Lois said she had been considering that on the drive to Dallas’s house. She figured that a mild sleeping spell could work, since the sleeping mind was already accustomed to walking that fine boundary between one’s physical self and their actual self. She would just need to find him and draw him out.
“Oh, sure. Makes sense,” Stanley agreed. “Like hypnosis. I hypnotized Herby once. We were bowling and he g-got sick all over his shoes.”
The vampire frowned. “Uh, Stan, I don’t think. I mean, I’m pretty sure you never actually hypnotized me. You told me to pretend I was curled up on my bathroom floor when I wasn’t feeling good at the bowling alley,” Herb clarified. “I don’t know if that counts.”
Before Stanley could object, Lois shushed them both and started to prepare for the casting. She had gathered a few ingredients from her satchel into her lap and started to softly speak some strange-sounding words when Stanley raised his hand again.
“Yes, Stanley?” she asked patiently.
“What about Herby?”
Lois sighed. “Same as you, Stanley.”
“Oh. Okay. I Th-thought so, but figured I’d better check. Never hurts to check. Measure tw-twice, cut once. An ounce of p-prevention is worth a p-pound of cure. Look before you,”
“You’re right, Stanley,” Lois interjected. “You’re very right. Now… hush.”
“Wake up Stanley,” a voice said, so he did.
“Oh, hey Lois. Hi, Herb,” Stanley said lazily. “Must’ve d-dozed off for a second. Anyway, I was just making sure me and Herb both knew what to d-do. I think we g-got it. Right, Herb? So you j-just go ahead and do that spell, Lois. I’m all set.”
Herb smiled. “Look down.”
Stanley frowned, suddenly self-conscious. Did he forget to zip his fly again? He turned his back to his friends and looked down. And down. And down.
Far, far beneath him, he could just make out the bird’s-eye silhouettes of a Swedish sedan, an all-American monster truck, and the roof of a house. Tree branches encroached from all sides, their shapes viewable in stark relief against the snowy ground below.
“Lois?” Stanley asked worriedly while squeezing his eyes shut. He’d never been real fond of heights. An unbidden desire to just be home overcame him. Home in his Barca Lounger instead of floating a mile above the ground. Home in his Barca Lounger instead of worrying about zombies and monster hunters and aliens. He just wanted to be home.
When Stanley cracked open first one, then a second eye, he felt his last meal heave in his stomach. Dallas’s house was still there, nestled in the trees below, but he could also see his house, so close he could practically reach down and touch it. As if that wasn’t disorienting enough, he could also see everything occupying every square inch between the two homes. Stanley squeezed his eyes shut again and valiantly chocked back the urge to vomit. He forced himself to take slow, calming breaths. As his heart rate slowed and his stomach settled, he risked opening his eyes again. This time, the strange, twisted view of the world that had made him suddenly and violently ill had resolved into familiar surroundings. His living room, seem from the vantage of his favorite chair.
That’s more like it, he thought, breathing a mental sigh of relief.
“Stanley!” Lois yelled, and suddenly he was floating a half-mile above Dallas’s truck again.
“Oh, hi Lois,” he said, trying not to sound annoyed, and simultaneously trying not to be perturbed by the fact that his two friends were literally standing on air in front of him.
The witch grabbed his hand and laced her fingers tightly with his.
“Well, first lesson learned,” she sighed. “We have to keep looking at each other or stay connected. You’re supposed to help make sure I don’t get lost, remember? I swear, keeping track of you two is like herding cats.”
“I was at Bay City Bowlers,” Herb confessed.
“I still can’t believe your sense of self is strongest in a bowling alley,” Lois grumbled, earning a chagrined look from her boyfriend.
“Me neither. I for sure would’ve thought it’d be Petro Patterson’s. I love convenience stores.”
After a final warning from Lois to keep holding hands or, so help her God, she’d leave them in the astral plane for a week while dressing up their physical bodies in Vikings jerseys and posting pictures on the internet, she started to look for Dallas.
