The Beasts: A Winter Tale, continuing the story begun in The Old

[ChrisGibson]

They already thought he was dead, but they didn't know, which is a whole new set of feelings. Of course, Seth already knew, but Seth isn't here. Wow. I fell asleep. I hope you have a great day too.

 

[ChrisGibson]

T H R E E

JOURNALS


The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

-Friedrich Nietzsche



“Please,” Natalie Keller said, sitting down in the large chair Jim had been in the night before, “tell us everything.”
“Ma’am,” Detective McCord said, looking around the room with what Marabeth thought was more nervousness than she ever expected from someone in the police department. “everything is… not pleasant.”
Natalie nodded grimly.
“I wouldn’t expect it to be.”
“We found him by a river. Really, in a river, Ma’am. In a town called Amhurst, about an hour and a half south of Chicago. He… from what we found it seems like he was gone for several months. We estimate as long as last April.”
Marabeth saw her grandmother nodding, and realized she was nodding too. Mother sat going paler and paler, looking out into nothing.
“We are not sure what he was doing there, or why he left—”
“He was unhappy,” Rebecca said.
Natalie looked at her daughter in law and said, “He was unhappy in life. Not in his marriage. He had a depression. It’s in the family. He was looking for a way out.”
Detective McCord raised an eyebrow and Natalie continued, “Not out of life, mind you. He was looking for a way back in, some sort of answers. Or healing. But I guess in the end…” the old woman’s voice faltered and now she seemed deflated.
“Most of the clothes were intact,” Detective McCord said. “They could be washed, especially the coat, though there are signs of effluvia, signs of the ravages of what happens when someone isn’t buried.”
“Did he die in the river or by the river?” Kris said, suddenly.
“It is likely he drowned,” Detective McCord said, “and then may have been… taken out of the river.”
“By?” Kris said.
Detective McCord said, “Mr. Strauss, it happened months ago, and it almost doesn’t matter.”
“Animals,” Kris said. “My dad was eaten by animals is what you’re saying.”
“Nature took it’s course,” Detective Mccord said neutrally. “And after such a long time it really is hard to say what happened first.”
Kris put his head in his hands and Jim stared dumbly at the wall, but the Detective turned to Marabeth.
“Ma’am, whatever you have in that satchel could tell you a lot. We opened it. I opened it for clues. His credit cards were in it. But also binders, journals maybe, and not badly damaged by the water. That is the thing. Your father was not found far from that satchel.”
“And you didn’t read anything in it?” Marabeth said as she fumbled with the brass snap and opened it, and then tugged on the zipper, surprised it still worked, even though Detective McCord had said it did.
“No,” he told her, “because it was labeled, ‘For Marabeth.’”
“Oh,” she said, slipping her hand into the bag.
She looked around.
“Do you all want me to open it now?”
“Your father said it was for you,” Rebecca told her. “It’s yours to open, and yours to share.”
Whatever her grandmother had been about to say, Natalie Keller nodded.
“We need to go out and tell the rest of the family,” Marabeth’s grandmother said.
“Do you want me to?” Jim offered. There was a strange, hard look in his eyes, and Joyce couldn’t say what it was .
“No,” Natalie Keller shook her head, looking grim. “If you don’t mind I think I want to. I need to. Keeps me moving. Oh,” she touched Rebecca, “You come with me. We both need to keep moving.”



“I could go,” Joyce said when they were alone.
“You better not,” Marabeth said. “I might need some help with this,” she lugged the bag. “Besides, you’ve seen us at our worst.”
“Do you want me to drive you home?”
“No,” Marabeth said after a moment. “I think I’d better stay here.”
Joyce nodded.
“Will you bring up the coffee, and we’ll go through this?”
Upstairs they opened the valise. They did not close the door in case anyone wanted to come up and aleady, downstairs, they heard the collected gasps and even some crying ,the change in the mood of the house that told them the family knew Nathan had been found. Not that he was dead. No matter what anyone said they had all long suspected this.
“I’m relieved more than anything,” Marabeth said as her hands moved over the credit cards and receipts, and then she held, wrapped in plastic, what seemed like two binders, a large one and a small one.
“Not more than anything,” Marabeth said. “No, hurt. Because I really, really hoped, despite everything that I just might see him again. I dreamed of him, Joy. Last night I dreamed about him ,and he was calling out to me. I tried to help him, but he couldn’t see me. And he was by a river. But… what does that mean? We were all thinking of rivers. All thinking that’s what happened.”
She opened the first folder and pulled out a spiral notebook. It was water warped, but only a little, and she opened it and read:
“I don’t know if I can take this any longer. Not just what’s happening to me. That’s bearable. It gets worse and worse every year, but still I can bear it. It’s seeing it in the boys, that same sickness, seeing how it almost killed Kris.”
Marabeth put it down.
“You don’t have to read it out loud,” Joyce said.
“I don’t know if I can read it at all,”
The two friends sat on the large bed, heavy hearted and heavy bodied and Marabeth said, “I need a cigarette.”
Joyce said, “I’ll go downstairs and get my purse.”
“You don’t have to.”
They looked up and saw Kris. To Joyce he looked especially pale. He took his Newports out of his pocket and handed them over.
“I can’t read this notebook,” Marabeth said to her brother. “I can’t. It’s Dad’s handwriting. It’s just too close. I…” she shook her head.
“Well then what about the other one,” Kris said as he lit his cigarette. “The big envelope.”
Marabeth nodded and Joyce handed it to her. With ceremony, her hands took back the tabs and they all gasped a little, for this was a journal too, but it was leather and heavy and the leather was well worked and in gold letters Marabeth read:
“The Journal of Pamela Strauss.”

“What rhe fuck?” Kris almost dropped his cigarette.
Marabeth turned the page and read:

“Here before I leave this world, is the combined journal I have set down of the Family Strauss in America. This is not done idly, but to be preserved and passed on to she who must appropriately receive it. I have been shown her in my dreams and seen her face to face, the true head of this family, and the only one who could ever take my place…”
“Mighty humble of her,” Kris murmured.
“For,” Marabeth read, “The Strauss are not simply a family, but a clan,”
“Clan,” Kris murmured.
“And more than a clan, a pack, and while I die, the pack goes without its head, but I leave this for her maturity to my great neice…”
Marabeth’s voice trailed off.
“Read it,” Kris said, suddenly stern.
“I leave this for her maturity, my great neice, Marabeth Strauss, the Queen of the Pack.”
“Fuck,” Kris said in despair while Marabeth simply looked perplexed and Joyce looked at the words in the frontispiece.
“I need to get something,” Kris said nervously. “It’s upstairs in my room,”
He was trembling like Marabeth had never seen.
“I forgot it and I don’t know how. It’s all about Chicago. Hold on. I’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later, Kris returned with a letter in is hand and gave it to Marabeth. She looked at it, and then looked up at him, but said nothing, and Joy read the address.

Marabeth Strauss
The Queen of the Pack.

“When she gave it to me I was… I was almost angry,” Kris said. “And … but I forgot. I honestly forgot about it until now. I think I wanted to, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I was so angry. Do you want to read it now or…?”
But Marabeth, who was looking about the room for something, took Joyce’s car keys, and gutted the envelope, pulling the letter out.



Dear Marabeth,
Originally there was a word for your father, Nathan Strauss, which he was to also share with you, but from what I have researched, he has never returned to you, and so I am writing you now. The Strauss family is not unknown to us at all. Your great aunt Pamela, was a woman of tremendous power, and well acquainted with my grandfather, Augustus Dunharrow. It was he who first gave her the secret of wulfbane—”

“What?” Kris frowned, standing up.
Marabeth read again…

“It was he who first gave the the secret of wulfbane, for though they were not the same thing, my grandfather realized that they were alike. Your father came seeking our help early in the spring, and we told him all that he could. When it came to our attention that he had not returned to you, we took it upon ourselves to write this letter. When you can, Marabeth, come to us and learn the secrets of your family that your great aunt so wished for you to know, and that your father could not handle. If you are anything like your aunt you will not only wish to know, but be strengthened by your knowledge. Come to us soon.

In sincerity,
Eve Moreland.

