by Douglas Draa
I did not comment. A mural showed a poorly painted vision of squirming worms with angel wings, rising over the planet. Next to the thing’s prison was a book bound in some sort of strong animal hide. Next to that was a skull that was being used as a bowl.
“When you become transformed,” he said, “we will make a painting of you as well.”
I ran then, as quickly as I could.
When I got home, I just locked my doors and hid in my bedroom, only coming out to use the bathroom or raid the fridge. My legs grew number every day, and my arms weaker as well. There were very few lids I could unscrew in my own apartment. I ended up ordering a lot of take out.
I tried to forget about all of it, but after one particular horrid dream, I woke up in a grave again and had to be shooed away by the caretaker, who obviously knew what was going on at the funeral home. This time, I had been digging at the dirt.
I went home and got the message from work that I was fired. I collapsed on the bed and fought to breathe. My arms and legs felt cumbersome and dead.
That night, I finally had a clear view of what was beyond the dirt the corpses were clawing at. It was a room filled with other corpses, bowing down before an empty throne made of bone and swathed in blood.
I fear I know who they believe will sit there.
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WHAT DARK GODS ARE FRIENDS TO ME?, by Chad Hensley
Eidolon sits forgotten, sunken isle;
A cracking obelisk on barren crag.
A monolith grotesque upon the spile?
Tall, woven tiki statues bend and snag
An empty islander and tourists too!
Now midnight ancient masses black far and wide
Will harken calling dark inhuman few
To tread the skies with black, gigantic stride;
A vast necropolis across the land.
Diseased and dying mankind’s final out;
Result a very cosmic evil planned
To plant iniquitous hot seeds that sprout
For alien cult messiahs disavow
Their power ushers Earth pariah now.
BABY MINE, by Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen
I was told that Elsa was an Alaskan Husky pup when I adopted her in the late spring of 1998 from the Winnebago Indians at the Black River Trading Post roadside stand off the highway. I was driving from my job at the health spa that Friday to my apartment in Wittenberg, Wisconsin and had stopped there many a time before, as it’s about halfway home and the gas and convenience mini-mart are across the side road. The stand has good vegetables and fruit for sale along with the Native American crafts for the tourists. But this time they had a sign that read, “Free Puppy—Needs Good Home.”
I fell in love with Elsa the moment she stood up, frantically trying to get my attention, inside the cage Bart Haranga had housed her in. Bart, of the Potawatomi tribe of the Winnebagos, ran the stand. He came over to me and lifted the pup out. He said, “She likes you. Why don’t you give her a home?”
“I don’t know, Bart. I’ve never had a dog. Where did you get this puppy?”
He held the squirming pup firmly. “Foundling. Abandoned in the woods near the Black River Falls. I think someone’s bitch had a small litter and they only kept one of the offspring. At any rate, this poor thing would have died if I hadn’t rescued her. But I’ve got too many dogs as it is. Why don’t you take her?”
He put her in my arms and darned if that little heartbreaker didn’t calm right down, nuzzling my chest and neck and giving me that wide-eyed look. Temptation overcame my reluctance. I was divorced and had sold my house. I had no children and the apartment felt lonely. The pup’s blue eyes penetrated straight to my heart, as if beseeching me to nurture her.
Bart stroked her soft white silver fur and said, “She needs love. She looks barely weaned. She’ll make a good watchdog when she’s grown, Carol.”
I studied the puppy and then Bart. We were once almost lovers, after my divorce from Peter. Bart was attractive, 29 years old, never married. He was two years older than me, and we had met at a dance in Wittenberg, but I was too skittish about any relationship after Peter dumped me and moved to Florida, when I was 23. Three years of marriage down the drain. When Bart tried to court me little more than a year later, I just wasn’t ready for another man that way.
But I did need to feel love, and the puppy nestling in my arms felt like love. “Umm, I don’t even know how to train a dog, Bart.”
