Page 56 of Atlas of Unknowable Things

“Monsters are real?”

“They always have been. You just need to venture far enough out into the woods.” He gestured toward the trees.

“Do you mean here? In these mountains?” I asked, certain now that I had to be dreaming.

“Not just here. But here is very important. You know that.”

“I don’t understand,” I said even though I partially did. I looked up at him, my heart breaking with the memories of a lost friendship. “Charles, who are you to me?”

“I think you know.”

“I thought you were my friend.”

“I am your friend. I always have been.”

“Then why did you leave me?”

He shook his head. “It’s you who left. Don’t you remember?”

“No,” I cried. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Listen, Bugbear,” he said, gently taking my hand, “I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m the only one who ever will.”

Bugbear. My heart felt like it was going to explode. That was his pet name for me. Only not in New York. Somewhere else.

I looked up into the night sky, at the stars swimming like jellyfish above us. Around us the woods were completely silent.

“Why is it so quiet?” I asked, gripping his hand more tightly.

“It’s coming,” he whispered. “If you listen very closely, you’ll hear it out there, moving between the trees.”

Once he said that, it was like a switch was turned on. I could hear something. And now I realized that maybe I could alwayshear it. Maybe that thing, whatever it was, was always out there, just out of sight, moving invisible through the trees.

“What is it?”

He sighed, adjusting his knit burgundy hat. “Let me ask you something. What is the purpose of alchemy?”

“Aspen said it’s to prove the existence of God. She said that they’d done that somehow.”

“Not them,” he said. “Those who came before us. Long ago. They proved the existence of God by proving its opposite. And now it must never get out,” he said, raising a hand toward the movement in the woods.

“The devil?”

“It’s more complicated than that. It’s impossible to put a name to it because we can’t comprehend what we can’t comprehend. We die in wars, unwittingly offering up libations in its name. Unknowing, unthinking, we kill each other in the name of a god or country or cause, convinced we’re doing it of our own free will, but really we are just ants, working in tandem, providing the necessary offerings to placate a monster.”

“This monster?” I whispered.

He nodded. “Great slumbering horned gods.”

“What happens if it gets out?”

“You mean iftheyget out.”

“It’s more than just one?”

“It is one, but it’s also legion.”

I stared into the forest, deep into the movement of the trees in the dark. And for a second, I thought I saw something there, something enormous and cosmic and cruel. All spindle legs and dripping pedipalps, it reared up toward the sky, flashing a muted pale white against the night sky. And then it was gone. And perhaps it was never there. Just a trick of the eye.