FIC: History Lessons 2/8, Part 1 of 2

[laguera25]

Title: History Lessons 2/8

Author: laguera25

Fandom: CSI:NY

Rating: FRM for violent imagery

Pairing: N/A; gen

Spoilers: S1-S3, especially "Tanglewood", "On the Job", "Run Silent, Run Deep", "All Access", and "Snow Day".

Disclaimer: All recognizable places, characters, and events herein are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.

A/N: Written for the all_hallows_fic Ficathon and dedicated to stellaluna_, who deserves more fluff, actually, but I'm afraid the country I inhabit is too dark for that.



Part I-Lindsay Monroe



Danny had never liked Halloween when he was a kid. Even back then, he'd known it was a gyp, all plastic and rubber faces and candy that tasted like those wax lips no matter what the wrapper said it was. His ma had tried to dress him up a few times when he was still in short pants, and he'd bet a paycheck that she still had the Kodaks of Great Pumpkin Danny and Casper Danny in an album tucked somewhere far out of his father's drunken reach, but he'd been a pain in the ass even then, fussed and twisted in her arms and tugged fretfully at the sheet until she'd given up and set him on his feet to run wild on the living room furniture. At least until Pop grunted and raised his rough, nicotine-yellowed hand in a gesture Danny had understood perfectly. Shut up, or I'll instruct you in the joys of silence.

It was hard to fuss when you couldn't open your mouth.

His ma had taken him trick-or-treating once, when he was five. People thought she was a wallflower because she hardly spoke, but there was an iron spine beneath her apron strings, one grown harder by the years she spent with Louis Messer, Sr., and when she set her feet, there was no moving her. So, she'd dressed him up in a cheap Batman costume, thrust a plastic pumpkin into his reluctant fist, and taken his picture while he stood on a kitchen chair like a miniature convict, sullen and pooch-lipped. He remembered the camera, a bulky Brownie with the heft of a brick and a lens that had jutted from the camera face like an impudent cock. She probably still had that picture, too, hidden in a shoebox and buried beneath half-empty compacts and thinning brushes. After twenty-six years, it was likely surrendering the fragment of spirit it had stolen to create the memory, milky and liver-spotted by photographic necrosis.

He hadn't wanted to go that night. He'd wanted to watch The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, stretched on the living room rug with his one-eyed teddy bear named Patch and a bottle of Yoohoo, but his mother had her own means of persuasion. A flicker of disappointment in her brown eyes cut more deeply than any harsh word or careless blow from Pop, and when her pleas had begun to waver and crack with desperate unhappiness, he'd decided that a bag full of candy from strangers was just what he'd wanted. So, he'd left the Yoohoo in the refrigerator and turned off the television set with a pang of regret at the thought that Snoopy would be waiting for him, trapped inside his father's idiot box and searching for his familiar, friendly face.

"Mama, what 'bout Snoopy?" he'd asked as his mother had ruined the effect of his Batman costume with a muffler and a pair of mittens. "Won't he miss me?"

Mama had squatted to adjust his muffler, and she had kissed the bridge of his nose with her dry mother lips. "Snoopy'll be fine, honey. He'd want you to have fun. You want to have fun, don't you?"

He'd been having fun with the prospect of a Yoohoo and a night with Snoopy, but she was his mama, and her face was anxious and too white, with hectic patches of color in her cheeks. So he'd nodded and said that he wanted to go out. She'd flashed him an overbright, hysterical smile and told him that he was her good boy, and he really had felt like Batman in his fifteen-dollar costume, masked hero to tired mamas everywhere. Only later the next night, when he was snuggled beneath his down blankets would it occur to him that he'd lied to her. The sticky film of sweets had been guilt on his teeth, and he'd folded his hands and prayed for God's forgiveness. Later still-years and murders later, he'd realized that lying wasn't always a sin. Sometimes, it was necessity; sometimes it was mercy.

Like the phone call you made the night Sonny Sassone scrambled my brains for me and left me bleedin' in a heap out front of the body shop where I was poundin' out dents in station wagons with a ten-pound mallet, Louie said, voice thick with nicotine and yellow phlegm and thick, black blood from his ruptured larynx. You didn't tell her how bad off I was or how I got that way. Especially not that last part, right, short pants? Wouldn't want her to know that her precious Danny was the reason her prodigal son was suckin' wind through a plastic tube. She might not look at you like you were Christ in a labcoat. You were the only straight man in her life, the only one whose money was as clean as his conscience, and you didn't want to give that up. You told yourself that it was for her good, a merciful, necessary lie of omission, and maybe it was, a little. You're not a complete prick, short pants, but you're enough of one that it mattered what she'd think of you.

So you didn't tell her that my head got caved in on your account, and you damn sure didn't tell her how it sounded when Sonny parted my hair with my Kentucky namesake, an overripe pumpkin shatterin' on grease-stained concrete. There are some things a mother never needs to know. If you've learned anything on this job, it's that. Honesty isn't always the best policy, and sometimes lies are kinder. You just told her that I'd been attacked on the street by an unknown thug. It was as close to the truth as you could come without losin' your fuckin' mind and your status as favorite son.

And since it's just the two of us talkin', you can admit that it was easier to lie to her than you care to admit. The falsehood rolled like oil offa your tongue, same as with the condolences you offer to the poor bastards who stand on the sidewalk in the middle of winter and watch you tweeze pieces of their broken lives off the bloody, frozen pavement. Just part of your job description and another tool in your stacked field kit. It was so smooth that you almost convinced yourself.

How many boldfaced lies have you told in pursuit of the truth, your mouth full of sugar and lye, guilt like Halloween candy on your teeth and tongue? Hundreds? Thousands, maybe, if you count the ones you've told suspects and assorted dirtbags. Your daughter didn't suffer. Your son never felt a thing. We've got your prints on a condom in her bathroom trash. Your buddy's in the next room, cuttin' a deal with the D.A. to save himself from the needle, so you better start talkin', asshole. Each told for its own purpose-mercy, or leverage. And lies of omission, of course.

