The Frenzy

by Francesca Lia Block

The third time I woke up it was Corey again. My mother still hadn’t come, at least not while I was conscious. It was night and the room was hushed and darkened. The air blew cool on my skin and my lips were parched.

  I reached for his arm with my right hand and pulled Corey to me. By the soft light from the window I could see there were tears in his eyes.

  “How could this have happened to me?” I sobbed.

  He kissed my face. “It’s going to be okay, baby.”

  “Okay?” I lifted my left arm. There was a fresh bandage on it now. “My hand! Corey! My hand.”

  “I know.” He held me and we wept together, so close that I couldn’t tell whose breath I heard—mine or his.

  I kept repeating, “What happened? What happened to me?”

  “I’ll be your hand,” Corey said.

  “But you’re leaving me!”

  “No, Liv. I’m not leaving. I’m not going to go anywhere without you.”

  “Where’s my mom?” Suddenly, in spite of what she had done I felt like a little girl again, wanting her presence, the smell of her perfume and the feeling of her hands combing my hair.

  But it was Corey who stroked my hair away from my forehead. “She’s been here. Your dad came, too. They won’t speak to me, though. I think they are trying to blame me for what happened. I wouldn’t have gotten in at all if my mom didn’t work here.”

  “Your mom knows?”

  “She knows I’ve been camping in the waiting room and I won’t go home without you.”

  “My hand,” I sobbed again. “Corey!” How could I live like this, a monster without a hand?

  “I know someone who can help,” he said.

  But I just wanted to sleep.

  When I woke the next morning—I thought it was the next morning but it could have been longer—Joe Ranger was standing over me, holding a silver hand.

  It looked just like the ones I’d seen in his shop but it gleamed—bright metal.

  “What the hell is that?” I yelped.

  “I brought you a present.” His lips curled into a small, worried smile.

  I remembered the newspaper articles in his room, the picture of me. I had trusted him once. “Get the fuck away!”

  “Liv, this will help you.”

  “Yeah, right. Help. I asked you for help before. You want to kill me. I know what you are and what you did. And I’m not stupid. I know a little about myself. I know what silver is supposed to do to them, to … me.”

  “Calm down, Livvy. I thought you could do this on your own. You’re getting there, mastering it, but this will make it easier. And it will protect you from your enemies.”

  “Get me Corey!”

  Joe sat at my bedside, holding the strange metal object and I writhed away from him.

  “You’re not right about any of those things you said.”

  “What things? That you want to kill me? That you’re a werewolf? That you’re the full moon killer?” I made my voice loud on purpose.

  “And you don’t know how important you are to me or why,” Joe went on, making his voice even quieter now.

  For some reason I didn’t scream. I guess I wanted to hear what he had to say and for some reason, as much as I was acting that way, I wasn’t entirely afraid of Joe Ranger. “That’s right. I don’t know. How should I know? Why do you keep my picture in your drawer? I trusted you. You were one of the only people I trusted.”

  “Liv,” he said. “I had a relationship with your mother before you were born. Do you understand?”

  I looked at Joe. His hair was red like mine. His eyes were green like mine. He had watched over me since I could remember. Like a father.

  “No!” I said. I’d heard enough. “Get him away!”

  The nurse came in. I knew her. Corey’s mom. “Core thought you’d be glad to see him.” She looked hard at Joe. “I think you need to leave now, Mr. Ranger.”

  He stood up and shook his head sadly.

  Then he put the silver hand down on the chair. And left.

  It shone eerily and I wondered if it could hurt me. And, at the same time, I wanted it.

  Joe Ranger was my father? My mother had slept with him? I tried to replay my whole life with this new knowledge. How my mother must have been so unhappy with my dad. I thought of them sleeping in their separate beds, hardly ever touching, never kissing. How my dad must have despised me because he knew on some level I wasn’t his, but how he took care of me as his own anyway. I could see his suspicious glances, the way hate flared in his eyes when he drank too much and I did something that upset him. How Joe Ranger had watched over me because I was his child. How hard it must have been for my mom to look at me with my red hair and green eyes. How she must have grown to hate any wildness—mine, the wolves’, Joe Ranger’s—because it reminded her of her own, what she could never really have or be.

