Fear Nothing

them.”
        “I don't think we should split up in different rooms unless we're absolutely driven to it,” I said. “They're smart enough to know about dividing to conquer.”
        Again, I squinted through the window near which the table was placed, but no monkeys were on that section of porch, and nothing but the rain and the wind moved through the dark dunes beyond the railing.
        Over the sink, one of the monkeys had managed to turn its back and still cling to the window. It was squealing as if with laughter as it mooned us, pressing its bare, furless, ugly butt to the glass.
        “So,” Bobby asked me, “what happened after you let yourself into the rectory?”
        Sensing time running out, I swiftly summarized the events in the attic, at Wyvern, and at the Ramirez house.
        Manuel, a pod person,” Bobby said, shaking his head sadly.
        “Ugh,” Sasha said, but she wasn't commenting on Manuel.
        At the window, the male monkey facing us was urinating copiously on the glass.
        “Well, this is new,” Bobby observed.
        On the porch beyond the sink windows, more monkeys started popping into the air like kernels of corn bursting off a hot oiled pan, tumbling up into sight and then dropping away. They were all squealing and shrieking, and there seemed to be scores of them, though it was surely the same half dozen springing-spinning-popping repeatedly into view.
        I finished the last of my beer.
        Being cool was getting harder minute by minute. Perhaps even doing cool required energy and more concentration than I possessed.
        “Orson,” I said, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you sauntered around the house.”
        He understood and set out immediately to police the perimeter.
        Before he was out of the kitchen, I said, “No heroics. If you see anything wrong, bark your head off and come running straight back here.”
        He padded out of sight.
        Immediately, I regretted having sent him, even though I knew it was the right thing to do.
        The first monkey had emptied its bladder, and now the second one had turned to face the kitchen and had begun to loose his own stream. Others were scampering along the handrail outside and swinging from the porch-roof rafters.
        Bobby was sitting directly opposite the window that was adjacent to the table. He searched that comparatively calm part of the night with suspicion equal to mine.
        The lightning seemed to have passed, but volleys of thunder still boomed across the sea. This cannonade excited the troop.
        “I hear the new Brad Pitt movie is really hot,” Bobby said.
        Sasha said, “Haven't seen it.”
        “I always wait for video,” I reminded him.
        Something tried the door to the back porch. The knob rattled and squeaked, but the lock was securely engaged.
        The two monkeys at the sink windows dropped away. Two more sprang up from the porch to take their places, and both began to urinate on the glass.
        Bobby said, “I'm not cleaning this up.”
        “Well, I'm not cleaning it up,” Sasha declared.
        “Maybe they'll get their aggression and anger out this way and then just leave,” I said.
        Bobby and Sasha appeared to have studied withering sarcastic expressions at the same school.
        “Or maybe not,” I reconsidered.
        From out of the night, a stone about the size of a cherry pit struck one of the windows, and the peeing monkeys dropped away to escape from the line of fire. More small stones quickly followed the first, rattling like hail.
        No stones were flung at the nearest window.
        Bobby plucked the shotgun from the floor and placed it across his lap.
        When the barrage was at its peak, it abruptly ended.
        The frenzied monkeys were screaming more fiercely now.
        Their escalating cries were shrill, eerie, and seemed to have supernatural effect, feeding back into the night with such demonic energy that rain pounded the cottage harder than ever. Merciless hammers of thunder cracked the shell of the night, and once again bright tines of lightning dug at the meat of the sky.
        A stone, larger than any in the previous assault, rebounded off one of the sink windows: snap . A second of approximately the same size immediately followed, thrown with greater force than the first.
        Fortunately their hands were too small to allow them to hold and