Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  Gabby made a racket with the straw and then flung the plastic cup away. “So, lame-o. Did you even talk to ‘Date-Rape’?”

  “Would you stop?”

  “See? You’re such a chicken-shit.”

  ‘Date-Rape’ was the nickname Gabby had labeled Dan Raylan with when Amy confessed to liking him. A bunch of them had gone out to the movies to see a cheesy horror flick at the Laurelhurst. Dan was there too and Gabby kept pushing Amy to talk to him. For Gabby, talking to boys was no problem. Especially ones she liked, which never failed to flabbergast Amy at how easy she made it look. Gabby would cajole and tease and hurl abuse at whatever boy she was crushing on at that moment. She made it look so easy and pushed Amy to do the same. As if. Amy discovered that her brain didn’t work when faced with some boy she thought even remotely cute, floundering like a spastic in gym class.

  “Time to man-up, chickie-shit.” Gabby thumbed towards the back of the too-brightly lit cafe they were in. Dan Raylan slouched on a small bench near the back with his friends. They’d all gone to the movies and wandered here for coffee afterwards. Amy had picked the table furthest from Dan and had been excoriated by Gabby for it. “Go talk to him already.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “You said that ten minutes ago. Tag.” Gabby belched and blew the effuse across the table. “What the hell are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. You’re scared of everything.”

  “I’m not like you.” Amy rolled her eyes this time. Why didn’t Gabby get that?

  “What’s the worst that’s gonna happen, Amy? He’s either interested or he’s not. If not, then you suffer a tiny humiliation. It’s character-building.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “The world ain’t gonna blow up if you embarrass yourself. Hell, no one is gonna notice at all. Not even ‘Date-Rape’, the lobotomy candidate.”

  She had a point. Amy pushed her chair back and prepared to march over to Dan and his dumb friends. But then she hesitated, her resolve crumbling and she dipped her shoulders. Already shot down. What time was it anyway?

  “Don’t check the time. God, you make me puke.”

  It was way late and there was going to be hell to pay going home. She got up, taking up her bag. “I gotta go.”

  Gabby sneered. “Amy, please. What’s the worst your dad’s gonna do? Stick around.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can do anything you want,” Gabby said. “You don’t always have to do what’s expected of you.”

  Amy said goodbye and waved to Dan as she shouldered the door open. He wasn’t even looking and she withered at her open display lost on the boy yammering to his friends.

  She hadn’t done anything really wrong. So she’d gone out. Stayed out after sundown for the first time in three months. Was that really so bad? Then why was she tiptoeing up the porch steps praying her dad had gone to bed early?

  She should have known something wasn’t right. The dog sat up when she approached, tail swishing across the boards, but didn’t run to greet her. She reached out and scratched the ruff on his flat head. Then she froze at the sound of his voice.

  “Well, what do you know.” Her dad sat on the railing. With the porch light off, he remained hidden in the darkness. “You’re still alive.”

  “I just went to the movies,” she said. “Nothing bad happened. The world didn’t end.”

  “Yup. Maybe I’m just paranoid after all.” He tilted off the railing and stood. She saw the drink in his hand, heard the gravelly timber in his voice. How much has he had?

  “Dad, I--“

  “Get inside.”

  The kitchen was cool when she entered, as if a window had been left open. Amy poured a glass of water and turned towards the stairs. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Sit down.”

  Here it comes. The speech, the fight. She wasn’t up to it. After the foul up with Dan and Gabby’s nagging, all Amy wanted to do was curl under the covers and forget the whole night. She set her glass on the counter but remained standing.

  He stood near the table, the expanse of floor between them. “I know this has been tough on you. I appreciate that. But you gotta stick to the rules. I let you go tonight cuz I figured you needed it. But that was a ‘gimme’. We’re back to routine now. Okay?”

  For a lecture, it was mercifully short and she could have left it there. She wanted to leave it, to just capitulate so she could escape to her room and marinate in privacy over this disaster of an evening. But why should she? “You can’t keep me locked up like this, dad. It’s not normal.”

