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| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
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Werehouse
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My cousin Amy has never been completely right. But she was always happy to see me, and in my family, that’s pretty special. So I never really asked what wasn’t right about her; we got along fine, so what did it matter?
So I was out of the loop when she ended up on the streets. Another cousin, Ben, mentioned that he was going looking for her, and that was the first I heard. The next time was a couple months later, and Ben told me he’d found her and taken her home, and she just went back on the streets. She was legally an adult, so she couldn’t be forced to stay home. But her family was worried (or at least parts of the family were). There’d been a few deaths lately downtown, pretty violent, pretty gruesome. You know how they always say murders and suicides spike when there’s a full moon? Well these were all happening when the moon was full. Local police had only managed to keep the feds out of it this long because the MO of the murders was so varied. The kinds of slashes, even the weapons and the aggressiveness, seemed to indicate completely different people. And the cops said they had unknown DNA from the scene that didn’t match the victims, and was different from scene to scene. And I maybe wouldn’t have ever got involved, except my mom ran into her at the farmer’s market, and they got into it; I guess she thought my mom was there to drag her home like Ben had. But it scared her, and she and Ben talked me into getting involved. They thought she might listen to me where she wouldn’t to other people; maybe because I’d never treated her like she was any different from the rest of us (and I admit that was mostly because I don’t know how different that might have been). I’d worked my way through school doing security work, and you’d be amazed how many eventual law enforcers start out there. I knew half a dozen people with ties to that community- mostly corrections, but enough that I got a few minutes with the detective at the lead of the case. “We haven’t put it in the papers, yet- mostly because the moment we do the feds will have to take the case from us, is that the people who turned up dead got robbed. Not just muggings, I mean their cars go missing, and before the body’s found their homes get broken into, too. It’s scary how quick and clean it is. But our boss has political ambitions- and he’d like to be able to hand the feds a nice thick steak of a file instead of the pile of sliced bologna we have- his words. Personally, I think the man should worry less about running for office and more about a coronary bypass- but I’m just a lowly homicide detective- ain’t my job to save people, just to figure out why they’re dead.” I gave enough of a pause to sound like I gave a crap about him or his boss, then said, “I know from the papers most of the victims have come from the park downtown. My cousin’s homeless, been hanging around down there during the days.” “You think he’s involved?” “No, no, and my cousin’s a she. No. She might smack somebody around if she thought they were getting in her face, but this, no.” “Well, you’ve got another week and a half, if this freak keeps to pattern. After that we’re probably going to have to hand it over to the feds, anyway. You could try looking into the Warehouse, though. That’s where most of the homeless down there sleep.” “The Warehouse?” “Yeah. Not an official name or anything, but it used to be a warehouse for I don’t know a couch company that went out of business or something, but it was renovated and turned into a homeless shelter. People call it the warehouse, still, only,” he hesitated, but knew there wasn’t any turning away from it, “only now instead of housing furniture nobody wants it’s a place we store people nobody wants.” “Hmm.” I said, and after a moment I got up. He muttered an embarrassed goodbye, and I nodded as I left. It seemed at the time, and seems more so now, to be a crackpot idea, but I had literally nothing else I could think of. So I dressed in my crappiest clothes and got on a bus downtown. I’d expected something shabby, industrial and foreboding, but the Warehouse had as its entrance a large three-story home, perhaps originally corporate offices; its namesake had been attached at a later time to the backside of the property. I shambled nervously up the steps, and a man who I couldn’t be sure if he worked or lived there asked, “First time?” I was nervous, and couldn’t look him in the face. “Yes.” “I know that look. Looked the same way when I first got here. Come on.” He set down a wrench on the windowsill and waved for me to follow him. He took me into the building, past a secretary, who he called “Clarice,” and acknowledged with a nod, and led me down a hall to a staircase. He took me to the top and pointed down a thin hallway. “Last door at the end. Boss likes to meet new people, talk to them about the rules, get them settled.” Then he disappears back down the stairs before I can realize I never got his name. I walk slowly to the door, and have finally got up the courage to knock when a voice from inside intones, “Come in.” I do, and immediately I’m greeted by a man standing behind his desk. From his posture, he must have been looking past the warehouse towards the river from a window behind his chair. “I thought I heard Hector, and that usually means a new guest. Hector used to be a tenant here; now he takes care of the day to day. Caroline is technically in charge, but she’s more of what you