by David Haynes
He turned to the boxer, keeping a gap between him and Ookami. Uncle had a gun, but Kenta didn’t think he’d use it until there was no other way out. Right now, he thought he could still bring his beloved little nephew around. He was mistaken. Once the boxer understood what was happening here, what Ookami really was and what he’d done, they would be at each other. They would tear each other apart. He didn’t care who came out on top because whoever it was, they’d be so fucked up he could easily put them down.
“The Wolf Man!” He howled for extra effect. He caught movement from the corner of his eye. Ookami was on the move.
“You ever seen a wolf, Leo? A real wolf?”
He stepped around the side of the snack stand, out of reach. The boxer remained where he was, but the guy’s fists were clenched and his jaw muscles were working overtime.
“No?” he said. “They’re not so common here in the city, but you have. You’ve met my uncle. In fact, you met him once before, although you might not recognize him. He looked a bit different back then.”
He watched the boxer’s face twitch.
“He had more hair when you first met him. His face was covered in it.” He paused. “Ring a bell, Leo?”
The lack of reaction from the boxer surprised him. He hadn’t seemed like the kind of guy who was afraid to get his fists bloody. In fact, Kenta knew he wasn’t. Personal experience told him that.
Ookami took a few more steps toward him. Kenta saw the knife flash orange as he drew it from beneath his coat. He wasn’t going to use the gun, he was going to try and slit his throat. That was good, he’d have to get up close to do that.
Kenta dodged between the magazines and the chips, stepping closer to the storeroom and, more importantly, the basement. The boxer watched him, eyes narrowed. Why wasn’t he reacting? The guy must be stupid to not understand. Kenta decided to ram the point home.
“He shot that kid.” He pointed back across the store. “Right over there, wasn’t it, Uncle?”
Ookami roared and ran toward him, pushing the magazine stand over as he charged. But he was too far away, too easy to avoid. He ran to the side, closer to the boxer. The guy hated him, but must surely despise Ookami even more.
Ookami stood at the end of the aisle, staring across at him. “You will die!” he shouted, pointing at Kenta with the tip of the great knife.
He was close enough to the boxer to smell the stale sweat seeping out of him. He was clenching and unclenching his fists in a steady rhythm. Kenta leaned a little closer to the man and spoke in a loud whisper. “He came back and bragged about it, told us all how he’d put the gun in the kid’s mouth and blown his head clean off. Told us that you’d been too old and slow to stop him. He even said he was going to come back and make you his bitch.”
“Lies!” Ookami screamed.
“You should kill him for that,” he whispered again.
The boxer turned slowly toward Kenta. They stood face to face.
“I’m just going to let you kill each other,” he replied, almost smiling. “And whichever one of you two bastards is left, well, that’s the one I’m going to deal with. I don’t care which one of you it is.”
The boxer gave Kenta a hard shove. “Now get the hell away from me.”
He stumbled backward. This wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. Even if he’d had two working hands and a weapon, Ookami was more skilled. It was time for his alternate plan.
He stumbled into the storeroom, feeling the cold void at his back, recalling the woman’s hideous face downstairs. He needed Ookami to follow him down there. He started running toward the basement stairs but slipped on the ice and fell to the floor.
Instinctively he rolled onto his back, bringing his hands up to cover his face. Through his stumps of his bloody fingers he saw Ookami coming toward him, the knife raised, his face an ugly snarl.
He had time to get to his feet and grab something from one of the shelves. He didn’t look to see what it was but it had some heft, enough to do some damage.
“I should have killed you years ago.” Ookami walked into the storeroom. “You’re nothing but a miserable, pathetic runt.”
Kenta took a step back. “When I kill you, dear uncle, I’m going to take your place. I’m going to pay a visit to my lovely, sexy aunt and make her my queen.” He laughed.
Ookami smiled and ran at him.
