Cry Baby Hollow

by Love, Aimee

  “Get her in a chair,” John ordered.

  Joe sat her down on the living room sofa and John unceremoniously shoved her head between her legs.

  “Take deep breaths,” he told her, holding her head in place firmly.

  Joe knelt in front of her.

  “Don’t worry, darlin’,” he told her softly. “I promise it ain’t nearly as bad as you think.”

  “Rose,” she gasped. They had said Rose was outside. She couldn’t bear the idea of sweet, cookie-baking, peach-smelling Rose out there confronting that thing.

  “It’s okay,” John told her. “You didn’t hit anything vital. Mom’ll be fine.”

  Aubrey’s head shot up in spite of John’s hand holding it down. Her eyes went wide and she felt the blood drain from her face.

  “Rose…?”

  “I’m fine dear,” Rose assured her from the doorway. She was wearing one of Vina’s bathrobes with the words “Holiday Inn” still stitched on the breast, and holding a tennis ball. She tossed the ball to Drake and then reached down to pet him.

  Aubrey looked from the tennis ball to Rose. It was definitely Drake’s. The same one she had last seen in the jaws of the werewolf.

  “I’m sorry I frightened you, hon,” Rose told her softly.

  “I think maybe she needs a drink,” Joe told her pointedly. Rose vanished back toward the kitchen, but it was Vina who came in a moment later with a mint julep in her hand.

  “Told you she’d freak out,” Vina said, handing the drink to Aubrey but directing her words to Joe and John.

  “And I told you she needed to be told before something like this happened,” John retorted. “Mom could have been killed. Aubrey could have had a heart attack.”

  “Well, she knows now,” Vina shot back. “So you can quit bitchin’ about it.” She turned back to the doorway where Rose, Lettie, and all the others were lurking. “You did this on purpose,” she said to Rose accusingly.

  “I didn’t!” Rose insisted. “I had to… She was…”

  Everyone crowded into the room and they all started talking at once.

  Aubrey looked at Joe.

  “Rose killed Noah?” She asked, her voice thick with dread. She realized that the real question was, who had killed Terri, but Noah was the one she had found and it was his death that still weighed on her.

  Behind her, Rose gasped.

  “I most certainly did not!” She told her, shocked. “I never killed anything in my life!”

  Vina scoffed.

  “Well,” Rose said sheepishly, looking at the floor. “Maybe a deer or two,” she admitted.

  “It was you that I saw the night I got here,” Aubrey said.

  “You were a day early,” Rose said defensively. “You weren’t due in until the next day, and I thought I’d have one last hurrah before we had to button things down for you.”

  “You gotta not think of us like the movie theater werewolves,” Vina told her. “You need to…”

  “Us?” Aubrey interrupted. “Us?!?”

  She looked around the room at them. Nobody would meet her eyes. She looked at Joe. He shook his head reassuringly.

  “Anyone who thinks they’re a werewolf needs to go into the other room for a while please,” Aubrey said, unable to take anymore.

  Rose shrugged and left.

  Aubrey looked at Vina.

  “I’m not technically a werewolf anymore,” Vina told her, “on account of I’m retired.”

  Aubrey closed her eyes and counted to ten.

  “Anyone who is now, or ever was…”

  She looked up as Vina, Lettie, Erma, Germaine, Betty, and Emaline left. Joe, Charlie, John, Armistead and Micejah were still there.

  “Which one of them killed Noah?” Aubrey asked, looking around.

  Joe shook his head, but it was Charlie who answered.

  “Rose is the only one who still changes, and as erratic as she’s been, I promise it wasn’t her. She can’t sleep for a week after she kills a rabbit. If she’d done anything, we’d know.”

  “Erratic?” Aubrey asked, confused. Was there any other type of werewolf?

  “On account of the change,” Vina put in from the other room.

  Joe got up, walked over, and shut the door. He came back and pulled a chair over so he could sit directly across from Aubrey and took her hands in his.

  “I’m gonna tell you a story, okay?” He asked.

  Aubrey nodded, too bewildered to demand instant explanations.

  “About ten years ago my marriage really sucked and I was lookin’ for a way to stay away from home for the summer, so I hit on the idea of tryin’ to trace the Melungeons. People have done gene analysis of them before, but the problem is that after the civil war, they took in most anybody who didn’t fit in, so they got real diluted. I wanted to find the oldest ones I could, to try to figure out who the original Melungeons had been.”

  “According to the stories, the Indians told the first explorers who came through that there was a tribe of white Indians who looked like Europeans livin’ in these hills, so we know they’d already been here for a while. Anyway, I searched around and found Vina. I came down here, but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get her to give me a sample, so I fished. It kept me away from home, so I was happy. Well, after a few summers I guess Vina decided she could trust me to come to her with anything I found, instead of callin’ CNN, so she let me take a swab. You followin’ me?” Joe asked.

  Aubrey nodded. “You’ve told me all this,” Aubrey reminded him.

  Joe smiled at her. He could feel her pulse slowing down and her breathing seemed less labored. He motioned for her to take a drink of the bourbon and went on.

