Don’t Let Me Down

By Simon Jimenez

Chapter Three

“Mourning”

*

I never liked funerals. Hated the somber atmosphere, couldn’t stand the depressing attire… never could look straight at a coffin while it was lowered into the earth. From the way Brody stared off into the gray horizon, eyes glazed over and unfocused, steadfastly refusing to look anywhere near his mother’s coffin, I could tell that he didn’t like funerals either.

Brody loved his mother to bits. She and I, however, never crossed paths often, and when we did, there would only be a slight nod of recognition, sometimes a requisite ‘How are you this fine day?’ Our relationship was nothing more than that, and that was fine by me. In fact, I was so removed from her that I had no idea her condition was fatal. All Brody told me was that she was sick, and that she needed a doctor, which was why she was in the hospital…just like him to be so vague.

But then again, it was never any of my business, so I didn’t blame him for not filling me in on the gory details. She wasn’t a part of my life. 

So if I hardly knew her, then why was I feeling so empty, as if one of my organs were missing? Easy. I was sad because Brody’s eyes looked like he plucked them from a corpse... an expression that was all too familiar for me.

I was only nine when I threw flowers down onto my father’s casket. I knew what it was like to lose a parent, both parents in a way… how it felt like someone had severed your lifeline, even though you were only halfway up the mountain. Loss was one of the worst feelings to experience, and it never hit quite as hard as it did during a rainy funeral. Brody and I now had that much more in common.

I wish I could say that was a good thing. 

“Oh, excuse me,” I said when something knocked against my legs. A large white dog with a black streak running down his face from cheek to cheek looked up from behind me, grunted, then trotted away amongst the tombstones.

I asked Brody whose dog that was.

“Did you say something?” he asked as he looked up from the grass. He was still in a daze.

I shook my head. “It’s alright, forget it.”

I kept my eyes on Brody’s the entire day, through the rain and mist, as he shook hands with strangers and made the rounds with his mother’s old friends, wondering if he’d ever let himself cry. ‘No, probably not,’ I thought as he shoveled the first fistful of dirt down the six foot pit. ‘Brody doesn’t cry. He punches walls.’

That night, his fist bled rivers. Once done creating a crater in my bedroom wall, he turned to me, whispered “That kind of hurt”, and fainted, still wearing his black suit.

It was hard, but I managed to drag him onto my bed and tuck him in.

Brody spoke in his sleep, and I, lying next to him in the dark wide-awake, listened.

“Yeah mom,” he said. “I do love him.”   

Two weeks later, he took me on a date. There was a full moon, glowing and bright. It was our only source of light as the train ran overhead in a screaming rush of a thousand roaring lions, vibrating the small alley where Brody and I stood as if it were perched on a paint shaker. Everything was louder where we were, the world screeching painfully in our ears, but we didn’t move. Under the moon, my boyfriend had me pinned against the dusty brick wall, grinding and biting.

We had just come out of the movie theater, deciding halfway through the picture we’d rather be fucking. So here we were.

As he entered me, I knew this wasn’t making love, or even sex. It was just fucking, and that was all right with me, because it felt good. He went faster as the minutes went by, and I grabbed his half rolled up shirt, his arm, his hair. Then it ended, and the movie inside was over, and people began to pour out.

My fingers interlocked with his free ones as he drove me home over the city bridge and through the quiet, sleeping neighborhoods. As I massaged his hand, I looked into his eyes, which were glazed over on the road ahead, and I realized it was going to take longer than two weeks for them to come alive again.

He had me home in record time, and wasted no time driving off, leaving a cloud of smoke in his wake. I coughed, waving dust out of my face. Once I had gotten my bearings back, I noticed something on my front lawn, something large, white, and wagging.

“Oh, it’s you,” I said, remembering the dog with the peculiar black streak on its face. “What are you doing here?”

I walked over to him, and he stared up at me with calm, smoky eyes.

“You are a really big dog, aren’t you?” I rubbed gently behind his ears, and his eyes closed in response. His hair was harsh and wiry, and slick with dirt and oil. “…and a really dirty dog.” I retracted my hands and wiped them down on my jeans. The dog looked at me with a sideways head, and I smiled back, and began heading towards the front door. It wasn’t until I had gotten my keys into the lock that I realized the dog was perched right behind me.

