Furr

by Axel Howerton

  McQueen leads me outside and into the shed. The chemical stink is fierce and brings tears to my eyes as soon as he opens the door and shoves me in ahead of him.

  He loops the end of the long chain around one of the dull metal pipes and fishes a padlock out of his pocket.

  “You’re a tough one, I’ll give you that. I thought I’d cut ya in two this morning. Then I had you dead to rights twice again, and both times you managed to slip me.”

  He may have doused himself in pool chemicals to cover the zoo stink, but his breath is still a foul mixture of mould and stale whiskey.

  The door opens behind us, and I hear the jangle of more chains.

  “Chain them up together,” Simon Magus says from behind me, his voice low and velvet smooth.

  Jules passes in front of me, haggard and naked and cowering into the corner opposite me. Her hair is a straggled mess of filthy straw, and she keeps her face buried behind her hands, twitching as she walks, as if she’s hurt, or has been hurt enough for a lifetime. McQueen ties her chain around the same pipe and locks us together.

  Magus steps in front of me, hands behind his back, chest out, chin up. He stares down his long face at me, and deep in the fog I imagine the snap of cartilage as I bite through the ridge of that nose, feeling the blood burst into the back of my throat as he screams for mercy.

  It’s only a dream. A distant, hollow dream of revenge, playing on a loop somewhere in my memory. The only response my body has to him is a hard swallow of the lump of bile-and-blood infused phlegm that seems lodged in my windpipe.

  Magus grips my face in his long fingers, the metal of his rings sending motes of grey mist swimming up to join with the ones already swirling in front of my vision. He leans in close, his own cherrywood-tinted irises alive with flame.

  “Took you long enough, McQueen. This one should have hardly been so much trouble. Weak and foolish. Practically a virgin.”

  Magus slaps my face, almost playfully, and steps back, swirling the tails of his long black coat aside as he perches on the white pvc conduit facing me.

  “You have no idea what you are, do you? The power that you lousy curs represent, and you act as if it’s some familial quirk.” His mysterious deck of playing cards appear in his hands, cutting and flipping as those long chicken-bone fingers twist and twirl.

  “I began this road more than a century ago. I chased your great-great grandfather across the continent. Him and his brood. I was a boy, a Mormon son, if you can believe it, when the Strong Wolves killed my father. He went into the woods after the beasts that stole our cattle, and he came out crippled, faithless, and mad.”

  I see it in my head, shrouded in fog, as if it’s playing on a drive-in screen. A boy, thin and frail, wide-eyed in terror at his father’s bedside, the old man, beard crusted with blood and spittle, mumbling of the devil and the creatures of the night.

  “The tales were fantastic and terrifying—men becoming wolves, running wild in the forest and devouring our herd.

  “My father was despondent after witnessing what he called ‘the Devil’s spawn’. He was violent. Disturbed. He drowned my mother, my brother, and my baby sister in the river beside our homestead. I alone escaped his madness. I watched from the very woods where your family had destroyed him. I watched him douse himself in kerosene and set the house alight. I listened to him scream for nearly an hour before I put him out of his misery.”

  The cards keep flipping and flipping. My eyes combine the two worlds, the constant ebb and flow of the cards in his hand over the smell of burning flesh, and the little boy with the shotgun on the movie screen in my mind.

  “I was lost, alone,” he continues, “wandering in the mountains of Utah. I was taken by a band of savages—Apaches—I’ll save you the list of indignities I suffered at their hands. Suffice it to say, the remainder of my childhood was spent in chains of one kind or another. Eventually, destiny put me in the hands of a pagan enchantress in New Orleans.”

  He reaches his free hand out toward Jules, still shivering under the pipe we’ve been chained to. Like an obedient pet, she crawls to his side, still hiding her face. Magus runs his long fingers into her hair, rubbing at her scalp and behind her ears absently as he tells his tale.

  “She taught me many things, my lovely Gaelic witch, including the truth of the monsters that had been the ruination of my family. She gave me the rudimentary skills of my craft—sleight of hand, illusion—simple spells that allowed me to amass wealth and the meagre power that most men crave. I left the past behind me. I became a very successful prestidigitator in Victoria’s England. I travelled the world, seeking more power, more knowledge, more magic.

