Isla, Dog Chow

I knocked on the door. Greg's eyes were piercing holes between my shoulder blades as I did. Surprised he didn't follow me. That he didn't suddenly appear in front of my nose, cage me against his body, and drag me back to his little hideout. Very surprised, actually. But maybe he figured all his moaning and pouting would be enough to lure me back.

Well psych, bucko.

Bummer nobody answered my first knock.

"Um, hello?" my voice shook more than I wanted. Not cool. I cleared my throat. "Anybody home? Lily? It's—" It's a-me, the necromoron who resurrected you a week ago.

Oh balls, this was stupid. Greg, that prick, had some nerve being right. I should've had a better plan.

"Fuck."

I punched my fist against the door.

With a metallic pop, the lock disengaged, and the door creaked open. Just a sliver. A wave of cool, lavender and caramel candy and mothball scented air wafted out.

An old woman's liver spotted face greeted me.

"Oh. Hi, you must be Rocco's mom—er, Mrs. Cabroni?" She didn't blink or flinch. "I'm a, uh, friend of your son's and was wondering if, maybe, say, he's recently brought another friend of ours over to stay—Ma'am? Hello?"

Without a sound the woman retreated from the doorway, drifting backward, her unblinking stare vanishing into the darkness of her home. Nah, not spooky at all. But at least she didn't slam the door in my face. I'll take that as an invite to come inside, sure, why not? This was already playing out easier than I expected.

I gently pushed the door aside and entered.

The lavender and candy and mothball scent, mixed with an unhealthy dose of musk and something rotten, was suffocating. Especially after the door slammed shut behind me, nearly clipping me in the booty as it did. I coughed on the dusty air. A Tiffany lamp flickered. It cast the hall in a dim, kaleidoscopic glow.

She stared at me. The old woman. Sunken cheeks and wrinkles creased the dark circles under her eyes. Her slippered steps backward were stilted and awkward. Made sense. Since her entire body had twisted from the neck down, rotating to keep that vacant gaze on me even as her toes pointed forward and she literally hovered down the hall.

She stretched an arm forward— pointing away from me and toward the back of the house— and curled one beckoning finger inward. Yeah. I think that was meant for me.

Ugh, great, another haunted house. Just what I needed.

I took a deep breath, shaking out the last of the chill from my shoulders on the exhale. Buck up, Buttercup. It's show time.

The ghostly woman abruptly turned and vanished through an archway into another, open room.

Oh Lily, you bitch, you better be hiding in here and not have sucked me into a stupid haunted house for nothing.

A heavy pounding assaulted the front door, making me jump and hurry to follow the ghost.

The space, situated between the front room and the kitchen, was clearly meant to be a dining area. Completely wood paneled walls. Squishy, mint carpet. Another orange green tinted Tiffany lamp hung from the ceiling. It seemed, currently, to serve as a sick ward instead. At its center, where you'd imagine a fine wood table set for the holidays, a hospital bed sat as a practical alter. The woman I'd followed was gone, but the figure occupying the bed was old and frail and still.

It was difficult to make out any features from my angle, but I was willing to bet the old lady on the bed was both dead and had answered the door for me.

And then there were the bones. They were delicately arranged on a folding table against one wall. Brittle and gray and flaking apart onto the carpet. A full skeleton. Well, nearly full. One hand was missing the bones of its littlest finger.

But, for once, the unmoving dead bodies in the room were the least of my worries.

"Lily?"

The barista gasped when she saw me. Straight up gasped. A mousy little squeak of surprise. She'd changed her gory sweater to a clean one, but still wore that same frightened rabbit look in her bloodshot eyes. Her hair was wilder. Like she hadn't thought to run a comb or some leave-in conditioner through that shag in days.

She stood between the bed and table, holding hands with both corpses. Her flighty gaze widened to the size of tea saucers.

"You."

"What are you..." I stepped forward and then back again when I felt a prickle of heat rise in my anklet (keep a Slenderman's arm's length away from the cadavers, girlfriend, you cannot risk bringing the Magistrate to you now).

The lavender smell was coming from this room. Incense to cover up the stench of the dead? I only just noticed the smokey cloud in the twinkling glow of the candles. Lots of candles. Lots of familiar looking candles. One in particular – situated on a shelf above the bed and flanked by rose quartz and agate and a dagger – really caught my eye.

"Is that my black flame candle?" I pointed to an antique spirit board propped up behind it, "and my Ouija? And—"

Lady Rosemond Mary Favichia (nee Hastings).

Her portrait, at least. Canvas was unfurled atop the skeleton. The pale woman painted on it sneered down at her own decomposed remains.

Atop a fold out snack tray, a cracked crystal ball rested snugly in a ring of duct tape.

