Storm In My Head
Violina was pleased to see the clouds gathering and condensing, as she had willed. Thunder, so subtle only she could hear it, grumbled inside the high, condensing mass. The storm was as devious as she was.
Thumbs hooked in his creaky belt, Officer Kebbler greeted her at the open door. “Yes indeed, ma’am! Hudson called over and said you’d be by!”
With his sun-spotted pate and deep crow’s feet, Kebbler looked to be well past the age of retirement. Yet his brisk movements and snappy speech pattern gave the impression he would be better in the field, rather than overseeing this dusty former machine shop at the end of Ecard Street, which served as an annex to the Cronus County Sheriff’s Department’s evidence lockup.
“Right this way.” He whistled a tune that seemed disjointed, as if he only needed to hear its reassuring echo in the plain-block building. They walked a while, passing locked cage rooms that housed everything from damaged Pumpkin Parade floats to one serious collection of armaments taken from a white-supremacist, militia-type group.
“This stuff’s kinda funny, ain’t it?” Kebbler asked as he unlocked the flimsy door to the small room, formerly the shop’s office. A clipboard hung by the door held a list that was labeled saxon farm/devil’s night.
“Funny?” asked Violina.
“Silly!” he elaborated, nodding his head in quick little jerks like a hyperactive teenager.
He swung the door open and flashed his coffee-browned teeth at her. “Hey, how about I keep you company?” Kebbler was shameless in his lack of subtlety given his age—and wedding ring.
“Aren’t you kind?” Violina made plain her sarcasm. “But I wouldn’t want your wife to get the wrong idea.”
“Oh, she’s passed.” Kebbler folded his fingers to hide his ring and his lie, face flushing.
She patted him on the chest as she entered the room. “Heart attack?”
“Yes…ma’am”
“Condolences.” Violina flipped the light switch and surveyed a simple table with folding chairs and a trio of steel shelving units not unlike those in Matilda’s barn. Plain boxes marked with sequential numbers lined them neatly.
“Are y’all ladies with one of the colleges?” asked Kebbler.
Violina hadn’t considered that Hudson and his circle were wisely keeping it quiet that witches were now involved in their town’s ongoing struggle against the unknown. “Of course. Duke University.” She said, naming the school not for its paranormal studies program but because it was the state’s most prestigious.
“I love college girls!” Kebbler laughed and laughed.
As Violina tugged one of the boxes down and onto the table, Kebbler made to help.
“No, I’ve got it,” she said. “Watch your heart!”
Kebbler seemed confused for a second. “No, that was my wife. Mine’s fine.”
“Surely it’s still broken.”
Kebbler was tongue-tied.
The box contained several sealed plastic bags. The top one, labeled footpath to barn, contained shards of glazed pottery. The footpath was where Jill had battled for her life against Everett Geelens. The shards had to be from the container the punker girl had smashed over the Trick-or-Treat Terror, the one that made him “vanish.”
“I hope you don’t think all of us around here believe in that hokey, horror-movie nonsense,” said Kebbler, regaining momentum. “I think the Halloween parade got into a few empty heads around here.”
The next bag contained a clay jar, about the size of a cold-cream container, engraved roughly with the letters lup. This would be skinwalker salve, for either changing or restoring. Unimportant to Violina.
“Some kind of lube?” Kebbler giggled like a frat boy. Violina didn’t look at him, but she could feel his gaze like a heat lamp on her legs and ass.
She took down another box and opened it, facing toward Kebbler this time. Inside was something of a knife collection: Aura’s bone-handled balisong, Rhino’s boot knife and Matilda’s athame, still speckled with blood.
Beneath these smaller blades were Everett’s toys: hedge clippers and the kidney-shaped bone saw he used to make real, live skull masks.
“Don’t get yourself hurt with those, now,” said Kebbler. “Be a shame if ya got blood on that nice blouse.” His breathing had gotten heavier. “…And had to take it off.”
Among a stack of Polaroids, she found several of sigils splashed onto a stone wall, possibly in blood. A notation at the bottom told her these were taken in the chamber under the church.
“I’ll need to take some of this with me,” Violina said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Can’t do that without the sheriff’s say.” Kebbler leaned out to look toward the front and make sure no one was there. “You can just take your time and…examine ’em here.”
A third box yielded a find more mundane in appearance, yet infinitely intriguing to Violina. giant pumpkin from field next door said its label. The contents were at least two handfuls of massive pumpkin seeds, about twice the normal size. Tiny brown dots on a few of them could only be blood.
