Chapter 20 Jill
Jill
For the rest of that rainy Saturday, Jill searched for monsters in her books. If she found something that could explain what
happened to the missing boys, she was supposed to call Una and tell her all about it. Knowing Una was on her side made Jill
less afraid.
She started off looking for creatures from Greek mythology that were capable of biting through bone. The Kraken was an obvious
choice. It was a behemoth with tentacles and a mouth filled with teeth the size of short swords. It could easily swallow a
human whole.
Did Charles see eels? Jill wondered, her fingertips tracing the black-and-white drawing of what looked like a giant octopus. Or tentacles?
Turning the page, she examined the illustration of the Scylla, a six-headed sea monster with a dragon-shaped head that reminded
Jill of Gidorah from the Godzilla movies. Scylla terrorized a channel of water somewhere in the Mediterranean, guarding one
side of the channel while another monster named Charybdis, who was basically a whirlpool, guarded the other.
“You don’t bite,” Jill said to the drawing of Charybdis.
She added Scylla’s name to the list she was compiling in her Hello Kitty notebook and continued reading.
There were dozens of sea nymphs and minor ocean goddesses. None had sharp teeth.
The illustrations of sirens varied. In one book, they were beautiful naked women from the waist up. The water hid their serpent
tails. In the second book, which was fifty years older than the first, sirens were birds with women’s faces.
The second book had a much longer description of the sirens, including how they’d been created by Demeter and how all three
had killed themselves after a man named Odysseus had managed to escape their deadly song.
Jill didn’t add sirens to her list. No bird had bitten off the finger Charles had seen floating in the water next to his boat.
Charles said it didn’t look like it had been cut by a blade. It had bits hanging out. Like it had been chewed.
After reading about the sea goddess Derceto in the newer book, Jill dismissed her because she was essentially a mermaid. But
in the older book, she was not only described as a great whale, but as the Greek version of a Syrian goddess named Atargatis.
This goddess was older and more powerful than the Greek Derceto. Atargatis ruled over all the fish. However, fish weren’t
the only creatures sacred to her. Snakes were as well.
Picturing the stone face in Mrs. Smith’s garden, Jill added Atargatis to her list. She also added Ceto, a general term for sea monsters. There were different descriptions of these creatures sprinkled throughout the book, but
most resembled giant sea serpents.
After reviewing her list, Jill noticed something.
“They’re all women. Scylla. Sirens. Atargatis. Ceto.”
She still had a hundred pages to go in the older Greek mythology book and hoped that her dad and brothers would leave her alone so she could finish it.
It was slow going. The typeface was small and there weren’t many illustrations.
It was harder to find descriptions of monsters without reading about the heroes who killed them.
She skimmed over the familiar stories of Perseus and Heracles, Theseus and Jason, and the section on wars and temples. Suddenly,
all that was left was a glossary on gods and goddesses and the minor deities and creatures under their dominion.
Jill flipped to the page listing Poseidon’s underlings. Many of his creatures were familiar to her now, from mermaids to hippocampi,
but she was only interested in the ones with teeth. Creatures who had teeth and bodies with snakelike appendages or tentacles.
She was just about to close the book when a line caught her eye.
Lamia. Female demon. Sea monster. Mother of Scylla. p. 114.
Jill turned back to the chapter on the Children of Zeus. This was an abbreviated history of all the women he’d slept with,
what form he’d taken to seduce them, what children the union had produced, and what Hera had done to punish the mortal women
and their offspring.
The paragraph about Lamia was short. Jill’s eyes flew over the words.
Zeus became enamored with Lamia, a queen of Libya who’d descended from the Titans.
When Hera learned that Lamia had given birth to twins, she was enraged.
Taking the form of a lioness, she crept up to Lamia’s children as they played in the gardens and slew them.
Lamia had spent the day swimming in the sea, but when she returned to the gardens and came upon the bodies of her children, her grief knew no bounds.
She vowed to spend the rest of her life punishing the Greeks.
Under the cover of darkness, she used her magic to lure their children into the water.
Then she carried them beneath the waves and devoured them.
Suddenly, the cut in the middle of Jill’s palm blazed in pain and she pressed her fingertips against the layers of gauze her
father had used to cover the wound.
She could feel the heat of her skin through the gauze. It was like touching a light bulb.
