by Tony Ortiz
There was a deep animal grunt in response. I crept over to the left side of the window, but still could not get a clear view of the far corner of the living room. I moved down a little further as heavy footsteps boomed across the wooden floor, getting closer. . . . I stepped back from the window as a hairy brown creature with lanky arms trudged across the creaky floorboards. I only got a quick glance at the creature, but it was just long enough to see that it was too tall for this house and had to stoop and hang its head to avoid hitting the ceiling.
“You see,” whispered the woman beside me. “No one believes me. But you do now.”
Time passed, and the house fell silent again. I could not think of one thing it could have been.
“What was that?” I whispered back breathlessly, still peering through the now fogged-up window. “Was that a costume?”
“No, no,” said the woman. “Can you not see right? I’ve been coming to this house for years. Same time – twelve – it appears. No one's in the room at first, then – poof! – there you have him–”
“But what is–”
“A werewolf.”
I turned to her in disbelief. There was no way that thing was a mythical creature. No way.
I heard the old mother’s voice in the kitchen along with a second voice. It was a low rumbling growl, as if that of an irate bear.
“I am going to be out late,” said the creature.
“Charles, you know you can’t send a kid to that monster.”
“We already had this discussion. Only a child can kill Himalaya. You should also know that a menala was murdered yesterday, along with another human.”
“What menala?” said the mother quietly, sounding sad. “Dili?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know because the menala was immediately taken to the shores of the Promulgated Samhain Fellowship. . . .”
I could not understand anything they were saying. They might as well have been speaking a foreign language. Thankfully, my new acquaintance was keen to fill me in. She said Himalaya was an evil creature that was a suspect in the murder of innocent humans and a threat to the world of the dead. As dreaded as Himalaya was, there was another creature, named Jack, who was the real problem. She believed that Jack was the one responsible for the deaths, not Himalaya. And that was why the werewolf’s mother had jack-o'-lanterns outside; Jack was scared of them.
“Are there enough lanterns on the front porch?” I heard the creature say.
“You think it killed the human?”
“I believe she had the mark that points to him.”
“Oh, my sweet patches. I better put out more pumpkins, just to be safe.”
“Mother, I have only a few days left to live. I need you to pass all that I know to Forlin before the Dark Hours – I have found the human kid.”
“What? Charles, you’re not taking a child to that thing!”
“It’s done. He’s been chosen. He’s wearing pajamas and–”
“Who?”
“And soccer shoes,” he finished.
“Soccer shoes? Kids don't play soccer this late. I bet you my good socks they don't.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can see the boy through your dirty wall as we speak. He’s peering inside your living room, straining to overhear our conversation.”
I jerked back away from the window, zapped by the sudden realization that it was me — I was wearing pajamas and soccer shoes. Before I could form my next thought, something yanked me backward into another dimension of swirling light and chilling cries. Next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of the yellow kitchen before the old mother and her hairy beast of a son.
“What in Halloween are you doing, Charles?” the mother scowled at the monster, who was even taller and more frightening up close. “Take this poor boy out of here. Look at him. He's shaking. Go, child. Run home.”
I was too scared to run home, and even if I was not, I would not be able to. The werewolf had a firm grip on my backpack. He used his other paw to dig through it. He pulled out everything, staring at each item, much like Oz had done. He looked deeply confused when he took out the bottle of aspirin.
“No, he'll stay with me,” he said firmly, placing the bottle back into my backpack. “I don’t have much time. This child will have to do. He can easily be taught to be brave.”
“Charles, you'd better let this boy go.”
The creature ignored her plea and shot one of his hairy arms over my head. “How old are you, child?” he asked, leaning down to my level. His black eyes had the reflection of the moon in them. “Judging by your height, I’d say you are in middle school. Are you in eighth grade?” His eyes opened wide. “Are you thirteen?”
His mother stepped between us, but the werewolf brushed her aside like a feather and straightened out to his full height, slightly tilting his head under the ceiling and looking more terrifying than anything I could have dreamt of.
I started to hyperventilate. I grabbed my stomach and closed my eyes.
“If you want to live, you’re going to have to give me what I want. You are thirteen. Otherwise, you would have said you weren't. Is this your father? Open your eyes.”
The beast held out a picture of a clean-shaven man with short brown hair. It wasn't my father. It was the man who stole my school I.D. card when I was six.
“This is very important. Was this your father?” He showed me the picture again. “Speak, child! Or your limbs will be torn off and you will be murdered most savagely. A man more evil than Satan is coming for you.”
“How dare you,” snarled the mother, punching her son in the arm, which did nothing but make him snarl back at her. “How dare you terrorize this poor kid. You’re scaring the Jassum out of him.”
Dismembered? Murdered? Oh, my God, I was going to die.
“Charles, I’m warning you this one last time: you stop this craziness right now."
“But I am not the one who is going to snap his bones in half! Can’t you see? I’m trying to prevent that from happening.”
“That’s not his father. I can tell. I don’t want another word from you. Listen to me. What good is this second life of yours if all you do is go around disobeying your mother and scaring kids? You’re staying home today. That’s final.”
