A Werewolf in Riverdale

by Caleb Roehrig

  Elena didn’t even blink. “Those woods are still familiar territory to anyone who grew up around here, so the campers could simply have been victims of convenience. I was prepared to accept Doiley as a victim of convenience, too, until the rest of the deaths established a different pattern. There was nothing convenient about targeting the Grundy woman. The beast had to break into the school from the roof, and then somehow it managed to kill her in her own classroom with the door locked.” She folded her arms across her chest. “He broke it down from the inside in order to get out once she was dead.”

  “None of that proves it was Jughead!” Archie finally shouted, his voice embarrassingly unsteady. “You can’t even prove the werewolf is a ‘he’—you’re just guessing!”

  “I hate to break it to you, Coppertop, but this isn’t exactly a court of law.” She gave him a look that could have knocked a bird out of the sky. “I don’t need to ‘prove’ anything, and we don’t have time to just sit around, waiting for your friend to confess!” Snatching up Archie’s target again, the elderly lady smiling through the blast of black paint, Elena shoved it under his nose. “You want to know why you screwed up tonight? It’s because you’re still thinking of your targets as either monsters or people, instead of as objectives. Even if you take out some old bag by accident, as long as you stop the wolf, you’ve saved her entire community. Call it a fair trade, and stop panicking about what will happen if you make a mistake.” She threw the paint-smeared placard at his feet. “If I were the one calling the shots here? Your pal Forsythe would have been dealt with already.”

  “But you’re not the one calling the shots,” Betty interrupted, her voice filled with steel, and they both glanced over at her. “I am. This is my mission, Aunt Elena, and I get to decide what collateral damage is acceptable.”

  Drawing herself up to her full height, the girl stated, “I don’t want any innocent lives lost—and that includes Jughead, if he’s not the one who’s killing these people.”

  “Having a soft heart is a great quality for a nanny or a veterinarian, but not a werewolf hunter.” Elena let out a disappointed sigh. “You need to toughen up, too, Elizabeth. I know this Jones kid is your friend, but people are going to die if you’re not willing to make the hard choices when the chips are down.”

  “It’s my mission, and I decide when the chips are down,” Betty repeated, just as strongly as before, and Archie’s eyebrows inched up a little. “I’m not killing one of my oldest friends because he might be responsible; I need to know for sure.”

  Elena flung her hands up in resignation, and Archie turned to Betty. Maybe she wasn’t on his side, exactly, but at least she didn’t want to kill Jughead. Besides, something she’d mentioned earlier was still ringing in his ears—still giving him a tiny glimmer of hope. “Who’s the other person? You said there were two people at the party with high temperatures.”

  “It was Juggie’s cousin Bingo.” Betty shifted her weight uncomfortably. “He left the party just a little bit before we did that night, and nobody seems to know where he went. As far as I can tell, he and Juggie are the only two suspects we’ve got who don’t have alibis for any of the killings.”

  “Okay, so maybe it’s him.” For the first time since this conversation started, Archie felt something like relief. “I mean, what do we even know about the guy? He’s got werewolf genes and he shows up at our parties uninvited? He’s way more likely to be a people-eating monster than Jughead! Jug feels guilty swatting mosquitoes.”

  “Wilkin lives in Midville,” Elena pointed out, “and Midville doesn’t have a werewolf problem. Riverdale does. Not to mention the fact that he’s not connected to any of the victims.”

  “The campsite was between Riverdale and Midville,” Archie pointed out in return, “and Bingo’s not exactly a stranger around here. He’s spent enough time with Jug and the rest of us to know what our lives are like, who our teachers are. All those books you made me read talk about werewolves being super smart, right? So maybe he’s killing people over here in order to divert suspicion.”

  “And maybe the simplest answer is the right one, and your best bud is eating his way through your social circle.” Elena put her hands on her hips. “Or maybe it’s both of them together. Either way, you’ve got about twenty hours before the full moon rises again and people start to die; so if I were you, I’d stop bickering about who the beast is and focus on how you’re going to kill it.”