might call a public relations person. But where are my manners. My name’s Howard.” He’s a tall, thin man with a mildly receding hairline (masked somewhat by a short cut); he seems to have an accent, though I can’t place it, and it seems to only exist every few words, and only for a moment. He stretches out a bony hand for me to take, and I do. His hand is warm in the palm but cold at the fingertips. I stammer out, “I don’t want to be a burden. I have skills. I-I want to be useful- however that might work. Computers, communication, a little security work.” He sighed, and looked down towards the warehouse, where a dozen disheveled homeless people were milling about. Some were talking, and laughing, but a few were silent, staring at a world they could not touch. “Everyone has skills. But I won’t assume you meant to be patronizing; after all, you’ve only just fallen on hard times, and it’s not uncommon to assume that the homeless really are just a gaggle of shiftless layabouts.” He recognized, I think, that he had spoken too harshly, and his eyes softened noticeably. “I will take your offer under consideration, but I’d suggest, for your sake, that you put your abilities into looking for work. Allow yourself to entertain whatever prospects may come your way- many of the people here aren’t fortunate enough to have that option. If you like you can speak to Caroline about any assistance she might need.” I turned to walk out, but suddenly his voice became higher pitched, before lowering again “Oh, in ten days time, you’ll be put out. I’m afraid we have festivities planned which cannot be made to accommodate you. I can see to it that you’re fed, and can have a word with another of the local shelters if you want for a bed for the night.” My heart beat imperceptibly faster, and I waited until I’d closed his office door to breathe again, for fear I would betray myself. Ten days? At the full moon. But that had to be a coincidence. I spent the next week fixing computers, which meant anything from formatting and installing a fresh OS to opening up a case to show Caroline, “Someone spilled hot chocolate with marshmallows in this; there are little white blobs burnt into the circuit board. It’s dead.” I also helped her with some coding for a blog that she was trying to set up to keep local donors and “friends of the shelter” up to date. Then one morning I came into her office and she said, “That’s it, you’ve fixed all our computers. You’re now useless to me.” For several days after I became useless I shadowed Hector, and assisted with manual repairs. I hadn’t done that kind of work since I’d helped my father tear out our kitchen- and I had still been too young for him to trust me on anything more complicated than pulling out the old boards and mortar. I saw my cousin once, at lunch, but when I tried to walk over to her a man whose head and face was covered in gray whiskers stepped between us. I think his name was Bill. “No cutting in line,” he said, poking a crooked finger into my chest. I tried to push past him. “I don’t care about the line,” was all I got out before he shoved me. I stumbled over a chair and smacked my face into a folding table. One man helped me up, and by then Bill was being held back by several others who were trying to calm him down. Amy was already gone. It was the day of the full moon when that Bill sat down beside me at breakfast. “Sorry,” he said quietly, “about the other day. I’m not always in my own head. Sometimes I just have to watch myself be crazy.” He slid his chair closer to mine, and his voice got quieter. “I know you have to leave tonight- everyone knows.” As if on cue, I noticed several sets of watchful eyes flick over me, then away as they realized they’d been noticed. “Do yourself a favor- never come back. Bad things happen to those who stay.” I might have entertained it as a threat, but Bill looked up from his tray and his eyes were earnest and a pale blue, and I knew at the least he believed what he was telling me. “What if I’ve no place else to go?” “There’s other shelters,” he whispered, “but you know that.” With a speed that frightened me he grabbed my hands and rubbed them with the pads of his fingers. “Your hands are still soft. Whatever work you done, you’ve done it long and well enough you ain’t worked as hard as you have the last week. You don’t belong here. I ain’t the only one to think so. There’s nothing but danger here for you. You oughta git while you can- is the last advice you’ll get out of me.” The old man abruptly released my hands, and picked up his tray and walked away. I didn’t know what to make of it. But I didn’t get much of a chance to, either. That night I packed up the things I brought, namely an old fraying backpack filled with clothes, and left the shelter. I returned less than a half hour later, skulking through the shadows. I didn’t even make it through the front door before Hector, far stronger than he looked, seized me by the collar and led me in. “Hector? It’s me,” I stammered as he led me through the empty lobby. He didn’t speak, just kept pushing me, holding my collar at such a height and angle I couldn’t resist, down the hall, up the stairs. I wriggled to break free, but all I managed to do was dig my shirt deeper into my neck. He pushed the door at the end of the upstairs hall open with my face, and with enough force that I thought he would throw me inside, but he didn’t let go. Howard was looking out of his window, down towards the warehouse. “Ah, there you are. I was beginning to think you’d lost your nerve. Hector, if you’d be so kind as to bring him to the window.” Hector walked me like an awkward marionette, kicking