Read Online A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness - Free Book Online Page B

and–”
    I have come to tell you the second tale
, the monster said.
    Conor made an exasperated sound and looked back at the broken clock. “Is it going to be as bad as the last one?” he asked, distractedly.
    It ends in proper destruction
,
if that is what you mean.
    Conor turned back to the monster. Its face had rearranged itself into the expression Conor recognized as the evil grin.
    “Is it a cheating story?” Conor asked. “Does it sound like it’s going to be one way and then it’s a total other way?”
    No
, said the monster
. It is about a man who thought only of himself.
The monster smiled again, looking even more wicked.
And he gets punished very, very badly indeed.
    Conor stood breathing for a second, thinking about the broken clock, about the scratches on the hardwood, about the poisonous berries dropping from the monster onto his grandma’s clean floor.
    He thought about his father.
    “I’m listening,” Conor said.

THE SECOND TALE
    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 towards the ground. Villages grew into towns, towns into cities. And people began to live
on
the earth rather than
within
it.
    But there was still green, if you knew where to look.
    (The monster opened its hands again, and a mist rolled through his grandma’s sitting room. When it cleared, Conor and the monster stood on a field of green, overlooking a valley of metal and brick.)
    (“So I
am
asleep,” Conor said.)
    (
Quiet
, said the monster.
Here he comes.
And Conor saw a sour-looking man with heavy black clothes and a deep, deep frown climbing the hill towards them.)
    Along the edge of this green lived a man. His name is not important, as no one ever used it. The villagers only ever called him the Apothecary.
    (“The what?” Conor asked.)
    (
The Apothecary
, said the monster.)
    (“The what?”)
    Apothecary was an old-fashioned name, even then, for a chemist.
    (“Oh,” Conor said. “Why didn’t you just say?”)
    But the name was well-earned, because apothecaries were ancient, dealing in the old ways of medicine, too. Of herbs and barks, of concoctions brewed from berries and leaves.
    (“Dad’s new wife does that,” Conor said as they watched the man dig up a root. “She owns a shop that sells crystals.”)
    (The monster frowned.
It is not remotely the same.
)
    Many a day the Apothecary went walking to collect the herbs and leaves of the surrounding green. But as the years passed, his walks became longer and longer as the factories and roads sprawled out of town like one of the rashes he was so effective in treating. Where he used to be able to collect paxsfoil and bella rosa before morning tea, it began to take him the entire day.
    The world was changing, and the Apothecary grew bitter. Or rather,
more
bitter, for he had always been an unpleasant man. He was greedy and charged too much for his cures, often taking more than the patient could afford to pay. Nevertheless, he was surprised at how unloved he was by the villagers, thinking they should treat him with far more respect. And because his attitude was poor, their attitude towards him was also poor, until, as time went on, his patients began seeking other, more modern remedies from other, more modern healers. Which only, of course, made the Apothecary even more bitter.
    (The mist surrounded them again and the scene changed. They were now standing on a lawn atop a small hillock. A parsonage sat to one side and a great yew tree stood in the middle of a few new headstones.)
    In the Apothecary’s village there also lived a parson–
    (“This is the hill behind my house,” Conor interrupted. He looked around, but there was no railway line yet, no rows of houses, just a few footpaths and a