The Changing

by T. M. Wright

  Eugene heard a car round the bend a hundred yards behind him. He glanced back into the car's headlights, saw they were on high beam. "Fuck you!" he breathed. The headlights dimmed. He looked back at the road in front of him—poorly lighted because here, in Irondequoit, one of Rochester's more fashionable neighborhoods, streetlamps were looked upon as a little gauche; no one walked anywhere anymore—and angled to his right, onto the shoulder, just in case the car's driver didn't see him. He was thankful there was a full moon tonight; it lit the gravel shoulder well enough that he could see the occasional pothole or rock.

  He idly watched the car as it passed him. He saw that it was dark gray in color (though that was hard to tell in the dark, he realized) and that it had a whip antenna on the back—an unmarked police car, he decided, and felt grateful that it was prowling the neighborhood. He watched it round the corner onto Briarcliffe, which ran into Bayview, then he angled back onto the road.

  The neighborhood was awfully quiet. He'd noticed that as soon as he'd left his house, because at this hour—it was 9:30—there was usually still a good amount of traffic—people coming and going to the big twenty-four-hour grocery, Wegman's, at the Culver Ridge Shopping Plaza or heading to one of the half dozen bars that dotted the area or to one of the five theaters at Eastway Plaza just a couple miles north. He liked the quiet, especially for jogging, because he jogged not only, he claimed, "for the health of it," but also, "for the peace of it," and the roads had rarely been as peaceful as they were to-night, with most people shut up in their houses away from the threat of the full moon. He thought, wryly, that there was some good to be found in any situation.

  His breathing as he jogged was heavy, especially toward the end of his routine, and the sound of it often covered up small sounds around him.

  So he didn't hear the low, ragged growling from the weeds just to his right. Or the weeds themselves being squashed underfoot. Or the gravel at the shoulder of the road crunching under an awful weight. And by then he was past the thing that was making all this noise, so he didn't see it, either, as it fell in behind him and kept pace with him just a couple of arm's lengths away.

  And when the thing was nearly upon him his nose twitched, because the smell wafting over him reminded him of the open sewers in Williamson, New York where he'd grown up. Then he felt only the whisper of a touch—like the touch of a butterfly—at the side of his throat. Then the top of his spinal column was ripped away, and he tumbled head over heels and lay with his arms and legs wide, his head at an impossible angle, and these words spilling incoherently from his lips: "The peace of it, the peace of it, the peace of it . . ."

  Jack Youngman stared for a long time into the trunk of his Marquis and at last convinced himself that there was no blood left in it. He'd cleaned it very thoroughly two weeks before, when he'd first found the blood. And then again when it had come back a week later. And now today, the day after Eugene Conkey's murder, which had been discovered several hours earlier and so had been part of the morning TV and radio newscasts but hadn't yet hit the newspapers. He closed the trunk quietly, though he was in his garage and the door was shut. You never knew about neighbors; one day they could be as warm as toast, and the next day they could turn you in for cheating on your income taxes. Or one of them might phone the cops anonymously and say, "Hey, I got this neighbor and he's been acting real peculiar; he cleans the trunk of his car all the time, you know."

  Because maybe, just maybe, Jack had decided, he was The Park Werewolf. He was big enough, after all. And strong enough. And what did it matter if he couldn't remember killing anyone? If he was nuts, if he went around taking people's heads off, then the chances were pretty damned good that he wouldn't remember it. Shit, why would he want to? Or maybe he had two or three personalities. Maybe during the day he was Big Jack Youngman, gruff and unapproachable—Big Jack Youngman, who was really made of mush on the inside and didn't want people to get too close to him because all that mush would come out. And then at night, during the full moon, he changed. He became a rock-hard, drooling killer.

  But when he thought about it, he didn't believe a word of it. Actually, he realized, he didn't want to believe a word of it. But there was the evidence of the blood, after all.

  THAT EVENING: 7:30

  "Poor slob," Tom McCabe said to Ryerson. They were standing several feet from an autopsy table at the Monroe County Medical Examiner's office. Dr. Peter B. Taub, a balding, thin, no-nonsense man in his early fifties, was performing the autopsy on Eugene Conkey. Detective Bill Andrews, who'd been brought in to help on The Park Werewolf case after Walt Morgan's murder, stood just behind Ryerson and McCabe, his eyes averted.

