Shapeshifter: 1

by J. F. Gonzalez

Detective Coverdale, Allen Frey and Frederick Johansen left the FBI office and said little as they made their way outside.

  Once in the parking lot, Johansen turned to the other two men. "I don't care what the feds say, I have a feeling that this Wiseman character is in on this."

  Coverdale seconded the motion. "Unfortunately, Agent Strong is right. Everything we've presented them with is purely circumstantial."

  "What do you believe?" Johansen asked.

  The detective shrugged. "Beats the hell out of me."

  Johansen turned to Frey. "I'd like you to find out everything you can about Mark Wiseman. I want to know where he lives, shits, and eats. I also want to know his present whereabouts and what he was doing on the nights Fielding, Samuels, John, and Krueger were attacked. And I want to know if there is any connection between him and Roberts."

  "Sure thing," Allen said, squinting. The day was cool, but bright and sunny. "Might take a few days though."

  "A few days is fine," Frederick said. "By then maybe the feds will have caught Bernard."

  "We can only hope," Allen Frey said.

  His body bore scratches and cuts from his foray into the desert. Unlike previous excursions within the past few months, he'd had no control this time. There was a four-hour block of time in which he remembered nothing. It wasn't until the early morning hours that he became aware of anything, but even then he couldn't will the change back. His lupine instinct was still strong; it prevailed over all else.

  When he became aware of himself the first thing he noticed was the taste of jackrabbit in his mouth. He licked his lips; there was dried blood on his teeth. His stomach rumbled, but he felt somewhat satiated. He didn't remember making the kill, but apparently somewhere along the way he had. He looked out across the vast open desert and breathed in the desert air. A multitude of scents came to him: scrub brush, jasmine, cacti, different flowers, animal spoors, rodents. The smell of diesel was faint, coming from a slight breeze that blew from the east. He wasn't that far from the highway and the motel. He began heading toward it, keeping to the shadows.

  He had to wait until dawn was approaching to venture closer to the highway. Far off in the distance he could see Pueblo illuminated in the few streetlights the town fathers were able to afford, still sleepy as the sky turned from black to a dark gray as the sun began to struggle to its ascent. As the sun's rays grew stronger, the lunar influence weakened, and finally as the sky began growing lighter he was able to will the change back. He gritted his teeth and fought the pain as his body went through the transformation. A moment later he stood in the still, California desert, shivering in the cold, his teeth chattering.

  He crept out from behind a rock and eyed the town. There was no sign that anybody was awake. He looked around carefully until he saw the motel. He couldn't tell if Carol's Camaro was still parked in the lot, and at this point he didn't care. He had to get to shelter-either his room at the motel, or another one, preferably a vacant room. He had to get some clothes.

  He made his way to the motel quickly, scampering over rocks and bushes. The motel parking lot and the highway was devoid of people. He quickly dashed across the parking lot and headed toward the door of the room they had checked into. His hands grasped the doorknob and twisted it; it was locked.

  Shivering in the cold, Mark rapped on the door. He hugged himself, his body shaking. He knocked again and suddenly the door was open and Carol was standing there. He didn't even look at her; he pushed his way inside and headed toward the bathroom.

  "What the fuck happened to you, goddamit?" Carol shouted. She was crying again. She had changed into jeans and a sweater. He could hear the tread of her footsteps as she trudged after him. He headed toward the shower and turned on the faucet to HOT.

  "I'm talking to you!" Carol was in the bathroom now. He stepped into the shower, not even bothering to close the shower curtain. The water was lukewarm, but it was better than the chill his body felt from the cold desert night. He shivered uncontrol lably as he turned the water on full blast, rubbing his hands over his arms and body. Carol was crying uncontrollably. "You motherfucker, you had me worried! What the hell happened? Why did you run out like that?"

  "It's okay," Mark said, the chill easing somewhat as the water grew warmer. He stepped into the spray and sighed as the water turned hot and he closed his eyes, letting it wash the dirt and grime away. He ducked his head in the spray, the hot water instantly waking him up. The more the water warmed up, the longer he stayed in, the more the chill was beaten down. "Everything's okay."

