by Adam Lowe
The little girl drew closer, looking from the puppy to the man.
“Mister, is that your puppy? What’s his name?”
The man pulled his glasses down, so that he could get a better look at the girl who stood in front of him, twisting shyly.
Keenan looked her over carefully. Like Buddy, he only had one working eye, but unlike the dog, he’d been given extensive plastic surgery and an excellent glass eye, and now you would have to look very, very closely to see the thin star-burst line of scars that led away from that meticulously reconstructed socket.. “That’s Rosebud,” he said, finally. “It’s a she.”
“Carli, what the hell are you doing? Get the fuck away from that guy. What did I tell you about talking to people you don’t know?”
Buddy growled softly, low in his throat.
A fat man approached, a faint aura of sweat and semen seeming to announce his arrival. As he approached, the little girl’s face closed up. She shot Keenan a desperate look. “My name’s not really Carli,” she whispered urgently, then fell silent. She turned her eyes to her feet and couldn’t seem to bring them back up.
Keenan stood and gave the fat man the same careful study he had afforded the girl.
The man grabbed the girl by the shoulder and brushed past Keenan with hard, hot eyes. Buddy’s growl got louder. Even the puppy was still, watching Keenan and the fat man with interest.
As he passed, Keen reached out to touch the man’s arm. It was a light touch, almost casual, but the fat man spun around and raised a hand, as if he would smash Keenan without even thinking about it.
Once, maybe. Never again.
Keenan grabbed the fat man’s raised hand and effortlessly stepped out of the way, turning so that the fat man ended up with his arm pinned behind his back. Keenan reached up with his other arm and wrapped it around the man’s neck. He put his lips close to the man’s ear and said pleasantly. “Bill Withers, you are under arrest for multiple counts of kidnap, sexual assault of a child, and murder.” The fat man started to splutter and tug at Keenan’s arm, and Keenan turned him so he could see half a dozen other men in SWAT gear approaching, faces grim and fierce.
Over the fat man’s shoulder, Keenan smiled down at the little girl. “Hi, Cindy Perkins, age five. I know some people who are going to be really glad to see you. How would you like to go home?”
Deb Hoag has been writing professionally for going on 20 years, starting at a weekly alternative newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, The Metro Times. Her work there included answering phones, editing, writing a column and organizing such events as the Detroit Music Awards and the newspaper’s yearly photography contest and Best Of issues. In the early ’90s, Deb went back to school and was awarded a PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Detroit-Mercy. Since embarking on her new career, Deb’s worked on the White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation in a variety of mental health positions, and is currently the in-patient therapist at the psychiatric hospital in Show Low, Arizona. Her novels Crashin’ the Real and Queer and Loathing on the Yellow-Brick Road have both been published by Dog Horn Publishing, where she also edits the Women Writing the Weird series.
Hairy Palms
by A.J. Kirby
When he was a boy, Remus Coley’s ma warned him so many times about what would happen to him if he continued to beat the meat so frequently that even now, as he finished off, he didn’t feel any pleasure or relief. He snapped his hands out of the marigolds and his cock out of its own glove and then guiltily started checking his palms for hair. He lifted one hand then the other in front of his face, wondering how they looked both slapped-ass, new-born fresh but also calloused and work-worn. Of course, there was no sign of any hair.
‘Get a grip Remus,’ he muttered to himself, closing-up his favourite magazine Hairy Harems. His drained cock lay slug-like across his thigh, mocking him, reminding him of the utter pointlessness of his actions. Grim-faced he wiped himself down, zipped-up, and reached over to the mini-fridge for a beer.
He took a satisfying swig from the can and creased his foamy lip into a sneer. He was too old to still believe in old wives’ tales. Too old to hear that old crone’s voice every time he even reached for the zipper. Nevertheless, the fact remained: he only masturbated at the shack in the Paulson Woods. Could never do it at home even though it was a couple of years since she’d passed. Hence every Friday since he’d been able to drive, he’d run on out to the truck as soon as the five o’ clock bell rang, leaving the factory, the house, and back when she was alive, the old crone behind him.
