Andy Deane

by The Sticks (epub)

  The whole time she was talking I was giving her that "you're crazy" look, but in my head I was replaying scenes from some of my own past relationships where I'd turned into a pretty big bastard over time. I never meant for things to go that way, it was just something in my biology that I couldn't fight…or didn't try hard enough to fight. But hearing Jess saying all of this made me more determined to do right by her. Just seeing her standing beside me in that red dress I knew I'd have to be one dumb asshole to let her get away. So I grabbed her by the waist and planted a big kiss on her. She pulled away laughing and jogged through the front door and out to the car. I watched her ass the whole way and it made me think that maybe there was a God after all.

  We listened to The Ramones as we drove toward Nate's place, and we were both singing along at the top of our lungs the whole way. The breeze coming through the car felt damned good and the sky was blue as far as I could see. Considering I'd been dealing with some pretty fucked up stuff at the time, I was feeling great. Fate had delivered this wonderful woman into my life, and it was looking like I might have a new best friend on top of it.

  Nate's place was pristine. The over-manicured lawn reminded me of a mini golf course. I half expected some zit-faced teenager to hand me a tiny pencil and a scorecard before making me pick out a brightly-colored ball from a bucket. I couldn't find a single crack in the paint on the house, and there wasn't one stray branch on the boxwoods lining the sides of the yard. The place looked more like a movie set than a real home, and I wondered if I tried to walk around the house if I'd run smack into a wall with Nate's house painted on it.

  Jess and I stepped out onto the grey paved driveway and made sure not to step on the lawn. I had this feeling that one step into the yard and I'd mess something up. The white ranch style home had a powder blue door with matching shutters. It was like the place had been beamed up to the Enterprise from Walnut Hill and plopped down in the sticks. I was reminded of how Hansel and Gretel must have felt when they first stumbled on the candy house in the middle of the woods. I hoped Natalie wouldn't turn out to be a wicked witch.

  The blue door opened and Nate came out smiling with his wife at his side. Natalie wasn't exactly beautiful, but there was definitely something attractive about her. I think the best way to describe her would be "hot librarian." She had a nice, slim figure and a smile that stretched ear to ear and said welcome without a word.

  Their kids came darting outside and ran past the couple laughing and screaming the entire way with the dog smiling like an idiot right behind them. You'd have thought a clown had set their house on fire for all the noise. Susan and James did a couple of figure eights between Jess and I before zooming off around the house toward the back yard, their laughter echoing behind them.

  "Energetic little bastards, huh?" was the next thing out of my mouth, and I immediately wished I'd gone with a different descriptive word to describe the fruit of Nate and Natalie's loins. I looked to Natalie to see if I'd offended her. Hell, I'd been kicked out of one house not too long before; why not keep my streak alive…

  Natalie surprised me by answering, "Yeah, you won't find a man on fire that moves as fast as those two. It's all I can do to keep up with the little fuckers, but I do love 'em. Nate and I got lucky with James and Susan."

  I was at a loss for words. Natalie had one-upped me with an F-bomb, and it had sounded way out of place in her June Cleaver voice. It got me thinking that Natalie, much like Nate, might not be anything like I'd assumed. I smiled and nodded, liking her more and more by the second, and then followed her and Nate inside.

  I was nervous about invading the interior of the place, because I knew there'd be trouble if it was half as well maintained as the lawn. I have this knack for tracking mortar, mud and dog shit onto carpeting. I'm also pretty damned good at spilling drinks onto new furniture. Call it a gift from God if you want. That's why my house didn't have anything in it that was built later than 1980, and most everything I owned lived at the Salvation Army before I adopted it. Poverty's the other reason I had so much old, second-hand stuff. But beat-up furniture was never an issue, because most of the friends I'd made over the course of my life had been poor as well. The few friends of mine who weren't broke fell into the highly-esteemed middle class.

