“How in the hell is this happening?! He’s keeping up with us, knocking the back of my truck sideways, and our bullets can’t kill it, either! We’re going to die!” screamed Carl. “Why is this happening to us?!”
“Drive faster!” yelled Brian as he loaded up his rifle again with more ammunition.
Carl wanted to drive a hundred mph, but could only drive thirty-five mph on the bumpy trail, for fear of breaking his truck’s suspension in half, along with also still having the gas cans and some camping supplies in the back bouncing two feet in the air at every bump.
“We’re almost to the Reese Highway!” shouted Brian with a glimmer of hope in his voice. “It’s just a little farther! I know we can lose that thing once were on it!”
The enraged werewolf, determined not to let his fleeing prey escape, and wanting to rip them to shreds with teeth and claws, now leaped through the air from behind, and into the back of Carl’s truck, landing in the middle of the remaining camping supplies and gas cans with a loud THUMP! Its mouth was drooling saliva as its red eyes locked onto them through the rear sliding-glass window of the truck.
“Holy crap!” yelled Brian from the top of his lungs. “It’s inside the back end now!”
“Shoot it again!” demanded Carl as Brian popped the rear sliding-glass window open and pointed his rifle barrel out through the back, toward the werewolf.
The highway now being just yards away, Carl hit the last big bump on the trail at forty mph, which propelled the full gas cans and the werewolf upward, bouncing them three feet into the air, causing one of the full fuel cans to fall on the werewolf’s right foot as they crash-landed at the same time. The enraged and furious werewolf retaliated at the plastic fuel can by biting into it, puncturing it with its teeth, and shaking it violently sideways, back and forth, in his jaws, like a rag doll. The bitter taste of gasoline appeared briefly to distract and hinder the werewolf’s attack on them, giving Brian a desperate idea in just an instant. The gas can seemed to be stuck on one of the werewolf’s fangs, and as it unsuccessfully tried shaking it off, Brian pointed his rifle barrel point blank against the side of the plastic fuel can through the rear sliding-glass window and fired! The extremely loud noise from the rifle’s fired shot was deafening inside the truck cab, causing both men’s ears to ring loudly, but Brian’s quick idea and shot were successful. The speedy bullet caused an impressive explosion of the can, spraying gasoline and flames all over the beast’s face and head, stinging its eyes, causing it to lose its balance and fall over the closed tailgate and off the backend of the truck at forty-five mph. And they mercifully and finally drove onto the highway, away from their attacker.
“Thank God,” said Carl. “We better put some distance between us and that thing, and hightail it back to Circa! Just look at me! I’m shaking all over, and I also nearly wet myself!”
Carl’s truck was spinning and sliding as he hit speeds up to eighty mph, seeing the campsite trail quickly fade out of sight in the rearview mirror. After maintaining eighty mph for one and a half miles, and noticing that the werewolf was no longer in pursuit or behind them, they slowly decreased the speed of the truck to a safer fifty-five mph on the snow-packed highway, while also breathing a big and deep sigh of relief.
“We better go talk to Phyllis again in the morning and see if she knows what that thing is, and if that was the reason why she didn’t want us staying here,” said Brian. “And maybe she has an answer as to why I saw blue jeans on that thing. Could it really be possible for a blue jean-wearing human to turn into something that vicious on a full moon? In the meantime, I think that we’ll be safe if we sleep in the truck somewhere in Circa tonight.”
“Sounds good to me,” replied Carl. “Were only a few miles out now, and it might be a good idea, after all, if we take her advice and head back to Fairville first thing in the morning. I suddenly don’t feel like hunting caribou anymore. We can call our wives in the morning, too, and let them know the scoop, as in we’ll be returning home early, but not the whole scoop, if you know what I mean.”
“Agreed,” replied Brian as they slowly drove over the small wooden bridge and entered back into Circa to stay for the rest of the night.
CHAPTER 5
February 18
It was 8:00 AM on a cold Friday morning, and Brian and Carl just awoke from a semi-deep sleep inside the warm Dodge truck, which they had parked on the health clinic’s parking lot and kept idling all night, thankful that they were still alive and anxiously awaiting the sunrise that was just thirty minutes away.
