Please log in to recommend or discuss...
Outside Boston
March 13, 2026
Two Years and Four Months After the Boston Massacre
Start with the wolves.
They leave the city at midnight, under the cover of darkness. Sleep is not a thing they worry about; they can ride their wolves until the morning, borrow energy from their strange well of magic. What they are worried about is the eyes on them, particularly the ones they can’t see—the ones in the shadows, looking on at their break in routine. If it were before, they might have thought a straight, predictable life would protect them. But they know that’s not true, not anymore. Whether they decide to act or not, the world will eat them anyway.
They wait until they’re hours outside the city before they stop. Rebecca and Laina go inside to peruse the shelves of the small gas station convenience store. Ridley stands outside, looking at the highway, the cars speeding by as streaking lights. His senses are keener now. He can hear not just the cars but also the scurrying of small creatures in the surrounding woods. The scent of gasoline fills Ridley’s nose, someone fueling up at one of the service stations. A van is parked in one of the parking spaces a few feet from where Ridley is standing.
The night sky is a comforting black. Ridley thinks comforting because all the light pollution keeps the darker places far off in the inky shadows of the surrounding forest. But Ridley can also see better in the dark now. He has become one of the creatures at home in the liminal space between comforting black and true darkness. The things that can eat him are deeper in that true dark.
The van’s driver-side door opens, and someone drops down to the curb. Ridley can only hear this person. He can’t see them, not yet. And only now does he realize the van’s windshield is tinted so black he cannot see inside.
The person comes around the van and walks sweetly up to Ridley.
“You got a lighter?”
The person’s voice is smooth and high—a silky treble that shudders just a bit at its edges.
Ridley shakes his head.
“I figured since you were standing here . . . How old are you?”
Ridley gives his age.
“A young person like you probably doesn’t smoke, right? You probably eat edibles? Or you vape. Vaping isn’t smoking—not that it won’t kill you just the same, right?” The person extends a hand. “I’m Mason. You probably want my pronouns, right? She/her.”
Ridley is alarmed at the way she is using “right” at the end of her sentences without being the least bit concerned whether she is right about what she’s saying. Ridley did want her pronouns but still hates the presumption.
He is also alarmed by the use of “young person.” She looks Ridley’s age. All smooth skin and fat in the face that makes Ridley think she’s in her thirties at most.
He looks back through the window. Laina is at the cashier, pulling a bag of what has to be junk food off the counter. She has one of those terrible hot dogs in her mouth, and it occurs to Ridley that he wants one as well.
“Your name?” Mason asks again.
He returns to her. “Ridley. He/him.”
“Ah,” she says. “I’m glad you told me your pronouns. Does your friend in there have a lighter?”
“My wife,” Ridley says. “No, she doesn’t smoke either.”
“Shame,” Mason says, with a look that makes the statement completely ambiguous. “Well.” She sighs. “Serves me right for not keeping a lighter with me.”
Mason’s hair is cut short. Large eyes, set in a pale face. She barely blinks, is barely blinking, even as her expressions change.
A sound comes from the back of the van. Ridley thinks it might have been a growl.
Mason smirks. “Looks like the princess is up. Feeding time.” She does something with her hand. A salute? Another thing that aggravates Ridley beyond reason. Even her gesture of goodbye feels mocking, the whole conversation a joke at Ridley’s expense. The door to the convenience store opens. Laina hands him a hot dog. “I ate mine already,” she says, and Ridley knows why she says it. She knew he wanted one even before he did.
Ridley gives her a kiss on the cheek in gratitude.
“Who was that?” Laina asks.
Ridley shrugs. “Someone asking for a lighter.”
Laina laughs. “Sounds like something from an old movie.”