  Creosote had been left in what Ryerson hoped were the capable hands of Loren Samuelson, the owner of the guest house where he was staying.

  Creosote had apparently not been feeling well lately, and Ryerson wanted to keep him out of the chill, moist Rochester air. He looked at McCabe: "Thanks for getting me in here, Tom."

  "No problem," McCabe said. Then, to Dr. Taub,

  "Can you give me a cause of death, Pete?"

  "Take your pick," Taub said dryly. "Broken neck, severed spinal column, lacerated trachea—"

  Detective Andrews, who had been trying to ignore what was happening and so hadn't realized the doctor was talking, cut in. "He won the lottery, you know.”

  “Sorry?" McCabe said.

  "Mr. Conkey won the New York State Lottery. I heard it on the radio on the way in this evening."

  Taub harrumphed; "I guess this was supposed to be his day."

  "It kind of was," Ryerson said.

  "Poor slob," McCabe said again.

  And Detective Andrews said, "Mind if I leave?" and before getting an answer, turned and quickly left the room.

  "Greta, Greta, my love," Doug Miller breathed—once, then again and again, deeply and with an almost overpowering sense of urgency. Then his orgasm was done and he stood from his bed, wadded up the soiled toilet paper in his hand, and tossed it idly into the wastebasket nearby. He pulled his pants up, zippered and buttoned them, and sat again, exhausted.

  He put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and took several long, deep breaths. "Greta, Greta, Greta," he whispered into his hands. He sighed.

  For God's sake, she would love him someday! He would make her love him! What else did he have to do to show her that he loved her? He followed her around like a damned puppy dog, didn't he? He walked her to her car every night, even though—and she knew this—his own car, a dark blue Plymouth Fury, was in the other parking lot. Hell, hadn't he even moved from his big house in Pittsford (which had been left to him upon his mother's death three years earlier) to this crummy apartment just a block away from her?

  And there was the best evidence of all—the evidence that he couldn't yet share with her, but that he would share in time—the evidence of his faithfulness. The evidence of his fidelity to her, even though she wasn't yet his. His fidelity not only in the fact that he'd kept himself clean for her, but also that he was keeping her secret. Her awful, nightmarish secret.

  He stood and went to the window that looked out on Fairview Heights. He could see Greta's house from that window. He could see that the lights in her third-floor apartment were on, and he wondered if she were there in the apartment, thinking about him.

  "Greta, my love," he whispered, "I'll always keep your secret."

  Chapter Eleven

  Ryerson felt awful about having Creosote here, making his abominable noises in the midst of this poor couple's grief. He apologized often, but he also felt relieved that getting the dog away from Rochester had, in a manner of speaking, brought him back to life.

  "She ran away?" Ryerson asked Will Curtis, who was seated across from him at the aluminum and glass dining table. The man's wife, Frances, sat with Ryerson and her husband. Each of them had a cup of cocoa to drink and a plate of D'Oro Cookies to pick at, but though the Curtises had told Ryerson "Eat, please eat
!" several times, they had all let their cocoa get cold and hadn't touched the plate of cookies.

  "Yes," said the man, his voice weary with several kinds of pain, "as many children do today, Lila ran away." He paused and smiled, though it was a smile as weak and pain-ridden as his voice. "But she came back, Mr. Biergarten. Lila came back."

  "And she was . . ." Ryerson paused; he could sense the anguish in the small, memorabilia-cluttered dining room; it was an anguish, he knew, that had grown not only from loss but from confusion and, as well, from a strange, lingering fear. "She acted… oddly when she came back?"

  The woman, Frances, nodded slowly. She had her small, pale hands clasped on the tabletop in front of her cup of cocoa, and her gaze was lowered, as if she were looking somewhere between her hands and the cup. She said, "Lila was sixteen, and I know that sixteen-year-old girls are full of the devil—" She stopped and appeared unable to go on. A tear slid down her cheek; she swiped at it, continued, "I was when I was sixteen. But Lila—" She stopped again.

