Нил Шустерман: Red Rider's Hood

"I think you know," she said.

I didn't know much of anything right then. That blow left me barely remembering my own name. "What did you hit me with?"

She reached over and pulled a nasty-looking rifle onto her lap. "I hit you with this rifle butt. As for the business end, you'll be meeting that in just a few minutes, I suspect."

I wanted to think she was joking, but she was serious. Deadly serious.

"This is about your brother, isn't it?"

"No. It's about you. It's about the things you do. It's about what you are."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Well, if that's true, we'll know soon enough." She looked up at a skylight above us. The sky was painted with purple-and-orange clouds. Dusk was kicking up colors and would soon be settling into night.

Marissa stood up, went off, and came back with something in her hands. There was a little table between us―cherrywood with fancy frills and clawed feet. She slammed the thing down on the table.

It was a skull. A human skull. Its empty eye sockets stared out at me. Its yellowed teeth were fixed in a snarling grin.

"What the. . ."

She sat down across from me, took the rifle, and laid it across her lap. "Now we wait."

"Do you have to leave that skull on the table staring at me? It's bad enough I have to sit here at all, why did you have to put that there?"

She didn't answer.

"This isn't exactly the date I had in mind," I told her.

She sighed. "Do I have to gag you?"

After that I kept quiet.

Slowly the clouds beyond the skylight bruised deeper, until the sky was dark. Still Marissa stared at me. Then, through a back window, a thin shaft of moonlight shone in, hitting the table. The dome of the skull glowed a faint blue in the darkness.

And what I saw then I will never forget for as long as I live.

The skull began to change.

I'd seen strange things in my life, and heard of things stranger still, but nothing could prepare me for what happened to that skull once the moonlight touched it.

The dome began to elongate, the jaw pulled back, the nose stretched forward, and those grinning teeth changed, too. The canines lengthened and sharpened, and the eye sockets shrank until I was no longer looking at a human skull. I was looking at the skull of some hideous beast.

I stared at the skull, astonished, and when I looked up Marissa was staring at me, just as shocked―but her expression wasn't about the skull. She was shocked by me.

"Oh my gosh, Red, I'm so sorry!" She put down the rifle and came over to untie me.

"Do you mind telling me what this is all about? Am I having a hallucination? Is this a concussion from getting knocked in the head?"

"No," Marissa said as she finished untying me. "It's real. You saw what you saw."

"And what exactly did I see?"

She sighed. "It's best if you don't know. Just go home, and forget what happened here."

Sure―like I could possibly forget any of it. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me."

She looked at me long and hard. "Once you know, it will haunt you forever. You'll go to bed thinking about it. You'll wake up thinking about it. It will fill your dreams. Are you sure you want to know?"

I nodded.

She reached down and picked up the terrible animal skull from the table. "This is the skull of Xavier Soames. Cedric Soames's grandfather."

I was never one to believe in werewolves. That was just silly stuff they showed on TV late at night to keep you awake so you'd watch the commercials. Sure, some people seemed to have more animal in them than human at times, but changing from man into beast―it just didn't happen in the world I was raised in. At least that's what I had always thought. Now I wasn't so sure. I wasn't sure about anything anymore.

"Xavier Soames was the first," Marissa told me. "The first one in our neighborhood anyway. He started a gang."

"The Wolves!"

"That was thirty years ago. But a couple of werewolf hunters came along to end the curse, and sent them all to their graves. The Wolves were gone, and for the longest time the only gang in town that people took seriously was that all-girl gang―the Crypts, I think they're called. They're not werewolves, and as far as I know, they haven't bothered anyone. The neighborhood recovered from the dark years. . . . Then, just a couple of years ago, Cedric started it up again and gathered a bunch of new members every bit as bad as the first."

"But. . . but he's not a werewolf, right? He's just pretend­ing, right? Right?"

"Haven't you heard the stories," Marissa said, "about coy­otes getting neighborhood cats and dogs? Since when have there ever been coyotes in the middle of the city?"

It was true that there had been more warnings about coy­otes over the past year. And now that I thought about it, I remembered my mom always saying that when she was a kid, there were a few years when she couldn't go out at night because of them, especially when the moon was bright, and . . . I gasped as I realized what I was thinking. Not when the moon was bright, but when the moon was full.

"And," said Marissa, "what about all those reports about teenagers in our neighborhood running away from home?"

"So, what about it?"

"Think, Red! Those kids didn't run anywhere. Oh, maybe they tried to run, but they didn't get too far. No farther than a wolf's belly."

"No!"

"Yes! And they don't leave any evidence. Werewolves―they eat their prey, bones and all." Then she picked up the hideous wolf skull from the table. "Of course, you don't have to be afraid of old Xavier Soames here―he can't hurt you anymore. Now I just use him as a test. You see, the moment this skull changes from human to wolf, that's the moment they all trans­form. That's how I know you're not one of them."

I rubbed the back of my head. A knot the size of a walnut had risen there.

"I've been trying to figure out their identities for months now, but the Wolves are very secretive. They don't make their identities known often, and when they do, it's usually the last thing that person sees. Cedric's the only one we know for sure."

"But I saw some of them!" I said. "I can identify―" Then something suddenly dawned on me.

She must have seen the way my jaw dropped halfway to the ground. "What's wrong?"

"Your brother..." I almost didn't tell her, but I knew I had to. It was too serious not to tell.

"My brother what?"

"Your brother's one of them."

She stepped back from me and looked at me in anger, as if I had slapped her right across the face. "Don't you say that! Don't even think it! He'd never be one of them! Never!"

"But I saw him!"

"You take it back! You're lying just to get back at me for hit­ting you! You take it back!"

But I shook my head. It hurt my brain to shake it. "He came to my grandma's house with the rest of them this morning. They stole the money I brought for her. And then they stole my car."

She sat down in the leather chair, trying to sort it out, try­ing to deny what I was telling her. "Maybe Cedric's just making him pay back a favor. He does that, you know. Just because Cedric's got my brother jumping through hoops doesn't mean he's one of them. I bet he'll get away, and tell me all about it the second he does."

I thought about that nasty look on Marvin's face. He sure looked like one of them to me.

"Maybe you're right, and maybe you're wrong," I told her. "Either way, it's not safe to be out there now." I looked at the skull she held. I did not want to see the face of any creature that owned a skull like that.

"I don't get to be safe," she said. "Wolf hunters never do. And now that you know, you don't get to be safe, either. We can't do this alone―we're gonna need some help."