The Best of Talebones

by edited by Patrick Swenson

  No surprise, I thought. That man, the Fairy, had been closeted away in the Shoe. “Could he describe the voice?”

  “He said it was low and gravelly, a little strained, like the guy was out of breath.”

  There were a couple unique things about the Fairy Godfather’s voice. Horner had just named them.

  “Did he fill out a report?”

  Horner handed me a piece of paper.

  It read like a dime-store novel. The meeting had taken place down on the bad side of town, in an alley where the presence of a rat wouldn’t be noticed. The man said people would flock to sugar and spice like kids to a witch’s house. Fellow said he’d cut her in on the take so long as she made the paying customers feel good. She agreed.

  “Horner, we’re going to have to bring Muffet in on suspicion.” I looked up from the report and right into Muffet’s peepers.

  She was wearing her camo again, her beret tipped jauntily to one side, her badge clipped tight on her chest.

  “Suspicion of what, Boss?” she asked.

  “Sugar running. Now I’m sorry to do this, Muffet, but until I put this case to rest, I can’t have you out on the street. Hand in your badge.”

  Muffet took the news pretty calmly. That gal was quite a number. She pulled off her badge and handed it to me, her gaze never wavering from mine.

  “And your spray,” I said.

  She unholstered her spray cans and gave them to me, one at a time.

  “Horner, read her her rights, and put her in the shell.”

  “Right, Peter,” Horner said in a thin voice. He didn’t want to do this any more than I did, but keeping Las Fables safe was our duty.

  Muffet didn’t move when Jack put his hand on her arm.

  “Boss,” she said. “I have nothing to do with the sugar shortage. I’d like you to believe that.”

  Truth was, I wanted to believe that too. “Save it for Judge White,” I said.

  Horner took her away. I stared at the gold badge on my desk and did a lot of thinking. Even though it was almost midnight I poured myself a stiff drink. It had been a long day. Tomorrow I’d have to bring the Fairy in for questioning. Before that, there was someone I needed to see.

  I knocked on Mother Hubbard’s door.

  There are few jobs worse than breaking bad news to a family member.

  “Who is it?” she called in her rough voice.

  “Detective Peter Peter, Ma’am.”

  Mother Hubbard opened the door.

  “Come in, Detective.” She turned and hobbled off, waving one hand at the wall-to-wall cupboards lining her living room. In one corner stood her poor taxidermied dog: just a knickknack — since Hubbard lacked — and couldn’t give the dog a bone.

  “I’d offer you food but my cupboards are bare,” she said.

  “I understand, Ma’am. I’m here to tell you something about your son.”

  She stopped. Her back still toward me. “Oh?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. I’m bringing him in on suspicion.”

  “My boy? Whatever for?”

  “We have reason to believe he’s behind the current sugar and spice shortage. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this.”

  Mother Hubbard’s shoulders trembled slightly. When she turned I saw a tear in her eye even though her smile was brave.

  “Detective,” she wheezed, “you’re a credit to your badge. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” I knew I had done my job, had followed the law by the book, but I didn’t feel like a credit to anything right now.

  “Would you stay for tea?” she asked.

  “No, Ma’am. I have paperwork.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Come by anytime, Detective.” She saw me to the door, then closed it behind me.

  I stood there on her doorstep a moment, thinking about good boys gone bad and good girls gone the same. I could hear poor Mother Hubbard behind the door coughing and choking with a cackling hack. I made a note to ask Muffet to take some food over to her, then caught myself. Muffet wasn’t part of the force anymore.

  She’d betrayed her badge. And me.

  Skirts. Nothing but trouble.

  Dark thoughts ringed-the-rosy in my mind as I headed back to the station.

  Halfway there, something Mother Hubbard said came back to me. Just before I left, she had offered me tea, but everyone knew her cupboards were bare. She herself had admitted they were bare just moments before offering the tea. A piece of the puzzle suddenly clicked. The mouse, Dock, had said the fellow’s voice was low, mumbly and out of breath. Just like the Fairy Godfather. And one other person.

