Wolf's Gambit

by W. D. Gagliani

  Today he rode past the Sokowski household twice, camera in hand, until on the third pass he ran full-tilt into a brick wall.

  A brick wall by the name of Leo.

  “What the fuck you doin’ hangin’ out here?” His steel-brace arms had grabbed Nick’s handlebars like bull’s horns.

  “Huh,” Nick stammered, flustered. This was not going according to plan.

  “I said what the fuck you doin’ here, you little fuckwad!”

  Leo’s tiny pig eyes glowered at Nick from inside rings of fat. Nick’s tongue stuck to his palate as he felt the bike vibrate under him, and he couldn’t find a single sound to make.

  “Shit, who cares?” Leo twisted his body and shook Nick off the bike like a bug flicked off a table.

  Nick hit the cracked asphalt and felt the uneven chunks poke him painfully through his T-shirt. He tried to scoot backward, but met resistance there, too.

  It was one of the other Leos, a carbon-copy bully in a compact bulldozer body, standing behind him like an immovable object. Before he could manage to scoot away, a booted foot caught his lower spine.

  Needle-sharp screaming knives jabbed between his vertebrae. Before he could scream, another jackboot evened out the pain by hitting the opposite side.

  The breath wooshed out of Nick.

  In front of him, Leo approached. He tossed the bike aside like a balsa wood toy. His body was impossibly wide.

  “What the—” Smash. “Fucking hell—” Smash. “Are you—” Smash. “Doing here?” Smash.

  The camera went flying.

  Leo Two picked it up. “Looky here!” He spiked it to the curb like a football.

  “No!” Nick shouted, but it was too late. The borrowed Polaroid exploded into a hundred pieces. Something sharp bounced back and gouged a bloody furrow in one cheek. He hardly felt it.

  Leo One’s open-handed slap rocked him next.

  Before he could recover, Leo slapped again with his entire weight behind the blow. Nick went over on his side and landed on the bike. Then he scrabbled, trying to disentangle himself and find enough purchase to get to his feet. But a jackboot kick in the side flattened him. Then both Leos rained kicks on him, mostly missing and scraping, but drawing some blood. The bruises would come later.

  Nick retreated into himself. The Creature howled with rage, waiting to be released from its cage. Its paws waited to pounce, its jaws to tear and shred. But it was the human who could unlock the cage.

  Had Leo One and Leo Two stopped their fusillade of kicks and looked carefully, they might have seen patches of hair sprout on their victim’s hands and arms, on his legs, on his back. They might have seen his eyes change unaccountably from their usual hazel to a clear, bright cold blue—and back again.

  Nick no longer felt pain, but he did feel the Creature in there with him. Though the Leos’ attack was thuggish and unsophisticated, he’d be sore for a week, and his face would resemble a lump of meat. The Creature gave up its struggle to emerge, and everything was reduced to the painful smashing of boots and fists into flesh and bone.

  Leo One and Two soon tired, leaving him on the sidewalk to crawl away painfully.

  Later, Frank Lupo would take a belt to Nick’s buttocks. Punishment first for stupidly allowing himself to be drawn into a fight, and second for having lost. Then silence reigned for a week in the Lupo house hold.

  From the Journals of Caroline Stewart

  October 1979

  After Nick showed me the videotape, we devised a way for me to witness an actual Change. Nick was adamant that we provide for my safety, because he said this Creature inside was a monster that would harm me, no matter how important to him I may be.

  My theory is that Nick has control over his Change. I hope to prove it to him. First, we decided to do things his way.

  We bought a hunter’s tree stand at a hunting supply store. How horrible—killing those beautiful, defenseless animals! Nick reminded me that his wolf side hunts, too.

  We drove to Kettle Moraine, where virgin woods cover the glacial hills, and set up the tree stand, knowing the full moon would rise later. Nick’s behavior changed as the hour approached. I saw hair grow and bristle along portions of his body. He almost shimmered at times, like a TV picture about to turn fuzzy. His voice broke into soft growls. I saw how frightened he was to finally show me this monstrous side of which he was so afraid.

