The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten

by Harrison Geillor

  I was afraid, I admit it—the way anyone would be, with a rattlesnake staring at them, ready to bite—but I kept my voice level and my back straight. “Of course, nothing makes a boy love you like killing his girlfriend.”

  She showed her teeth—and, yep, she had fangs, they sprouted right then, each as long as a forefinger, yuck. “Getting rid of the competition is always a good way to win, little girl.”

  “Yes, but you did it all wrong. Here’s the correct way: You make it look like an accident, and then, when I’m dead, you call Edwin up, in his grief, and you’re there for him, you offer a consoling shoulder to cry on, you get back into his life, and you make him depend on you. You don’t murder her and let the boy you like know you did it. Seriously, this is like Psychopath 101, Gretchen. You are so outclassed.” Mostly, I was playing for time, but we were alone, and Joachim couldn’t hear us, so it was also an opportunity to mock and to boast. I can never resist the former, and it’s so hard having to constantly avoid doing the latter.

  Her fangy smile faded. “What are you talking about?”

  “You think you’re a monster? Amateur,” I said. “I was in your situation, back in Santa Cruz. I liked a boy, he didn’t like me, he had a stupid girlfriend. So I did a little research and figured out how to disable her brakes—” (Yes, the irony of someone, I assume Rosemarie, tampering with Marmon’s brakes was not lost on me when it happened.) “—and she went right over a cliff on the coast road. Boom, crash, bye-bye. Then I moved in on the boy for the supportive snuggles.”

  Gretchen seemed interested, despite herself. “Damn. Did it work?”

  I sighed. “It was working. But see, the stupid girl had a stupid best friend, also hot, and she and the boy had the whole shared grief thing going, you know? They loved her like no one else, knew her better than the rest, yadda yadda. So pretty soon the boy stopped paying attention to me, and paid attention to her instead.”

  “So you gave up? Quitter.”

  “Never! I knew the boy pretty well by then, and it only took me three tries to guess his password—his dead girlfriend’s birthday, how lame, but I tried her first and last names first. He used the same password for all his social networking stuff, e-mail, everything. So, you know. I sent a few messages, to the grieving best friend, ostensibly from him. Not very nice messages. I borrowed his phone and sent her a few choice texts, too. Then I hacked her e-mail—her password was his birthday, she must have been angling for him a long time, despite him dating her best friend, don’t you hate treacherous bitches like that? I posted a bunch of… unflattering things in her accounts. Embarrassing things. Mostly photoshopped pictures of her in certain compromising situations, committing various betrayals. They got the job done. I’m pretty good with computers, manipulating images—really, manipulating anything. Anyway, pretty soon everyone hated her and thought she was a slut, and she was convinced the boy she liked was the one who’d hacked her account, so she blamed him, it was a big mess. I only meant to drive a wedge between them, you know, kill their friendship… but she was weak. She killed herself.”

  “Damn,” Gretchen said again. “You… it’s a good thing I didn’t turn you into a vampire. You’d be…”

  “I’d be a terrific vampire,” I said seriously. “I’ve got the personality for it. You know, you could just turn me—I don’t hold a grudge. We could work something out, maybe. Share Edwin or whatever. Boys love that threesome stuff, and I can pretend to enjoy making out with you, it’s easy to fake.”

  “Killing you is actually an altruistic act,” Gretchen said. “Who knew? I’ll be doing the world a favor. Hero Gretchen saves the day.”

  I tensed up—thinking, Get on with it already! and beginning to wonder if the cavalry was even coming—but she paused. “Oh,” I said. “You want to know what happened, right? How I ended up in the ass-end of Lake Woebegotten instead of in Santa Cruz soothing my cute boy back to mental health? I was pretty careful, never hacked from my own computer, but I used the school computer lab once or twice, and even though I used someone else’s ID to log in so I could cover my tracks, there were witnesses who put me there at the times… certain unsavory things… were posted in suicide girl’s account. Now, nobody could prove anything, it was all way beyond circumstantial, but you know the court of public opinion. The rumor got out anyway that I’d, you know…”

  “Facebooked a girl to death,” Gretchen said.

