When he had said that if he came back, it would be with an interest in the long term, he had meant it. It wasn’t fair for either of them to continue without all the cards being on the table.
Ginny was in her cabin getting ready, and Brandon was in his. He splashed water on his face and ran a toothbrush through his mouth. He looked like hell. And his hair growth was out of control. The headaches were getting worse. In the early part of the day he had felt pretty good, but as the afternoon wore on, he could tell that things were getting bad again. The pills…
He fished in his pocket, removed the small bottle and unscrewed the cap. One more pill in this bottle. He popped it, washed it down and tossed the bottle in the trash. Then he went to his nightstand and retrieved the second and final bottle. Soon it would be time to get more. And hopefully ones that did exactly what they were supposed to do. He needed to know if Ghost had actually upped the dosage like he said he was going to do.
He looked at the information card regarding calls made from the ship. It would be worth the money, he decided. He dug a folded up paper out of his wallet and dialed the number written there.
The other end rang, and rang and rang. Finally he hung up.
Just have to keep trying. In the meanwhile, he would find the right time to revisit the conversation with Ginny about exactly what he was. And this time, he would make her believe.
***
Ginny couldn’t stand it anymore; she had to call Kat, additional fees be damned.
Kat picked up on the second ring. “Hey, girlfriend!”
Ginny hopped on her bed and crossed her legs. “I don’t have a ton of time but I just had to tell you… this guy, Brandon. Well, it’s crazy. I’ll give you details when we get back, but—”
“When we get back?”
“I’m soo excited! I wish you could see me right now. This guy was going to get off at Juneau and head into the great white North and basically shut himself off from the whole world, but he’s coming back to Washington. With me!”
Kat squealed. “Oh my God! Look at you; I’m so proud!”
Ginny leaned into the phone. “I feel like a new woman. Better than I’ve felt in a long time. It’s like he… I don’t know, woke something up in me. It was there all the time, but for all kinds of reasons… being overshadowed by my brother, having one shitty relationship after another… it was just sleeping. That’s it! I was sleepwalking through life! Well, no more of that shit! And I’ll tell you something else: when I get back, I’m marching right into the boss’s office and I’m telling him I want a fucking raise!”
“Holy shit, you are a new woman! We can talk about that crap later, though. What I want to know is, are you having lots of nasty sex?”
Ginny pressed her lips together hard, as if she could barely contain the answer that burst out. “Yes!”
“Oh, you dirty little hooker! Tell me everything. And I mean details! Juicy details!”
***
When Brandon knocked on Ginny’s door, she was still grinning from ear to ear. He eyed her appraisingly.
“What?” she said, acting coy. She was wearing a tight sweater and black pants, her hair dancing in the soft light as she bounced up and down, favoring him with a wide, mischievous grin.
He simply smiled back and shook his head, then immediately frowned as a bolt of pain shot through his temples. Ginny looked at him with concern. “Damn, the headaches again?” She rubbed his face. “When we get back from dinner, I’m going to give you a nice, long massage…” She leaned in. “And then I’m gonna ride your ass like a bronco.”
He pulled her close, kissed her deeply. Their tongues grappled.
Fuck her now.
He could feel himself growing hard. He was hungry. Hungry for food, hungry for her.
She is food.
Brandon pulled away. Ginny watched him closely. “You okay?”
What the hell was that? Get your fucking head straight, for Christ’s sake. Brandon offered a weak smile and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll feel better once I eat.”
***
Less than ten minutes later he was sitting with Ginny, Vera and Sal. The old couple were talking about a trip they had taken on the Mount Roberts Tramway. “Oh my God, such views!” Vera said. “It was beautiful.”
“What’s that?” Sal leaned in.
Vera spoke louder. “I said it was beautiful.”
Sal nodded and shoved another forkful of fettuccini into his mouth. “She’s right. Beautiful,” he said through the pasta.
“Of course I’m right. I’m always right. Oh, and then we walked through the rainforest garden,” Vera continued. “Amazing! There were wildflowers and forget-me-nots, and—”
Brandon stopped hearing Vera’s voice, listening instead to the din of noise around him. The headache was coming back now, stronger than ever. As he shut out one set of noises, another would take center stage. He suppressed the noises of the silverware against dishes, of the wheels on the food carts, the clinking of glasses, but when he did, the conversations around him, the voices, came to the fore.
He could pick out a conversation from three tables away, isolate it, dampen it and focus on an exchange taking place in the hall outside the dining room. He could listen, table by table, as easily as if the speakers were sitting directly across from him. Some young woman was pissed at Pablo for eyeballing one of the show dancers; a little girl was talking about how cruises were boring and she didn’t care about Alaska and she didn’t want to cruise ever again. A couple was making plans to buy a house. A family of four was reliving the time Uncle Cosmo got so drunk he puked on Aunt Peggy’s new dress and she kicked him in the kneecap. Another couple was arguing about whether they should spend Thanksgiving at his parents’ house or hers.
This is no good. This shouldn’t be happening.