She’s right. Sort of. Ridley never gets asked this by strangers. Not for a long time. But when he was younger, he did hang out with the sort of people who asked for lighters. Sometimes he forgets how different their experiences were, his and Laina’s. He expects her to have been around people who asked for things like lighters, who stood outside bars or clubs getting high before going in. But he knows why he might think that. Because she grew up in a rough neighborhood and he grew up well-off in a nice neighborhood, everyone bored out of their mind. He feels a shock of shame for stereotyping her, and then he considers his history and how much of his experience was in rebellion to his safe, sheltered upbringing. Ridley didn’t want to admit how much of his experience was to prove
that he could exist within another context—a context that wasn’t his life as a “spoiled rich kid.” Not how he saw himself but how he thought others might see him. Laina had better reasons to rebel from her own circumstances: rebellion out of necessity.
Rebecca finally comes out of the convenience store, and they all squeeze back into their little Honda Fit.
Ridley finishes his hot dog before pulling out of the parking spot. He looks at the van again as he turns toward the road. It hasn’t moved. He keeps checking the rearview as the gas station and tinted van shrink into the distance.
Rebecca and Laina notice Ridley’s behavior, but neither remarks on it. They both assume this response, this habitual checking, is a fear response—a reasonable one since they are acting outside their normal pattern. They’ve been good little monsters for years, the only evidence of their new agenda being the footage of Lincoln’s death, rereleased and now openly accepted among most people as real. That and the conference room on the bottom floor of Anarres Books, locked when they’re not in it, the place where they keep the evidence of their ongoing attempts to understand this new and strange world.
After another hour on the freeway, Ridley stops looking in the rearview mirror, and they all feel a collective relief, a release of tension. For now, they have evaded their own fear, and there is no indication they should be afraid.
Ridley is playing Carly Rae Jepsen loud and singing along. Rebecca doesn’t particularly like Jepsen, but constant exposure has awakened in her a Stockholm-like joy when she hears the eighties-inspired bubble-gum poppiness that is the singer’s signature vibe.
Laina is moving her head to the music as well. Rebecca can see them both in the front seat, and briefly she feels like the child again, a third party intruding on a relationship long established. Happily, Jepsen is soon replaced with a Rihanna song—one of Rebecca’s contributions. Rebecca is singing along now too, but this is not unexpected. Rihanna unites everyone—a favorite of all four of us.
At 3:00 a.m., they switch, and Laina drives for three hours. Rebecca falls asleep, and Laina puts on a more chill playlist: instrumentals and folk music. She is wide awake.
Laina spares a glance at Ridley. He is looking out the side window. His posture indicates that he is awake as well.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
“I’m just wondering how many monsters are out there.”
Laina thinks on it. They’ve been wondering that for a while, and she suspects there’s a thought under that thought.
There is.
“In this scenario, are you worried about the monsters, or the humans?” Again, that purely reductive distinction. They all three are monsters and humans.
“Both,” Ridley says. “But I’m wondering if it might be useful for both sides to know—really know—how many. Or would that just lead to one or the other side being wiped out faster?”
“The humans will remain,” Laina says. “I know, at the very least, that there are not enough of us.”
“No, not enough of us at all.”
That’s the trick, Laina thinks. She imagines the history of monsters as a type of ongoing guerrilla warfare. There’s an advantage in the haziness of the shadow world. It could be hundreds of monsters, or thousands, or millions. A useful degree of uncertainty. And now, with the world as it is, they need that murkiness even more.
A few years ago, Laina wouldn’t have considered herself a part of the murk. But her brother was, and now she is too.
None of this gets to the heart of Ridley’s questioning. The true heart is a sort of infinite regression. How many monsters? Where did they come from? The world of monsters exists beneath the human world. What is the world beneath that? Or the world above? The heart of the question is the fear of infinite unknowns, descending forever, turtles all the way down. Places to hide and places hidden. The universe has legs.
It is reminiscent of Laina’s black sea, the thing she considered when Lincoln’s death filled her with the nihilism of despair. Now, years later, Ridley is considering a near sister to that idea. It is the existential question haunting the whole world: Can anything be trusted ever again?
