Best New Werewolf Tales (Vol. 1)

by Wilson, David Niall; Lamio, Michael; Newman, James; Maberry, Jonathan; Everson, John; Daley, James Roy

  The turkey didn’t satisfy my hunger. The lioness chewed into the zebra’s belly, tearing through the skin like knives through cloth. Her face covered in red, she licked her lips eagerly and I did the same.

  Suddenly, the air was thick like I felt that morning. I felt my ear angle backwards and, immediately after, a scream erupted from the basement like a breeze escaping a cave. The smell was familiar. I knew the taste. It was fear. I crawled to the basement; hand over hand with knees following.

  “Bill! Spider!” I normally ran to her assistance during spider attacks, but I found myself taking my time, savoring the scent like a glutton of her fear. “Bill, hurry!”

  I reached the steps and, still on all fours, proceeded down. My hands began to lengthen. My jaw was uncomfortable, sore like chewing gum for too long and I opened and closed my mouth trying to stretch the muscles. I put my chin to my chest and saw my torso elongate and my ribs cracked and repositioned themselves. I howled in agony while my skeleton broke apart and reformed. My fingernails scraped the concrete floor and I licked my lips. I could hear the neighborhood dogs barking in the distance. I could hear their encouragement. I heard their envy in each outburst. They could smell it too. The taste of her fear and sweat made me drool. Thick strands of saliva dripped to the floor.

  “William…” I glared at her from behind a nose that shone black and moist like an olive. Her body tensed. I could see her muscles tighten beneath her skin. My mind was possessed with a single thought. There was no remorse, no doubt, no sympathy as to what I was going to do. With one last look into the queen’s eyes, I leapt onto her and began to tear, claw, and bite. My appetite was immense, and the steak was delicious.

  SILVER ANNIVERSARY

  STEPHEN M. WILSON

  GOD with honor hang your head,

  Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed

  With lissome scions, sweet scions,

  Out of hallowed bodies bred.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins, “At the Wedding March”

  She gave him rich dainties

  Whenever he fed,

  And erected this monument

  When he was dead.

  “The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog”

  “‘Beer before wine’ or ‘wine before beer’?” she mumbled to herself as she grabbed the gallon jug of port from a cupboard that, minus the bottle, was now bare, “fuck, I don’t remember. Maybe it’s ‘drink before smoke’ or ‘smoke before drink’?”

  She smirked.

  “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.”

  She giggled.

  Who said that… Dorothy Parker… Mae West? She searched her memory, Liquor quicker? Lick her—

  “Lick her quicker!” she said aloud.

  She screamed.

  In a daze, she set the bottle on the table and then, sidestepping the mess on the floor as if she did not see it, retrieved a twelve-pack from the otherwise bare refrigerator and set the beer next to the wine.

  “Well it doesn’t much matter, I guess,” she answered her own questions.

  Bare, bloodied, and bewildered, she dropped into the one chair that accompanied the table and began to drink.

  Everyone leaves, she thought, everyone abandons. Husbands, children…

  Nearly six years had past since her own whelps had turned eighteen and left her, the only contact, a postcard Rom had sent her two years ago from Argentina. Just four short sentences:

  Dear Mom,

  I have joined Greenpeace. Remie is in Budapest collecting Hungarian folklore. We love you.

  She often wondered if they too had taken unsuspecting brides.

  Don’t focus on such things, she thought as she rolled a joint, sometimes they return. She had learned that lesson all too well this evening.

  She inhaled deeply on the stick, embracing the thick cloud of momentary forgetfulness that filled her.

  An hour later, mercifully stoned, she dragged an old trunk from beneath her bed.

  She rummaged through a past embodied by aged photographs and ancient love letters, before finding what she was looking for.

  The smell of mothballs, dust, and memories permeated the ivory-colored linen of the wedding dress as she removed it from the trunk. She spread the gown over the frayed bedspread then returned to the trunk. After a few more moments of sifting through nostalgia, she found a pair of silk hose that had been out-of-date since the invention of nylon and two age-stiffened red lace garters. She placed these remnants of her prior bloom, alongside the bridal vestige on the bed and then stared at the ensemble for a long time before returning to slide the trunk back beneath it.

