by P. T. Phronk
He'd try again later. That was enough sleuthing for one day. After gulping back a beer to celebrate his newfound hope and drown out any remaining doubts, Stan felt very sleepy. Feeling sleepy turned to feeling nothing at all as he dozed off, sinking into the worn fibers of the couch where he’d spent many lazy Saturday mornings watching cartoons.
"You called?” a voice asked.
Stan tried to spot the source of the voice. There were coffins all around him, but the place felt pleasant. The way the sun came through the blinds was special, just like the light in his mom’s room, and he knew the light came from the sun above Los Angeles.
“Well?” the voice asked. Stan turned around. Bob sat in an office chair behind one of the coffins. A computer and papers were laid out on top of it. The room behind him faded into shadows. None of these details made sense.
“I must have fallen asleep,” Stan said.
One of the coffins lining the room thumped.
“I must have fallen asleep,” Bob said.
The coffin thumped again.
“It’s good to see you, Bob.”
Bob smiled, showing teeth slightly less yellow than they were before. “It’s good to see you. If you count this as seein’. It’s more secure than talkin’ on the phone, at least.”
The part of Stan’s mind that knew it was a dream fought the part that knew the conversation was real. “Will we remember this when we wake up?”
“We’ll remember this when we wake up. But you’d do good to write it down as soon as you get your lazy ass out of bed. I’ve been practicing at remembering my nap-time meditations, but I’m guessin’ you haven’t.”
Stan shook his head. The room spun around him. The ceiling disappeared. “I need to find my mom,” he said. “She was kidnapped by Jeffery Humber-Wilcox. You used to know him. Can you help?”
Bob’s face twisted with anger. Behind him, strange figures appeared: faces with dark sunglasses covering their eyes, wearing dark suits. Like the countless bodyguards Stan had dodged in his paparazzo days.
Another coffin thumped, joining the first one. Thump, thump.
“He’s alive,” Bob muttered sadly. “Of course he wants to hurt you. Stan, don’t go after him. This man … he’s done things I wouldn’t speak of. He’s not on our side against the down under, not no more. If he’s alive, he’s one of them now.”
Stan nodded. All the details had been leading to the conclusion, but he still hadn’t said it out loud.
“A werewolf.”
Bob gave him a lopsided, hungry grin. “Likely.”
“But so is Annie,” Stan blurted out.
Bob turned sad. A bubble formed out of the corner of his eye and floated into the sky. “Yes. And I will find her a cure. I’ve been … occupied. Now, our time here’s short. We don’t know when you’ll wake up.”
“Okay, well, can you help me find my mother?”
Bob shifted in his seat. The floor of the funeral parlor was dirt now, and it writhed with life, cracks and mounds forming in the moist earth. “We’re stuck with gravity,” he said. He said something else after that, but the sound of the churning dirt and the rustling in the coffins around them drowned his voice out.
“What? I can’t hear you,” Stan said. He was on the other side of the room now, Bob a faraway speck at his coffin-desk. Stan concentrated, imagining he was in the room with Bob. Like when he tried to will himself to fly in dreams as a kid.
Bob drew closer, whispering in Stan’s ear, his voice like sand: “… with gravity. All creatures on this planet are beholden to it, but some have a stronger pull than others, sucking others in. When I set the pieces for Annie to come back to me, it wasn’t my gravity attracting hers. No, it was the larger ones—the stars—who were already destined to smash into each other. We was just dragged along with them. I got nudged into the Damien Fox system. You and Annie were caught in the well of that vampire. And all of them orbits got a strong tug from big old Planet Hollywood.” He chuckled.
The coffin that Bob used as a desk jiggled under him. The earth below was alive, grabbing for both of them. “You see what I’m sayin’, Stanley? We ain’t nothin’. We ain’t stars, and we ain’t even planets. We’re moons.”
The dirt below was moondust now, white and powdery but still moving. Above was a spitting ball of fire, eclipsed into an arc by a massive planet that Stan could feel tugging at his clothes.
