A Werewolf in Riverdale

by Caleb Roehrig

  “Oh?” He really didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Wolves are pack animals, and they have a natural tendency to cluster geographically,” Betty went on. “The good news—maybe the only good news—is that it’s actually rare for the gene to assert itself, and even more rare for werewolves to deliberately make new werewolves just to have a pack. When they’re in animal form, their instinct is to kill, not convert; and as humans … well, genetic lycanthropes tend to believe they’re far superior to the ones who turn from a bite.” She shrugged. “Basically, they’re snobs. That’s probably why, deep down, on a primitive level, families carrying the gene end up seeking one another out.”

  Goose bumps hardened the flesh on his shoulders as Archie remembered Betty’s words from earlier in the night: “It’s someone we both know.” “Which families?”

  “The Mantles, for one,” Betty began, glancing around cautiously, as if they might be overheard in this desolate neighborhood on this lonely night.

  “You mean it might be Reggie?” Archie sucked in a sharp breath, but then gave a slow nod. The more he thought about his chief rival at Riverdale High, the more reasonable the possibility sounded. “Actually, that makes a lot of sense. It would explain his attitude problem.”

  “Archie. Just because someone has an attitude—” Betty cut herself off, squeezing her eyes shut. “You know what? Never mind. It might be him. It might also be one of the Blossoms.”

  Archie lifted his brows. “Cheryl and Jason Blossom also have this … lycra-thingy?”

  “Lycanthropy. And I don’t know for sure. All I can tell you is that their family carries the marker for it—Aunt Elena’s records show a confirmed Blossom werewolf from sometime in the sixties.” Betty crossed her arms over her chest. “But that means it could be anyone they’re related to: parents, cousins, aunts, or uncles …”

  “Yeah, but come on,” Archie scoffed. “You know Cheryl. She’s mean; she’s athletic; she doesn’t care about hurting people … You told me yourself she runs the cheerleading squad like a tyrant, right? If one of them is a werewolf, it’s her.”

  “Maybe.” Betty frowned, looking a little annoyed by his deductive process. “But if we’re profiling people, then the one guy in Riverdale who really meets all the stereotypical werewolf criteria is Moose Mason—all quick-tempered, six foot infinity of him—and his family bears the curse as well.”

  “Really?” Archie’s voice became embarrassingly thin. Moose was intimidating enough already, and a complete wrecking ball on the football field; imagining him with teeth and claws and an insatiable bloodlust was … not comforting.

  “We can also add Bingo Wilkin to the list.” Shifting uncomfortably, Betty wouldn’t quite look Archie in the eye, and goose bumps spread clear to his elbows.

  “Bingo? Jughead’s cousin Bingo? Oh, man, that can’t be …” Archie trailed off, hearing his own words, and his heart constricted. Licking his lips, he stammered, “W-why is Bingo on the list?”

  Betty let out a terrible sigh, her shoulders drooping. “Because he has Jones blood in him. And the werewolf gene goes back centuries in Jughead’s family.”

  “Wait—you don’t … you can’t …” Archie stepped back, letting out a bark of nervous laughter. “That’s got to be some kind of a joke, right?”

  “I really wish that it were.” Her expression was grave, the corners of her mouth angled down.

  “You can’t possibly be suggesting that Jughead freaking Jones is—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” she stated flatly, but her tone was unconvincing. “I’m stating a fact, Archie. His family carries the gene. Aunt Elena has extensive records, and if you want, we can go right back inside and I can name every member of his family tree that’s wolfed out and killed people at some point—”

  “Stop, just stop it!” Archie put his hands up between them, taking a step back, his heart pounding. “I can’t believe you. Jughead is our friend—my best friend!”

  “And he might be innocent,” Betty returned agreeably. “But, Archie … you need to be prepared for the possibility that he isn’t.”

  “I’m not gonna listen to any more of this.” Disgusted, Archie turned and yanked the chain free, shoving the gate open. “You’ve got your own cousin locked in a cage; you’re talking about crushing people’s skulls … I don’t even know who you are!”

