The Curse of Moose Lake (International Monster Slayers Book 1)

by Bethany Helwig

  “Underground is real,” Hawk argues, flipping his cell phone over and over until he almost drops it.

  Agent Snow snatches the cell phone out of Hawk’s hand and sticks it in the top of his duffel bag. “Not out here it isn’t, and you’d better remember that.”

  The door to the cabin creaks open and we all stop to stare. A man steps out in a flannel plaid shirt carrying a dead rabbit by its ears. His gray hair falls a good two inches past his ears and waves lifeless in the breeze. Scruff covers his jaw, building up into a goatee around his thin mouth. His dark eyes are nearly hidden beneath his low brow and, with his wrinkles, it looks like he’s been stuck squinting his entire life. He stares at us for a whole silent minute before suddenly turning and whipping the dead rabbit through the air. It sails above us and crashes into the pines, hitting a trunk with a loud thump and catching branch after branch until it hits the ground. Despite feeling a little disturbed, I have the urge to laugh but bite my lip to hold it back.

  “I thought they were sending me agents,” the man growls, his voice deep and scratchy. “Not some snot-nosed kids.”

  “We’re not kids,” I snap.

  His eyes widen just enough so I can actually see his entire pupils. “Oh? How old are you exactly?”

  “We’re seventeen.”

  “Well, unless the definition of adult has changed recently, I’m pretty sure you’re still kids.” He turns to Agent Snow, ignoring us. “Really? Since when does the IMS let kids work topside for them?”

  Agent Snow just pulls out a file from the backpack he’s holding and passes it over. My face burns when I catch a glimpse of my photograph at the top of the file. I wonder how much of my history is in that flimsy manila folder. How much of my life have they kept track of?

  “Phoenix Mason,” the old man drones, pronouncing each syllable with a kind of mean humor. “Hawk Mason. These are your real names?”

  “Our parents had a bird fetish,” Hawk says calmly and crosses his arms over his chest. “You still haven’t told us your name.”

  At that Agent Snow smiles and starts to backtrack. “I’ll let you three have fun. Everything you need is in the file, Agent Jefferson Abraham Barnes.”

  He chuckles and jumps into the SUV, quickly throwing it into drive, and rolling down the driveway, leaving us quite alone and forsaken.

  “So,” I say, dropping my bag and crossing my arms as well. “Jefferson Abraham Barnes.” I say his name in the same distasteful way he did mine.

  “A president fetish is better than stupid birds,” he mumbles. He slaps the file closed and retreats into the cabin without another word. We pick up our bags and follow him inside.

  Considering what the outside is like, I shouldn’t be surprised by the inside but I still am. It’s tight, cramped, and messy. Of course, maybe it wouldn’t feel so small if there weren’t so many random boxes overflowing with paper everywhere. They sit haphazardly on a table, across the narrow kitchen counter allowing just enough room for a pile of dirty dishes, and are stacked precariously as a couple of towers against the far wall. Three doorways split off from the main entrance and there are visible trails through the paper to get to each.

  “So, was this paper fort on purpose or the cause of a troll hoarder sneaking in here every night?” Hawk says, gazing up and all around.

  Jefferson ignores him and stands in the center of one of the aisles paging through our file. I puff out my mouth, anxiety levels rising already, and pick up a random sheet of paper from a stack. It’s a list of prescriptions and patients out of a local family clinic. From what I can tell, all the prescriptions are for the werewolf serum from different pharmaceutical companies. Werevine Pharmaceutical is prominent on the list. I swallow and put the paper back on its loose stack.

  “Does it say what our mission is?” I ask in the hope of prompting a response while thumbing through some other miscellaneous papers.

  “Mission?” Jefferson looks at me over the top of the file. “There are no missions out here, little girl. We don’t chase after harpies, put down hydra, or even find trolls in the garbage. No, the Moose Lake Field Office handles one problem and one problem only. Werewolves.”

  I can sense Hawk tense without even looking at him.

