by Dan O'Brien
Lauren nodded. Her tongue felt numb. This affected the way she spoke, drawing a chuckle from the guide. “Then how does a human become a creature? What about the man who desires to become a creature?”
Hecate shushed her. “Quiet, child, let me continue. I have to finish the story. Then you can ask questions. For many years, werewolves lived in relative peace with their human counterparts, secluded far from temptation. Then industry swept the world bringing the light of the city into every corner and mountaintop and soon, they could hide no more. For you see, the bite of a werewolf is dangerous.”
Lauren’s eyes swam dreamily.
“I thought you said it was about the sex, not the bite.”
Hecate cast a dark glare upon the agent. “The bite does not change man to werewolf. It is far more cunning than that. Nature chose a very specific consequence. The werewolf produces a toxin which it releases when it bites its prey. Though meant for simpler animals, it works equally well in humans.”
“A toxin?”
Hecate nodded. “It causes madness. The prey goes insane, running into holes, hiding and screaming, drawing the predator to it. When a man is bitten the result is catastrophic. Disassociation with reality sets in, often manifested by violence and hatred toward other humans and a dreadful attraction to violence and lust. There is a story of a man bitten in ancient Greece who roamed the streets, maiming and killing those engaged in orgies and decadent behavior.”
Lauren sat back into her chair, her sense of reality altering with each passing second. The walls seemed to crawl, bleeding a plethora of colors, pastels, and brilliant shades.
“Bitten? My killer was bitten?”
“When someone is bitten, darkness takes over. This violence that has overtaken your killer will consume him. He will scar himself, mutilate himself. It will not end until he is no more. There will be much more death to come, Agent Westlake. You must be ready.”
Lauren felt as if the world was coming back into focus, but she knew she was under the thrall of something. Her skin felt wonderful. Touching it with her slender fingers created a lingering euphoria that made her smile.
“What about the werewolf?”
Hecate laughed and her voice rose, filling the shack. “You pursued him this night. He will be around, Agent Westlake. But for now you must stop the man, for he grows ever more powerful. Ever more bold. Much death is coming.”
Westlake pushed herself from the plush recline of the chair and blinked her eyes. She attempted to will away the strange sensation that had overtaken her body, but could not so easily part with the unique window through which she was viewing the world. The shack seemed to rise around her, things that did not speak taking on voices and whispering to her secrets in a language she could not understand.
“What is happening?” She felt sick to her stomach.
Hecate closed the book and placed it beside her amidst the leaning towers of antiquities. She stood and walked to where Lauren leaned against the wall, her hands clutching her stomach. “Sometimes it takes a poor course. The tea transports you, but often the return voyage is not as smooth.”
Lauren collapsed, her knees giving way. She rolled onto her back and the world fell silent. Watching the door of the shack open, she saw the heavy boots of Montgomery enter and another form farther in the distance watching; it was a shadow on the night.
Chapter XI
Lauren groaned as she rolled over, touching her head with a clammy, cold hand. The light of the cloudy day was deceiving. Gray, bruised skies announced the full touch of winter, unyielding, unrelenting. Her groan intensified as she tried to push to a sitting position, back against the baseboard of her hotel bed.
Looking down, she saw she was still completely clothed. Mud and snow caked the floor around her and the sheets and comforter were drawn in fitful mountains of her making. The heater kicked on, a low rumbling that blew stuffy, but warm air across her cold body.
The night before was foggy.
Closing her eyes, she recalled going to the murder scene and then pursuing something into the woods. And then she saw the guide, the damned witch who spiked her drink. “Teach me to take tea from strangers,” she grumbled, throwing back a tuft of blankets she had drawn with her into the sitting position.
Her gun was on the nightstand, holstered and dull-colored as always. The socks she wore were dry, but they had the feeling like they had been wet not so long ago, a stiffness about them that was irritating. With a few quick steps, she pulled open the bathroom door and closed it. The tile floor was unforgiving and she was quick to remove her socks and leap into the shower with a deft move.