Marabeth put down the letter and looked up at Kris.
“Who the hell is Eve Moreland?”
“She’s a witch,” Kris said, simply.
He waited for Marabeth’s face to change, but what she said was, “And how do you know her?”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Yes,” Marabeth said. “You said she’s a witch. I’ve had strange dreams for the last week and lived in a world of wonders. I’m an artist, Kris. I don’t have time to do that whole disbelieving let’s be logical I don’t believe in witches thing. That just takes up valuable time. So go on.”
“She is related to Uri.”
“Your Uri?”
“Yes,” Kris said. “His family… they’re all witches. Not all, but most. I was with them. I saw their head, a man called Lewis. And… they aren’t just Wiccans. I mean, these are like real witches. Out of the woodcuts. And it’s a big world, Mara. There are other things out there.”
“Like us,” Marabeth said. “Whatever we are.”
“You’ll know,” Joyce said, pointing to the leather journal, “if you read that book.”
Now, Joyce stood up.
“I think you need to read this alone,” she said. “The two of us can’t read it together, and after all, this is your book. Apparently Pamela saved it for you.”
“But how could she?” Marabeth said, her hand still on the frontispage. “I was so little when she died. Kris, Can you even remember her?”
He shook his head.
“Not really, just what we’ve heard of her.”
Marabeth nodded and Joyce, touching Kris’s shoulder to leave the room said, “I’ll be down the hall, in that nice little bedroom when you need me.”
“Yes,” Marabeth said, and Joyce left, and then Kris left, closing the door a little behind him. Joyce had said when you need me, and even though it might have been easier for her to go home and separate herself from this family and the grief that was slowly rolling through it tonight, she remained.
Meanwhile, Marabeth lay out on the bed and opened the book before her, reading, as she turned the page to begin:


The Book of Pamela Strauss

 

[CharmedFan28]

Sorry I am posting so late, I had a long day out. Wow the revelations just keep on coming! I wonder what will be in The Book of Pamela Strauss? This story just gets more and more interesting! Great writing and I look forward to more soon! Have a nice week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, yes, there is a lot more to come, and that's all I'm going to say.

 

[ChrisGibson]

The Book of Pamela Strauss



I was born on the last day of April in the year of Our Lord Eighteen-Hundred and Ninety Seven, in Bavaria where there were more mountains than houses, and more trees than both. I was born south of Wurzburg in the village of Emeiremken, which we called Emre, but, I was told this was not our original home. My father had come there and rarely spoke of where he had been before, and my father was my whole world.
You must understand that whatever our family is now, at that time it was only my father and myself. I never knew my mother, and if he had brothers or sisters or even parents I did not know it. You must understand how strange this is, for all of the tales you heard from the other residents on Dimler Street of their cousins back in the Motherland, when we left Germany, we left no one behind. There was no one but us.
Friederich Strauss was a massive and powerful man. He was what Germans were singing about at that time, the uberman, more blond, more muscled, more enraged than any man around him, and not given to friends, but to fighting. We lived in a small house in Emre, and father cut wood to make a living. He had, in time, two servants to do the cutting, for he began to have a thriving mill business, Hans and Ranken. They were paid well, and they left us alone, and Friederich left others alone. We would go to the beerhaus, the pub, and he would not drink with the other men, but with me, and if I caught any man’s eye, then next they caught his eye, and so everyone knew they were not to look at me.
We were outcast by our own strangeness and antisocial behavior. Father had made sure I was baptized, but even by then my mother must have been dead, and no one spoke of her, so I imagined that she must have died in whatever place we had come from. Friederich never went to Mass, but he always sent me.
“The people will think we are heathens, otherwise, and they will turn against us.”
“Father?” I asked him, “why don’t you go to Mass?”
He laughed gruffly and said, “Because, little one, I am a heathen.”
I did not understand, then, what he meant. I thought it was only a joke, and I put it out of my head.
In those days I was pretty. Most have known me old, for I am very old by now, and some knew me to be stern and imposing and, in a way, what they would call beautiful, but there was a time when I was a child, and a maid with the beauty and innocence of a maid, when I was what would be called pretty.
The one person I did call something like a friend was Frau Inga. She was a weaver, and she taught me how to weave cloth and keep house. When I was younger she was a housekeeper to my father. She never lived with us. She was old and proud. She taught my hands how to weave. It was Frau Inga who began to teach me what I had not known.
“No, no,” she said, “your father lived here a long time before you were born. He is not a complete stranger to the town, which is why he is welcome enough. People here are afraid. They do not like the wider world. Bavaria is Bavaria and Emre is Emre. Wurzburg is as far as most of these people can think. Germany… What is that? Certainly not a state. Who is this Kaiser? No. Friederich would never have been welcome here if some did not remember him in his boyhood. His aunt owned the house you live in. His aunt was as I am. As you may be too.”
“As I am?” I asked.
Frau Inga continued, “Your father, you know, loves to go out in the snow. He loves to go out at all times, but while some disdain the snow, he never does. One night, while it was still snowing, even though it was the last night of April, and the wolves were howling, he went out into the hills and came back with you, a tiny baby, so beautiful, so golden. He gave you to me, and I gave you to my daughter so she might nurse you. He loves you, but he is a man. He didn’t even know you needed a name. I named you Pamela.”
“And, my mother?”
“Who knows?” Frau Inga said. Then she said, before I could ask, “I assumed she had died, or why would he have taken you?”
After a time I said, “I feel like I shouldn’t ask him.”
“Then I feel like you’re right.”

I was twelve when I had my first bleeding. Frau Inga told me all about it. She tied me up and said it was the way of women and it would last for a time, and come each month. It would be irregular at first and go on for years and then, in the end it would also be irregular.
“It is the way of women,” Frau Inga said, “and it is your power. Never forget in your blood and in your pain is your power. It is a power men cannot have. This is why they fear it. Blood and birth are the way of the world.”
“And death?”
“The way of men.”
She saved the cloths with my first blood and said, “Keep these always. There is mighty power in them.”
It was winter when it happened. The trees so high under a silver sky, and snow on the hills so white, and I felt the hairs raise on the back of my neck. Slowly I turned, and in the snow, looking at me, like Friederich but unlike Friederich, was a great, tall man with short silver blond hair and a short beard fringing his face. His eyes went from grey to blue, and I admit for the first time I felt the strange pleasant flood between my thighs which I would later learn was desire. His arms were bare, even in this weather, and brown with a sun that was not a winter’s sun, and we looked upon each other for a long time, and then, he was gone.































Marabeth sat up, willing herself not to push the book away.
“The Man,” she murmured.
Nothing Pamela had written, not about saving her period blood even, had made Marabeth pause, but here, written down for the first time, long before she was born and certainly re written here when she was still a girl was the man who had come into her dreams two nights before, and now Marabeth wondered if the blond woman had not been Pamela herself.



I CANNOT SAY WHAT happened to me, but that night I was disturbed. I had questions, and they could not be answered, or they had not been answered. I had been content to live in the dark and now I was not. My father said, “Why are you like this, Pamela, stormy as the Witch Mountain?”
I put his dinner down, hard on the table.
“Why should I cook for you? Am I a slave?”
“I work for you,” he said. “you cook, you clean, you weave, because you are a woman.”
“I am your daughter, and I am done with all this.”
I walked away from the table, but as I did, he caught my arm. It was a hard grip, for he was a hard man, but I was not afraid of him.
“Did my mother die, or did she refuse to be your servant?”
“What are you talking about?” he growled.
“No one ever saw her. You just came back to this village with me as a baby. How do I even know you are my father?”
“You have only to look at us. I am most definitely your father. Who has been telling you these stories?”
I said nothing because I realized I might have already done damage, but my father erupted, “Frau Inga!”
Getting up from the table, without even throwing his and coat on, he went out the hosue and I followed him into the snow, He went down the hill from our house and banged so hard on the door of Frau Inga’s house I thought he would bash it in.
She answered it calmly, and even though she was small, when she drew herself up and wrapped her cloak about her, she seemed frosty and regal.
“You old, bitch! What are you telling my daughter? I’ll kill you.”
“By silent,” Frau Inga interrupted him. “You’ve already enough blood on your hands, Friederich Strauss. Put your hand down,” she commanded,
Fierce as my father was, his hand went down and she continued, “I bind you. I bind you by the signs on this door,”
She had always had elaborate signs on her door, but she was not the only one in that village. Half superstition and half tradition I had regarded them, but even now, she traced them in the air before her with her fingers, elaborate drawing of nothing on nothing.
“Have mercy,” Friederich said.
“Mind yourself,” Frau Inga returned. “Do I have your word that you will not harm your daughter?”
“Of course,” he said.
“Then go,” her voice was imperious, but when she looked at me, panting in my hurry to follow father, she said more gently, “both of you. There is much more to discuss in the morning.”
As we returned up the hill, and going up hill was far harder than going down the hill, my feet slid in the heavy snow, I began to understand what Frau Inga had meant by people like her, people like the aunt I had never known. They were hexen, witches, and maybe Friederich, in his great strength, was some manner of warlock. I did not know about that, but I knew there was something in me, and as we returned to the hosue, saying nothing of the violence that had just been prevented, I remembered that Frau Inga had said there was much to be discussed tomorrow.