Occasionally, they're weapons, lies like that, half-truths designed to trip up schemin' shitbags, but mostly, they're shields, acts of mercy meant to blunt the ugly horror of loss. You don't tell the parents of a murdered thirteen-year-old girl that she was raped after she was dead. You don't tell an eighty-six-year-old man that the mugger didn't split his wife's skull because his arthritis-swollen fingers were too slow getting off that fancy watch. You don't tell the five-year-old who opened the door to the delivery man that his ma might still be breathin' if he hadn't opened the door. And you sure as fuck don't tell ma that you hear my skull crackin' like a china plate beneath the fat barrel of that bat.

You consider it your penance. You couldn't stop the crime and can't raise the dead, but you can be the secret keeper, guardian of unpleasant truths. You'll swallow the worst of the darkness so tear-filled eyes can make the most of broken, warped light. If you've gotta lie to make it easier for heartbroken mothers and fathers and lost lovers to go on, then so be it. It's the least you can do and part of the duty that came with your badge and gun. You haven't been ashamed of lies in a long time. In fact, it's gotten so you don't know what you'd do without 'em.

But that was now, years into a life stretch of adulthood and jaundiced cynicism. Back then, he'd been five, and the world had been black and white. Good boys didn't lie to their mamas. Bad boys did and went to Hell, far away from their mamas and everything that was good forever and ever. So he'd folded his hands, his fingers so tightly interlaced that his knuckles had ached, and prayed. He'd run through his limited repertoire of prayer-God is Great, God is Good, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, and, of course, Our Father, Who's Art in Heaven-and been laboring through Hail Marys when Louie had banged on the thin wall between their rooms and hissed at him to let God get some sleep, goddammit. Danny'd thought to ask Louie how come God would want to damn His own sleep, but he'd sounded angry-Louie, not God-so Danny had wisely kept his mouth shut and pondered the question of when God had time to sleep since He had to set the sun and hang the stars all over the world. He'd fallen asleep to that thought and awakened to the smell of his mother's pancakes, and for a moment, he'd thought he was in Heaven.

He hadn't wanted to lie. He'd wanted to like Halloween to participate in the revelry with the same gusto that Louie had. He'd wanted to like the sweet rot of candy and pretend to be someone more exciting than little Danny Messer, who loved his mama and his ball glove and the wavery, underwater glow of the Mets on the two-ton television that dominated the living room. But he couldn't because he had known what was underneath the rubber masks and shredded bedsheets. Werewolves with yellow eyes and sharp teeth.

Louie had told him when he-Danny-was four, seated on the foot of Danny's bed with a corner of the blanket bunched in his raw-knuckled hand. Danny had been scratching and sniveling his way through the chicken pox, and Louie had drifted in unexpectedly and flopped gracelessly onto the sunken edge of the secondhand mattress.

"Heya, Louie," Danny had chirped. "You wanna play checkers or spades?"

Louie had shaken his head. "Naw, short pants. I ain't in the mood for games today. 'Sides, I might catch your baby cooties."

"I ain't a baby!" Danny had protested, wounded. "And they ain't cooties. They're chicken pox. Cooties are for girls."

"Whatever, short pants."

The Benadryl and cortisone Mama had given him to help with the needling itch of the pox had made him woozy, but something in Louie's voice had pierced the comforting medicinal haze and made him sit up in the bed, propped haphazardly against sagging pillows yellowed with years of sweat. Louie's voice had begun to change that summer, first thinning until it broke and then deepening. He had begun to sound like Pop. But that day, as afternoon had slipped into evening and the smell of burning newspapers had drifted to his window from the alleys below, he had sounded small and young, as young as Danny and just as miserable.

"What's the matter, Louie?" The itch of his pox had been temporarily smothered by cold unease. He'd been tempted to touch him, but he hadn't quite dared. Louie was eleven going on twelve, too old to be babied, he said.

"Nothin', Danny." But Louie had wiped his nose with the back of his hand and curled more deeply in on himself, and Danny had known he was crying.

Panic had fluttered in his gut, mingled with the tomato soup Mama had made for him and soured it. Louie never cried, not even that time he'd broken his arm trying to surf a stair railing on a bet from Mikey Bertuzzi.

"Why you cryin', Lou? What's the matter?"

Louie had rounded on him, twisted like a striking snake. "Who said I was cryin', you little pantywaste, huh?" he'd snarled. "You see me cryin?"

No, but he had seen Louie's blotchy face and the fresh shiner that had decorated his lefty eye. It had been swollen and livid, an ugly tattoo that had made him look like Bluto after a fight with Popeye. The black eye had been hilarious on Bluto as he sprawled amid broken crates and dented cans of spinach, but on Louie it was terrifying. It was too dark, too full of blood. If he looked closely, he could see burst blood vessels crawling beneath Louie's puffy skin, the slender legs of poisonous spiders. The sight had been so startling and disturbing that he'd forgotten to be afraid of Louie's mouth.

"What happened?" Danny had suddenly felt like crying, like calling for Mama to come and stroke his forehead and pillow him against her chest while lullabies rumbled inside it. Maybe he was a big baby like Louie said. Tears had filled his eyes, and his lips had trembled with an unspoken cry of Mama. He'd taken a hitching breath and retreated into the flagging safety of his tired pillows, sure that Louie would give him two for sniveling.

But when Louie's hand did move, it had only been to gingerly brush the lank strands of his bangs from his forehead. "Don' worry 'bout it, short pants," he'd said, and offered an uneven smile with teeth that had already borne traces of nicotine.

But Danny had worried about it. It was in his nature, so much so that Mama had called him Auntie Fret when he was little and warned him against wearing a groove in the rug. When he'd confessed to her what he wanted to be fifteen years later, hands curled around a cup of coffee to still their nervous twitching, she hadn't been surprised. She'd just offered him a rueful smile of her own over the rim of her cup and smoothed nonexistent bangs from his forehead.

