by T L Barrett
He waited, but heard nothing in response. He turned and dashed for the stairs.
“We have to get out of here, now, Arachne,” he shouted.
“Yes, Barry, I am right above you.”
Barry looked up to see Arachne skimming over the ceiling upside down on her quick legs.
Barry mounted the steps and ran down the hall. At the far end, the door opened.
For a moment, Barry expected to see a leering ghoulish snout greeting him from the intruder’s face.
Instead, he saw a white hood, white robes.
“The Klan. The Klan is in cahoots with the tribunal? This explains things,” Barry said. “I always wondered if those bastards could be human.”
The Klan member raised an arm. Distantly he saw the pistol in the racist’s hand. Without doubt he knew that pistol was loaded with silver bullets.
A shape dropped from the ceiling. Arachne crossed Barry’s line of site as a gunshot rang out. The spider jarred with constriction. Some grayish goop hit Barry in the face. Arachne fell to the floor.
Barry looked up and roared. He leapt.
He caught the Klansman on the chest and drove him to the floor. The fired shots randomly into the ceiling.
Barry drove his hand deep into the intruder’s abdomen. His claws gripped down on some innards and pulled hard.
The let out a great hiss of pain as Barry tore the innards out of him. He raised the pistol to point at Barry’s head. Barry knocked the hand to the side almost casually, sending more of the silver bullets into the wall.
He growled and lunged forward tearing out the intruder’s neck with his teeth.
The intruder’s body convulsed once under him and was still.
Barry looked down to get another great bite and stopped.
He was sitting astride, not a Klansman, as he had previously believed, but an ancient and leathery ghoul with eviscerated guts and neck.
“You were a Klansman a second ago, you bastard,” Barry growled.
“Ah…needed you to be able to attack without reservation,” an unsteady voice said into his mind.
“Arachne!” Barry shouted. He turned and saw where the spider lay upon her back. Her legs twitched in the air. A gray substance leaked from the bullet wound that had punctured her great abdomen.
Barry ran to her.
“Arachne! Speak to me!” he said, fluttering over her with useless claws.
“Help me, darling. You…might have to carry me.”
Barry scooped her up in his arms and turned toward the door, expecting another ghoul to come through the open door. Instead he felt a soft summer night breeze.
Three honks sounded in the night beyond the door.
“Morticia, thank God! Arachne, I think I have to get you to a hospital!”
“That really isn’t a possibility at this point, darling.”
“Just stay with me, Arachne, I’m going to need you.” He ran out the door, cradling the giant spider in his arms like an injured child.
“I’m not going anywhere, darling, but we shouldn’t be headed to the museum.”
Barry swore thanks as Morticia squealed into the drive and jerked to a stop in front of them. The back door swung open and Barry slid onto the seat.
“I feel cold, Barry. Hold me.”
“I am, sweetheart, I am,” Barry said, his voice taking on a strange southern tang, the voice of the dying spider in his head. He cradled her. A feeler reached up and touched Barry’s cheek.
“We shouldn’t go to the museum.”
“We aren’t. We’re getting help. We’re going to blow the lid off all these bastards, once and for all.”
Chapter Eleven
Barry Comes out
As the Late Night News team of KSRD 9 St. Louis were just getting through the preliminary 11:00 greetings, Tom Selleck entered the ground floor lobby carrying the ugliest lapdog the ground floor security guard, Freddie, had ever seen.
Freddie’s mouth dropped open. His first thought was that his wife, Grace, would never in a million years believe the news when he got home. Freddie, in a strange meaningless coincidence sported a stand-in resemblance for “T.C.”, Magnum’s sidekick.
“Mister Selleck!” Freddie blurted and stood. He bowed his head. Tom Selleck bowed his head in return and gave him that winsome trademark grin.
“Hi, ah…Frederick—” Tom Selleck said.
“Freddie, sir, you can call me Freddie,” Freddie gushed.
