The days trickle by at a steady pace, growing into weeks, budding into months. A routine emerges:

Wake up at 7 Tip-toe across the noisy floorboards Wash teeth, shower, breakfast Go to school Hand out with Betty and Anton on recess Stop on the way back for a U-Cook-It™ sandwich. Get glared at by Mister Guttierez. Go back home, do homework. Help Mister Nomura with the silver plating. Do deliveries. Knife practice at 8pm. Sleep. Wake Up. Repeat.

People like to go on about how routine is killing them, how they would like everything to change, turn life into an adventure. These people have never met my Dad or lived on Chancel Road. They probably don’t even know what it’s like, to wake up to the same view every day, to live in a place that’s more than just a straight line framed by dead houses.

Sometimes, I dream that I am still on Chancel Road, endlessly spinning around the world. I see the sky shifting above me, the constellations turning, rearranging themselves. In my dreams, the landscape runs like a soaked water-color painting before coalescing into another unknown landscape, anywhere other than Orsonville. In my dream, when I step out the door, my feet sink ankle-deep in the blisteringly hot sands of the Sahara. Other times, I trip and fall face-first into the ancient ice-flows of the Arctic. By the time I turn around to make my way back inside, Chancel Road is gone and I’m left there to thirst or freeze. But I always make my way back to Orsonville somehow, back to GoodSushi and Mister Nomura and school. I haven’t told him about the dreams. I’m not sure he’d even want to hear about them.

Fridays are the best. Better even than the weekends. We walk across Orsonville with Anton and Betty and he takes us out past the old Marsh House and into the woods. Sometimes, Betty will get nervous and she’ll head back. We’ll go on alone, anyway. Last week, Anton took me further than ever before, to the automobile graveyard. That’s where they put all those cars that they couldn’t sell during the Great Depression. Hid them somewhere in the woods and let the roots and the greenery creep over their chassis, burrow through their rusted hulls and choke the engines. Dad would have loved this place, if he could see it. He always had a soft spot for any place that proved ‘the folly of man’.

Anton puts his arm around my shoulders, when we sit on the roof of a moss-choked sedan. His hands are rough, gnarled. Kind of what I imagine a lumberjack’s hands would be, or a blacksmith's. I like the sound his palm makes, as it moves smoothly over my skin. We whisper to each other for no reason at all.

Weekends, Mister Nomura takes me spelunking. He tests my navigation skills in the tunnels. We’ve stopped knife-training and moved on to unarmed combat. ‘You’re a good fighter, but your posture is terrible.’ he says. I guess he is right. He drops me on the ground five times out of ten. Mister Nomura teaches me how to throw a punch, to duck and weave, how to kick where it hurts. Soon enough, he’s going to show me how to bite too. I get Sunday afternoons off, as long as I don’t go too far and swear on my parents' lives that I’ve done my homework.

I don’t see Mister Pettus at all, not until the man behind the counter at the convenience store tells me just as I’m about to leave:

“You’re the delivery girl for the sushi place, right?”

“Uh-huh” I mumble through a mouthful of rye, cheddar cheese and tuna.

“Can you get this sandwhich delivered to that crazy guy down Etchison? It’s just down the road, barely outta your way.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“Cause I got a store to run. And because I can’t stand having a weirdo talking to me through the mail-slot like I’m some damn cat. Look, you gonna take it or not?”

“What am I getting out of it?”

“All the expired chocolate you can eat.” He tells me, as he hands me the sandwich in a plastic bag and a half-dozen Snickers bars with last-month’s expiration dates.

“Gee, thanks mister.” I tell him and head out.

“You bring me back that shopping bag, you hear?” I hear him call out as I leave the store.

Mister Pettus’ house is dark and silent. The door’s been changed as well, replaced by an imposing thing made out of layers of metal coated with a faux-wood varnish. His front yard is bare, the shrubberies and potted plants removed or torn from the ground. The place looks bare, almost lifeless. The doorbell has been torn off from its place, so I knock only twice like Mister Guttierez would do.

I’m not going to talk to him I tell myself I don’t even want to look at him.

