by Glenn Rolfe
Both dates of the first two attacks coincided with a full moon. Each set of victims was torn to pieces, a car had been battered off the road and onto its side, and trees had been knocked over as if from a hurricane or tornado.
Would Joe figure it out?
The two men immediately started researching the folklore of werewolves. Stan used whatever books Joe would sneak in to him—his therapist would frown upon such things, considering Stan’s state of mind and reason for being in the facility in the first place. Stan battled his inner demons, writing down every bit of possibly pertinent information he could gather. In his dreams, he paid for every word. But at the time, he thought he could help destroy it. He thought he could rid himself of the curse, or at least help Joe to…
A voice broke the haggard ex-sheriff’s trip down memory lane.
“You all right, man?” said the young gentleman behind him.
Stan’s mind returned to the café. His coffee was staring back at him. The memories faded. Someone had placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and was looking at him with both apprehension and concern in his eyes. Stan recognized the youth as Alex McKinney.
“Get your fucking hand off me,” he growled.
Josh grabbed his brother and pulled him toward the café’s doors.
“Sorry, sir, he doesn’t know any better,” Josh said.
“What the fuck, Josh?” Alex said.
Josh spun his little brother around and shoved him out the door. He didn’t bother looking back to the former sheriff.
Outside of Mel’s, Josh’s brown eyes burrowed through his little brother, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t you know who that is?”
Alex pulled himself free before answering, “Yeah, so what? The guy looked like he was fucking ready to freak out. What’s wrong with you?”
“Look,” Josh began, “there are some people who are better left alone. Stan Springs is one of them. He’s a fucking nutjob. He spent five and a half years locked up in an asylum. Guys like that always look like they’re about to freak out. But they only do that if someone gives them a reason to.” Josh ran a hand through his short auburn hair before urging his brother forward.
They started toward the shop, then Alex fell quiet. A shiver raced through his body. Josh noticed, but said nothing. He just kept walking.
Back in the diner, Mel watched as the former sheriff made his way out the door and around the corner of the building. He had paid, always did, and had been a quiet customer—a little weird, but harmless—but for the first time since he had made his cryptic return from his self-induced exile, she was afraid of him. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him coming back in. She would have to call Joe and talk to him first. He knew the guy best, if anyone really did.
“Get your fucking hand off me.”
Alex looked as if the devil himself had just advised him to mind his own business.
Chapter Fifteen
The sun hovered above, high and bright, adding to his misery. Stan Springs stopped at the road and stared at the McKinney brothers heading down the sidewalk. Part of him wanted to follow them—a deep, mean part of him. He stayed put, letting them go on their way for now. He dared a glance over his shoulder and could make out that big-titted bitch behind the counter, phone in hand, calling the sheriff, no doubt. Fuck her. Fuck them all.
His blood didn’t just boil, it roared. It raced through his veins, his heart humming like the engine of his old ’57 Black Widow. He was like an old stock car all right, but what he had under the hood couldn’t be bought or sold. It was something only the cursed and the forgotten, the lonely and the tortured, endured. A price to pay doled out by some sadistic god above, or below. It didn’t matter which deity or demon pulled his tendons from beneath his flesh like old strings, he no longer gave a shit.
He’d overheard Pug Gettis mumbling through his false teeth about Old Mike, something about him sleeping on a park bench and then being ripped apart by a mountain lion. That’s the thing about small towns—they’re filled with half-truths and misinformation. Gilson Creek held a lot more secrets than its people knew.
Stan remembered the heated conversation he and Old Mike had just around the bend from here two months ago.
The drunk stumbled into him as they passed—Stan heading to Mel’s and Old Mike heading wherever wasted quitters wandered off to—causing Stan’s glasses to hit the ground and break. The eyes of the sloshed and brown-toothed vagrant, realizing whom he’d bumped, went dark. Storm clouds moved in over his brow. “I’d say sorry, but you don’t deserve it. You quit on this town. You quit and let that monster have his way. You ran away and hid while that thing ate through us. Three kids, just in high school, torn up and strung up for the world to see. And you just hid away. Shame on you,” that drunken son of a bitch said just before spitting in Stan’s face.
There were no witnesses when Stan grabbed the smelly bastard and delivered a right cross worthy of a gold belt across the sunken, bristled cheek of his accuser. It felt so good he delivered two more for good measure. He left the unconscious fool in the dirt on the side of the road.
Old Mike never ratted him out. He probably couldn’t remember whether the assault had been real or imagined. No matter, his accusations struck a chord Stan thought forgotten. Something revved within—something dark, something powerful.
The drunkard hadn’t been wrong, at least not completely. There were truths, half-truths, to his accusations of abandonment and resignation. That it was cowardice, on the other hand, was fucking laughable. A monster, he’d called it.
That’s funny, Stan thought. Most people live with ghosts of their own pasts, some often referring to skeletons in their closets. Stan lived with something much larger, much more tangible.