“Hey hey,” I told him, “you aren’t coming in. My sister’s allergic… and you smell.” I thought that threatening hand gestures were enough to dissuade him from entering, but as soon as I opened the door, he darted inside. “That bitch,” I muttered, chasing him into the house.

I followed the paw marks left on the rug up to the second floor, and into my room, where he had made himself more than comfortable on my twin-sized bed, which he completely covered.

“Oh, come on…. That’s disgusting.” I tried to shoo him off with flailing hands, but he didn’t bat an eye… just looked at me with a steadily dozing face. Then he yawned. As soon as I saw that, I yawned as well, suddenly feeling incredibly tired. “Well, I guess one night can’t hurt, right?”

Since I wasn’t going to be sharing a bed with the crap infested mutt, I prepared to sleep on the floor. I stripped off my shirt, but before I could get my pants off, I had fallen down in exhaustion, my entire body weighing more than my muscles deemed reasonable. I could barely move, I was so tired.

“Why am I… so…?”

I fell asleep, half-naked, the ceiling light still on.

Right before I lost consciousness, I heard something, a familiar woman’s voice, whispering in my ear.

“Goodnight, Harbor.”

When I woke up the next morning, the dog was gone. I looked around the house, trying to find out where the dog had left through. I couldn’t find any openings as all the doors and windows were closed, and the paw prints he had left earlier were gone. All evidence that the dog ever existed had disappeared… except for my bed, with white fur and dirt covering its circumference.

“That bitch,” I muttered, throwing my sheets in the washer.

At school the next day, I told Melvin about the mysterious, freeloading dog.

His first response was to laugh. I liked the way he laughed, as if his cheeks were made of jello, and his voice made of whipped cream, a giant vibrating dessert. “Strange that a dog would come into your house so readily…” he said once his laughter died down. “…you say it was large, white, and dirty? Are you sure it was a dog?”

“Yeah, because dogs are so hard to identify.” I scoffed at that. “Maybe it was a giant white possum.”

Melvin disregarded my sarcasm. “What I mean to say is, are you sure it wasn’t a wolf?”

I froze, from toe to the tip of my nose. “A wolf?” A wolf in my house?

“A wolf is definitely a possibility,” Melvin said thoughtfully. “People have been seeing wolves around the city recently… though they are usually attacked afterward. It’s strange that you weren’t mauled to death.”

“You really know how to put things in perspective, Mel.”

Melvin nodded, and continued to eat his salmon tartar.

Below the table, my hands were trembling… I had actually put these hands on a wolf. When I was a kid, along with the stories of angels and their wings, my mother read another to me, the tale about the lonely wolf prince who guarded the grave of his ancestors for millennia, until the gods of the moon finally granted him eternal rest. He was now one of the stars in the night sky who watched over the living, creating countless constellations with his brethren. Wolves were the proud protectors of the moon, fierce scavengers of the earth, and mighty warriors of the forests.

Wolves kicked ass. I hoped I would see him again. Deep down inside, I knew I would.

“How is Brody?” Melvin asked, snapping me out of my thoughts as he licked the remnants of food off his Tupperware.

I sighed, resting my head against my palm. “I don’t know. Still sad, I guess, but he doesn’t show it. Not even to me. The only times I do see him, all we do is…” I trailed off, not eager to get into that part of the relationship with Melvin, “…play chess.”

“You should get him flowers.”

“Why would I get him flowers?” I asked disdainfully. “He’s not the one who’s dead.”

“Flowers are good.” Melvin looked at his watch, stood up, and packed up his things. “Get him flowers. My momma gets me flowers when I’m sad or lonely.”

I had to restrain a smile at that. The thought of his mother giving him flowers was somewhat cute. In fact, all of Melvin’s being was too precious for existence. “The flowers make you happy?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “but they remind me that I’m not alone.”

Even though I had almost no respect for Melvin Mcguinnen in terms of his knowledge on relationships, he was probably onto something with the flowers.

Keeping this mind, after school I went to the florist at the city mall a few blocks away and bought a bouquet of long-stemmed roses. When the lady at the cash register asked with a devious smile who the flowers were for, I smiled and told her it was for my true love.

“She’s one lucky girl,” she said.

