David Witten thought about that now. What better creature to inspire the writing of folklore than the centuries old Eurasian wolf. It had inspired the fairytales of France, Norway, and Germany. Native American stories were brim-full of wolf-lore, and Puritan America—with its perfect fear of the unnatural—had nursed a vengeful terror for the men they suspected could shift to beast.
This particular bit of lore carried the strength to fuel hundreds of years of stories and fears, pressing its way into mainstream America through both the terrifying and the absurd. It was this particular bit of mythology that America couldn’t seem to get enough of. Man to beast or beast to man. Either way, it was a theme rich for discussion.
Witten finished printing out his lesson plans and then picked up his phone. “Hello, cherie,” he said. “Yes, the classes are going well. It’s nice to have interaction with humans instead of just old books.” After that there was a long pause while his sister spoke. When she was done, he hesitated before responding, and finally in a quiet voice he said, “Yes, cherie, they have arrived. Nine of them.”
When he hung up the phone, he was not so sure his niece would still be coming for Christmas.
Chapter 24
Ella and Sam stood by The Property. They’d spent the whole hour of Witten’s folklore class discussing wolf lore and had stopped at The Property as they walked home. Ella pressed her face into the bars of the front gate, like a convict planning her escape. “I wish we could go in there,” she said.
“Why?” Sam said.
“I wish we could see them.”
“Who?” Sam asked.
“The wolves,” Ella said, laughing. “I’d been hoping they would do some community access thing, where we could come in and observe them getting used to their new home.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, “I don’t think community access is really Napper’s thing.”
“Mmm,” Ella said, staring deeply into the woods.
Sam thought about the padlocked gate. He thought about Zinnie and her “back door.” Sure, she had dementia, but maybe that was her confused way of telling him there was another opening, a safe way into The Property.
“You wanna try to get in?” Sam asked.
Ella pulled back from the gate and looked at Sam suspiciously. “How?” Ella asked. “You going to climb over that?”
“Not if I can help it.” He smiled.
Ella cocked an eyebrow at him, waiting.
“Come on,” he said, and started to run.
She followed, jumping over the ditch and running along the shoulder of the road. He was impressed with how well Ella could keep up. She ran like a gazelle—all limbs and air, like she didn’t care if anyone else was watching.
“There’s this old shack I found one day when I got onto The Property,” he said, panting as he ran. “It’s pretty cool, and…well, you’ll just have to see.”
They came around to the trailer park, then to the south gate. All four padlocks were tightly secured. “It’s up there,” Sam said, pointing through the trees.
“How’d you get in there?” Ella asked.
“Once,” Sam started, not wanting to explain too much. “One day it was open.”
“Weird,” Ella said.
“It was.” Sam wished he could remember how it had been open. He’d been so scared that he’d run just like a rabbit—seeing only the straight ahead, the moment, the escape. “Anyway, supposedly there’s some other entrance near that shack that you can go through, although I’ve never seen it.”
He inched through his neighbors’ back yards—the ones that were closest to The Property.
“Back door,” Sam mumbled to himself. What did she mean? He looked for another gate and when he didn’t find one, he inspected the fence, hoping for a missing pole or something. Most of the leaves were turning and some had dropped, but the forest was still dense enough that he couldn’t see the shack through the trees. When he thought he was in the right area, he walked back and forth along the fence, touching it.
He expected to turn and see Ella looking at him like he was crazy, but she seemed just as intrigued as he was. She followed several paces after him, touching each wrought iron bar.
“This metal fence must have cost a fortune to put up,” she said.
“Probably. Even the metal as scrap is worth $100/ton.”
“That’s strange,” Ella said.
“I know.”
“No,” she said. “There’s a little path. And a cat staring at us.”
And there was.
Gabby sat in the woods, looking thin and mischievous. Right at their feet was the path. The strange thing was that the path, well-worn and cat-sized, went right under the bars as though the center bar hadn’t been there—as though the cat had just swung the bottom two feet of iron open like a bendable doggy door.
Sam touched each bar at chest level. They seemed solid, but the path the cat had made definitely plowed straight through one. Sam knocked on that pole. Thick iron and not moving. Then he kneeled down in the muddy path and looked through the fence at the cat.
“Gabby,” Sam cooed softly. “Here Gabby.”
She ignored him and cleaned a paw—taking special care to get between the toes.
“Gabby,” he said, and tapped on the bottom of the bar to get her attention. The sound did not tap back at him like cast iron should. It didn’t make any noise at all.
Ella dropped down beside him. “You’re kidding,” she whispered, touching the bar. She pushed on the bottom half of the vertical bar and it bent. “It’s candy,” she said.
That was impossible. Sam had taken every shop class ever available. He’d tinkered and fixed things in the trailer and had always been his dad’s go-to guy when their old beater van broke down. There was no way anyone could make candy look like cast iron.
He licked his finger and placed it against the bar. It was sticky. Ella did the same and then stuck her finger in her mouth.
“Candy,” she said. “Licorice—super gross.” She looked at him. “So what now? We eat our way in?”
“No,” Sam said, pressing on the bar.
