The Nighttime is the Right Time

by Bill Crider

  Look to the left, however, just a little farther along, and it’s a different story. You can see squatty old buildings with shattered windows and decaying houses that look as if they haven’t been painted since the stock market took that little tumble back in 1929.

  Marie’s grandmother’s house wasn’t in either of those places. It was out near the Galleria, in another kind of area, one that had practically been out in the country when the house was built but which was now covered up by apartment houses and condos.

  It was a low ranch-style that sat on a big corner lot, shaded by oak trees with branches so heavy and thick with leaves that there was almost no grass growing beneath them. The smooth, nearly bare ground was covered with tiny acorns, and a couple of squirrels chased each other around the trunk of one of the trees.

  The squirrels were funny, and I smiled, which was a mistake. The smile pulled my lips back from my teeth just a little and gave Marie the wrong idea.

  “You’re not going to do anything . . . funny, are you?”

  I looked at her, then at the squirrels. “I’m not going to jump out and chase them, if that’s what you mean. The moon won’t be full for another three days. I’ve never Changed that early before, so you don’t have to worry.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry I said anything. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “I’m not offended,” I told her, but my feelings were hurt all the same.

  Marie reached into the back seat for the paper bag she’d brought with her, and we got out of the car. The bag was heavy, and Marie cradled it in both arms as we went up the concrete walk to the front door. The walk, which never got any sunshine, was dark with mildew, and the bronze door knob was black with corrosion. Since Marie’s hands were full, I rang the bell.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Probably someone like my own grandmother, who was in her late sixties but who looked around ninety. At least to me.

  Marie’s grandmother wasn’t like that at all. In the heavy shade of the oaks, she didn’t look much older than Marie. Her hair was almost white, but not white like my grandmother’s. It was blonde, the kind of blonde you bought at the Walgreen’s in a peroxide bottle. And she was hardly wrinkled at all. Her eyes were green, like Marie’s, and she was wearing a shirt that showed off her breasts almost as well as her tight Levi’s showed off the rest of her. She was also wearing Chanel No. 5, but then I’d suspected that ever since we’d parked at the curb.

  “Hi, Grandma,” Marie said. “Here’s your bag of goodies.” She handed her the paper bag, and then introduced her to me as Helen Grayson.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, wondering if it was all right to lust after someone’s grandmother. I was pretty sure it wasn’t, but I was a teenager, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I’ll shake your hand as soon as I put these books down.”

  We followed her into the sunken den, where two walls were completely covered with bookshelves. The shelves were crammed with all kinds of books, hardbacks and paperbacks. Most of them were mysteries.

  “Marie’s mother and I love to read,” Mrs. Grayson said.

  She set the bag on a low coffee table that sat in front of a floral couch. Then she turned to me and stuck out her hand. I took it and felt almost as if a spark jumped between us. I tried not to show anything, but I probably did. I must have because out of the corner of my eye I saw Marie smirking.

  “I’m really glad you could come,” Mrs. Grayson said, dropping my hand. “Why don’t we all have a seat, and then we can talk.”

  She and Marie sat on the couch, so rather than fling myself between them, which I would dearly have loved to do, I sat in an old Kennedy rocker. It was a lot like one my own grandmother had, and just as uncomfortable.

  “So,” Mrs. Grayson said after we were all settled, “Marie tells me that you have some . . . unusual abilities.”

  I looked at Marie.

  “I didn’t tell her anything specific,” she said. “I just said that you might be able to help her out with a problem she’s having.”

  “I’d be glad to try,” I said, wondering what I could possibly do for a woman like that. Maybe her back yard needed mowing or something. I didn’t much like mowing, but I’d do it if that’s what she wanted. I probably would have done just about anything.

  “I’d like for you to smell something,” she said.

  I goggled at her, and she laughed. She had a nice laugh, so nice that I almost wasn’t embarrassed. Almost.

  “My, what big eyes you have,” she said.

  I felt my face starting to burn, and I opened my mouth to say something. I’m not sure what, since nothing came out, which was no doubt just as well.

  “It’s just a piece of paper,” Marie said. She sounded a little put out with me. “Show him, Grandmother.”

  Mrs. Grayson got up, smiled at me, and glided out of the room. She was back before my face had even had time to return to its normal color, and she handed me a folded piece of lined notebook paper just like the kind everyone uses in school.

  I took it and unfolded it. There was printing on it, big block letters all done in pencil:

  I’VE BEEN WATCHING YOU, I LIKE YOU A LOT, I THINK YOU’D LIKE ME TOO IF YOU’D GIVE IT A CHANCE.

  “Uh-oh,” I said.

  “Indeed,” Mrs. Grayson said. “It’s scary, isn’t it.”

  “The punctuation is bad, too,” I said.

  “I don’t think that’s the problem,” Marie said. “There’s another one.”

  Mrs. Grayson handed me another folded paper. I read that one, too.

  I THINK YOU’RE HOT, I’VE GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU, AND YOU’RE GOING TO LIKE IT A LOT.

