Shapeshifters Anonymous

by J. A. Konrath

  She began to scream at him in a high-pitched native tongue that sounded a lot like “Blaaa-laaaa-laaaaa-leeee-laaaa-blaaa!” Romi matched her, yipping right along. Weston took it for about ten seconds, and then pushed past, heading for his apartment. The chorus followed him inside.

  Though it was early, Weston yawned, then yawned again. He hung his keys on a hook next to the door, switched the TV on to one setting above MUTE, and sat on the sofa. There was dog hair on the carpet, which made no sense, because Weston had no dog.

  But the crazy old lady had a dog.

  Could she be getting in my apartment somehow?

  Panicked, Weston did a quick tour, looking for anything missing or out of place. He came up empty, but to his shame he realized he was picking up everything smaller than a match book and sticking it in his pockets. He took these items and placed them in a junk drawer in the kitchen.

  For some reason, this act drained him of his last drop of energy, and the sun had barely even gone down. He sat back down on the couch, switched to the SciFi Channel, and closed his eyes for just a few seconds.

  A ringing sound woke Weston up. He was naked on the kitchen floor, the sun streaming in through the windows. Weston automatically smacked his lips, checking to see if he could taste anything odd. Then he got to his knees and reached for the phone on the counter.

  “Mr. Smith? This is Dr. Waggoner’s office calling. Please hold for the doctor.”

  Weston scratched his chest, listening to Neil Diamond singing to a chair who apparently didn’t hear him.

  “Weston? This is Dr. Waggoner. How did you sleep last night?”

  “Not well,” he said, noting his nude body.

  “Remember to keep your appointment with the psychiatrist today. And also, it wouldn’t hurt to see a dentist as well. We got the lab report from your stool sample. It contained three molars.”

  “Teeth?”

  “Yes. Your teeth. There was also a shoelace, and a silver cross on a necklace. The lab is sending the cross over to my office later, in case you’d like to pick it up. It will be cleaned first, of course

  “Doctor, I…”

  Dr. Waggoner hung up before Weston could finish, “…don’t own a silver cross.”

  He got to his feet and padded over to the bathroom, opening wide for the mirror. Weston wasn’t missing any molars. Each of his teeth was in its proper place.

  What the hell is going on?

  His abdomen grumbled. Weston sat on the toilet and rubbed his temples, trying to make sense of any of this. How could he have swallowed teeth, or a silver cross? Why did he keep waking up naked? What was going on?

  He didn’t want to look, but before he flushed he forced himself. And gasped.

  At the bottom of the toilet bowl were two distinct, unmistakable objects: A gold hoop earring, and a silver tag that said ROMI.

  When he stopped running around in a blind panic (which took the good part of twenty minutes) Weston forced himself to the computer and Googled “eating+disorder+neighbor.” This led him to sites about anorexia, which certainly wasn’t his problem. Next he tried “cannibal” and got hits for bad Italian horror movies and death metal rock bands. “Sleep+eating+people” produced articles about sleeping pills, and “I ate human beings” led to a YouTube video of some drunk Klan member who kept saying “I hate human beings” and apparently posted the video so wasted he misspelled the title of his own rant.

  Various other word combination produced pages about Hannibal Lector, Alfred Packer, Sawney Bean, and ultimately Hansel and Gretel.

  While on the site about fairy tales, Weston clicked from the old witch who wanted to eat children to the big bad wolf who wanted to eat children. This took him to a site about the history of lycanthropy, which featured several old paintings of wolf people running off with screaming babies in their mouths. Soon Weston was looking up “clinical lycanthropy” which was a real psychiatric term that pretty much meant “batshit crazy.”

  Could I really be crazy? he thought. Do I subconsciously think I’m a werewolf?

  A quick click on a lunar calendar confirmed Weston’s fears: The only time he’d had blackouts and found weird things in his poop was during the full moon.

  Weston sat back, slack-jawed. He wondered if he should call someone. His parents? A doctor? The cops?

  He searched his soul for remorse for eating his mean neighbor and her nasty dog, but couldn’t find any.

  But he must have killed other, nicer people. Right?

  Weston slipped on some shorts and attacked the Internet again, looking through back issues of the local newspaper for accounts of murders or disappearances. He found five.

  The first was from yesterday. A hand and partial skeleton found near the River Walk, a popular woodsy trail in Naperville. The prints on the hand belonged to Leon Corledo. His death was attributed to the Naperville Ripper.

  How could I have missed hearing about that? Weston wondered. Too much work, probably. And the fact that the news depressed him, so he avoided it. Not to mention the fact that every time he turned on his TV, his recently digested neighbor banged.

  Weston read on, found that Mr. Corledo was a registered sex offender. No big loss there. Weston followed the links to articles about the Ripper’s other known victims. They included:

  Waldemar Daminsky, 66, a local businessman with known ties to Polish organized crime.

  Tony Rivers, 17, who was decapitated after robbing a liquor store and beating the owner unconscious.

