Wolf of Marble

Chapter 1 – Two Deaths

In a small, messy bedroom, two people lay sleeping on the floor, tangled in their sheets and blankets. The bedroom looks as if it had been ransacked. The bedside table has been knocked over, the lamp previously sitting on it now in several pieces on the floor. An upturned but still functioning alarm clock begins its daily alert, and the people immediately place their hands to their ears, the noise too much to bear. The man struggles to reach the clock as he becomes aware of his surroundings. He shuts it off and groans in relief.

Looking around, Adam finds that the reason his body is sore is because he slept on the hardwood floor of the bedroom again. This isn’t the first time he’s woken up like this. The last time this happened it hadn’t turned out as badly as this night did. Their possessions were still intact.

Adam looks to his girlfriend, her long auburn hair in tangles and her already light skin looking much paler than usual, and gently shaking her shoulder he whispers, "Hazel. The room is a mess and we're on the floor again."

Hazel groggily looks around, making the same discoveries as he did. "How did this happen a second time? The lamp even broke right by our heads and we still didn't wake up."

"I don't know. Maybe we should see a doctor. Last time this happened the mess wasn't this bad. Does your head hurt like last time?"

"Yeah. It's like I've got five hangovers at once. I just want to lay here."

"Same here. I'm still going to go to work, though. I'll see if I can get off early."

"I'll clean this up later today when I feel like I can actually move."

"Just get yourself back on the bed for now. We can clean this up later.”

With that Adam groans as he gets up to start his day. Looking in the bathroom mirror, he sees that his eyes are bloodshot and have prominent bags. One odd thing he noticed was his eye color also seemed lighter than the deep brown they usually were. Noticing that little detail, he decided seeing a doctor would be a good idea. Like Hazel, he was also paler than usual, though his dark skin hid it. His general appearance was that of someone who had the flu. Looking at his short black hair though, he smirked, thinking about the mess Hazel's hair had somehow become overnight. She was going to have a lot of work fixing that.

After a quick shower, Adam carefully steps over Hazel to grab his phone off the floor, noticing several missed messages from a couple of his friends. They all say something along the lines of "You need to call me right away." Seeing this, his heart stops. Just last month he woke up one morning with the same kind of message. “It can't be the same thing as before,” He thought, but he was rapidly becoming nervous at the thought of what could have happened this time. Thinking about what happened to Eli put him on edge.

He calls Eric, and after several rings was about to hang up when he finally answered. "Adam..."

"Eric, what's going on? You and Beth both sent me cryptic emergency messages." Eric doesn't answer right away. The only thing coming from the phone is a bit of sniffling. "Eric talk to me. What happened? Are you okay?"

“Adam. Emma's dead." There was a loud clunk as Eric carelessly dropped his phone somewhere, and the sound of heavy footsteps could be heard walking away. He hadn’t even hung up.

Adam stands frozen in place at the news. He had just lost a good friend only weeks ago to some terrible incident, and now his own sister died, too. He didn't want to believe it, but with death still fresh in his mind because of Eli, he was already is thinking the worst. That maybe she died the same gruesome way. He gathers himself and calls Beth, the other person who sent him emergency messages.

Immediately after Beth picks up he launches into getting answers. "Beth, Eric just told me Emma's dead but please tell me there's something else going on. I'm kind of freaking out about this right now."

"Adam... I'm so sorry. It's true. And I don't..." Beth was crying very hard and was barely able to choke out her words. "Adam I don't- I don't think I should tell you this but it happened just like Eli. Whatever happened to him happened to her, too. I’m sorry."

Adam's heart drops. He hadn’t seen what happened to Eli but he heard about it. Both him and his apartment had been completely torn to shreds. Something had broken into his building, broken down the front door, leaving deep scratches and gouges all over the walls and floor as whatever it was made its way to Eli. The thing was clearly targeting him as it had passed many other apartments with people in them on the way to his. Whatever attacked him also leaped out the window, shattering it on the way out. Eli lived on the third floor, and this creature had no problem falling that far of a distance. It left two unusually large prints where it landed, but they couldn't be identified. The funeral had to be closed casket.

Adam shuddered thinking about it. Eli's death and the gruesome details of it were still fresh in his mind. He momentarily forget what he had just been told about his sister, but it came back to him and hit him hard. He sat on the couch and buried his face in his knees. Hazel canceled work for the both of them as they dealt with it. They went to his parent’s house later for a long, miserable day.

Chapter 2 – It’s in the Eyes

Making it through Emma’s funeral was one of the hardest things Adam had ever done. Adam, his parents and one of their aunts who was very close to the family were all crying over the loss. Her long hair and skin were both only a shade lighter than Adam’s and she had a dimple on her chin that he would tease her about in retribution for saying he had love handles, though he’d lost those recently. They hadn’t been very close as children, but as they grew older they both found themselves surrounded by the same friends.

Two funerals in two months, and they both died the same terrible way. One for a best friend, and one for his very own sister. In the past few years they had begun spending time with each other on the weekends. She and Eric had only just begun dating a couple months ago, having had their first "date" at a party. The date was mostly the two of them just avoiding everyone at the party instead hanging out on the patio drinking with the group. That’s when they started dating, so they decided to call that night a date. Adam and Hazel had even gone on a double date once, which turned out to be a really fun night. Thinking about it now made Adam feel kind of sick. The funeral had now finally ended and everyone headed to the Mayer home for the reception. Once a place of comfort, it now had an empty feeling even with so many people inside.

As Adam solemnly made his way through the house, he passed by a board that had been covered with photos of Emma. Barely a moment had passed since he began looking at it when tears began welling up in his eyes again. There were pictures of her throughout her life and for many of them Adam could remember where they had been taken. As he looked through some of the recent ones he saw a familiar chubby guy in the background. It was Halloween in the picture so he was in costume but easily recognizable by his long tangled hair. Here Adam was at a funeral for his own sister, looking at a picture of not only her, but one of his good friends he lost only weeks ago to the same horrific thing.

Noticing Eric sitting on the couch, he decided this was a good time to sit down. The two of them both sat on the couch for several minutes lost in thought, neither of them saying a word. After a while, Eric said the first words he's said in days. "I was at my parent's house that night. I could easily have driven over to her place. I even planned on doing that to surprise her. Instead I felt kind of lightheaded so I stayed in. I really should have gone. I could have helped. Instead I just made a mess of my parent's guest room while my girlfriend was..."

"Eric..." Adam begins, "Whatever happened to her that night would have happened to you, too. Something terrible is out there. I'm glad you didn't go. Losing three people would have been too much. You’re still here."

"Why is this happening? Why did it have to happen to her? And Eli? Two people we know, and they're the only two people it's happened to. The police can't figure it out. They're saying it has to be some kind of animal, but they have no idea what could even do something like that. There’s never been any reports of that happening, even to wildlife or pets. And suddenly it starts happening to people? Why would it only go after people? And why’d the only two people it’s happened to have to be my friend and my girlfriend? It’s just too messed up." His eyes are watering and his voice is shaking. His dark brown hair has a sheen to it as if he hasn’t showered in a couple days, and his plain face was looking pallid.

People were milling about while Adam sat lost in thought on the couch. He saw some of his friends as they went by. People who had also been friends with Hazel. Dan, Logan, Vicky and Sophia were walking through the living room as a group. They waved to him and Eric as they passed by. He could tell Logan, Vicky and Sophia had been crying recently. Ever since Eli died Logan had taken to wearing sunglasses all the time to hide how puffy and red his eyes were most days. He caught a glimpse of Gan and Blake earlier, and he knew Parker was also in the house somewhere.

"Hi, guys." Hazel mutters, as she sits down between the two of them.

All Adam and Eric offer in return is a dull "Hey." before going back to not speaking.

Hazel sighs and puts her arms around the two of them. Mildly surprised by this, Eric turns to look at her as the touch of another human feels foreign and out of place to him right now. His stare is vacant at first, but then he notices her eyes.

"Did you do something to your eyes?" Eric asks.

"No, it's just this thing that happened. We're going to go to a doctor, but we haven't scheduled the appointment yet."

"We?"

Adam speaks up, " Yeah it happened to both of us. We're not sure what it is but-" Adam stops mid-sentence, noticing something on Eric’s face. "Eric, look at me." Eric turns his head, leaning forward slightly to see past Hazel. "Your eyes have it, too!"

Eric has a puzzled expression on his face. "What do you mean?"

"All three of us have something weird going on with our eyes."

"Are you sure? I haven't noticed anything."

"Have you looked? Because I'm looking right now and I can see your eyes look lighter, like ours do."

"I can see it, too." Hazel chimes in. "It's subtle, but it's definitely there."

Eric stops to think, "I guess I haven't really looked lately. I've been distracted by... All of this." He says, gesturing to the clothes he wore for the funeral.

"You should see a doctor, too. It seems like there's something going around. We noticed our eyes the day it happened to Emma."

Adam has a look of concentration on his face, "Eric. You said you made a mess of your parent's room the night it happened, right?"

"Um, yeah. My parents even said I made a lot of noise but I didn't remember doing anything. Why?"

"So did we. Our landlord even stopped by to say one of our neighbors complained about the noise, but we thought we were just sleeping. ...And now that I think about, the same thing happened a month ago, too. The night of Eli's... death. It wasn't as bad that night, though. I thought we just had a restless night or something. But the second time it happened we woke up on the floor. All of our stuff was thrown everywhere, and we even broke some glass but neither of us were woken up by the noise or even remembers doing it."

“So the three of us are getting sick on the same nights? That’s odd. What would even cause something like that?”

"I have no idea. Some weird disease maybe? But now I'm definitely going to schedule a doctor appointment right now."

As Adam gets up Hazel quickly adds, "We also need to see if anyone has this. I remember Naomi saying something about a rough night. It seems like there might be something going around.”

Adam called the doctor’s office and was able to schedule an appointment a week from now. He then walked around the house looking for Naomi, Grace and Beth all talking to each other, each dressed in black for the occasion.

Naomi was a short, skinny girl with tan lines on her shoulders from working outside so much. Her bleach blonde was hair tied up. She had a pointed face. She was often seen snacking on something, and today was no exception. In her hand was a plate with a healthy pile of meatballs, her fork frequently returning to it for another bite.

Grace was also short, and had a natural tan skin tone. Her dark brown hair was cut to only a couple inches long. She worked the night shift, and it was clear she didn’t take any time off before coming to the funeral. Her arms were covered in tattoos and she loved showing them off.

Beth was fairly large, though she seemed to have lost some weight recently. Her round face was framed by black hair hanging straight down on either side. She normally wore contacts, but today had on her pair of thick-rimmed glasses. She and Hazel were both worked as web developers for the same company and as a result Adam saw her regularly.

“Hi Adam,” Grace said. “Are you holding up okay?

“No. This is really hard.”

“I’m sorry. Is there anything we can do?”

“No. This is just going to take some time. I do have something to ask you, though.”

“What is it?”

“This is going to sound weird, but let me see each of your eyes for a second.”

“What for?”

“I’ll explain in a minute.”

“All right, I guess.”

Adam looked at each of their faces, “Have any of you noticed that your eyes seem kind of light?”

The three girls looked at each others’ eyes, “Now that you mention it, yeah. I do see it. What’s that all about?”

“I don’t know why, but me, Hazel and Eric all have that with our eyes, too. We also just discovered that the all three of us were apparently violent in our sleep only on the nights Eli and Emma… We woke up feeling like we had bad hangovers even though we didn’t drink. Did this happen to any of you?”

Grace thought for a minute, “Yeah. And it was only on those nights just like you said.” The others also confirmed they experienced the same things.

Beth joined the conversation, “What’s going on here Adam? What is this?”

“I don’t know. Me, Hazel and Eric were talking downstairs when we noticed his eyes. We started talking about it and found out all three of us have the eye thing and got sick only on those specific nights. I scheduled a doctor appointment, and Hazel’s going to do the same.”

“Who else has this besides us?”

“No idea. We only made this discovery a few minutes ago, and Hazel mentioned Naomi had a rough night recently and thought I should find her.”

“I missed work that night,” Grace said. “I was feeling kind of sick so I called in. I don’t even remember what happened next but I woke up not even in my bed and stuff was knocked over.”

“I guess we should try to find everyone who has this. I’ve been looking at people’s eyes as I was walking around and everyone else’s eyes look normal as far as I can tell. All I know so far is a few of our friends have it.”

“I’ll do the same. If it’s all our friends getting it then I’ll ask around.”

A few days later Adam received a message from Grace with a list of 40 or so people. She wanted him to talk to some so she wouldn’t have to do all the work and spend all her free time hunting down sick people.

Chapter 3 – Violent Night

Adam was sitting impatiently on the couch, nervously awaiting Hazel's return from the doctor. The TV was on, but he was too busy thinking about her doctor appointment to be paying attention to whatever show was on. He'd already been to been to his own doctor, but no results came up. Explaining the situation to him, the doctor said there was a possibility of something they hadn't considered, but as of right now they couldn’t give him any certain answers.

Doing a bit of his own research online, he found that there were any number of reasons why a person’s irises might lighten. Various diseases, age, even emotions or weather. None of those seemed likely, and the doctor told him he shouldn’t try to diagnose himself using the internet.

As for the rough nights, the doctor's best guess so far was that it was possibly just a coincidence, but it really did seem like there had to be a cause of some sort. He and Hazel had also confirmed with a few more of their friends that they'd been experiencing the same things. For now he was advised simply to keep track of all changes, and to call back should things continue or worsen. In the meantime he promised to see if he could find anything that might be the cause. The doctor also referred him to some specialists. Feeling incredibly uneasy with a mystery disease going around and two people he cared about dying, his attention was brought back to reality as the sound of the doorknob turned. Hazel had barely stepped through the door when he asked, "How'd it go?"

"Same thing as you. Exactly the same, actually. Somehow I'm in better health even though my eyes are changing color and I'm smashing things and yelling in my sleep and I feel sick."

"And your doctor had no idea about the cause either?"

"No, she didn't. Did you get my message about the chat group Ben set up?"

“Yeah. I hadn't looked at it yet. I wanted to see if your doctor had anything before I start telling my friends my medical information."

"Well there's nothing new so far. Not everyone in our friend group has it, but out of everyone who does, it doesn't seem like they've spread it to anyone else. It's as if we all contracted it at the same time."

Taking out his phone he looked at the list of everyone who was in the group, and realized every single person who had the mystery disease so far had been at Dan's party about three months ago. That's the last time they were all together, and nobody else appears to have contracted the disease anytime before or since then. The weirdest part of the whole thing by far however, was the fact that every single person in the group had fitful nights only on the nights of Eli and Emma's deaths. There had to be more to this than it being just a disease, but no one had any answers beyond some wild hypotheses.

Everyone in the chat was becoming increasingly worried. It had been a few weeks since their last "sleep attack" as some in the chat had started calling it, and no one was quite sure what to do about it happening again. Adam and Hazel hadn't been the only ones who managed to break a few things and put some dents in the walls the last time it happened. The two of them had taken to staying in Hazel's parents' basement the past few nights. There wasn't much they could break there, and the house was big enough that they could make plenty of noise and not be heard. Others in the group had similar and ideas and made their own preparations. Not everyone was as lucky, and would have to deal with whatever the consequences were when the next sleep attack came.

Their preparations weren't in vain, as after about a week of sleeping in the basement, it was getting late one night but gradually they could start to feel it coming on. Whereas the on the second night it occurred they felt a little lightheaded before, this time they had migraines, and were especially sensitive to the world around them. Every light was obnoxiously and painfully bright. Every little noise sounded like it was being blasted through a megaphone. They knew it was going to happen tonight. Somehow they could feel it.

After propping their phones up on a windowsill to record their actions, they cleared the room of everything, made sure all the doors and windows were closed and protected, and wrapping themselves up as much as they could, they laid in the darkness, knowing they were still going to have a mess to clean up tomorrow in spite of their precautions.

Adam thought about the ring he’d been secretly carrying around for the past few months as he laid down to sleep. He had planned on proposing a few months ago, but the few times he tried to set up a romantic day, they had to cancel because of work or other reasons. Then Eli died. Then Emma died. And now they were dealing with a bizarre sickness He closed his eyes and hoped everything would be okay when they woke up, but he had a strong feeling they wouldn’t.

Chapter 4 – Witness to Your Own Demise

Adam woke to the sudden sound of Hazel running to the bathroom. All of his senses were screaming at him. He could feel the intensity of the sunlight peaking through the coverings they had placed on the windows. The morning chirping of the birds was the worst thing he had ever heard. Sweat stained the sheets, though he was lying across the room on the floor again another puddle of sweat under him here. Suddenly he knew why Hazel ran to the bathroom. He also felt sick. Really sick. He made it to the bathroom sink only just in time to vomit. Hazel seemed to have gotten most of it out of her system already, as she was kneeling on the floor panting, covered in sweat and bruises from the night. Looking back to his vomit, he saw what he thought to be pieces of foam and cotton. He recognized some of the darker pieces as fabric from one of the chairs in the basement living room. "I ate pieces of the couch last night. What the fuck. Literally what the fuck."

Between raspy breaths Hazel muttered, "So did I. And two of my teeth fell out."

"What?! Are you okay?"

"I’m not. Something is really wrong with us."

She was telling the truth. He wasn't sure what he could say. They both felt like shit. He looked up at his reflection and saw he looked just as awful and sick as the last time this happened, only this time his eyes now had a noticeable yellow tint to them. This wasn't a gradual change. Whatever this thing was, it was getting worse each time they woke up like this. They were clearly becoming a danger to themselves and they were both worried, wondering when the next time this happened would be and what they could possibly do to protect themselves. They both spent the next hour or so sitting on the bathroom floor thinking about this, in too much pain to move.

Begrudgingly they finally removed themselves from the cold tile floor of the bathroom, grunting and groaning as they forced themselves to get up. They tried to avoid using their bruised and sore areas, but they were sore all over. Just moving around the next few days was going to be a chore. They made their way back to the living room where the slept to inspect the damage.