When he was at the shack, he could live the high-life just as his daddy had done before him. Indeed, there still remained a portrait of Remus’ daddy on one of the least decrepit walls of the shack. It showed him grimacing over a huge caught carp he was clutching in a meaty fist. It showed him as Remus remembered him: a shaggy-haired, whiskery kind of fellow who was not overly impressed with his lot in life; a man who liked to talk with his fists and ask questions later; a cruel, vindictive little man who’d made family life almost impossible. After he’d died, at least according to Remus’s old ma, daddy had become a bona fide saint as well as the ultimate judge. That most of the magazines in the shack were just about the only thing daddy had ever passed on to his son was beside the point. That daddy clearly used the shack for exactly the same purpose as his son was one of life’s great unmentionables, even now.
Remus drained his beer, tossed the can on the floor—no need for pleasantries here—and immediately reached for another one. Already, he was starting to feel a little drunk; that old temper of his was about to get a work-out, he could sense it.
‘Goddamn hairy palms,’ he laughed.
But as his laugh echoed back to him off the bare walls, it didn’t sound nearly as confident as he meant it to be. He was uneasy. And it wasn’t just that whenever he thought about his parents, he felt a real sense of guilt. No, it was something else. Something new. It was those rumours he’d heard about the animal loose in the woods. Those rumours, which chimed jarringly off-key, reminded him of something he didn’t ever want to think about . . .
Taylor Gray looked like the great movie director he’d been pretending to be for most of his life. He had the big shaggy beard, the unkempt hair and the rapidly expanding paunch that suggested he spent most of his time sitting on his ass in a darkened room. The way his sausage-fingers shook as he held the rented camera was the only thing which called this image into question.
‘One more time, Slim,’ he barked. ‘From the top.’
Slim Drake sighed. ‘Don’t you think you’d be better at playing the wolf? You already got the hair for it.’
Taylor ignored him; wondered if Kubrick or Jackson ever had such trouble with their leads. Doubted it. But then, their casting couch hadn’t been out back of Romi’s Bar. They hadn’t had to make their own props either, nor had they had to rent their goddamn cameras.
Think of the money, he told himself. Think of the career I’ll have after this film is shown.
He fingered the record button, but then had another thought.
‘This time try to make the wolf’s movements more realistic. We can’t have our lycanthrope saying “shit!” every time he stubs his toes . . . ’
Slim laughed like a drip-tray.
‘That wasn’t supposed to be funny,’ warned Taylor. He’d have to start rationing the whisky now. They weren’t here for a good time, they were here to try and fake a film which would set them (him) up for life.
‘You seriously think anyone will believe us?’ asked Slim.
‘It’s amazing what folk will believe,’ said Taylor. ‘Especially if they see it on television. Now: all-fours please . . . Lights, camera, action!’
There really was no need to call for lights. There was nobody on the lights. It was just him and Slim Drake. Him and Slim and the hundreds of extras; the tightly packed trees. Slim hunkered down onto his paws, shook his wet flanks then started pacing round in circles like a caged animal. That was good
; Slim was starting to get the movements now, becoming less self-conscious. The shots of whisky from the hip-flask had helped, of course, but there was also something about the woods themselves which seemed to be affecting his lead’s performance. The trees seemed to be closing in around them, the air thickening with the stink of decay. It had made the both of them a little Blair Witch crazy.
Taylor spied him through the viewfinder, blurred the image a little, upping the authenticity ante much as it pained the director in him. Now the image wasn’t a hundred percent. Slim’s wolf seemed far more lupine, far more real. The costume wasn’t great, but in the half-light of dusk in the Paulson Woods, the mange looked good, Taylor had to admit it. All the hard work of stitching together the skins of the road-killed foxes and dogs, all of the night-shifts he’d put in actually collecting the things in the first place, had proved worthwhile. Not that he’d have ever got into the skins himself, of course. The shop-bought fake blood which he’d liberally applied around the wolf’s chops looked good too. And then there was the natural, kinda hunched way Slim held himself. Slim, he knew, had injured himself in a drink-driving accident, way back in the mists of time. He had an air of desperation about him, just as a wolf which had been forced to live off the scraps of the land would have looked. Everything was coming together now. Soon he’d have his fake masterpiece. Soon he could start negotiating with the TV studios.
