A Monster Calls

by Patrick Ness

she’d started staring out of their kitchen window with a funny look on her face and saying, “That’s a yew tree, you know.”

this wasn’t the monster he was expecting.

It tasted as unhappy as it looked.

he heard her say, “There’s that old yew tree,” as if she was talking to herself.

It is not what I want from you, Conor O’Malley, it said. It is what you want from me.

monster. I am Herne the Hunter! I am Cernunnos! I am the eternal Green Man!

Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.

You know that your truth, the one that you hide, Conor O’Malley, is the thing you are most afraid of.

for a second it felt like the whole house was shaking, for a second it felt like he could reach down and tear the whole floor right out of the dark and loamy earth–

And you have worse things to be frightened of, said the monster, but not as a question.

nightmare feeling was rising in him, turning everything around him to darkness, making everything seem heavy and impossible, like he’d been asked to lift a mountain with his bare hands and no one would let him leave until he did.

Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?

“Stories don’t always have happy endings.”

Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn’t expect.

Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.

does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.