Monsterstreet #1

by J. H. Reynolds

  Soon, Jade’s cries turned to whimpers. Max could hear the panic in her voice. It was the sound of a creature that knew it was about to die.

  But the closer he came to it, the less it sounded like Jade.

  That’s—that’s an animal, he discerned.

  Right then, Max heard another sound. Deep, vicious growling. It rumbled like the engine of an old truck.

  Quickly, he hid behind a thicket of brush. He peeked through the mesh of limbs, and saw . . .

  The beast!

  Faint moonlight poured through an opening in the forest ceiling and illumined the spot where the werewolf stood. Its shoulders were as broad as a tractor. Its snout was as long as a ruler. Its ears were giant pyramids that reached up toward the treetops. And its fur—oh, that terrible, prickly fur—reminded Max more of a porcupine than a puppy. But most striking of all were its razor-sharp fangs, dripping with saliva as it used its giant paws to lift a baby deer toward its gullet!

  The deer whimpered helplessly.

  I can’t just let it die, Max thought, his heart chugging in his chest like a runaway train. If Jade were here, she’d do something.

  He reached down and felt the ground for a rock. Once he found one with jagged edges, he stood and hurled it with all his might.

  It bounced off the werewolf’s head, startling the beast.

  Max picked up another rock and threw it.

  And another.

  Until the werewolf dropped the baby deer, and the scared creature ran off into the woods. To safety.

  Furious, the werewolf sniffed the air, searching for the scent of its attacker. Max suspected the beast had night vision and could see in the dark. Unsure what to do, Max remained hidden behind the thicket, trying to hold his breath.

  Sniff!

  Sniff!!

  Sniff!!!

  The beast’s sniffs sounded like a bull about to charge. Max could hear its paws crunching over the fallen leaves on the other side of the tree. Tracking Max’s scent. Ready to pounce.

  Just as the beast arrived at the thicket, Max hurried and hid behind another tree. The beast sniffed the ground where Max had been standing, and Max knew he didn’t have much time. There were no other trees close enough to hide behind without the beast seeing him.

  With a shaky hand, Max lifted the silver knife from its sheath. He knew he’d only have one chance to pierce the werewolf’s heart.

  The beast growled, sensing Max was close by.

  It moved quicker.

  Louder.

  Nearer.

  And just as its monstrous eyes peeked around the tree, Max slashed the blade toward it, stabbing with all his might.

  The werewolf let out a terrible cry. “Arrooohhh!”

  Did I kill it? Max wondered. Did I stab its heart?

  Max stepped out from behind the tree to survey the wounded creature. But a chill crept over him like a blanket of ice.

  I—I missed! Max lamented.

  The knife had not pierced the werewolf’s heart, but now stuck out of its eye socket like an extension of a gross Halloween mask. Max panicked as he watched the beast yelping in pain as it tried to remove the dagger from its eye.

  Suddenly . . .

  The werewolf’s ears began to transform into human ears, and its paws into human hands.

  The silver must repel the beast’s nature and turn it back into its human form! Max thought in terror and excitement. Maybe that’s what my father’s experiment was all about!

  The werewolf turned and looked right at Max. It growled threateningly.

  Max froze, preparing for the beast’s revenge. He wanted to see the face of the hermit, the man who had killed his father.

  But before its human identity was revealed, it turned and darted off into the woods.

  Max wondered if he should track the beast and finish what his dad had started, but he suspected it was no use without the silver dagger.

  He felt his arms and legs to make sure he was still all in one piece and was surprised to find that there was not a scratch or a bite mark anywhere on his body.

  Soon, his thoughts turned back to Jade.

  I hope she escaped before the werewolf could get to her.

  Knowing he was also out of time to go look for the hoodie, he looked toward the horizon. It was just starting to turn a light blue color. Morning twilight.

  The sun will be rising soon, he thought. I need to get back to the cabin before Gramps and Grammy know that I’m gone.

  But it was already too late for that.

  17

  Telling the Truth

  When Max arrived back at the cabin, the sky was just beginning to lighten.

  Gramps was pacing back and forth on the porch with his rifle, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.

  At the sight of Max, the old man’s eyes widened.

  “Max!” he shouted. “Where have you been? We’ve been looking all over for you!”

  Max hurried toward him, and Gramps met him in the yard and hugged him tight.

  “I stabbed the werewolf!” Max declared, trying to catch his breath. “The hermit in the forest—he’s the beast!”

  “The forest?” Gramps asked, aghast.

  Max nodded, deciding to be honest this time.

  “How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of those woods?” Gramps shouted. “You’ve put us all in danger. Do you want to make the same mistakes as your father?”

  Max froze, unable to speak.

  The old man glared down at him.

  “Boy, you can’t realize what you’ve done. We locked you in your room last night to protect you from such dangers. After the incident with the chickens, we couldn’t risk another thing like that happening. Like I said, if your scent ever got into the forest—especially during the full moon—it’d be a danger for us all.”

  Max looked down at the ground, heavy with guilt.

  Gramps sighed.

