It came to him, approaching slowly, toying with the man or just observing, I’m not sure which. Even after all these years, I’m not sure how that thing feels about anything, or if after so many years of being around the human race, it’s come to perhaps mimic some of our little behavioral traits. That’s something for me to think on the next time I have nothing else to do.
The beast circled around him, around the tree, growling. Bill Parker shifted in the dirt, and murmured prayers he hadn’t thought about in years in a high-pitched squeal under his breath. He got most of the words right. The beast came back around and paced before him like a man not sure what to do. The beast swiveled its shoulders as if loosening a knot; then it crouched down and brought its face up close to Bill’s, sucked in the fear that leaked from the man’s pores like vapor. Bill thought the thing smelled like a wet dog. The beast thought Bill smelled like barbecue.
Bill Parker tried to talk. I wonder what it was he would’ve said if he’d been able to get the words out. Would he have asked what it was, or why it was, or who it was? Would he have asked if he was going to hell? Would he have asked for forgiveness, or would he have launched off a final round of expletives like all the tough guys in the movies do?
The beast watched Bill struggle for a moment, at first with a curious air, then with something that could’ve passed for amusement. It smiled the most horrible smile that Bill Parker could ever have imagined. Drool dripped from its fangs, and a blast of stinking air rushed up from the beast’s chest and hit Bill in the face like fumes.
Bill raised his one good arm, but before he could level the gun at his target, the beast grabbed him by his wrists with its two big, hairy hands and sank its teeth into the soft meat of Bill’s neck. A blood-arch pissed itself from the wound like a stream, and before the blood hit the ground, Bill Parker was dead and gone.
The beast drew back and tore a chunk of flesh away from the throat. It chewed, swallowed, and roared. Then it went back for seconds.
In the night, the life that inhabited those woods kept its distance and left that unnatural creature to its own devices. Its only company was the wind, carrying a trace of every single body in the world, and death. The moon watched like a quiet God, a beacon, a partner. But make no mistake. I was the wolf’s keeper, its warden, and I called the shots.
The name I was born with was Marlowe Higgins. Due to some rather extraordinary life circumstances, I haven’t always gone by that name, but I’m going to tell you a story, so I suppose I ought as well give you some facts to work with.
I’m a white male with long brown hair and a mustache that just won’t quit. I have a little scar under my right eye left over from a childhood injury that came about during a rather heated game of Wiffle ball. If not for that mark, I could have been anybody, anywhere, but still, I had little trouble making anonymity my greatest ally.
Where I’m from doesn’t matter, because it could have been right in your own hometown or a thousand miles away from you, and whether or not I got laid on prom night doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to do with anything either. There’s only so much you need to know and even less I care to talk about, but the one thing that should be said, I suppose, is that I’m a werewolf, and I have been for the better part of my life.
What I’m about to tell you happened back in the spring of 1993. Sit back, and let the pain and the suffering begin. It seems to be what I’m good at.
ONE
I am a man who is apt to have bad dreams. In my dreams I am not falling, or drowning, or even being roasted on a spit or some such thing by the Vietcong, who, at the time of the war, were rumored to do piss-awful things like that to the boys they caught.
My dreams are a little more fucked than that. I have no soul, and the godforsaken beast that had replaced it does more than take lives. It takes their spirits. So when I plop myself down on my lumpy mattress at night and go to sleep, I don’t dream like normal people do. Instead, I experience the memories of people who aren’t around anymore to remember their own histories. What makes a dream bad isn’t reliving how they died; it’s remembering how much my victims loved the men, women, and children they left behind in this world. In my dreams I miss these widows and children as if I knew them. I have been responsible for the deaths of over three hundred people over the years. Consequently my nightmares are legion.
On the morning of May 1, I awoke from one of my bad dreams because the radio alarm clock went off by my head like a gunshot. I was cold but sweating, and that wasn’t unusual. I looked around the room to get my bearings. It took a second to remember where I was, what year it was. I soon came to recognize my bedroom, and a razor slice of a grin appeared on my face because Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” was playing on KBTO, but, aside from that one saving grace, it was another day in the life that no one in their right mind would ask for.
A thin sliver of sunlight came in through the curtains andburned on the floor like the glowing edge of a heated knife. There were two windows in the bedroom. One was facing east, the other south. I had nailed the both of them shut when I moved in. The air smelled like old and rotting books. A combination of water damage and a few hundred old newspapers stacked up in the guest room helped create this scent, which was far preferable to how the house used to smell. I pulled back the damp sheets and stumbled across the creaking floorboards to the bedroom door. The door was closed, and I had a quarter balanced on the doorknob and a glass ashtray on the floor below it, so if anyone jiggled the handle at night, I’d know it by the noise of the coin dropping into the ashtray. I palmed the quarter, stuffed it into the pocket of the shorts I wore to bed, and moved the ashtray aside with my foot. Then I went down the short hallway to the bathroom.
I had a quarter resting on the bathroom doorknob as well, just in case anyone snuck in through the bathroom window. The bathroom window was the only one in the entire house that wasn’t permanently sealed, because I liked opening it when I did my business. It helped more than you could ever imagine. If I ever crap on a plane, all those funny little masks would probably drop down in the aisles.
I jumped in and out of the shower to wash away the sweat, and when I got out I combed my long, awesome hair, which at the time came down to the middle of my back. Looking at my face up close in the mirror, I decided to do a little tidy-up work on my handlebar mustache. I saw a couple of gray hairs in there that I didn’t believe should be so eager to come to fruition. I was forty years old, but a history of longevity ran in my nasty blood—despite the two packs I smoked a day—and grays in the face seemed to me to be redundant little creatures that hadn’t earned their place yet.
My little house on King Street was down on the southwestern edge of town, constructed at the very end of a cul-de-sac. The houses were spaced far enough away from each other that I had never felt obligated to say hello to the poor fools who had the misfortune of living to my left and to my right. My house was what they call ranch-style, and it was made of wood so gnarled by time that it looked like it was made of boards that fell off other houses. All the glass in the windows was rippled. Out front was a little driveway—no garage—and a few bushes I never trimmed. They looked like afros in the wind. Out back I had a dead tree that my neighbors always bitched about because they were worried it would fall down in a bad storm, but I liked my dead tree. You could always see the birds crapping from its limbs with that blank look in their eyes, and the squirrels running all around its girth as they played their daredevil games. Further, I liked it because it would be impossible for a sniper to hide in it.