A CIRCLE OF WOLVES
Chapter Two: What Is Dead
The woman entered the house with some difficulty. Her arms and hands over burdened with the bags of groceries she was carrying in from her car. Inside, she couldn't get the foyer light switch turned on with her hands full of grocery bags and gave up trying. Maneuvering carefully down the dark, familiar passage to the back of the house and into the kitchen, she didn't see the shadowy form of the man standing in the dining room.
Placing the bags on the old butcherblock table that doubled as an island, she quickly turned on the light, the sudden burst of light revealing the 50s styled green and white kitchen and began putting away the groceries, beginning with the cold products first. The man stood motionless in the dining room, watching through the open passthrough in the wall between them. He had plenty of time to accomplish his task and saw no reason to rush into completing what he had come to do. What he knew he had to do.
The groceries put away, the woman went to the sink and began washing the coffee cup she left there earlier that morning. As she polished the thin porcelain cup with a soapy rag, she noticed the black silhouette of the man standing in the next room reflected in the glass of the window.
"I've been expecting you," she told the man calmly, reaching out her senses to the knives hanging against the magnetic strip near the sink, "But this is a foolish errand on your part." The knives began to vibrate, fighting against their magnetic bindings. "Another will come. One who walks outside the circle, but is the circle complete. An alpha who is not an alpha."
Suddenly, the knives flew from the wall, sailing through the air with phenomenal speed. Across the kitchen and through the passthrough, they stopped abruptly in front of the man, spinning slowly in midair but moving no further. With a clash they fell to his feet, signaling the woman's failure.
Dropping the cup to smash against the old porcelain farm sink, she ran from the room, attempting to flee the house, but as she approached the foot of the stairs, the man's dark form emerged from the shadows of the dining room. Changing coarse, the woman ran up the stairs, tripping on a step very close to the top. She climbed the rest of the way on her hands and feet, then righted herself on the landing before rushing into her bedroom.
Closing the door and locking it, she turned on the light and turned to the long, empty wall and flung her arms out wide, as if flinging open French doors that didn't exist. The panels of the wooden wall began folding in on themselves, revealing a secret passage and another short flight of stairs that led into darkness. The man emerged from the shadows of the closet, moving quickly behind her. With an arm wrapped around her neck, he prevented her retreat into the safety of the passage just a couple of steps away.
From the black folds of his jacket, he produced an ornate and bejeweled dagger. The woman screamed as he thrust the weapon into her chest. Over and over again he dug the cold metal into her ripped and torn flesh, then pulled away his arm and slit her throat so deep he nearly decapitated her. A spray of arterial blood coated the wood paneled wall as it closed back in on itself, and the woman choked on her own blood.
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I awoke to the sound of thunder so loud it shook the house and muffled my scream, the deep guttural sound of an animal caught in a trap and desperately crying for help. Looking around the dark room, I searched for an intruder, the shadowy form of a faceless man. Lightning lit up the sky outside and briefly illuminated the bedroom with its strobe. I caught sight of the silhouette of someone standing at the foot of the bed, and another rising from the bed next to me. I bolted from the bed, ignoring the pain my body was suddenly racked with.
The room exploded into light, causing me to squint against the sudden brilliance. Bethany turned from the bedside lamp and looked at me with an expression that was anything but sympathetic. Still, the soft flow of her curly black locks and the familiar shape of her sultry brown eyes immediately put me at ease. At the foot of my bed stood Crow, his creepy appearance unsettling even when I was in full control of my senses.
"Again?" Bethany asked me with a moan, pulling the sheet from her nearly naked body. All she wore was an oversized t-shirt that belonged to her father before he was killed by a drunk driver. "Go take a hot shower, and I'll change the bedsheets."
The sheets, along with my own t-shirt and boxers, were soaked with sweat, as was the case every time I had the nightmare and awoke in the middle of the night screaming. The first two or three nights, Bethany's mother rushed in to see if everything was alright, but soon stopped worrying about it.
