The Leaping

by Tom Fletcher

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘Being human,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it.’

  ‘I’m not scared of dying.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘But other people dying? As a human, you can become vulnerable to such things.’

  ‘I’m not human.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re not fully one of them though, either.’ He gestures towards a small group of large, sleek wolves that gaze serenely up into the wintry sky. My breath catches at their tranquillity and quiet power. If I look around, there are others like them.

  ‘What? Why not?’

  ‘There is a deal you have to make,’ Balthazar says. ‘You have to give something up. Otherwise you are just a human being struggling with something you can’t really control. You can turn into a wolf, but afterwards you will still be human, with a human consciousness, with all of the guilt and the worry about what you’ve done. The conflict between the two states can ruin people, Francis, if they’re not strong enough.’ As he finishes speaking, he looks mournfully down at a clump of snow that’s just dropped from his waist. ‘Bloody campfires,’ he says.

  ‘Why would anybody not make the deal?’

  ‘Giving up your soul has this negative stigma,’ Balthazar says. ‘I don’t understand it myself.’

  ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘It means real nihilism,’ Balthazar says. ‘It means really, truly, not giving a fuck about anything except your own life. It means no chance, ever, of doing anything good for the world ever again.’

  I open my mouth to reply, but don’t.

  ‘Like I say,’ Balthazar says, ‘I don’t understand it myself.’

  The choice is one that I never expected to be so clear. All around me the dancing and the flaming slows down; the music and the yelling fades. I am surprised, and pleased, that really there is no choice to make at all. And excited. Genuinely excited for the first time in years.

  ‘What if I do want to be fully human again?’ I ask. ‘How do you go back?’

  He creaks over and whispers in my ear. The sound of ice cracking. As he leans back, I see a look on his face that could almost be pride. I nod. First, though, I need to find Jennifer.

  The fires are behind me. My shadow is cast forward, a long thin thing. Dark against the orange flickering light that illuminates the ground. I am facing the mountain. I try to taste the air. Looking for her scent. Jennifer. I need to find her. She is the thing that brought me here. Put me here. Led me here. Without her, none of this means a thing.

  And then. Her scent drifts across from the air above. A thin, floating strand of spiderweb. It is accompanied by another. A strong odour of rotten teeth. Instantly I am fully alive. Every sense jumps up, thirsty for more. I take a step forward. Then another. I move away from the dancing, fighting, feasting. I move upwards. Towards Jennifer. And the rotten teeth. I bend to touch the soil with the palms of my hands. I start to run. The mountain starts to speed past. Black earth. White snow. Points of light. Above. Blurring.

  JACK

  We were resting, trying again to formulate some kind of plan, when sharp bones sprouted from the old man’s wrists, with smaller wiggling bones on the end of them, all roped in red flesh like seaweed. They were replacing the mangled, flattened hands that hung on to the ends of his arms by skin alone, and he started lashing out, flapping them about, evidently convinced that he had regenerated sufficiently to fight back. But Graham ploughed the axe handle into his face and he fell over.

  The old man squirmed and twisted as Graham tried to hold him down, and I jumped in and struggled with him too. Graham was kneeling on his arms, forcing his head down by holding the axe handle lengthways across his neck and I was trying to hold the legs. Taylor was standing somewhere behind us, shivering and talking to himself.

  ‘Where’s Erin?’ he was saying. ‘Where’s Erin?’

  The old man snarled and hissed, and his mouth started to stretch open. Graham lifted the axe from the man’s – or the thing’s – neck and smashed it down again, with a strength and savagery that should have been shocking but wasn’t, it was perfectly OK, and we all heard the bones crack. Although the thing kept moving, its head hung limply to one side, so that when it tried to stand it couldn’t see straight, and fell over again.

  ‘Right,’ Graham said. He hefted the axe and chopped at the broken neck until the head came away and both the head and the body carried on changing until they were entirely, pitifully, human.

  ‘Graham,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘He couldn’t help us any more.’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s what it’s all about,’ I said.

  ‘Where’s Taylor?’ Graham asked.

  I looked around but couldn’t see him.

  ‘He’s gone,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Graham wiped his forehead. ‘I know that. But where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  But I could hear low voices, I thought, a conversation, just above the noise from the monsters by the lake, above the screaming and laughing and music. I crept forward, towards the low rise behind which the voices were coming from. I could see steam rising from beyond it, the physical presence of voices in the cold, and I ducked down so that I could approach without being silhouetted against the sky. One of the voices sounded like Taylor’s, but the other – I didn’t know. I couldn’t even be sure that there was another voice, or if it was Taylor talking to himself. There were definitely questions followed by answers, responses, although I couldn’t make out the words. Perhaps in fact they were the same voice, the sad voice of a person torn in two by confusion, pure and simple, calling out for help on the fellside and only being answered by himself, broken and useless. Holding on to the ground because it’s the only solid, unchanging thing.

  I didn’t know what I was thinking. We were all coming apart in our own ways.

