“This was last night?”
“Yes. About ten o’clock. I stood at the door waiting, but she didn’t come back. I called her. Went down with a torch to find her.” Javeen’s stomach knots. “The garden backs onto the woods but there’s a hedge at the bottom and a gate. She was nowhere, Jav. Do you think it was those lynxes?” His voice rises in pitch. “I’m not buying into the whole ‘wolfman’ hysteria. Do you think they could have attacked her like they did Thomas Burdon’s sheep?”
“I-”
The figures of Billy Oldfield, Jack Renwick, and Simon Carter darken the door’s window. Javeen unlocks the door, asks them to take a seat.
“People are arriving, Andy … Can we talk afterwards?” He nods and takes a seat as more villagers arrive. Low chatter fills the room, mingling with a hum of anxiety and tension. People smile politely at one another, though no one laughs, and Javeen wonders what gossip has gotten around so far. Billy Oldfield had walked in with a new confidence, shoulders squared – a man vindicated. Beside him, his wife Kathy helps the Reverend Baxter to sit.
By nine o’clock, the small village hall is full, although she estimates that at least half of the villagers have remained at home. She checks across the room, taking in the sea of faces. At some point it would be useful to take down their names, an inventory of sorts, in case any one else went missing.
Moving to the front of the hall, the room falls silent. She coughs to clear her throat. “First of all, I’d like to thank you all for coming here this morning. I realise that my call for a meeting was short notice and likely to have caused a good deal of anxiety. I apologise for that.” She scans the room, shoulders back, making eye contact where possible—making her best effort to appear in control, the voice of authority, despite the tremors that run through her fingers and seem to shoot up her arms. She takes a breath. There was no point hiding the truth, keeping it from them. She’d thought hard about how to present the information to the villagers, she doesn’t want to frighten them, but they need to realise just how much danger they are now in. “There is no easy way to say this, but the exit routes out of the village appear to have been blocked off.” A murmur spreads through the crowd.
You called us here to tell us about roadworks?”
“Not just roadworks. There’s something up in the woods.”
“Yeah. Wild bloody animals that have no place in the forest. Lynx UK-”
She tries again. “The road to Stannersburn has been blocked.”
“You’re not wrong. But why the hell you have to call a meeting about that-”
“Listen to the girl.”
“Pah! You listen. I tried to get through last night. I tried the old road as well. The same. It’s just roadworks. I even talked to the workmen. They’re doing it at night so as to cause the least amount of disruption.”
Murmurs.
Javeen remains silent and looks out across the gathering. They had to be told. She stuffs trembling hands back down into her pockets, fingers the handle of the knife. The room fills with murmurs. She coughs. “It’s not just … They’re not roadworkers.” The room quietens.
“Well who the hell are they?”
“Two days ago,” she scans the room, cheeks burning – this was going to sound outrageous, unbelievable, they would think she was lying. “Two days ago I entered Kielder Forest to the west of the village with PC Stuart Langton in order to commence search efforts for Lois Maybank and … another missing girl.”
“Two girls!”
A mumble shifts across the crowd then dies to silence as she continues.
“One of the girls was found.” A relieved murmur. “Unfortunately, the girl appears to have been mauled to death and has died of her injuries.” She won’t tell them poor Anita had been eviscerated, her entrails and organs missing.
Gasps.
“It’s them lynxes. Burdon lost three sheep—gutted they were.”
The noise level in the room increases. Javeen holds a hand up and it quietens once more.
“There is evidence to suggest that a lynx, perhaps more than one, has been set free within Kielder.”
“Told you! I told you.”
Javeen holds her right arm up again. “However, there is something far more dangerous in the woods than a lynx. The girl PC Stangton and I found had been … mutilated, and I believe it was by the same creature that killed Mr James Kendrick.”
Another gasp. “Jim’s dead?”
“What about his girl? His daughter’s missing too. Is she dead?”
