Wolf Howling

by Brian van Brunt

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  Chapter 2: The Three Queries

  1Consider the three queries. 2As Socrates admonished us at Delphi, know thyself above all else. 3Reflect in the darkness of the starry night and stare into the flames and contemplate the answers before proceeding on the path. 4The greatest focus is this: be centered on the objective. 5The three queries serve as a crucible to burn away the superfluous, to bring focus like the mantra of the Om mani padme hum.

  6The first query: Are those who will die known to you? 7Revenge and vengeance are reasonable motivations for killing, yet they complicate. 8Like a laser, focus your goal. 9Are there certain people who must die to be punished? 10Must they suffer? 11If this is your resolution, make this your design. 12The desire of your heart can be hard like the rocks of the greatest mountain or soft like the lush meadows. 13The target of your assault should be like these lush meadows of the Psalms. 14When the heart is hardened and the grievance is fierce, focus is lost. 15Strike adjacent to the object of your scorn and leave the pain that lasts for an eternity.

  16The second query: How many will die? 17For many, the crusade becomes about the artfulness of it. 18If those who will perish are not known to you, then your strategy will reflect this. 19Overall, there is no right answer, but rather a question of quality over quantity.

  20The third query: Must you live? 21Will you plunge into the abyss with your victims or will you live to see another day in freedom? 22This is not a question of chance, but rather of focus. 23This is not a fact, but it is a truth.

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  Chapter 3: Cover Your Path

  1Be wary of the tracks you leave as you plan. 2Striking at your heart’s desire leads to carelessness. 3Your own life and freedom can become forfeit and the plan may be ill-conceived. 4Choose wisely your path; be sly and clever, like the fox. 5Hunt, and forsake the howl.

  6Be silent as you cross to your prey, leaving no marks that can be followed. 7Make your purchases carefully and without credit cards that can be tracked, and remove the sim card from your phone.

  8Stay hidden and camouflaged as you stalk your prey. 9Avoid places where you can be observed and when you must be observed, make sure you use a mask, gloves, and camouflage to hide your identity, fingerprints, and DNA.

  10Do not bark loudly, amplifying your movements through social media. 11Be focused on your mission and do not telegraph your movements or gloat in your success.

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  Chapter 4: The Hammer in Your Hand

  1I shall be the hammer in your hand, the bullet in your brain. 2Choose carefully the weapon, the method of destruction. 3Many choose the wide path of the fancy, sleek, and complicated. 4Avoid these complications and stay focused on the task at hand. 5The most efficient killing machine is the bolt of the cattle gun. 6Metal against bone and flesh.

  7The pale Galilean, the prophet carpenter, had many hands and many tools. 8Be prepared when your hammer slips and fails you. 9Have many tools and many hands; these are the best of plans.

  Chapter 5: The Second Commandment

  1If the first commandment is preparation, the second commandment is rehearsal. 2Practice begets perfection.

  3The spider’s web is created over time and is a result of practice. 4Think of your goals and let them wander your mind.

  5Check the bolts securing the grand Ferris wheel to the earth, as once the spinning starts, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

  6When the winds come, the spider has tied its web tightly to the reeds.

  7When the rain falls, the spider has built a web that reflects the drops of water.

  8When the locusts prey, the spider loses the web but keeps the feast.

  9When the fire burns, the spider forgoes its master work to create another day.

  10Be like the spider, my children. 11Prepare and rehearse.

  12Be meticulous as thy God who has set the forsaken.

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  Chapter 6: Those Who Stand in Opposition

  1There are those who stand in opposition to your task. 2The peacemakers, the gunslingers. 3Know their processes and their procedures; know them like you know yourself. 4Their secret folly is in their preparation and methods. 5They play a game of checkers, methodical and unswerving, leaning into that strength. 6This is their strength and their weakness. 7Burn this into your mind: for every Achilles, there is a heel.

  8Be clever and quiet, my children, deep in the belly of that wooden horse. 9Play chess to their checkers, be Ulysses to their Achilles.