  I crept forward a little further, lying on the ground, until I reached the top of the low rise. I peered over and saw two figures – Taylor standing, head bowed, before another, taller man, who was dressed in a soft black tricorne hat and a black cape that reached the ground. He was accompanied by two huge dogs that faded in and out of the shadows around his cloak.

  ‘Dead?’ Taylor said.

  ‘Eaten alive,’ the other man said. ‘And she’s here to tell you so herself. I wouldn’t expect you to just take the word of a stranger like me on a night like this. Here, Erin.’

  Taylor looked up and shuddered and seemed to dissolve onto his knees. ‘Erin?’ he said. ‘Erin?’

  He seemed to be talking to a point in space between himself and the stranger, but I couldn’t see anybody there.

  ‘Erin?’ he said. ‘Oh, God.’ He stood up and opened his arms as if he was holding somebody to his wounded chest. ‘What happened?’ he said. ‘What happened to you?’ He was holding this empty space, kissing it, talking to it, asking it questions. I wanted to jump up and shout out – ‘There’s nobody there, Taylor, there’s nobody there. Nothing.’

  All the while, the stranger looked on, his face in shadow.

  ‘Francis?’ Taylor said. ‘Francis?’

  There was a silence, and more and more I was convinced that Taylor was delirious, hypothermic.

  Taylor stared at the space that he seemed to think Erin was occupying, and his eyes were bright, like those of a lunatic drunk, and there was a furious energy to his taut, trembling frame. ‘Francis did this to you?’ he asked.

  There was something occurring to me, slowly, and as I realised it fully I drove my face into the earth. Why hadn’t I got it before? Eaten alive, the stranger said, Erin was eaten alive, and Taylor’s words – Francis did this to you? I bit at the cold, wet soil. Why hadn’t I seen it? That Francis’ wounds had been inflicted by one of those horrors? That we had left Erin alone with him?

  I looked up again, and Taylor was somehow going wild without moving. I could see it in every line of his body, and every one of his edges was shaking, his big dark eyes tu
rning mostly white.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I swear it. I’m yours. Whatever. Just give it to me.’

  ‘Gladly,’ the stranger said, then stepped forward and put his hand round Taylor’s throat. He held it there for a moment, and then let go.

  ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘C’mere.’ He gave Taylor a big hug and slapped his back. ‘It’ll take a while before it’s completely gone. It’s got to untangle itself from all of your physical bits. But once it has, you’ll feel better than ever before. Come and find me later and we’ll have a drink.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Taylor said.

  ‘Well,’ the stranger said, and breathed deeply. ‘You’ll be seeing me later one way or another. You’re one of us now.’ Then he turned and strode away and Taylor was left, apparently alone.

  ‘Erin,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have left you. We didn’t know. We had no idea.’

  I had an idea, I thought – however hard I had denied it, on some level I knew. I pressed my face down into the ground, rubbing it and grubbing it and crying and biting, covering it in mud.

  Looking back up I saw Taylor stretch his arms out, his hands shaped as if they were holding Erin’s face, and his thumbs moved like he was wiping away her tears. ‘Can you stay?’ he said. ‘I don’t understand. How does it work?’

  I watched him as he received his response. I couldn’t hear anything, but Taylor seemed to, something that caused him to start crying: thick silent sobs that made his chest swell until it looked like it might explode. He lifted his hands away from where Erin might have been, and brought them to his face to cover his eyes. I wondered what the stranger had meant when he’d said, ‘You’re one of us now.’ A werewolf? Was that what he’d meant?

  Taylor was standing alone in a hollow, a small dent in the body of the fell and he bared his teeth, pulling his lips back like he was in intense pain. His teeth shone bright white in the starlight. He let his arms fall to his side and dropped his head and jerked backwards suddenly, as if touched.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’ He looked back up and his eyes moved slowly as if tracking movement. He started to walk towards me.

  I scrambled to my feet.

  ‘Jack,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Taylor.’ I stood up. ‘Are you OK? We didn’t know where you were. I thought that I could hear you talking to somebody.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I just had to pee.’

  ‘You weren’t talking to anybody?’ I asked.

  He seemed much more together than he had before the encounter, but at the same time everything about him was strained, tired. Maybe I looked the same. I didn’t know.

  ‘Like I said,’ he said. ‘I just had to pee.’ He carried on walking past me, back towards where Graham sat with the dead man. Graham didn’t even look up at his approach. I followed, slowly, and the three of us congregated and looked down at the old man’s head, face down in the snow.

  We were approaching a drystone wall which ran across our path, heading up the mountain in one direction and down the mountain in the other. We stopped as we reached it.

  ‘We’ll head downhill now,’ I said.

  We started to descend. The wall narrowed into a line in the lowering distance, a mark made on the land for us to follow.

  It had been I didn’t know how long, and I started to feel like my kneecaps were coming loose with the downhill strain, when Graham held his hand up.

  ‘A voice,’ he said. He pointed up ahead. ‘Behind the wall.’

  We stopped walking and then I could hear it too.

  ‘Jenny,’ it said. ‘Fuck!’

