Mongrels

by Stephen Graham Jones

  They matched the year Grandpa died. The year Darren had come home to stand between Red and Libby. They matched a black plastic trash bag on the kitchen table, stuffed with loose cash and strawberry wine coolers.

  I wanted to see that Bigfoot statue one more time. Most werewolves don’t get statues.

  The segment ended with a photograph of a state trooper who had been killed trying to stop a liquor-store robbery he’d stumbled onto. Whether it was related or not was uncertain.

  “Wrong place, wrong time,” I said.

  “Don’t tell him,” Libby said, reading my mind, and jerked her head over when the elevator down the hall dinged. “It wouldn’t make us do anything different. Not one single thing. Except he’d think he was famous. He’d think they wanted him to keep doing that.”

  “He is famous,” I said.

  She just stared at me until I nodded okay, sure.

  After the theatrics necessary for Darren to both smuggle a large domestic rabbit into a coma ward and lean over to sign a name on a clipboard, we led him down to room 77, on the seventh floor.

  “My burger, it’s alive!” Darren playacted, holding the paper bag up. The rabbit was kicking in there. I don’t know how he’d made its mouth be quiet. Tape, I would guess. Or staples, the stapler borrowed from the information desk downstairs. He’d have had to have gone into the bathroom with that stapler, though. It would have been complicated.

  “Ready?” Libby said to him.

  “Ready,” Darren said, then, to me: “You can wait out here, you want. I won’t think less of you. I mean, I don’t see how I could, but—”

  “He should see,” Libby said, and pushed the door open. “He’s old enough.”

  She was trying to inoculate me, I knew. She was trying to teach me to always kill my kills all the way. If I ever even got teeth.

  It was making me forget how to breathe normal.

  “Party of three,” Darren said, the brown paper bag hugged to his chest, “seating now . . .”

  Once we were all in, Libby pointed to the door for me.

  I wedged a chair under the knob, locked us in there.

  His name was Morris Wexler. There were some wilted flowers on his nightstand. The nurses were probably supposed to keep them watered. They were busy enough keeping the patients watered, I supposed. And, in this ward, the families came less and less, I’d imagine.

  The front of Morris Wexler’s throat was a mass of scar tissue.

  It made me look at Libby’s mouth in a different way.

  “I thought he was dead,” she said, in explanation.

  “He was dead, Lib,” Darren said.

  “Who was he?” I said.

  “It was right after Red, the first time,” Libby said. “I wasn’t—wasn’t thinking right.”

  She was standing at the window. Looking away from Morris Wexler. And crying again, I was pretty sure. Not her usual kind. Quieter. Like the sadness was just leaking from her face.

  “Shhh,” Darren said into the top of the bag.

  In return, a rabbit foot kicked through the side.

  Darren cupped it. He only had two hands, though.

  “Better make it fast,” he said to Libby.

  “We dated,” Libby said to me. For me. “Nothing serious.”

  When she said it, I saw her then. And seeing her at eighteen was seeing my mom, getting to have done that: dated.

  But she must have.

  Here I was, right?

  “Tell the rest,” Darren said, more serious now.

  “He was—it wasn’t his fault,” Libby said.

  “He beat her up,” Darren said, staring straight at Morris Wexler. “He used her as a punching bag just like Red always did, so she paid him a certain kind of visit. Right, Lib?”

  At the window, Libby snuffled.

  “He was dead when I left that room,” she said.

  “The paramedics brought him back,” I said, figuring it out.

  She raised the back of her hand to her nose.

  One thing werewolves had never been anticipating, it was CPR.

  There’s all the stories about taking the head off a werewolf to finally kill it. Which would work, sure. If you could catch it. If it didn’t kill you first, ten times over.

  Whose head should really be pulled off, it’s the werewolf’s victims’. Just to be sure.

  But not this time.

  Ten years ago, some hero paramedic had got Morris Wexler’s heart going again. Had sewn his throat shut. Had stuffed his intestines back inside his gut.