  “You stole that line from an episode of The Simpsons,” I said, shaking my finger at her accusingly. “No points for cleverness. Anyway, it was a tough rumor to dispel. The boy stopped liking me. The principal forced me to talk to a psychologist, and while it was entertaining faking her out, it was a little too close for comfort. Nobody had any idea I’d been involved with the first girl’s death by vehicular misadventure, but if a really smart and cynical and suspicious cop got interested…” I shrugged. “I talked it over with my mom—how these hurtful and untrue allegations were making life difficult—and we decided I should come stay with my dad for a while, here in the middle of nowheresville. Where, to my surprise and delight, I met Edwin. Kinda makes you almost believe everything happens for a reason. I mean, it doesn’t—the universe is a blind clashing machine that crushes anything and everything without curiosity or cognizance—but still, if I were a fate-and-destiny kind of girl, I’d think it was destiny that sent me here.”

  “What, to your death? Sorry, psycho-girl, but your fate was to be a late supper for me.” She crouched, showed her teeth, and I braced myself, thinking, Shit, they’re going to let me die!

  But I should’ve had faith. Because just as she leapt, a shape streaked through the darkness and slammed her out of mid-air.

  Despite what Edwin had said, I’d expected werewolves, because it just seems like vampires and werewolves go together like peanut butter and chocolate (or maybe oil and water, or sodium and water). But this thing wasn’t a wolf. It was way bigger than a wolf, and much broader across the shoulders, and didn’t have a tail, and had a lot less of a snout than a wolf did, and—

  “You’re were-bears?” I said, incredulous, as three more bears came loping from the woods, converging on Gretchen.

  “Fair enough,” Willy Noir said, walking down onto the beach, squinting at me. “Were-wolf comes from the Old English wer, for ‘man,’ and wulf, for ‘wolf.’ The Old English for ‘bear’ is bera, so maybe ‘were-bera’ is better, but that doesn’t really sound so good. The great bear is sacred to our people, and the great bear spirit gives us strength to fight the wendigos.”

  I wondered if there was such a thing as “dire bears,” because if so, that’s what these guys were—bigger than grizzlies (despite having the coloration of black bears), with jaws big enough to swallow a basketball whole.

  Gretchen struggled to her feet and stumbled toward the water, looking around in panic—one of her arms was missing, though it wasn’t bleeding, of course—and her eyes locked on mine.

  “Yeah,” I called out. “It’s a trap. Took you long enough to figure that out.” I looked back at Willy as three more bears knocked Gretchen down and began tearing her apart. “You took long enough, too.”

  “We were watching,” he said mildly. “You were in no danger. We wanted to make sure she would act aggressively—we’re not eager to break our treaty with the wendigos without cause.”

  “You don’t have a treaty with that one, anyway. She’s an outsider, not one of the Scullens or Scales.”

  He shrugged. “Forgive me for not taking your word for that. You consort with wendigos. I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t some trick of theirs to tempt us into war, using you as a pawn. They aren’t above using humans that way. Besides, we could see you talking—it didn’t look like you were about to be killed.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She’s the kind of vampire who likes to play with her food, that’s all. Lots of taunting and mocking. You didn’t overhear any of it?”

  He shook his head. That was a relief.

  “But, no, not a tric
k. The Scullens like the treaty. They’re living as much like humans as they can. I mean, come on.” I gestured. “It’s not like you guys aren’t monsters.”

  “We are not monsters. We are the cure for monsters. At least, some of us are. I wondered if Joachim might—Oh, my.” He pointed, and I turned to look.

  Joachim was awake, struggling to his feet… but as he rose, he also changed. His clothes shredded as his muscles bugled and expanded, and black hair sprouted all over him. His face elongated, teeth popping into existence like pimples after a teenage pizza party, and he snarled and growled, then ran toward Gretchen, who was, amazingly, still struggling, even though the bits of her that were still struggling were separated by some distance.

  I whistled. “Joachim, too? He’s a were-bear?”