Slim Drake sniffed around the trunk of a tree and then gave off this guttural growl. He turned to face the camera, all hollow yellow eyes, all bestial depravity, all Friday Fright Night. He was really getting into it now, like the woods had brought out the primitive in him. When he snarled, a shiver rattled up and down the director’s spine. ‘That’s good,’ he whispered. ‘Scary. Keep doing that!’
Slim didn’t miss a beat despite a compliment which was so rare it might as well have been bloody. He slunk into a darker place, where the trees were thicker, where the stink of decay grew even stronger. Taylor followed with the camera, picking his way carefully through prickly branches, cursing as he went. The wolf was starting to move too quickly now, like he was in single-minded pursuit of something. Soon he’d lose him and all of this great footage.
‘Slow down,’ he panted. ‘You’re going too far!’
The woods were almost impenetrable now, pressing in all about him. Roots reached up and tried to make a grab for his scurrying feet, thorns clawed at his face. And the mist was setting-in now too; icy tendrils crept up from the ground itself.
‘Stop!’ he called. ‘Cut!’
Ahead, Slim was almost out of sight, eating up the ground with his lurching stride. He didn’t stop. Taylor pushed himself over fallen trees, through a small stream, under overhanging creepers, his heart jack-hammering away in his chest, the acrid taste of the whisky on his tongue. But it was no good. He could no longer pick out his lead. In fact, he could barely pick out anything. Suddenly, the mist was heavy around him like a blanket.
Christ! he thought. What if I can’t find my way back?
The scream cut through the atmosphere like a foghorn. So ear-piercingly loud it could have stripped bark from the trees. So chilling it could have frozen blood. Taylor stumbled, felt the ground rushing up at him, reached out with a hand to stop himself and realised too late he’d landed with his full weight on the camera.
There goes my two-hundred dollar deposit right there, he thought. What the hell was Drake playing at screaming like that?
He staggered to his feet, brushed himself down, assessed the damage. The camera was ruined, wouldn’t even turn on. But that was the least of his worries. The mist was all around him now like snow. He couldn’t see more than a couple of feet ahead of him. And now he’d fallen, he couldn’t even remember which direction he’d been walking in.
‘Slim?’ he called, trying hard to keep a note of fear from entering his voice.
There was no answer. He forced himself to start walking. Slim couldn’t have gone far. Most likely, he’d just stumbled in the mist. Most likely he was just holed-up somewhere, waiting for it to clear.
Taylor didn’t want to think about the other possibility. But he couldn’t help but recall the whisky-soaked closing-time conversation which had started him on this trail. The rumours of a big stray dog, ‘like the hound of the Baskervilles’, which haunted the woods. The tales of what this big dog had done to the farm animals, to the deer. Of course, in the fug of Romi’s Bar, Taylor hadn’t believed a word of it. It had been all he could do not to laugh in the bumpkin farmer’s face. But now he was out here, and now he’d heard Slim’s scream, everything seemed plausible.
What if this wolf is out there in the trees stalking me? he thought. What if it’s just waiting for me to have another stumble and then it’ll be on me: biting, tearing, clawing?
For a terrible moment, his legs started to give way. He was going to curl up into a ball and play dead, just like he used to as a child when those bullies used to beat on him in the yard at school. For a terrible moment, Taylor was about to give up. But then, the businessman in him started to speak-up: Okay, say this thing is real. Say there really is some werewolf in the woods. And say I somehow manage to get the camera working again . . . Cher-ching!
Almost immediately, it was as though his lifted spirits acted to lift the mist. As he blinked into the evening light, he realised he had somehow managed to stumble into a clearing. Here, the woodland was not as tightly-packed but still the trees surrounded him, encircled him, watched him like sentries. Directly in front of him was a big old elm; it had shed its leaves, which drifted into browny-yellow piles, big as burial mounds. Flanking the elm was a haphazard collection of skeletal beech trees, almost choked by the dense green bushes which seemed to have leaped up everywhere. Mushrooms, large as skulls, grafted themselves onto everything. The stench was terrible, like death.
