Turning her attention to the crockpot, she dipped a finger in the simmering water and brought it to her lips. With a satisfied nod, she added pinches of spice and clumps of herbs to the water and stirred it gently with an old wooden spoon. The resulting smell exploded in Dallas’s nose and coated his throat, causing him to gag. Stanley started to wheeze, and even implacable Kevin chuffed. Only Lois seemed unaffected as her voice slashed out, each syllable a harsh challenge.
“Rathu pronsetha dur. Shum taren. Koth!” she cried. “Death, we refute you. Your place is not here, your time is not now. Be mine to scatter and mine to banish.”
A wailing moan rose up. A thousand haunted, empty voices cried out from the depths of the afterlife, a mournful chorus of loss and ruin. Lois opened the heavy book. While reading aloud from a marked page, she stirred the contents of the crockpot. Each thrust and pull of the wooden spoon formed a counter-rhythm to her voice. As Lois spoke and stirred, stirred and spoke, a heavy steam boiled up. Shapeless at first, it stretched and coalesced into a hundred different forms, thickening and clinging to the spoon’s handle like a heavy syrup. Still, the myriad voices wailed and cried, becoming louder and louder as Lois pushed and pulled at the heavy liquid.
Suddenly, Lois pulled the spoon free and threw it to the ground. Grasping each side of the pot, she tried to lift it. For a long moment, she strained, gritting her teeth, flexing her arms, stretching her back, but the pot wouldn’t move.
“It’s too much!” she sobbed. “I can’t do it. I can’t!”
Not understanding what was happening but knowing what was needed, Dallas strode forward. Meeting Lois’s frantic eyes, he took her hands away and placed his own on the sides of the familiar, old crockpot.
Damn strange bucket of chili, he thought, watching the heavy liquid heave and roil of its own accord.
“What do I do?” he yelled.
“It has to be poured on the grave,” Lois shouted back, her voice barely audible over the tornado of wails and moans whirling around them.
Well, that’s easy enough, he reasoned, grasping the sides of the pot and lifting.
A memory of the World’s Strongest Man contest popped into his mind. Dallas, Herb, and Stanley sat around the T.V., watching mountains of muscle on two legs flip tractor tires, toss logs, and pull airplanes. If only this was as easy as that. Trying to move the crockpot was like trying to shot put a boulder. Dallas heard his tendons creak and teeth grind. He felt tiny fractures start to form in the crockpot’s molded plastic sides where his fingers and palms pressed. Despite his Herculean effort, the pot didn’t budge.
“Can we skip this part?” he asked loudly, only to see Lois shake her head madly back and forth.
Well, crappers. When a thing needs doin’, you just gotta do it. Even if it sucks.
The moon, so close to full, inundated Dallas with its cold avalanche of reflected light. He opened himself up to it and let its strange power soak through him. Feet spread, he squatted down and wrapped his arms around the pot. Commanding each and every muscle he had to stop being such a pussy and man-up, he lifted.
Inch by unforgiving inch, the crockpot raised up from the T.V. tray. Dallas arched his back and flexed his legs. A foot shuffled forward, followed by another. Step by painful step, each one leaving a deep impression in the soft earth, Dallas moved forward until a voice cried,
“Now! Dump it now!”
A final heave, and the crockpot tilted forward. The viscous liquid poured forth and burned the grass when it hit the ground. Pulled by unseen forces, it followed and filled in the intricate pattern until the entire criss-crossing shape was full of churning, black liquid. Dallas felt the crockpot go suddenly and amazingly weightless as the final drop spilled free. The shift was so sudden he stumbled backward and landed on his rear.
The voices reached a crescendo as they formed an invisible tornado above the grave. Spinning with a violence that threatened to tear the whole of Wisconsin apart, they centered above the small can of Milwaukee’s Best and dove down, down, down.
The silence that followed was so complete that Dallas feared he’d gone deaf. Looking around in a panic, he was relieved to hear Kevin whimper and Stanley sob.
“Is it over?” Stanley begged. “P-please say it’s over.”
“SCARYUH,” Kevin added, huddled into a giant, furry ball.
