banner by BeccaBehr
One
Michael glared at the stupid campfire and tugged his thin blanket tighter around his shoulders. The other children were running around playing flashlight tag in Frazier Woods. Michael didn’t own a flashlight.
The parent volunteers were setting up the kids’ tents. Girls on one side of the camp and boys on the other. Ms. DeLuca, that crazy Maria’s mother, was arguing with the Sheriff about the proper way to push the poles into the ground. Mr. Parker was patiently fixing up after Mr. Whitman’s mistakes, and his wife, Mrs. Parker, was laying out the children’s bedding.
There were a few teachers, most of which were in the woods refereeing the game. But Mr. Trevors, the Vice-Principal of Roswell Elementary, was glaring over his scraggly moustache at Michael.
He glared back, jabbing a stick into the ground violently. If there was one thing Michael Guerin hated more than people pitying him, were people like Mr. Trevors who were always willing to believe the worse of the welfare, foster child.
Mr. Trevors started walking toward him and Michael steeled himself for a verbal beating, something he sometimes thought was worse than Hank’s fist, but it never came. The woods opened up and the fifth-grade class came streaming out, laughing. Michael scowled.
Soon enough, a few of his classmates had gathered around his fire. Kyle Valenti was bragging about some Jr. Rifle Competition to Liz Parker, the school smarty, who Michael thought was putting up a valiant effort to look interested. The Whitman twins were consulting as seriously as eleven-year-olds were able over an old guitar. And Maria DeLuca, with her sparkling green eyes and long blonde hair, was annoying him.
“How come your dad didn’t come?” she asked, sitting down on the log next to him and blinking her large eyes coyly. Michael grunted. “How come?” she pressed.
“Home come your dad didn’t come?” he retorted angrily.
She leaned away, taken aback by his tone. “I don’t got a dad.”
“Neither do I,” he said.
“Then who’s the guy who picks you up from detention?”
He glowered. “That’s Hank.”
“Isn’t he your dad?”
“No.” He stood up, throwing his stick at random. Alarmed, he saw it heading straight for Kyle’s head, the other boy not even noticing. He opened his mouth to yell in warning, but a small hand shot out and caught it.
Amazed, he saw Liz toss it into the fire, not taking her attention from Kyle. He shook his head, not quite believing what he had seen. He looked up, trying to rationalize sweet, studious Liz Parker with that feat of speed, and couldn’t. But he wasn’t the only one who had seen. Sheriff Valenti was staring at the girl sitting with his son, a very thoughtful expression on his face.
“Spaceboy?” The perky voice sounded in his ear and a little arm slid into his. Surprised, he jerked out of Maria’s hold.
“What did you call me?” he demanded.
“You were spaced out, I thought it was a cute nickname,” she replied innocently.
“You are so weird,” he informed her, “Now go bother someone else.” And he started walking away.
“Where are you going, Michael Guerin?” she shouted after him.
“Away from you!” he hollered back, and continued stomping into the woods.
After a while, he realized how stupid this action had been. For starters, he had never been to Frazier Woods, and did not know his way around. He was lost. Secondly, he couldn’t pick up any sign of human life. No burning campfire in the distance, no high-pitched voices, nothing but woods as far as he could tell. Finally, and most importantly, he couldn’t see.
Tripping yet again, Michael cursed his lack of flashlight and tattered, untie-able sneakers from Family Services. Then he double cursed Hank just for being a bastard. And concluded with triple cursing the stupid forest, because the tree branches were blocking the light of the full moon and preventing him from finding the path he had somehow wandered off of.
“Stupid bubble-headed girls,” he muttered, kicking a branch. They probably wouldn’t notice he was missing until morning, he thought, maybe not even until they got back to school. Unless Maria Stupid DeLuca blabbed her big fat mouth off to someone.
Well, that was fine with him. He could make it back on his own. He was a survivor. If he hadn’t been, Hank would’ve broken him a long time ago.
Determined now, Michael set off in what he deemed was north, and after five minutes nearly walked into a tree. “Darn it!” he exclaimed.
And then the growl came.
Eyes widening, Michael spun around. All was still for a moment, and then it came again, low and dangerous. It sounded like a really big animal. Panic started making his heart beat faster.
The rustling of the bushes was the only warning Michael had before the large, hairy creature burst from them. Luckily, it was enough. Michael managed to scramble up the tree he had nearly brained himself on, earning himself only a small gash on the ankle.
It burned. He ignored it as he climbed higher, panic making him move faster. When he had climbed as high as he could go without the branches breaking on him, he looked down.
The thing, it looked almost like a dog, but bigger and more humanoid, was circling the base of his tree, growling up at him. He stayed frozen on his branch. Please don’t let it climb trees, he pleaded with the Powers That Be. Michael didn’t believe in God, but there had to be something up there, right?
Another shifting of bushes below and Michael whimpered, afraid of another killer canine joining the first, but what stepped out of the bushes wasn’t a monster.
At least not in the usual sense.
The gunshot echoed through the forest, but Michael made not a sound. He watched as Mr. Trevors, the bane of his existence, put down the rifle and moved toward the thing that had attacked the boy.
No longer a gray dog, but a naked human.
It was a long while after Mr. Trevors left, dragging the body with him, that Michael came down. He walked aimlessly, limping from the laceration that still burned, thinking hard on what he had seen.
