“Because there might still be a human heart beating beside the beast’s in you.”
She chortled. “You know what your problem is? You and Quinell and Fromme? You haven’t accepted that you’re beasts. You still long to be what you were. All human. Not me. I relish my bestial form, and all the animal instincts that go with it. No more being some vulnerable little lady – all form and manners and no power. You all hold onto the past.” She spat on the floor. “That’s what I think of the past.”
“If you detest us all so much, why don’t you leave, Lyla?”
“Believe it or not, you fools serve your purpose.” She twirled and danced away, leaving me with a rage in my gut.
Poetry books piled on my bed, a pitcher of lemonade and a half-empty glass on my nightstand, I sat curled up under my window catching whatever breeze wafted in this late afternoon. My ankle felt better, but my head still ached. I was deep into Elizabeth Barrett Browning, when someone tapped on my door. I hoped it was Quinell, wanting to finish our discussion.
“Come in.”
Buss stuck his head in. “I’m done for the day.” He grinned at the sweating pitcher. “Mind if I have some of that lemonade?”
I sat up, patting down my sundress and fanning myself. “I suppose.” I could smell his sweat and musk as he came in. I closed my eyes and could taste him.
He poured himself some lemonade in my glass. “It’s cool under the house, but hot as hell moving all the lumber and supplies back and forth.”
Buss sat opposite me on the end of the bed. “Oh, I shouldn’t sit here after being under the house . . .” He stood up suddenly. “I’m going to shower, clean up. Then I’ll stop back. How’s that?”
“All right.” He smiled at me, and I wanted to follow him into the shower. Whatever forces were at work in me were growing in strength. “Wait. I have an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Let me show you the stream and the falls. It’s a hike into the woods a ways, but it’s worth it. You could wash there. The water’s cool and clean and it’s so pretty.”
He took my hand and yanked me off of the bed, my ankle turned with a sharp pain. “Ow.” He looked back at me as he let my hand go.
“Sorry. Come on.” He was like a giddy kid.
We raced to the stream. I fought the urge to shift and go the distance on all fours, the earth under my bare paws. When we got close, I slowed and he ran on ahead. My ankle hurt. I could barely wait until the cool water was rushing over the pain.
When I got to the stream, he had rolled up his pants and was knee-deep in it. “Hey, Chelsea, this is great!”
I stepped in beside him, shrieking at the cold and welcoming it. “Come on. Let’s go in.”
Buss hurried to the bank, peeled off his T-shirt, dropped his pants and stepped out of his shoes in one sweeping movement. I was startled by how white his body was where the sun hadn’t tanned him. He saw me looking and chuckled.
“You just going to watch or were you thinking you might join me?” He walked into the shallows, shivered, then dunked himself to the neck.
I closed my eyes, grabbed the hem of my dress and pulled it over my head. I tossed it to the bank and let myself fall backwards into the water. I felt the bruise on my head as the cold water touched my scalp.
“It’s freezing! Whew!”
Buss waded upstream to where I curled myself, back against the current. When he was beside me, I let him take me in his arms.
“I’ll warm you up.” He held me tightly, his lips brushing over my head and face.
I twisted my body so he was wrapped around me. The water and his tongue and the moment took over. I concentrated on holding my form in a corner of my mind, while the remainder of me turned to putty.
We rolled over well-worn rock until we were on the wet bank. I felt the cool of our skin from the water, the earth beneath us, the dappling of sunlight through the trees and the warmth of his tongue and lips and hands as they gently played over my body. I knew nothing but the sensations, the smell of him, the sound of his breathing, our moans accompanied by the babbling of the stream. When he entered me, I felt his warmth there, too.
My instincts kicked in and I moved so that he was behind me. He didn’t mind, his hands going over my breasts, kneading the nubs of my nipples. He began making growling noises, his teeth and lips taking nips at my back and neck. I could feel the muscles inside me closing around him, milking him. My breath came in hurried gasps as I felt myself sinking into a kind of dusk, a sur-reality. I wasn’t Chelsea, nor was I the beast. I was both, rutting in the woods, grunting and moaning, an animal and a woman, body and heart, feeling, falling. Falling.
