Wolf House (Potter's Story)

by Tim O'Rourke

  “Continue with your infantile remarks, if that’s what pleases you, Potter,” Harker said. “But you have three nights and three nights only to catch this ‘piece of filth’ as you so eloquently described him.”

  “Three nights,” I scoffed. “Three hours should be enough!”

  “Potter!” Murphy grimaced in pain. “Listen to him – he wouldn’t have stooped to this if he wasn’t desperate. Desperate men are dangerous! Desperate Lycanthrope are deadlier.”

  “What wise words your sergeant has for you, Potter,” Harker said with that stupid grin of his. “You should listen to him. I’m not playing games.”

  Knowing in my heart that he wasn’t, I said, “Why only three nights?”

  “Unlike other Lycanthrope, this wolf is in some way affected by the moon,” he said.

  “I thought all werewolves were controlled by the moon and had to dodge silver bullets,” I sneered.

  “You’ve been reading too many fairy tales,” Harker sneered back. “However, this werewolf does seem to be affected by the cycle of the moon. The moon is full tonight and will be for the next three nights. This werewolf always kills on a full moon, so we suspect that tonight he will take another child to the Wolf House.”

  “I don’t wish to point out the obvious, but why haven’t you just staked out this Wolf House yourselves?” I asked.

  “Don’t you think that’s the first thing we did?” Harker grumbled. “I’ve had my best two officers, Drake and Madison, camped out at that house for weeks and still this wolf eludes us.”

  Looking over at Madison and Drake, I said, “Perhaps your officers aren’t all they are cracked up to be?” I noticed Drake shift uncomfortably on the spot and Madison just fixed me with her yellow stare. I hated to admit this to myself, after all she was a Lycanthrope and was involved in this plot to shoot Murphy, but she was real cute. As if being able to see into my mind with that stare of hers, she suddenly smiled at me, and I looked away.

  “So what happens if I don’t return in three nights with this child-killing Lycanthrope?” I asked Harker as I lit a cigarette.

  “Murphy bleeds to death, and you and Luke are arrested for the murder of this poor man,” he said matter-of-factly as he glanced once more at the corpse. “And once you are in official police custody, it won’t take them long to figure out what you truly are.”

  “What if you’ve got me all wrong?” I asked him, blowing smoke in his face. “What if I couldn’t give a crap about the old man with the gunshot wound or Brad Pitt over there? Let’s say as soon as I get away from here, I tear Madison and Drake’s throats out and leave them swinging from the nearest tree by their entrails?”

  Within an instance, Harker raised the gun and pointed it at Murphy. Just as quick, I leapt across the underpass and stood in front of my friends.

  Laughing aloud, Harker lowered the gun and said, “You’ll come back with this rogue Lycanthrope – I bet Murphy’s life on it!”

  Knowing that I was beaten – we all were – I looked down at Murphy who lay propped in Luke’s arms. “I’ll see you in three nights, if not before,” I said to them.

  “Potter, remember what I told you,” Murphy gasped as he gripped his leg. “No heroics, keep your temper, and catch that son-of-a-bitch.”

  “We’re counting on you,” Luke said.

  I looked at the both of them and realised the responsibility that had been placed upon me, to save my friends and stop the slaughter of any more children. Was I ready for this? I had to be.

  “However touching I find your goodbyes,” Harker cut in, “you don’t have much time. The clock is ticking, so to speak. I have evidence to gather at this crime scene – the evidence that you’ve left behind, that is, and whatever I don’t have, I will manufacture. You have a Lycanthrope to catch, Potter.” Then wagging his finger in my face like a pendulum, he smiled and said, “Tick-tock! Tick-tock!”

  6

  I helped Luke carry Murphy to one of the marked police vehicles parked outside Little Hope railway station. Even though the night was cold and crisp, Murphy felt hot and clammy in my arms. He winced and cried out as we hoisted him onto the back seat of the car. Luke climbed into the front with Harker.

