"My Friend the Monster"
by Clyde Buller

This is a story about a boy named Hal. Hal is a prince. His parents, the King and the Queen, wanted him to be handsome, very, very smart, and very, very special. They were disappointed though, because he was just like other boys and girls. He wanted to play with the other children who lived outside the castle, but his parents wouldn't let him.

One day Hal waved out the window to a girl he saw playing, and she waved back. Later she found her way into the castle past the guards, and she brought a book with her. It was an old book, but Hal was happy to trade one of his new books for it. It was a book about the old days and about monsters. The monsters once lived in the kingdom now ruled by Hal's parents. In the old days, the man who was king drove the monster people out of their homes. The monsters had to run away to save their lives, and they escaped to live inside of Black Rock Mountain. When the monsters escaped, the King was so angry that he ordered the people never to talk about the monster people or write stories about them. In time few people in the land remembered the monsters who lived inside the mountain.

Hal was very sad and lonely inside the castle because he had no one to play with. So he read the book about the monsters over and over. He gave names to the monsters who were pictured in the book, and he felt that they were his friends. They were strange looking, but they seemed more sad than ugly.

One day Hal's mother, the Queen, came to his room and found the book about monsters. She was very angry. She threw the book into the fireplace Hal tried to save it from the flames, but it caught fire and burned. That night and for many nights afterwards, Hal dreamed of monsters and fire. He always woke up feeling sad. Time went by, and Hal began to grow thin and pale. The Queen told the King that Hal was not well, and a doctor was called. The doctor said Hal was very unhappy, that he should go somewhere else to live for a while. Hal said he wanted to go live with his Aunt Ivy, and his parents agreed. Ivy lived near the mountains. In fact, she lived near Black Rock Mountain, where the book said the monster people lived.

One cleat spring day, Prince Hal went to the mountains. He rode In a coach drawn by six horses, with six guards riding other horses all around the coach. They rode all day and toward evening came to a white house among the trees. Aunt Ivy came out to meet Hal. She showed him through the house and took him to see what would be his room. Hal asked if Cousin Archer, Aunt Ivy's son, would play with him. Aunt Ivy replied, "Cousin Archer is a grown man, not a boy, and he has no time to play."

Hal looked out the window of his room and saw something rising up behind the trees. It was Black Rock Mountain. He told his Aunt Ivy about something he had read in the book: that there was a black square on the mountain wall where a door used to be. "It was made by magic," Hal said. "It was the door used by the monsters to get into the mountain.

Aunt Ivy said that she had once heard a song about strange people who lived underground, but that she didn't know anything else about it. However, she remembered, once she had heard a man say he had caught a little monster.

The next day Cousin Archer came home from hunting. He was a big, rough-looking man. He had two big dogs and carried a bag in which there was a bird he had captured. He ignored Hal and said nothing even when Hal said, "Good day, Cousin Archer." When Hal followed Archer outside, they came to many cages placed along the garden path, cages full of pigeons and peacocks, monkeys and rabbits, and many other forest animals. Cousin Archer banged some of the animals on the nose to make them shriek. "Stop!" Hal cried when Archer hit the first animal. "You're hurting it." But Archer just laughed and kept at it. He said that he liked to hear them scream.

Hal felt very badly. "These animals are not happy," he told Cousin Archer. "You should set them free." But Cousin Archer said he could do whatever he wanted to. Then he became very angry at Hal and chased him from the garden with a stick. "Get out of here," Archer screamed at Hal. "Get out, and don't come back!"

Hal was excited and a little afraid. He ran along the road up the hill and down and then into the woods. He decided to head for Black Rock Mountain to see if he could find the magic door.

After a while Hal felt strange being all alone in the dark woods. He stopped for a drink of water at a stream. As he finished drinking, he discovered some clothes under a bush: a pair of boots, pants, a coat, and a hat with two holes in it, one on each side. The clothes were made of a strange material.He wondered whose they were. He looked at them very carefully but left them under the bush.

He hadn't gone far when he heard steps behind him. Hal turned. A boy was running after him, wearing the clothes Hal had found in the bush. The boy was a monster! He had great round eyes and a flat nose. His teeth were tusks. His hair was like a lion's mane. His skin was green. A pair of pink horns stretched through the holes in his cap.

"Give it back!" the boy shouted at Hal.

"Give what back?" Hal replied.

"The twig, the twig. You took my twig, and now I can't go home," the monster boy answered and started to cry.

Hal said, "I didn't take your twig, and I wish you'd stop crying. And why can't you go home?"

