by Hal Schrieve
“Do you all own it?” Aysel asked. The dilapidated house didn’t look like it would be expensive, but it seemed as if everyone in it was otherwise homeless or traveling. She couldn’t imagine them being able to buy it.
“Nah. It’s just the landlord lives in New York or Los Angeles or somewhere, owns hella property here and in Portland, doesn’t really care what’s happening. It was abandoned for a while. The house used to be a bunch of college kids partying.”
“How long—I mean, how long has it been here?”
Carmen shrugged again. “Few years. I came here the first time two years ago, when I was moving up from LA. It’s one of the only places in Oregon you can like, hunker down if you’re a registered werewolf. Otherwise it’s backpacking. Unless you have a false ID.”
“Do you stay here a lot?”
“As much as I can when I’m traveling.” Carmen smiled and leaned against the rail of the ramp. “It’s a good place. We’re trying to set up this camp, because of what happened to the homeless guys after the rally. Not just for werewolves, just in general, to raise awareness of how many people here need housing and are persecuted not even for being monsters, just for being poor. The argument Elaine’s having is about whether we should say we’re werewolves while we do it.”
“Yeah,” Aysel said. She hoped that Carmen would continue to talk, but she didn’t, so Aysel went over and examined some chamomile. Carmen ate a strawberry and smoked a cigarette. Eventually the argument inside the house stopped. There was the slam of a door. After a few minutes, Elaine came outside. She looked very tired.
“Hey, y’all. We’re done. Aysel, Josh and Chad want to know if you want to come back here when we have the meeting tomorrow. Get filled in on stuff. I talked to him, he says it’s okay.”
“Sure,” Aysel said. She wanted to know what the meeting was about. She was burning with the very idea of a meeting, a place where other werewolves gathered and spoke to one another. She thought of her mother waiting for her to come home. “When’s the meeting?”
“It starts at seven p.m. Is that okay? Can you make it?”
Aysel smiled a little at how earnest Elaine was. “I don’t know. I’ll try. I’ll tell my mom I’m at Z’s house.” If she isn’t enraged about me going out today, Aysel thought.
“Should she be coming to meetings without knowing what they’re for?” Carmen asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Where do you want to start?” Elaine asked.
Carmen lit a cigarette and looked at Aysel. “Where do you want to start?”
“I don’t know, wherever. I’m all ears,” Aysel said.
“Well, basically,” Elaine said, “we’ve all come here for the supermoon, but now shit has hit the fan and there are a ton of us in one place just as everyone goes all bonkers and decides to kill us all and also maybe kill all homeless people in general. And we have to figure out what to do about it. So we’re organizing a homeless camp.”
“And some of us think we can also use it to connect the homeless population in general with the same network of safe houses werewolves have been using, and get some zines out to help educate the public about werewolves,” Carmen added.
“Which is such a great idea,” Elaine added, rolling her eyes. “Not like the cops wanna know where wolves are or anything, or like, some homeless kid isn’t gonna take the chance to nark on us for a couple hundred bucks or whatever reward the pigs are offering.”
Carmen shrugged. “I mean, Chad’s point is, we gotta stop running sometime. Though I gotta say he’s more spoiling for a fight than anything else.”
“I think resistance is a great idea, but we don’t have the means. We got to be restrained. I think now is a good time to just try to make a space for some of the other people to hang out and be safe for a while, prove homeless people aren’t dangerous, don’t mention anything about wolves, and then when stuff dies down we can all get the hell out.”
Carmen nodded and sipped at her mug. “No, that’s all real,” she said. She let out a little hiss through her teeth. “The best thing we can do a lot of the time is help each other escape and lie low. Down in the Bay Area and Los Angeles folks have been sabotaging police werewolf records and helping Mexican werewolves get across the border.”
“Wait, the thing with the police in California, is that what the Timothy Morris thing—” Aysel stopped, looking from Elaine to Carmen. “The guy everyone said killed Archie Pagan?”