When he came, his cry was so loud, the birds flew off their branches in a sudden cacophony of thrashing wings. I howled as the bucking stopped and that dusk slowly grew into lucidity and light. Buss’s full weight fell on me. My legs gave way and we lay there, he still locked inside me. The air was alive with birds in song, and the frogs began to croak. I listened to his breathing, the sound rasping from deep in his throat. An animal sound.
I followed my first impulse, to release him and lick him clean. He lay back, a half-sleep overtaking him. Soon he was aroused again and once more we coupled. More lazily, as if time were suspended for the sake of pure pleasure. He touched me in ways I had only read of, my body knowing exactly what to do, though my mind reeled.
I was released in some way that reached into the core of me, threatening my shape. For a few moments, I shifted, thankful that Buss’s eyes were shut. But his hands knew – my fur lengthening, my muscles growing, rippling. I held his face to my neck as I strained to return to form. It was Chelsea who let him go, the beast finally settling somewhere inside of me. He seemed to search me with a muted fear. I let him, his eyes scanning me, his fingertips lightly tracing my curves. When he was done, he lay back, satisfied, but wary.
My slow grin warmed him and when we kissed, I saw something tender and sweet in his eyes. I had the urge to weep, but tears didn’t come.
We rinsed ourselves in the stream as the light grew amber then crimson. We said nothing, our eyes speaking the language of two connected by a special union.
I walked just behind him all the way back home. He turned often, smiling at me. I grinned back. Something had grown between the two of us. The longing I’d felt before had been transformed into a feeling of connection, warm and nurturing. It was very different from the bond I had with the others – a bond forged by shared sins and harbored secrets. Thinking of the others suddenly left me with a chill in my bones. As we neared the house, I could see the peeling white clapboard across the glen, and my gut knotted.
They’d take one look at me, at us, and know. Lyla knew what I’d wanted, as did Quinell. Surely, Lyla had said something about it to Fromme. Once I’d had my way with Buss, they’d be waiting – appetites raging and ready for the feast. I didn’t want them to take him away from me so soon. Not yet.
“Buss, stop.” He took a step and turned to me, his arms open. I went to him. “I . . . I don’t want them to know. You know.”
“Oh.” His face fell. “Yeah. Your father would fire me and then he’d kill me. What do you want me to do?”
I kissed him. “Can you act? Pretend that we just had a walk in the woods and that nothing’s different?”
“I guess. Can you?”
I doubted he could. He epitomized simple honesty, sincerity. “I’m a pretty good actress when I have to be. Just don’t let them know. You’re right about him wanting to kill you.”
His brow knit. I stared at him in wonder. I’d come to care so much about what happened to him. To our prey. I thought about wounding him, making him one of us. At least he’d have a chance of being spared and we might spend eternity together, in immortality. But I recalled how I felt about the beast who’d nearly killed me, left me for dead, transforming me into something not human, not animal, unfit for the life either might have lived well. I loathed that beast. I still loathed him. I couldn’t
stand the thought of Buss hating me. Not for a moment, let alone forever.
He regarded me with sudden urgency. “We could leave, Chelsea. Just pack up and go. I can get work anywhere.” He seemed surprised by his own suggestion.
“No. I can’t. Not now. Just promise you won’t let on.”
“Chelsea, I love you. I’ll do anything.”
I heard the words and felt myself shifting, my edges growing soft with a growing ache in my heart. I hugged him tightly, struggling to keep my form. I mumbled the same to him.
“Now go. Walk in on your own. I’ll follow in a bit. Tell them you saw me wander up into the woods and went looking for me. Say you couldn’t find me.”
“Right. See you.” We kissed again. I tasted myself on his tongue, sweet, musky. It made me giggle.
He waved, then made his way down the path into the glen.