  “What I found, when I had discovered all that there was to be discovered, was that Life truly does move in the circles of destiny. The one true, great mystery of the ages.”

  Magus wraps his fingers around tufts of Jules’ blonde hair, matted and dirty, and yanks her head back, pulling her face up toward him, showing the ruin they’ve made of her. He looks down at her, at the jagged wound that starts above her right eyebrow, white bone showing through the pink flesh, running halfway down her cheekbone. Her eyelid is peeled away, the dazzling emerald eye that had looked so much like my own is gone. All that remains is a bloody pit, empty and dark with blood and dirt. Her remaining eye is dull and grey, silently pleading for mercy from her master. She’s wearing a thick leather collar, with a silver plate sewn in the front. It has some kind of symbols carved into it. I imagine my own collar is the same.

  Magus raises his eyes to McQueen, still standing behind me at the door.

  “Your technique leaves something to be desired, Mister McQueen. Still . . .” Magus releases his grip on Jules and impossibly crumples the deck of cards into his fist, opening it to reveal a white glob, red tendrils snaking away from the back, an emerald green circle, glassy and wet in the centre. “The end result is that I will have what I desire.”

  He holds the eyeball in front of him, up to my face, so that it stares deep into my own emerald eyes, past the fog, and Simon Magus speaks inside of my head, whispering in the deepest parts of me, seeping into every open space, letting me know that he controls every last cell in my body by trampling over them all at once.

  Do you know what the secret is, Finn?

  His voice is everywhere. Inside of me. Surrounding me. It is me.

  The secret of how to live forever.

  34

  “YOU SEE, FINN,” Magus says, closing his fist around the eyeball, taking his voice out of my head and into his own mouth, “Once I understand how you were made in the first place, who will be able to stop me from using that power? From enslaving whole countries, whole continents? From living on into eternity as the master of all creation?”

  He opens the fist and shows me his empty palm.

  “Saint Patrick himself, the greatest wizard of the first century, he was the one who cursed you. Two-thousand years ago. He went to Ireland to convert the pagan heathens. What he actually did was steal the secrets of the Druids.” He stops his monologue and peers into the mist over my eyes again. He’s enjoying himself now. Proving his superiority, his master intelligence. “While there, he encountered the resistance of a small tribe known as the Laegnach Faelad, whom the island was named for. History barely remembers them now, I’m afraid. Down the centuries they were maligned as cannibals, baby killers, wild fiends who would steal your children by night. Something akin to the Viking berserkers. Really, they were just another band of filthy Irish cavemen. Their real importance is in their rebellion against Patrick. He cursed them, you see, to become the monsters they were rumoured to be. He cursed them to change by night, by moon, to become wild dogs and ravage the countryside. Werewolves.”

  Magus slaps my face, hard, and my head snaps against the pipe behind me with a clang. I feel almost nothing. “Do you understand? He changed them. Forever. Cursed not a single man, or a living group of people. He cursed a bloodline. How? How did he do it? The secret is lost to th
e ages.”

  My body may be useless, and my mind may be clouded in black, but I still hear him. I still see him. His little trick, forcing his way into my mind, has opened something up. He’s taken some of the mist with him when he left. My senses are returning. I can feel his arrogance, and I’m rebelling against it, from the inside out.

  He paces in front of me, unable or unwilling to leave off without explaining his brilliance. He is most certainly the smartest man in the room. He looks older. The more he talks and the more he turns in tiny circles, distracted by his own explanations, his true age begins to show. He no longer seems like a gangly thirty-year-old playing at being a moody goth teenager. The more he rambles and swaggers and explains, the more he reveals what he is. He’s a ghost. Thin paper skin wrapped tight around a skeleton of dust. He’s held together by his own magic, a terrible, decrepit mummy, wrapped in the strips of another man’s skin.

  I watch his jaw move and his bones dance around as he continues to pace the room. If I had control of my voice, I would scream.