Two young kids pitter-pattered in from the hall, rubbing their sleepy eyes. Once their eyes adjusted, they ran up merrily to the werewolf and wrapped themselves around his hairy legs.
“Leave, child,” the mother motioned to me.
I was desperate to flee, but my legs would not move. Seeing this, she pushed me rather gruffly. Thankfully, that got me going. I ran out of the kitchen, staggered through the dark living room, and slipped my way out of the house, but tumbled over the pumpkins on the front porch, crashing head first into a large moldy jack-o’-lantern.
“Please, Charles,” I heard his mother say inside.
“I have visited Antarctica and know what needs to be done. I need you to relay everything to Forlin while I take the boy to Himalaya.”
“Don’t you want to spend your last days with me?”
“I’m sorry, but this is more important.”
“And if the boy is killed?”
“If the boy is killed, there will be no more afterlife.”
That was it. I darted off the porch and raced off into the fog. “Duma!” I called, unable to see a thing. “Charles is – a monster is coming! A real monster!”
The screen door from the red house screeched open the exact moment I felt warm breathing down the back of my neck. It was the most frightening thing I had ever felt in my entire life.
“Help me!” I shrieked in the direction of a white house, just barely visible through the fog. I ran further down the street and screamed toward some other houses. “Help me! Someone help – Duma!”
Duma scurried across the street, totally spooked.
“Duma, wait!”
I ran after him and past the chubby woman standi
ng on the sidewalk. “Tell your friends!” she yelled after me. “Lock your doors! Because they are–”
The woman’s ranting suddenly changed to a hoarse scream. Duma and I froze for an instant, frightened by the way she was screaming. A moment later, everything fell silent.
CHAPTER THREE
The moon and the witch
After running all over the neighborhood for a while, without ever slowing down, we finally found our street. There was no point in going back to the woman if she was already dead. Oh, my God, what if she really was killed? My breathing started to pick up again.
“Come on, Duma, hurry up,” I said on our front yard. “We’re home.”
But Duma wouldn’t come through the gate. He just stood outside, staring at the house in terror. However, it wasn’t the house he was scared of. The werewolf was standing outside my bedroom window, quite still, just breathing out short gusty breaths and staring at the ground. He snorted painfully and then trudged along the side of the house, still unaware of our presence. How did he know where we lived? And how did he beat us here?
I ran to my window and dove over the windowsill. Once Duma jumped in, I slammed the window shut, rolled my dresser in front of it, and blocked my door with everything I could find in the room. I moaned. I was going to die.
After two hours of doing nothing but sitting on my bed with Duma, bug-eyed with fear, I grabbed a pencil and my journal, feeling a little bit better. Maybe Charles decided to go after another kid. I was a scaredy-cat after all.
“Today, I found out a werewolf wants to kidnap me,” I recited to Duma as I wrote it. “His name is Charles. He needs a human child to save everyone from Himalaya. And he showed me a picture of the man who stole my I.D. card. He said the child of this man would lead him to something important, whatever that was. His mother seemed nice. She had a lot of pumpkins around her house. I guess that protects them from the monster, Jack. Also, Charles said a menala was found dead and taken to the shores of the Promulgated Samhain Fellowship, whatever that was. What did the mom say was the menala’s name?” I looked into Duma’s keen, orange eyes. He loved it when I read him my thoughts– “Oh, I remember. Dili was killed by Jack. And, uh, that’s it.”
I slid under the bedcovers and rolled on my side just as a dark figure slipped out from under the bed. Duma darted out of the room through the closet crack, and I shot out of bed and stumbled to the door.
“Oz!” I screamed, trying to push aside all the stuff I had packed against the door. “I’m going to die! It’s going to kidnap–”
“Is this what I have to do? Scare the heck out of you?” scolded Oz, looking groggy and tired. “Get to bed please. If I hear you talking to Duma one more time–”
“I got attacked by a werewolf!” I blurted. “This is the very, very truth.”
“Then you shouldn’t have gone out. Right?” Oz noticed the mountain of clutter against the door. “I was going to give you the envelope, Jess, but you disobeyed me again.”
I think she mentioned that on purpose. What kind of mom would do that? And how could she last more than two hours under my bed? I would have fallen asleep.
“Oh, by the way, I found out they don’t have enough on Duma to put him under. He’s safe. Goodnight.”
Oz pushed a pile of clothes and boxes to the side and cracked the door open just enough for her to squeeze out. Duma came back in, looking at me like he had warned me all along not to go outside.
“Thanks a lot, you coward,” I scoffed. “I can't believe they're going to let you live.”
Duma jumped up on my bed and slithered under the covers.
“Keep a look out,” I yawned grumpily, climbing into bed. “You got the first shift–”
But Duma was already sleeping.
It was very rare that I would wake up peacefully, from a light tap on the shoulder or a ray of warm sunlight. I think that happened once or twice a month. Most of the time, Duma woke me up by either biting my nose, hissing directly into my mouth, or placing food crumbs or dead bugs in my ears. Today, he was sleeping on my face, just as he did yesterday, the day before that, and every other morning for the past two weeks.