  When Corey came back in I was crying again. “Baby?” He sat beside me. “I thought that would help. What happened?”

  “Silver, Corey.”

  He glanced down at the thing on the chair. It was skillfully crafted. It looked just like my hand, as if Joe had used the hand that was gone as a model.

  “Take it away!” I said.

  Corey frowned so a crease formed between his eyebrows. “Didn’t he explain it to you?”

  “He’s a freak, Corey. He’s dangerous. I know what he did.”

  “Wait, what are you talking about?”

  So I told Corey about the newspaper clippings in Joe’s room and how he had seen me leaving his place. How I thought he was one, like me. How I believed Sasha had bitten him, cursed him that way. He was the full moon killer. I was sure. Actually, I wasn’t sure I believed any of this but I needed to say it anyway, to distance Joe from me as much as possible. I didn’t tell Corey the other part—that Joe had told me he was my father. I didn’t want to say it out loud; it felt like too much to handle if I made it real with words.

  Corey shook his head no. “Listen, Liv. They know who did it. It wasn’t Joe.”

  “They know who did what?”

  “There was another killing that night. The night you hurt your … The night this happened to you.” He took my left arm and cradled it in his right, so gently. It was the first time he’d touched it. I didn’t flinch. This was Corey. He had seen me change. He could handle everything, even this.

  Then Corey told me about the off-duty police officers hunting in the woods; one, Jake Cunningham, had been killed and partially eaten that same night I’d frenzied. His friend had escaped and identified the murderer after spending the next night hunting for him in the woods with a posse of men.

  This friend was not someone you mess with. This friend was the chief of police.

  My father’s friend Jake Cunningham was dead. My father had somehow found Sasha’s cabin and now he had someone under arrest.

  “He’s been working on it nonstop. That’s probably why he hasn’t come here that much.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was the only reason why my father hadn’t come. I was already a burden to him, a reminder of everything that had gone wrong. Now I was something worse—a reminder of the violence and pain that existed beneath the surface of our lives.

  Corey took a newspaper out of his back pocket and showed me the picture. I recognized the light eyes, the thick dark hair with the thick sideburns and the lupine features.

  “It looks like he killed them all, for the last four years. Olaf’s dad, all of them.”

  “Victor,” I said, remembering that night on the road after Carl Olaf had reached down my shirt. Victor had read my mind that night. I had felt him rummaging inside my head when we met on the road. He had heard me tell Sasha that my father had hit me in the face and he had growled low in his throat. I had dreamed of him in my room and I was never sure if it was actually a dream. My diary had been open on my nightstand. Scattered through it were the names Dale Tamblin, Sadie Nelson and Sherry Lee. I had thought at first that Joe Ranger had come into my room but it was Vic
tor who had invaded my diary and my mind. He had said, “I am capable of many things. You could redeem me.” I hadn’t understood at the time. Was he talking of his ability to kill, and asking me to keep him from doing it again by taking him in my arms?

  I thought of Victor standing in my room and my whole body went cold.

  My father had even more reason to hate me now—I was, in part, the cause of his friend’s death.

  “Joe Ranger wants to help you,” said Corey. He leaned in closer, whispering, “The hand will keep you from changing if you wear it.”

  He reached over and held it like something very precious, like the part of my body that was no longer there. I couldn’t look away from what he held. But I couldn’t take it, either. If I did, then I would be fully acknowledging that my hand was gone, that my mother had shot it off, that I would never have a human hand with five ingeniously human fingers, not ever again. I would die and my skeleton arm would end in a stump.

  Also, if I took the hand, then I was fully accepting that Joe Ranger was more than a strange, kind man who had watched over me. He was the source of my mother’s pain. He was my father.

