“I don’t know, I just figured out how to do it yesterday. It sounds a little crazy but, I just… pulled the shadows around us so people won’t see us.” She stood on her tiptoes and looked over my shoulder. Even though we were in plain sight, nobody looked at us, not even when she waved a hand at them. My heart ached as I noticed the dark spots where her tears had soaked into my hoodie. She looked up at me, her eyes a little red and her makeup blurred. Surprise and wonder and something else I couldn’t quite place filled her eyes as a couple last tears rolled over her freckles.
“Come on raccoon eyes,” I said softly and smiled as I wiped her tears away with my thumb, “Fen’s waiting…” She didn’t move, except to lift her hand and rest it on my chest. At her touch, my heart thundered against my ribs like a rebellious beast. Time stilled for a moment as our eyes locked, until Fen’s voice whispered through my mind; Forbidden…
I closed my eyes and exhaled as I released the shadows and Loki shuddered when they broke. Only a couple people looked surprised as we stepped back into the flow of students.
I shook my head in amazement. People were so good at not seeing things they didn’t want to see. Of course, I’d been just like them a couple months ago.
For a blessed moment, the voices in the hall drowned out the ones in our heads and she and I both sighed, like a last drowning breath sucked in before the plunge.
It was going to be a long night…
We already planned on hanging out after school, but as we walked home Fen decided to call an “emergency sleepover” instead. An actual sleepover this time, no sleeping outside in a snowstorm required… at least not tonight. I parted ways with Fen in front of my house, and went inside to pack for the night. It was easy enough to talk Mom into letting me sleep over since she was taking Jacob out trick-or-treating anyway. I also conveniently “forgot” to mention that Loki would be there.
I dumped my backpack on my bed, and stuffed it with extra clothes, my toothbrush, and anything else I thought I’d need. I left the house and glanced around as I stepped down from the porch. No sign of my spectral raven, the street was mostly empty other than a few grade-schoolers already decked out in costumes crunching through the autumn leaves. The sky was clear and blue overhead with only a couple wispy clouds, but the sun neared the horizon and a feeling of foreboding set in.
I hoofed it down the street to Fen’s, and walked inside just as he finished calling Geri. I volunteered money for pizza and Fen and I cleaned up his small bedroom, stuffing books into whatever nooks and crannies we could find in his cluttered bookshelf. His book addiction could almost rival mine, though his books were almost all worn and yellow, with price tags from the used book store downtown. He took out some candles of various colors and set them around the room, and then lit a stick of incense as Geri arrived bearing a box wrapped in fabric, a stack of pizzas, and Loki with a black makeup box with a cartoon skull and crossbones on it. The twilight blue descended behind them through the doorway.
We wolfed down the pizza, while Loki and I slouched against Fen’s bed, too exhausted to do much else.
“So, why did you want me to bring ‘it’.” Geri asked and nodded toward the wrapped box.
“Well,” Fen took a sip of his root beer, “Something has been haunting Jimmy and Loki, and tonight we’re going to deal with it. And, since it’s Halloween, we’ll still to try squeeze a bit of fun out of it. After all…” he smirked and raised his glass in a toast, “this is the only night we get to take off our masks. Loki, would you do the honors?”
Loki retrieved her box and opened it, exposing a multitude of makeup; most of it colors I couldn’t imagine her wearing.
“Loki, I never would have taken you as one for pastel?” I teased and held up some sort of coral colored stick.
“Nor I you…” She winked and then looked at Fen. “So, him first?” She smirked and held up an ominous black pencil.
Fen nodded, and no one seemed to notice the confused look on my face. Loki scooted up close to me, “Close your eyes and try not to move them too much.”
“What’re you doing?” I stammered, and blushed when she cupped my cheek. My stomach tightened at her touch, her hand warm and smooth on my cheek.
“Making you wolfy, now stop twitching.” I was just thankful she didn’t say ‘making you a pretty, pretty princess’. I tried to relax, but I couldn’t prevent my eyelids from twitching as the pencil scraped over them.
She sighed; “I guess that’s as good as its gonna get…” and I opened my eyes as she moved on to Geri while he gnawed on a pizza crust. I excused myself to the bathroom to gauge the damage to my nonexistent masculinity.