“I can only confirm that Mr Kendrick is dead. Killed by the same … monster-”
“Monster!”
“Monsters! For crying out loud. What are you talking about?”
“She means a killer. Is there a serial killer out in the woods?”
Javeen takes a deep breath. Killers – plural – but not the type you’re thinking of. “I have reason to believe …” No, not reason to believe, you know! She takes another breath. What she’s about to tell them is beyond belief—they’ll think she’s a raving lunatic. They might laugh at her. Dismiss her.
Thud!
3
Javeen startles as the door swings open - why the hell wasn’t it locked? - and sighs with relief as Freddie Barnes steps into the hall, clutching Hayley Wilson to his side, and the door bangs shut.
“Mr Barnes, could you please, lock the door.” Javeen ignores the frowns from Conrad Shelby in the front row as he reacts to the high pitch of her voice.
Without noticing Javeen’s request, Freddie strides across the room clasping Hayley close to his body, his hand locked to hers, his frown set with deep crevices between his eyes. His body language screams discomfort.
She tries again. Louder this time. “Mr. Barnes. Could you lock the door behind you? Please?”
A murmur through the group.
“She’s locking us in!”
“What the hell is going on?’
Freddie catches her gaze, nods, pulls Hayley with him back to the door, and turns the keys in the lock.
The tightness across Javeen’s shoulders bites as she waits for Freddie and Hayley to settle at the end of the first row of chairs before speaking once more. She takes a breath and continues to address the villagers. “Yesterday, I entered Kielder Forest to the west of the village along with a team of police officers in order to locate the body of the murdered girl as well as to search for Doctor Max Anderson and Lois Maybank, both of whom had been reported as missing.” She stops to catch her breath and let the information sink in. The room is attentive, all chatter stopped. “The team consisted of four police officers and a police dog.” She swallows, forcing down the quiver rising in her throat. “I am the only one who returned alive.”
The room gives a collective gasp then erupts into noise as a barrage of questions is thrown at her.
“Who killed them?”
“What the hell killed that many people?”
Chairs scrape.
“Are we safe?”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Please … Please. Let me speak. I can only answer your questions one at a time.”
“Let her speak!” Billy Oldfield bellows as he stands. “There are monsters up in the forest. I’ve seen one.” The room quiets. “Nobody would believe me, and yes, I admit I was drunk, but I saw what I saw.”
Kathy rises beside him. “Emily Carmichael’s seen it too. And so has Reverend Baxter.” She gestures to the elderly man in the seat beside her. “He’s seen it up close. You have, haven’t you Reverend.” The room lulls to silence.
With effort, and the help of Kathy at his elbow, the Reverend Baxter stands and turns to face the villagers. “I saw two of them. They came into the churchyard and walked right up to me. They … seemed to be to be human, but so much changed that you could no longer believe that they were.”
“I told you! I told you!” Billy shouts.
“If they’re not human, then what are they?”
“They … I
do believe the male was Max Anderson-”
A snort of derision.
“The woman looked,” he swallows, “though her face was distorted, the creature looked like Lois Maybank, Marjory’s daughter.”
The room erupts once more.
“If I could ask for quiet, please!” Javeen shouts above the noise then waits for quiet to return. “I understand that this all sounds … fantastical-”
“A horror movie, more like.”
Javeen continues. “I am able to corroborate the Reverend’s experience with my own. The three creatures-”
“Three!”
“The three creatures that attacked the team of police officers in the woodlands did bear striking similarities to Doctor Anderson and Lois Maybank.”
“The other? You said three.”
“The other, I now believe to be nurse Kelly Gray.”
“Iain said she’d been bitten.”
“Where is Iain.”
“He went up to the cottage after we were in the police station yesterday.”
“Did he come back?”
Fear ripples through the room.
“What do these creatures look like?”
