Best New Werewolf Tales (Vol. 1)

by Wilson, David Niall; Lamio, Michael; Newman, James; Maberry, Jonathan; Everson, John; Daley, James Roy

  “Thanks for helping, Sammy,” she said, as she bent over a stack of dishes, her long gray hair cascading over hunched shoulders, mind seemingly elsewhere.

  “No problem, Grammy,” he told her, as he carefully wrapped the silverware and cups. All of it ancient looking, even to his untrained eye.

  She glanced up, sapphire eyes twinkling beneath the overhead lights. “They tell you why I’m being shipped out?” The twinkle turned to a flame, bursting from behind recessed sockets.

  Sammy coughed, a strange sensation swirling menacingly around his belly. “You, um, you need more help these days, I suppose.”

  “Yeah, right,” was all she replied, as she turned away.

  In truth, her grandson thought, she was strong as an ox and sharp as a tack. Then again, what did he know? Not like the grown-ups told kids much of anything. Maybe she was losing her marbles and was hiding it well enough. “Guess it’s probably safer at the home, even if you don’t need the help,” he tried.

  “Safer than what?” she asked, not even bothering to look his way this time. Sammy paused, sensing he was treading in dangerous waters. “You know, the times and all. Crime. And, um, the murders.”

  This caught her attention, her pause echoing his. “That’s exactly why they’re sending me away, Sammy. But not for the reason you’re thinking, you know.”

  A shiver ran up his spine, a cold bead of sweat forming atop his brow. “No, I, um, don’t know, Grammy. Tell me.” The dangerous waters were rising, the tide flooding in, chest-deep, neck-deep, suffocating him.

  She started to reply, then caught herself. “Your parents, they didn’t––oh, never mind. You’re right; it’s for my own good. Everyone’s own good.”

  He started to press, but she held up her hand. The conversation was over. Which was fine by him. Still, Sammy had a feeling it was more like a temporary reprieve.

  That night he didn’t sleep well, the spare room deathly quiet, walls now bare, shelves empty. Just Sammy, the bed, the window. With the shades gone the moon flooded in, silver beams dancing on the closet door. He sat up, squinting into the nothingness, and couldn’t remember emptying the closet or seeing Grammy do so either. Strange, he thought.

  The boy hopped out of bed and crept over, his heart pounding in his chest. He creaked the closet door open. There wasn’t much in there, mostly boxes from when his Gramps was still alive, some from even before the two of them had met, according to the labels. He opened some of the lids, poking around a bit. Everything was musty, old, age-worn. He put it all back where he found it, preparing to return to the bed. That’s when he spotted it, a box on the top shelf, pushed against the far wall.

  Sammy stood on tiptoe and slid it forward. The box was on the small side, light, dusty, much older looking than the others. No label. No date. He popped it open, the aged tape turning to powder. “Clothes,” he whispered, suddenly disappointed.

  His disappointment was short-lived.

  He grabbed for the garment on top, draping it down. It was a dress, really old, threadbare. Only, that’s not what made it stand out. There was a hole in the back, ripped, not cut. Same for the sleeves, both torn, and not down the seam either. Weird thing to save, he thought. Weirder still, the box was full of similar items, clothes, all frayed in the same exact spots. “Keepsakes not worth keeping,” he whispered.

  Then he heard the sound.

  He jumped, dropping the box, the clothes scattering around his feet. The noise came again, a scratch, a moan, a sigh. His heart beat out a syncopated rhythm in his chest, the sound of it pounding in his ears. He moved to the door. It opened with a squeak. “Grammy?” he managed, his throat tight and dry as the Sahara. No answer, the noise continued. It grew louder as he moved down the hallway, through the barren living room and on to the kitchen.

  It was coming from outside.

  He unlocked the door, face pressed up tight to the screen. “Hello?” he whispered. The noise abruptly stopped. No scampering of feet, no sound besides his own heavy breathing. He looked around the nearly empty kitchen, reaching for the only weapon he could find: a broom. “Go away,” he managed, his voice suddenly finding itself.