  Leaning into the back, I gently squeezed Murphy’s shoulder and said, “I’ll come back for you, Sarge.”

  “I know you will, Potter,” he whispered with his eyes closed. “I know you can do this.”

  His obvious trust in me made me feel kinda strange. I couldn’t ever recall anyone really trusting me before. My own father wouldn’t have trusted me to look after the family pet let alone with his life. I wasn’t sure how Murphy’s faith in me truly made me feel. If I were to be totally honest, it rattled me a little. It rattled me because I didn’t want to let him down; what he thinks is important to me. I didn’t usually give a shit what people thought of me, but Murphy was different. I did care when it came to him. I knew that I had to prove myself – not just to Murphy, but to my friend Luke too. If I could do this – if I could catch this Lycanthrope and save Murphy – then I would be their equal. I didn’t want to be the new boy on the team anymore.

  “You take it easy,” I told Murphy. Then closing the door I whispered, “I won’t let you down.”

  I watched as the car pulled away from the front of the station, leaving me alone with constables Drake and Madison. They were staring at me with their brilliant yellow eyes and I barked, “What are you freaking looking at?” Then I was gone, striding away across the car park to the unmarked cruiser.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Madison called after me.

  Without looking back, I shouted, “I thought you were in a rush to catch this relative of yours before he gets his claws into another kiddie?”

  “We go on foot,” Madison said.

  Turning, I looked at her and said, “Why?”

  “Don’t you think the killer would smell a rat if he saw a car parked outside the house?” Drake asked. “This is meant to be a stakeout you know – like, undercover?”

  Walking back towards them, I looked at Drake and said, “Listen to me, kid, I don’t know what it was like working for Harker, but I ain’t taking orders from you. The only person giving the orders out around here is gonna be me. Understand?”

  “We are going to go on foot though,” Madison smiled at me with those eyes of hers. I wished she would stop doing that. It made me feel uncomfortable, like she was looking into my soul or something.

  “Of course we’re going on foot,” I growled.

  “Why were you going back to your car then?” Drake cut in and I couldn’t be sure if he was taking the piss or was he just a dumb arse.

  Either way, I prodded him in the chest with a finger and said, “Look here, smart mouth, I’m getting pretty sick of you already. If you know what’s best for you, keep your trap shut and do as I tell you. I still haven’t forgotten how you pushed my friend into that corpse. So unless you want to end up like that body in the underpass, do yourself a favour and keep out of my face, okay?”

  “Whatever you say, boss. You’re the boss, boss,” Drake said.

  “See, there you go again!” I snapped at him.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean, boss,” Drake said.

  “You even say boss like a wise arse,” I shot back at him.

  “I don’t know what you mean b-” Drake started again.

  “Did I say you had to call me boss?”

  “It’s just that I thought…”

  “Don’t think!” I barked. “Just do as I say and we’ll get along just fine.”

  “Whatever you say,” Drake said.

  I glanced at Madison and she was smiling. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she smiled back.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realise that I was some sort of freaking comedian. Let’s see if you think it’s so funny when another one of those dead kids shows up. Jesus, no wonder you amateurs haven’t caught this piece of scum yet –
you’re probably all too busy sitting round cracking jokes and taking the piss to do any real police work.”

  “You are funny though,” she half-laughed. “It’s just that when you get angry, your jaw goes all tense and your nostrils flare out at the sides.”

  “Oh yeah, how very amusing,” I remarked. “I think you two clowns are funny – not ha-ha funny – but fucked-in-the-head funny! Now, if you two have quite finished doing your Laurel and Hardy impersonations, we’ve got a killer to catch!”

  Without waiting for a reply from either of them, I walked away from the car.

  “Wait up!” Madison called after me.

  “For what?” I shouted back, pausing to light a cigarette.

  “We need to get changed out of our uniforms,” Madison said.

  “Why?” I asked, turning to look at her.