"It's just a dream, Jesse," her mother told me as she attempted to hug away the trembling she mistook for fear. In truth, I felt like I was freezing to death and racked with pain I felt in every joint of my body.
With quiet hissing, I staggered into the bathroom, intentionally skirting Crow, despite my being very aware he wasn't really there. I set the shower to warm up and braced myself against the sink. I my skin felt hot, as if I were running a high fever, but knew I would be icy to the touch. That was an observation Seth made when we were sharing a cheap motel room while the police were holding the house to search for evidence. I didn't start crashing with Bethany until they released the scene and realized I couldn't return to sleeping in my own bed. Not after what I had seen.
Slowly and carefully, I pulled off my t-shirt, the otherwise soft wet cotton clung to me. It felt like I was ripping the skin from my body as I undressed. Then came the boxers, which I yanked down quickly, like ripping off a band aid in an effort to minimalize the extent of the pain that shocked through my groin like a bolt of ravaging electricity. Fully undressed, I braced myself against the sink again and sucked in a deep, steadying breath, willing my mind to overcome the pain that coursed through me like a terrible and horrific orgasm.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I barely recognized the gaunt face looking back at me. My dark red hair clung to my head in large, wet ringlets, my sky-blue eyes seemed clouded over and sunk deep in their sockets, casting gray shadows around them. I had always been lean, my runner's body cut with tight muscle, but a week after my mother's death I was beginning to take on an unhealthy skinny appearance. Seth noticed it first and practically begged me to eat, but I just didn't have an appetite.
It wasn't just that my mother was murdered, or that I was the one to find her. It was the way in which I found her. Her body lay in pieces, strewn about the living room in such a random, haphazard way that I didn't realize what I was looking at until I saw her face looking up at me from her decapitated head. The living room turned writer's den was so soaked with blood that the crime scene cleanup crew had to remove the entire carpet. Although they did a good job of scrubbing the blood from the walls, they were at a loss as to how to remedy the giant X carved into the drywall, reminding me of every detail of the scene every time I saw it. Seth had to close and lock off the room after he found me standing in the doorway on time too many. It didn't help. Just passing by the door was too much for me, and I found refuge in the bed of my girlfriend.
I stepped into the shower and allowed the heat of the water to wash over me. In the shower, under the spray of the hot water, I felt the ice began to melt from my bones, my body slowly returning to normal as I turned this way and that, stood with my head directly under the water, until I was once more an eighteen-year-old on the cusp of graduating high school, and not an old man who had lived a hard life and was now suffering for it. There is something to be said for a quiet life, I observed as I began to wash my hair.
As I showered, I thought about the dream, a constantly reoccurring nightmare that only changed in its details. Why did I dream about this stranger? Why wouldn't my mind just recount the night my own mother died? Was it a coping mechanism? Was it an attempt to make sense of what might have happened without looking at what actually happened? Who was the woman? I was quite certain I had never seen her before.
"One who walks outside the circle but is the circle complete," I quoted the woman on a whispered breath, "An alpha who is not an alpha." What did it mean? Did it mean anything at all, or was it just some rambling gibberish my brain thought up spontaneously? The woman had never spoken in earlier versions of the dream.
I didn't know what time it was, but I knew it was still early morning. I rarely slept for very long these days, intentionally staying up late so I'd wake later in the morning, and to stave off the inevitable nightmare that would wake me. I decided to go ahead and bathe, getting ready for the long day ahead of me. It was the day of the funeral, a day I've been anxious to arrive, believing that laying my mother to rest might give me some closure and the ability to start to piece together the shattered remnants of my life.
The feel of a hand on my shoulder caused me to jump, but I settled when I heard Bethany shush me. She moved in behind me, drawing close, her breasts pressing against my back as her hand snaked around me and gently took my cock in her soft hand. We had not had sex of any kind since my mother's death, and my dick had apparently had enough of the waiting, thickening and lengthening under her manipulation.