Bob was beside him, and the smell of his body odor was oddly comforting. “You can’t just walk up to a star,” he said, putting a hand on Stan’s shoulder. “But look!” He pointed to the side, off into the infinity of space, lit bright by trillions of stars. Another moon was out there, whirling around its own planet.
Stan felt his eyes fill with tears. “It’s her. Mom’s alive. Is that what you’re saying?”
Bob shrugged. “It’s your dream. If you feel her, she must live. Family always knows where its own blood is.”
Another star drew near, dark red, with arcs of fire lashing out at the smaller stars around it.
Bob patted Stan’s shoulder. “Looks like you have your work cut out for you. I ain’t countin’ you out, Stanley. I saw whatcha did in New York, I saw whatcha did with the vampire. It shows what you can do. You’ll find your moon. Just don’t go straight for them stars, or you’ll get burned.”
The funeral parlor was back, with a solid floor and a solid roof.
“A moon can really fuck things up if it’s in the right place at the right time. It’s still a damn big rock,” Bob said.
"Thanks, Bob. Morgan. Whatever you call yourself now.”
“Names ain’t important. Just blood.” He smiled. He was on the other side of the desk again, head down, examining the papers there.
The coffin jiggled. Thump thump thump.
“Can I contact you again when I need help?”
Bob shook his head and said something, frowning, concentrating on his papers, but his voice was drowned out by the racket of the coffins.
Thump! Thump thump!
Stan shot upright, nearly knocking the beer off the table beside the couch. The dream was already fading from his memory, and he felt Bob’s presence fading too. Where the hell was Annie?
Thump thump thump!
The sound was no dream. Somebody was knocking at the door.
8. Pines
ANNIE HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN ABOUT her detective mission to find Stan’s mom, because being out on her own, exploring the town with Dean Shaw, felt pretty good.
“Timber Jack’s is back down in the direction of the bridge,” he said. “Touristy place, that one. Mostly rich folks with cottages who come up here to snowmobile in the winter, or kayak in the summer. It’s dead now, in the in-between time.”
She gazed down the road and exhaled smoke from the cigarette Dean had given her. The fog was lighter in town, but the buildings still faded away after a block, so she had no idea if she could see Timber Jack’s or not.
Dean kept staring in that direction. He was tall, but constantly slouching, like he needed to duck down to suck at the cigarette in his own hand. “The new high school’s there. It’s where the high school kids hang out. Town Hall’s not much further down. Down that side road there are like five churches. Look, here come some church types now. They travel in herds.”
The group of women all wore jackets that were identical except for the color. They huddled against the cold together like a pack of weird penguins.
“There’s a park across from Town Hall. Whole lot of grass going on there. When it’s warm, I’ll lie there and read a book.” He looked around at the fog, confused for a moment, then continued up the street toward his bar.
The town was laid out all strangely. There was space between the road and the buildings, then more space between each building. Some of them had only one thing in them. Like, there was a big square building that just said INSURANCE on it, and there was no ethnic restaurant at the bottom or anything. It was just the insurance building. A group of men in suits
came out of it, all laughing loudly.
One of them spotted Dean. “Shaw!” he said. He was very loud, and had a big grin that didn’t suit the rest of his face. “Check your mail, buddy. Got something waiting for you there.” The other men spread out as they passed Annie and Dean, surrounding them.
“Mail from you? What could I do to deserve such an honor?”
One of the men snorted and looked Annie up and down with a stupid smirk, making her feel very small again. When they’d finally passed, Dean turned and gave their backsides the finger. “They’re passing bylaws, trying to make it so hard to run a bar that I shut it down. They’ve already cut me off from some of my suppliers. Could be because they want the building, but it’s a crumbling piece of shit, so it’s more likely they just don’t want anybody enjoying themselves enough to scare the tourists away.”
“Those guys can just make laws?”