  I reached the station and called out to Horner. “Get the mouse and follow me,” I said.

  A moment later, Horner was back, mouse in hand.

  He and I arrived at the little cottage on the right side of town just as the last cows were falling. I insisted Horner stay in the patrol car for back up. Truth was, I’d never seen him look so bad.

  I knocked on the door, and heard a familiar, wheezing voice.

  “Who is it?”

  “Detective Peter Peter, Ma’am. May I have a word with you?”

  “Oh, yes.” Pause, breath. “I’m coming.”

  The mouse in my pocket shifted his weight slightly, but stayed silent. If everything went according to plan, she’d never know I had ears on me.

  “Come in, Detective,” she said.

  Dock whispered, “That’s the guy.”

  I stepped into the cottage.

  “I’d offer you some food, Detective, but . . .”

  “I’ll get it myself, Ma’am.” I walked toward Old Mother’s Cupboards.

  Her smile faltered. “Detective, you know I don’t have any food in my house. My cupboards are bare.”

  “Yes Ma’am. Then I’m sure you won’t mind if I just take a look.”

  She shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.

  I turned the latch and pulled open a cabinet door the size of a wall.

  Sugar.

  Mounds and bags and sacks and kilos of pure, uncut sugar poured out, enough to supply a sugar-dry town.

  That’s when the Old Mother made a break for it. She hit me from behind and I fell into the white gold.

  I wondered how Dock had handled the impact. A voice from my pocket cried out, “I can see, I can see!” but I was already up and running after the Mother.

  I grabbed her just as she reached the doorway. “I’m sorry, Mother Hubbard,” I said as I pulled her hands behind her back and pressed her against the wall. “You have the right to remain silent.”

  “Don’t tell me to remain silent, young man,” she said. “I’ll speak my mind if I choose to.”

  I knew I shouldn’t, the law was the law, and not to be bent or broken by flatfoots like me, but I had to ask. “Is Miss Muffet involved in your sugar and spice scheme?”

  The old woman laughed. “Why in the world would you think that? Do you think an old woman like me can’t take care of myself, do you think I need a girl like her to run my business?”

  “You spoke to her in an alley by the old woman’s Shoe Bar. Talked about sugar and spice.”

  I turned Mother Hubbard around.

  She shook her head. “I was trying to fix up my son. He’s always at the Shoe Bar watching the band. She’s a pretty lounge singer. I told her if she was nice to him, I’d give her a raise . . .”

  “Lounge singer?”

  “What did you think she was doing in my Bar?” The old woman gave me a stern glare. “Don’t you trust your own employees, Detective?”

  “Of course I trust the boys on the force,” I said gruffly. “So you’re telling me you and Boy Blue are in business together?”

  “I ponied up the restoration money for the Shoe and hired the acts. But the sugar — that scheme was mine alone. That no good son of mine never cuts me in on his deals — after all I’ve done for him. Does he get married and give me a grandchild? No. Does he take care of me? No. So I sweeten up a
retirement plan of my own. Is that so wrong?”

  “We’ll let Judge White decide that, Ma’am.”

  I escorted her to the patrol car and shut the door on her and the case.

  Horner, leaning on the bumper of the black and white looked up at me. “Good job, Peter. Sounds like she’s going to give us a full confession.”

  I nodded. “Take care of the evidence in there, will you, Horner? Make sure the word gets out that Las Fables is open for business again.”

  I flashed my badge and cleared the check-station, then counted my way past pumpkins shells. The wife I couldn’t keep was there, along with the Old Woman who blew the dwarves away.

  I stopped outside Muffet’s shell and cleared my throat.

  Muffet sat on her tuffet, her toes and gaze on the floor. In the corner was a sloppy mess of a spider that must have gotten in her way.

  “Muffet,” I said.

  It took a minute, but she turned her head and looked at me.

  I don’t know what I’d expected. Hatred, anger, maybe even tears. Instead I saw the cool, clear gaze of the cop I’d worked with for three years.

  “Muffet,” I began, then the words dried up.