“I got a headache,” grumbled Carl. “I’ll probably have an even bigger headache after I get out and inspect the damage done to the back of my truck by that hairy bastard! We have just enough light now for me to see, so I guess I’ll go look.” He slowly stepped out of his truck, stretched, and walked to the back, dreading the thought of seeing any damages that might be awaiting him. “Crap! I knew we should have brought your truck instead,” he said with a sigh. “There are two huge dents in my rear panel, like it was swatted by a big bear!”
Brian was now at the back of the truck himself to see what all of Carl’s fussing was about. “Wow! Impressive,” he said and bent over to get a closer look at the damage. “There are five claw mark scratches in your metal, too, as if a large human hand with claws swatted it!” He retrieved a tape measure from the truck and measured the claw marks at two inches in length. “Shows up really well on your white paint also.”
“Sticks out like a sore thumb!” responded Carl in a complaining tone.
“The store should be open at 9:00 AM,” said Brian. “Let’s go hang out there until Phyllis shows up to open it. I hope they have coffee also, because we abandoned most of our food and supplies at our campsite last night when we fled for our lives, and I’m not too interested in going back now, or ever again, to get our stuff. We can give our wives a call from there, too, then dump the rest of the fuel in our five-gallon cans into your tank, and then leave Circa as soon as possible.”
They quickly climbed back into the truck and drove the short distance to the store’s parking lot to wait.
“I can’t get through to my wife on my cell phone,” moaned Carl. “Don’t have a signal! How about you, Buzz?”
“Nope, I don’t have a signal, either,” replied Brian. “We may have to dig our quarters and change out of our pockets and try that old pay phone, next to the front of the store.”
“You’re in luck then, because my glove box has a bunch of quarters in it,” said Carl. “You can call your wife first, and just tell her to pass the same message to my wife also, because I’m not totally sure if we have enough quarters to make more than one call from here.”
They counted all the quarters that they could find in the truck’s glove box, along with any loose change in their pockets, and came up with $8.25 worth. Carl sat inside his truck while Brian talked briefly to Nancy, his wife of six years, on the pay phone, continuing to put multiple quarters in the phone’s slot, hoping not to get cut off while he was talking to her.
Carl noticed a look of extreme concern on Brian’s face after he hung up the phone and returned to the truck. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m afraid the news couldn’t be any worse for us,” answered the despondent Brian.
Carl’s heart sank with dread of the impending bad news that he knew he was about to hear.
“Nancy told me that the local news channels are reporting that Hawk Summit will most likely be shut down and closed for two or three days, meaning that we’re trapped here! Even though we’ve had good weather here, and they’ve had good weather in Fairville, Hawk Summit has had blizzard conditions, whiteouts, and a small avalanche that’s blocking the highway! No one is coming into or leaving Circa until the highway is cleared!”
“Are you serious?!” responded Carl loudly. “We’re stuck here in this village with that hairy thing that tried to kill us still out there on the loose somewhere?! I guess that a
valanche also explains why we haven’t seen any other hunters, either.”
No sooner had Carl finished his rant of irritation when they spotted Phyllis walking up to the store’s front door, unlocking it, and entering inside. Then they saw the store’s bright, neon-lighted “OPEN” sign come on just seconds after.
“Did you tell Nancy what happened to us last night?” asked Carl to Brian.
“No, I didn’t say a word to her about it. If she even believed it, and didn’t think that I had gone crazy, wacko, or dreamt up that story, she would be worried to death! I’d rather not tell her unless I have to.”
“Sounds like Jessica also,” replied Carl, referring to his thirty-eight-year-old wife of ten years. “She always worries when I’m away, or doing overnight truck deliveries. And when she worries, it causes our little girl to worry also!” he said added, referring to his six-year-old daughter, Cindy. “I can usually tell when they’re worrying, too, because their faces will turn blushing red, and almost match the color of their identical red hair as well. Let’s go talk to Phyllis now and see if we can get some answers. Hopefully, she’ll offer us that bed and breakfast again. We need a place to stay for the next few days that has a shower and stove so that we can cook ourselves some hot food.”