I wrapped my arms around myself, still feeling Buss inside me. When he was out of my range of vision, I threw back my head and howled. Tears came then. Even as I shifted onto all fours, I bayed my heart out. So this was love. Hope. Pain.
They took him that evening, before I returned. They saved me some, but I wouldn’t eat. I’d lost my hunger. I’d changed, forever, knowing love. Quinell understood.
I’m not like them any longer. Fromme, Lyla, even Quinell. Perhaps I never was. I’m with child, now. Buss’s child, and mine. I’ve chosen to stay with them, though, for now. They’re all I’ve known. My family. I know I’ll have to leave eventually, when the child is born. The child won’t be like them, either. And they will always have their hunger.
They still speak of Buss, but always as prey. To me, he was my lover, my friend, the man who loved to fix things, the father of my baby, honest, good and trusting. That’s the way I want my child to know him, his father. A loving man. Never the prey.
Mark Morris
IMMORTAL
Mark Morris became a full-time writer in 1988 on the British government’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and a year later saw the publication of his first novel, Today (aka The Horror Club). Since then he has published more than a dozen others, including Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Mr Bad Face, Longbarrow, Genesis, Nowhere Near an Angel, The Deluge and four Doctor Who novelizations.
He has recently published a Torchwood novel, Bay of the Dead, and he is editor of the HWA Bram Stoker Award-nominated Cinema Macabre, a book of fifty horror movie essays by genre luminaries.
The author reveals that “Immortal” came about as the result of a three-way collision of desires: “Firstly, and most obviously, was my desire to write a story that would pander to the thematic requirements of this particular anthology. Secondly was my desire to write a police procedural, inspired largely, it must be said, by a number of recent excellent television series. Thirdly was my desire to make use of a particular location, in this case the railway platform at Stalybridge in Cheshire.
“I went over there to do a talk and reading at the local library. I arrived in an almost deserted town to find a huge banner plastered across the front of the library with my name written on it in three-foot high, blood-red letters. Weird. After the talk, which was surprisingly well-attended, I sat on the railway platform with a friend who had travelled over from Warrington to see me. There was an excellent bar on the platform and we sat and got slowly pissed as we waited for our respective trains home. I’ve always loved macabre tales centered around railway stations and this seemed the ideal location for just such a tale – still in use but somehow lost and forgotten.
“We sat there for a good while as it got gradually colder and darker, but though we saw a number of trains pulling into and then speeding out of the station, I don’t think we ever saw anyone alighting or ascending. Very strange . . . but, then again, we had had a few pints. . .”
I feel him inside me, and I know that he is hungry. He whispers to me. He says: What you do is not murder. It is instinct. Survival. These creatures are not your kind.
I know what he says is true, and I know that I can’t stop until it is over, that it is out of my control, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. I ask him: Don’t they have a right to survival too?
And he says: Hush. Listen to your blood.
Most people were still asleep, locked into forgetfulness. As George Farrow stepped from the car and crossed the pavement, early morning frost crackling beneath his feet, he glanced up at curtained windows and felt a stab of envy so acute he had to deep-breathe it away.
Half an hour ago he’d been wrenched from his own warm and welcome oblivion by the clamouring of the telephone. Even as his hand groped from beneath the duvet, he’d felt the chill of the morning settling on his skin, seeping into his bones.
Detective Sergeant Jackson’s briskness, as ever, infuriated him. “We’ve got another one, sir, Cumberland Street. Less than a mile from where Louise Castle was killed. I’ve taken the liberty of sending a car round for you, sir. Save you driving. Should be there in fifteen minutes.”
Shit, thought Farrow, and murmured something in reply before dropping the receiver none too gently back into its cradle. He suspected that Jackson was sending a car because the younger man thought he might otherwise dawdle, or even turn over and go back to sleep.
By the time Banks tapped on his door, Farrow was washed and dressed and making toast, which he ate in the car on the way over. Despite his hasty ablutions, he was still uncomfortably aware that he must look how he felt, which was like several different kinds of shit. Banks, however, was as courteous and respectful as ever, as was the uniformed constable standing outside the high wooden doors of the builder’s yard on Cumberland Street. However the instant Farrow set foot inside the yard, Jackson shot him the kind of look he might normally reserve for some smelly old dosser who’d just wandered in off the street to scrounge the price of a cup of tea.
