There’s always more to the story. In the latest middle grade speculative novel from Spontaneous author Aaron Starmer, Roman follows the twisted threads of bizarre family legends and magical secrets to write his own chapter in his peculiar family narrative.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from You Are Now Old Enough to Hear This by Aaron Starmer, which releases on March 24th 2026.
The Toe Beast looms large in the Barnes family lore—a tale concocted by twelve-year-old Roman’s grandpa to explain his missing toe. But Roman has never actually heard the full story, and after his grandpa dies suddenly, it seems like he never will.
That is, until Roman is tasked with clearing out his grandpa’s house, and stumbles upon some strange things. An old mason jar full of formaldehyde, a mysterious handwritten book about a girl and a pack of dogs, a rusty metal bucket with peculiar abilities. And they all tie back to extraordinary secrets from the distant past.
By unraveling even more unbelievable stories that have been hidden from him, Roman is forced to rethink how he fits into his family’s history. Now it’s up to him to see his own story through to the end. Because the Toe Beast was only the beginning . . .
EXCERPT
One Quick Thing
On the eve of his twelfth birthday, Roman Barnes made a wish. Alone in his room, tucked under his covers, he softly said the following words into the dark: “I wish I had someone to talk to, someone who understands me and what I’m going through, someone who will tell me everything is gonna be okay.”
The next morning, he received a gift.
“Oh, a magic eight ball,” he said as he sat cross-legged on the sofa, opening a box covered in shiny silver paper. “You ask it ‘yes or no’ questions and it tells your fortune, right?”
“Yep, just give it a shake and voilà, the answer will appear,” Roman’s dad said, and then he turned to Roman’s mom. “Where’d you find that?”
She shrugged. “Wasn’t me.”
“Must’ve been from his real parents,” Roman’s brother, Alex, said. “I guess now’s as good a time as ever to reveal the family secret. You’re adopted, Roman.”
“Not true and definitely not funny, Alex,” Roman’s mom said.
Roman was used to this sort of teasing from his brother, so he focused on the magic eight ball instead. He asked it, “Will you be nice to me?”
Roman shook the ball and an answer emerged in the murky waters. It was a definitive:
Yes.
“Well, it is your birthday,” Alex said. “It has to be nice to you on your birthday.”
Maybe that was the case, but it turned out that the magic eight ball was nice to Roman all the time.
Over the next week, he asked it more questions. Countless queries about who he was and what he wanted to be.
“Am I smart?”
“Will I make a difference when I’m older?”
“Do I matter?”
Whatever Roman asked the magic eight ball, it always answered with the same solitary word.
Yes.
Roman knew magic eight balls were supposed to be equipped with a whole slew of answers, phrases like Without a doubt, or Outlook not so good, or even Ask again later. But this particular magic eight ball would only ever answer with that short and sweet yes.
Such unbridled optimism meant the toy was clearly defective. Perhaps the floating die inside was unevenly weighted, or maybe the entire thing was misprinted with the same word on every surface. Yes, yes, yes, twenty times over. For this reason, Roman didn’t dare ask it any morbid questions such as “Will my parents die soon?” or “Will I always feel so alone?” because he couldn’t bear to see it confirm these things. Though he did posit a few silly scenarios, like “Will I grow up to be a capybara?” and “If I started training now, could I jump high enough to touch the moon?”
Yes. Yes.
Eventually, Roman grew bored with the toy. He stuffed it away somewhere and forgot where he put it. He didn’t even think to ask it about the Toe Beast.
Part One
The Toe Beast
Chapter 1
Roman’s cousins weren’t afraid of the Toe Beast. Neither was his brother. To them, it was simply a creature in a creepy tale that Grandpa Henry told when he pulled off his slippers and revealed his nine toes.
“How’d you lose that pinkie toe, Grandpa?” one of his grandkids would say.
And Grandpa Henry would arch an eyebrow and reply, “The losing part is the prologue. The real story is what came after the losing.” Then he’d proceed to tell whatever crowd had gathered about the Toe Beast and they’d cringe or laugh or gasp, but they’d all act as if it were harmless fiction.
Roman suspected it was fiction, but he couldn’t know for sure. Because he had never heard the story. At least not the entire thing. Bits and pieces would slip out of his cousins’ mouths when they were crowded around the kids’ table at Thanksgiving or scrunched up in the back of Uncle Pete’s van on trips to the beach.
The storms. The ax. The jar.