  The voice was wet, hairy, rising in pitch, approaching orgasm, nearby, close. It was accompanied by a series of moans, definitely her, I knew it, but somehow obscured, muffled, like she was trying to shout out for help. We looked at each other then ran towards it. We heard them on the other side of the drystone wall and we scrambled over, tumbling rocks and stones behind us, and there they were, we’d found her. At last. She was on her front, her face and arms splayed forward amongst snow and grass and soil and dead bracken. Her dress was around her waist and her wings were hanging to one side.

  Something inhuman – one of them – was on top of her, thrusting, hips popping jerkily, snoutish face raised in some grimace. Its body was cracking back and forth, as if every bone was breaking and reforming. It was talking in that deep, snarly voice. ‘Jenny,’ it said. ‘Jenny. For so long have I wanted you. For so long have I wanted you. A nice little – a nice little – oh, God and Jesus. Fuck.’

  It didn’t seem to have noticed us.

  She was pinned against the ground, unable to defend herself against the attacker.

  Everything rose up in me at once. I jumped forward and kicked at the side of the thing’s head, hard, and the impact made a dull sound, but it didn’t seem to have any effect other than causing it to turn its face in my direction. Despite the distorted, misshapen features, I recognised it.

  Kenny.

  FRANCIS

  Rotten teeth. And sounds. Wolf grunts. Cat shrieks. Wet rhythm. Bones. Scratching stones. Reaching inside. Penetrative growth. Voices rising in pleasure.

  She is there. I see her. Rotten-toothed Kenny on top. Fucking. Her smile. She smiles. Moans. Shoulder scabs. Bloody bite. Kenny speaks. Jennifer stretches. Her edges flicker with hair. I crouch, to pounce. To kill. But – Jack! He jumps in and kicks Kenny in the head. Kenny stops and looks and smiles. I pause. Jack stares down at him, unaware of my approach.

  I howl and leap.

  JACK

  Kenny just smiled a slow smile at me, that terrifying mouth of his making more sense on that face. His dripping tongue rolled around uneven rows of long, yellow teeth. I stopped all movement, my eyes drawn to the pit of his mouth, as I grappled with the illusion that it – his mouth – was big enough to swallow me whole.

  He smiled and drove his body down in one last, powerful thrust, and Jennifer squirmed beneath him. I brought my foot back in order to kick him again when something – another werewolf – hurled itself towards me out of the dark at my side, and everything was moving at the speed of continents, gracefully. Devastatingly slowly. Heavy with inevitability. Cities were sprouting and withering towards the other side of the world and this thing, this wolf, hung in mid-air, beautiful. A huge, noble, ferocious wolf, with four paws the size of my head raised, their claws fully extended, each claw nearly as long as my finger, with dark blue-grey fur along its flanks and a pale underbelly. Its face was a wolf’s face, but it was elevated by a transcendental anger and its tail swept across the sky behind it, wiping the world away, and its teeth were bright and hopeful points of light against this dark night, and its mouth was a regal, snarling hole, like a window to the outside.

  Its eyes were his.

  It was Francis.

  And I knew then that I wanted to be what he was.

  FRANCIS

  Falling towards them all. I am falling towards Jack. He looks up at me. Sad eyes. I roar.

  Pain. Something rips open my side. I am thrown sideways. Away from Jack. On to my back. The pain tears through me. I flail around. I am thinking again. Conscious. Thin and weak. I am bleeding from a wound in my side. Taylor is on the ground next to me. It was he who did this. I roll over. I try to ignore the pain so that I can turn back. But he jumps on my back and flattens me.

  ‘You killed her,’ he says.

  ‘I didn’t know I was doing it,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to be the way I am. You must understand. I’m not well. I’m imagining things.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Then you and me,’ I say. ‘We’re the same.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I know what I’m doing. Everything I’m doing, every change I make, I do it through choice.’ He is talking into my ear. His mouth pressed against me. ‘You killed her, Francis,’ he says. There are tears in his voice. ‘You killed her.‘

  ‘I didn’t know I was doing it,’ I say. ‘There are lots of things that I don’
t understand. Taylor. There’s something I need to tell you.’

  Taylor pulls his claws across my face. He rips my cheek so that it hangs off. I feel cold air on my tongue. My naked teeth.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything you need to tell me,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing left that I need to know. The only thing left that I want to do is kill you. And then all I want to do is turn into an animal, Francis, an animal like you. Like you always were. And forget it all. Forget everything.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten anything,’ I say. ‘Taylor, get the fuck off me. Get the fuck off me. Get off!’ I spring up. I twist round. I knock him off my back. I grab him and dig my fingers into his arms. Literally into his arms, forcing them beneath the skin. He screams.

  We are both too strong.

  ‘Taylor,’ I say. ‘Jennifer is one of us too.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But we both need to know. So whichever of us survives can tell Jack. Taylor. We have to tell Jack how to turn her back. There is a way. Do you understand me? If you kill me, you have to tell Jack how to save her. You might not care, Taylor, but do it for him. One of us is going to die now. Once I let you up. One of us is going to die.’