yellow to take myself out, waking up, then doing it all over again.
It took the unfortunate death of my mother at the hands of a junkie in 1981 to change my life, and with it, the very nature of the beast itself.
I called her every so often from wherever I was. I guess she was the only person who really understood the fate that had befallen me, and she knew why I could never go back home. Sometimes I’d call and hang up. Other times I’d be crying by the time she picked up. Sometimes when I was crying, she’d hang up because she just couldn’t take it. Sometimes I’d call her with a fierce drunk on, and I’d scream.
One morning I called and a cop answered the phone. He asked who I was, and when I stated that I was the son of the woman whose house he was in, he told me she’d been attacked. He didn’t tell me she was dead, not over the phone. I thought there was still a chance for me to see her. I drove at a hundred miles an hour and got there by nightfall. That’s when they broke the news to me.
She had been coming home from work. She put the key in the front door, and the scumbag, or “the perpetrator,” as they called him, pushed himself in behind her, knocked her down. What it was supposed to have been was a simple robbery. A street thug intimidating an old lady bad enough that she’d give up where the cash was in the house and that would be the end of it. But things didn’t go down that way. He either thought she was lying when she said that was all there was, or maybe he just felt like doing what he did. Maybe he saw it as a perfect opportunity to say “fuck you” to the world. I didn’t know, and I still don’t. In the end, it doesn’t matter. What he did to her claimed her life before her heart stopped beating anyway.
They had his fingerprints, some stains left behind, as if he were a dog marking his territory. But that was all. He was just another faceless criminal. Another tragic tale of America’s youth gone awry.
I wanted to take the world itself and throttle it like a baby. I was sick with anger. Not even in combat had I ever felt a feeling akin to the pure, unadulterated fury that coursed through me in the weeks following her death. I harbored the hope that the next time the beast came out, he’d wipe out the whole fucking city in one fell swoop, mark it on the maps as a red zone the way they would with Chernobyl a few years later.
On the night of the full moon, I was in the car I had at the time, parked on a dark road. I was naked. Clothes would get destroyed in the change—the beast maintained a human shape, but was so much bigger than I was—and I didn’t like to waste them. Outfits cost money, and I was consistently in the position of barely being able to feed myself, much less buy anything.
For the first time in my life I welcomed the beast. I looked forward to the lashing out that was about to happen. As night fell, the pain in my body grew stronger and stronger, just like it always did, but it didn’t bother me, not that night. It was just more fuel for the fire.
When the beast took over, I had no idea what was happening. I had no control over it, and I did not live the experience as it happened. I remembered what the beast did after a few days, or a week, or even longer, but I was just happy with (or at least resigned to) the fact that someone was going to get it bad. Someone certainly deserved it. Someone, perhaps, who had done something as bad as I had done.
When I woke up the next day, I was still in my car. Usually, I woke up in an unfamiliar place, so this was an oddity. I knew the beast had gone to work because the inside of the car was filthy, and I was covered in dried blood. I dressed in the clothes I had in the backseat, and then drove to the motel I was staying at.
The phone rang a couple of days later. I picked it up, and it was the police. They said they had to have some words with me. I figured they found out I was driving around in a stolen car. I didn’t care. I drove over anyway.
They sat me down and explained to me that a man, a boy, really, had been “attacked” by what must have been rabid dogs in the park. When they said that, my hairs stood up.
The detective said, “These dogs, whatever they were, they tore this boy to shreds. There isn’t a whole lot left, but his head and his hands were found intact. Some of the officers at the scene recognized the victim as a known burglar. For the hell of it, we checked his prints, and they matched the prints lifted from your mother’s residence.”
I said, “Well, knock me down.”
I couldn’t understand why the beast—which without fail had always struck as ruthlessly and randomly as a tornado—singled out the one motherfucker I wanted dead more than anybody else in the world. The more I thought about it, though, I realized what did it, and that was the desire. The want. The absolute and utter need that I felt in my heart and soul to make this filthy little devil pay. That was the spark.
Whereas every other time the full moon had rolled around I prayed for the beast not to hurt anybody, this was the one time I had called upon it with my prayers. This was the one time that I gave it a mission. A purpose. A target. With that, the beast had a goal, and with that, the quality of my life, as doomed as it was, got a whole hell of a lot better.
How it was able to fulfill its end of this operation became apparent rather quickly. Whatever it was—some ferocious demon or wrathful demigod—it had the physical properties and abilities of an animal. It worked on scent, on taste, on sound. The piece of shit that killed my mother left a scent. On that night when the beast struck back, it found his scent. From there, it was a simple matter of catching the boy on the wind.
My life is a black streak on a calendar, a sentence that has no end in sight. I go to bed every night knowing that when the reaper finally
As for the dearly departed Bill Parker, he did something he shouldn’t have done. On one of his late-night drives, he side-swiped an old lady who came out in the road in pursuit of her cat Sprinkles. Bill was speeding, as he was prone to do, and didn’t notice her in time. If she had been in her prime, she probably would have survived, but the trauma was too much for her little body. She left behind two daughters and three grandchildren. It was a goddamn shame what happened.
The police had no suspects. The article in the paper urged the driver to come forward. Bill Parker never did, so the wolf and I went to work. I may be a monster, but as long as I’m the only one in town, I can live with that.
FOUR
As Pearce went to work on his second cup of coffee, Van Buren stepped out of the unmarked police car and climbed the stairs. Through the glass, he looked like a vampire in his dark suit and pale skin. He rapped on the glass door with his ringed finger, beckoned Pearce out with a wave, then turned silently.
“Guess I better head out,” Pearce said.
“How’s Mr. Happy?”
“I don’t know why you two don’t get along.”
“Don’t worry about it. Tell him I said hi.”
“I won’t,” Pearce said, and he walked out without paying. He was good at that. By my calculations he owed the restaurant somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million dollars.
“He doesn’t seem like a cop,” said Anthony after the man left.
“I know,” I said. “That’s how I put up with him.”
Anthony laughed and threw down a ten-dollar bill.
He said, “I’m off. You have a very nice restaurant here. And a lovely town.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Take a picture.”
“I plan to. See you around.”
He walked out. The bell jangled. When he got to the car, he took off his jacket and tossed it onto the passenger seat. He pulled out, heading west on Main. A minute later, Abe came out of the bathroom, seemingly as refreshed as he’d ever been.
“Perfect timing, you scoundrel. I had to deal with that prick the whole time he was here. I’m keeping this tip all to myself,” I said, waving the ten.
“Fine,” said Abraham. “I was waiting for that damn kid to get out of here.”
