The Shape of Desire

by Sharon Shinn

  Nobody responds with anything like It was his time or God has a plan and you can’t know what it is or Everything happens for a reason. “He loved to run,” Marquez says, and that seems to satisfy her.

  “He really did,” Kathleen answers. “He was good at it and it made him happy. There were a lot of things he wasn’t good at, and that would make him mad, but he could run really fast.” She shakes her head; big tears fall from her eyes but she doesn’t appear to notice. “That’s why I don’t understand. Why couldn’t he just have kept running? Why couldn’t he get away?”

  The three of us exchange startled, puzzled glances. We have no idea what she’s talking about, but will it make it better or worse for her if we press for an explanation?

  “Honey, we’re still not quite sure what happened to Ritchie,” Ellen says. “Don’t tell us if you don’t feel like talking about it, but if you do—”

  “He was running. In Babler State Park,” Kathleen says, enunciating with great precision. “And some—some creature caught up to him and attacked him. Mauled him to death. Killed him.”

  Ellen and I stare at each other in horror. This is far more gruesome than any of the ordinary demises we had speculated about. “‘Some creature’?” Ellen repeats faintly. “Do you know what kind?”

  Kathleen shakes her head. The tears are still dropping from her eyes, steady as a drip from a leaky faucet. She doesn’t seem to care. “They said—the police said—they would have to do some forensics. They couldn’t tell if it was a dog or a coyote or something else—they didn’t know yet. They’re going to do tests.”

  “Can coyotes kill a grown man?” Ellen asks. “Aren’t they too small?”

  Marquez makes an abrupt motion with his hand to cut her off, as if to say, Consider that question some other time. “I’m sure they’ll figure it out,” he says.

  “They think they have a witness,” Kathleen says in a hopeless voice. “Oh, but maybe they don’t. They aren’t sure. But they found human footprints at the scene—right by Ritchie’s body, they said—footprints that had to have been made after he was attacked. But no one called the cops to report the crime, not until a couple of park rangers happened to find him.”

  “Well, that’s cold,” Marquez observes.

  “So there’s a sociopath and a dangerous animal on the loose, but I’m more worried about the animal,” Ellen says. “You’d think the cops would make an announcement. Or maybe even close the park until they can catch it.”

  “Even if they do,” Kathleen says softly, “Ritchie will still be dead.”

  Ellen lays a hand on her arm. “I know, baby,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  It’s clear Kathleen isn’t going to choke down another bite, and the rest of us have long ago finished our meals, so Marquez stands up and begins clearing the dishes. Ellen clears her throat. “I don’t want to sound heartless, but I have to ask practical questions,” she says. “Have you thought about funeral arrangements?”

  “Kelly’s going to help me with that,” Kathleen says. “My sister.”

  “Good. Make sure to take someone with you when you—when you pick out a casket,” says Ellen. “Sometimes you’re not thinking clearly and you end up with something way more expensive than you planned.”

  From the sink, Marquez says, “You let us know if you want any help writing up death notices or anything like that.”

  “When do you think you’ll have the funeral?” Ellen asks. “Ritchie has family, doesn’t he—a brother, maybe a mom still living? You’ll probably want to wait till they get here.”

  Kathleen’s hands clench, her face flushes, and she speaks in a voice that is suddenly frenzied. “I’ll wait until the police are done with the autopsy,” she exclaims with a sort of singsong emphasis. “They’re cutting him open—they’re examining him, they’re trying to figure out what exactly killed him. But I don’t care what killed him. I don’t want him to be dead.”

  Then she breaks down, sobbing in long, hysterical wails, pounding her fists against the table, knocking her forehead against the wood. Marquez spins around from the sink, but Ellen is quicker. She leaps up, pulls Kathleen out of her chair and into a tight hold, rocking that fragile body against her own. Kathleen can’t be comforted, of course; she continues to sob, to flail, to beat her small hands against Ellen’s sturdy back. Ellen strokes the disordered hair, makes soothing shh sounds into Kathleen’s ear, and eventually pulls Kathleen down so they are both sprawled on the kitchen floor. And still Ellen holds her, and still she rocks her, and still she offers proof with her own body that the world has not ended, that it still holds life, it holds love, it holds real and physical connections that cannot be severed all at once.

