Wolf Land

by Jonathan Janz

  Duane gritted his teeth. Coward! he thought.

  “I wouldn’t mind letting those jerks get a little farther ahead of us,” he said.

  “Me either,” she answered. “Except that means we’ll be alone with Ted Bundy.”

  Glenn switched off the ’Vette’s engine, and with the wad of paper towel shoved against his nose, he stumbled into the parking lot. This was getting absurd, he thought as he wheezed and coughed. He’d never heard of an allergy coming on so suddenly.

  His coughing finally under control, he made his way toward the stairwell. This time, he decided, he’d break the damned door down if Weezer refused to answer. Glenn had begun to worry that his friend might be dead in there. Who would be the wiser? The guy’s parents never checked on him. They were too busy losing money on the riverboats near Chicago to worry about their only living child. And other than Short Pump and Glenn, Weezer didn’t have any friends. So where did that leave him?

  Flyblown and putrefying, he thought.

  “Hell with that,” Glenn muttered and took the steps two at a time. He’d never felt better. At least with regard to physical fitness. The other changes were borderline terrifying—he still couldn’t think about what he’d done to that possum—but he’d never felt stronger, more agile. As if to test this belief, he paused halfway up the final flight of stairs, crouched, and leaped.

  And made it easily.

  Glenn glanced behind him, unwilling for the moment to accept what had just happened. He estimated the distance at about six feet. But it was six feet of vertical movement as well as horizontal. Surely that wasn’t possible.

  But he’d done it.

  He stood there grinning for a time. Then he remembered why he’d come.

  Turning, he moved down the dreary hallway and stopped outside Weezer’s door, 2F. He’d often kidded that Weezer should change the number to 7F so it could match his high school report cards.

  Which was really goddamn funny, wasn’t it? a caustic voice asked.

  Glenn’s fist paused a few inches from the door. I was just teasing him. Lighten up.

  Easy for you to say, the voice answered. Talk shit, make him feel even worse about himself, then claim you were kidding. No harm done, right?

  I didn’t say that.

  The hell you didn’t. Weezer looks up to you, asshole. All you ever do is belittle him.

  Glenn stared down at his feet a moment, trying and failing to fend off the tide of guilt. Surely he hadn’t been that bad to Weezer, had he? Hell, he’d hung out with him since they were in junior high, and that kind of longevity was worth something, wasn’t it?

  Evidently, it’s not enough to warrant decent treatment.

  Glenn sighed. He’d always been in his head a lot, but now the voices were so implacable—and ruthless—that he felt as if a team of quality control monitors were following him around and critiquing his every move.

  He knocked on Weezer’s door.

  No answer. Of course.

  “Dammit, Weezer,” he called. “You better be dead in there, or…” The words congealed in his mouth. What if Weezer really was dead? He’d been well enough to leave the hospital on Monday afternoon, but this was Wednesday. Had anybody heard from him since then? Thinking about his friend’s pathetic, solitary life, Glenn began to rattle the knob. Then he hammered on the door, surprised at how violently it tremored in its jamb. He was stronger than he’d been since…well, ever. Had he possessed these physical tools back in high school, it would have been he, and not Mike Freehafer, who would have been drafted by the Cubs. And had Glenn been drafted, he sure as hell wouldn’t have abandoned Savannah. He would’ve taken her with him, would have—

  “Glenn?”

  Glenn recoiled from the voice on the other side of the door.

  “That you, Weezer?” Glenn asked.

  A long pause. Then, “I just got up.”

  Glenn frowned. It was two in the afternoon. A hypothesis began to form in Glenn’s mind…

  “Hey, buddy. You been drinking these past couple days?”

  Another pause. “Yeah. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

  Glenn scowled at the door. Not only had Weezer’s voice sounded unhealthy—it was too low, for one thing—he’d detected a strong note of mockery in the words. Was Weezer messing with him?

  Glenn said, “You wanna do something tonight?”

  Again came the voice, oily with derision. “Sure, Glenn. I’d love to hang out with you.”