  With that, she turned around and stalked off, heading for a pile of fresh targets so she could reset the obstacle course. The music kicked in again a beat later, a hard-driving guitar riff and a lead singer who sounded like he was being strangled with piano wire. Wordlessly, Betty spun on her heel and hastened after her aunt—leaving Archie alone with a growing sense of anxious foreboding. Rubbing his neck, he looked down at his feet, where the face of that unfortunate old woman grinned madly back up at him.

  Jughead was the one they might be hunting … so why did Archie feel like he was the one wearing the target?

  THREE WEEKS EARLIER, LESS THAN seven days after the gruesome remains of what had once been Pop Tate were found inside the Chock’Lit Shoppe, Jughead was hiding in a bathroom stall at Riverdale High waiting for the hallways to empty. The school had finally reopened that morning, and his mom had refused to fall for his too-sick-to-go-to-class act. He would rather have been anywhere else, but if he skipped and she found out, Mrs. Jones would swiftly replace the Riverdale Ripper as the scariest creature in town.

  The Riverdale Ripper.

  He was the Riverdale Ripper. A deranged laugh bubbled up his throat, but when he coughed it out, it turned into a whimper. He felt like he was losing his mind, and he didn’t know what to do anymore. He had killed Pop Tate.

  He had eaten Pop Tate.

  A flat tone sounded, signaling the one-minute warning, and feet began stampeding in the halls outside. He waited until there were only thirty seconds left—just enough time to get to class, where he could sit with his head down and not talk to anyone. All week long he’d avoided his friends, ignoring their texts and pretending to be asleep if they stopped by his house; and today, he’d skulked around corners, ducking through doorways, and acted like he didn’t know his own name when Archie shouted it from the other end of the corridor. He couldn’t face them. He could barely face himself.

  Peeking out of the bathroom, making sure the coast was clear, he dashed down the hallway. There were still a few people hanging out by their lockers, but no one he knew well enough to talk to, and Jughead thanked whichever last one of his lucky stars was still functioning for that. He barreled around a corner, thirty feet from his classroom door—across from Grundy’s, which was now closed and locked for the foreseeable future—and ran straight into someone wearing a letterman’s jacket and heading in the opposite direction.

  “Whoa! Sorry, I—Jughead?”

  Even before his brain caught up with his eyes, Jughead froze solid, a bottomless pit opening up beneath his hopes as he found himself face-to-face with Archie Andrews for the first time since he’d learned the truth about himself … and what he’d done. For a long moment, he couldn’t remember how to speak. He wanted to shove past the guy and flee—maybe just head right for the door and keep running until he hit the state line. The funny-because-it-was-sad fact of the matter, though, was that if he ducked Archie now, after ghosting him for a week, it would only invite questions he couldn’t answer. And he had enough of those already.

  “Hey, man, where’ve you been all week?” Archie asked when Jughead didn’t say anything. There was something in his tone that sounded an awful lot like suspicion, and the hallway shrank a little around them. “I’ve been texting you.”

  “Yeah, sorry, I—” Jughead’s throat closed in a sudden panic, and it took him a beat to find his voice again. “I haven’t been feeling well. It’s … the past few days have been kinda rough.”

  “Because of Pop?” Archie supplied, his tone almost hopeful. The final bell rang
out, but the guy didn’t even blink—like the question was some kind of a test. He just kept staring through the unbearably awkward silence that followed, until he finally added, “I … can’t believe he’s dead, you know? I can’t believe the Chock’Lit Shoppe is closed.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” Jughead gripped the straps of his backpack so tight his knuckles cracked. Some events from the night he had dropped Betty off at home remained a peaceful blur … but other parts were rapidly coming back to him: gruesome images, fragments of something so unspeakably hideous that they turned his blood to ice and made him sick. And this time Jughead was certain they weren’t from a dream.

  “You can always call me to talk,” Archie blurted, looking his friend in the chest, his cheeks turning pink. “If something’s … going on, or whatever? You … you always think you need to deal with the heavy stuff by yourself, but you don’t.”