"Of course you do, my Danny boy," she'd said fondly. "It's what you've always wanted."

It was funny, the connections the mind made when you just let it run. He'd been thinking of Halloween and werewolves and the story Louie had told him one late afternoon when he'd had the chicken pox, and somehow, he'd stumbled onto a mental switchback that had led him to the day he'd told his mother that he'd wanted to be a cop. He supposed it was the gesture that had bound those moments and linked those paths forever in his mind, that careless, gentle sweep of fingertips that had smoothed hair into place. The fingertips had been different, of course, but the gesture had been the same, mute testimony to a shared history.

Louie's fingertips had been ragged that day, grimy-nailed and chewed to the quick. He'd nibbled the harassed skin of his thumb before he'd said, "A werewolf did it."

He'd regarded his brother in confused silence, sure that Louie was putting him on, like he had when he'd told him that the Easter Bunny was really their Uncle Phil, who turned into a rabbit one night a year and went around crapping eggs on people's lawns and in their windowboxes, but Louie had been solemn and thin-lipped, and hunched forward the way he always got when he wanted to tell the truth. The truth always had to be whispered, Louie said, because it was a secret.

"A werewolf?" Danny had repeated uncertainly, and absently scratched his neck. Mama had warned him not to, but Mama hadn't itched.

"Yeah," Louie had said, eyes dark and earnest, and that's when Danny had known he was telling the truth. There had been no sly joke in his voice, no telltale, beckoning lilt of the worm at the end of the hook.

"But they're just made up," Danny had ventured. "Just stories."

"Naw, they ain't, short pants. They're real. All the monsters are real. They just look different than the movies, is all, and so nobody recognizes 'em."

He'd absorbed that revelation and shifted uncomfortably beneath the sheets, which had suddenly been too hot against his legs, Saran Wrap instead of light cotton. "All of 'em?" Shrill and babyish, but he couldn't help it. His mind was filled with images of every monster he'd ever seen on the Saturday afternoon Creature Feature. Ghosts in dirty sheets and torn clothes and greasy-haired witches with green skin and cauldrons full of the Devil's bathwater. The Devil himself, horned and hoofed and red as raw meat. Frankenstein, with his patchwork limbs and cinderblock face and dead man's legs that lurched like killing scythes as he lumbered after his victims with arms outstretched. Dracula with his scarlet-lined cape, bloodless, white fingers, and slender, predatory fangs. The living, oilsmoke darkness beneath the bed.

"Yep," Louie had grunted solemnly.

"But if nobody recognizes 'em, how do ya know they're real?"

Louie had scowled at him and exhaled heavily through his nostrils. "'Cause I've seen 'em."

"You've seen monsters, Lou?"

"Not all of 'em. Just werewolves."

"When? Where?"

"You see 'em on the street sometimes, lurkin' on the corners. They don't bother people mostly. They don' wanna bring too much attention, see, 'cause then the cops might start huntin' 'em like they did a long time ago in Merry Olde Europe or somethin'. Sometimes, they can't help themselves, though. It gets in their blood, and they gotta hurt someone."

"How do ya know they're werewolves?"

Louie had shrugged. "Just do. It's in the eyes, mostly. They're kinda yellow in the white part, and shiny when the light hits 'em just right. New quarters. Sometimes you c'n smell 'em, too, if you get close enough, like Ma's old fur coat after it's been in the hall closet all summer. Musty. Dirty dog."

"Where'd you see 'em, Lou?" Danny had been besieged by images of werewolves circling the garbage cans in front of his building, dressed in the frayed tatters of their human skins and sniffing delicately at the choice remains of Mama's pot roast.

Louie hadn't answered. Instead, he'd folded one leg atop the bedspread, ignoring Mama's rule about no shoes on the furniture, and leaned forward, eyes and lips thin with concentration. "You tellin' me you've never seen one, short pants?"

Danny's mind had turned to the battered Pontiac that often squatted across the street from their apartment, and the pair of shadows that lived in the front seat and sent tendrils and plumes of smoke through the tops of the tinted windows. They'd been there every day for as long as he could remember. His father cursed and muttered under his breath whenever he saw them, and if Mama wasn't around, he flipped them the bird with a callused finger. Mama never cursed, never even spoke. She just nodded and kept her head up as she crossed the street to the market, fingers curled too tightly around his while he struggled to keep up.

He'd asked his father about the shadows in the Pontiac once. Pop's brow had darkened, and he'd been afraid Pop was going to lay into him for being nosy, but Pop had merely ruffled his hair and told him not to worry about it. Five minutes later, Danny's mouth and fingers had been smeared with the sticky joy of a Milky Way bar, and the shadows had been forgotten.

But with Louie grim-faced and long-limbed on the edge of his bed, he'd begun to wonder.

"Maybe," he'd said cautiously.

"No maybe about it," Louie had declared. "When you see one, you'll know. You ain't seen one yet."

"Where'd you see one?" he'd asked again.

Louie had sucked his bottom lip as he stared listlessly out the bedroom door and down the narrow, dim staircase that led to Pop's office and what Mama called the parlor and Pop called the goddamn living room. His face had been too sharp and too thin in the harsh light of the yellow bulb in the bedside lamp, and Danny had thought of Dracula and his gaunt, bone-white face. The bruise around Louie's swollen eye had pulsed with a strange, ugly beauty that had fascinated him.

Finally, Louie had shaken his head. "Ain't none'a yours, short pants. They wouldn't bother with a runt like you anyways. Don' worry 'bout it, an' if you tell Ma I told you, I'll rub your ugly face in my asscrack." With that, Louie had slipped off the bed and abandoned him to his thoughts and his feverish dreams, which had been filled with snap-jawed wolves in high collars and silver eyes that watched him from behind the windshield of a Pontiac.