  Glenn took a step back from the door. What the hell?

  “Where would you like to go, Glenn?” the new Weezer asked.

  What was up with all this “Glenn” crap? Weezer either called him Kershaw or nothing at all. The way Weezer said his name now reminded him of a teacher who had something on him. Or an ex-girlfriend about to bust him for cheating.

  Glenn scratched the nape of his neck. “I don’t know. We could try the Roof, see who’s there.”

  Weezer didn’t answer, but Glenn could hear him breathing. And smiling, he realized.

  What a crock of shit, he thought. How the hell can you sense a smile through a door?

  Glenn had no idea, but he was surer of it than he was of anything. Weezer was grinning at him. And not in a kind way.

  Like a predator getting ready to pounce.

  Glenn blew out weary breath. The notion of Weezer as some lethal killing machine proved what Glenn had suspected since the changes began. He’d gone online and done some reading about sensory hypersensitivity and found that in many brain trauma cases, patients underwent transformations a lot like the one he’d been experiencing. In the case of brain lesions, even the appetite could be affected.

  Glenn thought it entirely possible that he’d incurred a lesion when the beast had attacked him. The creature had rammed into him with the force of a runaway train, after all, so it was likely he’d suffered some sort of brain injury. That the doctors hadn’t found anything during his stay at Lakeview Memorial meant nothing. This was advanced stuff. Far beyond the pale of their limited expertise.

  “How have you been eating lately, Glenn?” Weezer asked.

  Glenn’s heart began to gallop. Dry-mouthed, he stared at the door. “Why?”

  “No reason,” Weezer answered, the knowing taint in his voice thicker than ever.

  Unaccountably, Glenn decided he needed to get out of here. He wasn’t scared exactly—what was there to be frightened of?—but Weezer’s behavior was flat-out bizarre, and…okay, the guttural voice did give him a slight case of the willies.

  Glenn had taken a step toward the stairwell when Weezer said, “How about the drive-in?”

  Glenn paused. “What’s playing?”

  “Does it matter? It’s the experience that counts, isn’t it?”

  Glenn couldn’t argue with that. They’d practically lived there during high school and in their early adulthood. They only went once or twice a summer now, and they hadn’t been yet this year.

  But the more Glenn thought about it, the more he thought the drive-in might be exactly what he needed to inject a sense of normalcy into his life.

  He nodded. “What time you want me to pick you up?”

  Another one of those pauses. “Let’s meet in the back.”

  Weezer didn’t need to explain what this meant. They always staked out an area near the rear of the drive-in, where the ivy crept up the weathered fencing and no little kids ran around shrieking.

  It was the best place to take a girl.

  Not that Weezer had experienced much success in that arena. Glenn could count on two fingers the times Weezer had scored at the drive-in, and in both of those cases it was a matter of some dog-faced friend of a girl Glenn had picked up being bored or desperate enough to hook up with anybody.

  More belittling, the voice in Glenn’s head lamented. Won’t you ever learn?
>
  “All right,” Glenn said. “I’ll meet you there.” He turned to go, paused. “Hey, Weezer?”

  “Yes, Glenn?”

  Glenn’s triceps tightened. He was about to tell his friend to knock the Glenn crap off, but bit back his angry words at the last moment. “Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  Fittingly, Weezer didn’t answer.

  “Or your door,” Glenn continued. “I was here yesterday.” He tried to smile. “You too good for me now?”

  All the humor drained from Weezer’s voice. “I’ve never been too good for you.”

  Ice water trickled down Glenn’s back.

  “Well,” he said, retreating, “I better get going. I haven’t been to work yet, and I figure the place has gone to hell.”

  “To hell,” Weezer said, and this time the voice was so soft Glenn could barely hear it.

  Without another word, he turned and hurried down the stairs.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dusk, the pole barn. On Wednesdays it was a standing date. Melody wished she could steal away to the attic, but if she did that, they might learn her secret, and if they learned her secret, the one decent thing in her life would be wrested from her. Father Bridwell would never stand for a secret under his own roof. And Father Bridwell’s sons would go along with whatever Father Bridwell decreed.