  I was surprised to find that Nate and Natalie had done a good job of making their place inviting. The walls were simple beige, and the carpet was a lighter shade of the same color. They had a big, soft looking sectional couch that Jess and I sank into after Nate told us to get comfortable. Damned thing was nearly as cozy as mine, and I hadn't thought that was possible.

  Natalie came in from the kitchen with four cups of coffee on a tray with a bowl of sugar and a cup of milk.

  "Be careful, it's hot," said Natalie as she sat down beside her husband." She turned to Jess and I and said, "Nate managed to burn the fuck out of his mouth last week even after I warned him." She threw Nate a playful smile and he laughed and nodded in agreement.

  Another F-bomb. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

  "I told you not to embarrass me in front of my friends, woman," said Nate, still laughing.

  "Woman? You keep that shit up and I'll cut you off for good."

  We all laughed and sat around talking for some twenty minutes before Nate stood up and left the room to start dinner. Natalie turned on the TV and flipped three channels before turning it off and rolling her eyes.

  "They couldn't do a much worse job with the programming. It's like they hired a fucking retard to write the shows, you know?" said Natalie.

  One thing was becoming crystal clear. Natalie had a bad case of the potty mouth. She sounded like the sailor that had taught all the other sailors how to swear. She could curse about as well as Mike Tyson could punch during his reign as the heavyweight champ. Funny thing is, her bad language went a long way to making me feel more at home.

  The smell of something amazing hit me in the face, so I stood to trace it to the source. The trail led me to the backyard where Nate was grilling steaks. In my world there's nothing better than a grilled steak, and that includes burgers, ribs and women. Well, maybe not women.

  We all sat at a patio table in the shade eating steaks and getting more familiar with one another. I had this great feeling in my gut about the friends I'd made since Alicia's disappearance. It made me feel a little guilty, but at the same time I knew that I deserved to have decent folks around me as much as the next guy. It was just too bad that Jeff, king of the monsters, lord of the turtleneck, had come along with the package like a cancer chewing at my happiness.

  No sooner than Jeff's name crossed my mind did James emerge from the woods and into the yard with Spike close behind him.

  "Where's your sister?" asked Nate.

  "I don't know," replied James in an annoyed and somewhat whiney tone. "We were playing hide and seek and I couldn't find her and she wouldn't come out even though I told her I quit a whole bunch of times. She's stupid."

  "Where was Susan when you last saw her?" asked Nate with worry biting at the edge of his words.

  "We were down the path. But she wanted to hide first so I said okay and I don't know which way she went and I got tired of looking for her and so I said I quit and I came home because she's not playing right."

  "It's okay. Why don't you go inside and get cleaned up while I go find her."

  Nate walked to the edge of the trees and started calling Susan's name out loud. He did this about ten times before walking back over to us.

  "I better go find her, guys. It's starting to get dark and I don't want her getting lost," said Nate.

  My stomach sank like the Titanic as my brain raced to convince the rest of me that everything was alright. I wanted to believe that Susan was playing a trick on us, hiding behind a tree some twenty feet away with a hand over her mouth so we wouldn't hear her giggling as we called out for her. But I knew that Jeff was on the loose and about as pissed off as a rattlesnake with diarrhea. I also figured there was no limit to
what he'd do to hurt me.

  I prayed that Jeff's hatred wouldn't be taken out on the Smiths, who wouldn't know Jeff from Boris Karloff. If Jeff did end up harming one of them, there would be no denying that I was the catalyst for their pain, and I didn't know if I'd be able to live with that.

  "I'll join you," I said to Nate, "just let me run to the car and grab my jacket first."

  He nodded and started calling Susan's name into the forest again, this time in a stern voice. I paused half a second hoping that she'd appear to no avail. Natalie didn't seem nervous at all, as she was probably used to having to herd the kids inside at night. Jess and I met eyes and I could tell that she was feeling just as jumpy as I was. I walked around the edge of the house and then sprinted to the car.