Turning on the faucet, steam rose as heat and the cold air of the hotel room collided. Sitting down into the slowly rising water, she pulled her hair into a bun. Twisting it in her hand, she used it as pillow.
Grabbing the hotel bath crystals, a generic excuse for something extraordinary, she dumped them in. A fizzle and bubble later, the water seemed lathered with a viscous substance that smelled of a thousand manufactured scents.
A sigh gave way to alleviation of the pressure in her skull, though not completely. She was quite certain that she had vomited, perhaps even twice though the details remained fuzzy. The woman, Hecate, had been helpful, if in a crude, intrusive way.
“A man trying to become a monster and a monster desiring to be a man,” she muttered. Sighing again, she lowered her body so that only her knees were above the steaming water and part of her long hair dipped into the bubbly pond.
A thought crossed her mind: she wished she had grabbed her gun on her way to the bath. It was quickly chased away by the comfort and stability of the warm deluge. The water sloshed back and forth as she raised a leg out or turned this way or that, bringing small, childish smiles to her face. The shack remained in her mind, the strange drawings on the wall and the story that the odd woman had told.
“Werewolves,” she whispered, flicking water with just a sliver of her fingers. “Bitten. A man bitten would exhibit violence. He would be attracted to sex and violence.”
She traced her fingers around in the water. The case was beginning to form. She had an idea of what was coming; maybe, even what to expect. Case files from decades past must have been other people bitten by werewolves, creating schizophrenic serial killers.
How very movie of the week, she thought.
The hair raised on the back of her neck as she thought she heard the door handle move. Holding her breath, she listened carefully and cursed her lack of foresight for not bringing her weapon into the bathroom with her.
This time the sound was more pronounced.
Carefully extricating herself from the bathtub, she wrapped a towel around her body in a smooth movement and peeked out the bathroom door. The handle was indeed moving. The deadbolt had been engaged, so there was a clear moment at some point in the hours before she woke up where she had thought to lock the door.
Moving across the room on her tiptoes, she pulled the gun from its holster and walked toward the door very slowly. Grabbing the door hand with her free hand, she held it so it could not be turned.
“Agent Westlake?” called the sheriff’s muffled voice from the other side of the door.
She shrugged her shoulders, the tension melting from them in a quick movement. “Hold on a moment, sheriff,” she called and then went about dressing quicker than she had ever done. When she opened the door a moment later, her wild hair was damp on the bottom and her blouse un-tucked. The black pants she wore were wrinkled and her jacket was thrown over a chair at the far side of the room.
She stepped away from the door to sit on the bed and grabbed one of her shoes roughly. “Quite a night, sheriff. Mind filling me in on the details that I missed.”
Montgomery closed the door quietly and held his hands behind his back, clearly uncomfortable. “Quite a night, indeed. How are you feeling? You took a pretty nasty fall at the shack and the old woman said the effects might linger.”
“Effects of the
fall?”
He chuckled, picking up the Locke phonebook, which was basically a glorified pamphlet. “The tea. She said that it may take many days for it wear off completely. There may be a resurgence of what she called awareness.”
Lauren laced up the second shoe and stood up, pressing her feet down to get them comfortable. “That’s fantastic, exactly what I need. I’m going to be high for the next couple of days while I try to catch a psychopath who has been bitten by something out of a horror movie.”
Montgomery put down the phone book and walked across the room. “You were babbling about some strange things last night when I was taking you home. Something about werewolves and monsters that hide in men, it was strange shit to be honest. It spooked me a little bit.”
Grabbing her jacket, she wrapped it around her shoulders. Weapon and holster tucked away and thick coat in place, she pointed at the door. “Breakfast and some coffee, and then we talk about Hecate and the shack.”
THE LAST CHANCE DINER ON the corner of 1st and Wallace was truly the only family restaurant in town. It catered to the mill worker and as well the truck driver crowd who managed the twenty-four hour layover in the sleepy, frost-ridden town.