  “The first change is brought on by anger and rage in the presence of the wendigo,” he said. “He has been around wendigo before—seen them in town—but never with such hatred and anger toward them as he feels now.” He sighed. “I should have prepared him better. I tried to tell him, but he never believed me. I might have shown him, but I am his father. I did not want him to look upon me as a beast. It will take some time to teach him to control his powers. It will be some time before he can see a wendigo without automatically beginning to transform.”

  “That would be awkward if he ran into Edwin at the grocery store,” I said. I covered my mouth and yawned. “Think someone can give me a ride home? I don’t want Harry to worry about me.”

  Willy stared at me. “You have ice water in your veins, Bonnie Grayduck. You should have been born a boy—you could have been a mighty warrior.”

  “Sexist much?” I said. “I can be anything I want, and don’t you forget it.”

  “And yet you choose to be a consort of monsters.”

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m grateful to you. I am. But Edwin… he’s not what you think. He’s actually good.”

  “He is an evil thing,” Willy said. “By nature. But I will concede that, to you, he might sometimes seem to do good. Just be careful, Bonnie. Hasn’t this brush with death given you pause? Shown you how dangerous your relationship with the Scullens can be?”

  I nodded. It had shown me that. It had shown me that I needed to become a vampire so I could protect myself, without worrying about some big hairy guys coming to help me.

  “I’ll get one of the young men to drive you home,” Willy said. “Obviously, it’s best if you don’t mention any of this to your father.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. Tell Joachim to call me when he’s, ah, recovered, okay?” Joachim was busily batting what remained of Gretchen’s head around on the sand. Vampires in movies often turn to dust, but in real life, they just turn into rotten meat, like anybody does. At Willy’s dark look, I dredged up a dazzling smile despite my exhaustion. “Come on. Joachim must be a good influence on me, right? Keep him in my life, maybe he’ll offset the bad influence of Edwin.”

  “I can only hope,” Willy said. “At least tonight we rid the world of one of these horrible parasites.”

  “Wendigo,” I said, looking at Gretchen’s twitching remains. “Wendigoing. Wendigone.”

  SLAYERS ASSEMBLE

  NARRATOR

  “Heckfire,” Stevie Ray said wearily. “Harry’s daughter is friendly with the undead? And she knows what they are?”

  “She does,” Willy confirmed, shifting in his armchair. A terrible thumping and roaring sounded somewhere out behind the house, like a great beast was trying to escape from one of the sheds, but Willy didn’t seem bothered by it, so Stevie Ray did his best to avoid worrying, too. “Harry doesn’t.”

  “Well, let’s keep it that way,” Stevie Ray said. He yawned. “Sorry. Was out in the woods most of the day, looking for Gunther’s remains.” He sighed. “I guess this vampire girl you all, ah, dispatched was the one who killed him?”

  “One of them,” Willy said. “We think there were at least two other wendigos in the forest with her. The others may have moved on, or they may still be present.” He shrugged. “The girl, at least, had a personal problem with Edwin Scullen—who, I might remind you, is the one who broke our treaty by straying onto our lands not so long ago. What if he has other enemies? What if they come? Accepting for the moment the dubious claim that the Scullens and Scales are themselves harmless, the same cannot be said of the rest of their kind. What if this Gretchen’s friends decide they need to come get revenge?”

  Stevie Ray squinted into the fire. He hated fireplaces. They were a darned inefficient way to heat a house. Central heat was best, but even a good woodstove did the job a lot better than an open fire. “Then we’re screwed, I guess. Unless you’re willing to foreswear your treaty and attack.”

  “No. The treaty holds. I’d rather avoid war, if I can. But my business, really, is Pres du Lac. The people of Lake Woebegotten might want to make… other arrangements.”

  Stevie Ray cleared his throat. “Um. Like what?”

  “I know about your Interfaith Vampire Slayers,” he said. “Father Edsel comes out occasionally to try and convert us heathens, you know, and to buy tax-free pipe tobacco, and we got to talking once. He was ranting about unclean monsters and so on, and I realized he knew more than most people do about the creatures in our midst. So we felt each other out a bit, conversationally, and, well. He told me that you told him—about the wendigos, and about my people. I’d be hurt at the betrayal of confidence, Stevie Ray, if I hadn’t learned a long time ago to never trust the white man.”

