The Skinwalker's Tale

by Christopher Carrolli

  “You told him that you were a shifter?” he asked.

  “I foolishly told him everything,” she said. “I’d even been stupid enough to show him. Sounds familiar, right? One night, he wanted to get even with me over something, so he left that note.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “He didn’t live to tell.”

  He felt the onset of a dark unease, an edginess that crept inside of him at the sound of her words. He knew what she meant. Her madness was confirmed.

  “Once I reached the age where I became fully conscious of my own shifting, I realized that there had been some final loose ends that needed tying up,” she said. “There was Antonio. I blamed him for the way my life had gone. I had to face my consequences, yet Antonio got another life, a fresh start. I was without my child. It wasn’t fair.

  “I knew that I’d find him if I searched hard enough, and I had. He was holed up in an efficiency apartment in a little shithole of a town not far south of here.”

  “What do you mean?” Something peaked inside of him. His voice grew louder with each question. “You’d found Antonio? What are you saying? What happened?”

  The chaos was brewing, the tension mounting. She batted her eyes at him, and then turned them away toward the woods. Then, she looked back at him with the same unflinching gaze and answered his question.

  “I killed him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Now he knew the truth. She would tell him all of it, but now he would finally know the truth about everything. She’d killed Antonio for taking an already fragile existence and shattering what was left of it. She was just a budding flower when she’d met him, one that looked up to a magnificent sun that totally eclipsed before her. She’d enacted revenge for her broken heart, and a life that he helped to destroy.

  She told him how she’d found Antonio years later in an internet age, when locating someone became a simple task. She’d tracked him to an efficiency apartment in a sparsely inhabited ghost town not twenty miles south of Green Valley. It had been summer, and she stood outside of his apartment building, watching him through his open window on the bottom floor. He was older, and his once athletic structure had mutated into a beer-bellied blob of abandonment.

  “I couldn’t believe it was him,” she said. “There he was after all the years that were gone but not forgotten, none of which had been kind to him. His face was ragged, pockmarked, and sunken. He was sitting at a table, engorging in a small smorgasbord splayed out before him, popping what smelled like jalapeño poppers into his fat pie-hole.

  “I was close to shifting, and all of my senses were acutely sharpened. I could smell everything about him even from outside his window, from the hot tang of his greasy food, the vinegary stench of stale beer, to the sweat that stained his seldom showered ass. The tension had been tearing me apart as I watched him. The sun had been beating down on my face. I could feel my seething anger burning along with it.

  “I shifted right then and there, a cursed abomination under the sun, oblivious to whether anyone had seen me. Though no one could’ve seen what actually happened to me, as my clothes suddenly fell to the ground. I shifted into the fly that flew through his open window.”

  She giggled once again, savoring the sweet memory of revenge as it made her heart pound with pleasure even now in what seemed like a lifetime away. She looked back at her son, laughing at an irony she suddenly realized.

  “He’d swatted at me the same way you did only hours ago,” she said, laughing. “He didn’t get me either.”

  He wasn’t laughing with her. She stopped. She’d always been tone-deaf to the sound of her own laughter. She cleared her throat, continuing the story with the same calm with which she’d begun it.

  “As I said, he was stuffing his face while trying to swat at the fly. What I’d done was a risky move. As the fly, I circled his chomping lips in between bites, and soon, his mouth opened like a cave. Then, the fly flew into that cave, buzzing and tickling as the food slid down his throat, until he began choking and writhing.

  “Antonio leapt from the chair, panicking as the food lodged in his esophagus. It had blocked his windpipe, with a little help from the fly. He was frantic for air. My coming-of-age consciousness that I told you about was cognizant of one overwhelming thought—the realization that I shifted into an insect and had seconds to escape a dying man’s body.

