Snarl

by Lorne Dixon

  “You might have noticed there’s only two chairs at this kitchen table. That’s all there ever was, just two chairs, one for my wife Laura and one for me. We wanted kids, both came from big families. Almost had a few before … but afterwards she couldn’t carry them, not after what they did to her. It was too hard on her, losing ’em like that. We just stopped trying after a while. One night she went in for her bath with a bottle of persimmon wine and one of her romance books …”

  The pain on Gus’s face tore at Chev’s heart.

  “You ever see a book after its gotten wet? Bloats up so much that the spine can’t but barely hold all the paper inside. The wine bottle sank. I used to keep the station open all night back then, ran the overnight shift myself. It was nine in the morning when the kid I employed arrived and I went inside … I found her.” He paused and sobbed. “She was … like that book and the bottle … I always wonder if she fell asleep … like the Sheriff guessed, or if she …”

  Gus brought his service revolver up from his lap. “So there’s just the two chairs, all there’s ever been, and now it’s one too many. But I keep it, y’know, ’cause it’s hard to let go and accept that things change.”

  Chev knew.

  Gus handed him the gun and the gas key. “Try to get Bella away from here. Take her somewhere safe, somewhere they can’t find her. You promise me that?”

  “I promise,” Chev said.

  “Good.” Gus leaned forward and locked his hands together. “Now you need to get moving. That was the sheriff on the phone warning me that the four of you have been marked and that you might come around. Told me just to stay inside and not open the door.”

  Chev curled his hands around the keys. “Thank you.”

  “It’s not a favor. You need to pay for the gas.”

  Chev reached for his wallet.

  “No,” Gus said. “I don’t want your money. Don’t got nothing left to buy. That revolver has six rounds in it. What you do with the last five bullets is your business.”

  A chill ran through Chev. “I can’t—”

  “They’ll tear me apart for helping you. They’ll take their time, maybe let their younglings teethe on me for a while. It’s okay, I want to go. I want to have breakfast with Laura at a table made for two, a stack of her buttermilk pancakes and peach tea, just like we used to. I’ve been waiting for another breakfast with her for almost twenty-five years.”

  Chev stood up, pointed the gun at Gus, and took a step back. Gus closed his eyes. Chev ran his finger along the trigger. He understood the man’s request. He thought of the beasts’ sharp black teeth. He imagined them torturing Gus, old men armed with straight razors and black and gray beasts with curved claws. He told himself to pull the trigger, to give this man a quick death, to save him from the pain and the terror.

  He couldn’t.

  Gus saw it in his eyes and sighed. He pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the table’s candle centerpiece. “If not breakfast, then a candlelight dinner.”

  He turned and walked out of the kitchen as the fire spread down the candlestick to the fuel-soaked tabletop.

  Chapter Five

  Ross watched Chev return from the house, keychain in hand. He thought about the warning Chev had given him—Watch Bella—and wondered why he should trust the tall, black trucker, either. The monsters had come for him, after all, not himself and David. This wasn’t their fight. Had Chev told him all there was to the story, or was there more? He would protect David above all else. That as all that was important, not Bella or Chev or anyone.

  The way Chev stepped off the porch and walked to the car, Ross could tell something bad had happened inside. Not a fight, no, there was no swagger or pride or pain in his step. His head was down and his strides were shallow. Whatever had happened inside the house had disturbed him.

  “Everything good?” he asked.

  Chev jiggled the key into the lock then turned it. The pump’s digital display lit. “Everything will be once we fill up and get a few dozen miles away from this town.”

  Bella swung the nozzle off its hook, opened her gas cap, and started to pump. They watched the display screen, watched the number of gallons entering the tank climb, watched the dollars build. Ross could remember filling the first tank of gas in his first car. What he had paid then wouldn’t have bought two gallons today.

  “You hear something?” Chev asked.

  Bella released the nozzle’s trigger. Ross could hear something, though it took a moment for him to identify the sound. It sounded like a warlike hive of bees. Growing louder, though, he could tell it was a motorcade.