“I’ll come over after work and bring puppy chow and newspaper. I’ll teach you. Look, she loves you.”
The dog was licking my face, its little tongue raspy. “You’re just looking for an excuse to get on my good side, Bart.”
“Can’t blame me for trying. Come on, Carol. I’ll just help you get acclimated to the puppy. She just needs a mother right now. And a name.” He looked at me with those dark, earth-brown eyes, his hair richly brown and just shy of long, his smile sincere, trustworthy. “I’ll even pay for her food.”
“Damn, Bart, I think I’ve fallen in love.”
“With me or the pup?”
“With the puppy. Okay, I’ll see you tonight. But give me some food for the dog to take back now, so I can feed her if you’re late.”
Bart put her back into the cage, took a few cans of wet dog food and hauled everything to my car, loading them in the back seat. Then he bagged the produce I’d selected, but refused to take any money. “So what are you going to name her?”
I gave him a cautious smile, still uncertain about taking the pup. “Well, I always wanted to name a daughter Elsa, but didn’t have one. So I guess I’ll call her Elsa.”
“Nice name. Okay, I’ll see you and Elsa tonight at 7:30 p.m., soon as I’m done here. Give her some milk if she won’t eat the soft food. I’ll stop and pick up some proper puppy chow.”
* * * *
Elsa was easily trained. I walked her early in the morning and once at night and she never made a mess after the first week. She also loved the toys I bought her and sleeping on my bed at night, although she would paw me as if nursing and I worried that she’d been weaned too early. Bart came over once every weekend to check her progress and probably to check on his own with me. It became a routine, and his presence was becoming enjoyable. We’d watch movies or play cards and he’d act the perfect gentleman. When he left, he’d give me one gentle kiss and scratch Elsa’s head.
But the third weekend held a surprise which neither of us expected. Elsa had been asleep on the rug while we watched TV. The sun had gone down, night came and I turned on the living room lights. Then Bart and I went into the kitchen to make some coffee. A minute later, we heard a baby crying, sounding close.
“What the heck?” Bart said.
“I don’t know anyone in the building with a baby. Someone with one must be visiting.” But the crying continued, and seemed to be coming from my living room. We started back there, steaming cups in hand, and put them on my coffee table. “Must be directly upstairs.”
“Where’s Elsa?”
I looked around. “She must have wandered off. She was just there, under the table.”
The cry came again, and Bart got up to search for Elsa and froze by the side of the sofa, staring at the floor hidden behind its right arm. “Carol. Look!”
I did. A naked baby lay on the floor, its piercing blue eyes frightened and its silver white hair long and fine against the carpet as it wailed and shivered. A girl child, reaching out its small arms to me.
I reacted instinctively, picking her up. “Oh, God! Where did she come from?”
He stayed silent for a long minute, and then murmured, “I’ll get a towel to wrap her in.” He went into my bathroom, bringing back a fluffy towel to warm the baby in. But before he covered her completely, he examined her feet. Watching, I sucked in my breath: the baby’s feet didn’t have soft human skin. It
had the pads of a canine.
“What is this?” I asked, “And where’s Elsa?”
He hesitated before answering, looking at me directly, reluctant and worried. “This is Elsa, Carol. I’ve heard of these things, but never saw one before.”
“How can this baby be Elsa?”
“Carol, listen to me. There are legends about this. And if I’m right, we have a hard task ahead of us.”
I listened. It was hard believing what he said.
* * * *
Bart told me of a sort of reverse werewolf. Wolves are very much like humans: they love, they form family groups, they work together, and they are loyal to each other. They aren’t blood-thirsty or violent by nature; they kill their prey for sustenance, never for sport. They respect it and keep its numbers thriving, so that the balance of nature is maintained. And as for their attitude towards mankind, they’re both wary and curious about us, knowing us to be superior creatures and possibly more dangerous than any other animal. And so, most of the wolves avoid humans, a species they don’t normally trust.