  “The million eyes of the fly caught a glint of light from above, and the next thing my consciousness realized was a sense of hot air that had suddenly turned cold. As the fly, I escaped and was soon outside of him, watching the myriad images of him falling to the floor, gasping and writhing for air. It was the same picture, presented an infinite number of times like endless security cameras. Finally, he stopped kicking.

  “I could see with the fly’s eyes the brightness of daylight coming closer and closer. The next thing I realized was being outside of the window again. Then, I fell to the ground, naked and out of nowhere, where I scrambled to gather my discarded clothes. I quickly dressed and looked around me. No one was watching, only the birds that flew up and away from me, tweeting in hysteria at the strange sight only they had seen.

  “I looked once again into the open window at the man lying on the apartment floor—my long lost love. He was face-down, kicking, and then motionless, dead. And though he hadn’t been the same person, he was once the love of my life. I felt nothing.”

  A silence marched on forever between them. She felt almost afraid to turn and look at him. So, now he knew everything: what he was, where it came from, and what happened to his father. And now the long awaited moment of confrontation lingered between them. She knew what he’d planned to do once he found Antonio; she’d overheard his conversation with the blonde woman. He’d gone to Appleton to kill Antonio in hopes of undoing a curse, as if the natural world would even allow such a thing.

  Now, the fatal outcome would belong to either her or him, her adult son. Either way, the outcome would be sure to stifle this curse once and for all.

  She turned her head slowly toward him. His expression was one of petrified shock.

  “You’re insane,” he said. He dragged out the syllables of the word, as if insanity were a demonic affliction. He stood up from the bench, looking down at her. His dark eyes were smoldering. “I’m nothing like you. Everything you’ve done has been with a conscious forethought. You’re a murderer.”

  And he was right. Murdering Antonio had been revenge. Murdering that louse she’d shacked up with had been rage. But one thing was certain—murdering her son would be self-defense. Though maybe she had no right to call him that; she’d never been much of a mother to him in the first place. It was understandable that he hated her.

  He got up and walked away from her. She followed him into the yard.

  “Can you honestly say that you had no inkling of conscious thought when you attacked Herb Haller? Can you really say that it was all a fog, a trance, a nightmare?”

  “I had no idea, no control over what happened!”

  “But something stopped you from killing the old man, didn’t it, Brett? What was it?”

  She stood from the bench and leaned in toward him. She could see how the chaos was gripping him. His chest was heaving faster and faster. She could see intent in his eyes. And inside, she could feel herself changing.

  * * * *

  She was right. Something had flashed through his mind that night, but what was it—a realization? A memory of who he really was? He couldn’t remember.

  He could feel his breath heaving harder and faster. The heat was fueling him from inside, and he was beginning to sweat more than normal. The chaos was churning. It was her; her presence here was causing it to start up again.

  She’d killed Antonio, the father he would never know. She would go on killing again; he’d heard it in the madness of her voice. Now, in the flash of a second, her eyes changed. It was fast, but he caught it. The color of her eyes
turned a glossy yellow, like the wolf, and then it was gone. She was changing, but unfortunately for her, so was he.

  He was shaking as he watched her, the sweat beginning to spout from him. She knew what was happening to him, and he to her. She’d known all along why he was looking for Antonio. She’d been playing him like a violin.

  What had stopped her from killing him as soon as he walked out onto the patio? Why hadn’t she done him in like she had Antonio? That was why she was here wasn’t it—to kill him before her killed her? It was she who’d left the back door only partially shut; she still had a key after all these years. She’d been inside the house, searching for him.

  He looked at her, hints of the bitch breaking through beneath the surface, how ironic. In her, the change seemed almost gradual. But for him, sweat soaked his hair once again. He was shifting faster than her.

  Her face was white with fear.

  The change was happening fast. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He ripped the shirt from his chest, creating the coarse sound of splitting fabric. He felt his body fall to the ground, writhing as the tingling and sprouting of fur enveloped him. He allowed the heat to overwhelm him, to scorch his every physical fiber until it passed, and the shifting was complete.