Windows embodied the square building. Chipped paint spelled out specials. Local heroes adorned the windows, obfuscating the patrons from outside scrutiny.
Montgomery and Westlake sat at a back booth.
Orange cushioning with black stitching had seen better days, but the heater was working and the waitress was quick to return to refill the coffee. Middle-aged with long black hair and gray-streaked bangs, the nametag read: Phyllis. She wore black-framed glasses that made her appear a sexy librarian more than a woman unhappy with her station in life.
“Sheriff Montgomery. Agent Westlake. You decided what you want, hey? Beyond the coffee that is,” charmed Phyllis, her bright red lipstick comical for eight o’clock in the morning. Though to be fair, she had probably worked through the night and was getting ready to end the shift with a burly, trucker-hat-wearing roughneck from the crowd.
Lauren smiled sweetly despite the nagging pulse in her mind that seemed to want to hammer its way out. “I think I will have the fruit bowl with some dry toast.”
Montgomery smiled broadly, laying down his menu with authority. “Phyllis, you look as radiant as a spring morning,” he began. She snickered and batted her eyelashes. “I think I will have Last Chance Breakfast with extra gravy, darling, and how about an orange juice as well. I like that tart bite in the morning.”
She collected the menus and smiled at Montgomery.
“I like a tart bite in the morning too, sheriff.”
Lauren watched the waitress go with a bemused twist of her lips. “Looks like you have a little thing going on with Ms. Phyllis of the Last Chance Diner. Might be serious,” she joked.
Montgomery poured a creamer into his coffee and stirred it slowly. “Afraid not, just some harmless flirting. Phyllis is kind enough to indulge me.”
“What are you talking about? You are a handsome older man, sheriff. Not my type, mind you, but certainly enough to be the apple of some lucky woman’s eye. Phyllis seemed genuinely interested. Can’t imagine why you would say such a thing?”
“It’s complicated, Agent Westlake,” he replied, continuing to stir his coffee.
Lauren was intrigued now. She pushed aside her coffee and laid her hands on the table. “Complicated? How is it complicated?”
Montgomery lifted the spoon from his coffee and took a sip, making a sucking sound through his teeth as he set it down again. “My wife died about four years back. We were high school sweethearts, loved her through those final moments. Love her still.”
Lauren felt a stab of sadness in heart. She touched his hand gingerly. “I am so sorry for prying. And for your loss. It was…”
Montgomery smiled and held up a hand for her to stop. “It is alright, Agent Westlake. Sometimes it is nice to talk about her. It hurts, yeah. But, then I remember all the wonderful things like they were happening all over again.”
Lauren sat back into her seat and smiled sadly as Phyllis returned and laid the toast and fruit bowl in front of her. “You still wear your ring. I am so sorry.”
He waved her away yet again.
“Alice was a beautiful woman. Probably too beautiful for a dope like me, but she loved me anyways. She went away to college when we were just kids, but we wrote each other all the time. And then after a time we married. Greatest years of my life spent with her. More than most people can say I guess.”
Westlake grabbed a slice of honeydew melon and chewed it slowly.
“Cancer took her. Long battle, the end was hard. Those years were the most important because I was there for her. Just me, kids grown up, moved away. I mean they came and visited their mom, but they had lives and children. This was our battle, you see. And we fought to the end. The bitter end,” he continued somberly.
Lauren could not find the words to console the sheriff, so she did the only thing she could think of: change the subject. “I think we need to rethink what we are tracking here in Locke,” she began, clearing her throat as she took a bite of the dry toast.
Montgomery nodded excessively, fighting back emotion. His voice cracked as he spoke. “Right. Right. What you learned from the woman in the shack, the business about a man trying to become a monster.”
Lauren gestured with the toast. “She said that there were two forces at work, someone who was bitten by a werewolf and a werewolf here in Locke.”
“And you believed her?” he queried, taking a sip from his coffee.