“Yeah,” Carmen said. “He was with a werewolf group. But it didn’t happen like the police said. We never attacked nobody. Timothy got shocked when he was younger a couple times, but he didn’t fuck with Pagan. They spin it like we did so nobody asks why they shoot us.”
“So Timothy Morris didn’t attack that Pagan guy or anyone? That was made up?” Aysel asked, thinking of the body on the news.
“Nah. Tim lit a dumpster on fire once and got in a fight with a cop once and did time as a teenager for selling something that was supposed to be fairy dust when he was about thirteen, but he never hurt anybody.”
“Who killed Archie Pagan then?”
“Dunno,” Carmen said. “That’s just how it goes, isn’t it? Sometimes the cops get you when you haven’t done anything at all. It wasn’t anyone here that I know of.”
“Why was he up here?” Aysel asked. “Morris.”
“Couldn’t pay rent, couldn’t find a job. Supermoon. Same reason any of us are up here.”
“Anyway,” Elaine said, loudly, “the organizing and stuff’s what happens at the House of Wolves. It’s what the meeting’s about tomorrow. A few homeless people from downtown are bringing their tents and we’re putting up a fence around the house and just helping people settle in and talking about what to do next.”
“I’ll be there,” Aysel said, though she wasn’t sure if she would be. In the distance there was the noise of sirens.
Aysel walked home, fearing her mother’s reaction. When she walked through the door she heard her mother in the garage doing the laundry. She sat down on the couch waiting for Azra to come back in, squaring her jaw and preparing for the inevitable.
Her mother walked in with a large box in her arms. “Oh, there you are. I thought maybe you’d decide to let me know when you went out this morning. I guess I was wrong,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Aysel said.
“We talked about this before, didn’t we, Aysel? I’m glad you’re safe, but you can’t keep doing this. You’re grounded.”
Aysel’s heart sank. “Okay,” she said. She still planned to go to the meeting later. She knew she had to get there somehow. It was just going to be more difficult now.
“I’m just scared for you,” Azra said for what felt like the thousandth time. “There was a police report today. That Charles Salt man got voted in, in the local election. He wants to give the police more power to shoot on sight, to—I don’t know what all.”
“I’m as scared as you are,” Aysel said, too grouchily. She knew her mother was not trying to make her hurt.
“So why do you do this? You didn’t say, Mom, I’m going to the library! You said nothing to me at all!” Azra banged a narrow hand on the table with an abruptness that startled them both. “Aysel, I am on your side.”
“Mom,” Aysel said, “I’m not saying you aren’t.”
“I want to protect you. I know it feels—suffocating—but this is the worst time for you to assert your independence. You are all I have, Aysel, besides my mother across the world and my work friends, and of them all you are the most precious thing in my life.” Azra said this in the way she often said truly moving things: nervously. Her hand went to her cigarettes again, and this time she lit one.
13
Sunday Z woke with their tailbone pressing against the hard floor of the kitchen. It took a few moments before they put together that waking up meant they had slept. It was the first time since they had died that they had been unconscious. For a second Z had an ominous feeling of dread. They blinked a
nd raised themselves up painfully onto their elbows, half expecting to find themselves in a prison or strapped to a gurney. Instead they opened their eyes and sat squinting and scrunching their pale wasted face against the weak sunlight. It was seven in the morning. There was a cat watching them. Z did not remember falling asleep. They sat and offered a hand to the cat, who walked over and cautiously rubbed against it.
Mrs. Dunnigan came out of her bedroom a few minutes after eight. Her hair was sticking up from her head in crazy directions. She had been sick lately, but she had gotten better over the last few days. She yawned and lifted a cat. Carrying it, she shuffled into the kitchen, her bare bony knees visible under the hem of her nightdress. She seemed surprised to see Z still sitting on the floor.
“What are you doing down there?” she asked.
“I fell asleep,” Z said.
Mrs. Dunnigan looked at them but said nothing, and fried slices of bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast. The coffee maker burbled. It was so odd to have slept. Z examined the bags under their eyes. Were the circles less dark? Z washed their face and felt the skin come away in places as it had before, but there seemed to be new skin underneath somehow. Z wondered if it was the potion. The rain made noises on the roof. It was clear that it was going to be a nice cold day.