  “All of you fools, so far removed from your own history, your own creation, you can’t possibly give me any insight into the magic that made you. I need to start fresh, with the newborn pup, as it were. None of you are half the killer that your predecessors were. Your instincts are lost to you, no more than mongrels born of mongrels, generations removed from anything that resembles your true nature. Your children, though . . .”

  Magus turns to wrap his skeleton fingers around my face once more, turning my eyes to his as a terrible, wide grin splits his face, leaving me with the image of a fiery skull, burning its way into my soul.

  “Your children will be those demon hounds of legend. I’ll see to that. And when they’ve revealed Saint Patrick’s curse to me, and they’ve served their purpose as servants, experiments, and playthings, I’ll happily toast the death of your line as I watch the last of your progeny burn.”

  My feet and my fingers tingle and pulse, but I still can’t will them to move. I watch, helpless, as Simon Magus turns his back on me, swirling his coat behind him as he exits the shed.

  “Bring her to me when the deed is done. I need to make sure it takes. Who knows how much you’ve damaged her.”

  “I never once used the front door,” McQueen says, “just like you told me.”

  “Just be sure they procreate. No more mistakes, Mister McQueen.”

  “I’ll grease her myself, boss.” He makes a clicking sound in his throat, and the door closes.

  McQueen slides up close behind me, whispers in my ear. “You ready to get it up, boy?”

  He puts a hand under Jules’ arm, pulls her to her feet. His other hand holds the big knife that nearly gutted me. He twirls it in front of her face, and she cringes. He smiles at me. A filthy, rot-toothed smile.

  “You like what I’ve done, eh? She put up quite a fight, but, in the end . . .” He slaps the broad side of the knife over one eye and laughs like a maniac.

  “She’s nice and docile-like now though, isn’t she?” He reaches inside his leather vest and pulls something long and black from inside.

  “You ever heard the joke about the Indian? Goes into the bar, asks all the nice white ladies there, tickle your cunt with a feather?” He laughs again and plays the feather around her face, Jules squirming and twisting against his grip. “Aww yeah! Still got a little life in her! Don’t worry, girlie. I’m gonna show you one last good time, before your cousin here gets his turn.”

  Jules struggles against him, trying to escape.

  “And after you pop out them puppies, I’m gonna use you up, then gut you like I did your Daddy, and your Mama, and those two little bastard brothers of yours. Then I would have done me the whole pack. Maybe I’ll use ya for matching luggage!”

  He lets go of her arm and waves the black feather in front of my face. “You like it? Got it off your friend, the Big Chief, when I buried my knife in his chest. Cooed like a baby, he did.” His rank breath of mushrooms and dog-shit splashes over my face and soaks through the fog. Inside, my body is shaking, thrashing against the chains, desperate to hold McQueen’s throat in my teeth. I try my fingers again and am rewarded with a twitch. Another couple of hours I might be able to move enough to flip him off.

  “Big ol’ Indian Chief, wasn’t much of a . . .”

  There’s a clamour outside the door, the sound of someone stumbling through a field of empty cans. Raccoons on the prowl. I hear the sound of birds—crows—lighting nearby in the trees. A lot of them.

  McQueen’s head whips toward the door.

  “The fuck is that?” He growls and slides the knife into its sheath, replacing it with a pistol from the holster at his back.

  “Don’t you two start without me,” he whispers, slapping my face with his dirty hand.

  The door creaks open behind me, McQueen takes a few steps in the soft earth. There’s a high-pitch whistle, followed by another, a shriek, and the report of McQueen’s pistol firing into the night. Something crashes from the doorway, and McQueen crawls across the floor in front of me, dragging his own bloody legs behind him, two slender arrows protruding from his knee joints. I can see two inches of wood sticking out the back of his legs. There are two smeared paths of blood trailing from them to the door.

  “Fuck!” he screams. “Don’t you come in here, you bastard! I’ll kill ’em both!”