I glanced into the mirror, afraid to see some sort of slutty drag-gone-wrong motif, but smiled instead. Dark lines peaked down toward my nose, and tapered out from the corners, giving the shape and impression of a wolf’s eyes. As I stared at the eyes in my reflection, my pupils contracted and my irises shifted to dark honey gold. My wolf reacted to my own reflection, and I felt his energy flow through me.
Movement in the mirror drew my eyes over my shoulder, but there was nothing there. Suddenly the noise swelled, like someone cranked up the volume on five different radio stations at once.
Understanding clicked. The shift! The mental shift pulled me deeper into the spirit world. My phantom limbs evanesced into ghostly existence one by one and my fur rose as the voices unsettled both my wolf and me.
“Jimmy...” A voice whispered through my mind and I flashed back to my dream, only this time I wasn’t watching. The taste of metal and grease in my mouth…
The wolf snarled inside me, freeing me from the image. The walls pressed in on me like a cage, and I lurched out of the small bathroom and reentered Fen’s bedroom like a rock into a pond. The anxious storm of energy boiling around me silenced them all in an instant.
“What happened?” Geri asked, his jade green eyes livid in their black surrounds.
I couldn’t get my voice to work; all I could do was pant as I glanced at Fen and his one finished eye. That yellow orb stared back at me and I glanced away as my stomach tightened. Must be the stress…
The dragon shifted inside me, and I winced.
I found my voice and tried to explain, then reeled as an intense shout floored me, nonsensical and wordless. I dropped halfway onto Fen’s bed, holding my head and whimpering. Fen told Loki to hurry, and she did so with stark precision.
“Geri?” Fen’s voice was cold.
“Yeah?”
“Get the board ready.”
Geri crossed the room and picked up the box he’d brought, and unwrapped the cloth. “Don’t want my parents to see what it is.” He smiled and shrugged, embarrassed. The fabric came clear and revealed an aged board game.
“Is that a real Ouija board?” I’d heard urban legends about them, but I didn’t think they were any more than gag gifts.
“Yup, this is the real deal. Picked it up at a comic book store in the Springs, only cost me, like, five bucks too.” He grinned.
“Fen, what are you doing?” I asked nervously; with all the stories of accidental demonic possession, I really didn’t want to think about what could happen with four werewolves noodling with it.
“We’re going to try and get this damn spirit off your ass.” His voice bore an edge of steel.
“I need the mirror to do my own eyes…” Loki muttered, but didn’t move toward the door.
It took a second for me to realize why, and I started to stand, “I’ll go—“
“No.” Fen cut me off, “Geri, you go with her. I’ll finish setting up.”
Jealousy and rejection surged through me, “Why? I don’t mind.”
Fen didn’t meet my eyes, “Because I don’t want my two most psychic packmates alone in a place where you already had an encounter. Geri’s a psychic null, like me, so he can anchor her.”
I didn’t like it, and my gut told me he wasn’t saying everything, but I sat back down anyway and fought down a growl. Geri and
Loki both glanced at me as they slipped out.
Dammit, I just wanted to help, why’d Fen have to shoot me down like that?
I flopped backward onto Fen’s bed and ground my teeth in sullen silence as I stared at the cutouts from numerous wolf calendars that wallpapered his room. Fen lit the candles one by one as I toyed with a pizza crust.
I noticed a picture of a smiling man holding a baby, unruly golden blonde hair spilled over his forehead as he grinned down at the bundle in his arms.
“Is this your dad?” I asked and Fen glanced to see what I was looking at.
“Yeah, that was the day I was born.”
“Do you ever get to see him?”
“Yeah, a few times a year. You can come along next time if you’d like.” He glanced at me with an uncertain smile and I realized how much favor he was showing me.
“Yeah, I’d like that.” I smiled back at him as he turned off the lights, and the room was lit only by flickering orange light. Shadows danced on the walls until Geri and Loki returned a minute later.
“Any problems?” Fen asked.
“No, nothing,” Loki replied as she shut the door and they sat down, each on a different side of the board. I allowed myself a brief smirk before I wiped my face and took my seat by the board.