After breakfast, with the greasy pan soaking in the sink and the dishes washed, Mrs. Dunnigan put on her coat to go out on a walk with her fourth-fattest cat. He needed the exercise, Mrs. Dunnigan explained, fastening the leash under his large resentful chin. Even if he was trimmer than some of the others, he was having digestive problems. She zipped up her pink raincoat and stepped outside. Z sat down on the couch to wait for her to come back, staring into space and listening for noises in the rain. After far too short a time, the door opened and Mrs. Dunnigan came back into the hall.
“There is an enormous box on the porch,” she called to Z. “Do you know why it’s there?”
“I don’t,” Z said, and got up from the table to go and look. They rounded the corner into the hall. Mrs. Dunnigan and the cat, which seemed to comprehend with some measure of joy that no walk was happening, were staring at a box the size of a small coffee table which was laid carefully across the front porch. It was made of a battered, mildewed-looking cardboard, held together with extensive duct tape. The daily paper was laid on top of it.
“Maybe it’s a mistake,” Z said, but when they examined it the box was addressed to Alondra Dunnigan, in a childish all-capitals print that left no letter or word in doubt. There was no return address. Mrs. Dunnigan stared at it for a few moments with her arms crossed over her chest.
“It’s not a mistake,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “This is one of the boxes that disappeared from the bookstore after the break-in.”
“Oh,” Z said. “So they’re giving it back?” They frowned. “That’s weird.”
“It is weird,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. She looked deeply unsettled.
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “A lot of the organization of the back room was up to Cassie, and I haven’t touched a lot of those boxes since she died.”
“Do you think they left whatever was in it, or put something else inside?” Z asked.
Mrs. Dunnigan was quiet for some time. “I don’t know if we should take it inside,” Mrs. Dunnigan said at last. “Since those hooligans had their hands in it.”
“We can deal with it,” Z said.
“I suppose it isn’t going away unless we deal with it in any case.”
“Probably not,” Z agreed. The mist of apathy that had been crushing them for weeks, and the fear that had recently replaced it, was gone now: they had slept, and were perhaps not rotting anymore, and could fight whatever the rioters had put into this box. They moved forward and tried to turn over the box with magic, half expecting to have new strength.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Mrs. Dunnigan said.
The box shifted, but Z’s magic had been coming in stops and starts. Sparks shot out and fizzled away. A corner of the box raised into the air, then fell back down, and that meant the task was possible. Eventually, with Mrs. Dunnigan’s help, they wrestled the huge thing a safe distance from the porch, into the rain. Mrs. Dunnigan went and got a knife while the fourth-fattest cat, still attached to his leash, sat glaring at them. Another cat took advantage of the open door and walked outside, tail in the air to show it had no intention of returning. After a moment it seemed to realize it was getting soaked and ran back to the kitchen.
“This is exciting,” Mrs. Dunnigan said nervously, emerging again and approaching the box with a knife that looked as if it was meant to slice through bone. Z wondered vaguely where one bought a knife like that. “A thrilling mystery. Maybe it’s not a bomb at all. Maybe it’s seventy pounds of anthrax. Best back up.”
But there was something in her voice that told Z Mrs. Dunnigan knew exactly what was in the box. They stood back and watched the muscles in the old woman’s shoulders strain as she bent to slice through the tape. The box came open like a scab, ripping along one corner. Mrs. Dunnigan stepped forward and undid each cardboard flap while holding one arm over her face as if to protect herself. She carefully leaned over, and then closed her eyes and heaved a great sigh. She ran one hand through her short hair.
“What is it?” Z asked.
“It’s another box,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “A crate.”
Mrs. Dunnigan moved as if in a trance, back into the house to the kitchen where she kept her toolbox. The wooden box was nailed shut and each nail had to be pried loose individually. With her brittle bones and Z’s fragile skeleton it was long work. Z didn’t know if Mrs. Dunnigan expected them to help. She seemed singularly focused on her project as she wedged the back end of a hammer under each nail and pried up, moving the thing back and forth until the nail at last was freed, and fell, and rolled across the pathway.
