Howl

Shaun David Hutchinson

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781534470934
• eBook ISBN: 9781534470941

From critically acclaimed Shaun David Hutchinson comes a "gripping, dynamic" ( Booklist, starred review) portrayal of the oftentimes traumatic experience of growing up. Virgil Knox was attacked by a monster.Of course, no one in Merritt believes him. Not even after he stumbled into the busy town center, bleeding, battered, and bruised, for everyone to see. He'd been drinking, they said. He was hanging out where he wasn't supposed to, they said. It must've been a bear, or a badger, or a gator—definitely no monster.Virgil doesn't think it was any of those things. He's positive it was a monster. But being the new kid in a town where everybody knows everybody is hard enough as it is without being the kid who's afraid of monsters, so he tries to keep a low profile.Except he knows the monster is still out there. And if he isn't careful, Virgil's afraid it'll come back to finish him off, or worse—that he'll become one himself.

ONE

I DIDN’T SCREAM.

TWO

MAIN STREET WAS DARK. SUNSHINE realty, Dr. Kaluuya DDS, Gannon’s Hardware, Merritt Books and Café, Birdie Buchanan’s Bridal Shop. Doors locked, shades drawn, the elaborate displays that invited customers to come on in and sit a spell during the day went dark at sundown and remained that way until dawn.

Signs fastened to the decorative lamps that lined the street—WELCOME TO MERRITT! alternating with MERRITT LOVES YOU!—swayed in the hot, fetid summer wind that blew in from the sprawl to the west. Shadows pooled around the weak streetlamps, herding the light into tight, inescapable circles. Canopies of Spanish moss hung from the limbs of old oak trees, choking the illumination from the cloudless night sky before it could reach the street below. It was so dark that sometimes strangers on their way to Disney World would get lost and stumble across Merritt after sunset and wonder if the town had been abandoned.

But Merritt wasn’t abandoned. There was one light that remained on after dark. At the far end of Main Street, past Merritt Baptist Church and the old elementary school, the neon glow of a garish blue-and-pink ice cream cone stood against the backdrop of the night like a beacon.

Every month, during the Merritt town council’s open forum, Sudie Kennon, who’d been alive and had lived in Merritt longer than some of the oak trees, spent her allotted three minutes explaining in tedious detail why the Tasty Cones Ice Cream neon sign was a blight on the town she had been born in and would, by the grace of God, die in, though not before she’d made damn sure that sign was torn down.

Mayor Marjorie Hart and most of the members of the town council agreed with Sudie Kennon. The neon sign was garish and bright, and it did detract from Merritt’s charm. Yet any motion brought to the council regarding the Tasty Cones Ice Cream sign ultimately failed. Sudie Kennon couldn’t sway the mayor or the members of the council to join her holy war.

John McIntyre had endured Sudie Kennon’s wrath long before he’d sat on the council. Back then, she’d been a teacher short on patience and he’d been a rambunctious sixth-grader who couldn’t sit still.

Patty Ornston had only run for the council after being forced to remove the rainbow flag she’d hung from her veranda in support of her niece after Sudie Kennon had complained that it violated the rules regarding what decorations were allowed to adorn a house.

Brett Sadler didn’t know why his mother and Ms. Kennon were bitter enemies, but he’d grown up hearing that Sudie was a spiteful, hateful woman whom his mother hoped would die alone and lonely, and he viewed it as his responsibility to see she got her wish.

Each of the three council members had been, at one time or another, victimized by Sudie Kennon, and so they ignored her complaints about the Tasty Cones Ice Cream sign mostly out of spite.

Sudie Kennon’s compulsion to meddle and the council’s petty efforts to frustrate her had probably saved my life.

THREE

CLOUDS OF MOSQUITOES STALKED ME as I limped down Main Street toward the enormous neon ice cream cone on the horizon. Gnats clung to the crusted blood around the gashes on my arms and became mired in the blood still oozing from the slashes across my back.