In the morning, Frau Inga was painting a flower in a circle, and I had seen this before. I had seen much of her art, most of it in circles. But today she sat me down, and she explained, “The green is for fertility and strength, and also for youth, for those who are young. Green is the life force. Yellow is too. But it can also be sickness. Here the red and the green in the flower is life. And the red circle is life as well, fiery life.”
And she taught me. “There are not only shapes, but forms, the form of the horse, the two rampant horse greeting each other. And there is the bear and the wolf, all of these mean many things, and you can place your force in them. For all of these things, when it is said and done mean whatever they mean to you.”
She took me through the woods and even in winter she showed me the herbs that grew out of the snow, what they meant, what they could do.
“This is a quick poison when boiled in full, and when diluted and strained it helps women who have found themselves in trouble. The priest frown upon it, but the priest are men. They know nothing of what it means to be a ruined woman.”
And she would say, “This mushroom will kill, it is different from the kind that goes in food, and this one will kill as well, but when dried and then diluted in water, it causes visions and opens the mind to the meaning of dreams.”
One day I asked her, “Frau Inga, are you an hexe?”
She looked at me sharply.
“Child, you know I cannot abide foolish questions, and a foolish question is one to which you already know the answer.”
“Then is it what I am too?”
She looked at me closely, not the way people do when they are about to lie, but the way one does when they are searching out the truth.
“Your great aunt was. Many of the women of your family have been. But their craft was still of a different order from mine, But you seem to be of a different matter even than they. And I believe your gods and your spirits will come to you soon enough.”
I was not Christian enough to be troubled by what she said. Our world was full of gods and spirits. Ours was the ancient world, and whatever Catholics had originally thought of it, the power of the church was in recognizing that. All about and outside the church swirled the world of the ancient gods, and there were many of them. In the old myths, there were nine worlds about the world tree, the apparent world of men was simply one of them. But what we knew was more than nine there were nine times nine, and still nines times those.
That was why, when on the night the moon was high and full, and Father said he would go out, and I must not wait up for him, I did not obey him. Before Frau Inga, I had paid no attention to his comings and goings, but now, trained in witchly arts, if not a witch, I understood he left on the full moons. And did he go to worship his gods? For Friederich had said he was a heathen.
That night I stayed with Frau Inga until after midnight. She did not tell me to be careful, but simply pronounced a charm on me and sent me up the hill. It was slippery, for the snow was melting and it was approaching my birthday. The sky was full of the moon and bright with stars in a darkness that, past the time of electricity, it is impossible to comprehend. My heart danced with fear because I thought tonight I would learn what I was.
I entered the house. The door was never locked, and crossed the front room. Beside the kitchen there was a small room where the housekeeper slept, for since I had stopped cooking, Father had hired one. I did not go upstairs to my room, but went into his. The window was open and moonlight shone in, and I thought of closing the window, but also thought I’d better not. I simply sat on the bed and waited.
That whole time I did not tire. There was not a part of me that wished to go to sleep. Perhaps it was because I had slept some at Frau Inga’s or perhaps it was because I knew I had to wait for Father, wait for what was going to happen. Still, as the night progressed and the air changed indicating that morning was almost here, I did fall into a dreamlike state. I was not as awake as I might have been, and this was why, perhaps, I was not shocked or afraid when it happened. Or maybe there were other forces at work in this.
By now the moon’s arc had passed from the sky, and I sat in darkness. In the darkness, I suddenly saw a form, white and massive and covered in fur and not immediately did all the shapes in my mind mass themselves into the face that, through the window had come what I had never seen so close. Large and full and terrifying force was a massive white wolf, Though it slay me, it was the loveliest thing I had ever seen. It did not look to me.
It had no idea that I was there, and even as I began to comprehend it, it changed before my eyes into the tall, well muscled, naked form of Friederich Strauss.


THAT'S ALL FOR TONIGHT. MORE ROSSFORD TOMORROW. THE BEASTS WILL RETURN THURSDAY

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well the Book of Pamela Strauss was very interesting and I can't wait to read more of it! It was a fascinating bit of history with twists and turns that I did not see coming. (Such as what happened at the end.) Great writing and I look forward to Rossford tomorrow and the continuation of this in a few days! I hope you had a good night!

 

[ChrisGibson]

The journal... What can I say about it? Not much.

 

[ChrisGibson]

F O U R

YOU
ME
AND
THE GIRAFFE




When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

-Friedrich Nietzsche


Marabeth pushed the book away from her, shook her head and looked about the room which was suddenly too dark, and too cold. She turned the book on its face and then got out of bed, feeling her muscles aching from sitting in one position, and walked across the floor, out of her room, and down the hall to Joyce’s room.
She came in without knocking.
“We need to go on a drive,” Marabeth said.
“Sure?” Joyce said, her brow furrowed.
“I need to get out of this house. I need to get away from what I’m reading.”


“You’ve been mighty silent,” Joyce said as they drove up Dorr Road, “which is, by the way, completely allowed.”
“It’s still Christmas, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Joyce said in a tone of discovery. “Yes, I guess it is. And not even that late.”
“Everything’s shut tonight.”
Joyce nodded.
“I guess it should be,” Marabeth said. “With Christmas and all.”
“We could go to Weary Wood. You know, with all the Christmas lights.”
“Yeah,” Marabeth said. “We should make that happen.”
Every year the residents of the Weary Wood subdivision would set up elaborate light displays in their yards, Santa Claus racing eight reindeer on top of a house, giant Nativity scenes, a whole Nutcracker Suite, the sides of houses turned into billboards reading: JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON.
“It’s strange,” Marabeth said as they passed a long house with a display of trotting reindeer, “this year all of these lights just seem like dull little points in the darkness. Everything was so bright today, and now everything seems so drab.”
“I can’t listen to you the way I should if I’m driving. I-Hop’s open. It’s always open.”



“Are you going to tell me what was in that journal?”
Marabeth poured the coffee for Joyce, and looked around the brightly lit restaurant. It wasn’t as warm as it should have been, but it felt better to have a little cool weather, too much light, ordinary people walking in. A homely dark haired family was entering. Across from them sat a large black family, and it seemed like the booth could not have been enough for all of them.
“It’s all about Pamela,” Marabeth said. “Well, it’s her journal. All about her life in Germany. They lived in some village near a town I don’t know because I don’t know shit about Germany and… to make a long story short, it seems like Pamela was a witch.”
Joyce, who was not nearly so welcoming of strange things as Marabeth had been frowned at her, and Marabeth said, “Well, that’s what she says. A witch, or something like a witch. And she was raised by a witch. A woman called Frau Inga.”
“Oh, common,” Joyce laughed.
“Look, I didn’t write it. You asked what was in the book, and I’m telling you what I’ve read so far. She was taught by a witch called Frau Inga and I stopped reading when I got to the part where… She goes to her father’s room, my great grandfather Friederich, at night. He’s not there, because he goes away a lot. But this night a wolf comes into the room, and the wolf turns into Friederich.”
“What?”
“And that’s where I stopped.”
“When this woman said that her father was a werewolf?”
“Where my Aunt Pamela said her father was a werewolf.”
Neither one of them spoke immediately, but then Joyce said, “You believe it. Don’t you?”
Marabeth frowned.
“I don’t not believe it,” Marabeth said, calmly. “My family—our family—is strange. Pamela was a strange woman, and from what I’ve heard about Friederich, he was strange too. My father killed himself for some reason. Things happened in our family for some reason. I thought that if I said it here, in an I Hop in fluorescent light, it would seem crazier, but it doesn’t seem crazy or… if it sounds crazy, it doesn’t sound untrue.”