  Ginger Fitzgerald, who had recently lost custody of her daughter for locking her in a closet for a week without food or water.

  And Marty Coslaw, a lawyer.

  Weston felt zero guilt, and breathed a bit easier. But how many criminals and lawyers did Naperville have? Eventually, he’d run out of scumbags to eat. Then what?

  He tried the search term “help for real lycanthropy” and, incredibly, got a hit. A single hit, for a website called Shapeshifters Anonymous.

  Weston went to the site, and found it to be a home for werewolf jokes. After suffering through a spate of awful puns (Where do werewolves go on vacation? A Howliday Inn!) he had about given up when he noticed a tiny hotlink at the bottom of the page that read, “Real therianthropes click here.”

  He knew from his lycanthropy reading that therianthropes were humans who morphed into animals. He clicked.

  The page took him to another site, which had a black background and only five large cryptic words on it.

  THERIANTHROPES MUST VIEW THE SOURCE

  Weston stared, wondering what it meant. Which source? The source of their affliction? The source of their food?

  On a whim, he Googled “view the source” and came up with a bunch of websites about HTML programming. Then he got it.

  View the webpage source.

  He went back to the werewolf page, opened his Internet Explorer toolbar, and under the PAGE menu clicked VIEW SOURCE. The HTML and Javascript appeared in a new window. Weston read through the computer language gobbledygook until he came to this:

  &ei=xY0_R6--CZXcigGGoPmBCA"+g}return true};window.gbar={};(function(){;var g=window.gbar,a,f,h;functionm(b,e,d){b.display=b.display=="block"?"none":"block";b.left=e+"px";b.top=d+"px"}g.tg=function(b){real therianthropes call 1-800-209-7219}

  Weston grabbed his phone and dialed with trembling hands.

  “Therianthrope hotline, Zela speaking, may I help you?”

  “I… uh… is this for real?”

  “Are you a therianthrope, sir?”

  “I think so. Is this really a werewolf hotline?”

  “Is that what you turn into, sir? A wolf?”

  “I have no idea. I black out beforehand, can’t remember anything.”

  “Why do you think you’re a therianthrope, sir?”

  “I’m finding, um, things, in my, uh, toilet.”

  “Things like bone fragments, jewelry, eyeglasses, bits of clothing, coins, watches, and keys?”

  “How did you know?”

  �
�I’m a therianthrope myself, sir. Can I ask where you currently reside?”

  “Naperville. Illinois.”

  “So I’m assuming you just realized you’re the Naperville Ripper we’ve been hearing about?”

  “They were all bad people,” Weston said quickly. “I’m not sure about the lawyer, but I can make assumptions.”

  “We’ve been following the news. He was a defense attorney, defended child molesters. When given a choice, therianthropes usually prefer the wicked over the good. The creatures inside us find evil tastier.”

  “That’s, uh, good to know. So… what are you, exactly? Are you a werewolf too?”

  “I’m a weresquirrel, sir.”

  “When the full moon rises, you turn into a squirrel?”

  “Yes.”

  “A squirrel with buck teeth with a big fluffy tail?

  “That’s the one.”

  Weston wasn’t sure if he was supposed to laugh or not.

  “Do you shrink? Or stay full size?”

  “Full size.”

  “And you eat people?”

  “No, sir. Not all therianthropes are carnivores.”

  “So, if you don’t mind me asking, what do you do when you change?”

  “I horde nuts.”

  Weston chose his next words carefully.

  “Are they… evil nuts?”

  “Sir, I’m going to put your sarcasm down as you being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, so I’ll ignore it. Are you interested in getting help for your therianthropy?”

  “Yes, please. Thank you, Zela.”

  “Let me check the meeting schedule. Okay, today, at noon, there’s an SA meeting at St. Lucian’s church in Schaumburg, approximately ten miles northwest of you. The secret word to gain entry is Talbot.”

  “What’s SA?”

  “Shapeshifters Anonymous.”

  “So I just go there, and they’ll let me join them?”

  “If you give the secret word. Yes.”

  “Do I have to bring anything?”

  “Donuts are always nice.”

  “Donuts. I could bring donuts. Will you be there tonight, Zela? I can bring some with peanuts on them.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you sir, but I live in New Jersey. And I also think you’re kind of a schmuck. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

  “No. Thanks, Zela.”

  “Thanks for calling the hotline.”

  Weston hung up, ending what was easily the most surreal conversation he ever had in his life. An hour ago, he’d been a normal guy with some odd bowel movements. Now, he was 99% sure he was some sort of therianthrope.

  But what kind?

  He went back to the sofa, picked up some of the hair. Long, grayish, fluffy.

  Was he a weresheep?

  No. He ate people. Had to be a carnivore of some sort.

  So what gray animals ate other animals?

  Wolves, obviously. Coyotes. Dogs. Cats. Were elephants carnivores?

  The Internet told him they were herbivores, which was a relief. But then Weston thought of another gray carnivore.