She lifted up the lid of the box. Inside it was packed with straw. Mrs. Dunnigan felt through the straw with her hands, immersing her arms. The smell of the straw filled the air—sweet and farmlike. Underneath it there was a hint of salt. The box rustled as Mrs. Dunnigan drew out something from its heart. At first Z did not know what it was. It looked like a dead thing, dry and black and wrinkled and curled in on itself, and then Mrs. Dunnigan took it in her arms and stood up, and it looked like it might be a leather jacket. But Mrs. Dunnigan was holding it too close for Z to be certain. She folded her little brittle arms around it and folded her torso forward so she enfolded the thing, and stood there, half bent over, shaking.
“What is that?” Z asked, not expecting an answer.
Mrs. Dunnigan was crying now. It took a moment to see really clearly, but she was crying. There were large tears rolling down the wrinkled lines of her face. She stretched her mouth like she was smiling, but there was a deep tension in the muscles of her jaw. After a moment a little keening sound started coming from the back of her throat. Watching her welling up and shaking in her raincoat and boots, with this mottled black thing clutched in her hands, Z felt deeply afraid for the first time since they had died. A deep chill came over them and they stood there feeling it rattle around their bones and trembling as Mrs. Dunnigan trembled, wondering: What is happening? They stood that way for ten minutes, aching, watching.
“Mrs. Dunnigan?” Z asked again. “What’s that thing you’re holding?”
Mrs. Dunnigan made no reply, but suddenly lurched like she had been bitten and dropped the wrinkled thing back into the box. Turning quickly, she went inside and stumbled down the hall past the living room like she was going into the bathroom. Her feet shuffled against the carpet and made the faint noise of the rain more pronounced. Z watched her and waited for a few seconds, but realized she had left in order to be alone. They got up and shut the door so no more cats could escape and strand themselves in the rain. Then Z looked into the box at the thing Mrs. Dunnigan had held. There did not appear to be any sort of monster or poison or bomb. Mrs. Dunnigan’
s reaction made it all seem deeply private in a way that Z was nervous about, but they felt such a pang of curiosity that they reached out and pulled the leather thing up into the cold morning. As it came out of the box, a piece of paper fell to the wet cement with it. It was written on in red ink.
Shapeshifter Monsters Out
Go Back to the Ocean, Selkie
Close Your Harpy Bookstore
—Anti-Monster Citizen Action Committee
Eventually Mrs. Dunnigan came out into the rain again. It was obvious that she had washed her face, but her eyes were red. Z did not look at her longer than they thought absolutely necessary. It was embarrassing and horrifying. Mrs. Dunnigan crossed to the box and kneeled down next to them. She was still wearing her raincoat, and it made an odd swishing shuffle of every movement. Her hands shook as she lifted the note and looked at it.
“If it isn’t too private, can I ask what the coat thing is?” Z said as quietly as they could.
Mrs. Dunnigan turned over the note and looked at the blank back side. She breathed slowly through her mouth.
She seemed like she wanted to answer, but when she opened her mouth, no words came out. It was unsettling. She was so old, and her eyes were black and deep in the dim morning. She took a deep breath and sighed. “When you’re as old as I am you end up having a lot of dangerous secrets,” she said finally, looking seriously at Z. “I thought I left all mine someplace safe, but I judged rather badly.”
Z waited for her to continue. “I don’t understand.” They looked at the note again. “Why did they call you a shapeshifter?”
“When Cassie and I met, in Ireland, she was studying seals,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. She reached out slowly and ran her hands over the leather of the thing in the box. Z saw her eyes were watery. “One day she found me when I was on the beach, and she had come back from the water. I’d been watching her swim as a seal, out near the point where my family was summering. I watched her turn from a seal into this beautiful solid woman who had the biggest arms I’d ever seen, and I thought, I want her to hold me and never let me go. I went up to her and let her see me.”