I reached back and blindly felt my way to her vagina, fingering the folds of her labia before sliding my wet fingers over her hooded clit, massaging it the way I knew she liked, between two fingers pressed slightly into her soft flesh. I heard her moan, her hand missing a beat as she stroked my hard cock. How many times had we manipulated one another's sex organs before beginning to explore oral sex? I played with her clit with confidence. We didn't blindly move into having sex with each other, but taught the other what we wanted, how we got ourselves off. As I felt her body stiffen and tremble against me, leaning on me for support, I slipped my fingers inside her, rubbing my fingertips between her labia, placing pressure against the tight ring of her entrance without pushing any deeper into her, then spun around and fell to my knees, replacing my fingers with my tongue, digging the wet organ into her to softly tongue fuck her, pushing my upper lip up and down her clit. Her hands gripped my head tightly, pulling me deeper between her thighs while simultaneous bracing herself as she cried out with a hot exhale and started cumming. I cupped my hands under her firm ass to hold her up as her legs threatened to give way. Softly sucking on her clit, she flexed again and I pushed the index and middle fingers of one hand inside her, finger fucking her tight tunnel hard, enjoying the spams of her lingering orgasm jerk through her body under my complete manipulation.
Standing and drawing her up into my arms, I lifted her and pressed her body against the tiled wall and guided my cock into her. She nearly screamed, a surprised moan rushing from her as she slid down the length of my eight inch prod and wrapped her arms around my neck, legs around my waist. My mouth found hers, exploring our passion with an expression of tongues gliding and dancing together. I didn't fuck her right away. I wanted her to feel me inside her while I held her and expressed my love to her.
When I did begin to thrust in and out of her, it was urgent, desperate, a driving force inside me that sought to feel something more than the sadness and emptiness of loss, a desire to connect to another person- the one person- in a meaningful way again. As I drove my cock into her, I felt my soul reawaken, her energy blending with mine, rising together in a spiral between us, two bodies becoming one, two spirits merging and melding together. She dug her nails into my shoulder and she came again, her ecstasy voiced with the growl of an animal in heat, her sex pulsing around mine, milking my cock in such an exquisite way that I erupted inside her, filling her with the essence of who I am.
Arms and legs twisted together, our bodies pressed together, my mind raptured with the satiating climax of our love, we remained where we were, unmoving and held fast as the warm spray washed over us and brought us slowly and softly back to the ever-present now.
Finishing with our shower, soaping each other's bodies, laughing together for the first time in what seemed like years, we exited and toweled off. I emerged from the bathroom, freshly shaven with clean teeth and fresh breath, leaving Bethany to fuss over her hair and skin care routine.
Slipping into a fresh pair of boxers, I sat at her desk and pulled out my sketch journal, flipping through the pages to where I began drawing the dream in comic book layout, an attempt at taking the unfolding events out of my head so I wouldn't have the nightmare again. Failing that, I was now just adding as many details as I could remember, polishing the silent, still panels.
I added the dialogue the woman presented in the latest version, then spent some time working on the details of her face. She was an older woman, which I found more challenging to draw. Her face was deeply lined, but not wrinkled; plump cheeks, and a familiarly colored dark auburn hair that had become streaked with white. Salt and Paprika?
I was startled when I Bethany reentered the room, her hair and face carefully made up. She didn't wear much make up, the last remnants of her tomboy days, and she had only allowed her hair to grow long in the last year or two, threatening to cut it back into a pixie cut every time it rained or the humidity rose high enough for it to frizz.
"Get dressed, she told me, pointing at the black suit hanging on her closet door, "I think we should make breakfast for Mom. It's the least we can do for probably waking her with the sounds of our lovemaking."
"Do you think the funeral guys sewed my mother's body back together, or just dumped the evidence bags in the coffin and called it good?"
"It's a closed casket," she answered, "So, I suppose we'll never know."