The monster boy explained that the twig was part of the magic that opened the mountain to let him in. It was gone, and he couldn't go home.

"I'll help you find it," Hal offered.

"No, you won't help me, " the boy said. "You're a Small Eyes. Small Eyes are our enemy."

"I'm not your enemy," said Hal.

"Yes, you are. You hate us," the boy said.

"No, I don't hate you," Hal said, "and I'll help you look for your twig." They went back to the bush by the stream and looked for the twig, but they couldn't find it. Then Hal had a good idea. "Must it be just the twig you lost?" he asked.

"It must be a twig from a black fir tree," the monster boy explained.

"I have a black fir at home," said Hal. "You wait here, and I'll go home and get you a new twig. By the way, what is your name?"

"My name is Humbert," the monster said.

"And my name is Hal," said Hal.

Hal hurried back to Aunt Ivy's house. He sneaked behind the house and broke a twig from the black fit tree. He was about to run off to the woods when he heard a commotion on the other side of the house. When he walked around and peeked into the garden, he saw that Cousin Archer had Humbert locked in a cage. Archer had found Humbert waiting in the woods. He had captured Humbert and brought him back to the house."What a fine monster I have caught," Archer was boasting. And a crowd of people from the village had gathered around the cage to stare at the monster boy.

Hal ran to the edge of the crowd unseen by his cousin and then wormed his way to the front ."Humbert," Hal whispered.

The boy in the cage was startled. "Hal," he said.

"I have the twig," Hal told him softly. "Be ready."

While Cousin Archer was driving the villagers out of the garden, Hal climbed a tree and hid in the thick branches. He waited there for hours until it was night. Then he climbed down from the tree and quickly went from cage to cage, opening each one as he passed by. A monkey jumped from its cage and began to shriek. Soon the other monkeys had joined in, as did all of the other animals. The monkeys screamed and chattered. The birds squawked. The dogs barked. As the guards came running, Hal opened Humbert's cage, and the two boys raced away from the garden.

Humbert and Hal ran through the woods all the way to Black Rock Mountain. When they reached the mountain, Humbert took the twig and said the magic words. There was a deep rumble, and a door opened in the side of the mountain. They ran through, and the door closed after them. Now they were safe.

First they walked through a place called The Land of In-Between where thousands of glow worms gave them light. Then they walked under a waterfall and came to the land where Humbert and his people lived. It was a land where the people kept coal fires burning all of the time so they could have light and heat.

The boys came to Humbert's house, but only Humbert went in at first. "I have to ask my mother about your staying," Humbert explained.

Hal couldn't see anyone in the house, but he heard Humbert's mother talking. "He is a Small Eyes. Why have you brought him here? He can't stay here. He is our enemy," she said.

"He is not our enemy," Humbert replied. "He is my friend." Hal couldn't hear what was said after that, but soon Humbert returned and brought Hal into his house. Despite what she had said, Humbert's mother was very kind to Hal. She gave the boys dinner and a bath, and then she put them to sleep.

In the morning Hal was awoken by the sound of voices. Humbert and his mother were talking in the next room. "You are only a monster to this Small Eyes," Humbert's mother said. "Do you think he would ever say of you, 'This is my friend, the monster?"

Humbert replied, "No matter what you say, he is my friend."

Though Hal stayed in Humbert's house another day, both Hal and Humbert knew that Hal had to leave. Humbert's mother was uneasy. And the boys couldn't even go out and play, because the other monster people would see Hal as the enemy and put him in a cage, or worse. Very early the next morning, Hal and Humbert raced away from the house and on into The Land of In-Between. There Humbert gave Hal the twig and taught him the magic words for the door. The boys said goodbye but promised to meet again.

Hal raced through The Land of In-Between, through the magic door, and on through the woods. When he came to the house, his parents were there as well as Aunt Ivy. Everyone was so happy to see him. They had heard that Cousin Archer had chased him from the garden, and the King had sent Archer away for a year as punishment for this.

The King and Queen could see that Hal was well again, and they were very happy. They decided to let Hal play with other children. Often Hal would go to visit his Aunt Ivy. And each time he'd go out to Black Rock Mountain to visit his friend, Humbert. The boys usually played together in The Land of In-Between. There, Humbert was safe from the "Small Eyes" and Hal was safe from the "Monsters."Hal wanted to tell Humbert that someday he wouldbe the king. When he was, Humbert and all of his people could come out from inside the mountain, and no one would harm them. Hal would order it.Then they would all live together in peace. And that's the end of the story.