The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

Zauber

Seven

Lust

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Marabeth and Kris Strauss sat across from Uriah, and he was the first to speak and the only one not smoking as they sipped tea before the closed fireplace, Marabeth looking up at the great portrait of Pamela.

“What is the thing you want to know the most?”

Marabeth glanced at Kris, and he said nothing and then she said, “I want to know if we’re werewolves.”

When Uriah said nothing, Kris finally said, “I want to know if the pills I take are because of it. I want to know if I have some kind of depression, or if it’s something more.”

“That can be easily discerned,” Uriah told him.

Kris waited for him to explain.

“Go out there to your cousins. Ask every man in the family if he takes the pills you take.”

“That is one way,” Kris said cautiously.

“Well, if not that, then there is another way.”

“Which is?

“Simply don’t take the pills.”

“What?” Marabeth exclaimed.

“If you think your father knew, if many people know, they’ve got to have other means to subdue you when you Change should there be no medication. In this house, somewhere, is the means to subdue you. If this is true. And it is true.”

“How do you know?” Kris asked.

“I know,” Uriah said.

“But,” Kris said, “whatever there is in this house or wherever that could control me… I wouldn’t know where it was.”

“Someone would.”

“Dad’s dead.”

“He wouldn’t be the only one. “

“Great-Grandfather only had one son,” Marabeth said. “My grandfather had two sons, but they’re both dead. The only men, and it seems to only affect the men, are Kris, Jim, Peter, Myron…”

“And any of your other cousins. Any of Friederich’s grandsons as well as his great-grandsons. If this is true,” Uriah said, “then surely it wouldn’t have only been Nathan who knew. That would be too dangerous.”

“Then you think someone else knows.”

“Marabeth, I think several someones know. Your mother must know. Your grandmother. The only reason you don’t know is because they never told you, and you don’t dare to ask them.”

“But… Cousin Robert?” Marabeth said. “Myron.”

“No,” Kris said. “Myron doesn’t really know anything. I mean, I love him, but he doesn’t really know anything.”

“They always said Pamela controlled things, and even though she didn’t like Aunt Maris, she trusted her sons. That’s why she sent them to law school. Granger knew everything that went on in this family. He was the executer of Pamela’s will. He handled all the legal business. He must have been in cahoots with them.”

“Shit!” Kris suddenly exclaimed, almost dropping his cigarette.

“What?” Marabeth began, and then she stopped.

Uriah looked at them both, and Marabeth said, “But… he couldn’t. He’s just. He just runs the law firm. He just handles…”

“All the family business, just like his dad did,” Kris said. “He just… runs every… thing.”

Marabeth had put her cigarette down.

“Peter knows.”

“It’s so cold out here,” Joyce said.

“You didn’t have to come,” Peter told her. His breath was white, and it seemed to Joyce that it might actually freeze on the night.

“I didn’t mean that to be an ass,” he said. “You really could have stayed in.”

“I wanted to hang out with you,” she said. “You don’t wear a hat. Or anything.”

His ears were red, and so was his nose as he smiled down on her, and they walked down the street, his hands jammed in his pockets.

“This is a beautiful church,” Joyce said. “If it wasn’t almost below zero, I’d want to look at it some more.”

“Oh, I could look at it all night,” Peter’s said. “Saint Ursula’s is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. But I love Saint Agatha’s.”

“It’s a little closer to you,” Joy said. “Why didn’t your family go here?”

“Because Ursula was the German church. Saint Agatha’s was the Black church. It was built for the Black community around the time my family came to America. Or rather, they built it themselves. They decided it had to be better and more beautiful than any other church in the neighborhood, and it was. If you could see this in daylight, the red brick, it’s really pink brick, and the white cement arcades inside! I love this church. I used to be an altar boy here. Sometimes, when I just need to get quiet, I still come here, even talk to Father Johnson. I don’t know if I’m still religious, but sometimes it’s nice to talk to a priest.”

“So, your whole family went to Saint Ursula, but you went here?”

“Well, that’s not totally true. Aunt Natalie went here after her husband died. She used to bring Nate and Byron. She only goes to Saint Ursula’s on Christmas, and Marabeth and Kris went to both. But we all grew up later. And I think we felt weird so we came here.”

Joyce didn’t say she was confused over this last statement, but Peter said, “I’m a little older than Kris and Marabeth. I… I used to feel like I didn’t fit in. The other kids were kind of assholes to me, and the Black kids and the Mexicans... they sort of took me in, and so I would come to Saint Agatha’s. The Neils, the family that lives across the street from the Big House, I was friends with their son Osgood. Osgood would bring me with him to church, and so this place sort of became a home to me. See, right there, that’s the school. I ended up going there in fourth grade. My parents were… I think scared is the right word. I was one of five white kids.”

“How was it?”

“It made me glad,” Peter said. “To tell you the truth, I doubt Black people feel the same way when the situation’s reversed, but I liked it. I got so used to it. I felt super weird when we finally went to Saint Ignatius and saw white people again.”

A car drove down Demming, but otherwise the night was silent. Moments later, Peter motioned for Joyce to make way as another man, pale as Peter, walked down the sidewalk, hands jammed in his pockets. He muttered a hello, and Peter nodded, and they kept walking, toward Dimler Street in the direction of the tall buildings of downtown.

“It clears my head, you know,” Peter said, “to be out in the night. Especially on a night like this. And, sometimes, when things would get rough, when it was too much for my mind, it was good to get outside. We think it’s so cold out here, but that guy,” he gestured to the man walking toward downtown, “who knows? We’re going back to the house. Who knows how long he’s walking?”

“Maybe he’s going home like us.”