  “Here,” Libby said then, and bustled across the hospital room like she’d aged twenty years since walking in.

  Darren lifted the rabbit from the bag.

  It had had its snout forced into a bent-open, emptied-out Bonneville Brougham factory key ring. Doing that had broken some of the thin bones there, which was making its eyes bleed. But it was still alive. Alive enough. Libby threaded the key ring back out.

  “Don’t watch,” she said when the rabbit’s mouth was free, but I did.

  She held the rabbit’s hairless belly up to her mouth and ripped. With her flat human teeth.

  They worked.

  She let the blood sprinkle onto Morris Wexler’s lips.

  And then some more.

  “What—?” I said.

  Darren planted his hand in my chest, held me back.

  Now I saw. Now I could see. Morris Wexler, he was shifting. Bit by bit, his snout was lengthening. He was going wolf.

  The man was in a coma, but the wolf was locked in there too.

  That’s who Libby was here for.

  When the mouth was big enough, Libby dropped the rabbit onto Morris’s chest. So fast that I flinched, his clawed hands were on it, forcing it up to his mouth. The rabbit was gone, bones and all, in under a minute.

  The wolf, though, he remained. Just dead eyes staring straight up.

  “I’m sorry,” Libby said, openly crying now.

  Darren moved over, hooked an arm around her.

  I was still staring at Morris Wexler.

  I kept swallowing, the sound loud in my ears.

  Eventually Libby reached out, pulled me to them, and after a few more minutes, Morris Wexler was Morris Wexler again.

  Libby cleaned him as best she could. Because his gown was a lost cause, she changed him, using one from his cabinet. That’s probably why the nurse down the hall had remembered Libby: Seeing her meant one missing gown. When Libby didn’t bother shutting the cabinet back, I caught the door, looked inside. On the top shelf by the folded sheets were all the pictures Morris Wexler’s family probably left out for him. All the pictures the nurses didn’t like having to dust, so just stored.

  One was, I would guess, from ten years ago.

  It was him with a certain dark-haired girl. Libby. She was standing beside him, her hand to his chest, neither of her eyes swollen up right then. She was just happy.

  My face heated up, looking at her, seeing an aunt I’d never known, a Libby who smiled without having to think about it, and it made me have to run to the door, scrabble the chair away, fall out into the hall and run and run and run.

  Where Darren finally found me was out by the pond. Ducks were having panic attacks all around us. Ducks know.

  “Think we’re ready to split, if you are,” he said. Both his hands were in his pants pockets. It made his shoulders more innocent.

  That’s just another way of saying still guilty, though.

  I wasn’t even crying. Not on the outside.

  “She looked just like her, didn’t she?” I said. “In that picture. She looked like my mom. Like she would have.”

  I looked up to Darren and his mouth opened like to say something, but he lost it.

  “I’m the exact same age she was when I killed her,” I said, having to stretch my throat out to keep from crying hard like my whole body wanted to.

  Darren mistook that, though.

  “Let me see your tongue,” he said, stepping in, leadin
g with his dry, pushy fingers at my lips. “It might be happening.”

  I pushed him away as hard as I could, hard enough that his back foot planted in the edge of the pond and sank in.

  Behind him all the ducks made their racket, whirred their wings, exploded up into the sky.

  “These are my good boots,” he said, trying to extract his leg before the water sloshed over the top.

  “They’re your only boots,” I said, my voice mean and hard and as unforgiving as I could get it.

  “Exactly,” he said, and when he took the hand I was offering, instead of using me as anchor, he jerked, left me teetering.

  It was either plant my hands in his chest and push, or go in myself.

  I pushed.

  Darren had to step back farther, both his feet in the muck now.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  He looked up to me like checking was I serious. I was.

  “They’re twins,” he said. “What do you think? Of course they looked the same.”

  It made my breath hitch in my chest.

  My mom, smiling like that. Her hair blowing all around her face. Her open hand on her boyfriend’s chest. On my father’s chest.

  Darren stepped up from the pond as easy as anything. He didn’t care about his boots. No werewolf’s ever cared about a stupid pair of boots.

