The Frenzy

by Francesca Lia Block

  Sometimes in the heady heat of late summer everything seemed like a dream—Sasha, the brothers, the haunted house, the thing that had happened to Pace. I wanted to believe that the wolf woman was a dream, too. I didn’t want that to be real. All I had to do, I told myself, was to keep away from the strange people who lived in the forest.

  But I knew it really wasn’t as simple as that, not at all. Three things had to be present to activate the curse—a full moon, my menstrual blood and an outburst of my rage. At least that was how it had been every time and the moon, my cycle and my anger were not as easy to avoid as a forest.

  I was still seeing Nieberding to appease my parents but he was starting to really make my nerves crawl. After Pace’s death he watched me more carefully and kept asking how Pace being gone made me feel. I didn’t want to go through the emotions again because I was afraid I’d frenzy, so I tried to change the subject. The sessions were grueling and I left feeling weak from the discipline. Sometimes, afterward, I’d notice how long and jagged my fingernails suddenly looked. I had to be careful when I kissed Corey because my teeth felt sharper. And the hair kept growing on my body.

  There was a brutal, desperate feeling in the air that summer, like when you smell a fire, a big fire, but you don’t know where it’s coming from. The town lay under a stupor. The heat made it hard to move or breathe and all around me I sensed danger. But most of all I sensed it from inside myself.

  Now that Corey was picking me up after work I stopped walking past Joe Ranger’s. I thought of how he’d watched me in the cemetery and the way he’d talked about the full moon coming. I wasn’t sure who or what Joe was and I didn’t know if I trusted him anymore. He had taken me to Sasha and seemed to be her friend. Maybe he wanted me to kill my mother, too. So I avoided Joe Ranger until I had no other choice except to seek him out and ask him for his help.

  It was late at night, after I’d left Corey. I woke from a nightmare of being in the prosthetics shop. Real severed limbs hung from the walls. The flesh was mottled like blue cheese or dripping with blood like raw meat in a butcher’s shop. When I opened my eyes I was so disoriented that the figure standing at my bedside seemed part of the nightmare.

  But he was real.

  He was a tall, dark-haired young man with luminous, yellow eyes and red roses—so dark they almost looked black—in his arms.

  Victor.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. His voice was deep and soft and his eyes were fixed on mine. I could feel him willing me not to scream and it worked. Besides, the last thing I wanted was for my father to come. I just stared back at Victor. My thighs were sweating into the sheet.

  “I won’t hurt you, Olivia.”

  “Get the hell out!” I hissed when I could finally talk.

  “I just need to talk to you for a little while. Is that all right? May I speak with you? May I sit?”

  He gestured to a chair by my bed but I didn’t answer him.

  “I brought you roses. May I leave them here?” He laid the roses at the foot of my bed. They had a strong scent that made my head spin the way it did when I frenzied. It was as if I had two hundred million smelling cells inside my nose.

  “I don’t think my boyfriend will be okay with that,” I said. “You know him. The one you threatened.”

  Victor ignored me. “We have been respectful.”

  He bowed his head and dropped to his knees.

  “Get up!” I growled. “My dad will come.”

  Victor’s eyes flicked up at me. “I’m not afraid of your father.” There was a sneer in his voice.

  “I’m not going to go anywhere with you.”

  He moved closer to me and in spite of how he and his brothers had circled me and Corey in the woods I felt a desire to reach out and touch the top of his head. His hair looked thick, coarse but lush. Saliva filled my mouth and my heart was pounding. There would be a full moon soon. There always was eventually. I wondered if the more times I desired to change, the more easily I would change when the circumstances were right.

  “Your mother is downstairs, asleep,” Victor said softly. “But she wears a silver cross on her breast day and night. She is safe from me. She is safe from everyone.”

  But not from me, I thought. That was what Victor was thinking; I knew it. I was the one who could slip into my mother’s room, when the moon was not full and I did not bleed, remove the silver from her neck, hide it and, later, before she found it, take her life.