The toe of my sole remaining sneaker caught in a pothole, and I stumbled forward, shredding my palms and knees on the asphalt. My jeans, which hung around my hips with little more than prayer, were already ruined. I crawled until I reached a bench I could lean on to help me stand.

Where’s my phone?

I patted my pockets. Empty.

I need to call Dad.

I reached for my phone, but my pockets were still empty.

Crickets chirped and trees rustled and bats flew overhead. I jerked my head around, trying to search every shadow, but there were too many.

Where’s my phone? And my other shoe? My shirt was gone, too, but I’d left the tattered, blood-soaked rag somewhere back in the sprawl. Sweat soaked my hair and ran down my chest. I shivered in the August heat and limped onward.

The bright neon ice cream cone grew nearer as I slowly put one foot in front of the other. I was close enough to the parking lot that I could hear trucks idling. Big things built for pulling trailers and boats and for tearing through the mud and swamps that surrounded Merritt. Beasts with chrome bumpers decorated with Confederate flags, rubber testicles that dangled from the hitch, or stickers stuck to the back that said things like IF YOU CAN READ THIS THEN YOU’RE IN RANGE.

What time is it? Grandma’s gonna be so pissed.

I hesitated. The lights were too bright. The sounds too loud. What if people had gotten bored of the party and had decided to get ice cream? Tasty Cones was the only place open after dark, so it was Merritt’s natural hangout. I didn’t want anyone to see me. The only thing capable of traveling faster than light was gossip.

But I needed help.

I spotted Pastor Wallace and Mrs. Wallace leaning against the hood of their minivan holding court. Missy Pierce was being fed ice cream by Coach Munford in a display that probably should’ve been private. The Hunt brood, all eleven of them, were running circles around their mom, who stood staring at a sad cone with a single scoop of vanilla ice cream melting over her fingers. I didn’t recognize anyone from Finn’s party. There were still people inside the shop I couldn’t see, though. It was busy for a Thursday night.

I raked a hand through my hair as I shuffled out of the dark and into the halo of neon light, though the gesture was as futile as trying to put out a fire with a thimble of water. Luca would’ve said I was silly for caring. He would’ve been right.

I tried to speak, to call for help, but my throat was as dry as a California summer. No one was looking my way. I was invisible. The frantic strength that had carried me from the sprawl to Main Street and from Main to Tasty Cones evaporated all at once. My knees wobbled. They were on the verge of giving out, and if they did, I was certain I would die at the edge of the parking lot, unnoticed until a Tasty Cones employee eventually found my cold, bloody body on the pavement while taking out the garbage.

Earlier, somewhere between the party and the parking lot, I’d said I wanted to die—I’d spoken the words aloud, and I’d asked nicely. In the moment, I’d meant it. Now I wanted to take it back.

Please let me take it back.

With the last surge of will I could muster, I threw my body forward, stumbling a few steps and then finally collapsing.

One of the Hunt children, Nine of Eleven maybe, shrieked in terror. Every conversation in the parking lot skidded to a halt as the child’s sound split the night, accomplishing the one thing I’d failed to do. Mrs. Hunt dropped her uneaten cone. Pastor Wallace shouted, “What in the Yankee Doodle?” Coach Munford said, “That ain’t blood, is it?” while Missy Pierce slapped his arm and said, “Call the police, stupid!”

I shut my eyes, invisible no more.

“Is that Virgil Knox?”

A hand touched my shoulder. I would’ve flinched, but it took all my strength to keep breathing.

“Virgil? Virgil, what happened to you, son?”

“Put your phone away, Tyson. He don’t need you recording this.”

“Ambulance is on the way.”

“Someone call his daddy.”

“Virgil? What happened? Did someone do this to you?”

Tears welled in my eyes and rolled across my nose.

“A monster,” I managed in a hoarse whisper. “I was attacked by a monster.”

FOUR

I SWAM THROUGH A WARM pool of painkillers. The serenity was only interrupted by the numb tugging on my skin as a doctor with more jokes than skill stitched closed the wounds on my back and arm, and by the two cops at the foot of my hospital bed, snickering and not bothering to be quiet about it.