  “There are lots a different kinds of DNA tests, and to tell where someone’s ancestors came from, you usually just test for certain things that are specific to certain populations, but Vina had been so hesitant, and made me make so many promises… Well, I ran every test I could think of on her.”

  Aubrey finished her drink in one long swallow. “And?” She asked.

  “And she’s got about twenty-five percent more DNA than she aught.”

  “I don’t understand,” Aubrey told him.

  “Well, neither did I,” Joe admitted. “So I ran some more tests and tried to figure out what the extra stuff was.”

  “You’re going to tell me it was wolf,” Aubrey guessed.

  “Some of it,” he admitted, “but there was also a lot that had to do with cellular metabolism and protein combinations. I asked her about it and she introduced me to John. John’s known since he was young. He went into medical research to try to figure out the how and why.”

  “But he isn’t one?” Aubrey asked, then realized John had taken a seat beside her on the couch and it was rude to talk about him like he wasn’t there. “You aren’t?” She corrected, turning to him.

  He shook his head.

  “Men can’t be,” Joe told her. “The genes in question are mitochondrial. They pass from a mother to her children, but they dead-end there in men. A man can carry the trait, but he can’t pass it on to his daughters and he can’t present.”

  “So only women,” Aubrey said, realizing for the first time that she was the only woman left in the room.

  Joe nodded.

  “Men have known for a long time that women turn into beasts once a month,” John joked. “Around here it’s just more literal.”

  Aubrey shot him a look.

  “It’s like male pattern baldness,” Joe told her. “They say if you wanna know if you’re gonna be bald, you don’t look at your Dad, you look at your Mom’s brothers because the gene for it is actually passed from a mother to her children, but men can’t pass it on.”

  Aubrey nodded as if she understood. She didn
’t, not really, but her eyes were starting to glaze over.

  “So if it wasn’t Rose, then who killed Noah?” She asked.

  “The people of the hollow aren’t the only Melungeons who moved down here,” Joe reminded her. He glanced behind him, toward the ridge and the Mosley’s land.

  “The Mosleys are werewolves, too?”

  “Celestine Wynn was, and her daughter’s female descendants are.”

  Aubrey’s hand shot up to her neck.

  “If you’re about to tell me that when The Bitch bit me she made me a werewolf I’m…”

  Joe shook his head.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” he promised. “Well, sometimes it does, but not this time.”

  “Sometimes?” Aubrey was extremely confused. Charlie reached forward and took the empty glass gently from her hand. He walked over to the closed door and opened it just wide enough to hand out the glass.

  “Stronger,” he told Vina, giving her the glass. He closed the door again and waited.

  Joe looked at John.

  “Have you ever had conjunctivitis?” John asked.

  Aubrey was taken aback. “You mean pinkeye?”

  John nodded.

  “I guess, she told him. “When I was little.”

  “Do you know how you got it?”

  “One of the kids at school got it and then we all did,” she said, even more confused than before.

  Someone rapped on the door and Charlie opened it, took the glass, and closed it again. He handed the drink to Aubrey. She took a big gulp and sighed.

  “That’s viral pinkeye,” John told her. “Did your mother ever tell you not to rub your nose and then your eyes?” He asked.

  Aubrey couldn’t fathom where this was going.

  “Yes,” she told him.

  “Because you’d get pinkeye?” John asked.

  Aubrey nodded.

  “But you can’t catch a virus from yourself. The thing is, there are several forms of conjunctivitis. One is viral, the kind you get from other kids, then there’s the bacterial one you can give yourself through bad hygiene, and there’s also one caused by allergies. Lycanthropy… Werewolves,” he clarified, ”are the same way. There are different types that all look the same to a layman. Celestine Wynn…”

  “Stop saying The Bitch’s name in my house!” Vina bellowed through the door.

  “The Bitch,” John corrected himself smoothly, “has the genetic kind. She can’t pass it through a bite. As far as we know, the viral type has completely died out. We’ve certainly never seen it.”

  “She isn’t a werewolf anymore, anyway,” Joe told her. “She’s retired like Vina and the others.”

  Aubrey sighed in relief.

  “So I’m not a werewolf?”

  Joe and John shared a look.

  “What?” She demanded, looking from one to the other. “What?!?”

  “Well,” Joe told her soothingly. “Your grandmother was, and I checked you when you gave me your DNA in the hospital. You have the genes for it, so technically…”

  “I would know, wouldn’t I?” Aubrey looked around in disbelief. “I couldn’t be one and not know!”

  “You aren’t,” John assured her.

  “And this is why they were talking about hurting me?” Aubrey finally asked.

  “Hurting you?” Joe asked. “Nobody around here would ever hurt you, darlin’.”

  “I heard,” Aubrey told him. “I was out for a walk and I was going to stop here and rest and I heard you talking about using force, about…”

  “I told you I heard someone!” Lettie crowed triumphantly from the kitchen.

  “They weren’t talkin’ about hurting you. That was just a little disagreement among friends,” Joe told her. “Some of us wanted to tell you as soon as you got here and some of us didn’t think you ever needed to know. There’s been a truce with the Mosleys since after your Grandmother was killed, and Rose won’t be one much longer so…”

  “She’s retiring,” Charlie said. “So we thought you never had to find out.”