The mail slot slides open and I see Mister Pettus slide his hand out the slot, snapping his fingers at the empty air. I make sure to stay at the very edge of the door, lower the bag. He snatches it like a bird of prey, lighting-quick; shoves it through the mail slot. I can already hear the tuna melt making a mess inside the packaging. Mister Pettus groans and curses until it’s finally through. The sandwich plops down on the floor and I stifle a giggle as I hear him remove the packaging, only to stick his fingers in a mess of fish and cheese.

I’m walking down the front porch steps when I hear him mutter:

“I don’t blame you, Finn.”

I bite my lip, clench my hands into fists. I want to tell him off, let him know exactly how much I blame him how I hate his pandering attitude. He didn’t seem to mind when he put my life in danger. He didn’t seem to give a good goddamn when he found out I almost got killed. I want nothing more than to kick down the door, grab him by the lapel and just let him have a piece of my mind…

Except I don’t. I walk away, past his front porch down Etchison back to GoodSushi and the usual madness that is my life with Mister Nomura. Even though I hate to admit it, I do look back, hoping that maybe he will be there, looking through his windows down at me, hoping to see his broken, sad smile. But all I see are the forbidding black shutters on that empty skull of a house.

***

On the last Sunday of April, GoodSushi’s phone rang. It was a shrill, strange sound that filled the place. The ringing of an old phone that was untouched, barely used. It rang for a while before Mister Nomura picked up. There was a short muttering, before I finally heard him call:

“Finn! One of your school friends!”

I was just as baffled as he was.

“Are you going around giving my phone number to people?”

I shrugged, not quite sure what to say, taking the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Finn? It’s Betty…” I hear her say against a soft hissing in the background. She seems to be panting, her voice stressed and her breathing shallow.

“Betty? Where did you get this number?”

“Yellow pages. It’s still listed, even if there aren’t any fliers going around…huh!” Betty lets out something like a little yelp. She sounds odd, stressed. “Listen um, are you doing anything right now? Wanna…wanna hang out?”

“Yeah, sure.” I say, suddenly feeling uncomfortable, picking up just a hint of hysteria in her tone. I whisper to her: “Betty, is something wrong?”

“No, no!” she yelps back, a little too loud. “It’s um…it’s kind of personal thing just…can you come see me? I’m by the old theater, you know where that is?”

“Yeah. Gonna be there in fifteen minutes. See you.”

“Yeah, bye.”

“Who was that?” Mister Nomura asks, as I head back upstairs and dress up. Betty sounded strange, panicky. I wasn’t in the mood to get jumped again, not like last time.

“Girl called Betty at my school. We hang out.” I let him know so he won’t worry. “Going to be back by dinnertime.” I tell him as I put my empty bag on the counter so he won’t see how I pocket one of the silver plated training knives.

“You don’t stay out too long after dark, you hear?” he calls out as I step outside the door, the knife tucked on the inside of my sleeve. It feels cold against my skin.

The old theater is a derelict place, set up near the old silver mine. It used to be a b-movie themed restaurant that went under in the 50’s. Then, someone decided to turn the place into an amusement park, but no one wanted to be anywhere near the mine so the next person turned it into a movie theater, except King’s drove them out of business. Now, the faded outlines of monsters and cheap aliens look out from shattered windowpanes, clutching screaming women in their three-clawed hands. Cold War-era warrior-kings in silvery form-fitting costumes shoot tacky ray guns at amorphous blobs from beyond; bats nest in the projection rooms.

I pull my knife out of my sleeve and stuff it in the back of my pants so I can draw it immediately should something come up. Betty is an odd one, but the way she sounded worried me.

“Betty?” I call out her name. She replies from somewhere in the darkness near the concession stands:

“Over here…” her voice is raspy and shaking. I step inside and wrap my fingers around the knife’s handle. Dead leaves and shards of glass crunch under the soles of my shoes. I take a deep breath and let my eyes adjust to the half-light inside.

“Finn. This way…” Betty says, waving me over from the concession stand, a strained smile on her face. She looks terrified.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her, not taking one step closer, the knife gripped tightly in my hand.

