The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

Journals

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

“Please,” Natalie Keller said, sitting down in the large chair Jim had been in the night before, “tell us everything.”

“Ma’am,” Detective McCord said, looking around the room with what Marabeth thought was more nervousness than she ever expected from someone in the police department. “everything is… not pleasant.”

Natalie nodded grimly.

“I wouldn’t expect it to be.”

“We found him by a river. Really, in a river, Ma’am. In a town called Amhurst, about an hour and a half south of Chicago. He… from what we found it seems like he was gone for several months. We estimate as long as last April.”

Marabeth saw her grandmother nodding, and realized she was nodding too. Mother sat going paler and paler, looking out into nothing.

“We are not sure what he was doing there, or why he left—”

“He was unhappy,” Rebecca said.

Natalie looked at her daughter in law and said, “He was unhappy in life. Not in his marriage. He had a depression. It’s in the family. He was looking for a way out.”

Detective McCord raised an eyebrow and Natalie continued, “Not out of life, mind you. He was looking for a way back in, some sort of answers. Or healing. But I guess in the end…” the old woman’s voice faltered and now she seemed deflated.

“Most of the clothes were intact,” Detective McCord said. “They could be washed, especially the coat, though there are signs of effluvia, signs of the ravages of what happens when someone isn’t buried.”

“Did he die in the river or by the river?” Kris said, suddenly.

“It is likely he drowned,” Detective McCord said, “and then may have been… taken out of the river.”

“By?” Kris said.

Detective McCord said, “Mr. Strauss, it happened months ago, and it almost doesn’t matter.”

“Animals,” Kris said. “My dad was eaten by animals is what you’re saying.”

“Nature took its course,” Detective McCord said neutrally. “And after such a long time it really is hard to say what happened first.”

Kris put his head in his hands and Jim stared dumbly at the wall, but the detective turned to Marabeth.

“Ma’am, whatever you have in that satchel could tell you a lot. We opened it. I opened it for clues. His credit cards were in it. But also binders, journals maybe, and not badly damaged by the water. That is the thing. Your father was not found far from that satchel.”

“And you didn’t read anything in it?” Marabeth said as she fumbled with the brass snap and opened it, and then tugged on the zipper, surprised it still worked, even though Detective McCord had said it did.

“No,” he told her, “because it was labeled, ‘For Marabeth.’”

“Oh,” she said, slipping her hand into the bag.

She looked around.

“Do you all want me to open it now?”

“Your father said it was for you,” Rebecca told her. “It’s yours to open, and yours to share.”

Whatever her grandmother had been about to say, Natalie Keller nodded.

“We need to go out and tell the rest of the family,” Marabeth’s grandmother said.

“Do you want me to?” Jim offered. There was a strange, hard look in his eyes, and Joyce couldn’t say what it was.

“No,” Natalie Keller shook her head, looking grim. “If you don’t mind I think I want to. I need to. Keeps me moving. Oh,” she touched Rebecca, “you come with me. We both need to keep moving.”

“I could go,” Joyce said when they were alone.

“You better not,” Marabeth said. “I might need some help with this,” she lugged the bag. “Besides, you’ve seen us at our worst.”

“Do you want me to drive you home?”

“No,” Marabeth said after a moment. “I think I’d better stay here.”

Joyce nodded.

“Will you bring up the coffee, and we’ll go through this?”

Upstairs they opened the valise. They did not close the door in case anyone wanted to come up and already, downstairs, they heard the collected gasps, the beginning of weeping, the change in the mood of the house that told them the family knew Nathan had been found. Not that he was dead. No matter what anyone said they had all long suspected this.

“I’m relieved more than anything,” Marabeth said as her hands moved over the credit cards and receipts, and then she held, wrapped in plastic, what seemed like two binders, a large one and a small one.

“Not more than anything,” Marabeth said. “No, hurt. Because I really, really hoped, despite everything that I just might see him again. I dreamed of him, Joy. Last night I dreamed about him, and he was calling out to me. I tried to help him, but he couldn’t see me. And he was by a river. But… what does that mean? We were all thinking of rivers. All thinking that’s what happened.”

She opened the first folder and pulled out a spiral notebook. It was water warped, but only a little, and she opened it and read:

“I don’t know if I can take this any longer. Not just what’s happening to me. That’s bearable. It gets worse and worse every year, but still I can bear it. It’s seeing it in the boys, that same sickness, seeing how it almost killed Kris.”

Marabeth put it down.

“You don’t have to read it out loud,” Joyce said.

“I don’t know if I can read it at all,”

The two friends sat on the large bed, heavy hearted and heavy bodied and Marabeth said, “I need a cigarette.”

