Shifters Read online

  “I wasn’t trying to pick her up,” Locke pointed out. Suddenly he craved a cigarette, and regretted that he’d quit years ago. “I was just being the charming, level-headed, and deeply intelligent guy I always am.”

  “Right, and my name’s Dick. Take my word for it, Locke. When you work this side of the bar long enough, you start to get a knack for seeing things that other people don’t see.”

  Locke nodded, frowning. He had a knack himself, for being cynical in the light of the positivity of others. “Okay, Carl. So tell me, what did you see?”

  “That girl’s nuts about you.”

  Locke paused in the middle of a sip of McEwan’s. Carl’s observation seemed to remain alight behind his eyes, like details of a nice dream. Locke didn’t know how to interpret Carl’s mystic analysis, but that didn’t matter. Locke felt something, and whatever it was, he knew it felt awesomely real.

  That’s all he wanted. That’s all any poet wanted. To find something in the chaos of society that was real.

  And what he said next he didn’t so much say to Carl, or even to himself. He said it to the world. He said it to fate, or to oblivion, or perhaps even to God.

  He said: “I could fall in love with her in the wink of an eye.”

  TWO

  Shorn Heart

  (i)

  Locke fell in love with Clare Black in the wink of an eye.

  It was almost too easy, it was almost too real—the spontaneity through which their relationship commenced, and through which they’d not only become lovers and best friends but also each other’s confessors. Locke was a poet, and poets were almost always obscured from the conventions of life. Though he’d accepted his reclusion for a decade, he was never happy with it. It was Clare that had brought him back; her outgoingness, her sociability, and her vast circle of friends had welcomed Locke back into a world that he thought had abandoned him forever. No more of the brooding, recluse poet. No more sitting alone in Concannon’s, speculating his creative visions on bar napkins and wondering why he felt so different. He wasn’t different, he was just misguided. The vibrancy of Clare’s love had built him back up again. With her, he’d never felt more real in his life.

  And he thought the same went for her. She was in the legal profession, which was hectic, highly pressured, and relentless. All of her closest friends were in the same business too, and this left her without advice and conjectures that were unbiased. Now, though, whenever she had a bad day, she could relate to Locke in a scope of feeling that she didn’t have elsewhere. He was the only aspect of her life that did not have a deep root in the same occupational realm. Locke became the diversity that she needed, and had never had until now.

  They had lots in common, but not too much. Locke knew too many couples who had too much in common; staleness set in eventually, and the relationship went to hell every time. But he and Clare were different enough yet the same enough that, regardless of where they went or what they did, the harmony between the two of them never faltered. Love can’t be this easy, he’d wonder to himself a million times. But apparently it was. Verity, he thought. That must be the difference. Most relationships existed through compromises, but Locke and Clare’s differences only augmented each other. Their love evolved as a machine whose most intricate parts never failed.

  It was impossible to describe. Clare’s love for him erased his sins, his errors, his inadequacies. He felt reborn in it: she was the ray of light that his darkened life had been yearning for, for longer than he cared to remember. The more involved he became with her, the more complete he felt, the more perceptive, the more real. He seemed to fit into every aspect of her life without a hitch—soon they became a fixture of the city’s social heart. With every week that passed, their love only became more sure of itself, more convinced of the very same truth that had joined them in the first place. In the spring they’d driven down to Portland to visit her family. It was more of the same: full acceptance. Her parents had thrown a big party; Locke met all of Clare’s relatives, who, like all of her friends, proved to be among the most congenial people he’d ever met. Her parents, who were even more congenial, thought Locke was great. At the party, Clare’s mother had taken him aside and said: “You’ve really done a lot for her, and we love you for that.” Locke wasn’t sure what she meant, but then she went on: “You’re the only boy she’s ever dated who’s been good for her.” Locke couldn’t hope for a better mark of approval. And then, later, Clare’s father had taken him aside. “You’re a great guy, Locke,” he’d informed him. “And that’s what Clare needs—a great guy. I really hope things work out for the two of you.” Locke was flabbergasted. He was brimming in elation.