James B. Strauss the Second, better known as Cousin Jim, took the long walk from the first floor, past the second, all the way to the third. Traveling up from the living room really was like coming to a different place. It was a colder clime, and a more solitary one, free from the hot grief of the family. Here this whole floor was empty and nearly dark except for the moon through the window and the light in the bathroom and one last light in the bedroom across from it. This whole floor, how unfair was that, but then no one had ever wished to claim it, belonged to his cousin, Kristopher Struass.
He tapped on the half open fdoor and came in without speaking.
“You’re making yourself awfully familiar up here,” Kris said.
“I wanted to talk,” Jim said. “I wanted to check on you.”
“Well,” Kris, who was sitting upright on his bed with a dirty ashtray and a packet of Marlboros said, “you’ve found me. And I’m still alive.”
“Yeah, that’s great,” Jim said, his voice less sure than usual.
“I just wondered if you felt as awful—if you… I feel so awful.”
“And you wondered if I felt as awful as you?” Kris looked up coldly at his cousin.
“That’s not what I meant. I meant—”
“You wondered if some detective coming to our house and telling us that my father died in a river and then was eaten by wildlife makes me feel as bad as it makes you feel, Jim?”
“I just meant…Well, he was my dad, too, right?”
“He was your uncle,” Kris said, stubbing out his cigarette and swinging his leg around the bed.
“For thirty years you’ve… you’ve tried to take everything that’s mine. But my dad wasn’t yours. He was my dad, and he’s dead.”
Fine,” Jim said. “You’re right. I’m going to go now. Leave you to yourself.”
“Great,” Kris said, tonelessly.
Jim made himself walk at a regular pace.
Catch your breath he told himself. Breathe in. Breathe out. Don’t let it get to you. Don’t let any of this get to you.
He had been very little, about four, when he had been swept up into a rage. It was here, in this house, and Jim wasn’t sure if his father was still alive or not. He had become so angry the light in his eyes had misted over to red, and when he had come to, Aunt Pamela, more kind that anyone had known her, was wiping his brow and singing in German to him.
“Do you know the story of Cain and Abel,” she had asked him.
He shook his head and the very old woman, with yellow still in her white hair half sang about Adam and Eve and their first born Cain and the younger, Abel, and how they all had made sacrifices to God, and God had preferred Abel’s offering over Cain, and this had sent Cain into a rage. God came to Cain and told him to master his rage. He said sin lurked like a monster at his door, but he must master it.
“What happened?”
“Cain did not master it. Not then. He was filled with rage, and so he killed Abel, his own brother. Rage, unmastered, does horrible things to men, more men than women and more the men of this family than any men I have known. The story leaves out one thing, and it is that the rage, not mastered, eventually kills Cain as well. Your rage is a wolf, little James. If you master it, it will make you a king of wolves, but if you do not, oh, my child, the wolf will eat you.”
He went downstairs, and he was embraced by family and put Kris out of his mind.
“You look like hell,” Peter said, wrapping his arm around Jim.
“Well, you know.”
“I know exactly what happened.”
Peter had thick dark hair and was tall and thing with sharp blue eyes like glass bits and handsome in his angular way.
“You went up to try to bond with Kristian, and the two of you just don’t bond.”
“He’s such a fuck.”
“He’s really hurting,” Peter said. “Just like you. You both just lost a dad.”
“Kris made sure that I knew he lost a dad and I lost an uncle. I’m an interloper. I’m a—”
“Enough of that,” Peter said. “Come on into the kitchen and have a drink with us before we head out. I gotta bring the kids to their mom. If you want you can stay at my place.”
“I feel like I should stay with Grandma.”
“Aunt Natalie’s—” Peter started, then he said, “You know what, you’re probably right. As long as you don’t stay at your place.”
“I work hard, pl—”
“Play hard and deserve nice things, yeah yeah, but that huge apartment, with no one else… you shouldn’t stay alone tonight, cousin.”
Past the dining room and the parlor that had become a den, down the hall passing the library and the bedroom and bathrooms, they came to the large kitchen where, under the fluorescent light, two very old people were drinking.
“Jimmy!” the old man called, “have a seat. Where’ve you been?”
“Statler, leave him alone,” Natalie admonished. “Young people can’t be crowded all the time.”
“I was just being gloomy,” Jim made light of himself and Peter, grinning at his cousin said, “I will get you that drink, little brother.”
“I wonder,” Rebecca Strauss , who was swishing a thick bottom glass of bourbon in one hand, said, “if you all are more closely related than brothers.”
“Well,” the tall elegant, blue suited Peter said, handing his cousin a Scotch, “Grandma Maris was Uncle Jimmy’s sister, but Grandpa Will was Aunt Natalie’s brother, so… we’re double cousins.”
“What an odd story,” Rebecca reflected. She turned to her mother-in-law, “Didn’t you ever find it strange?”
Jim sat down beside the old man, his grandfather, and Natalie said to Statler, “We’re the only ones left from those days. You know, Parker and Will married Maris and Claire, and I thought how very odd it was my brothers marrying a pair of sisters. I had other things to do with my life. Other boyfriends,” she laughed. “Imagine when the last Keller married the youngest Strauss. Yes. It was strange. And strange that, when I look back, we weren’t married very long.”
She looked to Statler. “Jimmy died so young.”
“Did he look like me?” Jim asked.
“Truthfully?” the old woman said. “No. I mean, you’re a lot more handsome than James.”
They burst out laughing.
“But it’s true,” Natalie said. “I loved him, but he was very thin and shy and not at all like his father. I think Friederich terrified him. You take after Statler. To me Statler hasn’t changed a day. You all still look just a like.’
Jim grinned at his grandfather.
“Except for the white hiar, the stooped back and the palsy,” the old man said, “I haven’t changed a bit.”
“You’re getting better and better, Granddad,” Jim said.
“If I get any more better, you’ll have to nail my coffin shut,” Statler returned. “And I can make jokes like that. Because I’m ancient.’
“Well, if you’re ancient, I’m ancient,” Natalie swirled the last of her bourbon and downed it, then held her glass out.
“Peter, I’ll take another one. It’s a good night to get drunk and talk about what was.”
Jim’s long tall cousin, perched on the edge of his chair, reached out and pulled the bottle to the table.
“You could have fallen on your head,” Statler told him.
Peter shrugged.
“What old people don’t understand about their nephews and nieces and grandkids is we’re getting old too, and don’t want to keep getting up and sitting down.”
“We were the youngest,” Natalie said, as she poured her own glass, and then filled Peter’s and Jim’s and also Rebecca’s. “Out of them all, me and Jimmy and Statler. Jimmy and Statler were brothers. They were the best of friends. So close I almost felt I split them up.”
“You made things richer,” Statler said. “You made it better.”
“And then you married Caroline,” Natalie said.
“Delia looked just like her,” Statler said.
Jim looked down at the table, and his grandfather said, “Jim, I know in the end, things were bad for your mother, but she loved you. And in a time you can’t remember, she was a bright, bright shining girl.”
Natalie nodded her head reverently.
“She was—” then Natalie touched Rebecca’s hand, “you both were my own daughters. Especially after Kristin. You were the fire and she was the star.”
Suddenly Jim’s hand hit the table and the bottle of bourbon fell over only for Peter to catch it. Despite the noise and Jim’s sudden embarrassment, no one moved. He looked across the table to his cousin Peter.
“I know,” the elfin faced man said, “We’ve lost so many people we’ve loved, and none of those losses seem to have been peaceful.”
In a house this full of people, no one had noticed the front door opening, and no one noticed Marabeth and Joy until they had come into the kitchen and Natalie said, “Where have you been?” for they brought the cold in with them, and their coats were not off yet.
“We drove around,” Marabeth said. “Joyce took me to I-Hop.”
“And now,” Joyce saluted them, “I will thank you for the wonderful Christmas and be on my way.”
Most people would have said sorry for your loss, but it didn’t seem to really cover it, and so Joyce left that out.
“You’re leaving?” Jim nearly stood up.
“I’m intruding,” Joyce said. “This is a time for family to be there for each other, not have some guest just sitting around.”
“Oh…” Natalie began, looking for the right word, “Bullshit!”
“She’s right,” Rebecca said, “I know for some people that’s true, but for us… we’re a little too claustrophobic of a family. We would be honored if you would stay with us. Besides, Mara doesn’t really have any friends but you.”
“Mother!”
“You don’t,” Rebecca said.
“And you do?”
“That’s not what I said,” Rebecca Strauss said. “The truth is, we all end up being a little friendless in this family, so actually, Mara’s doing great.”
Jim threw up his hand cheerfully, “I don’t have any friends, and I know Peter doesn’t.”
“We’re all a hopelessly introverted group of folks,” Peter said. “That’s probably why me and Myron are divorced. Mara too, for that matter.”
“I’m leaving you all,” Marabeth said flatly.
“Cuz, you wanna drink?”
“No,” she began. Then, “Well, possibly. Maybe.”
“If you’re going up to read your Aunt Pamela’s journal, from what you said is in there, you might want a drink,” Joyce said.
But at this, everyone looked at Joyce and Marabeth, not with laughter but with genuine concern. Not Jim, Joyce realized, but certainly Peter, Statler, Natalie and Marabeth’s mother.
“What has she said?” Rebecca asked.
“Do you really remember her?” Marabeth asked.
“God, yes,” Rebecca said. “What is in that book?”
“It’s her journal,” Marabeth said, lamely, “She’s still in Germany. Still a little girl.”
For some reason Marabeth left out Friederich being a werewolf. She said, “Pamela thinks she is a witch. I’m going up to read more.”
She made way to leave, taking the bottle of bourbon Peter proffered, but as she did, her grandmother said, “Witch was just the right word for her. And more.”
“Even when she was old she terrified me,” Rebecca said.
“She didn’t terrify me,” Natalie said, flatly. “And that’s a fact.”
“She did not terrify me,” Statler said in a different tone. “No matter how other people were frightened of her, she was always kind to me. She told me to call her Aunt Pam, even though I wasn’t one of you—”
“Of course you were,” Natalie objected.
“Because she made me,” Statler said. “I know she was frightening to some, and I know that Friederich was no an innocent man. He wasn’t,” Statler said. “But… he was old when I was a boy, and he was always kind to me. That’s all I can say.”
“Well,” Jim pulled a chair between him and Peter, “if Mara’s going to read then, Joy, why don’t you sit up and drink with us?”
“She could be tired.” Rebecca said.
“We’re all tired,” Peter said, “and I gotta drive. You’re sitting with us, Missy,”
Joy took her seat, grinning, bemused, and Marabeth realized her cousin Peter was just a little bit drunk
“Peter, I know Joy’s not a cab service, but maybe she could drive you home. I’ll call Haley and tell her we’re keeping the kids, and will bring them in the morning.”
“Haley, Haley, Haley!” Peter repeated his ex wife’s name and laughed, and Marabeth knew he was past sobriety.
While Marabeth took herself up the back stair she could still hear her family talking down below, and it struck her that during the time when she was reading of a young Pamela under the mountains of Wurzburg even the oldest of these people had not been born.
She thought of going up to see her brother. There was only one staircase that went to the third floor. Here she stood before the door to Jim’s room. But in the end she decided she’d rather read, that even though she had been terrified by the strange world of her aunt, she was ready to return to the Book of Pamela Strauss.


