Brimstone

by Daniel Foster

  When it spoke like a human, Garret was acutely aware of being naked, and of its penetrating gaze. Embarrassed, he picked up the strap and held it in front of himself. But he couldn’t leave now. He was hooked. “So you want to help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  The voice was solid again, full of dark strength, but it spoke without coercion. “You have been trapped for years, as I have been.” Again, it opened a hand to its monstrous form. “I cannot escape what I am. But you can.”

  A warning bell rang somewhere in the back of his head, but it was far back.

  “How?” he repeated.

  “Garret, a very long time ago, I was much as you are now. I was tricked and betrayed by the one who should have protected me. The curse I received as a result is a burden I must endure, but it has given me many abilities.”

  Like reading my mind and coming into my dreams, Garret thought.

  Yes, just like that. Then the creature resumed speaking aloud. “If only I had the smallest measure of my strength now, before this happened to me. I would have been able to see what was coming. I could have saved myself.” The creature straightened its huge form, towering over him. Its ears were oversized, and shaped in long, perfect triangles. They were trained on Garret.

  “If you will allow me into the deeper parts of your soul, I can help you uncover the thing that is holding you captive. I can show you why anger has taken you, until you fear you will never be able to love Molly, or anyone else, without breaking them. I can show you why you can’t escape the feeling that you are worthless, or that you will never succeed. And then, I will show you why it is all a lie. I will lead you out of it, Garret.”

  They stood for the longest time, the hunched, deformed creature with its protruding jaw and teeth, and Garret, small in the dark. The creature had piqued the longstanding bane of his existence. He was miserable, torn up on the inside, and though he seemed to have ample reason, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t really understand why. He wanted to know so badly. He knew he’d never be free without it.

  At last Garret realized he wasn’t going to keep his voice from trembling when he agreed, so he went ahead and said it. “O-ok—okay.”

  The creature stepped forward and picked Garret up like a toy. “It will all be over soon.” Its hand encompassed his bare torso like cold steel. It held him firmly, but not cruelly.

  It lifted him level with its face. Garret stared at the long snout, bristling with teeth, yellow and laced with cracks, like centuries-old ivory. Behind the long snout, set deep beneath heavy brows, its eyes burned into him. They were solid black and round, glistening like wet obsidian, but they flickered and glinted within, as if they were lit from far beneath with a fire that never went out. They were not human eyes. They did not go down into a soul. They just went down forever into blackness. They were not alive. They were that which fed on life. And they wanted his life.

  Garret panicked, kicking, prying at the fingers. “I—I’ve changed my mind! Put me down. Let go, plea—” The end of Garret’s plea left him in a huff of breath as the fingers tightened around his torso.

  Garret struggled, begged for mercy in his mind. Please, please let me go.

  All humanity was gone from the voice. It spewed from the creature’s mouth in a raging river.

  “In hell, your word is your bond, little half-breed, and I claim the ancient right of satisfaction to it. I hold you to your word. Now open yourself to me.”

  The creature shivered, tested its feet and rolled its head from side to side, as though it had just been released from invisible shackles. Its eyes pulled Garret in. He tried to look away, but he couldn’t. Black eyes. Glistening, getting larger and larger. They filled his soul, and his mind’s defenses began to crumble.

  Vague memories surfaced, more like remembrances of the edge of an emotion. Emotions of violation, of things a child had no way to understand or combat, or even speak of. Somewhere far away from his mind, Garret felt his body begin to spasm and cold sweat. The cold darkness of the eyes dragged him deeper into himself, ripping away all the scabs his psyche had laid over the things he could not yet bear. The memories began to come back in real color. First a tip of one, then a hint of another. Memories of rape, before he even had any idea what rape was, or what it meant. A woman was raping him, and he was only a boy.

  He cried out for help, and something ripped him away from the eyes, flinging him to the surface where his nakedness was being held against the creature’s body. But the creature was no longer a creature, it was a human female, her breasts pressed against his chest, her pelvis grinding against his, trying to illicit an erection from him. She was strong as steel, and she was laughing in the creature’s voice. It was a deep bellow, full of lust, blood, and malice. It boomed through the trees, shattering the night for miles around. The creature reached deep into him and planted something. A seed, a tiny part of itself.