Joyce said, “I’ll go downstairs and get my purse.”

“You don’t have to.”

They looked up and saw Kris. To Joyce he looked especially pale. He took his Newports out of his pocket and handed them over.

“I can’t read this notebook,” Marabeth said to her brother. “I can’t. It’s Dad’s handwriting. It’s just too close. I…” she shook her head.

“Well then what about the other one,” Kris said as he lit his cigarette. “The big envelope.”

Marabeth nodded and Joyce handed it to her. With ceremony, her hands took back the tabs and they all gasped a little, for this was a journal too, but it was leather and heavy and the leather was well worked, and in gold letters Marabeth read:

“The Journal of Pamela Strauss.”

“What the fuck?” Kris almost dropped his cigarette.

Marabeth turned the page and read:

“Here, before I leave this world, is the combined journal I have set down of the Family Strauss in America. This is not done idly, but to be preserved and passed on to she who must appropriately receive it. I have been shown in dreams that she is my heir, and seen her face to face, the true head of this family, and the only one who could ever take my place…”

“Mighty humble of her,” Kris murmured.

“For,” Marabeth read, “The Strauss are not simply a family, but a clan,”

“Clan,” Kris murmured.

“And more than a clan, a pack, and while I die, the pack goes without its head, but I leave this for her maturity to my great niece…”

Marabeth’s voice trailed off.

“Read it,” Kris said, suddenly stern.

“I leave this for her maturity, my great niece, Marabeth Strauss, the Queen of the Pack.”

“Fuck,” Kris said in despair while Marabeth simply looked perplexed and Joyce looked at the words in the frontispiece.

“I need to get something,” Kris said nervously. “It’s upstairs in my room,”

He was trembling like Marabeth had never seen.

“I forgot it and I don’t know how. It’s all about Chicago. Hold on. I’ll be right back.”

A few minutes later, Kris returned with a letter in his hand and gave it to Marabeth. She looked at it, and then looked up at him, but said nothing, and Joy read the address.

Marabeth Strauss
The Queen of the Pack.

“When she gave it to me I was… I was almost angry,” Kris said. “And … but I forgot. I honestly forgot about it until now. I think I wanted to, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I was so angry. Do you want to read it now or…?”

But Marabeth, who was looking about the room for something, took Joyce’s car keys, and gutted the envelope, pulling the letter out.

Dear Marabeth,

Originally this was a message for your father, Nathan Strauss, which he was to also share with you, but from what I have researched, he has never returned to you, and so I am writing you now. The Strauss family is not unknown to us at all. Your great aunt Pamela was a woman of tremendous power, and well acquainted with my grandfather, Augustus Dunharrow. It was he who first gave her the secret of wulfbane—”

“What?” Kris frowned, standing up.

Marabeth read again…

“It was he who first gave the secret of wulfbane, for though they were not the same thing, my grandfather realized that he and Pamela were alike. Your father came seeking our help early in the spring, and we told him all that he could. When it came to our attention that he had not returned to you, we took it upon ourselves to write this letter. When you can, Marabeth, come to us and learn the secrets of your family that your great aunt so wished for you to know, and that your father could not handle. If you are anything like your aunt you will not only wish to know, but be strengthened by your knowledge. Come to us soon.

In sincerity,

Eve Moreland.

Marabeth put down the letter and looked up at Kris.

“Who the hell is Eve Moreland?”

“She’s a witch,” Kris said, simply.

He waited for Marabeth’s face to change, but what she said was, “And how do you know her?”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“Yes,” Marabeth said. “You said she’s a witch. I’ve had strange dreams for the last week and lived in a world of wonders. I’m an artist, Kris. I don’t have time to do that whole disbelieving let’s be logical I don’t believe in witches thing. That just takes up valuable time. So go on.”

“She is related to Uri.”

“Your Uri?”

“Yes,” Kris said. “His family… they’re all witches. Not all, but most. I was with them. I saw their head, a man called Lewis. And… they aren’t just Wiccans. I mean, these are like real witches. Out of the woodcuts. And it’s a big world, Mara. There are other things out there.”

“Like us,” Marabeth said. “Whatever we are.”

“You’ll know,” Joyce said, pointing to the leather journal, “if you read that book.”

Now, Joyce stood up.

“I think you need to read this alone,” she said. “The two of us can’t read it together, and after all, this is your book. Apparently Pamela saved it for you.”

“But how could she?” Marabeth said, her hand still on the frontispage. “I was so little when she died. Kris, Can you even remember her?”

He shook his head.

“Not really, just what we’ve heard of her.”

Marabeth nodded and Joyce, touching Kris’s shoulder to leave the room said, “I’ll be down the hall, in that nice little bedroom when you need me.”