  “We’re wearing fluorescent police jackets,” Drake cut in. “They’d stick out a mile on our stake -”

  “You’ve got five minutes,” I said, blowing smoke into the night.

  7

  I’d smoked another two cigarettes by the time Madison and Drake finished screwing about with their kit. Climbing from a nearby police van, I could see they were both now dressed in all black and each had a rucksack thrown over their backs.

  It was only now that they were out of their uniforms that I could see how tall Madison was. She strode towards me on legs that seemed to go on forever. She was as tall as me at six-foot-two and I wondered if, in fact, she was an inch or so taller. It was as if she had grown a few inches – they both had – in the short space of time that I’d been waiting for them. Without his police helmet on, I could see Drake had his hair in a crew cut, something a Marine would have. His black jacket and the way he had his combat trousers stuffed into his black military style-boots made him look like some Steven Segal wannabe. Although Madison was dressed identically, I couldn’t help but notice, despite the fact that she was a Lycanthrope, how fit she looked. Without her police cap, a fountain of long, blond hair spilled onto her shoulders and down her back. Now that the bulky yellow police coat had gone, I could see that she had a hot figure and legs long enough to wrap all the way around me. Even though I knew she was a werewolf, I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly beautiful she was.

  I buried any feelings that might be twitching inside me and reminded myself that she had once been a child killer just like the Lycanthrope we were heading off to hunt down and kill. And even if she hadn’t have been a killer, she had a hairy tongue for crying out loud, and that was enough to put any man off.

  They strode towards me. Madison asked, “Ready?” then fixed me with that stare and that smile of hers.

  “I’ve been ready for the last half an hour” I snapped, throwing my half-smoked cigarette away.

  “Then let’s get going,” Drake said, striding away into the night.

  Madison and I set off after him as he led us away from the railway station and onto a road that twisted away into the dark.

  “Wouldn’t it be quicker to fly?” I asked Madison. “I do have wings, you know.”

  “We don’t,” she said back as she walked along beside me.

  “How about wolfing-out or whatever it is you do? I mean you can run fast, right?” I asked her.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m fast,” she smiled at me. “But it doesn’t work like that. I’ve got to be worked-up – angry or excited - before I change,” she said, her eyes twinkling as she glanced at me.

  Was she flirting with me? I wasn’t sure – but either way I was going to play along. So I asked, “Like ‘The Hulk’?”

  “The what?” she asked, sounding bemused.

  “You know, the guy who turns into the big green dude when someone pisses him off?”

  “I don’t know any big green men,” she said, and again I couldn’t tell if she was trying to be funny or serious.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told her, looking ahead into the dark.

  There was a wooden gate ahead set into the stone wall that ran alongside this particular stretch of country road. Reaching it, Drake bounded over the gate in one leap and landed in the field on the other side. Madison and I followed. The field rose steadily higher as we made our way across it, and on the other side there was a small woods. The moon sat fat and round overhead, and the night was so clear that I could see grey mottled patches on its surface. Its pale, milky light lit our way across the field, and as we entered the woods, it shone through the trees in narrow shafts.

  We walked in silence, and apart from the gentle stirring of trees in the wind, the only other sound I could hear was the occasional rustling of leaves and brush as wild animals darted back and forth amongst the undergrowth. It took about half an hour of brisk walking to reach the other side of the woods, and as we did, Drake, who was ahead, raised his hand into the air for us to stop.

  Standing next to him, Drake said, catching his breath, “We’re here.”

  Looking ahead, I could see a clearing, and at its centre sat a small house. Immediately, I thought of the story ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ and wondered if Grandma was at home. But the house didn’t look very welcoming. It was made from slabs of dark grey stone, and it leaned to the left, as if it were being pushed over by some giant invisible finger. The roof was thatched, but in places, the straw was non-existent, leaving holes that looked like giant, empty eye sockets.