  "No, everything is not okay!" Carol was trying to control her crying, and her voice was filled with anger. "Everything is not fucking okay until you start telling me the truth. What the fuck happened to you that made you run out of here so suddenly?"

  "In a minute," Mark said, his body feeling better as he washed himself clean. He was no longer shivering. "I promise I'll tell you everything. Just let me clean up."

  "You motherfucker!" Carol stomped into the bedroom. Her sobs came back to him, heavy with anger.

  Mark's skin tingled under the water. He turned the water temperature to a more tolerable level and settled back, letting the water soothe his aching body. Carol's sobbing came to him loud and clear from the bedroom and his heart was heavy with sadness. He felt bad for not being completely honest and telling her everything, but what could he have done? She never would have believed it if he'd told her about the curse. In hindsight, he hoped perhaps that what had happened last night was for the best. Now that she had seen what had happened to him, it might be easier to convince her of his condition.

  He wanted to shower completely, but Carol's sorrow beckoned. When his body temperature returned to normal, he shut the water off and reached for a white towel resting over the toilet. He patted himself dry and stepped out of the shower. His wet hair clung to his skull and his upper back, dripping water on the floor. Wrapping the towel around his waist, he stepped into the bedroom.

  Carol was sitting on the bed near the window, her back to him. Her face was buried in her hands as she sobbed. Mark approached her warily. "Carol," he said softly.

  If she heard him she made no indication. Her sobs were heavy with emotion. Mark stepped behind her and nervously touched her shoulder. Her skin tingled, as if recoiling from something slimy. "What?" She jumped up suddenly, eyes and face red and wet with tears. "Oh, now you decide to come back and play the nice, sensitive caring boyfriend? After ... pulling what you pulled last night ... running out into ... the fucking desert without your fucking clothes..." Her voice hitched with the sobs as she spit her dialog out. "I thought there was something wrong with you!"

  "There is," Mark said, reaching to embrace her.

  Carol moved away from him, her eyes angry and hurt. "No shit, there's something wrong with you!" She made a feeble attempt at slapping him and he grabbed her hand. She beat at his chest with her fists and collapsed against him, sobbing anew. "You motherfucker ..."

  Mark held her, his right hand stroking her hair. He cooed meaningless words in an attempt to soothe her, but they only proved to make her cry harder. She struggled feebly in an attempt to break away but then gave up, her body completely exhausted. He held her and kept whispering, "It's okay now, it's okay now." In time her sobs trickled down.

  When she gained control of herself Mark eased her down onto the bed gently. He sat down beside her. "I'm sorry about what happened," he began, speaking slowly. "But ... what happened to me last night was something I couldn't control. It just came over me so suddenly-"

  "It looked like you were having ... convulsions," Carol said, sniffling. She looked at him wide eyed with an expression that suggested she wanted to trust him. "I didn't know what to think ... and I was so scared when you ran out like that-"

  "I know," Mark said, taking her hands. "I know it must have really scared you, and I am so sorry. If I had only ... known it would have happened-"

  "You could have told me about this," Carol said. "If you had only to
ld me it wouldn't have scared me so bad."

  "You might not have believed me if I had told you before."

  Carol looked confused. "What are you saying? Of course I would have believed you. I mean ... I saw what happened last night-"

  "What do you think happened to me last night, Carol?" Mark regarded her seriously, his features set.

  Carol looked at him, puzzled. "I ... I don't know. It looked like you were having a ... seizure or something. I thought you were embarrassed to tell me about it. I sat here last night after you left driving myself crazy, wondering why you couldn't trust me enough to confide in me that you have some kind of neurological problem."

  Mark nodded. Maybe she was on to something there. Maybe whatever had happened to him back on that first dark day had been the manifestation of some neurological problem that had suddenly sprung full-blown. That was what the rational part of him suggested; he had seen too much and lived through too much to believe it to be the truth.

  "That's a good assessment," he said. "But unfortunately ... it's the farthest thing from the truth."

  "Well then what is it?"