“They’re on the city council. No, scratch that. They are the city council. Along with Joe Bussichio, husband of that lovely Bree woman we saw yelling in the diner. Used to be Linda on council too, the only voice of reason, but she got sick.”
Annie patted the pocket of her jeans, where she’d been keeping a square of fabric from one of Linda’s dresses, just in case her ability to track came back and she needed to give it a sniff. She tried to sound like a normal human interested in casual conversation. “So Stan’s mom was on council with Stan’s ex’s husband, wow.”
“I thought you were new to town.”
“You must’ve mentioned all that earlier.”
“Must’ve,” he said. The eyebrow above the black lens of his glasses twitched. It seemed to do that whenever he humored her with a little white lie.
She tried to get back to her task of gathering information. “People go missing a lot around here?”
“As someone who came into town covered in blood, I’m not sure I’m comfortable discussing that with you.”
She couldn’t look at him. The penguin church ladies were across the street, shooting suspicious glances at her. “I didn’t kill anybody, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Hey now, fuck, I wasn’t asking anything. You got your secrets. I got mine. This whole town’s got its own. Because yeah, people do go missing here. Usually tourists or older folks, and it’s blamed on snowmobile accidents, or getting too close to the river.” He just left that hanging there.
They walked in the same direction as the church herd, who, every so often, would turn their heads in unison toward Annie, then begin whispering to each other.
“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” Dean said after minutes of silence, “I’ll ask. You in town to find a missing tourist or something?”
“Does that sound like a convincing story?”
He shrugged. “I guess that’s why I said it.”
“Then sure, that’s why I’m here.”
After a few more minutes, they stopped outside a small building with records and CDs in the window. Dean paused to finish his cigarette. Back in the direction they came from, the men in suits had stopped outside Town Hall. It was hard to tell through the fog, but Annie was sure they all stared directly at her, thinking the same questions that Dean had started asking. The church ladies across the street were doing the same, whispering, their heads bobbing up and down as they talked. The fog shifted, and she thought she saw faces in the apartment windows above a hardware store.
“Can we go?” Annie asked.
“Yeah. This is the place,” Dean said. He stamped out his cigarette and opened the creaky door to the run-down record shop. “Don’t worry about the people back there. We’re in the good part of town now. Let’s find you a new shirt.”
The record shop called itself Vinyl Days, according to the sign behind the counter. It smelled like old books and old smoke. Rows of records—the big, pretty, colorful ones—filled the store, leaving only narrow aisles between them. Off to one side were shelves with toys, a tower of CDs, and a rack with shirts. Annie was drawn to the records first though.
“My dad used to put on records,” she said, flipping through the middle of a row of them. Nazareth, Opeth, Ozzy. Nice.
“Your dad here in town with you?” Dean asked, rubbing at a zigzagging line of water damage on a New Order sleeve.
“I don’t know where the fuck my dad is.”
That shut up his questions for a minute. She worked her way toward the back of the store, picking up any records that caught her eye, then putting them back down. She wondered if Stan’s mom had a record player hiding somewhere in that little house.
A couple of girls, no older than fifteen, jingled through the door. Probably skipping school. They headed straight to the CD rack.
The guy at the counter at the back looked up from a magazine. He had a haircut with a part in the middle and glasses that made his eyes look giant. “Hi Dean. Who’s this?” he asked.
“It’s Annie. She’s new.”
“New kid, huh?”
Annie didn’t know what to say, so she kept moving down the aisle, poking at the musical possibilities all lined up in front of her. She didn’t recognize most of them, but she tried to picture what each album sounded like just from the album art. When she looked up again, there was a monster staring down at her. Some scaly Creature From the Black Lagoon thing. A speech bubble sticking from the cardboard cutout’s head read YOU BREAK IT, I KILL YOU.
“What the fuck is that?” Annie asked, her voice louder than she intended it to be. The girls browsing the CDs looked up, and their faces twisted in disgust.
“New girl hasn’t heard about Newbury’s world-famous shaggs yet, huh?” the guy behind the counter said.
