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Summary
Summary
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child comes a hypnotic literary horror novel about a young boy trapped inside his own world, whose drawings blur the lines between fantasy and reality.
Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire. His mother, Holly, begins to hear strange sounds in the night coming from the ocean, and she seeks answers from the local Catholic priest and his Japanese housekeeper, who fill her head with stories of shipwrecks and ghosts. His father, Tim, wanders the beach, frantically searching for a strange apparition running wild in the dunes. And the boy's only friend, Nick, becomes helplessly entangled in the eerie power of the drawings. While those around Jack Peter are haunted by what they think they see, only he knows the truth behind the frightful occurrences as the outside world encroaches upon them all.
In the tradition of The Turn of the Screw , Keith Donohue's The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a mesmerizing tale of psychological terror and imagination run wild, a perfectly creepy read for a dark night.
Author Notes
Keith Donohueis the national bestselling author of the novels The Stolen Child , The Angels of Destruction , and Centuries of June . His work has been translated into two dozen languages, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post , among other publications. A graduate of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Donohue also holds a Ph.D. in English from The Catholic University of America. He lives in Maryland.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The ghostly influence of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw haunts this chilling novel by Donohue ( The Stolen Child ), which follows a troubled boy whose interest in drawing coincides with the appearance of strange creatures around his family's dream house in coastal Maine. When Jack Peter Jip Keenan, an agoraphobic, occasionally violent 10-year-old with high-functioning Asperger's, takes up drawing, his parents, Holly and Tim, hope this new creative outlet will help to combat Jip's introversion. But, over the course of a bleak December, a series of inexplicable phenomena--a beast-like man in the road, the bone of a human arm in the sand, visions of evil babies scuttling... like silverfish across a page, etc.--begin to throw the family, as well as Jip's only friend, Nick, off-balance. With Jip receding further into himself, and his drawings--visually linked to the phenomena--growing darker, Holly seeks the counsel of a mysterious church worker, Miss Tiramaku, who, having Asperger's herself, believes she knows Jip's secret. Donohue is an adept creator of atmosphere--the nor'easter that frames the novel's climax is expertly rendered--but repetitive flashbacks and the characters' underdeveloped emotions detract from what is otherwise a brisk and winningly creepy narrative. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Three years ago, Jack Peter Keenan was a normal little boy. But since an incident in which he almost drowned, he's withdrawn into himself; now the 10-year-old undergoing therapy and on medication designed to ease his anxieties is afraid to leave the house. And, apparently, he's taken up drawing not the usual happy doodlings of a youngster, but dark, frightening images that appear, in defiance of all logic, to be manifesting themselves in the real world: the boy's parents begin to see and hear strange things, to wonder if there is some otherworldly presence haunting them. Although Jack Peter loves his parents, it's really only his friend, Nick, who's able to pull Jack Peter out of his inner gloom. But it soon becomes clear to Jack Peter's parents that Nick may be involved in whatever nasty stuff is going on in the real world. This is a traditional horror story something you could easily imagine Graham Masterton writing with a delicious twist near the end that makes you rethink everything you've just read.--Pitt, David Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"WHAT A DASHING and beautiful figure Lestat was," an elderly vampire moons at a pivotal moment in Anne Rice's PRINCE LESTAT (Knopf, $28.95), succinctly stating the novel's theme. The natty vamp Lestat de Lioncourt - decked out for this occasion, a kind of worldwide blood-drinkers summit, "in a fresh and showstopping ensemble of Ralph Lauren wool plaids and pastel linen and silk" - was present at the creation of Rice's long-running Vampire Chronicles series, which began with "Interview With the Vampire" in 1976. Brooding furiously, he dominated that book, commanding it as effortlessly as he does the attention of his fellow vampires in this latest installment. Lestat's vampirism dates from the late 18th century, but his star quality seems very much the product of the time in which Rice gave birth to him, the 1970s: "Interview With the Vampire" reads like a People magazine profile written by Ann Radcliffe. (People had begun publication just a couple of years earlier.) Although the style, mixing celebrity-worshiping gush with Gothic portentousness, is, not to put too fine a point on it, nutty, Rice wielded it with amazing self-assurance, as if it were inevitable, something that had been waiting to be discovered. That's what all pop-culture geniuses do, in their different ways. And over nearly four decades and many, many books, she has seen no reason to change it. In "Prince Lestat," the first Vampire Chronicles novel in a decade, Rice's queenly prose is unaltered. Time cannot wither nor custom stale its infinite monotony. The years have taken their toll in other respects. "Interview With