  “This isn’t about normal. It’s about being safe.”

  “I am safe. I’m always aware of my surroundings. I know where the exits are. Everything you taught me, I do. Nothing bad is gonna happen.”

  “Bad can always happen.” He set his glass on the table and reached for the bottle. Spun the top off. “Just humour me, okay?”

  Amy chin-wagged the bottle. “Is that gonna help matters?”

  “Don’t lecture me.”

  “God!” She fought the urge to hurl her glass at him. “Don’t lecture you? Humor you? I have to bend every time but you won’t tell me anything. You won’t trust me with anything.”

  “This isn’t about that,” he said, pulling out a chair and easing into it. “It’s about being safe. That’s all.”

  “Safe from what? I can handle myself. I don’t get into stupid situations.”

  He swirled the drink in the tumbler. Irish whiskey, his poison. He cocked his head as if to say something, then changed his mind and kept his mouth shut. “I know, sweetheart. But there are bad situations and then there’s worse. Way worse.”

  Amy watched her father take a drink. His hand shook a little as it tilted the rock glass. And he looked so old now. The dark rings under his eyes, the sag in his shoulders. She used to think of him as tall but he seemed to have lost a few inches as if unable to stand straight anymore. As tight-lipped as he was, one of the few real things her dad had confided to her was the rage he harbored for his own father who had given into the drink. How he had just given up and crawled into a bottle to inure himself from the world. And here he was doing the exact same thing and Amy could barely bite down the rage burning up in her own guts. How stupid can a grown man be?

  “You need help, dad.” She took a breath, wanting to get it out without losing her temper. “You’re in trouble and you need to talk to someone.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Wake up!” The water glass in her hand flung across the room and broke against the wall. To his credit, he at least looked startled. “You’re paranoid! And I don’t mean in a jokey sense, I mean the clinical sense. You suffer debilitating nightmares. You don’t sleep. You drink way too much!” Amy paced this way, that way, trying to burn off the rage but it stoked hotter. “Don’t you see what’s going on? It’s post traumatic stress disorder! A blind man could diagnose this!”

  His hand went up. “Enough.”

  “No, it’s not enough. You’ve been spinning down since that night you ended up in the hospital. The night Lara disappeared. And you won’t confide in me about it? You won’t trust me enough to tell me the truth?” She put enough spin on the word ‘trust’ to make a wicked curveball and it hit hard. She went on. “Fine. If you won’t talk to me then talk to someone else. Get help, before this gets any worse.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes you can. All you have to do is pick up the phone.” She rubbed her eyes then leveled her gaze back to him. “And if you don’t, I will call your boss and tell him that you’re suffering from extreme post traumatic stress.”

  He blew out his cheeks in a sigh and then fetched up the bottle and poured a lethal length. Said nothing.

  Like a slap in the face, Amy thought. He doesn’t care. Doesn’t even hear a word she’s saying. She needed to get out of here. Get to her room, figure things out. She marched for the stairs.

  “You re
member the night you were chased by a pack of wild dogs?”

  She stopped. Not looking at him but not walking away either.

  “Those dogs belonged to a suspect Lara and I were tracking. His name was Ivan Prall.”

  Amy looked at their dog curled up by the front door, watching them with baleful eyes. “He was one of them,” she said. “Wasn’t he?”

  “Yep. Lara and I tracked that son of a bitch hard. Got close to collaring him a few times even. But Lara studied the guy and found out something unusual. This guy thought he was a monster. And not in the figurative sense. Ivan Prall believed he was a werewolf.” He sipped his glass. “That in itself wasn’t unusual. I see every kind of crazy. People convinced their Jesus Christ or Judy Garland. The thing is, what we learned the hard way was that Ivan Prall wasn’t crazy. He was telling the truth.”

  Amy didn’t move. The clock on the wall ticked away.

