by David Lubar
We had a test. I sat and did the problems that were written on the board, getting lost in the safe universe of mathematics. Most of the time I didn’t even need paper to work out the math. The answers were there for me. I wasn’t showing off—it was just something I was good at.
“Norman?”
I looked up. Mr. Phermat, the math teacher, was standing at my desk, staring down at me.
“Yes?”
“Do you need to go to the nurse?” he asked.
“Pardon me?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“You’ve been scratching all afternoon,” he said. “I thought you might have poison ivy or something.”
I looked at myself. In one hand, I held my unused pencil. The other hand was scratching my chest. As I glanced down, I noticed something else that I hoped my teacher hadn’t seen—my shirt was filled with small rips and slashes. They weren’t obvious from a distance, but I’m sure they hadn’t been there before.
“I’m fine,” I said, looking back up and trying to draw his attention away from my hand. “It’s just a nervous habit, I guess. I was noticing an interesting pattern in the numbers from the first five problems. Look, see that thirty-seven in the first one. Now, the second problem has a seventy-four, which, of course, is twice thirty-seven. Now, that’s just a coincidence, and I’m sure there was nothing intentional on your part when you constructed the test, though we do have to consider the role of the subconscious. However, and this is quite amazing, if you look at the numbers in the third problem—”
“Very nice, Norman,” Mr. Phermat said, backing away from my desk. “Better get on with your work, though.” He walked up the aisle. As he reached his desk, he looked back at me and said, “Something’s different.… I know, you got a haircut.”
He turned away before I could say anything. I put one hand on the desk and tried to make sure it stayed there while I wrote with the other. Even so, I caught myself scratching more than once before the end of the class.
What was happening? I looked at my shirt. It was actually shredded. I remembered spilling some chemicals on it last week while doing an experiment. That must be it—the chemicals had weakened the cloth.
That explanation satisfied me. It’s always best to go with the simplest solution. At least, it satisfied me for a while. But after what happened in gym class, I began to realize that my life had taken a turn down a path where there were no simple solutions.
Ten
TO THE MAT
I won’t say that I hate gym class. I understand the importance of exercise and physical fitness. But surely exercise could be more pleasant than they make it in school. This month, it was especially unpleasant. We were wrestling. There are few things I find less delightful than being folded up into a human pretzel by one of my sweaty classmates. My neck was not designed to be wedged behind my knees; my ankle was not meant to be pressed into my ear.
Imagine my surprise when, barely three seconds after starting my bout against Ernest Gabrielli, I found myself pinning him to the ground. I had no idea how I had done it. From the expression on his face, Ernest was also clueless. Mr. Bersicker, the gym teacher, who was standing there with his whistle dangling from his neck—apparently after the whistle had fallen from his still-open mouth—didn’t seem to know what had happened, either.
I remember that he had blown the whistle for us to start the match. Then Ernest, who was about my size but a lot stronger, had stepped forward to grapple. And I had met him. In an instant, we’d ended up on the ground. I’d pinned him flat.
For a moment, I didn’t move. I was almost trembling with the rush of excitement that came from victory. I stood reluctantly, backed away, and let my prey rise. Prey? Where did that thought come from? I mean, I let my opponent up.
I stumbled off the mat and joined the rest of the class on the floor. Nobody said anything. I’d bet nobody really believed what they had just seen. I almost didn’t believe it myself. If you drop a penny a billion times, it might land on its edge once or twice. That’s about how likely it was that I could pin someone, especially that quickly. I could whip anyone in the school on any kind of test, as long as it involved nothing more physical than writing answers on paper. But in the real world, the world of strength and power, I was usually a spectator or victim.
As we were leaving the gym at the end of class, Mr. Bersicker looked at me and asked, “New haircut?”
I shook my head. In the locker room, when I looked for my glasses, it hit me—I hadn’t been wearing them. That’s why Splat and everyone else thought I’d looked different. They knew something had changed, but hadn’t figured out what it was. I hadn’t really noticed, either. I’d left the house without my glasses, and the world wasn’t blurry.
Things had changed. I could see in dim light, and I could hear much better than before. What else? “Be rational,” I said out loud. “Be a scientist.”
Kids around me stared, but I ignored them and grabbed a notebook. I started listing the symptoms—the running, the climbing, the hunger, the dreams, and on and on. Then I listed as many possible causes as I could for each symptom.
Only one cause appeared in every single column.
Around me, the others had left the locker room, but I stayed and stared at the list. There it was—right in front of my eyes. I could no longer hide from the reality that was slapping me in the face with one strange incident after another. Until now, I had forced myself to ignore the evidence. I had been a bad scientist, refusing to accept the facts because they led to a conclusion I didn’t want to reach. But there was only one answer that fit.
I was becoming a werewolf.
I couldn’t hide from the truth any longer. I had to deal with the situation. And I didn’t think I had a lot of time. From what I’d seen or read, a werewolf was strongest during the full moon. It was then that he became entirely a wolf and ran through the night out of control, no longer in touch with his human side.