  Chev said, “Finish filling it. Now.”

  Bella continued pumping.

  “Could it be the police?” Ross asked.

  “If it is,” Bella told him, “you’ll wish it wasn’t.”

  David whimpered.

  The approaching engines grew louder. Ross took a step towards the road; headlights were approaching. “Whoever’s coming, they’re coming quick.”

  Chev pulled a revolver out of his waistband.“That’s enough. We need to go.”

  Ross came back to the car and opened the driver’s side door. “C’mon, David, jump in. We’re leaving now.”

  David didn’t move. He seemed paralyzed.

  “David.”

  Bella pulled the nozzle out of the car and hung it up. She reached down for the boy but she shrugged away and ran across the lot. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Ross turned, following the boy’s eyes, to Gus’s house. Orange flames were rising behind the windows, casting strange shadows onto the porch.

  A sedan and four pickup trucks came screaming down the road. They braked with a horrifying screech and pulled into the service station. David screamed and fell to his knees as the vehicles circled. Ross rushed across the lot, spinning as a sedan cut between him and his grandson. As the trucks parked, a balding man with a gut bulging out of his wife beater stepped out of the sedan.

  “Daddy,” Bella yelled.

  The other drivers exited their trucks. They were all men, all over forty, all wearing deep frowns. A passenger stepped out of Bella’s father’s car. As the light from the fire danced over his features, Ross recognized the supermarket manager.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Bella’s father said. “We got a plan to sort all this out. Mr. Aldridge called me straight away.”

  Aldridge blushed. “I waited down the street. When you didn’t follow me out, I knew that there’d been trouble, so I called Ben—I called your father.”

  The drivers huddled behind Ben and Aldridge, looking to Bella’s father for directions and staring at the burning house.

  Ben stared at Chev and asked, “Did you kill Gus before you took his gun? Or after you set the fire?”

  Chev pointed the gun at the sky. “I didn’t kill him at all.”

  “Too bad,” Ben said. “He’s wanted to die for years.”

  One of the other drivers scooped David off the ground and sat him down on Ben’s car. David screamed. Ross took a quick step forward but Chev stopped him with one hand. Ross wished he had Chev’s gun and thought about how he could make it more than a wish.

  One of the other drivers handed Ben a blur of fabric. The man brushed it off and held it out. “Hey there, little man. Got something of yours, I think. What’s his name? Bugs? Funny Bunny? Wabbity-wabby-wabbit?”

  David took his stuffed animal and croaked, “Copper.”

  Ben rustled David’s hair and stepped around his car. “Tell me, trucker, you have plans to use that gun? If so, I think you should do it now, ’cause you’re making my boys nervous wiggling it around in your hands like that. Probably should mention that we’re all armed, too. So why don’t you put that thing down around my daughter.”

  Chev dropped his arms to his side but kept the revolver in his hand.

  “That’s a bit better. A bit more friendly.” Ben turned his attention to Bella. “Now, you come on over here and we’ll go on home. Mom’s
got hot chocolate brewing and your pillow’s waiting.”

  She curled her lips. “What deal did you work out with Marek?”

  Ben grimaced. “You don’t need to bother with that, sweetheart. You can just walk away and forget all this. Pretend these folks never even showed their faces in town. Nothing at all needs to have changed.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Tell me.”

  He stomped his feet. “Bella-girl, just walk away. Do it now.”

  “No.”

  Aldridge played with his glasses as he spoke up. “They want the kid, but that’s all, just the kid.”

  “What,” Ross screamed.

  “They take the boy,” Ben said. “We take care of your friends. We’d do it quick, no pain. We’re not like them, not animals. And then everything goes back to how it was.”

  Bella shook her head. “You don’t have any right to give David to them.”

  “Honey, I didn’t come up with the conditions. Marek did. I don’t like it any more than you do. But you know what I like less? The thought of them running wild in our streets, raping and killing. You want them to get at your friends? Your mother?”

  Ross growled, “Give me back my grandson.”