After another couple of hours, sunlight spills into the window of their little car. Laina is beginning to feel groggy, so they stop, and Rebecca completes the journey. She doesn’t like driving, but she will do it now since there is only a few hours’ worth to go. They make the turn down the dirt road at 10:30 a.m. Rebecca has never been to this part of Pennsylvania. Once, in college, she went to a conference in
Pittsburgh, but that was a city. This is the backwoods of Pittsburgh. Sure, she grew up in a sort of backwoods, but Rebecca doesn’t trust other people’s.
They pull up to the house and are greeted by dogs’ frantic barking. A woman in her nightgown comes out on the porch.
“You’re here,” she says, a just-woke-up rasp to her voice. “Well, come on in,” she says and walks back inside, leaving the screen door open. The barking dogs stare at them until a whistle from inside the house pulls them away.
When they enter, they can hear the rattle of kibble being poured into dog bowls, then the excited scrape of the bowls being dragged across the kitchen linoleum.
“Have a seat in the parlor there. I’ll be right out.”
They oblige. Of the three, Rebecca is the most nervous. Laina puts a hand on her knee, gives her a kiss on the cheek to calm her nerves.
The woman—her name is Agatha—comes into the parlor from the kitchen and bends to sit in her comfortable chair. No one chose to sit there. Normally, this decision might come out of a sixth sense that all humans have, an understanding of a new context through dozens of subtle contextual cues. But in this case, the sense is smell. Agatha’s scent has accumulated in that chair over many years—a clear marking of preference that the guests’ wolf senses can pick up on.
When she sits, she lets out a groan that is all old age and bad knees.
“The dogs will come back out,” she says. “But don’t you worry. They’ll be well behaved now that they’ve eaten.”
They nod together; the pack magic has strengthened between them. There is no leader, no alpha of this pack—only well-established roles among the people and their wolves: a maternal role, a protective one, and a comforter, corresponding with the personality types of these three people.
They’ve managed introductions by the time the dogs come into the parlor, and Agatha asks if someone would open the door and let them outside. Ridley volunteers. The two German shepherds run out into the yard and immediately find familiar spots to do their business.
“Connor used to clean up the backyard, but now I go out there occasionally and do what I can. Sorry about the smell.”
“It’s fine,” Laina says, although—for her wolf most of all—it isn’t.
“Can you tell us what
happened?” Ridley asks.
“Well, it is like I already told you on the phone. He packed a bag and left.”
“Yes,” Rebecca says, jumping in. “But did you notice anything? People hanging around. Did he seem frightened?”
Agatha shakes her head. “You know, if I noticed anything, it was from Connor. But not because he was frightened. No, nothing like that. He would run off sometimes at night, you know, and he’d come back with a strange look in his eyes. The dogs loved him, but they were sometimes afraid of him too.” She shakes her head again. “No people hanging around. Just my Connor.”
“Agatha,” Ridley starts, leaving some space to prepare himself and the others—and Agatha—for what he’s about to ask, “do you believe in monsters?”
Agatha laughs—a short, dry laugh that passes quickly through her body. “Well, there’s not much use for believing around these parts. People leave me well enough alone, though Connor’s parents have been asking me to come live with them. I don’t like living in town, you know. All the noises, smells, and people. Good Lord. But I suppose I’ll have to take them up on it now that Connor’s run off to God knows where. The house is the problem. And my dogs—I don’t want to give them up. My kids don’t want anything to do with this place. I was going to leave it to Connor, you know. I hope that boy’s okay.”
Ridley rephrases the question: “Did you ever talk about monsters with Connor?”
“Sure. He mentioned it from time to time. It was strange, you know? He’d just bring it up in the middle of meals. News and some such. I just thought he was interested in that stuff. I entertained him, nodded along as he talked about werewolves.” She laughs again, longer this time.
Ridley looks at Laina and Rebecca, and they both look back. It’s a quick look, but Agatha notices. An expression of her own, brief but distinct. She’s thinking, They are like him. She is thinking, They’re not scary at all. Just like my Connor. But the mask slips back on.