I thought about the date. The full moon was less than a week away. There was no way of knowing what would happen then, but I suspected it would, at the very least, be an experience beyond anything I had encountered before. Still, I couldn’t imagine ever losing all control. I was a thinking animal, not a beast. That could never change. I closed the notebook and hurried back to my classroom.
What next? I needed to gather more facts. The thought of doing research excited me. The day dragged by, but finally my last class ended.
As I left school, I considered running home to my computer, finding some sort of supernatural interest group on the Internet, and posting some questions. Surely someone out there had information that could help me. But the Internet was far from private. I would be leaving a trail if I did that. I would be jumping up and down and shouting, “Hey, here I am!” I remembered how useless my attempt to find vampire information had been, back when I was trying to help Splat.
I decided to begin my research the old-fashioned way. Lewington had a decent library. It wasn’t as large as the one in the capital, but it was a good start. I walked into the center of town and up the stone steps to the front entrance of the building. After a quick catalog search by subject, I found that there was actually a book about werewolves, and it was not currently checked out. It was in the psychology section, down in the basement of the old part of the library.
The musty smell of ancient books greeted me as I reached the bottom of the steps. Rows of shelves, shoved close together, filled all the available space. It was a fabulous storehouse of information. I found the area I wanted and looked for the book.
But it wasn’t on the shelf. I stood staring at a space right where it should have been, feeling an eerie sense that I was seconds too late. Had the book been a person, I suspect the opening would still have been warm.
“Looking for this?”
I spun around. There was Lew, the homeless guy, holding out a book in one hand. I backed off a step, feeling trapped amid the shelves. I didn’t like feeling trapped—I didn’t li
ke it at all. Something short and harsh burst from my throat. It was a snarl. I couldn’t believe I had just snarled.
“Easy, boy,” Lew said. He backed up a step. “I just wanted to keep you from wasting your time. Most of this is nonsense. You’d get more information from the Sunday comics or Saturday-morning cartoon shows. Chapter three’s got a few half-right bits of information, but the rest is useless hogwash.”
He tossed the book to me. I shot out my right hand and caught it.
Lew backed up another step, but kept his eyes locked on mine. I finally looked away. It wasn’t fear on my part. It wasn’t anger or hate on his part. I just knew I had to turn my eyes from his. He’d won some sort of contest. I didn’t know what the rules were, but there was no doubt that he’d won.
“Come see me when you’re ready for the truth,” he said. “But don’t wait too long.” Then he slipped away toward the stairs, leaving me holding the worn volume of werewolf lore.
As I watched him move off, my mind flashed back to that encounter in the woods. The gray creature that had attacked me in the clearing—it had moved the same way. My hand rose and touched the spot on my nose where I’d been bitten.
My instinct was to run after him, to stop him and ask the questions I needed to ask. But I couldn’t. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to hear the truth. Instead, I took the book to a table, sat down, and started reading chapter three.
Eleven
A WOLF IN CHEAP CLOTHING?
The chapter was called “Myth or Reality,” and it discussed what might or might not be real about werewolves. It wasn’t all that rare, according to what I had read, for a person to think he was a werewolf. It also wasn’t uncommon for someone to think he was Elvis or Napoléon. But I was obviously not imagining all of this.
Of course, if I was imagining it, how would I know? What evidence did I have? I thought back. I had done some strange things in the last few days, beginning with falling out the window; that certainly wasn’t the smartest move I’d ever made.
I closed the book as a wave of uncertainty washed over me. Is it all in my mind? Had I pushed my brain so far and so hard in so many different directions that it had finally shot off in a direction I would never have anticipated? What proof did I have? I thought carefully about everything that had happened. After a while, I had to conclude that I had no proof at all.
I walked through the library, confused and concerned. If I was imagining things or believing things that weren’t real, I needed some kind of help.
It was obviously impossible for me to come to any conclusion by myself. No matter what happened, how could I know it wasn’t my imagination? I needed to get an opinion from someone else.
I had to talk to Splat. He knew monsters. And he knew me. That made him the perfect choice. I went out the door and started down the steps.
Lew was sitting at the bottom. He turned as I came by. “Find anything interesting?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Starting to doubt it all, I’d bet. That’s natural, if I remember. But you’ll change your mind. You’ll believe.” He stuck his hand into a pocket of his pants and took out an old wallet. Then he pulled something small and shiny out of a compartment in the wallet. “When the moment of choice comes, you’ll want to have this.” He reached toward me.
I felt something the size of a silver dollar slide down to the bottom of my shirt pocket. As I glanced at Lew’s hand, I noticed something inside the wallet—a worn and dirty driver’s license from out of state. It was a Pennsylvania license with Lew’s picture—much younger than now—and the name LEWIS MORTON printed beneath the picture.
“You can thank me later, kid,” he said. Then he spun quickly from me and jogged down the street.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the object. It was a coin of some sort. No, not a real coin—there was no value stamped on it. It was a token, or maybe a talisman. On one side, there was the head of a wolf. I turned it over. On the other side, there was the head of a man.
