“You don’t have to tell me,” Harry began, “but if something happened and you need to get it out....”
“I know, Harry. Thanks,” I said. “Nothing happened. We’re still together, just trying to work out one minor issue, but it’s no big deal. Nothing major.” That was probably the biggest lie I ever told.
He knew I was lying, too.
“Hey, isn’t your uncle supposed to be here?”
I glanced up at the clock above the customer service booth, glad he didn’t probe further about Isaac.
“Probably just the roads,” I said.
The snowfall had reduced to light flurries within the past hour, but outside, everything was covered by it. Only one snowplow had driven past the store since before Beverlee left. I took that as a sign the weather wasn’t going to get any worse. Traffic, although light, was moving along at a normal rate.
I started to go back to the oatmeal boxes until I noticed a dark figure standing in the far corner of Finch’s parking lot. Moving out of the pool of light shining above from the fluorescent, I stood closer to the end of the shelf.
“Thirty more minutes and he won’t need to come anyway,” Harry said from behind.
I walked further up and edged my way toward the window to get a better look. The figure stood just out of the glow from the street light. He, if it was a man, wore dark clothes from head to toe. The way he stood there, still as a statue and staring toward the store, made my nerves short out like electrical wires.
“Me and Sebastian don’t hang out much anymore,” Harry went on, still shelving merchandise. “I mean, I get it and all, but it still sucks. Y’know?”
“Harry,” I whispered, as if the man could actually hear me from that far away, “come here.”
I felt him standing behind me then.
“Do you see that guy?” I said, taking my eyes off the parking lot for just a second.
“No,” Harry answered. “I don’t see anybody.”
I did a double take. The man was gone.
“No,” I said, moving quickly to the store window and almost pressing my face against it. “He was standing right there, off in the corner. He was staring this way.”
I turned around fully to face Harry.
“I can’t believe this,” I said.
“Don’t get so worked up, Adria.” Harry started to walk back to the aisle. “Could’ve been anyone; you’re really jumpy tonight.”
I turned around again. The man, with a grinning, maniacal face dripping with blood stood an inch from the glass.
I shrieked and stumbled backward, my foot catching under a metal newspaper rack. I fell hard on my side and newspapers came tumbling down.
Harry came running over.
“Holy shit!” he said.
Harry grabbed me and pulled me to my feet. The man’s eyes swirled black; his knifelike teeth glistening with blood.
Suddenly, Harry fell over the same newspaper stand that I did. He almost took me down with him, but let go of my arm just as he hit the floor.
“What the hell!” he shouted.
The man came closer to the window. His wicked, smiling face was like staring into the face of the Devil.
His hands were behind his back. He pulled his right arm out slowly and pointed his index finger upwards, the nail two inches razor-sharp and black like his eyes. His hand was covered in blood.
Blood stained the snow beneath him.
“I imagine uncles taste better than German Shepherds,” the man said so cold and menacingly through the glass.
I gasped. Harry had gotten to his feet and was trying to pull me backwards with him, but I pushed him away from me. I threw myself against the window, my face and the werewolf’s face separated by nothing more than a false sense of security. I banged my palms once against it, feeling the entire window shake and shudder.
“What did you do to him?” I screamed. “What did you do to my uncle?” I banged the glass once more; the palms of my hands stung.
The man grinned, revealing his deadly teeth even more to me in his malign expression.
Harry grabbed me more intensely and managed to pry me violently away from the window. I was mad with rage, trying to fight my way free, but Harry was too strong. I felt my shoes scraping across the floor as he pulled me into the nearest aisle.
The werewolf let out a menacing growl from outside, jerking back his head. The last I saw of him was how his hot breath had melted the cold from the glass.
“We have to leave!” I said. “Now! Can you drive me to my house?” I ran into the back of the store and grabbed my coat and canvas backpack from a file cabinet.
