Furr

by Axel Howerton

  I step into the shadow of the big house, hoping he hasn’t seen me, or my companions.

  McQueen finishes his gardening and crashes back through his front door, and I look to the trees, finding myself alone again. Jamie and Kevin are gone.

  FOUR HOURS LATER, the sun is up, streaming through the windows of the big house, and McQueen is awake and fresh, or as fresh as a stinking creep like him can get, grinning at me as I enter the vast kitchen to the smell of hot, fresh coffee. The coffee and the smell of frying bacon are almost enough to cover McQueen’s stink. Almost.

  “Help y’self, mate. Boss’ll be down in a jiff. He’s likely worn out,” he says, hopping down from his counter perch, “. . . if he and the missus had a night like I did.”

  I cringe and reach past him for the carafe and a cup.

  Arthur is sitting in a bright corner, cradling a cup of tea in one hand, the silver head of his cane in the other.

  “You’re going to have to explain how that thing works,” I whisper as I sit, eyeballing McQueen across the room to make sure he’s out of earshot.

  “A gift,” Arthur winks, “from my sister. She worked it herself. It is engraved with the ancient markings of our clans. Quite wonderful, is it not?”

  “Silver, right?” I say, making small talk to throw off any suspicion from the lurking presence of McQueen. “I thought silver was a no-no. The only thing that can kill a werewolf.”

  “Oh, my boy. You mustn’t believe all that poppycock. The things that writers and old women create in their minds. You should know there are other kinds of wolves, all with specific Achilles heels as it were. We are fortunate to be blessed in many ways, much improved strength and vigour over our fellow man, speed and heightened senses, you know. Long life if we embrace our nature.”

  “But all the family that’s died . . .”

  “What we are not blessed with is impervious skin, nor immortality, my boy. There is also the madness, which, of all of our curses, is the worst.”

  “So, my father . . .”

  Arthur shushes me, nods toward McQueen and the sound of approaching footsteps.

  “Another time, Finn. A conversation for another time.”

  McQueen leans toward the hallway, trying to listen in as their voices approach us. I have an easier time of eavesdropping.

  “I will not. What the hell is wrong with you? You are my husband, aren’t you? How do you even ask me to do something like that? You asshole!”

  Magus’ voice is quieter, more restrained, but it holds a more threatening tone.

  “You will do it, Emma. You will do it because I command it. Or do you think you can refuse me?”

  I smell the aggression, not his, but hers. Hot and furious, something close to the smell of blood.

  Even the bacon grease and coffee can’t hide it.

  BY THE TIME they enter the room, the conversation is ended. Emma shoves McQueen out of her way, sending him toppling into a chair on the opposite end of the table. He immediately jumps up toward her, but Magus raises a hand to call him off, and McQueen hunches his shoulders, picks up his cup, and stomps off toward the front door, slamming it open on his way out, as is obviously his hallmark.

  I watch Magus slink up behind Emma, teasing his fingers across her shoulders as he did the night before. I see it again, in my mind’s wishful eye, his pale, thin neck stretched out in the dirt, the red bubbling forth like a river under my teeth.

  “Now, Em,” he coos at her, pulling her hair aside and stroking her neck. She straightens, almost imperceptibly, and opens herself to him. “Be nice, hmm? Say good morning to cousin Finn.”

  “Good morning, cousin Finn,” she says, dreamily, swaying lightly in the sunlight.

  Magus is dressed all in black, thin and pale wherever he pokes out of dark cloth. He spins on his heel and approaches the table, eyes locked on mine as he does. Without even looking at it, he spins a chair out toward him, straddles the seat, and folds his hands on the table in front of him. He is graceful, I’ll give him that. Like a snake.

  He makes his eyebrows jump, twists his hands, and somehow produces a deck of cards, fanning them out across the table in front of him, as if out of thin air.

  Emma quietly places a cup of coffee beside him and kisses his face. I take note of the necklace for the first time. It looks like silver, same as the head of Arthur’s cane, but this is a locket, or some kind of amulet, round and pocked like the moon itself. It swings between her breasts as she leans in to him, then disappears into her shirt as she stands, regards me with those olive green eyes, even deeper under accents of brown and grey on her eyelids.

