MeeMaw’s Tavern gleamed in the hazy twilight, the flaws in its weather-bitten white paint smoothed away by storm light and the romantic flush of neon beer signs. A low building, it appeared to rise from the depths of a colossal pothole. The dirt lot, jammed with pick-up trucks, funneled toward the crooked concrete slab of its porch where a single caged bulb flickered over the screen door. We parked under the boughs of an elderly oak, far enough away to be beyond the reach of the light, but close enough to feel the tremble in the chassis from the rocking juke inside the tavern. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Whiskey Rock-A-Roller spilled out on a buzz of laughter and raucous conversation. We climbed from the Jeep into the electric air. Above us, a growl of thunder competed with the tavern din, a ponderous sound like that of a piano rolling across a marble floor, and heat lightning cracked the indigo sky.
“Are you sure you want to go in there?”
Nick shouted in my ear as a sozzled good old boy reeled from the snapping screen door to piss into the woods before climbing in one of the trucks and slapping the horn. A young woman emerged from the tavern on a gust of cigarette smoke and whiskey fumes and bounced in with him, and the two were off with a roar and a swirl of dust.
“It’s the only game in town for hot food and a public phone. Come on, I met the owner a couple weeks ago when I came up with Claudia. We spent the weekend with her. Her name’s Trudy Bigg, and you’re going to love her.”
At just over five feet tall, ropy and tough as beef jerky, Trudy didn’t live up to her name in a physical sense, but she more than made up for it in force of personality. She perched on a worn red leather stool at the kitchen end of the bar, a fuming Camel in one hand and a tumbler of Jim Beam at her elbow and held court like a robber queen. Her rough crow’s voice sang out as we crowded in the door.
“Hey, Red! See you brought your boyfriend with you this time.”
I waved and followed in Nick’s wake as he made a hole in the crowd. Trudy’s words gave me a pang. If things had been different, I would have brought my fiancé here to meet her. Brett would have loved MeeMaw’s and the whole gorgeous wilderness around Davitt’s Grove. It was just too bad he’d decided he didn’t love me. Even after the long months of separation, the bald truth still cut me like a razor blade, and I felt tears sting my eyes. We reached Trudy’s island in the fray and she slung a tattooed arm around my neck and planted a smoky kiss on my mouth to the whoops and razzing of the locals.
“Good to see you, girl. Claudia called yesterday, said to watch for you.” She turned me loose and spun on her stool, shouting, “Shut your faces, you perverts. Put some beer in ‘em, in fact. On me.”
She whirled a forefinger in the air, signaling the bartender to set them up, and the crowd surged forward with another cheer. Nick was borne against the sharp, white rocks of Trudy’s knees, and she grabbed him by the front of his shirt.
“What’s your name, handsome?”
When he told her, she whistled and slapped the bar. The bartender unstuck himself from the revelers and glided to her. She grinned at Nick.
“What are you drinking? Wait, let me guess. I always know what a man likes … to drink.” She leaned back into the fog of her cigarette and regarded him with hooded eyes. “Tequila. Straight up, no chaser.”
A frosty bottle of reposado appeared as if by magic in the bartender’s hand, and liquid fire kindled in the belly of a snifter.
“No salt, no lime, honey. That’s pure agave. You sip that the Mexican way.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nick said, and did as instructed. “Sublime.”
Trudy laughed, a gruff wheezy sound, and slapped Nick on the back. “I like you. We better throw some food in on top of that, though, before I have to sweep you up with the peanut shells. You hungry?”
Nick grinned. “I’m just about starved. I’ve been told you serve the best hamburgers in the county.”
“In the state, baby, in the state.”
Trudy leaned across the bar, her necklace of tiny, oddly shaped bones clattering over the scarred bar top, and bellowed into the kitchen.
“Hey, Dom! Get up a platter of burgers and onion rings for my two friends, and don’t be stingy.” She turned her attention to me, pinching me above my hip. “Better put some meat on, woman. You’re gonna end up a scrawny old bat like me.”
I laughed. “No worries if I eat here very often. I’m going to go call Claudia and let her know we’re at the lodge.”