  “You don’t have to like it, but this is something you’re just gonna have to deal with, Archie,” she exclaimed in a fierce undertone, hurrying after him as he marched across the street. “Denial isn’t going to protect you, and it isn’t going to prevent more people from dying—trust me.”

  He ignored her, though, his ears burning with everything he wished he’d never heard, and just before they reached the driver’s side of his car, Betty grabbed his elbow, stopping him in his tracks. “One of our friends might be the beast that killed Dilton, and I will stop them from hurting anyone else—no matter what it takes!”

  The sun was just coming up over the horizon, layering the sky in sherbet tones and splashing purple clouds with bright gold, when Jughead Jones opened his eyes. He was freezing cold, his head still heavy with sleep, and he was … naked? Why was he naked? For a groggy moment, he couldn’t even figure out where he was. Rubbing his eyes, he sat up—and froze, his heart coming to a complete stop in his throat when he finally recognized his surroundings.

  Headstones, blackened with age and studded with clumps of moss, poked out of the ground on either side of him; a marble angel knelt on a pedestal at his back, saying a silent prayer; and a gloomy mausoleum, its plinth reading JONES in block letters, stood directly before him. Bright yellow crime scene tape had been strung across the metal gate that guarded its doors, and Jughead gulped. He was in the cemetery; and was this exactly where Dilton had actually died? A wave of dizziness swept over him, the world pulsing with light, and he doubled over with his head between his knees.

  His mind raced as he struggled to breathe, struggled to recall how he had possibly gotten here, but the last memory he could draw up was listening to music in Bingo’s basement, laughing, surrounded by pizza boxes and soda bottles. Now he was in the graveyard—and he was naked. Was this a prank? Could his cousin have drugged him, taken his clothes, and dumped him at the foot of the family crypt as some kind of a joke?

  “Sheriff Keller was the first one on the scene when the groundskeeper called the police.” The memory of Veronica’s words sent him scrambling to his feet, shivering all over with the cold. He had no idea what kind of hours the groundskeeper kept, but there was no way he wanted to get caught stark naked in the middle of an actual crime scene, with grass and leaves stuck to his backside. He rubbed his eyes again, thinking—and that’s when he finally noticed his hands.

  They were filthy, with fresh dirt under his nails … but they were also covered in blood. His stomach rolled and heaved, and Jughead doubled over a second time, gagging up a thread of saliva that oozed into the grass. This can’t be happening. His mouth had that same foul taste as the morning before, and he gasped for air, trying to fight the convulsions that tugged at his throat. Whatever was going on, he could figure it out later, but first he had to get home—before his mom came to wake him up for school and found him missing from his bed.

  Ripping the liner out of a public trash can just next to the cemetery’s side entrance, Jughead fashioned it into a makeshift smock, trying not to think about what had been inside of it before he’d emptied it onto the ground. He looked both ways before he sprinted up the road, his feet slapping the pavement, his garbage bag tunic fluttering in the morning breeze. No news crews, no dog walkers or early-morning joggers—the coast was clear. Even the streetlights were still on as he raced back home.

  The metal brackets on the drainpipe cut his feet as he scaled the side of his house, clambering as quickly and quietly as possible onto the eaves near his bedroom window, and then tumbling inside. He was still shaking all over, his heart trying to punch its way through his
rib cage, when he peeled off the liner and shoved it to the bottom of his wastebasket. He’d beaten his alarm by two minutes.

  He was in the shower, desperately scrubbing dried blood from the creases in his palms, when the first uninvited memory came to him: Riverdale High, the hallways dark and empty; someone running, the air thickened by the smell of fear; a high-pitched scream mingling with the sound of … of—

  “Forsythe?” His mom’s voice, accompanied by a tentative knock at the door, broke through his train of thought. “Can I open the door?”

  “I’m—I’m in the shower, Mom!” He tried to sound normal, but his voice was pitched an octave higher than it should be. “Can’t it wait?”