I turned my face, and he slid off, waking himself up when he hit the floor. Not all cats landed perfectly on all fours.
“Stop sleeping on my face!” I said irritably. “I’m not your pillow!”
He gave me his crazy stare and then waddled tiredly out of the room. I stayed in all morning, postponing my inevitable morning meeting with Oz. I made my bed, swept the floor, and sprayed my desk and dresser, inside and out, even the back. Oz always said dust found its way into places that were hard to reach. After four long hours, I climbed outside and fed the snails that were camped outside my window. I had made a cardboard home for them and a tombstone for a snail I had stepped on two years ago. It read: The Snail That Flew To New Heights, John The Snail, November 20, 1999.
“What’s going on here?” said a warm voice behind me. Oz was leaning out of the window, wearing her green cooking apron and her reading glasses. “The room looks good, Jess.”
I kept quiet.
“Come get some breakfast – some brunch.”
Oz left the window and walked out of my bedroom. I climbed over the window frame and followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table. She fed me peanut-butter pancakes, cinnamon bacon, and yogurt with scrambled eggs inside. The bacon was actually not that bad. Everything else I fed to Duma.
“Thanks,” I said to Oz as I took my plate to the sink.
“Thanks for what?”
“For brunch and–”
“Thank you for cleaning your room. Glad you figured out tidy doesn’t mean clean.”
I was feeling much better now that we were back to normal. That was just the way it went with Oz and me, we would fight at night and make up the next day.
I went into my room and checked the time. It was nearly one in the afternoon. Katie would be getting out of school in two hours, unless she decided not to go or had a minimum day, which recently was every other day. One time she had it for five months straight.
A rock shot unexpectedly into my room, and I screamed my lungs out. Luckily, it was only Katie.
“Hey, what you screaming for?” she said, stepping through the window. “Didn’t Oz tell you Duma’s going to be alright?”
“Uhmm . . . yeah–”
“Well, while you’re thinking can you solve this for me?” She showed me a page in her math notebook. “Teach is still forcing me to finish last week’s assignment. How crappy is that?”
“Why don’t you study? You have an extraordinary memory like mine—”
“Nah. I’m good.”
“It’s four and a quarter,” I calculated easily.
“He’s going to be so amazed. This is the hardest one.”
“You want me to do the rest?”
“Nope. I don’t do more than one. He’d think something’s up.”
“Don’t you think you figuring out the most difficult one would raise suspicion?”
“True. I’ll put five quarters and twenty dimes.”
That was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, but whatever. “Katie, I’m going to tell you something.” I waited until I had her full attention. She looked like she was about to smile. “I didn’t say anything yet! Why are you–”
“No, just go on. I’m fine. I won’t laugh.”
“I saw and heard something last night and . . .”
Katie burst out laughing.
“I did! I saw a werewolf, and now he’s coming after me to take me to a monster in Antarctica. That’s why I was screaming when you came in. I thought he was the one who threw the rock.”
Katie shook her head, looking embarrassed by me.
“I’m not lying,” I scowled. “I saw a werewolf.”
“Don’t make fun of mí foster mamá,” she smiled. “That’s not nice.”
I gave up. She wasn’t ever going to take me seriously. “So what’s our plan for trick-or-
treating?”
Judging by her grin she had already come up with a plan of escape.
“Something. So, what do you want to be?”
“What’s the plan?”
“I think you should be a dead boy. That’s cool, no?”
“I don’t want to be a–”
“I can spread dirt all over you. It’ll be good. We can make a tombstone that you can carry around and–”
“And it could say something like ‘I was eaten by a crocodile’,” I said excitedly.
Katie made a face.
“That wouldn’t be funny?” I asked as I watched her grab my pillow.
“That’s gross. Wait here. I’m gonna talk to Oz. Today, we’re going trick-or-treating.”
I waited for Katie to leave before I followed her out. Instead of going into the kitchen, I sneaked into the living room and squatted behind the couch, where I was able to see the entire kitchen. Duma was in the living room with me, clawing at one of the corners he liked to pee in.
Just as Katie walked into the kitchen, Oz shoved a pie in the oven. “Hey, Oz! Pumpkin pie?”
“Apple.” Oz shut the oven door with her hip. “Want to help? I’m making another batch . . .” Oz trailed off as she saw Katie’s big belly. Katie turned a little so my pillow underneath her shirt wasn’t visible.
“You know what you look like?” asked Katie.
Oz was slow to reply. “A chef?” she uttered blankly, still staring at Katie’s stomach.
“A witch. If you just undo your hair–”
“I’m not dressing up for Halloween, Katie. You know me better than that. What’s your secret plan to go trick-or-treating this year?”
“You know this is my last year?” said Katie quietly. “I don’t have time to make up plans.”
“Katie, is this Jess’s idea?”
“No. It’s just that . . .” Katie handed Oz a doctor’s slip. “I won’t have time. I’m not tricking you.”