I pointed toward the dark hole of the doorway to the restrooms where I knew a pay phone hung in the vestibule.
“You can’t hear yourself cuss in here,” Trudy growled. She gestured to a drape hanging beyond the kitchen doorway. “You go through that and there’s steps down to the storage cellar. I got a little office down there. You can use the phone in there.”
Before I could thank her, she turned back to Nick, who had eased himself onto a duct-taped bar stool. “You like my necklace, honey? Know what these bones are? They’re raccoon penises! Bought ‘em from a tattoo guy in a carnival a couple years back. Got this, too.”
I left her flexing her stringy biceps for Nick, showing him the horned, priapic devil cavorting there.
***
In the relative quiet of Trudy’s office, I took the deep breath I’d been craving since Nick and I had arrived in Davitt’s Grove. I sat in the old swivel chair behind the army surplus desk and ran my hands over the satin grooves in its arms, worn by decades of hard use. The subterranean light, the muffled din of the party upstairs, the smell of earth and cold stone that percolated from behind the buckled paneling and from beneath the brittle linoleum, lulled me. The handset of the Bakelite phone, a rotary dial relic hard-wired to the wall behind the desk, weighed in my hand like a burdened heart. I placed my other hand over my chest and felt the sluggish tide there before I dialed Claudia’s number. She picked up on the second ring.
“Tess?”
“How could you possibly know?”
I wasn’t really surprised. Ancient spirits had touched Claudia on her birth, gifting her the way the thirteen fairies had gifted Beauty. At least, that has always been our little joke when confronted with her premonitions.
“I’ve been thinking about you. And, I recognized Trudy’s phone number on the caller ID.” She laughed, and the sound was a shower of sunlight. “How goes the hunt for werewolves? I hope you haven’t found any living in the lodge.”
“No. The strangest thing we’ve encountered is the caretaker’s maiden aunt, out in the woods in a shack fit for a storybook witch. If nothing else comes of this trip, Nick and I will have a treasure trove of character studies for a novel.”
“You met Maudie Egolf? She’s practically an institution up there. Did you tell her you’re a long lost relative?”
“No, and I don’t think I want to claim any ties. She’s more than a little scary.”
“Well, you probably have distant cousins behind every tree. Everyone’s related in that village.”
Claudia warbled on, but a sound distracted me. Slithering, dry and stealthy, behind the wall at my back where there should be nothing but still, stony earth. Whatever it was, it slid along the wall until it came to rest behind my right ear. I thought of tree roots, seeking blindly in the dark soil. I thought of claws, dragged over the rough reverse of the oak paneling. The phantom of a smell, a humid, bloody stench, wafted by me and was caught and dismembered in the languid vortex of the ceiling fan. Saliva pooled on my tongue. From far away, I heard Claudia’s voice, bright and interrogatory.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I said, how are you and Nicolas getting along? Anything sparking?”
I sighed. “Claudia, don’t. He’s a good friend, and my business partner, if I can call what we do a business.”
“C’mon, Tess. He’s hot. You’re two attractive, unattached people in the wilderness. It’s romantic.” She paused and let out a frustrated huff of air when I said nothing. “It could be romantic, anyway.”
Misery flooded me and forced a tear from my eye. “I’m not interested in romance just now, Claudia. I’m here to work, and look over the lodge, and …” I bit down on the question that crowded my mouth, but it blurted out despite my efforts. “Has Brett called?”
“Oh, honey. You know he hasn’t. He’s not going to call. He’s in Canada with that woman. You have to forget about him.”
Six years of sunny memories shriveled and rotted in that moment. I breathed pain. Betrayal. And, finally, rage. I embraced it, letting it blaze up and burn away my tattered pride, my cracked heart. If emptiness was all that was left, it was better than that constantly bleeding organ. Another sound emanated from behind the paneling, a low laugh, or maybe a growl.
“I have to go,” I said. “I want to talk to some of the locals before we head back to the lodge.”
“Are you okay? Tess?”
