Hungry Ghost

by Allison Moon

  In barely above a whisper, Ray said, “I think you’d best talk to Shirley.”

  They didn’t talk about Lexie’s aunt much in the Clarion household. She’d been estranged since long before Lexie’s mom’s disappearance-slash-death. Supposedly, Lexie met Aunt Shirley once, years ago, but she didn’t remember.

  “She lives down south a couple hours, just outside the Wilder Springs Rez,” he muttered. “Might give you some of the answers you’re lookin’ for.”

  “Dad?”

  He didn’t respond—he just stared off in front of him as though she had disappeared. He reached for the banister and pulled himself up the stairs. Lexie stared, watching an ally become a stranger.

  21

  Lexie parked on the dirt drive, two dusty ruts overgrown with tall grass. The tranquilizer gun sat in the bed of her Bonanza, wrapped in Summer’s ruined quilt. Shirley’s trailer stood among others just like it scattered randomly throughout the clearing. Rust sprouted between the siding, and the torn window screen flapped in the breeze. The slam of Lexie’s door set a dog barking somewhere off in the distance.

  After a few minutes of silence, a marmalade cat appeared at the screen door, staring with lazy eyes at Lexie.

  A woman appeared and nudged the cat away from the door with a brush of a slippered foot. She gave no reason of the delay in answering the door, nor an apology.

  “You must be Alexis.” The woman’s voice was raw wool. Her hair was gray and ragged, interrupted by glossy streaks of black. “Leon get off the fucking couch!” she screamed into the trailer. Somewhere beyond Lexie’s vision, a tiny dog protested.

  Lexie stood below the front steps.

  “Well?” the woman asked, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette.

  “I’m sorry,” Lexie said. “I don’t remember you.”

  “Well no shit. Last time I saw you, you were barely bigger than a ground squirrel.”

  She held open the screen door and dragged hard on her cigarette. “My name’s Shirley.”

  Lexie stepped into the trailer, a narrow space with wood panels concealing drawers and cabinets. All she could smell was smoke and dog and cat.

  “So you’re hunting for answers then.”

  “The word I had in mind was ‘fishing’,” Lexie said with a half-hearted smile.

  “Big difference. When you’re hunting you’re alert and on the move. Fishing, you just sit and let things come to you. And no one comes to Wilder for the fishing.”

  Lexie let her hair fall in front of her eyes. “I guess. But I don’t even know what I’m hunting.”

  “Eh, you rarely do. Long as you got the chops, it don’t likely matter, neither.”

  “You’re my mom’s sister?”

  “Well, sure, start with the obvious. Seems a fine strategy.” Shirley threw a wet cough into a tight fist. “Yeah, I’m her baby sister by two years.”

  Lexie looked askance at the deep creases in her tan flesh, her cracked lips, and her leathery hands.

  “You know what happened to her,” Lexie said. She felt high, so close to answers—real answers—about her mother’s death.

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what you know.”

  “I know that she’s dead,” Lexie said. “And I know she was magic or something.” Lexie felt foolish to reveal how little she knew about her mother’s death. That the near-stranger sitting across from her held more information maddened her. “What do you know?”

  “The gist.”

  “Who killed her?”

  “All of ‘em,” Shirley said.

  “The Morloc?”

  “Mostly, yeah.”

  Shirley pushed a chipped ceramic mug in front of Lexie and poured some tepid coffee into it. Lexie took a sip and struggled to swallow the bitter liquid.

  “How?”

  She shrugged. “Wasn’t there.”

  “Why—?”

  Shirley made to talk, but Lexie talked over her. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  Shirley took a heavy drag and lifted her mug to her lips. She squinted through her cigarette’s smoke and answered. “Your Pa tried to cut your ma apart from her family. Part of that was pretending we didn’t exist. I suppose he felt it was safe for you to know about your Nana because she was so batshit by the time you popped out, she wasn’t gonna reveal nothing sacred.”

  “She wasn’t crazy.”

  “Oh hell yes she was.”

  “She was a peacespeaker.”

  Shirley’s forehead formed uncountable wrinkles. “How’d you know about that?”