  “Vina argued that since you have the gene and could pass it on to your daughters, you needed to know about it but… Well, we never really reached any kind of agreement.”

  “Then why were they talking about forcing me? You said you’d lock me in a closet! Why? To keep them from telling me?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “To keep them from changing you,” he told her.

  “You aren’t one now,” John said. “But you could be. We never knew why you and your mother didn’t change, but something you said in the hospital gave us an idea. Your mother was on birth control pills? And so were you? How old were you when you started taking them?”

  Aubrey shrugged, glad that the bourbon was making her numb.

  “Right after I got my first period,” Aubrey told them reluctantly. “My mother said she didn’t want me to have a baby young and ruin my life the way she had.”

  Charlie shook his head. “A real class act, your mom,” he said in an undertone.

  “It’s all hormonal,” John explained. “It’s related to a woman’s cycle. That’s probably where the full moon legend came from. In ancient times, people believed that the phases of the moon controlled a woman’s fertility. But birth control pills trick a woman’s body into not ovulating by making it think she’s already pregnant. It’s probable that the pills also inhibited your ability to change.”

  “But I’m not on them anymore,” Aubrey told him.

  “It wouldn’t matter,” he said. “It’s the huge surge of hormones that comes with puberty that triggers it. I could simulate it with fertility drugs.”

  Aubrey looked at them in disbelief. “They wanted to force me to become a werewolf?”

  “We told them we wouldn’t do it without informed consent,” Joe assured her. “Vina wanted to slip you a werewolf micky, so you couldn’t refuse, but we thought you should be given the choice.”

  “Why the hell would I consent to becoming a fucking werewolf?!?”

  “It’d fix you,” Vina screamed from the next room.

  “Fix me?” Aubrey asked. “What does she mean?”

  Joe sighed.

  “Having wolf DNA doesn’t mean anything without the mechanism to change back and forth. You remember the stuff about the DNA having a lot to do with cellular metabolism and stuff?” He asked.

  Aubrey nodded.

  “What do you know about stem cells?” John asked.

  “I saw the South Park episode where Christopher Reeves eats babies,” she told them.

  John rolled his eyes.

  “And I’ve read articles in magazines. They can grow into any kind of cells, but adults don’t have them the way a fetus does,” she said.

  “Most adults,” John clarified. “You and the others, your cells are basically all still stem cells. They can change.”

  “So?”

  “When Germaine was little,” Joe told her. “She and her brother were choppin’ wood and she missed and cut off three of her fingers. The first time she changed into a wolf and back, her hand was whole again. Your neck, your leg, your heart… You’d be healthy again. Vina’s right. It’d fix you.”

  “She was a little shorter after that,” Vina screamed from the kitchen. “On account of the extra stuff for the new hand had to come from somewhere.”

  “She’s just pulling your leg,” Germaine called.

  Aubrey shook her head in wonder.

  “That’s why they’re all so healthy,” John told her. “Your body is essentially remade every time you transform. Vina may be over a hundred, but her body is basically that of a sixty year old because that’s how long its been since her last time.”

  “Vina is over a
hundred?” Aubrey asked in disbelief.

  Joe nodded. “She won’t tell us how far over,” he said.

  “But I’d be a werewolf?” Aubrey asked. “I’d be healthy, but I’d be a werewolf.”

  “Only for part of the time,” John told her, “and only until menopause. You acquire the ability to change when you ovulate. It lasts about a week.”

  “You don’t have to change though,” Micejah said, speaking for the first time. “Emaline has always hated it. Even when she still could, she hardly ever did.”

  “That’s why Rose has become erratic? Menopause?”

  John nodded. “Her cycle is slowing down, getting ready to stop. Sometimes she can’t change even when she thinks she can, and sometimes she does it unexpectedly.”

  Aubrey leaned back and tried to process it all.

  Vina opened the door and brushed past Charlie with the other women hard on her heels.

  “If you don’t, we’ll all have to move,” she told Aubrey. “The Bitch was a lot of things, but at least she respected the truce and the old ways. Whoever is in charge over there now doesn’t care about secrecy or nothin’. They want revenge and Rose can’t hold ‘em off all alone.”

  “I am so sorry I scared you dear,” Rose told her. “They were following you in the woods though, and when I saw that you’d past Vina’s… Well, they were laying a trap for you, and I knew I had to get you to turn around. I tried to change back to warn you, but I could only make it halfway. I knew you’d be frightened, but I couldn’t let you go any further. I thought maybe if you saw Drake and I getting along, you’d figure out that I was friendly but…” She shrugged.

  “I’m sorry I shot you,” Aubrey told her.

  Rose smiled. “I’m good as new now, dear. Don’t you worry about it.”

  Considering the vast number of other things on her mind at the moment, Aubrey doubted she would.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Joe hopped up into the truck and slammed the door. He looked over at Aubrey. “You okay?” He finally asked.

  “What do you think?”

  Joe look