  “I miss her too, man,” he said.

  “I never even knew her!” I said, pulling my shoulder away from him.

  “Every time I look at you, man,” he said. “The way you do your eyes—”

  “Just shut up,” I told him, aiming away from him now.

  He kept pace, his footsteps squelching with water, his hands in his pockets again.

  I just wanted to be alone. So I said the worst thing I could come up with: “I know why you hate the Lone Ranger.”

  “What?” he said, some real hesitation in his voice for once. And on his face.

  “Because Grandpa was the Lone Ranger,” I said. “In Little Rock that time. With the silver bullets. Shooting all his other kids. It made you think he might shoot you someday.”

  He didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no. But he did fall a step behind.

  I kicked ahead without him. But then I slowed, looked back.

  He was just standing there, his shoulders rounder than usual. It made me realize that he wasn’t a giant. I was almost as tall as him already.

  And, the way I did my eyes—it didn’t have anything to do with my mom. I’d modeled it on him. Practiced in the mirror and everything.

  But I appreciated the lie.

  “Still parked in the same place?” I said, like agreeing I’d forget I’d said that about Grandpa if he would.

  He looked past me to the parking lot, to the idea of the Bonneville.

  We went there, more space between us than usual.

  “It’s like walking through goldfish,” he said, his steps sloshy.

  “It’s not like walking through goldfish,” I said back, halfway smiling.

  “Like you know?”

  “That guy at the gas station,” I said. “He was lucky.”

  Darren looked over to the stadium. To the idea of the stadium.

  “You should have killed him,” I said, my lip trembling again in that way I hated, my tongue flattening out in my mouth.

  I was changing.

  I didn’t know into what.

  CHAPTER 8

  How to Recognize a Werewolf

  Are there any ones with yellow fur?” the biologist asks in the grocery store, exactly two minutes before the hurricane’s all the way there.

  Florida has an actual season for hurricanes. The biologist’s uncle says this “panhandle” they’re in is really the bottom of Alabama, somebody just drew the lines wrong, but it would cost too much to reprint all the maps and books, and change all the road signs.

  The biologist is nine already. He’s not sure about this.

  “Why do you ask?” the biologist’s aunt says, also looking down the cereal aisle, at the biologist’s uncle’s new girlfriend.

  The biologist has to hold his lips together not to smile.

  “Anyway, we don’t have fur,” the biologist’s aunt says. “We have hair. See?”

  She pulls her own out to the side to show.

  It’s black like it’s always been.

  The new girlfriend’s secret name is Sister Golden Hair.

  “And you’re supposed to say ‘blond,’ anyway,” the biologist’s aunt adds.

  “Blond,” the biologist says, then, quieter, “are there any blond werewolves?”

  His aunt looks ahead to the new girlfriend, teetering up on her high heels, her leotard legs radiation green, her purple leg warmers bunched at her ankles.

  Her name has something to do with a mountain. The biologist can never remember it. She’s taking a box of cereal from the biologist’s uncle’s basket and trading it for another, even though most of the cereal boxes are already gone since it’s the end of the world outside.

  “How do you know she’s not one already?” the biologist’s aunt says, now that the biologist’s uncle and the uncle’s girlfriend are kissing again.

  “She’s not,” the biologist says. “She wouldn’t wear that much perfume.”

  “Good, good,” the biologist’s aunt says. “Because it would hurt her nose. If she had a real nose. That could smell.”

  “And her legs are too bright,” the biologist says.

  “Werewolves like the shadows,” his aunt says. “And?” she prompts.

  It’s summer, but he’s still in class.

  It’s always summer in Florida.

  “And her breath would smell better,” the biologist says at last, proud to have remembered.

  Werewolves are paranoid about having dog breath, are always brushing their teeth and chewing mints.

  “And her palms aren’t hairy,” he adds, “and she’s not a seventh son and she wasn’t born on Christmas and her ring finger isn’t longer and she doesn’t eat raw—”

  “You’ve been watching movies while I’m at work,” the biologist’s aunt says.