  Lexie shifted in her chair, loose screws drawing squeaks from the aluminum struts.

  “Well, she was that too,” Shirley continued, “but she was as schizo as a syphilitic hound dog, and don’t you think those two are the same things.”

  Lexie hid her face behind her coffee mug and forced herself to take another bitter sip.

  “Why’d my dad keep me from you?”

  “Cause he’s a rat bastard.”

  Lexie flinched. Shirley softened. “I expect he didn’t want you to follow the same path as your ma. He sure didn’t like it when Summer and I started going to the gatherings, and he tried putting his foot down after our first meeting with the Rares, but Summer was always the bull of the family. There was never any stopping her.”

  Lexie squinted as the pins slipped into place. “My Dad. He knew?”

  “Not much, hon, but yeah, he knew.”

  “He told me my mom had left him for another man.”

  Shirley held her coffee in one hand and her cigarette in the other, bringing neither to her lips. “You fucking joking?”

  Lexie shook her head, her bangs hiding her eyes.

  “That sonofabitch.” Shirley slammed her fist down, making the cigarette’s ash leap across the table. The dog yipped and the cat rushed to hide behind the bucket under the sink.

  “He tell you about the peacespeaking bit?”

  Lexie shook her head again. “This is all I’ve got.” She hesitated before unsnapping her sheath and retrieving her knife.

  “No shit,” Shirley said with a dry grin. “Haven’t seen this in an age.”

  She reached for it, and Lexie balked.

  Shirley raised her eyebrows. Lexie handed her the knife.

  Shirley wrapped her fingers around the hilt and angled it toward the light. “Yeah,” she said, her eyes squinting with a smile as she seemed to trace the memories. “This is a good one.” She rocked the knife in her palms, catching the overcast light in the blade. It reflected a white streak against her black eyes. She smiled, serene for a moment, almost sweet-looking, before catching Lexie’s wary gaze in the steel’s reflection.

  “Son of a … ” her voice cracked. Her wide eyes fixed on Lexie’s face.

  “No.” Lexie said, leaning away. She hadn’t expected to be outed. Certainly not like this. “I mean … it’s not a … a real thing. Not me. Not more than once.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Shirley said, not shocked, but something else, something certain but wary. “When did you change?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, just the one time. In October. But I haven’t changed since the first time. It didn’t stick.” Lexie picked at her fingernails.

  “Four full moons, and you haven’t changed?” Shirley rasped.

  Lexie shook her head. “No. It didn’t take.”

  “Bullshit.” Shirley waved the knife between their faces. “Carrying this thing around on your hip like a totem. I’ll bet you even sleep with it, don’tcha?”

  Lexie looked at her lap, wanting to hide alongside the cat.

  “This shit is getting sadder by the minute,” Shirley said, taking a long drag from her waning cigarette. “You bleed last month?”

  Lexie nodded.

  “And the month before?”

  “Sure.”

  “You crankier than usual?”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s not just PMS. I lost someone.”

 
“Bunk. You feel it.”

  “What?”

  “Your wolf. You feel her inside of you.”

  Lexie pulled her knees to her chest, fingering her keys in her jacket pocket. “It’s my ex. She’s inside of me.”

  “Bullshit,” Shirley said, slamming the knife down on the table. “People live in your head and your heart. Maybe your sexy bits if you’re real lucky or unlucky. They aren’t in your ribcage, your jaws, and your gut. That’s your wolf. And you best not confuse the two.”

  Lexie was too ashamed to meet Shirley’s eyes. She glanced up through a veil of bangs. “You know that ain’t allowed, right?” Shirley said. “A girl being both a peacespeaker and a wolf?”

  “So I’ve heard,” Lexie muttered.

  “Get rid of this knife. It’s holding you back.”

  Lexie’s hand darted across the table. She grabbed the knife from Shirley’s hand. She felt better immediately, squeezing it tight before returning it to the sheath. “It belonged to my mom. I’m not just going to get rid of it.”

  “Why do you care so much about this? It’s just an artifact.”

  Lexie began to feel defiant of this strange and abrasive woman. “It’s got magic. It keeps me … intact.”

