Cry Wolf & Select Short Stories
Copyright 2013 Nicolas Wilson
Hi. I’m Nic. This is a short story collection of mine. Other stories and information about upcoming work can be found on my website: www.nicolaswilson.com. At the end of this collection, you’ll find snippets of novels I’m working on. I’m calling them entertisements, because the word amuses me. Keep going to reach the fiction, or you can view the Table of Contents (including synopses of the stories in this collection).
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The Gambit: The Dread Wolf’s Bane
I’m driving faster than I should, and in Portland in a crap economy that’s just asking to get pulled over. But I’m in need of a cop, anyway, so maybe that would take care of two birds. “So, this is going to work, right?” I ask into my cell.
“The literature is spottier than I’d like. But it will stop him.”
“Okay. But by stop, we don’t mean kill, right? Because if he dies, I’m going to prison, probably forever.”
“Well, like I said, it’s spotty. I’d say a seventy percent chance of it working right and you know, not killing anybody- but it is my first time brewing it.” She swallows. And it’s cute that she thinks I need the pep talk. “You know what happens if you don’t do it: the kid dies, and maybe takes a bunch of innocent people with him. And it all gets written off as a mass hallucination and buried.”
“Yeah, I know. If it does fail, how will I know?”
“If it fails and is poisonous, initial signs are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. This proceeds to burning, tingling, numbness in the mouth and face, eventually progressing to the limbs. Death comes from paralysis of the heart or respiratory system.”
“So we really hope you mixed it right. But I better go. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You better.”
The BBC is playing on the local OPB station; it’s late enough that nobody’s up around her to deal with the news. But they’re still talking locally, anyway. “The boy- Ray- claims to have been living in the forest for five years with his father. When his father died, he buried him in a shallow grave, and walked out of the forest. But he can’t remember where he lived, or his last name. Barely speaks English at all- he’s nearly feral. The police are still trying to track down the boy’s origins. It’s almost a day since he was found. How goes the hunt?”
Another British voice, barely distinguishable from the last, comes in. “Investigators are playing it close to the vest. But they’re trying to track the boy back to his campsite, with the hopes that they’ll find some clues.”
Vergara isn’t in a giving mood tonight. She agreed to meet me, so long as I came to her. And bought dinner. I guess I should be happy dinner is a Shari’s, instead of Beaches or some place more expensive.
I put the car into a spot next to Vergara’s Honda. The hostess isn’t there, but Vergara’s in a booth right by the entrance, and motions me over. I sit across from her. She ordered me coffee, and I empty cream and sweetener into it. I take a sip that turns into a deep gulp when I realize it’s cool enough to down in one go. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve reflexively, and ask, “You heard about the kid on the news?”
“The wolf boy? That’s what this is about? Here I thought this was a social call.”
“And you came anyway.” She apparently forgets it’s all bluster, because she flushes a little. I let that go, because I don’t want her feeling vulnerable- not tonight. Our waitress mercifully interrupts to deliver Vergara’s food.
“Can I get you anything?” she asks, noticing me.
“Whatever’s hot and ready. I’m in a hurry.”
“Got it. I’ll bring out an appetizer platter.”
Vergara takes a bite of breaded salmon, and I find myself watching her mouth as she pulls it off the fork with her tongue. “I need to see him.”
“That’s touching- your sudden interest in troubled juveniles- unless your interest is touching them, and then you’re as sick a bastard as I always thought.”
“You figured me for a kiddie-fiddler?” I ask, a little wounded.
“For a sicko, anyway- even if I haven’t figured the particulars.”
I’d like to defend my honor, but my ego needs to take a backseat. “Is the kid alone?”
“As lonesome as you can ever get in detention.”
“But is he alone in his cell?”
“Juvey isn’t the Ritz. Everybody has to bunk up.”
“Then his cell mate is in danger.”
“They’re a couple of kids; neither with any indication of a history of violence.” She’s already taken an interest in the case; that bodes well for me.
