Coyote Blues Read online

  Fiona’s touch lit a fire in her belly that spread between her thighs. “I know what I’d like to do about it.”

  “Then why don’t you show me…”

  That was all Fiona needed to say, although her eyes already said it all. And unlike the times Riley had avoided staring into them for too long, this time she let herself fall into the mesmerizing depths of their summoning blue sea. Side by side they kissed—more confident, less self-conscious than yesterday—those tender kisses becoming hard and hungry as they acknowledged an appetite that had been growing, unnamed and unspoken, from the moment they’d met.

  Fiona’s lips never left hers as they struggled to peel off their wet bathing suits. And when they were naked, Riley settled on top of her, her body covering the length of Fiona’s. Their skin was cool from swimming and smelled of the earthiness of the water. But beneath the sweet scent of the lake was the unique and personal smell of Fiona. Riley’s olfactory sense was as keen as her hearing. Like a perfume chemist mixing a fragrance formula, she inhaled deeply, taking those notes up through her nose and into her brain, where they would be encoded, memorized forever.

  And there in that private place, on a forest bed beneath the shimmering canopies of sunlit trees, they learned the art of lovemaking. Although inexperienced, and perhaps clumsy in spots, they satisfied each other. Twice. And Riley knew then that her heart would forever belong to Fiona, that this yearning, now temporarily satisfied, would come back stronger and never go away.

  * * *

  Later that night Riley began to feel strange as she sat curled in a bowl-like Papasan chair, watching a horror movie with her parents. Michael and Amelia Dawson were stretched out on the couch opposite one another like Barbie and Ken dolls, he lying there in shorts, massaging Amelia’s feet, which rested on his stomach. He’d arrived from the city just in time to grill dinner, as he usually did on Friday evenings. At forty-seven, Michael was strikingly handsome, trim and fit from swimming and racquetball, and although Amelia was a beautiful woman, Riley often wondered why he loved her. Amelia was fond of entertaining, but she didn’t clean or cook—those duties were delegated to a housekeeper they kept in the city—and she wasn’t an especially affectionate woman. The two enjoyed museums together, the theater and opera, but when it came to outdoor activities, she avoided anything that might result in a chipped nail and ruined manicure.

  On occasion he’d talk her into skinny-dipping with him after Riley went to bed, but she didn’t enjoy the outdoors much and had never once accompanied Riley on a walk or in the canoe. Amelia spent her afternoons volunteering with the arts council, playing bridge, and attending concerts at Tanglewood. Come to think of it, her parents had tickets to a play tomorrow night at Shakespeare and Company. Riley had declined an invitation to join them and was happy she did. It meant she’d be home alone tomorrow night. Having Fiona over for a continuation of today in a real bed was all she could think about. She stared at the television, seeing only the movie projected in her head—a replay of sex with Fiona. Beautiful, blue-eyed Fiona Bell, who just happened to be in love with her. Imagine that! She still couldn’t believe they’d come out to one another, professed their love…that they’d had sex. That fact, combined with having a driver’s license, made her feel like a full-fledged adult. And the thought that sex had been with the girl of her dreams filled her with desire again. It made her hot. Really hot. Oddly feverish, in fact. Sweat started beading on her forehead, and suddenly she didn’t feel so good.

  Her stomach began to churn and growl, and when it felt like something might claw its way out of her gut, she climbed out of the bowl-like chair. The muscles in her back felt awfully tight, so tight it almost hurt to stand up straight—the aftermath of the afternoon’s sexual acrobatics, she was sure. But the quiet exhilaration she’d enjoyed since then was turning into the jitters. She felt as if every nerve in her body were crawling beneath her skin, millions of electrical threads trying to escape through her pores. The sensation made her want to jump out of her own body. She needed fresh air. Fast. Before she threw up.

  The only light in the room came from the television, and she was glad her parents couldn’t see her sweating, or her hands shaking, or that she was a little hunched over. “Enjoy the movie, guys,” she said, in as calm a voice as she could muster.

  “Where’re you going?” her father asked.

  “Down to the dock.”

  “Swimming?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t like you alone out there at night. It’s too chilly,” her mother said.

