Someone was talking — Dan, continuing to plead his case. Without another word to him, I turned and started back the way that had brought me here. I managed half a dozen steps before Dan caught my shoulder and spun me around. His face was scarlet, the scar descending its right side bone white. He was shouting, spittle flying from his lips. “What the fuck, Abe? What the fuck? You’re going to leave? You’re going to abandon me? What about Sophie? What about Jonas and Jason? Are you thinking of us? Are you thinking of Marie? What about Marie, Abe? What about her?” Behind him, Marie maintained her vigil of the beast.
“Dan,” I said. “Stop. It’s too much. He’s—”
“He’s what?” Dan punctuated his question with a shove from his big hands that had the force of his long legs behind it. It sent me stumbling over the smooth, rounded stones. My foot slipped, and my balance went. I twisted as I fell, trying to catch myself, but all that accomplished was to bring me down on my right side. My arm, my ribs, my hip smashed into the waiting rocks; the pain forced the air from my lungs. Through some miracle, my head escaped colliding with a stone, and when I saw Dan bending towards me, my first thought was, He’s helping me. But he wasn’t close enough to offer me a hand, and he straightened almost immediately. Not until I saw the large, bluish rock his fingers stretched around did I understand what he was doing. “I don’t want to do this,” he said, “I really don’t. It’s — if he has your strength, then he won’t have to take them away from me. I — if there were any other way, Abe. Honestly. I don’t want to do this.”
“Then don’t,” I managed, already aware that my words hadn’t registered, because Dan was raising the stone, his body tensing as he made ready to lunge into a blow. That the man I counted my closest friend was about to inflict grievous harm on me, if not kill me outright, was the most monstrous thing I had encountered yet this strange, awful day. A wave of nausea rolled over me. Even as I watched him shift his grip, moving his fingers to one end of his improvised weapon in order to better control it, I half-expected him to pause, lower and allow the rock to fall from his hand, and shake the sense back into his head. Only when Dan was moving forward, swinging the stone towards me, his eyes wide, his lips pressed tightly together, did a surge of adrenaline send me rolling out of his way. His attack missed, the rock cracking on the one that had been under my head and flying from his grasp. My feet tangled with his, sweeping him to the ground but preventing me from rising. Instead, I kicked furiously, pushing away from where he lay stunned. This entire time, I had not forgotten the knife in my pocket, and as I struggled to my feet, I had it out and in hand.
“A knife?” From the tone of Dan’s voice, you would have thought I was the one threatening him. He tried to raise himself on his arms, but he must have injured the left one. It gave out on him, and he barely saved himself from falling on his face. He looked up at me. “It doesn’t matter.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. My heart was pounding, hammering against my chest as if I’d finished a short, fast race. To my left, a stone shifted. A glance in that direction showed one of the boys — I couldn’t tell them apart — toddling towards me. His brother was clambering in my direction from the right; Sophie was waiting a dozen feet behind me. I was about to call out to Dan, mock him for dragging his wife and babies into the dirty deed he was attempting, but something about whichever twin was on my left stilled my tongue. His chubby face, more baby than little boy, was wavering, the mouth stretching wider, splitting his cheeks most of the way to his ears, the blanched gums sprouting rows of serrated fangs that would not have been out of place in the mouth of a shark. His brother’s face had undergone a similar transformation, as had Sophie’s.
Dan had found his way to his feet, though he was rubbing that left arm. He had to have seen the change in Sophie and the boys, but nothing about him acknowledged it. Wincing, he stooped and scooped up a new, reddish rock with his right hand. Rising, he said, “It’s a shame, Abe. I always thought Sophie and you would have gotten along with one another, appreciated each other’s company.”
I licked my lips, which had gone dry. Attempting to keep my eyes on all four figures surrounding me, I said, “This isn’t your wife, Dan. You have to know that.”
“Shut up,” Dan said and, before I could offer a rejoinder, charged.
The last fight worth the name I had been in had occurred the better part of three decades ago. Dan was younger, at a guess stronger, and he was fighting for what he’d convinced himself was his family. He’d learned a little from his first pass at me: he faked a swing at my head with the stone, then whipped his left hand at me in a roundhouse that might have been smoother if he hadn’t injured that arm. It clouted my ear with less force than he intended, leaving me able to jerk my head out of the path of his rock. I slashed the knife right to left across him, felt it drag on his shirt. He hissed, and swept the stone at me in an uppercut that hit me high in the chest. I grunted, and slashed left to right, feeling the knife catch on his skin. Hugging his left arm to the vents I’d cut in his shirt, Dan stumbled back.
My chest was heaving, my temples pounding. “Dan,” I said, “please.” The tip of my knife wavered in front of me, Dan’s blood scarlet on more of the blade than I’d anticipated.
Crouched forward, his own breath coming in pants, Dan said, “You cut me. You son of a bitch.”
This did not seem the appropriate moment to point out that I had done so in response to his effort to crush my skull with the rock he continued to hold. To either side of me, the twins had drawn closer, their pudgy fingers ending in hooked claws. At my back, Sophie was also nearer, similarly changed. I’d cut Dan deeper than I’d intended. Where it pressed against him, his shirt sleeve was wet with blood. Without releasing his grip on the stone, he lowered himself to sitting. “Ow,” he said. “You son of a bitch. You cut me.”
“Sorry,” I said; although I wasn’t, not exactly. A mix of joy and revulsion swirled in my gut: joy that I’d survived Dan’s assault; revulsion at the blood soaking his sleeve. Was there any way to find him some kind of medical care in this place?
Dan didn’t answer me. Blood was dripping from his shirt cuff onto the rocks underneath him. The twins, their toes webbed and clawed, were less than a yard from me. I wasn’t as concerned with turning the knife on them or Sophie, not with their appearances so changed, but I wasn’t sure it would do me any good. Yes, they seemed solid, as much as Marie had earlier, in the forest, but the ease with which their forms shifted made me doubt the efficacy of any weapon I could muster against them. When the boys paused their flanking maneuver, I assumed it was to judge the best moment to strike. I didn’t think I could evade the two of them. I was hoping to hop out of the range of one and deal with his brother; though their wide mouths, crammed with fangs, troubled me far more than had Dan’s stones. Not to mention, as long as I was occupied with one of them, their mother would have the opportunity to move on me from behind.