MORE FROM THE STRANGE JOURNAL OF PAMELA STRAUSS ON SATURDAY NIGHT. CHEERS!

 

[CharmedFan28]

I am really liking this story at the moment. This journal sounds more and more interesting. I am sad Kris is hurting but that was bound to happen with learning the news about his father. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I think Kris's hurt is a very old hurt and what he's feeling right now is only a part of it. Not to sound vain, but so am I. Some stories are harder to write than others or more challenging, and this story was just really easy for the most part, and I loved these characters and their world. So maybe that enjoyment is passing through to you. I'm glad you're enjoying. Thanks for reading. More Saturday night

 

[ChrisGibson]

The revelations continue in....


the Book of Pamela Strauss.


HE MUST HAVE HEARD me, heard some breathing in the room. Even as a man he was fierce, snarled as he turned to me, but in a moment his vision resolved.
“Friederich,” I said. I did not call him Father.
I will not explain such a thing, and I cannot make you understand it. I am certainly too old to beg pardon for it, and whom would I beg pardon from? Seeing Friederch transform from a wolf, to a beautiful naked man, seeing him become one thing I had never known and then another thing I had always suspected, and even now I cannot say which was which, a thing had happened to me. His transformation had transformed me. He stood there, naked and muscled, his body covered in a transparent pelt of blond hair. As he looked at me I saw he was truly naked, for his great secret was exposed. His eyes were not hard, but almost afraid, and as we looked at each other, the sap, the thrill that had come upon me when I had seen that other man in the woods, came to me again.
Without speaking, I lifted my gown over my head. My nipples were hard, my body thrilled. I could see his penis rising from the cloud of his hair. We did not speak. I climbed onto the bed, and Friederich climbed onto the bed, then onto me. I opened my thighs for him. It hurt when he entered me, but more than that it satisfied me. I understood then that this is what I had wanted for a long time. I rejoiced more than I ever had before, and that late night or early morning was the first time I slept in Friederich’s bed. This was how he became my lover.


Read on! Read on, Marabeth Strauss. Don’t you dare stop reading. Read!


HOW TO SPEAK OF my relationship to Friederich? It had never been the normal relationship of a girl and her father. Yet, I have seen in many instances that often a girl will wish to make love to her father, and things were different for us only in that I could. Only that morning as we lay together, and the sunlight vame in grey through the windows, while he shyly tweaked one nipple and then the other, did I understand that I had always been curious about the hair on his thick arms and growing over his chest, about what it would feel like to run my hands over his sides. My sexuality had barely begun to rise in me, but that morning, I longed to have him inside me. I longed to know again what the powerful Friederich Stauss, so in control, was like in the throes of desire and lust, and I think I had always longed for him to have no other woman but me.
“I will cook for you again,” I told my father as I kissed his lips gently, “and I will be all the things I said I was not before.”
“We have a servant.”
“She cannot stay.”
“She will not see anything.”
“She may.”
“I trust her. I think she will not talk.”
“Father, all women talk., Everyone talks. She must go.”
Friederich looked doubtful. Whatever he was, he was fair to his workers, and I said, “I will see she is well paid. Frau Inga has no one to look after her.”
“Do you think she would want Willa?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “If I were to ask her.”
I arranged things with Frau Inga before telling Willa she would go there, and in the end she did well, for the large room she stayed in at Frau Inga’s house was better than her spot in the corner by the hearth, and she asked no questions about her service being changed. The villages far from the cities were places where very private people lived, and people who lived private lives asked few questions. Life continued on in many ways as it had before except now I saw the change my father made and watched Friederich become the wolf that ran through the hills and, of course, now I slept in his bed. I felt that while I was with him the power was building in me, but what the power was I could not say, and now I saw even more frequently the man in the shadows . A few times I let him watch me, but finally I crossed the valley when it was full spring. I had to see if he was some spirit, but he seemed real and solid enough and now, as I stood before him he said,
“Would you like to touch me, Pamela?”
“How do you know me?”
“I have always known you.”
“Who are you?”
“The first of you.”
“Are we to exchange clever words or are you going to tell me anything I need to know.”
“Such fire! Yes, but I knew you would have the fire. You are the Queen of the Pack. Only… the pack is long gone. But you could bring it back.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He smiled at me, and he was like and unlike Friedeich, and not to sound overly mysterious, but he seemed at turns much younger and much older than my father, and now he said, “You can ask of me one more question, but it must be an important one. If it is important. If it is worthy—”
“Worthy of your time.”
“Worthy of your asking,” he said, “then I will answer it.”
“What is your name?”
“Hagano.”
And for some reason the sound of his name put me at rest. It was like something tight had been broken, and now he said, “For that you may ask another question.”
“What are you?”
“I am what I said, the first of your kind, wolf and man. Not wolf man, but wolf and also man.”
“But it is my father who is the wolf. How did he become one? Do you know?”
There were stories, of course, of men being bitten by wolves or bitten by the werewolf. Is this why Father had fled his old home?
But Friederich said, “He became it by being born.”
I looked at him.
“Some are made but most are born. Your father was born what he is and you, being his daughter, were born thus too. The Strausses are werewolves. To be werewolf is to be Strauss.”



Marabeth sat in the sudden coldness of her room and longed to close the door. She could not even consider getting up to look at herself, pull her hand through her hair, look in the mirror.
Was this bitch lying? Was she making this shit up? And yet there was a part of Marabeth that hoped she was not, overcome only by the part that knew she was not, and so she read on.



“THE CHANGE IS IN you,” Hagano said. “The Change is in you even more than it is in your father, for you are more the wolf, wolf of very wolf.”
And then I said, “Show me.”
I do not know how I knew he could show me, but he put his hand to my head and I did not have to close my eyes. I saw my beloved Friederich, and he was stripping off his clothes so I could see the play of muscle in his back down to the rounded firmness of his buttocks and the light blond hair on them. I saw him transform into the great wolf. The wolf ran through the winter hills and he met with other wolves and they ran through the hills, hunting, tracking, bringing night beasts down. All the time I knew which one was Friederich, savored the joy of the kill, and the consummation of steaming bloody flesh in the snow.
But in this vision Friederich did not come back in the morning, he remained with the pack, and now I saw it, quite clearly. The pack was in rut, and he mounted a bitch from behind, and when he was satisfied he trotted across the hills and returned, I suppose, home.