Think of the money, he told himself, and started to walk on. There was a narrow path, at first glance almost completely buried by leaf mulch, which led out of the clearing an up a steady slope. At the top of the slope, he thought he could pick out what appeared to be a small shack. He made for it, still nursing his broken camera, hoping to coax it back into life. Now he had a purpose, he barely gave Slim a second thought. Slim Drake had survived a car wreck ferchristsakes; should’ve seen the state of the car they cut him out of.
The shack was really not much more than a wooden lean-to. Probably it had been used by hunters once upon a time, but now it looked abandoned. Nature was reclaiming it; weeds choked the doorway, a tree appeared to be growing out of the smashed window, the front steps appeared almost overwhelmed by leaves. Only, the closer Taylor got, the more he began to think it wasn’t rotten leaves at all but something else. Something mangy; something hairy . . . The stink was starting to get worse too. Smelled like the abattoir up at Netherbridge.
By the time Taylor was close enough to see what was really on the steps, his nose had already given him ample warning. By the time he got close enough to see how Slim’s throat had been ripped out, he’d already thrown-up twice. And by the time, he’d steeled himself to roll the body of the poor old drunk over and look into his terrified face, Taylor was already crying. Whatever had attacked Slim Drake had clawed off all of his fake whiskers, his fake hair and his fake snout.
Taylor sniffed, spat away some leftover bile and then crouched over his camera. If he could just get a shot of Slim’s face so mangled, everybody would have to believe him. If he could just get the camera working for two minutes . . . one minute . . . then the footage would be priceless.
The first growl echoed back off the empty shell of the shack, through the clearing, up the path and mainlined straight into Taylor’s heart. He fell forward, onto the already cold body of his lead actor. He curled himself into a foetal comma and tried for all he was worth to stop shivering and crying. The second growl sounded, if anything, even closer. Even angrier. The wannabe film-director in him longed to open up his eyes, to at least look upon the beast before it did to him wha
t it had done to Slim. The child in him wanted the ground to suck him up, make him invisible. The child in him was also, no doubt, responsible for him pissing himself, just as he had in the yard all those years ago.
Then Taylor felt the beast’s hot breath on the back of his neck, carrying with it the overwhelming smell of death. He felt the beast’s bloodied whiskers pricking into him. He heard a third growl: strangely monstrous and soothing at the same time. Somehow, he understood it was a growl from the beast’s lupine belly—a ravenous, cavernous hungry growl. The growl told him it would all be over soon.
But the beast wouldn’t put him out of his misery yet. It continued to sniff at him for some time, as though confused by the vinegary aroma of urine Taylor was giving off.
‘Just let me die,’ he sobbed.
He was shaking so much now the broken pieces of the camera started to rattle in his hands. Shaking so much the beast placed a heavy paw on his shoulders as though to stop him. Taylor felt the claws ripping through his check-shirt and into his flesh. But what was even more terrifying was the startling warmth of the padded parts of the beast’s paw. How he could feel its racing heartbeat through it. How that heartbeat felt at once human and at once something so out there it could scarcely be believed. Still, Taylor couldn’t stop himself from shaking.
The beast, it seemed, was confused by the rattling sounds. It lowered its head and started to nuzzle the camera, dripping blood, gore and death upon Taylor’s hand. Then it started to wrap its huge jaws around the camera, ready to swallow it, Taylor’s hand still strapped in and all. And as it bit down, miraculously, the camera started to make a whirring sound. Miraculously, it started to creep back into life. Startled, the wolf began to back away a little.
And now the wannabe director in Taylor just had to look; had to check whether the camera was pointing in the right direction. Had to check whether the little red light was on again and whether he was now in a position to record the last moments of his life. He opened his eyes; they were narrow-slits at first but gradually wide saucers once he took in the scene.