Harry and the Monkey
By Euan Harvey, first published in Realms of Fantasy
A man’s game with his son turns into something more sinister when he finds out that his son is seeing things that he isn’t.
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Plot Summary
A man living in Thailand with his family begins a game with his toddler son Harry to distract him from getting upset. The man points out a monkey, and his son has to go find it. It reminds the man of when his own father used to distract him and his brother with a game to find the “doolally” hiding in their garden. For a while this game works, but then Harry begins to correct him about where the monkey is actually hiding. When the man looks where Harry points, there’s never anything there. He doesn’t see anything particularly wrong with continuing the game until one night when Harry has a nightmare and his father tells him that the monkey will protect him from it. The next day, Harry has to go home early from school with a fever, and his father lets him watch TV while he eats lunch in another room. When he gets up to check on him, though, Harry is gone. Frantic, his father runs up and down the street looking for him until he catches sight of a black van. A Thai urban legend involves a black van that kidnaps children, and recently newspapers have reported an increase in missing kids. Harry’s father runs after the van and finally catches it pulled over with Harry standing outside. He grabs his son but hears something large in the bamboo behind him and sees blood inside the car. He doesn’t look, but from the footprints, it seems like a giant monkey walking away towards the river.