“Is that a band?” Annie asked.
“Yeah, but no,” Dean said. “They’re Newbury’s version of the sasquatch. Mostly to scare tourists from fucking around too deep into the woods, but it doesn’t usually work. They come back, say they saw something like a man, except with green skin. And fangs. And webbed feet. Because they live in the lake, the story goes, and can only come out of the water for a few hours at a time.”
“They got masks though,” the shop owner said.
Dean rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah, they’ve got masks. What’s your wife think of the sign?” He pointed to the cardboard cutout, with its yellow eyes, ears like fish fins, and hand-drawn over top of the painting’s mouth, something resembling a gas mask.
“She hates it.”
Dean turned to Annie. “Some people take the shagg legends a little more seriously than others.”
“So it’s only a legend?” Annie asked.
“Of-fucking-course it’s only a legend,” Dean said.
The shop owner made a whistling sound as he breathed out through his nose. He shot Dean a look, his magnified eyes narrowing. Annie noted that angry look on his face, and filed away that detail to pass on to Stan later. Before the guy could say anything else, the girls from the front of the shop approached him, asking about Justin Bieber posters. He told them to try the new Walmart up the road.
Annie cringed, as she did every time she passed a Walmart since the horrible scene in Canada. She wandered toward the front section of the store, past a cardboard bucket of posters, to the rack of band shirts. They weren’t concert shirts, but the way her life was going, she probably wouldn’t be seeing a concert any time soon, so a plain shirt with the band’s logo printed on the front would have to do.
The girls returned to the posters. “Uuugh! I don’t wanna walk all the way to Walmart. We’re already late,” one of them said. She was pretty but had too much makeup on.
“They have some here, but not the new poster series,” said the other one, who had the exact same makeup.
Annie leaned in to look at the previews of the posters on the box. Maybe she could learn more if she made friends with girls like her. “I remember him,” she said.
“Uhhh, duh, he’s only the most popular superstar on the planet. He’s on TV, like, all the time,” one of the girls said.
> “I mean I remember meeting him. A year or two ago, outside Madison Square Garden. I knew which door he was coming out, and my friend Stan took a whole bunch of pictures of him, but they didn’t sell for very much money.”
The girl made a pshh! sound.
“Uhhh, you’re saying you met Justin Bieber?” the other one said.
“Yeah. He was done singing songs for the night, so he left to go home, and Stan took pictures, and the Bieber kid patted me on the head.”
“He patted you on the head.”
“Yeah. I smelled him, and I remember he smelled funny.”
The first girl put her hands on her hips. “What do you mean he smelled funny? He doesn’t smell funny.”
“Oh, you know him too?” Annie didn’t think he’d come up to a small town like this on his tour, but he was from a small town, so maybe he would.
She pursed her lips. “I … no! But I know he doesn’t smell funny! Who are you, anyway? I’ve never seen you here. You’re old. Whose mom are you?”
Annie blushed. “I’m nobody’s mom. I’m Stan’s friend. I’m … just a girl.”
“You’re weird,” the girl said, staring at Annie with her makeup-rimmed eyes.
“Come on, Cindy, let’s check Walmart,” the other girl said.
Cindy looked like she wanted to kill Annie, which was a look Annie knew pretty well, but not one she expected from some girl just for describing a teen star’s smell. The other girl grabbed Cindy’s arm, and the two of them jingled out the door.
Dean walked down the aisle, shaking his head. The sparkly look in his eye was the opposite of wanting to kill her, and that was a look she hadn’t seen in a very long time. “You’ve met Justin Bieber. You get more and more interesting every moment, you know that?”
She broke out in a smile, and, for once, it didn’t feel forced. “I could say the same thing about this town. Penguiny church ladies, lake monsters, mean girls. You’ve got it all up here in the U.P.”
He laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. Come on, let’s be interesting with each other. Take me up on that rain check and come have a drink with me.”