“Okay; first try to clear your mind of unnecessary clutter. Don’t think about school, homework, or chores; nothing.” Fen said. I tried, but the noise wouldn’t leave me, so of course I kept thinking about the noise. Whispers nagged and burned my mind like a slow smoldering rot.
“Now, put your fingers on the piece. Barely touch it, and don’t push it, just let it move on its own.” It felt cool under my fingers, and dense like ivory or bone. It drifted a little in no particular direction. “I’ll ask the questions.” He almost whispered. “We ready?”
He glanced at each of us in turn as we nodded, “Okay… Is there a spirit with us now?” The curser hovered a moment and nothing happened. Fen asked again, more forcefully, and the candles flickered like a soft wind entered the room and it slid over to the ‘Yes’ graphic with a soft scratching sound.
“Okay, reset back to the center.” He swallowed. “We have questions, will you answer them?” Again, the pieced drifted to the ‘Yes’ graphic, and we re-centered it. “Will you answer them truthfully?” Yes. “Is the raven that landed on Jimmy’s shoulder a spirit of some kind?” Yes. “Does it have malicious intent toward us?” No. “Is the spirit in the room with us?” Yes.
“Are we speaking with it now?” Yes. The hair on the back of my neck bristled and a low growl rumbled in my chest as my wolf showed his displeasure. Fen glanced at me before he continued.
“Are you a nature spirit?” No. “Are you a psychic vampire?” No.
“Were you ever alive?” It paused a moment. Yes. “Are you aware that you are… no longer living?” Yes.
“Why are you haunting us?” Letter by letter, the curser spelled out ‘Unfinished Business’. “With us?” Yes.
Fen looked up at Loki and what little color was left in her face drained away. “What’s your name?” He asked like he didn’t really want to hear the answer.
The curser moved under our fingers. C. A name popped into my head, and I dismissed it. O. Shit, please no… R. My mind raced as Loki’s eyes grew wide; darkness fell over her candlelit face so thick I could smell her fear. Gently, as the curser moved toward the end of the alphabet, I pushed it just a little further and held it over the Y, then forced it back to center. The whispers erupted to screams inside my head. I clenched my eyes shut as a wave of pain swept over me. Now, if I could just get past the nausea…
I wiped my face blank to keep anything from showing as Fen looked around at each of us, his eyebrows furrowed with confusion. He looked back at me, “Did you know someone named ‘Cory’?”
“Um… Yeah; he was a kid I knew in Miami, he uh… used to pick on me in middle school.” I totally winged it, “I think he got suspended. Don’t know why he would be haunting me though; he was alive when we left a few years ago…” I scratched my head, how pathetic that that was the best I could come up with. “Maybe that’s why I encountered him in the bathroom, but Loki didn’t.” I was grasping at straws, but better they assume it was some specter from my past instead of the suspect in my mind.
“When did you live in Florida?” Geri asked.
“About three years ago, we lived just north of Miami Beach.”
Fen frowned, and then refocused on the board, “Are you trying to reach Jimmy?” Yes. “You say your intentions are not malicious, but the cost of your attention has hurt us all. Will you leave us alone?” 4 Now.
Wow, text message lingo on a Ouija board. As soon as we touched the ‘W’, the voices faded. Not all the way gone, but diminished into the background. Loki gasped and looked around.
“What is it?” Fen asked.
“The voices, they… faded!” She grinned at me, her eyes sparkling with relief. I couldn’t help but smile back, and she launched across the board and tackled me with a hug.
Levity flowed back into the evening like sensation returning to a numb limb, until the early hours of the morning when Fen’s mom came home. Her weary shadowed eyes told what kind of night she’d endured, and we moved back into Fen’s room without a word.
Since space was limited, we piled on Fen’s bed and watched An American Werewolf in London instead. We turned the lights off and passed around a bowl of popcorn. In the dark I mused without anyone noticing, and I zoned out through most of the movie.