And the smells… he could smell and identify every morsel of food. He could smell perfumes, colognes, aftershaves. He could smell clothes that had already been worn once but not washed before being worn again. He could smell the obese man on the second floor who didn’t shower after his workout. He could smell several people silently passing gas. He could smell women menstruating and pinpoint exactly who they were. He could smell the lingering scent of rain outside and he could sense the impending storm.
He felt every wave, despite the ship’s stabilizers. His muscles ached. His gums were sore and his teeth felt as they had when he wore braces in high school. His joints throbbed with dull pain.
You’re making it out to be worse than it is. Keep it together. The moon is not full. You’re not turning. You’re just having some strange kind of… episode.
The pills. He craved them. The pills could fix everything. He just needed more. A few more should solve the problem.
Brandon gritted his teeth. The sounds, the smells, the rocking all came back and threatened to overwhelm him. He had broken out in a sweat and was squeezing his eyes shut. When he opened them, Vera, Sal and Ginny were all looking at him in concern.
Ginny stood up. “Let’s get you out of here.”
***
Alexander had risen from dinner a few times to nonchalantly glance down upon the table where his target sat, keeping tabs on him. It so happened that on the third such status check his quarry and the hussy were taking their leave.
He returned to where his dinner companions were chittering away in their native tongue, oblivious to his existence. He stood at the edge of the table and said, “I do hope you’ll excuse me but I must be going,” in flawless Malaysian, spun, and left the family in stunned silence.
Would the mutt and his tramp go to her room, or his? They tended to spend the most time in his. Alexander took the stairs to deck five…
And emerged at the elevator banks, on the side opposite where the two would need to walk in order to access their hallway. He waited around the corner, heard a ding! followed by elevator doors opening, and was gladdened to see his targets make their way across the floor to the hallway across from him. The bird
was supporting the target, as if the larger man was unsteady on his feet.
Neither noticed as Alexander followed to the end of their hallway and watched them enter the whore’s room.
***
She was worried. Brandon seemed out of it. He was walking like someone who’d gone on an all-night bender. Plus he was sweating and his skin was cold to the touch.
The trip back to her cabin seemed to take forever. She asked him if he wanted to lie down but he declined, sitting on the couch instead, asking for a glass of water. He said that they had something very important to discuss…
And then he brought up the werewolf shit again.
She handed him the water and sat on the bed. Brandon removed a small brown pharmaceutical bottle from his pocket. “I need you to listen. I told you about these pills… they’re supposed to suppress the symptoms of lycanthropy and prevent the turning itself. But I don’t know if they’re working. This is a new bottle, so I hope they’re effective, but if not…”
Brandon’s hand was shaking slightly as he retrieved two pills, lifted the glass and swallowed. But he seemed to be doing a bit better now that he was away from the crowds and the noise.
The pills… a horrific epiphany struck her like a thunderbolt, making her wonder how she couldn’t have seen it before: he takes pills. For a "condition" he has…
No, no, don’t go down that road. Not now, not when everything was going so well…
But it was too late. Pandora’s proverbial box had been opened, and she had to ask the next logical question: didn’t mentally ill people take pills?
Just because he… just because he…
Thinks he’s a werewolf?
Ah, Christ.
What if that was it?
Brandon continued: “There are certain things that happen, when I’m getting close to turning, and those things have started happening to me.”
Well, that was it. Of course that was it. Brandon had mental problems. He was probably schizophrenic.
“Okay. Can I… can I see the pills?” she asked. He handed her the bottle. There was a plain, blank white label. If this was prescribed, there would be a product name, directions…
Holy shit, what if he’s so far gone he substituted his actual medication with something else?
She opened the bottle and looked in to see a jumble of white, oblong pills. “Where did you get these?”
“He sends them to me. A guy I met once through Celine. Ghost, he calls himself. He makes them and he sends them. I tried to call him earlier but there was no answer.”
“Ghost.” More delusion.
Ginny replaced the cap, sat the bottle on the coffee table and buried her head in her hands.
“I know this can’t be easy for you,” he rasped. His voice had steadily gotten worse. Now it was like a tire digging into gravel.
When Ginny looked up, there were tears in her eyes. “Just tell me you’re joking. Please, just tell me you’re fucking with me.”
Brandon’s weary eyes found hers. “I’m not fucking with you. These pills are the only things that prevent me from becoming a beast once a month. An apex predator. An unthinking, unfeeling, raw force of nature.”
Ginny thought about the last time she’d seen the moon. “But it’s not even a full moon!” She was pleading now, hoping that he would see some kind of reason, maybe see that even his own delusion didn’t make sense.
“I know. There’s no reason I should be having symptoms now. I don’t know why this is happening.”
Ginny wiped at her eyes and sat on the coffee table directly in front of him, speaking in what she hoped was a very calm, reassuring voice:
“Brandon, I think that there’s something wrong. And these pills… I don’t think they are what you think they are. Maybe they do make things better, but not in the way you think they do. Look, we need to—we need to talk about how we might get you some help…”
Brandon looked at Ginny, and his eyes registered a shocked, hurt recognition of betrayal. “You think I’m crazy.”
He gritted his teeth and clasped both hands to the sides of his head, rocking back and forth.