  Still nothing. He flicked the switch on, the room suddenly bright, blinding. He rubbed his eyes, squinting into the backyard. Two eyes glinted back at him at the edge of the yard, blinking. Then teeth, long, sharp teeth, glistening white beneath the full moon. White, that is, where they weren’t a crimson red. He froze, the distant growl rumbling through his stomach like a runaway train, the teeth bared further, the bloody carcass dropped to the ground in a sickeningly dull thud.

  The animal moved towards the house, its muzzle coming into view, eyes a surprising blue, the snout long, canine in appearance. Except dogs don’t stand on their hind feet, clawed hands extended, walking slowly but with purpose. Only one animal does that, Sammy thought.

  Knees trembling, stomach lurching, Sammy slammed the door, locking it, his back up against it as he tried to catch his breath. Then a new sound, feet running towards the house, fast, a body slamming into the door frame, claws scraping at the wood, the sound like nails across a chalkboard, grunting coming from the other side.

  “Go away!” he screamed, voice cracking, sweat pouring down his face now. “Please, go away!”

  It bayed and barked, the sound of its breathing loud in Sammy’s ears, despite the inch or so of wood that still separated the two of them. Then a momentary cold, dead silence, before the creature stopped, then retreated away from the house, letting out a howl from at least ten feet away.

  Sammy moved to the window and peeked out, the creature turning again to look his way, locking eyes before disappearing into the night, its long gray mane the last thing he saw.

  “Grammy,” he sighed, shivering.

  He checked her room to be certain, but she was gone. He bowed his head, walking to her lone window, the moon’s rays illuminating his face as the final howl went up again, causing his very bones to quake.

  “Grammy,” he echoed, crashing down on her bed, confused and alone.

  Exhausted, he lay down, trying to collect his own disturbing thoughts.

  He must have dozed off, waking, surprised to be in his own bed, the sun bright and warm on his face.

  A dream, he thought, but knew better. A nightmare, he corrected.

  He sprung up and tiptoed to the door, making his way down the hall. She was in the kitchen, a hot cup of coffee in front of her, some juice already waiting for him. “Morning,” she said, forcing a smile.

  He sat down across from her, both their eyes intent yet wary. “I already know it was you, you know.”

  She nodded, eyes closed for just the briefest of seconds. “I suppose it’s best you find it out from me, anyway. Maybe that’s why they sent you here yesterday.”

  “Not to help you pack?” he asked, terror suddenly rising up his chest.

  She laughed, despite the circumstances. “Does it look like I need help, Sammy?”

  He took a sip of his juice. “No, ma’am.” He paused, his eyes taking her in, looking for the beast he’d seen the night before. Not a trace. No surprise there. “So you’re a, a werewolf?” The words barely made it out from between his lips.

  She smiled and nodded. “I think you always knew, Sammy. Felt it at least. Makes sense.”

  He frowned. “Nothing makes sense. None of this. All those murders. You.” He paused, unsure of how to continue. “I saw you eating last night. It’s been you all along.”

  She sighed and shook her head, the mane of steely gray hair rolling down her shoulders. “No, Sammy. Just a rabbit. See, the home I’m going to is for werewolves.” She rose and stood by his side, a gentle hand on his shoulder. “When werewolves get older, they lose the ability to control their most basic instincts.”

  “Like to kill?” Sammy interrupted.

  “Like to kill,” she replied, the nod returning. “And the home protects us from that. And that population, of course. That way, our kind can still live among
them, as we have for centuries.”

  He gulped, his stomach now tied in knots. “Our kind?”

  She tightened the grip on his shoulder. “Sometimes it skips a generation.”

  He remembered the torn clothes in the box, his own pajamas still in one piece. “When I get a little older, these will rip when I, when I change?”

  Again she sighed. “You’ve already changed, Sammy. Last night, during the full moon. And before that one. And before that one, too. When we change, we have little remembrance of it, just flashing images, sometimes. The torn clothes come later. Still, we can control what and who we kill. When we get older.”

  He turned and looked up at her. “Unless you’re too old to control it.”