  “Is it time for me to go home now, boss?” she asked.

  I nodded and pulled the key out of my pocket. The flyer Boy Blue had given me back at the Shoe Bar fell out. I picked it up and caught my breath at the picture. There in her red-dress glory was a picture of Muffet. The bold letters at the top of the flyer said: The Blue Shoe’s New Act, Red hot singer Sugar ‘n’ Spice! Naughty and nice.”

  “Sugar ‘n’ Spice?” I asked as I opened the door.

  Muffet shrugged. “A gal has to have a stage name.” She stood, and prison orange never looked so fine.

  “You could have told me, Muffet,” I said.

  “I didn’t think you’d understand.” She stepped past me, out into open air and freedom.

  I touched her arm. She looked over her shoulder.

  “For the record,” I said, careful to keep my voice level, “I would have understood.”

  Muffet raised one eyebrow and smiled one of her rare smiles.

  “Sure, Boss.” Then she walked away, 100% pure sugar, spice and everything nice.

  Like I said. It’s hard for a guy like me to trust gals, but with Muffet, well, she’s a different story.

  Appearing in issue #35, William F. Nolan is no stranger to most speculative fiction readers. The co-author of Logan’s Run has spent his recent years writing dark fiction and horror. (He’s had wide praise by a few writers you might have heard of: Ray Bradbury, Joe R. Lansdale, Peter Straub, Stephen King, Robert Bloch, and Norman Mailer.) Fairwood has recently published two different collections of his dark stories: Nightshadows and Dark Dimensions. Here’s his take on the werewolf story.

  WOLF SONG

  WILLIAM F. NOLAN

  Late at night, under a full moon,

  have you heard the song of the wolf?

  —Jules LeGrande, 1876

  Oh, yes, I know that rational, sane people do not believe in them. They are something you encounter in a fairy tale, something fanciful and dark that logically cannot be. They don’t exist. They aren’t real.

  Yet I’m real. I exist.

  I fingered the long white scar on my neck, remembering that night in the Alabama woods . . . .

  I was ten. Little Donny Morgan. Pampered. An only child. Small for my age, with pale colorless eyes and skin that would never tan. Like white wax. Walking home, taking the short cut through Mobile’s thick-treed woods. Under a full moon. Whistling. Feeling good after the John Wayne cowboy movie at the Strand. Full of popcorn and iced coke.

  Then, with a terrible roar, a creature erupted from the trees. Covered with dark, matted fur. Glowing red eyes. Sharp razor claws. A 1ong snout lined with teeth like a serrated row of glittering knives.

  I screamed, began to run, stumbled, falling to my knees. A deep growling, as the foul creature’s teeth sank into my neck. A bright burst of pain. Blood. The fetid breath of the beast, like rank steam in my nostrils.

  Then . . . from deep woods . . . a sudden shotgun blast. The wolf-creature, howling in anger, badly wounded, retreated . . . fading back into the tree shadows.

  A tall figure stood over me. Dizzy. Blood at my throat. I stared up at the man with the shotgun.

  “Dunno what in the name of God that was — but it’s lucky for you I come along when I did.”

  Lucky. Yes, lucky.

  “You’re bleedin’ something fierce, son,” said the tall man. “Need to get you to a doctor.”

  Hands lifting me. Swirling stars. An engulfing darkness.

  I blacked out.

  Fifteen years had passed since that fateful night in the woods.

  I’m already balding. My face is long and bony. Skinny legs, thick glasses. All in all, not much to look at. I’ve lived in Mobile all my 1ife. Until recently, I held a boring job as an accountant for the Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio Railroad. Eight dull hours each day, perched on a high wooden stool, wearing a green plastic eyeshade, working with endless figures in a small dusty cubicle next to the downtown post office.

  My salary was modest and would never be substantial. But that was fine because I knew I was something more than an overworked, poorly paid railroad accountant. I was special.

  I vividly recall the first transformation.