  As she was closing the lid, something caught her eye. She pushed the various relics of her youth to one side, revealing a black wig that had a little hat attached to it with bobby-pins. It seemed a lifetime since she had been an airline stewardess.

  At the sight of the black hair, something ugly scratched at the surface of her mind then flitted away before it could be realized.

  She retrieved the wig and returned to the bed, leaving the trunk in the middle of the floor.

  She ignored the blood that was drying on her hands and forearms as she slowly, ceremoniously donned the treasures from her past, Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” trilling through her addled brain. Afterwards, she took a small mirror from atop the chest-of-drawers and glided into the living room.

  She placed the mirror on an end table otherwise occupied by an antique brass lamp. This she turned off. She floated across the matted green shag wall-to-wall and raised the tattered shade on the one small window in the apartment. The light of the full Autumn moon shone bright as it streamed through the dingy lace curtains giving the tiny room an ethereal glow.

  A tear coursed through her blood-caked cheek. She put a heavily scratched vintage vinyl on the turntable and began to dance around the small apartment.

  “Lavender blue, dilly, dilly…” she joined Burl Ives in a surreal duet.

  She occasionally paused to take a swig or a toke, or to light a cigarette, but would quickly resume her reverie. At one point she tried to stand on her head, but she crashed to the floor laughing. After a while, the matter within her skull was spinning.

  She plopped down onto a threadbare orange velour sofa and lifted the mirror to stare at her reflection. Through the haze of alcohol and pot, she saw herself as she must have looked to him on that night twenty-five years earlier.

  “Hi there, purtty,” she said to the mirror, “yera hot little number.”

  Her blood-smeared doppelganger cackled.

  She gasped.

  She threw the mirror across the room, where it hit the record. The amplified blare of needle scratching across vinyl momentarily replaced the music.

  Then there was silence.

  She screamed.

  She vacated the sofa and flowed into the kitchen.

  She approached the heap that lay in the middle of the floor.

  She dropped to one knee, almost slipping in the tacky blood.

  When she pulled the large silver crucifix from the corpse, it exited quicker than she expected and she fell on her ass.

  She quickly righted herself then watched in morbid fascination as viscera spilled to tile before the black hair slowly closed around the wound.

  She drifted on the sea of blackening blood, the cross gripped tightly in both hands like an oar. As she stared at the pelage, a quarter of a century of both indignation and desolation passed in seconds.

  She kicked the carcass once. Then, wedging her feet against it and leaning back on her hands for leverage, she pushed.

  It took some effort but eventually she was able to roll the beast over onto its back. One of her shoes was pulled from her foot by the motion, its sharp heel now buried in the creature’s pelt.

  “Ain’t that somethin’.” She dragged her stocking-clad foot through the tacky pool surrounding the mongrel.

  She released her grip on the makeshift weapon and, after it clattered to the tile, studied in
tently the blood that also coated the feet of the figure of Christ that adorned it.

  Even in her inebriated condition, the irony of the crucifix did not escape her.

  Twenty-five years ago, after consummating their marriage, her groom had stepped out for a smoke and disappeared.

  The next morning, on the pillow that should have been cradling his dark curls, she had instead found an unmarked package wrapped in plain brown butcher paper and tied with twine.

  She postponed opening it, afraid of the truth that it might contain.

  After the first month, spent searching for her husband, she realized that, like Larry, her monthly curse had also disappeared.

  Tears sluiced the gore from her face as she leaned forward and started to stroke the black bristly pelt.

  “You bastard. You goddamned fucking bastard.”

  Larry had made no bones about his staunch atheism, so when she had lifted the crucifix from the cradle of layered tissue paper in which it was nestled, she had stared at it in confused fascination. She spent months trying to decipher its meaning, as well as the cryptic note that accompanied it, scrawled in his own hand.

  That was until the twins had reached puberty.

  The hair.