“You saw that thing on the road. That was not a bear. It was a werewolf.”
Montgomery nodded begrudgingly. “Let us assume for a moment that creature was a werewolf. Why didn’t it kill us there in the road? And why are there not two were-whatever running amok?”
She took a sip of the coffee as well and grimaced, reaching for raw sugar. “Hecate, the woman at the shack, said that werewolves are born, not turned like in pop lore. When a werewolf bites someone it releases a virulent toxin that has psychogenic properties. Our killer was bitten and believes he is becoming a werewolf. He is mutilating and maiming to make himself the monster his twisted mind has come to believe he is.”
It was the sheriff’s turn to grimace. “That’s a truly gruesome thought. We start looking for hospital admissions for wolf bites or large animal bites?”
Dumping in the sugar, she stirred her coffee. “Precisely, this had to have been recent given the prevalence and proximity of the murders. Do you recall any strange killing of animals or reports of animal attacks in the past couple of weeks?”
He shrugged, status quo restored. “It is possible. We have the occasional bear that walks onto someone’s property, but something that big doesn’t usually leave survivors.”
Lauren nodded.
“What about strange visitors coming into town?”
He smirked.
“You mean other than you?”
She looked at him with a grin.
He looked out the window at the listless skies. “If we had anything unusual it would be in the reports back at the station. Off the top of my head, nothing comes to mind.”
The Last Chance Breakfast arrived: two thick, fluffy biscuits smothered in gray gravy, chunks of sausage swimming happily in it. Digging a fork into the center of one of the biscuits, the yolk of an egg oozed out, polluting the color of the gravy.
Shoveling a few heaping forkfuls into his mouth, he sighed contentedly. “I realize that a breakfast like this puts me on the fast track to a heart attack, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t ambrosia,” he marveled, sitting back and patting his belly. “Can’t ever seem to finish it though. Must have brought home a thousand of these and put them in the ‘fridge over the years.”
“Did we hear anything back from the morgue about wound kits or particulates from the bodies? Collins find anything new?”
Montgomery nodded, tapping a knuckle ag
ainst the table. “Yeah, she did indeed. The kit came back from central. She called about the results early this morning when you were still sleeping off your drug binge. Said we would want to see what the lab found.”
Lauren stood, gathering her coat and draining her cup of coffee. Montgomery looked at her lazily from the booth. Throwing down some bills on the table, Westlake marched across the restaurant much to the chagrin of the sheriff. Then groaning, he pushed himself from the seat and made his way toward the entrance.
Phyllis walked by, touching his forearm and smiling broadly. “See ya next time, sheriff, hey.”
He tipped his head and patted her hand.
“You bet, Ms. Phyllis. You can count on it.”
When Montgomery pushed open the door out into the frigid grip of the cold morning, he pulled his coat around his neck and face with a groan. Lauren had already begun the quick jaunt across the street toward the station.
Apparently, warming to the day would have to wait. Sauntering behind her, he watched as she crossed the street, ignoring the one traffic signal in town. Though in her defense, there was not a single car on the road at the moment. He picked up the pace to a brisk walk as she disappeared around an abandoned building near the morgue.
Chapter XII
The sheriff felt the warm air of the morgue heater hit his face and was glad for it. He imagined that Agent Westlake was already in the basement, tapping her foot and not bothering to wait to hear the news. Her tenacity was actually quite liberating for him. Cases of this magnitude did little but pour on stress and part of him was joyful for the relief.
Another part condemned him for being so lax and taking the back seat in his own jurisdiction. The above-ground floor of the morgue acted as a funeral home. There was a room devoted to caskets and all the décor that was involved. He approached the opaque glass door that led down in the basement and pulled it open with a quick tug.
The stairwell was poorly lit and the dark strips at the edge of each step squeaked each time his boot grazed them. Montgomery stuffed his hands into his pockets and hummed softly. He could hear Collins and Westlake already deep in conversation.