Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson (ebook voice reader TXT) 📗

The door opened and she ran to him and threw her arms around his waist.

“Hey,” he said.

She was tall for an almost-six-year-old. She had her long hair in braids and looked pale, eyes swollen from crying. She wore her favourite Olaf pyjamas. The ghosts tried to follow as she led him inside, but some kind of warding stopped them. The apartment was empty except for the couch, a table, and a wall of suitcases and moving boxes labelled in black marker. Eliza’s desk-sized, old-school TV set was tuned to a news channel.

Outside the living room window, a giant red spirit excitedly thrashed its eight arms when it saw Jared. Its eyes glowed gold. Each of its suckers glowed the yellow-green of glow-in-the-dark paint. Huey zipped through the wall and bounced on the thing until it backed away from the window.

Aiden walked through the wall and stood in the TV. It flickered. Eliza pressed herself against Jared, grabbing his hand. One of the cups in the dish rack fell and shattered.

Aiden, Jared thought. Stop it. Then he asked Eliza, “How is he getting through the warding?”

I let him in, Eliza thought. He’s the only one who keeps the monster away. None of the warding works against that.

“Maybe we should wake your mom up,” Jared said. “You two could go over to Hank’s or Mave’s place.”

“Mom took sleeping pills,” Eliza said. “Doesn’t matter if we leave. It won’t help. Nothing helps.”

Dead Aiden glided to the dining table and sat on one of the kitchen chairs, sulking.

“Do you want Shu back?” Jared whispered to Eliza. He couldn’t do that, but maybe his mom could.

“No,” Eliza whispered back. “She killed Daddy.”

“Okay.”

Aiden was suddenly beside him, head spinning like a bad Exorcist rip-off. Eliza quickly ducked behind Jared.

Dude, Jared thought. What the hell? This is your daughter.

Huey bounded back through the window and rammed himself into Aiden’s midsection. Aiden and Huey flew through the wall. A tentacle appeared through the floor, creeping towards them, and then another. Eliza started crying, quietly.

“It’s okay,” Jared said. “It’s gonna be okay.”

When the first arm got close to him, something snapped like a live wire. A fierce roar echoed through the apartment. Aiden popped back in and stomped on the tentacle until it withdrew. He glared at them both, then retreated to a dimly lit corner of the living room.

Jared could hear the ghosts whispering outside in the hallway. The tentacle thing rose up until it was staring at them through the living room window. It can’t touch me, Jared thought. It can’t hurt me. But that went both ways. He was pretty sure he couldn’t take it in a fight. He wondered if it was sensitive to sound. As his mom said, he was talented at annoying things.

“You wanna sing ‘Let It Go’ with me?” Jared said.

Eliza shook her head quickly.

“Your dad can leave if he doesn’t like it,” Jared said.

“Daddy keeps the monster away.”

“Do you think it’s a squid monster or an octopus monster?”

“It’s just a monster.”

“It’s an octopus, dumb-ass,” Dead Aiden said.

Eliza flinched at the sound of her father’s voice. Jared paused to consider the octopus monster. Did anything hunt octopus? Did they have a natural enemy that they were afraid of? He vaguely remembered pictures of giant arms wrapped around a whale’s face. He wished he had brought his phone so he could consult Grandfather Google. But it was worth a shot.

“What do you think, Huey?” Jared said. “Can you do a whale call?”

Huey moved his lips, but nothing came out. In his head, Jared made sounds he’d heard from television shows that he hoped were whale-like. The arms whipped about in obvious irritation. The only octopus he could bring to mind was the Kraken from Clash of the Titans. That didn’t seem particularly useful. This one was much smaller. Jared bobbed around, waving his arms.

“Good job,” Dead Aiden said. “Piss it off. See where that gets us.”

“Aiden, we’re going to sing ‘Let It Go’ now. I’m not trying to rile you up. I just want to see if the octopus thing reacts, all right?” He held his hand out for Eliza.

“No,” she said. “Sing something else. Please, Jared.”

“Okay, no Elsa. How about Nickelback?”

“I don’t think monsters are scared of Nickelback.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Everything’s afraid of sharks,” Eliza said. “We could sing ‘Baby Shark.’ ”

“I don’t know that one.”

“It’s easy. I’ll teach you.”

Eliza sang and made her hands into an imaginary shark mouth. Jared joined in for the chorus. Huey bounced to the beat, his mouth mimicking Eliza’s. The bobbing octopus flushed dark purple. Dead Aiden shimmered like a mirage, his head whipping back and forth so hard he blurred. Eliza fell quiet, gripping Jared’s hand tight. Jared could usually think of annoying nicknames, but he was kind of tired and brainless. Watching the octopus bob around, he thought, Hey, Bob at it. The arms squirmed in irritation. Bob the Octopus it was.

“Do you have a recorder?” Jared asked. “Or a harmonica?”

“No,” Eliza said. “How come?”

“I need something that Huey can play.”

“You’re fucking dumb as a sack of hammers,” Dead Aiden said. “You’re going to get her killed!”

The salt shaker whipped across the room and banged off a lamp.

“I have a whistle,” Eliza whispered.

“That might work,” Jared said.

“Mom said only use it if I get attacked.”

“I think this counts as an attack.”

Eliza led him to the closet and took a pink whistle on a pink rope out of one of her jacket pockets. You Are Not Alone was printed on one side of the whistle. Rape Crisis Hotline and its number was printed on the other. He rummaged through the apartment until he found a lighter and an emergency candle in a box marked Junk Drawer.

“What’re you doing?” Eliza said.

“I don’t know if it’ll work,” Jared said. But it had worked when he’d wanted to share food with Huey and Shu—he’d burned marshmallows for them, and they’d loved that. His mom said this was the way to send physical things to the