  The blood.

  The stigmata.

  With her sons, the mystery had eventually revealed itself to her.

  For twenty-five years she had anticipated this night with both longing and dread.

  She reached into her bodice to retrieve the note, stiff and yellowed with age. Her eyes drifted one last time over the faded script:

  My Dearest Jenny,

  I cannot explain, nor can I tell you how sorry that I am to leave you this way. Always keep Christ close. Someday, you will know when, my gift will be your salvation…

  She had read it so many times that the words were scored on her heart. She crumpled the note and then threw it at the corpse, the remaining words echoing in her mind:

  …for even the man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the Autumn moon shines bright.”

  Your loving husband,

  Lawrence Talbot

  BUY A GOAT FOR CHRISTMAS

  ANNA TABORSKA

  The moment Pierre saw the tank he fell madly in love with it. It was large and chunky, its rotting green paint barely covering the blood-colored flecks of rust beneath. Pierre ran his hand over the gun barrel, wincing as he caught his finger on a sliver of flaking paint. He sucked his bleeding finger and ran his other hand over the side of the tank, his eyes glowing like those of a schoolboy who’s just realized that toads pop when you blow them up with a straw.

  Not many people remembered the time before the war, but Pierre did. He remembered when a traveling cinema had come to the nearest town. He’d borrowed a donkey from one of his neighbors and ridden to the cinema. The film showing was ‘The Exorcist’. Some of the other locals had walked out in protest, a few women had fainted, and a little boy got possessed and had to be taken to the local priest after the screening. Pierre was in seventh heaven: thrilled, terrified, moved—one emotion after another and all at once. Pierre rode out to town every day, for the three days before the cinema was closed down and the projectionist thrown out of town for blasphemy and perverting the God-fearing locals. It was during the third and final screening that Pierre realised his life’s ambition: to be able to say, “your mother sucks cocks in hell” in every language on earth. From that day on, until war broke out, Pierre worked towards fulfilling his ambition and tried out the language skills he was acquiring on any tourist who passed through this godforsaken part of the world. Pierre often sported a black eye.

  Then war broke out. Pierre’s village avoided most of the violence, but hunger, poverty and disease took its toll. Now that life was slowly returning to normal, the village school had re-opened, the villagers had started to rebuild their livelihoods, but they were still heavily dependent on outside help and would be for many months to come.

  * * *

  Mr. Wyndham-Smythe of Kensington had broken his vow never to suffer going on the tube again, and was sitting, handkerchief held firmly over his nose and mouth, among the coughing commuters and excited tourists, when he noticed the Giftaid poster directly opposite him. He had already read all the other posters—twice—but somehow this one had eluded his gaze, perhaps—as is often the case in life—by merit of being directly in front of him.

  “That’s the family and its conscience taken care of,” it proclaimed. “Buy a goat or some chickens from Farm Africa for £10.” The poster went on to explain that an enterprising blacksmith could convert a decommissioned tank into 3,000 farm implements for a poor African village.

  Mr. Wyndham-Smythe didn’t like animals, particularly smelly farmyard animals tended to by dirty farmers. He found weapons and militaria much more appealing. Ever since his father had sent him to military academy and he had met Dick, the young Wyndham-Smythe was fascinated by all things military. Dick had humiliated him, played practical jokes on him, beaten him and urinated on him, and Wyndham-Smythe had loved every miserable minute. As old memories came flooding back, Mr. Wyndham-Smythe reflected on his life, and his thoughts turned to his children, William and Henrietta. Henrietta had been pestering him all year for a Sony widescreen laptop with 32X Re-write DVD drive, and all William could talk about was an X-box. Well—not this year. This year William and Henrietta would learn about the true spirit of Christmas.

  * * *

  “Pierre? — Pierre!” The blacksmith had been daydreaming: imagining himself driving through the village in his perfectly polished, shining silver tank, the other villagers eyeing him with admiration and cheering as he passed. The village elder’s voice brought Pierre out of his reveries.