Stan Springs made his way down the sidewalk, thinking of an old novel he’d read years ago by Guy Endore. Stan’s thoughts were of the French and of monsters. He continued on under the hot sun high in the sky, headed for his fortress of solitude. Sweat barreled down his forehead, his thick chest, and his thighs.
He would wait and see if the sheriff paid him a visit. He doubted Joe Fischer would do much more than knock on his door. A heart-to-heart with his old friend was long overdue.
Bonjour, Sheriff.
Chapter Sixteen
Sonya was glad to be back in her own bed. She’d spent the last week at Kim’s, and even though they had a blast whenever they were together, she needed the peace and quiet.
With Mrs. Donaldson working late every day, the girls were left to themselves and their vices of choice. Usually that was pot, but it could have been worse—they could have been pill poppers like some of the freakier girls at school.
Lying on her bed in the comfort of silence, she felt drained. Both her body and mind could use the rest. On top of all that, she’d not seen her dad since Saturday morning, and outside of a couple quick phone calls, she hadn’t really talked to him either. Something wasn’t right with him. She heard it in his voice. She knew when he was busy, but she also understood when he was avoiding her. This past week had been a combination of both. Whatever it was he was working on, he didn’t want her to know about or be involved in.
She hadn’t seen much of Alex this week, either. He’d been busy working at the shop during the day and off running various errands in the afternoons. He was helping his brother out and making decent money. She was excited for him, but missed him like crazy. They hadn’t slept together since the afternoon in Kim’s guest room on Sunday, and though she wanted to be with him this very instant, she needed a night to herself even more.
When she had called him earlier, she told him tomorrow night would be their night. He promised to come over for dinner with her and her dad. Afterwards, they could go to the cineplex in Hollis Oaks. She really wanted to see Spider Man 2. She liked Tobey Maguire, but she loved James Franco.
Sonya took a nice, long shower and threw on a
comfy pair of Hello Kitty pajama bottoms and an old KISS T-shirt she had dug out of her father’s box of outdated clothes a couple months back.
As she brushed her wet hair, she thought back on the night she had stumbled upon the box of her dad’s old things in the basement while looking for a photo album.
He must have been a rocker back in the ’70s, though you’d never know it, with all the James Taylor he listened to nowadays. The box had been filled with bell-bottom jeans and old worn-out concert shirts. Bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple were on the clothing. Truth be told, she was expecting to find a joint rolled up within the clothes.
She confiscated the KISS and Zeppelin shirts and absolutely loved wearing them to bed, as they were so soft from the past numerous washings. Her dad caught her with one of the shirts on a few nights after she’d taken them upstairs and told her he had forgotten all about them and the box. He said he had put all the clothing he was fond of in it, but that he knew her mom would throw it out, so he had hidden it deep down in the basement.
That was a great night. He talked about all the crazy stuff he and his pals had done as dumb kids, going to rock concerts and smoking grass—which is actually how he referred to it. He was so old. He also spent a good amount of time that night doing something he rarely did—talk about her mom.
She knew it was too hard on him to discuss her mother, but she and her father had laughed long and hard about her picking on him for wanting to keep his old shirts, and about how if her mother were alive today, she would make remarks about the cowboy hat that he wore every day.
He told Sonya the story about when he tried to grow a mustache. Her mother hated mustaches so much that the one time he decided to grow one she had refused to kiss him until he shaved it off. Needless to say, he didn’t have it for more than a week. Her mom was both stubborn and particular when it came to her dad and his appearance—especially after he became a police officer. Her dad recounted how he had tried to sell her mom on the fact that the mustache went with the cop sunglasses, and they laughed until there were tears when he told her that her mother said he looked like one of the Village People.
Sonya didn’t get the reference, but laughed right along with him. She loved seeing him that happy. He was usually upbeat when he wasn’t being Mr. Cop, but she could count on one hand the number of times that she had seen him smile so wide or laugh as hard as he had on that night. It was one of her favorite memories, and wearing his old concert shirts to bed had become a part of her nightly sleep attire thereafter.
Her father picked her up from Kim’s that afternoon, but took off right after dropping her in the driveway. He said he had to go see an old friend and after that he’d be home for the night. He had deliberately failed to mention a name, choosing to remain vague and using the anonymity of the generic term old friend. That struck her as weird because he always wanted her to know right where he was on his nights off, in case of an emergency.
She chalked it up to being a part of the enigmatic character he had taken on recently, and decided that wasting any more of her relaxation time worrying about it would be stupid. Besides, her dad had always said “worrying is like a rocking chair—it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere”. He was right, as usual.
Besides, she had some summer reading to get to—a pile of Stephen King and Bentley Little books stacked next to her bed, just waiting to give her the creeps. There was nothing like a little Shining while home alone. She had to admit, she liked being scared. The recent deaths in town only added to the ambiance.
She grabbed a glass of milk and headed to her bedroom. Before picking up her book, she wondered once more where her dad had gone and who the mystery friend could be. She quickly reminded herself of the rocking-chair adage, shook it off and dove into the misadventures of a man named Jack Torrance.
