Monsters in the Midwest (Book 2): Northwoods Wolfman (21 page)

Raising
his head, Stanley looked at Dallas. When their eyes met, the tears Dallas had
been trying to control broke free. As they streamed down his face, a little bit
of the blood, a little bit of the horror, was washed clean.

Chapter 29

With
no real idea where else to go, the trio had returned to Dallas’s house. Lois
had practically gagged when she walked in and was slapped in the face with the
ripe smells of bachelor pad and raw meat.

“Good
god, Dallas. Guess I just get to keep on cleaning. Best day ever. Go take a
shower and bag up those clothes,” she instructed, referring to the rags that
still hung on his large frame. “They’re ruined anyway, so we’ll burn them
later.”

Dallas
had obliged. After a long, steaming shower, he returned downstairs wearing a
fresh pair of jeans, tee-shirt, and a cleanish flannel. He found Lois wiping
the last bits of dust from his entertainment center and stood in amazement at
the transformation of his home. Gone were the empty pizza boxes, beer cans, and
random piles of junk mail. He no longer felt the menacing stares of over-sized
dust bunnies, and a lemony scent flooded his sensitive nose. Without the
detritus of his bad habits cluttering up the kitchen and living room, the space
looked twice as big.

“Wow.
You did a helluva job, Lois. I mean, this is really, really,” he sniffed again,
“lemony. You didn’t need to do all this though. I would’ve done it…”

Lois
crossed her arms across her chest and glared at Dallas. “I didn’t do it for
you. I did it for me. If I’m going to be stuck here for the next twenty-four
hours, I’d rather not be sitting in month-old pizza grease.”

“Twenty-four
hours? What do you mean?” Dallas asked, puzzled.

“The
full moon. Tonight’s the third night, which means you’re going to turn again.
To make sure you don’t run out and eat anyone else, Stanley and I are going to
tie you up, lock you in the basement, and make sure you stay put until it’s
over.”

For
a moment, the old Dallas popped up through the confused self-loathing he’d been
wrapped in since waking up at the cabin covered in blood and full of Dan.

“Sure
you can tie old Dallas up, but only if he gets to return the favor.”

 
“Keep
your paws off my girl, you dirty dog,”
Herb snipped,
causing Dallas to whip his head around.

“Herb’s
here again? Where’d you put him?”

In
response, Lois pointed at the coffee table in front of the couch.

“Oh,
right. Hiya, Herby.” Dallas waved at the beer can. “Don’t you worry, buddy. I
won’t be making any moves on your girl. Actually, I got somebody kinda
special…”

Dallas’s
brief ray of humor was bowled over by a dark realization.

“Oh
crappers. My girlfriend’s gonna kill me. Like, for real kill me.”

Lois
levelled a dark stare at Dallas, every bit of her glare wrapped in cold
judgment.

“So
tell me, Hero of Trappersville. How does that feel, knowing someone wants to
kill you for no reason other than they don’t like what you’ve become? What you
are?”

“Dammit,
Lois, don’t you get it? I killed a guy! I’m a murderer. Me! It doesn’t matter
that I don’t know how I turned into a werewolf. I am one, and now Aletia and
the Society have to put me down.”

Dallas
stopped talking, a new realization shoving its way forward. It was absolutely
true. The Society had to put him down, and he was a member of the Society.
Filled with sudden purpose, he lurched toward the closet. Pulling it open, he
retrieved his hunting rifle.

“Dallas,
what are you doing?” Lois asked.

“Yeah,
what the heck, Dallas?”
Herb echoed.

Dallas
checked the clip and found it loaded. Grunting in satisfaction, he turned and
headed for the front door.

Time to end this once and for all,
he promised.

“Dallas!
Stop. Don’t be stupid,” Lois yelled, but he ignored her completely. Grasping
the handle, he yanked open the front door and almost collided with Stanley. The
other man was carrying two loaded grocery bags and struggled mightily to keep
from dropping them as he pulled up short to avoid colliding with Dallas.

“Oh,
s-sorry, Dallas,” Stanley offered. “What’cha doing? I g-got you some food.”

“Out
of the way, Stanley. Thanks for always being a good buddy and sorry things
worked out this way.” Shouldering his way past his confused friend, Dallas
walked down his front drive, shifting the rifle in his grip as he walked.

Shit. Bullets ain’t silver,
he realized suddenly. Stopping, he
hollered back at the house.

“Stanley!
Will regular bullets kill a werewolf when it’s not a werewolf, or do they have
to be silver?”

Always
helpful, Stanley hollered back from where he still stood in the doorway.

“Oh,
um. I th-think regular bullets do alright when the werewolf’s a p-person. You
need silver when they’re a wolf though. I know that for sure.”

“Shut
up and get out of the way,” Lois screamed, pushing her way past Stanley and
running after Dallas. “He’s going to kill himself!”

Knowing
he didn’t have much time, Dallas turned to make sure the blast would go away
from the house.

No sense hurting anyone else,
he thought, bringing the barrel up
under his chin and stretching his arm, thumb on the trigger.