Dallas looked to Lois. She knelt at the edge of the pattern, face expressionless as she watched the strange liquid bubble and churn.
“Almost,” she finally whispered. At the sound of her voice, the liquid suddenly sucked straight down into the dirt like a giant drop of water on a drought-starved field. Everyone held their breath and waited for whatever was supposed to come next.
When the hand pushed up from beneath the dirt, Lois gave an involuntary sob of relief. When the next hand pushed its way up, Dallas and Lois sobbed in unison. Soon, two forearms were free, followed by two elbows. The arms squirmed and reached and finally found the leverage to push a head free. A dark haired, widow’s peaked head with milky eyes and a mud covered goatee.
Randall’s reanimated corpse pushed itself inch by muddy inch from his grave. His torso cleared the ground, followed by methodically churning legs. His mouth stretched and a moan poured out, a solitary version of the wails that had rocked the countryside a few moments before.
“Shit!” Dallas yelled. “Zombie! Zombie! Get me a hockey stick! It’s a frickin’ Randall zombie!” Scrabbling to his feet, he readied himself to confront the new monster as it rose up and shuffled a step forward.
Kevin sobbed and made for the trees, his heavy feet thumping the ground. Stanley started screaming and ran back and forth, waving his hands in a panic.
“I don’t got a hockey stick! I don’t got a hockey stick,” he cried in a manic voice.
Dallas cursed as the zombie took another shambling step forward. “Fire poker, tent pole, whatever. Just get me something pointy!”
“No!” Lois yelled as she ran toward Dallas. “Get the beer can. Get Herb! We need to make it drink Herb!”
Dallas looked at her incredulously, but the look on her face convinced him that while she might be bat-shit crazy, she was one-hundred percent sincere. Jumping inside the pattern, he scooped up Herb in one hand and grabbed zombie-Randall’s neck with the other. Muddy, clawed fingers raked at his face, but Dallas ignored them and bent the head back. With a loud victory cry, he shoved the beer can up to the zombie’s mouth.
Randall tried to twist his head, moans and wails becoming more frantic, but Dallas held the can holding Herb firmly to Randall’s lips. A milky white smoke poured out and down the zombie’s throat. Suddenly, Randall went lax in Dallas’s grip. When a cold, muddy hand reached up and grabbed Dallas’s own, he yelped but refused to let go.
A suckling sound reached his ears. Randall was now actively drinking the smoke, guzzling it down with a series of hungry gulps. Dallas felt the cold flesh gripping his own shift its fingers around the beer can. As Dallas released Randall’s throat and stepped back, the zombie stood on its own, can of Milwaukee’s Best tipped up as yard after yard of milky smoke poured down into its mouth.
What happened next was the strangest thing Dallas thought a pair of looking balls could ever witness. Randall’s skin started to ripple, his arms started to vibrate, his legs started to twitch. His face stretched and contracted. The scraggly hairs of a goatee shriveled and wilted. In their place, a reddish five o’clock shadow spread like peach fuzz over rounding cheeks and a softening chin. Freckles popped out across a once sharp nose turned not-quite-bulbous, and the dark widow’s peak pulled back to a less severe hairline defined by brown hair turning a familiar, rusty red.
Herb Knudsen raised the empty can high above his head and smiled, his long fangs glinting in the light of the moon.
“Best beer in the whole world, and that’s a fact.”
Chapter 36
Dallas, Stanley, Lois, and Herb sat in Dallas’s living room, each one lost deep in their own thoughts. No
one spoke, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable quiet.
After Herb’s return, Lois had wrapped the reincarnated vampire up in a hug so fierce Herb complained about her trying to squeeze him to death right after he’d come back. When she finally released him, Stanley took her place. Blubbering sobs wracked his wiry frame as he clung to his friend. Herb patted him on the back affectionately, muttered nothings, and told Stanley everything was fine, just fine, and thanked him for being such a great friend.
Then it was Dallas’s turn. He knew he was supposed to say something, do something, but couldn’t for the life of him figure out what. So finally, he just stuck out a hand.
“Welcome back, buddy. I’m sorry about everything, but I’m damn glad you’re back.”
“Me, too,” Herb replied, grasping the offered hand. “Me, too.”
