Broken Monsters (39 page)

Layla's gotten
used to it. Being
that
girl. The one who knocked Travis's teeth out. The one whose mom killed the psychopath. And of course the rumors swirl that she's Mystery Girl in the video.

Cas's dad helped with that. Faked surveillance footage from a convenience store that showed she wasn't even there at the time. Bumped it up in the search results, bought opinions in bulk from an Indian company that uses English-speaking students for one cent per comment with their own choice of words to cast doubt on the theory in the forums on Reddit and 4Chan. Andy Holt is convinced the human touch is going to be what sets Walled Garden apart from other reputation management services. Maybe he's right.

She did spend a few months in Atlanta with her dad while it all blew over. She actually got along with her stepsibs, Julie and Wilson, and had them performing a Christmas play with a Transformer as Santa Claus and Wilson in reindeer horns making hee-haw noises, which made her stepmom thaw a little, although she still treats Layla like she's a pack of rotted dynamite that might go off at any moment.

They took the little ones to Six Flags, which was great, but her dad took her on her own to an experimental reimagining of
Othello
with puppets that she had to explain to him afterwards over dinner. Just the two of them, and it felt like old times, back when they did finicky craft stuff together, or went out into the woods to look at the stars with binoculars.

And she met a boy. Armand. Who is seventeen and wants to study molecular science, but still likes video games and movies and weird theater. She can't handle art galleries anymore, but she took him to see the
Othello
remake after she'd seen it with her dad. They messed around, but didn't have sex. It was intense, like love, even though they never said it and they didn't talk about what had happened to her, although they have since on both counts. He's promised to try and visit over the summer, because she's come back to Detroit.

She missed NyanCat, and after much fiery family debate, with Gabi threatening to pack her off to her grandparents in Miami, it was decided that what she really needed was stability and familiarity, at least until she finished school. So she was back in time to start in the new year.

They talked about transferring her to a different school, switching to her dad's name only. But she likes being Layla Stirling-Versado. She's proud of her mom, even if things are sometimes fraught between them, and they're both seeing psychologists once a week to try to deal with what happened, which they can't agree on and probably never will.

Cas is Cas, although she's more open now. It's easier when you're not living underneath the weight of a secret. She even gave a talk in lifeskills about sexual harassment. It was awkward, but a lot of kids came up to her afterwards to tell her how brave she was. They're veterans, the two of them. Scarred, but alive.

So, let the rumors fly. Bring on the Mystery Girl fan mail, which she dumps straight into the trash. She can handle it.

This is the way the world is now. Everything is public. You have to find other people who understand.

You have to find a way to live with it.

I've had many generous guides to the city of Detroit, beyond the evocative ruin porn and doom on the news. I'm grateful for all your personal insights, and I hope you'll forgive me the artistic liberties.

Anna Clarke was the best kind of well-connected fixer, who brought her own journalist's eye to the places we visited and people we spoke to, and read the manuscript when it was done.

Robert-David Jones introduced me to the arts scene, told me wild stories (including the one about the séance), took me dancing in Eastern Market and drove me around town in a big black mortuary van.

The NOAH Project at the Central United Methodist Church allowed me to work in their soup kitchen for a morning. I'm grateful to all the people who were willing to sit and talk to me about their lives, especially James Harris, who gave me permission to use aspects of his personal history. You can donate to NOAH to help them continue their work via their website  http://www.noahprojectdetroit.org/.

Julia Cuneo arranged for me to visit the Detroit Arts Academy and hang out with the students, who were all the best kinds of surprising and awesome. Thank you all for being so open. The Mosaic Theater School gave me a backstage pass to their performance of
Hastings Street
(and roped me into the warm-up exercises). Thanks especially to Ta-Shaun and Shennell for our chats online about the perils of being a theater geek.

Sergeant Robert “Bubble” Haig advised me on police procedure, let me read an early draft of his memoir,
Ten Little Police Chiefs,
about his long service in the Detroit Police Department, lent me his dead-baby-in-the-basement story, and, along with Commander Joseph O'Sullivan, gave me invaluable feedback on police procedure in this novel. Any errors or discrepancies are mine.

Keith Weir and Randall Hauk made introductions possible to homicide detectives William Peterson and Paul Thomas, who let me take them to lunch. Thanks especially to Sergeant Kenneth “The Reverend” Gardner, who took me to visit Beaubien, and everyone at DPD Homicide. I appreciate your personal perspectives on the very fine and very difficult work you do.

Zara Trafford and Amanda Stone helped me to make invaluable connections. Sherry Sparks introduced me to Pewabic Pottery, Saladin Ahmed took me to a concert with his family, Dean Philip shared stories about real estate and new journalism, Norene Cashen Smith provided a poet's insight and pancakes, Clinton Snider talked dreams and art and took me around the Powerhouse District, and Scott Hanselman demonstrated diabetes treatment over Skype from Portland.

Photographer and artist Scott Hocking let me hijack him for the day, introduced me to the DelRay Angels and the border patrol, burial mounds and ghost factories, and told me about finding the body in the ice, which I couldn't squeeze into the novel.