I hung up and sat glowering in the greenish glow from the beer cooler at the far end of the room, examining the murderous energy walking over my bones. I held out my hand in the murk and flexed my fingers, hooking them into claws. The phone gave a startled chirp that was not quite a ring. I dropped my hand onto the receiver and lifted it to my ear, expecting to hear Claudia chiding me for hanging up on her. Instead, the open line hummed and whined with the sound of appalling distance, perhaps the space between stars - it was that immense, cold, and dark. Out of the terrible nothingness rose a voice, soft and implacable, familiar.
“I see your heart, girl,” it said. “You need some religion.”
The slaughterhouse smell was back, stronger than before. This time I could taste it.
“Run, Hunt, Chase. That’s the only prayer that matters. Ain’t no Amen on this one. This prayer ends with Eat.”
My nerves fired with a mixture of fear and longing, and something like memory. I dropped the receiver back into its cradle, cutting off Maudie Egolf’s guttural chuckle.
***
I emerged into the hot fog of beer, grease, and cheap aftershave that defined Friday night at MeeMaw’s and, for a moment, was sure the storm had arrived to knock out the electricity. The place was dim, lit by flickering candles and strings of blinking white and blue Christmas lights festooned along the dirty junction of the walls and acoustic tile ceiling. The juke crooned out a slow country ballad in the requisite twang at full volume, and couples thronged the dance floor, swaying and groping in the summer gloom.
Trudy had abandoned her perch. I stood on tiptoe at the end of the bar and scanned the room for Nick. The bartender materialized and touched my elbow. He pointed to the line of booths along the wall where the shadows hung over candles in Mason jars as though warming themselves. Nick and Red John Kovak huddled in the corner booth, their noses over the juddering flame like crystal-ball diviners.
Kovak’s lips moved. He shrugged and made a sweeping hand gesture, then helped himself to the onion rings on the platter between them. He grinned and chewed, the unstable light striking sparks from his fiery beard. I remembered what Maudie had said about such things running in a family, and Claudia’s casual quip about distant cousins, and gooseflesh rose on my arms. Nick’s face was serious, even grim. A shiver of guilty dread rippled down my back. I made my way to the booth, weaving among the lovestruck dancers. Nick glanced up, saw me, and fixed me with a chilly, blue stare. He stood and let me slip in past him.
“Well, hey there,” Red John boomed, flashing a million bucks worth of dazzling fang. “I was just telling your friend here about how old Preston must’ve took off on a toot. Ain’t seen him for almost two weeks. I’d have said something earlier, but I figured he was holed up out at his shack with a woman. He gets up to it sometimes, the dog.”
I tried a smile. “Not much privacy there, with his aunt living with him.”
The wattage of Kovak’s grin dimmed a shade, though he kept it firmly in place. “Well, she’s got a wandering bone herself. You never know where Maudie might turn up.” He tapped the side of his head and laughed. “She’s touched, and I oughtta know. She’s my Gran’s sister.”
“You’re family?”
I shot a sidelong glance at Nick and found his gaze on me. I cocked an eyebrow at him, but his contemplative expression didn’t change.
“Yeah, I’ve been around Maudie all my life, but I wouldn’t say we’re close or nothing. She was fair scandalous in her younger days. I was telling your friend here about it.” He nodded at Nick, then slid around the horseshoe bench of the booth until his thigh touched mine. “You know, I told my Gran about you. Showed her your picture from the security camera in the store.” He reached out and stroked my hand. “Didn’t you say your people was from around here?”
I jerked my hand away as though burned. Another slow ballad tumbled out of the juke, and the couples on the dance floor swung into it without pause. Nick leaned toward me, but his eyes never left Red John.
“Let’s dance,” he said, and pulled me after him into the undulating shadows.
“What the hell was that about?” I hissed.
Nick bent and murmured in my ear, “I think Red John might be our werewolf. I asked him about the legend, and he got all squirrely. After a couple of beers - and I’m telling you that man can slam them down - he nearly talked my ear off about his family history. It’s caught up in the old stories.” He swung me into the darkness at the edge of the crowd, beyond the glowing beer signs. “It’s a family legend, not just a regional one. Get this. Preston Egolf isn’t really Maudie’s nephew. He’s her adopted son, and no love lost between him and John. Nobody knows where she got him, or how. The family’s always been afraid she kidnapped him. They’ve told everyone for the last sixty years that Preston’s her nephew. Now we find out he’s missing.”