“Freddie, it is nice to meet you. Listen, I’m supposed to do this guest spot on the air tonight.”
“Nobody told me anything about it, sir,” Freddie said.
“Oh, well—”
“Nobody tells me anything, anyways.”
“Right, well, I’m kind of running late. I was hoping you could direct me—”
“Of course, and please let me say, it is a real honor to meet you,” Freddie said, and offered his hand.
Tom Selleck grinned again and both of them looked down at the grotesque dog that lay in his arms.
“Do you want me to hold your dog for you, sir? What kind of breed is that?” Freddie hoped that Mister Selleck would say, no. There was something about the dog that made him cringe, especially the horrible black eyes that seemed to stare into him.
“Well, she’s a rescue dog. I mean—I rescued her, you know. That’s actually what my piece is about. Rescuing dogs, cats, other kinds of creatures, too.”
“Wow, that is amazing, sir. Really.”
“Thanks, Freddie, you’re a champ.”
Freddie chuckled and grinned. He gave Tom Selleck directions to the news floor on the eighth floor. Tom Selleck thanked him again and disappeared into the lobby elevator.
Freddie mused about this curious event. Tom Selleck looked damned good. He didn’t look a day older than he had when on Magnum P. I. Freddie surmised that celebrities could afford to keep their good looks. Freddie didn’t pretend to understand it.
What kept coming back to his mind was that dog he had been holding. Was it a dog, at all? He had never seen something that ugly before. Those eyes and their spider-like stare kept haunting his memory. Why anyone would want to rescue such a thing was beyond him. In any case, he supposed a celebrity like Tom Selleck could afford to be a little eccentric.
Freddie looked down at the floor and saw the faintly iridescent splotches of gray splat that led like a trail to the elevator. He looked up and out through the glass front of the lobby. A hearse was parked on the curb.
“Had Tom Selleck driven here in a hearse?”
Freddie knew two things: trying to understand the tastes of the rich and famous would always be completely beyond him, and his wife, Grace, would not believe him in a million years.
* * * *
“Ah’m sorry for making such a mess all over you, darling,” Arachne sent as the elevator ascended. Barry looked down at his hands and pant legs to see the glowing grey ichors covering them.
“It’s fine. Are you going to hold up?”
“Not for long, ah’m afraid. You will have to be quick. Ah don’t know how long ah’ll be able to focus long enough to keep tricking folks.”
“Well, if all goes right, it shouldn’t take, too, long. It better not. The others are counting on us.” Barry kept hearing Glen’s frightened voice over the speaker in the Furies’ headquarters.
“Barry, do you know what you’re doing?”
“I think I do. I got the idea from watching The Howling. Back when I first changed, I boned up on a ton of werewolf movies. I was always hoping that it would prove worthwhile.”
The elevator opened and Barry faced a bored looking young woman who sat at the reception desk.
“Hi, beautiful!” Barry said in his best Tom Selleck impersonation. The girl looked up and swallowed the gum she had been chomping on.
“If I remember right, the newsroom is…”
“That way,” the woman yelped and pointed. Barry gave her a come hither wink and scurried down the hall to a door.
A member of the technical staff turned and jumped back when he saw Tom Selleck approaching with a strange animal in his arms.
“Hi! Looks like I made it just in time. Would you mind holding my dog for me?” he asked and unloaded Arachne into the arms of the astounded, yet compliant, technical staff member.
Barry sucked in his breath and walked out in front of the cameras.
Liza Kelley, the co-anchoress, gasped when she saw him. Bill Lederman, the co-anchor, took his eyes away from the teleprompter to see what had happened.
“Hi, I was hoping I could just get a word in, if that’s all right?” Barry asked. He jogged over and sat down at a guest chair very close to the news desk.
“Uh, ladies and gentlemen, it appears…it appears that Tom Selleck has joined the KSRD 9 News team this evening. Hello, Mister Selleck,” Liza looked toward her director in the sound booth. The director shrugged and made a keep rolling motion with his arm.