  10Anticipate their reaction and guide their hand. 11As in Aikido, use their force against them and guide them gently to the floor; then have your way with their women, feast on their meat, and plunder their treasures.

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  Chapter 7: The Third Commandment

  1Water has many ways of being; resonating within itself. 2Each state contradicts the state before it, moving and hiding, like a clear ghost with transparent desires. 3Be this substance, my children, in all its forms. 4Hold steady to your ideals and be willing to adjust. 5Move quickly when the time calls and be patient in the blind, enduring and waiting to strike your prey.

  6Be like water; hard as ice and focused on your plan.

  7Be like water; fluid and liquid, adapting to your surroundings.

  8Be like water; gaseous like steam, hidden yet ever present.

  9Allow for innovation, as the universe is vast and complex.

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  Chapter 8: Afterword

  1I leave you, my dear children, the followers of my book, with these commandments and teachings. 2Broken free from the stone tablet and existing in hexadecimal and the burning bush of binary LED light. 3I write this for you, take of my body and eat. 4Be nourished as you read my words and follow my path, my way.

  5Take my words and fish. 5Be my disciples and take what providence has given you dominion over in all the land, the sea, and sky. 6Go forth and multiply, and make me proud.

  7Leave the sharks to eat their dead.

  Chapter 15

  New Orleans, Spring, Tuesday, 9:45pm

  Wagner walked quickly away from Jade and her Tarot cards and covered several blocks before his heart stopped racing. He turned the corner on Chartres and Magnolia and walked down the block to the faded green door with the gate leading to his apartment. He walked through and closed the wrought iron behind him. He took some solace in the old stories that iron kept ghosts and spirits from entering a house.

  He thought back to when he first moved to New Orleans. Many of the apartment and real estate postings were listed as haunted or not haunted. He joked with Mauve, his real estate broker, when he first saw this. She had quickly corrected him.

  “Oh no, that ain’t no joke.” She turned her massive frame around in the office chair and came close to him. He could still smell her perfume, something too rich and overpowering. She wore a bright yellow dress that was two sizes too big and seemed to clash with her dark skin. She had been born and raised in Louisiana and had the thick accent that mesmerized Wagner every time he heard it. It reminded him of James Carville, the Ragin’ Cajun from LSU.

  “People here take their ghosts real serious-like. You’re all but required to list the supernatural status of all apartments near and about the Quarter. Down right obligated, I’d say. My sweet Jesus.” She crossed herself and seemed to say a quick prayer at all this talk of ghosts.

  Wagner climbed the stairs to his third-floor apartment and unlocked the door. As usual, Faulkner bounded up to him. This cat hadn’t quite gotten the message about not being a dog. He circled Wagner’s leg and purred loudly. “Just happy to see me, eh Faulk?” This cat gave it away. Nothing coy about him.

  Wagner rifled through the kitchen and cursed his lack of foresight at neglecting to stock even the most basic of groceries. In a city known for its food, there was just too much temptation to wander down the street to the Grille or Central Grocery to buy a sandwich instead of cooking at home. He had stocked his kitchen a few times, but after
throwing out spoiled milk, brown lettuce, and squishy grapes, he realized that there were better ways to spend his money.

  Dumb cat, Wagner said to himself. Little fur ball. Wagner pushed past his collection of mixers, tonic, and assorted limes in the refrigerator and found a half-consumed can of cat food wrapped in plastic. He pulled off the cellophane and put the can on the floor. Faulk wasted no time digging in, accompanied with a low, almost growl-like, purr. The can of food slid across the floor as the exuberant and perpetually-hungry cat ate his dinner. Faulkner looked up at him halfway through his can of Fancy Feast and purred contentedly.

  The apartment was a small one, much smaller than the house Wagner once lived in. Location trumped floor space here in the Crescent City. He would have opted for an apartment half this size if the location was as good. It was within wandering distance to the House of Blues, One Eyed Jack’s, and the assorted music venues of Frenchman Street. Wagner wouldn’t have chosen to live anywhere else on the planet. This was his home.