  There was a short pause, and then she spoke again. “It’s important. There’s been … Something’s happened.”

  “Okay, okay,” he replied hastily, scrubbing up one last time before shutting off the water. The blood was still there, still clinging to the tiny grooves over his knuckles, the razor-thin lines that made hatch marks in the webbing of his thumbs. Grabbing a thick terry-cloth robe off a hook on the wall, Jughead shrugged into it before he opened the door, burying his hands in the deep pockets. “What’s going on?”

  He was so preoccupied with his own problems that it took him a moment to realize how pale his mother was, her skin almost waxy under the light from the hall as she said, “School’s been canceled again today, honey.”

  She was staring at him as if trying to memorize all the lines on his face, like maybe she’d never see him again, and he froze under the scrutiny.

  Dumbly, he managed, “It has?”

  “I was going to let you sleep, but then I heard the water running, and—” Her words choked off abruptly, and she swallowed, shaking her head. “I just didn’t want you to find out from the news.”

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  His mind was still racing, casting out feelers in all directions, trying to fill the void that stretched between Bingo’s basement and the family crypt, trying to make sense of yet another horrible dream. He’d woken up naked in a graveyard, covered in blood, and now class was canceled for the second day in a row? It couldn’t be a coincidence—and yet it had to be a coincidence. Please, please let it be a coincidence.

  “It’s a day off, right?” In the pockets of his robe, his bloodied hands throbbed with guilt. “Who cares how I find out about it?”

  “It’s because of the reason,” Mrs. Jones answered with a tremulous sigh, and the hollow, worried look in her eyes hit him like the front end of a truck. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Forsythe … but one of your teachers was killed last night. And it happened on school property, so the building is a crime scene.”

  The ground dropped away from beneath him. Dark, empty hallways; someone running; the air thickened by the smell of fear. His voice squeaking, Jughead asked, “Wh-who was it?”

  “Miss Grundy.” His mom rubbed her mouth and swiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “I’m so sorry, honey. They’re saying … apparently it was another animal attack, like what happened to your friend Dilton. They don’t know how wild animals could have gotten into the school, but—”

  “Into the school?” Jughead repeated in a daze, his hands tingling now in the pockets of his robe. Howling. A high-pitched scream mingled with the sound of howling.

  A sob burst from his mother, tears rolling down her cheeks, and she pressed her hands together. “They’re saying … they’re saying she was eaten.”

  The room flickered, his stomach inverted, and Jughead barely made it to the sink in time to hurl chunks of half-digested meat into the drain.

  NOTHING MADE ARCHIE FEEL more invincible than a fit of righteous anger, but when he woke up the next morning to the news of another gruesome attack by the Riverdale Ripper, he felt nothing but overwhelming guilt. Miss Grundy was dead.

  The shock of it was like falling through ice—a sudden, cold bath that snapped him out of his sense of moral superiority. Betty had been putting herself through the paces in her aunt’s obstacle course, getting both mentally and physically ready to face down a monster, and Archie had been thinking up creatively mean-spirited things to say about her disloyalty. One after another, he’d devised brilliant, if tardy, comebacks to her suggestion that Jughead Jones might be responsible for what happened to Dilton.

  Meanwhile, a killer—most likely someone they knew—had been ripping Miss Grundy apart.

  The reports of what had happened at Riverdale High the night before were vague, but in a way, what they didn’t say was worse than what they did. Archie’s imagination worked overtime, remembering all the horrible things Reggie had described at the Chock’Lit Shoppe the previous afternoon, but now picturing them being done to his teacher. The truth was that Archie had gotten on Miss Grundy’s bad side a lot more than he’d ever been on her good side—usually for not paying attention in class, or forgetting to do his homework. But all the times that he’d cursed her name under his breath after getting a bad grade on a test weren’t what came back to him as he tried to make sense of the morning’s headlines.

