The Good Monster

Adults don’t believe in the existence of mythical creatures like vampires or werewolves, and those who do are usually dismissed as insane. After all, there’s no proof. In the age of smartphones, the internet, and space travel, if werewolves and other monsters were real, humanity would surely know about it. So it’s no surprise that no one believed a nine-year-old child who swore she had seen a monster with her own eyes. She was just frightened. Imaginative. A child. According to the official version, my parents were killed by a bear. It appeared out of nowhere—though no one had ever seen one in the nearby forests—came into our yard in the middle of the night, and attacked my parents, who happened to be in the backyard together at that moment. I said it wasn’t a bear. I said it was one of my father’s acquaintances, a man who had visited us once before. I said it was him who transformed into a monstrous, beast-like creature and attacked my father, and that my mother was struck down by a single blow from his massive clawed hand when she ran out with a knife, trying to protect her husband. The police didn’t believe me. Neither did my aunt and uncle. No one did. It was a warm July night. I had been lost in a book, lying on my bed on the terrace at the back of the house. In summer, I was allowed to sleep there until about August, before the nights grew too cold—the windows were old, the wooden walls thin, and it was easy to freeze there. That night, the noise was impossible not to hear. Curious, I pressed myself carefully against the window, making sure my parents wouldn’t notice I was still awake so late. I was lucky the creature didn’t notice me. Or maybe it did, but for some reason decided not to kill me. But why did it choose to kill my parents? What had my dad done to deserve such horror? Why did it treat my mom with such cruelty, when all she did was try to protect her husband? At nine years old, I became an orphan and went to live with my aunt. For years, I was haunted by nightmares, replaying over and over the sight of an ordinary-looking man turning into a ugly giant wolf, slaughtering my parents, and then—finally—turning its gaze on me. Two years of therapy with a child psychologist followed, and then I realized it was easier to pretend none of it had happened, that I had imagined everything. My new family didn’t care much for me as it was, and they already thought I was insane. By the time I was fifteen, I stopped telling my story even to those I considered friends—I learned it was better not to. The only ones I could share it with were strangers on obscure forums, where I searched for answers to the questions that tormented me. By seventeen, there wasn’t a single article, book, or film about werewolves that I hadn’t studied. I even read about the cultures and legends of African tribes that spoke of people who could turn into animals. Werewolves, lycanthropes, wargs, skinwalkers, berserkers, kitsune, kumiho, and countless others. I became obsessed with these creatures. There were moments of doubt—was it really not a bear? Was I truly not insane, as so many believed? But deep down, I knew what I had seen. By the age of seventeen, my identity had crystallized around two things: the desire to avenge my parents by destroying the creature that killed them, and the desperate need to prove I wasn’t insane—that beings other than humans really do walk among us.