“Yes,” Marabeth said, and Joyce left, and then Kris left, closing the door a little behind him. Joyce had said when you need me, and even though it might have been easier for her to go home and separate herself from this family and the grief that was slowly rolling through it tonight, she remained.

Meanwhile, Marabeth lay out on the bed and opened the book before her, reading, as she turned the page to begin:

The Book of Pamela Strauss

I was born on the last day of April in the year of Our Lord Eighteen-Hundred and Ninety Seven, in Bavaria where there were more mountains than houses, and more trees than both. I was born south of Wurzburg in the village of Emeiremken, which we called Emre, but, I was told this was not our original home. My father had come there and rarely spoke of where he had been before, and my father was my whole world.

You must understand that whatever our family is now, at that time it was only my father and myself. I never knew my mother, and if he had brothers or sisters or even parents I did not know it. You must understand how strange this is, for all of the tales you heard from the other residents on Dimler Street of their cousins back in the Motherland, when we left Germany, we left no one behind. There was no one but us.

Friederich Strauss was a massive and powerful man. He was what Germans were singing about at that time, the uberman, more blond, more muscled, more enraged than any man around him, and not given to friends, but to fighting. We lived in a small house in Emre, and father cut wood to make a living. He had, in time, two servants to do the cutting, for he began to have a thriving mill business, Hans and Ranken. They were paid well, and they left us alone, and Friederich left others alone. We would go to the beerhaus, the pub, and he would not drink with the other men, but with me, and if I caught any man’s eye, then next they caught his eye, and so everyone knew I was verboten.

We were outcast by our own strange and antisocial behavior. Father had made sure I was baptized, but even by then my mother must have been dead, and no one spoke of her, so I imagined that she must have died in whatever place we had come from. Friederich never went to Mass, but he always sent me.

“The people will think we are heathens otherwise, and they will turn against us.”

“Father?” I asked him, “why don’t you go to Mass?”

He laughed gruffly and said, “Because, little one, I am a heathen.”
I did not understand then, what he meant. I thought it was only a joke, and I put it out of my head.

In those days I was pretty. Most have known me old, for I am very old by now, and some knew me to be stern and imposing and, in a way, what they would call beautiful, but there was a time when I was a child, and a maid with the beauty and innocence of a maid, and I was pretty.

The person who was a friend was Frau Inga. She was a weaver, and she taught me how to weave cloth and keep house. When I was younger she was a housekeeper to my father. She never lived with us. She was old and proud. It was Frau Inga who began to teach me what I had not known.

“No, no,” she said, “your father lived here a long time before you were born. He is not a complete stranger to the town, which is why he is welcome enough. People here are afraid. They do not like the wider world. Bavaria is Bavaria and Emre is Emre. Wurzburg is as far as most of these people can think. Germany… What is that? Certainly not a state. Who is this Kaiser? No. Friederich would never have been welcome here if some did not remember him in his boyhood. His aunt owned the house you live in. His aunt was as I am. As you may be too.”

“As I may be?” I asked.

Frau Inga continued, “Your father, you know, loves to go out in the snow. He loves to go out at all times, but while some disdain the snow he never does. One night, while it was still snowing, even though it was the last night of April, and the wolves were howling, he went out into the hills and came back with you, a tiny baby, so beautiful, so golden. He gave you to me, and I gave you to my daughter so she might nurse you. He loves you, but he is a man. He didn’t even know you needed a name. I named you Pamela.”

“And, my mother?”

“Who knows?” Frau Inga said. Then she said, before I could ask, “I assumed she had died, or why would he have taken you?”

After a time I said, “I feel like I shouldn’t ask him.”

“And I feel like you are right.”

I was twelve when I had my first bleeding. Frau Inga told me all about it. She tied me up and said it would last for a time and come each month. It would be irregular at first and go on for years and then, in the end it would also be irregular.

“It is the way of women,” Frau Inga said, “and it is your power. Never forget in your blood and in your pain is your power. It is a power men cannot have. This is why they fear it. Blood and birth are the way of the world.”

“And death?”

“The way of men.”

She saved the cloths with my first blood and said, “Keep these always. There is mighty power in them.”

It was winter when it happened. The trees so high under a silver sky, and snow on the hills so white, and I felt the hairs raise on the back of my neck. Slowly I turned, and in the snow, looking at me, like Friederich but unlike Friederich, was a great, tall man with short silver blond hair and a short beard fringing his face. His eyes went from grey to blue, and I admit for the first time I felt the strange pleasant flood between my thighs which I would later learn was desire. His arms were bare, even in this weather, and brown with a sun that was not a winter’s sun, and we looked upon each other for a long time, and then, he was gone.