  Magus twirls a card across his fingers. “Have I ever told you, Arthur, how I spent my youth in New Orleans, learning the ways of the cardsharp?”

  Arthur looks at him with quiet eyes.

  “Let me show you a trick, Finn,” Magus says, turning to me. He fans the cards in front of him, a seemingly perfect spacing of fifty-two, every card laid with absolute precision.

  I humour him. I pull a card. The backs of the cards are decorated with Victorian flourishes and strange symbols. I flip it to find the King of Hearts. The King has a wolf’s head in profile, howling at the letter K in the nearest corner.

  “Very good. Very good, indeed.” His voice drips with poison.

  He takes the card, slides it back into the fan, and scoops them all together with a flourish, cupping them between his palms. He mutters something in Latin and opens his hands. The cards burst into flame, so instantaneously hot that we all back away from the table. The cards incinerate in the air, falling to ash in a pile in front of him. He’s still watching me. Those gold and crooked teeth peeking out under that sly grin.

  He raises an eyebrow again and snaps his fingers. The grey dust and smoke swirl into the air in front of me, reconstituting into the shape of a single card, which flutters across the table, as if on the ashen wings of a moth. It comes to a stop on top of my cup, face down, the back of the card identical to the one I had picked from his hand.

  He nods for me to look at the card.

  It’s the King of Hearts. The King no longer has a wolf’s head. Now he’s just a skull.

  “Nice trick,” is all I offer him. I drop the card on the table and slurp at my coffee, keeping my eyes locked on his.

  Magus’ smile widens to the sides of his long face. He plants his hands on the table and pushes himself up, as if his business is done.

  “You may keep that.”

  He bows to us, having finished his performance.

  “Arthur,” he says, then turns to Emma. “My love.”

  He blows her a kiss as he turns to leave.

  And then all of his grace is lost as he walks straight into the barrel chest of Bob Dylan, standing in the doorway.

  “Skinkuk,” Bob says, flat and nonchalant.

  Magus sneers, all of his elegance and poison wasted. He’s flustered, for the first time since I met him.

  “Kyanukxu,” Magus hisses, and shoves past Bob like an angry child. I hear him follow McQueen out of the house with the slamming of the door.

  I look to Emma, who’s regarding me oddly. The clouds have lifted from her eyes again, and she’s looking at me as if she’s seeing me for the first time.

  “Finn?” she asks. Her eyes dance as she smiles at me, the deep olive green glowing from within, eerie with a light I haven’t seen there before, except in my dreams.

  In my mind, she runs to me, throws her arms around me, filling my senses with chocolate and vanilla and heat.

  What she actually does is shake the cobwebs from her head, smile politely, and then kiss Arthur on the forehead, before she turns and follows Magus out of the house, the door closing quietly this time.

  Bob looks around the kitchen, sniffs at the air.

  “Bacon’s burnin’.” He goes to the stove and tosses the pan into the sink, blasting the water and creating a cloud of steam.

  “That’s a shame. Was lookin’ forward to some breakfast. You comin�
�� into town, Finn?”

  I place a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, suddenly reticent to leave him in this place. I can still smell McQueen’s stink nearby.

  “Go on then,” Arthur says. “You’ve only just arrived, my boy. Take the day and set yourself in order.”

  I nod, then look to Bob. “Give me a couple of minutes?”

  24

  SHE’S STANDING OUT on the wide veranda, staring off into the distance, maybe at her abandoned childhood home, maybe at a rabbit on the edge of the woods.

  “Did you really meet David Copperfield in Seattle?”

  “I left here as soon as I was old enough. Ran away to college. Not far enough I guess.”

  “Listen, I don’t want to . . .”

  “Why did you come back here?” Her voice is flat and full of regret. Or maybe it’s resentment. Maybe she just doesn’t like me.

  “This is my home.”

  She laughs at that. The sarcastic chuckle of a perturbed cheerleader.