  That was the word. Elation. Locke was elated with his love. They never even argued. The few times they had problems, their love for each other refused to let them fight. Instead, they’d make deliberations, they’d reason, and then they’d resolve the problem. Soon they were talking of living together, of marriage, of their future together. They’d catch themselves going on out-of-the-way drives, looking at houses, looking at yards. They talked about children…

  Months went by. Seasons changed, but their love didn’t. It only steepened, it only evolved a little more each day into something more real for them. Clare’s love laid Locke’s whole life out for him—a wonderful, meaningful life…

  And on the last day of August, the day he would officially propose to her, Clare Black opened her door, let him in, and said: “I don’t love you anymore.”

  Locke’s world fell apart.

  THREE

  Woman Overboard

  (i)

  Ramsey’s vision plummeted—into blood. He tried to scream but his voice froze, his mouth locked wide open in the deafening silence. Shadows merged—what? Figures? People? Ramsey didn’t think so.

  He was running through a chasm, underground. He was running away from something. Pits and rabbets pocked the chasm’s walls, oozing ichor. Every so often he’d step on something and slip. Some hot, wicked panting seemed to follow him, and rapid footfalls. At a bend in the grotto’s channel, Ramsey turned, paused, looked…

  It was a wolf.

  Ramsey gulped. Yes, an immense, gray timber wolf darted down the channel. But it wasn’t coming for Ramsey. Instead it pounced upon another figure—a man with a knife. Ramsey didn’t know how he knew—yet he was certain that the man was a murderer. His aura seemed to throb in frantic waves, greenly evil.

  The wolf’s great maw spread like a bear trap. The man wailed, lashed out with the knife. Then the wolf’s jaws snapped shut, and the man’s hand, still gripping the blade, dropped to the stone floor.

  Jesus… Christ…, Ramsey slowly thought.

  It was not what happened next as much as what he somehow sensed behind all this. The dank air felt charged with energy. Evil for evil, he thought, though it seemed like someone else’s thought. And what was he doing here? What was this awful place?

  The killer’s screams didn’t even sound human now. The wolf had cleverly snapped off each of the man’s feet just above the ankles. He lay spread-legged before the beast, twitching. The wolf glared at him. Was it smiling? Could an animal smile?

  Regardless, Ramsey wasn’t smiling. No way. Yet he continued to watch, hand and cheek pressed against the wall of warm, pitted rock. He didn’t want to watch this, he was forced to.

  But by what?

  The wolf, he thought.

  Somehow he knew it was the wolf.

  It waited. It stood solidly on all fours. When it looked at Ramsey, its red eyes twitched.

  Ramsey wet his pants.

  Footless now, the killer could only shift in retreat, pushing away from the gray beast on his clipped stumps. The wolf returned its gaze to its prey.

  Watch, the word bloomed in Ramsey’s brain.

  The wolf lunged. It bit directly into the killer’s crotch—one quick snap!—and tore the genitals out of the groin. The man’s screams cessated—too much pain often paralyzed the larynx, not that it w
ould’ve mattered a moment later. For next the wolf’s jaws tore that out too, along with the rest of the throat.

  Evil for evil?

  But whose words were they? Not Ramsey’s.

  The wages of sin?

  Ramsey gaped.

  The wages of evil?

  Then rose the laugh: black, cynical, a fluttering chord in his head. Who was whispering these awful things to him?

  The laugh replayed—a siren now, a fever-pitched insanity. Then, again:

  Watch.

  Again Ramsey thought of a high-torque bear trap. The wolf’s jaws snapped opened and closed, on and on, bursting into the killer’s gut. Blood exploded. Flesh and muscle parted easily as new lard. Each jerk of the wolf’s huge head shot wet innards this way and that. Ramsey watched now in the lowest disgust. This was no natural predation, this was not simply a beast feeding upon unfortunate prey. This was a jubal: the complete systematic destruction of a human being, purely for sport.