*
Leo heard everything Kenta said. It confirmed what Alison said, crystallized it in his mind. Ookami was responsible for Oliver’s murder. He felt the cold clarity of untethered rage in his belly. It worked its way upward into his head and wound itself around his brain. It squeezed until he thought he could take no more and then dissolved.
He would kill Ookami.
But first he would let the two animals fight it out. He would let Ookami kill his own nephew. Kenta did not deserve to feel the barbs of Leo’s fury.
He watched as Kenta pulled a steel rod from the shelving. It had come from a broken strut on an old shelf, and was rusty and covered in dust. Kenta held it like a sword, like a katana.
Ookami ran forward, stopping just as Kenta swung with the pipe. It missed his head by inches. Ookami stepped to the side and flicked the blade at Kenta’s face. It caught him just below the eye, opening up a deep cut that made it look as if he were crying tears of blood.
Kenta screamed and stabbed forward with the rod. It caught Ookami’s shoulder, but without an edge it simply knocked the man back a step. They circled each other for a couple of seconds before Kenta raised the pipe, feinting a downward blow. Ookami dodged to the right, crouching low. But Kenta held back and when Ookami tried a counter-strike, he brought the pipe down hard. Ookami saw it and rolled backward, landing on his feet and standing tall all in one motion.
He smiled at his nephew. “You betrayed me, Kenta. You didn’t listen and you…”
“You’re not fit to lead us!” Kenta shouted. “I’ll turn us into a…”
But Ookami didn’t let him finish; he grabbed a can off the shelf, threw it at Kenta and then charged again. The can bounced off the wall behind Kenta but it forced him to dodge to the side. Ookami slashed at the place where Kenta was going, not where he’d just been. The blade flashed across Kenta’s thigh, slicing through the material on his pants.
Kenta gasped and grimaced. Blood dripped down the inside of his leg, pooling on the storeroom floor by his foot. As he reached for his leg, Ookami used the butt end of the knife and banged it into Kenta’s face. Blood flew from his already beaten and swollen face, spattering up the wall.
“You think you could take my place?” Ookami smiled again. He looked more and more lupine by the minute. “I’m going to carve you up piece by piece, then I’m going to feed you to the dogs on the street.”
“Fuck you!” Kenta screeched back. He was injured, badly too. Leo knew that Ookami’s strike had not been random but carefully placed to nick the femoral artery. Kenta was going to die if he didn’t get to the hospital soon. And that wasn’t going to happen.
Leo watched as Kenta moved closer to the basement, turning his body to the stairs hidden in the corner. Why was he going so close to the stairs? He could easily topple backward and fall, losing any advantage he thought he had. Was he trying to run? That made more sense, the coward that he was. Yet there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide down there. Ookami would just follow him, bleeding him slowly until his body was a dried-out husk.
Leo felt like a sick voyeur, watching these two animals fight it out, but he felt no guilt. He couldn’t stop them, even if he were inclined to do so. This was how they lived their lives. Kenta’s plan had been transparent. He’d been trying to get Leo to do the job for him, or at least tire Ookami out enough so he could kill his uncle himself. Well, he wasn’t that gullible. As set as his mind was on killing Ookami, he wasn’t about to get caught up in their hideous power struggle.
Ookami followed Kenta toward the corner and then stopped.
“What’s the matter, Uncle? Afraid of th
e dark?”
Leo moved around the shelving to see. He froze.
His punchbag glittered in the gloom. Snow lay deep and thick at the top of the stairs. That was enough to give Ookami pause but not stop his pursuit. He was halted by something else entirely.
The woman and her child stood behind Kenta; her head lowered, the child hidden beneath the blanket. Kenta was unaware of her, had not turned his head. He was focused solely on his uncle.
Leo’s mind flashed back to the basement. The fog started to lift. She was not beautiful nor young, and the baby was not the contented infant his mind had conjured up. A trick?
Sota’s sneaker. The bloody snow. The child gnawing on one of Sota’s leg bones. The woman a vile and repulsive creature and the child, its long gray tongue extended, lapping. He swallowed hard to stay the vomit.