  So Melody remained in the kitchen and kept on scrubbing the soup pot. It had been clean twenty minutes ago, but the longer she stayed inside, the longer she’d avoid the pole barn. Experience told her this was unwise, that they’d get pissed off being made to wait, but the thought of going out there tonight was unfathomable.

  Yet she knew she’d go. She always did. Because the alternative was worse. The handful of times she’d thrown a fuss about their Wednesday nights had ended in injuries that had taken weeks, even months to heal.

  Stop it, she told herself. She inhaled quaveringly, concentrated on scrubbing a stain from the base of the soup pot. The stain was russet-colored, like a splotch of blood, and had been there for as long as she could remember. But now it seemed very important to remove it. She nudged the water hotter, thinking that would loosen the stain, but when that didn’t help, she bumped it all the way to the left, where the water began to steam. She filled the soup pot, the soapsuds popping from the heat, just a scrim of milky fizz now. Her fingers were entombed in the superheated water, the heat blistering, so hot it almost felt icy, and still Melody worked the scrubber, the tendons of her forearms standing out. The pain in her fingers was exquisite. She couldn’t see the stain anymore, but still she dug at it, scratching and scraping the steel, wincing at the pain but relishing it because it was better than what awaited her. She shot a look through the window and saw, sure enough, Donny flinging open the door of the once-yellow pole barn and stalking through the driveway toward the house.

  It wouldn’t do to let him see her like this, the air of the kitchen hazy with steam, like a sauna now, swirling around and coating her skin and moistening her upper lip. She drew her fingers from the scalding pot of water and was about to turn off the tap when she caught sight of her hands. It wouldn’t have surprised her a bit had the flesh been dotted with blisters, or if the skin had begun to peel off. What she didn’t expect was the coarse black strands of hair sprouting from her flesh. The hair had appeared on her fingers and palms as well.

  Now that’s interesting, she thought.

  The back door banged open. Hissing, Melody thrust her aching hands into the front of her blue apron, turned to face Donny.

  Who looked back at her, his expression baffled. “Just what in the hell is keeping you?”

  She manufactured a close-mouthed smile, knowing her skin was darkly blushed.

  Donny took a step closer. “What’re you doin’ there, diddlin’ yourself?”

  Melody nodded over her shoulder. “Dishes.”

  Donny’s eyes flicked to her apron. “Why you hidin’ your hands?”

  “I’m just finishing up.”

  An ugly sheen of sweat peppered Donny’s forehead, his eyes glazed with lust. “You been finishin’ up for going on an hour now. We’re waitin’.”

  “Just a few more minutes,” Melody said and made to turn back to the sink, but Donny was on her then, across the room like vengeance and spinning her around to face him in one fluid motion. He wrenched her wrists away from her apron, jerked them into the air so the overhead light glared down at them, and for a terrible instant Melody was sure he’d see the black strands stringing over her flesh like she’d had some sort of experimental implants, the world’s first female hair plugs engineered especially for the hands.

  Donny stared at her hands. So did Melody.

  They were normal. Except they were bright red, like baby’s hands.

  “The hell’s goin’ on with you?” Donny asked. His breath was as rank as ever, but now Melody noted how untamed his beard had become, the reddish-brown curls matted in places and straggly in others. There was food collected here and there, and not just the beef stroganoff and mashed potatoes she’d made tonight. There was older food there too, and that disturbed her. He’d always been sloppy, indolent, and rattlesnake mean, but like their father and brothers, there’d also coursed through him that preserving streak of vanity that prevented the Bridwell men from stooping over and accepting their true nature as cruel, libidinous apes.

  Donny squeezed her wrists. “I asked you a question, Mel-o-dee.”

  Melody grimaced, as much at the teasing pronunciation of her name as at the grinding pain in her wrist bones.