Lily's gaze flicked between the dead. "I—"

"This is my stuff."

Rocco that mother fucker. He had a key to my place. This whole damn time he'd had a key to place. He tried to kill Grumpkin twice, that asshole. I was just going to have to let Grumpkin claw his eyes out. Twice. Even stevens.

The pounding at the front door continued. A desperate, muffled yell I couldn't understand accompanied the strikes. Made both Lily and I flinch.

"Please," she said, a light lilt in her tone I hadn't noticed last time we met. When she spoke again, fear or excitement or something had pitched her voice higher. "Please, you can help me with this, can you not? I don't have much time."

Unwilling to release the hands of the corpses, Lily nodded toward the skeleton's feet (its finger bones crunched and crackled). Poised against the rotted toes was an open book. It was just as old and beat up as the bones. Bound in a leathery fabric. The pages wept blood onto the table. A neat little The Free Library of Philadelphia sticker was taped along the twisted spine.

My stomach dropped.

"No," I croaked. "No, girl, you can't do this. You don't want to do this. Trust me, it's not worth it. The dead deserve their rest, okay?"

She frowned, brows pinching. "Then what the bloody hell was it you thought I deserved?"

Busted.

"Yeah. I, uh, wanted to talk to you about that."

"Talk?"

She threw the dead hands aside – the old woman's smacked roughly against the bedrail – and yanked up her sweater. The wound on her side was still pissed. Red and torn and crusty. It didn't bleed or ooze. Wasn't infected. But it certainly, evidently, never healed. Just stayed a big ole gash for wool to get stuck on.

What exactly were you trying to do here, sweetie? I imagined Nazira's nurturing voice saying. Charity? Not really your style, is it? Tsk, tsk, tsk. This should've been just a blip.

"Fine, then. This what you want to talk about?" a wicked smile danced across Lily's lips. "I'd love a little chat about this, frankly. About how to correct it. For good."

There were cuts on her thumbs. They didn't bleed but left little maroon prints on her hem and sleeves. I held up my own. A scab had formed from my touch up with Big Tony the other night. "Trick won't work without a few pre-requisites, you know."

A dark look crossed Lily's dainty features. She gestured to the bodies. "I have bones."

Something oily and foul slithered in my gut. Okay. So she'd been doing some, ah, light reading lately. Human bone and blood were ingredients for necromancy, alright.

"It's not that straight forward—um, shit, I don't know how that book translates—you shouldn't do it out of sequential order. The eyes come before the—" My left eye itched in its socket. What the pixie dust was I saying? "Uh, forget it, actually. You shouldn't do this at all. It's not safe."

She opened her mouth, but snapped it shut again when she heard the howl. It reverberated up through the floorboards. Her eyes widened. Heck, mine probably did too.

I spun. Creeped a few steps into the hall into the kitchen, following the sound. There, just under the stairs, was a door. To the basement I presumed. A thin, silver chain was all that latched it shut.

Lily's soft footsteps followed me.

"Is Rocco home?"

"It's fine," the sudden height in her pitch suggested Lily seriously doubted this was fine. "I've got him under control now."

Lily reached for the thin chain.

"No, don't—"

But of course, she didn't listen.

I'd be lying to you if I said I faced the scene below us with a tremendous amount of ladylike courage, and didn't instead cower behind the undead problem of my ow making.

But, of course, I wasn't immediately assaulted by a rabid werewolf, foaming at the mouth with bloodlust either.

The door creaked open slowly. Its hinges were in some obvious need of lube (ha). It revealed a dim, dank, unfinished basement. Brick walls and gray cement flooring. Cobwebs. Boxes of Christmas decorations and the like. Against the far wall, one could just make out a yellowed washer/dryer combo. If one was able to unglue their eyes from the werewolf chained to the floor in the center of the room.

Rocco paced circles around the spike in the cement. The short chain linking the metal collar round his neck to that anchor prevented him from moving much further. Deep gashes in the cement told me he'd been pacing like this for a while. Was it late? How long had the moon been up already?

"See," Lily's sigh of relief was not well hidden. "The wolfsbane renders him harmless."

A wet circle of drool followed Rocco's tail tucked trudge around the basement. If a wolf could pout, that's certainly what his snout was doing.

Every so often a sliver of moonlight would cut through the dust caked little windows out on to the front sidewalk, triggering another bone chilling howl from Rocco.

"You got him intoxicated? Where did you even get that herb, it's regulated—"

At the apparent sound of my voice, Rocco's head snapped up. His ears twisted in our direction. Glowing, yellow eyes narrowed at me, pupils dilating. Lips curled back to reveal rows of jagged teeth. Steaming drool dribbled onto the cement.