The mattress they slept on had a large piece torn from the corner. There were huge chunks out of the couches where they had ripped and bitten into them. The many sheets they used to bind themselves overnight had somehow remained mostly intact, though not a single pillow survived the night. They checked their phones. Adam's had fallen from the ledge and the screen now had a spiderweb of cracks emanating from the top right corner, though it was still usable. They both had footage of their destructive and fitful sleep.

Adam and Hazel sat on the edge of the ruined mattress, their mouths agape at what they were witnessing. The night began with pained moans, which quickly turned into animalistic growls. They were both twitching in their wrappings, their movements constrained. It wasn't long before they broke free. The two of them ran around the room, tearing things apart. Shredding things, sinking their teeth into the furniture and shaking their heads like animals to rip things into pieces. Hazel winced as she watched herself violently sink her teeth into the mattress, tugging and pulling until finally the piece in her mouth came out. She whipped her head to the side and tossed the mattress piece across the room, two of her teeth flying along with it. They began clawing angrily at the walls, as if they were seeking escape. As the footage progressed they seemed to grow both in intensity of violence and the actual size of their bodies. Adam subconsciously grabbed at the boxers he was wearing. They were stretched out, the elastic broken, and there was a large rip in the underside of the crotch. Hazel's clothes suffered less damage, but they definitely showed serious strain last night. Finally the two of them seemed to have run out of energy by the time morning came and they collapsed wherever they happened to be, and seemed to deflate back to normal size.

Hazel started crying. Adam wrapped his arms around her as his eyes started welling up with tears as well. He wished he could find something to say. Adam's phone pinged as he got a message from the group chat. Adam yelled in anger and threw it at the wall before even reading what it said. The phone shattered into several pieces, leaving shrapnel on the floor and another dent in the wall.

Chapter 5 – Two Deaths

Several hours passed. They lay in silence on the shredded mattress, not speaking and not knowing what to do. The group chat had started to pick up in activity, but neither wanted to look at it right now, dreading what they might see. Tossing on some loose clothes, they solemnly made their way upstairs for a late breakfast.

"Are you two sick?! If you've got the flu don't come near me!" Hazel's father blurted out as he got a look at the pair.

"We've got something. It's not the flu and it's not contagious. We've already seen a doctor and we're going to go again soon," Hazel replied. "And please try not to say things so loud; our heads are killing us."

Hazel's father stared at his daughter apprehensively. Adam watched as he shifted his jaw around in contemplation through that thick beard of his. He was a large man, equal parts fat and muscle. His thick beard and body hair seemed to be an attempt to make up for the lack of hair on his head. "You're sure it's nothing like the flu?"

"Yes, dad. Us and some friends all got it from somewhere a while ago, and it hasn't spread to a single person since."

"What were you doing that you all got sick at once?"

"A bunch of us were hanging out a few months ago. We weren’t doing anything unusual. We think it might’ve happened then. None of us are sure if that was it, but we’re figuring it out and we're dealing with it."

Mr. Larsen grunted in disapproval. He got the impression his daughter was hiding something about that night, and he was giving Adam the side eye, thinking he must have been in on it. Hazel did tell the truth, though. What she was hiding was about all the events that had occurred since.

Suddenly the news on the TV caught everyone's attention. "'-victims were Blake Weise and Gan Ng. Two more people in the past several months to have been attacked by an animal of some sort. The only discernible pattern so far is that it has only attacked people in their mid-twenties, and so far has attacked once every few weeks, and only at night. Police have been working with Animal Control to try to determine what this animal is and how future attacks can be prevented. A curfew has been put in place, asking residents to be in their homes or a safe location by nine o'clock pm, and to report any suspicious activity. They have additionally been seeking help from more outside sources, but so far they have all come up empty-handed. The entire city of Marble, Colorado is growing increasingly restless and frustrated with the lack of results as more victims keep turning up. We can only hope the situation is resolved soon, before another tragedy occurs.' 'Thank you, Debra. In local news, two high school students have-'" Mr. Larsen turned off the TV.

Looking at his beloved daughter and her longtime boyfriend, he said, "I'm sorry. I should have turned that off sooner. I know you were good friends with Gan, and I know you've both been through a lot lately. I just want you to know that I'm here for you both, and please, if you know anything about this, please tell me. If you know something, you don't have to hide it from me. I'm here for you." Hazel was crying into Adam's shoulder, while he stared vacantly at the floor. Mr. Larsen gave them a hug, and after resting his hand on his daughter's shoulder for a moment, he left so they could be alone.

When Gan had first emigrated from China he didn’t know any English at all. Blake ended up being the one who showed him around and it was from him Gan had learned most of his English, for better or for worse. Soon it became rare to see the scrawny, freckled Blake without Gan by his side. Once Gan finally realized some of the goofy things he’d been saying he just laughed it off, telling Blake he would’ve done the same thing. They stayed friends over the years, eventually living together.

That last part was what worried Adam. It was because they were together that they died together. He knew during the next attack she would insist on being with him. They’d done everything together for years, and as big of a thing as this was, it was still just one more one a long list of things they had done with each other. He’d have to find a way to convince her out of it.

Chapter 6 – The List

It had been a few days since the news report, and neither Adam nor Hazel had left their apartment since then other than to buy groceries. This time the sick feeling lasted for several days before finally fading away

Adam's performance at work at declined over the past few months, and with his taking so much time off to deal with his sickness and all the deaths, he was let go. His boss had been very understanding and was apologetic, but he couldn't keep someone around who wasn't able to come in, and when they did, their performance was subpar. It was only a boring office job to him so he wasn’t going to miss it, but he was still suddenly without income. Hazel was lucky she was able to work from home if she needed to. Her job allowed for working remotely, and with her freelance work on the side, they at least still had some income.

Some of that income was spent repairing and hiding as much of the evidence of their night at Hazel's parents' house. They couldn’t hide the shredded furniture, and made up a story about “having too much fun” last night, trying to keep it vague and promising to replace it. They had decided they wouldn't tell either of their parents for now, as they really didn't know much, but they didn't want to worry them just yet. For now all their parents knew was that their kids were a bit sick.

The group chat had been steadily going, but Adam and Hazel had both been avoiding it. They knew they should really check in, so Adam opened up the cheap phone he bought as a temporary replacement for the one he smashed, and looked through what was going on. "You haven't looked at the chat in awhile, right?"

"No, I've been avoiding it. What have they been saying?"

"Well first, a couple people tried to stay up through the sleep attack, even chugging tons of caffeine and doing everything they could to stay awake. They still passed out, and when they came to, they had made just as much of a mess as everyone else did, though one of them got pee everywhere." Hazel smirked slightly at that. It really wasn't a funny thing, but with as much as had been going on she let herself laugh at something like that, even though that could easily have been her.

Moving on, Adam said, "Others also recorded themselves like we had been talking about and they saw exactly the same things we we did. One of them showed their footage to a doctor already, and he had no idea what to make of it. He talked about prescribing medicine for some kind of psychosis. She declined, and also pointed out the recent discovery someone else in our group made to him. These attacks we all keep having have happened every 29 days so far. We all have a violent night, and one of us doesn't get to wake up. Except for last time with Blake and Gan, but they were in the same place, which means if it happens to us, it's going to be both of us attacked together at the same time as well.

The police have also spoken to a few of the people in the group, as all the victims knew each other. Pretty much what they told the police was that they all went to a party at Dan's house a few months ago for a party, did nothing strange or illegal, and somehow all ended up sick and started being killed off."

"W-What does all of this mean?"

Adam looked to the ground, "I have idea. But everyone else's sleep attacks have been getting worse, just like ours have. And someone else noticed the attacks have all happened on full moon nights, and normally I'd say I don't believe in that kind of thing, but this is getting so weird that I'm kind of willing to hear what anyone says."

"At this point, I'm honestly willing to try anything. I'm really terrified of the scene I'll wake up to next time. Maybe next time it will turn out that we'll have killed someone! You saw what was happening to us! I can't go through this again. And something really fucked up is happening to us. And I didn't say it before but..."

"But what?"

"Those teeth I lost are growing back in."

"What?"

"Look," Hazel opened up her mouth so he could look inside and sure enough, there were two fresh white nubs poking through her gums.

"...How?"

"I don't know. This is too much. Eyes yellow! Adult teeth growing back! We become wild at night, and our bodies got bigger and smaller somehow! Adam..." Adam wrapped her in a hug. For what seemed like the thousandth time in the past few weeks, he couldn't think of anything to say to comfort her. He wanted to tell her they'd get through this, but he was just as terrified as she was. The fact that he couldn't comfort her was the worst thing to him.

"There's one more thing from the group chat, Hazel." Adam finally said, breaking the silence. "This one is... I don't like looking at it. Someone made a list of everyone who was at the party and has this... disease. Everyone else who isn’t sick has been kicked out of the chat. And they also crossed off the names of… everyone who's died."

He handed his phone to her, which she reached for very slowly. even more bad news was not welcome. He didn't want to show her this, and she didn't want to see it, yet here it was. The definitive list of everyone who was at Dan's party, gotten sick and was now being killed off.

Dan O’Neil

Eric Frye

Eli Pace

Hazel Larsen

Adam Mayer

Blake Weise

Gan Ng

Beth Knowles

Emma Mayer

Grace Schiefelbein

Naomi Cochran

Logan Ewing

Sophia Vasquez

Vicky Christensen

Parker Thornton

"They really did cross off their names! That’s a really sick thing to do!"

"That is everyone though, and we're slowly figuring this out. Now we know for sure something happened to us at that party."

Chapter 7 – The Party

The group had already been retracing their steps of the night of the party, but they started over since Adam and Hazel hadn't been in on it before. Everyone in the group discussed every single detail they could remember of not only the party, but of all the days leading up to and following party, in case the sickness came from elsewhere, but no one's recollections had anything out of place or suspicious in them.

Parker and Logan were at Dan's house preparing for the party, and had spent the whole day after playing video games. Dan got home from work at around four o'clock, then people started arriving about an hour later, and as the night went on and people trickled in, things started to get louder and everyone had at least a few drinks. There wasn't a punch bowl or anything, it was a large selection of beers and mixed drinks, and since some people only had beer and others only mixed drinks. Given all of that information, they thought it was safe to rule out that the drinks had been tampered with. It was the same situation with food; not everyone ate the same things that night.

Blake and Gan had gone off to sit in the corner by themselves for awhile, and later joined Emma, Naomi, Logan and Parker on the porch to smoke. All of them on the porch at this point oscillated between spending time inside and on the porch throughout the night.

Vicky and Sophia had far too many to drink and by the end of the night they were both passed out on the couch.

The rest of the group mostly had spent the night inside, listening to music and just talking as they drank and ate. Adam and Hazel talked about plans they had for a trip out of town, Eli droned on about video games, and kept eyeing the games that were set up in the living room throughout the night, Dan complained about his boss asking him invasive questions, Eric and Emma mostly talked to each other, and everyone else had all just talked about and did average things as the party went on. No one seemed out of place or to have done anything out of the norm.

The next day they all woke up with hangovers, which they initially attributed to drinking, but now they that they suspected the party was the first night they had the disease, they thought their hangovers might have had a bit more to them, especially since some of them really hadn't drunk that much. Everyone went back to their lives, albeit it feeling slightly ill. Some had work to go to, others had more plans for the weekend. Everything was still normal.

The only unusual thing that happened was Dan claimed a few things had been stolen from his house, and that it had to have happened at the party, meaning one of them did it. He thoroughly cleaned his house after the party, and made sure to look everywhere. He didn't say anything until a few days later when he was sure. No one would admit they were the ones who took things from him however, and eventually Dan had to let it go.

The chat was frustrated. They had gone through the night and all the days before and after it, but still found nothing out of place, even with Adam and Hazel's perspectives added to the mix. Dan took the opportunity to remind everyone he was still miffed about the theft, and also reminded everyone once again that he wasn't going to invite anyone over until he had his things back. He didn't care if they just showed up at his front door one morning, he just wanted to be able to trust his friends.

In the meantime, since they could now predict when the sleep attacks would happen, they began planning for places to lock themselves up for the night, discussing places they could rent out such as storage sheds or a warehouse, or finding abandoned buildings to stay in where causing damage to their surroundings wouldn't be a huge problem. They all made plans and everyone stated where they were going to be that night, and they collectively worked to board up and protect all of their safe houses.

The funerals for Blake and Gan had come and gone, equally as depressing as the rest had been, but there was now had a sense of urgency, as they thought they were being targeted and any one of them could be next. They even told the police of their plans. They didn't believe that a creature would be targeting just their friend group, but they offered to drive around all of their safe houses they had set up just to check up on them. Adam tried to convince Hazel that they should stay in separate safe houses that night in case they became violent towards each other or the creature came for them, but she insisted they were in this together, no matter what happened. She cared about him too much to let him do this alone, even if it meant a higher chance of death. She told him she was fully aware of what her decision meant, and that she didn’t care. Adam reluctantly agreed.

Finally, the day arrived. They woke up already feeling sick, and they could feel that it was going to happen tonight. They didn't have to guess. They, and everyone in the chat knew that tonight was the night. They all promised to check in first thing in the morning, and worked on any last minute preparations they could think of.

Time went by at an agonizing crawl. They wondered just what they were going to wake up to this time, and strongly hoped their group wouldn't once again become smaller. As slow as time moved, it was still moving, and at long last it was night time.

In a tiny but well barricaded room in a disused metal recycling plant, Adam looked to Hazel, wrapped in chains. She looked back at him, a sorrowful look in her yellow eyes as she looked up and down his chains as well. They could only hope these would be enough for whatever was going to happen to them. They wore scrappy clothing they wouldn't mind losing, and after making sure everything was ready and secure, and that there wasn't anything more to do, they sat down to lean against the wall. Based on everyone's experiences, they knew they were going to become wild and violent soon not matter what they did to prevent it. Staring vacantly at the muted green of the wall opposite them, they leaned against each other, not saying anything as the awaited the nightmare they would wake up to.

Chapter 8 – Help Arrives

Ping. Adam heard the noise, but he was in too much pain to move. Ping. Hazel groaned, but she couldn't bring herself to move either. Adam slowly started to come to, realizing that Hazel was still here with him, meaning he hadn't unknowingly hurt her in the night. Ping. With an irritated grunt, Adam slowly crawled over to Hazel's phone. Naomi, Beth and Parker had all already somehow woken and were frantically spamming the chat with messages, trying to wake everyone else up and make sure they were okay. Adam typed a quick "we're okay" before dragging himself to lay next to Hazel. They had broken free of their chains last night, but he couldn't be bothered to think of that right now. He laid himself down on the dusty cement floor and grabbed Hazel's hand as he closed his eyes again.

They were soon woken up by a pair of policemen shaking their shoulders. They quickly grabbed their things to go with them, not wanting to stay in the embarrassing mess they left behind. They could tell the destruction was worse than it had been the previous time. The policemen were nervous to be around them, and though neither Adam nor Hazel had had a chance to see their own faces yet, they could both see that the others’ eyes had turned completely yellow now and knew their own had to match.

They were brought to a plain-looking building, and inside several chairs had been set up in a circle. Some of their friends were already sitting in the circle, looking like death. Adam and Hazel joined them, as police officers brought more to the circle until 9 of the 11 chairs had been filled.

Parker walked in shortly after they did. He was the shortest of the group. His messy blonde hair had a gash in it from last night, though it didn’t look serious. He shuffled his way to the nearest available chair and collapsed into it.

Dan sat down next to them on their left. He was a tall, muscular man with thick hair, and it was hard to think of a time when he wasn’t smiling. Right now was one of those times. His long face appearing slightly longer as he sat in a stupor with is mouth open and large bags hanging beneath his eyes.

Sophia and Vicky sat next to them on their right. Vicky’s red hair was strewn all over her flannel shirt and draping in front of her pointed face but she couldn’t bother with that right now. Her hands were calloused from frequent rock climbing. Sophia was a mousy girl with neck-length black hair and until recently, pretty green eyes. Her arm was wrapped around Vicky’s and she looked ready to pass out from exhaustion.

A well-dressed man and woman came out of a room to the side to sit in the two remaining chairs. After a moment, Beth realized something was amiss, "Where are Logan and Grace?!" she shouted, clearly nervous about the what tragic fate they may have met in the night.

The well-dressed man spoke up. "Logan is fine, but we are asking him a few questions as he broke free of the makeshift confinement he set up. We are trying to see if he remembers anything about where he went in the night. He woke up in the forest, and so far claims that is all he can remember. As for Grace... I am truly sorry. But she has passed."

“Just like the rest?" Beth responded, despair on her face. The man simply nodded yes in response. Beth sat back down, her eyes now pointed at the floor.

The woman began to speak, "I know you are all going through terrible loss, and none of you are feeling well. I can see the state you are in with just a glance. We are here from the Centers for Disease Control, the CDC. We were called in early this morning. From what we know so far, everyone in this group contracted this disease some months ago. We don't actually know if it is a disease just yet, but that is what we are calling it for now to make things simple. It has been progressively getting worse, and every month you have also had to deal with a tragic loss. Am I correct on these base details?" Some in the group nodded. "What we would like to do is thoroughly investigate just what caused this to happen to you. Your symptoms are completely unheard of. And most unusual of all is the violent outbursts on the same nights as someone of this group comes to a tragic end."

The man spoke up again, "We're going to begin by discussing everything that happened over the past year, well before the first attack." At this moment a young man also dressed in a suit came in with several large paper bags. "Ah, this is our intern, Gavin," the man said, "Just set those on the table in the middle here." The man got up to get another chair for Gavin. "And I only now am realizing we haven't introduced ourselves. I am David Long, and my coworker here is Penelope Hodges," David said, gesturing to the well-dressed woman. "On the table here are several bags of bagels for breakfast, and on that table in the corner is coffee. We're going to be here awhile unfortunately, and I know this is going to be difficult, but we're here to help, and this has to be done as soon as possible. We also have a doctor here, and you will each be taking turns seeing him. He will be performing a checkup, drawing blood, and anything else we deem necessary. Drawing blood will be the worst of it though; I assure you. Each of your families have also been contacted about your whereabouts. If you need to call them feel free to do so at any time."