As Stanley was dragged along, he realized that ‘look for’ wasn’t really the best description. The astral plane was a funny place indeed. Distances didn’t seem to matter at all. It was like every possible place existed all at once. All it took was a subtle shift of your attention, and you could be in Sheboygan, Wisconsin or Beijing, China, or both places at once. And the people. All of the people. Stanley knew there were seven billion people, give or take, on the planet. He’d never imaged what that would look like if you could see them all at once.
“Holy c-cow,” he whispered. “How we gonna find Dallas in all of this?”
Herb didn’t seem as worried as Stanley and actually seemed to be enjoying himself. He kept asking Lois if they could go to Wisconsin Dells, or Lambeau Field, or Wausau for some fried pickles. He’d heard from one of the guys he used to bowl with that there was this great place for fried pickles in Wausau, and even if he couldn’t eat them because he was a vampire, it’d still be cool to check it out.
Every time Herb thought of a new place, the three would be there. Then Lois would tell him to focus and they’d be here again. Then a new idea would pop into Herb’s head and they’d be there, and Lois would grumble and they’d be here.
“Are we there yet?” Stanley asked. “All this jumping around is m-making me sick. What happens if you yack in the astral p-plane?”
Suddenly, the three were floating above an unbroken expanse of forest. Trees stretched to the horizon in every direction, dappled in the light of a trillion stars and a waxing moon.
“I think we’re close,” Lois said. She looked down, and they were among the trees.
“Dallas?” she asked softly. “Dallas, is that you?”
A short distance away, a man sat comfortably in the snow between the tree trunks. His legs were drawn up, allowing him to lean forward and rest his elbows on his knees. Since the man had his back to them, Stanley couldn’t tell what his hands were doing.
“You did it!” Herb hollered, kissing Lois’s hand. “Hey Dallas! Lois did it! She found you!”
The man’s head cocked to one side, and Stanley saw it was true. It was Dallas. Even in the half-light of a moon soaked night, he was unmistakable. Emotions Stanley didn’t realize had been bottled up broke free, and heavy tears poured down his face.
“You’re okay,” he cried. “I kn-knew it. T-toughest guy I know. Of c-course you’d be okay.”
Stanley dragged Lois and Herb behind him as he moved toward his friend.
“You are okay, aren’t ya?” he asked when Dallas still didn’t respond.
When they came around the front of their sitting friend, Dallas’s hands came into view. Whatever Stanley had been expecting those hands to be doing, it was a far cry from what he actually saw. Delicately balanced in each was a knitting needle. Piled in front of him was a skein of pink – pink! – yarn. As Stanley, Herb, and Lois all tried to pull their respective jaws up from the ground, Dallas resumed knitting what looked suspiciously like little booties.
“Oh D-Dallas,” Stanley said, tears still streaming but for an entirely different reason. “You are not okay.”
Even though they were standing directly in front of him, Dallas gave no indication that he was aware of their presence. Needles clicked in a slow rhythm, pausing only when Dallas dropped a stitch. When that happened, he’d curse softly, back out a few pulls, and start again.
“What’s wrong with him?” Herb asked.
Lois responded by closing her eyes, her beautiful features pulled into a mask of concentration.
“Deloris,” she said quietly, and then repeated it more loudly. “Deloris.”
“Baby?” Dallas asked, ears pricking and eyes searching the woods.
“Lois, Herb, and Stanley are in Deloris,” Lois announced.
The knitting needles and yarn fell from Dallas’s hands as he pushed himself to his feet. He looked restlessly around, pivoting in a wary circle and sniffing the air.
“Who’s messing with me?” he asked in a challenging tone. “Dwight? Amber? C’mon you guys. Stop screwing around.”
Lois stepped up to Dallas and raised herself up on her toes until she was practically nose to nose with the taller man. Stanley and Herb were at her sides, hands still linked with hers.
“Dallas,” Lois said again. “Open your eyes, you dolt. Think about Deloris and see us.”
The werewolf blinked, yelped, and jumped back a good three feet.
“Sonofabitch!” he cursed. “Where the hell did you three come from?”
“Nice to see you, too,” Herb remarked.
Dallas had the good grace to look embarrassed. He offered a gruff apology followed by a, “Come here, you.” He stepped forward to give Herb a manly hug, but his arms whooshed right through the vampire. Perplexed, he swiped at Lois and Stanley, but with the same result. Horrified, Dallas clapped a hand to his mouth and spoke through his fingers.