But according to the legends, some wolves became attracted to humanity, so much so, that they would steal among us and shed their wolf pelts and walk in the guise of humans, but only during a full moon when its light allowed that transformation. Then they would clothe themselves in our garments and appear to strangely question the men and women they met and sniff out our ways. Sometimes they became adept at passing as humans. People would make mention of a solitary woman who appeared now and then in town, wandering and mysterious, or a curious man who would nose into late night conversations. And sometimes there was talk of their quiet invitation to bed them and taste their pleasures. But in the morning, they vanished, although they might appear on another night in another month to the same lover, saying they had suddenly had to journey on unexpectedly, but now they had returned, promising to be as faithful as they could be. But they never stayed for more than a season; they knew they couldn’t truly mate with us.
Bart called them by a Winnebago name I couldn’t pronounce. “They are drawn to humans,” he said, “but they know they are wolves, a cousin, but not a brother or sister, and that they cannot live among us as a human. And so their human lover one day wonders why he or she has been abandoned, but it wasn’t because the wolf didn’t care. The wolf did care, but it knew it must leave its lover for its lover’s sake. And once they know this, they know they cannot shift again and must accept their wolf nature completely and leave humans be.”
I asked, “What has this got to do with us and with Elsa?”
Bart sat with me on the sofa; I held the baby.
Bart nodded, as if agreeing with something he was thinking. “Carol, we have to find another wolf mother. Sometimes a she-wolf bears a child if she lies with a man. They say a human woman can also bear the child of a transformed male wolf. There are legends about that. But the child always dies and sometimes the mother, too.” He shook his head. “Carol, I’m really sorry about this.”
“So what do we do now?” I looked again at the baby’s feet. “This is unbelievable.”
“I know. We’ll have to care for Elsa until I talk with the medicine man of my people. The legends say a transformed child-wolf can only be human during the full moon, and according to the lore she must go back to the wild or she’ll die.”
He took his cell phone from his pocket and dialed the medicine man. They talked for a while. He gave Bart the name and number of another tribal elder, and then Bart hung up. He told me that on the following weekend, when Elsa was once again a wolf—for wolf was what she was and not a dog—we would try to return her to her people.
* * * *
Bart drove us to a forested area farther north in Wisconsin. I held the wolf pup in my arms as we were met by an elderly female Winnebago tribeswoman who led us further into the woods, far away from any marked path. There she instructed me to put Elsa down before a huge tree and made me move away from her. Bart and I were told to stand at nearby trees, and the woman shook tobacco out of a large pouch into our hands. She then went over to Elsa and scattered the tobacco on the ground before the wolf pup.
I watched anxiously for Elsa to bolt, to run away or run to me, but she didn’t. She sat down on the leaves and earth, as obedient as a trained dog, watching as the old woman began to sing in Winnebago. She also brought a rattle and moved it rhythmically to her singing, pointing it at Bart and me.
Bart instructed me, “Scatter the tobacco in your hands around the trees and call out to the spirits to have pity on Elsa. Tell the spirits that you are pleading for Elsa to be returned to her true family.”
I stared at him.
“Do it, Carol.” He pointed at the medicine woman. “She’s ‘calling down the thunder,’ the power of the sky, the power of nature. Only that power can return Elsa to her true form permanently.” Bart’s eyes pleaded for my understanding. That there were realities beyond those we call normal, and only acceptance could make the magic work.
I flecked the tobacco around the tree we stood beside, and gazed at the pup who had stolen my heart. I had to give her up, caught in a mystery I barely believed in and yet had to believe in.
My mouth dry, I swallowed to moisten it, and I began: “I call down the thunder! Please protect my baby, whom You only let me love for the shortest time.” My voice strengthened as a strange breeze seemed to swirl about me. “Please send her another mother to love her as I would have. Please do not leave her alone. Please bring her back to her wolf family!”