With that David and Penelope began with asking many questions about what they had been up to. The group pulled up the chat as they had been conducting their own investigation, and filled in any details the people from the CDC wanted to know. Gavin sat with his legs crossed, clipboard resting on one of them, and scrawling notes down at a furious pace.

After a few hours, Logan entered and pulled up a chair to sit with the rest, not looking at anyone or saying a word. Most people would describe him as good-looking with his angular jawline and tallness and ordinarily he would have had time to make very deliberate decisions regarding his clothing and dirty blonde hair but today was not the case. Seeing him show up somewhere without having spent the time to meticulously groom himself was somewhat of a shock. He sat down with a look of concentration on his face and had his arms crossed.

The group sent copies of the few videos they had saved, and after discussing those, they broke for lunch for an hour. They weren't allowed to leave the premises just yet, but their families were allowed to stop by. When everyone was once again seated they discussed that in 29 days, when the next attack happened, there would be better containment facilities prepared for them, and they talked about anything else they might need to do to prepare.

At long last there wasn't anything further to discuss. They had been in this drab room for over nine hours. David and Penelope stood off to the side, alternating between talking with each other and talking on the phone. David was wearing a frustrated expression, as he called one person after another. Gavin had nothing to do so he sat slumped in a chair, mindlessly munching a leftover bagel. At last Eric and the doctor stepped out of the small side room, the last of the examinations finally finished. The portly balding man wiped some sweat off is brow and asked, "I know all of you have been through a lot, and you are all going through the exact same thing. I just wanted to ask, would you like to discuss the results in private individually, or is it okay if I tell you everything I have here now seeing as how you all have the same mysterious affliction?" Naomi, Parker and Sophia were on the fence at first, but everyone eventually decided they were all in this together.

"So first I'd like to state that everyone's results are exactly the same. Based on previous medical information, all of you are actually in better health than before. Your heart rates are good, you each appear to have been exercising even though most of you told me you haven’t been, just everything. I know you all look and feel sick right now, but I was not able to determine a cause for that, but I assure you, you are all healthy. As for your eyes, I was not able to detect any possible reason for the change. My preliminary examination has determined that you are all in good health, but have some inexplicable illness plaguing you, and I know that's not good to hear. I have all the samples packed up and ready to go, and they'll be in for testing later tonight. The results of the samples could change everything I just told you, but like I said, from what I can tell just based on today, each of you appears to be in good health, in spite of how you're feeling at the moment." He paused, waiting to see if anyone had any questions, "I should have the results of your samples in about two weeks," following this, the portly doctor walked out the front door, a large case in each hand.

Penelope walked to where the doctor had just been standing so she could say something while everyone was still gathered, "We will meet here again in a couple of weeks, when the results come in. We will be discussing those, as well as anything else you can think of that might be important. We will also be going over the containment facilities we talked about earlier, and anything that can be done to-" David cut her off.

With his brow furrowed in frustration, David addressed the group, "Unfortunately that is not going to be happening. I had been hoping to receive a call back about this very thing, but it appears my bosses' minds are set. I made clear the severity of the situation to them, but as this is a small group of people, and this hasn't been spreading, they ultimately determined the budget was better spent elsewhere. I will however personally pay for a contractor to come by each of the places you set up, to help you make them safer. I know it's not ideal by any means, but it's the least I can do. Both myself and Penelope here will use the footage and information you gave us to determine what we think will be best, then I will send the contractor over to help and advise each of you. I would also try asking the police for help, as there may be something they can add to this situation. Again, I am sorry it had to turn out this way."

Waiting a moment to be sure he was done speaking, Penelope then added, "I have one last thing to tell you. I didn't mention it earlier so as not to worry you anymore than you already are, but someone claimed to have seen the creature. It was dark and they only saw it from a distance as they drove past, but they claimed it was running south towards the lake, and that it looked like, and I quote 'some kind weird-shaped bear'. When asked what he meant by that he said it was bear-sized, but not quite bear-shaped. Would any of you know anything about this?"

Eric answered, "No. We knew there had to be something out there but this is the first we've actually heard anything about what it might be."

In a small way Adam thought it was slightly comforting. Until now they had lost several friends, and not a single person had even seen what was killing them. Before, it felt like they were being hunted down by a nightmare, a constant feeling of pressure and dread and as the night of the attack approached, wondering if tonight was your turn to die. Now that the creature had a face, it seemed to lose its nightmarish qualities, and became something real, tangible, something that could be killed and stopped before anyone else had to die.

"Alright then," Penelope pulled a stack of business cards from her pocket and went around the circle handing them out, "We will be checking in with each of you regularly, but please do not hesitate to call either of us if anything comes up. Any small detail you can think of, or any further changes to your bodies or symptoms, please tell us right away. If something comes up, do not wait until we see each other again in a couple weeks when the samples come in, call us right away. Now, unless there's anything else to add, I think we have finally finished for the day." Before anyone could say anything else, Logan sprinted out of the room.

Grace Schiefelbein.

Chapter 9 – He Kills Them All

I'm the creature. While everyone else has been waking up in the rooms they fell asleep in the nights of the attacks I've been waking in the woods every time. I didn't know how. I didn't know why. But after Gan and Blake, I felt the coincidences were too much to be just that. I always seemed to wake up in the woods near the home of whoever died that night. The creature was spotted heading right for Grace's safe house, and it was in those same woods that I woke up. I always woke up with little to no clothing left on me, and when I woke up yesterday I vomited red. I think it was Grace's blood. And I’ve been wearing those stupid sunglasses for so long because my eyes turned yellow right away. I don't know what's happening to me, but I'm certain I'm the thing that's been doing this.

And Dan, I'm sorry. I'm the one who stole from you at the party. I was drunk and wandered home holding a few of your things. I would have returned them, but that statue, after I had it for a few days I just felt something awful coming from it. It really scared me, and I was afraid to return it to you. I felt like I was being violated every time I came near it. I couldn't take it anymore, and I didn't think it should be near anyone. It felt like pure rage and hatred was pouring into me, so I threw it in the lake. I know it sounds insane that a statue could make a person feel that way, but with everything else that's been happening, I don't know what to believe anymore.

The only thing I believe now is that I need to die. I'm the killer. I have to kill myself and hope whatever's happening to you is somehow resolved by my death. I love you all. I really do, and I'll miss you.

To my family: I love all of you so much. I know how much this will hurt you, but I'm becoming something terrible. I can't be this anymore. I can't hurt anyone else. Chloe, I promised I was going to surprise you with something big when you graduated high school. I won't get the chance to do that now, but I took out all the money I saved up for it and put it in a box under my bed. All of that is yours.

I'm so sorry I had to do this. Goodbye.

That was the suicide note of Logan Ewing. He called the police and told them to find his body in his safe house, then texted the note to his family and everyone in the chat. When the police arrived, what they found was a pool of blood on the floor, some splattered on the wall, a gun missing a shot. There were smears of blood all over the floor, and they led out the door the before diminishing into nothing. Several claw marks left deep gouges in the walls and floor. It definitely looked as though someone had died here, but there wasn’t a body.

At this point, the group of fifteen people was now down to nine. While what happened with Logan was different compared to what had happened with everyone else, none of them had much hope that he was okay. They had only just begun to mourn Grace, and now they had another name to cross off their macabre list of the dead and dying. Logan Ewing. Most of the remaining group didn’t say anything. It was only later that day that Dan sent the message, “I NEED TO FIND THAT STATUE. I TOLD THE OWNER WHAT THE NOTE SAID AND HE SAYS LOGAN’S DESCRIPTION OF IT WAS EXACTLY RIGHT, AND THAT IT IS THE CAUSE OF WHAT’S HAPPENING TO US. COME TO THE LAKE TO HELP.”

Hazel volunteered herself and Adam to help. She was becoming numb to all the death around her, and frustrated with her inability to actually do anything about this disease. Determined to help, they left. Upon arriving they saw Eric, Sophia and Parker wading in the edge of the water, and a man who looked to be in his fifties wearing a denim jacket and several odd trinkets around his neck and wrists.

The man walked over to them and introduced himself, “Hi. I’m Carson Holcomb, owner of the antique store on 4th Street. I’ll explain everything later, but right now finding that statue is the priority. Just as Logan described, the longer you spend around it, the worse you’ll feel. If enough time passes we’ll be able to find it just by looking where we feel the worst. It’s already done all the damage it can do to you, so you don’t need to worry about anything happening to you. Now get to it!”

“What does it look like?” Adam asked.

“It’s an angry wolf sitting on a pedestal.”

Adam and Hazel had been wading around in the water for about forty-five minutes when Beth and Vicky showed up to help. Carson went up to them and gave them the same spiel, then they joined their friends spread out along the shore. A couple hours passed, when Vicky yelled “I got it!” and came splashing back to shore with the statue raised above her head. She set it on the ground as everyone gathered around it to look at it. All of them felt like there was something angry at them filled with a seething fury nothing could sate, and all of them felt like running but they steadfastly stayed put, wanting to put an end to this.

The statue was an angry wolf as Carson described, but it was surprisingly small, not even a foot tall. It was a dull brown color, and looked worn and immeasurably ancient. The pedestal the wolf sat on had some faint indentations on the front, an inscription of some kind now too worn to make out. Carson ran to his car to grab something, and came back carrying an old wooden box with strange symbols on the sides. The box was faded and worn, but the symbols looked brand new and seemed to radiate a faint gold light. The dark green color on every side had long since begun to fade. He put the statue in, stating, “Finally. At least this is taken care of.” He put some of the trinkets he was wearing in the box with the statue and put the lid back on. With the lid closed the angry pressure surrounding them dissipated and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“Dan,” Carson said, speaking directly to him now. “I’m not blaming you for stealing the statue from me. It arrived much sooner than I expected, so I didn’t have time to tell you not to open that package, as it wasn’t one of the usual antiques. Magic has that effect on people, especially an object like this. It’s why I kept pestering you at work about it, and I kept telling you just how important it was and that I needed it back, but it appears you only had it in your possession for a few hours before Logan succumbed just as you did. I told you before that this statue was the source of your problems, but it seems only now are you ready to believe me.

Having it for as long as he did, Logan was fully cursed in only a matter of days. Everyone else in your group here came into contact with it, but only long enough to start the process, not complete it. You’ve all been slowly transforming more and more with each full moon.”

“So Logan really was the one attacking us? And he didn’t even know it?” Parker asked, shocked.

“Yes, unfortunately. And I also have far worse news. The police released the details of Logan’s death. They said it looked like Logan killed himself, but his body wasn’t found. A gunshot to the head is enough to kill a human, but not a werewolf. The curse was a complete part of him, so when he killed himself, he only killed the human part of himself. His body transformed into the wolf form permanently.

Based on the sheer anger and hatred this statue emanates, we can tell that this curse was created as a sort of violent act of revenge against someone. Perhaps as some sort of safeguard, if a werewolf detects another of its kind in the area, it will kill them, as a brutal method of making sure this curse didn’t spread anymore than was originally intended. If there are no werewolves, then it goes after people they care about most. From there, it goes into a rampage just killing anyone it can.

Back to Logan... He is dead, and only the wolf remains. The curse uses the magic of the full moon to transform, but without the human it is attached to, it is nothing but bloodlust. It is alive, and it’s still daytime, which means the wolf is asleep or hunting animals at the moment, but it will attack tonight. And without the immense physical drain of having to transform between human and back, it will be more vicious than before.”

Carson looked around the group as a shocked silence befell them. Dan’s face filled with rage, “If all that is true then why the fuck were we looking for a fucking statue?!”

“We had to get it before it spread its curse to anyone else. Someone would found it or come looking for it eventually, and then this whole mess would start all over again. For now it is contained to your group, which is terrible, and something I am truly sorry for, but at least this way it won’t spread any more than it already has.”

“Then… what do we do about Logan?”

“Arm yourselves. Tonight isn’t a full moon, which means you can fight back with something more than fingernails. A gunshot to the head won’t kill him, but will at least knock him out for a moment to recover from it. If you can use that moment to empty a whole clip into his head, I think that would probably do it. Beheading is really the only surefire way. Otherwise as a cursed beast, it will eventually burn out within a few months, even without the transformation toll.”

Vicky looked at Carson with a combination of pleading and disgust, “How are we supposed behead it?! None of us even have guns! We’re all fucked! It’s already six o’clock! How are we supposed to prepare for this in only a few hours!?” She was sobbing uncontrollably, and looked like she wanted to say more but couldn’t get anything more out.

“I know. And I’m sorry. I was never prepared for this. I don’t have any weapons either. I run an antique store, and deal with a little bit of magic on the side as a hobby. What’s happening here is far beyond me. After the statue went missing I started doing as much research as I could about werewolves, and I’m trying to develop a way to fix this, but I’m only one man, and I’m up against a powerful ancient curse and the threat of being killed myself if I don’t figure something out soon.”

Adam had tears in his eyes and was choking up at the thought that he was going to unknowingly kill Hazel and his family, and that’s if they even survived Logan.” Not a single person in the group expected werewolves, but it all made sense, and as much as they didn’t want to accept that this was their reality, they had no other choice. And as they learned from Logan, suicide wasn’t an option.

Hazel decided to go with Carson for now to get as much information as she could as long as she promised him to leave before nightfall, while Adam and everyone else went to arm themselves. She put all the information in the chat, and asked any questions anyone had as she got answers.

The first bit of news was reaffirming that suicide was not an option unless you had a surefire way to be sure your body was destroyed nearly instantaneously. If not, only the human part of you will have died and the wolf will remain to kill. Because of the curse you would go after the ones you care about first. You could try to run away but the curse would bring you back, and even while human and aware of your surroundings the curse would instill an intense desire to be near the ones you care about.

With the exception of Logan none of them had become full werewolves yet, but according to Carson their luck on that front had run out, and he suspected the next full moon would bring about a massive bloodbath between werewolves and any victims.

The werewolf curse had occasionally been let loose on the world throughout history. After numerous scattered incidents beginning thousands of years ago, there were some established facts about the curse. Werewolves are significantly harder to kill than humans. An injury fatal to a human will likely not be enough to kill a werewolf. Because the curse is bonded to a person, if the host is killed, the curse then takes over, the human now dead forever and a hellish wolf bent on killing is the only thing that remains. The curse uses the magic of the full moon to initiate the transformation, and the cursed individuals, after becoming a full werewolf, typically only survive an average of eight or so transformations before the curse uses up the host’s body. In addition, because the moon is such a large energy source, a werewolf can sometimes have an overflow of magic energy and accidentally transfer the curse to a victim if they survive the encounter. Transferring the curse requires direct contact between the wolf and the victim, meaning every bite or scratch has the potential to infect a person.

The signs a person is a werewolf include, yellow eyes, regularly feeling sick, and hypersensitivity to their surroundings, especially on days leading up to and following the full moon. Any and all injuries would heal rapidly, and given enough time scars would vanish as well.

The statue itself was several thousands of years old. A relic from a time when magic was not only commonplace, but was also a wilder, more abundant energy. Not only did magic no longer function as it did then, but much of the knowledge about the statue had been lost. Why it was created, what the inscription said, a method of ending the curse… All of that knowledge was lost to the ages. What was known about it today was that it was as powerful as it was ancient, and was impervious to all attempts at destruction or containment. No matter how well it was safeguarded, with time it would always overpower its protections and begin to spread its evil once again. It was supposedly even once tossed into a volcano, but somehow found its way back to humanity. This is why it had to be passed from person to person over the millennia. They could safeguard it for awhile, then pass it on to another person in a different location with different safeguards. This ensured it at least could never spread the curse.

In spite of now accepting that werewolves were not only real, but that she and her friends had all become cursed, she was still heavily skeptical about magic. Carson showed her a variety of things in a locked backroom of his store. There were several things contained in jars, odd creatures or plants, some of them moving around. Carson opened a tackle box which contained all manner of ingredients instead of fishing gear. A pinch of the fine brown powder caused her to perceive Carson to not be in the room at all. A handful of odd, elongated, purple seeds would grow a column of plants which spiraled straight upward in a matter of minutes. A whiff of the sparkling white powder put her in a dazed state where she felt completely calm and relaxed, but would obey any command Carson gave until it wore off. A variety of unusual books and trinkets lined the walls, and Carson gave her a drink that allowed her to actually feel the magic within them. At the end Hazel still felt apprehensive, but conceded magic to be real, and relayed Carson’s offer to give the same proof to the group.

Finally, Carson began discussing the solutions he’d been working on. He had minimal knowledge of how the curse actually worked, and none of the usual methods would work for something so unique and powerful. He showed her texts and explained why this solution wouldn’t work, he brought out a few concoctions he had put together, but told her none came close to being powerful enough or performing the right task. He had been in contact with several others versed in magic, but other than one promising she would send some rare ingredients over, the rest were at just as much of a loss as he was. He also told her that silver would not be effective. According to him, the myth that silver was the only thing effective against a werewolf began in a work of fiction from some point in the last few centuries.

Two hours had passed and Hazel thanked him, being able to tell he really was doing his best to help. It was 8:30 and growing dark, so she left just as she promised she would. The group decided to all gather in one place to heavily fortify which is where Hazel was now headed to. With the knowledge the curse had a possibility of spreading they decided not to involve the police or anyone else, thinking their chances were slim even with additional help, and not wanting to bring about more death. No one contacted the CDC either. They weren’t going to talk to them about magic and didn’t want to risk getting those people killed too.

By taking his own life, Logan may have just taken all of theirs.

Logan Ewing.

Chapter 10 – They all Kill Him

Adam jogged out of the warehouse as Hazel pulled up to it in her car. She could hear gunshots being fired off in the distance, and was apprehensive to open the door. She rolled down the window so her boyfriend could talk to her, “They’re just doing some gun training in the field behind the warehouse. We should actually go there too, but right now let’s at least show you what we’ve got set up here so far.”