That- that right there was why I loved her. Anyone else would have wondered if I'd lost my mind or thought I was being inappropriate. Only Bethany would know that I was genuinely curious.
I stood and started dressing, watching her as she allowed the towel she was wearing fall to the floor, slipping into her sexiest black lace panties and bra.
"Am I getting lucky later?" I asked, with a smile and a wiggle of my eyebrows.
"What makes you think I'm dressing for you?" she asked haughtily, "Maybe I'm dressing up for that hot funeral director... what was his name?"
"You mean Niles?" I asked, "I can see the appeal, I guess. I mean, if you're into skinny bald seventy something year old men with a perpetually creepy smile plastered across his face."
"I know, right?" she deadpanned, "Hubba hubba!"
I laughed and finished dressing, feeling uncomfortable in the suit. It was the first suit I'd ever worn, and I didn't care for the way it felt. Like most social events, Bethany and I never attended any of the school's dances. The suit's unnatural material was itchy, and it felt heavy. I slipped the tie that Seth pre-tied for me over my head and tightened it loosely around my neck. No suit was complete without a proper noose.
In the kitchen, Bethany made scrambled eggs (the only thing she knew how to cook) and set up the coffee pot while I put a baking pan full of carefully aligned bacon strips in the oven and grilled pancakes. Bethany's mother joined us shortly after the coffee was finished making and sat at the kitchen table watching us. Her scrutiny made me feel uneasy, certain she was aware that I had just fucked her daughter, even though I knew she'd been aware of our being sexually active for some time.
After breakfast, which consisted more of idle conversation on my end than actual eating, Mrs. Rogers sent us off to the funeral, informing us that she'd deal with the dishes. She wasn't able to attend due to her work, but gave me a hard hug before we left, making sure I knew how sorry she was for what I was going through, assuring me that I would eventually find the loss easier to deal with in time as she straightened my tie.
It was a simple graveside service conducted under an awning with Pastor Wilkins saying a few words before reading from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes and offering up a prayer. I held it together until he got to the part about there being a time to mourn and a time to rejoice and completely lost it, running away through the rain to collapse beneath a stone angel whose moss-covered face looked down on me with sad sympathy. As the rain disguised my tears and the thunder covered my sobbing, I released an angry scream that shook loose the rage I felt just as long bolts of nuclear hot lightning streaked across the sky, temporarily turning the nearly perpetual twilight into a blinding daylight of cold white light. The display was so alarming, I was aware of the people under the tent ducking for cover long after the deafening thunder subsided.
Spotting Crow standing among the tombstones, I walked over to see what he was looking at. At his bare, coal black feet was a small headstone that simply read "Baby" and a single date.
Sad, he signed simply before moving on to the next tombstone.
"Jesse?" I heard a man's voice ask me, a voice I did not know. Looking up, I saw a very short middle-aged man with balding salt and pepper hair wearing a plain black suit and holding a briefcase. Standing in the rain in the middle of a cemetery, he couldn't have looked more out of place. "Jesse Cowan?"
"Yes, that's me," I answered, regarding him suspiciously.
"My name is Thaddeus Boudreaux," he told me, handing me a card, "I'm the lawyer acting as executor of your grandmother's estate."
"I think you have the wrong Jesse Cowan," I told him, looking at the card with Mr. Boudreaux's name embossed on it, along with his address. I noted the town's name, having never heard of Circle Oak. "I don't have a grandmother."
Mother never talked about her past or her family. It was as if she had no history before my birth. I didn't even know who my biological father was, which made creating a family tree for junior high history class problematic. Mom quietly rectified the situation with a private conversation she had with my teacher that resulted in my being excused from the project.
"Let what is dead remain dead," was all she ever said when I asked questions. Eventually, I just stopped asking, rationalizing her silence as evidence of her own personal demons, ghosts that haunted her, but not me.