  “What’s done is done,” the old man finally said. “Tonight’s the last night of the full moon. And the important thing is that you’re here now. What were you doing in the forest anyway?”

  “I was trying to find Jade and my hood—”

  “The girl next door?”

  “Yes. Have you seen her?”

  Gramps hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I saw her and her father getting into their truck not ten minutes ago. Said they were going on a last-minute vacation. They seemed in quite a hurry.”

  Vacation? Max thought, wondering why they would leave on such short notice.

  “But she never said anything to me about it,” Max said.

  Gramps shrugged.

  “I told you not to trust anyone around here.”

  He then led Max toward the porch steps and opened the front door for him.

  “Why don’t you go on upstairs and get some sleep? I’m sure you’re tired. I’ll make us some breakfast when you wake up,” Gramps said.

  “Where’s Grammy?” Max asked.

  “She’s not feeling well,” Gramps explained. “One of her migraines again. She’s going to need some bed rest today, but she’ll be back to normal in no time.”

  Max realized just how tired he was. He dragged himself upstairs to take a nap and stopped to peek inside his grandparents’ bedroom.

  The lights were off, and the room was pitch-dark. Grammy was lying in bed with her back to the door. Max could hear her softly moaning, so he closed the door so that he wouldn’t disturb her.

  Poor Grammy, he thought. I wish I could help her feel better.

  Just then, Max heard Gramps’s voice call to him from downstairs. Max peeked over the rails of the second-floor walkway and saw the old man standing below . . .

  “I almost forgot!” Gramps said. “I know things have been a bit strange around here, but Grammy and I should have your surprise ready for you tonight. We’ve been looking forward to it for a while, so no more sneaking away, okay?”

  Max nodded, feeling guilty again for having already looked inside the wood
en chest.

  He watched as Gramps’s shadow crawled across the den floor and disappeared into the next room.

  Exhausted, Max ambled toward his bedroom and plopped down on his bed.

  As soon as his head hit the pillow, he began to think about everything he had experienced since arriving on the farm.

  The hermit’s transformation.

  The bloody chicken coop.

  The werewolf he had stabbed.

  Somehow, he sensed they were all connected to his father’s death. And as he slipped away into a dark, dreamless sleep, he remembered again that the coming night was the final night of the full moon.

  When the new beast would arise.

  18

  Home Invasion

  After Max’s nap, Gramps made a big breakfast: bacon for himself, and eggs and chocolate-chip pancakes for Max.

  The two of them worked in the garden for the rest of the day, pulling up weeds, pruning the vegetables, and getting ready for harvest. All the while, Grammy rested inside the house.

  As Max worked, he thought about the werewolf he had stabbed. He wondered if it was lying dead somewhere in the woods, or if it had made it back to its shack. And then his thoughts turned to Jade and her father. He couldn’t figure out why they had left in such a hurry. Had they really decided to go on a last-minute vacation? Or had the hermit frightened them?

  That evening, just after sunset, Max sat down on the porch with a warm mug of pumpkin cider. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, then he lifted his father’s diary from the front pocket of his shirt. He wanted to know everything that his father knew about the beast and if there were any more clues about his experiment. Max hoped that Gramps and Grammy wouldn’t notice that the diary was missing from the chest.

  Just as he was about to open to the first page, he looked across the pumpkin patch at the Howlers’ house and saw a buttery light glowing in one of their downstairs windows.

  Maybe they came back early, he thought.

  Just then, he heard Gramps’s voice call to him from inside the cabin.

  “It’s gettin’ dark, boy! Ten more minutes, then you better come inside,” the old man said. “It’s almost time for your surprise.”

  Max reasoned that if he went back inside the house with Gramps, he might be locked up in his bedroom again for the night. But he needed to talk to Jade—and he knew this might be his only chance.

  He put the diary back in the front pocket of his shirt and snuck off the porch.

  A moment later, Max was rushing through the pumpkin patch, the autumn air licking his face and the scent of fallen leaves and pumpkin dust fuming into his nostrils.

  When he arrived on the Howlers’ front porch, he saw that the light was coming from the living room. But it didn’t look like anyone was home, and Max wondered if the light had accidentally been left on.

  Curious, he knocked on the door.

  No one came.

  He knocked again.

  Still, no answer.

  He decided to try the doorknob . . .

  When he turned it, to his great surprise, the door creaked open.

  The possibility of entering a house without being invited felt illegal.

  He stepped inside anyway and looked around.

  The air was warm, and he heard the heater wheezing in the nearby hallway. There, he saw dozens of framed photographs hanging on the wall, including a few of Jade’s mother holding her when she was a baby. Then he saw that there were lights on in not just one but several rooms.

  Maybe the Howlers forgot to turn them off before they left this morning, Max supposed.

  But as he searched through the house, he found more peculiar things . . .

  The pillows on the couch were all out of place. A cup of cold coffee sat on a wooden lampstand next to an open book. And an antique lamp was shattered on the ground next to an overturned chair, as if there had been a struggle of some kind.

  Strangest of all . . .

  Two plates sat on the dinner table. And they were both full of food.