Following behind him as he showed her around, Adam began, “So we’re going to make sure all the exits are closed and locked, obviously. We have no idea where he’s going to come from, but we’re going to leave the small doorway in the corner open and hope he uses that. There aren't any lights in the surrounding area so we aren’t going to have someone be lookout because it will be too dark for them to see anything and they could end up a target.” Hazel looked around as he spoke. She could see why they chose this place. It was spacious, had thick cement walls, and the windows were small and high off the ground. It had a walkway going all around the edges with a path in the middle. It was also located far from anything notable, and it wasn’t likely there would be anyone around. It didn’t have electricity, but there were several lamps and flashlights set up in various places along the floor. There was also a small generator in the corner, powering a few lamps that weren’t portable. Years of graffiti could be seen in the dim light. Dan was stacking hay bales, and Sophia was using the wood to reinforce the doors and windows.

Hazel continued taking in the defenses as Adam continued the tour. “All of us are going to be waiting on the walkway that surrounds and overlooks the main area. With any luck he’ll run into the middle where we can shoot at him from above. The place was mostly empty when we got here other than a few palettes, so we took those apart and reinforced some of the doorways and windows with the boards. I’ve been making runs to stores to get more wood and nails and supplies we might need. We even bought some meat to hopefully set a trap for it.

Dan has been making trips to his uncle’s farm, loading his truck with hay bales to try to set up walls and barricades in case we need them. With us on the top looking down on him, even if he tries to hide behind one of these at least one person with a gun will see him.

We’re going to put the meat right in the middle, with some propane tanks by it as a way to blow him up if we get the chance. Another trap we set was just covering the entire middle area with gasoline. Like the propane, that could also kill us, so try not to be near it and only consider it if things start going really badly.

As for weapons, Naomi, Dan, Parker and Vicky all have family they were able to get guns from. I don’t think any of them asked to use them.” They walked out of the building, towards the field where their friends were practicing, “Only Dan and Vicky have any real experience with guns, so they’re training us with what little time we have. Other weapons we have besides guns are some large kitchen knives, crowbars, tire irons and we also made a few nail bats. Hopefully we don’t need any of those.”

With it being summer, the sun had only just set a few minutes ago. Hazel got in what little practice she could as the last vestiges of light faded away, but she missed every shot, “Well hey, Carson said the thing should be big, right?” Vicky tried to comfort her.

Hazel grimaced, “He also said ‘fast’.”

They all returned to the relative safety of the warehouse, not wanting to stay in the darkness. All the previous attacks had occurred at night, but without having to transform, they had no idea when it might happen. Only a few minutes had passed when they realized Dan and Beth were missing. They hurriedly tried to call them, while everyone gathered at the wall above the entrance, trying to see if their cars were still there. Vicky shined a spotlight at the dirt clearing where they all parked, but Beth’s car was nowhere to be found. several anxious calls later and they got a hold of Dan. Parker bellowed into his phone, “Where the hell are you?! Is Beth with you?! Why did you leave?!...Yeah, I’m sure you’re real fucking sorry leaving all of us to die! It could even be after _ you _ right now for all we know!...What did you take with you? ...Fine. Leave us to die while you run away. Fuck you.” Parker walked back and forth momentarily, his fists balled up and breathing heavily out of anger. Taking one final moment to recompose himself, he stated, “Dan and Beth ran away. They took a few guns with them and drove off in Beth’s car. I could hear how fast they were driving over the phone. I don’t know about any of this magic stuff either, but I’m not in the mood to test it. Maybe they’ll be okay.”

They anxiously paced the rusty walkway, quietly discussing strategies and having a minor heart attack every time they heard something outside, real or imagined. Time moved with all the haste of a snail. Their thoughts would occasionally return to Dan and Beth, wondering if the curse was really trying to turn them back towards town or if the werewolf had already added them to its list of victims. Everyone in the group collectively agreed to tell their parents they were all getting out of town until this was sorted out, a decision which none argued against. The thought that their families could wake up tomorrow down a member was a painful one, but it also gave a sort of determination. To make it through this for them. None of them really blamed Beth or Dan for running away, but that also lowered their chances of ending this tonight. Vicky and Sophia had taken a break from patrolling the walkway to sit in the corner, quietly huddled against each other, Sophia with her head resting on Vicky’s shoulder, both with their eyes closed but neither actually at rest. Looking at the two of them, Adam hugged Hazel from behind. They stood there in the dim light, trying to find a moment of peace between them.

_ Bang. _

Something crashed into the wall.

Skritch scratch scratch.

It was on the outside wall nearest Naomi. A dent could be seen at the edge of the old roofing. everyone hurriedly backed away as its rear claws found purchase in the thick cement walls. Moments later long, sleek claws pierced the ceiling, and in one fluid motion and with a terrible crunch as the metal was shredded, a hole was torn in the roof. Without a moment’s hesitation it leaped down and immediately charged for Naomi, who was still the closest.

It was a few feet taller than a human and every inch of its body was covered in thick fur and raw muscle. It was standing up right now. The legs were a canine shape. It had massive arms that would probably also work as legs. A large tail could be seen whipping around, and it had a the head of a large wolf, with massive canine fangs pointing down like a saber-tooth tiger. The shredded and bloodied remains of the shirt Logan was wearing at the meeting hugged tight around its neck, and a feral set of yellow eyes, having become slits, finally belonged.

It caught up to Naomi in an instant and with one vicious swing of its claws it ripped straight through her torso. She barely had time to process her final moments as the life left her body. Before she even hit the floor there was a large blood splatter on the wall, and the beast came bounding for Parker, one thick, meaty arm stained.

The wolf turned the corner, bounding along the middle walkway path as Parker began firing while trying to run away. A few rounds hit the beast’s front, but seemingly had no effect. A scream was cut short as claws found their way into his chest, and his body was violently slammed sideways, over the railing. What remained of Parker collapsed with a sickening wet thud.

The creature now set its gaze on Adam and Hazel. The two of them along with Vicky were all now firing at it. Sophia was in shock and couldn’t move, so Vicky stepped in front of her, still firing. Just as it caught up with Adam and Hazel, someone got a lucky shot in its head. It fell down, still barreling forward, and latched onto Hazel’s leg as it tumbled into the railing. The rail was too rusty and old to support the weight of an enormous creature careening into it and gave way. It fell over the edge, taking Hazel with it.

Stunned from having been shot in the head and falling, it took a moment to get up. Seeing an opportunity, Vicky and Adam both jumped down onto some hay bales and continued to fire at it. Getting closer, they got more shots in at its head. Eric had been standing rigidly in the corner, but with success near at hand he found some bravery and joined the two. It fell to the ground, no longer moving. They emptied their clips to be sure it wouldn’t get up again. The hulking corpse of a werewolf lay before them, the head full of holes and a pool of blood forming beneath it.

From above they heard a meek, “Did you- did you get it?”

Eric looked up at Sophia, “I think so. I think it would have recovered by now.”

The group stood staring at the corpse, hearts still racing from narrowly escaping death, panting heavily, unable to process what happened next.

Snap. Crunch. Pop.

They all turned to the source of noise. Hazel was writhing on the ground. Her body twisted and contorted as her bones snapped back into place. With a grinding sound her head stopped following the movements as her neck snapped back into place. They watched in horror as her body rapidly inflated in size and grew dark with fur. Her face pushed out, heels shifted, and a tail was growing. As Hazel’s clothes began tearing apart Sophia shouted from above “SHOOT IT SHOOT IT SHE’S ONE OF THEM!”

Adam couldn’t move. He felt an internal struggle to run forward and comfort her and run away to save himself. He nearly took a step forward at first to help the one he loved but somewhere in his mind he knew what was happening to her. He remained firmly in place as what was left of his girlfriend vanished before him.

Vicky and Eric fumbled as they tried to reload their spent weapons. Sophia had her hands on her mouth, forgetting there was a gun sticking out the back of her pants.

The new wolf began growling as it started coming to. Hearing this, Vicky shouted, “FUCK IT RUN WE’RE BURNING THE THING.” Thinking quickly, she turned the valve on one of the propane tanks before sprinting for the door. Eric grabbed Adam’s arm and forced him to clumsily follow behind him, nearly tripping. Sophia finally found the strength the move and jumped off the walkway onto one of the hay bale stacks. She rolled off onto the ground and got gasoline all over her, but quickly recovered and was at the door before Eric and Adam were. Vicky stood outside with a lighter. Seeing an opportunity for a plan more likely to succeed, Vicky ripped off a part of Sophia’s gasoline-soaked shirt, wrapped it around her now-useless empty gun, lit it on fire, then chucked it inside, slamming the door just as the wolf was coming to and began to charge them.

The four remaining members of the group ran towards the field where they had practiced earlier with guns. Behind them there was a yelp of surprise from inside the building as the floor erupted into flame.

_ BOOOOOOM!! _

The propane had done its job. They four collapsed onto the ground, spent. Adam could only think of Hazel, her from bending and contorting as it became something else entirely. She became a vile creature. Just minutes ago she was the woman he loved. They all lay in the grass, beginning to mourn losing loved ones yet again.

Vicky took charge again, and said, “We need to get out of here. Before the police arrive. Everyone take your cars. The fewer that are here, the better. They’ll obviously want to question us once they find the other cars... and… the corpses.”

Sophia responded, “Where should we hide them? We can’t just park out in the open. We can’t go home now until this is all done, too. And what about our phones? Are they going to track us?!”

“Um… I think our phones are probably fine. I’m pretty sure the police don’t work like that.”

“Okay I’ve got an idea. How about the woods, near where the statue was? It’s close enough to here that we could get there in a few minutes. And as long as we park behind the treeline I think that would be a good enough place to hide.”

“I guess it’ll have to do for tonight. Someone else could come looking for that statue. We don’t know who’s read Logan’s note other than us, his family and the police, so we should leave first thing in the morning in case someone happens to comes looking for it.” She paused for a moment to look at the boys, “Is everyone okay to drive?” Eric nodded yes, and Adam continued staring at the sky. The light from the fire was obscuring the stars. “Adam we have to leave right now. Either drive or get in my car. It’s not far, you can do this.”

Adam stood up with the rest and flatly said, “Okay. I can make it. Let’s go.”

Naomi Cochran.

Parker Thornton.

Hazel Larsen.

Chapter 11 – The Hunt Begins

Adam, Eric, Vicky and Sophia had all parked in the woods, then gathered into Vicky’s car because it was the most spacious. Vicky’s car had an optional passenger seat in the front by lifting the middle section, which she had done so she could lean against Sophia, whose arms were wrapped around her. Adam and Eric were sitting on opposite sides the back, staring out of their respective windows. The image of Hazel violently contorting and changing into something not even human wouldn’t leave Adam’s thoughts. It was as if he was still there, standing before her as her body changed. Her corpse. She could only have changed into that if she died, so the fall must have broken her neck somehow. It didn’t help that the massive creature had landed on her, as well. It was all he could see right now, and he didn’t even remember driving away from the warehouse. His vision was blurred with tears.

The sky grew a shade lighter sunrise neared. A car could be heard in the distance, and they all froze in place. As it drew closer Sophia relaxed, saying “It’s Beth and Dan. I told them to come here.” Sophia exited the car to wave them down, and the rest followed. They all sat down in a circle, and after parking her car in the trees, Beth and Dan joined them.

They looked around. The four from the warehouse were covered in sweat, tears, gas, dirt, rust and blood. They were all a mess. “Is this… everyone?” Dan asked hesitantly. They only nodded in response. Looking at Dan and Beth, they were covered in sweat as well. even though everyone was still experiencing feelings of sickness from the curse, Beth and Dan looked far sicker than when they had left.

Not shifting her gaze from the ground, Beth began, “We were scared. We ran away. Maybe things would have turned out different if we stayed. I’m so sorry for leaving… The curse wouldn’t let us leave anyway, just like Hazel said. The farther away we got, the worse we felt. It got to the point where we were both in a lot of pain as we tried to leave town, and we started having these crazy thoughts about how leaving town meant certain death for us. The farther away we got, the worse all of that became. We kept driving and driving until we couldn’t stand it anymore, and the moment we turned around and made the decision to come back we started feeling better. We’re not allowed to leave. It won’t let us. We can’t run.”

“I think we should talk to Carson again,” Dan said. “He might be the only one who can help us right now.” Nobody objected, so Dan called him and told him to come to the lake. “He said he can be here in a couple hours.”

The group sat in silence as the sky turned blue and a golden light befell them. Adam buried his face in his legs. Hours passed. everyone spread out and wandered around as they waited. Beth was walking the woods, Dan was violently chucking rocks into the lake, Eric found a tree to lean against, and Adam shut himself away in his car, lying in the backseat. They all gathered as Carson finally pulled up.

“Is this everyone?” He asked, looking around the woods to see if more would come out.

“Yes,” Dan solemnly replied.

“I’m sorry. The cost was high, but the werewolf is gone. Did you involve anyone from outside your group?”

“No. It was just us. We didn’t want to risk anyone else getting killed or infected.”

“I see. Promise me that if this ever happens again you’ll get help from someone. You’re just kids! You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU COME THEN? YOU’RE THE ONE WHO KNOWS MAGIC! YOU COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING!”

“I’m not a fighter! And I’m trying to find a cure, and I’m the only person right now who even has a chance of finding something to fix this whole mess!”

“IT’S YOUR FAULT WE’RE DYING! YOU HAD TO GET THAT STUPID FUCKING STATUE, AND TO DO WHAT WITH IT? WHAT WAS YOUR PLAN?! HOW WERE YOU GOING TO FIX THIS?!”

“_ SHUT THE FUCK UP!! ” Adam stepped in. “He said before it was an accident! That it wasn’t on schedule or something and he just hadn’t told you! And if you want to blame people for things they didn’t do, then I get to blame _you for what happened to Hazel! _ YOU _ RAN AWAY! IF YOU HAD STAYED TO HELP SHE COULD BE HERE RIGHT NOW, BUT SHE’S NOT SO FUCK OFF!”

Dan looked back at Adam, anger fading from his eyes. “...I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, okay? I was too afraid to do anything. I just… I couldn’t bring myself to face it. Logan was my best friend.”

Seeing that tempers had died down Carson spoke up again, “What happened to Logan… You did what you had to. Now tell me everything, and I’ll see what I can do to help you from here.”

They recounted the events of the night, starting from preparations and gun training, to beginning their long wait. Dan and Beth got disdainful looks when they reached the part about them running away. Carson pointed out that they at least found the boundaries of the curse, so that was one more thing they knew. They struggled through the rest. Carson told them not to give them any details they couldn’t talk about, an offer they gladly accepted. He also understood their reasoning for them avoiding the police at the moment, though he disagreed with their decision.

After getting the whole story, Carson had a grave look on his face as he started explaining the situation from here. “There’s 27 days until the next full moon. I hate to say this so bluntly but the situation is dire. You are all going to fully turn that night, then try to kill each other as werewolves. Some of you might survive, but there’s no way of knowing who, if any. And if any of you do survive that fight, at the full moon after that you’ll starting hunting down family and friends every month until the curse burns you out and you die.”

“There’s got to be something we can do, right?” Beth pleaded, “This is too fucked up to be real.”

“For now the best I can offer is to let you hide at my house. There’s plenty of space to park your cars, where they won’t be noticed behind the house. Maybe you’ll be able to help me find something about the curse that I missed. Just don’t got messing with ingredients or potions unless I’m there, because who knows what you could do to yourself.”

“You seriously have potions?”

“Yes. I know it’s still hard to believe the magic might be real, but you’ll see soon enough. Anyway, we should leave right now. It’s a bit out of the way, but I don’t think we’ll have any trouble if we take the back roads. I doubt the police are looking for your cars just yet, but let’s go before the situation becomes worse than it already is.

And Dan, because your car is still at the warehouse, they’re probably going to want to talk to you, so if anyone needs to go into town for any reason, don’t take Dan with you. He’s the one the police are going to want to talk to the most right now.”

Several minutes and bumpy dirt roads later, they arrived at Carson’s house. It was a tall wooden structure, with several large windows facing the dirt driveway. The house was plenty wide enough to hide all five of the cars behind it, though Carson’s wife was not pleased by her backyard being full of cars. Near where they parked was a large garden, a fence surrounding it and protecting the many strange plants within. They would later be told the plants were mostly ingredients for magic. Behind the garden stood the edge of the forest. The property line was deep within those trees.

Carson’s wife introduced herself as Nora. She was just as tall and narrow as her husband, and the two of them side by side looked like a matching set. Her deep brown hair was tied into one thick braid and rested over her left shoulder, with odd-looking beads dotting it in a careful pattern. Other than occasionally helping out at the antique store, she made her living by making jewelry at home and selling it online, some of which must been what she used in her braid.

Carson had explained the situation to her as they drove over. She wasn’t keen on having six guests suddenly arrive on her doorstep, only one one of whom she had briefly met, as Dan worked at her husband’s store. She gave them a tour of the house, and explained how she had met Carson online several years ago, repeatedly ordering ingredients from him to use in her magic, and over time they started talking. Eventually they decided to meet and it went from there. As she talked about magic she put a hand to her braid, and Adam noticed the beads seemed to refract the light in angles and colors that shouldn’t be possible.

When she got to the spare rooms, Vicky and Sophia shared one, and Beth and Dan opted to share the other after a bit of discussion. That left Adam and Eric to use the couches. All of them went to take a nap. They were sick from the curse, and still hadn’t slept since last night’s brutal events.

They awoke a few hours later as Nora ordered tons of Chinese food for lunch. In spite of the events they suffered through, they were all still hungry and hadn’t had a chance to eat since lunchtime yesterday. Each of them sat around the table. None of them spoke, but being able to sit down and have a meal with friends was the first relaxing thing they had done as a group on a long time. Afterward they each took a turn in the shower. There weren’t a lot of spare clothes for them to wear, but they decided they would try to sneak back to their homes to grab anything. Carson had made a quick trip to town to buy some cheap clothes, and other various things such as phone chargers and sunglasses to hide their yellow eyes. Everyone charged their phones, and saw the usual messages from family and friends. There were messages about the deaths of Naomi and Parker, but they decided they had to ignore them for now. Their own deaths were imminent. Dan sat there for some time, going through several messages and listening to voicemails, but ultimately decided to ignore all of them.