Chapter Seventeen
Stan Springs stretched his legs, arched his back and felt the powerful, blessed blood course through his body. There was a time when the impending change had been a terrible burden. Oh, the guilt had tormented him. He’d even played along with the charade, helping Joe Fischer dig up every whisper, every rumor or piece of folklore they could find on the shape-shifting monstrosity. And as hard as Stan tried to keep the beast away, in those early days, the monster always came home.
He couldn’t remember where or how he’d been cursed. He only knew when.
It was an early spring offer from Douglas Hendricks to come up-country and hunt on his cousin’s land. “The Allagash is the best bear huntin’ this side of the country.” Doug’s words drizzled somewhere in Stan’s memory.
Stan normally only hunted during deer season, but after the death of his sister, Elaine, in January of that year left him the sole surviving member of his family, he decided a weekend away with an old friend in the North Country might be a good reprieve from the sudden isolation he felt.
The morning was quiet. He and Doug were up before dawn and tracking something massive. Doug insisted Stan take the tree stand. Stan refused. He didn’t consider hiding in a tree and taking cheap shots at clueless creatures to be hunting. Doug took the stand; Stan stalked the ground.
One minute there was a sound to his right; the next he was waking up at Doug’s. Doug’s wife, Missy, was tending to a deep wound on the back of his right leg. Stan remembered blood. He remembered Doug pacing the room and Missy trying to disinfect his wound with a bottle of homemade alcohol.
The next day they took him to a proper hospital where he was stricken with some sort of fever/infection. Three days later and thirty pounds lighter, Stan was released. By the end of the week, home and back to work, Stan’s leg was nearly good as new. His mind, on the other hand, was far from it.
The low rumble of an all too familiar vehicle broke Stan from his reverie.
The drive to Stan Springs’s house filled Joe Fischer with anxiety and trepidation. He didn’t know if Stan would listen. Joe liked to think that he avoided Stan, giving him his space because he knew the man.
Who was he kidding? The truth was he stayed away from Stan for the same reason everyone else in town did. It wasn’t a favor. No, they had lost touch. But even more than that, it was what he thought of every time he saw the man. It brought him right back to that horrible summer. All the books and all the time spent talking about full moons and monsters. Stan Springs was a constant reminder of the beast.
Stan’s driveway came into sight. His old Ford pickup sat unused on the lawn. Joe swallowed hard and gritted his teeth. A mixture of emotions—abandonment, anger, guilt and fear—ran the gauntlet inside of his head.
Joe stepped out of his truck, closed the door and stared at the bedroom window upstairs. The curtains fluttered and closed as the shadow behind them disappeared.
Joe instantly regretted coming here.
Stan Springs watched the familiar green Range Rover pull into his gravel driveway, the loose pebbles crunching beneath its tires. He stared down through worn-out eyes. He brimmed with discontent, watching as Sheriff Joe Fischer stepped out of the truck, wearing a look of uncertainty. Springs smiled at the sheriff’s obvious discomfort.
Joe couldn’t shake the sudden feeling that this was a bad move. Springs wasn’t the man he once was. Hell, who knows what kind of drugs they’d had him on all those years. He’d read somewhere that antidepressants and antianxiety medications could change the chemicals in a person’s brain. He dismissed the thought. He was being stupid. He was nervous because he had been avoiding his former mentor. He was the jerk here and owned every right to the guilt that pulled at his stomach.
He climbed the half-rotten steps to the wide front porch. A single gray rocking chair sat ten feet from the door as the only object dressing the porch. He had shared many beers over the years out here on late evenings with his former friend. There used to be another rocking chair, a red one with a crooked rocker that made it wobble. Before, ther
e was also an old red Craftsman toolbox in the corner, plus various rags, old hunting magazines and a metal Coors Light cooler between the chairs, which was always filled with Budweiser.
Stan might have stored it all before heading down to the hospital, probably had, but Joe imagined that Stan would have at least brought some of the old things back out by now. The absence of “life” on the porch was unsettling. He steeled himself and stepped up to the large oak door, his knuckles poised.
Stan opened the door before he had even finished knocking. He looked worse than Joe remembered. His long, scraggly gray hair, combined with the way his unkempt beard stretched out around the bottom of his face as if it were trying to escape from the man wearing it, gave him the appearance of a lion. From the look in this tattered but still powerful-looking man’s squinting, dark eyes and the scowl on Stan’s face, Joe was half expecting a roar, rather than the quiet response he received.
“Sheriff, what brings you out my way?”
There was a trace of a smirk behind the beard. Joe wasn’t sure he liked it. “Can we talk?”
“I’ve been wondering that since I got home,” Stan said, the resentment in his eyes creeping into his voice.
“I know. We haven’t had a chance to catch up sin—”
“What the fuck do you want?” Stan interrupted.
The sudden change in tone caught Joe off guard. He was here on behalf of Mel, but he was also here hoping to…hoping to what?
“Well, if that’s it, Sheriff, I really must be getting back to my reading,” Stan said. The large man stepped back to close the door.
“I have to talk to you about what happened today at Mel’s.”
Stan flung the door back open, stepped over the threshold and out onto the porch.
