviously been tampered with, or footprints darkening the dust on the front steps, and simply shake their head and walk away. But still, as they progressed down the street, they would occasionally glance back, and imagine what sort of beast could have made those prints. A fearsome creature, who preys on the innocent. A smiling mouth, concealing teeth dripping with blood. Scarred hands with dirty fingernails, that remember all too well the feel of a pale neck snapping in their clenches. For a moment, these daytime nightmares would stop them in their tracks. But eventually they would shake their heads, as if to try to toss their thoughts out onto the cement and out of their minds for good.
There was a large “For Sale” sign that had been put up the day after the house’s owners had perished, and had not moved an inch since. At some point, a couple of bored teens had drawn indecencies on it, but still, the same decaying sign remained. The front door had a large piece of wood holding it shut, and the perimeter of the house was sanctioned off by browning CAUTION tape.
The house itself was a death trap, which was why, on a slightly cool day in June, no one in the neighborhood was very surprised to hear the sirens. Still, they all flocked to 137 Monroe Avenue, curious to see which hooligan had gotten the nerve to go inside, damaging himself in the process. When they realized that sirens were coming from police cars, not ambulances, their humor turned to dread. They gathered outside with grim anticipation, waiting for the monster to surface. And finally, he did. Images of the terrible creature they had all imagined were discarded as the grimy, harmless-looking man being escorted by two policemen was shoved into an awaiting police car. The relieved community began to chat; people told each other and reassured themselves that they never really believed in all that nonsense about a monster, and could they believe that they had a squatter in their very own neighborhood?
The only one in the crowd who was not talking was a young boy who lived on Magnolia Street, two blocks away. He had crouched into a ball on the sidewalk, his dirty blonde head tucked firmly into his Old Navy sweatshirt, the tan sleeves turning brown as his tears stained the cotton. A hush went over the crowd as people noticed the little boy. An elderly policeman walked over, and slowly kneeled down to talk to him. The policeman’s bent head made it impossible to read his emotions, until suddenly he jerked up, his face a mask of horror. Before anyone could ask what was going on, the boy was whisked into another police car and driven away.


Five months later, a group of sixth graders walked cautiously past 137 Monroe Avenue. Although the man had been taken out, and would be in jail for the rest of his life charged with breaking and entering, theft and robbery, and three different accounts of rape, the house still had a haunted quality to it. The children looked into the boarded up windows and thought of their classmate, who had been so quiet the past few months, and after the outburst in June, had moved away, never to be seen again. No one teased each other about a monster living in the house. No one said anything. Two weeks later, the house was demolished, and jokes about monsters hiding under the bed weren’t quite as funny anymore.