In a large room to the side they were now being given the in-depth tour of the room where several tables covered in unusual objects were spread out. Ceiling-high bookshelves lined two of the walls, many of the books filling the shelves not only having unusual titles, but also unusual appearances. Some of the books were even in other languages, none of which Adam recognized. An armoire stood in one corner. One of the drawers too full to be closed all the way had something green and purple-colored sticking out of it.

Nora and Carson stood in front of the window along the back wall, where the cars and garden could be seen. Nora spoke up, obviously excited to actually have the chance to show off her magic to someone, “This is the room where the magic happens,” She giggled and bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I never get the chance to say that.” Still smiling from her little joke, she continued her tour, “So on this wall all the books on this shelf are about magical energy. Some are about how it affects plants, some about people, and so on. There are also some that are more historical. Magic changes over time, so keeping track of what’s changed can be good to know in certain situations, such as with that awful statue,” She grimaced for a moment as she thought about it, and was interrupted before she could continue.

“So if you guys know so much about magic, and new the statue was bad, why did you have it sent to the store instead of here?” Dan finished, irritated once again about how he came into contact with the dreaded relic.

“I’m so sorry about that. Our house is on the edge of town, and as you saw there aren’t even any paved roads nearby. Our mail sometimes gets lost because they either can’t find or completely miss our house because it’s out of the way. By sending it to the store we knew it would show up there, and we also knew when it was supposed to show up, but it seems Alexander was keen to get rid of it and sent it early without telling anyone.” Dan certainly didn’t look pleased, but at least seemed to accept her explanation.

Nora continued her tour while Carson watched, a slight smile on his face as he watched his wife talk with excitement about magic. She went over more books, many of which explained the properties of things and how they could be used. Some were very specific, such as the large collection of books recently added to their collection stacked on one of the tables, all of them about werewolves or curses, or something along the lines of ancient magic. After briefly showing them the various things in the armoire and giving them a small demonstration much like the one Carson gave Hazel, she also mentioned there were many more ingredients stored in the basement, but that they shouldn’t need any of them. Smiling at all of them when she finally finished, she said, “Hopefully with all of this you’ll find something in here that can help you. I know you’re not here by choice, but please go through these books with Carson. I’ll consider finding a cure for yourselves as payment for letting you staying here. Just ask either of us if you have any questions, as I’m sure there will be many. While you guys get started in here I’ll start on dinner.” With a smile and a nod she briskly stepped out of the room.

Carson chuckled as she left, “We’ve never had a chance to show this room off like this before.” He clapped his hands together, “So! I think the easiest thing to start with would be to just grab a book from this stack and start reading. I think we should all sit either in the living room or at the dining table. That way whenever one of you has a question, you can all hear the answer at once, instead of telling each of you the same thing as you go through the books individually.”

Chapter 12 – Mourn the Living

They all sat at the table for about an hour, reading strange books about strange things. There was apparently energy all around, much like the air, and magic was simply the use of it. Magic was never something people could commonly do, even long ago when it was known fact that it was real. It takes years of practice and study before you can even begin to understand how to access the energy, to channel its flow into something you could use. Magic could be used as a weapon, and because of how rare magic users were, they were often hunted down because people were terrified of the power. Eventually magic fell into disuse as its users were feared. Today, magic was thought by most to not even exist, and still only a few could use it. Because of the long history of people being killed if they studied magic, the amount of people who used it had been steadily dwindling over the centuries as it was still feared. Learning all of this, Sophia asked, “So how did you guys start doing magic if it such a difficult and feared thing to get into?”

Nora started first, “I had an estranged grandmother who died some decades ago. As I was clearing out her things I found some old books and odd items. As I touched one of them, I felt a surge of energy go through me. I had no idea what it was, but when I looked in the mirror later, my reflection showed a completely different person. I found out it was just a small illusion spell, but after finding that I dug right in, and have been going ever since!” She smiled and returned to chopping vegetables.

Carson started telling his story, “As for me, I was about six years old I think. My family was on a camping trip. I was swimming in the lake when I thought I saw something glow underwater. I tried to grab it but it moved, and I swam after it. It headed toward a group of other glowing lights. I dived under to try to catch them. They completely vanished without a trace, but before they did I thought it looked like they had faces of some kind. I told my parents but they thought it was just my imagination, and my brother teased me about it the rest of the day.

Many years later I just happened to be looking through a book about mythical creatures when I saw a description of the very thing I saw when I was little. I had completely forgotten about it. I looked into it more, and kept reading. I was still very young and impressionable at the time, so I thought these strange creatures might be real. I went out looking for another creature from the book, and in an extremely rare stroke of luck, I actually sighted a magic salamander as it used magic to instantly grow a bed of moss all around it. It’s already extremely rare to encounter magical animals, and somehow it happened to me twice as a child. They’re so elusive because it’s more like the magic is a part of them, whereas we have to study and train for decades to even begin to understand it on a deep level.

Anyway, after that I kept looking at mythical animals and mythology for awhile. I had nearly lost interest when I stumbled across an herb that when treated and boiled just right, then ingested properly, would make you somewhat intangible. After trying a few times and really focusing, I was able to reach straight through a cupboard door to grab the food within it. After that I definitely knew magic was real and I kept going from there!”

After seeing what Nora demonstrated for them in the study, reading these books and hearing their stories, the entire group felt somewhat of an uplifting feeling at the possibilities of what they could do, and that just maybe, somewhere hidden in these books was a cure. They went back to reading for a bit, and put their books away once Nora said dinner was ready. It was a massive assortment of chopped meat and veggies that had been cooked in a skillet. They were somewhat taken aback by the amount of food, but realized there were eight people in the house, and six of them had barely eaten over the last few days.

With studying the books on magic and werewolves they had a distraction from life for awhile. They even began having normal conversations again. The attacks from last night were brutal and would haunt them for a long time, but by this point they were becoming accustomed to death. They were still mourning, and would be doing so much more if the threat of their lives ending in less than a month wasn’t hanging over their heads. Now they had a mission.

Halfway through eating his meal, Eric suddenly stopped, and started looking around at everyone else’s plates. “What are you doing?” Adam asked, the first sentence he’d said in a while. He was still thinking about Hazel. She had only died last night. But he was also feeling a determination growing within him, to fix this, to prevent worse things from happening. He needed to be human again.

Eric frowned, “I’m just noticing how much meat we’re all eating,” Everyone stopped to look at their plates. Mostly meat. They looked at the remaining food that they had been refilling their plates from. Mostly vegetables left.

Carson apologetically said, “It looks like the curse is catching up to you. This really is the last month you are guaranteed to have.”

“Carson I have told you time and time again, not to be so blunt!” Nora scolded him.

“They need to know! I’m not going to mess around when their lives are on the line!”

Nora scrunched up her face and exhaled. She shook her head, and decided not to continue this argument. “Finish eating. Meat and all.” everyone returned to their plates, looking sorrowfully at the meat, but eating it anyway. If their bodies were changing to require more meat, it was probably better to go with it for now, even if the cause of the change was a curse. They had already heard that this was their last month to live, and they could feel it too. They decided to ignore that little argument, and all cleaned up afterwards. There may have been food for eight people, but cleaning was done nearly instantly with all of them helping.

The group returned to the books again. They sat there for another few hours, trading questions, looking for meaning in the words and trying to figure out this whole new world of magic they had fallen into.

There was a sound of thumping and heavy breathing coming from behind the house. Carson looked at the group nervously and asked, “You killed them, right?”

AAAAAAAH!!

Before they had time to respond Nora screamed from the study. She ran out as they all got up and ran to her, “I saw it! There’s a werewolf out there! I know I saw it!”

“But we killed them!” Vicky shouted, “I know we did!”

The thumping grew louder as it scrambled its way onto the deck. It reached the sliding door and they could see the beast limping, severe burns covering the entire front and left sides. “Hazel,” Adam whispered, eyes wide in shock. Her yellow eyes met his for one brief moment before Carson and Nora together both shot huge blasts of energy at the wolf, shattering the glass door and breaking the railing of the deck as it flew backwards.

The Holcombs immediately directed their arms upwards. Waves of energy emitted from their bodies as the house became surrounded in protection spells. They both fell to the ground, spent. Panting, Nora said, “That should hold it for at least a few hours, all of you need to find something to protect yourselves with in case it doesn’t hold. The left cupboard of the armoire has brown pellets you can use that will create minor explosions if you throw them hard enough. These spells protecting the house will only remain as long as we hold them in place.” There were faint strings of light pointing straight up from Nora and Carson.

The group scrambled around the house to find something that could be a weapon. Dan and Beth still had three guns with some ammo, one of which they gave to Vicky. There was nowhere for Dan and Beth to run this time, but they looked ready to face whatever came for them.

Outside, the werewolf could be seen clumsily prowling around the house, searching for a way to penetrate the barrier. Those with guns thought about taking shots at it, but they had limited ammo, and not the best aim. Hours passed as the Holcombs were moved to the couches. They were laying down, but still focusing intensely on keeping the barriers up. They were both sweating profusely, and looked as though they should have passed out from exhaustion hours ago.

After several intense hours of the wolf and humans watching each other nonstop, the wolf finally slunk away as the sun began to rise. They waited a while to be sure it was gone, then told the Holcombs they could stop. Immediately all the tension left their bodies and the strings of light vanished as they released their magic, then they both passed out from exhaustion. For the first time since this all began, someone didn’t die. The only loss was a sliding glass door.

The wolf would come back tomorrow night. She was driven to come for them. As a werewolf she would heal much faster and tomorrow night there wouldn’t be a moment for them to blast it with an attack as there had been tonight. She wouldn’t be so weak then. There were now 26 days left to find a cure and an additional werewolf to kill.

Chapter 13 – Magic Police

The entire group was tired, and they all went to sleep, leaving the Holcombs on the couches. Adam and Eric couldn’t use the couches they had planned to sleep on, and so found the two least uncomfortable chairs they could find and spread out as well. Many hours passed, and they began to wake up to the sound of activity in the kitchen.

Beth and Dan were awake and cooking something for everyone. They had also cleaned up the glass from the door that was shattered last night, and covered up the hole with cardboard and tape. Adam headed to the kitchen to help out, and made a mental note to see what he could do about repairing the damages to the house.

By eleven o’clock only the Holcombs remained asleep. No one in the group had gotten enough sleep, but they had to prepare for tonight’s attack. A large stack of pancakes was being made, and Adam gently shook the Holcombs awake. No one said much as they ate their late breakfast, but tension was in the air. The group had promised that the werewolves were dead, and everyone could have died last night.

“Guess you missed one,” Carson said dryly with a wry smile on his face.

Adam spoke up, “We’re sorry. We thought she was dead. I mean we lit her on fire and blew her up. But I guess going through that after having just recovered from a broken neck still wasn’t good enough.”

Everyone stared at Adam. His face showed no emotion. He and Hazel had been dating for three years, and considering she died and turned into a monster only a couple nights ago, they thought he should be a wreck right now.

“Adam…” Vicky started, but was interrupted by him before she could continue.

“I can tell you’re all worried about me. I’ve kind of been a wreck up until this point. But last night I realized something. We keep dying. About four months ago we had a party, and in that time nine of us have died. Five of them in the last few days. With death chasing us, and seeing what happened to Hazel… I’m just done. Now I’m fucking mad. We have to kill the thing that used to be my girlfriend, and fix us before we all die, too. I have nothing left in me right now to feel anything. Once this is all done, if I’m still alive, I think I’ll probably just fall to the floor and cry for weeks straight. But right now I have to take care of the Hazel problem, and standing here mourning isn’t going to fix it. Nine of us are dead. Fucking nine of us! And I can’t take any more dying,” Adam ended his tirade. He pulled a small silver ring out of his pocket and showed it to the group. “I never got a chance to propose.” He left the ring on the table and sat down in the living room without another word.

Everyone decided to leave him alone for awhile. While Adam sat alone looking at his phone, they talked about what happened at the warehouse and how they were sure an explosion would have killed the werewolf. Carson said whether or not Hazel turned depended on the severity of how badly her neck broke. It was obviously enough to kill her, but everything was still in the right place more or less and the curse was still able to take effect. A bullet through a head or a broken neck weren’t enough to stop this curse. They also talked about how quickly werewolves heal, meaning when it came back tonight it might not be limping anymore.

They then began discussing how they would survive another attack. The Holcombs were still spent, and still needed another several hours of rest. The barrier they put up drained them, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything on that scale for awhile. If it came to it, they could hold put up another barrier, but this one probably wouldn’t be strong enough to stop it, and even if it was, they couldn’t hold it up for very long anyway.

Vicky had an idea, “What if we hunted it now, while it’s resting? They only ever attack at night, so we might be able to just get it now.”

“If you could find it, that might be a possibility. There’s no guarantee it’s resting though. It could be out hunting animals right now. And even if it is you’d probably wake it long before you even came close, though. They’re far more powerful when the moon is out, which is why they attack at night, but meeting one during the day would still be dangerous.”

“How does that make sense though? Moonlight is just reflected sunlight!”

“Scientifically yes, magically no. Everything has magical properties whether we’re aware of them or not. According to this astrology book we were reading last night, ‘The positions of Sol and Luna can affect the natural properties of certain energies, and these changes are considered to be a natural cycle in these types of energies.’ It then goes farther into detail about that, but then later explains how the energy warps as it travels from Sol, to Luna, then to Terra.” Some of the group stared at him blankly. “Oh, sorry. The sun the moon and the earth. The properties of the light take on different effects as a result of making an extra stop before reaching us. We can’t talk about this right now though, as we need to plan for tonight. There’s nothing about this that we can use to our advantage.”

“So if people like you can know so much about magic, why isn’t it more commonplace? Why aren’t scientists discovering all these energies and stuff?”

“Okay I’ll answer this question, then we have to get back on topic. Basically, the tools we have as humans detect things that occur naturally in our world. Magical energies are different from what we see daily. They’re sort of a part of life itself. Most people aren’t aware of it, because it’s hard to find something when you have to look deep within the properties of everything to find anything at all. And you kind of have to know what you’re looking for, and train yourself to be able to feel the energy around you. Humans are actually starting to come close to this with science. We’re discovering new things all the time, digging deeper and looking closer at everything we know. Even if we’re completely wrong about some of what we think we know today, science is still beginning to head in the direction of magic.. Magic is basically science we don’t understand yet, and while I doubt I’ll live to see it, I fully expect there to be a collision of science and magic at some point far in the future. I hope that answer is good enough for now, because we have the wolf to contend with and I will not be driven off-topic again.”

Adam suddenly yelled from the living room, “I have an idea. What if we brought the police in this time just like people have been telling us to do?”

Dan replied, “Adam we talked about why we can’t do that. They could be killed or infected.”

“It’s their job to protect people, and we need protecting. We already saw what happens when we try to handle things ourselves, and look how that turned out. The police are trained with guns. I’ve been reading the reports about the warehouse, and they’re confused about the creature corpse they found. They’re assuming it was the one killing everyone, which it was, and they’re also looking for us. None of us are in any trouble just yet, but I’m sure they’ll understand why we did it ourselves to try to keep other people from dying or being infected, even if they think it was a stupid decision. So when we’re attacked again tonight we could warn them of just what they’ll be facing… maybe without actually using the word ‘werewolf’. But now that they’ve seen a corpse and know it’s pretty much after our group, I think they might be our safest bet. Plus we can keep the Carson and Nora out of this. They shouldn’t be involved anymore than they already are, and they could’ve died for us last night.”

Everyone looked at Carson and Nora Holcomb regretfully. They all felt guilty about getting them involved in this. Involving even more people didn’t feel like a good idea, but it did make sense. Adam came back from the living room and they all tried to find as many options as they could that didn’t involve the police, but they were grasping at straws. After about an hour of talking they conceded that was the best idea so far, and they wanted to leave soon so the police had time to prepare. They decided what they would be telling the police would be that the disease and the creature were somehow related in an unknown way and that was why it was after them. They didn’t want to risk anyone else’s death or infection by involving them, which is why they didn’t at first, but after the warehouse they needed people with guns.

Chapter 14 – Beast Bait

The group had decided to go to the police. They wanted to seem as honest and upfront as possible, so they each drove in their own cars except for Dan, whose car had been left at the warehouse. As expected, the police wanted to talk to all of them. Dan’s car had been left at the warehouse, but they each had been seen at stores and driving around when they said they had been out of town. And there was also the matter of each of them stealing supplies from their own families, which did not go unnoticed.

They all brought in their families, who were relieved they were all okay, and they were scolded for not contacting them and for avoiding the police. It took a lot of explaining, but eventually the police and all the families came to an understanding of what happened at the warehouse and why they didn’t want to bring anyone else in. They all agreed it was a stupid thing to do to not bring anyone else in, but they were here now. It took many hours of talking between all of them to get everything all straightened out, which made them glad they left early. Their families had left by this point, and they all promised they wouldn’t do this again, that they would keep in touch and not keep secrets like this. The hardest part was talking about Hazel. They had to tell the police she was dead even though no body was found. They made up a false story about she died and her body must of been taken like Logan’s was.

That story didn’t satisfy the police, but throughout the entire conversation they all kept insisting that there was only one other creature remaining, and that it would be coming for them tonight. They had to make up more information about how this creature was somehow attracted to the disease they had, and the police agreed to start organizing a way to protect them. No one wanted to come near them, as they still looked sickly and vibrant yellow eyes, but they assured them the disease couldn’t spread to them. They didn’t think any of the stories entirely made sense, but with all the deaths they were willing to go with it for now. Before they left to start setting up in preparation for the attack, the police made sure everyone in the group was aware they would have to go to court in a couple months to explain their actions. Eric let slip an “If any of us are even still alive by then.” The officer grimaced at him, but he knew there was some truth to it so didn’t say anything.