“Hi, uh, Liza and…” Barry saw the promotional banners downstairs, but already forgot the co-anchor’s name. He always was horrible with names.
“That’s Bill,” Bill Lederman said. His handsome square-jawed face was squinted with manly suspicion.
“I just had a few words for the people at home, if that’s okay?” Barry asked Liza.
Liza nodded, incredulously, and pointed to the camera for Barry to look into.
Barry looked into the camera and took another big gulp of air.
“Hi, for those watching at home, you realize that I’m not Tom Selleck. I’m just some ordinary schmuck like the rest of you. Only, I’m not. Well…I have some news for all of you. Living among us are lots of different, people. You might call them monsters—”
“Excuse me?” Bill Lederman said, leaning forward. “Did you say monsters?”
“Yes, there are many types. They’ve been hiding for a long time among you. Only they have been drastically misunderstood. Most of us are just like most of you. We aren’t naturally bad people, it’s just a few of them that ruin it for the rest of us. That’s why almost none of you know that we’re out there, why we’ve been so good at blending in. We just want to lead nice quiet lives. Most of us, that is—”
“Mister Selleck, did you just call yourself a monster.”
“My name isn’t Tom Selleck. My name is Barry Trudeau, and I am a werewolf.”
“What is going on?” Liza asked.
“Right now, a few of those monsters, a group of ladies that call themselves The Furies are in great danger. They and my friend, Glen, who’s a Sasquatch—”
“A Sasquatch?” Liza asked.
“Yes, many of you have heard of the Furies, I’m sure. They are monsters like me, and they’ve been putting their own safety on the line these past few weeks to keep the city safe, to keep you safe. Only now they are being punished for protecting you. A group of not so nice monsters, afraid of exposure, are going to execute these heroes, tonight.
“Barry, I can’t…”
The door to the sound room opened and the director walked toward Barry.
“Security,” the director shouted.
“Wait! I can prove this, wait. I’m a werewolf. You have to listen to me!”
The director froze in his approach. Everyone looked at Barry.
Barry willed his transformation.
Nothing happened.
“Of all the times for this to happen! There has to be some technical name besides lycanthropic impotence!”
Barry grunted and tried to growl. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He looked over at Bill Lederman. Bill sighed, stood and put his arm on Barry’s shoulder.
“I have to admit something, as well,” Bill said. He began unbuttoning his shirt and loosened his tie.
“Bill, what are you doing?” Liza asked.
“I’m being brave. I am sick of living a lie, Liza,” Bill said. “I, too, am a monster. People at home, do not be alarmed by what you are about to see.”
“Has everyone gone insane?” the director shouted. “Cut the mikes, go to a commercial.”
“No, Trent!” Bill said. “You will want to keep the cameras rolling for this, I assure you.” Bill bared his handsome chest and pushed both thumbs against his nipples. A crease appeared down the middle of his chest and both sides of his chest opened outward.
Liza shrieked. At that exact moment, the technical staff member realized that he was holding an enormous spider in his hands. He shrieked, too, and dropped the dead spider onto the floor. In the light of the events occurring around the news desk, no one noticed. The staff member fell against the newsroom door, scrabbled with the doorknob and dashed out and down the hall.
Beside the news desk, before the live cameras, Bill Lederman’s chest cavity opened up, and a two foot bearded creature attached to wires leading into the rest of Lederman’s body crawled out and waved a tiny arm at the camera.
“Hello,” the creature said in Bill Ledermen’s deep and resonate voice, “my real name is Trickles the gnome. I’ve been going by the name Bill Lederman since I started here in, God, what was it Trent? 1995?” Trent, in all his shock, did not have a ready answer for the creature that had crawled from his reporter’s chest cavity.
“Did you build that?” Barry asked.
“I did.” Trickles said. He turned to his ashen faced co-anchoress. “I hope this doesn’t change how you feel about me, smookins.” With a look of panicked disgust on her face, Liza got up and walked off the news set on trembling legs.