  Stevie Ray looked at his hands, which were just as dark as usual, but refrained from pointing out that he wasn’t, in fact, the white man, and that historically the white man hadn’t done so good by his people, either, because Willy was right—Stevie Ray had betrayed a confidence. “I was afraid, that’s all,” he said. “I wanted to have some, well, totally human allies in case things got ugly between your people and theirs.”

  Willy waved his hand. “I understand. All I can say is: gather your troops. Be prepared. There may be more bloodshed. I’ll help all I can.”

  Another thump, and an ear-splitting roar. “Forgive me,” Stevie Ray said. “It’s none of my business, but, ah…”

  “My son,” Willy said. “He went through the change for the first time tonight. It always takes a long time to come down, the first time.” He sighed. “And I thought living through that boy’s puberty was hard.”

  LOVE CONQUERS SOME

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK

  “You are a brave, wonderful, suicidally stupid, diplomatic-incident-causing, amazing woman,” Edwin said, kissing my face all over. We were in my bed, two nights after Gretchen’s very timely demise. He’d only been back for about ten minutes, and he’d already called me names, clutched me to his bosom, sobbed a bit, brooded a fair amount, and proclaimed his love in a fairly operatic fashion. He’d finally settled down to snuggling me in bed, which was rather less exhausting.

  “I hope Pleasance will forgive me,” I said. “I haven’t heard from her since I got back, and the look on her face when I showed up at my own front door… she was so upset. I wanted to tell her, but I was afraid—I thought Gretchen had Harry, you know?”

  “I do. I understand. And so does Pleasance—once she realized what you’d done, and why, she was very understanding. Rosemarie thinks you’re a tactical genius, by the way. She doesn’t like you, don’t get me wrong, but she respects you, now.”

  Drat. I was hoping she’d keep thinking I was a dimwitted love-struck girl—that would have made taking her by surprise and killing her someday a lot easier. But oh well. I’d been forced to give up some of my nice-girl camouflage in the course of saving my own life. “Still, Argyle is… uncomfortable… with the way you brought the tribal elders into all this. Their were-forms have been dormant for a long time, and now that they’re active again, triggered by their encounter with Gretchen… He thinks the treaty will hold, but when they’re in their beastly shapes, their hatred for us can be difficu
lt for them to contain. Not unlike we vampires, when the bloodlust is upon us, I suppose.”

  “They helped me,” I said. “Even though they know I’m close with you. I think you don’t give them enough credit. But then, I know they don’t give you enough credit. I can’t help but think it could be worked out if you could sit down and talk a while.”

  “The fact that if they get angry in our presence they turn into giant bears makes negotiating a bit fraught,” Edwin said. “I think our current state of détente is the best we can hope for.” He nuzzled me.

  “Are you sorry Gretchen’s dead?” I asked. “I know you must have cared for her, once.”

  He sighed. “Gretchen was… passionate. Fiery. She had a lot of appeal to me at one point in my life, but she was, hmm, all sizzle, no steak? There was nothing there, underneath—just emptiness, need, hunger. Even when she was alive. That became magnified when she turned. She was intolerable, really. I regret what she did to herself, what she became, but no, I wouldn’t say I miss her. The woman I cared about never actually even existed. She only pretended to be what you truly are, Bonnie: my truest of true true loves.”

  Given that my entire life is a series of carefully constructed masks, that was kind of funny, but the thing was, I loved Edwin, as well as I could, as much as I was able, more than I’d ever imagined loving anyone else—so I’d keep on the mask he saw when he looked at me forever, if I had to. Maybe eventually it would become my true face.

  “So this vampire who turned Gretchen,” I said, trying to sound only vaguely interested. “Is that something you guys do? Turn people in exchange for cash or prizes?”

  “Vampires are like people. Some of us are monstrous and avaricious. I’m not acquainted with the one who turned her. It wasn’t either of the ones she traveled with, at any rate. I gather he lives back east, somewhere.”