  “Werewolves aren’t classified as true monsters,” I say. “Under Title 51, subtitle 6, chapter 606—”

  “Beings infected with magical decay but are not, by their own nature, of malice or perceived to be hostile. I know the law.” Jefferson closes the file again and tosses it onto a nearby stack. “Our job isn’t to kill them, it’s to regulate them. Do you know how easy it is to spread the werewolf disease? Now throw in a bunch of teenagers that don’t care and a pack of toddlers who don’t know the difference. It’s a population explosion.” He throws his hands up and accidently disturbs a pile of papers, turning them into an avalanche at his feet. He nonchalantly steps out of the mess and continues on.

  “What do you think all this paperwork is about? I’ve been trying to handle it on my own, making sure each one gets the serum so they don’t go wolf crazy out in the woods. It’s for their safety and the safety of the whole city.”

  I gaze around at the thousands of sheets littered everywhere. “How on earth do you keep track of any of this?”

  “Can’t you just put it all into a computer?” Hawk says.

  Jefferson brushes away some leaflets to uncover a tan box. “The stupid thing hasn’t been working and I don’t trust computers. Hard copies are always better.”

  He turns it slightly so I can see the box is actually a monitor. It’s sitting on an equally large box that is the computer itself. I push my palm against my forehead. I sense a headache coming on.

  “Well, you better stow your things so you can get to work,” Jefferson says.

  “Work on what?” Hawk asks.

  His laughter is absolutely no comfort. “Organizing!” Jefferson points to the first door before vanishing through the second and slamming it behind him.

  Hawk looks to me and shrugs. “It could be worse?”

  “Yeah,” I say and head for the first door. “We could be dead.”

  I push it open with my foot and flick on the light. There’s more paper stuffed in here too, so much in fact that it takes me a moment to realize this is a bedroom. A set of bunk beds is pushed against the wall and there’s a single wooden dresser hardly visible beneath more boxes. With a sigh I wade through and open the shade on the only window. It creaks and a waterfall of dust rolls off of it. The window itself is cracked and kept together by a mix of duct tape and hard white paste. I peer through its frosty surface to the barn behind the cabin and a system of pulleys set up in a flat backyard. I can’t be sure but it looks like a homemade firing range.

  “Charming place,” Hawk says behind me. He throws his bag onto the bottom bunk and a cloud of dust rises making us both cough. He waves the cloud away with his hand and sputters, “It’s like a soft blanket of flaky, dead people on everything. Nice and homey.”

  “Piping Pan!” I cough and let my bag slide to the floor. “It’s like a person disintegrated on the bed. We should have packed our bed sets.”

  “Oh, we’ll be fine,” Hawk says and tries to brush off the thick layer of dust but just creates a bigger cloud. We escape the room to the breathable air of the main area and stare around at the paper.

  “Think we’ll find a body under all this?” I ask.

  “Probably two,” Hawk says.

  The door behind us swings open with the unpleasant smell of a used bathroom and Jefferson rejoins us. “Not human bodies any way. I think I heard a mouse trap go off about three weeks ago.”

  Hawk sniffs and wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, that sounds about right. And whatever just died in the bathroom.”

  “Everybody poops, kid.” Jefferson fans a newspaper in front of his face then heads for the front door. “You two better get started on that. Best to sort them alphabetically, I think.”

  “Where are you going?” I ask loudly
before he abandons us.

  “I’ll be back at dusk,” he says over his shoulder and disappears outside.

  Silence follows. I brace myself against the back of a chair sticking out from the mountains of paper. I feel dizzy and angry. Just this morning we had a dragon backing us up and remanding the director on our behalf. Now we’re stuck handling the Rockies of paperwork in a dusty, smelly, old cabin bound to collapse on top of us at any moment. My throat starts to constrict and I’m desperately homesick.

  I look to my brother for some kind of support. He looks just as upset, arms tight across his chest and his mouth a thin line.

  “I’m hungry,” he says. “Think there’s anything edible in the fridge?”

  Leave it to my brother to break my shell. I start to laugh and clamp a hand over my mouth. He throws me a big smile and steps carefully over to the fridge that looks like a gigantic bar of soap.