  “I’m washing dishes,” Melody said, doing her damnedest to keep the moan out of her voice. She almost managed to.

  But Donny’d heard how much he was hurting her. He showed large, discolored teeth. God, he looked like their father. And like their father, he was violent, more violent than John, which was saying something, and far more violent than Robbie, which wasn’t saying much since Robbie mostly watched, and just did what his dad and brothers did so they’d give him their approval. Robbie was the only one she ever slept with willingly, and he’d only ever raped her in front of the others. Some nights she’d even begged Robbie to sleep in her bed to keep the other three off of her, and sometimes the ploy worked.

  Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes her father or Donny or John would bust the door in and find them together and smack Robbie around before taking her and doing it in front of Robbie on general principle. See, you stupid little baby? See how she deserves to be treated?

  And Robbie smacked her some, but that was only on Wednesday nights, and she was pretty sure that was for show. At least she hoped it was for show.

  Now, gazing into her oldest brother’s muddy brown eyes, Melody was thankful Robbie was out there in the barn. He’d slap her, sure, he’d rape her and she’d struggle against him, but with him present, she was certain it wouldn’t go too far. Robbie would never let them kill her.

  This is what she told herself.

  “You pulled the same stunt last week,” Donny said.

  She blinked up at him. He was almost six feet tall. And strong.

  “And the week before,” he added.

  “What stunt?” she asked.

  “Stalling,” he said, his voice strained and hoarse.

  “I told you, I wasn’t—”

  “I know what you told me,” he growled. “And I don’t believe a word of it.”

  She opened her mouth to protest but spotted the wheedling grin on his lips, realized he was goading her, giving himself an excuse to really unload on her, to have at her before the others could.

  Then he let go of her wrists. But not gently. The Bridwell men were never gentle.

  “Two minutes,” he told her in a flat voice, and went out. She listened to his work boots crunch the driveway.

  Two minutes, he’d said.

  Melody thought, Ok
ay, Donny. Two minutes. I’ll be there in two minutes. So you can do your thing, all four of you. And I’ll go along. Because I don’t know any different. Or because I’m chickenshit. I would’ve slit my wrists sixteen years ago if I’d had the guts.

  My God, Melody thought. Had it been that long?

  Yes. The pole barn nights had begun sixteen years ago, because that’s when the pole barn had been built. And she often wondered if Wednesday nights had been the real reason behind the construction. Her father stored equipment out there, her brothers their old junkers they bought and tried to fix up. But the biggest part of the pole barn, the part that was kept clean, the dust there soft and feathery, almost like someone had hauled in several truckloads of beige talcum powder, that was made for Wednesday nights.

  Melody glanced at the digital stove clock. A minute had already gone by. At least a minute. Donny would be waiting. Father would be waiting. They’d all of them be livid. Best not to let that anger whip into a fury. With a convulsive movement, Melody started toward the back door.

  She’d seen what they could do when they got furious.

  Jake thawed eventually. Maybe, Duane decided, it was the fact that he’d returned Savannah intact after their excursion to the Devil’s Lair. Or maybe it was the greasy elephant ear and the cone of pink-and-blue cotton candy he’d purchased for Jake on the way out of the park. Whatever it was, after they’d eaten supper at the Pizza Hut buffet and dropped Joyce off at her house, Jake had consented to allow Duane to read him bedtime stories.

  “You mind?” Duane asked Savannah before he followed Jake into his bedroom.

  “Do I mind?” she asked. “I’m dead tired. I’d love a break from reading.”

  “So how many books do you and your mom read?” Duane asked after closing the door behind him. “Three? Four?”

  “Fifty hundred,” Jake answered.

  “Fifty hundred? That’d take us awhile.”

  “I don’t mind,” Jake said.

  Duane nodded and hunkered down before a cheap white bookcase on the brink of collapsing. “What do we have here? Curious George…Thomas the Train…Frog and Toad Are Friends. The Lorax.” Fingering the spines, he turned to Jake. “Which ones sound good to you?”