the Vampire" was at least arguably horror fiction: Although Lestat and his cronies were the heroes, their depredations did still have the power to shock, in part because there was always at least one character - the interviewer - to represent the perspective of the non-undead. In the subsequent books, Rice seemed to lose interest in the human point of view, preferring instead to burrow deeper into the blood-drinkers' tenebrous world: its origins, its day-to-day (or night-to-night) problems, its tangled internal politics. By this late stage of the Vampire Chronicles, Rice has constructed such a fearsomely elaborate mythology that "Prince Lestat" requires a ton of supplementary material even to be comprehensible. The book includes an introductory recap of vampire history (called "Blood Genesis"), a glossary of Rice-specific terminology ("Blood Argot") and, at the end, a sorely needed list of dramatis personae and an "informal guide" to the previous volumes, without all of which paraphernalia the uninitiated reader would be utterly lost. What plot there is takes an agonizingly long time to rev up because there's so much back story to fill in, and even when it reaches cruising speed the narrative momentum is rather leisurely. The novel's only subject, really, is the greatness of Lestat, who sometimes narrates and is otherwise merely spoken of in hushed, awe-struck tones - even before he nobly saves the entire vampire race from extinction. Although this is a dreadful novel, it has to be said that the earnestness with which Rice continues to toil at her brand of pop sorcery has an odd, retro sort of charm, an aura redolent of the desperate, decadent silliness of the disco era. "Prince Lestat" has nothing to do with horror and even less to do with the Romantic literature Rice tries to evoke, but she and her hero are possessed of a certain louche conviction - a sense that although their time is passing, they will grit their pointy teeth and boogie on. These days, vampires are pretty scarce in horror fic- tion. For many of them, the party has moved elsewhere, to the hybrid genre known as "paranormal romance," in which impossible beings gambol to their own weird beats. (Those awful, smelly zombie arrivistes have simply ruined the horror scene.) And the glittery night world of the Vampire Chronicles doesn't have the allure it once had for readers of mainstream horror, who now seem to prefer to stay at home and worry about household maintenance, difficult children and rude ghosts. Several of these tales of middle-class domestic anxiety are out at the moment, the most interesting being Keith Donohue's THE BOY WHO DREW MONSTERS (Picador, $26), Lauren Oliver's ROOMS (Ecco/HarperCollins, $25.99) and Siobhan Adcock's THE BARTER (Dutton, $26.95). In Donohue's ingenious novel, Holly and Tim Keenan, living in their "dream house" on the rugged coast of Maine, notice some disturbing changes in their 10-year-old son, Jack Peter. A solitary, fearful kid even at the best of times, he has begun to suffer from terrible nightmares, dreaming of monsters who "lay a hand upon his shoulder" and "whisper in his ear as he slept." While the parents fret and bicker, strange creatures - perhaps actual monsters - start to appear, as if summoned by the boy's increasingly fevered imagination. Donohue unspools his simple story patiently, delivering jolts when necessary, but mostly concentrating on the stress generated in a family with an unhappy child. It's a modest novel, elegantly worked, with a nice chilly twist at the end. Oliver's "Rooms," which also takes place in an old house in the Northeast inhabited by a dysfunctional family, is a more ambitious but more ramshackle construction, with multiple narrators, several ghosts, an unusually busy plot and a tricky structure. Although the novel is, from time to time, pleasantly spooky, even Oliver's best scare effects don't linger long in the mind because there's so much bric-a-brac. The storytelling is jittery, cluttered, unsettling in some of the right ways and quite a few of the wrong ones. (Maybe a feng shui makeover. ...) "Rooms" has neither the shamelessness of pulp horror nor the focused intensity of a literary ghost story, in which the apparitions bring forth truths about the troubled souls of both the living and the dead. There's plenty of activity, human and otherwise, in these rooms, but the novel feels like too much house for the small ideas that rattle around in it. Adcock's novel, her first, seems initially no more than another of these cozy domestic hauntings, distinct only in its setting - suburban Texas, rather than the usual rural Northeast. The young family here consists of Bridget; her husband, Mark; and their infant daughter, Julie. Bridget is ambivalent about having given up the practice of law for motherhood; Mark works punishingly long hours as a web designer; and Julie's just a cute kid. Into this banal life steps a mighty insistent spirit, the shade of a dead woman who seems unhealthily interested in the little girl. Adcock describes the specter vividly: "The edges of her body, her head, her limbs, seem constantly to be shifting, growing enormous and grotesque and then shrinking, angling away, diminishing to an equally grotesque size, out of proportion to what her body seems to want to be. It is like watching a maddened Picasso try to struggle out of its frame." The ghost becomes a constant, vaguely threatening presence in the family's otherwise ordinary lives, and Bridget goes haywire trying to get it to go away. She doesn't know, or especially care, who the dead woman was. But the reader does, because in alternating chapters "The Barter" tells the story of another frazzled wife and mother, named