Gods and Monsters: Unclean Spirits by Chuck Wendig Page A

more.”
    Frank sits on the edge of a cracked formica counter. “We just killed a monster.”
    “What kind of monster?”
    “Kind that eats raccoons and possums. And stray cats and lost dogs. And... once in a while, a little kid or three.” Frank shrugs like it’s no big deal. Snaps his fingers, slaps them on his knee in a jerky drum-beat. “The, ahh, this area was once settled by some Indians. Lenni-Lenape. They venerated this spirit, this creature called ‘Meesink’ who was said to keep the balance between the world of man and the world of nature. All the stories and paintings have him looking like a big, y’know, a Bigfoot—which, as you can see, turned out pretty goddamn accurate.”
    Cason’s head spins. His entire reality does. “Is this real? Is this a real thing? Am I just... dead? Sick? High on something?”
    “It’s the real deal, dude.”
    “Monsters are real.”
    “Not just monsters.”
    Cason’s eyes narrow. “What else?”
    “The gods.”
    “Gods. Plural. Not God.”
    “He’s real, too. He’s just one among many.”
    Cason stands. Almost falls. “You know what? I’m outta here.”
    Frank hops down, stands in Cason’s way.
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow your roll, stud. How do you think this whole thing works? You think your wife and kid want to murder you because that’s just how they feel? Or you think it’s because someone’s pulling their strings? It’s time to open your eyes—really open them, now—and look around. There’s magic in this life, and it ain’t ours to play with. It’s theirs . The gods are the ones with all the tricks. We’re just their playthings. They’re the kid with the magnifying glass and we’re the burning ants.”
    Gods. Monsters. Impossible. And yet—not really, not at all. Women with wings, man-boys with unholy magnetism, and that little business about his wife and son burning alive in a car but now, miraculously, being alive as if it never happened.
    His legs almost give out, but Frank steadies him.
    “But they have a saying,” Frank continues. “The ants weigh more than the elephants. You know that saying?”
    The smallest head shake. No .
    “The ants weigh more than the elephants. Doesn’t seem true, because a teeny tiny ant is just a squirming black bug in a big-ass elephant’s butthole. But that’s not what the saying says, the saying says ants and elephants , plural. Because all the ants together weigh more than all the elephants together. And that’s how we are. Gods and man. We don’t outweigh them one to one, but together, boy. There’s a lot more of us than them.”
    The questions—his mind is like a bucket that just overturned and now he can’t stop the questions. “Who are they? How did they get here? Why me?”
    Frank chuckles. “The easy answer? They were pushed . The longer, crazier answer is—”
    His already bulging bug-eyes seem to go wider as the skin around them pulls back—Frank’s look of perpetual surprise is suddenly magnified.
    “Someone’s here,” Frank says.
    A knock at the door.
    Not a friendly knock, either. Wham wham wham wham .
    The hairs on Cason’s neck stand. Arms, too. Straight and tall like soldiers.
    “One of them ,” Frank says. “How the fuck—” He hurries over to the window over the sink, pulls back a filmy curtain, quickly lets it fall back in place. “We gotta go.”
    “I want to see,” Cason says, moving toward the sink.
    Frank stands in his way. “No time. We have to go.”
    “Move.”
    “Case, the longer we wait—”
    Frank’s not a big man. Cason shoves him aside.
    And then he sees. The window overlooks the porch. It takes a second to click, but the wild hair gives it away. It’s the woman from the woods: the one bound in golden chains. The one with wings—wings that are, at present, nowhere to be seen.
    Someone else is there, too—
    The other person takes a step back.
    Alison.
    Alison .
    Her eyes, empty. Mouth slack, with saliva moistening her lips. Her head has this