“Well, I heard he isn’t dead at all and that Caleb McCreedy was out there investigating. And that’s when she sicced her pet bear on him so he wouldn’t find out she’d been torturing her uncle all this time,” another one said.
I pretended I didn’t hear them and that their words didn’t sting. “Where’s the damned peanut butter,” I grumbled, impatient for my escape.
Everyone quieted at the sound of my voice, and I barely avoided my legs locking up on me. Stupid trembling hands.
Something landed with a splat against my ankle. All six people at the tables snickered, so I couldn’t begin to guess who threw it. I pulled a soggy noodle off my leg and looked around for somewhere to put it. Everyone laughed harder—probably because I looked like I was glaring at the soup cans for someone to blame. Hanging the fettuccini over the side of my basket, I finished my shopping and headed for the front. Every step brought relief because I was farther away from my tormentors.
Bernard rang up the groceries and bagged them as I counted out exact change. He’d never before talked to me other than what was necessary to exchange goods and money, so I jumped when he said my name.
“Yes?” I sounded terrified and small.
“I’m sorry about your uncle.”
“Yeah,” one of the girls from the back chimed in. “Now you’re all out of family to eat.” She and her friends peeled into laughter.
“Eat your food and let her be,” Bernard snapped.
His voice was loud and commanding, and it scared me. I tried to smile my thanks to him, but it came out as a lip tremble instead, and I scurried out of Jake’s before anyone said anything else.
I clutched onto my single bag of groceries and looked down the street. I don’t know why. I always went straight for my truck with my head down, but for some reason I couldn’t help looking for Caleb. In the daylight, I could see the sterile looking clinic with its whitewashed brick. Despite my panic, I moved down the sidewalk to my left. What would I say to him? The last time I’d spoken to him, it was obvious he thought I was insane for talking about bear men. Would he throw me out? How many people would be visiting him? He was a McCreedy after all, so of course there would be visitors.
A loop of horrifying questions ran through my mind until I reached for the front door of the clinic. I was surprised when the door opened suddenly from the inside. Unable to pull my hand away quickly enough, it jammed against the unforgiving metal, making a deep thunk sound and sending pain shooting straight up my arm from where my wrist had overextended.
Hooking the groceries with an arm, I held the hurt part with my other hand like the pressure would make it feel better. I’d had much worse, but the pain was unexpected.
A girl my age appeared out of the doorway. She was wiping her eyes with a tissue, and her nose looked red from crying. Big blue eyes, light brown hair, and lightly freckled skin told me she was pretty, and I felt sad that she was leaving in tears. Maybe she had lost someone, too.
“Mira,” she said in a harsh voice. “Is it true that you stitched up Caleb McCreedy after that bear attack?”
My eyes went wide at being talked to directly. I shifted my weight from side to side and tried to peel my gaze from her angry face.
“Well?” she demanded so loudly I jumped and shrank into myself.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Her look darkened. “You only stitched up half of what needed to be done, and poorly at that. His body is ruined now.” Hate tainted every word. “He will be scarred for life, and everyone will look at his skin out of pity. Because of you.”
A shorter girl beside her put a gentle hand over her forearm. “Becca,” she said, looking around at the gathering crowd. “I think we should go.”
Becca shoved by me, bumping my shoulder and spinning me to the side as she passed. I stared after her in disbelief and confusion. I hadn’t made those scars on Caleb. The grizzly had. No, Mr. Idiot Shifter Eli Emmerson had, for reasons I hadn’t a guess at. I had only tried to help, and I had done the best I could. I’d thought about it over and over and couldn’t imagine a way I could have done it differently—done it better. I wished I had the balls to say those things out loud to her and defend myself.
Suddenly, I was angry at Caleb. Why had he been up on my land, anyway? He wouldn’t have been attacked if he would have been back at his big safe mansion with the rest of his snooty family. And he’d still be fucking human! And now I carried all this guilt, and apparently the blame, too.
His fault.