“Are you all right, Deputy Kebbler?”
“Oh, I’m righter than rain right now, hun.”
“Are you”—she cocked her head and stared at his chest—“certain?”
Kebbler cleared his throat. He raised his hand to his sternum. “Maybe a little heartburn.”
“Some water might help,” said Violina.
Kebbler wheezed, louder with each breath, as he stepped away from the little room and started toward his desk.
Violina rearranged the contents of the boxes, putting all she wanted to take in one. She carried it cradled in her arm like an infant as she left the room and made her way toward the exit.
Kebbler was at his desk, trying to move the dirty, clear-plastic rotary on the ancient telephone cradle with a quivering finger.
“Can I call someone for you, Officer?”
Neutered by distress, he could only look at her with suspicion. “I think I’ll be all right. Just need to sit for a minute or two.”
She patted his suddenly pale hand on her way to the door. “Thanks for all your help.”
Before the door had clicked closed behind her, Kebbler’s breathing had gotten so heavy and strident it echoed throughout the building, like his off-tune whistle.
* * * *
The Wolf fought to stay. Spurred by the shock of sharp pain, the Man eventually claimed the greater measure of control.
Yoshida snarled and snapped, but the violently wriggling cat was out of his paws—hands—and bolting through the clattering pet door before Yoshida could drop to all fours to pursue it.
Out of breath, his hands stinging from cat scratches, Yoshida rolled onto his back on the rough bark mulch around Mr. Campbell’s Japanese maple and squinted in pain at the sky. Fast-growing clouds had covered the moon, but he knew, somehow, that it was at about three-quarters, and this seemed disappointing for some reason.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Purrf?” asked Mr. Campbell, smelling strongly of store-brand shampoo and a toasted bacon-and-cheese sandwich he’d eaten roughly twenty minutes ago.
Yoshida looked toward his neighbor’s door, realizing he had never heard more than an indecipherable muffle from within before tonight. He rose from the mulch and shook to throw off the clinging chips.
Shook?
He reached back and slapped the mulch away, as he hunkered down to hide between some shrubs. A second later, the bathrobed Mr. Campbell flipped on his outside light and, opened the door, searching the yard with tired eyes. “Did you fight another kitty?”
Mr. Campbell went back inside and switched off the light. But Yoshida found that he could see just the same without it. He could trace the oozing trails of his cat scratches just as well as he could feel them, even in the deeper dark of the hedges.
How the hell did I piss off Mr. Purrfect? Yoshida asked himself.
Campbell’s tuxedo cat had been friendly to him since the day Yoshida moved to Ember Hollow. Yoshida even allowed him into his home and petted him sometimes.
The cat must have gotten scared.
Yoshida realized he was naked again. And that his teeth ached from gnashing.
“Crap on a Chrysler!” Yoshida whispered. “Did I just try to eat Mr. Purrfect?”
Yoshida’s heart sank. Taking the wolf out of Aura had not taken it out of him.
It didn’t take a Harry D’Amour to figure out that he was drawing closer to full-on werewolf status as the moon grew fatter.
* * * *
Hudson set the phone on its cradle gently, as if out of respect for his fallen fellow officer, Kebbler. The relieving officer had found him face down on his desk, dead of a heart attack.
This should be a day of mourning. Unfortunately, as with the past two Octobers, that would have to wait.
* * * *
Deputy Yoshida signed out, changed into civvies and drove his personal car to Ember Hollow Recreational Grounds Park, sure he looked like an undercover rookie about to make his first drug buy.
He tried on a smile, checked his reflection and decided against it. It seemed predatory somehow, exactly the last thing he wanted, as he was going to meet the kids.
The sky was a Hitchcock film, heavy with suspense. Clouds were gathering like an angry flock of bloodthirsty birds.
The kids were out on the soccer field, passing a jack-o’-lantern-painted Frisbee between the three of them and the exuberant Bravo. Yoshida raised a hand to wave, but they were having too much fun to notice. He envied them and remembered how much they deserved it after the extremes of raw terror they had lived through.
He was within thirty feet before Bravo charged for a vigorous greeting rub—then stopped hard. Some troubling scent had him on edge.
“You don’t seem so square in your regular clothes,” quipped DeShaun.
Bravo issued a low growl.
“Bravo disagrees.”
Yoshida slowed, extending his hand for the dog to sniff. “Hey, it’s me, boy!”