  “Olivia, I am here for something else.”

  I shivered at the intensity of his words that came from deep in his throat. I had to admit his face was beautiful in the moonlight—broad, high cheekbones, a cleft in his chin, wide-set eyes that tilted up slightly at the outer corners under heavy arched brows.

  “I never met any females who were like me,” he went on. “So I was excited to meet you. We all were. We overheard our mother talk about you. We used to come to town once a year looking when it became almost unbearable to be alone. But you aren’t just important because of that.” He lowered his head again. His eyelashes made spiky shadows on his cheeks. “I am capable of many things….” His pause was ominous. “You could redeem me.”

  Redeem him? What did that mean? It frightened me but it also intrigued me—it made me feel a certain sense of power, but power that was dependent on his attention to, and need for, me.

  In spite of myself I felt something I couldn’t name pump through my veins. What would it be like to touch a young man like this? A man who deeply understood what I was. Who was what I was.

  The unnamed thing was desire.

  No, Liv, stop.

  “I saw you with the boy,” Victor said, curling the last word with his tongue. “I’ve seen you with him for years. I can tell he loves you. Now. But he is leaving for the city while you stay here.”

  “How do you know that?” I had to force myself to keep from screaming for my parents. But I knew that would only make this all worse.

  Victor didn’t answer the question. “I’m not going anywhere,” was all he said.

  “Yes, you are! Get out of here!” I stumbled from the bed, not caring that he saw me in my underwear, the soft layer of red hair sprouting all over my body. The roses scattered on the floor as I pulled the blanket off and wrapped it around me.

  Victor slunk toward the window, still gazing up at me with his gold eyes.

  “I can teach you things,” he said. “Things you need to know to survive with this curse you have. The boy can teach you nothing. He will never be enough for you. Come to me before you have no other choice.”

  And then he was on the ledge. I watched him leap down to the garden below, the way no boy could leap. He turned to look up at me one last time before he vanished into the night.

  I could smell the perfume of roses like beautiful poison.

  After Victor’s visit I knew I had to see Joe Ranger. He had knowledge I needed. I couldn’t go looking for Sasha, Victor or the others—even after the visit I was still trying to pretend they weren’t real, it hadn’t happened—but Joe was real, and he wasn’t hidden away in the woods. And maybe he had some answers.

  So one night, when Corey had to stay late at work, I went back to the shop.

  It looked closed—door locked, sign out—but I knocked and waited. After a long time I heard footsteps and he came to the front of the shop. The light was dim but I could see Joe’s green eyes very well.

  “Livia, what’s shakin’?”

  “Me,” I said. “Most of the time.”

  “Come on in, girl.”

  The shop had a strange musty, metallic smell. I followed Joe into the back room. I’d never been there before. There were two old-fashioned upholstered armchairs and a small table. Cooper slept on the floor next to the fan. Joe motioned for me to sit down and he gave me a bottle of water.

  We were silent for a while, studying each other. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I had a weird dream about the shop,” I said.

  �
�Yeah?” He scowled a little. “Do tell.”

  “There were real limbs hanging everywhere.”

  Joe bared his teeth for a quick second, then his face went back to normal. “Not a pretty sight.”

  “And then Victor came to visit me.” I hadn’t expected to tell him that. Saying Victor’s name out loud to someone else made it all more real. Or maybe it just made me seem crazier to myself.

  “Came to your house, did he?” Joe shook his head. “Boy’s getting bold. What did he want? I told him to lay off.”

  “I think you know.”

  Joe shook his head again. “I don’t know nothing for sure anymore.”

  It seemed pointless to pretend after everything that had happened. “But you’re one.”

  He had his head down, while he stroked Cooper’s exposed belly, but his eyes shot up at me. The pupils were pricks of dark in the bright green irises.

  “One what?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “This ain’t about what I am or am not,” he said.

  Joe stood up, all six-foot-two of him rising above me. He leaned back against the wall and looked at me.