“Well …” Javeen hesitates. What she’s about to say sounds ridiculous even to her own ears.” “Well, they seem to be mutated-”
“Mutated! What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Please, PC Latimer. Ignore them. Explain what you mean by ‘mutated’.”
“Well, and I know how this sounds, it’s hard to believe, even I struggle, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“Get on with it!”
She won’t hold back, no matter how odd it sounds. “They have fangs-”
“Fangs! She’s really taking the piss now.”
“And their eyes are … God, their eyes are monstrous—filled with blood-”
“This is a joke! It has to be.”
“And … and they’re covered with hair.”
“Shut up, Latimer. You know this is bollocks, right? She’s talking bollocks. It’s a cover up. How much did they pay you Latimer? Hey?”
“Cover up? What are you talk-”
“The Lynx Trust? Huh? How much did they pay you to make up this cock-and-bull story? They killed my sheep, them lynxes did, and you’re here trying to cover it up. They won’t get away with it, I promise you.”
“Mr. Burdon. I assure you-”
The room erupts. A woman begins to cry, and grabs her husband’s coat. He slips his arm around her. He turns to the room with a snarl, “Shut up, the lot of you.”
Chaos! It’s turning into chaos. In all of her imaginings of how this would go, this is not a scenario she had imagined. Panic? Yes. Tears? Yes. Anger? Yes. Disbelief and being accused of lying, and worse, being part of a cover up? No.
“Honestly, Mr. Burdon, I-”
Freddie Barnes moves from his position against the wall, steps next to Javeen, and faces the villagers. “She’s telling the truth.”
Despite the boom of his voice, the noise in the room is too loud, the people too concerned with voicing their opinions, to listen. He shouts louder this time, his voice a deep rumble. “She is … telling … the truth.” The bickering and worried voices stop. All eyes turn to Freddie. “I saw them … this morning. When I left for the rig, it was still dark, and I was followed out of the village by two … creatures … female creatures. One of them tried to pull me from my bike.”
“Rubbish!”
Freddie shrugs his overcoat from his shoulders and turns his back to the crowd. Beneath the overcoat, his jacket flaps where the leather has been slashed.
“Followed out of the village?”
Javeen can hardly breathe.
“Fake! He’s in on it too.”
“Freddie would never lie about a thing like that!” Hayley shouts and steps beside him.
“Oh, really? Him and his mate Craig are well known about the village for their pranks. He’s the first to brag about the latest stunt they’ve pulled.”
“Show them, Freddie! Show them what the monsters did to you.”
Silence.
Freddie shrugs off his leather jacket. Beneath it is an undamaged shirt.
“See! See, I told you. He’s a fraud.”
Freddie turns to face the crowd and begins to unbutton his shirt. Javeen has the uncomfortable feeling of hysteria rising once more. The thought of this man, undressing as though for a striptease, in the village hall in front of the Reverend and a large collection of his godly congregation, makes her want to squeal with laughter. She takes a breath. Hysteria, it seems, is an affliction that this new level of stress has birthed within her. As the final button is undone, a collective gasp, along with a titter from one of the older ladies, rises. The man is broad-shouldered, with abs you could run your fingers over. Freddie turns and shrugs the shirt from his shoulders – his very muscular and tanned shoulders – Javeen bites her lips, hoping that Andy can’t see the rise of a flush on her cheeks. The room gasps. Beneath the shirt, scratches, nearly as long as the ones on his jacket, rise as red welts along his back. She grimaces; they really should be seen to by a doctor.
“Freddie, those wounds need-” A sudden thought rocks her senses. “Freddie … did they bite you?”
Their eyes lock. Javeen pushes down the urge to run out of the hall whilst simultaneously scanning his body and calculating the time between the attack and now. Jenny had turned to so quickly, and Freddie looks normal without a sign of blood in his eyes.
“No. Just scratched.”
Javeen can’t hide her relief. “Thank God!”
“More like thank Kawasaki.”
“Huh?” Javeen scans her memory for the deity Kawasaki.
“My bike.”
