Hunger

ceiling.
    Monsters. A hundred nightmares’ worth of monsters. They slithered from under his bed. They crawled from his closet. They floated like they were helium balloons. Like an entire Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in miniature had floated into Little Pete’s room. But instead of cartoon Shrek and the Cat in the Hat there were things much more sinister in their place.
    One of the smaller ones had purple wings in three pairs, grasping tendrils hanging from its belly, a head like the end of a syringe with bloodred eyeballs perched on top.
    The largest was a shaggy monstrosity like a grizzly bear with eighteen-inch spikes at the ends of its paws.
    There were creatures that were all sharp edges, as if they’d been assembled out of razor blades and kitchen knives. There were creatures of glowing magma. There were creatures who flew and others who slithered.
    “Like the other day? In the plaza?” Sam asked in a shaky whisper.
    “No. Look: they cast shadows,” Astrid said urgently. “They’re making sounds. They smell.”
    The big shaggy monster shifted shape as they watched. The brown fur lightened toward white, then veered suddenly to green.
    Its mouth moved.
    Opened.
    A sound came from it, like a strangling cat. An eerie mewling.
    Then the mouth snapped shut with an audible click. The mouth melted and disappeared beneath new-grown fur.
    “It was trying to speak,” Astrid whispered.
    A mustard-colored creature with a vaguely canine shape, pickax head, antennae, and twin tubes mounted on its eyeless head was changing shape as it floated. Its feet were shifting, from mere pads to sharp-ended, fishhook-barbed spears. The barbs clicked in and out. Like the creature was practicing with them, discovering their use.
    And then, with its shape determined at last, it too attempted to speak. This time the sound was even less coherent, a chittering, insect sound that died out suddenly when a fleshy membrane grew over its mouth.
    “Do they see us?” Sam wondered aloud.
    “I don’t know. See how they’re staring at Petey?”
    It was absurd to think about reading the faces of the monsters—some had five eyes; some had a single eye; some had gnashing, razor teeth and no eyes at all. But to Sam they seemed to be gazing with something like awe at Little Pete, who snored softly, oblivious.
    A snake as long as a python slithered by, twisting in midair. Tiny centipede legs grew from it, reminiscent almost of the zekes, though these legs looked like they were made for sticking like Velcro.
    The snake’s mouth hissed. The hissing grew in volume, then stopped abruptly: the snake’s entire head had simply disappeared.
    “They’re trying to communicate,” Astrid said. “Something is stopping them. Something won’t let them speak.”
    “Or someone,” Sam said. “If they attack us…” He raised his hands, palms out.
    Instantly Astrid pressed his hands down. “No, Sam. You might hit Petey.”
    “What happens if he wakes up?”
    “The other times the visions just disappeared. But this is different. Look. Look at the curtains, they’re singed where that…that lava thing got near them.”
    Sam made up his mind. “Wake him up.”
    “What if—” she began.
    “Look, maybe they’re not a threat. But maybe they are. If they are, I’m not just going to let them hurt you, I’m going to burn them.”
    Then he added, “If I can.”
    “Pete,” Astrid called in a quavering voice.
    Until that moment none of the creatures had taken any notice of the two frail-looking humans standing there gawking. But now every eye, every set of eyes, every quivering antenna, turned toward them. It was so sudden, Sam imagined he heard their eyeballs click.
    Red eyes, black eyes, yellow-slitted eyes, globular blue eyes, maybe fifty eyes in all, stared straight at Sam and Astrid.
    “Try again,” Sam whispered. He stretched out his armsagain, opened his palms toward the monsters, ready.
    “Petey,” Astrid said more urgently.
    Now monstrous bodies shifted. They moved almost as one, some clumsy, some like lightning, but all moving as if they were Disney animatronics operating off the same signal. They turned to face Sam and Astrid.
    One after another their mouths opened. Sounds came from those mouths. Grunts and hisses, hoots and growls; sounds like steel dragged on porcelain, sounds like the chirping of crickets, sounds like mad dogs barking. Not words, but sounds that wanted to be words, were struggling to be words.
    It was a chorus of