  He has the big knife out and is clawing to get a purchase on any one of Jules’ limbs. She crawls into the shadows, as far as the chain will allow. I feel hands at the back of my neck. The tension at my throat loosens, the strap removed, and I fall to my knees with a gasp as all of my senses are returned to me, clear and full. The world rushes in with the air, and the fog comes out in a hacking cough, deep and rough, from the centre of my chest. It burns like fire coming up, then dissolves when it hits the fresh night air.

  McQueen lunges and grabs my arm, pulling it out from beneath me and bringing me face first into the concrete floor.

  “I’ll cut him!” he screams. “I swear, I’ll fucking cut him!”

  Jules is just out of my reach. I put a hand out toward her. I say her name, coaxing her to come closer. McQueen has my leg, pulled tight against him, screaming at someone behind me. The way he’s holding me, I can’t turn, and I can’t get free. My only chance is to reach Jules.

  She edges closer. Closer.

  “Please, Jules.”

  Closer.

  “Please.”

  I stretch my fingers as far they will reach, and I hook them into the collar at her neck, pulling with everything I have left to bring her close enough to reach the clasp on the back. I’m fumbling, twisting at metal, praying to find the mechanism.

  McQueen is still screaming. “I’ll cut his fucking balls off!”

  I feel the point of the knife right at the edge of my thigh, digging in close, a centimetre away from my testicles. He’s twisting the tip into me, and I feel an excruciating sting and the hot dribble of fresh blood.

  My fingers are trembling. Jules is pulling against me. I don’t dare twist or fight any more than I am.

  McQueen paws at me with his free hand, trying to pull me back toward him. The collar gives as he sinks the blade an inch deep in the inside of my thigh, and I howl in pain. I lurch back, and he pulls me down in front of him, a human shield.

  There’s a sound of leaves crackling behind us, a low growl. McQueen’s arm goes rigid around my chest. His body stiffens underneath me, and he swings the knife away from my legs, holds it at my throat. We both look into the shadows to see one emerald eye, gleaming from the darkness. He drops the knife, and something warm floats across my back.

  Big hands reach out and pull me to my feet as McQueen’s screams are muffled by teeth and fur, eclipsed by the sound of bones cracking. She tears his bottom jaw off, his tongue and his throat coming loose with a strong twist of her head, and the screaming stops. Now there’s only the sound of blood.

  35

  I TURN AND bury my face in the w
ide chest of Bob Dylan’s buckskin shirt, throw my arms around him and squeeze.

  He wheezes and squeaks like a broken rubber duck, and buckles under my weight.

  “Awww, hell,” he groans, and I catch him as he falls.

  “Bob? Bob!” As I stretch him out on the floor for the shed, I see that he’s soaked through with blood in at least four places. One pant leg is black and completely saturated from a wide gash across his thigh.

  The sound of Jules tearing into the carcass that used to be McQueen continues behind me. I turn and crouch, crab-walking around the opposite side of him, keeping as much distance between myself and the wolf as possible.

  She looks up at me with her one gleaming eye, bares teeth covered in blood and flesh, and returns to her vengeance meal. The feet of a hundred birds batter and claw at the tin roof. The clamour is deafening.

  I dig in McQueen’s pockets, come up with nothing but a lighter and a tiny, sticky bottle of lube. There’s something round, and hard, in his other pocket. I reach carefully underneath gnashing teeth and slip my fingers into his other pocket. I grip it tight in my hand, the cold white jade filling me with resolve. Calming my nerves. Reminding me of who I came here to be.

  I pick up the knife and think about cutting McQueen’s pants away, cutting them into strips for bandages or tourniquets. One sniff and I know they’d be more likely to kill Bob than the blood loss.

  I lift Bob enough to peel away the buckskin shirt and lift the necklaces and charms from his neck. Most of them are on leather straps. I strip the longest necklace of its beads, silently apologizing to whatever Gods or Spirits I might be offending, and quickly run it around Bob’s leg, above the gash, cinching it tight until the blood stops oozing from the wound.

  I’m so lost in trying to remember my eighth-grade emergency survival class, I don’t realize that Jules has changed back until the batter of feet against the roof turns quiet and I hear her weeping behind me.

  She’s on her knees, in front of what’s left of McQueen, her face in her hands, sobbing.