The Wolfman

“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve already died once. I don’t want to do it again.”

“There’s no hope, Marlowe, and there’s no cure. Believe me, your father tried. He really did. Wherever you go, death will follow. And it will never end.”

“We’ll see. There has to be someone out there who knows about this. Someone who can reverse it, somewhere. There has to be a cure. Someone who can help.”

“There’s no hope,” she said. “Your search will be futile and painful. But if that’s what you want to do, you’ll need this.”

She reached into her bathrobe and produced the eagle feather.

“It was the Indian’s. It’s the only thing that matters now.”

There was no kiss good-bye, no parting words. Her son was dead, or at least a very human part of him was, and in his place was a walking, talking pestilence. A plague. A bike-borne disease named Vicious Death. In the space that died was a doorway to hell that would never fully close.

“There’s no hope,” she repeated.

“We’ll see,” I replied defiantly as I passed through her doorway and out into the night. The next time I would see her, she would be dead.

I walked through the door of my childhood home for the last time and left my mother standing in the doorway. Later that night, my mother burned the motel down to the ground. Doris’s body was never found, and as far as her parents ever knew, we’d run off together, never to be seen again. They never knew what happened to their girl.

Strapped to the back of my bike was the bag that Doris had brought over. In it had been her clothes, some makeup, a couple of books, a small framed picture of her that she knew I couldn’t live without, and her night-light. The one with the clown’s head on it. The one she’d had since she was a little kid, the one she still had, because she was deathly afraid of the dark. They were the trinkets and charms of my Doris—the material objects that had meant so little to me the day before, but had now taken on such deep and abundant meanings because their existence was all I had left of our life together.

I had the clothes on my back and forty-eight dollars to my name. My useless name. A name that brought such astounding sorrow to the lives of those it touched, and, like a Pandora’s box, would do the same twenty years later when I thought I could bring it back out of the closet I’d hidden it in, polish it off, make it mean something, and use it again.

I got on the bike and I cried her name. “Doris, I’m so sorry.”

My life was no more. Nothing was left, save doom, and darkness, and bloody moons gorged ripe and red with horror. I was in hell, and from this hell, there seemed to be not a single escape, a saving refuge, a possible way out. But I couldn’t give up that easily. The war, the blood, my love—it couldn’t all have been for nothing. There had to be a cure. I had to try.

With that, I started the bike, and I was gone.

I got to Long John’s a little after seven in the morning. Abraham’s Buick was in one of the spaces. I hopped up the steps, went through the door, and heard the bell jangle above my head. Abraham was behind the counter, wiping it down with a cloth. “Mind if I come in?”

“Of course not,” said Abraham. “You owe me for that coffee.” I took a seat on one of the stools.

“How you doin’, Abe?”

“Pretty good,” he said. “How about you? Last time I saw you, you looked like you’d become intimate with an ugly stick.”

With the full moon come and gone, I was back in tip-top shape. I felt like a million bucks. But I probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred.

“I have a history of resiliency.”

“Got the recipe?”

“It’s a family secret,” I said. “Sorry. I just came by to tell you I’m skippin’ town, Abe. I’m outta here.”

“I kind of figured you would be.”

“I think I wore out my welcome these last few weeks. I gotta start over again. Somewhere fresh.”

“To be honest, you wore out your welcome the day you showed up.”

“I probably did,” I said.

“Is anybody going to be looking for you?”

“I hope not.”

“I ask because I see you have a new ride out there. I recognize that car. Is there anything I should know?”

“Nothing you need to know, except I’m not a bad guy, Abraham. Everything else you might hear on the news at some point.”

He went back to wiping the counter, then said, “But you’re not a bad guy.”

“That’s right.”

“In that case, you don’t owe me for the coffee.”

“Can I have another then?”

“Don’t push your luck,” he said. “Where are you off to?”

“I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Did you ever?”

“No, I guess not. It was nice working with you, Abe.”

“I wish I could say the same,” he said.

We shook hands, and the bell jangled behind me for the last time.

The hatchback pulled into the parking lot, all clean and shiny, and he came to a stop in the same place it was in the last time. Van Buren killed the engine, undid his safety belt, and opened the door. I snuck up behind the car. My right hand was curled up in a pretty little fist of fury.

His brown leather shoes hit the asphalt. He must’ve heard a footstep, for he turned to me before I reached him. It didn’t matter though. My right hook knocked him down to the ground. His sunglasses flew away, revealing discolored eyes. I dropped to my knees and plucked the handgun out from the inside of his jacket before he knew which way was up, and I trained it to the side of his head.

“Higgins,” he said, shocked.

He licked a trickle of blood away from the corner of his mouth, and struggled a second to uncross his eyes. His face was still a patchwork of browns and blues from our skirmish in the woods. His nose was covered with a white strip.

“Surprised to see me?”

“How …”

“You tried to kill me,” I hissed. “That wasn’t very fucking nice.”

“Higgins …”

“You fucked up. People like you always do. If you’re going to try to kill a man, you do it right, like I do.”

“Please don’t …”

“You’re a scumbag, Van Buren. You’re no kind of cop. Where did you get that car you rammed me with?”

“Impound,” he said. “You ruined my truck.”

“I shot you …”

“Yes you did, you motherfucker.”

“You should be dead. How …”

“You’re a cop, Van Buren. You would know that they didn’t pull a body out of that truck. Don’t pull this shocked shit with me, and if you thought I wouldn’t come back for you, you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

“I thought you’d crawled into the woods and died, Higgins….

What’re you going to do?”

I know what I would have liked to do.

I pulled an envelope from the back pocket of my jeans. It contained Van Buren’s shield and a hand-drawn map I’d made for him. The map was crude, but showed exactly where in those thick and haunted woods off of Old