Family Secrets (The Nocturnia Chronicles Book 2)

by Thomas F Monteleone

  “And lock the basement door after you. Don’t unlock it till you hear me asking you to.”

  “You got it.”

  Holding the lantern out ahead of him as it cast long shadows into to depths behind him, Cal reached the top of the stairs, slipped past the open door and closed it. He turned the lock on the knob, then slipped a deadbolt into place.

  You didn’t have to remind me to do that, Cal thought. That’s a no-brainer.

  He turned out the lights, other than the small lantern, and stood at the window, staring at the night. The moon, huge and full, was just beginning to peek over the line of trees that defined the right boundary of the Jantz farm.

  A shriek shattered the peaceful darkness – but not from outside… from the basement.

  Cal shuddered and prayed Emma and Ryan were all right. He couldn’t imagine being stranded outside tonight.

  34

  Emma heard Ryan say, “Oh, no!”

  They were running along the road as fast as they could – well, as fast as she could. She knew Ryan was holding back because of her. He was like lightning on his feet – not quite Dash in The Incredibles, but close.

  “What?” she puffed.

  Without breaking stride he pointed to the eastern horizon, dead ahead. “Look!”

  The pale gold globe of the moon was halfway above the treetops in the distance. They hadn’t even reached the fork yet.

  “We’re never gonna make it,” she said.

  She was having one of her feelings – almost overwhelming strong – that something bad was going to happen tonight to someone close. Whether her or Ryan or Cal, she couldn’t be sure, but someone was going to get hurt, maybe die.

  “Don’t give up on us now,” Ryan said.

  “I’m not giving up. I just don’t know how long I can keep running like this.”

  “You’ve got to, Em.”

  What if the feeling was about Ryan? She was holding him back. If anything happened to him it would be her fault.

  “Run ahead,” she told him. “Get to safety. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.”

  His matter-of-fact tone spoke worlds about his loyalty. Pain though he could be at times, she loved her little brother very much right then.

  “No more chatter,” he added. “Save your breath for running.”

  Emma increased her pace as best she could, but the effort turned her legs rubbery, and she knew she couldn’t keep up with him.

  “We can’t outrun them, Ryan. There’s no way we get back to the farmhouse.”

  Backing off on his smooth strides, he jogged shoulder-to-shoulder with her. “You’re right… but we’ve got to make it at least as far as the trees up ahead. We’ve got to!”

  Each breath she now took burned in her throat, and she was getting a pinching pain in her side. Two clumps of trees stood on either side of the road just before the fork, looking so far away as the daylight became less than a memory, replaced by a thickening dusk. The only reason she could still see was the increasing albedo of moonrise. Weird how all the colors seemed to be leached out of everything. Shades of gray, deeper grays, and blackness. She concentrated on the dim illumination guiding them toward the trees and tried to ignore her failing stamina.

  Now it felt she was no longer running, instead lumbering forward as if in a very bad dream. The trees seemed no closer but they had entered that part of the lane where large bramble bushes and shrubs hugged each side of the road.

  She could sense Ryan alongside her, still jogging in a smooth, regular rhythm. “Come on, Emma! That’s it!”

  Just as he called out his encouragement, his voice was muted by the piercing howl of a lycan celebrating its transformation. The sound splintered the darkness like lightning, a sound fraught with a slobbering madness that foretold horrible things if one encountered its source.

  Shuddering, stumbling forward, Emma reached out and grabbed her brother’s hand. “Ryan!”

  He was pointing ahead of them where the great round yellow disk of the full moon now crested the treeline. Nightfall complete, the full power of the lunar light burned down on them, and that single, piercing call of bestial triumph suddenly became a chorus of predatory screams. All around them, the sounds of death rose like warning sirens, and Emma knew they were in deep trouble.

  Suddenly, she felt herself being yanked hard to the right.

  “In here! Hurry!”

  The next instant, she felt her face and arms slapped and scratched by unseen branches and leaves. The roadside bushes fought against their invasion, threatening to catch and tear their clothes, or worse tangle them so badly they would hang half-exposed to anything bounding and slavering down the road.

  Her exposed skin stung from the scratches and cuts of the stout shrubbery, but she pushed forward, forcing herself deeper into the thicket. Ryan was smaller than she and was able to burrow right to center of the bushes. Gradually, she worked her way to his side and crouched amidst countless branches that wanted to gouge and tear and scratch.

  “That was awful,” she half-whispered.

  “Thicker than I thought. Stay low, and no talking, okay?”

  Emma nodded but wondered if her brother could see her. The bushes along the road were so overgrown and wild, not much light could penetrate.

  But sound certainly could,

  She stiffened as she heard a furious percussion growing louder and louder. It sounded like a herd of cattle working themselves up into a stampede. The pounding rhythm of clawed feet grew louder, closer, punctuated by random howls and screams.

  “Ryan, listen!”

  “I hear it…be quiet now. Let them go right past us…”

  “Here they come!”

  She reached out and held his hand. It was slick with perspiration but it felt good to be in contact with him. The approach of what sounded like a huge pack of lycans filled the air, so loud and so pervasive, Emma expected to see their razor-toothed snouts burst through the shrubbery at any moment.