Bart scattered his own tobacco and let out a stream of musical words, his voice rising and falling, but I could not understand them, for they were in the Winnebago language.
And then something extraordinary occurred. Elsa began to whimper. I almost ran to her, but Bart quickly stopped me. From out of the woods, a full-grown wolf emerged, halted, and looked at the medicine woman and then at Bart and me. She slowly loped up to me in the forest clearing, leaned back on her hind legs, and then stood up again. She lifted her silver-furred head and bayed in a howl, its pitch unique, melodic. Somewhere in the distance, other wolves answered her. She gazed directly at me, her blue eyes penetrating.
The she-wolf—I knew the wolf was female—turned and trotted to Elsa. The pup greeted her eagerly, nuzzling against her underside seeking her nipples. The wolf licked Elsa tenderly and swiftly grasped her by the scruff of her neck, lifting her, claiming her as her own.
I wanted to run to the pup, to stroke her, a farewell, a goodbye. I involuntarily called her name. “Elsa.”
The wolf-mother turned halfway, her eyes once more on my own, Elsa limply hanging by her scruff, acceptance in her posture, letting this new mother take her to their den. And then the wolf and Elsa disappeared through the thick woods.
The Winnebago medicine woman came over to Bart and me. “This is good,” she said. “The child has returned to its true parent.” She smiled sadly at me. “You are lonely. You need to have a true child of your own to love.”
I nodded.
We walked silently along the forest path back to our cars and parted ways.
* * * *
Bart and I became closer after this. He finally won my love. We now have two sons and a daughter, our true children. Our daughter, of course, was named Elsa.
For years, I thought of the wolf puppy, and I became an advocate for the wolves. Last year, we took the children to a nature reserve where they could watch the wolves from a distance. And as we watched, one female with striking blue eyes and white silver fur came close to us and stood there. She gazed directly at me with open canine curiosity and then turned, moving off, not looking back.
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IN BLACKWALK WOOD, Adrian Cole
The old guy who lived at the end of the street was as miserable as sin. Okay, that was just my opinion of him, based on a few meetings, although you could hardly call them meetings—brushes perh
aps. These were usually in the local stores. I always say hello to people—it’s a small town and not a bad community—I reckon most of its inhabitants would lend each other a hand if the need arose. Maybe my circumstances made me seem more irritable than I realised and maybe that’s why the old guy was wary.
I spoke to Dennis, who runs the store, about the old man after I’d said my customary good morning in there one day. I’d got the usual cool stare and nod of the head from the bloke, no more than that. He was big and tall, probably in his sixties, and he was slightly stoop-shouldered. “He’s not a bundle of laughs, that guy,” I said after he’d picked up his small bag of supplies and moved away before anyone could engage him in conversation. In this town, most people are always glad to exchange at least a few pleasantries. One of the reasons they come to Dennis’s store rather than go exclusively to the big supermarket is for the company, the slightly more intimate atmosphere.
“O’Riordan? No, but he’s not always been like that.” Dennis seemed to be about to enlarge on his remark, but something checked him. The expression on his face was one he usually reserved for me. It was that same look of sympathy, more than that—pity—which I was trying uncomfortably to come to terms with. My wife had been diagnosed with cancer and although a stubborn part of me didn’t want to accept it, she probably didn’t have long to live. It seemed like the whole town knew it, even though we’d been here less than a year. We’d migrated to this relatively remote spot to try and make the remainder of her time as pleasant as we could. We’d always said we’d come here when we retired, expecting that to be a long way in the future. I felt cheated and angry, but I just had to bite the bullet.
“Ten years ago, he was very different,” said Dennis. “Affable, very approachable. Nothing he wouldn’t do to help people. What you’d have called a pillar of society. Some people tried to get him to run for Mayor, or Councillor, but he just laughed it off. His wife was the same. Very nice lady. Their kids have families of their own now, up country.”