  For fun, Ramsey realized. It’s doing this for fun.

  The great snout delved, swallowing organs whole as it emptied the abdominal vault. The fur of the wolf’s angular face up to the forehead shone spiky red. Blood dripped off the tip of its lower jaw. Ropy segments of intestines lay about the dead killer like pink snakes, the bowel hung limp from the rive of flesh. It was then that Ramsey noticed the entirety of the chasm floor lay thick with offal, unwanted scraps of human meat and fat, and masticated bones. Black cavern flies buzzed in shifting sheets, oblivious in their feast. Maggots churned in jellied blood, marrow, and spoiled flesh.

  Welcome, Ramsey, the unseen voice fluttered.

  A crackling-crunching sound split the fetid air. Now the wolf’s jaws closed steadily down upon the killer’s head, like a high-pressure vise. The cranium split to large pieces which fell away, leaving the brain exposed and raw in dark light. The beast, almost daintily now, picked the shiny convoluted orb out of the base of the skull. It looked up at Ramsey, like someone’s pet dog with a ball in its mouth. The wolf wagged its tail.

  Then its jaw crunched down on the brain and ate it.

  Welcome to my home.

  The voice, if it even was a voice, sounded forlorn. Did Ramsey hear weeping beyond? It was the sound of sadness, or regret.

  Ramsey’s basest instincts kicked in. The killer lay dead, the wolf was finished with him. But what would the wolf want next?

  Me, Ramsey thought.

  He darted right, sprinted into the grotto’s veer. A rock wall faced him. Dead end. Then left, and the same.

  I’m trapped.

  Ramsey turned in the cragged juncture, refaced the beast. I’m dead, he realized. But the wolf seemed disinterested in him. It calmly bowed its head, lapping at the vast puddle of blood.

  Sated, full-bellied, its red eyes glanced a final time at Ramsey. His knees were shaking. The front of his pants were drenched, and the back of his pants, he grimly noticed now, felt warm and heavy.

  The wolf stared at him—

  Oh, please, God, please…

  Then it turned and walked away.

  Welcome to my home, the soft sad voice wept away in the darkness. Welcome to my domain.

  (ii)

  “Ram! Ram, get the lead out!”

  Ramsey felt submerged in swamp muck. His body shook, he felt hands on him. It felt as though his soul were being dragged up from a bottomless, black pit.

  “Come on, Ram! Shag ass!”

  Ramsey awoke, enslimed. Cabin light fumed in his eyes. He lay in his bunk as if in a casket.

  “Rise and shine, pal.”

  Yeah, right. It was fifteen till midnight. Ramsey leaned groggily up in his bunk, and bumped his head. Peering down at him, and none too pleased, was Winslow, one of the engine techs, dressed in jeans, boots, and a heavy deck coat.

  “We got watch, buddy,” Winslow said. “Fifteen minutes. I’m aftpoint, you’re on the portquarter. Captain’s worried; we’re in a bad chop.”

  Shit. Ramsey could feel it, low in his gut—the slow, steady churn of the ship on the sea. When he tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, he saw blood.

  The dream, he remembered.

  What a dream. He shook his head, as if to dislodge something. But the images only lurched closer. The wolf. The destruction. And the blood. All the blood, he thought.

  “Ramsey!” Winslow fairly bellowed. He’d been drinking; Ramsey could smell it. But Ramsey could use a drink himself. After a nightmare like that, who wouldn’t want a drink?

  “Sometime tonight, huh, man?” Winslow was getting ticked. “Captain wants us up and out now. You all right?”

  Ramsey squinted. He felt sopped in gelid sweat. “I just had the worst nightmare.”

  The wolf… He could still hear the screams, the manic jaws snapping, the bones as they crunched.

  “I gotta drag you outta that bunk?”

  “Sorry, man,” Ramsey apologized. Get your shit together! It was just a dream. “Portquarter watch. I’m rolling, I’ll be up in five.”

  “Good boy.” Winslow headed to the hatch. “And wear something. It’s colder than a nun’s cunny tonight. And it’s weird.”