It was impossible, yet there it was—a bar with the bottom three feet made of candy, candy that was so expertly connected to the iron top that no one would ever know it was different unless they noticed an animal push through.
For the second time on the way to the woman’s house, Sam thought he might be dreaming. He and Ella bent the gummy candy post out of their way and crawled through. Sam had never been on drugs, but he was pretty sure this was how it would feel.
They stood, dusted off, and walked to the house. No smoke spiraled out of the chimney even though it was chilly. Sam tapped on the door. No one answered.
Outside the cat mewed loudly. Sam knocked again and then noticed that one of the windows was broken when it hadn’t been before. He knocked louder as Ella walked around the short periphery of the house.
“Sam,” she said, as his knocking got even louder. “I’m not sure anyone lives here.”
The comment annoyed him. He pinched his lips shut, and—remembering his granny wandering helpless and lost around her own house—he gently pushed open the door.
They both stepped in and Ella said, “See,” while Sam stood there like a stone.
Several windows were broken, age-old soot stained the wall above the fireplace, and leaves that had blown through the holes were scattered on the floor. The house was completely empty. No furniture, no fire, no cookies, no life. Sam turned several times in the center of the floor as though dancing a slow song with himself.
“Cool,” Ella said, wandering into the abandoned kitchen.
The cat had followed them in and was rubbing her neck on the corners of walls, marking them with her scent.
“No,” Sam said, but couldn’t say more.
Ella came back out and looked at him. “You okay?”
“No,” he repeated, looking away.
“It’s a cool, old shack,” Ella said. “How’d you f
ind it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s empty.” Sam walked to the corner of the room. The fireplace was filled with cobwebs. The floor was coated with dust and dirt. It wasn’t possible.
“Yeah,” Ella said, “and has been for a while.”
“No,” Sam said for the third time. “Last time I was here it wasn’t empty. An old woman lived here. There was a fire and furniture and she had made cookies and tea. We talked.”
“That’s not possible,” Ella said, drawing a deep line through the dust on the window ledge with her finger.
“I know,” Sam said.
They sat in Sam’s trailer and ate Saltine crackers. Well, Ella ate. Sam just sat and stared at the wall.
“Maybe,” Ella said, “maybe you just imagined it. Maybe in your panic during the storm you, like, had some kind of hallucination or something.”
“Maybe,” Sam muttered. That didn’t much explain the other little chats with his imaginary friend. Zinnie had told him to look for a back door.
And there was the cat Gabby, the orange tabby. Suddenly Sam bolted up. “Ella,” he said. “That cat—did it have a tail?”
“Nope,” she said. “Cut clean off. I kind of liked the little guy.”
“Girl,” Sam said.
It hadn’t had a tail the first time he’d seen it either. He remembered it now, but most of the other times, he was pretty sure she’d had a tail. He could picture the tail hanging down off the window sill, and then later curled around her body as she’d lain in the suitcase. The suitcase. With the missing picture. Had he somehow imagined the inscription too? Sam leaned his head into his arms on the table. “Oh man,” he said. “Oh man oh man oh man.”
“Hey,” Ella said softly. “It’s okay. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
Yeah, Sam thought, There had to be, right? But even as he thought it, he saw his Granny Calhoun rocking back and forth in her nursing home bed, moaning about things she swore were there that weren’t.
Ella finished her crackers and sat back in the old chair that Sam’s dad had found by their neighbor’s trash.
“Now this is a home,” she said, looking at the pictures and old furniture and stained rug.
“Ella,” Sam said, ignoring his junky house. “The post—it was candy, right?”
“Crazily enough, yes,” she said, tipping back in the chair. “I wonder who put it there? Probably someone who likes to go hide out or make out or sleep in that shack.”
“But it was licorice?” Sam said. “Thick, black licorice.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And you’ll tell me that tomorrow if I ask?”
“Yesss,” she said slowly.
“Okay,” Sam said, pressing the sides of his head like his dad did when a migraine was coming on. “Because tomorrow I’m going to ask you.”
But tomorrow he didn’t.
By the next morning, his head was burning so badly that he threw up twice before the sun even came up. His dad sat by his bed, urging him to take tiny sips of ginger ale. The soda was a precious luxury, but all Sam wanted was to lie still and never move again. He slept in and out of the next several days, nightmares about the Silver Shooter and Zinnie’s empty house conjoining and clashing through his consciousness, until at last they faded, misty and distant.
Just when he thought he would live and die on a diet of flat ginger ale, his fever broke. Thursday morning he woke up starving, sent his father out the door, and polished off the rest of the ginger ale and a cold piece of toast his father had left for him. But that wasn’t going to cut it.
He closed his eyes, thinking about food for the first time in days. What he really wanted was a hamburger—juicy, thick, tender. It was a strange craving, but thinking about it made Sam smile. He took a quick shower, grabbed a stack of change and put on his tennis shoes. He wouldn’t be running today, but being out of the dank trailer sounded really nice. Some Mexican guy sold tamales and hamburgers from a food cart just south of the trailer park. He’d go there.