Farrow bridled. He was aware that he did not look his best at the present time, but he had his reasons. Besides, who was this boy to pass judgement on him? He could imagine what Jackson and his cronies were saying about him behind his back – that he was washed out, that the strain of handling such a serious investigation was getting too much for him.
Jackson was smiling now, offering a brisk, “Morning, sir,” a small balloon of white breath curling away from his face. With his double-breasted suit, expensive haircut and bright questing eyes, he looked more like an advertising executive than a policeman.
Even as Farrow was mustering a response, Jackson was striding towards a large yellow plastic construction at the end of the yard, calling over his shoulder, “Deceased is in here, sir.”
Farrow, aware that in the eyes of his colleagues he was already trailing by several points, perfunctorily smoothed down his thin but wayward hair, and said, loud enough to draw the attention and smiles of the other dozen or so people in the yard, “Really, Christopher? You do surprise me.”
Jackson at least had the decency to blush and mutter an apology. He even held the flap of the incident tent open so that Farrow could enter without taking his hands from his pockets.
The killer’s work was several hours old. The girl’s innards, exposed for all to see, had long ago stopped steaming.
“Careful, sir,” Jackson said, placing a restraining hand on Farrow’s arm and nodding down at the floor as the Detective Inspector lifted a foot to step forward. Farrow paused, following his Sergeant’s gaze. He’d been about to trample a piece of the girl underfoot, he realized; some unrecognizable gobbet of bloodied flesh, torn from the body and now ringed in yellow chalk. Despite the bitterly cold October morning, the inside of the tent was oppressively warm and smelled like an abattoir.
“Do we know who she is?” Farrow said, narrowing his eyes against the red glare of the girl’s blood.
“We’re not one hundred per cent sure, sir. The killer took her face again as you can see. But we’re almost certain she’s a 23-year-old barmaid called Sarah-Jane Springer. She was reported missing by her boyfriend just before
one a.m. after failing to return from her seven to eleven shift at The Crow’s Nest.”
“The big pub on the corner of Maddeley Road?” said Farrow.
“That’s right, sir. According to the landlord, Miss Springer normally got the twenty-five past eleven bus just across the road from the pub, which got her to the corner of Juniper Street at about eleven-forty. She would then walk up Juniper Street, take a left on to Cumberland Street, and then a right on to Markham Road, which is where she lived. Number 42.”
“So she’d normally get home . . . what? About quarter to twelve?”
“About that, sir.”
“What’s the boyfriend’s name?” said Farrow. His head felt thick with the smell of blood.
“Ian Latimer, sir.”
“Ian Latimer.” Farrow repeated the name as if tasting it. “Any form?”
“No, sir. He works at Whitworth’s Brewery, and has done since he left school nine years ago. He and Miss Springer have lived together for the past two and a half years.”
“And did Mr Latimer have a reason for not reporting Miss Springer’s disappearance before one a.m.?”
“The call was logged at oh-oh-fifty-one, sir,” said Jackson pedantically, and then hastily added, “He says he fell asleep watching the football, sir.”
“Hmm,” said Farrow and turned his attention back to the girl. From the waist upwards she had been ripped apart, just like the others. All that identified her as human were the out-flung arms and legs and the blood-matted blonde hair. Her fingernails were long and varnished as red as her blood. On her left wrist was a thin gold-coloured bracelet and a watch.
“I assume this is just like the others? No obvious motive? No sign of robbery, sexual assault?”
“None, sir. Whoever did this just likes killing people. Correction: killing young women.”
“Quite,” said Farrow. He frowned; he was finding it hard to concentrate. What he wouldn’t give for a cup of strong, dark coffee to kick-start these tired old cells of his into life, or preferably another hour’s kip.
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 16