A Monster Calls

by Patrick Ness

He heard the creaking and cracking of wood again, groaning like a living thing, like the hungry stomach of the world growling for a meal.

There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere inbetween.

One hundred and fifty years ago, the monster began, this country had become a place of industry. Factories grew on the landscape like weeds. Trees fell, fields were up-ended, rivers blackened. The sky choked on smoke and ash, and the people did, too, spending their days coughing and itching, their eyes turned forever toward the ground. Villages grew into towns, towns into cities. And people began to live on the earth rather than within it.