  I had never thought to really be afraid of him before in spite of my parents’ warnings. The air in the room felt stifling and hot. Corey wouldn’t know where I had gone….

  “Then tell me about what I am. I don’t know how to control this thing and there’s no one I can ask.”

  “There’s nothing I can teach you,” Joe said. “You need to learn it for yourself.”

  “But I think you know how to control it. You don’t live in fear, away from everyone.”

  “I told you, this ain’t about the way I roll.” Joe cocked a bushy eyebrow at me.

  “Sasha said it was connected to rage.”

  He grinned so his big teeth showed. “What do you think?”

  “It was rage for me, but only when I had my … when I’m on my cycle and the moon’s full.” I felt my cheeks turning red. “I could control it before—the anger. But not in the last two months.”

  “I’ve been working with rage my whole life. You don’t just learn how to manage by having some elder statesman, no matter how wise”—he cleared his throat, winked and patted his chest—”tell you what to do. You have to work it out by yourself.”

  But you know, I wanted to shout. You know!

  I looked at him standing against the wall. “How did you become one?” I asked him.

  There was something almost vicious about his grin now. “You don’t stop, do you?”

  “Were you cursed, like me? Or did you change some other way?”

  “Time to leave now,” Joe said.

  Then I remembered how Sasha and Joe had looked at each other at the cabin door. “Does it have something to do with Sasha? Can we change people who aren’t born like us? Did she …”

  Joe shook his head, long and slow. “I said time to leave.”

  I didn’t protest. When I looked into his eyes I knew there wasn’t any more I could say to change his mind.

  I didn’t sleep at all that night, just lay awake thinking. The shadows on the wall grew teeth and snarled at me. The next night when I knew Joe Ranger would be leading his AA meeting at the café where Pace used to work I told Corey I had some things to do for my mom and went back to the shop. I walked around the back and jiggled the door. It was locked, of course. But I saw a small window up at the top. I could climb up there—I was a good climber. And I could fit through. No one was around to see.

  When I lowered myself into the tiny bathroom with the cracked green tile I was suddenly sick with fear. What if he came back? I had to kneel on the floor with my head down for a moment to calm myself. Fireworks were shooting through my brain and dropping corrosive sparks down my throat into my stomach. May the great mother protect me. Finally I was able to crawl into the little bedroom next to the bath. It was very dark with a large bed covered in a red quilt. Not much else of interest. I got up and walked into the room with the two chairs—not much there either. There was also a tiny kitchen with a mini refrigerator and a microwave. Nothing. I went back into the bedroom and opened some dresser drawers—just T-shirts, jeans, underwear and socks. I pawed through a stack of papers on a bureau. A few bills. Closet? Joe’s denim and leather jackets and a few button-down shirts, his boots. I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the bed. There was an old leather-bound trunk. I pulled it out and opened it.

  They were photos and newspaper clippings mostly. I lifted them out and spread them on the floor. I found a picture of Joe as a kid with a giant parrot perched on his shoulder. Another of him with a big dog, a fishing pole in his hand. Some more black and whites of what must have been family members. And then I found a photo of a woman wearing a man’s fedora hat, peeking up from under the brim. She was topless and her lips were curved in a soft smile. It was Sasha.

  Under that were some newspaper clippings that read:

  “Full Moon Killer Strikes Again.”

  “Full Moon Murders.”

  “Serial Animal? Who Will Be Next?”

  They were from the last four years, the period of time since my mother had killed the wolf. Had Sasha met Joe then, bitten him? Had he changed and was he now the murderer? Is that how it worked, could you bite someone and make them become like you? And what did Joe want with me? What was I to him? And what came next?

  There was another picture under the newspaper clippings.

  It was a picture of me.

  I was about three years old, wearing a bathing suit with ruffles. My skin looked very light in the bright sun. I was playing in the fountain in the town square, laughing as the water spurted out at me from the mouths of demons.

