The Wolfman

It must’ve thrown the beast off, that stuff. God knows how, and God knows why, but that had to be it. That crap must’ve “cleansed” the places or something. Washed away the sin.

“I needed the holy water to help the girls. I’m not a bad guy. I killed them because they needed killing, but I’m not fucked up. I don’t think anyone deserves to burn in hell forever, so with the holy water … I figured I was saving them, you know? Taking them out, but only physically. See?”

“Yeah, I see. You’re out of your fucking mind.”

Anthony swatted at my face with the knife again. I felt it run through the skin on my forehead. Precious blood ran down my face, and mixed in with the red pool that had formed in my seat.

The wolf was a curse, but the one single thing that it ever did for me that could be considered good, or kind, or merciful, is that after all these years it has never allowed me to remember what happened the night that Doris died. But I remembered everything else. I remembered the oath I swore to my friend’s memory, and what had, in the end, brought me to that shack.

Anthony let the knife fall from his fingers. It stabbed the floorboard and stood erect. The boards were riddled by bugs and warped by years of rain. The shack had been left abandoned and standing in the middle of nowhere for God knows how long so this parasite could bleed the town for all its worth from a quiet little perch that was lost in the green. He picked up the rifle, raised it up, and pressed it into my forehead.

“Anthony, before you do me in, I have a request.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“I won’t be doing that today,” I said, “but you said I could get a last wish, like in the movies. I have an easy one.”

“What is it?”

“I’d like to see the moon one last time before I buy the farm.”

He lowered the gun toward my chest. “Why?” he asked.

“I’m a hopeless romantic. It makes me feel like everything’s going to be okay.”

“Don’t say I never did anything for you,” Anthony said.

He went over, gun over his shoulder, and pulled the rug from the window frame, sending dust into the air. White moonlight hit the ancient glass and came through silver. The dust particles lit up and shone like a million little stars in that silver light. Like fireflies. Like angels. Like answered prayers.

It washed over me, shocked me like a current.

The blood that poured from my face began to bubble and turn to smoke. Anthony dropped the gun from his shaking hands and backed far away from me into the darkened corner of the shack. As he did so, he knocked the lantern off the hook in the wall with his shoulder. The light that came from it extinguished itself, died, and Anthony mumbled something low. A question lost to time.

“Anthony,” I said with a voice that was no longer wholly my own, “there’s more than one creature that stalks the night.”

Anthony began to scream. He turned and struggled in the darkness with the latch on the door, but the thing was rusted, and his shaking, sweaty hands had no force to guide them right in the darkness.

Skin ripped. Muscles expanded. I screamed. My monster hands burst from the shackles he’d bound me in. The handcuffs bent, then gave way like rotten nutshells. With that, I tore the cord from my throat with the nails that had quickly protruded from the bleeding fingers of my right hand. The tape ripped away as my body grew, and I rose.

Anthony fumbled for the gun and fired the last bullet. It missed me completely and went clean through the ancient glass. He tried to fire again, but it didn’t work. He sank to his knees, crying. Vengeance was mine.

TWENTY-SIX

His name was John Raynor.

He was raised in Las Vegas by a domineering woman who, while being deeply religious, imbibed drugs and drink like her life depended on it. Like most people who grow up to be deranged, he seemed to find a secret joy in starting fires and shooting cats and dogs with a pellet gun. If he was able to catch them, he would do experiments.

His earliest special memory was of his cousin, a girl named June. She was two years younger than him and was easily coaxed into games of doctor that went too far. He was acting out all the things he had seen his mother doing with strange men through the crack in her bedroom door.

When his mother found out about what he was doing with June, she filled a tub with scalding water to scorch away the sin from his privates. The burns on his legs never went away, and from that day on, he only wore long pants.

Eight months before the federales believed the Rose Killer spree started, he killed his first victim. It was a woman he picked up at a bar in Los Angeles. He’d bought her a few drinks so he could get her home. When they got to his apartment and the clothes came off, she laughed at his legs because the skin up to his thighs was red, as if constantly embarrassed.

He choked her. He didn’t mean to. He had drunk just as much as she had, but the anger that always rested in the pit of his stomach like a molten ball suddenly flared to life, and he couldn’t control himself. Immediately after, he broke down and wept. He couldn’t believe what he had done. There was regret, but not for her. It was for him, should he ever get caught. Psychopaths do feel remorse, just not for others.

He checked her pulse, and was able to detect a faint heartbeat. He knew that if he brought her to a hospital, she would have him arrested. Then what would happen? He felt his only option was to make sure she never told, so he loaded her up in his car and drove west, to the water. When he found himself on a quiet block, the only witness the moon in the sky, he dragged her out of the car and stabbed her in the heart.

He became so consumed with worry about being caught that he started fucking up at work—he worked at a photo development lab in a menial position—and he got fired. It was then, with no more income, fear of losing his home, the life he had built for himself, that he killed another, and another, and another. Soon, there was no turning back.

The name he lived under on the road—Anthony Mannuzza—was the name of the cop who’d arrested him for disorderly conduct just days after he’d killed his first victim.

It was a woman who had burned him, a woman who had gotten him burned in the first place. It was women that always found his legs repulsive, no matter what kind of hairstyle he had, or how nice his clothes were. With all the blood on his hands, he had nothing left to lose, except his life, and that’s where I came in.

When I woke up, sunlight was coming down. The air moved in a gentle breeze, carrying the scents of flowers and honey. The birds were singing, as if the world were perfect. It wasn’t, but it was just a little bit better than it had been the night before.

My limbs were covered in dried blood, and as I stretched out naked in the tall grass, it chipped off like a layer of skin. I breathed in deep, coughed, and then smiled. I got up off the ground, using the tree as support. Once I was on my feet, I realized which tree it was. There, carved into it at shoulder level, were the names Johnny and June, surrounded by a carved-out heart. In the upper right corner of the heart was a hole. That was where my shot from the rifle had ended up. Ten yards past the tree was the shack, its one window blasted out, and its door slightly ajar. I walked over.

The wood door cried on its hinges, revealing a ten-by-ten room completely painted in blood. It was on the floor, the walls, the ceiling. It was so thick in some places that it had seemed to dry in layers—dry at the bottom and wet at the top. The photos along the walls were ruined, but there was a bag in the corner that I hadn’t noticed the night before. It was probably loaded with photographs that had made it safely through the crimson rain. I went over and opened it, and sure enough, it was. Bundles of photographs. I didn’t want to look at them, and I didn’t have to. Everything the Rose Killer had ever done was in my head now, and would be until the day I died.

I stacked the pictures on a fairly dry spot on the floor, being sure not to leave big, bloody fingerprints on the edges, and took the bag. I would need it. Next, I righted the chair I had been tied to the night before and set the bag on it.

Shredded meat littered the floor like confetti, maybe a third of what it would take to make a man. Resting in the far corner, one stacked on top of the other, were a pair of human legs, untouched, as if the wolf had wanted no part of them.