Louie had never mentioned werewolves or any other monsters again, but Danny had never forgotten that conversation. It had nested in his memory, a dark pearl he occasionally stumbled upon when the apartment was quiet except for the creak of settling floorboards or the throaty shuffle of socked feet on the bathroom carpet. Sometimes, the rustle of cotton on shag had conjured images of padded paws and lolling, pink tongues bracketed by glistening canines, and he'd burrowed deeper into the covers and screwed his eyes shut.

That conversation had been on his mind the night his mother had insisted on taking him trick-or-treating. He hadn't want to go out for fear of seeing the werewolves in their hiding skins, yellow-eyed and grinning with their papery human mouths. He'd wanted to stay inside with Snoopy and the Yoohoo and the comforting heat of the radiator as it chuntered in its corner. But Mama had asked, and the flesh in the corners of her mouth and around her eyes had been pinched and wan, the way it always was when the bills came due or Pop's friends turned up with their cigars and bottles in rumpled, brown paper bags. He'd wanted Mama to look happy, and so he'd let her lead him from the apartment.

Out of the building and across the street, past the Pontiac and its living shadows. He'd stood on tiptoe and craned for a better look. The firefly glow of a lit cigarette had darted to and fro in the cabin, and one of the shadows had raised a hand in greeting. In the faint, unsteady light of the Marlboro lantern, the fingers had been too long, possessed of too many knuckles, and he'd thought of Dracula's hand curling hypnotically around the dirt-stained lid of his coffin. His mother must've had the same thought, because she'd quickened her pace and tugged him to the opposite curb with unnecessary force.

Mama, I think the monsters saw us, he'd thought in dismay, and stared at the Pontiac until he was around the corner.

Mr. Cho in the Korean deli had given him a handful of Atomic Fireballs, and Mr. Sutelli had dropped a huge brown fistful of Smarties into his proffered pumpkin pail. By the time Mrs. Berkovitz at the flower shop had exclaimed over his store-bought physique and paid Tootsie Rolls in tribute, Danny had forgotten about werewolves and vampires, caught up in the excitement of Halloween. He'd let go of his mother's hand and waded confidently through the moving pumpkin patches of babies dressed as jack-o-lanterns, pail outthrust like a veteran stripper's tip jar.

"Trick or treat," he'd bellowed exuberantly, and one gap-toothed grin later, the loot had poured into his Great Pumpkin. His mother had frowned and scolded whenever he'd pushed the wobbling, toddling pumpkins and chicks out of the way in his enthusiasm, but she'd been relaxed. She'd smiled at his glee and laughed when he'd squealed at a generous windfall of butterscotch discs.

"Gold, Mama!" he'd howled, and Mama had laughed, head thrown back to expose her slender, olive neck and the heavy curtain of her dark hair as it spilled from the loose chignon into which she'd tied it before they'd left the apartment. She'd looked like an angel as she'd leaned against the edge of the ice cream case in the front of the store.

"Not gold, Danny," she'd said between giggles. "Just candy."

Mr. Vindal, who'd run the store with his half-blind wife and oldest son, and who would die in front of that same display case nine years later after a robbery gone bad, had folded his arms across the gargantuan barrel of his chest and laughed, a booming guffaw that Danny had never forgotten. "Lady," he'd said, "tonight, there ain't no difference." He'd gently shooed her off the display case, reached inside, and produced a triple-chocolate drumstick. "The lady deserves a treat, too, huh?"

His mother had shared the ice cream with him as they'd wound lazily through the neighborhood, and when his pumpkin pail had grown too heavy for him to carry, she'd lifted it from his straining fingers. The police station four blocks east of their building had been their last stop, and after panhandling a crowd of patrolmen for some lollipops and toffees, they'd started home, mouths rimed with sugar and the aftertaste of peanuts.

It had been late, far later than Danny had ever stayed up before, and the darkness had been dense and heavy, humid with the heat of slinking, running bodies and burning newspapers. Smoke from the latter had tickled and wrinkled his nose. The babies and little kids had been replaced by older kids in Freddy masks and hockey masks, and they had chased each other through the streets, crowing and cursing and swinging cheap hockey sticks through the air as if they were broadswords and hatchets. There'd been kids older than Louie, too, lanky boys and awkward, blossoming girls that had teetered on the brink of adulthood. No costumes for them. Just leather jackets and stonewashed jeans, and the air had been thick with a smell he couldn't name, brine and tobacco and sweat on vinyl. And the language of unsupervised night.

"Fuck," a kid who looked like Lou Diamond Philips had shouted, and the epithet, so sour and malicious on his father's tongue, had been joyous. He'd swung a plastic bag of candy in one hand, and the other had curled possessively around the waist of a girl with long, back hair and full, red lips, Snow White in denim and thigh-highs. The boy's fingers had rested on the swell of her ass.

Danny had thought the girl was beautiful, and he'd waved shyly. The girl had smiled, straight, white teeth bright in the darkness, and her gaudy, silver, hoop earrings had twinkled like fairy lights when she'd tossed her hair over her shoulder. They'd clinked, too, and Danny had found the noise inexplicably exotic. He'd giggled, and the girl's indulgent smile had broadened.

The boy had turned, his face hard and predatory. Twenty years later, Danny would associate the expression with the start of bad intentions and the end of live and let live, but back then, he'd thought only of the Big Bad Wolf and what big teeth he had. Of werewolves, with their yellow eyes that shone silver in the moonlight.

Oh, Mama, the werewolves found me, he'd thought.

"Whatcha lookin' at, little man?" the boy had sneered. His mouth had been smiling, but his eyes hadn't been. They'd been cold and hard and glassy.

Danny hadn't wanted to look at those eyes. They'd been alien and yet terribly familiar. He'd recoiled and sought the refuge of his mother's legs. Like Daddy's eyes after a bad day with his friends, he'd thought miserably. Or like the eyes of those sharks on the National Geographic specials, the ones who tear baby seals in half while their eyes roll to whites in the sockets. The ones that don't leave no pieces floatin' in the water.