  I popped the trunk and grabbed an old grey jacket that had been there for a couple of months, and then headed for my true destination, the glove box. I had stashed my.44 there before getting out of the car, figuring it would have made one hell of a bad first impression on Natalie. Well, now that I was heading into the dark woods with Nate, I knew that the.44 would work miracles for my confidence. It felt like the spirit of Charles Bronson was watching my back.

  When I got back around the house, I nodded to Nate to let him know I was ready, and we headed toward the darkening woods. I could hear Jess and Natalie talking behind us, most of the conversation coming out of Natalie's mouth.

  Nate pointed to his right and said, "Could be she's down by the pond. It's a short trip that way. The kids love it down there and I've had to go after them on more than a few occasions when it was getting late. I'll go check down there. You follow the trail to your left to the field. It's another one of their hang-outs. I'm sure one of us will find her." He seemed nervous. I think he sensed something was off, maybe from me.

  I started walking and then got up to a jog when Nate was out of view. If it weren't so dark under the canopy of trees I would've been running wide open. As it was, I was stumbling like one of the bimbos in Friday the 13th, and came close to biting the dirt more than once.

  I moved the.44 from the inside pocket of my jacket to the outside pocket where I kept my hand tight on the butt. It took me about five minutes of walking down the small path before I came to my destination. Darkness was setting in fast.

  I saw the clearing some twenty yards ahead through the tree trunks and thought I heard the sound of a child whimpering coming from that direction. I stopped to listen, scared to death of what lay before me. My hand squeezed the cold grip of the.44 in my pocket until it turned warm, and I swallowed hard before stepping forward. I wasn't too excited about finding out what was waiting for me beyond the tree line, but I forced myself on until I saw a massive human form silhouetted in the yellow moonlight. I knew immediately that it was that oversized werewolf bastard, Jeff. The guy was shoveling chaos into my life like coal into the belly of a steamboat.

  I was thinking how great it'd be to lodge a bullet into his brain. First the back of his head would explode. Then his corpse would fall to the ground twitching and jerking, to eventually lie still. Then I'd see the obligatory trail of blood run from his mouth, like in the movies. You never can be sure that someone's dead in a film until you see some mouth blood. But after that crimson trail runs between the victims' lips you can print up the toe tag and call it a day's work.

  "Hey boy," said Jeff's shadow, "I told you, you done fucked with the wrong guy. And that's the understatement of the year."

  I could hear Susan crying quietly from where Jeff was standing but couldn't make her out in the darkness. All I could make out was Jeff's bulky shadow standing in knee high grass thirty yards away in the center of the clearing. Then the shadow split into two parts, one large and one only a couple of feet taller than the swaying grass. It reminded me of an insect breaking free of its cocoon. Jeff was holding Susan out so that I'd know for sure the predicament I was in. It seemed that every time I thought I couldn't hate this asshole another ounce he'd go and surprise me.

  "You see this, boy?" called Jeff. "Yeah, you see it. I'm holding all the damn cards here, so just do what I say and I'll send this piece of shit back home to mommy and daddy all safe and sound." Susan started crying loudly and I could hear Jeff saying something to her before she grew quiet again.

  "You decide you want to be a hero tonight and I'll rip her little head off and ship it to you next week," snarled Jeff.

  "What do?"

  "You and me are sharing a secret, boy, but you don't even know the half of it. You don't know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the goddamned woods covered in blood with no idea how you got there! You don't know what it's like to try and lead a normal life all day knowing that you might turn into a monster when the sun goes down! Fuck!"

  "Jeff, calm down, man. Let's talk about this. Maybe I can help you," I said in the most relaxed voice I could muster.

  "Don't you call me that! Jeff's dying! Jeff's a thing of the past! He's the guy you met at the party who was trying so hard to fit in but was too damned full of misery to make it stick. I'm the monster now, or I will be soon if I'm not. The spells are getting longer every time and the monster's thoughts are starting to take over mine. Even during the day sometimes. I had an urge to bite the goddamned mailman last week! What in the hell am I supposed to do about that? Huh?"