“After Phyllis gets one whiff of you, and me, too, of course, she’ll beg us both to take a shower at the bed and breakfast,” replied Carl with a chuckle.
Carl and Brian walked into the store, and after closing the door behind them, they continued walking up to the counter where Phyllis was standing behind. Tears started to well up in her eyes, along with facial expressions of guilt, grief, and also relief when she saw them.
“We need to talk,” said Brian to her.
Phyllis pulled a tissue from the tissue box on the top of the counter and wiped dry her tearful eyes as she walked over and locked the front door, followed by unplugging the neon-lighted “OPEN” sign, turning it off. “What happened out there last night?” she asked with dread. “Did you see or encounter anything that is hard to believe?”
“Some unexplainable, large, hairy beast with fangs and claws almost killed us last night!” snapped Carl. “Granted, you did try to give us some kind of a lame warning last night, and we sort of didn’t listen, I’ll give you that, but if you know something about whatever that thing is, then we demand to know!”
“Easy, Carl, settle down please,” pleaded Brian to him in a calm voice, while Phyllis became even more tearful again.
“I’m sorry,” replied the choked-up Phyllis. “I should have tried harder to stop you guys from camping out there, but what could have I really done, or said, that would have convinced you two? I just don’t know what to do anymore!”
“Fair point,” replied the now sympathetic Carl, who felt slightly guilty for his fiery response. “And I’m sorry I snapped at you like I did.”
“Why don’t the three of us sit down somewhere and finish this conversation over a cup of coffee?” Brian suggested. “We’re not going anywhere for at least two or three days anyways. My wife said that Hawk Summit had an avalanche, along with blowing snow and whiteouts! The highway is closed and blocked off, and we’re stuck here until it’s reopened again.”
“That’s terrible news!” replied Phyllis. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She guided them down the small hallway past the counter and sat them down at a table in the kitchen area of the store. “Excuse me for a moment.” She walked up to the kitchen counter, retrieved something from the cupboard before making something hot to drink, and returned to the table with three cups of coffee, sitting down on the opposite side of them. “Here are the keys to my uncle’s bed and breakfast cottage.” She handed them two silver-colored keys. “One key is for the dead bolt and the other key is for the doorknob. It’s the least that I can do after what you both have been through! It’s the small cottage on the right, just after you cross over the wooden bridge, next to the small building with the ‘WILD FISH AND GAME, MEAT CUTTERS’ sign on it.”
“Thank you from both of us,” replied Brian.
“The cottage used to belong to my parents, but after they were both killed by a drunk driver last year on the Reese Highway, my uncle continued to manage it, along with helping to take care of me,” she said.
“Were sorry for your tragic loss,” Carl offered.
“The creature that you encountered last night is my boyfriend, and his name is Buck Holmberg,” explained Phyllis hesitantly, as she began to elaborate and go into more details.
Carl and Brian were bewildered and speechless, but also skeptical when hearing her words, but remained silent as to let her continue with her story.
“Buck was out caribou hunting last August when he got attacked and bitten in the leg by a rogue lone wolf. At that time, we didn’t know whether anything was wrong with the wolf or not, until it was too late. It was tested here for rabies and sent to Fairville for more testing, and nothing was found wrong with the wolf, other than two puncture or bite wounds on its back. And after Buck’s wounds miraculously improved by the next day, we were sure everything was going to be fine,” Phyllis continued with her difficult story while constantly fighting back tears, as Carl and Brian listened intently. “But a few nights later, something unexplainable, unearthly, and unthinkable happened to him that still haunts him and us even now, six months later! During the full moon’s cycle in August, and also every month since then, Buck will turn into that creature you encountered last night, and transform into some vicious, half-man and half-wolf creature, an uncontrollable monster that will try and kill anything it can! It’s as if Buck has some terrible evil curse!”
Brian handed Phyllis some more tissues, as she was continuously choked up with tears and sad emotions from telling her devastating story.