my ankles whenever I didn’t move my feet fast enough. “Now, normally, we don’t leave the doors open like that, but it’s for your benefit.” The yard below was lit by an unseen moon, hidden behind clouds. Inside the warehouse I could see a man, one I thought I recognized- I think he was the one who helped me up in the cafeteria. He was lashed to a big wooden “X” in the middle of a circle of the homeless. “I can’t expect you to understand, frankly; ours is an old culture, very foreign from yours. Lionel, who’s tied to the cross- and I’m not certain you’ve met-is an object lesson.” Bill, the old man covered in graying whiskers, looked up in our direction. Howard nodded, and Bill produced a long, thin knife. He held it beside Lionel’s neck, then shoved the blade into the center just behind the trachea and pulled forward, tearing out his throat in a torrent of blood. Lionel’s face twisted, beyond the contortions of pain. The skin of his face stretched taut, then broke at the edges of the mouth, and his blood ran down his cheeks and chin, tributaries into the rivers pouring out of his neck. His nose pressed forward out of his skull, causing his face to take on a bestial silhouette; it was very much the image of a wolf trying to force itself through a drum of flesh, until suddenly the last vestige of life poured out of his cut throat, and the beast subsided, leaving his human appearance intact as his head fell forward. “What do you know of wolves who look like men?” Howard asked, then looked at me, and realized I was too stunned to reply (though I suspect his question was largely rhetorical, anyway). “Then I suppose you’ve never heard of a Vargulf. Wolves need blood for the monthly ceremony of Lykaia; without it, they turn, and lose all reason, and sanity. Wolves kill for this blood. A Vargulf is a wolf who did not join in the Lykaia. They are driven mad by the moon. They do not simply kill without discriminating- they essentially kill for the joy of murder; you might use the term rabid as a touchstone, but it’s far more insidious than that.” “I don’t know that I’d put much faith in Ovid’s interpretation of our genesis, but we are cursed. We change with the seasons and the moon. We take no joy in death or the destruction we wreak, and try to minimize our impact. You may have noticed certain… eccentricities already amongst us. We prey upon those who are unfortunate; they are often not among man’s pristine specimens. But those who survive the ceremony become one of us- they become family. But when someone who is unstable is transformed into a beast, what else could you think the outcome would be but unstable beasts? We are cautious, and attempt to keep the urges of the pack in check- but there are always exceptions. Broken people who break things.” “Lionel below was one such person. He was the source of the murders recently. Certain others were profiting off the deaths beside him- but they will be dealt with less harshly.” He stopped, and ran his tongue across his teeth; I realized they seemed sharper, and I was compelled to look up at the moon. It was hidden behind a thinning sheaf of fog, but every moment it’s features become more prominent as the condensation before it faded. Howard’s clean-shaven face was already peppered with long whiskers that I’d have sworn I could see growing. “But I believe the real reason you were ever here to begin with was Amy. You smell like her- just a little.” Amy came into the room. She made quick, intermittent movements, like a chicken. “Hey cous,” she said, and the way she emphasized it made the word sound like a swearword- but she’d always talked like that, and moved like that, too. Really, the only thing that had changed at all was she’d put on a little weight, so the quick movements seemed a little more forceful and intimidating. Standing beside her was Danny, her husband. He was trying to be coldly impartial- though we’d met a few times before, and he seemed pleasant, apologetic, even, as if he had to explain the forceful turn in Amy. But now he was watching her, and Howard, subordinating to them. Howard mused: “Perhaps we could let you go. Having seen a functioning social element here, perhaps we could rely on your discretion. But we’d never know. How many cycles would it be before you counted the waning moons and decided we’d taken too many victims, that your conscience could no longer handle the strain? Four? Seven?” “Ultimately, the question is one of survival. Lionel, by breaking our laws, was a threat to our pack- and now, so are you. You are an unfortunate case, too, because you’re an intruder; we can’t simply turn you and hope for interdependence. You still have friends, and resources beyond these walls. But beyond any other considerations, however, tonight is the Lykaia, and we need the blood sacrifice.” My eyes widened. “But Lionel-” “Lionel was one of us- and a Vargulf besides; his blood would merely infect others, and those untainted would become Vargulf for want of the proper ceremony.” He turned to Amy. “You should say your goodbyes.” There was the hint of tears in her eyes, though her plump face was becoming more elfin, the fine blond hairs on her face thickening and darkening. “I’m sorry- but you made me choose between the family I want, and the family I didn’t.” She turned away from me, and said to her husband, “Make it quick.” He was only barely recognizable as a man beneath the elongated bones in his face, and the thick hair sprouting over his skin, but his eyes failed to keep his stoic vigil. “Sorry,” he said, and put his hand on my shoulder, and his teeth around my throat. |
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