  I could see three upper windows which were smeared with grime and dirt. There were two windows on the ground level on either side of an ancient-looking wooden door. Wild ivy grew up and over the front of the house like a cancer. A cobbled path led to the front of the house, but most of it was covered with weeds and brambles. Now, I’ve never been a superstitious type, I don’t believe in ghosts, ghouls, or Father Christmas, but if there ever was a place that was going to be haunted, alive with evil spirits and demons, this was the place. It’s hard to describe, but it was like a blackness seeped from between the cracks in the stone from beneath the front door and from the holes in the roof. It was like it was reaching out for me – trying to grab my heart and turn it cold – so cold that it would stop.

  “Nice place, huh?” Madison said, nudging me gently in the ribs.

  “I’ve taken vacations in nicer places. Not a lot nicer, but I’ve never seen anything like this before,” I whispered.

  “The place is evil,” Drake said as if talking to himself. “The devil lives here.”

  “I admit that the place doesn’t look overly-inviting – but the devil?” I said. “I don’t believe in him.”

  Then looking me straight in the eyes, Madison said, “You will by the time you leave this place, Potter, believe me. You’ll know the devil is real.” This time that beautiful smile of hers had vanished, and the sparkle in her eyes had been replaced with fear.

  8

  To be honest, not much scared me. But this house was different. Scared was probably the wrong word; “on edge” is probably the best way to describe how I was feeling as we made our way up the overgrown path to the rickety old front door. There was a smell too. If there was ever a smell of rot and decay, then it was here, emanating from this house in waves.

  Drake led the way, and Madison and I followed close behind. As we drew near to the Wolf House, I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness – a feeling that I had only ever really felt once before, and a fleeting image of a girl I had once known called Sophie passed across the front of my mind. I didn’t want to be reminded of her, so I pushed her face away along with the feeling of sadness.

  Drake reached the door and looked back over his shoulder at us.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “For what?” I shot back.

  “I dunno. I’m just asking – are you ready?”

  I glanced sideways at Madison and she shot me a quick look. “Oh for crying out loud,” I groaned. “We’re not a bunch of five-year-olds!” Brushing past him, I pushed open the front door. It seemed to make a crying noise as it opened, a sound similar to the ones I imagine
d the children who had died in this house had once made. If I thought the smell outside had been bad, the horrible odour that hit me as I pushed the door open was almost suffocating. It was rancid. Grimacing, I covered my nose with the back of my hand and stepped inside. Drake and Madison followed.

  Moonlight crept in through the filthy windows but did nothing to light the place. Reaching into their rucksacks, Drake and Madison both produced flashlights. Switching them on, they splashed cones of white light across the floors and walls of the house.

  “Don’t s’pose you’ve got a spare one of those?” I asked them.

  Madison shook her head, and Drake replied, “Don’t you have one of your own? I thought you were a cop. All cops have flashlights, don’t they?”

  “Not this one,” I grumbled, taking my Zippo lighter from my coat pocket.

  “It’s standard equipment…” Drake started up again, but I couldn’t be bothered to listen to his whining and walked away.

  Holding my lighter up, I moved across the small, poky lounge we found ourselves in. I hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t what my lighter and the torches were now revealing to me. The outside of the house looked in complete disrepair, but the inside looked surprisingly better kept. Although the place smelled like some maggot-infested shit-hole, the walls were covered in flower-patterned wallpaper. In some places, it hung from the walls in damp strips, revealing black patches of mildew that resembled giant bruises. Thick cobwebs swung from the corners of the room like drapes, and I could hear the distant sound of rats scuttling around beneath the wooden floorboards.

  The room had furniture that looked as if it had just been yanked from a dumpster. It was old, dirty, and dusty, but still looked strong enough to support someone’s weight. I could see a small two-seater sofa, two arm chairs, and a small coffee table. This was covered in so much dust that it looked like topsoil. On the table was a book, which had been left open but facedown so the cover was staring up at me. I glanced down and looked at the cover. It read, Dark Enlightenment by Kaycee Smith