  I reassured him, but his mood darkened. I was no longer sure whether I was dealing with the loving Nick or his Creature.

  It occurred to me that I might be dealing with an extreme case of multiple personality syndrome. God knew he fit the profile. Sometimes he reminded me of my brother, who is able to turn off and on various personality traits according to need. I’ve seen Martin fool a room of experts and beat proven diagnostic tests, so I know it can be done.

  But Nick exhibited signs of other, more complex personality disorders—could lycanthropy explain them?

  He became afflicted with an all-over itch. I’d retreated to the safety of the tree stand, while he sat in a lawn chair below. Suddenly he stood and began stripping off his clothes. He waited, naked and shivering. The moonlight approached. Shadows passed over his exposed skin. At first I wasn’t sure what this was, but then it hit me—it was rapid hair growth, like time-lapse photography.

  The air shimmered around Nick’s body for a split second, and then, without any horror movie special effects, Nick the human simply ceased—and in his place stood a gigantic black wolf.

  I felt so faint I might have slid right off my tree stand if I hadn’t hugged the branch.

  The wolf turned his snout to the rising moon and howled. Long and tragic and somehow painful. Then he turned to me, his eyes glowing with a ferocious, hellish fire. Long rows of fangs lined his jaws and gleamed in the light. I knew that Nick was not in control.

  He was right. If I’d been standing on the forest floor, he would have lunged for my throat.

  He—the Creature—howled again, then turned his head as if hearing a voice no one else could hear, and then he was gone, bounding out of the tiny clearing in chase of some rustling animal, prey that he soon brought down.

  I heard growling, tearing, and the terrible sound of those huge jaws grinding raw meat and swallowing, lapping at blood, tearing some more. Then he howled, and my blood truly ran cold. For the first time ever, I knew what the phrase meant.

  He abandoned the remains of his first prey of the night, scurrying between the pines to hunt and kill again, more raw meat for his insatiable appetite. For hours I listened as he roamed the area, free and happy under the moon’s influence, his hunger slowly being sated by the sacrificial offerings of the night forest.

  I realized I still grasped the camera with which I’d planned to capture his Change. I had done nothing. I was more afraid than I’d ever expected.

  I wondered how we were going to deal with Nick’s condition. Fate had already ascribed him a role, and there would be no changing it now.

  From the Journals of Caroline Stewart

  October 1979 (Additional note)

  I’m reluctant to write this, but I feel I must be honest in my assessment of Nick. I have lately started to see a willfulness about him, an immature quality whereby the Creature sometimes comes to the fore, unhappy with being thwarted. Like a temper tantrum, but one much more potentially violent, led by the wolf within. It leads him along until his temper explodes. But later Nick can see that the Creature cannot always have its way. It’s a little disturbing, this new personality trait.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Prey: Alfred Calling

  Contemplating the amount of golden liquid left in the bottle, he decided he could stand another small one. Maybe two.

  Dad would have been proud. The bottle chugged merrily as he filled the glass. Living out your life like a drunken Indian.

  He drank deeply, appreciating the burn and the taste. Certainly the burn.

  There were a lot of reasons to drink, he reflected. He’d changed
his name to better fit into the white man’s world. He’d undermined his own culture, his own people, his own pride. Built a career out of distancing himself from his roots. And then, when that clown Blackthorn tracked him down, the disgraced son of a famed elder, he’d bribed him to return and reclaim his place in the tribe.

  We need your vote, Blackthorn said.

  And the payment was just too good to resist for a washedup lawyer recently disbarred after being caught accepting bribes and kickbacks from clients and anyone who needed something.

  He turned to stare at the living room, the creamy white leather sectional, the creamy young hooker sprawled on the sofa, where he had just fucked her brains out.