  That’s when the agonizing images suddenly flashed in his head, bolting through like white hot lightening. Muscles and joints aching, stretching, morphing. Claws and hair and teeth so sharp they could cut bone. The pain and confusion. Anguish and ecstasy. The blood. So much blood. A veritable river of it.

  She bent down and kissed his forehead. “Or too young to control it, Sammy.” She turned and taped up the last of her meager belongings. “Or just a little too young.”

  SCARRED FOR LIFE

  MICHAEL LAIMO

  Every night I dream his face. It is just as I remember it, staring, accusing––and yet, unbridled in its potential to forgive. Do you love me? He asks. I try to answer but in this ongoing dream I am incapable of expressing my feelings for the boy––the boy who is my very own flesh and blood––an extension of my love. By reason of my inability to illuminate my affections, he senses only my fear, rising from me in an invisible musk that only he can detect. His rosy cherub innocence vanishes from his face, morphing into a bestial visage secreting hot fluids from the snarls of his formed muzzle, strenuously taut from pleading.

  If you say you love me, father, then why did you let me die?

  I let him die because I had to. Because I did not love him.

  * * *

  My son died during childbirth. It had become no true shock after all the painful difficulties my wife tolerated throughout the latter months of the pregnancy. Fourteen hellish months it lasted. Nine of those joyfully anticipated, the remaining five painfully endured.

  I sat by her side in our bedroom for most of those five months, gingerly running my fingers along the purple gnarls lining her swelled abdomen. I could feel the baby kicking, moving, answering the gentle tracings of my finger as I prayed for its escape from the womb, my mind searching for a reason as to why the attempt of Caesarean childbirth would be fatal to both wife and child. Why the inductions had failed to work. And then why my wife vehemently refused medical attention, choosing the herbal remedies of a naturalist midwife.

  Even here, before his birth, he haunted my dreams, my fetal child running the show like a mysterious ringleader, we the parents its unwitting puppets, answering his every beckon.

  * * *

  Her water broke in an alarming spray of fluids, shocking against the natural sterility of the environment we occupied, the odd plants arranged about the bed, the high humid temperature my wife insisted upon. She gripped my hand and held it vice-tight as the midwife began the procedure. I watched with great disquiet as her face fell into an agony of contortion and pain and fear. I could only return her grasp and offer false hopes of reassurance.

  Screams abounded: my wife producing noises like nothing I’d ever heard. The pain of childbirth, I thought. It must be nearly unendurable.

  It happened so quickly, her bloated stomach shifting, our baby slipping free from the womb.

  My breath escaped me. I fell back in utter loathe, dizzied at the sight of him. I could see my wife’s stomach undulating, pumping fluids and matter free from her womb, surrounding the infant in a moat of steaming gore. The placenta-shrouded newborn twisted madly on the bed amidst its afterbirth, the head and arms rupturing the tenuous veil, emerging forth. Wicked claws brushing at the dermis with feline-like consideration, wiping the matter across its face as its tongue lapped urgently for nutrition.

  Its gaze found mine, primordial eyes with diamond pupils set in blue irises. A brown gelatinous fluid purled from its throat and fled down its sodden torso. My wife reached desperately for the infant, moaning and still fraught in pain. The midwife bustled madly, assisting in the action. She cradled the infant to her breast as it writhed and convulsed in her arms, seeking freedom from her grasp. She toweled its fine hide, the umbilical cord whipping about like a snake, possessed with a life of its own.

  And I could only stand silent and watch the horror of a baby that seemed to defy all that I expected this moment to be.

  When the baby quieted I walked over, took it from my wife’s arms. Its eyes shined green with a luminescence that I knew bragged sight in the darkest and dampest of places.

  I asked myself, Do you love him?

  No, I answered. I don’t.

  I returned the child to the midwife, and left the room.

  Three days later, my baby died.

  * * *

  I sit in a chair on the porch of a rented cabin that exists deep in a wooded area, far from civilization. There is a special tranquility about this place, one that I cannot put a finger on, yet it is where my wife wishes to be. Somehow, this feels right.

  The environment was all wrong, my wife had explained. It is why our baby died.