  “You left a lifetime ago, Finn. You don’t belong here. Not that there’s much here left.”

  She hugs herself, shivering against the morning chill. I pull off my sweater and wrap it around her shoulders. It gets me a dagger between the eyes, but then she softens enough to shove her arms into the sleeves and stuff her hands down into the pockets.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ve never fit in anywhere, Emma. Coming back here, it’s been . . .”

  “Weird?”

  “To say the least. I didn’t even know what I was, what we are, until a few days ago.”

  That stops her. She turns to me with those olive green eyes from my dreams, as dark and deep as the sea.

  “How could you not know?” Her voice finally softening, and my heart nearly breaking at the sound of it. That little lantern in my soul swells and glows warm. Little Finn hollers in triumph in his cave.

  I swallow hard and feel the weight of a lifetime of confusion sitting focused on the top vertebrae of my neck, right at the base of my head. It threatens to crush me any second.

  “I . . . I always thought I was crazy. My mother never told me about any of this. It’s all like some acid-trip fever dream.”

  “Tell me about it. Imagine getting your first period the same night that you wake from a nightmare and find yourself out in the woods, covered with what’s left of the deer you just tore apart, not knowing whose blood is whose.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Aunty Siobhan tried to help with the girl stuff, but she wasn’t my mom. She had Jules to take care of. I love my grandfather, and he’s always treated me well and taken care of me, but I’ve always been . . .”

  “Alone?”

  Her eyes harden again and she turns back to staring at the empty cabin across the meadow.

  “Whatever we were supposed to be, whatever friendship we had when we were five, it’s ancient history. You don’t belong here.”

  She strips the hoodie off and drops it on the wood-plank floor and walks away, stomping down the stairs and across the grass, and she is as beautiful as anything I have ever seen.

  She almost makes me believe the anger, the hurt, until she glances up once—just once—as she backs out of the drive in her white SUV. She has tears in her eyes. Those beautiful olive green eyes, as deep and as dark as the sea.

  25

  THE RIDE DOWN to Pitamont is no less rough and no less numbing than the ride up. The air is clearer than I’ve breathed in months, maybe in my life, certainly in my memory. The vanilla and chocolate perfume of Emma is clinging to me, now soaked into my sweater and following me like a ghost. I know it’s ridiculous to think there’s something between us, after decades apart. We’re total strangers. Still, there’s something. Something that makes that little lantern rage like the sun.

  Bob hunches over the wheel, his usual hangdog expression even more dour than the day before.

  “What did you say to Magus?” I finally ask.

  Bob chuckles. “Really shook him up there, hey? Dark bastard.”

  “It broke whatever spell he had on everybody. Maybe only for a minute, but it did.”

  Bob straightens up, stretching out his spine, before he answers, slowly.

  “He’s a dangerous one. You be careful.”

  He cracks his neck to one side, and then the other, still taking his time.

  “What I called him was Skinkuk, means Coyote, in my language.”

  “Like the trickster, right? Isn’t that what Coyote is in Indian . . .” I catch myself, “I mean, native mythology?”

  Bob turns and gives me a wink. “I think they call us First Nations now. But that’s the same as lumping you together with every other white guy, no matter where your ancestors came from. I’m a Ktunaxa.”

  I shrink back in the seat and Bob laughs.

  “It’s ok, kid. You can say Indian. I’m not gonna sue you, or scalp you.”

  He takes another minute, chewing on something, before he finishes his thought.

  “I can’t tell you about anybody else, but the Ktunaxa, we’re a small tribe, always worked as a community, and looked out for each other. That’s probably why we got along with your type so well. The Europeans came and penned us up in reservations, took the land for themselves, sure. But they did the same to your tribe back in Ireland. We’re family, Ktunaxa and the Strong Wolves. We’ve always worked together.” He continues, “But Skinkuk, he’s always out for himself, stealing, manipulating. He’s a troublemaker.”

  “That guy seems like more than a troublemaker.”

  “Yup.”

  “How is he controlling them? Emma and Jules?”

