The Wolfman

“A lot of people wouldn’t want to hire a draft dodger. A lot of people wouldn’t want to hire a woman who runs with a draft dodger. A lot of landlords may not want to rent to you. You could end up in jail, doing hard time. They got a unit out there in the FBI that hunts down little men like you who take off. There are kids out there getting two-year, five-year sentences for doing what you’re talking about doing. How would being an ex-con affect the rest of your life? What would happen to Doris? Even if you never got picked up, what about the strain that could come between you from running?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Trust me, it’s possible. Misery makes it very easy for love to feel like hate.”

“So you think Doris and I would be miserable?”

“I wouldn’t want to speculate,” he said. “The decision is up to you.”

Little did I know that he could’ve cared less about the happiness she and I created just by being around each other. He just wanted me to die before he did.

My brother, Jeffrey, had died as an infant. He wasn’t even a distant memory to me. Jeffrey was something that made my parents uncomfortable when his name was mentioned. With no more children to carry on the bloodline, the curse would be broken, and he would be the last. Dad wanted to be the last one. That’s why I never knew the family secret—about the evil that lived inside me, biding its time—until it was too late. He wanted me to die without being tainted by that secret, and the best way for that to happen would be to get myself killed in a rice paddy a million miles away with a belly full of lead and a stained picture of my love tucked inside my helmet, just like how my father had tried to die in combat, and his father before him.

So I went. I spent a few months in training, and just over four months in the shit before they shipped me back with discharge papers. They said I was certifiable. In 1971, mental breakdown was the reason for a full half of all the medical evacuations from Vietnam. I was nothing special.

Letters came from Doris regularly. I wrote to her once that she didn’t have to write so often, but her letters never ceased. I never received a word from my father. I didn’t know that I had been written off prematurely. That’s the kind of guy he was, a fucking werewolf. All things being equal, he could have lived to be two hundred years old. But he didn’t. He died under the wheels of a bus at the bus depot. A day later, I was shot by a sniper in the jungles of Vietnam. Had my father been standing in a different place, he would have gotten what he wanted. He would have been the last one. I would have died in combat, but instead I became the healthiest man alive.

When the service for Danny was over, it started to rain. Everyone got up to go to their cars, huddling in groups under large black umbrellas.

I went over to Pearce’s wife. Martha had a big heavy cop in dress uniform on each side of her. They had her held up under her arms, like she was a drunk who couldn’t go on anymore, and they were leading her to one of the long black cars.

When I approached, they gave me a look like I was a field mouse that had stumbled into their yard, and they were the big dogs. I didn’t want to get in a situation with them, which was apt to happen, me having the face that I have, so I approached with a friendly wave.

“Mrs. Pearce,” I said, extending my hand for her.

She didn’t take it.

“I was wondering if I could have a word with you for a minute.”

She looked away, said, “No, I can’t talk,” in a low, guttural voice, like any music that had existed inside her had died with her man, and the way she said it, I knew it was true. But I had no choice. She had to know how much he loved her, and I had to know where he was on the night that Judith Myers disappeared.

“I swear, Mrs. Pearce, I just …”

“Hey, guy,” said one of the cops at her side, “did you hear what she said?”

“Yeah, but …”

“I don’t want to hear it. Back off, her fucking husband died.”

Mrs. Pearce wailed at the insensitivity.

“Ma’am,” I said, “please.”

“Leave me alone,” she cried, “all of you.”

She broke the grips of both men and hurried down the gravel road toward her waiting car. The two cops looked at each other, and then looked at me.

“Thanks, asshole. You see what you did?” said one of them.

“Yeah,” said the other. “Why don’t you go drop dead?” They stormed off.

Under my breath, I said, “I’ll give that a shot.”

When I called Pearce’s home number that evening, a cop answered, and I hung up. A moment later, my phone rang. I figured they had caller ID over there, and she was calling back to see who it was. I picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

Silence. Then a man’s voice. Very soft.

“I know what you did.”

“Who is this?”

A shallow breath, then the line went dead. I slammed the phone into the cradle.

My roots to the town were dead and buried, and I really had no reason to stay. In fact, staying would only make things worse, if not for me, then most certainly for someone else. But then, no matter where I went, someone would have to die. There was no alternative to that short of my own death, and suicide, obviously, was not in my repertoire. But if I left right away, I reckoned it would only bring about a suspicion surrounding my sudden disappearance, and I didn’t need anyone looking for me. I had to do something.

The Rose Killer was still out there, whoever he was. He was the first person I had sent the wolf after who managed to make it through the night. I was concerned that the wolf was no longer under my control, but I was somewhat convinced that something had gone horribly wrong that allowed the target to live.

The only person who would know was the killer.

I didn’t know what could possibly have gone wrong. Was it something internal in the beast, or something the killer could have done to throw the beast off? And if that was the case, was it intentional, or was it some cosmic snafu? I had to know his secret so I would never again kill an innocent man.

I was tempted to take the easy way out, to select another target for the next full moon. Someone easy, like some scumbag already in jail. But that would’ve been evading the issue of whether or not the beast could be as trustworthy as it once was, and further,

I needed to know what its weakness was.

I came up with my plan of action.

I had to get the Rose Killer. I had to try again. Not only for myself, but for Pearce and all those girls who weren’t around anymore.

Before the last full moon, I had been able to acquire a lot of information about the killer thanks to Pearce, but now I was on my own. Anything I hoped to learn from that point on would not be privileged information. It would be filtered through the media first before it got to concerned citizens such as myself. Real information would be scarce.

I needed to do some digging on my own. Just like Nancy Drew. I wasn’t a sleuth, but to get to the bottom of all this, I had to put my neck out there a lot more than usual. I didn’t like it, and try as I might, I couldn’t get the wolf to relinquish any more of its memories from the night Pearce died.

If the police caught the killer, the wolf could’ve just busted into his cell and took him out, lickety-split. It would have no problem doing that. After all, it had gotten us out of one, once.

If, by the grace of God, I was the one to catch him, I would be tempted to kill him. For all my big talk I had never actually killed a man. Never wanted to. I would have to turn him over to the authorities, or kidnap him. Maybe question him myself. Tie him to a chair in my house so the next time the moon came up, he’d be right there. However that bastard evaded me would be known once I had his memories.

I decided that after the next full moon, Evelyn would no longer be my home. I knew that much for sure. I had outlived my welcome. Maybe I would be Steve Rogers again, somewhere a thousand miles away from that place.