  It could have been a friendly gesture, but caught in the grips of spiraling paranoia, Jughead saw only another test—a clumsy invitation to confess his crimes. His doubts must have been written plainly on his face, because Archie stammered as he rushed on. “Y-you spent more time at the Chock’Lit Shoppe than any of us. And sometimes it just helps to share, you know?”

  “Sometimes it doesn’t,” Jughead returned, way more emphatically than he meant to. But he couldn’t share this, and Archie couldn’t help him. No one could. “I really need to get to class.”

  He didn’t wait for a counterargument, just stepped around his friend and raced for the door, but behind him, he heard Archie say, “Even if you don’t want to talk about it, we can still hang out. I … I’m worried about you, Jug.”

  Jughead didn’t answer. How could he explain that he was worried about himself, too?

  After his disastrous run-in with Archie, Jughead had made a point of trying to act as normal as possible around his friends, hiding his discomfort as best he could whenever the topic of conversation inevitably turned to the Riverdale Ripper. But now, mere hours before sundown on the night of another full moon, he stood at the back of Moore’s Hardware Supply, his stomach tied in the kind of knots that Boy Scouts win merit badges for.

  There were still more than three hours to go until sunset, but already he could feel the itch beneath his skin, the heat climbing in his blood. His vision wobbled as his eyes filled with tears, and he blinked the moisture away with a shaky breath. In front of him was a selection of heavy-duty chains, the largest and sturdiest with links as big around as his fingers, and he was running out of time to get up the courage to make his purchase.

  This was supposed to be the easy part. No one knew why he was there, and he might have a million reasons for buying the kind of chains they use to keep SUVs from rolling off auto-transport trailers. But going through with it—picking out chains, selecting a padlock, going up to pay for them—meant accepting that all of this was real.

  There was no turning back now.

  Just thinking about the whole situation brought a hysterical laugh to Jughead’s lips. A dozen times a day over the past month, the absurdity of it all would hit him again suddenly out of the blue, and he would start to worry that maybe he really was losing his mind. What rational person above the age of ten believed in real, actual monsters? Bingo was just another popular kid with the instincts of a bully, and he’d told this ridiculous lie to get under Jughead’s skin—and it had worked.

  But then there were the details that had emerged over the past month, reports that had been worded carefully to soften the gruesomeness of the killings that had plagued Riverdale. Massive amounts of flesh missing from the bodies, bones that were scored deep with tooth marks, paw prints tracked all over the crime scenes in the victims’ blood … it added up to an ugly summary he couldn’t argue against. And no matter what lies Bingo had told him the night of Reggie’s party, at least one thing had been the indisputable truth: “It’ll come back to you soon, cousin, I promise.”

  He’d woken up in his own bed the morning after Pop Tate died, with no recollection of how he’d gotten there. His last memory had been saying good-bye to Betty, watching her head up the walk to her front door, his head spinning a little and his stomach painfully empty. The story that had been splashed all over the local news when he’d gotten up, though, had shaken loose the details of yet another grisly dream—a pile of spoiling meat, a grown man’s pitiful screams, the taste of warm, slippery blood coursing down his throat—and Jughead had started to panic.

  But, of course, they weren’t dreams at all; they were memories, and they were quickly joined by others, first in a trickle and then in a flood, complete with taste and sound and texture. The shredding of tent fabric and the terrified shrieks of the campers inside, their eyes bulging in horror. Hunkering down in the mildewy darkness of the old crypt, his heart thudding with anticipation, his stomach growling. Pursuing Miss Grundy along the shadowed hallway of the high school, letting her stay ahead but knowing he could take her down any time he wanted. Pop Tate on his back, the tile floor covered in blood, the man’s flesh being torn open by dark claws at the end of thick, inhuman fingers—his fingers.

  Jughead was a real, actual monster. A werewolf. And the full moon was due to rise in a matter of hours.

