Darrell Schweitzer - Full MoonCity

“I’m scrunched up as far as I can scrunch, Hersh.”

“There’s something I have to confess, Dad,” came the voice of my daughter.

“Which of your damn cars did you smash into what?”

“No, no, this is about your current dilemma.”

“We already talked about that, kid, and just at the moment I-”

“This is about why you turned into a werewolf, Dad. Did that happen again tonight, by the way?”

“It did. We can have a nice long chat about that at a later-”

“See, I did order that werewolf potion.”

“Why in the hell did-”

The BMW suddenly went over something on the street we’d turned onto. Felt like part of a wooden box or something like that. The car bounced and I was thrown against the side of my improvised cubbyhole. I was suddenly visited by a very painful cramp.

“Hold on, Beth. I’ve got a cramp and I have to stretch my leg for a second.”

I eased painfully up off the floorboards to try to straighten out my leg.

Simultaneously the car passed a light post and a bunch of college kids who were emerging from a Burger Oasis. They got a very brief glimpse of me before I hunkered back down.

“Oh, God,” screamed a coed. “It’s him!”

“It’s the Wolf-Man!”

“Call the cops on your cell, Julie!”

Hersh gunned the motor and went bouncing along the night street. He skidded around a corner, drove down an alley to the next street over, slowed, and entered a darker, quieter, less frequented street. “I don’t think they got my license number.”

My leg still hurt, and my heart was beating at an unfamiliar rate. “Tell me about the potion, Beth,” I said into the phone.

“Are you okay? What was all that noise?”

“Villagers spotted me, but we eluded them. None of them had flaming torches.”

“Well, listen, Dad. I meant the werewolf gunk for Bryson Kranbuhl.”

“Your mother’s literary agent? The despicable oaf who suggested she write I Married an Asshole ?”

“That Bryson Kranbuhl, yes. He’s also been trying to sell the memoir as a TV serial. He’s convinced that it can be the next Survivor ,”she continued. “I ordered the potion for him. I was hoping it would distract him and also inspire Mom to evict the guy. She, you know, isn’t much of an animal lover. Bryson’s been pretty much living with us since early this year.”

“You’re saying you got the two philters mixed up and gave me his potion?”

“No, Dad, I’m saying that imbecile Vincent X. Shandu screwed up and sold me two doses of werewolf potion and none of love potion,” she explained. “I’m going to drive down to Palm Springs, since there’s a lot of desert around there and maybe I can find him and-”

“No, nope. Don’t drive anywhere,” I cautioned her. “I think we have another way to work a cure. So you wait until-”

“We’re there,” announced Hersh, braking the car on what felt like a gravel driveway.

“Stay where you are until I contact you,” I told my daughter. “Bye.”

“Information from your nitwit offspring?” Hersh came around to my side of the BMW, opened the door, and helped me get myself off the floor.

“Yeah, now I know who the Wolf-Man of Westwood is,” I replied as I emerged.

Fletcher Boggs was circling the straight-back chair I was sitting uncomfortably upon. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about sixty, tanned and with an impressive head of white hair. “Vincent X. Shandu is second-rate,” he observed, halting in front of me and scrutinizing my face. “You’re not much of a werewolf.”

“Sufficient enough for me.”

“You’re not even an authentic wolf,” the big occult investigator said, stepping back. “You aren’t four-legged, you don’t have a bushy tail; except for two canines, your teeth aren’t even especially lupine.”

Hersh had settled onto a low tan sofa across the cottage parlor. “Be that as it may, Fletcher, can you reverse the effect of the potion?”

Boggs frowned at him. “A defrocked veterinarian could do that.” He returned his attention to me. “Tell me what your daughter told you about this stuff she fed you. By the way, is she going to get back on Posy Pickwick ?”

“Negotiations are under way,” I told him. “About the potion. Beth told me Shandu took it from a book of magic by a fellow named Count Monstrodamus, who flourished in the eighteenth century.”

“Actually he flourished through several centuries,” said the occult investigator. “The Count wasn’t immortal, but he hung on for almost three hundred years. Sounds like Vince was borrowing from a copy of The Vile and Unholy Spells, Potions and Incantations of the Infamous, Black-Souled Magus, the Notorious Count Monstrodamus, Late of Vienna. Any idea which edition?”

“The first. The one that’s supposed to be bound in human skin.”

Boggs shook his head. “Bullshit. It’s only goat skin,” he said. “But the first edition version of the werewolf potion is slightly different from the one in later editions.”

Hersh asked, “You have a copy?”

“Too expensive.” He crossed to the PC that rested on a tile-topped, iron-legged table against the wall. “I’ve modified my computer so it can access just about every forbidden sorcery book known to man.”

“Who put that stuff on the Net?” I asked him.

“Various adepts.” He seated himself at the computer. “I’ll take a look at the Count’s formula, then look up a surefire antidote. Did I mention my fee?”

“Not as yet.”

“Since you’re a buddy of Bernie’s, I’ll give you the discount. It’ll run you, soon as you’re satisfied with the cure, six hundred ninety-five bucks.”

“I can afford that,” I assured him.

I put on a fresh plaid shirt, buttoned several buttons and stepped into the john to observe my image.

I was my normal everyday self, as I had been since late last night when I’d swallowed the six ounces of Fletcher Boggs’s antidote to the werewolf potion my madcap daughter had slipped into my morning smoothie. Considering what I was paying, I expected he’d serve me out of something more upscale than an old peanut butter jar.

The important thing, though, was that the stuff cured my lycanthropy in a matter of minutes. Outside of severe nausea, heart palpitations, double vision, and cramps for about a half hour, there were no side effects to speak of. Since last night I hadn’t turned into a wolf-man again. And I noticed this morning that I didn’t even need to shave. Hopefully I was cured.

I’d been in the kitchen less than a minute, when I heard a rattling crash out on the front half acre. That was followed by a large splash.

Setting the half gallon of vanilla soy milk that I’d just fetched out of the refrigerator down next to the blender, I ran outside.

Beth, wearing a bright yellow singlet, crimson cycling pants, and a silver cycling helmet, was stepping gingerly out of the fishpond. This was a few feet from where the birdbath once had stood.

A black ten-speed bike was partially submerged among the lily pads and agitated goldfish.

“Have you run out of cars, child?” I inquired, bending and hefting the bicycle out of the greenish water.

“I made a vow not to drive a car of any kind for six months.”

“In church?”

“In the Will Destry offices,” my daughter explained. “Part of the deal everybody worked up to put me back on Posy Pickwick: Rock & Roll Detective.”

“So you’re gainfully employed again.” I laid the dripping bike out on the lawn.

“I’m going to hire a chauffeur tomorrow, but today I used one of my bicycles to ride over to visit you.”

“As I told you last night, I am no longer a werewolf. If all goes well, I never shall be again.”