“Nothing’s wrong, I just…I wanted to hang out…” Betty says and I can see her gaze wandering to the right if only for a second, then focus behind my shoulder. Her breath is caught in her throat and the knife is in my hand, the blade sliding out of its place. I’m turning, about to slash at whoever’s behind me before the fist slams at the side of my head and sends me careening down into the mildew-choked red carpet. I feel blood flowing freely down my split lip. My head is swimming, my vision getting blurry. From someplace far away, Betty calls my name. I try to get up, but someone drives a boot into my gut, the tip digging into my stomach. I roll down and fight against the wave of nausea, doing my best not to vomit.

Hands grip my hair, pull my head back. A curtain of white cascades down my field of vision and then the hands grip my head, slam it down against the carpet. The fabric soaks up a bit of the blow but my head still feels as if it’s split right down the middle. The hand pulls my head back again, but this time I’m ready. I push up against it and bring up my elbow. Something gives way under the blow, perhaps the ridge of a nose. The attacker lets out a scream and I blink the tears out of my eyes. When I focus, Lisa comes into view.

I kick her just as she turns around to strike again, driving my shoe against her chest, let her roll down the floor. Betty screams something, but I can’t make it out. I sit on Lisa’s chest just as she is about to get up and pin her hands down with my knees. My fists come down on her face. Blood sprays all over, flowing freely down her broken nose. I shudder as I feel my knuckles slamming against jawbone, at the wet sound her cheeks make. She gasps, bucks under me, tries to get free but I’ve got her buffaloed. I keep hitting her until my fingers feel sore. My entire body shudders, shakes.

It’s only as I slowly come down that I see Betty’s hand, reaching out to me. I grasp it and get up, knees shaking. For all the Helfwir training, nothing prepares you for this. Not the fight or the dirty little tricks or the animal thing that pushes out from the back of your brain and takes over.

“I’m sorry…” Betty is weeping, as she tries to straighten my hair. “I didn’t want this to happen…”

“Betty, it’s okay…” I manage, spitting a little blood. “It’s okay.”

“She knew where I was and she threatened she was going to beat me up and when I said no she grabbed my arm and said she’d break it, I’m so sorry…oh my God.” Betty says and I turn around, looking at Lisa as she staggers up to her feet, her face a mess of blood and bruises.

“You best get out of here, Betty.” I tell her and I know exactly how stupid I must sound, out of breath and gasping, my lip bloodied, trying to pull of my Major Steele impression. Betty does it anyway, bolting for the door.

“I’m just going to find her later” Lisa growls, spitting a tooth from her mouth “soon as I’m done with you.”

“You can try, big girl.” I tell her. “Doubt a little chicken like you can fight, anyway.”

“I’m going to tear off your pretty little head and eat your eyeballs.” Lisa says, as we circle each other. I can see her eyes already shifting; the apples of her eyes go wide, swallowing up the irises. She grins and I can see the teeth growing longer, sliding down the gums. “Least I can do, after you had that truck run me over” she growls.

I reach my hand for my knife and my fingers grasp empty air. I see it on the carpet, barely a few steps away from Lisa. She’s shifting fast, growing taller as her skeleton increases in size, new rows of ribs bursting from behind her chest, muscles rippling just under the skin. Her features become elongated, animalistic. A row of canines explode from her gums. She lets out a barely human sound, sharply dropping in octaves as her shifting body rips off her clothes.

I can get it, I can make it before she shifts, I can do it I say and I go for the knife, the world slowing down around me. I can see the fabric of Lisa’s clothes tearing away, strips raining down on the floor, her fingernails shifting into wicked talons. She froths and barks at me in slow motion. Reaching out, I dive for the knife. Lisa moves deceptively slow, her legs transforming even as she aims her leg at my face the soles of her feet compacting, contracting; her knees bend backwards.