The plan was to place them all in the middle of a wide open field. Since they had no choice about being the bait, they agreed to that. The police were able to gather plenty of manpower and set up stands to get higher vantage points. There was someone armed facing every direction, and so they began waiting quietly as time ticked by and darkness fell. The group had warned them this thing was tough, and would require lot more bullets in it than the usual animal, and to aim for the head as much as possible. They had had to explain the warehouse incident in a way that made shooting the creature in the head make the most sense, hoping the officers would take that to heart and follow suit. The officers pointed out it was strange a creature would be so predictable as to come for them every night, no matter what. Beth replied by mentioning all the deaths, and pointed at her yellow eyes for emphasis about how strange the whole situation really was.

A couple hours passed when one of the officers yelled, “I see it! It’s coming from the southwest! It’s big and it’s fast!” She started firing immediately, and the other officers did as well once they spotted it. Feeling pain, the werewolf started running in erratic patterns, trying to reach its prey. It was about fifty feet away when it finally fell. Everyone was expecting more of a fight than this. In a way it was somewhat underwhelming.

Adam yelled, “Make sure you shoot it in the head! It will keep moving until the head is practically obliterated!”

Some of the officers ran up to it, and seeing it move, they shot it in the head. It moved again so it was shot again. It started moving yet again, so one excitable officer emptied his clip into its head. Finally it was down for good. Seeing that everything had turned out okay, Dan asked “Is it okay if we leave now?”

“Are you certain this is the only remaining creature?”

“Yes. That’s the last one.”

“...Fine. Then yes, you can go. But be careful. And don’t do anything stupid again. Now get out of here. And don’t forget your court date.” The police were glad to see them leave. A group of twenty-somethings with a mystery disease that turned their eyes yellow and brought death into their town was not welcome.

They gladly left, letting the officers try to figure out what to do with the corpse. They could hardly believe how quickly it went down and they felt guilty about what happened at the warehouse. They each decided they should go home to their families for a while, and they had Grace, Logan, Naomi, Parker and Hazel’s funerals to go to as well. It was agony sitting through all of those, and many shot them dirty looks, not only because of their yellow eyes, but also thinking they had somehow brought about the deaths of so many of their own friends. Adam had a nasty one-sided conversation with Mr. Larsen at Hazel’s funeral, but Adam knew it was coming and had to let Mr. Larsen’s strong emotions fall on him.

Dan had his car back so he didn’t need a ride from anyone. They stayed home for about a week, reading several of Carson and Nora’s books that they had borrowed to study. They would get a lot more done together, and with the help of the Holcombs, so they lied to their families again. This time they said they were going to get help from the CDC, and would have to be spending a lot of time with them. With the werewolf dead and their families lied to yet again, they all returned to the Holcombs’ house for the final stretch, this time not having to hide their cars in the backyard. 19 days remained.

Chapter 15 – Just a Pleasant Lunch

Five days had passed since the group returned to Carson and Nora’s house. Things were easier now that they were free to go to town and spend money when they needed to. They bought food and helped around the house to repay their hosts for their hospitality. They kept reading and trading ideas as they learned more. In the study, Nora and Carson tinkered with ingredients, trying to find something that might have an effect. So far nothing was successful and they had made no progress other a few potions being made that would “have some effect, but the curse would remain”. They were trying to solve a problem that no one in thousands of years had been able to solve.

The follow up appointment with with David and Penelope from the CDC was today. They were glad for a break from the constant work, as important as it was. They returned to the same dull building. Gavin, the spindly intern, stood at the door and greeted them as they walked in. This time the correct number of chairs had been arranged in a circle. Nine. Three for the CDC people, and six for the rest.

They all sat down, and Penelope began speaking, “I’m terribly sorry. We heard about what happened to the others. At least the things are dead now, right? Now it’s just the disease to worry about. Of which we have good news and bad news.”

David pulled out a tablet and after taking a moment to get to the correct screen, started speaking, “The good news is, that just like your physical results, all the samples we took came back incredibly positive. According to these results all of you should be the healthiest people we have ever seen. Which is also the bad news, because that means we aren’t any closer to figuring out what this is. There should be something that raises red flags, but so far nothing. Not only can we not find any trace of this disease, but you are all experiencing symptoms and there are no indications that anything is even going on in your bodies.

And we can tell that it’s not somehow screwing with the results. Every test from each of you came back saying the same things. Somehow you are simultaneously becoming healthier and sicker at the same time. And you also told the police you thought this disease was making the creatures attracted to you somehow? Are you able to expand on that?”

Sophia replied, “They only killed people in our friend group who had this disease. And after the last night that we blacked out, the night Grace died, we were able to stay awake overnight. If you read Logan’s note then you know he said he was the creature, but that’s obviously impossible.”

Vicky picked up where Sophia left off, “We’re pretty sure they took Logan’s body. We don’t know what exactly happened from there, but the damn things apparently got excited or hungry or something and kept coming for us. At least that made them predictable, and both creatures were killed.” It was hard for her to say that with a straight face. Everyone had pained expressions and was avoiding eye contact, but the CDC people simply mistook it for grief which was at least partially true.

“I’m so sorry for what all of you have had to endure,” Penelope began, “We’re doing our best here with what we have. We’ve had people examine the bodies of both your friends, as well as the creatures. Your eyes are the same shade of bright yellow, but that is the only thing we’ve been able to find so far that links you. We haven’t yet determined what those creatures even are. They look very similar to wolves, but we can definitively say they are absolutely not wolves of any kind that we are aware of. It’s as if they appeared out of nowhere.”

David passed the tablet around, “All the details are there, and will also be emailed to all of you. Even though you all had the same test results and agreed to share with each other given the circumstances, you will each only be receiving your own results.

The test results were what everyone expected, but seeing detailed photos and descriptions of the werewolves was kind of surreal. “These might be useful to Carson and Nora,” Adam thought. The wolf corpse that had once been Logan was charred to a crisp. There was a hole in the head where they had poured their bullets in. The remnants of the shirt must have burned in the fire, which was good news, so no one would be thinking it was a pet or had possibly escaped from somewhere. The other werewolf carcass was about what he expected. The burns had healed over quite a bit from the last time they got a good look at it, and it didn’t appear to have any damage to the leg from the night at the warehouse, but there was a fresh bullet hole in it. It was completely riddled with bullet holes, culminating in innumerable shots in the head. With the remains being so well-lit, a fur pattern was visible. Mostly black, but varying shades of dark gray and dark brown spread all over. The most striking things were the slit yellow eyes and large fangs. Adam didn’t know much about wolves, but those didn’t seem right to him above everything else.

Once everyone had a chance to look at the results David spoke up again, “Even though it’s only been a couple weeks since we last saw you, we’re going to be doing all the tests again. Today we have two doctors, so it will go faster, and we also thought we’d treat you to lunch again! My boss won’t approve of that, but considering what he denied you last time, I felt this was the least I could do. Which leads me to my final point before we start the physicals. Last time I visited I offered to hire a contractor to help you reinforce your safe houses, but a few days later you canceled. I’m sure you have your reasons, but I just want to make sure it’s not because of what happened to your friends.”

“It’s not that,” Eric began explaining, “We found a couple of people who own a large area that we can stay in on that night that looks much safer than everything we had set up before. They’re willing to let us use it and do what we need to, but they didn’t want anyone from outside making major changes. We tried to convince them otherwise, but even without the help of a contractor this still looks like the safest place for us.” Almost all of this was a lie. Eric was talking about the Holcombs, and the “safe area” he mentioned was just in their basement. One of the spells Carson and Nora were working on was a spell to keep them docile the night of the full moon. They knew they wouldn’t be contained by anything as werewolves, so this was one of the plans they were working on. Nobody was going to tell the CDC anything about magic, though.

David let out a sigh of relief hearing this, “I’m glad to hear you had a good reason for canceling my contractor. At least I got to save some money with that happening,” He smirked. “Alright! Is pizza for lunch okay with everyone? Good, let’s get those tests out of the way while I order.”

They started a new round of physicals, and with half the people and double the doctors things went at a much quicker pace than last time. They sat in the circle asking and answering as many questions as they could, but there wasn’t much left to talk about. From there things went to just regular conversations about life and work and so on. David and Penelope tried their best to be careful with what the talked about, trying not to remind anyone of the people they had lost or the situation they were in. Gavin found the courage to chime in occasionally, but he was too awkward and somewhat nervous to really hold a conversation here.

The tests completed and the pizza eaten, everyone decided it was time to leave. This meeting ended much better than the last one had, but everyone feared there would never be a third one. David set up their next appointment for a few days following the full moon, and once again reminded everyone to contact either himself or Penelope should things become bad, or if they had any concerns.

Chapter 16 – The End

The group returned from the meeting, ready to get back studying. By now all of them had either taken off of work or altogether lost their jobs as Adam had. No matter what this was the most important thing in their lives right now. Adam had forwarded the email containing all of his results and the investigation into the creatures to Carson and Nora to see what they made of it. To everyone’s surprise the Holcombs greeted them with excitement as they entered the house.

“It’s part demon!” Nora shouted, beaming at everyone.

They gave her a nonplussed stare in response to that. “Um… Okay?” Vicky said.

“Adam forwarded the CDC email to us! The test results were actually expected, at least from us, but such detailed pictures of a werewolf actually tell us a lot!” Carson said excitedly. He led them all to the table where he had a book about demons open.

Somewhat sarcastically Dan asked, “So demons are real now, too?”

“Yes. To quickly summarize what they are, they’re ordinary creatures have have absorbed negative or destructive energy. If that energy isn’t spent, the creature then mutates into something else, mimicking the traits of the energy it absorbed. The kind of demon it becomes is based on what it was before the transformation, and what kind of energy it absorbed. This happens only in highly specific circumstances, and as far as we know, there’s only been a single demon sighting in the past several centuries.

I’ve been kind of able to guess at some of what the werewolf might be before, but the few records we have are old and not very thorough. From these photographs I can tell that the creator of the curse used a regular wolf as a base, and suffused it with destructive energies and various other things until they merged. They then had have embedded that form into the statue. Combined with the emotions the you feel when in the presence of the thing, I am now certain this curse was created with the intent to make someone suffer by killing their own family and friends.”

“Wait, why does the statue make you feel bad again?” Adam asked.

“Magic is an energy that flows through all things. With something as powerful as this curse, what the creator was feeling was embedded into it. This also reveals to us another obstacle, however. As I’ve said before, magic changes over time. The statue acts as sort of a magnet, constantly gathering more destructive energy for the curse. It can’t actually contain very much within it, so that energy starts to just accumulate around it, which is why it has to be moved every few decades, before the problem becomes serious.

With such care taken into designing the werewolf form, it’s safe to say the person who created the curse was very deliberate in what they were doing. For example, the werewolf has slit eyes, while a regular wolf doesn’t. Some snakes are prone to gathering destructive energy, so the creator used essence of snake in the curse, which caused that particular physical attribute to develop. That may also be where the giant fangs came from. Or maybe they came from some kind of cat. It’s hard to say.

There are lots of other signs too, the fact that it heals so quickly, the size of the beast, the claws... and the fur is very a dark color. Things appearing black or charred is another sign of destructive energy. When all of this combines with a human it creates a creature that functions just as well on two legs as on four. I’m sure the fact that they have hands baffles the hell out of the scientists looking at it. I hate to praise someone who did something so horrible, but the skill and knowledge required to not only create this curse, embed it in a statue, then make that statue impervious to destruction is so far beyond any kind of magic I’ve even heard of!”

“Okay. You’re getting really excited about this. Let’s back up for a minute here. You said something about an obstacle?”

“Yes! Sorry. In order to reverse something of this magnitude, we need an even greater amount of constructive, or positive energy. With the amount of time we have left, Nora and I will have to be at it for nearly all our waking ours. That leaves the rest of you to do research and hope you find something better than the solutions we’ve found so far. But I also have one piece of good news. A magic-using friend of ours will be arriving tomorrow to help. His name is Alexander, and he’s the previous caretaker of the statue, and I need you to promise not to be upset with him over the timing mix-up.”

“I’m already over it. It was an accident. It sucks, but I’ve got worse things to worry about right now.”

Dan scowled. The man whose eagerness to rid himself of the statue, which resulted in so many deaths, was coming here. “I suppose I can deal with him being here,” Dan stated flatly. It was clear they weren’t going to get along, but Dan was smart enough to not be too childish about the whole thing.

Nora and Carson went to the study to begin coalescing materials and constructive energy. No one quite understood what that meant exactly, but yet again they returned to studying, keeping the new knowledge about energies and demons in mind.

Alexander arrived around noon the next day. He was a very narrow man, and not at all what anyone was expecting. He moved quite fluidly for a man of his age, and at a brisk pace. He came in at around four feet tall, had long silver hair tied in a ponytail, carefully pulled back over the top of his head in an apparent attempt to hide his bald spot. He wore jeans, a stained white shirt and a vest, and even though he smiled as he greeted everyone and hugged the Holcombs, he seemed to permanently have a dour expression on his face.

“What have you got so far?” he asked gruffly. Nora took him to the study to show him everything they had accomplished.

Carson turned to the group, “He can come off as rough or even a bit mean sometimes, but he’s a good guy. He knows more about magic than Nora, and because he’s watched over the statue for the last thirty years, maybe there’s something he can tell us about it that we don’t already know.” He went to the study to join Nora and Alexander’s conversation, while the group returned to their books.

At dinner Nora happily announced that because they had an extra set of hands, they were guaranteed to gather the amount of energy required in time, meaning they had a little bit more time for research. They still had the hard part of figuring out what spells and ingredients they needed, however. There were only thirty days left, and they didn’t seem any closer to the solution than when they started. Alexander didn’t have any new information on the statue, either.

Alexander had been busy in the study all day so Dan hadn’t had a chance to ask the question he’d been burning to ask all day, “Alexander,” Dan began, “I’d just like to know why you had to send the statue ahead of schedule.” Dan looked at Alexander’s unmoving stone face. He couldn’t tell if he had just pissed him off, but it felt like he might have.

“I live on the edge of a city that has been rapidly growing in recent years. The crime level has been rising as steadily as the city has been expanding. When people do something negative, that produces a small amount of negative energy. The statue sucked up that energy like a vacuum and was reaching dangerous levels. I received the statue thirty years ago and there was no way for me to predict what would happen to the world around me over time. It was risky to hold onto it for even one more day, so it had to go. I know the trouble it caused you, and I apologize for that.”

“Oh,” Dan stared at his plate. He was searching for more words to say but none came.

A couple more days had gone by. They were now making a definitive list of anything that could possibly have any effect on them, and ruling out everything that either wouldn’t work, or wasn’t the best option. Their choices were meager, and none were appealing.

Carson, Nora and Alexander helped the group with information when they had time to spare, but they mostly were in the study messing with various ingredients and magical paraphernalia none of them understood as they all rushed to meet the deadline. With four days remaining, they had a meeting. There would only be enough energy to cast one spell, and they had to decide which one. They had all the supplies and materials they needed, but the remaining days would be spent preparing the spell they chose.

The first option was the expedite the curse. This would cause the effects to worsen. The werewolf transformation would be more violent and dangerous than before, but since they were all going to try killing each other as werewolves, that might mean no one besides themselves would get hurt. Any survivors of the night would die within the following month, their bodies being used up and burnt out by the curse. This method would mean some of them could survive the fight, leaving the possibility of now more violent werewolves to attack the people they care about.

The next option was to reverse the effects. It was made clear to the group hat “reverse” did not mean the same thing as “undo”. This would take all the destructive energy and instead of directing it outward into a werewolf form, the spell would direct it inward. Reversal spells were common in magic, but in this case it was difficult to ascertain everyone’s safety. They weren’t entirely sure of the result, but predicted they would become violent humans, while as werewolves would have regular animal instincts and intelligence, but not the bloodlust. Mentally they would disappear forever, as the bloodlust transferred to their human selves and everything that made them them would vanish. Then with the werewolves acting they way a regular wild animal would, that would make it less dangerous to the public and easier to kill.

The final option was to try removing all the magic energy from their bodies. On a regular human being, this would be fatal; to someone with as powerful a curse as they had however, assuming they survived the process, would still be dangerous and unpredictable. This was the first option to be ruled out. It was too unpredictable, and they had no way of being sure that removing all the energy wouldn’t just kill the person and leave the werewolf.

Everyone in the house spent the next few hours around the table once again, discussing the remaining two options. They traded arguments back and forth. Lives were on the line. Not only the group of cursed twenty-somethings, not only the three people casting the spell, but everyone in the surrounding area had the very real possibility of dying a violent death, as well as all their families and friends.

Emotions were high as they debated into the night, but they finally came to a conclusion. They concluded that the reversal spell would be safest. The reasons for choosing this came down to the werewolf forms no longer having bloodlust. They would lose their humanity, and Alexander volunteered to kill their now-violent human selves, which would leave them permanently as somewhat docile werewolves who would eventually die in a few months once the curse burned through them. Alexander also stated he would hunt them down as werewolves just to be sure, and that it would be easier with them only having base animal instincts. Nora and Carson avoided eye contacted as he talked about this with ease. They knew him to be a hard man who had been through and seen much, but his willingness to kill came too easily for everyone’s comfort. Technically, he wouldn’t be killing humans, but that didn’t change how everyone was feeling. When Dan asked how he could be so at ease and sure of himself when it came to the killing part of their plan, Alexander simply pulled down his shirt to reveal a large gouge in his chest surrounded by severe burn scars, and didn’t say a word about it.

The cursed group no longer had any researching to do, so they all went home to their families until the full moon. They lied again, and said they would be returning to the CDC for more testing some time soon, and that these few days were just a break. It wasn’t the full moon yet, but the six of them could feel it coming, and the feelings of illness were beginning already. They took these few days to say and do anything they needed to, and Beth, Vicky and Adam also took the time to set up a will, something they had been working on over the previous weeks.