  He remembered that she had a cat—a rescue—that she’d once had to treat for ear mites. He remembered her laughing about the singles’ cruise she once went on for her birthday and how it turned out that the only thing she didn’t like about the trip was having to share the boat with other people. Most of all, he remembered that she would wistfully call Riverdale High her “home away from home.” He’d thought it was sad, at the time, all these lonely-sounding things; but looking back, he realized how genuinely happy she’d seemed while talking about them. She wasn’t just some robot that turned on when the first bell rang—she was a person with a life and interests of her own. And now she was dead.

  After a long run failed to clear either his mind or his conscience, Archie swallowed his pride and made a call. Betty picked up on the second ring, but he didn’t wait for her to say hello before launching into what was on his mind. “Listen, I’m sorry about the things I said last night. You were right—”

  “Forget it.” Her tone was firm but understanding. “It’s pretty awful stuff to know about, and you’re not the only one who’s freaked out over what it all means, you know?”

  “It’s just going to keep happening, isn’t it?”

  “Until someone stops the beast. Well, until I stop it,” Betty said. “Aunt Elena has her hands full with my cousin—his parents are on the other side of the country, and my parents are mostly retired from the game at this point.” She let out a heavy sigh. “Did you hear that school is canceled indefinitely?”

  Archie nodded before he realized that she couldn’t see him over the phone. “On TV they said the crime scene was so bad that it could take days for the police to process it.”

  Betty made some noises with her mouth. Then: “Reggie is having a party tonight.”

  “What?” Archie stared at the phone. This was news. “He’s … what?”

  “According to the text blast he sent out it’s ‘in honor of Dilton and Miss Grundy,’ ” Betty reported, apparently reading out loud from the message. “But really it’s a ‘spring break in September’ party. Since we ‘might have a whole week off, now. On account of all the carnage and stuff.’ ”

  Archie’s nose wrinkled back until it practically touched his forehead. “Two people just died! What’s wrong with him?” Then: “And did he seriously not invite me?”

  “He’s Reggie,” she answered with a verbal shrug. “Anyway, I don’t know if you have plans tonight, but it’ll be down by the river—near the Wesley Road bridge—and it starts at ten.”

  He waited for her to say she was making some kind of a tasteless joke, and when she didn’t, he demanded, “You’re not serious, right?”

  “Archie. This is the third night of the full moon, and a whole bunch of our friends are going off into the woods to make noise and be irresponsible.” Her words were crisp, edged in impatience. “It’s exactly the same recipe that led to those campers being sla
ughtered last month, and I’m not going to let that happen again. If Reggie’s having a party, I’m going to be there. I have to—it’s my job.”

  “Oh.” He stopped, silent for a moment. “I … hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “I get it if you want to stay home,” she said next, her tone softening. “This isn’t your responsibility, and things could get … hairy. Literally. But I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t go and something happens to anyone else we care about.”

  Archie was unsettled for the rest of their conversation, unable to say he’d go and unable to say he wouldn’t. The whole idea of partying right now grossed him out, but Betty was right: Everyone who attended could be in danger. And it’s not like he could just come right out and warn them. They would laugh him out of town if he tried to tell people that there was a werewolf on the loose. What really bothered him is that he shouldn’t have to warn anybody about anything; people were getting killed! Whether it was a supernatural monster, some feral animal, or just a run-of-the-mill, ax-wielding drifter—who still wanted to go hang out in the woods?

  The people going to this party probably thought safety in numbers would protect them. The authorities were still being cagey about what exactly had gone down with Miss Grundy, but everyone knew she had been alone when she was killed—just like Dilton was. Besides, Reggie had thrown tons of parties by the Wesley Road bridge, where the river bent and a vast expanse of flat rocks backed up to the tree line, and nothing bad had ever happened. A bunch of campers dying in the no-man’s-land between Riverdale and Midville probably wasn’t on anybody’s radar.

  More and more, it was starting to look like Betty Cooper might be their only hope.

  For a while after she finished talking to Archie, Betty lay on her back in bed, staring at the ceiling. Dark clouds pressed in on her thoughts, and she did her best to push them back, but it was something of a losing fight.