I pictured Maudie, with her sly stare, assuring us she’d send her nephew out to the lodge in the morning. “Do you think it’s like John said, that Preston is just on a tear? Maudie didn’t say anything about him being missing.”
Nick shook his head. “Something’s not right. After talking to John, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Preston roasting on a spit somewhere. Or, more likely, carved into nice bloody steaks for the raw foodies in the family.”
“You don’t believe in werewolves any more than I do,” I said, the words lacking conviction.
“I believe in crazy. Kovak makes my hair stand on end. I’m pretty sure he believes in werewolves and thinks he is one. You should have heard him.” He stared over my shoulder toward our abandoned booth. “I think you’d better keep away from him. He’s got an unhealthy interest.”
I shook my head, stepping back to look up at him. “I don’t think he’s the one we have to worry about. Maybe we shouldn’t have come up here in the first place.”
I wanted to tell him about the phantom phone call in Trudy’s office, and about the eerie stirring in my blood. I wanted to tell him that I’d fallen into a state of belief at odds with writerly exploration, that things had slipped dangerously sideways, and we should just leave, but he looked so severe the words died in my throat.
Nick tugged me closer. “I thought we were here to research an old monster story, maybe get some good material out of it. I feel like we’re in much deeper water; and I feel like you knew we would be.”
“No, that’s not true!” I was ready to work up a good indignant argument, but Nick’s serious frown caused the words to stick in my throat. I sighed. “At least, I didn’t think there would be anything more here than a good story. I do have some distant family ties here. Claudia knew that. I think it’s what got her interested when she found out the lodge was for sale. Then she heard the stories and there was no stopping her. The reason we’re here hasn’t changed.”
“So, you really are related to Maudie? And to Kovak?”
“Distantly,” I stressed. “I don’t know any of these people. It just didn’t seem important. Do you tell me about every fifth cousin twice removed?”
Nick was silent for a long, charged moment. He turned his back on the room and scowled down at me. “Tess, we’ve been working together long enough that we should be able to trust each other. We’re partners in case I need to remind you. There’s no place in that for keeping secrets.” He swept a hand through his hair. “Look, it wouldn’t ordinarily be a big deal, but I think we stumbled into something here. From now on, I need for you to trust me.”
Remorse raked me, and a tiny, persistent lick of anger. Trust, trust, he said, as though it were easy. As though it were nothing to yoke my fate to another’s, to count on him, to believe in him. As though those I trusted would never tear my heart out, or use my secrets against me, or leave. I looked up at Nick’s earnest face and saw hurt and concern. He wasn’t Brett, or any other self-serving pirate I’d known. He was my friend, and I had a sudden desire to unburden myself of long-kept secrets.
“I’m sorry. I do trust you. Let’s get out of here. I guess I have some other stuff to tell you.”
Nick smiled. A roar of thunder split the night above the tavern and shook the walls. The lights went out, the music died in mid-stanza, and an ocean of rain fell out of the clouds. A few people shrieked, and then laughed. Someone began lighting more candles. Cigarette lighters flicked on in the darkness. I saw Red John Kovak filling the open doorway, silhouetted against a flare of lightning so bright the negative of his image burned on my retinas for a heartbeat. In the next instant, he was gone into the deluge. Another bellow of thunder shook us. Nick steered us back to our empty booth.
“Looks like our dinner companion took off,” he said.
“I saw him leave. I can’t believe he’d try to drive in this.”
Nick twirled a finger near his ear. “What’d I tell you? Crazy. What do you say we sit out the worst of the rain, then get our stuff from the lodge and blow this place. The longer I’m here, the less I like it.”
A waitress with a burning candle melted onto her tray sashayed over and set down a pitcher of beer and clean glasses.
“From Red John, hon,” she said, popping her gum at Nick. “Said he owed you.”
She smiled, pivoted on her cowboy-booted heel, and vanished into the crowd.
I poured for us both and held up my glass.
“To werewolves with a sense of obligation,” I said. Nick clinked the lip of my glass with his, and we set to drinking the pitcher dry.
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