“Adria, what the hell was that?” he shouted, following behind me. “I’m not going out there. I-I’m not going anywhere.”
I forced my coat on angrily because it wasn’t cooperating. “Harry, listen to me.” I stopped directly in front of him. He couldn’t hide the fear in his face. “That was a werewolf. I know it sounds stupid and you probably won’t believe me, but I’m telling you the truth. Now, we have to find my uncle, alright?”
Harry’s head drew back in disbelief.
“A what?”
“I don’t have time for this,” I said, pushing my way past him. “If you won’t take me, then I’ll walk.”
I pulled the store keys from my pocket and unlocked the front door before tossing them at him. “Lock up if you decide to leave. In fact, lock up after I leave.”
And I went out into the cold night.
I didn’t give Harry a chance to pull his head together and speak, but I left him standing there in shock, completely disoriented.
I ran down the snow-covered sidewalk and past the streetlights, far away from Finch’s Grocery. I ran until I was out of breath and my throat burned from the cold. My shoes were wet with snow, all the way through to my socks. The streetlights became fewer and darkness began to surround me. A couple of houses were on each side of the street, but nestled many feet away and encroached by trees.
I unlocked the keys on my cell phone and called Beverlee. There was no answer and I broke down and started to cry.
The phone rang and BEVERLEE lit up on the screen then.
“Aunt Bev,” I answered frantically. I fumbled the phone to my ear and dropped it in the snow. “Where’s Uncle Carl?” I said, after finally getting the phone back into my hand.
“Adria, calm down, okay? I need you to calm down.”
Her voice shuddered quietly as if she had been crying, too.
“I can’t calm down. Please, just tell me what happened.”
I heard Beverlee take a deep breath.
A car drove past me; the sound of snow crunching under its wheels.
“Where are you?” she said suddenly. “Did you leave the store? Are you outside?”
“Beverlee!” I couldn’t help but yell at her. I needed to know the truth and she was angering me by holding it from me for so long.
“Carl is in stable condition,” she said finally, the tears choking her voice, “but he’s not been conscious at all since they brought him in.”
“Oh no, what happened? Beverlee, what happened to him?”
Headlights bore down on me from behind. I pulled the phone away from my ear and turned swiftly, on my guard. It was Harry. Thank God, it was Harry.
“Harry’s here,” I said into the phone. “I’m coming to the hospital.”
Harry hung his head out the car window and motioned for me to get in. I ran around the car and slung open the door, jumping inside with the phone still pressed to the side of my face.
“He was in an accident,” said Beverlee. “No one knows for sure, but by the looks of the car it might’ve been a deer, possibly a moose, that ran out and hit him.”
Oh my God, oh my God, I kept saying over and over in my head.
“Please tell Harry to be careful,” she said.
“I will.”
I hung up and just sat there, gripping the phone.
“First, your Uncle,” Harr
y demanded, “and then you have some explaining to do.”
All I could do was nod, agreeing. I had to catch my breath. I had to calm myself down and think clearly.
“We need to go to the hospital,” I said. “Uncle Carl was in an accident.”
“Okay, we’re going now.”
I got quiet again. I kept picturing the so-called accident in my mind. I saw the werewolf bash into the side of my uncle’s car, tossing him from it. I saw the car become crushed and mangled beyond identification, because that is exactly what would happen. Werewolves are enormous, formidable beasts. A car impacted by one would be like hitting another, better-built car head-on.
But the blood. The werewolf at the store was covered in blood. His teeth, his hands, all dripping with blood. He did this. He mentioned my uncle. But what exactly did he do?
“Oh no....”
I was never going to be able to think straight.
“Adria,” said Harry, “you have to tell me what that was. I’ll believe whatever you say, if you just start explaining.”
Harry needed answers as desperately as I did.
“I told you,” I said. “It was a werewolf.”
“I know, but I thought you were screwing with me.”