“This is crazy,” I said. Before I could decide what to do with it, I heard a voice behind me.
“Hey—it’s that kid. Gonna get him.”
I looked back. Spud Mellon, three blocks away, had spotted me. I could hear him talking to himself. I dropped the coin back in my shirt pocket and dashed down the street, turning quickly at the corner.
As I finished my turn, I heard something else. There was a clink and a scraping metallic sound. I jammed my fingers in my pocket and saw that the cloth was filled with rips. Behind me, I caught a flash as the token rolled under a clump of bushes. I started to go back for it, but the sound of footsteps spurred me on. I raced away, cutting up the next street. Then I stopped and listened. Spud had lost track of me. I stayed where I was a few more minutes, then continued toward Splat’s house. The token could wait. I’d get it later.
I hadn’t walked half a block before I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. Ahead, his back to me but unmistakable, was Teridakian. He was talking to someone who was wearing a shirt that said THE HULL BROTHERS’ CIRCUS.
I had no trouble hearing what they were saying.
“So we understand my price?” Teridakian asked.
“Yes. That is not important to me. As long as I have a specimen for the sideshow,” the circus man said.
“You will have him,” Teridakian said. “I am close. He is here. You will have him. I never fail.”
“Unharmed?”
“Of course.”
I crossed the street, then went past them. For some reason, I didn’t want Teridakian to notice me. Another block and I stopped again. I was walking past Big Ben’s Barbecue when the smell of ribs grabbed me and dragged me inside. Before I knew it, I was walking out again with my very own bagful of Big Ben’s Jumbo Back Rib Bargain. I ate as I walked, burying my face in the crisply charred hunks of meat.
My hands were so full of sauce and grease that I used my elbow to ring Splat’s bell.
“Hey, Norman, come in,” he said when he opened the door.
“Thanks.” I went right to the kitchen and washed my hands.
Angelina, who was sitting at the table, painting her nails, had to make a comment. “Well, he’s a nerd, but at least he’s clean,” she said. She frowned, then added, “And I do believe he actually got a haircut.”
“I need to talk to you,” I told Splat.
“Okay, but come downstairs. I have something cool to show you.” He opened the door that led to the basement and headed down.
I realized he wouldn’t pay any attention to me until after he showed me whatever it was he thought was so interesting. I followed him to his father’s workshop. Splat’s dad made jewelry. “Check it out,” Splat said, picking something up from a table. He turned and tossed an object toward me.
As the object spun and glittered, I was suddenly filled with an unbearable sense of terror. I jumped aside, slamming into the wall. The object went past me and dropped to the floor, making a ringing tinkle against the concrete.
“Hey, relax, it’s just a letter opener,” Splat said, stepping over and picking it up. He held it out for me to see. “Look, it’s not even sharp.” He pressed his thumb against the side of it. “Dad just designed it the other day. Look at the handle.”
I stared at the letter opener. It was made of silver. A silver bullet could kill a werewolf. So could a silver knife or a silver club. Other than the fact that it could bring an end to my existence, I had to admit that it was a nice piece of work. The handle was in the shape of a coiled snake, and there was a design etched onto the blade.
“Here.” Splat held it toward me.
“That’s okay.” I backed away.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I looked around at all the silver in the workshop. “Can we go upstairs?”
Splat shrugged. “Sure.”
We went up to the kitchen, then up the next floor to his room. “I think I’m a werewolf,” I said, not knowin
g any way to ease slowly into the subject.
Splat cocked his head to one side, then the other, making a big show of examining me. Then he shook his head. “Nah, you’re Norman.” He pointed to the movie poster of Lon Chaney, Jr., on his wall—the one from The Wolf Man. “Now, that’s a werewolf.”
“I’m serious,” I said.
“Let’s hear a growl,” Splat said.
“I’m not joking,” I said. I pointed at my face. “What about this?”
Splat shrugged. “What’s a haircut got to do with it?”
“I DIDN’T GET A HAIRCUT!” I gritted my teeth until I calmed down, then said, “I’m not wearing glasses. See?”
Splat nodded. “Cool, your mom let you get contacts.”
“Look, Splat, I’m not kidding. I’m a werewolf.”
Another voice came from behind me. “I believe you.”
I turned. It was Rory. He was standing in the hall outside the room, holding a couple of his toy soldiers in one hand and a dump truck in the other.
“Thanks.”
“This is crazy,” Splat said.
“I’ve considered that possibility,” I said. “I thought you could help me figure it out. There must be some way to tell for sure.”
He shrugged. “What do we know about werewolves?”
“You can kill them with silver,” Rory said, apparently eager to show off his knowledge.
“I’d hate to prove that the hard way,” I said. “There must be some other test.”
“We could wait for the full moon,” Splat suggested.
“I’m not sure I should wait. I have a funny feeling that I’d better find out as much as I can before then. And that’s not the only problem.” I told him about Teridakian.
“This is all oddly familiar,” Splat said.
“Maybe to you,” I told him, “but it’s all new to me.” I was about to say more when we were interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. A moment later, Splat’s dad stuck his head into the room.