When I left the building and crossed over the parking lot, I felt something knock against my legs. I would’ve kept walking if that something hadn’t barked to get my attention.

I looked down and smiled at the white wolf. “I knew I’d see you again,” I said. “You want to come with me to deliver these flowers?”

The wolf stared silently.

I shrugged. “I guess that’s a yes.”

It took ten minutes to make it to Brody’s building, the wolf following the entire way close behind, occasionally tripping over my feet. We got looks from passersby, probably wondering what kind of kibble I fed the big fellow. I always wondered what it would be like to own a dog, and guessed it was probably something like this, except not as cool.

The wolf barked at Brody’s brick-laden apartment building.

“Yep, that’s where my boyfriend lives.” My boyfriend…. Only now had I noticed how tingly I felt when I said those words aloud.

Above the cracked pavement steps, I rang the small, greasy bell, and offered the wolf another smile, to which the he replied with a cocked head.

The buzzer went off. “Who is it?” a tired voice asked.

I told him who it was. All that came from the other end was some static and a pregnant pause.

“Brody?” I called again, “You still there?”

“Come up,” was all he said before the intercom went dead. The lock on the door released. I shrugged and kept the door open for the wolf, glad that the proprietor allowed pets in his building. We got out of the elevator at the third floor, and went down the narrow hall to the fourth door on the right, door 421. I knocked, and the door opened with a weary looking Brody on the other side.

I extended the roses with a gentle smile. “I got these for--”

“Mom?” Brody yelled, eyes wider than dinner plates. “What are you doing here?”

My smile faded, scared that he was losing his mind. “Brody, it’s me, Harbor.”

He looked at me as if I’d gone stupid. “I know that. I was talking to her.” His eyes went down, to my friend, the wolf. “…I can’t believe you’re back.”

“I had to come back,” the wolf said. Her mouth wasn’t moving, but I was positive the voice was coming from her, a voice deep and throaty, and all too familiar. “I… I missed you so much. How could you ask me to abandon you?”

Brody stared at the wolf, the wolf stared back at him, and I looked back and forth between the two of them, completely lost.

Okay, that was a lie. I wasn’t completely lost.

Brody’s mother had turned into a wolf, the funeral was a fake to throw people off, and she had used me to get into his building.

Completely natural, right? 

A long time ago, I had resigned myself to the fact that I had no control over the more peculiar aspects of my life, those of which ranged from the joy of puberty to knife wielding grannies. Things happen, shit flops off the fan, the rain will pour… whatever your choice of words was, it didn’t matter in the end. One day, your car won’t start in the middle of a highway and a whale will swoop down from the sky and crap on your windshield, for no reason other than to entertain the universe.

I could live with that, I really could. I guess that’s why I remained surprisingly calm and collected as I sat in the passenger seat with Brody in his car once again, only this time his mother, the werewolf, was riding backseat. He was driving all of us out of the city, into the country, leading to who knows where, and looked mad as a knife to the gut while doing it.

An awkward silence filled the car, as everyone in it refused to talk, or just didn’t know what to say.

Before we had left, Brody had tried to drop me off back home, but I refused. I was at once glad to be doing something with him that didn’t require taking it up the ass, and intensely curious as to what the logistics of having a werewolf as a mother were…and I just couldn’t figure it out. Brody seemed normal enough to me. I’d known him all my life, I knew who he was inside, so I guess learning that he was a werewolf was like being told he was a quarter Irish.

Okay, maybe it was a little different, but truth be told, it didn’t make that much of a difference to me. And yes, the fact that it didn’t matter did surprise me, and also spoke volumes of just how far down the rabbit hole I was willing to follow this guy.

Brody caught me staring at him while he was driving, which made his face fall into a deep frown. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not like that. I’m as human as they come.”

“There’s no shame in being a wolf,” his mother snapped from behind, making me jump in my seat.

“Half-wolf, mom. Half-wolf.” He scratched his head, looking out the windshield pensively. “And there is shame in being like you…” his voice died down, “…and you know that. We all do.”

His mother had nothing to say to that.

“Whatever. We’re almost there,” Brody said.

A few miles out of the city, he took the car off the road and into the surrounding forest, brushes and sharp branches hit the windows with the crack of a leather whip. As we went farther in, the cracking died down, and the forest canopy above muffled out the gray sun in its hair of leaves.