  “You remember Lara got attacked by the dogs? Ended up in a coma and we all stayed with her. You were there when she woke. Well, the dogs didn’t attack her. Prall did. The wolf chewed her up.”

  Now more than ever Amy wanted to flee. To get out before she heard anymore but her legs didn’t work. Her muscles rebelling against her brain.

  “Lara got the curse,” he said. “Or infected or whatever the hell it is. She started to change. The night we took Prall down, the night we killed the wolf, Lara was too far gone. She went all the way and changed into one of those damn things. Once Prall was dead, she... or it... ran off. And I’ve spent the last three months looking for her.”

  The Husky sat up and nosed the door, whining to be let out.

  “So, you’re right. I am traumatized and going round the bend. But hey…” he threw up his hands. “I got good reason to be.”

  Amy forced her legs to move and walked away. Plodding up the steps with slow robotic movements. Her dad was off the deep end. Way worse than she could have imagined. Damaged, unstable and crazier than a shithouse rat.

  SEVEN

  THE CUTTING WAS losing its efficacy. When she had first stumbled upon this trick, it had been a merciful relief. Like a mosquito buzzing near her ear that she couldn’t swat away until that first time she had cut her flesh. The silver slicing into her skin was like squashing the mosquito, its excruciating buzz finally silenced. And then peace. The purifying silver a blinding wash of light that burned everything off.

  It was almost manageable after that, this thing inside her. When her pulse spiked and her heart twanged like a piano wire being plucked, she dug out the knife and cut like a teenage girl with a razor blade. She had always assumed that the consensus about teen cutting was true; that it was a cry for help. Now she wasn’t so sure. A sharp twinge of pain brought the moment into fierce clarity and made you feel alive. Part rush, part relief.

  Yet like any garden variety junkie, the more she used the less its potency. She had to cut deeper to attain the wash of relief and each cut lessened its power as a balm. When she ran out of room on her forearm, the skin crisscrossed like she’d been keeping score on it, she cut into her thigh.

  She wiped the blade clean and put it away. Elbows on her knees, she stared at two little droplets of blood on the grimy floor. How much longer could she keep this up? Hiding in a bathroom stall like some two-bit user. Like the creeps and smokehounds she had busted so many times in her old life. How long until the silver edge gave no release at all?

  Get up. Get out. Quit the pity-party.

  She cleaned up at the sink, averting her eyes from the mirror but gave in at the last moment. She looked ghastly. Unbrushed hair pulled into a ponytail, dark hollows under her eyes. Shabby clothes that, while warm and dry, made her look like a homeless person. Thin too. Way too thin, given her unstable diet now. Her cheeks had a sallow pull to them that made her look old. Or was that just the grime?

  Watching the blood run thin and circle the drain, she wondered what had triggered the change just now. There was always a trigger. Fear or danger. The chatty guy in the bar was no threat. Was he?

  The bar had filled in when she came out of the bathroom. More seats occupied by men in workboots and women who’d left their name-tags on, hoping to catch the tail end of happy hour. The hunting party, along with the man who had chatted her up earlier, were mercifully gone. The waitress, bless her, had left her unfinished glass on the table, slipping the bill under it.

  She put the money on the table and drained the glass. A small fortification before the long walk home.

  “Not much fun, is it?”

  A man stood near the table. Tall and lean with short buzzed hair. Flecks of grey whiskers in a three-day beard. He smiled. “Scraping the bottom of the barrel. Rock bottom and all that. It’s tough.”

  Lara shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  He took a chair from a nearby table and spun it backwards. Sat down, propping his elbows on the backrest. “Sure you do. The hard part is admitting it. Pride gets in the way, trips us up.”

  “Whatever you’re selling--,” she said, reaching for her gear. “I gotta go.”

  “I’m not selling anything.” His hands went up, to show he wasn’t hiding anything. “I just recognized a kindred spirit. Keeping to yourself, trying to be invisible. Clinging to the edge by your fingernails. It isn’t much fun, is it?”