I glared at a familiar, dark-headed man who had come too close and pushed past the murmuring crowd. I peeled out of town as fast as my truck could go—which was actually really slow and anticlimactic.
When I was younger, I had this foster family I liked. I had been passed around a lot and labeled a problem child because I didn’t talk very much and I looked funny. Something about me didn’t sit well with people who didn’t understand what I’d been through. This one family though, the Millers, had a biological son who was bad news. He would destroy anything he could get his hands on, and he would always blame it on me because he knew I wouldn’t defend myself. Life was pretty miserable until the Millers decided they didn’t believe him anymore, so they would ask me if he was telling the truth, and a funny thing happened. For the first time in my life, someone believed me. I never told them, but I had prayed every night that they would adopt me. It was the only time I had ever wanted such a whimsical thing. When a social worker came to take me away from the Millers, my heart had shattered into a million tiny pieces, like one of the fine china plates their son had thrown against the edge of a table in a tantrum. It hadn’t mattered how honest I was, they still hadn’t wanted me. Hadn’t cared.
“Learn your lesson, Mira,” I growled at myself.
Sticks and stones would break my bones, but frivolous wishes would break my heart.
****
Caleb
I fell out of bed in the dark, drowning, suffocating, and burning from the inside out. Every inch of my skin felt washed in live embers. Short bursts of breath squeezed from my lungs as I kicked out of the covers that had ensnared my legs.
Something was happening. Something inside.
I tried to yell out in pain, but a snarling sound rippled from my throat as I stumbled for the bathroom. The light was blinding, like my eyes were oversensitive. My vision was humming with small pulses that made everything look crisp, then blurry again. Gripping either side of the sink, I lifted my eyes to the mirror and shook my head in horror at what I saw there.
My eyes. I leaned closer and ran my trembling fingers across my cheek. The color was supposed to be blue, but instead, they were gold on the outside, glowing like the freaking sun, and green on the inside. I didn’t understand. Fighting for air, I searched the medicine cabinet for anything that would explain this away. I had to be hallucinating as a side-effect from the pain meds the clinic had prescribed me.
Panicked, I yanked all of the bottles of Advil and vitamins out until they all clattered across the sink, then jerked the orange bottle of pain pills to my face. Holy shit. I could see the individual paper fibers the label had been made with. Focus.
Nausea, drowsiness, dizziness, fatigue, headache, skin rash, and not a damned word about hallucinations.
“Oww.” The word tapered into a gravelly voice that couldn’t belong to me. Pin pricks shot from my lips and cheeks, and when I looked into the mirror again, I had short, blunt whiskers and my face was beginning to morph into something I didn’t recognize.
I needed help. No! I couldn’t tell anyone about this. I ran for the front door, needing to do something, but at a loss on how to fix my broken self. I threw it open and let the wind caress my bare chest. I dragged lungful after lungful of fresh air into me and tried to think.
Who would believe me?
Who would believe I was this monster now?
Mira.
My eyes were drawn to the woods. I’d bought Eli’s place a while back and was on the pro
perty beside Fletcher land now.
If I could get to her, she could help me. She knew. She’d tried to warn me about what I would become, and I hadn’t believed her. She wasn’t crazy. She was the only person in this whole damned town who knew what was real.
I grunted as pain rippled up my spine and bent me forward. On all fours, I closed my eyes as the agony became blinding. I screamed as my skin felt like it exploded, casting me upward with the force of my transformation. I landed heavily on all fours, hard enough to rock the porch.
My paws were huge, and six-inch black claws made marks across the wood floor as I shifted my weight. Thick, dark fur covered my arms and chest. When I turned to look at my reflection in the window, I wanted to run. Staring back at me with gold-rimmed, bottomless eyes was a fully matured grizzly bear. I was no longer me, but other. I was one of those bear men Mira had whispered about the day she’d saved me.
I sat heavily, completely out of control of my new body. I wanted so badly to go back an hour ago when I’d been sleeping comfortably in my bed, thinking I was going to be okay. I wasn’t going to be okay at all. This wasn’t just some weird hobby or embarrassing pastime. This was something I would have to hide from everyone I knew and loved to protect them, and to protect me.