“Oh god, you’re dead. You’re all dead. How’d you die? What happened?”
“We’re not d-dead, Dallas,” Stanley corrected. “We’re astral projecting with Lois. Our b-bodies are back in your truck. Pretty neat, right? Lois made me and Herby g-go to sleep, and then we woke up and we were everywhere all at once, and then we were here, and now we’re t-talking with you even though we’re b-back home. Hey, j-just curious. Where are we, Big D? Or I guess, where are you?”
Dallas exhaled, his look making it clear that he hadn’t appreciated the scare one bit. After taking a moment to compose himself, he swept his hands out. “Home,” he said serenely. “Northeastern Ontario, about halfway between Mammamattawa and Smoky Falls.”
Stanley frowned. “So your hotel’s close by, then?”
“No hotel, Stanley.”
“Wow. You g-gotta house already? How many b-bedrooms? You g-gots the walk-in kitchen, or one of them open floorplans, you know, where the d-dining room and living room and k-kitchen are all sort of the same room? Those are nice. Makes it feel nice and open. How about a hockey rink? I figured maybe them C-Canadians would have that instead of a pool.”
Dallas chuckled. “No house, Stanley. Just this. Just what you see.”
The werewolf explained that after he ran off into the night, he’d hiked up through Michigan’s northern peninsula, alone with the sun and stars and, of course, the moon. He didn’t want to hurt anyone else so he tried to get as far from civilization as possible.
“I snuck across the border, which those Canadians should really do something about. Maybe build a wall or something. Anyway, I just kept heading north. The nice thing about not really having somewhere to go is that you can end up pretty much anywhere and it’s okay.”
What Dallas hadn’t realized was that he’d been followed. For the better part of a month, he had the sneaking suspicion that he was being watched, but he didn’t give it much thought. He was too busy being depressed about being a werewolf and killing an innocent person and that kind of stuff. Instead of trying to figure out if he was being followed, or by whom and why, Dallas had just kept sleeping and waking up and eating when he was hungry and sleeping again. The next full moon, he got quite a surprise.
“It was a pack. A whole bunch of werewolves. I’d turned and was chasing a deer. Suddenly, there was a howl nearby, then another. They came out of nowhere, but not to get me. They helped me hunt. We herded that deer and ran it down. When I finally caught it, the others all came in to feed with me. It was awesome,” their friend exclaimed. “I shit you not, you ain’t lived until you’ve hunted with a pack.”
“Who were they?” Stanley asked, caught up in the story. “Were they Canadian? They must’ve b-been. Canadians are so nice. J-just makes sense that Canadian werewolves would be p-pretty nice too.”
Dallas smiled at his friend. “Yeah, they’re pretty nice. We ran and hunted and howled the whole night away. When the moon set, we got introduced formal-like. Dwight, he’s the pack leader, is from Ontario. Like me, when he turned, he decided the best thing he could do was put as many miles between him and people as possible. That’s easy to do up here. Over the years, he found others and brought them into the fold. Now the pack’s got a solid twelve werewolves, plus a handful of folks that pass through from time to time.”
In the ensuing months, Dallas learned a lot. He’d always considered himself outdoorsy. He could pitch a tent and build a fire and whip up some decent grub, provided the grub came out of a can. Dwight made Dallas see how little he actually knew about living off the land. He didn’t need anything besides what nature had to offer. He had started a little commune deep in the woods, and everyone that joined the pack did their part to make it work. It had a few long, low row houses they used for sleeping and social activities. When they were human, they’d spend their days making or mending little necessities and doing the countless chores needed to survive.
“We even have a little farm. You know, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, that sort of stuff. I guess they tried to keep a few goats and chickens, but that didn’t work so good,” Dallas admitted. “They had to keep replacing them after every full moon.”
Nights were spent sharing stories. Dallas learned a lot about his new pack mates, and they learned a good deal about him. There was no judgement, just acceptance. That was also when he learned about the Great Wolf.
