Pearl Tanner leaned over, gently kissed Jerius on the head, and fluffed his pillow.
“You good … you need to go to the bathroom or anything?” she asked.
“No, mama,” he said, smiling. “I’m all set.”
Pearl got up, stretched, and eyed the child’s room, which was painted mint green. On the wall behind Jerius’s bed was a giant poster of the Gill-man from “The Creature of the Black Lagoon,” while the far wall with a small window had three different drawings of King Kong – the last showing him swatting at biplanes while atop the Empire State Building.
And instead of a lamp, the centerpiece of his nightstand was a large skull that doubled as a candleholder. Once the overhead light went out, Pearl lit the wick.
“OK,” she said. “Lemme check for monsters.”
She walked toward the closet door, opened it, glanced at hanging clothes and a scattering of toys, and closed it. She then knelt down and lifted up the blanket slightly so she could peer under his bed.
“No monsters in the closet and no monsters under the bed,” she said. “No monsters anywhere in the house. Same as it was last night and the night before. The only monsters here are the ones on your wall.”
“Mama, you know I’m not scared of monsters,” he said proudly. “Monsters ain’t gonna hurt me.”
Pearl laughed.
“Well, of course not. No such thing, anyway. It’s like that big ol’ fish-looking thing there on the wall – it’s scary looking in the movie, but it’s just a man in a fish suit. And the monkey who climbed that building? He looks mean, but he’s just a story … a fun story, but just a story. I kinda suspected you already knew that, but just for fun I started checking for monsters when you were a little thing and just never got out of the habit. You never were the type to get scared, though, I’ll give you that.”
Pearl blew Jerius a kiss, ignited the candle and switched off the light.
“Goodnight, sugar,” she said as she left his bedroom. “Sweet dreams.”
Jerius could hear his mom walk down the hallway, and the squeak of her bedroom door and the click of the lock signaled that the coast was clear.
“Pssst … Eddie. You can come out now.”
The door to Jerius’s closet cracked and a gnarled gray hand with curled claws gripped the side and pushed it open. Eddie looked like a three-foot tall garden gnome – if garden gnomes were covered in wiry, brown fur. He had small blue eyes, no apparent nose and a triangular mouth that displayed jagged, yellow teeth.
He walked slowly – and with a wobble – but once he reached the side of Jerius’s bed, he effortlessly jumped up and plopped on the mattress.
“Hello, J,” Eddie said in a soft, child-like voice. “What’s the plan tonight?”
Jerius let out a belly laugh and his nurse, Rhonda, cracked a smile as she handed him his medication. He had told the story to the staff at the Franklin Assisted Living Facility for years, and it never got old – at least not to him.
“That’s the absolutely, 100 percent true story I call ‘Me and My Monster,’” Jerius said right after swallowing his pills. “I wrote it along about when I was 10 or 11, and now I’ve told it so many times I got it memorized. Pretty good, huh?”
“It’s very good, Mr. Tanner,” she said. “So, when I go to tuck my kids in tonight, I should tell them that all those stories about having monsters in their closets and under their beds are true, except they aren’t really monsters at all?”
“That’s about the size of it, Miss Rhonda. Monsters were always my friends, ever since I was a young ‘un. Think about the Gill-man … what did he do? He’s just mindin’ his own business and people come up in a boat and start messin’ with his house. And Kong? He’s doing fine on his island and these rich folks chain him up and put him in a show. Shoot … I’d be mad, too. Nah, just because you don’t understand somethin’ doesn’t mean it’s bad. ‘Monster’ is just a word people made up ‘cause they were too lazy to learn about somethin’ new.”
Rhonda patted him on the shoulder and walked to the door.
“I always enjoy talking to you, Mr. Tanner. Good night and sleep tight … you want the light on or off?”
“Now you know Eddie ain’t gonna come out of the closet with the light on,” he said, laying his head back.
The nurse walked down the hallway, and Jerious could hear the sound of her footsteps fade away. He turned over and noticed the door to his closet was ajar.
“Pssst … Eddie. You can come out now.”