  Shirley took a thick draw and arched her eyebrows. You don’t say, they seemed to mock. “That magic ain’t keeping no one safe. Least of all you. It’s keeping you weak, locked in that skinny little virgin body of yours.”

  Lexie felt the instinct to protest but stopped herself.

  A weighty moment passed between the two women before Shirley stubbed her cigarette out into a plastic ashtray.

  “I always thought your pa was gonna make some woman real happy someday. But your mama wasn’t just some woman. She never did like being told what to do, by our ma, by men, by me, by no one. I guess that’s why she always preferred the company of wolves.”

  Shirley shook another cigarette out of her pack and offered one to Lexie, who shook her head. “I suppose you have that in common. How’d it happen?”

  “I fell in love.”

  “Common problem.”

  “So I gather.” Lexie picked at her fingernails and shook her head. “I tripped my tits off and drank from a paw print.”

  Shirley snorted. “That sounds more like it.” Shirley finished her coffee and tipped the mug on its side, spinning it by the handle. “What exactly you looking for here, squirrel?”

  “Answers,” Lexie said. “The Morloc are responsible, either directly or indirectly, for another death. And they attacked one of my pack. I want to stop them before they kill or turn anyone else. My ma’s the only one who knew anything about this. She’s dead, and I got nothing but this knife to sort through all this Cree woo-woo.”

  “Ha!” Shirley smacked the table again and expelled a cloud of smoke. “Cree woo-woo? Shit, girl, you have all your shit messed up, and I won’t even blame your daddy for that.”

  “Cree woo-woo,” Shirley muttered and shook her head. “You don’t need answers. You need results, because that’s the only thing you and all the white folks who raised you seem to believe in.”

  “What kind of results?”

  “Depends on what you’re shopping for. But I have a feeling, since you’re Summer’s kid, it ain’t gonna be peace and quiet, am I right?”

  “I just want things to go back to normal.”

  “You think killing the Morloc is going to get you normal? Squirrel, you been on this planet for eighteen years. The Morloc been on it for eight-hundred. This is normal.”

  “Fine. I want our town to be normal-normal, not Wolf Creek-normal.”

  Shirley stubbed out her cigarette and leaned back against the fur-spattered upholstery. “Morloc been killing, girls been dying, townspeople been grumbling since long before you or I were around to notice. You might be strong, hon, but you can’t change history.”

  “The Morloc are getting organized.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It happened once before.”

  “Yeah, but your mama’s pack killed their leader.”

  “Maybe there’s a new one. Multiple wolves mauled a classmate all at once. The Morloc have to be working as a pack. They already attacked one of my … sisters.” Lexie nearly stumbled over the word, but it suddenly felt right on her tongue.

  “If I fix this …

   … Archer will come back.

   … My mother will come back.

   … Renee will be redeemed.

   … Duane will be healed.

   … We won’t have to be so scared anymore.

  Lexie knew none of these were true, but each vied for a place on her tongue, trying to trick her into their veracity.

  “If I fix this … ” Lexie said. “I don’t know. I just know I need to. I’m following a trail, hoping it’ll take me to the right place.”

  Shirley held her hand out to the cat that sat on the plastic carpet covering, flexing its paws. She opened her hand once, like describing a flash with her fingers, and the cat leapt onto her lap and lay down for a scratch.

  “What’ya got?” Shirley asked.

  “I have a pack.”

  “Of women?”

  “Half-bloods.”

  Shirley laughed. “You may as well take on the Taliban with a slingshot while you’re at it.”

  Lexie narrowed her eyes. “We can fight.”

  “I don’t doubt ya. But don’t get any grand notions of fighting the Morloc, cause a peacespeaker and a handful of ladies ain’t nearly enough for those fuckers. We tried that already and got our asses handed to us.”

  “What would be enough?”

  Shirley’s laugh rasped, shrill and coarse.

  “Hell if I know. We didn’t have it ten years ago, and you ain’t got it now. You need more manpower, that’s for damn sure, and you gotta figure out a way to fight those fuckers where you actually have a chance to win.”

  “How?”