  Adrenaline scratched his veins on the inside, his arms and legs jittery and restless, and all day long his stomach had turned at the smell of anything other than raw meat. Grabbing the heaviest, thickest set of chains, and the biggest padlock he could find, Jughead hurried the items to the front of the store. All he could hope for at this point was that these would be strong enough to hold him—that when he transformed, it would keep him from breaking free and taking yet another human life.

  When he checked out, the bag was so heavy the muscles in his arms burned as he struggled out the door with it, and the absurdity struck him once again. He could barely lift the chains now, but before the night was over, he’d consider it a lucky miracle if they even slowed him down.

  He was halfway across the parking lot when he looked up and froze, the bag slipping from his hand and hitting the pavement with a loud clink. Leaning against Jughead’s bicycle, wearing a peacoat and a self-satisfied smirk, was Bingo Wilkin.

  “Well, hey there, Forsythe.” The boy’s tone was benign, almost friendly, but Jughead sensed the threat that hung between them. “Long time, no see.”

  “Yeah. Long time, no see for a reason, Bingo,” Jughead snapped, his already rattled nerves fraying just a little bit more. He’d been avoiding his cousin like the plague since the death of Pop Tate—declining his calls and deleting his texts—and he’d even snuck out his bedroom window one afternoon, when Bingo showed up unannounced at the Joneses’ house. “Maybe you should learn how to take a hint.”

  “Maybe I’m not the one who’s having trouble facing what’s right in front of him,” Bingo rejoined mildly. Pushing off the side of the parked bicycle, he sauntered closer, peeking into the bag of chains as Jughead heaved it up off the ground again. “I’d ask what these are for, but I’ve got a feeling the answer’s gonna be really disappointing.”

  “I know why you came looking for me, but you can just get lost, because I don’t want anything to do with you.” Jughead pushed around him, heading for his bike, suddenly wishing he’d brought a backpack. How was he going to get these things home?

  “Too bad for you that we’re linked together by blood, then, huh?” Bingo asked, following right along behind him. “And all those other things we have in common—”

  “We have nothing in common!” Jughead snarled, spinning around, his teeth bared and his eyes blazing. Once upon a time, he’d have been thrilled by a comparison to his talented, good-looking cousin—once upon a time, he’d wanted to be more like Bingo. He’d never misjudged someone more profoundly, or been so horrified by what traits they actually shared. “I am nothing like you, and I don’t want to be, either, okay? You need to get that through your head, and just leave. Me. Alone.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, man.”
Bingo smiled, calm and casual—but his eyes were colder than the approaching October night. “I tried to tell you last month that we’re part of the same pack. You and me? We’re bonded together whether you like it or not, cousin.”

  “I’m not part of anything!” Jughead shouted. He was so loud that a man getting into his car on the other side of the lot looked up with a sharp glance, and the boy lowered his voice. “You’re some kind of a psychopath if you actually like being what we are—if you like doing the … the things we’ve done.” He shuddered all over as terrible images flashed through his mind like an ugly newsreel, his breath catching, bile creeping up the back of his throat. “I never, ever want to see you again, Bingo. Just … stay out of my life.”

  “So you can do … what, exactly?” his cousin taunted, falling right into step with him again as Jughead made for his bike. “Chain yourself up like someone’s pet schnauzer? Mope and pout and cry like some sad little loser because a twist of fate made you better than ninety-nine percent of the rest of humanity?”

  “Better?” Jughead wheeled on Bingo again, his hands clenched into fists. “You call this better? We’re monsters! People are dead because of us—we killed people and ruined lives, and … and don’t you even care about that?”

  “No. I don’t.” Bingo’s expression remained serene and untroubled. “People die every day; it’s not like your buddy Dilton is special just because he punched his ticket last month instead of next month.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Jughead was appalled. “He didn’t ‘punch his ticket’—we did!”

  “And you think that if I feel bad enough about it that it would make a difference to someone?” Bingo asked with genuine puzzlement. “He could’ve died choking on a piece of candy, or crossing the street without looking both ways … It’s not like he was gonna live forever if we hadn’t intervened, or something.”