Mickey Alice Kwapis from the Detroit Academy of Taxidermy explained how to peel a really gross orange and lent me the kangaroo story, and Chef Wylie Dufresne of WD50 walked me through the particulars of using meat glue. I have taken liberties with science. Cynthia Duncan Eñi Acho Iya of AboutSanteria.com candidly discussed her faith, dispelled the easy clichés and introduced me to broken heads.

Thanks Danah Boyd for the thing you weren't supposed to do, and Scott Westerfeld for facilitating, to Katherine and Kendaa Fitzpatrick for your personal insight into growing up biracial, and Janee Cifuentes for the Cuban leads.

Megan Abbott, Anna Clark, Anne Perry, Emma Cook, Matthew Brown, Helen Moffett, Sarah Lotz and Emad Akhtar all read early drafts of this book and helped to shape the beast.

Behind the scenes, I owe everything to my agent, Oli Munson, for making it happen. Thanks to Jennifer Custer, Hélène Ferey and Vickie Dillon at AM Heath, as well as everyone at Blake Friedmann, and also Lawrence Mattis at Circle of Confusion.

I'm grateful to Julia Wisdom, Joshua Kendall and Fourie Botha for your faith and perspective.

On a personal level, I'm thankful for my friends and family, especially Dale Halvorsen, Nophumla Nobomvu, Craig Madeley, Monene Watson, Roxy and Ella, Sarah Lotz, Keitu and Matthew Brown, whose love and friendship mean the world and make all things possible.

This book is what it is because of my editor, Helen Moffett, who pushed the story harder and higher, and caught me when I fell.

Thank you.

About the Author

Lauren Beukes writes novels, comics and screenplays. She's the author of the critically acclaimed international bestseller
The Shining Girls,
about a time-traveling serial killer;
Zoo City,
a phantasmagorical Joburg noir which won the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award; and the neopolitical thriller
Moxyland.
She's worked as a journalist and as showrunner on one of South Africa's biggest animated TV shows, directed an award-winning documentary, and written the
New York Times
bestselling graphic novel
Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom.
She lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

laurenbeukes.com

“Exquisitely paced and impeccably controlled.…An enormously satisfying novel that employs the best attributes of multiple genres to dramatize big ideas about art, the Internet, and urban decay.…Beukes moves effortlessly through many of the city's worlds, from police precincts to the Internet-driven secret lives of teenage girls and the homeless shelters and mostly dead neighborhoods of a hobbled American city, all while teasing a disturbingly beautiful and possibly supernatural universe existing at its borders.”

—Christopher Rice,
New York Times Book Review

“Captivating.…
Broken Monsters
defies the standard tropes of the serial killer genre to become a thoroughly modern supernatural thriller.”

—Karolina Waclawiak,
Los Angeles Times

“A uniquely, horribly, brilliantly disturbing novel.…Lauren Beukes's glimpse into the mind of a murderer whose grip on reality is unraveling fast should be a shoo-in for thriller of the year.”

—Alison Flood,
The Guardian
(UK)

“Beukes imbues her story with shrewd social commentary, dark humor, and a dusting of metaphysical wonder.
Broken Monsters
delivers something smarter and sharper than your average splatter paperback. Gore is easy, after all; gutsy writing is a lot harder.”

—Leah Greenblatt,
Entertainment Weekly

“Flawless—I haven't read a scarier, more tense book in years.…It's hard to overstate how ambitious
Broken Monsters
is, maybe because Beukes somehow manages to make it look easy. Her prose is unhindered, exuberant, and something like addictive—you can tell yourself you're just going to read one chapter, but before you know it, you've gone through a hundred pages. You could say that she's as edgy as James Ellroy, as creepy as Stephen King, and as darkly funny as Kurt Vonnegut, but Beukes is an author whose work is resistant to easy comparisons.
Broken Monsters
is one of the most remarkable books of the year, and one of the best suspense novels you'll read in quite some time.”

—Michael Schaub, NPR.org

“Scary as hell and hypnotic. I couldn't put it down.…I'd grab it if I were you.”

—Stephen King

“With
Broken Monsters,
the wildly talented Lauren Beukes has created a darkly majestic jewel of a novel, surpassing even
The Shining Girls
(no mean feat). Part harrowing thriller, part urban Grimm's fairy tale, but always filled with a deeply affecting humanity,
Broken Monsters
is the kind of book you'll find yourself pressing into the hands of everyone you know so they can experience it too.”

—Megan Abbott, author of
The Fever

“Beukes is as enamored of words and wordplay as she is of an adventurous story line. Like a mixed-media art installation, Beukes's novel takes on multiple aspects, whisking you on a roller-coaster ride that barrels as seamlessly through the minefield-riddled mind of a killer as it does through the colorful, chaotic, elaborately image-papered bedroom of a teen.”

