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CHAPTER TWO

The Horror

George felt the cold wind slap him as he stepped out of the museum. He felt horrible. The black treacly feeling was still bubbling in his head, and the chill on his face only made it worse. He didn’t know what to do next. He just knew he’d had to get out and be alone for a moment.

George knew that it was safer and easier to be alone. He’d decided this right after his dad had died, when life had suddenly filled with too many people saying all the wrong things, as if their words could begin to fill the new dull hole in the middle of him.

Being a loner seemed like a hard road, and sometimes his weakness betrayed him: for example, he hated himself for smiling at the boy who’d toppled the pamphlet stand on him; it had been sheer, unthinking weakness.

He’d betrayed himself.

Smiling had been like trying to be friends when they weren’t. Smiling had been a gutless, needy thing to do. And George had definitely decided he didn’t need anyone, friends or otherwise.

Rain spat at him, and he looked up, thinking that alone was the way to be, because alone meant you were in charge of what could get to you and what you could keep out.

Above him, high on the decorated facade of the museum, there were carvings of imaginary animals, nearly real but not quite. Lizards that only existed in the mind of the sculptor alternated with alarming pterodactyl-like birds. The pterodactyls had nasty pointy teeth jagging out of nasty pointy beaks, and ugly hooks stuck out of their featherless wings. Their eyes had the wide-open glassy stare of someone you don’t want to cross.

He felt the cold air on his gums and wondered if he was smiling or grimacing. The more he looked the more he saw that the whole front of the building seethed with stone carvings of animals. They made him uneasy. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t like them. He felt watched. Maybe it was the windows in the facade—the people who could be looking out, seeing him with a red face and eyes pricking with frustration and tears that he wasn’t going to let come.

He knew enough about self-pity to hate it. He hated it more than Killingbeck, more than the rock or the hard place. So he turned from the facade and wiped his eyes to be sure no one saw him nearly cry.

He looked at his watch: 3:42. They’d be in there until four thirty at least. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He turned away and leaned back against the building.

Something jagged into his back.

Behind him, at waist height, on the corner of the front portico of the museum, a little nubby carving of a dragon’s head stared up at him.

It reminded him of the things his dad made—used to make—in his workshop. Not the big stuff, the serious stuff, but the little animal toys he’d sometimes squidge out of clay to make George smile when George was smaller, on days when George found him at work but not too busy.

The memory didn’t make him happy. Maybe because he’d thought about his dad too much for one day anyway, or maybe because the dragon had fangs and the fangs reminded him of the monkey, of the taste in his mouth, of Killingbeck.

Whatever the reason, the result was strong and sharp.

He hated the carving.

He hated it a lot.

His fist was bunched and in motion before he thought about it. Once he thought about it, he knew this was going to hurt. He knew there’d be blood, split knuckles, maybe even broken bones. He knew he didn’t mind. He knew in a place that was closer to wanting than knowing that all this was likely, and all this was okay.

His fist was the size of the dragon’s head. His fist was not made of granular stone. In the microsecond before impact, he realized he didn’t know what this would feel like. He realized he was going to break his first bone. He felt more air on his gums as his grin rictussed wider.

He didn’t feel the impact. He heard it—a sharp, ugly crack—and the world jerked a bit.

Something hit his foot.

He closed his eyes and cradled his hand instinctively, waiting for the wave of pain. From the cracking noise alone he knew that bad damage had been done. Now that he’d done it he wished he hadn’t. He didn’t want to look at his hand in case something was sticking out of it. Like a bone. He checked it with his good hand, carefully. No bone, but definitely wetness.

Something hissed at him.

He opened his eyes. He must have imagined it. As he turned to check behind him, his foot stumbled over an obstruction. He looked down.

It was the stone dragon’s head.

He’d knocked it off.

He looked at the portico. There was the stump of its neck, sheared off neat as a scalpel cut.

Now he looked at his hand. No bone. No blood, even. Just wet from the rain. It was fine. He picked up the dragon’s head. He couldn’t believe it. Something had changed. It wasn’t looking at him anymore. It wasn’t looking at anything. Unless he was going mad, it had been looking at him. Now its eyes were closed. He decided it must have been a trick of the light.

There was another hiss from behind him. Then a wet scrape and a dry squeal.

He knew without looking that the noise must be one of the museum guards, maybe even Killingbeck coming out to give him a real beasting about leaving the hall. He had no idea how Killingbeck was going to react to seeing that his least favorite boy had just broken a carving off the museum wall.

So as he turned, he jammed the dragon’s head into his coat pocket, hoping to hide it but knowing he wasn’t going to get away with it.

It wasn’t Killingbeck. It was something worse, something so much worse that if he’d had time to think he would have given anything for it to be Killingbeck instead.

It wasn’t anything human.

It wasn’t anything possible.

It was, however, peeling itself off the stone facade of the museum and looking at George with flat, blank hatred. And not just hatred—hunger, too.

It was a pterodactyl.

Its eyes were wide and unblinking, as if permanently surprised to find there was room for them at all in a skull that wasn’t so much a head, as a long, heavy beak that tapered back into a ribbed neck, bent under the strain of holding up all those teeth. Its body was small and surprisingly pigeon-chested, but was more than made up for by the large batlike wings and the sinewy legs that ended in bent knuckles and ripping talons.

Something like breath hissed from deep within its stony neck.

George’s body had entirely forgotten to breathe.

The thing jerked off the frieze with a final effort. It tried to spread its wings, but only succeeded in getting one uncurled before it disappeared from view, plummeting below the level of the balustrade.

George heard a noise like a sackful of wet suitcases hit the grass below. Unable to stop himself, he peered over the balustrade. The monster continued unpacking itself and getting all its wings and talons in the right order. It had its back to him. It stretched itself like an old man working a kink out of his neck.

And then it turned.

It looked right at him with dead stone eyes. And as the rest of the body twisted to follow the head and point itself at him, George knew what those eyes were doing.

They were locking on. Acquiring a target.

And that target was him.

As if to confirm this, the pterodactyl raised its beak to the lead sky and chattered its teeth in a noise like a drumroll played on dead men’s bones.

Then it lowered its head and began to lurch forward, dragging itself toward him on its wing-knuckles, swinging its body and foot-talons along between them, like a demon on crutches.

George ran.