Chapter 3

“Babe, you won’t believe this. Some archaeologists just unearthed what looks like a werewolf in Mississippi. They think it was a werewolf that died in between transformations.”

Oh, not again. Birdy felt like screaming. Joe would not stop talking about werewolves, their existence, and his research.

“What if it was just a fossil of some unknown animal that scientists are yet to name, not a werewolf?” Birdy teased, even though she barely knew anything about fossils and what scientists did.

“That’s very unlikely,” Joe replied; his gesticulations betrayed his fiery enthusiasm. He adjusted his glasses, an epitome of a geeky nerd. At that point, Birdy knew he wanted to plunge into some arcane conversation about fossils that only he and his faculty members understood.

“Well, rocks are deposited in layers,” Joe started, using his hands to portray layers of rocks, placing them on one another. “The layer where anything is found determines how old it has been. This being was found in a shallow layer, and carbon dating shows it’s less than 2,000 years old. It’s definitely a werewolf.”

Birdy didn’t understand half of what Joe said, but she was really proud that her fiancé was such a smart person. After graduating Summa Cum Laude from the Biology Department at Harvard, he went on to grad school to study what many would see as a useless research topic.

“Are you out of your mind?” Joe recalled his Ph.D. advisor, Professor Pinker, saying when he’d told him that he wanted to synthesize the werewolf DNA and recreate it in the lab.

“Does this lab seem to be like where we carry out fairy tale projects?” Professor Pinker said. None of the faculty members understood why Joe, a brilliant and talented scientist and researcher, would opt for a dead end such as this.

Joe, always relentless in his pursuit and backed by his ardent belief in the existence of werewolves, had not listened to any of the advice offered to him.

“Okay, cute werewolf researcher, you can stop now,” Birdy said, pinching and wagging Joe’s nose tip. She had already been lost in the explanation of words such as Cambrian and Precambrian.

“How about your archaeologist friends helping us dig out when our wedding would be?”

Joe was befuddled. It had already been six months since Joe proposed to Birdy, and the news had already spread to every family member. At the time, it had seemed like the wedding would take place in two weeks.

“I’m sorry, babe,” Joe said, unable to look at Birdy. “You know I want this wedding as much as you do. But it’s just that my research has been consuming my time so much….” 

Birdy was already familiar with these lines.

“Don’t worry, I’ll round up my research in a month.”

“It’s just a couple more weeks, and I’ll do breakthrough research.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll synthesize the werewolf DNA and prove everybody wrong, and then we’ll get married, have a ton of money, and live happily ever after.”

“...and you know you’ve not been able to work as much as you used to,” Joe continued, running his right hand through Birdy’s blonde hair, “so, I don’t want the burden to rest too much on you.”

Birdy had been missing work a lot since she entered that trance six months ago at her mother’s house. Initially, it occurred only at night, and she’d always leap out of bed, frantic and nervous, with beads of sweat rolling down her forehead, panting.

With time, she started having a trance during the daytime, often staring at the blank wall in her office for long periods and then toppling on the armrest of her chair.

She had gone to the doctor two months after the trance was frequently occurring, and the doctor had said she had schizophrenia, so she prescribed d**** to help her with the trance, but it wasn’t working, and she had to stop the d****.

“Maybe you should go back to taking your pills again,” Joe said to Birdy. “Perhaps, they would help curb the trance during the daytime so that you can at least focus on work while I try to speed up my research.”

“I’m not schizophrenic,” Birdy replied, waving her hand as though the word schizophrenia was in the air.

“Everything would be okay, honey,” Joe said as he removed his glasses, folded the frame, kept it on the side table, and pulled the chair closer to his legs. He motioned Birdy to rest her head on his shoulder and slowly kissed her forehead.

“Don’t worry. You’ll always be my Bird, and we’ll be together and fly to the trees, make our nest, and brood our chicks together.”

Birdy chuckled at the constant joke Joe made whenever she was sad. She drew closer to him and wrapped her hands around his torso.

***

“So, what exactly led you to go searching for this in Mississippi, considering that nobody actually believes that werewolves existed?” Joe asked the lead archaeologist, Dr. Steven, who led the excavation of Robben Land in Mississippi. He was a short man with a big belly and thin legs, giving the look of a tennis ball sitting on toothpicks.

“Well, as an archaeologist, my job is to believe what other people do not want to believe and to look for things where other people do not want to look.”

Dr. Steven took a deep breath. Years of sitting down behind a desk poring over documents of archaeological research had made him obese and, in every sense, unhealthy. It didn’t help that he was a chronic smoker, puffing his cigarettes in excavation sites.

Dr. Steven’s office doubled as a show-off museum where he decorated his excavated laurels. On the left corner was the hoof of a Gomphotherium, an extinct animal he excavated in Kansas. On the right wall and behind his desk were other bones from extinct and extant animals, arranged in neat rows from left to right, in order of how big the bones were.

“So, you are the eccentric Ph.D. student who thinks werewolves existed, eh?” Dr. Steven had read about Joe’s work published in Science magazine on the analysis of werewolf bone organic matrix by transmission electron microscopy.

“Yes, and I think this bone you found in Mississippi is just what I’ve been waiting for.”

Joe plunged into his usual cryptic explanations of werewolf physiognomy, habitation, migration pattern, and why he believed Mississippi was an excellent place to excavate werewolf bones.

During his second year of research, Joe traveled to Robben Island to interview inhabitants. Some reported that they saw humans transforming into wolves during the full moon and some mysterious deaths occurring in the county. Still, no law enforcement agency believed the stories they told.

“Well,” Dr. Steven said, “I’m all for science, and if you can prove that werewolves existed with these bones, I would not mind giving them to you.” He paused to catch his breath. “However, I do believe that your area of research is a delicate one, and you should consider the implications of this if your theory is correct.”