  I shuddered as I stared at the hand and then willed myself to look away from it. “Please, don’t.”

  “Okay, baby,” said Corey, stroking my head. “We’ll get you out of here first and we will figure out what to do.”

  When my mother came to the hospital I didn’t want her to comfort me the way I had imagined I would. She looked as if she had lost weight, her eyes were unfocused, as if she hadn’t been sleeping and her hair—this was the part that freaked me out the most, because I’d never seen it like this before, at least not out of the house—was a mess. She asked how I was but we hardly talked about what had happened. We hardly talked about anything at all. She mentioned the full moon murders once, how great it was that my dad had solved the case, how he was the big hero now. She also started to talk about things she was going to order from catalogs but I stopped her, saying I was feeling sick, and eventually she left.

  After one of these visits I called Corey and he came right over. He brought some wildflowers he had picked along the way and put them in an old apple juice bottle by my bed.

  “I need a plan now,” I said, after I had thanked him for the flowers. “I can’t go home with her.”

  He nodded. “I know. I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “But you’re about to leave for school.”

  “I told you, Liv, I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  “We can’t stay in this town,” I said. “It’s not even safe for us. I don’t know what Victor’s brothers will do now that he’s in prison.”

  “And your dad put him there. Believe me, I’ve been thinking about it.” Corey stroked my hair. “I’m going to take you with me. As soon as they release you I’m going to come get you and we’ll go.”

  “Where?”

  “East,” Corey told me. “Where the sun rises. Like we always planned.”

  I reached out for him and he leaned over and kissed my mouth. A warmth tingled through my body. I reached up with my left hand to touch Corey’s unshaven face, forgetting that there was nothing at the end of my arm. No hand, no miracle of fingers with their dexterity and sensitivity to sensations of hot and cold, smooth and rough. Tears again. It seemed like I was always crying now. Damn. I thought about the silver hand, so delicately crafted that it looked like something that could have been in a museum. Maybe I would let Corey strap it to my ruined stump. Maybe Corey and I still had a chance to be free.

  As if he could read my mind, Corey said, “The first night you’re home, at midnight, I’ll come for you.

  I’ll bring it with me.” He didn’t say “the silver hand” but I knew that was what he meant.

  My mother and father (the man I had always believed was my father, the one who looked nothing like me) finally brought me home. When we got home, that cool afternoon in September, as the students were arriving for school and the air smelled of wood smoke and dried leaves, all the TVs were on and my gramp was dozing in front of the big one in the living room. I looked around at the house full of television sets. Liquor bottles gleamed in the cabinets. The refrigerator was full of meat. Gossip magazines and catalogs were piled on all the tables. And everything was clean.

  It all seemed perfectly normal. Happy America. Except that I was a werewolf, my mother had shot off my hand and one of my father’s men had been brutally murdered. But no one would talk about it.

  “I’ve ordered you some cute new jeans and things for when school starts,” my mother said, holding up a catalog. I glared at her.

  “Cindy,” my dad said. “Not now.”

  She looked at him, surprised. “What, Jeff? She needs clothes.”

  My dad turned off the TV in front of Gramp. He stirred in his chair and made a wheezing sound.

  “Just not now.” My dad went to pour himself a scotch. Then stopped and turned to me. “Do you need anything, Olivia?”

  I shook my head. Gramp opened his eyes. “Olivia!” he said. “You’re home.” He lifted himself from his chair with effort.

  I went to meet him, trying to hide my stump as best I could. He had tears in his eyes. I put my arms around him. He’d wanted to visit me in the hospital but they hadn’t let him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s not your fault. None of it was your fault. Remember that. Live responsibly but without guilt for what is past.” He let go of my shoulders and gripped my right hand in both of his. “You must try, Olivia.”

  “Liv, why don’t you go upstairs and lie down,” said my mom. “I’ll bring you some food and a magazine.”

  “I hate your magazines,” I said. “I hate your food.”