A low rumble rattled my throat and I tried to imagine what my family would say if they saw me like this.
I had to hide what I was now from everyone.
Everyone but Mira.
Heaving upward again, I stood and managed to spread all of my paws wide enough to stay upright. I swayed as I tried to realize my new balance.
My heart was pounding against my ribcage. I could hear it. I could hear everything. Leaves fluttering in the soft breeze all the way from the tree line. Some small mammal scurried around the forest floor some distance off, and the soft call of bullfrogs sounded so loud it made the hairs of my ears tingle. The tall grass, swaying in the wind, jerked my attention with every shift. The old rocking chair behind me creaked, and I jumped away and growled. I growled! Ears flat, canines bared, and I made the sound of an animal at the movement of a harmless chair.
I made a shitty monster.
Get it together, Caleb. Looking down at my giant paws, the size of dinner plates, I flexed them. They made little scars on the wood beneath. I wasn’t helpless. I wasn’t human. Now, I was all weapons. Just like the grizzly—the bear man—who had tried to kill me. Or perhaps he was only trying to change me. But why?
Lowering my lips to cover my teeth, I lifted my senses back to the woods that stood between me and Mira’s house. Some sick part of me wanted her to see me like this, like some apology for scoffing at her when she’d tried to warn me about my fate. I wanted her to know she’d been right, and that I was sorry—that I was wrong.
Maybe it was the panic and confusion talking, but suddenly, I wanted her to see me, and I wanted to see her more than anything.
With her face as my motivation, I took my first step in this new body, and then the second. By the time I’d reached the trees, I was able to trot. My breath sounded like panting that tapered into a soft growl as I gained confidence in my new form. Cool air blasted in front of me with every breath. Night birds called out from the canopy above, but quieted as I drew nearer, as if they could sense danger. Was I the danger? I must’ve been because I could make out the sound of field mice, their little heartbeats hammering as they scurried to their homes when I passed.
I began to run, testing the power in my new legs, and on a whim, I leaped through the air and landed with my claws in an old cottonwood tree. When I held, I widened my eyes at the claws dug deep into the bark and looked up into the branches. Bunching my muscles, I heaved upward until I reached the lowest branch. It wasn’t thick enough to hold my weight, so I slid down, clawing the tree as I went, leaving long gashes in the bark. I looked at my claws, but they hadn’t dulled a bit. A strange feeling spread through me. I’d loved climbing trees as a kid, but as I’d grown older, I’d fallen out of the habit. I’d lost the joy in it. The freedom. As I looked up into the branches, a little wisp of that joy came back. Maybe this wasn’t all bad.
My ears twitched at a sound that echoed through the woods. It cracked again and picked up a steady rhythm. Curious, I trotted toward it.
I could smell her long before I could see her. Mira was chopping wood in the clearing in front of her house. Or trying to. Her arms were too thin, and she looked weak, but that didn’t stop her from putting block after block on an old stump and hefting an ax down onto it. The blade was old and rust-eaten, and she could only manage to get it through the top few inches. Then, she’d pick up the ax again, still attached to the wood, and crack it down against the stump. It took her at least four swings to get one log split each time.
I didn’t know how long I stood there, watching her, wanting to help but unable to. A great pity took me at how exhausted she was becoming, but a great pride surged through me at how determined she was to finish her chore. She was the strongest woman I’d ever met, and I’d only seen a fraction of her struggle.
She rested her hands on her knees, and from here, I could see her shaking at the elbows. The soft sound of her stomach growling drew me forward a step. She was hungry. I didn’t know how I could fix it, but I wanted to.
Mira looked up with frightened, wide eyes as the wind shifted. Straightening, she scanned the woods around me. Her eyes never landed on me directly, but she began to back away as if she could sense my presence. As if she could sense me watching her.