  I sit unmoving; I have not said a word for ten minutes. My stomach is a burning knot of suspicion too dark to examine and horror too awful to endure.

  Ritchie was killed in Babler State Park—by an animal police have yet to identify.

  What if the killer is not an animal at all?

  What if the murderer is a man with a grudge against Ritchie? A man who is certainly familiar with the park and happened to be within its general vicinity Saturday morning when the attack took place?

  What if that man can take the shape of any animal in the world?

  What if he suddenly finds himself back in the shape of a man? What if he stands there, staring with terror or disbelief or even satisfaction on the carnage he has wrought?

  We have been at Kathleen’s for two hours when her sister comes out of the bedroom, looking scarcely more rested or cheerful than Kathleen. There’s a family resemblance between them, but Kelly is darker and more robust; I can’t help thinking that if her husband tried to beat her up she’d haul off and knock him straight to Sunday. Then again, statistics show that women of all types are abused by their domestic partners. She might not be as strong as she seems.

  Kelly thanks us all profusely for coming to see Kathleen and promises to call if there’s anything else we can do, but it’s clear she wants us out of the house so she can start imposing her own brand of order. Once we say our farewells and exit, Marquez and Ellen and I stand in the driveway a few moments, shivering, and confer about what to do next: whom to call, how much information to give to everyone else at the office.

  “Well, anybody with a TV set will hear this story by the end of the day,” Marquez predicts. “I don’t see any point in trying to conceal the circumstances of his death.”

  I feel like I have to contribute something to the conversation or risk snagging Ellen’s restless attention. “What about her finances?” I ask. “Do you think Ritchie had life insurance? Can she afford the funeral? Can she afford this house on her own?”

  “Yes on the life insurance, because they got that through us. And they both had health insurance through the company, too, so that’s good,” Ellen says.

  “She’s used up all her vacation time for the year. And sick time,” Marquez puts in.

  Ellen waves a hand. “Company policy officially allows for a three-day bereavement absence, and unofficially people can take at least a week,” she says. “If she needs more than that, we’ll be able to work something out.”

  “I don’t know how she’ll get through this,” I say in a low voice. I don’t know how I will.

  Ellen gives me a short, sharp nod. “She’ll get through it the way any of us would,” she says. “Because she has to.”

  Do I have to? I don’t think I can.

  On the drive back, Ellen is talkative, mostly going over plans to ease Kathleen’s next few days. We’ll take up a collection at work, we’ll implement a schedule of calls and visits, we’ll organize meal deliveries. I manage to offer a few ideas when they seem called for, and make sounds of approval when that’s sufficient. Ellen doesn’t seem to notice that I have turned to stone or ash or liquid fear—the states I pass through sequentially as we make the trip home.

  “Come in early tomorrow morning and we’ll talk some more,” she commands as she pulls in f
ront of my house.

  “All right,” I say as I climb out. “I can’t imagine I’ll be able to sleep tonight, anyway.”

  “We need to get Kathleen some sleeping pills,” she says, “and keep some for ourselves.”

  I step inside the house and then slump against the door, not even having the strength to walk across the floor.

  Ritchie is dead. Did Dante kill him? Ritchie is dead. Did Dante kill him? Ritchie is dead…

  It cannot be true. Dante could not have done such a terrible thing. He had no cause, no reason. The altercation at my house surely was not enough to inspire a killing animosity.

  Does he need a reason? What instincts govern him when he is in his animal state? He has often said his memories of those days are indistinct, though he makes no secret of the fact that he regularly hunts and eats small creatures to sustain himself when he’s in the wild. Is it much different to slay a man? Can his beast’s brain tell the difference?