The cool air felt good on Sam’s face and neck. And it made the warm burger even better. The juices dripped onto his fingers as he walked, and he stopped when he got to a foot path that meandered outside the east edge of The Property.
Sam licked his fingers, savoring every greasy drop. His dad was a vegetarian and he was always telling Sam not to eat meat. Beans were cheap and, supposedly, there was a family history of heart disease.
Sam didn’t care. He was sixteen and he was hungry. Especially since they’d moved here. A small glob of cheese and two lettuce bits were stuck to the wrapper. Sam used his finger to peel them off and pop them in his mouth. He might have licked off the wrapper itself if some homeless guy hadn’t wandered into his view. The man pushed a cart full of clothes and Coke cans. It looked like he hadn’t had enough to eat for a long time—he was scrawny and scraggly and his chest was covered in patches of greasy hair. If Sam had had any burger left, he would have offered it to the guy.
Sam had known more than one homeless person in his life. Which meant he knew to be nice, but wary. Sometimes they were strung out, sometimes they were not all there. This guy was one or the other or both. He looked at Sam with bloodshot eyes that were covered by lids so wrinkled they sagged down, almost covering the rusty irises.
Sam tipped his head at the guy and the homeless man took a step closer, staring into Sam’s face. Technically, Sam had been homeless himself—because living in your van in New Mexico doesn’t count if you tell a social worker. But, to be fair, he’d never really felt homeless. He had his dad, some kind of roof over his head, and—well—his sanity. Lots of homeless guys didn’t.
Sam took a step back.
“You smell,” the old man said, the ‘s’ lisping since he was missing all his front teeth.
Sam had to resist the urge to laugh out loud. Instead, he just smiled and said, “Do I?”
“That’s right,” the homeless guy said. “I can smell you. They can’t yet. You’re too young and they’re not close enough. But they will. Just wait.”
“Okay,” Sam said, scooting backwards, preparing to walk around the man. “Well, you have a good day.”
“You have to listen to him,” the homeless man said. “Your old man. Otherwise, they’ll smell you.”
“Okay,” Sam said, walking cautiously around the shopping cart. “I’ll do that. I’ll listen to the old man.”
The homeless man snorted as though offended and walked off, picking up two cans from the gutter just a few feet away.
Poor guy, Sam thought. He wandered around the periphery of The Property, wanting to move his limbs and avoid another run-in with the homeless guy. But he overestimated his energy or underestimated the distance. By the time he came around to the area near the mental institution, all he wanted to do was sit down and rest. But he didn’t.
So far in his new city, the people most willing to talk to him were a crazy cat lady who may or may not exist, and a homeless man with no teeth who told him he smelled.
No teeth.
Sam thought about the latest news story of the Silver Shooter. He always took the teeth. Nothing else. Sam shook off the chill. There was no way that homeless guy was wandering from city to city killing rich people. Still, as Sam walked past the mental institution, his legs moved faster and faster until he broke into a run. He might have been tired and weak, but at this time of day, the institution cast a long shadow.
Charles Napper did not touch the stone. Indeed, he could not. That was part of what was so pesty about it.
He wore thick leather gloves whenever he handled it and even then, he usually felt ill afterwards. His nephew had collapsed after handing the stone over and had taken a full three days to recover.
In this way, it would have been nice to have the good doctor still available. But he’d become a bit bulky to carry around—rather like an overstuffed suitcase when you’re travelling—convenient until the weight becomes too much. At that point, it’s freeing to unload some of the baggage
, especially if you have the things you most need.
And Napper did.
Well, at least one of them. The other he’d moved within his range. The veterinarian Tomas thought they should test her as well—just to be sure. What if she’d been adopted? Or was a stepchild from the father? It seemed unlikely considering the fact that her face was the picture of her mother’s.
But it didn’t seem worth the risk. When you could only change a thing every hundred years, there was no point in betting on the wrong horse.
Of course, he didn’t want to damage the child so much she couldn’t be used. The incident with her mother had been necessary to obtain the stone, but unfortunate. It would have been nice to have two heirs still available. Now he had only one, and he needed her whole for the solstice.
But as Tomas had pointed out, all he needed was a small sample of blood. And that, he reasoned, could be procured at the next changing. He wouldn’t do it himself—he’d gotten too old for such business. But he knew those who would help, and gladly.
Chapter 25
The corn maze stretched out over two hundred acres, bumping up against a little creek and occasionally turning its way around a dark stand of trees.
Supposedly, the corn maze had made the major news channels twice for losing someone inside for over twenty-four hours. The average time to make it through was four hours. And it wasn’t just a maze. It was a haunted maze. And a treasure hunt. So, while getting lost for long enough that you might miss your next meal, you could also get chased by zombies, vampires, bats and—naturally—children of the corn.
It was easy to get Sam on board.
Because somewhere along the haunted labyrinth was a small token—a literal silver bullet. If you found this, it could be cashed in for a hundred dollars. The girl who sat next to Ella in folklore told her that years would go by with no one finding it. Which made sense. With the maze and the darkness and the zombies and all.
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