I swung my head around to look at him. “Why would I joke about something like that?” I was shouting, but trying not to. “You saw what I saw. You know it wasn’t normal.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but dude could’ve been wearing contacts, or something. Anyone can look like that.”
I stared at him in that are-you-for-real sort of way. Nothing in any local costume shop could duplicate that nightmare. Harry knew it, too.
“Okay, so it was real,” he admitted, “but that didn’t look like any friggin’ werewolf I’ve ever seen.”
“And how many werewolves have you seen exactly?” I said.
The car slid a bit when he turned left at the end of the street.
“Well...none in person,” he said, “but like on the—damn, Adria, you know what I mean!”
He slapped the steering wheel. “How do you know so much anyway?”
“Because I’ve seen them Turn. Because I’ve been chased and attacked by them,” I snapped, “and because my sister is one of them!”
Harry shut up in an instant.
It was like telling him I just robbed a bank and shot someone, that look on his face.
“Yes, you heard me right,” I said. “Alex is a werewolf. That man you saw back there was a werewolf. There’s quite a few in this town, actually.”
I was steering too close to revealing the Mayfair’s secret. Sebastian’s secret. Zia’s secret.
“I can’t believe this,” he said and then shook himself free from the stun. “But why did he look like that? I thought werewolves were supposed to look like, well, like werewolves.”
“He was in-between his human and werewolf form,” I said.
Blue, red and yellow lights flashed on the road up ahead. As we got closer, I recognized the totaled car immediately.
“Jesus,” said Harry.
We crept along past the accident scene slowly. The yellow lights were coming from a wrecker, which already had the car halfway lifted onto it. It was nothing but a twisted heap of warped metal.
How Uncle Carl survived that crash was beyond me. I couldn’t get the reality of it out of my mind, how he might have survived. I felt guilty for thinking it, but I knew that Uncle Carl would be better off dead than one of them.
All the way to the hospital, I tried to prepare myself for the unthinkable, about losing my uncle the same way I lost my sister. Who would be next? Harry? Aunt Bev? Me?
The nurse at the desk directed me to the waiting room where Beverlee joined us. She hugged me so tight I thought she’d never let go. Her face was stained with tears where they had run down her cheeks and through her makeup. Her hair was wild and the butterfly barrette she always wore hung hopelessly on one side of her head. I reached up to fix it for her. She hardly noticed.
“I can’t lose him, Adria,” she cried. “I just can’t.”
I hugged her close to me. “You said he’s stable and that’s a great sign. Just try to be positive.”
Harry stood nervously off to the side. He probably wasn’t one for tragic family gatherings, but he was also giving us our space.
“I-I don’t know what happened to the dog,” Beverlee said, her voice trembling. “He’s probably out there in the cold.”
“What dog?” I said, pulling away from her.
“Carl adopted a German Shepherd from the animal shelter,” she said. “It was supposed to be a gift to you. He had just come back from Augusta. I was on the phone with him. The car. I heard him yell and the dog whimper. Oh God, I thought it happened because he was talking on the phone while driving.” She buried her face in her hands. “That still could’ve been why. Adria, oh God, it’s probably my fault!”
I held her close again, rubbing her back with my hands. “No, Aunt Bev, it wasn’t your fault.” I felt so awful for shouting at her earlier on the phone. Now I was the one trying to calm her down. “You said they think it was maybe a deer, remember? Why do they think that? Did they say why?”
Beverlee dried her eyes the best she could and began pacing; a tissue crushed in her fist.
“There was no other vehicle,” she began, “no second set of tire marks and his car was found on the side of the road, not against a tree so he didn’t lose control and drive into anything. That’s all I know.” She wiped her nose with the tissue.
I couldn’t bring myself to say anything aloud about there not being a dead deer in the road. Beverlee would have gone back to the cell phone theory and blaming herself.
But Beverlee gave me hope that I didn’t have before. Maybe the blood was from the dog. It had to be. The werewolf’s only words indicated that it was a dog he attacked, not my uncle. Yes, that gave me hope, though very little.