  Still leaning my spine against the door, I press a hand to my forehead. I can’t think. It’s too complicated, and my questions contradict each other. Am I afraid that, even in the form of a wild creature, animal Dante is human enough to hate Ritchie and deliberately kill him? Or am I afraid that animal Dante is so lost to civilized instincts that he doesn’t even realize he’s capable of slaughtering a man?

  I realize I am afraid of both possibilities, though the first one is infinitely worse. The first one speaks to rage and premeditated murderous intent; it bears the whiff of evil, and that scent is intensified when I imagine the animal shifting back to human shape so he can view and judge his handiwork.

  The second possibility is appalling, too, but it’s tragic more than terrible. You would have to believe that the soul who took human form after his bloody rampage stood beside his victim and wept in remorse and fear. You would still have to find a way to contain him in his incarnation as a mindless marauder, of course. You would have to cage him up, keep him off the streets, and make sure he never had the chance to harm another person.

  But you would have to hate any creature that could deliberately kill a human being. You would have to destroy it.

  My breath breaks out of my body in a single hoarse gasp. I cannot hate Dante. I cannot see him destroyed. It doesn’t matter what he’s done.

  Am I crazy to even think this way? Is there any reason to believe that Dante is Ritchie’s killer? Yes, he was at my house late Friday night; yes, he could have been in Babler Park Saturday morning when Ritchie went for his run. But it’s just as likely that he was miles from the St. Louis area by daybreak. He could have gone north toward Hannibal, west toward Columbia, or south toward Cape Girardeau. He could have crossed the river and headed for the open land of southern Illinois.

  And even if he was in the park, so were dozens of other wild creatures, some far more dangerous than Dante. Rabid dogs could have been roaming those paths, or hungry bobcats, even coyotes—surely a pack of them could bring down a man, even one as fast as Ritchie. And those footprints hardly prove that a shape-shifter was responsible for the crime. Any number of people could have stood by that mangled body and decided not to call for help. A sociopath, as Ellen suggested, or a developmentally delayed adult who did not comprehend what he was seeing. Perhaps an escaped convict with worries of his own.

  What nags at me is Kathleen’s frustration at the ignorance of the authorities. The police said they would have to do some forensics. They couldn’t tell if it was a dog or a coyote or something else. What if they couldn’t tell because the creature was unfamiliar to them: something unique, a strange hybrid chimera that borrowed characteristics from three or five or seven animals?

  Dante has always been so vague about the shapes he takes, the process he undergoes, that I have sometimes thought he doesn’t really know what animals he becomes when the transformation overtakes him. What if his conversions are always jumbled and incomplete? What if he is a griffin or a harpy, a wyvern or a sphinx, some crossbred creature? Wouldn’t such an animal leave behind baffling tracks, some sort of unidentifiable spore?

  The longer it takes the police to determine what caused Ritchie’s death, the more I will worry that it was Dante.

  Shuddering and now nauseated, I push myself away from the door and take a few tentative steps deeper into the house. I think I might, like Kathleen, spend the night vomiting and weeping, made physically ill by the manifestation of a reality that cannot be borne. But hers is solid, a hard granite wall of starkness. Mine is misty, formless, populated by specters too frightening to contemplate.

  I simply don’t know yet if my world has ended.

  How will I survive if it has?

  I force myself to keep moving, to walk around the living room, picking up discarded shoes, straightening piles of magazines. I wash the breakfast dishes, put away laundry, and iron a few shirts that I might wear in the coming weeks. I am just trying to find tasks that will occupy my hands and give the outer edges of my mind some slim, pitiful distraction. I turn on the television and tune in to a football game. I don’t know who is playing and I don’t care. I just want to hear voices other than the ones screaming unanswerable questions inside my head.

  I am not thinking clearly enough to switch channels before the local news comes on at five o’clock.

  Ritchie’s death is the lead story, of course. The reporter is a young woman with a suitably solemn face; she wears bright red earmuffs and a puffy white coat as she broadcasts her story from one of the RV lots in the park.