  “No, it’s not. The water’s warm.”

  “Just make sure those floodlights are on,” her father said as she walked across the room and pulled open the curtains that covered the sliding-glass door. The full moon’s smiling face was right there, as though it were waiting for her. It loomed low in the sky, big and yellow, glistening on the lake and bathing the dock and steep staircase leading down to it in its light—a moonlight stranger and somehow brighter than any moon she’d ever seen.

  “Leave that door cracked so we can hear you,” her father said. “Maybe I’ll join you for a swim when the movie’s over.”

  “Okay, Dad.” She flipped the light switch, left the glass door open a few inches, and slid the screen panel closed behind her.

  “Where’s your bathing suit?” her mother called after her.

  Riley didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Going to her room to shed her shorts and tank top would have taken too long. She would have passed out if she’d stayed inside a minute longer.

  The cool night felt wonderful. She bent over, hands on her thighs, taking in lungfuls of air until the wave of nausea passed. But a fever still burned inside. It was as if something was elevating her temperature, fueling her, filling her with heat and a nervous energy that made her want to take off, jump into the water, swim clear across the lake. She stretched her back as much as she could, held on to the railing, and trotted clumsily down the staircase.

  When she reached the dock, she walked to the edge and surveyed the moonlit landscape. Fog rose like smoke from the water, and through it she could see the black outline of bats flickering about in a mosquito-feeding frenzy. Riley marveled at the sudden clarity of the nocturnal world. Her vision seemed sharper, the sounds of nature amplified. She cocked her head, oddly able to locate and zero in on frogs hopping, mice running, even the vibrations of swimming fish and the ripples of stealthy snapping turtles hunting along the shore. She could hear it all: the life force, the beating of her own heart, the thrumming of her quickening pulse.

  Amazing. Whether it was the surge of pubescent hormones set off by Fiona, she didn’t know, but it seemed as though someone had peeled back a dingy film that had been covering her eyes her whole life, and now the whole world seemed incredibly sharper, her vision almost magical. Maybe this was just what falling in love did—heightened the senses, unveiled life’s deeper beauty—and she wondered if Fiona was experiencing this same feeling of exaltation tonight.

  Coyotes yipped somewhere on the other side of the lake, as they did in late summer. But tonight those voices spoke to her, woke something dormant in her genes. Riley listened, then turned her back to the water, struck by an irresistible compulsion to run instead of swim. She knew with an instinctive and absolute certainty that she could easily navigate the dark woods without a flashlight or compass. She wasn’t sure how she knew this, but she did.

  Bursting with an irrepressible energy, Riley slipped on the water shoes she’d left on the dock, but before she could take off and run free, the change grabbed hold of her. Without warning it stabbed her between the shoulder blades, a shooting pain so excruciating, so crippling, she was sure her back had been broken. It happened so fast she didn’t know who or what had attacked from behind. It yanked her by the ankles, tore the shoes from her feet, pulled her legs from underneath her so swiftly her knees hit the dock.

  A dozen panicked thoughts flashed through her mind, the first being that some prehisto
ric lake monster had surfaced and impaled her with a sword-like barb. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, numbing any further pain as she fought for her life. She struggled to crawl forward, to get herself off the dock and up the steps to the safety of the house before this thing pulled her into the water.

  “Dad? Daddy!” Riley screamed, writhing on her stomach, kicking, twisting from side to side to see what had her in its death grip. But her arms and legs wouldn’t cooperate. The messages her brain was sending weren’t reaching her extremities. She flayed, half paralyzed, craning her neck to see what was behind her.

  Nothing. Nothing was there. Nothing at all. And at that moment Riley realized she was being attacked from the inside. A sickening panic gripped her, along with flashbacks to Dr. Blacksberg’s long-ago conversation with her mother.

  No spina bifida? No tethered spinal cord? It’s a medical miracle that your daughter isn’t disabled, deformed.