  "I'm sorry, Carol." Mark touched her face lightly with the back of his hand. "I didn't mean to lie to you, to hide the truth from you. But I was so damn scared, I was afraid that if you found out that I would lose you."

  "You'll never lose me." Carol took his hand and kissed his fingers one by one. She held his hand to her cheek, nuzzling it. "No matter what is wrong with you, baby, you'll never lose me."

  He was just about to say you'll believe otherwise after you hear this, but wisely decided not to. Now was not the time to bait her. It was better to let her hear his story in full so she could decide for herself.

  Taking a deep breath, Mark took her back to those dark days when he lived in a violent household; from there the story segued easily into the day the curse manifested itself without warning.

  From there it became easy. He told her everything.

  Carol sat next to him, eyes wide with amazement, horror, and a sort of wonder. She didn't say a word as Mark spun the story out. At times her breath was held as if in rapt suspense.

  It didn't take long to tell her. She already knew about his role in the board member killings, his relationship with Bernard Roberts, and the card the executive was holding on his life. The part about his curse fit in neatly, like the missing piece of a long lost puzzle. That's how Mark saw it.

  When he finished he was afraid to look at her, but he did. Her features were riddled with conflicting emotions: fear, rage, revulsion, and pity. She had released her grip on his hands and had inched back as he told his story, and now that he was finished she drew into herself. Her eyes darted around the room nervously, as if seeking escape. Mark had been expecting this and he told her, "I knew you would react this way. You think I'm crazy, that there's something wrong with me mentally."

  "No, I don't think that at all," Carol protested. "It's just ..."

  "Just what?"

  Carol regarded him silently. She appeared to be fighting the fear and revulsion she had exhibited. "It's just that ..."

  "It's unbelievable, isn't it?"

  Carol nodded.

  "I know. But trust me, Carol, it's real."

  Carol opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it, then shook her head. She appeared to be struggling with something. Finally she spit it out: "What you're suggesting is ... well, it's-"

  "I thought you already used the word 'crazy'?"

  "Crazy wasn't the word I was going for," Carol said. She seemed to be in more control of herself, especially since Mark apparently wasn't going to sprout fangs and fur and turn into a werewolf right before her eyes. "I guess the closest thing I can think of is that what you're describing is pure superstition."

  "But don't you think that superstitions have some basis in fact? I mean, how else do they become superstitions in the first place?"

  Carol shrugged and rubbed her shoulders. "I don't know. Walking under ladders, black cats crossing your path-"

  "Ghosts, the Loch Ness monster, UFO's and alien abduction," Mark said. "Let's refer to some of them as urban legends, if you will."

  "Okay."

  "Let's take UFO's for instance. They seem to be the most popular right now. In fact, they seem to be just as popular an urban myth as werewolves and vampires were three hundred years ago. Why is that, do you think?"

  Carol shrugged. Her shoulders looked less rigid, her face less strained. "People are less superstitious now?"

  "Partly true. Another reason could be that technologically, we're more advanced now. Three hundred years ago we weren't and we relied more on folklore to help explain the things we didn't understand. When technology took off in the thirties and forties, new fears followed; nuclear war, the mysteries of space. We've long pondered the possibility of life on other planets and the more we learned about the solar system and the galaxy beyond, the more we began hearing stories of extraterrestrial visitors."

  "If you're saying that folklore and urban legends are a result of mass hallucination, you're doing a terrible job of convincing me of your lycanthropic condition." Now Carol was becoming her old self again; strong, witty, and no-nonsense.

  "Sorry. Didn't mean to lead you down that track, but this does eventually make sense." Mark paused briefly, leaned closer to Carol and continued. "I can't remember which pharaoh it was, but it had to have been the early 1920s when a particular tomb was unearthed in Egypt. It was estimated to be three thousand years old. Among the hieroglyphics engraved in the tomb that told that particular pharaoh's story, the archeologists discovered what could only be described as flying disks; in fact, that particular hieroglyph appeared to tell the story of beings from the outer stars who visited the Egyptians. Most of the hieroglyphics are still undecipherable, but it's the story that beings from another planet might have possibly visited the ancient Egyptians that continues to amaze UFO buffs to this day. Because here we have actual recorded evidence dating three thousand years before the UFO craze of the forties. There are various cultures around the world that have similar extraterrestrial folklore."