“
Noseph ruthera, bruckallow zizith!
Limbs
of stone, can’t move alone!”
Lois
screamed.

Dallas
thought it was a funny thing to be the last thing he heard on earth and
squeezed the trigger.

For
a moment, he thought that he had pulled the trigger, blown his head off, and
now was stuck in some lame afterlife that was suspiciously similar to the life
he’d just left. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense though, so Dallas
concluded he hadn’t yet shot himself and made a fresh attempt.

Bang!
he hoped, but again, nothing
happened.

Bang, bang, double-blammy! Pull the
goddamn trigger. C’mon, thumb. What are you waiting for?

Again,
no luck. The barrel was under his chin, and his thumb was on the trigger, but
Dallas couldn’t seem to finish the act.

I ain’t no coward! I’m not scared.
he screamed, belatedly realizing
that he didn’t actually scream since he couldn’t move his mouth. Or head. Or
anything, really. He was just,

Stuck! I can’t move. What the hell
is going on here?

“I’m
taking the gun, Dallas. Then I’ll reverse the spell. When I do, you’re going go
back in the house, sit on the couch, and not, I repeat, not do anything stupid.
Okay?”

It
was rather impressive how Lois’s voice managed to sound at once very calm, very
reasonable, and also very, very pissed off. Dallas felt a tug remove his thumb
from the trigger. He felt the weight leave his outstretched arm as the gun was
lifted away, and the peculiar cold spot on his neck where the barrel had
pressed into skin started to warm.

“That’s
awesome!”
he heard Herb exclaim.
“Can
you do anything to him right now?”

“Pretty
much, yeah,” Lois responded. “The spell holds the person in a sort of stasis.
Automatic things still work, like his heart and lungs. He just can’t
voluntarily move any muscles.”

“So
we could maybe pose him or something? Dress him up?”

“Oh,
h-heck yeah!” Stanley chimed in. “Make him a ballerina. I want to see a Dallas
ballerina.”

Lois
walked in front of Dallas, still holding the rifle. “What do you think, Dallas?
You up for a little humiliation at the hands of your friends? I know! We could
take pictures, too. Dress you up like a schoolgirl or put you in a Vikings
jersey and post those pictures all over town.” She leaned in, a wicked smile
curling her lips but not reaching her eyes.

“Would
you like that, Dallas? No? Then remember, I can do this to you whenever I want.
When I reverse the spell, you behave. No suicide attempts. No trying to fly the
coop. If you do, we’ll be relentless in our pursuit of humiliation. Comprende?”

Stepping
back, Lois handed the rifle to Stanley, taking Herb in trade. “Put that away,
would you, Stan? Oh, and empty the clip. Only a bona fide idiot keeps a loaded gun
in his coat closet.”

Closing
her eyes, Lois took a deep breath.

“I
love it when she gets all witchy.”
Herb whispered.

“Shhh.
I need to concentrate. I wouldn’t want to accidentally turn his insides to
Jell-O or swap his ears with his kidneys.”

What? Whadaya mean, ‘swap my ears
with my kidneys?’ You know what you’re doing, right? Please say you know what
you’re doing.
Dallas’s
thoughts turned into panicked critters that scurried around his skull in mad
circles.

“Just
kidding. I know what I’m doing. Now.”

A
gentle hush descended as Lois spread her arms and waggled her fingers at
Dallas.

“
Perchun modund. Ento dally.
No more fun,
spell undone.”

Dallas’s
thumb twitched, and his eyes flinched shut, but of course nothing happened. He
sucked in a large breath and started crafting it into a royal ass-chewing, but
a single glance from Lois put the kabash on that.

“Okay,
fine. Relax, will ya? I’m over it,” he muttered, running a shaking hand through
his hair. “Although I’m sorely tempted for a quick game of kick the can, you
read me Herb?”

“Loud
and clear, Dallas.”
Herb said, his tinny voice full of smiles.
“I’m just glad you’re back.”

Chapter 30

Dallas
and Lois sat on the couch while Stanley perched on a chair and Herb rested
among a large collection of empty beer cans. Dallas was glad Stanley’s trip to
the Get’n’Gobble had included grabbing a case of beer. After the day he was
having, he certainly needed one, or as it happened, six, going on seven.

“You
seriously have no idea how it happened?” Lois asked again.

Dallas
shook his head tiredly. “None whatsoever. I mean, does anybody know what they
were doing a month ago? I know I was probably drinking a lot, and there was
this girl from Chicago I hooked up with a while back, and, um.” Dallas
scratched his head, face screwed up in thought. “Oh, wait. I fixed Jerry’s
thermostat around that time, too. No werewolves though. Not even a dog bite.”

Stanley’s
eyes lit up. “Oh, the d-dogs! I forgot to tell you. They’re in the back woods.”

“What?”
Dallas yelped.

“Yup.
I got to thinking, well, if you was the werewolf we’ve been looking for after
all, then it was p-probably you that got those dogs. You know, the ones that
went missing. I found ‘em back behind your house. Well, what’s left, I mean.”