When the blow connects, I roll down in real-time. The knife is in my hand. Lisa growls; it’s a guttural, animal sound. I jump upright, make a feint and she mirrors my moves perfectly, follows my every move. I go for a quick lunge, but Lisa avoids it effortlessly, leaving me open to attack. She jumps the next instant, crossing the distance between us in the blink of an eye. She slams against me like a steam hammer. We crash through the rotted wooden doors into the theater and tumble down across rows of seats, crushing them into splinters as we go. Something in my ribcage snaps, loosens inside me. When we stop, I clench my teeth against the blinding pain, bring my legs up against her ribcage so I can push her off me and roll away. She swipes blindly but finds her mark all the same; her talons rip through my jeans, tearing long strips of flesh off my thigh. I struggle not to fall on my knees and jump back just out of her reach as she moves in to bite me. I am at her neck, driving the knife’s handle asgainst it. She whines, coughs. It didn’t hurt her, but it must have stung like hell. I run over to the row next to me and jump up at the old speakers hanging from the wall so I can use them as leverage to get to the gallery. I can do it I keep lying to myself all I need is a little bit of distance, give myself a little time to plan…

Lisa comes bounding across the rows, tearing seats as she goes. She jumps just as I’m pulling myself up the old speaker. Her teeth snap next to my neck, missing my jugular by a centimeter. She grasps my ankle as she goes down and we tumble down with the speaker. Owdered plaster rains down.

I’m on my feet just in time to watch Lisa tearing the old speaker off her. She tosses the chunks aside, their gleaming guts spilling down on the floor. I change the knife’s position, hold it with the blade out. I keep one foot in front of the other, just like Mister Nomura showed me and I hope to God that I won’t blink, I won’t miss, that I won’t trip and fall and that the next thing I feel won't be her teeth sinking in my jugular.

Lisa crosses the distance between us in the blink of an eye. She jumps in the air, her hands open wide. Her talons gleam so strangely in the half-light and I know she’s going to bring them down on my head and crush it like a grape so I thrust the knife upward without really thinking, my body reacting on its own. My shoulder jerks as the blade pierces through the thick fur and slides all the way to the hilt inside Lisa’s ribcage, pierces her heart.

Lisas’ body drops to the floor. Her massive frame drags me down. She whines and struggles like a dog, snarling against the sizzling, burning sensation of her flesh against silver, the fur around the wound slowly burning away. She rakes her claws across my back, tearing off strips of flesh even as her eyes roll to the back of her head. I keep the knife in place inside her, push both my hands against it. Lisa lets out a long, terrible sound. She weeps almost like a baby. Blood froths out from her mouth and her tongue lolls out of her teeth. She is struggling to bite me even now so I twist the knife in the wound. Blood soaks my hand.

Lisa the werewolf kicks and claws and bites at the empty air and then she goes still and silent. I try to pull the knife out of her, but it’s jammed in her ribcage. It makes a hissing, crunching noise. My fingers are sticky and slip off the handle. Her body begins to slowly shrink, shedding the fur. Her hide turns into smooth skin, her eyes slowly shift back into regular brown, all lifeless and glassy now.

I look at Lisa’s face, at the long streaks of tears down her cheeks, at the blood caking her lips. I vomit on the carpet. I try to get up, but end up crawlin on the floor instead. I can feel the skin hanging off my back, the blood flowing freely down my legs. I can hear someone crying. It’s a terrible, pathetic little sound, so loud and pleading. It takes a while to realize that I’m the one doing it, that I’m crying like a baby even as I’m bleeding out in the middle of an abandoned theater and there’s blood on my hands and oh dear God I’m going to die, why won’t someone help me, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to, I don’t…

The pleading little voice thankfully stops, after a while and I fall into a deep place without dreams or light or pain.

***

“…postcards, falling through the space between worlds…” I hear a tiny voice say, somewhere to my left. I realize that I am in a dark place with cruel halogen lights shining on me and that I am in terrible, excruciating pain. I flail my hands, struggling to get free. The tiny voice begins to whimper, turns staccato. Then a tenor, as deep and loud as a church bell calls out. Little skinny hands grasp my wrists, hold them steady against a hard, cold surface.

“Hold her down, for pete’s sake!” comes the tenor voice again and the tiny voice –Betty’s voice- whimpers:

“I’m trying…she’s strong…”

“If this goes wrong, then she will be a strong dead girl. So hold her!”

I turn to look at Betty but all I see are her hands, skinny and weak, the veins bulging against her skin, muscles shifting as she struggles against me. There’s blood on her floral pattern dress. She’s biting her lip, crying.