“Well, can you help me find him?” she asks.
“We can try,” Ridley says, but even as he says the words, he knows he has no idea where to look.
They had all sat together,
planning this out. This trip and this conversation. And in their minds, they imagined that some clue would present itself during the conversation to help them track down another clue, and then another. They had watched crime dramas where this exact thing would happen, and they hoped the reality would produce the same result. Something clear and concrete that would send them down a path to increased revelations. But to just disappear? Here one day and gone the next? Did he run? Was he abducted? But who would abduct a werewolf? Of course, they knew the answer to that, even if they didn’t know any names.
Rebecca asks another question. “Did he talk to anyone while he was here? On the phone, I mean?”
“Well, yes, some of his friends from Boston. Might’ve been you, I imagine.”
Rebecca frowns. It might’ve been. Another dead end.
Laina asks, “Did you see anyone around the property that night? Hear anything?”
“I’m a deep sleeper,” Agatha says. A fleeting crease of the brow. “Well, come to think of it . . .”
They lean in.
“The dogs were barking that night, but I didn’t get up to see why. They sometimes get to barking if they hear things outside. Deer, foxes, raccoons—you know, that sort of thing.”
Their collective deflation is palpable.
“Might need to get those dogs back inside before they get themselves into trouble,” she says, looking at Ridley.
He gets up and opens the screen door, and the dogs surge in. They’re friendly. One of them comes close and sniffs Ridley’s hand. The dog steps back, whining. The other one growls in warning.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into ’em,” Agatha says, appalled. But her eyes tell a different story.
“We should go,” Laina says. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
Agatha stands. “Tell me if you find something, okay? His parents and I have been worried. It feels like the old days again, when he used to get himself in all sorts of trouble.”
Rebecca is the only one who fully understands what she means. All the previous members of her pack were homeless at some point in their lives, by necessity or choice—a self-imposed exile for the guilt and shame they felt over their addictions. Connor and Rebecca were like that. He got his life back together, like all the other members of her pack. Two are dead now. Three disappeared. A surge of grief passes through her.
“We’ll do our best to find him,” Rebecca says, and she means it, though she has no
idea what she’ll be able to do. In a normal world, she might stand a better chance. But not in this new world, where people can just disappear without a trace. Where a man made of smoke can just take someone away, or ants can form portals in solid earth.
Agatha watches them leave. On the front porch, Rebecca sniffs the air. She doesn’t say anything until they get to the car and shut themselves in.
“He’s been hunting for miles in each direction,” she says. “No strange scents.”
“I didn’t pick up anything either,” says Laina.
“We head back?” Ridley asks. The question is mostly for Rebecca.
Rebecca weighs it carefully. There is nothing here for them to find. Frustrated, she stomps her feet down hard enough for the sound to reverberate through the car.
No one tries to control Rebecca’s anger. Laina and Ridley just sit in the unsteady silence.
Finally, Rebecca says, “We go home.”
It’ll be at least a nine-hour drive back. And so they point their car toward Boston and begin the journey.
That first hour is quiet, the music low, the tension high.
They all are thinking of different things, but each mind eventually circles back to the same theme. This is the reality now, a half-seen world within an impenetrable fog. There’s no control here, no figuring everything out. Dead ends everywhere, at the end of all paths, long or short.
Eventually, Rebecca says, “We need to find more monsters ourselves. That is the only way forward.”
“That is dangerous,” Ridley says and has always been saying.
“I’m telling you,” Rebecca says, “we’re not the only ones who are lost. We can’t go any further in any direction if we don’t have guides—or aren’t willing to be ones ourselves.”
“How are we going to find them?” Laina this time.
“We put ourselves out there. Call them to us by showing them who we are.”
“We’ll be dead inside a week,” Ridley says.
“We’re dead anyway. Eventually. They already know who we are, Ridley.”