“I’ve been wanting to come forward for a long time. I just never thought I could, until you came here, Mister Trudeau.”
Barry looked at the little smiling and warty-faced man and smiled back. His heart was beating in his chest, but that was okay. He could grab that feeling, ride it right out of his own skin…
Barry grew hair out of his face, hands and neck. His nose darkened; his teeth lengthened.
“Ladies and Gentleman, we are reporting live from the KSRD 9 newsroom with breaking news. Monsters live among us, some of them are your neighbors, they could be your friends, or your family members. There is nothing to be concerned with as we have here a very friendly werewolf, and I, Bill Ledermen, am also a member of one of the many groups that call themselves collectively, the folk.”
“Now, Mister Trudeau, you were saying that the group of vigilante heroes calling themselves the Furies, are really a group of folk women.”
“Yes, Bill, I mean, Trickles…They have been protecting the city for the last few weeks and now they are being held by a hostile faction of Folk calling themselves the tribunal in this city’s natural history museum. The Furies are about to pay the ultimate price for their good deeds. Murder is about to be committed in your city.” Barry stood and looked at the camera.
“People of Saint Louis, the Furies were tired of sitting around while the corrupt and vicious took what was not theirs. They stood for justice and protection of the law-abiding citizen. Now, if you care about safely walking the streets of this city, if you care about your own children, you need to march on the Natural History Museum this very moment and demand that the Furies be released from these illegal and foreign group of executioners.”
Trickles operated the Bill Lederman flesh golem until it stood beside Barry.
“Fellow folk! Many of you are as tired as we are of hiding in the shadows, afraid of letting our gifts shine in a world that desperately needs them. If you have ever felt this way, if you have ever wished you could live openly with the same rules and laws as those that govern the rest of humanity, now is the time to rise up and join an inter-folk brotherhood. Assemble with us at the Natural History Museum and make a new tomorrow.”
“Hey, that was pretty good!” Barry said.
&n
bsp; “Thanks. Okay, people, we need to get moving. KSRD 9 will be there covering all the excitement, right Trent?”
Trent, the director, nodded and then stepped forward.
“Yes, yes, of course. Bill, I should probably call the network with this.”
“I think they’ll be calling any moment now,” Trickles said. Sure enough, Trent’s phone began to vibrate. Outside, the office phones began to ring off the hook.
“Keep the cameras rolling and on us, Trent,” Trickles commanded. “We’ve got a world to change.”
Barry called out in his mind to Arachne. Silence answered. He looked about and saw where she lay, quite dead, on her back. He rushed over, took off his jacket and spread it on the ground.
He lifted her gently onto the jacket.
“Because of you, we changed the world, sweetheart,” he said. He already missed her sweet southern twang in his head. He sniffed and felt like he should bend down and kiss her. It seemed like the appropriate gesture for her noble sacrifice.
In the end, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he gently wrapped her in his coat and carried her out of the newsroom.
* * * *
Mortica, the death car, sped like dark liquid silver down the night streets. In no time, she arrived at the museum where a large group of people and monsters of all sorts had gathered to be a part of history or to witness it.
Barry got out of the car and blinked at a pooka with a Mohawk who walked beside two teenage boys on their way to the museum steps. At that moment the news van pulled up behind Morticia. People turned their heads and saw Barry standing there, hair and all.
“There he is,” someone shouted. The pooka pumped his fist into the air and let out a high bray of rebellion.
“Listen people, we’ve got to get inside that museum, and we’ve got to do it now,” Barry shouted. The group cheered and rushed up the museum stairs adding people every second.
At the top, just as a group of people were about to throw themselves bodily against the plate glass doors, a little old African-American man of noble face and wearing the uniform of a museum security guard, waved his hands for them to stop.
“Hold on people, I’ve got the key,” he said. Barry squeezed through the crowd and met him.