The Wolfman

that right?”

“No,” said Pearce.

“What’s wrong with the story?” I asked.

“C’mon,” said Pearce, “it’s not like King Kong lives in a little house in the woods. There’s no such thing as a shoot-out with an animal.”

“I don’t know. It sounds good to me,” I said. “Aside from the shoot-out part,” said Anthony. Pearce said, “I know it sounds good, but …”

“But what?” asked Anthony.

“There was only one trail of blood going into those woods. Whatever happened out by that car … I don’t know. It almost feels like what happened at the car was a separate incident. If Parker encountered some kind of animal on the road, where was the body? Why did Parker go in the woods if he was injured? Why wouldn’t he go to a house? Why did he take the gun with him?”

Evelyn wasn’t a place known for its high mortality rate. Hell, it wasn’t known for anything, but Pearce, being the fresh detective that he was, wasn’t exactly Columbo when it came to crime-solving.

“You don’t know he took it with him,” I said.

“True, and with that, it makes this whole thing even a little more fucked up.”

“It could have been wolves,” I said. “Wolves,” repeated Pearce.

“Wolves,” shouted Anthony. “I’m going cross-country, and I step into the fucking animal kingdom over here. What kind of town is this?”

No one said anything.

“I guess this passes for interesting in a small town, right?” he asked me. “I swear, I was planning on passing through here by the end of the day, but seeing how things go around here, I think I’ll stick around awhile. See how this plays out.”

“What’re you? Fucking Angela Lansbury?” said Pearce.

“Priceless,” said Anthony. “This is going in the book, I swear. You guys have got to let me take your pictures.”

Anthony went back to his table and picked up his camera.

“Don’t,” I said. “You’re not taking pictures of anybody.”

“Yes I am,” he said. “Don’t you want to be famous?”

“What’s the story with this guy?” asked Pearce.

“He’s making a coffee table book about his fucking road trip.”

“What is he, Kerouac? I don’t want my fucking picture taken.”

“Maybe you should arrest him.”

“For what? Being a pain in the ass?”

“He’s from Jersey. That alone’s a good excuse.”

“I can’t do that.”

“He tried to put his finger in my ass before you got here. How about that?”

“I’d arrest him for that if it were anyone but you.” Then: “You know what this reminds me of? The Bill Parker thing? Remember when that guy disappeared a couple years ago? Carter? It was the same thing with him. Found a piece of him in the park after he’d been gone a month. Same damn thing as this.”

“We are in the middle of nowhere, Danny. This doesn’t have to be a mystery. Shit like this happens more often than you think.”

“Do your twenty newspapers a day tell you that?”

“Please,” interrupted the kid. “Look at the camera. I’m gonna start snapping with or without your permission, guys.”

Pearce and I looked at each other, smiled, and then we both flipped the bird at the camera. The flash went off three times in rapid succession.

“Speaks volumes,” said the kid. “I swear, this place is amazing. I’m here for an hour and I’m already caught up in a horror story.”

I looked at Pearce.

Bill Parker’s ghost haunted the corners of his brain, crying out for answers. Pearce chewed his nicotine gum, thought of his baby, his town, and what—or who—had devoured our upstanding townsman, Bill Parker.

“You have no idea,” I said.

THREE

It happened overseas. The fact is that Marlowe Higgins died in ‘Nam. He never made it. On that night when the beast entered me, when I became, the Marlowe Higgins that had dreams of making it back Stateside, the Marlowe Higgins that loved baseball and motorcycles and had a girl named Doris waiting back home for him, ceased to exist. In his place was a shell, a husk, a host for the ungodly thing that had invaded him. Indeed, one can’t truly have a life when what lurks on the inside feasts on death.

I found that out the hard way.

Once I realized what I had become, I started drifting, going from place to place, town to town. I was a stranger on every street and in every city, and that’s the way I wanted it. The name I was born with was a worthless thing to me, and wherever I went I left a trail of blood and grated bones in my wake.

I was never able to go fast enough to escape the horror in my head, the truth of what I carried soul-deep. I alone was hell on earth, and knowing that I was responsible for the gruesome murders of so many innocent people was often too much for me to bear. Even in combat I’d never had the nerve or the desire to kill another human being. It disgusted me that the monster forced me to do what I’d thought I would never be capable of. What made it worse were the dreams I told you about. I started drinking out of necessity, and in my weakest moments, when the liquor wore off long enough for me to find the keys, I’d get on my motorcycle and see just how fast I could go.

I woke up in hospitals a lot those first few cursed years on the road. They chalked up my suicidal tendencies to combat shock, or whatever the hell the term was they were using at the time, but they never took it too seriously because I never got hurt that bad. I was lucky, they said. What it really was, and this bothered me immensely, was that it had just become harder for me to die.

My “accidents” on the black-veined roads of America began to get a little more elaborate. One time I hot- wired a semi and drove it through a gas station in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I woke up burned like a motherfucker, handcuffed to a hospital bed. I was so burned up there was no way they could identify me. When the next full moon came, the handcuffs didn’t mean much to the beast, and it got us out of there, but not before butchering a handful of nurses and an eye specialist.

I woke up the next day in the cellar of a local antique shop, naked, as usual, and the burns that had covered a healthy portion of my body were gone. I woke up in immaculate physical condition, just like I always do the day after. I haven’t gotten so much as a cold in the last twenty years.

The blood on my hands made me a monster by proxy, an accomplice to the supernatural genocide machine that had affixed itself to my being. I couldn’t take it, so once I found my way out of Wyoming, I got myself a rifle. A Remington. With a little bit of liquid courage I strolled up to a pawn shop and threw a garbage can through the window. I made off with the first weapon I saw. I figured a nice, concentrated attack on my skull would be the ample dose to keep me down for good, and in doing that, I’d be putting the beast down too.

I drove this pretty ‘63 Monterey I’d wired out into the wilderness and found a spot on a hill that overlooked a stream. I was surrounded by trees, the pink-orange rays of the day’s dying sun. Brown leaves hugged the ground like a blanket, holding in its moisture so it could turn to ice in the coming frozen months, and the clear, chill water in the stream sent cool air up over the hill that passed through me like a prayer.

As night came on I loaded my rifle. I pressed the butt of it into the grass and rested my chin at the business end. I took a few deep breaths, then a few more, and just as the cold of night set in, I cursed myself for not having the stones to do what needed to be done.

I drove off to the next town.

That was the first time I ever put a gun to my head, but it wasn’t the last.

And so it went like that—going from town to town, stealing, working odd jobs, sleeping in dives or hot cars, drinking and fighting, trying to forget, being responsible for the slaughter of yet another poor soul because I was too