  Then, a great howl disrupted the daylight.

  * * * *

  The black wolf watched through canine eyes, but this time, something was different. It recognized her; it recognized the change that was consuming her. It sensed a dormant wolf that fought beneath a human surface. Her eyes were flickering. Her veins pulsed beneath her skin, exposing a map of morphing bloodlines. It could smell her familiar blood.

  The wolf knew what it had to do—take her life before she shifted. It lunged at her. She fought hard, her arms flailing and punching as the wolf landed on top of her, pinning her to the ground. She scowled with an angry, half-human hiss, one that combined with the wolf’s growl in an eerie cacophony.

  The wolf plunged its fangs into her throat. The iron taste of blood filled its mouth as it ripped and tore at her flesh, its head jerking and yanking between muffled howls. Her cries were stifled, silenced by the severance of her jugular vein. And unlike before, the wolf was recognizing its action. It was aware of its intention. And now, it was also aware of the soul that slept deep within it—the soul of Brett Taylor.

  * * * *

  She’d fought hard against the wolf, but its fierceness matched it unnatural size and power. She hadn’t been able to complete the shifting. The strength of her son’s curse far outweighed her own. Now, scenes of her life flashed in her mind as the steel sharp fangs plunged into her throat, sending a piercing pain throughout her body.

  She saw herself sitting on the front porch with Aunt Vivian the day her father never returned. She saw Aunt Vivian taking her by the hand and convincing her to come inside the house. She saw Uncle Jack and Brett Jamison teaching her how to ride a horse. Then, there was the younger face of Antonio. That feeling of young love flowed through her for one quick second, one last time. She saw Uncle Jack and Aunt Vivian rushing her into that strange emergency room, where she’d gone into labor.

  She remembered the face of her child, tiny and fragile in the incubator as he struggled to maintain. Then, she remembered his adult face, strong and handsome, but then the face changed. The morphing body had fallen to the ground and shifted into the black wolf that attacked her. She remembered seeing how his handsome face had changed, elongating into a perfect snout, the eyes changing color to a sickly yellow, the fur that suddenly sprouted everywhere. She saw the various versions of her son’s face one last time, and then she saw nothing but blackness.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I need to stop and refuel; there’s not enough gas to make it back.”

  The sound of Dylan’s voice had awakened Tahoe from the vision, and now he stared at the flashing red indicator of a low gas tank. The vision had overcome him suddenly. He saw Brett’s face, and the face of the woman that Leah had mentioned. She’d been right; there was a woman. But what Leah had missed was the fact that the woman was Brett’s mother, Claudia.

  So, she was the original skinwalker. The vision had showed him the black wolf soaked in blood, once again, and the woman lying face-up in the bloodstained grass. Her dead eyes were fixed upon the sky above. So, it had happened. She had tracked Brett down, and if the vision was true, she paid the ultimate price. Now as the red indicator continued to flash, Tahoe realized that such a minor delay was keeping them from where they needed to be.

  It took five minutes to refuel the van and get back on the road. Tahoe was about to reveal everything he’d seen in the vision, when he noticed Sidney stirring in his seat. The listener was listening. Then, Sidney turned and spoke.

  “It’s over,” Sidney said. “We’ve got to get back.”

  * * * *

  Sidney had suddenly deafened, and the familiar loss was quick as always. Vivian’s voice had spoken simply and with the sound of finality.

  “It’s over, Sidney,” she’d said. “It’s over.”

  The sound had returned to his ears as if someone released a distant mute button. He turned to them all and spoke.

  “It’s over,” he said. “We’ve got to get back.”

  “Yes, I know,” Tahoe said. “I’ve seen everything.”

  “What?” Susan asked.

  “Brett has found his skinwalker.” Tahoe said. His tone was grave, solemn.

  “I knew it!” Leah said. “I knew it, but I couldn’t piece it together—the woman!”