Now it was another night, and now I saw my father dressing in furts and taking a lantern, leaving the house in a sledge, and he rode over the hills and came to a cave, and even though he was a man, none of the wolves were disturbed. He entered the cave, and in it was a bitch wolf who had just born her cubs, and she was suckling them, beautiful pups, silver and white and now, he moved his hand through them for they were all piled up, and to my shock and to my horror, there was, in the midst of them, eyes closed, unfed but also unmolested, wrinkly and with downy bits of gold for hair, a human child.
“Come to me, come to me,” Friederich sang, and he took up the child. and a look passed between him and the bitch wolf, and then he left the cave with the baby in his arms, and the lantern in another, climbed into the sledge and rode away. Though I watched what was happening with lead in my heart, with my face almost frozen, when he came to Frau Inga and she began to fuss and coo over the baby, when she said, what is her name, when he said, I have no name yet. Does it matter, when she said to the baby, “I will name you Pamela.” I screamed and screamed, pulling away from Hagano so fast that I felt like I was falling through darkness before I hit the ground, still screaming in horror.
“Stop screaming,” Hagano chided, sounding almost amused.
“My mother—”
“Was a wolf.” Hagano said
Then he said, “You are wolf of wolf. If your mother had been human, still you would be wolf. You are wolf of wolf.”
“You must stop saying that.”
“I will not. Because you are afraid of it because you have lived only as human, and humans fear all other animals, but when you become the wolf, you will understand,”
“Become?”
“Yes,” Hagano said to me. “I am here to teach you, daughter. There is no other reason I am here.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

The Book Of Pamela Strauss just gets more and more interesting! So the Strauss's are a family of wolves? Cool! I hope that despite all that is being revealed that Marabeth keeps reading. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, she better read or someone else will have to. Marabeth has just begun to learn a few of her family's secrets.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUDED


“I think,” Joyce MacNamara told Peter Keller, “that I’m going to take you home.”
“You’re a naughty lady, Joyce,” Peter said to her and Rebecca said, “Yeah. It’s definitely time to take him home.”
“I’ll go get the kids.”
Peter stood up and caught the chair. He blinked.
“Are you alright?” Jim asked.
“Yes, it’s just that I haven’t stood up in an hour or so.”
“Don’t worry about the kids, they’re asleep,” Rebecca said. “You can come and get them tomorrow..”
“I gotta get to bed,” Peter said. Then he said, “Do you know I have to work tomorrow? No rest for the wicked.”
“Isn’t it a conference call?” Jim asked him.
Peter frowned. “It’s still work.”
“I really do appreciate this,” Peter said to Joyce.
“It is no problem at all,” Joyce said.
Most of the family had gone home now. Outside, on the stoop, in the very cold darkness lit up by snow, Peter declared, “I instantly feel ten percent more sober.”
“Me too,” Joyce said, and that’s a good thing because I’m driving.”
“I can drive myself home.”
“You’re not that much more sober,” Joyce said. “Just give me directions.”
It turned out that Peter did live fairly close, about ten blocks over, but the zigzagging directions through small streets he gave were so confusing, Joyce said, “There had to be a easier way.’
“I’m sure there is,” Peter said.
Joyce parked and Peter said, “Would you like to come in for a bit?”
“For what? A nightcap? Cause we’ve been drinking all night.”
“I don’t know,” Peter shrugged. “Maybe because I’m not sure I feel like being alone right now, and I don’t know if you do either.”
“That is very –”
“Presumptuous.”
“I was going to say perceptive,” Joyce replied. “This is the strangest Christmas, and I’m not quite ready for it to end.”
Peter’s house was an old Queen Anne with many rooves and turrets amidst a couple of other Queen Annes, and across the street a row of townhouses not unlike the one the Strausses lived in.
“I didn’t expect you to live in a house like this,” she said, comuing up the steps after the tall man in the still immaculate suit. He didn’t seem that drunk now, either.
Peter smiled at her, and on the long wraparound porch he said, “You met me tonight for the first time and you already decided where I lived?”
“I thought it would be a modern, happening house. Sleek, full of glass walls—”
Peter grunted as he pushed in the door after unlocking it.
“White carpets,” Joyce continued, “a shelf with brandy sniffers and good liquor that a power attorney would drink.”
“Well, before you continue that,” Peter said, flipping on the light, “don’t trip over my son’s Thomas the Tank Engine. Which,” Peter bent down in front of Joyce, “I have told him not to leave out in the hallways.”
It was a very old house, and though built differently, reminded him of the home the Strausses live in.
“I don’t know how you knew I was an attorney—” Peter began.
“I was just saying some shit, and by the way, where the hell were you a year ago when I was filing bankruptcy.”
“Probably filing divorce papers. And I think I would have had just the kind of place your described. But I got married. And then I had kids. And… I wanted to be around my family. So… I’m here.”
“Here is very nice.”
Joyce looked up at the ceilings, and at the children’s art.
“You have to excuse the mess,” Peter said.
“I love the mess,” Joyce said, looking at socks on the floor and a stuffed giraffe peaking at her from the sofa.
“Well, then you’ll love my kitchen.”
“How often do you have your boys? Hell, I don’t even think I know how many you have.”
“The Twins and Ryan,” Peter said, “and all under ten. Yay!” he clapped his hands. “And I have them most of the time. I got them in the divorce. I got basically everything, and when I say everything I mean the responsibility. It was not a good marriage.”
“She sounds really… But it’s not my place to say.”
Peter smiled bitterly and jammed his hands into his pockets.
“I was not a good husband.”
“You seem good enough to me.”
“I’m not married to you,” Peter said. “Com’on, I’ll get you a drink. You, me and the giraffe can sit together and talk about life until you get bored.”


“What do you do for work? Have you seen Hamilton? Isn’t a shame Hilary didn’t win?’
“What?” Joyce said.
“Wasn’t it a shame about Game of Thrones? Have you seen the new season of Black Mirror?”
“I don’t even know what the fuck you’re getting at?”
“Oh, you know,” Peter said, “all of the dull and stupid questions people ask when they meet you. All the stuff no one really cares about. What do you do? ‘Why do you give a fuck what I do?’ I always want to say.”
“I actually have the temptation to do the same thing, but that’s because I’m an artist who hustles doing low wage jobs.”
“Like Marabeth,” Peter said. Then he shrugged. “That’s probably how you met Mara.”
“No, I met Mara in college when we were becoming the nobodies we are today. You know when your mind just works this one certain way, and you’re always looking for someone who understands you, and then you find that person? When you finall find them, you know a lot of trouble’s gonna happen.”
“No,” Peter said. Then he said, “I know what it’s like to want to meet that person, but no. I haven’t met that person.”
Peter pulled his legs up onto the couch. His jacket was gone and he was just in pants and white shirt, his tie hanging noose like a thin and half hearted noose. Joyce knew all the men in Marabeth’s family, even Kristian, stayed in suits all day, some of them shabbier than others,, but still, and she wondered how you could wear one all day.
“It’s funny,” Peter said, “I think people get married because they think their spouses will be their best friends. It’s like the two of you are supposed to be everything to each other.”
“That might be true,” Joyce allowed, “If we were lesbians.”
Peter snorted, laughing out loud.
“I think,” Joyce continued, while Peter recovered from laughing, “that men think their wives are going to be everything, and women never expect that from their husbands. It’s strange, cause most of the women I know will do anything to get a man, and most of the men I know do so little.”
Peter had stopped laughing, and Joyce said, “I’m sorry to be so brutal.”
“No,” Peter said. “You’re right. I did too little.”
“You know what?” Joyce said., “I feel like that’s bullshit. I feel like men who do too little never know it. I’m looking around here and you’re raising three kids and going to work in pressed suits every day and, apparently, being a big brother to Jim, and I feel like you’re doing a fuck of a lot. You seem like one of those guys who is always beating himself up. You seem like one of those guys girls were afraid to date because they were on their way to Harvard and head of the Young Republicans.”
“What the fuck?” Peter said.
“What?”
“I was, in fact, head of the Young Republicans until I became a Democrat, but… You know what?”
“I talk too fucking much.”
“Maybe,” Peter allowed, “but I like you. You make wild crazy assumptions which turn out to be true.”