Rebecca, who lived a brief, unsatisfying farm-country life in the early 20th century, before the bright suburbs claimed the land. Rebecca's tale of her ill-fated marriage is interesting, deep and sad, and it gives perspective to the doubts and minor irritations of Bridget's relationship with Mark. It's as if this house had been invaded by an unfamiliar sort of gravity, a sense that life can be heavy and consequential in ways good suburban mommies and daddies only dimly understand. In a way, this sorrowful spirit allows Adcock to make excellent sport of the culture of modern middle-class parenting. With the ghost looming, the petty concerns of the local youngmom cadre look dopier than ever to Bridget, who gradually loses patience with the conventions that rule her narrow world. We see her measuring her old, trivial anxieties against this huge new thing, this fear, as she begins to realize that what you're afraid of is part of who you are. "The Barter" is a thoughtful and surprisingly witty novel. It weighs its horrors precisely. And that's a crucial quality in this genre: Horror works best when it's about things that are actually worth being afraid of. Like Siobhan Adcock, the English writer Chaz Brenchley, who tells a bizarre coming-of-age story in his lovely short novel BEING SMALL (Per Aspera; cloth, $19.99; paper, $9.99), knows how to give some heft and gravity to the anxieties of everyday life. His narrator, 16-year-old Michael, is, like every teenager, trying to figure out who he is, but his version of that perennial problem is unique: He was born with his dead twin, whom he calls Small, inside his own body, and feels him there still. Michael and his ditsy mother live a bohemian life on the fringes of Oxford. They speak of Small as if they were describing a real person, and although Michael protests that his phantom brother "is not a metaphor, for my use or anyone's else," that is, of course, exactly what Small is: an embodiment of Michael's ambivalence about the person he is, or is not, becoming. He tries on ways of interpreting his resident alter ego: "He can be my cold and unreachable heart, the figure in my carpet, the ghost in my machine; or he can be my savior, my criterion, deus ex machina, the point of my perspective." He comes closest, perhaps, when he refers to Small as "the mote in my inward eye" because the issue, throughout, is how Michael sees himself: whether he feels he's living his own life or someone else's and, come to that, which life he would prefer. Not much of a truly horrific nature happens in "Being Small" - Brenchley's tone is quiet, contemplative - but it's intensely dramatic, in the way adolescent problems tend to be, in teenagers' inward eyes. "It might be war," Michael announces, "where only the strong survive." Brenchley makes this tooth-and-claw battle thrilling. There are also bloody, bruising conflicts in Patrick McCabe's HELLO MR. BONES AND GOODBYE MR. RAT (Quercus, $24.99), which brings together a pair of rambunctious short novels, both narrated (very unreliably) by ghosts. In the first, a demonic pedophile named Balthazar Bowen, self-slaughtered, gleefully recounts his attempt to destroy the life of the boy who, years before in Ireland, blew the whistle on his abuse. The victim, Valentine Shannon, is now, decades later, a grown man on the verge of happiness, which inspires Bowen (a.k.a. Mr. Bones, among other guises) to destroy poor Valentine's hopes for normality. It's an appalling spectacle. But McCabe, as readers of his 1992 novel "The Butcher Boy" might remember, is expert at making the darkest deeds funny, forcing us to laugh at the worst things in the world. He writes like an Irish Lenny Bruce, riffing at warp speed, swerving from one time to another and one place to another and strewing the landscape with allusions - to Coleridge, Milton, Yeats, Marc Bolan, "Goodbye Mr. Chips," "Oliver!," Betty Boop and an annoyingly memorable toothpaste jingle, among others - and somehow it all makes sense. By the end, you might feel, as Valentine does, "captive in the dread country of delusion and irrationality," but if you're not blinded by McCabe's verbal pyrotechnics you can make out where he's been going. This story is about the struggle to break free of a dire past; about the powerful forces arrayed against reason, sanity, happiness itself; about the demons that keep us locked up in old obsessions. If this sounds like an allegory of the long troubles of McCabe's native island, that's no accident, and in "Goodbye Mr. Rat" he states his case a wee bit more directly. The narrator here is a dead I.R.A. bomber named Gabriel King, who may or may not have been an informer. After his death, in America, his ashes are being carried back to Ireland by his friend Beni Banikin, a lesbian playwright who is herself a casualty of a violent history. The tone of "Goodbye Mr. Rat" is more muted and mournful than that of "Hello Mr. Bones," but McCabe's writing is no less brazenly allusive - the major points of reference here are Yeats's play "The Dreaming of the Bones," Coleridge again ("A frightful fiend doth close behind him tread"), the Band, Thin Lizzy, "Toy Story" and Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" - and Gabriel is no more to be trusted than Balthazar Bowen was. Different though they are, the novels come together when you're finished reading, creating a single vision of the horrors that crush people's souls. The stories McCabe tells have a terrible beauty. Next to them, the problems of a bunch of vampires don't amount to a hill of beans. TERRENCE RAFFERTY, the author of "The Thing Happens: Ten Years of Writing About the Movies," is a frequent contributor to the Book Review.