  Rats.

  Weston didn’t want to be a wererat. He hated rats. Hording nuts was one thing. Swimming in the sewers, eating garbage and feces and dead animals, that was awful. He held his armpit up to his face and sniffed, seeing if he could detect any sort of sewage smell. It seemed okay. Then he checked the time and saw he had two hours to get to the SA meeting. So he hopped in the shower, dressed, and got on his way.

  It had snowed during the night, making Naperville seem even more Winter-Wonderlandish. The cold felt good on Weston’s bare face. He attributed the slight fever to his condition: Google told him wolves had an average body temperature of 100.5.

  His first stop was Dr. Waggoner’s, to pick up the silver cross. Weston didn’t want to keep it for himself, but it was evidence of a murder, so it was best to get rid of it.

  The nurse handed it to him in an envelope.

  “Are you going to put it on?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

  “Not right now.”

  But when he stepped outside, he did open the envelope to take a look. It was, indeed, silver. But all of the movies, all the books, said silver killed werewolves. Weston took a deep breath and dumped it into his palm. It didn’t burn his skin. Or was that only with vampires?

  He was bringing it up to his face, ready to touch it to his tongue, when he remembered where it had been. Besides, it had already passed through his system without killing him. Obviously the legends were wrong.

  He tucked the cross into his coat pocket and walked into town, toward the bakery. On his way, he passed a man dressed as Santa Claus, ringing a bell for some charity. Thinking of the cross, Weston approached and dropped it in the steel collection pot.

  “Beware,” Santa muttered, voice low and sinister.

  Weston wasn’t sure he heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

  “There’s a killer on the loose in Naperville.” Weston could smell the NyQuil on Santa’s breath. “Not an ordinary killer, either. Only comes out when the moon is full.”

  “Uh, thanks for the warning.”

  Weston began to walk away, but Santa’s hand reached out and snatched his wrist, pinching like a lobster claw.

  “Naughty boys get what they deserve,” Santa intoned.

  “Okay…”

  Santa’s eyes suddenly lit up, burning with some internal fire.

  “They will be torn limb-from-limb! Their heads severed from their unholy bodies! Burned to ash on sacred ground! BURNED! BURRRRRRRRRNED!!!!!”

  Weston pulled free, then walked briskly to the other side of the street, badly shaken. What kind of charity allowed cough syrup crazed psychotics out in public? Wasn’t there some kind of screening process for volunteers?

  He glanced once over his shoulder, and Psycho Santa was talking on a cell phone, still pointing at him like Donald Sutherland at the end of the first Invasion of the Bodysnatchers remake. It gave Weston the chills.

  The uneasy feeling stayed with him all the way up to Russoff’s Bakery, where he bought a dozen assorted donuts and a black coffee. When he stepped back onto the street, Weston considered taking another route home so he wouldn’t have to see Looney Claus again, then chided himself for being afraid. After all, he was a werecreature. What did he have to fear? If that Santa was really a bad person, chances were good that Weston’s inner therianthrope would eat him tonight during the full moon. Weston allowed himself a small smile at the thought of seeing a white beard in his toilet tomorrow morning.

  So he steeled himself, and walked the regular path home. But when he passed the spot where Psycho Santa had been, he saw the volunteer was no longer there. Crazy Kringle had packed up his charity pot and left.

  Weston walked to his apartment parking lot, hopped into his car, spent a minute programming his GPS, and headed for the suburb of Schaumburg. During the drive, he tried to get his mind around the events of the past twenty-four hours. But he wasn’t able to focus. He kept seeing Santa’s face. Kept hearing his threats. Once, in the rearview mirror, he swore he saw someone several car lengths behind him in a pointy red hat.

  “You’re being paranoid,” he said to himself, refusing to drink any more coffee.

  Just the same, he drove a little faster.

  Ten minutes later he was at St. Lucian’s, an unassuming Catholic church with a 1970’s vibe to the architecture. It was orange with a black shingle roof, shaped like an upside down V. Two large stained glass windows flanked the double entry doors, and a statue of someone, possibly Jesus, perched atop the steeple. There were only six cars in the parking lot, which Weston appreciated because he wasn’t good at remembering names, and no one would be short a donut. He parked behind an SUV and took a deep breath to calm his nerves. It was 10:46.

  “Here goes nothing.”

  Bakery goods in hand, he approached the double doors and let himself into St. Lucian’s.

  The church was dark, quiet. It
smelled of scented candles, many of which were burning on a stand next to a charity box. Weston looked down the aisle, to the altar, seeing no one. Then he caught a handwritten sign taped to the back of a pew that read, “SA MEETING IN BASEMENT.”

  He did a 360, opened a storage closet, then a confessional booth, before finding the door to the stairs next to a baptism font. The concrete staircase wasn’t lit, but at the bottom he heard voices. Weston descended, the temperature getting warmer the lower he went. At the bottom he walked past a large furnace, down a short hall, and over to a meeting room.