Blood began to seep into the clean white gauze, forming a familiar shape. A red eye stared out at her from the center of her
palm.
The pain lessened to a dull throb, but Jill felt clammy and nauseated. The words in her notebook blurred. The letters seemed
to melt together, to slither across the page like dozens of little worms.
“Stop,” she muttered through gritted teeth.
She picked up her pen and pressed it down hard on the paper to steady her trembling hand. Her words came out slanted and spidery.
Lamia. Demon. Sea monster. Eats children. Hunts at night. Mother of Scylla.
Jill’s pen snapped in half, spewing black ink across the paper.
She rushed to the bathroom for paper towels, blotted up the ink, then sank back against her bed.
Demon. Sea monster. Eats children.
Jill had to tell Una about Lamia. She had to tell her how her hand had started hurting the moment she’d seen the creature’s name. The phone in the kitchen had a long cord, so she could stand out on the deck and close the door behind her. No one would hear what she said to Una.
However, her dad was in the kitchen, talking on the phone. Covering the mouthpiece, he whispered to Jill, “Charles is coming
over. He has something for you.”
For once, Jill wasn’t repelled by the idea of seeing Charles. If she couldn’t talk to Una, she could show Charles what she’d
found.
She opened the front door before he had the chance to knock.
He thrust a bakery box at her. “Mom got you butter cookies.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Jill took the box and waved him inside. “Can I show you something?”
Startled by the invitation, all Charles could do was nod.
Jill left the box of cookies on the hall table and beckoned for Charles to follow her to her room. She sat on the floor and
patted the carpet the same way she would if she wanted Lady or Tramp to lie down.
“I went to the library today,” she began. “Una drove me home, and we started talking. I told her about the . . . you know.”
She held out her index finger. “She totally believes you and she doesn’t think we’re crazy for thinking there was something
out there. Something . . . in the water.”
She saw Charles retreat into himself. He drew his knees into his chest and stared at the books scattered across the carpet.
Jill pulled a jewelry box from under her bed and twisted the tiny key in the lock. The lid popped open, and she pointed at
the scale nestled in one of the satin-lined compartments.
“Look at this.” She waited for his pale blue eyes to land on the scale. “I found it in her garden. This is what it did to me.”
She unfurled her fingers and showed him her bandaged palm.
He immediately recoiled.
“I’m not contagious,” Jill snapped.
Hearing her change of tone, Charles nodded contritely. His eyes were fixed on the scale. “Can I see it?”
Jill plucked the scale out of the box and dropped it into Charles’s open hand. He poked it, pinched it, and tested the sharpness
of its tip.
“What’s it from?”
Jill shook her head. “Dunno. I haven’t found an exact match. The closest was a scale for a fish called a gar. It has teeth
and eats other fish.” She waved at the books. “I’ve been looking for stories about sea creatures. Not sharks, but other things.
Things with teeth.”
Charles pulled one of the books closer to him. He stared at the illustration of Scylla for a long moment, his gaze tracing
the serpentine lines of her tail.
“I made a list of ones with body parts that might look like eels. And . . .” She trailed off, unsure of what to say next.
Charles gave her an expectant look, and she gestured for him to pass her the book in front of him. She turned to an illustration
of Medusa. “My mom is making J.J. and me do yard work for Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith wrote a note, telling us to start in the
backyard. I’ve never seen what’s back there before, but I guess there used to be a garden. There’s a bunch of brick paths
that come together in a circle. The circle is actually a woman’s face. She looks really pissed off, and there are scales carved
around the edge of her face.”
Charles held out the scale from Jill’s jewelry box. “Like this?”
“Yeah. They’re the same shape without the little teeth around the sides. I guess that would be kind of hard to carve.”
“So, do you think she’s, like, a monster? Like, something from one of these books?”
Jill knew he understood that she wasn’t referring to the stone face. Neither of them wanted to say Mrs. Smith’s name.
“This face in her garden is weird. Her house is weird. You know. You see it every day, same as me. Those skinny windows on the bottom. That creepy octopus in the attic windows. The
way the air feels colder when you get close to the place. All the wasps and flies and pricker bushes and poison ivy. Those
vines that have spread from her house all through the woods. And it always feels like someone inside is watching.”
“That happens to you, too?”