Dr. Steven opened his drawer and pulled out his cigarette pack, cracking the top open in a professional style.

“Want some?”

“No, sir. I don’t smoke.”

“Ah, another healthy scientist afraid of lung cancer.” They both laughed.

“We’ll all die and become fossils someday, anyway.”

***

Back at Harvard, Joe’s laboratory was a mess, and you would not be able to differentiate it from a national archive of books and articles from centuries in the past. It was not the usual laboratory decorated with rows of beakers and conical flasks. Instead, the counters were flagged by clips of articles cut out from various sources.

On the wall in front of Joe’s table hung a notice board, and pictures of werewolves portrayed by contemporary cartoonists and some from the medieval era were pinned to the wall.

Joe’s table was filled with stacks of thick books on arcane topics of molecular biology, gene editing, and a combination of topics that would’ve made an ordinary person yawn.

To the right-hand side of the table was the work table, where Joe placed his microscopes, computer, and other things he needed to do his scientist duties. His lab, indeed, was a classic representation of the obsessed alchemist seeking an answer to a seemingly nonexistent question.

Joe mainly worked alone in his lab because nobody in the faculty wanted to participate in research based on fairy tales.

“There are way more interesting questions in science than trying to ask whether werewolves exist,” a fellow Ph.D. student had once told Joe. “You can as well research whether unicorns exist.”

Talks like this had never fazed Joe. Working alone, his blinds were often closed while he pored over hundreds of articles on werewolves under the warm white light of his table lamp on his table.

Amid all the chaos was his precious hoof, the excavated hoof handed to him by Dr. Steven. He wrapped it carefully in cellophane; he definitely couldn’t afford to lose this trophy.

Knock, knock.

Joe wrapped the hoof and threw it into his drawer before walking to the door.

“My baby,” Joe said, giving Birdy a very long hug, motioning her to come in.

“Is there a rule that werewolf hunters should be too busy?” Birdy asked, her left hand propped on her hip and her brows raised.

Joe shrugged.

“Here, I brought you food,” Birdy continued, placing the food on Joe’s table. Then she sat on the chair Joe had been sitting on earlier.

Comfortable that it was Birdy, Joe brought out the hoof. Birdy hadn’t seen it since Joe returned from his trip.

“So, this hoof has the key to the past, and we can extract DNA from it, which we can inject into a viral vector, and the DNA will fuse with the viral DNA to create a biological transportation system that can be injected into another organism, and the process called reverse transcription will merge….”

Birdy yawned.

“Oops,” Joe caught himself. “I lost myself again. I thought I was narrating a Jane Austen romance novel again.”

Birdy’s throaty laughter could be heard as she threw her key dummy at Joe.

“So, what happens if your research actually succeeds and you make werewolf bacteria-?”

“Werewolf virus,” Joe corrected her.

“Whatever,” Birdy said, chuckling. “What do you then do with the virus?”

“Oh, well, I don’t know. It’s a delicate thing. I may convince the ethics board of the university that there are some benefits to the research, such as using the virus to prolong people’s lifespan or cure people of their chronic disease,” Joe said. “Or we could inject ourselves and become werewolves so we can love each other for centuries to come.”

“Ewww,” Birdy said. She tried saying something but was overshadowed by her spastic laughter, which got louder as Joe exhibited lupine behavior.

And she kept on laughing until she toppled in her chair. The room slowly grew dark, and a cloud seemed to cover her view of Joe. She couldn’t see anything except dark figures with long wings and the little boy she had come to know now. This time, unlike all the other times, his palm was facing upward as he was dropped into the field.

The cloud was too dense to see anything, but Birdy could read the inscription on the palm.

“Soon, I shall return.”

***

Birdy was lying on her spring bed, propped up halfway by two pillows on which she placed her back. She had had this bed since her college days; it was one of those things she cherished.

“You’ll be okay, sweetie,” Joe said as he dragged the flower-designed bedspread halfway across her body to her bust and removed the towel he’d placed on her forehead.

“Your temperature is running sky-high. Should I get you an aspirin?”

“Nah,” Birdy said, turning her head to the opposite side of the bed, barely audible, almost muttering. “Aspirin is not good for my ulcer.”

“Oh, yes, that’s true. I’m already losing track of all the precautions you must take.”

Joe stood up and walked to the sink. He soaked the towel again to get it damp and placed it back on Birdie’s forehead.

“Maybe you should take another break from work, you know,” Joe suggested.

“But you know, I’ve missed so much already, and I’m even running the risk of getting fired,” Birdy replied, a slight frown creasing her face.

“Should I drive you to your mom’s so you can get extra care while you’re at her?”

When Birdy’s dad left the house when she was sixteen, she had seen her mother cry every day, exasperated by the pain of her husband leaving her for another woman. Even though it had been many years since then, her mom had not really been able to go through all the stages of grief, and she’d been stuck in the depression phase since then.

“I’m not sure seeing my mom wallowing in depression while making self-effacing jokes is what’s best for my mental health right now.”

Birdy was plagued by the guilt of avoiding her mother because she was scared to see her in her worst state.

“Who knows if my visit to her place has anything to do with the constant trance of this strange demon or whatever that’s happening to me now.” She cringed at the thought of this.

“Hey, how can you say something like that?” Joe reprimanded her. “You already know that whatever is happening now is just neurons firing in a way that we don’t understand, and if a biologist finds a way to solve the problem, we may understand that….”

“Joe, please, not now. Spare me the scientific details for today, please. I need some rest now.”

“Okay, hon. I’ll be in my study if you need me. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Joe kissed her forehead and left for the door, now having to deal with two obsessive thoughts: his fiancée’s ceaseless dreams and his own ceaseless inquisition for the unknown.