The night of the full moon had come at last. They returned to the Holcombs’ house to find a large hexagonal arrangement of objects and ingredients in the backyard. White flower petals soaked in a slimy substance had been strewn over the entire arrangement. Nora and Alexander were arranging some of the objects in a particular pattern, while Carson was carefully pouring lines of a fluffy yellow substance around the edges of the hexagon.

“It’s convenient there are six of you as this spell requires a six-point arrangement,” Alexander stated, “There’s still about four hours until you transform, and that’s the moment when this spell must be cast. If there’s anything left you need to say or do before you’re gone, now’s your last chance. Be back here in three hours just to be safe and when you come back, be careful not to sit in anything or knock anything over.”

Everyone had been dreading this moment for the past month, and it was finally here. They had spent the past few days preparing everything for their deaths, and saying all their goodbyes. Some had confided in their families that this disease was likely terminal, but lied again and said they had to go back to the CDC again to find out for sure. None of them would return. This would be the end of all of them.

The group returned to the kitchen to get some drinks. They all sat in a circle on the living room floor and talked about everyone who had died. Eli. Emma. Blake. Gan. Grace. Logan. Naomi. Parker. And finally, Hazel. They talked about all how they had all met, and the memories they had that brought them together. They’d been to too many funerals and were becoming numb to the deaths of their own friends. But tonight, with everything finally in order, and their own lives about to end as well, they reminisced and cried and reminded themselves why they had to do this. For their families. For their friends. And for everyone already lost, their lives unfairly cut short. Adam put the ring he bought for Hazel on his pinkie finger. They all toasted each other and took one last hard swig of their drinks, then stood up to face the end.

They each sat in one corner of the hexagon, which now had spiraling patterns starting from each corner and wavering before colliding in the center. Large stones meticulously placed in the center of spirals radiated with an eerie but calming light that looked as though it had come from the stars themselves. A trail of stones led to a now-reinforced shed, glowing with the same light as the barriers Carson and Nora cast the night they were attacked. This was to give themselves some protection should things go awry. There were also various magic items and even some fresh meat to lure the werewolves away from them once they became docile, or at least a docile as a wild wolf was. The meat lure didn’t work on a werewolf, but it might once the bloodlust was removed. Carson and Nora stood at opposite corners of the hexagon, while Alexander simply stood in the background. He was not needed for this part. The group eyed the guns on his person with unease. They knew by the time they’d been shot by him they would already be gone.

Nora looked at everyone with a wan smile, “I know I’ve only known each of you a few weeks, but you are all wonderful. What you have instilled within me I will carry for the rest of my life.”

Carson looked at everyone with the same warm, but sad smile, “What you are doing here is brave. You’ve all been through so much, and the last month getting to know you has-” Adam didn’t hear the rest.

He felt pain all over his body. With painful breaking and snapping sounds he knew this had to be the transformation. There was a disturbing feeling within him, as if he were throwing up, but inward and all over was the best way he could describe it. “That must be the spell working,” he thought. Over the noise of his own body grinding and shifting he heard a gunshot. Alexander killed the first one. He felt himself falling away into nothingness, and embraced death.

Adam felt like he had been shredded apart molecule by molecule. He didn’t feel right. Weapon fire, snarling and the loud sound of something like waves crashing could be heard nearby. He opened his eyes. There was something stuck on his face. He reached up to get it off, and saw a large clawed paw-shaped hand heading for him. A small glint of silver caught his eye. It was a ring, stretched out and ripped apart, but still barely hanging onto the last finger of that wolf-hand.

Chapter 17 – Cursed Again

The hand heading for Adam’s face stopped. He looked at it, and turned it. With horror, he realized it was his own hand. He tried to back away from it and fell backwards, and now had a good look at his new legs. They looked like wolf legs, but massive in comparison. “...a creature that functions just as well on two legs as on four,” he remembered Carson saying. He tried standing up. His sense of balance was way off, but this was definitely possible. Nearby, the sounds of fighting were still happening, though he couldn’t see the source of the noises. Before he could think about that his attention was drawn elsewhere. Two more werewolves sat examining their limbs in a way no animal would. They were sitting where Vicky and Sophia had been, their clothes lie shredded beneath them. “Vicky?” He tried to ask, but it came out rough and slurred.

The wolves’ attention was drawn from themselves and to him. “Adam? Is… that you?” Her voice was just as sloppy-sounding as his was. Whether this was the effects of the transformation and magic, or just their new voices, they didn’t know. Adam nodded slowly. They stared at each other, looking death in the face but knowing it was their friends behind the slit yellow eyes. A tugging sensation led toward the house. Another gunshot drew their attention to the fighting occurring off in the distance.

“We should go,” Adam grumbled. Vicky and Sophia agreed. They clumsily tried to stand up, but each kept falling forward or backward as they tried to get used to their new bodies. For now they reverted to having to run on all fours, like animals. Not tripping over themselves as much in this position, they clumsily made their way toward the sound of violence.

The shed Nora and Carson set up as an emergency defense lay scattered in pieces, deep gashes in the remnants where large claws had ripped through. They could see a wet trail of blood gleaming in the light of the full moon that led further away. They could smell the blood, too; it was like copper. They could smell everyone in fact, each other, the other werewolves, and Carson, Nora and Alexander. Everyone but them were all fighting in the same area.

They continued their journey to the violence on their new cumbersome limbs. A steep incline up a hill was before them, and they could sense everyone on the other side. The three werewolves reached the top of the hill, and down the other side the trail of blood spatter led to three other werewolves randomly alternating between attacking each other and attacking the three humans. Carson had one glowing hand reaching to his back, doing something to the long claw marks dragged across his flesh. With his other hand he was shooting out waves of energy to force the werewolves back when they got too close. Nora was putting everything she had into maintaining a barrier around them. When Alexander thought he had a good shot he would step out of the barrier to fire the shotgun he was carrying. Glowing buckshot covered the wolves in various places, searing the flesh where it entered. He was using magic bullets.

Adam’s large new mouth fell open at the sight he was witnessing. Magic and werewolves and an angry man with a gun. This was the strangest thing he had ever witnessed, and all of them were his friends. He wanted to help but he had to think for a moment. He was a werewolf. He followed a trail of blood here. “Did I get here on instinct? Am I here because I want to kill them?” He thought. He was thinking right now and not attacking, which was a good sign. He had to risk it. From the hilltop he waved to the humans and shouted, “We’re okay! Are the others like us?! Can they talk?!”

The humans looked at them in shock. A quick moment passed and Alexander yelled back, “They’re gone! There’s nothing left of them! They’re here to kill and that’s it!”

Adam didn’t hesitate. He ran to the other werewolves and starting tearing at them with his claws. He didn’t know how to use them very well, and the others were running on instinct. They were each covered in claw gashes and scrapes, deep bite marks from the terrible fangs they all possessed, and burning, glowing wounds from Alexander’s gun. Vicky came behind Adam to help him, and Sophia followed after.

Claws ripping, creatures snarling, waves of magic crashing through the group, and a shotgun blasting glowing, burning shells. This was the scene at the edge of the Holcomb property. Adam, Vicky and Sophia drew themselves into a team and tried to attack each werewolf in a three-on-one fight. Aghast at how huge and powerful they were, they soldiered on and mauled each wolf with a barrage of claws that could rip and gouge with ease. They felt like the demons they looked like. Completely ravaged by claws, one werewolf wavered in place. They backed away, and a blast from the shotgun caused it to fall to the ground. “You have to get its head!” Alexander yelled to them. Vicky rushed over and slammed her claws into its skull and ripped apart its brain.

The remaining two werewolves had been fighting each other. One of them sunk its teeth into the other and they tumbled across the ground toward the humans. Before they could get too close Carson sent out another blast of energy that threw them backwards, which drew their attention back to the humans. They charged forward, but Adam and Sophia careened into them before they could breach Nora’s barrier. It could withstand some attacks, but it wouldn’t last long against even one werewolf, let alone the two remaining ones.

In a vicious tumble of teeth and claws, Adam, Sophia and whoever the other two werewolves used to be rolled on the ground. Vicky stood to the side, wanting to help but she couldn’t tell who was who. She instead stood in front of the barrier to guard it until there was something else she could do to help.

One of the wolves scrambled out of the entanglement of death and charged at Vicky as she was an easier target by herself. Sophia chased behind, while Vicky ran forward. They collided and while Vicky struggled with the beast now pinning her down, Sophia clawed it’s neck, slicing the jugular veins. Blood sprayed the two of them, covering them more and painting them a deep red as the color mixed with their dark fur. Sophia kept clawing its neck until she was sure it couldn’t recover.

Adam was still back fighting the last one. He and the werewolf traded swipes at each other, the only difference between the two of them right now was that Adam wasn’t snarling. The humans took this as more evidence that they really were still themselves. The werewolf swiped again at Adam. It may be a powerful and violent creature, but it was also predictable. He took this moment to grab the wolf’s arm and pull it toward him. He spun him around and wrapped his arm around the wolf’s arms and torso. It snarled and snapped at him with long dangerous red-stained teeth but couldn’t reach. Adam used his fangs for the first time to rip into the creature’s neck. Blood splashed into his mouth and drenched his face. The creature writhed and struggled to break free. Adam’s teeth were still sunk into the creature, and gripping his jaw tight, he pulled back. A large chunk of flesh remained in Adam’s teeth and a deep pocket of red was visible in the beast’s neck. The creature still struggled to escape, but its movements were becoming sluggish as the blood drained from its body. Adam used his claws to shred its neck just as Sophia did. The final corpse now lay on the ground, stained red and covering its entire body were swipes from claws, teeth marks, and red pockets where bits of flesh had been lost. The three corpses looked identical, and even if they were intact there was no way of telling who they had once been.

Adam, Vicky and Sophia looked just the same as the corpses, and were barely standing. They limped over to each other and the three of them laid down in the grass, staring up at the moon. “Fuck,” Adam said, looking at his hand.

“What happened to your hand?” Eve asked, looking at all the scrapes and blood he was covered in. She was in the same condition.

“It’s not that. Hazel’s ring is gone. It was torn apart when I woke up, but it was still on my finger. I guess it’s gone for good now.”

“We could look for it?”

“...No. I think I’ll be okay without it. We did what he had to do here and finished this thing. I don’t know why we’re still us, but none of us are going to be killing anyone now I think. We just have to wait for the curse to end.”

Finally safe, Nora dropped her barrier and used what little energy she had left to help heal Carson’s injury, which Alexander joined. They kneeled in the grass, each with a faintly glowing hand on Carson’s back to heal it faster. The made sure the bleeding had stopped, then all slowly came over to the patch of grass where the remaining group was. “So you’re all really still in there, huh?” Carson asked weakly.

“As much of a surprise to us as it is to you,” Vicky responded through her mouthful of sharp teeth. “How did this happen?”

Nora explained so her husband wouldn’t have to talk or move anymore than he already was, “We had just started talking to you when the full moon reached it’s highest point. Your transformation activated and we began the spell. We were inverting your energy while Alexander did his part in taking care of your human selves before the transformation was complete so they wouldn’t hurt anyone when you changed back. The inversion wasn’t complete by the time you finished your transformations. I started backing away and put everything I had into finishing it as soon as possible.

The fact that I started moving away didn’t matter. What mattered was that the trail of protection stones leading to the shed were right behind me, which essentially added a new ingredient to the spell as I came within range of them. That’s actually what saved us. The curse was too powerful, and too big for any of us to handle, even together, even with all the constructive energy we gathered. It was too much. We thought the inversion would take away everything the curse put into the werewolf forms, leaving nothing behind but regular animal instincts… Instead of that horrible bloodlust. The curse was of course too strong for that and it didn’t work. We were foolish to think we had a chance against it.

The protection stones however… I guess the best way to put it was that it put a barrier around your mind when it mixed with spell. The stones were only near me, and you three were the ones sitting closest to me, so that’s why it only affected you. When the others came to and started attacking we ran to the shed. Carson was standing right behind them and got hit with one of their claws. Alexander shot it before it could do more. We thought it strange you didn’t wake up with the rest, but we didn’t have time to think about that.

We were only in the shed for a short time before it was torn apart. It gave us enough time to prepare for a fight however. So we ran, and we were defending ourselves against three werewolves. A couple minutes later you guys showed up. When you started shouting at us I was never so glad to see werewolves in my life.”

The six of them sat in the grass for awhile, exhausted and covered in blood. They all wanted to clean themselves off. As they got up Carson meekly asked, “When you were first cursed do you remember what it felt like?”

Adam looked at him with his demonic eyes, “If you’re cursed you’ll wake up tomorrow feeling like you have a hangover.”

“I see.”

Nora carefully put her arm around him. “If it comes to that we’ll figure something out. Now let’s head back. All of us are filthy.”

As they started walking back Alexander pulled Adam aside, “I have to ask, are you three going to be a danger to them?”

“As far as we know, no. You’d know better than we would actually, understanding magic and all.”

“What about when you bit into that other werewolf? You’re saying that wasn’t some sort of violent instinct you had to kill?”

“What? No! No I promise it wasn’t. I kind of wish it was actually. Knowing I did that on purpose and getting all that blood and stuff in my mouth. That was disgusting! I was holding it with my arms and I didn’t have anything else to attack with. I was about to lose my hold on him, too. That was my best option I think. I really didn’t want to do that, though. I promise.”

“Hm,” was all Alexander had to say to that before walking off.

Adam, Vicky and Sophia all hosed themselves down instead of going inside for a shower. They healed fast as werewolves, but they were still bleeding in too many places to count. Nora brought out a tent for them to use, along with some old blankets she didn’t mind getting ruined. They would figure out something better tomorrow. Alexander also approved of this because he still wasn’t sure about them.

Adam may not have been human anymore, but he was greatly relieved. Nora and Alexander didn’t have a scratch on them, Carson was probably going to be fine, and this entire stupid curse was finally coming to an end. They’d even been lucky enough that no one outside of their friend group was hurt! In spite of what had happened to his friends and the bloody battle to the death with monsters he had just been survived, Adam peacefully fell asleep for the first time in nearly half a year. Tomorrow was going to be a strange but good day.

Eric Frye.

Beth Knowles.

Dan O’Neil.

Chapter 18 – The Final Funeral

Adam was the first to awake the next day. He tried to wake Vicky and Sophia but they refused to move. He’d been too hot to sleep under the blankets with all the fur he had and ended up sleeping on top of them. They had bloodstains all over. Thinking a few more bloodstains wouldn’t hurt, he grabbed the blankets and stepped outside the tent, patting them all over his body, looking for anywhere that might still be bleeding. He was bruised and beaten and covered in scabs, but couldn’t find any fresh blood. For the first time he thought about the fact that he was naked. He looked down and saw that he had too much fur to even see anything anyway, which was a relief. He wasn’t sure if he could even find any clothes to wear, and running around with people seeing his junk wasn’t something he wanted to deal with.

“Hello down there!” He heard a voice call. He looked up at the deck and saw Nora, Carson and Alexander all sitting around a small outdoor table, enjoying lunch.

“Oh, hi! I didn’t see you up there.”

“Who are you? Not to be rude, but I can’t tell.”

“Adam, and that’s okay, I get it. I don’t even know who I was sleeping by. Is it alright if I come up?”

“Yes! Of course!” Holding the railing, he carefully clambered up the steps. His new legs were still difficult to use.

“Hey there, Adam,” Carson said, visibly sore from last night.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine It’ll just take some time to heal.”

“That’s good to know, but I meant you’re head,” Adam sat down on a chair, but his new form towered over everyone else’s so he opted to sit cross-legged on the floor. This put him at a much more comfortable height. He was still a bit higher than everyone else was. If he had to guess he was maybe an absurd nine feet tall now.

“Oh, that’s right! Nothing to worry about there; I feel fine! It’s just my body that’s killing me.”

“I’m glad that worked out. That would have been a nightmare if you ended up like this, too.”

Nora had gone into the house and brought out a plate of food for Adam while he talked with Carson. It was mostly meat. She was guessing this is what he would want now, and she was absolutely right. He struggled to eat it. New hands and a new mouth made things frustrating. Talking was still going to take some time to get down, but he was at least understandable. He just wished he would stop accidentally biting his tongue.

“So what’s it like to be sitting down for lunch with a werewolf?” Adam said with a smirk.

“It’s pretty surreal, I’ll tell you that much,” Carson responded.

Alexander was still suspicious of Adam, which he didn’t blame him for as intelligent demons weren’t exactly common. The girls still in the tent got tired of hearing people talking, and after checking themselves over as Adam did, they came to join the conversation. Alexander still said nothing, and kept his eyes on them just as he did Adam.

After lunch Nora offered to let them use the actual shower instead of the hose they had to use last night. They weren’t sure they would fit, and Adam said they would scratch up her floors, but she just grabbed the bloody blankets and laid them down. They didn’t really have an excuse to not go in at this point.

They had to duck through the doorway, which still hadn’t been repaired since being broken during the Hazel-wolf attack, but once inside they could stand freely again. The combination kitchen and living room had a ceiling that reached up an extra story. The hallway with the bathroom was at the regular height, and required bending over to keep from hitting their heads.

Adam ended up using the shower first. He found he had to kneel down and bring his arms in close. It was a tight fit, but he managed. The water was red and brown at first as it rinsed the remnants of last night from his body. He spent a long time scrubbing his copious fur while avoiding scabbed areas. After drying himself he stood in front of the mirror just looking at his reflection. The eyes, the fangs, the clean fur which had been made extra fluffy from rubbing dry with the towel. He was glad this wasn’t permanent. Looking closely he noticed the muzzle he now had wasn’t as far out as a wolf’s would be. “Probably the effect of having a little bit of human in this whole mixture. And I guess that’s also why walking and talking have been as easy as they have been so far,” Adam thought to himself. He finished drying off and stooped low to exit the room.