Marabeth made her way up the steps and down the hall to Kris’s room.
“I have to get out of here,” Kris was saying even before she came to the door.
“How did you know it was me?”
Kris looked up at her tiredly, “It really wouldn’t be anyone else. What’s up, Sis?”
“If you have to go—”
“Siddown,” Kris said, “You know I’ve always got time for you.”
Marabeth nodded and sat on the bed while her brother stopped combing his hair and came to sit beside her.
“I’ve been reading that book all night. I had to stop for a while.”
“What have you learned?’
“I can’t talk about it with anyone downstairs. I tried. All I said was… that Pamela thought she was a witch. That she was raised by a witch. But not by her mother. She and Friederich grew up some place in Germany—which we knew—some village and… I’m not telling this very well. She actually slept with him”
“Slept with who?” Kris screwed up his face. “Slept with Friederich?”
“Yes.”
“She fucked her own father?”
“Yes, Kris,” Marabeth said, “and that’s not the half of it. Well, it is the half of it, but… She says she saw Friederich turn into a wolf. She says Friederich was a werewolf. Not only that, she says she was too.”
Kris’s expression had changed, and now Marabeth said, “What?”
“There was that letter, the one I gave you from Eve about the herb her grandfather showed Pamela… the medicine.”
“Wulfbane.”
“Yes.”
Kris stood up and moved to his bureau., He gave Marabeth the tablets and she said, “What is this, birth control? You know the girl you’re sleeping with takes these and not… what the fuck is aconitum carmichaelii?”
“ Wulfbane.” Kris said.
When his sister blinked at him, he continued.
“Yes. Do you remember when I went crazy as a teenager. When Mom and Dad put me away and then took me to the doctor. This is my medication, Mara.”
Marabeth nodded, and then she said, “Kristian, I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
“I have the same thing Dad had, that drove him nuts. That made him go away and never come back. His dad, our granddad had the same thing and maybe Uncle Byron. What if they were the same as Friederich?”
“Are you saying you believe this,” Marabeth gestured out the hall, because it was as close as she could get to pointing at the book.
“Are you saying you don’t?” Kris demanded. “Because if you didn’t, why the fuck would you have come up here to tell me about it? Why wouldn’t you be laughing in your room about it., You know there’s something about us, Marabeth.”
“That we’re werewolves?”
“Or that I am,” Kris said. “It… I know you never expected to hear that from me, but I think that’s why Uri took me to Chicago, so that I could really look at… every option.”
“But Kristian,” Marabeth said, “If this is true.. and I think something is true, I really think something is happening, but if THIS was true, wouldn’t I be a werewolf? Wouldn’t everyone in our family be one? Wouldn’t we all be taking these pills? And why weren’t they? Pamela and Friederich? Because they aren’t like movie werewolves. I mean they turn into full on wolves.”
“The wolves in fairy tales did too. Werewolf is a German word that went into the French. In the French stories the man turned into a wolf, not a wolf man.”
“But once a month. Because of the moon, He couldn’t help it.”
“And these pills stop it?”
“Maybe?”
“But why not take them only on the full moon?”
“The direction are specific,” Kris said. “Maybe their all sugar pills and the ones that have an effect I only take on the full moon. Or maybe, like birth control, it’s really a gradual dosage you have to take all the time.”
“I don’t want to believe that. I don’t want this to be… I also don’t want to say this is so crazy its not possible. I don’t want to be one of those silly people in books and movies who takes the whole plot to believe. Anything’s possible, I guess. But… Pamela did not take pills or herbs. She changed when she wanted to and didn’t when she didn’t So…”
“You’ve got to just keep reading,” Kris told her earnestly.
Marabeth nodded.
“Are you still going out?”
“Yeah,” Kris said. “I have to. Maybe you should too.”
“No, I’ve had enough out. Joy took Peter home and I guess she went back to her place cause she isn’t back here, and Jim either went to bed or is still downstairs.”
“Oh,” Kris said.
“Oh, what?”
Kristian Strauss cleared his throat.
“I did a shitty thing.”
Marabeth looked at her brother.
“Jim came up here and I tore into him. He wanted to talk about Dad and I told him how our Dad wasn’t his dad, he was just a cousin and I was tired of him trying to act like he was our borther. And…”
He stopped at the look on his sister’s face, but continued.
“I told him his sadness was nothing compared to mine and he didn’t have a right to try to … I was really awful.”
Marabeth look sad and horrified and she said, “How could you do that?”
When Kris didn’t say anything, she said, “That’s not like you. It’s something about Jim that always makes you do things like that.”
“Maybe its exactly what I said,” Kris said miserably “Maybe I really didn’t want him trying to be our brother.”
“But he is. Dad loved jim. Dad was there after both of his parents. His mom and dad died years ago. All he has is us.”
“I know that!’ Kris said, miserably. “I know that. I felt awful for saying all that.”
“You have to say you’re sorry.”
Kris shook his head.
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“You don’t understand. That’s not the relationship we have. I… I can’t say I’m sorry for saying what I said. That doesn’t cover it. And it’s really too late for me and Jim to be friends. I think I’m a very jealous, nasty person.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Jim’s life… has been shitty, and it never gets him down and he built a real life for himself and I had everything. Until now, had a mom and a dad. And… I’ve always been jealous about keeping what I had, always thought Jim outshone me. I’m mean and I’m hateful and Jim knows that about me. I show it to him all the time. There’s no use saying sorry.”
Marabeth reached out to touch his hand, but Kris shook his head and stood up.
“I’m gonna go, Sis, See you in the morning.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

Another excellent portion! I hope Kris is ok. What he said to Jim was bad but I hope he doesn't beat himself up too much about it. Marabeth is learning a lot about her family. I can't wait to read what happens next in The Book Of Pamela Strauss. Great writing and I look forward to the next portion!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I actually do hope Kris beats himself up a little bit. But more than beating himself up, I hope he makes the situation better. Marabeth has stumbled on some family secrets and the whole family will have to be together to face what's coming next.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER
FIVE

NEED



When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you..

-Friedrich Nietzsche




Past midnight, Joyce McNamara found herself making out with Peter Keller.
“Do you mind?” Peter stopped for a moment.
“No.” And then Joyce said, “Mind what?”
Peter reached passed her, He’d forgotten he had unbuttoned his shirt, and his tie was on the floor. He took the giraffe and gently put it down there too, turning it around.
When Joyce looked at him, he went red.
“I felt like he was looking at me.”
“Yeah,” Joyce laughed. “I got that. And who wants to be judged by a giraffe?”
“It’s not even that,” Peter said, and then he said, “You’re going to think I’m such a nerd.”
“Peter, I already think you’re a nerd”
“I just feel like Mr Yips shouldn’t see us making out.”
“He has a name. Well, I mean that does make sense.”
“Has a name, makes a noise. Yip yip yip. Madder made it up. And Mr. Yips is a very innocent three foot giraffe.”
“That is cute as fuck,” Joyce said.,
Peter frowned, “You don’t think it’s sad that a forty year old man believes he has to turn a stuffed animal’s head around when he’s making out for the first time in… a very long time?”
“No, I think it’s actually the least sad thing that’s happened this night.”
“Amen,” Peter said. “Well,” he sat back on the couch, hair disheveled, shirt undone, “I have probably killed the mood we were—”
Joyce kissed him quickly.
“What was that for?”
“Because,” Joyce said, “I’m not a slut, but I feel like you’re one of those guys who isn’t aggressive, doesn’t press his advantage, and might not know if a girl is interested.”
When Peter turned to her with a half smile, she was surprised by how handsome he looked with part of his dark hiar hanging in his face, and his blue eyes a little fiercer than they had been.
“I’m interested,” she said, simply.
“I’m out of practice,” he placed his hand over hers. “I don’t want to get you into something you’ll regret.”
“Or you’ll regret?”
“Joyce MacNamara, I would not rtegret you. Just tell me when you want me to stop, how far you wanna go.”
Joyce felt flushed and foolish. She said, “I guess I’m the New Woman and you’re the New Man and you’re waiting for my affirmation.”
“I could carry you up the stairs like Rhett Butler and you could slap me. That used to be hot.”
“My ass is too fat to carry, but the idea of going upstairs with you feels like something I want to happen.”
Peter turned away form her, his face red.
“Me too,” he said. He turned to her.
“I’m not… I’m not that guy that’s good with stuff like this.”
“Sex.”
“No, I’m great at sex. No!” he smacked himself in the head. “I mean, Yes, I guess. It’s my words. And my feelings, My affections. I… I’d like to go upstairs too. If you’d like too.”
The more unsure and gentle he was, the more she wanted him, and part of her wondered if it was some game he played to lure women, but Joyce knew as soon as she’d thought this that it couldn’t be true. She said, “Yes, Pete.”
“Did oyu just call me Pete?”
“I was trying something. Didn’t feel right did it? You’re definitely a Peter.”
“I kind of am, and I’ve tried to be a Peter, but—”
“Peter.”
“Yes, Joy?”
“Take me upstairs.”