  “Probably not,” I say, still laughing. “What do you want to bet there’s paper folded up to look like food?”

  He shuffles paper blocking the door with his foot and yanks it open, bending down to peer inside. “Well, I think he’s got enough alcohol in here to make a giant pass out. And Mr. Presidents-Man seems to like leftovers as much as paper. It’s like a temple in here.”

  He pulls out a white Styrofoam container, opens it, and then holds it out so I can have a look.

  “Great,” I mutter. “Unidentifiable meat. It could be one of the mice he’s trapped in here.”

  My brother lifts it to his nose and takes a deep whiff. He shakes his head and stuffs it back in the fridge. “Just venison.”

  Sometimes I forget how good his sense of smell is. Eventually, after hunting through the cupboards, we find a bag of only slightly stale chips. We split the bag and inspect the rest of the cabin. It’s obvious Hawk and I will have to share the one room with the bunk beds. The only other rooms are the bathroom, complete with a stained washer and dryer squeezed in next to the toilet, and Jefferson’s room. His is the only room that doesn’t have paper in it. In fact, the room is mostly bare except for a locked gun cabinet and a picture of a little girl riding a pink bike with her two braids flying behind her.

  “His daughter?” Hawk suggests. “Niece? Dead girl buried under the paper?”

  “Only one way to find out,” I sigh.

  We tackle our designated bedroom first. The piles of paper and boxes are pushed out and, after Hawk’s suggestion, placed inside Jefferson’s room. As he says, Jefferson is clearly lacking a healthy amount of paper. We rip the bedding off the bunks and beat the dust out of them outside. Once we have a decent place to sleep, we both bunch up around the computer and press buttons but can’t get it to turn on. It’s older than any computer either of us is used to and after ten minutes we give up.

  The door creaks open and Jefferson stomps in, his boots covered in mud and leaves. He pulls them off and sets them at the door, walks in, stops at the fridge, turns around, and freezes when he sees us as if he had forgotten we were even there. He blinks, then steps around us muttering into his bedroom. I lean back—Hawk mimics me—to peek into the other room. Jefferson fumbles with the lock on his gun safe but eventually cracks it open and pulls out a camera. He fishes a card out of his pocket, shoves it into a slot on the back, and starts scrolling through pictures. Hawk shrugs at me.

  “Uh, Agent Barnes?” I say loudly, in case he tries to ignore me again. “What are you doing?”

  He holds up the camera and shakes it. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m looking at pictures.”

  “Of what?”

  “My game cams I have set on the back forty acres,” Jefferson says and keeps clicking through the pictures on his camera. “Considering the amount of wolf tracks back there, I had a feeling I’d be able to snap a photo of the culprits killing livestock in the area.”

  Hawk shakes his head and moves to lean against the open doorframe. “It has to be regular wolves. Werewolves that take the serum keep their human minds when they transform. They wouldn’t be killing cows or whatever.”

  Jefferson jerks his pointer finger in Hawk’s direction without looking at him. “Firstly, step back out of my room.” He twitches his finger shooing Hawk. With a scowl my brother takes a few steps backwards. “Second, who’s to say there aren’t werewolves out there running around unaccounted for without the serum because their friends don’t want to rat them out?”

  “Why would anyone want to run around like an animal?” I argue. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  He rapidly hits a button on the camera then marches forward and shoves the lit screen under my nose. “Because some people get a high off the hunt.”

  I glare at him for a moment before taking the camera from him to get a better look at what he’s trying to show me. Hawk stands over my shoulder as well to see a pack of four wolves running through the trees. They’re frozen mid-stride in the picture. One is looking directly at the camera. There’s something odd about the eyes. The color and shape are all wrong. They’re human.

  “Werewolves,” I murmur.

  Jefferson snatches the camera back and nods. Sharing time over, he glances around at the piles of paper and snatches up our file that he left sitting out. I bite my lip—I should have looked at it when I had the chance. Stupid me.

  “I see you two have hardly done anything,” he grumbles.