A nurse opened the waiting room door.
“Mrs. Dawson, you can go back now,” she said, gesturing her back.
I took hold of Beverlee’s arm. “Can I go?”
Beverlee looked across at the nurse who nodded her approval. I went over to Harry. “Wait for me, okay?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m not leaving anywhere without you.”
To Harry, I was the one with all the answers. If I had actually wanted to get rid of him, I knew I couldn’t.
WE FOLLOWED THE NURSE down the sterile-white hallway. I never liked hospitals, the smell of them, the bright lights, the cruel atmosphere, the death. The last time I was actually in one, my great-grandma was recovering from heart surgery. She died two days later.
I held Beverlee’s hand the whole way.
The nurse stopped us at the door to Uncle Carl’s room before opening it. She held a lime green clipboard pressed against her breasts.
“Dr. Derringer will be here in an hour,” she said. “Your husband is awake, but the pain medication will keep him from making much sense for a while.”
Beverlee listened carefully, tears glistening upon her cheeks.
“He’s conscious?” Beverlee’s face lit up.
The nurse smiled and pushed open the door slowly. I felt like I was taking a deep breath before jumping off a cliff into water. I expected to see flesh ripped from my uncle’s bones, maybe even an arm or leg missing. I wanted to shut my eyes and not look at all, but some invisible force locked them wide open.
Machines were hooked up to him on both sides: an IV taped to the top of his right hand, a blood pressure cuff resting around his bicep. An annoying little machine with flashy colors and lighted numbers displayed his heart rate and blood oxygen. One leg and one arm were in casts. Bandages wrapped around the upper part of his head with thick gauze taped over his left temple and eye. Blood was there, soaked up in the dressing. A long, clear tube hung from the left side of his chest as bloody fluids pumped through it into an ominous contraption that sat in the floor. It made such an eeri
e sucking noise that I wanted to plug my ears.
Uncle Carl’s head fell sideways onto the pillow so that he was facing us. A tiny clear tube rested in his nostrils, feeding him oxygen.
The nurse set the clipboard onto a table and began adjusting this and that, poking and prodding his tubes and needles.
Beverlee took the chair pressed close to the bedside, where I knew she had been sitting before.
I didn’t feel comfortable sitting down. I didn’t feel comfortable being in the room at all. My uncle looked horrible and technically, it was because of me. I choked back the tears and they made it only as far as the edges of my eyelids.
“I’ll be back in about half an hour,” the nurse said just before leaving.
I walked closer to the bed, every step more hesitant than the last. Uncle Carl’s eyes were partially closed; they were bruised and swollen.
“What is that?” I whispered to Beverlee about the machine on the floor.
“His left lung collapsed,” she said. “They had to insert a tube into his chest to help it inflate.”
An unpleasant shiver went up the back of my neck. I didn’t even notice when my hand went over my mouth, or how long it had been there.
Beverlee leaned in close to Uncle Carl’s face. She kissed his forehead where it was free of gauze. “Carl?” she said in a low voice. “Honey, can you hear me?”
His eyes opened a crack and he mumbled something neither of us understood.
“What was that, honey?” She was trying really hard not to cry anymore. It was a struggle for her.
“It...hit me,” he said. Still, his voice was so low I could barely make out the simplest of words.
Finally, I pulled a chair next to Beverlee’s. Leaning forward, I said to Uncle Carl, “What hit you?”
“An...animal,” he said weakly. “I-I don’t know...huge.”
The more he struggled to speak the worse he was in pain. His face tightened in agony. The heart rate numbers went up on the machine beside him.
“Shhh,” Beverlee said, brushing his eyebrow with her fingertip. “Just try to sleep.”
He took Beverlee’s advice; shutting his eyes and allowing his face to rest on the pillow.
“I just can’t believe this is happening,” Beverlee whispered aloud to herself.