  Feeling his hand tighten on hers, Emma tensed her shoulders as she tried to make herself smaller beneath the protective cover of the bushes. The howling storm was upon them now. Loud and snarling, it rushed past like an out-of-control freight train.

  She and her brother held their breath as the ravenous sounds of the pack began to Doppler away from them, dwindling as the beasts ranged off into the darkness in search of kills.

  “I can’t believe this place,” she whispered. “It just keeps getting worse and worse. Weirder and weirder.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think you need to tell me that…”

  “Ryan, I don’t think we should stay here. What happens if one of those werewolves isn’t running full tilt down this road?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean suppose he’s just nosing around – couldn’t he smell us in here?”

  “Oh yeah, I’ll bet he could. We should get to those trees while we have the chance.”

  Emma shook off a chill that had settled on her shoulders. “Is it safe? What do you think?”

  “Safe as it’s gonna be.” Ryan pulled out his crouch, pushed through some of the branches as he peered outward. “Can’t see anything moving.”

  “It sounds quiet out there.”

  Ryan nodded. “I don’t hear a thing.”

  “I think we should make a run for it while we have the chance. And climb as high as we can.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Ryan started to force his way between two of the scrawnier shrubs. “I’ll go first.”

  “Be careful!”

  “Be ready when I give you the word.”

  Emma’s eyes had adjusted to the lack of light and while she couldn’t see anything clearly, she could see enough to distinguish shapes and highlights. Just as Ryan parted the branches in front of his face, she caught a glimpse of his features and his grim expression. Growing up, he’d always been a handful for their parents because he’d always had his own way of doing things,
a determined attitude that brought as much trouble as it did success.

  But in that brief look before he slipped through the brambles, Emma saw that familiar look, and she felt better. Ryan had it in his head they would get through this ordeal, and she just knew they would. It wasn’t one of her “feelings” this time – one of those vague, gauzy notions she often had that were ambiguous or unclear. Not this time. Ryan would –

  “Wait!” His voice cut through her thoughts. Harsh. More than a whisper. “Stay there – something’s coming!”

  35

  Beyond the window where Cal stood, the saw grass wavered and swayed under a night breeze. He could see it clearly because the moon had cleared the trees along the border of the farm and washed the wide acreage of the Jantz property in cruel, pale light. The quiet beauty of the scene belied what was really going on out there on this night of luning. Cal had seen the madness in the past, but only from distant vantage points. Looking down on a city street from the top of a building is not the same as having lycans transforming in the next room or in your basement.

  Turning, Cal stared at the door to the basement, secured with a slide-bolt across a reinforced frame. The house huddled around him, silent and waiting for what was to come. Behind that door, Cal could hear the first stirrings and mewlings from the Jantz family, and he was of two minds about it. He knew he should get as far away from the entrance to the lower level as possible – upstairs where the sounds would be somewhat muted. But he also churned with a morbid need to see what lycans looked like when they were in the process of transforming.

  It might the only chance he’d get in his whole life…

  Without really thinking about it, he’d advanced closer to the door with a several small sliding steps. And each time he drew closer, a new scream filtered up from below, as though the elder Jantz knew what Cal was thinking and was sending out warnings to stay away.

  Each scream a signature of agony and rage. Changing into a werewolf had to be an experience of overwhelming pain.

  Closing his eyes and covering his ears with his hands, he tried to block out the sounds and clear his thoughts. But standing so close the door, he could not avoid the rhythmic clatter of the steel cage imprisoning Orin Jantz. Now, with each new bellow of pain, there followed a thrashing and shaking of the metal bars fixed in the stone floor below.

  What did it feel like to “trans?”

  What did it look like?

  Just do it, thought Cal.

  Picking up the lantern, then reaching up to the heavy slide-bolt, he grasped it in his hand and worked it slowly to the left until it slipped free of its hasp. He unlocked the knob.

  I’d rather you didn’t watch. You really don’t need to see this…

  The words of Orin Jantz…the gentle lycan farmer had issued his warning in the kindest words possible, considering the horrors to which he referred. Cal knew the elder Jantz had wanted to warn him away from what must be a terrible thing to endure, much less witness.

  But he could not turn away from this chance to bear witness to something a human rarely – if ever – got to see.

  And with that thought, Cal eased back the cellar door.

  If it creaked on its hinges, he never heard it. Rushing up out of the lower darkness, a gaggle of inhuman sounds assaulted him. Something was screaming, howling as if in the most excruciating pain. Its cage vibrated against the stone floor in a violent cadence that never ceased. Cal paused on the top step. Maybe Orin Jantz was right…

  The torturous cries suddenly changed into a series of panting breaths – a great bellows being furiously pumped. It was like an engine gathering energy and steam into itself before bursting into full motion. And then they exploded into a thundering growl punctuated and abetted by the snapping of great slobbering jaws. So powerful was the pure animal sound that Cal felt as if it were physically attacking him, pushing him backward.

  How could that tall thin farmer sound like such a ravenous beast?