  It had not happened right away. I didn’t even know that I was infected, or exactly what kind of beast had attacked me. My parents said it was most likely a wild dog, and they had me checked for rabies. The checkup was negative, with the doctor assuring my parents that once the neck wound healed I’d be okay. My parents were greatly relieved.

  I knew that the thing I’d seen in those dark woods was no dog. But what exactly was it?

  A month later, under a grossly-bloated full moon, as I was returning from a late-night visit with my only friend, Bobby Wilkes, it happened.

  The transformation.

  I felt my body begin to reshape itself. Bones bending, twisting, flesh stretching, a dark thick matting of fur spreading over my skin, daggered teeth lining a long wolf’s snout, a deep, gutteral growl rising in my throat — and a sudden lust for blood.

  Human blood.

  Afterward, with the sun shimmering golden in the sky the next morning, I awoke in my parents’ apartment. My clothes were tattered and streaked with crimson. Bits of flesh adhered to my teeth, and the rusty taste of blood was on my tongue. My breath was foul and I smelled of death.

  I could remember everything that happened the previous night. Vivid images. Screams. The odor of fear. I had attacked a seven-year-old girl in the woods, ripped her throat open, and devoured parts of her body. I felt no guilt. On the contrary, I felt renewed, refreshed, satiated. A dark appetite had been appeased. I had enjoyed a satisfying meal of tender young flesh.

  Over the months that followed, prowling the dark woods, I’d struck again and again under the pale yellow circle of the moon, feeling no regret over my actions. What transpired in those moonlit woods by night left me buoyant and pleasantly light-hearted by day.

  Deny not the beast!

  I read that somewhere. I was doing extensive research on the subject of werewolves, surprised at what I’d uncovered. Werewolf lore extends back into the dim past. For centuries, people in many parts of the world have accepted the werewolf as reality. Not a thing of myth and folk tales, but a real, three-dimensional creature who stalked and killed under the full moon.

  Reports of such beasts could be traced far back in prehistory.

  In the fifth century B.C. the Greek historian Herodotus reported on the Neuri, a wild tribe that transformed themselves into wolves for a given period each year. It was also believed that Nebuchadnezzar, the fabled king of ancient Babylonia, was a victim of lycanthropy. Lycanthrope derives from the Greek words “lykos” (wolf) and “anthropos” (human).

  Lycanthropy was said to have flourished during the Middle Ages. Between 1520 and 1630, som
e 30,000 individuals, men and women, were condemned as loup-garou in France and burned at the stake. (Loup-garou: French for werewolf.)

  In 1767, a creature identified only as “The Beast of Le Gevaudan,” was proclaimed to be a werewolf and was killed in the French countryside by bullets made from a blessed chalice.

  Under a full moon.

  In fact, the full moon figured as an essential element in every account, ancient or modern, concerning a werewolf. Etheric energies in the Earth are at their peak when the moon is round. At the full, this cold, lifeless heavenly body, close companion to Earth, affects the oceanic tides, stimulates worldwide unrest, and is said to produce startling changes in the human form. Police around the world have reported that under a full moon crime increases tenfold.

  Much has been written or dramatized concerning the werewolf, and a large proportion of what I had encountered in my research proved to be lurid trash. Outlandish novels and stories, a host of obviously fallacious studies, and countless motion pictures featured myth over reality. For example, the idea that it takes a silver bullet to slay a werewolf is pure Hollywood hokum.

  I recalled a dark chant from one such film I’d seen as a child:

  Even a man who is pure of heart

  and says his prayers by night

  may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

  and the moon is clear and bright

  Utter nonsense, of course! Wolfbane is a poisonous flower of a variety mainly grown in Nepal. Warriors used the poison from this flower to tip their arrows, but it had nothing to do with an actual transformation of man into beast.

  Again and again, throughout my research, I encountered one universal element — that those who survived the teeth of the beast became its victims. Under a full moon, they suffered “the curse of the werewolf.”

  I reject this idea. I am certainly no victim; I have been given a strong new identity, a life beyond anything I could ever have imagined. What I have undergone is no curse. It is a blessing. A gift of fate.