  Bob shrugs.

  “Arthur’s cane. Do you know about that?”

  Bob shrugs again.

  “Come on! You must know something about what’s going on.”

  Bob takes a deep breath and lets it out in a long sigh.

  “Your father wants me to keep you safe.”

  “My father is dead. My family needs me.”

  Bob’s poker-face slips, he smiles on the far side of his mouth. He doesn’t think I can see it, but there’s a twitch in his chin and a twinkle in his eye.

  “What did Simon say to you, when you called him Coyote?”

  “Called me a goat.”

  “That’s a pretty lame insult,” I offer.

  “Depends how much you like goats.” He laughs. That raucous laugh that fills the cab of the truck with light.

  BOB PULLS IN at the garage, where three dark haired dudes in matching coveralls all turn from what they’re doing and offer a unified nod toward him. The tallest one saunters over to us as we’re climbing down.

  “Bob.” He says, “This the kid from up the mountain?”

  Kid. Like he’s any more than a couple years older than me. I put a hand out, “My name is Finn.” It’s like an afterthought, realizing that’s my first name. “Finn MacTyre.” The man is dark, not as dark as Bob, but could easily be part Ktunaxa, or some other tribe. Dark hair, dark eyes. The same measured economy that Bob shows, taking his time, sure of every move, every word.

  He looks at my hand, looks at my face. He wipes his fingers with the rag in his fist. He slaps his hand in mine and shakes with a firm grip. He smiles, a handsome, friendly smile.

  “I guessed that. It’s the eyes,” he says, pointing two fingers at his own eyes.

  “I’m Jericho. Jerry.” He says, “That’s my brother Jedediah. Call him Jed.” The second brother waves from under the hood of the same truck Bob had been working on the day before. “And that’s Jonah back in the office.” A hand pops up in the window, despite it being too far for him to have heard us. “Mom was a little religious,” he offers with a blush.

  “Nice to meet you.” I nod, feeling oddly comfortable with this man.

  He turns to Bob and goes into depth about a bunch of work that’s waiting. A hundred words I don’t understand, a few that I’ve heard before. Bob turns back to me.

  “Look, I gotta get some work done
here. Try not to get in any trouble.” He pulls me aside and whispers the rest. “Magus and his hunter aren’t likely to come down the mountain. Who knows what the hell they do up there all day, but they don’t show their faces down here too much. I think he needs to stay up there to keep his dark magic in place.”

  The brothers all turn and wave as I walk away, tuned into the same station somehow, all three nodding in unison, same as when we pulled in.

  I WALK DOWN past the Victory, half expecting to feel that strange compulsion to go in and stare at the stage, give cousin Jules all of my money . . . Jules. There’s a gnawing taste of guilt twisting in the pit of my stomach. What if she wasn’t under her own free will? What if she was brainwashed or hypnotized or under some kind of spell, like Emma? And I just stood and watched that creep piss on the lawn in the middle of the night and didn’t do anything to help her? She’ll tear you to bits, man. Isn’t that what the scar-faced barkeep said? Followed by the sound of furniture being turned into kindling in the back room of the Victory.

  I walk on, past wide paved streets with small houses on big lots, plenty of grass, plenty of room. In the city, each of these lots would hold three houses, tall and thin, mere inches away from each other, and every one a carbon copy. These houses are all sizes and shapes, some with perfect green lawns, some with rock gardens, flower beds, or assorted toys strewn all over. A few have cars junked out and propped up on blocks. The overall effect being that it feels like a new city neighbourhood every hundred feet, but they all blend one into the next, none of them seeming out-of-place here, despite the differences. The trees are tall and thick and healthy, in every single yard. After a barely five-minute walk, I’m back on Main Street.

  I pull Devil’s cell phone out of my pocket, waving it around in the air like an idiot while I try to get the best signal. Is that even how these goddamn things work anymore?

  I walk to the end of the street and up a steep hill, a handful of people staring at me as I pass, a couple of dirty old trucks rumbling in the opposite direction in the middle of the road. No lanes here.