  She brushed invisible lint off her shirt and went to the refrigerator. “I know you’ve been through a lot but that’s no reason to speak to me like that.”

  “Mom,” I said. “‘Been through a lot’? My hand got shot off. Do you see this?” I held up the stump, still wrapped in a bandage.

  “Jeff …,” my mom said.

  “You shot me.” I was shouting now. “You shot off my hand!”

  “Jeff,” my mom said again. Her eyes were huge and she took a step away from me as if I were a crazed monster. I realized she didn’t know. Either she really didn’t know or she had blocked it from her mind, the way I had blocked the clues to what I was for so many years. But I remembered how she had called my name before she shot me, how she had glanced back at my window as if she was wondering if I was in there or if, maybe, this creature before her, so like the two wolves she had shot before, was me. She didn’t know for sure if she had shot me but there was doubt in her mind. I didn’t hate her for the doubt; I hated her for not acknowledging it, for blocking out everything except what she wanted to believe.

  My dad walked over to me. He hadn’t touched me in years except to hit me. I backed away. I could feel my blood heating up. The moon would rise tonight.

  “Liv,” he said. “Olivia.”

  “You’re not much different,” I told him. My voice was soft and I hung my head. “When you get mad and you get drunk and you hit me in the face.”

  My dad cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  My mom came over and touched his arm. He brushed her away. “Olivia, I don’t understand what is happening but I see you are hurt. And it’s not okay. And I’m going to find out who did this to you.”

  He didn’t know anything, that was for sure, but maybe part of him sensed something because he had never sounded this sympathetic. I looked at him. His face was red. He had folds under his eyes. He had raised me as his own but it was clear I never was. I looked at my mom with her pleading face. Part of her knows, I thought again. Part of her knows what she did. But I wasn’t going to tell him, confirm his suspicions and bring more pain on them. It was enough; we’d all had enough.

  “No one did this to me,” I said. “I did this to myself.”

  Scoot began to
bark hysterically.

  “What’s that in the yard?” Gramp pointed. “Out in the yard! Lookit!”

  We turned and saw a shadow slip behind a tree.

  “A wolf!” Gramp said. “I’ll be damned if it wasn’t one.”

  My mom ran toward the window but she crashed into the glass coffee table and slumped to the ground. Her shin was bleeding. A bright red trickle. I inadvertently touched my top lip with my tongue.

  My mom looked from me to my dad and back, then to Gramp, then to Dad again. “Isn’t anyone going to ask if I’m okay?” She paused. “I guess not. Because I always say everything is okay. But you know what? I have some news for all of you. I am not okay.” She looked at me. “I loved you. I did everything for you. I’m a good mother. But you’re right. Nothing is okay and it won’t ever be.”

  Then she started to cry. Maybe, someday, she would be strong enough to acknowledge what she had done. But I wouldn’t be there to see it.

  The shadow in the garden was gone. I backed away from my mother. Then I turned. I ran upstairs and packed a backpack and sat by the window. My right hand was shaking so much it seemed like it belonged to someone else. My other hand was still because it wasn’t there.

  May love’s fire burn away my pain.

  Corey came at midnight as we had planned. I was lying on the floor breathing as deeply as I could—even though the breath kept catching in my chest—trying to keep the change from coming on. He knelt beside me and I noticed the hair on his cheeks and chin; he’d never had so much before. He looked a lot older to me then.

  “My mom said the bandages can come off now.”

  I flinched.

  “May I?

  Corey was used to handling fragile, sick animals. Once he’d cared for a sick lamb. He kept it in a box in his room and fed it with a dropper. When it died he buried it in his garden.

  I let Corey unwrap the bandages. My head was turned away but when I felt his touch on my wrist—so gentle—I looked back. My arm seemed smaller and paler as if it had shrunk. As if it wasn’t my arm at all but the arm of a small child. But not a normal child. It ended in a roughly tapered stump.

  Corey slipped the silver hand over my wrist. It attached with a delicate strap above my elbow.