  Granted she hadn’t shown many signs of brain activity, except for the myriad ways she had taken his dick. She snorted in her sleep, sexy mouth half-open, matted hair a tangled mess.

  It was very nice, coming home to this.

  He grinned at the pretty young thing. He liked his women attractive, none of that “great body, not much of a face” stuff for him. He had expensive tastes. She was over all the way from Appleton, a convention town, and she liked high rollers even if they were in the boonies. He was willing to pay for her trouble getting here and pay well.

  Almost time to wake her up again and make her earn that money.

  Alfred Calling swirled the brandy—a Wisconsin thing, drinking brandy—then downed it. Maybe one more after all.

  Then more sex. He was Viagra-ready.

  He was already naked, unmindful of the floor-to-ceiling glass along two walls of the living room, and the French doors on the third wall. He hadn’t bothered to close the vertical blinds. The house was nestled in a deep thicket just barely within reservation land, part of a development still half-empty because hardly anyone who lived on the rez could afford it. But Alfred lived here for free, part of his payment for selling out his vote. The promised percentage he’d rake in from the new casino would keep him in the style to which he was accustomed.

  The hooker woke up when he shoved his dick in her slack mouth.

  “Time to roll, baby,” he growled. She didn’t argue. Instead, she purred and started to prove her worth.

  As he got busy between her plump lips, Alfred heard ragged knocking coming from one of the glass walls. “What the fuck?”

  Before he could pull out to investigate, there was knocking from the other glass wall.

  “Hey, baby, you hear that?”

  She nodded but didn’t stop. Good girl.

  “Well, shit, what’s going on?” He didn’t have neighbors who’d come calling at this hour. He stepped away from her—very reluctantly—and turned to look through the glass. Didn’t see anyone. Ditto the other wall.

  Then there was knocking from the French doors. Loud, irregular knocking.

  “This is ridiculous!” he barked. “Wait right here, sweetie. I’ll be right back.”

  She pouted at him but turned to look in the direction of the strange new knocking.

  He was only halfway to the desk drawer in which he had stashed a gun when one of the glass walls shattered inward with a shower of jagged shards. Something catapulted inside, a black blur.

  Alfred stopped in shock, then dove for the desk just as the other wall burst and a second dark form crashed through.

  He gaped at the scene, scrabbling inside the drawer for his SIG.

  The woman screamed, covering herself, her eyes bulging.

  The French doors blew in and another four-footed shape barreled into the living room.

  Alfred aimed at the two wolves who advanced on him, still trying to process what was happening.

  Whoever heard of wolves breaking into a house?

  He fired over and over, the blasts loud in the house, emptying the magazine. He had always been good with guns (at least one thing for which his father was proud of him), and he knew he had scored with every single 9mm slug.

  Yet the beasts approached as if he’d missed entirely.

  The SIG’s slide locked and the gun fell silent.

  The wolves grinned at him, and he threw the useless pistol at them and started to run, his feet sliced to ribbons on the broken glass.

  They caught him before he reached the window and brought him down hard, like a deer.

  The woman suddenly lunged off the couch and made for the door, but the black wolf who had crashed through the French doors caught her before she got very far, clamping his jaws on her fleshy thighs and sending her tumbling to the floor.

  In less than a minute, the human whimpers were replaced by the sounds of frenzied feeding.

  Dickie Klug

  The rear of the house was mostly glass. The pines extended almost up to the tiny strip of grass that passed for a backyard.

  He settled into his post with a soft groan. The years, the arthritis, the weight—they were all taking their toll.

  He sprayed himself carefully, covering his clothes and exposed skin, then dug into the army surplus backpack for the goggles. He fitted the harness over his head and positioned the unit. He was ready for the stakeout.

  After slipping a wad of minty tobacco into his cheek, he resprayed his clothes and the air around him, making himself the center of a protective circle.

  The tenants were gone, but for how long?