  "So what are you saying?"

  "What I'm saying is that if you believe that there is life on other planets, that it could have been very possible that extraterrestrials visited various primitive cultures thousands of years ago. And that those visits were what has resulted in UFO folklore to this day."

  Carol was silent as she appeared to digest this information. "What about Roswell, then?"

  "An anomaly," Mark said. "Of the thousands of reported sightings received every year, Roswell was probably the real thing."

  "So in other words, most UFO sightings are bona fide fake."

  "Right."

  "And what about vampires and werewolves. You said before that their popularity was at its height three hundred years ago."

  "Between the fifteenth and nineteenth century," Mark said. He ran his hand along his still wet hair. "And with each culture they had a different methodology to them. In some countries, somebody that died as a vampire came back as a werewolf. In some countries a vampire could only be killed by an oak stake through the heart; in others, it had to be decapitated as well, with garlic stuffed in its mouth. I could go on with the different myths for both, but the point is, the reason they were both extremely popular in their day and age was due to the scientific ignorance of the masses of that time, and religious hysteria. The church did a good job at convincing poor, uneducated peasants that crazy Simon who lived all by himself on the Moors-who, if a twentieth-century psychiatrist were to examine him today would diagnose paranoid schizophrenia-was really a demon-possessed werewolf."

  "Okay, I can believe that," Carol said. "I'm sure there were serial killers back then just as well."

  "Exactly!" Mark was feeling animated now, especially the more Carol warmed up to this theory. "People like Ted Bundy have been around forever; it's only recently that we've been able to coin a phrase to describe people like that."
>
  "A guy like Ted Bundy back then," Carol said, shaking her head. "Or Richard Chase-that vampire guy in Sacramento-would be prime for burning at the stake as a werewolf back in the Middle Ages."

  "You're catching on," Mark said. "There's even evidence that suggests vampires and werewolves of the past were possible victims of a rare blood disease called porphyria. They may have attacked and drank the blood of fellow villagers in an attempt to get healthy hemoglobin into their systems."

  Carol looked surprised. "Porphyria?"

  Mark nodded. "It's a hereditary disease caused by a defect in the bone marrow. It lies dormant in the system until a stressful situation triggers it. One key symptom is an acute sensitivity to light. Sunlight may cause severe scarring and sores to erupt on the skin. Receding gums expose discolored reddish fang-like teeth. It's little wonder many victims of the disease stayed indoors during the day and only ventured out at night. There are ways to treat this condition now, but back in the 1500s? People like that were often scorned, they had to hide from fearful villagers who were afraid they would kill them."

  "Hence the vampire and werewolf myths," Carol said.

  "Precisely."

  "That still doesn't explain what you just told me," Carol said. The fear and loathing had left her face only to be replaced by a stronger sense of pity. "In a sense, the part regarding porphyria rings true; your condition sprang suddenly during a stressful time of your life. But everything else ... the ... physical changing into a beast ... it smacks right out of that movie An American Werewolf in London. You described being able to physically change. And that, to be painfully honest, smacks of something psychological."

  Mark sighed. He knew very well that this is how it would sound to her, but there was no other way to tell her. He had to tell her everything, no holds barred. And he didn't want to will the change now in front of her for fear that he would lose control of the beast within. The thought of suddenly blacking out in the middle of the change and waking up to find her strewn bloodily across the room was something he didn't want to consider. "I don't know what it is," he said, his voice low. "All I know is ... there is something within me that compels me to ... to let the beast out every month during the lunar cycle. I used to be able to control it, but something happened last summer. It started getting out of control, taking a hold of me without warning. Bernard Roberts saw what happened to me that night in the tape library. He told me himself; he was standing by the security booth yakking it up with a security guard while the guy's back was turned. He saw me start to change in the camera, and he got a copy of the tape. That, and the research he did ..." He let the sentence trail off. He shrugged. "He had me. I couldn't let him destroy me."