  Had my wife not seen the state in which our offspring had been born? Had she not seen its deformations? And, had she not seen me shun the child unlike a father should do? This is why our baby died!

  My wife exits the cabin and stands next to me. I gaze into her eyes and I know at once it is time. The midwife follows, assisting her down the three steps to the clearing before the cabin. She removes my wife’s clothing, first her shirt to reveal the pendulous breasts and a distended stomach that have endured yet another fourteen months of agony. She then peels her skirt away––a wash of fluid is evident between her thighs.

  The midwife soon follows the procedure, removing her own clothing. The task now accomplished, the two slowly disappear into the woods.

  * * *

  I have waited for nearly an hour, staring into the black woods. My fear grows as every minute passes.

  Suddenly, I hear a cry. Could this be my cue? I walk to the perimeter of the woodland and gaze into the sea. Nothing graces my sights. I step further in. I hear a constant moan. My gait is strangely hesitant, for fear of what I’ll find. The sounds of nature abound, yet I still discern the familiar echoes of labored breathing. Shadows engulf me, I press farther ahead. The painful sounds grow as I near its source, concealed somewhere amidst the tangled knots of branches, leaves, and twigs. Shards of broken moonbeams illuminate pockets of spicy foliage. At an impasse, I reach my hand out, pull aside a thicket of nature, and step forward into a hidden clearing.

  Here, I find the answer to the question.

  Do you love me?

  A shaft of moonlight escaping through the forest canopy shines across the two wolves. I see dampened fur upon them both, the copper tang of blood thick in the air, the matted grass beneath them soaked thick with crimson life. One wolf lies on its side, panting, a trail of blood seeping from its womb. The other gently licks the leg that dangles from it.

  The leg is human.

  The mother-wolf’s eyes spot me, its green eyes telling a primordial tale, that this is the way it’s supposed to be. It turns its head and howls a lupine cry into the night, its efforts echoing wickedly throughout the forest. The baby slips free from the womb, the midwife-wolf immediately licking away the afterbirth to cleanse it from infection.

  I walk over and pick up my baby boy, elated, overjoyed. My human baby boy. I smile and pace to my wife, the mother of my child.

  Yes, I love him. And I will not reject the child born in human form.

  I kneel down and place the baby next to her, by her nipples. He instinctually latches on, lips sucking voraciously for his mother’s milk. This child will be loved,
will live. My dreams shall no longer be haunted by the soul of the dead child.

  I hold my wife close, my child.

  And I love him.

  HAIRS AND GRACES

  WILLIAM MEIKLE

  Dog tired.

  I’d heard the phrase, but never understood its true meaning. I was about to find out.

  The bell above the doorway rang at two after noon.

  The man who entered was big money, through and through. He wore a thick serge tunic, his sash was draped just right, and his shiny leather boots squeaked as he walked across the room. He was in his sixties, but held his back ramrod straight. And although his mouth smiled, his eyes told a different story. He strode into the chamber as if he owned it and thrust a hand at me that I couldn’t refuse to shake.

  “Gwynne Ericsdochtir?” he said, “I’m Lord Colwyn of Eyr, and I believe there’s something you can help me with.”

  He smelled––of perfumed soaps and rosewater, and underneath that, the faint but unmistakable odor of liquor.

  “I’m Gwynne. And all investigations can be undertaken if the fee is right. And I am surprised. When a Lord comes to a place like this, it’s usually about a woman; and usually a wife, lover, or whore. They mostly want a man to investigate cases like that.”

  “It’s been a while since I had any of those three,” the Lord said.

  For the first time I saw him for what he was––an older man, proud and keeping himself together, but fighting the same constant battle against boredom and booze that I recognized only too well in myself.

  I motioned him towards the chair opposite me. I half expected him to dust it down first, but he sat without a second thought, falling into its depths. I leaned back in my own chair, feeling much more comfortable––now I had him where I wanted him.

  Time for business.

  “Before I start,” he said, “I must tell you, this is strictly confidential. Word of this must not leave this room. It could seriously damage my reputation.”