Kirkus Review
What happens when the monsters under the bed come from the boy sleeping on top of it? Jack Peter is not a normal boy, and it's beginning to take its toll on his family. He's always been an odd child, but at 7, he nearly drowned and withdrew from the world. For the three years since, he has refused to leave the house, preferring to move from obsession to obsession, occasionally being bundled into a wad of blankets to be taken to the doctor. When the book begins, his obsession has moved from playing war to drawing monsters, and Nick, a relatively normal boy who is Jack's only remaining friend, is swept up in the furor. But Jack's parents and Nick are beginning to hear and see things that seem otherworldly, and it becomes clear that Jack's drawings reflect, or perhaps even create, the odd sounds and creatures. His parents, Tim and Holly, baffled by the happenings and frightened by the cracks in their marriage, try desperately to solve the growing mysteries. All suspect they are going insane; Tim takes to roaming the foggy beaches, Holly turns to the church, and Nick keeps tagging along with Jack. Donohue's (The Stolen Child, 2006, etc.) writing is as evocative as Jack Peter's drawings, both startling and heavy with emotion. The pacing is steady and recalls other recent works of literary horror, in which the terror of the monsters is uneasily balanced with the mundanity of everyday life. This doesn't discredit Jack's creatures at all, though; in fact, they're terrifying. With such a spooky novel, it's almost too much to hope for a good ending, but Donohue manages to surprise and satisfy nonetheless. A sterling example of the new breed of horror: unnerving and internal with just the right number of bumps in the night. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Jack Peter (JP) Keenan is a ten-year-old agoraphobic with Asperger's who lives with his parents, Holly and Tim, in an isolated home on the coast of Maine. To mentally escape his self-imposed solitude-triggered by a near-drowning three years before-JP draws monsters. Among them: a wretched, haunting figure that prowls the sea; a pale, naked man who roams the snow; and a creature with smallpox scars and rotten teeth. JP shares his obsessive drawings with his best friend, Nick, and encourages him to draw some, too. Meanwhile, JP's parents begin to experience troubling phenomena, including auditory hallucinations, visions, and debilitating headaches. It seems JP's imagination has taken on a life of its own-and young Nick, JP's only remaining friend, is unwittingly involved in it all. VERDICT Although the characters are too understated at times, the novel unfolds through rich prose and a deeply imagined story. The plot takes its time; it's not one to rush through. The final page-the final sentence, really-comes as a clever surprise, but one that resonates soundly. Fans of Donohue's acclaimed first novel, The Stolen Child, will be pleased. Also recommended for readers of Joe Hill. [See Prepub Alert, 4/14/14.]-Erin Kelly, Media, PA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
One ii. A pale yellow sun hung low in the salt sky. Winter had blown in overnight, and the cold gave an air of lonesomeness to the empty roads and deserted vacation homes. Tim loved the dying light of December and the absence of the people and set about his business with a kind of gleeful freedom. He had a dozen properties to take care of in the village and another dozen scattered on the eastern edge of the peninsula, and he had worked his way through three of the four homes on his list for the day with not a soul to bother him. The Rothmans' summer place was the biggest and finest house in the village, fronting the crescent beach, ideally situated with a view of the lighthouse to the north and the unspoiled sand and rocks to the south. Tim parked the Jeep around back and stood in the driveway, admiring how seamlessly the new mansion blended in with the grand old New England Victorians that dotted the coast. But it had been built less than ten years ago. His son was older than the house. The wind cut through his jacket, so he hooked the lapels against his throat and jogged to the door and fumbled for the keys. The house was colder inside than out, and he searched for the thermostat to turn up the heat and flipped on the lights in the pale noontime. In the kitchen, new and clean birch cabinets glowed like honey above smooth slate countertops and the spotless stove and refrigerator. A few tasteful prints lined the walls, and in the dining room, the chairs sat precisely three inches from the edge of the table, awaiting company. Alert for drafts, he wandered room to room, absentmindedly checking windows that he knew were closed. A layer of dust furred the shells and curios laid out