  The steel cage shook and scraped against the stones, sounding as if it must explode from the constant stress on its bars. And that distinct possibility spiked through him with an implicit message to turn and run from this spot right now.

  Especially since the snarling rage of Orin Jantz was now joined by the transforming cries of Irina. More high-pitched, and tinged with the fragile, almost musical notes of an opera singer at the top of her range, those sounds sent a chill along Cal’s backbone. Irina’s mewling whimpers of anticipation of the pain to overcome her had been replaced by the reality of stretching flesh and grinding bones.

  Cal’s temporary paralysis lifted as he raised his hand and slapped his cheek with the back of his own hand.

  Get on with it…or just get out of here.

  Nodding to himself, awash in the rising tide of lupine bedlam, he took the first downward step on the stairs.

  And then another.

  And another.

  Each footfall took him deeper into the dark well of tortured sounds. Hard to believe, but he could differentiate between the deeper growls of Orin Jantz and the higher whelps and snapping barks of his wife. Together they sang a song of pure bestiality, a message that, given the chance, they would use their slavering jaws to rend Cal into bloody pieces.

  Get out. Turn back while you can.

  The thought spiked through him with each lower step. But he pushed on.

  Down.

  Closer.

  Just one look at them. Just one chance to see them in their feral forms. And then he would leave them to thrash out the hours of full moon without him.

  Cal took another step into the lengthening shadows created by the lantern light. At the bottom of the staircase, the entrance to the cellar looked like a black rectangle that could have been the opening to a bottomless pit. He couldn’t yet see what lay concealed by the deepest of shadows.

  But he could hear it.

  Irina’s higher pitched shrieks had been replaced by upper-register growls. The vicious shaking and rattling of the cages increased as if the adult lycans were becoming more agitated with Cal’s approach. He could hear the bulk of their bodies slamming hard against the restraining bars, their snarling growls louder.

  Three steps from the bottom and the lantern light was pooling across the basement floor – enough that Cal could see the front corner of Orin’s cage and the mortise key hanging on the nearby wall.

  So close…

  Just one look at them and then he’d be out of there.

  Another two steps and that’s when it hit him – an overwhelming odor of pungent animal essence. Dank and sharp, the acrid stench stung the inside of his nose. So strong, he felt his stomach lurch. He didn’t want to get any closer but he’d already cleared the final step and as his right foot touched the stone floor, the light of his lantern flooded full into the chamber.

  He realized that the sight before him would burn deep into his memory and that he would never forget it.

  Contained in their adjoining prisons, the two adult lycans half crouched on their hind-legs as they pressed and slammed against the cages, lunging at him in pure mindless rage. Their clothes had been shredded into ragged strips scattered across the bottom of the enclosures. The thing that had been Orin Jantz tried to force its muzzle between the vertical bars as it glared at him with wide yellow eyes that glowed in the lantern’s light. Irina’s head was leaner and she squeezed her jutting jaws between the restraining slats to reveal long razor-edged teeth. As she lunged at him, great gobbets of saliva hurtled from her open maw and spattered across the stones of the floor.

  Cal knew he could not chance moving even an inch closer to those vicious fangs, and he was almost grateful the stark vision of the transformed lycans had held him in a paralyzing grip. He knew he had to get out of there. His presence only served to drive them into ever-upward spirals of rage.

  You really don’t need to see this…

  But he had. And there was no un-seeing it.

  Backing up, but not turning away
from the cages, Cal heard a new sound – one that had been muted or overwhelmed by the animal cries of the adults. From behind the separating curtain came something that chilled him worse than the savage growls – a tinkling peal of children’s giggling laughter. It was sound so… unexpected… so out of synch with the whole grotesque scene that at first Cal was not sure he was hearing it.

  That Ben and Ella Grace could find this whole experience funny touched Cal with a sense of dread well beyond his endurance.

  Get out of here.

  He stepped backward, feeling his shoe touch the leading of the lowest step.

  Now!

  But he was having trouble getting himself into motion because each movement agitated the adults into renewed attacks against the bars.

  And suddenly the laughing of children was gone… replaced by high-pitched pig-like squeals that quickly descended the register until they became barks and then spittle-choked snarls.

  No way he wanted to see what the little ones had become.

  No way.

  Up one step, and then another. And another. Each one delivering him that much farther away from the abject horror in the basement. The feeble light of the lantern no longer penetrated the darkness below, and that made the sounds bellowing up at him seem somehow less threatening, less real.

  And he needed that.

  With each step farther away from those cages and the hideous things they restrained, he felt better.

  Finally Cal attained the top of the stairs and passed the threshold. He closed the door with a rush and fumbled the locks and bolts into place. Following instructions, he would not be throwing them open until he heard the deliberate drawl of Orin Jantz on the other side.

  Returning to the front window, Cal peeked out from the curtain to see the moon sailing high and luminous above the trees and pastures. Its cold harsh light reminded him of its power over this strange race of beings called lycans. And having seen the effects of Luna at very close range, he knew he would not be sleeping tonight.

  If the beasts running free out there in the farmlands were anything like what howled and thrashed beneath his feet, and if they ever sensed him here inside, he didn’t want to think about what might follow.