Dallas’s
shoulders slumped. Some small part of him had still hoped this was all a
terrible mistake, but now Stanley had just taken a big, fat crap on that
possibility.

“Well,
this is just great. Just frickin’ great,” he griped. “Not to mention totally
unfair. I was supposed to be the monster hunter, not the frickin’ monster.”

“You’re
preaching to the choir,”
Herb said.
“Near
as I can figure, a mosquito that drank from an old and really powerful vampire
did me in.”

“There’s
over a hundred seventy k-kinds of skeeters,” Stanley offered helpfully. “That’s
why you got to get the DEET. Maybe a skeeter that bit a werewolf got you,
Dallas.”

“Maybe,”
Lois conceded. “But it doesn’t quite work, does it? I mean, mosquitos drink
blood, vampires drink blood. Makes a weird kind of sense. But a werewolf?”

Dallas
stood and walked into the kitchen, a dark certainty settling in. Suddenly, he
had a very good idea of just what had made him into a damn monster. Since Lois
had taken the liberty of putting stuff away, it took a bit to find the glass
Mason jar. Luckily, she hadn’t tossed it.

 
“Mosquito biting a werewolf don’t make much
sense, but what about a dog tick?” he asked, holding up the jar for the rest to
see.

While
Lois, Stanley, and Herb oohed and aahed over the wriggling little parasite,
Dallas threw up his hands in disgust.

“Forget
about the stupid tick. What am I going to do? Lois, you brought back Herb. Can
you do something witchy and make me not a werewolf?”

Lois
shook her head sadly. “I honestly don’t think so, Dallas. I told you there was
a way to bring Herb all the way back and get him a body again. When I was
researching that, I tried to find a way to make him human and not a vampire.”

“Forget
it. Being a vamp is way better. Did you see me bowl?”

Lois
patted Herb’s can affectionately. “The point is, it seems like magic can move
someone between
living
and
dead
, but only as themselves, whatever
their ‘self’ is. Herb was a vampire. You, a werewolf.”

“So
what’s the plan? I mean, there is a plan, right?”

Lois
looked at Stanley, and Stanley shrugged.

“For
now,” he said apologetically, “we t-tie you up and lock you in the b-basement.”

Dallas’s
rambler had an unfinished basement that was about as hospitable as a cave with
a roughed in bathroom. Stanley carried down a sturdy wooden chair, and Lois brought
down long coils of heavy rope. Dallas grumbled a bit about being trussed up
like a pig but didn’t resist. Only a handful of hours ago, he’d been scooping
up and burying the remnants of the last person he’d been around in werewolf
form. It was just one night. If this is what it would take to keep everyone
safe, he’d tough it out.

“These,
too,” Lois said, dangling a pair of familiar fuzzy handcuffs. “Can’t be too
careful, right?”

Dallas
eyed the cuffs skeptically. “I know they look legit, but those are more
recreational than practical. I’ll bet even Stanley could bust ‘em.”

“Humor
me,” Lois replied, dropping them in Dallas’s lap.

He
settled into the chair. “What should I cuff myself to?” he asked.

“Nothing.
Just put them on with your hands in your lap. I’ll take care of the rest.”

For
the next fifteen minutes or so, Lois and Stanley worked diligently to restrain
Dallas. First, his ankles were bound to the legs of the chair. Next, coils of
heavy rope were wound around his legs and behind his calves. Soon, his legs
were so securely anchored that all he could do was flex his ankles a bit and
wriggle his toes. Legs secured, they wound length after length of rope around
his torso, pinning his arms to his sides and securing him to the back of the
chair.

“T-too
tight?” Stanley asked, tugging on the rope.

Dallas
shook his head. The experience was definitely getting uncomfortable, but it had
nothing to do with the ropes. He could feel the moon drawing closer, a
sensation that was at once foreign and familiar.

“Just
hurry up and get out of here, would ya? Clock’s ticking.”

Once
Dallas was firmly attached to the chair, Lois looped two lengths of rope around
a couple of stout four-by-fours supporting the joists, pulled them taut, and
tied them off. Like guy-wires securing a tower, he wouldn’t be able to topple
the chair over.

“I
think that’s the best we can do. Shouldn’t be much longer. Are you okay?” Lois
asked, concerned.

“Oh
sure,” Dallas replied. “Peachy. Couldn’t be better.” Sighing heavily, he tried
to stretch his shoulders, only to find that he truly couldn’t move.

“Couldn’t
you just use that spell that makes me freeze?” he asked. “The ropes and all
ain’t exactly comfy.”

Lois
shook her head. “I can’t risk it. I don’t know if that spell will hold after
you change. I know this sucks, but it’s the better option.”

Resigned,
Dallas relaxed his muscles as best he could and tried to ignore the queasy
claustrophobia that kept swimming in dangerous circles just below the threshold
of his control.

“Um,
hey Lois? Dallas? Um, you guys down there?” Stanley’s voice called down the
stairs.

“Kinda
hard for me to go anyplace else, Stan. What’s up?” Dallas replied.

“Um,
t-the moon.”