  “Huh?” Pierre took his hand off the tank and looked around, slightly dazed. The village elder had called all the villagers together for an impromptu ceremony in honor of the aid workers who had transported in the village’s allocation of western aid and the donors who had funded the gifts.

  “I said that you,” the village elder told Pierre, “as the village blacksmith, will be honored to make tools out of the old tank, so that we will be able to till our land again and grow our own crops.”

  “Huh?” The village elder frowned at Pierre and turned back to the villagers, the aid workers and the two truck drivers who had convoyed in the tank, rice and farm animals.

  “On behalf of everyone in the village of Santa Maria Illuminosa Madre di Jesu Crucifixio, I would like to thank the Giftaid Foundation and all of you for bringing us help in our hour of need. We also extend our thanks to the people of Great Britain, in particular to Mrs. Jameson of Shepherd’s Bush for the goat, Mr. Thompson of Aberdeen for the chickens, and to Mr. Wyndham-Smythe of Kensington and his family for the tank.”

  “Mr. Wyndham-Smythe of Kensington,” mouthed Pierre.

  * * *

  The village elder’s speech went on for some time and Alicia was starting to feel nauseous again. She hadn’t been right since the incident in Utar Pradesh. It had been dark and the aid truck she was traveling in hit what she and the driver initially thought was a large black dog. Alicia got out of the truck to see if it was still alive, and that was when it went for her. It all happened so fast. Alicia saw the creature’s yellow eyes and large fangs as it sprang at her throat. She managed to raise a hand to defend herself, but if it hadn’t been for the driver leaping out of the truck and hitting the animal with the cricket bat he kept next to his seat, it would have ripped her throat out for sure. Instead it reeled under the blow from the bat, then glowered at the two humans and disappeared into the bushes.

  “Are you alright?” cried the driver, rushing over to Alicia and helping her to her feet.

  “I think so.” Alicia inspected her bitten hand. The shock had not set in yet and she was surprised at how clear her head was at that moment. “But the dog might have had rabies,” she told the driver calmly. “I need to get to a hospital as
soon as possible.”

  “Yes, of course.” The driver helped her back into the truck, adding quietly, “But that was no dog.”

  Despite what had happened in India, Alicia jumped at the chance to travel to Africa. Since her husband had left her for a woman half her age, Alicia had thrown herself completely into her charity work. She had been to India and to Thailand, but Africa had always been the one country that she really wanted to visit. That was where the starving children truly needed her, and the charity had finally given in to her nagging and allowed her to join one of the aid convoys, on the condition that she cover the cost of her own travel. Luckily she had enough of her parents’ money left even after the divorce. But now that they were finally here, she was not feeling herself.

  A skinny little boy caught Alicia’s eye and she smiled at the child, happy that she was making a difference to his impoverished life. The boy’s eyes opened wide and to Alicia’s dismay he burst into tears and pulled his hand out of his mother’s grip, running for the shelter of one of the ramshackle huts surrounding the dusty village square.

  Alicia swooned slightly in the heat and wiped her brow. As the village elder’s voice swam in and out of her consciousness, she started to notice other sounds around her: the agitated clucking of the chickens, the distant sound of a rat scurrying though the bushes, the heartbeat of the goat they had brought and which was now tethered with a piece of string held by one of the villagers. As she listened, fascinated, to the goat’s beating heart, the animal turned to look at Alicia and bleated in alarm. Perhaps at that very moment the wind drifted in Alicia’s direction from where the animal stood, but Alicia was surprised to find that she could smell the goat even at a distance of eight or so metres. The smell told her that the animal was afraid. Alicia found herself salivating and wiped the corner of her mouth. She could hear the goat’s heart beating faster and faster, and suddenly the animal was bucking in fear. The goat tore itself out of the grasp of the astonished peasant who was handling it and in its confusion darted here and there among the villagers and their foreign visitors. As if noticing the wasteland that stretched beyond the villagers’ huts, the goat bolted towards it, seemingly oblivious to the small man and the tank that stood in its way. The village elder spotted the goat’s intentions and yelled at the blacksmith.