  “Authorities are still trying to determine what kind of animal killed Mr. Hogan,” she says. “And they’re trying to determine if his death can be linked to the three similar deaths that have occurred in public spaces in recent weeks.”

  Three similar deaths?

  What?

  My legs are shaking as I cross to the computer and turn it on, waiting with feverish impatience during the seconds it takes for the screen to come to life. It is a matter of a few clicks to get to a Google page and begin searching for HUMAN DEATHS + ANIMALS + ST. LOUIS + OCTOBER. A handful of stories immediately come up, most of them describing the still-unresolved case of a man and a woman killed in some park in Wildwood. I vaguely remember discussing this one day over lunch with Ellen and Grant, but it didn’t really register with me at the time.

  Now I read three of the stories, but don’t glean much useful information. The victims were youngish, in their twenties, and they’d been missing for nearly two weeks before they’d been found slashed to pieces by some kind of creature the police still haven’t identified. Time of death has been tricky to establish, but the coroner eventually estimated that they were killed on or around September twenty-fourth. The police have noted that they “have reason to believe” someone may have seen or overheard the attack, and they ask that this witness come forward with any descriptive information. They don’t say exactly why they think someone else was on the scene, but I’m guessing there was a dropped glove, an empty soda can, or another set of footprints nearby.

  I do the math and shiver. Dante had been staying with me for the days just prior to that. He would have left my house sometime on the twenty-second.

  At the bottom of the third story is a paragraph that states:

  Rodgers and Stemple are the second and third people to be slaughtered by wild animals in eastern Missouri this fall. On September 29, a young woman was found mauled to death in a public area in Mark Twain State Park, not far from Rolla. The animal that killed her has never been found, either.

  My hands freeze on the keyboard.

  A young woman killed in Mark Twain State Park. I remember that event. I had called Christina the morning I’d heard the news, terrified she’d been the one attacked. But the report hadn’t specified a cause of death, not that I can recall, anyway.

  Had Dante been in the St. Louis area when this other death occurred? Surely not—if he’d left my place on the twenty-second, he would have been gone nearly a week by the time this woman was killed. He cou
ld have been miles away from St. Louis, possibly not even in Missouri.

  Or he could have lingered, drawn to familiar haunts or disinclined for the effort of travel. I remember that late-night call from the pay phone in my very own area code. Maybe, despite what he has always told me, he never strays more than a hundred miles from my house. Or maybe, at this particular time, he had simply decided to spend a few days in Rolla—either to visit his siblings or to take shelter in an area he knows so well that he can, perhaps, let down his guard a little. He might have holed up in that park for days, for weeks, enjoying the good weather and the easy hunting.

  He could have killed that woman. He could have killed all of them.

  Oh God.

  Oh God.

  Absolutely no work gets done the next day at the office. The only conversations revolve around where people were when they got the call, or saw the news on the television, and what they thought, what they said, who they told. Those with a wider circle of acquaintances are able to supplement these reports with stories about people they know who died bloody or mysterious deaths. It is possible, before noon, to wonder if anyone ever expires of natural causes.

  I try to keep myself occupied, sitting at my computer, opening spreadsheets and checking figures, but my brain is such a frantic jumble of fear and worry that nothing my eyes take in has a chance to register. Every twenty minutes or so, someone drops by my office to ask for news or speculate some more. I find these interruptions to be both a nuisance and a relief. Every time someone says, “Kathleen must be devastated,” I want to shout, My world has ended, too! But of course I don’t.

  Our boss, Frank, who has spent half the morning in consultation with Ellen, is genuinely trying to be useful and sympathetic. He has announced that anyone who wants to help Kathleen in some way—by running errands on her behalf or visiting her during the day—can do so without being charged for personal time. He also has taken money from petty cash to buy ten pizzas to be delivered at lunch, so that we can all gather together to continue our endless conjecturing. People wander through the hallways for the rest of the day, slices of pizza in their hands, the same topic on their lips.