And then, because my luck is most certainly mine, Rocco yanked his neck hard. The spike grounding his chain into the floor rattled. Loosened. Little chunks of rock dislodged and skittered across the floor.

He growled. The deep snarl shook both my bones and the ones left out on the folding table like a Thanksgiving turkey carcass. Wolfie probably wanted to gobble us up like Thanksgiving turkeys too.

Rocco jumped.

The spike plunked free.

"Oh tits," I slammed the basically plywood door shut, not bothering to hook the flimsy chain. "Not fine. Get out of here."

"I need to finish the rit—"

Lily screamed when the werewolf ripped apart the door. Wooden shards flew into the kitchen. I turned and grabbed her, throwing us both down behind an island. Pain ricocheted through my knees from coming down hard on linoleum. Beneath me, Lily wriggled and slapped. She rolled her way out from under me just as the wolf leapt on the counter. He sent a bowl of fruit spilling into my lap.

He was big. Wowie. Rocco's muscles were bordering on action hero sycophant in his human form. As a wolf, it was apparent his fur covered limbs were even more jacked. He was so furry and massive his head bonked the fluorescent lamp hanging from the kitchen ceiling.

Grotesque shadows swung across his face and shoulders as he panted. His snout curled back, revealing rows a

"Run!" I screamed to Lily, literally kicking her in the ass, as Rocco's jaws nipped at me. "Runrunrunrun!"

She obeyed. Slipping only once on the hard floor, she scampered to her feet and set off down the hall. The wolf's attention followed her. Hunched. Prepared to pounce. I grabbed for something. Anything. My hands found a banana, bruised from its tumble in the fruit bowl.

I jumped up and smashed the banana in the wolf's eye. "Fuck you, Rocco!"

He wailed. Shook his entire, shaggy form, pawing at the yellow mush in his eye.

Grateful for the moment of distraction I darted after Lily.

She was stuck at the door, smacking it hard and futilely. Stupid thing looked like it wouldn't budge.

"Run!"

Lily yelped when I clapped her by the shoulders and dragged her away from the door.

Rocco's paws, meanwhile, were slip-sliding stupidly on the kitchen linoleum, unable to find traction. He whimpered, smacking his snout against the island. Aggravated he dug his claws into the ground. It cracked.

I threw Lily onto the staircase and gave her what definitely wouldn't be classified as a gentle nudge with my foot for her to keep moving.

"Vamos!"

"What?"

"Just go!"

Slobbering werewolf on our tail, she caught my drift pretty quick, grabbed onto the railing and hoisted herself to her feet.

The quaking walls clued told me that Rocco was barreling down the narrow hall, toward the front of the house. I rammed my fist against Lily's ass and urged her forward. We scuttled like roaches up the stairs. Our saving grace was the wolf's hulking size. He could barely squeeze into the tight, spiral staircase leading up the second floor. Claws dug angry tears into the wallpaper in his awkward climb.

Greg. Where was Greg? I needed him. Why wasn't he in here? Why hadn't he come? What, had he popped some corn and decided to just watch all the action happening from across the street? The prick.

"Greg!" I screamed, voice hoarse, unsure if even a vamp be able to hear me above the cacophony of our chase. Oh fuck, oh shit, oh balls I did not want to be were-puppy chow. "Greg!"

Lily stormed into the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. Which was stupid. Going upstairs was stupid. We'd be trapped. Or we could jump. Maybe this room had a balcony. I followed her, throwing the door closed behind me.

It didn't even latch. Rocco rammed straight through it, jete-ing like some four-legged monstrosity of a ballerina. I jumped aside, tossing myself onto the bed. Lily seemed to duck behind it. I think. But the room was small. All the rooms in these old houses were small.

Rocco, the meathead werewolf that he was, leaped straight through the door with such force he propelled himself entirely across the room in seconds, and crashed through the window. Just like that. In a mere breath, he was gone, leaving shards of glass and tufts of fur floating in his wake.

Whimpers and bones cracking echoed up from the yard below. I should run. Should just grab Lily and make a beeline for the front door again, while the dog was down. Among the grunts and flattening body parts, a man groaned.

"Evening, Cabroni," Greg's charming voice wafted through the cold air. "Say, how'd you like to go for a run, eh?"

My wild heart beat against my ribs like it wanted to escape. Tripped over Lily as climbed off the bed. She swore at me. Whatever. Ungrateful hussy. Still helped her up, arms wrapped around her waist to steady her as she winced in pain, cause I'm a sucker I guess.

Speaking of suckers.

"Greg!" I shouted.

My vampire gazed up at me.

Right as the werewolf lunged for him.