"'M sorry," he'd mumbled, and shuffled his feet. He hadn't felt like Batman anymore, just stupid and small and tired. He'd wanted to go home and divvy his candy with Louie, swap lemon drops for Sugar Daddies and watch what was left of Sleepy Hollow. He'd wanted the smell of his father's cigars and the worn nap of his mute Teddy Ruxpin under his chin and stroking fingers.

"I'm sorry, don't think I heard ya, there, little man," the boy had said, and dropped his arm from around Snow White's waist.

"Please," his Mama had pleaded, and Danny had almost burst into tears. He'd never heard her like that before, weak and timid and frightened. Mama had a voice like thunder and Yahweh, and she'd needed no stone tablets to carry the law of her house. "Please, he's just a baby."

Lou Diamond Philips had ignored her and dropped to his haunches. He'd loped toward him in a perversely fluid spiderwalk, and fear had risen in Danny's throat, sweet ice cream and bitter peanuts.

"You're old enough to look, though, ain't'cha, little man? So why don't you tell me what you was lookin' at?"

That close, Danny could smell cigarettes and stale sweat and the sweet, piquant musk of oiled leather. Matted fur and rotten meat. The reek of the beast. His chest had begun to hitch, and his Batman suit had suddenly been too tight, hot and prickling against his skin.

"'M sorry," he'd muttered. "'M sorry. I was just lookin'."

"At what?" The boy had moved closer still, so close that Danny could see nicotine stains on his teeth and smell burning leaves and greasy meat on his breath. "Huh? At what?" His hand had shot out and gripped the arm of his Batman suit. The grip had been ruthless and biting, and Danny had felt the flimsy fabric tear with a sad, spent breath of dying thread.

My, what big teeth you have. And Danny had known that he was going to be eaten on the sidewalk, devoured like a baby seal in the jaws of a shark. Any minute now, the jaws would gape, the eyes would roll, and he'd be so much blood on the street. His mother's voice had lost its thunder, and her legs had run to taffy. No one was going to help him. The other kids who'd thronged the sidewalk five minutes before had melted into the shadows and the storefronts like receding fog, frightened by the scent of the wolf. He was going to be eaten by the monster, and when the policemen from the nearby station came with their badges and their heavy flashlights, they'd find his mother clutching the bloody sleeve of his Batman costume, candy strewn at her feet like remembrance stones.

Mama, he's gonna eat me. Then Danny had cried, a helpless, mewling baby whine. "I was just lookin' at the girl," he'd sniffled. "She's pretty, like Snow White."

The boy had laughed, eyes gone to silver in the moonlight. "Snow White, huh? Well, what're you, a fuckin' dwarf? Weepy, right?" The kid had reached out and ruffled his hair, and in the light, Danny had seen purple bruises on his forearms. They'd reminded him of his bout with the chicken pox and his conversation with Louie.

"Joey, c'mon," the girl had said, and tugged on Joey's arm. "He's just a kid. Let's get outta here, and I'll give ya some honey with your candy."

Joey's nostrils had flared, a hound scenting blood, and he'd turned those silver eyes on Snow White. "Yeah?" A growl, low and fraught with a tension he hadn't understood. Danny had worried that the wolf had decided to eat her instead, rise from his crouch and lunge for the tender, brown enticement of her throat.

"Yeah." Snow White's tongue had darted out to moisten her lips, and her grip had tightened on Joey's arm.

Joey's smile had widened, predatory and ugly on his lean face, and he'd turned to face Danny again, silver and ivory in the dark. "Looks like I'm outta here, Weepy. Ain't nothin' better than honey. Trust me, one of these days, you're gonna want nothin' more than to make Snow White's petals run red."

Behind Danny, his mother had moaned. Then the boy had straightened and turned and loped easily into the shadows, into an alley that housed a huge, green dumpster and dunes of garbage that it had rejected. Snow White had trailed behind him, tethered to him by interlaced fingers, and Danny had wanted to scream at her not to follow him, to run away like the Gingerbread Man or Little Red Riding Hood, but the werewolf had devoured his brains and his voice, and he could only cry and salt his upper lip with tears and snot.

His mother had carried him home, had lurched drunkenly through the streets with him clinging desperately to her neck. She'd stumbled once or twice, caught unawares by the grasping fingers of chinks in the pavement and pits in the neglected asphalt of their neighborhood. She'd cupped his head in her trembling hand and pressed kisses to the top of his head. She'd crooned to him that it was going to be all right now, that she wasn't going to let anyone hurt him, but her voice had been breathless and weak, and he hadn't believed her. He'd been ashamed of his doubt, but he couldn't banish it. The truth had been too bright to ignore, and just as frightening as the werewolf's grin when he'd looked at him and predicted that he'd want Snow White to turn red some day. His mother had a mask, too, and just like the Werewolf's, it had slipped. Mama couldn't protect him anymore. Maybe she never could. He'd wondered if Louie had known. Probably. Louie had known everything.

His mother had carried him straight into their apartment, simply shouldered the door and marched past Pop and his cronies, who'd been seated at the kitchen table like grime-faced knights of the round. Pops had looked up from his card game, cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth, and Danny had sensed the angry shout rising in his father's throat, seen it in the thunderously knitted brow and the dangerous hardening of his jaw. Pop had never liked to be interrupted during his card games.

"Don't. Don't you say one damn word to me, Louis Messer," his mother had snarled, and Danny, who had been lulled by the unsteady rhythm of his mother's gait on the walk home, had burst into hysterical tears again because she'd sounded just like the werewolf, low and gravelly and inhuman.

He didn't eat me. Not me. He ate Mama instead, gobbled her up, and now he's wearing her skin like the Big Bad Wolf wore the grandma's nightgown and glasses in Little Red Riding Hood. If I look, her eyes'll be silver and her teeth'll be too long. She'll eat me before Daddy even sees, or maybe he won't ever see. Maybe the werewolf'll carry me into the bathroom and eat me, and Daddy'll never know because he'll never look up from his stupid cards. Maybe he'll find me at the end of the night after all his friends have gone home, or maybe all he'll find are my pajamas and some bloody claw marks on the windowsill.