  “Honey, if I knew that, I’d be with your ma at happy hour right now.” She scratched the cat’s ears and it purred in her lap. “Two things your ma had going for her that you could stand to learn though: conviction and resolve. You’re torn in two. You think half your heart’s with your lady friend, but that ain’t true. Half is with your wolf, and the other is searching for a home. Maybe with your woman, maybe not. It means you don’t know which side to fight on, or for, or for what. You gotta make a bold choice, squirrel. Cowgirl up, and ditch that knife for a bit.”

  22

  Through all the information Shirley offered, all the warnings, all the history, only one thing burned in Lexie’s brain: Dad knew.

  Dad knew.

  Dad motherfucking knew, and he lied to Lexie’s face twice. When she gave him the out, when she laid it out before him and all he had to do was cop to it and come clean, the fucker buried his head even deeper in the pile of bullshit he’d been shoveling all of Lexie’s life.

  Rage burned under her skin and forced sweat from her brow. She ground her teeth until her jaw ached. She wanted to explode, to force her fist into someone’s ribcage, to close her teeth around a throat and tear. Didn’t matter whose.

  Mom had been killed by Rares. Dad knew she was a peacespeaker, and he’d lied. He lied and lied and lied for eighteen fucking years. That patronizing son of a prick.

  “Fuck you, Dad!” she screamed as she ran through the forest that had once been Archer’s, far away from any ears.

  “Fuck you, Dad!” she screamed again as she burst into the clearing by the river and launched herself up the cliffside leading to the treehouse. Her voice echoed against the rock face, and she screamed without words, until her throat seized and she coughed against her self-inflicted damage. Atop the cliff, she stripped off her jacket and shirt and tore into her sycamore, the branches scratching at her bare skin and tearing at her hair. She leapt into the tree, landing on the planks of the treehouse with a clatter.

  The birds in their nest chirped loud and insi
stent, a warning, meager and pathetic. Lexie glared, and the birds peeped once and fell silent.

  She stood at the edge of the platform. The glittering sea formed a narrow strip at the horizon. She drew her knife from her belt and threw it with all her strength into the trees. It caught the red sunset as it spun in the open air and dropped through the treetops. “Fuck you, Dad!” she screamed and grabbed her hair, pulling, tearing it from her scalp. Her face was wet with sweat and tears. “Fuck you, Archer!” each time louder, a seeping wound of rage and loathing. “Fuck you Randy, fuck you Brian, fuck you Duane, fuck you Mom, fuck you Blythe fuck you fuck you fuck you!!!” She choked on her voice, each scream croaking out of her.

  “Fuck yooooooooooooooooooooou!!!!!!” she howled.

  And blacked out.

  When she came to, a breath later, she knew.

  Her chest felt heavy and full. Her breath came in gasps. She let her tongue loll out of her mouth and tug at her throat. She rolled her heavy skull on her neck and let her lungs fill up with one, two, three times the capacity of her human lungs. The inhalation was like the drawing of a syringe. She released a gurgled growl, drunk on the smells of the forest, of her body, of this treehouse. Scents too subtle for human noses now stood out starkly. They rattled her elongated sinuses, each layered scent bouncing at a different speed and angle, announcing various degrees of import and interest.

  Lexie stumbled, caught between standing on two paws and standing on four. She gripped the planks with splayed pads and righted herself.

  She heaved a breath and stared at her paws. No more real than the first time she witnessed them in her love-drunk haze. Now, there was no moon, no love, only rage and betrayal and a need to let go. She had let it go, and this is what she got for it.

  The knife had landed somewhere below, and with it a piece, so annoyingly obvious, fell into place. Lexie hadn’t been willing her wolf to abate for these three months. Her knife had done that work for her.

  Now, with three months of pent-up beast within her, it needed no incentive but her rage to spring forth.

  Lexie curled her paw, claw tips reaching to prick at her forearm. Such drama over such a simple thing. Lexie admired her paw in the sunset’s copper glare. The sun broke free of the clouds at the horizon, dwindling above the cliffs at the ocean’s edge. Its yellow mirrored her own lightest hairs.