  Her tone isn’t pleased.

  The biologist studies the wires of their basket. How they weave over and under the whole way across.

  “Pentagram too?” the biologist’s aunt says, flashing her palm up to show what she means.

  The biologist doesn’t answer.

  “Yes, her breath would smell better,” the biologist’s aunt says, nodding the biologist forward. “And she wouldn’t wear those leggings, but not just because they’re that color.”

  The biologist’s uncle and the new girlfriend are at the meat department, now.

  “I don’t think there ever has been a blond one,” the biologist’s aunt says, one hand on the basket, to keep the biologist from flat-tiring the mom and her baby just ahead. “Maybe out in the desert? But—”

  “It would be hard to hunt at night,” the biologist says, trying to make up for the werewolf movies.

  “Impossible to hunt,” his aunt says. “And you’d be target practice too. The only place you could hide would be a wheat field, I guess. Or a stack of gold.” This is funny to her. Hilarious. Werewolves never get the treasure.

  “What about when you get old like Grandpa was?” the biologist asks.

  “Old and grey,” his aunt says, following where he’s saying.

  “Silverback,” the biologist says. It’s from the nature shows.

  “It’s better than being yellow on top,” the biologist’s aunt says, and they’re close enough that this time the biologist’s uncle does hear.

  He raises his lip on one side just for an instant.

  The biologist’s aunt picks up a bottle of cranberry juice from his and his girlfriend’s basket and inspects it. “Didn’t know you were drinking this,” she says, an innocent lilt to her voice.

  “Oh, it’s good for him,” the girlfriend says with her eyes and with her mouth both,
taking the cranberry juice away with the very tips of her fingers. Setting it back in its place in the basket.

  “That’s funny,” the biologist’s aunt says. “He’s usually more into meat.” To show, she plucks a juicy roast from the clearance bin and weighs it against her bicep.

  “Red meat’s more of a luxury,” the girlfriend explains.

  “A luxury,” the biologist’s aunt repeats, and is studying the roast now. “So . . .” she says, “then I guess doing this would be just sinful, wouldn’t it?”

  What she’s talking about is biting into the top of the roast, right through the clear plastic.

  She pulls away with her neck.

  The way a human does it is with their hand, with their arm.

  These are things all biologists know.

  The aunt chews, chews some more, the girlfriend stepping back, her hands covering her mouth like trying to muffle a shriek that’s going to come up anyway, once she can actually breathe in again.

  The biologist’s aunt teases the chewed-up plastic from the corner of her mouth, wipes it on her pants leg with a smear of blood. She swallows the meat in a big obvious gulp, doesn’t even have to close her eyes to get it down.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way, Lib,” the biologist’s uncle says.

  “You’re right,” the biologist’s aunt says, picking the cranberry juice from the basket, twisting the golden cap off. “Here. You like it, right?”

  The biologist’s uncle is staring twin holes through his sister. He knocks the cranberry juice away with the back of his hand. The mom with the baby gets splashed purple on her white pants, looks up to the biologist’s uncle about this.

  “I still like meat,” the biologist’s uncle says. “I’ll always like meat.”

  “Dare, what’s she—” the girlfriend says, but Darren raises his hand palm out, shuts her up.

  “Dare?” the biologist’s aunt says, liking it, and the biologist’s uncle shakes his head like he’s sick of this, he really is.

  When she offers the roast, says it like a joke, “Dare you,” he slaps that away too.

  “I said I like meat,” the biologist’s uncle says, and steps neatly past the biologist’s aunt, snatches the baby from the mom with the white pants. The baby’s already screaming. It’s because babies always know a werewolf. They’re even faster about it than dogs, than horses. “This is what you want, right?” the biologist’s uncle says, holding the baby higher than the white-pants mom can reach, stiff-arming his new girlfriend away with his other hand so he can fake-lower the baby to his waiting mouth. Trained for just this sort of situation, the biologist pushes his basket around the corner, slips down the next aisle.