“It sounds like you’re telling us that Buck is a werewolf,” observed Carl. “I guess that explains why the beast we saw last night had torn blue jeans on, and looked like a werewolf or wolf man from the movies. Unbelievable!”
“What makes his transformation even worse is that he will start turning even when the moon is only ninety-five percent full,” said the despondent Phyllis as she continued on. “When you encountered him last night, the moon was at ninety-nine perfect full. Starting tonight and for the following two nights after that, the moon will be completely full, and Buck will be at full strength and power!”
“What did you say, and what do you mean?” asked Carl with alarm.
“Yes, please elaborate more if you could,” said Brian.
“When you encountered him, he wasn’t completely at full strength, but tonight, he will be. He turns for a total of five days in a month, and since he started turning on Wednesday night, he has three more nights left, Sunday night, and then he’ll be free until next month’s full moon cycle,” answered Phyllis.
“No way!” replied Carl with dire alarm. “We couldn’t come close to stopping him last night, and tonight you say he’ll be at full strength?! If we encounter him again, we’re screwed. We are definitely screwed! And we’re dead men!”
Phyllis began to weep, and Brian and Carl felt helpless to comfort her or themselves.
“Please don’t hurt him,” she pleaded.
“Hurt him?” asked the perplexed Carl. “How? He nearly took us and my truck down at the same time, and our rifle bullets had little effect on him!”
“I’m praying that when our twenty-four hours of daylight finally comes in the early summer months, it will stop his transformations, for at least a few months,” said Phyllis. “But we don’t really know that as of yet, since this summer will be his first as a werewolf.” She continued to tell them more. “Doctor Jones from our clinic was working with Buck religiously to try and help him control and cure his creature side, but no medicine, therapy, not even hypnosis, worked!
“Doctor Jones?” asked Brian. “I know him. Is he still in Circa?”
“No, he isn’t,” answered Phyllis with heavy guilt and sorrow. “One night in October, durin
g the full moon, the doctor was working to help Buck control it, but got himself killed instead when Buck attacked him, mutilating and ripping his throat out during his transformation. Buck had even chained himself down to a concrete floor beforehand for safety, but his powerful creature still managed to break its chains and killed Doctor Jones!”
Brian and Carl were stunned and saddened by the tragic news, while at the same time, in awe of the werewolf’s strength and power.
“Buck has never forgiven himself for killing the doctor, even though he was helpless to control the creature, and he still feels heavy guilt for it,” she said. “He now demands that I drive him at least twenty-five or thirty miles out of Circa, and drop him off before nightfall to hopefully prevent him from hurting anyone else ever again.”
Brian quickly remembered the unknown tracks that he and Carl had seen in the snow just off the highway, twenty-five miles before Circa, along with the shredded moose carcass ten miles farther, when driving in. He was slowly beginning to put the pieces of the tracks’ mystery puzzle together in his mind, which also included their encounter with Buck’s werewolf while camping.
“Last night, when we got attacked by Buck, did you take him twenty-five miles out again, like the other past times?” asked Brian to Phyllis.
“I tried, but we got off to a later start than usual, and he started to feel himself transform before we were even halfway to the usual drop-off spot, so I had to drop him off at around eight miles out instead. I didn’t have any idea where you two were camping, I promise! I tried to do the best that I could.”
Brian and Carl paused momentarily.
Then Brian said, “We know that, Phyllis. We also know that this isn’t your fault.”
“I could never blame you, either,” said Carl. “Where are all the people from your village anyways? We haven’t seen many people in the last couple of days. And no sled dogs, either.”
“Most of the citizens from Circa will try and leave for Fairville or Anchor town on the week of the full moon cycle, and then return on the following week,” she replied. “They’re just as afraid of risking potential harm to Buck, as much as they’re afraid of Buck harming them! So they choose to leave the village instead, hoping to ensure everyone’s safety by doing so. And the sled dogs were all killed by Buck’s wolf side on the August night of his first transformation, so no one has ever brought any more dogs back since.”
Village of the Full Moon Curse Page 5