“You want to finish this?” Kenta yelled. “Come and try!” He took another step backward, trying to goad Ookami into following him, but the other man stayed where he was. The expression of calm, guided anger he’d worn for the last few minutes was gone. He looked confused, unsure of himself.
Kenta swung his makeshift club. “Come on!” he screamed. “Come and get me you piece of shit!”
But Ookami didn’t take a step. Only the woman moved. She glided across the snow until she was only a few inches from Kenta’s back.
“My baby,” she said. It was only a whisper, but an icy wind carried her voice to all corners of the storeroom. Fresh flakes of powdery snow dropped softly from her words, falling in the darkest recesses of the room.
“Help me,” she whispered.
Kenta’s eyes widened. He swallowed and then turned slowly. She held the child out to him, pushing it into his arms. The child cooed, wriggling snugly in the blanket. Its skin was the color of alabaster. Both child and mother gave off a faint, eerie gray light, illuminating the baby’s keen, black eyes. The child gurgled, showing off a front row of teeth that would have served a wolf well. It had a hideous flap of skin that hung from its back, connecting to its mother.
Kenta gazed at the child and then slowly lifted his head. He dropped the steel rod and gradually lifted his hands to take the child. He was mesmerized by the woman’s beauty. In that moment, to Kenta, she was not the repulsive hag the others saw, but the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. It was not hard to see why Kenta lifted his arms, offering to help. He was as lost as both Leo and Ookami.
Then he screamed, dropping his hands, trying to look away. Why? What was there to be afraid of? It was just a mother and her child, and they needed help.
She lifted her hand to his cheek and touched it. Kenta froze, his eyes widening impossibly. He opened his mouth to scream again but the sound was muted, almost a cry of pleasure.
She pushed the child toward him again. This time he lifted his hands to take it. The child lay still as the mother put her other hand on Kenta’s cheek. As she did, there was a terrible splintering sound. It was followed by creaking, as of a loose floorboard, and then a loud snapping crack. Kenta screamed and dropped to his knees. One of his legs jutted out at an unnatural angle.
Still she held onto his face. Still he held onto the child. His body shook, trembling as the sounds of his destruction echoed throughout the building.
Leo glanced up, sensing movement. Kim was standing in the doorway to the apartment. She had a hand held up to her mouth.
Kenta gave a violent buck. The end of something sharp and splintered pushed out through his mouth. It was his spine. Blood gushed out of his throat, coating mother and child in Kenta’s essence. He fell forward onto his face.
Ookami stepped backward then fell against the shelves, sending them crashing to the floor.
Leo stared, his whole body rigid. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real.
A gun went off, loud but not as loud as Kenta’s bones being splintered to pieces. There was a second shot. Kim was firing, but the bullets were having no effect. They passed through the woman, smashing into the wall behind her. She did not acknowledge the shots or even lift her head.
Ookami was firing too now. His shots were panicked, spraying the walls with bullets. He kept firing until the clip clicked empty.
The woman was crouching over Kenta’s still body. Her hands pressed down on his face, pushing it deeper into the snow. A breeze swirled the snow around her, creating scores of tiny funnels. They danced about her and the child as Kenta’s body folded in on itself. The sound of bones breaking was hideous, stomach-churning.
Worse was to come. The woman released Kenta and pushed the baby down onto him. Immediately there was a crunching sound as the infant began biting through his frozen flesh, gnawing through the skin and into the small bones on his face.
The woman watched, smiling, oblivious to the horrified expressions around her.
He heard Kim by the stairs. “Dear God!” She’d stopped shooting after the first couple of rounds proved completely ineffective. Unlike Ookami.
Leo knew he had to move, to get away from this nightmarish scene, but he couldn’t. His mind couldn’t rationalize what his eyes were seeing. None of them could move.