  She let him go, and Garret fell into the leaves retching, gagging on his own vomit. His change into the wolf was protracted, painful, and his human cries shifted slowly into the whimpers of a broken animal. The creature vanished, its huge form siphoning away into a shadow. The echoes of its laughter escaped into the night.

  Chapter 15

  Garret blushed. He was naked, irritable, scared, and sick, even though, judging by the mess on the leaves beside him, he’d already been sick several hours before. Sheriff Halstead leaned into his face.

  “I’m gonna ask you one more time, boy, what on God’s green earth are you doing out here, and where are your clothes?”

  Halstead was ready to throttle somebody. So were the men with him, the willowy Mr. Johnson, the tall, dour Mr. Clemens, and the ever-present, ever-hairy Mr. Orem. All of them were armed. Garret fumbled and accidentally shot a sidelong glance at the grey wolfstrap, dangling from Halstead’s clenched fist. Halstead saw him do it.

  “I don’t remember,” Garret said. It was true, partially. He remembered bits and pieces, smeared images of the creature, talking to it, and the horrible pain that followed. He still couldn’t remember much about what caused the pain, but it made him feel like a hand was closing around his throat. His mind was fighting him, trying to rebury the memories every time he tried to recall them.

  Halstead lost his scant cool and shoved a fistful of the wolfstrap in Garret’s face. “Then what in the blazes is this?! And what the hell are those!” Halstead poked Garret in the chest with a rude finger. Garret flinched away. His chest was a flowering mass of black and blue bruises, large ones. They ran in six wide rows, five from right to left, and one row from left to right, as if someone had whaled on him with a big branch, but neatly, evenly. The bruises throbbed and his ribs ached every time he breathed. Considering how badly his back hurt, he had to assume it was in similarly bad shape.

  “You’ve been hiding something from me since the day Jerry Bentley died, and so help me God, you’re gonna answer me today!” Halstead roared.

  “He doesn’t know nothin’,” Sarn said again. He was standing opposite Halstead. It was one of, oh, maybe three times Garret had seen his brother visibly angry. Like everything else about Sarn, his anger was quiet. But quiet in the way of a bear, pacing through the woods.

  “You stay out of this!” Halstead ordered. He shifted the pointing finger to Sarn, but didn’t poke him as he had Garret, even though Sarn was within reach.

  “All of my cattle are dead,” Clemens said. His long, dour face got longer and dourer each time he mentioned it. “I’m ruined.”

  “Shut up about the damn cows, Leo!” It was Orem who said it, dirty and gritty, his little eyes glittering behind his thick facial hair.

  “Only their hearts were missing,” Clemens muttered, more to spite Orem than anything.

  Two other men were making their way down the ravine. “Over here!” Orem bellowed. He’d been roaring directions and homing calls to the rest of the hunting party since they’d found Garret. And he, like Halstead, suspected Garret
was to blame for whatever had happened.

  Garret pulled his bare legs as close to his bruised chest as he dared and stared at the leaves. He was depressed and discouraged, though he had no idea why. Some of it had lifted since Sarn had awakened him, but not much. Sarn had shaken him out of a black, dreamless sleep, more of a mental shut-down than actual rest. Sarn’s plain face was drawn and tense. He had seemed enormously relieved to find Garret, as if he’d been looking for a long time. Sarn insisted they had to move fast before the others arrived. But Garret couldn’t move fast. He was familiar with depression, but the despair that filled his mind at that moment seemed to drain the color from the world more completely than his wolf vision.

  Sarn tried to get Garret to move. Garret just wanted his brother to go away and leave him alone, but he couldn’t bring himself to say something like that to Sarn. So he tried to go. He felt his brother’s strong hands pick him up, but when Sarn’s bare skin touched his own, Garret lost his mind.