“Maybe,” Peter said, “but he looked sort of homeless. It’s just downtown and bridges and old buildings and church porches to sleep under. On a night like this. Sorry, I think about stuff like that some time.”

Joyce hooked her arm in his, then said, “That was forward of me.”

“I don’t mind you being forward,” Peter said. “Maybe if more forward women showed up I wouldn’t be this weird gloomy person I am.”

“I don’t think you’re gloomy. I think you’re right.”

Joyce was jostled as Peter suddenly stopped in the middle of the street, looking up.

“It’s so small and white. Smaller than a dime,” Peter said.

“The moon,” Joyce said, realizing that was needless. It was almost burning white in the dark blue,night and Peter said, “Sometimes I look up at it and I could just .. never look away. Never feel the cold.”

Suddenly Peter broke off from her, boy like in his car coat, and howled.

He laughed.

“Makes me feel like a wolf. What are you staring at?” He grinned at Joyce.

Joyce scrambled for words, not a lie, but any words, because she didn’t quite know what to say.

“You’re a rare man, Peter Keller.”

“Not that rare,” he differed.

Then he said, “My kids are still gone tonight. Would you want to come back with me? Tonight? Or would that be too soon?”

“You’re not into games, are you?”

“Games are for kids. I like having you around. I liked you staying with me.”

“I like staying with you too. If Marabeth doesn’t think I’m too much of a tart, then yes, I’ll come back with you.”

Peter shrugged, “Marabeth can think whatever she wants. I like being with you Joy Mc.Namara.”

They stayed up talking a while, Kris mostly keeping silence between Marabeth and Uriah, and of course Kris had not read the book and knew very little of what Uriah knew. Uriah had only told him that there was much more in the world than people liked to admit, and often left it at that.

“You have to understand, I did not seek Kris out, but when I first met him, when he first described his depressions and his youth I decided I’d better keep an eye on him. I had some inkling as to what he was.”

“Then you know about… werewolves,” Marabeth had said.

“I know about Strausses,” Uriah said. “Your Aunt Pamela knew my Uncle Augustus. He spoke of her, and so I knew that there was a family in Ohio, where I lived, that could shapeshift.”

“That’s a very nice way of putting it,” Kris cut in.

“I had forgotten much of what I learned, and only begun to put two and two together after I had known Kris awhile. But he had not told me and so I did not know if he knew and was keeping it to himself or… what I felt like, that it was not mine to tell. But I felt like he had to come to Chicago to see other things.”

“Like Eve Moreland.”

“Yes, like the witches of my family.”

“And are you a witch?” Marabeth asked.

“No,” Uriah said. “Not really.”

“Then I might not really be a—”

“You are,” Uriah said. “I don’t know how it works in your family. Apparently all of the men must take tablets or they turn. Apparently the gene or trait or gift or—”

“Curse,” Kris said

“Or whatever it is,” Uriah said, “is quiet in the women. Pamela had it, but she was taught it. Friederich changed but only when he wished to. The trait doesn’t seem to have any consistency.”

“But then I haven’t finished reading the book.”

“That’s right,” Uriah said.

“And we also haven’t spoken to Peter.”

After they had talked a little more Kris said he would take Uriah home and Marabeth said she would go upstairs to bed.

“Are you staying here?” Kris asked.

“I think I’d better,” Marabeth said, yawning.

The house was beginning to feel like home again, and she could hear Jim down the hall snoring in his old room. She went through the ritual of showering, washing her hair, brushing her teeth and climbing into bed. She glanced at the journal and then looked away from it. Time for that tomorrow.

In her dreams a man was kissing her, and that wasn’t strange. She was, after all, divorced and terminally unfucked. She even knew she was dreaming, but she wanted to put that away. The more he undressed her, ran his hands over her, the more she knew it wasn’t real, knew that the moment before you knew it wasn’t real was when you woke up pissed off and frustrated. She willed the dream to stay. She undressed the man. He was long and tall and he was muscled. His body was like a furry blond pelt. His eyes blue. He kissed her hungrily and she knew, but did not push it from her mind, that this was Hagano, her Aunt Pamela’s lover, the man from her dreams. She opened her thighs for him and she felt his kiss on her breasts, on her shoulders, back up again. But now as she awoke she knew it was only a dream, that she was Marabeth Strauss, divorced, almost forty and in her mother’s house. But…

He was still making love to her. Her eyes opened wide and she saw, beneath the blankets, between her thighs, the figure of a man moving, and the blanket was up as if over his shoulders. She pulled away almost screaming, as the blanket collapsed, and she was alone, but still felt the heat of Hagano’s body on her, still felt him in the covers, still felt his touch, still felt wet between her thighs, sat up in the night terrified to find her gown down, and her nipples wet with his kisses.

She was discombobulated and so it took a moment to hear the buzzing, to know the buzzing was her phone and then to find said phone even though it was on the nightstand beside the bed where she always left it.

She picked it up and answered, which she never did this late and said, “Joyce?”

“I’m sorry,” the man’s voice on the other end of the phone said, “I didn’t expect anyone to pick up. I was leaving a message. I don’t know if you’ll remember me, but this is Detective McCord.”

How would she forget the man who had brought her dead father back to her?

“Yes, Detective. I remember you.”

“There were other effects of your father, still at the station. I was leaving the message so you could get them.”

“Oh… thank you. I… I could get them tomorrow.”

She felt awake and said, “I could get them tonight, actually.”

“I didn’t think you’d be up,” the detective said. “I can bring them to you. I get off of work in forty-five minutes. Unless that’s too late.”

“Forty-five minutes or an hour would be great,” Marabeth said.