  That was so bad that I didn’t even feel like commenting on the attempt at poetry, which after all could have been an accident.

  “Who wrote these?” I said.

  “There are more,” Mrs. Grayson said.

  “And they’re worse,” Marie added.

  I didn’t think I wanted to see them. I said that they hadn’t answered my question.

  “We don’t know,” Mrs. Grayson said. “That’s what I want you to tell me.”

  “I don’t think you want me. I think you want the police.”

  “I’ve had the police. They took the other notes, but they haven’t been able to do a thing. You can buy notebook paper like this all over the city, and apparently there are no fingerprints.”

  “How did you get the notes?”

  Mrs. Grayson smiled at me, and I started getting warm again.

  “That’s a very good question. Someone slipped them under my back door.”

  “Then get the cops to watch the house. That’s the best way to catch him.”

  “They watched. They even stayed in the house, but they didn’t catch him. When they were here, he didn’t show up. When they left, he slipped the notes under the back door again.”

  The back yard had a six-foot high wooden fence around it. Whoever was writing the notes must have been pretty athletic.

  “The police believe that whoever is writing these notes is someone I know,” Mrs. Grayson said, “maybe someone from the neighborhood.”

  “That’s where you come in,” Marie said. “I thought maybe you could smell the note and tell us who wrote it.”

  “Oh, good grief,” I said.

  After they explained things, however, I realized the idea wasn’t quite as dumb as it sounded. If I could pick up a scent from the paper, which I admitted was a possibility, though not a very good one since a lot of people besides the writer had handled it and since the writer had probably been wearing gloves, I might be able to match the scent to one of the neighbors. Assuming one of the neighbors was the writer. It all seemed pretty thin to me.

  “It’s about all we’ve got, though,” Mrs. Grayson said. “The police are no help at all. I think whoever wrote these notes would have to kill me for them to get really interested in doing anything. To tell the truth, I’m getting f
rightened.”

  I didn’t blame her. “What if it’s not someone from the neighborhood?” I said. “What if it’s some nut from out of town?”

  “I don’t think that’s very likely, do you?”

  “No,” I admitted. And then I had another thought. “What if I do find out who wrote the notes? What are you going to do then?”

  “Why, I’m going to tell the police, of course.”

  “That would never work,” I said “Not in a million years.”

  “Why not?” she asked, so I told her.

  Well, I didn’t actually tell her. What I said was that the cops weren’t going to believe some kid who said he’d smelled a man’s scent on a piece of paper. I didn’t add that they wouldn’t believe me even if I told them that I was a werewolf. If they believed that part, they’d probably run out looking for silver bullets.

  Mrs. Grayson looked disappointed, but she knew I was right.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t help,” I said, and I meant it.

  “Maybe you still could,” Marie said, looking thoughtful. She looked good that way, but then she looked good most ways. Genetics was bad news when it came to werewolves, but she and her grandmother were certainly proof that nothing is all bad.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Instead of the police watching the house, you could watch it.”

  “Me?” I said, and then I caught on. “Oh. Yeah. Me.”

  “Am I missing something?” Mrs. Grayson asked.

  “Not really,” I said.

  ~ * ~

  While I was taking her home, Marie filled me in on her plan.

  “You’d do it during the time of the full moon, of course. I’ll bet wolves know all kinds of ways to hide out in the dark.”

  “It’s not so dark when the moon is full,” I pointed out.

  “You know what I mean. You’re probably very sly when you’re a wolf.”

  I wasn’t ever very sly, but of course I couldn’t tell her that. I was still hoping to impress her.

  “And you could still check out the men in the neighborhood,” she said. “That way, you’d know who to expect, and you’d know where he was coming from.”

  “Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that I do this. What am I supposed to do if the guy actually shows up? Rip his throat out?”

  Marie shuddered. “Would you really do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I don’t think so, though. I’ve sure never done anything like that before.”

  Well, except for a chicken one time, but I didn’t think it would be tactful to mention that. It was more in the way of an experiment than anything else, and it hadn’t been exactly pleasant.

  So I just said, “I don’t think I’d like the taste of blood.”

  “Yuck. I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”

  “You started it.”

  “Maybe. But what I meant was that maybe you could . . . bark at him. Do wolves bark?”

  “No. And that wouldn’t scare anybody, anyway.”

  “How about if you jumped up on him? Knocked him down, maybe, and then slobbered in his face. Growled. Showed him your fangs. You have fangs, don’t you?”

  I had fangs, all right, and pretty big ones, but I didn’t think that would work, either.

  Marie said, “He’d think she had some kind of giant watch dog. He’d probably never come back. And if he did, we could file a complaint with the police. You could identify him and say you saw him put the note under the door. It would be the truth, too, sort of.”

  OK, it was possible. Barely. But so are a lot of things. I said I’d think about it. I didn’t want to disappoint Marie. Or her grandmother, for that matter.

  “I want to know now,” Marie said.

  “Why?”

  “So I’ll know whether to give you a kiss when we get to my house.”