  “Yes,” Tahoe said. “What do you see now, child?”

  She closed her eyes, focused, and then opened them again.

  “All I see is a hole in the ground,” she said.

  Sidney suddenly knew exactly what this meant. He turned to Dylan.

  “Step on it,” he said. “Hurry!”

  * * * *

  When he shifted back, he realized it had been an act of will. Killing her had been an act of will, the same thing for which he maligned her only moments before attacking her. But a large part of him now understood that it had been necessary; it had been vital to the rest of his existence. He could still taste her blood in his mouth.

  He stood in the vast yard, naked except for her blood that covered him. He stared at the gruesome scene. She lay in a pool of her own blood that soaked the grass. She was dead, her eyes frozen in a fixed stare at the sky. He felt confounded by his action, dazed and nauseous from the shifting, and confused as to what do to next.

  He staggered off to the shed, where he fastened the garden hose to a spigot and rinsed the blood from his body. He found his jeans and quickly pulled them on. Then, he closed her eyes before he lifted her body up from the ground and cradled her in his arms for a moment. He carried her into the woods, where he laid her down on the cold, earthen floor. Then, he turned and walked back to the shed, where he retrieved a shovel. Once he made it back to the woods, he began to dig a hole for her, here in the wooded quiet—a place that she loved.

  Then, he remembered the pool of blood in the grass.

  He left the body behind in the woods and walked back into the yard. He took the hose and began washing away Claudia’s blood, as though she’d never existed. He would finish digging the hole later. No one would find her in the woods that were now part of his property. Now, he watched as her blood swirled through the grass, turning pink and becoming fainter until it was no more.

  He thought once more of the shifting, how he’d managed to change so quickly and sink his teeth into her throat. She had also been shifting, but her change was incomplete. He hadn’t given her the time. He’d killed her, his mother, Claudia Taylor, and though she was some mutated form of herself at the time of her death, he still carried a human corpse out into the woods. Strangely, in that dark moment when he’d lapped at her blood, he realized so much about her: how her insanity had not been her fault, how the shifting had driven her to utter madness.

  And now that it was over, he suddenly realiz
ed so much about himself. This time, the shifting had been different. It was not only the matter of will, but how he’d managed to turn it on and off so quickly, like throwing a switch. It was how, at that moment, he was in complete control of it, much like he’d been as the hawk searching in the desert. Something was altogether different about him now; he could feel it. An inner calm overcame him, lulling him and coexisting with a heightened sense of control.

  He felt a trickle down the side of his chin, and with his finger, realized that he’d missed the blood that stained his mouth and face. He turned the hose to his face and let the cold stream wash away what he’d forgotten. He lapped at the spout, much like the wolf had lapped at her throat. He rinsed and spit, but the lingering taste of her blood remained. Then, he rinsed away the blood the stained his arms from carrying her.

  The sound of a familiar engine purred from the front of the house. He knew the sound well; it was the van. The team was back. He listened as the engine died away, and the expected sound of slamming doors followed.

  Soon, five familiar figures walked slowly and steadily through the grass toward him. He saw the looks of apprehension on their faces. They were fearful not of him, but for him. He looked at Tahoe, Sidney, and Leah; they looked expectant and knowing, as though their freakish knack for foreknowledge had struck them along the way.

  They looked at him and then at the pool of dark water that flooded the ground beneath him. He dropped the hose, letting the pool of water widen on its own. He looked to Dylan first.

  “I need you to help me finish digging a hole.”

  “Where is she, Brett?” Susan stepped forward, questioning him with her hands placed out in front of her, as though he were a rampaging brat smashing glass.

  So, they knew. He didn’t think much would’ve missed the eyes of Tahoe and Leah. Maybe Sid had even heard from Aunt Viv again. He turned and faced the woods, placing his hands on his hips, looking out and sighing. He turned back to them, his mind reeling in its confusion. He didn’t know where to begin.