Marabeth lay spread out on her stomach, the book open before her and her door open. She was a little surprised when her mother entered.
“Are you alright.” she asked Rebecca.
“I’m supposed to be asking you that.”
“Well, I can still ask you.”
“What about you?” Rebecca said.
“I think I feel like Grandma. I think I always knew he was gone, but really knowing it makes me feel better. I just want us to have… what’s left. So we can do right by him. Have a real funeral. It’s Kris you should check on, but he’s out.”
“You think he went out with Jim?
“Oh, I doubt that very much. Jim’s out?”
“Yeah. He said he was going home, which surprised me. I thought he’d stay in his old room. Not that there’s any reason he should, I mean, he has a beautiful apartment. So do you. But—”
“Mother,” Marabeth said, “you’re starting to ramble. Just a bit.”
“Well, yes,” Rebecca admitted. “It’s what I do when .. when I’m exhausted and sad and concerned for my family.”
“I’ll keep my door open,” Marabeth offered.
Rebecca nodded and said, “I was just going to say, you have a lovely apartment, but I’m so glad you’re here tonight.”
“I’m glad I’m here too, Mom.”
Rebecca kissed her, then moved to the door.
Before leaving she said, “Mara, your father was troubled by many things, and I imagine you will begin to understand them if you read what your aunt wrote. Try not to stay up too much longer, and don’t let Pamela’s mind fill yours. I remember her. I remember what that was like.”


In the grey light of morning, he woke up sprawled naked across her bed, exhausted from passion that had burned all pain away. His usual messy hair was a more of a bird’s nest than ever, and the girl, half asleep, looked over his long body covered in brown hair, then looked on his blinking pale blue eyes and though of a wolf.
“Was it good for you?” she asked him.
“That’s what I should be asking you,” Kris Strauss said, yawning.
“I hurt,” she stated. “I’ll probably hurt for the next day.”
Kris blinked suddenly and turned over, looking concerned, but she laughed and said, “You don’t understand, sometimes a bitch needs it like that.”
She sighed, lying down in the damp sheets. “I needed it like that. How did you know?”
Kris always knew. Last night he left the house and thought about heading to a club before he realized on Christmas every club and bar would be closed. But his sister was right. I-Hop never closed. He sat in the restaurant drinking cup after cup of coffee, chatting down the waitress. And it wasn’t that he had an undeniable magnetism, though intellectual, a little unshaved and shaggy, tall and with a look of playfulness in his eyes, he did. He knew that what spoke to hunger was other hunger, and he knew in a way he could not explain, that she was hungry. He didn’t eat anything, he had eaten enough, and he wasn’t really here for food. When she said she was getting off, he asked what she was doing later on.
“It’s one in the morning. I should be going to sleep.”
“Yes,” Kris said, “you probably should.”
“But I want something to do. You know?”
“Oh, I know.”
She laughed a little, but it wasn’t a real laugh, and she asked, “Do you think you’d want to follow me home?”
“I’m not opposed to it.”
“Oh, I should get to bed.”
“I’ll definitely make sure you get there.”
Now she did laugh, and she said, “Bad things happen when I start talking like this.”
Kris placed his hand over hers. It was a long, strong hand with traces of hair on the back palm, and his eyes were merry and pale blue and a little bit wicked.
“I…” he began, “shouldn’t take you home.”
“Don’t take me home, then.”

In the parking lot of the I-Hop, the windows of the waitress’s car were steamed over as it rocked from side to side and Kris fucked her in the backseat.
“Oh, God!” she cried, loud, her fingernails raking his ass and then coming up under his shirt, under his jacket while he fucked her on hands and knees, pressing her up against a window.
“You like it?” he demanded. “You like it? You like my big,” he fucked her, “fucking,” he thrust into her, “cock, in you?”
“Give it to me. Shove it in my pussy.”
He loved sex like this, and she moaned, her fingers curling in the little hairs at the back of his neck, “come inside of me, okay. Make a mess in me.”
He repositioned her and with each syllable he pushed into her, “I’m going to come inside of your tight, tight, tight pussyyy—oooooooh, G—”
He lost himself in orgasm, his mouth open, the veins of his neck standing out, his head titled up, almost blind as the sweat ran down his temples.
Many men hated the feeling of defeat that came after sex, the feeling of being rung out, emptied, deflated. Wishing to crush they themselves were crushed, but Kris loved it, this being taken out of his himself, this weakness after the strength, his shirt damp under his blazer, his pants down around his knees, heaving, unable to speak, weak, his penis becoming moist and soft as it slipped out of this woman, still dripping come.
“Do you still want to follow me home,” the waitress asked, “or has the feeling passed now that you got what you needed?”
Kris didn’t talk right away, his rough cheek lay against hers, unconsciously, his bare ass still pointed in the air.
“The thing is,” he began to explain, “I never really get everything I need.”


He was not needy, but he was in need. Kris Strauss hated needy people. They would find anyone and tell them everything. It was one of the reasons he had so few friends. He didn’t need to tell this girl everything, but he needed more than a quick fuck in the back of a car ,and yes, he had needed that fuck. People were so twisted up because they didn’t want to admit what they needed. They thought they were so much more and so much stronger than they were. Kris knew he needed to abase himself, to hard fuck someone, but he needed to follow this girl home, believe in that strange predatory magic. The Native Americans said that the buffalo gave themselves up to be slaughtered and Kris thought, driving home with an erection rising between his legs, pointing straight at the car whose red taillights blinked up Dorr road and then out into the suburbs, that people who wanted to fuck were like that too.. Back In her apartment they drank a little and talked, and Kris needed that. He needed to hear this girl talk about work, He needed to rub her feet after offering. He didn’t need to simply be consumed or comforted. He needed to offer comfort. He needed to forget his own sorrow in the sorrows of the world, to make that magical connection to a stranger he would never see again. The two of them in the shower, him washing her back, washing her hair, washing her skin so tenderly, getting on his knees to adore her, to bow before her, to bury his face in her pussy only to lay against the towels groaning while she did the same to him, gagging on his cock untuil he came down her throat. He needed them sleeping exhausted in that bed, and then the middle of the middle of the night sex.

Driving back in an early morning so devoid of dawn it was more night than day, and everyone still used their headlights, Kris thought how there was a time when he would have saved the number of every girl he’d had a one night stand with. But that was to prolong the magic, to be greedy, almost. The good sex of one night didn’t make a relationship. He knew this now. He drove over the pebbles and snow of the alley behind Dimler Street, and getting out of his car, unlocked and hefted up the heavy door of the old garage behind the house. Having parked, he came through the little door leading into the backyard and the carriage house, covered in dried vines and snow, the paint falling off of wet wood where Pamela had lived her last days. No one lived her now. He passed the yard and went up the steps of the back porch, and into the kitchen, thankful that his grandmother or mother were not in it yet, and taking off his shoes, barefoot, he trekked up the three flights to his room, on his floor, and exhausted, body humming from lovemaking, went to bed.

 

[CharmedFan28]

I like Joyce and Peter, I am glad they are enjoying each others company. Kris seems to be all kinds of messed up at the moment. I hope he can make his way through the pain. Great writing and I look forward to the next portion!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I have a sense that Kris might be your favorite character? I am really partial to him too, in all of his mess ups and he almost steals the story for me, at least at this point. As messed up as he is, I always feel like he needed what happened between him and Jenean. I don't know. I also just remembered, and maybe you forgot, that though we're four chapters in, all of this is actually taking place in one night. The story started on Christmas Eve and right now, it's still actually only Christmas night. Oh: and I am a great Joyce and Peter fan too. So much is going to happen with all of these folks before the story is over. I'm so excited you're reading.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Yeah I like Kris a lot!