“What’s happening to me? Betty?” I howl and she blinks, focuses, looks at my face. She’s looks mortified. On my back, big hands are sewing back and forth.

“I’m sorry Finn, you were hurt, there was no place I could take you to, nowhere else…”

“What’s happening to me? What are you doing let go of my hands Betty!” I scream at her and the big hands keep going back and forth, back and forth.

“I had to take you somewhere, you were bleeding real bad. So I took you to my dad, he’s…he’s a surgeon Finn. From the old country. He knows what he’s doing, he’s going to make you well!”

“Let go of me Betty, please let go, let me go!”

“Hold her” the tenor growls, his hands going back and forth.

“Lisa hurt you really bad. You were going to die, Finn. You were bleeding and I didn’t know what to do, so I took you here, I carried you. I didn’t want you to get hurt like that, I never thought Lisa would do it, I didn’t even know…”

“It’s done.” the tenor says and I try to turn around but my back feels sore and my skin is itching. When I try to drop to the floor, my feet give way under me and I drop to the ground, my cheek pressing against cold hewn rock. I’m looking at a boot that’s comically big, my eyes wandering up a legs as wide as tree trunks. A huge calloused hand grasps me, picks me up like a ragdoll to place me on the slab and the man with the white apron and the surgical mask covered in my own blood steps back away from the light so I won’t see how his eyes don’t seem to quite fit in his sockets.

“What is this place?” I manage, shivering.

“This is where I live, Finn. It’s the old silver mine.” Betty blushes, hanging her head low. “I’m sorry, but you’d have died, Finn.”

“You live here? In this place? In the caves?” I say. Betty puts a blanket over my shoulders. I push her away, out of reflex.

“We…when dad moved here, he worked in the mine, originally. Knew the place better than anyone else. After the people left it, he stayed behind, to keep an eye on it.”

“He’s been here a long time.” I ask, struggling to contain the chattering of my teeth. “What did you do to me, Betty?”

“We saved your life. We patched your wounds. I gave blood for you, as much as I could. You were too far gone, when I got here. We stopped the bleeding just in time.”

“Why didn’t you leave me?”

“Why would I leave you? You’re my only friend, Finn! You fought a werewolf head on, like a badass! I didn’t want to help Lisa but she made me! She followed me here and she saw everything and she said if I didn’t help her bait you into the old theater she’d tell everyone and then they’d know about my dad!”

I look just behind Betty’s shoulder and I can see the lumbering shape of her father removing his apron, replacing his surgical tools in the drawers. A giant of a man, his motions slow and delicate.

“We can’t leave this place, Finn. Not now, not ever. It’s getting harder for us to hide these days. If a photo of my dad ever went out, they would go after us, Finn. They’d hurt him.”

The way Betty’s father moves, the set of his shoulders the gait in his step, the shape of his head in the dark, it brings back memories of a gravure painting back home, stuck in the yellowed pages of some musky tome and I know what he is, I know exactly what Betty is, the meaning behind the scarring and the way she looks. The name, their home, they all fall into place.

“You aren’t human, neither of you” I say. Betty’s dad hangs his head. Betty stares at me, terrified. “Erstellt. Isn’t that Dutch for ‘created’?”

“German.” Betty’s dad says, his voice booming in the chamber. “Although my…father was Swiss. I was born in Germany, in a fashion.” He says and I can see Betty already worried, her eyes transfixed at her feet. “He was a good doctor, my father. Parenthood did not suit him. He did not want me so I came to this place, after our long tryst.”

“Then you’re him. Victor’s…” I stop myself from saying the word creature just barely “Adam.”

“My father never gave me a name. Miss Shelley, God bless her soul, she chose to baptize me. Dipped my head under the waters of Lake Geneva to save my soul. She called me Adam, because I was the first. Betty, she is second.”

It’s strange, how anticlimactic life is. There are no scores of trilling violins to point out the scary parts, the sad parts, the strange parts. There’s only silence in a little chamber deep inside the Earth as the idea that Betty was never really born clicks into place in my mind and even then I can’t bring myself to be scared or repulsed by her. Betty sees it, when I look at her. She’s still tense but doesn’t back away.