Bravo remained leery.
“Jeez, what’s wrong, Bravs?” asked Stuart.
Candace tossed the Frisbee to Yoshida and went to hug the dog. “You’re trembling, fella!”
“Maybe he thinks you’re a cat,” said DeShaun.
Yoshida smiled, but it was not genuine. He was reminded of his skirmish with Mr. Purrfect.
“Sorry, kids. Not feeling very jocular.”
“Yeah, well, my dad is gonna give you a major frowning-upon if he sees you sporting that scruffy samurai look, Lone Wolf.”
Rubbing his chin, Yoshida had a disconcerting moment of paranoia that DeShaun knew his secret and was mocking it—then realized the boy was making reference to a Japanese manga and film character with that appellation. His point was well made; there was already gritty stubble where he had shaved just hours ago.
As DeShaun hoisted his backpack and started toward the nearest picnic shelter, Candace attached Bravo’s leash. “Maybe I should hold onto him.”
“Stay close, okay?” said Stuart.
Watching how the kids kept careful watch on one another drove home for Yoshida just how much they had been through together. He winced at the sound of distant thunder, which the kids did not seem to hear.
Candace laced Bravo’s leash around a picnic bench at the next table and sat close to the dog.
“Did you bring the books?” the deputy asked, as he sat opposite the boys.
“Nah.” Said DeShaun as he unzipped the backpack. “This is just full of heroin and whatnot.”
“Didn’t think anybody but us ever looked at these,” said Stuart, helping DeShaun unload the books.
“Mrs. Washburn at the library must have thought the same. She said she was letting you guys hold onto them indefinitely.”
“Friends in high places.” DeShaun arranged the books, seven in all, side by side on the table.
* * * *
Modern day
Yoshida found himself avoiding eye contact with Bravo. The mastiff seemed to be studying him like a code, reading his darkest secrets and fears straight from his brain.
His eye caught the title of the book before him on the picnic table—Men into Animals: A History of Magical Transformation. “Is this a joke?”
Stuart opened the book to a page he had marked with a folded Chalk Outlines flyer. “Why don’t you ask yourself from a year ago?”
With this, Yoshida realized how deep was his denial, that he was willing to ignore the battle with lycanthropes he had personally experienced, to avoid the idea of what he was becoming.
“Why’d you even want to see that stuff if you don’t believe in it?” asked Candace.
“I’m curious about the biker girl.”
“But that’s a done deal.”
“Is it a crime to be curious about something?” he snapped.
“Yeah, so arrest yourself, Deppidy Doofwad.” The kids were as quick on the draw as ever.
“Sorry, guys. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Who has? We live in Scarytown, USA.”
Yoshida skimmed over several passages in a couple of the books, wondering how he could pose his main question without giving himself away. “Is there anything about what happens when a skinwalker bites someone?”
The kids all blinked in alarm, having skipped to the end. “Oh, shit, Yosh.”
“When?” asked DeShaun, in a low tone.
Yoshida sighed with resignation. “When we caught her.”
“My dad…?”
“He didn’t get bit, and he doesn’t know,” said Yoshida. “For now, I’d like to keep it that way.”
The kids circulated a grim look. “All that stuff about the curse being passed on from a bite, that’s just made up for Lon Chaney movies,” said Stuart.
“Werewolf of London with Henry Hull was actually the first,” added DeShaun.
Stuart raised a middle finger in his friend’s face as he continued. “On the other hand, I didn’t read anything about anybody being bitten by a skinwalker and actually surviving.”
“Maybe you’re the first,” said Candace.
When Yoshida turned to look at her, Bravo gave a low growl, placing his big body in front of his girl.
“I’ve had some weird incidents,” Yoshida said, giving details about losing control at Aura’s transformation ceremony, sleepwalking, following the moon home—and apparently trying to eat Mr. Purrfect.
“Psychosomatic maybe?” DeShaun said.
“You see how Bravo is acting. And these cat scratches…” Yoshida rubbed the pink lines on his arms that looked a week old. “That was last night.”
The kids gawped.
“I’m at a point where I can’t take any chances.” Yoshida said. “How long do we have till the full moon?”
“What’s the moon like now?”
“Wait, you guys…” Candace began. “You already said it’s not like the movies.”
“Yeah?”
“He could be changing a little more every night.”
“Which means…” Stuart did not want to finish.
“It means I might turn full-blown wolf one of these nights.” Yoshida closed the book. “And…never turn back.”