Now the four sat in a loose circle, Dallas and Stanley drinking a couple of beers while Herb and Lois drank in each other’s closeness.
When Dallas spoke, he asked the question everyone was thinking while trying equally hard to not think.
“So,” he started. “Now what?”
Herb looked up from Lois’s eyes. “I suppose maybe I could go back to work at Ronnie’s. You know, explain everything and see if I could pick up the night shift again.”
“The K-king Pins are back together!” Stanley yammered. “We’ll get back in the league and w-win the tourney again.” His smile magnified when Herb offered a hearty thumb’s up.
“We should go find Kevin, too,” Herb suggested. “I’ll bet he’d love bowling. Might be hard to find big enough shoes though.”
Dallas looked at Lois.
I reckon it’s my job to burst the bubble?
When Lois dropped her eyes and turned her head away, he knew the answer.
“Sorry, compadres. I’m not sure a happy ending is part of this particular massage. Herb, the sheriff still thinks you’re guilty of all those murders. Like it or not, they’re right, too. The first guy, definitely, and even if you could prove that Helen did the other girl and those frat boys in before frying herself, you’d be an accomplice at least.”
Pounding a fist on his knee, Dallas continued the litany of their misfortunes.
“Eventually, someone’s going to notice Fancy Dan’s gone missing. I think we covered our tracks, but even the smallest clue puts me squarely in the ‘Trappersville’s Most Wanted’ category. Local law enforcement aside, there are also a couple of folks in particular that are going to come looking for Randall. What do we do when the Society shows up?”
The quiet returned, but this time it wasn’t nearly as comfortable as before. When no one spoke, Dallas raised his voice again.
“I think Kevin had the right idea. We should run. All of us. We can head up to Michigan, or even Canada. Fake our deaths here, maybe, and get a fresh start with new identities.”
Stanley brightened. “Oh, yeah. Like in Murder, She Wrote, season eleven, episode fifteen. T-twice Dead. You know, when everyone thinks Max is dead?”
“Uh, sure. Yeah, I suppose just like that,” Dallas conceded, attempting to prevent Stanley from describing not just the entire episode, but also the ones before and after to provide context.
“So? What do you think? Pack tonight, tie up loose ends tomorrow, and hit the road?” he asked.
Lois shook her head. “Even if we did want to run, the sun rises in a couple of hours, and tomorrow night’s the full moon, remember? Herb can’t travel during the day, and how far could you get tomorrow night before you turn?”
Her good point did a pretty solid job of ruining his already not-so-great mood.
“Well? What’s plan B?” he asked, exasperated. “Ride out the weekend, hope the Society doesn’t pop in, and then blow this Popsicle stand in a few days? Risky, but maybe the better way to go.”
“Guys, we can just stay here. In Trappersville. No need to run, no need to hide. You’re forgetting an important detail. I,” Herb said, dramatically, “can whammy people.”
Lois lit up like a Christmas tree, and Stanley started to clap.
“Th-that’s right!” he crowed. “You can whammy ‘em. Ronnie and the sheriff and the guys at b-bowling and Rhonda and Jasper and P-pam and Stein and,”
“Okay, Stanley! We get it, already.” Dallas cut in. “Well, Herb? You think you got the juice to whammy half the town?”
Herb sat back with a thoughtful look on his eyes. “I dunno. I suppose, if I could get them in one or two at a time.”
“I can help with a spell,” Lois added. “Like, a temporary amnesia spell. We get a bunch of folks together, I cast the spell, and then Herb can work the crowd and whammy them.” Her eyes pleaded with Dallas. “It could work. We could stay, and everything could be okay again.”
Suddenly, Dallas found himself at the center of three sets of imploring eyes, all seeking his approval.
Well? What would the harm be? We’re just erasing a couple hundred folks’ memories and replacing them. That ain’t so bad, is it? Hell, I bet the government does it every day.
“Deal. Lois does the witchy stuff, Herb does the whammy stuff, and we stay. Trappersville is our home, after all. Even if we don’t all quite fit the mold, we still belong here as much as the next monster. That doesn’t solve the Society problem though. I mean, I guess there’s a chance we could catch Colton and Aletia off-guard and whammy them, too, but something tells me they won’t be that easy to take down.”