“I came a long way until I found this place. Jumped across the ice-flows, tread down the continent to reach this place. We have found peace, of sorts, in Orsonville.” Adam Erstellt says, stepping into the light, letting me look at the crooked line of his jaw, his too-thin lips; the bald head with the halo of scars on the crown of his head. “Betty assured me that you would like to keep it this way.”

I nod my head and Adam Erstellt gives me a crooked-toothed grin. “I fixed the wounds and mended the bone. You will have little scarring, but it will fade in time. But the pain will linger. Sometimes, you will feel it. The trauma was too severe and the healing was too fast.”

“What about…” I try to speak, but Lisa’s name sticks to my throat. I think of the look on her face, on the old theater floor, the tears and the blood and the glassy eyes. Adam waves his hand.

“It has been taken care of. I would suggest you went back home. The operation took a while. Your parents will probably be worried. I will show you outside, when you are ready.”

And with that, Adam Erstellt leaves; his gait is long and lumbering. He ducks under the doorway, disappearing in the darkness beyond. Betty hands me one of her spare clothes, silently. She tucks the dog-eared paperback book into a drawer from where she’d dropped it next to the operating table.

“I read to you, when dad operated. He tells me people can hear it sometimes.” She whispers.

“Thanks. You have a lovely reading voice.” I lie and try on the dress. My back itches like crazy and my legs feel numb, but I can stand and that will have to do.

“Can we still hang out? On Monday?” Betty asks and in the light I can see the scars and the stitching. I know that under the floral pattern dress she’s assembled, put together by spare parts like a jury-rigged car except she isn’t driven by wrath or built to satisfy some unquenchable lust for knowledge and power. She is a living, breeathing labor of love.

“Sure.” I tell her and Betty bites her lip, smiles. When I head out, Adam Erstellt leads me through the winding tunnels beneath the silver mine. The way out is simple. I could retrace my steps easily if I wanted but I know I couldn’t risk their trust in me. When we exit through one of the service shafts, Adam Erstellt tells me:

“I met a man named Don once in the Yukon, a long time ago. He was an old man, a bitter man. You have his eyes.”

“You must have met Lucius, my grandfather. He mentioned you, in his journal.”

“Lucius Don thought I was a monster that should be cleansed from the face of the Earth.”

“Well I am not him.” I say and Adam Ertsellt nods knowingly, hands me a flashlight. The way back is open to me now, barely a half-hour walk back to GoodSushi and Mister Nomura. He stays out to keep an eye on me as I go.

It’s at the corner of Ellisson and Etchison that I see the old phone box, the shattered glass in the panes glinting in the moonlight. All I have to do is go inside and dial the number. The glass doors slide open, creaking in the still night. The receiver is caked with dust and layers of mud swept up by the rains. There’s no dial tone, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a simple three-digit number.

When the phone rings, it sounds like bird-bones, tumbling down and old marble staircase. It rings twice, three times. Mom picks up.

“Hello?” she asks and I can just smell the cherry blossoms in her perfume, the lacquered hardwood in the living room. She sounds worried, but she’s keeping it in check. I try my best not to let her hear me breathe. “Who is this?” Mom asks and I want to tell her that I want out, that I want to go back to Chancel Road and sleep in my bed. That I’m scared and I miss her and I miss Dad and my room, that I almost died and I was sewn back together by a monster and its daughter that I’m not Lucuis Don, I don’t have the guts or the bloodlust or the steel to be a killer, I just wanted something simple, something normal…

I hang up. All around me, Orsonville is silent, staring. I’m not Lucius Don. I’m not Dad. But I am not a coward.

Mister Nomura waits for me across the street. He looks disheveled, worried out of his mind. He doesn’t try to conceal it. When I step out of the phone booth, he crosses the street and hugs me. The way he holds me makes the stitches tug at my back, but they don’t hurt. I struggle to breathe, choke back the tears and then I realize that they won’t come.

The phone begins to ring; it’s a strange, shrill sound that cuts through the night. I let it until it stops entirely. We head home, not saying a single word to each other.

I’m not afraid. I’m not alone.