—Daneet Steffens,
Boston Globe

“Dig it: what a brilliant crime-phantasmagoria novel this is!!!!! This splendid novel is
the
new primer on urban decay to the nth degree. I unhesitatingly urge you to buy it and read it now!”

—James Ellroy, author of
American Tabloid

“A supernatural thriller that will disturb you in all the right ways.…Beukes is brilliant with plot and character.…This is a novel that will take you to some dark places—philosophically and narratively—but it also has the guts to suggest that hope is not lost. We can find our way out of the thicket of lies and cruelty, even if we make a lot of ugly mistakes along the way.”

—Annalee Newitz,
iO9

“Reading Lauren Beukes is like watching a fireworks display. Her sentences pop, fizz, and explode across the page, leaving you oohing and aahing with your mouth open.”

—Michael Robotham, author of
Life or Death

“A smart crime thriller....Lauren Beukes so seamlessly blends two genres that it's hard to pinpoint the moment a commonplace crime story becomes infested with supernatural horror.”

—Sherryl Connelly,
New York Daily News

“Beukes takes the reader on a remarkable tour of Motor City in all its devastated grandeur. Along the way, we glimpse the complexity, resilience, and hope of its people, even in the midst of mounting dread inspired by events both natural and supernatural.”

—Kevin Nance,
Chicago Tribune

“This is a tremendous novel, full of original characters and stunning dialogue.”

—Marcel Berlins,
The Times
(UK)

“A genuinely unsettling—in all the best ways—blend of suspense and the supernatural makes this a serial killer tale like you've never seen.…A truly terrifying horror story.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Lauren Beukes delivers the most surreal crime narratives...dotting her potboiler plot with Joycean streams of consciousness and transcripts ripped from Internet comments threads.”

—Laura Miller,
Salon

“I love ardent intragenre contemporary weirdness, and Lauren Beukes's Detroit is superb.”

—William Gibson, Powells.com

“In this highly atmospheric novel, Lauren Beukes sketches a metropolis full of hope and vigor, in spite of a monster roaming its streets. A powerful look at our fascination with social media and the transformative power of art and imagination round out this genre-defying chiller's captivating and terrifying narrative.”

—Kristin Centorcelli,
Library Journal

“Beukes is a genre-busting South African novelist with a sharp prose style who has a good handle on America.”

—Jim Higgins,
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“An enjoyably violent procedural high on hallucinogens. Its appeal is not so much in the who, why, or even howdunit but in the idiosyncratic, slightly dreamy prose and Beukes's descriptions of a devastated city.”

—Katie Law,
Evening Standard

“This is a brilliant, grisly tale of the search for a very strange serial killer.…This book has brilliant characters, a touch of horror in a very sophisticated plot, and a wonderful sense of place.
Beukes
is a writer to watch.”

—Margaret Cannon,
Globe and Mail

“Beukes returns with another genre bender boasting sympathetic characters, meticulously rendered settings, an unflinchingly realistic crime scene, and a distinctly horror-fiction atmosphere.…Beukes avoids predictability by leading readers to doubt their interpretations of motives and events, blending detection and atmospheric horror to court both hard-boiled mystery and literary-horror fans. Think Peter Straub meets Karin Slaughter.”

—Christine Tran,
Booklist

“Lauren Beukes's writing style is really gripping and fantastic.”

—Carolyn Kellogg,
Bullseye

“Beukes's latest supernatural horror/crime novel does a lot of difficult things very well. The first thing, of course, is the horror. She builds it in incremental, almost innocuous steps, punctuated by the grotesque murders around which the book revolves. BAM! Murder, then bit by bit, circling the murder, the horror, a thermostat dialed up by slow degrees, the shivers going down your spine as a police detective, a drifter, a tormented artist, and a young girl begin to unravel the story of a murdered child whose body is found with its legs removed, and in their place, the crudely preserved hindquarters of a young deer....
Broken Monsters
is a horror novel about the zeitgeist....It's a big and ambitious book with a lot of moving parts, and it's quite an advance on Beukes's already impressive collection of works.”

—Cory Doctorow,
Boing Boing

“Beukes's ability to be astutely, bang-on-target contemporary is astounding. It's not just that she points out that modern life is strange, with our dependencies on the Internet for all sorts of validation, but that she's willing to explore so many facets of it so fast and so cleverly.”

—Mahvesh Murad, Tor.com

“What Beukes is doing here is using the conventions of the cop novel (gruesome crime, meddling journalist, tough homicide cop with vulnerable child) to do something incredibly clever and incredibly interesting. The plot is slippery and strange, and the tension and the weirdness build and build, to a climax like nothing you've ever read—not in crime fiction, not in literary fiction, not
anywhere
.”

—Ben H. Winters, author of
The Last Policeman

“
Broken Monsters
is a show-stopping story of a city trying to rise from its own ashes, its inhabitants struggling with their own demons, and a monster working to shape the world to match his most disturbing visions. It's beautiful, horrifying, thrilling, and, most impressive of all, possessed of a deep and remarkable compassion. I wish I'd written it.”

—Ivy Pochoda, author of
Visitation Street