The storm grew in intensity until mother and child were a blur through the snow. It was enough to stun his brain into action. He ran across to the stairs and grabbed Kim, pushing her upward.
He turned to look back and the woman lifted her head, frozen sinew and guts hanging from her open mouth. As their eyes met, her face grew ancient, lined with deep fissures that ran across her face like scars. Her skin hung in ragged flaps from her cheeks and her teeth were needles. Just like her child. Yet her eyes remained the same. The deep and dark pools rippled in the faint lamplight. His first and only thought was: She looks sad.
Whatever he felt in that moment disappeared the instant her mouth hinged open, almost splitting her head front to back. She shrieked, and then from her mouth poured cloud upon cloud of snow. Like swarming bees the flakes landed on everything, covering them completely. Some landed on Leo’s arm. He brushed them away, feeling not the cold wet snow he knew so well but Kenta’s freeze-dried and powdered bones. Bone snow.
He shivered, swept away the powder and then slammed the door shut behind him, locking it before running up the stairs.
2
Leo stood at the top of the stairs and waited. His fists were clenched but he had a suspicion they would be about as much use against the woman as Kim’s Glock. The shrieking continued, the wind rattled the door in its frame and the bone snow thrashed against everything in the storeroom.
His heart hammered in his chest and, despite the temperature, he felt a cold sweat run down between his shoulder blades. What had he just witnessed? What the hell was that?
He waited until the shrieking stopped and then turned away. Below, the sound of twigs being snapped underfoot continued.
“Where’s Ookami?” Kim asked. She was standing beside the couch. Her gun was still drawn but held pointing downward.
“Downstairs,” he replied. Down there with that thing. That suited him just fine.
Kim nodded but said nothing, only glanced at Sam. Crashing noises drifted up the stairs. It sounded like someone was taking the store apart, smashing the whole place to hell.
He took a deep breath and walked over to her. “What the hell was that?”
Kim kept her weapon unholstered. “I…I don’t know. I haven’t a clue how to even start with it, but I know what I saw and it was the same down in the basement. She’s a…I don’t know…a cannibal?”
Leo rubbed his face, feeling every day of his forty-eight years on his lined skin. He could feel it in his bones. He was in shock. There was no way anyone could explain what happened downstairs, not if they didn’t want to end up in an asylum. It was a scene from a movie, a sick movie. It wasn’t real. How could it be?
His mind turned in a circle, a carousel of hellish images flashing before his eyes. They pushed him deeper into confusion and inertia. He had to think. Who…what was she and why was she here? W
hat did she want with the store, with him? Was it even about him? He’d rescued her, brought her and her child inside. She’d been so pathetic and weak then, trembling in the cold.
What he saw in the storeroom was someone…something else entirely. Maybe he could try and talk to her again, ask her…it…whatever she was, what she wanted. She was getting stronger, that much was clear. She was moving about on her bed of bones, using it like a magic goddamn carpet to get around, and feeding herself and the child. One thing was for certain, she didn’t look like she was full yet. There was plenty of room for a few more courses and maybe even dessert.
The door to the storeroom crashed loudly, banging against the frame several times. Was she trying to get inside? Could they even stop her? Kim raised her gun again. She saw him looking at it and as if sensing his thoughts said, “It makes me feel better, if nothing else.”
They both turned to the staircase, waiting for the woman to join them. The seconds passed and the banging stopped. Then just as quickly, started again.
“Hey! Let me up!” Ookami’s voice called. “Please! She’s coming back!”
Leo looked at Kim, grinding his teeth in frustration. “Bastard,” he hissed. She should have killed him by now, ground his bones to snow and vomited him all over the store.
“We should let him up,” Kim said.
“We should leave him. Let her deal with him.”
“That what you want?”
“Kenta told me it was him who killed Oliver. Said Ookami had been boasting about it, said he was going to come back here and…”
“And you believe everything that ass says…said?”
Leo looked away. “He killed Oliver. He didn’t deny it.”