Stepping out of the bathroom he smelled Vicky and Sophia in the study. He walked in to see them just standing around, looking the various books and objects. “What are you two up to?” He asked them.

“Wow, you are extra fluffy!” One of them said.

“You will be too, once you’ve had your turn! ...Sorry, but are you Vicky or Sophia? I’m still getting used to the whole ‘smelling people’ thing and I can’t tell you apart by sight just yet.”

“Sophia. I’m the one wearing this,” She held up a small medallion, “Went through the same thing with everyone else, so if you see this it’s me.”

“Got it. So what are you two looking at? We’re done with all of this!”

“I’m not really sure. I just feel drawn to this room right now.”

“Same here,” Vicky added. “I feel like there’s something we have to do.”

Adam thought for a moment, “Now that I think about it when I came to last night I felt drawn to the house. I’m starting to get that same feeling again standing in here. Are we attracted to the magic?”

“We’re not sure either. We can’t find anything that stands out, but for some reason I feel like I have to be here.”

Carson and Nora were standing in the doorway watching them. “I might have an idea,” Carson said. “Nora could you get the chest for me?”

“Of course,” Nora replied with a smile. She put her hands on the bottom cupboard and concentrated. An extra door grew underneath the bottom one. She opened it and pulled out a large, old chest made of wood and closed with leather straps. She grabbed the handle and had to lean back with all her weight to get it out of the armoire. “This is where we keep magic stuff we don’t like or that no one should have.”

“Thank you,” Carson said. He opened the chest. Inside were only a few items. A box full of round, black, glass beads, an old doll, and a familiar old box of faded dark green, with strange symbols on the sides. He left that box closed. “Is this what you’re looking for?” He asked, looking up at the three large werewolves before him.

Adam pointed at it excitedly, “Yes! That’s it! I can feel it. We’re connected to that stupid statue somehow.”

“What can you tell me about what you’re feeling?”

“When I woke up last night I felt like there was something trying to pull me in this direction. And now that I’m right in front of the statue again it just feels like I’m supposed to do something with it. I don’t know what exactly.” Vicky and Sophia nodded in agreement.

“I think we should go outside to test it. Maybe we can figure something new out about this curse!”

They went to the backyard, far away from where the fight had taken place, and far away from the hexagon as well. The sound of a shovel moving dirt echoed across the land. “Is someone digging?” Sophia asked.

“Yes,” Carson replied. “That would be Alexander digging. He’s burying the bodies. He also plans on doing a little bit of dissection for research purposes, and I don’t want to be around that.”

“Researching demons?”

“Yes. He said he probably won’t gain any useful knowledge, but if he does find something it could help with preventing or fixing future curses.”

“You mean there could be more werewolves?”

“That’s unlikely… We still don’t know the origins of the statue and probably never will, but to our knowledge it’s the only thing that has this curse. After thousands of years I think something else like this would have come up by now but it hasn’t, so it’s safe to assume this is the only statue. And werewolves are demons. That’s what he’s researching. Demons in general, not specifically werewolves.”

“Just where did you even find this guy?”

Carson chuckled, “The magic community is pretty tight-knit, and Alexander has been around a long time and helped out countless people. If you know magic at all, then you probably have also heard of him. He’s a bit of a legend.” He smiled, reminiscing about some old memory. Seeing that no one had anymore questions, he set the box down. “So I’m going to back away from here just in case. I don’t think anything will happen when you open the box, but after last night I don’t want to chance it.” He then walked a distance away and yelled, “Whenever you’re ready!”

Vicky opened the box. A red aura began drifting slowly out of it, like a fog machine. “The statue and other stuff look the same, but there’s this red kind of fog coming out of it,” She yelled to Carson.

Seeing that nothing immediately dangerous was going to happen, he came back over. “How far has the fog spread?”

“Just a few feet, why?”

“I was just curious how much power it had right now. What you’re seeing is the curse itself. I can’t see it, as I’m not cursed.”

“Really? Why didn’t we see it last time?”

“I think… I think it’s because you’re not human right now.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. The fact that you were drawn to this statue after transforming, and that you can see the curse, the creator must have intended for that.”

“Why would they have done that?”

“This is just speculation… But I think there used to be a cure in the statue.”

“WHAT?!” The three wolves shouted in unison. Three werewolves shouting in unison was quite loud.

“I’m sorry. I said ‘used to be’. The magic has long since been corrupted. Magic gradually changes over time, and this curse is no different. Let’s see now… The curse was created to get revenge at someone. They would turn into a demon and go after their loved ones. I can’t get into the creator’s mind to know for sure but I think the werewolf form wasn’t originally as violent. The destructive energy must have completely overtaken the other aspects of the curse over time. The intent must have been for them to try to overcome their bloodlust and get to this statue for the cure.”

“If that’s true that’s pretty messed up.”

“Is everything okay?! I heard a loud noise!” Alexander was running to the group.

“Everything’s fine, we just got a nasty surprise is all. This statue long ago was capable of curing the curse.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes, the three of them can actually see the curse right now.”

Alexander stared at the werewolves. He gave a “Hm,” and began walking back to the graves he was digging for the dead werewolves.

“It’s safe for any of you to pick up the statue. It can’t do anything to you anymore.”

Adam pulled it out of the box, “I want to smash it. Not just because of what it did to us, but now that I’m holding it it feels like that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“I wonder if you could actually break it… This thing might not have truly been indestructible this entire time! A werewolf was supposed to be the one to break it but the magic got messed up!” Adam lifted the statue with one hand, about to smash it on the ground. “WAIT!!”

“What? You said a werewolf could smash it and finally destroy this thing!”

“I did, but if that’s true that could also mean there’s some side effects.”

“Side effects?”

“It’s an ancient and powerful curse that has been corrupted over time. There must have been a cure in there long ago but it’s gone now. It should have been susceptible to other magic and attempts at destroying it over the years, but based on what I know about it now, I think when it remained in one place for too long, all the destructive energy it absorbed enhanced that property until only a werewolf, what the statue was intended for, would be capable of ending it.

Because it’s a wolf essence in there, that might also be the reason for werewolves killing other werewolves. You yourselves were drawn to the statue as you are now, but there are no recorded instances of a wolf trying to get to the statue. That’s a clear indication of what the curse was supposed to be when it was first created. Someone became a werewolf, and had bloodlust but also enough of themselves to try to fight it and get the cure. The statue was supposed to contain a cure, which you would absorb by breaking it. If you broke it now, the only thing left in it, it’s indestructibility, would be transferred to you. Think of it like curing you so much that instead of just healing you, it would permanently heal you.”

“So… You’re saying I would live out normal human lifespan but as a werewolf?”

“Worse than that. You wouldn’t age. You might be stuck as a werewolf… forever.”

“Oh come on, living forever? That can’t also be real, can it?”

“Under normal circumstances, no. That is well outside the laws of nature. But this statue… The only way of knowing for sure would be to actually break it and see what happens. You risk immortality as a demon if you do this.”

“If this statue remains unbroken, what would happen to it?”

“The cycle of passing it around would continue.”

“So the curse could get out again?”

“Yes.”

Adam thought about what this curse had done to him. Every single one of his friends had died. He became ostracized for having yellow eyes and being sick all the time. If there hadn’t been other werewolves, he would have killed his family and friends. He remembered the fight from last night, how disgustingly violent it had to get. He looked at Carson wincing every time he moved because of the deep wound he received. He thought about how many people this must have happened to in the past, and if he let it go, how many more might die in the future. This curse could not be contained. “I’ve made up my mind. I’ll take that risk. We’re dealing with a lot of ifs here, but if it’s true I can break it, then it’s worth it. If I have the chance to prevent this from ever happening again, I have to take it. And besides, if it really does ending up making me indestructible or immortal, I’ll have eternity to figure out how to fix it, right?”

“I admire your tenacity, Adam, but don’t take this lightly. You would live to see your family die. Entire lifetimes would pass you by as you continued on by alone.”

“Again. It’s a chance I want to take. What about either of you?” Adam turned asking Vicky and Sophia if they wanted to do this with him.

“I know I don’t want to do this. This curse is going to kill me in a month or two, and I’ve already prepared everything for my death. We were supposed to die last night. That’s what I prepared for.” Vicky flatly said. She looked to Sophia who nodded in return.

Sophia put her arm across Vicky’s shoulders, “I’m with her on this. I’ll live out what’s left of my life right here.”

“Is everyone absolutely sure of what they want?” Carson asked.

“Yes,” they each stated individually.

“Then Sophia, Vicky, put these on. They’ll protect from anything that comes from the statue.” He took off two of the necklaces he was wearing and handed one to each of them. “Good. Are you ready to do this, Adam?” He nodded. “Then let’s give him some space.”

Carson, Sophia and Vicky backed away from Adam. He laid the statue on the ground. Standing before it, he took one last deep breath, then as hard as he could he slashed at it with claws. A small crack formed in the side, more of the curse visibly spilling out of it. He slashed again. Still no claw marks, but the crack grew in length. The curse was pouring out if it in a solid red jet which settled to the ground in plumes. He slashed again. The crack now seemed more like a hole in the side, and was splitting in multiple directions now. Adam slashed again and again and again until finally it separated into a top and bottom half, small shards of the statue sprinkling the ground.

The pieces glowed red for a moment, then all the curse smoke stopped spreading. Slowly, it began to reverse, but not into the statue. It spread all around Adam, ensconcing his body in a thick layer of the red smoke. For a moment he appeared to be made entirely of the smoke. It began absorbing into his body, filling him up from the outside in. When there was finally nothing left of the smoke, Adam stood there, all the gashes and marks from last night’s fight healed. He was covered in scars, but he was fine.

Sophia ran up to him and hugged him hard, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. I feel really good actually! I’m all healed, and I don’t feel anymore of that werewolf sickness we’ve been stuck with for so long. Kind of weird to say this but I actually feel like a person again!”

“I can’t believe you actually did that,” Vicky said as she walked over. “Are you actually immortal now?”

“No idea,” He carefully dragged a claw across his thigh, but nothing happened. He tried again with more force, but still couldn’t break the skin. He finally tried an actual slash with full force but still nothing happened. “Looks like it.”

“Why did you go through with it?”

“I didn’t want anyone else to have to deal with this. We watched all of our friends die, and then we would have tried to kill other people. How many times has that happened throughout history? How many times would it happen again? Somehow this curse would have gotten out again. I had the chance to end all the death, and I took it.”

“At great sacrifice to yourself,” Carson joined in.

“I know what I did.”

“No. You really don’t. ...But I thank you for ending it all the same.”

That night they all had a happy dinner. No one expected to end the curse. This was a huge bonus to surviving the fight. Alexander showed Adam a genuine smile which took everyone by surprise. He knew why Adam broke the statue, and showed him great respect for it. He looked at all of Adam’s scars, then showed off his chest scar again. He wouldn’t go into details, but he said he got into a fight with a fire demon. This demon had the power to bend others to its will. He looked away as he said that then stopped talking.

After dinner they went to the hilltop from the night before. Three large, freshly dug graves were there. They held a small funeral for Eric, Dan and Beth. Adam, Vicky and Sophia were no longer physically capable of crying, which afterward they agreed was one of the worst discoveries they had made in a long time.

They weren’t sure how to tell their friends’ families that they had died. They couldn’t send a message of any kind or else the police would investigate it, as there weren’t going to be any bodies for them to find. Their families would also find out they were lying about working with the CDC once David and Penelope returned for their next appointment in a couple days. No one would know how they spent the last month. To the world, the six of them would all have simply vanished off the face of the earth. They had each prepared for their death in some way, so it would probably be assumed they had died.

Nora and Alexander spent a few hours driving everyone’s cars with all of their belongings to a random location a few towns over to be sure. Alexander was overheard giving Nora a few tips on not leaving any evidence behind just in case the police investigation went that far. He stayed for a few more days in case there was anything else that needed to be taken care of, then headed home. The three wolves were genuinely going to miss him.

The Holcombs had both missed a lot of work in the past month. Nora’s business was freelance so it wasn’t so bad for her, but Carson had a physical store to run, and needed to hire a new employee. He was quite busy for several weeks until he could hire additional help.

Thinking about the CDC appointment reminded Adam they were also supposed to go to court in a month or so over the warehouse incident. He smirked at the idea of showing up as the very monster he had killed that night.

The next couple months were spent at first relaxing now that they were finally able to, but they grew bored. Vicky and Sophia were getting sicker by the day, and their deaths were near. Soon Adam would be the sole survivor. He had a few ideas about where to start going with his life, but for now he spent as much time as he could with the girls. The last of his friends. For once they knew someone was going to die, and it wasn’t going to be in a horrible, gruesome way.

The day finally came when the three of them were laying in the grass on a sunny July day. Adam looked over to find Vicky and Sophia in each others’ arms, not breathing. He attended one last funeral, and cursed his inability to cry again.

Sophia Vasquez.

Vicky Christensen.

Chapter 19 – Life after Death

It had been a few months since the curse took Sophia and Vicky. The police stopped by once because someone said they saw of of their cars driving on these back roads once or twice, but there hadn’t been anything since then. The Holcomb property was on the edge of town which allowed him to test if the curse would let him leave or not. The statue was broken, so if he could find a place to stay outside of town, he was free to go there.

Feeding six young people had been quite the strain on Nora and Carson’s wallets. When that changed to three werewolves the effect was about the same. Now that it was down to just Adam the werewolf, things were finally becoming manageable for them again. He still felt bad about it, and asked Alexander to teach him how to hunt, ideally without having to use his claws. He had to use a bow and arrow because he had no access to guns or a steady supply of ammo. He could even eventually learn how to make his own bow. Finally Adam had found something Alexander didn’t know how to do, but he agreed it was a good idea. The weapon and ammo he had been given didn’t have Adam’s luxury of lasting forever.

It took many months of practice but he finally started to become good at hunting. The hard part was gutting and cleaning what he killed. He never envisioned himself as a hunter, and still wasn’t fond of it. Hunting was not in his comfort zone. He did have a significant advantage when it came to his senses. They were superior in every way to what he had as a human. Taste was the one exception to this. His sense of taste was dramatically dulled compared to what it used to be.

Another thing not in his comfort zone was nudity. He had enough fur to cover his private areas even with his summer coat, but it still felt strange to not wear clothes. He tried several times to wear, and even make clothes, but they always became too hot or uncomfortable. Even when he was out hunting in the winter he didn’t wear much, if anything at all. In the end he gave up on wearing clothing of any kind, with the exception of some slippers he had made so he wouldn’t leave scratches all over the floors.

His fur was an entire issue by itself to manage. There was so much of it! He studied dog grooming online and had to use those techniques on himself. He felt badly about shedding as well, and would sweep up the hair and do all that he could to minimize it, which the grooming techniques he learned online helped with. One thing which made pleased him greatly was that parasites would have no effect on him since they couldn’t break the skin. He could still bring them into the house, so he would check himself regularly just in case. He eventually learned a minor deflection spell that helped immensely with keeping things from getting caught in his fur.

As he became more acquainted with the forest he would look out for ingredients Carson and Nora could use for their magic as another way of repaying them. The biggest thing he was repaying them for was magic lessons. During that first month he was only learning about werewolves, but now that he had the time he wanted to actually get into it and learn how it worked. He specifically wanted to see about turning himself human and ridding himself of his immortality, but he had a long journey ahead before he could even begin to understand how those things worked. Carson, Nora, and Alexander said they were almost undoubtedly irreversible, but he still had to try. He had also expected his scars from the big fight to eventually heal, but the “cure” from the statue apparently stuck him exactly as he was when he broke it.

The full moon had no effect on Adam as he feared it might. It was only the catalyst to activate the transformation, nothing more. Even though he had no intentions of scratching or biting anyone, he was still afraid he could pass on the curse. Since they couldn’t draw blood they had to devise some unique methods to find this answer. It involved meditation and focusing energy. Nearly an entire year passed before he started to make progress on this. When they were finally able to compare the state of his energy, it was revealed that the curse no longer existed within him. He couldn’t technically be called a werewolf anymore. Now he was a demon. A human trapped forever in a demon body designed by some vengeful person thousands of years ago.

Adam spent several years living with Carson and Nora and learning magic from them. Over time he would spend more and more time on his own. One day after being gone for a few weeks he revealed to them he had found a well-hidden cave in the side of a mountain. He intended to make that his home. He was going to clean it up, carve it out, add a door, and make it into something much like an actual house. The magic community was mostly online these days, so the hardest part was going to be getting a stable internet connection so he could stay in contact with them.

When he finally made the move, he had already begun shaping the inside into actual rooms. He read up on structural integrity, and reinforced everything with magic. He would become known in the magic community as “that guy who is never seen and will only trade with things, never money.” By “never seen” they were referring to the fact that he would leave their package in a certain location, and they would leave his. No direct contact was ever made.

After several years the town of Marble, Colorado developed something of a theme on Halloween. It involved monstrous wolves that would either eat you or take you away for some unknown worse fate. Yellow eyes were the mark of the beast and wearing yellow contacts on Halloween became a common thing. Going even further with it, the town set up an annual haunted house in the safe house Logan used, leaving all the damage he did intact.

Time passed. After much work Adam’s cave became a fully-furnished home. He had to find creative solutions to things like electricity and plumbing, and was able to solve a lot of the problems with magic. It was nearly impossible to find the cave before he took up residence and turned it into a house, but he put wards on it and the surrounding area anyway. If someone managed to find his home he’d be genuinely impressed. He had become quite knowledgeable in magic, and he’d been at it so long he was beginning to do things with it no else had before.

He maintained contact with Carson, Nora and Alexander, but refused to introduce himself to anyone else in the magic community. He felt like his problems were his own. He also would sometimes check on his family, occasionally leaving them inconspicuous gifts when he could. Hazel’s parents had never been repaid for the repairs to their house and replacement furniture, so Adam did what he could to rectify that, as well as ease his guilt over Hazel’s death. Years went by, and enough time had now passed that the few people who knew Adam in real life had passed away. To the world, he no longer existed.

Adam Mayer.