  Riley cried out again. It was happening—some congenital anomaly finally catching up with her. Perhaps the amputation of her tail had delayed the onset, but now here it came, some latent spinal deformity that would have her in a wheelchair the rest of her life. Spasms coursed through her as she crawled forward, extending her arms and finally managing to grip the edge of the dock. But as she clung to it, slowly pulling herself forward, her fingers began to shorten and lose their grip. She watched in horror as her thumbs withered away into useless, sickle-like dewclaws. “Help! Daddy, help me!”

  Hair poked up all over the backs of her hands, sprouting like seeded grass in the warm soil of spring. Within seconds it covered her arms. She heard her jaw pop then, felt a crunch in her occipital bones, and then something long jutted out, blocking her vision. She went cross-eyed trying to see it, but it wasn’t until it wriggled and twitched that Riley realized it was her own nose. Her own snout.

  A sharp pinch at the end of her spine made her jump. And then came a thumping, a knocking sound against the wood behind her. She heard it to the right, then to the left. Thump, thump…thump, thump. Riley lifted her heavy head, managed to raise her torso just enough to glance back. And there it was working its way out of her waistband—her lost tail. Long, lean, and muscular, it slapped the dock, thrashing back and forth like a rudder to steady and steer her the way a dog uses its tail in the water. Riley cried at the sight of it. Inside she cried, but the tears couldn’t come. Her eyes were different now, superior but tearless, her voice wordless.

  With the help of her new appendage, she used her elbows to turn herself in a clockwise circle until her face hung over the dock. And there, mirrored in the moonlit water, was a hideous fur-covered face, the weight of it held up by her still-human neck. “Daddy, help!” she screamed again, drowning in the tears that wouldn’t spill, but the words came out in garbled syllables, sounding more like the wail of an injured animal than the cry of a teenager.

  Horrified, helpless, Riley flailed on her belly, digging her claws into wood and pushing herself back around in a half-circle until she was facing the house again. Raising her head and lifting her suddenly deep chested torso a few inches, she looked up at the glass doors of the house that stood high above the dock. Light from the television still flickered, but the lamps had been turned on, and there were her parents, silhouetted against the glow. They stood side by side, staring down at her like two mannequins in a store window. Unable to speak, Riley whimpered, lifted one arm and reached out to them like a pathetic dog offering its paw.

  The shorter of the two outlined figures began backing away from the window. The taller one remained frozen for another moment before he, too, backed up and drew the curtains closed.

  Splayed on the dock, Riley waited, certain her mother was calling an ambulance, that her father would dash out any second to carry her up to the house. But no one came.

  As the pain subsided, Riley kicked and pushed, using her muscular tail to turn onto her side. That felt better. Looking past her snout, she stared up at the moon, listened to the water lapping the dock, and began to whine and howl her discontent. Coyotes answered from across the lake. At least someone was concerned enough to respond. Exhausted, dejected, petrified, she rolled onto her side, curling into a fetal position. She felt the tremors in her legs. They twitched uncontrollably, like a dreaming dog running in its sleep. And then Riley did fall sleep.

  How long she slept she couldn’t say, but it was still night when she awoke. The first thing she saw were her fisted hands. She sat up and took inventory of her anatomy. Her snout and tail were gone. She was wholly human again.

  Carefully, she got up and walked off the dock on two legs, fumbling to find the steps. That visual clarity, that amazing night vision was gone now, and she had trouble seeing in the dark. She worried that she wouldn’t be welcome in the house, that her father might have locked the door, but it slid open, and she stepped through the curtains. A lamp was on, and in the hallway across from the living room stood her father, holding a baseball bat loosely at his side. Never mind the vampire movie they’d been watching; their own daughter topped the evening’s creature-feature. The smell of their fear saturated the room, and Riley knew her father had been expecting a monster, some sort of werewolf to storm in. And she knew then that he was prepared to knock her head off if she’d come up here thinking to devour him and his wife.

  Amelia was nowhere in sight. Riley suspected she’d barricaded herself in the bedroom.

  Riley’s mouth was dry, her jaw so stiff she could hardly speak. “I’m sorry, Dad.” She slurred her words. “I don’t know what’s wrong with—”

  He held up a hand to silence her, examining her from head to toe. “Are you…normal now?”