carefully on the sideboard, and he drew a line with his fingertip along the edge of a mahogany credenza. Bound in frames, pictures of the Rothmans were everywhere: the father in his white dentist's jacket, brandishing a tool of grave menace; the mother with the same practical smile in every photograph. Two children--a boy and a girl--progressively aging from toddlers to teenagers, perfect teeth glistening in the Maine summer sun. Even the dog was perfect, a Shiba Inu regal as a coiffed fox. In a gilded mirror, Tim saw himself prowling through their possessions like a thief, and he quickly turned away. Tim sat in Dr. Rothman's easy chair and inspected the Persian rug between his feet, wondering if he had dragged any sand or mud inside. The room was simple and elegant. A Steinway upright took up one wall. More photographs of Mrs. Rothman in her best swimsuit. Arts and Crafts mirrors and lamps. White pine beams and finishing trim. The furniture, spare pieces, summer home, finer and newer than his own. A castle built crown by crown, bridge by bridge, tooth by tooth. Money. He dug into his front pocket and fished out a ten, the same crumpled bill he had tucked away three days ago. He knew without looking that his wallet was empty. Never enough money. The plan had been for him to go back to school, finish his degree, but when their son was born and later diagnosed, they decided after many long nights of argument that Tim would put ambition aside to care for the boy most of the time. "I make more money," she had said, and it was true, even as a small town lawyer just starting out. "So it only makes sense, when he's still little, for me to keep my job. What's so terrible about being a stay-at-home dad? You can always find something seasonal or part-time, we'll work it out." He had stumbled into the caretaker's position with Coast Property Management, but he often wondered if Holly had not secretly welcomed the chance to escape the responsibility of daily care for the boy, right from the beginning. When J.P. was younger, Tim took him along for odd jobs when Holly was not free or when they could not find a sitter. But after Jip developed his phobia, those excursions with his son became nearly impossible. Just as unlikely as returning to college after all these years. He was old enough to be a freshman's father. With the sole of his boot, he scraped at a spot on the rug. The wind rattled the windowpanes behind him, and he hoisted himself from the easy chair, stiff with cold, and climbed the stairs to check for drafts in the bedrooms. In the dentist's boudoir, the king-size bed floated like a raft on a wide expanse. A single wrinkle creased the bedspread, and he smoothed it with two hands, picturing Dr. Rothman and his wife, perfect and tan, resting on a summer afternoon, worn out with relaxation. The wind whistled through a chink in the walls, and Tim followed the sound, past the daughter's room. He caught a glimpse of a giant stuffed bear, won at some seaside carnival, sitting on Goldilocks's chair. The door at the end of the hall was closed, and when he opened it, a sharp odor leapt from the boy's bedroom, as if it had been trapped for three months. Something dead in there. On the walls were posters of all the Boston sports stars, Red Sox and Patriots, Celtics and Bruins. A pair of water skis stood in the corner, and on the shelves and dresser careful lines of shells and starfish, a dried mermaid's purse, a stick of driftwood bent like a narwhal's horn. A scrapbook lay open on the schoolboy's desk. Pages of an ordinary summer. The whaleboat out of Boothbay, a clambake on the beach, a set of printouts from the big annual fireworks in Portland. And the boy and his sister in the bright sunshine, climbing on rocks, kayaking on the calm Atlantic, holding a pair of trophy fishes no bigger than perch. The boy and his sister, darkening to bronze from July to September. He turned the last page and thought of his son. Monster under the bed. Turning back the bedspread, Tim fell to his knees and peeked beneath the mattress. Squatting like a dried toad were a pair of swimming trunks in the shadows. He strained to reach them and recoiled when he touched the calcified folds and creases. As he dragged the stiff cloth across the floor, a trail of sand spilled out. In the pockets were four hermit crab shells reeking of the sea. He poked at the little bodies one by one but they did not flinch. Some monsters. The Rothmans must not have noticed when they packed up for the season, and that the cleaning crew must have neglected to look under the bed was no surprise to Tim, for they were quick and careless, often leaving behind surprises for him to remedy. He set the swimming trunks and the dead crabs next to the scrapbook, the shells dark against the wood. Holly had