“There are rules of engagement here,” Ridley says. “I’m not opposed to looking for other monsters—”
“You
were two seconds ago.”
“—in theory. But we should do it carefully. We make ourselves a lightning rod, who knows what we’ll attract.”
“We’re getting nowhere. We have no leads and zero options for getting any. I’m tired of sitting on my hands.”
Laina is watching them both, helpless. Every once in a while, it gets like this, and she has to be the intermediary. It isn’t so bad yet. It might blow over.
It has been years like this for them. Knowing what they know, what they don’t know, bottomless. Life continues.
Rebecca has been secretly talking to people online for a while, but what she is saying now goes beyond that. Meeting monsters in the real world. Monsters she doesn’t know, from origins she doesn’t understand.
They’ve had a bookstore to run and bills to pay and their own relationship to manage, Rebecca moving in permanently, becoming a pack.
If they were being honest, this step was always on the horizon. Laina knows this. They’re at the cliff’s edge, and now they must jump.
“Hypothetically, if there is some sort of secret way monsters signal each other, what could it be?” Laina asks Rebecca.
Ridley frowns at the question and says nothing.
“Well, saying you’re a monster wouldn’t be enough,” Rebecca says, getting to the heart of the question. “And . . .” Rebecca trails off.
“What?” Ridley says.
“From what I can tell, there aren’t a lot of monsters like us. I keep getting the sense that . . .” Rebecca finally says what she has been thinking for a long time, what she has been reluctant to admit to herself. “We’re accidents.”
Silence.
Rebecca continues. “I think whatever network there is for establishing connections across monster communities requires vouching from within the network. We have no one to vouch for us.”
“So how do we attract them without sacrificing whatever anonymity we still have?” Ridley asks.
“The monster solidarity movement is likely filled with monsters,” Rebecca says. “We have to plug into it.”
They all shudder, Rebecca included.
“It is time,” Rebecca says.
“Where do we start?"
Laina asks.
“The cooperative network,” Rebecca answers. “Two things have been happening lately: an upsurge in monster solidarity and more co-ops. I can’t imagine it’s a coincidence.”
Ridley can feel Rebecca’s attention on him. He doesn’t acknowledge it.
As the sun is setting, they stop for the second time to get gas. Again, Ridley is outside, this time at the pump as Rebecca and Laina go inside for more snacks. There is a palpable difference in everyone’s demeanor. What was once a mix of apprehension and excitement is now dejection and melancholy.
Every part of this has been different from what they expected. That early resolve in the hospital room has given way, over many years, to a collision with a difficult reality. But what did they expect—that creatures who were smart enough to remain hidden for thousands of years would somehow be easy to find?
According to Rebecca, there had been monsters at the march. A fox shifter and a snake shifter, at the very least. A few witches. Where did they come from?
There’s the snap of the gas pump shutting off. Ridley pulls out the nozzle, places it back on its hook, and that’s when he sees the van again, idling in the parking lot, the engine still running. Ridley is slow to move, as if any strong response will make the van more real than it already is. He considers the possibilities. They saw the van on the way to Agatha’s. Is it possible it was on its way to a similar location, and they just happened to catch each other on their way back to the city?
Ridley tries to look through the back windows, but they’re just as dark as the windshield.
Rebecca and Laina come out of the gas station, and suddenly a woman is there. She approaches quickly and says something to them. Rebecca doesn’t seem uneasy at all, but Laina is tense the whole time.
The brief exchange ends, and the woman shrugs before going into the store. Laina and Rebecca make their way to the car.
“What happened?” Ridley asks. “What did she say?”
Rebecca reads the alarm on Laina’s and Ridley’s faces.
“She asked us for a light,” Laina says.
They all climb into the car and hit the freeway.
“What the fuck?” Ridley says.
Laina explains to Rebecca that this was the same woman who talked to Ridley before, standing in front of that other gas station. Rebecca nods, determined to do what is necessary. This is it. ...