  “What?” Ramsey asked.

  Winslow turned at the end of the bunk aisle. Suddenly he seemed remote. “I don’t know, it’s just kind of weird out. Really high chop but no storm brewing. No clouds. You know what I’m talking about. Just…weird.”

  Winslow went topside. Ramsey crawled out of the narrow bunk compartment. Weird night, he thought. He dragged on long johns, jeans, three shirts, his wool coat, and a watchcap. Gloves, too, and his best insulated boots. It was still only autumn, but when you were on watch, on the sea at night, the world could get very cold.

  It was not this certain anticipation, however, that touched Ramsey into a fit of shivers. It was the shards of the nightmare that remained imbued, like lesions, in his mind.

  The wolf. The screams.

  The blood.

  Death.

  (iii)

  Their ship was called The Angus Scrimm, a 200-foot, 20-year-old bulk carrier known as a “pallet tramp.” Year round it traveled unscheduled routes up and down the coast on private and independent delivery contracts. A tub, a typical rustbucket. Ramsey had been hired last spring as a prop and shaft technician—decent pay for decent work. He liked the job and all its aspects, save for one.

  Nightwatch.

  Standing alone at the catline, at night, made him feel like the last man on earth. Ramsey didn’t mind solitude, but desolation was something else. The awesome vision often scared him: they were a gray speck bobbing on the universe. Both night and sea stretched on forever, a turbulent and cruel infinity.

  Ramsey rose from the steel climb, stepped onto the port deck. Weird night, he reflected. Winslow was right. His face seemed to shrink at once against the cold abovedecks. It was bitter, icy, yet there was no wind. The ship pitched on the water; it was a bad chop, all right, real bad. The sea seemed to roil in infinite darkness, it seemed to play with the ship. Ramsey’s guts sunk against the heavy motion.

  He walked past amidships, his hand trailing along on the tight stanchion cable. The ship continued to toss; he nearly lost his footing several times. Heading to the portquarter, he stalled.

  What was it?

  He squeezed his eyes shut against the still cold. A scent seemed to flirt with him; he looked down.

  #4 HOLD, read black stenciled letters. Ramsey lifted the manway hatch, peering into blackness. Yes, a strange scent wafted from the freightway, something musky, like a warm animal. Sometimes they freighted exotic animals from Japan; to Seattle or San Diego, but not this trip. Just pallets of Japanese beer and auto parts from Osaka bound for Puget Sound. Ramsey’s face lingered at the opened hatch. The scent seemed seductive somehow, pleasant, heady. He stuck his face in and breathed.

  Get on watch.

  He closed the hatch and took his post. Captain’ll probably keep me out here till daybreak, he pondered, gazing out. From here, the world extended
as a hostile, black, freezing scape. Stars blurred whitely overhead, and below, the sea churned within itself, throwing foam around the great plumes from the props. Low on the edge of the world, a full moon glowed.

  Yeah…weird night. He closed his eyes, the moonlight swelled.

  He tried to blank his mind. Suddenly he felt invaded. Images assaulted him: the dream, the nightmare. Blood dripping from the huge wolf’s maw…

  Then: Snap!

  Ramsey whirled. He was sure he’d heard a sound, something metallic, like—

  Like a hatch closing, he realized.

  The bridge loomed above him as he faced the bow. It looked like some great stone deity, a horned god. What was that noise? he asked himself. He walked back toward amidships. The vessel’s old metal groaned through a rise of sea.

  Ramsey froze in his tracks.

  A figure stood by the manway of the fourth hold. Was it Winslow? No, no, Ramsey could see. It was a woman.

  But there were no women on board.

  “Hey! You, there!”

  The figure didn’t flinch. Cold air blasted Ramsey’s face. The figure, impossibly, seemed to be removing its clothing.

  What the hell is this?

  Then it occurred to him. A stowaway. It happened sometimes. Abused kids and runaways would sneak on board for a free ride up the coast. But…but…