  Chev raised the revolver. “Yeah. That’s how it is. David, come on over to your granddad. Don’t worry. Those men won’t stop you. Will you, boys?”

  Ben and the boys brought out their weapons, automatic pistols, fat little revolvers, and shotguns. Unlike Chev, their posture showed that they knew how to use the guns.

  Ben yelled, “Now, listen. There are guns pointed towards my little girl. I can’t have that, you understand? Anything happens to her and I’ll—”

  “Come on, David,” Chev said.

  David looked from side to side but didn’t move. He pulled Copper close to his chest.

  Ross stepped around Chev. “I’m coming, David. Grandpop’s coming.”

  Ben’s face reddened. “Don’t you move, old man.”

  Ross stepped between them, hands up, and moved towards David. He’d been in the line of fire before, during the war, but this was different. He could see the guns and the faces of the men holding them. He saw how scared they were, how angry and desperate. He mentally began to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

  Our Father, who art in Heaven,

  The sound of the house fire boiled over into a steady crackle and growl, like a needle running the groove at the end of an old record. He walked, listening, watching the strain grow on the men’s faces.

  Hallowed be thy Name.

  David extended one arm towards his grandfather, the other held Copper, and tears flowed down his face. The fire, the men, the guns, the wolves—all of this was reflected in his wide, terrified eyes.

  Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.

  Ben retrained his aim from Chev to Ross’s head.

  On Earth as it is in Heaven.

  Their fingertips touched across the expanse of the car’s hood. He saw a glimmer of relief sparkle in David’s eyes.

  Give us this day our daily bread,

  Ross leaned in and wrapped his hand around David’s wrist. The grandson and grandfather’s eyes locked. Ross whispered, “I love you.”

  And forgive us our tresp—

  Ben wrapped his arms around David’s waist and pulled him off the car. Ross gasped as the boy’s wrist slipped out of his grasp. One of the Boys rounded the car and pushed him back. “David …”

  Ben handed the squirming child to Aldridge. “Take him and go.”

  Aldridge hustled David into the cab of a pickup truck and slammed the door behind them. One of the Boys slid into the driver’s seat.

  Ross screamed, “No.”

  The truck’s engine started with a rumble.

  “Don’t,” Chev warned Ben.

  Ben motioned for the truck to go. “Stakes are low on your end. You don’t care what happens to this town. One boy versus an entire grammar school—would you make a different decision? Could you?”

  The truck kicked up gravel as it sped out of the gas station. Ross felt his legs give out under him as he watched it disappear down the highway. He fell onto his knees and elbows.

  “Now, Bella, enough is enough. Come on home, now. There’s nothing more you can do for them,” he said, lowering his gun. “I understand what you tried to do tonight. You’re a brave girl. But there are things we have to live with. Things that can’t be changed.”

  Bella reached out and slid her fingers around the gun in Chev’s hand. He gave her a questioning look. She guided his aim to her own temple. “No, Dad. You even approach him, I’ll pull this trigger myself.”

  “You won’t,” he said, but his face betrayed his words.

  Tears streaked down her face. “You know what I have growing inside me, who put it there. You think I want to give birth to a monster? Your choice, Dad. Either you and the boys leave here now and let me get these men to safety, or you’ll have my blood on your hands.”

  Father and daughter stared into each other’s eyes.

  Gus’s house burned.

  Ross closed his eyes. He’d sworn to himself that he would protect David at any cost. But he hadn’t. David was gone, on his way to meet with monsters. Ross couldn’t continue the Lord’s Prayer, doubted he would ever recite it again because he knew he could never forgive those who trespassed against him.

  Ben sighed. “All right. You win. The boy will keep the pact in place. But you get them outta here, far and gone. If Marek knows what happened, there’s no telling what he’ll do. What they’ll do.”

  Bella wiped away her tears. “Thank you, Daddy.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded. Then he ducked into his sedan. The other drivers climbed into their trucks. They left as a group. As a town.