I sank back deeper into the shadows and lowered my head. She was scared. I could smell the acrid scent of it on the breeze. It was me she feared, and disgust flooded my gut. I shouldn’t have come here. I’d been wrong about being able to share this with Mira. What gave her immunity from the danger of my existence? I’d immediately decided to shield my family and friends from what I’d turned into, but not Mira. Why?
Didn’t she have enough on her plate just trying to survive?
I sank farther back into the woods as she ran for the front door and slammed it closed behind her. I imagined her clutching that little rifle she’d brought the day she saved me. I imagined her staring at the door in horror, waiting for someone, or something, to come in after her. Her breath trembling, hands shaking, arms weary as they lifted the rifle.
All because of me.
I didn’t want to complicate her life. She was practically a stranger who’d taken a great risk saving my sorry hide. The best thing I could do for her was to hide this from her, too.
****
Mira
It had been a month since Caleb McCreedy. The weather had changed from the hot and blinding brightness of summer to the cool and dim promise of autumn. I had passed my final exams and was a high school graduate. There had been no party or graduation cards. Just me and Uncle Brady’s mangy old dog, who had decided to show up after three months of me thinking he was dead in the woods somewhere. He would only stay around if there was a chance of a meal. There wasn’t for either of us, so he’d be gone again to find something better before long.
I had taken up my favorite sleeping posture in the night sometime, curled up in a ball with my arms wrapped around my stomach. It eased the ache if I lay like this, and because of it, I’d slept like the dead.
A noise rattled the walls, and I lurched upward and covered my ears as they were assaulted by some sound I couldn’t identify in the first moments of wakefulness. Screaming?
My breath was rushed as I looked around my room for something I could use as a weapon. The light bulb above me flickered and went out, and then flickered on and held.
My head swiveled frantically. “What’s happening,” I whispered.
The ghost of Uncle Brady had come back for me. That’s what was happening.
I jumped up and got tangled in my bed sheets on my way off the bed. I fell to the floor and smacked my knees against the wooden planks below. One broke in half and dangled under my leg, held in place by two rusty nails that hadn’t q
uite given up yet. Scrabbling for the door, I ran for the old record player in the living room, as it seemed that was where most of the sound was coming from. It was playing an old Elvis record at maximum volume. I yanked the cord out of the wall and yelped when I saw the kitchen.
Either someone had been in my house, or the magic grocery fairy had come a callin’.
Rows and rows of brown plastic Jake’s Quickstop bags full of food lined the counters and table.
“Morning,” came a deep voice from the doorway.
It was barely light outside, but I would be able to pick out Caleb’s silhouette anywhere. He leaned up against the doorframe, and I swear I could see a smirk in his stance.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. My heart was pounding against my sternum so hard it hurt.
“Do you always sleep in that?” he asked, ignoring my question and pointing to my lack of pants.
My one pair of shorts was flapping around in the breeze to dry outside, so it had been a tank top and undies kind of night for me.
My hands rocketed to cover my front but Caleb was already walking toward the kitchen, apparently not giving a fig about my state of undress. He wore a tight fitting, gray, V-neck T-shirt and some baggy jeans with a utility belt full of tools slung low around his hips. His pants had dried paint and smudges of black on them and holes frayed with plain white strands of undyed denim at the knees. Work pants.
I should have left to put my shorts on, but I couldn’t quite pull myself away from the sight of Caleb in my kitchen and the ripple of the muscles in his back as he tugged on…
“No! Don’t open—”
He pulled on the refrigerator door, and the smell of the food that had been entombed for the past nine months wafted out like a stinky tidal wave.
“Oh, God.” I gagged and covered my nose with the back of my hand as my eyes watered.
Caleb must have been holding his breath because he ignored the smell and went right to work on dumping the contents of the fridge into a large trash bag. I went and propped the front and back doors open in hopes that it would help some of the stink escape. Bolting, I yanked my shorts off the clothesline outside and shimmied into them. When I came back in, Caleb tossed me a plastic container of sanitary wipes and opened a can of his own.