The thought had terrified him, and he'd thrashed in his mother's arms, convinced that underneath the smell of her bath soap was the scent of rotting meat and damp fur.

"Danny! It's okay. It's okay, my Danny boy." Startled and on the cusp of panic. "Sssh, honey, Mommy's here."

"What the hell's up with him?" Pops had demanded, cigar drooping from between his clenched teeth like a charred and broken bone. He'd half-risen from his chair, but he hadn't let go of his poker hand.

Danny's mother hadn't said a word. She'd simply marched him into the bathroom, stripped him of his clothes and costume, and plopped him into a warm chamomile and lavender bath. She'd murmured soothing nonsense as she'd slopped water down his back and over his head. It's all right, my boy. All right. He was just a bad man, but he's gone, and he can't hurt you now. You're safe with us. All right now. All right. Her words had moved to the rhythm of the water and made his bones light and his eyelids heavy.

"Monster, mama. Monster," he'd tried to tell her, but his tongue had been clumsy, and the words had slurred drunkenly on his lips. Adrenaline had drained from him along with the water in the tub, and by the time she'd toweled him off and poured him into his flannel pajamas, he'd been boneless inside his clean skin. He'd floated to bed, guided by his mother's gently chivvying hand, and collapsed into the prickly, protective embrace of his blankets. He'd been asleep before his mother's parting kiss had cooled on his forehead, and he'd woken the next morning to the furtive rustle of Louie pilfering his caramel chews. The encounter with the werewolf had retreated to the bottomless vault of childhood memory.

He'd never forgotten it, though, nor had it been the last. He'd seen them often after that, caught glimpses of them as he walked home after school or kicked the hackeysack around the entrance to his building. He'd never tried to see them, had never sought them out, but once he'd seen them, he couldn't unsee them. Louie had passed knowledge of them to him like contagion, just as he'd passed on most of his colds and his love for the Mets, and though the original infection had passed, traces had remained, antibodies that had allowed him to see behind the masks.

Sometimes, Louie had been with him when he'd seen them, and he'd put his arm around Danny's neck and hiss, "Don't look, short pants. They won't hurt you as long as they don' know you c'n see 'em. Just keep your head down an' pretend you don't see an' don't give a shit." Louie's arm, so strong and reassuring on his neck, and his breath on his ear and the side of his face, comforting in spite of the faint, greenbark odor of stolen cigarettes.

So he hadn't looked. He'd turned his head when the glimpses came, the flashes of silver in the whites of passing eyes, the fleeting smell of damp fur or rotting meat. He'd dropped his gaze to the gritty, grey blankness of the sidewalk, scuffed his initials on it with the toe of his sneakers. Once, he'd seen the silver glint in the eyes of a Salvation Army Santa tolling his bell outside a Kroger's, and he'd closed his eyes against the sight under the pretense of rubbing them. Louie had told him he'd be all right if he didn't look, and Louie had never steered him wrong.

Maybe if Louie had followed his own advice, things would be different now.

You're not sure when they got to him. You've turned it over in your head a thousand times, invented a thousand scenarios to explain when he became one of them. You've told yourself it doesn't matter, that it hasn't mattered since you left that house and the Messer sphere of influence. It sounds so rational inside your head, all scientific and adult and everythin' that you tell yourself you are. You even wrote it down once, in an old composition notebook left from your college days. You figured that if you wrote it down, it'd make it real, a wish whispered into the ear of God from the cool, prim lips of a ballpoint pen.

So much for wishful thinkin'. You wrote it down, a confession on college-ruled paper, and it didn't change a damn thing. You still wonder when your brother lost himself, when his face became a mask and his eyes went silver. Maybe you shoulda burned the paper and tossed the ashes and dying embers into Long Island Sound to hiss like brimstone. Maybe the fire woulda robbed the thought of its power to consume you. Maybe. But you doubt it.

You knew what Sonny Sassone was the minute you saw him and his cronies holdin' court on the courts behind P.S. 139. He was all teeth and mouth and leather jacket that smelled vaguely of mesquite. He was seventeen and already makin' his bones on blow and dope, and he was the princelin' of the streets. All seedy roads led to Sassone, and every crook and wannabe was sniffin' at his feet. Louie had talked about him all that summer, sung his praises like a love-struck schoolgirl. It had driven your old man crazy, and he'd gotten so fed up with Sonny mania that he'd reached over the whipped potatoes one night at the dinner table and popped your brother in the mouth. Your brother had bled into his peas, and your mother had cried into her napkin, and the subject of Sonny Sassone had been abruptly tabled, but silence and secrecy had only made Sonny more thrilling to Louie, and by the time, you saw him on the courts that afternoon, he was a god.

Louie hadn't gone lookin' for Sonny that day. He was there because you'd pestered him into takin' you to the corner bodega for an ice cream sandwich. You still had it in your hand when Louie stopped short, gaze fixed on the picnic tables just beyond the chainlink fence that separated the basketball courts of P.S. 139 from the rest of the city.

What is it, Lou? you asked, vanilla on your lips and chocolate bleedin' over your fingers.

Nothin', short pants, he assured you. See that guy over there? He nodded in the direction of the benches.

You squinted against the sun. The Fonzie guy?

The Fonz, my ass, he rebuked sharply. That, short pants, is Sonny Sassone.

You blinked in molish surprise and studied the figure more closely. After months of hearing about the exploits and miracles wrought by Sonny's hands, you'd expected a mythic superhero carved in the image of Superman, but the kid on the bench was like ten thousand other kids in the borough. He was short and square and dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. He was smokin', and ashes from his cigarette drifted onto the square, steel toe of his boot like shed divinity. When he noticed, he shook 'em off with a balletic twist of his foot and blew smoke from his nose.

You wrinkled your nose and took another bite of your ice cream sandwich. That's him? I thought he was cool an' stuff, you said around a mouthful of chocolate and meltin' strawberry ice cream.