We arrived in a small clearing of trees, covered in a rug of dead leaves and branches. In the center of the clearing stood the end of a large metal pipe connected to a shack of concrete. I assumed it was a long forgotten route into the city sewer system. Was this our destination? An old sewer line?

Brody got out of the car, and I followed as he walked up to the entrance to the sewers, and gazed into the foreboding, whale-like darkness stretching endlessly into the earth. The pipe, at least eight feet in diameter, was tilted at a slight slant, leading down more like a steady ramp than a free fall drop. 

“This leads to a safe place,” he told me, “the safest place in the world for her.”

I winced at the smell wafting out of the darkness. “Where? The garbage dump?”

Brody cracked the faintest of smiled, and my heart skipped a couple beats shy of a heart attack. I hadn’t seen him smile for weeks, and I have to admit, it was really, really nice.

My boyfriend turned around, and faced his mother, who was now perched on the hood of his car, scratching fleas out from behind her ear. He cleared his throat, she stopped, and the whole world seemed to be at a standstill, not a gust of wind the air, as if God himself were holding his breath.

They stood face to face for a long time, until he said, “Hunters have picked up your trail by now. It’s time to go.”

“I know,” she replied in that odd baritone voice of hers. “I’m ready.” Her head lowered. “Will you walk me there, this time?”

He hesitated for a moment, eyes letting slip a small sliver of fear… but in the end, he nodded. “Yes, I will.”

She leapt off the hood of the car and landed on the leaves in a soft wet thump. “Let us go, then.”

Brody turned to me. “You should stay here. It’s quite a walk.”

“No thanks.” I rubbed down my prickling skin, my stomach feeling a little uneasy, almost seasick. There was something unusual about the air. “It feels weird out here. I think I’ll go with you guys.”

Brody nodded, and the three of us descended into the wet abyss, unaware that there were eyes in the treetops.  

*

At least half an hour had passed, and endless darkness still stretched before us, constantly heading further and further into the core of the earth. It was so dark, I could barely make out the hand before my face. The moist air made me sweat, my clothes beginning to stick to my body in uncomfortable places.  

I slipped on a wet stone, and Brody caught me.

“You okay?” he asked in between breaths. 

I nodded tiredly, and we continued walking.

The wolf, or rather Brody’s mother, was moving with a limp, something I hadn’t noticed before since she was still more graceful than a flowing stream, even with the impediment. She reminded me of a four-legged ballerina, paws barely making contact with the ground before lifting for the next step. She never once showed any signs of tire.

“Can I ask you something, Mrs. Gallagher?” I said, half-hoping she’d answer.

She never made eye contact with me. “What is it?”

“Why did you come to my house?” Brody was looking over at me now with faint curiosity. “I mean, not to sound rude or anything…but I hardly know you, almost never talked to you… of all the places to go, why did you come to me?”

It took a long time to find an answer, but once she did, she didn’t hesitate with a single word. “I ran from my destiny like a coward. I am a shame to my race. There are not many places for a coward to go…but I knew I was safe with you, at least until I was prepared to face my son again.” Her head faced toward the endless darkness ahead. “I should never have returned. For that, Brody, I truly am sorry.”

Her son was silent. They had such a strange dynamic. Brody had visited her in the hospital for all those years, never missed a visit. So why was he being so distant now? 

“Why do you have to leave?” I asked.

She growled from deep within. “…I can feel myself losing grip, slowly. The blood that runs through me is no longer human, and basic instinct is smothering my sixty years of being a human. I am a threat, as are all werewolves when in their prime.” Her pace slowed even more. “A wolf’s heart is a powerful thing… it grants me the ability to withstand the cruelest of tortures without the blink of an eye…and the power to tear the world apart indiscriminately.”  

“Werewolves are monsters, just like Bethany,” Brody said, making his mother’s ears perk up. “There’s no place for those creatures in this world.”

“What about you?” his mother retorted. “Is there no place for you? No place beside Harbor?”

“…I’m not a wolf.”

“No,” his mother said, “you are no wolf.”

The conversation died there. Brody’s expression continued to look more and more pained as we walked, and his mother refused to look behind at either of us. I wondered where we were going, but decided against asking, as I saw our destination up ahead in the far distance.