“The kid's amnesiac; he could have a history of being Charlie Manson and not remember it- and if you haven’t identified him yet you can’t know that, either. But you know the old superstition, where supposedly crime goes up on a full moon.”
“Yes,” she says, “which is entirely bunk.”
“Statistically, that’s true. But most wrong ideas, superstitions especially, started somewhere, were formed around a kernel of truth. At one point it was true that violence spiked on a full moon. Because of a small population with clinical lycanthropy.”
She’s taking a drink when I say that last bit, and some of it must go down the wrong tube. She coughs a little to try and clear it out. “Werewolves?”
“People who think they are. Technically, it’s a disorder without a diagnosis, unless you count general ‘psychosis.’”
“You don’t strike me as the doctorate type. High school guidance counselor?”
“Just an interested party with a passing experience of the weird. But we’re talking about two kids’ lives, here- not my proclivities. Besides, clinical lycanthropy takes years to treat. I don’t have a cure, exactly, but I’m familiar with a palliative measure.”
“A silver bullet?” she asks with a grin.
“Actually- presuming you mean the cheap beer- you probably could get him wasted, and he’d sleep right through the moon. Unless he’s a violent drunk, and then the problem isn’t really much better. But I meant tea.”
“You’ve finally lost your mind, haven’t you?”
“Brewed from wolfsbane.”
“Um, isn’t that deadly.”
“There’s an Ayurvedic method of detoxification, neutralizes the aconite.”
“Great. You’re creepy and New Agey.”
“I prefer to think of it as old age; Ayurveda started more than a thousand years before Christ.”
“Surprised you’d use BC instead of BCE.”
“I’m just old-fashioned enough that the whole ‘before current era’ thing feels wrong, and more than a little clunky.”
The waitress comes back with a deep-fried cornucopia. “Could I get a to-go box?” She nods, and scurries off.
“Seems presumptuous, that I’m convinced enough that we can. But let’s just say I believe you, that this kid, who you don’t claim to be able to identify, yet do claim to be able to diagnose, remotely, I might add, is violent. What’s to keep him from killing you if you go in there, instead of his roommate?”
“If he kills me, you don’t have to put up with me anymore.”
“That’s the bright side. But there’d be paperwork.”
“More, or less, than if I live?” I ask, and pop a mozzarella stick into my mouth. It burns me enough I don’t get to be as smug about my answer as I’d like.
“Good point.”
The waitress returns and sets a styrofoam box on the end of the table. “Will that be everything?” she asks.
Vergara doesn’t finish chewing before she says, “I’m going to need your most expensive pie,
to go, please. He’s buying.” She comes back with a cardboard box with a pie window in the top and the check, and hands one to me and the other to Vergara. I leave the receipt with two twenties and we get up to go.
I follow her in my car down to Juvie. I park right behind her, and walk up to her driver’s side. The door’s unlocked, so I pull it open. She still has half a slice of pie in her hand, with the other half presumably what’s swelling out her cheeks. “What?” she asks. “I was hungry. I didn’t eat dinner.”
“I watched you eat dinner ten minutes ago.”
“I didn’t eat dinner earlier. So now I’m hungrier than just for normal dinner. Jeez. Who died and made you pie inquisitor?” I shrug as she puts away the rest of the slice, then gets out. “I half expected an Adolf Cobbler joke.”
“I strive to be unpredictable.” She barely flashes her badge to get us in the front door. But inside, she has to sign me in. By then I can tell, from the way she’s shuffling around, that the whole thing makes her nervous. “I know this is unorthodox,” I say.
“You never ask for orthodox. But if anything happens to the kid, I’ll shoot you.”
“You probably would.”
A man with arms as thick as his neck comes through a reinforced door. “This is Steven. He’ll take you back to the cells.”
“We don’t like to call them cells,” he corrects her, gently. “Rooms.” He opens the door for me, and I walk through it. I don’t like having someone that size where I can’t see them. “Maureen tells me you’re a counselor,” he says from behind