Yeah, not doing much to persuade me otherwise there, buddy.
Saliva dribbled from Brandon’s mouth and onto his lap as he spoke. “I need you to listen carefully, just in case, I… if it happens. I need to be locked up. There’s got to be someplace on this ship where they can hold me until… until things get better. No matter what, I can’t… turn before I’m locked up.”
“Look, I want to get you help. Is there another kind of medication that you normally take? There are doctors on board who can talk to you, ask you the right questions…”
Brandon raised his head. “You still don’t believe me. Why won’t you listen?” He stood, at the same instant snatching the bottle of pills from the table in a motion almost too fast for her eyes to register. He loomed over her, and for a brief instant it seemed as if he actually increased in size. His fists were clenched, and he was trembling. “Listen, just listen!”
“Hey, I—” she began.
He leaned forward and shouted in her face: “I NEED YOU TO FUCKING LISTEN TO ME!!!”
Ginny’s features hardened. There was a fearless resolve in her eyes. “You need to get out. Now.”
A low moan escaped Brandon’s throat. He pressed his palm against his forehead, shutting his eyes tight.
“Now,” Ginny repeated, using what Kat called her “don’t fuck with me voice.”
In three long strides Brandon was at the door, and a second later he was out of the room. Ginny let out a long, shuddery breath.
***
The target stumbled out of the pudgy tart’s room and shambled down the corridor in the opposite direction from where Alexander was standing.
His prey did not notice as the hunter followed.
***
Why did I yell at her? He shouldn’t have. He felt like an asshole.
The pills. If the pills would just work, they would make everything better.
Brandon moved in a kind of haze, swaying with the rocking of the ship. Bombarded by smells and noise, he made his way to the midships staircases and descended. As he reached deck three he stopped to avoid colliding with a fall-down drunk brunette in a low cut party dress. Her eyes widened slightly when she looked up at his face. “Ooh, you’re pretty.” Then almost in slow motion, she eyed him up and down. Without another word she grabbed his hand and led him around the corner and into the casino.
There was a rowdy group of four women standing and sitting at the casino bar; all make-up caked eyes turned toward Brandon as the brunette led him to her friends.
He shouldn’t be here. He needed to find help. He needed to find someone who would listen…
Feed.
“Hey, bitches, look what I found,” the brunette yelled.
A chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” rang out. One particularly aggressive female, a thick-set blonde with enormous tits spilling out of her top, strode confidently up and pressed her chest against him. He was assaulted by strong odors: perfume, cigarette smoke, deodorant, body wash, whiskey, raw fish and rice… And beneath those: fabric softener, detergent, body odor and douche. She reached down and snatched up his left hand, inspecting it, speaking with a southern twang.
“I don’t see no ring on that finger, gorgeous…”
She pressed his hand against her right breast. “How you like them apples?”
Somewhere behind her one of the girls said: “More like watermelons!” The whole gang cackled and hawed.
Fuck her.
Fierce passion ignited within him, like a spark amongst dry kindling. The blonde curled the tips of his fingers under the fabric of her dress and pulled it to the side, revealing a light pink areola. “When the liquor goes in, the clothes come off. Know what I mean, honey?”
Brandon’s head lunged in for a kiss. He pressed hard against her, mouth open, tongue probing deep. She returned his ardor with equal zest. Behind him, the sloshe
d brunette seized his ass cheeks with both hands. All around him the women hollered and whistled.
Fuck them all.
He pulled away, lowered a smoldering gaze briefly at the blonde, then turned and shouldered past the brunette.
“Where the fuck you goin’?” the blonde called after him.
Brandon hurried up flight after flight of stairs until he was back on deck five.
I need to talk to her. I need to make things right. I need to get my head on straight.
He arrived at her door and knocked, but he knew… he could tell by the absence of sound in the room, could tell by the absence of her smell, that she had left.
He lay his head against the door and closed his eyes. It felt as if the part of him that was the real Brandon was cast out alone in a midnight sea, trapped in an inexorable current and drifting farther and farther from land.
He wondered just how long it would be before the current pulled him under completely.
***
Ginny wanted to cry. She wanted to curl up on the bed, put a pillow over her head, shut out the world and cry her eyes dry. Just a couple hours ago she was on top of the world, ready to shout her love from the rooftops, and now this.
But what was this, exactly? Was it really mental illness? Ginny didn’t have enough experience with it to know one way or another. No one in her family that she had been close to was ever sick in the head. She only knew what she had heard or seen on TV shows. It seemed to fit, but there was something else. Something that had been gnawing at her ever since Brandon stormed out of her room…
When he had stood and yelled at her, thrusting his face into hers, she could swear that his eyes had lit up. It had been no trick of the light, had not been her imagination; for the briefest second, his eyes had gotten brighter. And that caused her to remember something else… the night she had the dream, about the dog-thing on the ghost ship. She had woken up and Brandon had told her to go back to sleep, but when he looked at her, his eyes had glowed, as if reflecting moonlight. She had forgotten until now, the way you sometimes forget a dream upon waking. But now that the memory had returned, it was vivid. There was something unnatural about it…
The Turning Page 13