"Nonsense," he chuckled, "Everyone has a grandmother. Usually, two. Yours was Sewilla Cowan, and she named you as the sole beneficiary of her estate. I've been searching for you for about a month now. It's unfortunate that it was your mother's obituary that finally led me to you. I'm so terribly sorry for your loss."
"What kind of estate?" I asked, very aware of how any and all outstanding debts held by the deceased could be imposed on the surviving family members.
"Oh, I don't know," he said thoughtfully, "I believe the estimate I received after the audit was somewhere in the two hundred million range."
I stared at him, suddenly numb from the neck up. The amount he quoted was more than I was capable of comprehending.
"Dollar?" I finally asked incredulously. I dared not ask if that was money to be given to me, or expected of me to pay.
"Yes," he laughed, "It's just an estimate, of course, based on real estate holdings, stocks, bonds, and actual liquid assets. The land she stipulated to be held as a private reserve wasn't factored into the estimate. I just need to get your signature on some documents, and it's pretty much yours. The only stipulation being that you have to live in the family home for a year and a day to take full control of the estate. Of course, this isn't the appropriate time for this sort of thing, but you have my card. Call me when you're ready."
I watched him walk away, too stunned to stop him. Was he sure he had the right guy? I mean, why would Mom leave what sounded like a pretty cushy situation to struggle as a single parent before marrying Seth? Why did she never want to talk about a parent who was still alive? I had assumed her immediate family were all long gone.
As I pondered these questions, I continued wandering the cemetery with Crow, reading the names of the strangers my mother would spend eternity with. I was startled when I heard another unfamiliar voice say my name shortly after the rain began to subside.
This time, the man standing in front of me was younger, not much older than I was. He wore a black suit that looked somehow old fashioned with a long coat elaborately embroidered with black silk thread the same color as the fabric. Only the contrast in the materials made the needlework obvious, but not so much so as to make the design apparent. From what I could make out, it seemed to be a pattern of dense flowers and leaves, but I was at a loss as to what plants were being represented. He was tall and lean, like me, and he had a full head of neatly groomed hair that was remarkably the same shade of dark auburn as my own, a trait I inherited from my mother.
"Hello, Jesse," he smiled, his voice a deep, hollow baritone that reminded me of the sound a cello makes, "I'm Henry. I'm your uncle."
He extended his hand and I took it, impressed with his firm handshake. Seth always said you could tell a lot about a man based on his handshake alone. Only, instead of releasing my hand, he held it, placing his other hand on top.
"You found your mother's body," he told me, his gray eyes locking onto mine, "The carnage was terrible... and there was something else, something you can't understand." My mind flashed to the large X carved into the drywall and I yanked my hand out of his. "I'm sorry, I sometimes I get carried away."
"You look a little young to be my uncle," I told him, regarding him with a sense of suspicion laced with an unshakable feeling of misplaced fear.
"Yes, well, I'm only a few years older than you. I was about four or five when Emily ran away. Mama called me her menopause baby. I guess Emily had her reasons for leaving like she did." He looked at me with curiosity, as if he were inspecting a plant or a colorful bug he had never laid eyes on. "Anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself and take the opportunity to meet you. I see you've already spoken to Thad. Any plans to come out to Circle Oak? Maybe we could have coffee, or lunch and try to get caught up, if you do."
"I'm not certain of anything just yet," I answered, unwilling to make any promises.
His back visibly stiffened, as if he'd suddenly become uncomfortable and he looked around. Upon spotting Seth and Bethany approaching, he expressed his condolences quickly and departed. If I had not known better, I would have suspected he'd sidestepped Crow to avoid him.
"Who was that?" Seth asked, watching Uncle Henry walking casually away.
"Apparently, that would be my long lost uncle, Henry," I told them both. "I also have a grandmother. Well, I did. She's dead now, and my inheritance will make me ridiculously rich."
"That's great!" Bethany smiled encouragingly.
"Yeah," Seth said, continuing to watch Henry with interest, "Great." He didn't sound as delighted about my new discoveries as Bethany was.
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