  Her husband took over for her. "Lila was a very confused girl, Mr. Biergarten. Maybe it was because we were . . . older when we became parents. Frances was well into her thirties, you see—"

  Frances cut in, a little sharply, "Our age has nothing to do with it, Will. Lila was confused for her own reasons; we were good parents, damnit, we were the very best parents we could be."

  Creosote cut loose with a lengthy bout of snorting, belching, and benign growling. "I'm sorry, forgive me," Ryerson pleaded. He got Creosote's soft plastic duck from the pocket of his cream-colored bulky-knit sweater and stuck it in the dog's mouth. Creosote began working at it happily.

  Will Curtis waved Ryerson's words awry. "Nothing to forgive; I had four Boston bull terriers when I was growing up, Mr. Biergarten. Fine animals. Noisy, sure, but still fine animals. Smart as a whip, and loyal as your shadow—"

  "Lila was cursed," Frances cut in.

  Ryerson studied the woman's eyes for several seconds; he saw the same anguish in them that filled the room, but he saw resolve, too, and an almost painful sort of honesty. He said, "How was she cursed?"

  Frances nodded again, slowly, as if it were a nervous habit. Her gaze lowered. "I've read about what's happening up north. In Rochester."

  "Yes?" Ryerson coaxed.

  "And if I didn't know that Lila was lying in her grave—"

  "Shut up," her husband cut in sharply. "You shut your mouth, woman—"

  "Don't you speak to me in that tone, Will Curtis—”

  “I'll speak to you in whatever tone I please; you can't talk about my Lila that way—"

  "Your Lila?! Your Lila?! Good Lord, she was our daughter, she was our mistake—"

  "Goddamnit, she was a beautiful, beautiful child who ran away and got . . . corrupted—"

  Ryerson felt embarrassment flooding into him like hot soup. He stood, tucked Creosote firmly under his arm, said "Excuse me, please, I'll be in here," and nodded toward the living room. Then he went and sat on a big overstuffed blue couch and waited for the argument to subside.

  "Corrupted?" Frances screeched. "Our daughter was corrupted by your cloying, smothering, overprotective—"

  "Not that again. My God, woman—"

  "Stop calling me 'woman' ! My name is Frances, or did you forget? Did you want to call me 'Lila'?"

  And so it went.

  After ten minutes Ryerson got the idea that this sort of thing went on quite a lot, that it was a way the couple had of putting their grief and confusion and fear aside, if just temporarily, if only until both of them became exhausted and, in all probability, Ryerson thought, fell sobbing into each other's arms.

  After fifteen minutes he got up from the couch and went outside, onto the wraparound, screen-enclosed porch. He closed the door firmly behind him, which shut him off well enough from the sound of the argument inside. He inhaled deeply of the fresh, clean country air, found a white rattan rocking chair halfway down the porch toward the east end of the house, and sat in it with Creosote on his lap. He scratched idly at the dog's ears, rocked, picked out the Big Dipper above the northern horizon, the constellation of Orion to the east.

  "Creosote," he said, "this is a world of pain and confusion, I'm afraid." And Creosote belched, snorted, belched, and snorted again, all as if to say, Yes, but I'm feeling good, thank you!

  And then, for half an instant, as he scratched idly at his dog's ears, Ryerson saw The Park Werewolf in his mind's eye as clearly as he could see the Big Dipper above the northern horizon, and feelings rushed into him, feelings of need and compulsion and hunger, feelings so vile and intense that they made his stomach turn over and pushed bile high into his throat. Then the image and the feelings dissipated and he felt breathless, exhausted, and vaguely panic-stricken, as if he had just nearly been run over by a truck.

  Creosote fell silent.

  "Jesus!" Ryerson whispered. "He's ... he's ..." But he could think of no words that exactly fit the awful creature his mind's eye had just shown him.

  The argument between Frances and Will Curtis ended half an hour after it began, and they both came out to the porch, where Ryerson was sitting, and looked rather sheepishly down at him.

  Frances said, "We are very sorry, Mr. Biergarten," and she smiled a quick, broad smile. "How is your little dog?"

  "He's fine," Ryerson said.