  A patron passed between them, cutting for the bathrooms. He leaned in, stealing a confidence. “I’ve been where you are. Down. Out. Game over. It doesn’t have to be this way. I can help you.”

  His eyes fixed onto her glass as she killed the beer. That’s what this was about. An AA lifer, reaching out to help what he thought was another alcoholic on the downward spiral.

  “There’s no relief in that.” He nodded to the drink, confirming her suspicion. “I know, I looked.”

  He was harmless, she decided. A do-gooder. But if that was so, why was the hair on her nape standing up? Something about the man wasn’t right. A smell or just a gut reaction, she couldn’t tell. Maybe it was just the ragged scar on his jaw, cutting a line through the stubble.

  She rose, hauling the backpack to her shoulder. “I have to go.”

  “Oh? You got somewhere to be? Somebody waiting at home?” His smile was cockeyed but genuine. He chin-wagged her chair. “Come on and sit a spell. We both know you got nothing to go home to. Talk to me.”

  “You know all that, do you?”

  “An educated guess.” He got up from the chair and held out a hand. “Where are my manners. I’m Edgar. Edgar Grissom.”

  She turned towards the door. “See you around, Ed.”

  “At least tell me your name.”

  “Lois Lane,” she said, walking away.

  She disappeared. He snorted and then sank back into his chair. When the waitress swung past, he touched her arm and asked for another beer.

  The small hamlet of Weepers trailed off at the main road, the buildings fewer and farther between until there is just blacktop hemmed by forest on both sides. The last sign of civilization was a gas station, homey in its old roll-up doors and chipped stucco. On the far side of the pumps stood a phone booth.

  She stopped as she came alongside it, staring at the scratched out plexiglass door, the graffiti scrawled over the metal frame. A temptation that snagged her nerves before but always shunned. Not this time. Not with the stranger’s words pinballing around inside her head.

  We both know you got nothing to go home to.

  How did he know? He didn’t. That line probably applied to every defeated drunk he had ever reached out to. It wasn’t even a guess. Then why did it claw at her nerves like a rusty fishhook? There was something off about the man and it set her inner alarm ringing. Her heart was banging up the charts and her skin had that clammy itch whenever the change was coming on. Jesus, she just cut with the silver but already the curse was coming back? What the hell.

  How long before her little cutting schtick didn’t cut muster anymore?

  Nothing to go home to.

  She elbowed thro
ugh the glass door and felt the stifling air inside the booth. The receiver was rank with an awful tang, as if fouled by all the crying or yelling that had been emptied into it. No one used payphones to chitchat. These things were only ever used for harsh and unpleasant calls. Desperation or fury, shamed apologies or righteous vitriol.

  Pleas for help.

  Her call would be no different. Another unpleasant ring from a refugee with no option but a public payphone. She plugged quarters into the slot and waited and, when prompted by a metallic sounding voice, slotted more silver in.

  Two rings, then three. Any rehearsed dialogue she had imagined went out the window expecting to hear his voice. The low timber of it, the stunned silence at his end when he realized who was calling. What she hadn’t anticipated was hearing his daughter’s voice.

  “Hello?”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Panic set in and she thunked the phone back onto its cradle. Out the door of the piss-rank booth, she hurried back to the road, walking as fast as she could.

  There was little to be done in the Brakken file. Gallagher spent the morning talking to the few witnesses in the incident, going over their statements again to catch any missing detail and dot every ‘i’. Ines Brakken was released on bail and went home to a husband she now knew was cheating on her. Traumatized, she hadn’t slept, unable to scrub the image of shooting her assailant from her mind. Carol Arbuckle and her daughter remained at home with the drapes closed, mourning. Gallagher couldn’t be sure but the steely tension between Mrs. Arbuckle and her daughter made him wonder if the teenage girl’s pregnancy test had come back with bad news.