  I looked back at the newspaper articles. It struck me then, for the first time. How had I not noticed it before? Carl Olaf’s dad, Reed, just a week after Carl Olaf laughed at me. My one supposed girlfriend Sadie Nelson’s father, Loudon. Hair-tying Sherry Lee’s father, Bob. Rude Dale Tamblin’s father, Dan. They were all hunters, yes, out in the woods on the night of a full moon. But that wasn’t uncommon in this town—people hunted by the bright moonlight. Almost everyone in this town hunted. But not almost everyone in this town had a child or spouse who had insulted or hurt me in some way. Not almost everyone in town had a child who had occupied space in my diary, the diary that had been open one morning when I was sure I had closed it the night before.

  I heard a noise and jumped, covering my mouth with my hand as waves of cold air rippled through me. It was only Joe’s black cat. It hissed at me and I backed toward the bathroom.

  As I slid through the window and jumped down into the night I saw a truck pull up from the road into the drive. I’d been at Joe’s longer than I’d thought. The headlights caught me for a moment before I got away.

  Joe Ranger had seen me. And I understood him even less now than before. And I was more afraid of him.

  The next day at breakfast I asked my father. I tried to sound casual. It helped that the news was on because I could pretend that it had reminded me about the killings.

  “Did you ever find out more about those hunters that died in the woods?” I asked him as I nonchalantly chewed my cornflakes.

  He took a sip of coffee and looked at me. It almost seemed painful for him to look directly at me, especially lately. “You mean the full moon murders?”

  I nodded.

  My mom bustled around pouring more coffee.

  “Can we not talk shop here? It’s disturbing.”

  “I never ask Dad about his work,” I said.

  She switched the channel to America’s Next Top Model reruns. She knew each episode almost by heart.

  “She looks exactly like a boy. She needs to stop lifting weights and start eating something like Lisa told her. You’d think they put another transgendered one on.”

  “Now that’s disgusting talk at the table,” my father said.

  “But do you have any clues? I mean do you think it could happen again?�
��

  He shrugged. “It could always happen again. Everything could always happen again. Why do you think I don’t want you near those woods? It’s not for shits and giggles.”

  I had to hide the shudder that went through my body. I had never really been afraid of the full moon murderer before. But I thought of Joe Ranger’s strange green eyes watching me illuminated in his headlights.

  I wasn’t so sure that I was safe from anything anymore. At the same time I didn’t want to bring up his name. As much as he scared me, part of me still wanted to protect him until I was sure.

  “So no clues?” I said as I stared at the TV, where a beautiful girl in black eyeliner was posing with her hand on her ass.

  “I can’t discuss it,” my dad said. “Since when are you interested?”

  I shrugged. My mom said, “She’s just trying to make conversation with you, Jeff. She’s reaching out. You could try to indulge her.”

  I got up. “No, it’s okay,” I said.

  “I need a manicure today.” My mom had sat down and was examining her cuticles. “Do you want to come after work?”

  I looked at my ragged fingernails. “No thanks,” I said.

  “We’re going out of town next weekend,” she told me. “You’ll have the house to yourself. Maybe you could invite some girlfriends over. You need people.”

  Yeah, right. Like I had girlfriends.

  “You need to start making friends now, new friends.”

  “Okay,” I said. And I left the room.

  When I think back on that time I remember my hand throbbing a warning. But maybe I just imagine it now.

  My mom had distracted me but I wasn’t done talking to my dad about the full moon murders. So the next afternoon I decided to stop by the police station. I rode my bike there, along the deserted pathways of the campus, among the peeling-barked sycamore trees that hung heavy and yellow-green with heat. The brick buildings of the college always seemed weird in the summer, just much too quiet. I tried to imagine going to school there in the fall but it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe right. I was afraid it would be high school all over again—the isolation, the embarrassment—while Corey escaped to a city that was never quiet or completely dark and where monsters like me roamed freely and unnoticed in the streets.