  "We've both been quite tense," Will Curtis offered. "Ever since Lila's . . . passing, we've both been irritable, and tense, and I'm afraid we . . ."—he searched for the right word,—"submit to it on occasion."

  "Yes," Ryerson said, "I understand that. Please don't feel that you need to apologize."

  And Frances suggested, "Why don't we go to the grave now."

  "Sorry?" Ryerson said, confused. "It's—" He checked his watch, which was difficult to do on the darkened porch.

  Will Curtis cut in, "Eight forty-five. Not too late, Mr. Biergarten, not too late."

  "Not too late at all," Frances said. Ryerson thought they sounded almost enthusiastic, as if it were a bright midsummer's day and someone had suggested they go on a picnic. Frances hurried on, "She likes us to visit her at night, under a full moon." Her voice rose in pitch, and apparently in expectation, as she added, "She talks to us then."

  Will Curtis nodded meaningfully. "Yes, Mr. Biergarten. She does talk to us."

  Ryerson was still confused, and uneasy, too, but he said, "Yes, of course; whenever you're ready."

  Will Curtis shrugged. "We're ready now. We're always ready."

  The cemetery where Lila was buried was a short drive from the Curtis home, half a mile down a narrow, unpaved road that had an old two-wire fence running on both sides down its entire length. The wire was just visible in the moonlight, like a long, meandering, thick strand of silk, because the evening dew was on it.

  "Electric fence," Will Curtis offered. "Least it used to be, when they had horses in there." He nodded at the field of chickweed and clover creamy in the moonlight, beyond the fence.

  Frances, who was driving the couple's vintage Chevrolet, said, "Nothing in there now. No horses, anyway." Then she slowed the car and brought it to a stop. "Here it is," she said. "Will, you can get the gate this time."

  Will said, "Sure," opened his door, got out slowly because of his arthritis, and opened the wrought-iron gates to Edgewater Cemetery, its name wrought in Gothic lettering above the gates. "We're in Edgewater," Frances said. "This is Edgewater."

  "Yes," Ryerson said.

  Frances drove through while her husband held the gate open.

  It had been only two months since Lila's burial and the ground had yet to settle, so there was still no stone to mark her grave, just a wreath at its head and a small pot of freshly watered chrysanthemums below it. "Got a nice stone picked out," Will said. They'd been standing at the graveside for ten minutes or more, Ryerson thought. The Curtises had their hands clasped in front of them and their heads lowered.

  "It'll be
a while," Frances said.

  "Yes," Ryerson began, and Frances interrupted, "Until she starts to talk to us, I mean."

  "Oh," Ryerson said, still confused and still uneasy around this grieving middle-aged couple who were probably taking him on an eerie stroll through their most profound fantasy. Creosote was deathly still in his arms, the soft plastic duck sticking out of one corner of its mouth. Several times Ryerson had actually felt the dog's chest to be sure it was breathing.

  "Sometimes it's a half hour or more," Will said.

  "And sometimes it's an hour," Frances said.

  "Sometimes you can understand her," Will said.

  "And sometimes you can't," Frances said.

  "Sometimes it's gibberish. It sounds like ..." Will faltered.

  Frances suggested, "Birds. It sounds like birds sometimes."

  Will nodded. "Bluejays," he said. "It's raucous. Like bluejays are."

  "Yes, of course," Ryerson said, distractedly. He was thankful for the full moon. He could see well enough by its light, but if a cloud covered it, he'd be all but blind here, he realized.

  Lila's grave was at the extreme northeast perimeter of the small cemetery. Just a couple of yards beyond it, the six-foot-high wrought-iron fence stood straight and dark, its pitted and rusted surfaces reflecting the moonlight dully. Beyond the fence, the same fields of chickweed and clover stretched to a horizon that, at the northeast, was a light bluish-green; Erie, Ryerson supposed, sketching a quick map of the area in his mind. Where Greta Lynch came from, he reminded himself. He said, to either of the Curtises who might answer him, "Could you tell me something about your daughter's friends?"

  "Boyfriends, you mean?" Will asked, a small tremor of suspicion in his voice.

  Frances offered sharply, "She had lots of boyfriends, Mr. Biergarten."