"I'm always limping. It comes with age and too much port wine."
Father Willie loved telling her things like that. Every time, she would cluck at him just as she did now, and, every time, he would smile, letting her know it was all just a naughty tease. Mrs. Hansen was short, overweight, and probably the only person in town shorter, fatter, and older than Father Willie.
"It's dark out, Father. I'd like to be getting home."
"That's fine, dear. We're finished for the day."
"I don't like leaving after dark. It's not safe out in the night."
"You could have gone two hours ago."
"You were still working."
"And I'll work after you leave. Just a few more things. Here, I'll see you out to your car."
She clucked again as he pulled on his jacket. The thin air was growing nippy.
"You big men think I'm silly, but something happened to all those people and it always happened at night. Javier is the same way, making fun of me like it's all in my head."
Javier Hansen was her husband. Between them, Mr. and Mrs. Hansen had five children, sixteen grandchildren, and two greatgrandchildren, every one of them "corn-fed and farm-raised" as her husband liked to say, and all of them currently living somewhere else.
"I'm not making fun, dear, but that was years ago and there was never any fact to go with the rumors. People get carried away with these things, and then start believing in werewolves."
"Six people don't just up and vanish."
"Six people spread over twenty years. Wives leave their husbands, husbands leave wives, children run away, people move on."
"People say something when they move, good-bye or good riddance. They pay their bills and close their accounts-they don't just disappear like they were snatched off the face of the earth. Those children didn't just leave."
Mrs. Hansen had worked herself up into a snit, though Father Willie had to agree about the children. Three of the six missing were minor children, the two little Ames girls and that Brentworth boy, gone missing in the span of eight months almost ten years ago. They hadn't just moved on like the adults might have, not those little girls and the boy. That was a clear-cut crime, no doubt about it, though the police had never been able to prove it or even name a suspect.
Father Willie felt glum at the memory, and suddenly got it in his head to tease Mrs. Hansen out of her snit.
"Well, I'm not going to let anything happen to you, dear, you can be sure of that!"
He pulled out a shiny black Kimber.45-caliber semiautomatic, and waved it overhead.
"Silver bullets! In case it's a werewolf!"
Mrs. Hansen, who well knew about the Father's gun, rolled her eyes and turned away, smiling in spite of herself.
"You put that thing away before you hurt yourself!"
"The Lord will keep me safe; it's the werewolves who better watch out."
Father Willie was no stranger to firearms, as Mrs. Hansen and everyone else who worked at the church knew. Father Willie was an avid sports marksman, and the gun had been a Christmas gift from his youngest brother. Having gotten Mrs. Hansen to smile, Father Willie slipped the pistol into his jacket, caught up to her in the hall, and saw her out to her car.
Set back from the main road and surrounded by pines, the small parking lot seemed deserted with only two cars remaining, one being his Le Baron, the other her four-wheel-drive Subaru. Father Willie had always thought the middle darkness of early spring lent his church a cloak of isolation, though now the parking lot seemed unusually dark.
She said, "Don't you work too late. You're not a young man. And don't get into that port wine until you're home. I don't want the police finding you on the side of the road."
"Drive safely, Mrs. H. I'll see you tomorrow."
Father Willie held the door for her, then watched her drive up the narrow road into blackness. He snuggled his hands into his pockets, his right hand just naturally finding the pistol's grip. As Mrs. Hansen's headlights disappeared, he saw his breath in the moonlight and suddenly realized why it was so dark-the two enormous security lamps that automatically came on when it got dark, hadn't. The lamps were perched on their poles like two dead owls.
Father Willie made a mental note to tell the custodian in the morning, then started back to his office.
"Father?"
The voice startled him, but then Father Willie saw the man's embarrassed smile. The