  Sarn had dropped to his knees in the leaves and tried to calm Garret’s mindless flailing and wailing when Halstead and company had arrived. Halstead was on the warpath, and Orem looked like a gremlin, searching for someone to eat. To them, Garret was naked, bruised, out of his mind, and all-around suspicious. Garret had no doubt they would have beaten him into submission right there, but Sarn had kept all of them off of him. Garret wasn’t sure how Sarn had done it.

  Halstead came at him again. “One last chance before I lock you away, boy! Explain yourself!”

  “He doesn’t have to explain shit, Sheriff, and you know it.” Sarn was standing very close to Garret with his arms crossed. “If he wants to run naked in the woods, what’s it to you?”

  Halstead cursed and flung the wolfstrap to the ground. “Then what the hell is that? I want an answer.”

  Sarn blinked slowly. “It’s called fur. Animals grow it on their backs. Orem, too.”

  Orem cursed Sarn until Garret thought the bark was going to start peeling off the nearby trees. Dully, Garret knew what Sarn was doing. He was turning their ire from Garret to himself. It was working. All of the men were chewing on Sarn now. Serene as a mountain lake, Sarn ignored them, knelt, and started checking Garret’s injuries. This time, Sarn didn’t touch him. Garret put his head on his knees and let Sarn inspect him.

  By now there were probably eight or nine men standing in a circle around Garret. From his head-down vantage, Garret could see all manner of boots surrounding him. Halstead’s nice boots, Orem’s huge, funk-encrusted hobnails, Clemens’ cow-shit smelling work boots, and the grey tumble of a wolfstrap, lying beside Halstead in the leaves. It would be so easy for Garret to call the strap onto himself. The change would be nearly instant. He could run away into the leaves. They all had guns. Maybe some of them would have the presence of mind to take a shot. Maybe one of them would get lucky. Maybe Garret would die.

  Halstead was barking demands and impotent authority like a mad dog. Orem was making gravelly threats. Sarn was wrangling quietly with them. Garret tried to shut it all out.

  “He’s behind this, and I know it,” Orem said after a time.

  Halstead turned to go. “The townsfolk are starting to talk of witchcraft, Samuel Vilner. And I won’t be able to protect your brother if he doesn’t level with me. They’re going to burn someone for this. I’d keep that in mind.”

  The men moved off in an angry, muttering knot. Orem was the last to go.

  “What did you say?” Garret asked his brother when they were gone.

  “The truth,” he said. Then, “What about you, brother?”

  “I don’t know,” Garret said, head back on his knees.

  Sarn sat beside him. “You make things hard on yourself. Harder than they have to be.”

  Garret gave an ill smile and looked at the wolfstrap. “You think so, huh?”

  “I know so. I know you, brother.”

  Had he not been so depressed, Garret never would have done it. In retrospect, he wasn’t sure how even the depression, confusion, pain, and weariness were enough to make him do it, because there was nothing in the world he valued more than Sarn’s opinion of him. But as they sat in the leaves, Garret needed someone to see, so he did it. He called the wolfstrap to himself. This time, instead of disappearing from where it lay and reappearing across his chest, the strap leaped off the ground in a flurry of leaves and wrapped itself around him.

  The change didn’t go as fast as usual, but change he did.

  Sitting on all fours, Garret wrapped his tail around himself and stared at the leaves, unable to meet Sarn’s eye. So that was it then. Garret had done it. Now his brother knew.

  Garret stared at the ground until it became strange that Sarn hadn’t said anything. Garret forced himself to raise his eyes. Sarn still sat, his arms folded in a relaxed manner around his knees, a bland expression on his face.

  Garret stared at him, cocked his head in canine confusion.

  Sarn blinked slowly. “You should probably get that looked at.”

  Much as one’s mouth might fall open, Garret’s wolfstrap fell off in the leaves.

  “I just turned into a wolf in three seconds.”

  “You can turn into an asshole in two.”

  Garret moved his mouth, but no sound came out.

  Sarn yawned. “Granted, the asshole’s not so big a change.”

  “You’re not scared of me?”

  Sarn’s expression went from flat to… something flatter than flat.