  I didn’t need to think any longer. “I’ll do it,” I said.

  She smiled. “I thought you might.”

  3.

  I spent a lot of time in my room that night, sniffing notebook paper. It didn’t do any good, though. Mostly, I could smell Mrs. Grayson’s perfume, and there was a faint odor of something that was probably leather. You’d think that whoever wrote the notes would use some kind of gloves that would be more flexible -- rubber, for example. And there was another odor, even more faint, of something that smelled like new houses. Unless the writer was a carpenter, I didn’t have a thing to go on.

  That didn’t discourage Marie. She talked to me every day at school, and she called me in the evenings. I had to admit that I didn’t mind the attention. Maybe I should have mentioned to her sooner that I was a werewolf.

  On the day of the night of the full moon, she caught up with me in the hall near my locker. The hall was noisy, as usual, with locker doors clanging, guys talking loud, feet shuffling, and Marie put her mouth close to my ear so I could hear her.

  “Are you going to watch the house tonight?”

  Her warm breath tickled my ear, and I was afraid I might turn into a wolf right then and there, even though I’d never Changed in the daylight hours before. And I didn’t that time, either, but it was a near thing.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Can I come too?”

  She was fascinated with the idea of the Change, but I wasn’t about to let her see it. She might think it would be exciting, but it’s not. It’s mostly just ugly and painful.

  “No,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Pleeease.”

  “Forget it. If you try to come, I won’t do it.”

  She pouted, sticking out a lovely, full lower lip, but it didn’t do her any good.

  “Oh, all right,” she said after a minute. “What’s your plan.”

  “I don’t have one,” I said.

  And I didn’t. In the first place, I didn’t think anyone would show up. There hadn’t been any new notes since I’d visited Mrs. Grayson, and there was no real reason to think one would arrive that evening. They had come at irregular intervals from the beginning. But I’d said I’d watch, so I would.

  After school that day I went home and told my mother I was going out that night.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “You know the rules.”

  The rules were pretty standard. She and I both had agreed to them long ago. During the full moon, we stayed home, in our rooms, which had been fixed up to be more or less werewolf proof.

  We didn’t really need the precautions -- bars on the windows, thick wall hangings, doors that my father locked from the outside -- because we weren’t at all like the werewolves in most of the movies you’ve seen. We were basically domesticated and didn’t have any desire to mangle human flesh, though there were enough animal instincts to make us dangerous to chickens now and then and (as I found out later) interested in Schnauzers and the like. Mostly we spent the nights of the Change sleeping or watching TV. Even a wolf can do that.

  I explained to my mother that I was just going to do a favor for a friend. She didn’t think it was a good idea.

  “Werewolves don’t do favors,” she said. “We just keep out of sight and mind our own business.”

  I told her that there was a girl involved, and that really set her off.

  “You haven’t told her, have you? You know what could happen if you did that. Or maybe you don’t, but you certainly should. It will be the peasants and the torches all over again.”

  “I thought that was Frankenstein.”

  “Don’t you get smart with your mother.”

  I apologized and tried to explain what I was going to do.

  “You’re just going to watch the house?”

  I said that was the plan.

  “And you’re sure that’s all?”

  I said I was sure, though I really had no idea.

  “Well, I don’t like the idea of a woman being tormented like that. She doesn’t have protection like you and I do. Why if a man tried that on me, I’d rip him to shreds.” />
  I said that I didn’t doubt it. “Does that mean I can go?”

  “I suppose so. But you be careful. You never know who might be using silver bullets these days.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “And get back before dawn. You know what happens if you’re out at dawn.”

  I knew. Cinderella had nothing on us werewolves.

  “And don’t tell your father. I’ll handle him.”

  That was fine with me. I wasn’t sure my father had ever completely adjusted to having a werewolf wife, much less a teenage werewolf son.

  “Will you need any help?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  Little did I know.

  4.

  The moon came up big and bright, or as big and bright as it gets in the city, and I knew about it before anyone else. Except for my mother, of course, and any other werewolves that might be around. We don’t know of any. And we don’t have to see the moon. The Change happens when it’s raining or when there’s an eclipse or when you’re in a sealed basement. It doesn’t have anything to do with light.

  As I said, it’s painful. My bones stretch, my skull changes shape, my mouth fills with sharp white fangs, my nails become claws while my feet and hands are becoming padded paws.

  Sometimes I howl.

  Not this time, however. It wouldn’t have been a good idea. I wasn’t in my room like most of the times before. I was on a tree-covered lot, not far from Mrs. Grayson’s house. I could tell by some stakes with red ribbons on them that the lot had recently been surveyed, and it wouldn’t be long before someone built a house there, but right now it was perfect for my purposes.

  Lots of people think of Texas in general as a part of the southwestern desert, and parts of it are. But Houston is a coastal city with a sub-tropical climate. One of the things that sometimes surprises people who visit for the first time is the number of trees. They’re all over the place, and the ones on the lot provided me with plenty of cover for Changing.