“That’s the best part,” he said earnestly. “See, all this is happening for a reason. There’s a big wolf, so big that when you think you’re looking at stars, you’re actually just seeing little flecks of ice on his coat. So big that all you can ever really see is his eye when it opens up all the way. That’s only once a month because he’s so big, he blinks really slow-like,” Dallas explained. “Anyway, everything that happens is because the Great Wolf wants it to. All you gotta do is just give yourself over to the Wolf.”
“So that’s it?” Lois asked in a caustic tone. “You just traded in your old friends for new ones, huh? Just left us all to wonder and worry night after night for months, while you’ve been up here all the while playing cult and knitting… What is that, anyway?”
Dallas looked down at his craftwork. “Oh, they’re booties. Sonya’s having a baby. Everyone thinks it’ll be a girl. We can smell it, you know.”
“Knitting pink booties,” Lois continued. “You abandoned your friends to knit baby booties in the woods of Ontario. Dallas, that’s just… That’s just awful.”
Dallas responded to Lois’s attack with a calm nod. “I know it seems that way, but it was never my choice. The Great Wolf brought me here, and once I got here, well… there aren’t exactly phone booths, so I couldn’t call.”
“I’m glad for you, Dallas,” Herb said earnestly. “I mean, you always liked the outdoors, and now you, um. Well, you’re outdoors all the time. So that’s good. But here’s the thing. We need you to come home.”
“I am home, Herby.”
“No, like Trappersville home. Your house home. There’s some really bad stuff going on, Dallas. The whole town’s turned into zombies, and the Society is there killing ‘em all. We need your help.”
Dallas returned to sitting on the ground. A moment later, the needles started to click.
“Society, huh?” he asked, too nonchalantly. “You mean, like Tia?”
Herb nodded, and explained that it was Aletia and two other guys. Both real tough.
Dallas pursed his lips in thought, and then shook his head. “Can’t do it, buddy. I’ve found my place, and besides, whatever’s going on, it’ll be okay. The Great Wolf’s got a plan, and you’re all part of it. Even if you aren’t wolves,” he added. “At least, I think so. I guess I never asked Dwight if non-wolf people get to be p
art of the plan.” Dallas shrugged. “Anyway, if you see Tia again, maybe. I dunno. Maybe tell her I said hi.”
The needles started to click again, looping and pulling the yarn in calm monotony. The witch dropped Herb’s hand and swatted angrily at the knitting needles, but her hand passed right through. She cursed in frustration, and cursed again when she realized Herb had vanished.
“Oh great,” she complained. “Now I have to go find Herb again. I hope he’s back in the truck.”
The clicking stopped.
“Deloris? You said you’re in Deloris,” Dallas remembered. “How… You know. How is she?”
Lois gasped in shock. “Seriously? You haven’t changed. Not one bit. Herb tells you the whole town is overrun by zombies, and you ask about your stupid truck?” she yelled.
“She’s not stupid,” Dallas retorted.
“D-Deloris is fine, just fine,” Stanley soothed, eager to head off an argument. “But, but we really d-do need you, Dallas. Those Society folks are real tough. We c-can’t figure out a cure for the zombies if they’re around trying to k-kill us. You gotta beat ‘em up. Beat ‘em up real g-good so we can help everyone else.”
Dallas shrugged apologetically. “I don’t fight anymore. Dwight says that kind of violence just isn’t what the Great Wolf wants. You never see wolves going around pummeling each other, do you?” When neither Stanley nor Lois had a ready answer for that, he nodded authoritatively. “See? All part of the plan, and right now, the plan for old Dallas is to stay put and finish these here booties.”
Lois was about to say something else, and from her expression, it was going to be some pretty choice words. Before she could utter the first syllable, a faint voice echoed in the still night air around them.
“Lois? Stanley? Where are you guys? Can you hear me?”
Stanley kept a firm grasp on Lois’s hand while his head spun from side to side.
“Herby? We’re here. Where’d you g-go?” he asked, still searching the nearby trees for some sign of the red-headed vampire.
“Deloris,” the faint voice said, echoing eerily in the space around them. “I’m awake. You two are still conked out. But, um. Well, you should probably get back here.”
Undead Cheesehead (Monsters in the Midwest Book 3) Page 12