  Chev lowered the revolver and ran with Bella over to Ross. They helped him off the ground. His eyes were glassy and his face was sunken. He looked like a dead man. “I have to get my grandson back. I have to go get David.”

  Chest heaving, Chev said, “If it were my daughters, I would need the same thing, so we’ll find a way.”

  “I know someone who may be able to help,” Bella said, already marching back to the Beetle. “He lives outside town, outside the pact.”

  Ross sobbed, his head full of horrible visions, and asked, “Who is he and how can he help?”

  “His name is Devil Ayers. He’s about the only person they’re scared of. He’s not very social and doesn’t like townies. But he hates the Brothers worse. I think he’ll help us.”

  Chev asked, “Why do they fear him?”

  “Because he hunts them.”

  Chapter Six

  The sign read: you are now leaving easter glen — drive safely. They avoided the highways and traveled down narrow dirt roads. There was no way of knowing if they were safe. Pacts were only as good as the people who kept them, and what trust could anyone really place in monsters, anyway?

  “We need to get to a phone,” Chev said. “Mr. Tom was sending someone for my truck.”

  Ross, his face still pale, leaned up and toggled the Beetle’s heater. Then he covered his face and wept a while longer.

  “Or maybe we could call the state police.”

  Bella tightened her grip on the wheel. “Could. But it’d take a couple hours for them to get out here. And the first thing they’d do is stop off at the Sheriff’s station. We need to get to David faster than that, if there’s a chance to—”

  Ross coughed. “Has to be a chance. Has to be.”

  Chev looked down at the revolver in his lap. “You know, I had a choice. I didn’t have to take the run. I could have spent Christmas with my wife and daughters, but the money was good, better than the usual holiday pay. Crazy route, zigzagging across the country instead of just trucking across I-80. But the girls are growing up fast and college is only a few years off. So I said yes.”

  They were silent as the bug turned right. The new road was little more than a pair of dug-in ruts with an island of weeds between them.<
br />
  “He used to come around the school,” Bella began, “like guys do, y’know? Older, riding his motorcycle. Lots of girls liked him. We all knew what he was, or at least we’d been told. Teachers saw him but they wouldn’t run him off like the regular guys that came around. They didn’t dare.”

  Marek, Chev thought.

  “He was sweet at first. Not the kind of sweet that brings you flowers and candy, no, but sweet. He didn’t stay that way. I agreed to a date with him after the high school musical. I wanted to be an actress. It wasn’t a date. It was … . He took me back to their den. It’s an old abandoned grange out in the woods behind the old Mill. The Brothers were all there, the young and the old, some human, some wolf. They all watched as he had me.”

  Chev asked, “Wolf? Those things aren’t wolves.”

  “No,” she answered. “You haven’t figured that out yet, have you? They’re not anything anymore. They’re both man and beast, always, at the same time. Most people only see men, others just see animals. Some of us can see either.”

  Ross pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and blew his nose. “I’ve been on a fixed income since the year before my wife, Ellie, died. Money’s tight even with my military service and my pension. David was born premature, supposed to have been February, but he came out on December second. I had two granddaughters, but he’s my only grandson. He’s always been special to me so I try to get him the best birthday gift I can each year, something more than I can afford and I buy gifts at this discount place I know. They sell all kinds of things from companies that went out of business or products with the wrong paint job, or whatever. Lets me buy things for better than half price.”

  Ross’s eyes dropped and studied his folded hands. “This year it was pretty slim pickings as toys went. I don’t really know what kids play with anymore, anyway. When I was a kid we made do with a handful of green army men and whatever came out of the Cracker Jack box. Maybe people had started Christmas shopping earlier, I dunno. I bought him this contraption, a little oven with molds in the shape of monsters, you know—Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wol—well, you understand. A week later, I went back to buy some new pants that I saw advertised. They have a wall right when you walk in and it has recall notices pinned up there. I saw the oven. I did, I saw it. Something about the electrical cord heating up … but it was already wrapped up. So I thought … I dunno what I thought …”