  Garret tried again. “So you don’t think—“

  Sarn rolled his eyes. “Brother, you’ve been doing that for more than a week. On the nights you actually come back to the house and sleep in a bed, anyway.”

  Garret blinked. “I’ve been…”

  Sarn held out a hand. “So are you gonna let me try it or not?”

  “Let you try…”

  Sarn squinted at him. “I don’t see any bruises on your head. Come on, gimmie.”

  Still about ten seconds behind in the conversation, Garret picked up the strap and handed it to Sarn, who started squirming into it. Garret watched his stocky brother struggle with the strap. It was like watching a middle aged woman try to fight her way into her corset from twenty years ago. Garret grinned, then laughed. It felt good. “You’d have to take your shirt off. But it won’t work for you anyway.”

  With one of his arms cranked over his head, and the other pinned to his side by the strap, Sarn asked, “Why not?”

  Hmm, good question. “I don’t know. It just won’t.” Garret realized the answer. It was the same reason it came to him and obeyed his desires to go or stay. “It’s not really a strap. It’s part of me, somehow.”

  Sarn wrinkled his nose, pulled the strap back off and handed it to Garret.

  “So how did you get it?”

  Garret fumbled with it, again keenly aware that he still wasn’t wearing any clothes. “So, you don’t think I’m like a son of the Devil, or anything?”

  Sarn shook his head and tried not to laugh. “Brother, I may have tackled you, but part of me was cheering you on when you took a swing at Pa.”

  Garret was embarrassed. “Well what about all the stuff Father Bendetti says about hell and demons and monsters.”

  Sarn sobered and his voice dropped. “Father Bendetti’s dead.”

  “What? How?”

  Sarn sat beside Garret again, so as not to have to look directly at him, and give him a measure of dignity. “I don’t know, brother. It was bad. Real bad.” Sarn sighed. “I was in town, making a delivery for Mr. Carson. They were taking Father Bendetti down when I passed the church.”

  Garret didn’t want to ask, but Sarn went on without prompting. “He was impaled on top of his own church. Someone took him all the way to the top of the steeple and drove him down on it, all the way to the church roof.”

  Garret swallowed. So that’s why Halstead and company were ready to string somebody up.

  Sarn choked a little. Garret grabbed the back of Sarn’s nec
k. Sarn was tough on the outside, but on the inside he was soft as the baby animals he loved.

  “It’s okay,” Garret said. “You don’t need to tell me anymore.”

  But Sarn did, after he swallowed hard. “Brother, that steeple is thirty feet tall. Somebody drove him from the top to the bottom. His blood was smeared all the way.”

  Garret gripped his brother’s neck tightly. “Samuel, stop.”

  “Brother,” Sarn cried. “Why would someone do that to him? He was a good person. Why do people hurt each other? It’s just as easy to love someone as it is to hate them. So why don’t people decide to love each other?”

  In the future, Garret would look back on what he did next as one of the stranger decisions he ever made, but at the moment, it seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe it was just because he didn’t have clothes on, so it would have been too awkward any other way. As Sarn crumpled forward, Garret shifted into the wolf, a big, furry, huggable animal, and crawled as much of himself into Sarn’s lap as would fit. Sarn wrapped himself around the wolf, holding handfuls of his fur, clinging tightly to the warm animal, and to his brother at the same time.

  Sarn cried gently across Garret’s wolf back, and Garret quietly watched the woods. Garret was seriously screwed up inside, in ways he could not yet understand, but his little brother, his anchor, had again reminded him of what mattered, so Garret watched the woods, keeping a weather eye for anything that might disturb Sarn’s grief.

  The right to grieve in peace was the least of the things Sarn deserved, but at the moment, it was the only thing Garret could give him.

  Garret paced through the woods towards the Bendetti house. Despite his decision to remain human of heart and mind, he was relying on his wolf body more and more as a means of travel. It was faster, stronger, more alert, just plain better. As Garret slipped across the autumn carpet of gold and red, Sarn’s parting words rang in his mind. “Don’t worry about it brother, you’ll tell us both when you’re ready.”