  “I think so, but—”

  He shut her up with a hand again. “I don’t know what you are, Riley…but we won’t ever speak of this. Never, ever. Not to anyone. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.” Riley hung her head in shame like a guilty teenager who’d defied parental authority, gotten caught in the act of doing something forbidden.

  Her father pointed to her bedroom door on the opposite side of the cabin. Riley looked at him pleadingly, her lip trembling as she opened her mouth to speak, but he jerked his outstretched arm again. “In your room. Now.” He was angry. But for what? For upsetting and frightening his darling Amelia?

  Riley obeyed. She went to her room and, as she closed her door, listened to her father softly knocking on his own bedroom door. She heard it unlock from the other side, then shut and lock again.

  Riley stared at herself in the mirror of her tiny bathroom. She brushed her teeth with a trembling hand, put on her pajamas, and slipped under the covers. She was terrified over what had happened to her, ashamed that her parents had watched it all, furious that they hadn’t helped her. She began to sob. All she wanted was to be with Fiona. Fiona would let her speak, help her figure out what had happened. Or would she? Fiona probably wouldn’t believe her. She’d think Riley was joking, or maybe going crazy. And if she did believe, she’d probably be as horrified as Riley’s parents.

  Remember what you said about my spirit animal? Well, I am that, Fiona…half that, at least. I’m some kind of monster. I don’t know how or why. And I don’t know what to do…where to turn. I only know that I love you.

  Her parents knew what to do. By noon the next day their personal belongings were packed, and they were headed back to the city. Mr. and Mrs. Dawson evidently thought that taking Riley out of the woods, away from the natural world, would keep the wolf at bay. She expected to be shipped off to a boarding school for her senior year of high school. The idea, she knew, had crossed their minds, but they were still legally responsible for her. Sending her to a residential school would have increased the odds of someone witnessing that tailed monstrosity if it happened again. Better to keep their wolf-daughter at home until she turned eighteen.

  Riley never saw Fiona again. She called a few times that week, prepared to make up a story about why her parents had returned to the city so suddenl
y. The first two times she left messages on the Bells’ answering machine, but neither call was returned. The third time Fiona answered. Just the sound of her voice made Riley choke up. “It’s me,” she said.

  “Riley? What happened? Are you—”

  It sounded like Fiona covered the receiver just then. Riley heard a muffled argument, a scuffle, as though the phone were being wrestled from Fiona’s hand, and then Mrs. Bell came on the line. “Riley? This is Mrs. Bell,” she said in an uncharacteristically cold and curt tone. “Fiona doesn’t want to speak with you. She’s not like you, Riley, and asks that you not contact her again.” Fiona began to scream and cry in the background, begging to talk to her, but Mrs. Bell only spoke louder. “School is starting, and Fiona is very busy with her Bible studies and Christian youth group. You, too, would do well to read the Bible. If you repent and ask the Lord to come into your life, he will heal and make you normal.” After a pause she said, “God bless you, Riley.”

  That was it. Mrs. Bell hung up, leaving Riley stunned and holding the phone. She sat on the edge of her bed in shock. Mrs. Bell must have seen her on the dock that night. What she was doing out so late in the evening, Riley didn’t know. Maybe she had been bringing the Dawsons a pie, as she always did when the peaches ripened and she started baking. Riley couldn’t say for sure. She hadn’t been aware of anything but the pain and fright of her own mangled body that night. But Fiona’s mother had witnessed the transmutation. Of that Riley was now certain. It was the only explanation. Mrs. Bell knew what she was—an abomination.

  * * *

  By October, realtors were calling, and her father informed her over dinner one night that they’d put the lake house on the market. Riley had expected that. After all, how could the traumatized Amelia Dawson ever tolerate sitting on the dock where she’d watched her perfect little girl turn into something grotesquely subhuman? If given the chance, Amelia would have put Riley on the market along with the house. They didn’t love her. Not anymore. Or maybe they’d never loved her enough. Riley couldn’t blame them, though. Poor Amelia was half out of her mind, struggling to cope with it all. She’d been on Valium since September, eating those pills like M&Ms to ward off the nervous breakdown she’d probably already had.