Baby Face Monster's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Baby Face Monster stood inside the mouth of his cave and practiced lowering his voice. He was thirty years old. His shoulders were broad. His head was the size of any grown man's. But his cheeks stayed round and pink, and his skin had never learned a single line. That was why he lived here, in the dark hollow of the forest, alone. That was why, when a stranger's footsteps had crunched up the slope an hour ago, he had bolted inside and hidden. He could still hear her out there. A woman. She was calling into the trees for someone named Dad. Her voice cracked on the second call. He pressed his bare back against the cold stone and looked down at his blue jeans, the only clothes he owned. He needed her to leave. He also, painfully, needed her to stay. If he stepped out and she laughed, or screamed, or spoke to him the way people spoke to toddlers, he would crawl back into the dark and never come out again. He rehearsed. "Ma'am. I can help you." Too soft. "Ma'am, I know these woods." Better. He tried to stand the way he thought a grown man stood: chest out, chin down. He tried a frown. On his face, a frown looked like a baby about to cry. He wiped it off. A branch snapped close to the entrance. Through the gap he saw her — the researcher, the one whose voice had been cracking. A white lab coat, muddy at the hem. Glasses fogged from the climb. She held a folded paper in one hand and a small flashlight in the other, and she was already lifting the beam toward the cave. He had no more time to practice. He stepped into the light before she could shine it on him. "Ma'am," he said. He kept his voice low. "Don't come closer yet. I don't want to scare you." Her flashlight jerked up anyway and caught his face. He watched her eyes do what every pair of eyes did. They started at his shoulders, traveled up his chest, and stopped at his cheeks. Her mouth opened. He waited for the laugh. It didn't come. She squinted, then tilted her head. "You're a man," she said. Not a question. A correction, like she was arguing with her own eyes. "Yes." "You live out here?" "Yes." She lowered the flashlight. She unfolded the paper and held it up so he could see. A photograph of a man with grey hair. "I'm Ellie Jamieson," she said. "I've been looking for my father for eleven days. Have you seen him?" Baby Face Monster looked at the picture. He had seen that man. A few years ago. Baby Face Monster knew the man had been a researcher. He drew a breath and gave her the first real answer of his adult life. "I have seen him before, years ago. I believe he was researching me. He had a camp setup not far from here.”