While I pulled on my running clothes and my sneakers, I didn’t do what some people do when they’ve been scared. I didn’t try to focus my mind on bunny rabbits or kitty cats or Disney cartoons (which, quite frankly, I find to be truly scary). Instead I mentally ran through the whole catalog of scary creatures from Narragansett tales: Cheepi, the Evil One; huge black dogs; headless ghosts; cannibal skeletons; underwater snakes; monster birds. We even have a story about the devil on ice skates. I thought about all those different creatures that Grama Delia made come alive for me in her wintertime tales, so alive that I only had to close my eyes to see them. And especially I thought about how each and every one of them ended up defeated or thwarted in one way or another.

Like I said, monsters are one of the reasons Roger and I became so close so quick. They are his favorite thing too. We both like them because the best monster stories—not just the ones that Grama Delia told me about, but even some of the newer ones in books and movies—always have rules and a certain kind of supernatural logic to them. First there’s the battle between good and evil, then there’s the idea that good can always find some way to win. That’s usually linked to the fact that, powerful as any monster might be, it always has at least one weakness. That was even true of those scary creations of poor old neurotic HPL, the “ghoul-haunted master of the macabre” (as Roger’s mother calls him). A kid can take comfort in that, knowing that even a little child can find a way to overcome a big old monster. “The reassurance of juvenile empowerment.” That’s how Roger’s mother explains it in her lectures.

A rumbling sound came from down the road. A construction crew had been there for the last two weeks, doing some kind of excavating for a new sewer line or something. Aunt Lyssa had been told that they’d only have the street torn up for a few days. That had made both of us smile. Nothing in Providence ever gets done in a few days. Apparently they’d run into harder rock than expected because they were now using dynamite. That was unfortunate. Every time a blast went off—like the one that had just made me drop my running shoes—it totally freaked out Bootsie to the point where she peed on the rug. As a result, she had been banished during the day to our fenced-in backyard. Bootsie is a year-old Irish setter. Aunt Lyssa got her as a puppy because she said I needed a dog to keep me company. Of course, Aunt Lyssa is the one “my” dog always comes to first. And guess whose bed she sleeps on at night?