Invariably Roman’s brother, Alex, would say something like, “He’s not ready for that yet,” and the others would clam up immediately. Roman found that suspicious, even though he appreciated it. As the youngest of the cousins, his default mode was to be on the defensive. In most other instances, his brother—and the rest of the Barnes clan—would not be quite so considerate of his feelings.
The funny thing was, Roman really liked stories. But he couldn’t handle ones with blood and gore, and he suspected the story of the Toe Beast was full of both. So, whenever Grandpa Henry unveiled his foot, Roman would sneak away to another room until the tale was complete. He had no idea what the Toe Beast even was. He told himself he didn’t want to know.
There was a problem, however. Just because a guy tells himself he doesn’t want to know something, it doesn’t mean he won’t wonder about it. So, on some nights—many, in fact—Roman would lie awake in bed for hours pondering the Toe Beast. Was it a beast made of toes? Or was it a beast that ate toes? And what did it have to do with his nine-toed Grandpa Henry?
Grandpa Henry lived alone as a widower in a small house not far from Roman’s home. His wife, Dorothy, was gone by the time Roman was a baby, but the old man still talked about her constantly and lovingly.
“You and your grandma would’ve been the best of pals,” he told Roman on more than one occasion. “She was a thinker like you.”
Roman wasn’t sure if he was a thinker, but his mind often wandered and clearly often wondered.
What does Grandpa Henry do all day alone? He comes to our house for Sunday dinners, and I see him cheering at all my Little League games, but how does he spend the rest of his hours?
It was on a blazing hot summer day when some of the things Roman wondered about began to reveal themselves. He had gone to Grandpa Henry’s house to cut the lawn, something his parents insisted he do because his grandfather, a former barber, had “already done two lifetimes’ worth of cutting.”
Roman found the old man behind the house, attaching a substantial padlock to his red toolshed. Sweat was dripping down his neck, and his hands were trembling.
“Roman!” Grandpa Henry said in shock, spinning around. “Why are you . . . I mean . . . I’m . . . happy to see you.”
He didn’t look happy, though. He looked scared.
“What’s going on?” Roman asked.
“It’s the Toe Beast,” he said, grabbing Roman by the shoulder a little too tightly. “He wants out again.”
Roman wished he hadn’t heard those words, because now he had to do something about them. “You look exhausted, Grandpa,” Roman said, pulling himself away from the old man’s grasp. “Do you have any lemonade inside?”
The boy knew the answer before even asking the question. Lemonade was a fixture in Grandpa Henry’s refrigerator, so of course the old man nodded in response, and Roman was able to take him by the arm and lead him into the house, away from the red toolshed.
When the two were sitting safely at the kitchen counter with tall, full glasses in front of them, Grandpa Henry once again put a firm hand on Roman’s shoulder. “Promise me you won’t let it out.”
“The Toe Beast?” Roman asked.
Grandpa Henry nodded vigorously. “I don’t know how much longer I have to live, but now that it’s fully grown, the Toe Beast might live for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. They’ve found hair on mummies, you know?”
Roman took a long sip of his lemonade because he didn’t know how to respond. He was so worried.
“I’ve told you about that despicable Toe Beast, haven’t I?” Grandpa Henry said, pushing his glass of lemonade away from him like it was poison.
“You’ve told me many times,” Roman said, which was a lie, of course, but an understandable one. He certainly didn’t want to hear the story now. Not because he feared the Toe Beast but because he was scared for his grandfather. There was something not right about him. Something strange and different. An attitude? An . . . illness? Roman wasn’t clueless. He knew that when people got old, they sometimes suffered from delusions, and he wanted to stop this delusion right in its tracks. He figured the more he agreed with him, the sooner Grandpa Henry would change the subject.
“Hardly anyone believes me about the Toe Beast,” Grandpa Henry said. “Your Grandma Dorothy did. You do too, right?”
“Of course I believe,” Roman said, and he couldn’t feel bad for this lie either because it made his grandfather’s face brighten. But the brightness had a sheen to it, a redness, a simmering anger that didn’t look right on the typically serene old man.
“Good, good, good,” Grandpa Henry said, his lip curling. “You’re the only one I’m telling this. But you know what to do if it gets out, right?”
Roman had no idea what to do if some imaginary creature got out. He nodded just the same, which seemed to satisfy his grandfather, who nodded back and then retreated to the comfort of his bedroom. Before long, it started to rain and Roman realized he would have to wait to cut the lawn. He went home without saying goodbye.
Grandpa Henry died the next day.