  The kitchen was simple, the dishes stacked on open shelves. Asian-style deep bowls and a collection of barware glasses that Wagner had for everyday use. There were a few bottles of liquor lined up against the tiled backsplash next to the sink. Johnny Walker Black, Jameson, and a half-empty bottle of Johnny Walker Blue that Kate, his publisher from Harper, had sent him when he first moved down to celebrate the success of his novel.

  Aside from that, the counters were mostly bare, but for the French press he had gotten from his friends when he moved. Of course, he rarely made coffee at home and opted for one of the dozen coffee shops sprinkled throughout the city. PJ’s was a favorite, with its deep-set leather chairs and ideal people-watching location by the intersection of Chartres and St. Peter by Jackson Square.

  His eye caught on the bowl that Jackie had gotten for him the third or fourth night that she had stayed over. It was faded ceramic with a dog painted on it. An excited cartoon dog looking very happy to be fed. It had a little rubber mat attached to the bottom to keep it from sliding on the kitchen floor. She had gotten this for Faulkner. She would make this face when he ate, growling and purring and pushing the tin across the floor. This thought made Wagner sad, though he wasn’t sure why.

  He clicked the light in the bedroom and kicked off his boots. He usually carried a small messenger bag with him that held a notebook or laptop to use if the mood to write struck him. It had been a few years since his last book. Despite the initial high sales, the royalty checks had started to diminish while the phone calls for another manuscript had increased. It wasn’t quite writer’s block, nothing so mundane. That problem never troubled Wagner. It was something different. Like he was relegated to sketches that never really added up to something significant. Something meaningful.

  The bed was an unmade mess, as usual, as he liked it. Too many pillows scattered amongst soft sheets and a tangle of blankets. A ceiling fan spun in its lazy, continuous cycle above him. The rest of the room was sparse, with a bedside table made from upcycled wood and a closet mostly filled with clothes he never wore. An assortment of t-shirts and jeans were slung over the leather chair in the corner. Wagner had gotten the chair at an estate sale a few months ago. He never sat in it but liked the way it looked in the corner.

  He went back into the kitchen/living room and lit a few of the candles in the old non-working fireplace in the corner. The brick walls and fireplace had been a selling point for the apartment, that and the hardwood floors. Mauve warned him about the fireplace not working. “That there isn’t gonna work and won’t never work. So, you can’t have fires here. Not that you should have fires anywhere in the city. We had enough of that in 1788. My Jesus, this whole city. Either burning up or underwater. My sweet Jesus.”

  He knew she wouldn’t have liked the candles. They were perfectly safe on the brick and with all of their use had accumulated a rather nice collection of white wax shaped into a landscape across the hearth. Wagner liked the candlelight and did most of his writing in the deep leather chair that sat next to the fireplace.

  The chair had been a spree purchase, and he had a hell of a time working with the movers to get it up the steps. It was wide and took effort to climb in and out of. It had come from the high-end, sophisticated, vintage-style store Restored Antiques. A Churchill, he thought. That’s what it was called. Either that or Churchill was the name of the leather color. He couldn’t remember. He had a love/hate relationship with places like that. It was a nice chair, but they sold him a story. Like the narrator in Fight Club, “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?”

  Wagner didn’t have a TV. He wasn’t necessarily against television, but there was something about it that depressed him. Watching other people do things. He had never really followed sports and the news didn’t interest him. If he wanted to watch something, he would pull it up online. There was more there than he could possibly watch anyway. That and Wagner was a more of a movie buff. He had several of his favorites saved as files on the bottom of his desktop. An eclectic mix: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Casablanca, The Matrix, Fight Club, The Big Lebowski, Barfly, Groundhog Day, Apocalypse Now. He liked his movies to match his mood. In some ways, the files were like old friends he would invite over when he was feeling down. They picked him up and walked him safely across his darker, broodier times. Another occupational hazard for a writer, he supposed.