And do I really want to mind-bend Aletia? he wondered. The townsfolk were one thing, but messing with Tia’s memories gave Dallas a bad feeling.
“If they show up,” Lois started.
“When,” Dallas interjected.
“Fine. When they show up, I guess we’ll just have to deal,” she finished. “But tonight I don’t want to think about it. Let’s just let tonight be tonight. Okay?”
Pushing down his rising anxiety, Dallas raised his beer. “I’ll drink to that,” he toasted.
After Herb, Lois, and Stanley had all left, Dallas lay awake in bed for a long time. Tonight was tonight, but tomorrow he’d be a werewolf again. He just hoped that Colton and Aletia were taking the scenic route.
Chapter 37
“Buenos dias, stranger.”
Dallas stood in his boxer shorts, mouth agape.
“Aletia? What are you doing here?”
She slid up to him, placed one palm on his bare chest, and the other someplace much more intimate.
“Oh,” she pouted. “And here I thought you’d be happy to see me.” Kissing his still open mouth, she looked up into his wide eyes.
“You are happy to see me, aren’t you?”
Dallas tried to recover, failed miserably, and tried again.
“What? Oh, yeah. Yes! I just, I… well, I thought you guys were ‘squatch hunting up in Canada or something. I just wasn’t expecting you. Here. Today.”
On the morning of the night that I turn into a goddamn werewolf, he thought.
Aletia slid past him into his living room and settled into the couch.
“We were. Trail went cold, so we split up. Colton and I continued north, and Randall circled back in case we missed something. We thought he’d swing through town and check in with you. Guess not, huh?”
“Who?” Dallas fumbled. “Oh, right. Randall. Ah, no. Nope. Haven’t seen him since you guys left town. A, you know, month ago.”
Aletia rolled her eyes. “El es un idiota. We told him to come to you for help. Don’t feel bad though. He knows you’re a good hunter. He just takes a while to warm up to newbies. Especially when the newbie happens to be tall, dark, handsome, and pretty much naked,” she added with a wink.
Still standing in the open doorway and wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and a look bordering on panic, Dallas tried to think of what to say. When Aletia stood up, slipped off her jacket, pulled her tee-shirt over her head, and slid her skin-tight jeans down to the floor, he decided that saying things wasn’t really necessary at that exact moment in time. Closing the
door, he let Aletia tackle him.
Later, Dallas lay on his back with Aletia’s head pillowed on his outstretched arm. While her hand traced lazy circles on his stomach and her foot rubbed playfully against his, he watched the slow creep of a ray of sunlight across the far wall. Like a countdown timer to the end of the world, the sun tracked west across the sky with the full moon nipping at its heels.
“Mmmmm,” she moaned. “That’s more like it. Just promise me you don’t greet all the girls this way.”
“Just you, babe. Just you,” he sighed.
Her fingers stopped their listless doodles and she propped herself up on an elbow.
“Que pasa? You seem a little far away. Are you okay?” she asked, eyes searching his face.
Turning his head, he looked into her dark eyes. Breathing in the scent of her, basking in the warmth of her, he tried again to think of what he could do, what he could say, how he could explain any of the things that had happened the past month and have her not instantly shoot him with a silver bullet.
“You never told me why you joined the Society,” he finally said. “What made you want to do it?”
Aletia lay back on the mattress, situating the sheet across her waist and folding her hands carefully on her stomach. For a few moments she just lay there, eyes staring past the ceiling far into her past.
“You have a right to know, and I don’t want you thinking I’m hiding things from you. It’s just not that easy to talk about, you know? And I’m not entirely sure where to start.”
“Maybe at the beginning?” Dallas suggested softly.
“Maybe after breakfast,” she replied with a smile. “I’m starving.”
When Dallas stepped into Ronnie’s, he wasn’t expecting to see Lois. As the waitress and Aletia locked eyes, the air practically crackled with mutual hostility.
Dallas grit his teeth in frustration. He’d been certain Lois would be with Herb, not working.
Monsters in the Midwest (Book 2): Northwoods Wolfman Page 22