  “If you haven’t noticed,” Hawk says, “There’s enough paper here to build another cabin.”

  “Then I suggest you get started.” He slams the door to his room, probably to keep us out, and shrugs past us to the fridge.

  I throw my hands up and slam them back down on a stack of paper. “You’re supposed to be training us, not turning us into your servants because you haven’t learned how to alphabetize your own crap!”

  He pulls out a Styrofoam box, balances his camera on top, and takes a bottle of beer before shutting the fridge with his foot. He points the bottle at me. “Half of being an agent is paperwork. Better get used to it now. If you want to do something else, then finish that first.”

  His squinty eyes flash over the pair of us before he stomps out of the house. I peer through the small window in the kitchen and watch him carry his dinner into the barn.

  “This is so bogus,” I growl.

  “We’re being punished, remember?” Hawk sighs. “We might as well get started. I have a feeling we won’t be going anywhere for a while.”

  The truth of that sinks in and I shuffle over to him morosely. The first thing we do is clear enough room around the computer and chair so it’s usable. I’m determined to hound Jefferson into getting it to work or getting a new one. I wish Witty was here—he can reanimate any dead computer.

  After we clear that small space, we start picking up random sheets of paper trying to figure out what we’re sorting. There are medical records, prescription lists, newspaper articles of wolf sightings, a few handwritten grocery lists, old credit card offers, and every kind of map imaginable for Moose Lake.

  “Does this guy throw anything out?” Hawk scoffs, tossing aside a letter promising $50,000 in cash if Mr. Barnes transfers money into some shady account for fees.

  By the time night has fallen we’ve barely made a dent. I glance out the window and the lights in the barn are still on. Jefferson hasn’t shown his face again since he went out there. We heat up one of his venison steaks after nearly blowing up the stove and find a can of orange pop in the back of the fridge that we share. We work another two hours under the dim light of an old incandescent bulb and manage to uncover a garbage bag beneath the mess that we dump all of Jefferson’s useless items into it.

  Moonlight creeps in through the window and we finally quit, both bearing paper-cuts on our hands. We turn out the lights in the cabin and I can still see light from the barn. A shadow moves now and again, which I assume is Jefferson working on something secret he doesn’t want us to know about.

  I’m nearly asleep in the top bunk when I hear howling in the
distance. The bunk below me creaks and I know Hawk is awake. The howling continues louder and is joined by others. Hawk exhales sharply and the floorboards squeak under his weight. I slide out of my bunk and hit the ground with a thud before he reaches the door.

  “Hawk?” I whisper. “Where are you going?”

  He pauses with his hand on the knob and looks back at me. His expression is one of pain. I close the distance between us and rest a hand on his shoulder. The howling only gets louder and I can feel his muscles coil under my palm. I mean to comfort him but it feels like I’m holding him back.

  He grits his teeth. “I haven’t had an urge like this in a long time,” he forces out and gives another big exhale.

  I tug his shoulder back and forth. He stands stiff and rocks with the movement. He’s like corded steel. “Who’s your family, Hawk?” I ask.

  He sighs. “You are.”

  “And who will always have your back? Me or a pack of psychopathic teenage werewolves?”

  My words hang between us and I can feel him start to relax. Sometimes I have to give him these reminders, ground him in the fact that he’s human and doesn’t answer to animal instincts. It’s been this way since he was first infected. I keep him focused. I’ve helped him through the hard times, held his hand when he needed it, stayed quiet during his darker days, or pushed him back into life when he deserved a kick in the butt.

  “You always have my back,” he says quietly. His hand falls from the door handle.

  I give his shoulders a squeeze and lean back with a smile. “Of course I do.”

  A loud crack makes us both jump. I swing around to the window and see Jefferson standing outside the barn, the door thrown back against the wall.

  “I know that’s you, Ben, and your flea-bitten friends!” he shouts towards the dark woods, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Go home or I’ll tell your mother!”

  The howling instantly stops and the silence is tangible. Jefferson stands in the glow coming from the barn for a moment longer before stomping back inside and slamming the door shut with another loud crack.