As if we were heading into the next life, there was a dazzling blue light at the end of the sewers. The smell of decay grew strong, and contrasted with the beauty of the luminescence in the darkness.

Eventually we got near enough to see the blue light was coming from behind a steel door set against a pale stonewall. A strange inscription, which looked vaguely like Japanese, etched deeply into its face like a scar. My stomach felt sick as we got nearer, like a hand was yanking it through my throat, making me gag.

Brody ignored me, and went right up to the door, pushing against it with the slightest pressure, letting it swing inward, revealing the world behind it.

In the sacred blue light, behind the door, was an old forest, trees as thick as buildings, and flowers more beautiful than diamonds, twisting like draped snakes around the thick roots of even larger flora. The song of nature echoed softly like a hum in my ear, and begged me to walk toward it, to embrace it in its unusual awe.

Slowly, I found myself reaching my hand out to touch the savagely beautiful blue light… but Brody yanked it away long before it could get near.

“Don’t touch it,” was all he said. “Never touch the light.”

I nodded quickly and backed away a bit, allowing his mother to get nearer to him. The light from the door silhouetted them both as they stood before it like two creatures in the wild, studying each other, recognizing the other from somewhere long ago.

His mother spoke first. “I love you, you know.”

He knelt down so they were closer. She continued.

“I always will love you… even when I am no longer me. I will always be your mother.” Her voice raised. “You may only be half a wolf, but you are completely my son. Never, ever forget that. Promise me you won’t.”

Brody nodded, and said “I promise” so softly it was as if he had never said it at all.

He then looked as though he wanted to say something more, but could not find the right words. His mother didn’t seem to be bothered, however. She simply nudged his cheek with hers, and whispered something that I couldn’t hear.

Then he smiled, and backed away from her.

His mother’s smoky eyes fell upon mine, and my back straightened. “Take care of him while I’m gone, will you, Harbor?”

“Wait,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I just realized… I don’t even know your name.”

She looked surprised for a second, then chuckled grimly. “Does that really matter?”  

“I…I guess not.” She was right. It didn’t matter at all if I knew her name. This was not my story. “Goodbye, Mrs. Gallagher.”

She gave me a slight nod, and turned back to the light, taking in a sure breath. “Yes…this is goodbye, isn’t it?”

Each step she took toward the light, she seemed to become more and more afraid. Her rear legs were trembling, but she never stopped, always pushing forward with the next step as if her mind had to will each individual muscle to do so. Once that last paw landed in the ethereal light, she looked back at us, and smiled the best a wolf could smile. 

Before I could smile back, the blue light shimmered like glass under the sun, and her body burst into a cloud of gray matter, which rose slightly from the ground, then ripped in the air like a torn cloth.

She was gone, as if her being had never existed.

Brody’s eyes were closed, his hands in his pockets. My mouth was agape, wanting to ask what just happened. A part of me already knew.

I asked anyway, in no more than a hoarse whisper. “Is she dead?”   

“She was dangerous,” Brody said, with only a tinge of anger, his eyes barely open. “In a week, she would have forgotten who I was, would’ve killed me and everyone else in the city.”

He then walked away, and I followed in his wake, regretting having asked the question, regretting having come along at all. I had no purpose here. All that had been accomplished was deepening the well of sadness in my chest, which made me ask myself the same question from before… if I hardly knew her, then why was I feeling so sad?

The answer was the same as before, and so obvious it hurt.  

Brody said nothing the entire way out of the tunnel system, and continued to remain silent, even when daybreak hit our faces, the car waiting patiently for us at the edge of the clearing. He drove me back to my house going ten miles slower than the speed limit. When I asked him if he wanted to stay the night, I expected a brief ‘no’, but was elated when he nodded silently and followed me into the front door.

Gwyn was watching the news in the living room as we drifted past her toward the stairs. My mother was still at work. We had just arrived in my bedroom when he said, “I need to take a piss.”

Before he got away, I grabbed his arm. “You gonna be alright?” I asked.

The corner of his mouth twitched. I expected him to lash out at me, and I’d understand if he did… but all he gave was a weak smile and the cold words, “I’m always alright.” He left the room. My back against the bed, I lay in darkness, listening as he locked the bathroom door. Even from across the hall, I could hear him.

He may have had the heart of a wolf, but he cried like a human.