I wanted to write off the Ouija board… Any of them could have influenced the curser, hell I did, but the name bothered me. I saw where the curser was headed, but that wasn’t possible… was it? God, nothing was ‘impossible’ anymore…
Chapter 9 – Secrets
I slept through most of the three-day weekend. With the close of the first quarter, I traded third period Gym for Myths and Legends. Best. Trade. Ever. Leaving gym behind meant that I was leaving Jack and Malcolm’s territory as well, and their best opportunity at retribution.
It didn’t come a moment too soon either; the football team got slaughtered at the state final and everyone who knew about my role in Jack’s fall from grace seemed to want my head on a spike. I expected the figurative glaring daggers part to turn into a more literal Julius Caesar event at any moment.
So naturally, as I walked into to my new Mythology classroom, I spotted Bo near the windows. Apparently we shared an interest in Mythology… dandy… I looked around the room, and picked a chair in the corner as far from Bo as I could manage. I had just worked myself into a good glower when Loki dashed in just before the bell rang. We grinned when we saw each other, and I risked relocating closer to Bo so I could steal the seat next to her.
Of course, the irony of two werewolves attending a class on myths and legends was enough to keep a stupid grin on our faces all period.
The injuries from my spat with Jack and Malcolm left only shiny pale lines of scar tissue behind. November broke over our little slice of the world, and the weather grew too miserable for us to spend lunch outside. We tried the cafeteria, but we had to constantly censor ourselves and yell just to be heard across the table. After about a week of that, I had an epiphany and asked Mrs. Ashcroft if we could eat lunch in the art room. She said she usually ate in the teacher’s lounge anyway, so Fen or I just had to stay behind to let the others in.
Things went well until my report card arrived. My gut twisted when Mom handed me the gray carbon paper envelope. I folded the edges and opened it; Mom leaned closer to try and read past my shoulder, and then jumped when I screamed in her ear. Mrs. Ashcroft gave me an A, no surprise there, but I also managed to worm out an A- in English despite my distraction during the midterm.
The thing that killed me was the B in P.E. I grabbed Mom and crushed her with a hug as I laughed, and she congratulated me. I felt like I could dance, despite the ominous C in Math. John asked to see it at dinner, and then launched into another lecture t
hat I tuned out with a practiced ear. It was like he didn’t even see the As and just fixated on the C.
“But this is good right?” I prodded. John sighed, and my smile wilted as I waited for him to shoot me down.
“Honey…” Mom muttered, and touched John’s arm.
“Just watch those grades; if they drop again, you’ll lose your guitar.” He was quiet for a moment while he chewed a bite of spaghetti, “So, I finally got word on the bid for the Victory church contract today.”
“And—?” Mom paused from eating.
“And, we got it!” He grinned, while Mom jumped up and hugged him.
I stared at my plate and kept eating.
Clouds rolled in the next day as Fen and I walked downtown to the library, a big masonry building just a few blocks off Main Street. Geri went hunting with his dad for the weekend, and Loki wasn’t interested, so it was just the two bibliophiles. The roads were wet from the gently falling sleet, and reflected the glow of the streetlights as we sloshed across the cold asphalt and up the steps. The musty odor of aging patrons and even older paper greeted us as I pushed the dark wooden door open and shook off what water I could onto the soggy carpet.
Fen seemed to know the place like the back of his hand, and dragged me around everywhere while he rambled about his favorite books. After checking in at the library’s card-catalog computer next to a middle-aged man who smelled like rotten fruit and patchouli, Fen made a beeline for a secluded section in the back corner of the library. He pulled a book off the shelf as if he’d memorized its location, and handed it to me. I read the cover, The Book of Werewolves by Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould. The spine had been fixed at least twice that I could tell; the corners tattered and rounded off by the years.
“Be careful with this one, it’s seen more than its share.”
“No shit… how old is it?” I flipped to the title page and looked for the print date.
“Well the good Reverend wrote it in the late nineteenth century, but this particular copy’s about a decade old. This should help you understand where we come from better. A lot of our history, accurate or not, is in here. Most of the stories I’ve told you were from here. As well as some of the reasons why we don’t advertise what we are; folks who do that don’t tend to live very long.”
Walking Wolf Road (Wolf Road Chronicles Book 1) Page 12