Yeah, Louie said distantly. Awed and worshipful, as though he'd crested Olympus and glimpsed the gods. Listen, short pants, you stay here a minute while I talk to Sonny. Stay where I c'n see you, though. Ma'd have my ass if you went and got hit by a fuckin' cab.

I ain't a baby, you protested indignantly, but the sticky smears of red and brown drying to tacky sweetness on your fingers and in the corners of your mouth belied the sentiment. 'Sides, we gotta go. It'll be dinner soon, and you know how Pop gets when we're out after dark.

It won't take long, he promised. If you keep your mouth shut, I'll buy ya another ice cream bar.

But, Louie, you whined. I don't wanna. I wanna go home. I gotta make a diorama for school.

Louie rolled his eyes. For fuck's sake, Danny. When did you become such a fuckin' pussy?

I ain't a pussy, you sniveled, stung, but Louie was already striding towards Sonny, hand raised in greeting.

A minute turned into an hour, and all you could do was stand on the pavement outside the fence and watch. Your brother laughed and smiled with Sonny and his boys, slapped hands and shoulders and swore with gleeful intensity. It's a pussy word to use, maybe, but he was radiant, somehow older and younger at the same time. He was free out there with Sonny, no Pop to beat him down with family obligations and no watchers parked across the street in a bronze Pontiac. He was raw and free, Louie Messer under the dirt of the family name. Louie as he was when there was no one else to see and judge.

Watching him made your chest hollow and too warm, as though your ma had placed a menthol compress under your shirt. He'd never been like that with you and never would be. There were seven years between you and him, and that was an insurmountable gap in childhood years. He was seventeen, a man. He'd already ridden the velvet mountain in the back of a deserted subway car, and you were still playin' with Transformers and He-Man and just beginnin' to realize that girls were more than cootie farms. You were crawlin' in his footprints and getting left behind. The chanlink fence between you was a continental divide, and the drift would soon carry him out of sight. He wasn't gone yet, but you already missed him like hell.

But you envied him, too. You wanted the same freedom, the same escape from that dingy apartment and the palls of cigar smoke that hung over the kitchen table. You wanted to live where the watchers in the Pontiac couldn't follow. You wanted to live without Pop's parliament of cronies cawin' in the middle of the night and linin' their pockets with bits of the grocery money. You wanted legs long enough to run and hands big enough to crush the throat of the beast. You wanted to be like him, big and strong and unafraid of the monsters.

The sun sank toward the horizon, and Louie disappeared with it. He became a collection of suppositions and shadows, all angles and harshly intersecting lines and dimly recollected features-the sharp jut of a nose, for instance. Soon, even those were gone, and all that was left were the Sesame Street shapes of a human bein'. The oval of a head. The long rectangle of a torso. The pipestem cylinders of arms and legs. A shadow man occasionally thrown into wavering relief by the burnin' light of a shared cigarette.

You waited as long as you dared, torn between your fear of bein' called a pantywaste pussy and your well-founded fear of your mother's anger and your pop's callused hands, but when the playground was dark and Louie showed no signs of leavin', you gathered your balls an' headed for the fence.

Hey, Louie, you called, and hooked your fingers through the cold, hard chainlink. We gotta go. Ma'll kill us.

The long, reedy shadow slipped from atop the picnic table and ambled toward the fence, and you breathed a sigh of relief. Then you realized another shape was coming, too, shorter and thicker. It passed the reedy hulk of your brother and loped to where you stood. In the dark, fingers transformed into serrated claws. Then the figure stepped into the weak, flickering light of an artificial moon, and it was Sonny Sassone. He smiled and drummed jauntily on the fence, which bulged and creaked in a tortured, musical jingle.

And who might you be? he asked.

You retreated a step and said nothin'. Your ma had taught you never to speak to strangers, and Sonny raised the hackles on the back of your neck and made your spit go sour. His smile was bright and broad and terribly wrong. It stretched the skin around his mouth and showed too many teeth, and it stopped short of his eyes, which were flat, black stones inside his face.

Not real, you thought. The smile ain't real, and not the face, neither. It's plastic, like the rubber masks they sell at the dimestore on Halloween. Just the eyes are real, and they're awful, a dead guy's eyes.

The better to see you with, whispered a guttural voice inside your head, and you almost loaded your pants.

That's just my kid brother, the reedy shadow that was Louie offered at last. Diffident and embarrassed, as if he were discussin' a pile of dog shit or a particularly troublesome zit in the heart of his asscrack.

Sonny surveyed you through half-lidded eyes. This is the runt, huh? How old're you, kid? He reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a crumpled pack of Marlboros. He opened it and tapped one of them into his hand.

Ten, you declared defiantly. And I ain't no runt. To illustrate your point, you hauled off and kicked the fence. It's a wonder you didn't fall on your ass, Charlie Brown whiffin' a punt 'cause Lucy houdini'd the ball at the last second. The fence quaked and shuddered.

Sonny just laughed and lit his cigarette.

Fuckin'-A. I guess I can see the family resemblance, after all, he said, and took a drag. The others had drifted from their picnic table perch to flank Sonny. They laughed dutifully. It was harsh, ugly laughter, like the cawin' of your old man's poker buddies, and your unease deepened.

He's always had a big mouth, Louie muttered apologetically. I haven't been able to beat it outta him yet.

That so? Sonny mused. Maybe you ain't been tryin' all that hard. Maybe you need a little help with that. He was smilin', but his voice was hard and calculating, a wolf ponderin' a hapless chick that had tumbled from its nest and lay, broken-backed, atop a snowdrift. What do you think, boys? Sonny asked, and the satellite shapes drew closer, thin, ferret-faced boys with slicked-back hair and patented James Dean scowls. Ya think Louie here needs a little help teachin' his runt brother a little respect?

Sure, Sonny, agreed the one on the left. The one on the right merely stepped forward and cracked his knuckles.

Even Louie was uneasy now, sidlin' from foot to foot and runnin' his fingers through his hair. Naw, Sonny, he assured him. I got him, sure as shit. Much as I appreciate the offer, I got it covered.