The song registered on a subconscious level. It wasn’t until he came upon Maria DeLuca sitting on a boulder on the edge of the woods that he realized he had been following sound of her voice to get back to camp. He stared at her as she finished the hypnotic melody.
“Maria!” The two children turned. Ms. DeLuca looked furious. It was the first and last time Michael ever saw Amy upset with her darling daughter. “What are you doing, young lady?” she demanded, tight-lipped.
“Michael was lost, Mom,” she responded softly.
Ms. DeLuca looked at him, and her expression relaxed. “It’s bed-time. Michael, you’re sharing a tent with Kyle and Alex. Maria, you’re with Liz and Isabel.”
“Aw, Mom, I hate Isabel!”
“Hush your mouth,” Amy scolded, but she was smiling.
Michael ignored the kooky pair and trudged off to find his tent. The other two boys were already asleep when he settled down. Their chaperones, the Sheriff and Mr. Whitman were still outside, chatting with a newly returned Mr. Trevors. Michael had made sure to avoid the vice-principal’s gaze, unnerved at the incident in the woods, and still unable to figure out what had really happened.
As he slowly slipped into a deep sleep, his hand reached down to scratch the cut, which had started itching.
Two
It was a month later when things began happening.
He had noticed, in the days that followed the bizarre incident in Frazier Woods, that he could smell and hear better. When Hank came home drunk, the smell of alcohol and sweat made him sick. Luckily, the better hearing let him know when Hank was nearby, so he could run and hide. But sometimes his foster father still caught him.
Michael had been healing faster too. The bruises and cuts the beating left on him were gone in a few hours to a day depending on the severity of the damage. It was nice. He no longer had to miss school, his only escape, because he was too hurt to move.
Though school wasn’t that great. Michael now had a great fear of Vice Principal Trevors that clashed with his despisal of the man. The sight of Mr. Trevors’ stupid comb-over from above as he dragged that dead man, who had been a large animal just seconds before, was something that would stick with Michael for life.
And he was noticing small things about his classmates too. Kyle Valenti always had gunpowder clinging to him that made Michael sneeze. Alex and Isabel Whitman had an electricity that sparked between them that gave him a shock on occasion if he got too close. Liz Parker, quiet and shy, had a feel of power to her that left Michael a little in awe of her. And Maria DeLuca, the stupid bubble-girl herself, smelt like the sea. She left a salty wind taste on his tongue if he breathed around her.
Then there was lunch. The portion of the day he was beginning to dread. Before he had always felt bad when he came with cracker to eat, or when Mr. Trevors announced loudly that the cafeteria didn’t accept food stamps, or when he didn’t have anything to eat at all, and he had to sit and watch the rest of the kids eat their lovingly prepared lunches for half an hour. Now, he could smell each and every item of food a kid had in their lunchbox, and it took every ounce of what little self-control he had not to pounce when he sniffed out a ham sandwich or a slice of chocolate cake.
As it closer to the next full moon, he found himself fantasizing about raw meat, and tearing Hank’s throat out, or ripping Mr. Trevors a new one. Or biting into Maria’s soft, tender white flesh…
They scared him, these thoughts, but he couldn’t stop them.
The day of the full moon, Michael stayed home from school. He felt so hot he thought he’d burn up any minute, and the cramps in every muscle made it impossible to move. He spent the day curled up in a fetal position on his tattered bed, a mattress with broken springs and a ripped sheet, whimpering in pain.
Michael heard when Hank returned from work. The truck door slamming nearly deafened him, and he tried to curl up into himself more.
“Boy!” came the shout from the TV area of the trailer, “Get your lazy ass out here!”
He shifted, every move agony, but Hank would just come after him if he didn’t get up. He shuffled into the kitchen/living room, trying not to cry out with the pain. A football game was on the television, and Hank’s feet were up on the recliner footstool. “What?” Michael croaked.
His foster father didn’t even look at him. “Get me a beer and heat up a dinner.”
He managed to get a TV dinner into the microwave, but his arm spasmed as he removed a beer from the refrigerator. Night had finally fallen. The bottle fell to the floor and broke, pieces of glass cut Michael’s bare feet and the overwhelming smell of alcohol made him go to his knees and retch.
“What the hell?” Hank had gotten up, rage in his every ugly feature. He grabbed Michael’s arm and shook him. “Clean that up, you lazy ungrateful bastard!” Michael looked up at him, the smell of meat overriding his fear, and Hank dropped his arm, staring in horror.
The boy, unaware that his warm brown eyes had become cold gray, filled with hunger, watched him. More spasms moved across his muscles, and hair started sprouting along his arms and face and legs. And still, he tracked every move his foster father made with eyes that resembled a wolf’s.
“You’re a freak,” Hank accused, staring in horror as the boy’s entire body began to transform. Frenzied, he grabbed the shotgun off the wall and fired. The bullet hit the little monster in the shoulder.
The wolf felt the impact and smelled the blood. A growl escaped between enlarged incisors and he moved in a flash of gray fur. The second shot went wild and the man was down, screaming. Teeth gleamed and the scream cut off as the man’s throat was torn out.
In the midst of the feeding, the blood and carnage, the neighbors locked their doors and shut their blinds.
The wolf raised a red-soaked muzzle into the air and howled.