been so angry that morning, filled with a deep disappointment that had rarely surfaced despite their hardships of the past ten years. The mark on her cheek already blossoming into a red plum. She never understood how best to deal with the boy, how to approach him sideways and give him space to come into the real world from his far-off land. Only once had Jip raised a fist against him. It was on the first day of school after the near drowning three summers ago, and Tim was sure that his son would not want to miss the chance to see his friends. He had tricked him into getting out of bed and even made it through breakfast, but as the time to go approached, the boy simply stopped moving. "Put on your socks and shoes," Tim had barked. "We're late for school." His son balked and bent his legs to hide his bare feet beneath his bottom. "You know you want to go. Dammit, Jip, hurry up and do as I say." He could hear the rising anger in his voice but did nothing to stop it. Lowering his head, the boy glowered at him, defiance steadfast in his gaze. He shifted farther away, anchoring himself in the chair, wrapping his thin arms around the rails. "Last chance--" "No," Jip yelled. Tim reached and grabbed at his arm, intending to wrench him free and make him put on his socks and shoes, but in the same instant, his son twisted and swung wildly, small fists beating like a drummer against his father's hands. Realizing his mistake, Tim stepped out of range, and watched the boy flail at him and then collapse, overcome by his rage, a different creature altogether, a mad dog snarling and showing his teeth. The display alarmed Tim at first, but he thought to simply wait and betray no emotion. Just as he had guessed, his son came back into himself and settled. Standing tall and looking down on the child, Tim said, "You must never hit." His little boy convulsed with one short spasm, just longer than a twitch. "No," he said. From that moment, Tim knew to take care in any sudden and unexpected touch, and that's what must have done in Holly. She forgot. She scared him. It would never happen again, Tim would find the right opportunity to talk with Jip and put the fear of God in him. Send him away, indeed. The Rothmans would never have to send away their little boy. He would come to this room every summer until he was a young man, and probably come back with his own son in time, and that boy would be normal, too, and on it would go for them, the lucky, the untroubled, the well-to-do. And Tim would be coming here forever, checking on someone else's second home, closing up every winter and caretaking their dreams. He listened for the wind, but it had abated. No breeze whistled through the cracks. An oppressive silence gave him the uneasy sensation of being all alone in a strange place, and then the house heaved a sigh as though it had tired of him. When he realized it was just the furnace shutting off, Tim laughed at himself. Acutely aware of his own breathing and feeling like a trespasser, he turned to leave, only to be stopped by a small and uncertain sound. Something scratched, like fingernails raked across a sheet of paper, barely audible but enough to unsettle him. It clicked again, a staccato of movement emanating from inside the room. Spooked by its suddenness, he pricked up his ears. The third set of delicate clicks came from the direction of the boy's desk, and he heard and finally saw the scuttling of a pair of hermit crabs resurrecting themselves in their shells, fiddling their great claws and wriggling their legs to meander across the wooden surface. "What the--" All four crabs were on the march, heading off to the four corners, and he pounced, collecting them one by one in the scoop of his hands. Each quickly withdrew into its whirling cone. How they had survived for months in the boy's pockets was a mystery to Tim, but he quickly dismissed the question and carried them downstairs and put them in the sea grass behind the house. He watched for a long time to see if they would move, but they remained still as stones. The sun had long since reached its winter day apogee and now arced toward the west as though rimed in mist. A frosty afternoon was sneaking in, and he was late. He left the crabs where they lay and hurried off. As he approached the Wellers' house, he could see their son, Nick, waiting patiently on the front porch, cold as an icicle, and he raced to the Jeep as Tim pulled into the driveway, as if he had been a prisoner a long, long time and was now released from his sentence. His cheeks were red and chapped, and the boy beamed with an eagerness nearly impossible to bear. Nick was such a good friend to have for Jip. Such a good boy. Copyright © 2014 by Keith Donohue Excerpted from The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.