Javeen sinks a little – idiot!
“It’s fast—that’s all that saved me.”
Freddie faces the villagers as he pulls his shirt back over his shoulders. “These creatures are real. I know it seems impossible—like something out of a film, but two creatures ran after me out of the village, tried to pull me off my bike. I was doing about forty-”
A snort. “Forty miles per hour? Nothing can go that fast.”
“A leopard can.”
A murmur.
“Perhaps one escaped from a zoo?”
“They weren’t leopards. The only reason I got away was because the bike could go faster. I lost them at about sixty.”
“Impossible!”
“Jesus Christ!”
“So, we’re talking about … werewolves?”
“I don’t know if they were, but the women that chased me had fangs, and like PC Latimer said, their eyes were just black, and they were covered in hairs too.”
“Naked?”
“Yes.”
Sniggers.
“So,” a teenage boy pipes up. “They were hairy … down there?” He gestures to his groin.
“Kyle!” The boy’s mother glares. He lowers his head, and sniggers into his chest, his shoulders heaving.
“Sorry!” the mother offers. “He’s just immature.” She glares once more at her son, then trains her eyes on Javeen, waiting for her to continue.
“I know how this sounds. But I believe we are all in grave danger from these …” She can’t say it.
“Wolfmen.” Kathy offers. “That’s what Emily called them.”
“They do look a bit wolfish.”
“OK. Wolfmen.”
“What do you suggest we do?” Conrad Shelby hugs his wife a little closer as he stares directly at Javeen. From his face, she can tell he’s genuinely concerned, not confrontational like some of the others. She can understand their disbelief, she can even understand the way their fear is presenting as anger, an anger that is directed towards herself.
“The first thing we need to do is secure our properties—make them as safe as possible. Don’t go out alone. Don’t go out without some form of protection. Keep to the curfew.”
“Is that it? That’s your great p
lan to save us against these ‘wolfmen’ that you’ve admitted killed an entire team of police officers, savaged a poor, innocent girl to death, and ran at speeds no human could achieve when they tried to attack Freddie?”
Javeen shakes her head. Poor, poor Anita. What else can they do? She searches for an answer. Struggles.
“And don’t forget Jimbob!”
“Yes, and they killed Jimbob.”
“We need to get out of the village. Not sit here waiting to be attacked.”
“We need to evacuate.”
“But aren’t the roads closed off?”
Chairs scrape against the floorboards.
“It’s just roadworks.”
People stand then make their way with hurried steps to the door.
“No!” Javeen shouts. “Please! Everyone, sit down.” Javeen is losing control. As more people head for the door, her plea is drowned out by the excited, fearful chatter of the villagers. Some remain sitting, some look around, pondering what to do. “They’re not roadworkers. Please. Sit down.” The hall empties and, unheeded, Javeen runs fingers through hair that has been neither washed nor brushed. Her fingers pull at the strands making it even more dishevelled. Only seven people remain; Billy and Kathy Oldfield, The Reverend Baxter, Freddie Barnes, Hayley Wilson, Andy, and herself.
“That went well.”
Javeen sags and sits down with a thud.
“What now?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
4
Matilda ‘Tilly’ Stangton pushes out through the village hall doors into the cold November morning. Where the hell was Stuart? Javeen had assured her that he hadn’t accompanied her into the woodlands where the other officers were killed – her knees buckle – she leans up against the wall. She’d said he’d gone into town but not returned. Now, given what she’d heard in the village hall, how Freddie Barnes had been attacked as he’d tried to leave the village, she’s almost certain something has happened to Stuart on his way to town. Her mind searches for an explanation. Unable to stomach any of them, she grows numb. One thing is for sure. She isn’t going to wait in the village for whatever lies in the woods to kill her too. She grabs Barry Johnson’s sleeve as he pushes past.
Caged: An Apocalyptic Horror Series (The Wolfmen of Kielder Book 2) Page 2