Yeah? Sonny quirked a thick eyebrow in amused skepticism. How 'bout you give me a demonstration of your technique? Seein' as how it's so effective an' all, who knows? I might come outta this with a few pointers.

Louie opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. Opened it. Finally, his shoulders sagged and he said, Sure, Sonny. Why not? He followed the fence until he reached the open gate, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket like concealed weapons.

I like your spirit, Messer, Sonny crowed as Louie stepped onto your side of the fence. The Dean twins crowded the fence, convicts with their faces pressed to the bars of their prison cells. The thin, fall air was heavy with anticipation, sweat and ozone and damp leather.

This oughta be good, one of them muttered.

Louie loomed over you, hands still stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. You remember what I told you, short pants? he demanded. His face was dark and inscrutable, and his voice was queerly flat.

You goggled at him. He'd told you a million things over the course of your growin' up, truths, lies, and everythin' in between. He'd burst your bubble about Santa Claus when you were eight, and he'd told you that angels rode the tails of comets like chariots when you were five. He'd told you the story of Orion and Taurus and pointed out the Big Dipper and Little Dipper and the throne of Cassiopeia. He'd fixed your Go-Bots when you busted 'em up and taught you how to play Spades and War and Slapjack and Hearts. He'd told you about football and baseball and hockey, and why your parents often traded shouts like blows across the kitchen table. He'd taught you when to avoid Pop and how to keep your head down and your mouth shut when the shit got too thick. He'd taught you how to remove candy and pop from bodegas via the armpit express. He'd taught you everythin' you knew about bein' a Messer.

He'd taught you about the monsters, especially the werewolves.

You stared at him, lips tremblin' and eyes pricklin'. It was a test. You knew that by the stony, shrewd set of his face and the constant flexin' and closin' of his hands in his pockets.

You told me lots of stuff, Lou. Like how Sonny-

It happened so fast that you never saw his hand leave his pocket. You just felt its thunder on your cheek, sudden and stingin' and rough as dead leaves and brittle sandpaper. Blood filled your mouth, perversely sweet, and forever after, you associated strawberry ice cream and blood with betrayal. You reeled and fell on your ass, hard, in the middle of the pavement, feet splayed and teeth clickin'. Louie had hit you plenty of times-punchin' bag was part of the little brother job description-but he'd never hit you because someone else told him to, never sold you out for shits an' giggles. You sat on the sidewalk while the pain burrowed deeper into your cheek and jaw and wondered how a quick slap could hurt all the way to the center of your chest.

Lo-Lo-, you stammered, but the word wouldn't come. His name had gone foreign and unintelligible in your head, as though it'd rattled loose from the blow.

He sneered. What the fuck did I tell you, huh? Get up and stop fuckin' snivelin'. He grabbed you by the collar and yanked you upright, eyes blank and fingernails rough against your collarbone.

Sonny applauded, lips pursed in appreciation. Not bad, Messer. Not bad at all. He sauntered to where you stood, and crouched. Grit crunched beneath his shoes as he shifted. Hey, kid, he said, and tapped your cheek where Louie had hit you. Fresh pain blossomed in your cheek, and you gritted your teeth, determined not to cry like a baby. Beside you, Louie tensed and tightened his grip on your shirt.

Hey, kid, Sonny prodded, and Louie's fisted fingers tugged on the captured fabric.

You forced yourself to look up, into that grinning face. Yeah? You swallowed a wince as bruised muscles protested the movement.

That took a lotta guts, not bawlin' after a shot like that. I'm impressed. Maybe in a few years when you get the ice cream offa your cheeks, you come back and talk to me, huh? Maybe you can join the family.

Squattin' on the sidewalk with his leather jacket grazin' his thighs and his mouth stretchin' in that cold, calculatin' grin, Sonny reminded you of that Halloween when you were five years old and Lou Diamond Philips had almost eaten you up. It was déjà vu, only it was Louie standin' next to you now, a prop as ineffective and impotent as your ma had been. He was the wolf, all yellow, bloody teeth and musty fur and eyes that'd glow silver if the light hit 'em just so.

Thanks, you managed, and sidled from foot to foot to ease the treacherous ache in your shrunken bladder.

We gotta roll, Messer, Sonny said as he rose from his crouch. Maybe we'll see you around. He snapped his fingers and jerked his head, and just like that, he was swaggerin' into the night, leavin' Louie behind without even a wave.

Louie watched them disappear into a red Corvette, and then he loosened his grip on your shirt and let his hand drift to your shoulder. You shrugged it off and watched your feet as you walked. You didn't want to look at Louie and see that terrible blankness. He stopped at the bodega and bought you another ice cream bar-two, as a matter of fact-but you'd lost your appetite for ice cream, and they went uneaten. They melted in your clenched hands and left a trail of melted ice cream and bits of soggy, chocolate graham cracker in your wake like bits of decomposin' flesh. There was nothin' left of them but the wrappers by the time you got home, and you threw those into the gutter in front of your buildin'. One held on for a moment, a hapless victim clingin' to the wet, rushin' edge of a waterfall, and then it disappeared into the yawnin' darkness, Snow White snatched from the light.

Your ma was pissed as hell when you came in well past dark and covered in candied carnage. She was swattin' Louie with a dishtowel and mutterin' dark threats against his insolence when she noticed the bruise on your cheek. Then it was all kisses and maternal worry and hellfire glances directed at a skulkin' Louie until he said that he'd saved you from some local hoods.

At the time, you hated him for the lie and went to bed without talkin' to him for the rest of the night, but now you wonder if he wasn't lyin' at all. Maybe he was tellin' a truth that you couldn't see. Maybe he did save you that night. Maybe by demonstratin' the ass-whippin' technique perfected by your old man, he saved you from a worse fate.

You think that, and you almost believe it. And then you wonder, why, if he was tryin' to save you, didn't he save himself, too, instead of throwin' himself into the waitin' jaws of the dark?

On to Part II