Officer Delerue looked like the kind of man who’d become a cop because he’d had a taste of power in high school and had become addicted to it. His hand rarely strayed far from his holster, and his lip, nearly overshadowed by a bristly brown mustache, remained frozen in a permanent sneer.

Officer Bruford had almost fooled me into believing he was on my side, with his friendly smile and sympathetic eyes, but I saw the wolf hiding in that sheep’s clothing. Bruford was the type who’d learned early on that those with real power didn’t need to wield it like a cudgel. Delerue might’ve taken the lead during the questioning, but Bruford was in charge.

“So, are we talking Bigfoot?” Delerue asked. “What d’you think, Bruford? We got a Sasquatch out in the sprawl?”

Dr. Patterson chortled. “I would imagine the swamp’s too hot for a Sasquatch.”

Delerue and Bruford had been questioning me for ten minutes that had felt like an hour while the doctor stitched me up. If I could’ve trusted my legs to support me, I would’ve hopped out of bed and run.

“I seen a show about windigo,” Delerue said.

“Don’t they usually eat folks?” Bruford asked.

Delerue motioned at me with his chin. “Guess this one ain’t got enough meat on him to bother. Monster got a taste and threw him back.”

Bruford held his phone in his hand, but he’d long since given up the pretense of taking notes. “You and your daddy moved here from Seattle, ain’t that right?”

“I went to school with Tommy,” Delerue said. Something passed between him and Bruford that I couldn’t read. A raised eyebrow, a lip twitch.

“Your folks are divorcing, is what I heard,” Bruford said to me.

“So? I wasn’t attacked by my parents’ divorce.”

Bruford shrugged. “But I bet you’re pretty pissed off about it.” He glanced at Delerue. “Remember Michael Miller? Set a couple fires to get his folks’ attention?”

“Right. I did this to myself. I was at a party and decided to claw my own back because I was angry at my parents.”

“Uh-oh,” Delerue said. “Looks like you hit a sore spot.” Both men chuckled.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” my grandpa said as he marched into the room, followed by my grandma.

Roy Knox had lived in Merritt since he was seven years old. He’d become a local hero playing quarterback for the Merritt High Coyotes, and he had only left Merritt twice in his life. The first when he enlisted to fight in the Vietnam War, the second when he went to Gainesville to study veterinary medicine at the Univ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen
• Chapter Sixteen
• Chapter Seventeen
• Chapter Eighteen
• Chapter Nineteen
• Chapter Twenty
• Chapter Twenty-One
• Chapter Twenty-Two
• Chapter Twenty-Three
• Chapter Twenty-Four
• Chapter Twenty-Five
• Chapter Twenty-Six
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
• Chapter Thirty
• Chapter Thirty-One
• Chapter Thirty-Two
• Chapter Thirty-Three
• Chapter Thirty-Four
• Chapter Thirty-Five
• Chapter Thirty-Six
• Chapter Thirty-Seven
• Chapter Thirty-Eight
• Chapter Thirty-Nine
• Chapter Forty
• Chapter Forty-One
• Chapter Forty-Two
• Chapter Forty-Three
• Chapter Forty-Four
• Chapter Forty-Five
• Chapter Forty-Six
• Chapter Forty-Seven
• Chapter Forty-Eight
• Chapter Forty-Nine
• Chapter Fifty
• Chapter Fifty-One
• Chapter Fifty-Two
• Chapter Fifty-Three
• Chapter Fifty-Four
• Chapter Fifty-Five
• Chapter Fifty-Six
• Chapter Fifty-Seven
• Chapter Fifty-Eight
• Chapter Fifty-Nine
• Chapter Sixty
• Chapter Sixty-One
• Chapter Sixty-Two
• Chapter Sixty-Three
• Chapter Sixty-Four
• Chapter Sixty-Five
• Chapter Sixty-Six
• Chapter Sixty-Seven
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright