Shifting

Page 12

I ran down country roads that led back toward town, through neighborhoods and across grocery store parking lots until I was in downtown Silver City, dodging the occasional car and running after cats. I spent hours with my nose to the street—it was like another world—when I sensed rather than heard the approach of another canine.
My head lifted, my front paw came up, and I pointed in the direction of the approaching animal.
Shash, his black-and-white fur slicked against his narrow body, loped down the road and stopped at my side. A low, pitiful whine echoed from his throat and he began pacing back and forth.
Where in the world did you come from? I thought at him. I have no idea if he heard me, but he yelped and trotted off. Before he was a block away, he turned and looked at me over his shoulder, tail wagging. Waiting for me to follow.
We ran through the town and back into the country. It was easy to stay behind Shash because his scent, musky and strong, saturated not only the muddy ground, but every single twig, branch, rock, and blade of sagebrush he touched, not to mention the very air. I could have followed him with my eyes closed.
We wound our way through the bushes in a steady direction—home—when I smelled something that made me stop dead. With my snout held up toward the falling sky, I inhaled. My fur bristled and a sudden, primitive instinct overtook all human control: Evil—RUN!
Up ahead Shash started barking—ferocious, murderous barking. As one, we resumed our sprint through the scraggly brush. And that is when I spotted the gleam of wet, mangy bodies through the narrow gaps in the trees.
Shash and I darted through the underbrush. Fear lent fresh speed to my legs. But whatever chased me was so unnatural, so malicious, it took sheer willpower not to lay on the ground, frozen with terror, and let them have me.
They were not the glossy, wet-coated dogs that they appeared to be. They were something more, something different. Wrong.
Though Shash and I ran at top speed, I could feel them behind me, could smell them when the wind shifted and hear their ragged breathing.
When one got so close I could hear its pounding heart, teeth snapped and pain seared my ankle. I fell, rolling on the muddy ground. The animal was on me before I stopped moving, its snarling, long-toothed mouth searching for skin through my thick fur. I bit back, something so natural I hardly gave it a second thought as wet fur filled my mouth. My teeth came down hard and I smelled blood before a single drop touched my tongue. And then the creature was off me and Shash was at my side. We tried to run, but my ankle was useless, my tendon severed.
Side by side, my head by Shash’s tail, Shash’s head by my tail, we waited. A large, menacing pack of doglike creatures crept out of the underbrush and circled us. There were all sorts of breeds, all larger than us. My lips pulled away from my teeth in a snarl and I tensed my hind legs, ready to spring. When a solid Doberman-looking animal leaped at me, I leaped, too, and we met in midair, both of our mouths finding the other’s neck.
We crashed down and I landed on top of the rock-hard creature, shaking its neck with all my might. Hope, that I might actually kill the unnatural thing beneath me, lent power to my jaws and determination to my tired body—until the rest of the dogs pounced on my back.
Hundreds of teeth sank into my flesh, from my shoulders to my haunches.
A yelp screeched into the rainy night, the sound a dog makes right after it is hit by a car, a split second before it dies. When another yelp ripped through the night, torn from my throat, I realized I was the dog about to die.
With every ounce of strength I possessed, I bit and scratched the motley, stinking mound of animals smothering me, but I was outnumbered. The weight of death pressed me down and I couldn’t get up.
An ear-deafening boom rattled the night, vibrating my bones and swallowing the rumble of animals snarling. Time seemed to pause as every set of teeth so intent on ripping my head from my body paused inside of my skin. The boom sounded again. A dog yelped. Teeth released my flesh and the creatures scattered so quickly, so silently, I almost wondered if they had existed at all.
A third shot rang out, this time from the opposite direction, and Shash whined a low, pitiful sound.
I whimpered and struggled to get up but was too hurt to move. A new scent entered my nose and a copper shadow loped over and began licking my snout. Duke. He whined and pushed at me with his nose. Slowly, shakily, I found the strength to stand. Duke began trotting away. Shash and I followed, though my hind leg dragged behind me, as useless as a stick caught in my fur.
I hadn’t gone ten paces when I froze. A rottweiler, eyes glazed, mouth gaping, lay in a growing pool of blood. I shuffled around the dead body and followed Shash and Duke.
We passed the school bus stop and loped toward home. It wasn’t long before Mrs. Carpenter’s brightly lit barn and house came into view. On three legs I hobbled toward the open barn door. Inside, I fell onto a pile of straw, every inch of my body hurting, and slid back into my own shape. I lay curled in a trembling, naked ball and wondered how I was lucky enough to be alive.
Beside me Duke and Shash whined.
“Dear Lord almighty, if you’re a Skinwalker, I’ll shoot you before I ask questions.” It wasn’t until Mrs. Carpenter spoke that I realized she was in the barn, too.
Shocked and horrified, I looked up to see her standing over me with a rifle in hand.
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“What’s a Skinwalker?” I asked, waiting for her to kill me. Duke whimpered and, ears flat against his head, slunk in between Mrs. Carpenter and me.
She lowered her gun and grunted.
Something soft and rose scented draped my shivering body, stinging the scrapes that covered my skin.
“We need to get you inside, child, before you catch your death,” Mrs. Carpenter said, as if I had been out working in the garden on a rainy afternoon. She pulled me to my feet and helped me slip my arms into a bathrobe. Her bathrobe. She wore nothing but an old, thin nightgown. Without a word, she tied the pink terry cloth belt around my waist.
Mrs. Carpenter tilted her head to the side. After a silent moment, she picked up the rifle and walked over to shut the barn doors.
“Shash, Duke, come,” she commanded. The dogs left my side and ran to her. “Is it safe? Is that pack of mangy animals gone?” she asked the dogs and pushed the doors wide. Both dogs sniffed the air and wagged their tails. In spite of this, Mrs. Carpenter dropped another shell into the rifle and pointed it outside. “You go first, Maggie Mae,” she said, motioning me outside with the gun barrel.
As I passed her, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to shoot me in the back.
“Hurry, Maggie Mae. Before that pack of unholy mongrels comes back!” I hobbled to the house. Shash and Duke ran with me, Mrs. Carpenter a step behind. When we entered the dark living room, Mrs. Carpenter slammed the front door and locked it before flipping on the light.
“Now let me take a look at you, see if we need to go to the emergency room,” Mrs. Carpenter said, setting the gun on the dining room table. “Some of those bites looked pretty deep.”
I dropped the robe to the floor around my bare feet. After being picked up nude so many times by random police officers, modesty wasn’t really an issue anymore. Naked was naked.
Mrs. Carpenter’s eyes grew wide as she took in my bare form, and I wondered if I had gone too far, standing naked in front of her.
“Turn around,” she instructed, staring. I turned. “Lord have mercy! Let me see your knuckles.” She grabbed my hand, examining the wound I’d gotten from Danni’s tooth. “I can hardly believe it,” she muttered, looking at my body again. “Your hand … it’s still hurt. But the rest of you …”
I looked down and gasped. Not a single scratch remained on my pale, mud- and blood-streaked skin. I lifted my leg and twisted my injured ankle. It was good as new. I was healed.
“You may not be a Skinwalker, but you’re something unnatural,” Mrs. Carpenter said, stepping away from me. “If my dogs didn’t seem to like you so well …” Her voice trailed off as she studied me with wise, yet terrified, eyes. But there was something else there. Shock.
I looked at my naked self again and tried not to cry, but I couldn’t help it. I looked so normal, so human. But I was an abomination. An animal. A freak. Loud, ugly sobs joined the tears. I covered my face with my hands and tried to hold it all in.
“Oh, Maggie Mae, forgive my hasty words.” The soft robe enfolded my naked body, and then her arms, warm and gentle, embraced me. “Dear child, what are we going to do with you?” she whispered, running her hand over and over my wet hair.
I hadn’t been held this way—like I was loved—since my last family member had been killed. Not only loved, but loved by someone who felt nearly like a mother.
She tugged my hands from my face. “Maggie Mae, dear, why don’t you take a shower.”
I nodded. With the robe held tightly in place, I hurried to the bathroom.
After a scalding shower, I put on my nightshirt and, in spite of the predawn hour, went to the kitchen. The light was on and I could smell food. I was so ravenous, my stomach was trying to turn inside out.
Mrs. Carpenter eyed me warily, like the day I’d come to live with her, but she didn’t say a thing—just passed me a bowl of boiled wheat farina with cinnamon and raisins. I took it to the dining room table.
The bowl was empty in less than a minute, warming me from the inside out. Mrs. Carpenter refilled it and sat beside me, searching my face, my clean hands, my eyes.
“I’m still the same girl I was yesterday,” I said, my voice ragged from crying. “You just know more about me now. But I haven’t changed.”
Mrs. Carpenter shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “I keep telling myself that. But what exactly is it that I now know about you?”
I shrugged and swallowed farina before answering simply, “I change at the full moon.”
Mrs. Carpenter looked at me in exasperation. “Why, thank you for stating the obvious, but what are you? Why do you … change?”
“I’ve asked myself that very same question every single day for the last two years. Since this started happening. I don’t know why I started to change or what I am.”