  I just stood there quietly trying to figure out how I was going to get Susan away from the madman. Jeff was obviously losing his mind, which was the last thing I needed. Sane werewolves are hard enough to deal with, but this one was turning out to be a real handful.

  "Hey Brian, you heard from Alicia lately?" He laughed at his own question and waited for me to answer.

  I had to grind my teeth to keep quiet after that one. My grip on the gun tightened and my palm was wet with sweat. I considered trying to take the bastard out of this world right then and there, but he had pulled Susan close to him again and I didn't want to risk hurting her or worse. I could still hear her crying softly in fear.

  "Let me tell you, that Alicia was a real firecracker. I met her long before you even knew who she was. I ain't never had a girl like that pay me two cents of attention. Thought I'd hit the fucking jackpot. We were only together a few months when I got bit by this big fucking thing while I was out hunting behind my house. Damn thing got me by the neck and just about ripped my throat out. Lucky for me, I had the safety off on my rifle and I plugged it before it could do me in. Damn thing ran off like a cat with its ass on fire. Died a ways off from the house. I found it on the ground the next day. Ugly son of a bitch was big as a bear and a whole lot meaner. But my neck healed up a lot too quick and soon after I started having blackouts. I can always tell when I'm about to go out because the scars on my neck start to hurt. I'd wake up miles from home naked as a shaved dog wondering what the fuck was going on. Once I came to in a ditch beside the road next to a deer carcass that looked to have been smacked dead by a Mack truck. Bad part was I was covered in the damned thing's blood. Worse than that, I could taste the blood in my mouth."

  "So what happened to Alicia? Is she alive?" I asked as calmly as possible. The suspense was killing me, and having the puzzle I'd been staring at for the past month coming together before my eyes was as much of a relief as it was terrifying.

  "That ain't what we're here to talk about. Seems to me you got more immediate business to deal with right now."

  "So what do you want me to do?"

  "Just step on over here and take what's coming to ya, boy."

  "You planning on killing me, Jeff? That what you have in mind?" I did my best to give my voice an air of confidence.

  This was the first time I'd ever been given the option to die to save another life, and it was tearing me in two. I'd love to say that it was a no-brainer, and that I knew right then and there that I was going to make the self-sacrifice, but that would be a big fat lie. My body was playing tug of war with my brain trying to convince me to start running in the opposite direction, and let me tell you, instinct is one
hell of a mean bear to wrestle with. Lucky for me, I got my dad's willpower and my mother's heart, because I managed to stand my ground for the sake of the kid.

  "Kill you? Oh hell no, boy, you got me all wrong. I got something much worse than that in mind for you. Just a little bite on the arm for you and then you and the wench can go about your merry way."

  Jeff laughed and my jaw just about hit my shoes. The bastard wanted to turn me into what he was. The weight of this revelation was staggering, and my stomach started doing gymnastic tricks. My mind filled with pity for Alicia as I imagined her going through whatever hell she'd been through.

  "Come on now, boy. I ain't the most patient fella you ever met, so start walking. You wouldn't want the pretty girl to get hurt now would you?"

  My blood was hotter than fried shit as I listened to Jeff ranting from the field. I wondered if Nate would hear any of this, and I hoped that he wouldn't. I knew that if he showed up his daughter was as good as dead.

  I kept my hands in my jacket pockets as I stepped onto the field from the cover of trees, my right hand like a vice on the gun. The ground beneath my feet went from soft to hard and uneven as I moved toward my enemy.

  I didn't have a plan, and didn't have too good an idea of just what I'd be planning for anyway. The facts were pretty plain; a man-monster was holding my friend's daughter hostage so he could get me close enough to him to give me a bad case of the werewolf. That'd leave me with a lifetime of pain and misery, and possibly fleas, which I was in no mood for. My mission was just as black and white; save the girl, don't get bitten or scratched, and hopefully send Jeff's brains flying all over the ground as an early Christmas bonus for myself.