Free Let Evil Beware! by Claude Lalumiere

LET EVIL BEWARE!

    Billy was eight years old.
    He was sitting at his desk in class. The teacher was talking. Billy was looking very attentive. In truth, he didn’t hear a word of what the teacher was saying.
    Monsters! His head was filled with visions of monsters. He saw himself hunting bloodsucking fiends, flesh-eating ghouls, bone-crushing brutes, would-be world-conquering despotic demons, and snickering creeps who tortured innocent victims. He hunted them down and destroyed them—or at the very least banished them to another dimension.
    Let evil beware! None can escape Billy, the monster hunter!
    The bell rang and snapped Billy out of his reverie.
    It was the last day of school. Billy ran out of the classroom, emptied his locker into his school bag, and hurried out of the school building.
    On his way home he stopped by The Golden Age comics shop. It was Wednesday. The week’s new comics were out!
    “Hi, Bert.” Bert was the guy who ran the comics shop. He was tall and friendly, with glasses that looked a bit too small for his head. He played bass in the band Another Grey Truck; as usual, he had on a sweatshirt emblazoned with the band logo. Bert always treated Billy with respect.
    He welcomed the boy with a warm smile. “Hey! How’s it going, Billy? Last day of school, I hear.”
    “Finally . . . now I can get back to work.”
    “Lots of monsters to kill, huh?”
    “You bet, Bert. It’s frantic work trying to cram in a full load of monster hunting on free weekends and school holidays. It’ll be easier now that I can be on the job almost every day.”
    Billy glanced at the new-release rack. “Wow.”
    “Yeah, I thought you’d be pretty happy. A lot of your favourites came out today. Here, I put aside the ones I thought you’d want.” Bert handed Billy a stack of new comics.
    Jade Sentinel. Doc Shadow. Mister Thunder. Strange Tales of the Sproutworld. The Adventures of Kirby & Jack. Baron Nexus. B.E.M. The Preservers. Spiderkid. Rude Dude. Brimstone Kid. The Immortals. The Time Teens. The Detective of Dreams.
    “Wow,” repeated the awed little boy. “This is great! I can’t remember getting so many good comics on the same week.” He carefully inspected all the new releases. “Looks like you got everything, Bert.”
    Billy paid for his comics (his dad always gave him enough money for comics because he read them, too) and headed home.
    “Hey squirt. You look happy!” Billy’s father was cutting vegetables for tonight’s supper.
    “Hi Dad! You bet! Look at these!” Billy whipped out his new comics.
    “Whoa! You hit the jackpot today!”
    “Did you record my—”
    “Of course I did, squirt. Why don’t you read your comics now? I’ll be done here in forty minutes or so; then we can watch the cartoons together.”
    “Sounds great, Dad!”
    Billy hurried to his bedroom and threw his schoolbag on the bed. Clutching his new comics, he went to the living room and buried himself in the couch to read while he waited for his father to join him to watch today’s episodes of
World’s Best Heroes
,
Chuck Amuck
,
Leave It to Lucky!
, and
Opus the Cat
.
    Tomorrow
, he thought (flipping back the cover of
Baron Nexus
),
tomorrow I’ll hunt monsters.
    “Hi, I’m Billy. I’m here to get my stuff.”
    It was nine, Thursday morning. Aydee had just opened up Lost Pages bookshop for the day. This was the first time she had done it by herself, and already she felt out of her depth. She’d started the day confident she could handle anything. “Your . . . stuff?”
    “You’re new here, right? Where’s Lucas? What’s your name? What do you know about monsters?”
    “Hey, slow down . . . Billy,” Aydee said, remembering the little boy’s name.
    “You don’t look much older than me. Do you really work here?”
    For a moment the two children faced each other down. Why was this annoying kid giving her a hard time? Exasperated, Aydee broke the duel and busied herself tidying the counter.
    She