  He made himself as comfortable as he could in the slight depression he’d scratched out with his folding shovel.

  Then he settled down to wait.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lupo

  1977

  Psychological wounds always heal more slowly. In Nick’s case, when August began he was better physically and back in his father’s good graces, but inside he knew he had changed.

  He rarely saw Beth Ann, and when he did she seemed to move in a haze. The free spirit who sunbathed nude was gone.

  He saw Leo once or twice on his street, but kept his distance. Leo was skulking around Beth Ann.

  Fuck. Bastard’s probably told all his friends about how he beat me to a pulp.

  Nick bided his time, watching the calendar.

  Inside, the Creature paced as if locked up behind a gate. As sure as he was of breathing, Nick knew the Creature wanted revenge.

  Wanted to rip and tear and devour.

  Nick wondered how long the Creature would wait. The next full moon? He also wondered how long he could keep the Creature occupied and muzzled. For the first time, it occurred to him that he might be able to control the Creature and perhaps communicate with it, even though he considered it alien to himself.

  Meantime, he spoke to his surviving Polaroids of the jerk after tacking them inside his closet door where his mother wouldn’t see them.

  It started out simple: “I’ll get you for this!”

  But in less than a week, he was unleashing a monologue of grievances every time he stared at the blurry photos of Leo.

  Inside, the Creature stirred.

  But that wasn’t possible in the middle of the lunar cycle, was it? Though the gnawing feeling deep in the pit of his stomach was familiar enough—it was how the Creature felt upon its release in the woods, the scent of rabbit in its nostrils.

  The gnawing was uncomfortable, but not enough to make him stop raining all his hate and disgust on Leo’s picture.

  When the full moon finally came, Nick’s anger was at high pitch. Leo had cost Nick the fantasy of becoming friendly with Beth Ann.

  Now Nick waited to see what the Creature would do.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dickie Klug

  The night’s chill had settled into his bones by then, but he was dressed for it. His filthy camouflage jumpsuit emulated the shoots of still-bare branches. His night goggles gave everything a greenish glow. He was still waiting for the tenants to make an appearance. He stared down at his notebook, the childish block printing laying out the people’s peculiar schedule.

  Dickie wondered for the hundredth time if he was wasting his time here. He was an expert house breaker, used to raiding closed-up houses in the
off-season, liberating just enough valuables to keep himself in sausage, donuts, and beer year-round. He’d learned part of the trade from his dear departed cousin, Wilbur Klug. This particu lar house had been a fat target on his list a long time, but had been rented (rented!) and occupied just when he’d expected to go in and remove the big-screen TV he’d spied through the window, not to mention some stereo components. He knew a fence down in Antigo who specialized in audio crap.

  He’d crossed the house off his list, but had returned because he couldn’t stop thinking how fat the take was. He’d have rent money for his dump for a year if he hit the place now, even though it went against his number one rule: never raid an occupied house. But his number two rule was: don’t let a fuckin’ good thing slip through your fingers. Rule number two overruled rule number one.

  The tenants were some kinda rich transients. He’d heard them discuss real estate. He’d kept an eye on the house on and off, waiting to see the three weirdos load up their vehicles and get the fuck outta Dodge.

  Any day now.

  He was good at his trade. No one suspected him of the careful break-ins that often went unnoticed for months and then unreported.

  But this one was different.

  He figured the tenants for ex-military. Maybe brothers and a son, or a younger brother. Definitely not gay. He’d been ready to B&E once, but then he saw a bunch of dogs running loose. Not fuckin’ poodles, either.

  Big-ass dogs. Shepherds maybe. He couldn’t tell from a distance. He was grateful he always used human scent neutralizer. He bought Ghost by the case and it practically paid for itself.

  These dogs could tear him to shreds. Even from afar, they were oversized, muscular, intimidating. They weren’t around now.

  He wondered if tonight was his night.

  No one home. And no dogs.

  Fuckin’ A.