  The apartment’s main decorations were books. They rested in a haphazard fashion throughout. Wagner had two long and deep wooden bookshelves that held a dozen or so volumes on each shelf. These were packed full in a way that would have made sense to a hoarder. After all of the proper space was taken up, books fought for position in a precarious balancing act. Hemingway, Fitzpatrick, Gaiman, Bukowski, and Thompson filled the shelves. He had a few from Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot phase and some Flannery O’Connor. Writer’s books. Inspiration. Gaiman was his favorite, the story of Door and Richard Mahew in London Below. Several piles of brown moleskin notebooks sat on one shelf containing writing sketches and ideas for future stories.

  He fell onto the chair and stretched his legs out on the ottoman. It was early still, not yet 10, and Wagner thought about writing some. He certainly had experienced enough thought-provoking occurrences tonight to feel inspired. Yet, that was the problem; they never really quite tied together into something larger. Something with meaning. Not that the first book had any meaning. Not really. But that was different; that one he wrote for the money. After writing that way, he wasn’t sure there was anything left. He sold part of himself writing that. However, if you are going to sell out, at least make some good money when they take your soul.

  He thought about the cups, running in his mind all in a row. It was strange that the cards fell like that for him. More than strange, really. It reminded him of the classic scene from Disney’s Fantasia. The brooms lining up and carrying an infinite number of buckets of water. That poor mouse fighting against the inevitable tide. That movie always gave Wagner the chills. It was this dark feeling of being out of control and afraid. It made him feel sad and scared all at once. Like something had been started and he didn’t have control over it any longer. He pitied Mickey in that movie. It made him anxious to watch.

  He took his small laptop from where it was wedged between the cushion and the side of the chair. The screen flickered on and Faulkner, long since done with his meal, took up his position at Wagner’s feet. Wagner stretched out in the chair and considered the day. He opened his computer and began to jot down some of the events. His eyes felt heavy. Wagner found himself losing the battle to stay awake. And why fight it? He didn’t have anywhere to be in the morning. Not anymore. He could catch up some tomorrow with the writing. Maybe call Kate later in the day and make up some kind of story about his next project. Maybe that would buy him a few weeks. But now, a little nap; just for a moment.

  He was in London, under Queen Mary’s bridge by the Eye of London. The tunnel was cold, but tolerable. Centuries-old brick was darkened by the
smoke of countless fires to keep the cold at bay. Wagner looked to the end of the bridge and away from the man.

  An old man was pressed against the stone. He wore a tattered khaki coat with a dirty black t-shirt. He held a light brown notebook in his lap and he wrote carefully, lifting his head occasionally in thought. He had two signs on either side of a red and black hat with some coins and some crumpled bills inside it. One sign read, “Anything is a blessing” while the other was written in shaky black marker with the words, “Embarrassed. Hungry.” There was a backpack next to him with writing and symbols on it.

  Wagner walked by him, saying nothing. He wasn’t sure why he was in London. He had been a few times but it had been years since he was last there. Of course, London held a special place in his mind, given Gaiman’s book, London above and London Below.

  Wagner paused crossing the tunnel and turned back, trying to make out the man’s face in the poor light. He leaned closer and tried to get a better look. The more he leaned in, the harder it was to see. It was as if the light was working against him in some kind of illusion. The man wrote and the shadows became darker. And when he was close, so very close, then he saw his own face, his own eyes looking back at him. Cold and in pain.

  Wagner woke with a start. Faulkner did not care for this and looked at Wagner sleepily.

  The dream reminded Wagner of a recurrent nightmare he used to have in childhood. He was alone in his house and heard someone cooking in the kitchen. Banging pots around and humming to himself. Wagner walked down the hall in slow motion. Closer and closer; past the beige phone hanging on the wall and the side of the refrigerator with the erasable pen and the smudged whiteboard. Past the wooden desk on the left where his father paid the bills. He turned and saw a figure to the right, in front of the stove. The figure turned, and his face was Wagner’s face, smiling back at him with a too-wide Cheshire cat grin. The smile grew and grew until it was unbelievably big; too big for his face. And then it would take the iron pan it was cooking with, this bizzaro-Wagner, and swing it in a wide arc, grease spraying around the kitchen and whatever meat had been cooking flying against the wall into the clock. And then Wagner just heard the sound. The sound of a loud cartoon gong right as the frying pan slammed into his head.