  A fork was stuck into a pile of mashed potatoes, which had hardened like toasted meringue. And the water glasses were still full.

  It was almost as if the Howlers had left for their vacation right in the middle of a meal. Either that, or they had simply vanished into thin air.

  Maybe they heard the werewolf howling last night and decided to leave right away, Max thought, searching for a logical explanation.

  Max then heard an odd sound coming from the nearby closet in the entryway.

  Scratching. Desperate, spine-tingling scratching.

  It sounded like someone trapped in a coffin trying to claw their way out.

  He walked toward the sound.

  The scraping was coming from inside the closet.

  Was it Jade? Her father? Or perhaps . . .

  Max held his breath.

  Then he reached for the handle and turned it.

  19

  No Turning Back

  A creature was in the closet!

  A furry, black-eyed, long-tailed creature!

  Not just any creature, but a—

  Mouse?

  The tiny rodent scurried out of the unlit closet and ran right over Max’s shoe, causing him to jump in fright. It moved so fast that Max didn’t see where it went.

  He couldn’t help but feel silly for being so afraid of a mouse scratching on the closet door. But then he noticed something unexplainable.

  The closet was full of . . .

  Suitcases.

  They were all zipped up and stacked against one another like books on a bookshelf. A layer of dust blanketed the tops of them, as if they hadn’t been used in months or even years.

  Who goes on vacation without their suitcases? Max thought, wondering why Mr. Howler and Jade would lie to Gramps. Or . . . why Gramps would lie to Max.

  He glanced over at the lamp on the ground and then to the table of food. He began to put the puzzle pieces together just as he saw the full moon beginning to rise outside the window.

  That’s when he saw . . .

  Muddy paw prints.

  Leading out the back door.

  The hermit, Max thought. He probably took the Howlers back to his shack, and he’s going to eat them beneath the full moon tonight. If they’re still alive, there probably isn’t much time!

  Max ran into the kitchen, took a knife from the butcher block, and hurried out of the house.

  He thought about going to get Gramps, but he knew the old man would just lock him up again. And he couldn’t risk Gramps ruining his plan. So Max dashed across the field.

  Under the barbed-wire fence.

  And into the woods for the last time.

  Twilight dissolved, and darkness fell upon the earth like a plague. Max could feel the eyes of wild creatures watching him from every pocket of the woods. It made him feel vulnerable—like a sheep being led to slaughter.

  When he arrived at the hermit’s shack, he waited to see if there was any sign of movement inside. But there was no light. No shadows. The entire shanty seemed to be in slumber.

  Conjuring up his courage, Max approached the rotting structure.

  One step, two steps, three . . .

  An owl hooted nearby in warning.

  Max stepped onto the porch, and the old wood groaned beneath his feet.

  There’s no turning back now, he told himself.

  Max reached for the door and opened it. The smell of death rushed over him.

  The inside of the shack was dark, and Max couldn’t see anything. He felt along the walls with his hands until he stumbled upon a wooden dresser with a railroad lantern sitting atop it. He patted the top of the dresser, then frantically searched through the drawers, hoping to find a box of matches.

  The top drawer . . .

  The middle drawer . . .

  The bottom drawer . . .

  Finally, he found what he was looking for and quickly lit the wick.

  As soon as
the light bloomed, Max saw an old rifle hanging on the wall above the dresser, covered in cobwebs. Beneath it, on top of the dresser, was a peculiar leather-bound book. The tome was large and dusty and full of yellowed pages. It looked homemade, like a scrapbook of some kind.

  He felt the cover.

  It was wrapped in . . .

  “Skin?” Max whispered in horror.

  Chills ran up his spine and robbed him of breath. He couldn’t move—his entire body was paralyzed.

  But then he looked closer. The book had splotches of fur all over it. That’s when he realized that it wasn’t covered with human skin but . . . wolf skin.

  Max carefully opened the cover, fearing it might crumble in his hands. Inside was a collection of newspaper clippings and photographs. They were all glued to the curling, tawny pages.

  In each picture was the same bearded man wearing a wide-brimmed hat.

  “The hermit,” Max whispered, remembering seeing him wearing that same hat two nights before when he had transformed into the beast.

  And yet, in every single photograph, the hermit was standing over the corpses of . . .

  Wolves.

  If the hermit is a werewolf, then why would he want to kill the wolves of the eastern forest? Max wondered.

  For the life of him, Max couldn’t figure out the riddle.

  Then he saw an article that perplexed him even more. The headline was dated twelve years before, and it read:

  THE WOLVES ARE DEAD!

  KILLED BY LOCAL HUNTERS!

  In the picture, a group of men was standing over the corpses of several wolves. The hermit was in front of them all, with his foot resting atop the dead body of a giant wolf.

  A man-wolf.

  The beast!

  Max blinked in astonishment.

  But Gramps said that my father was the one who killed the beast, he thought, running his fingers over the picture of the hermit. This man isn’t my father!

  As he turned around to explore more of the shack, the lantern light licked across the room, illuminating the most nightmarish thing that Max had ever seen.

  He was being watched.

  Not by one . . .

  Or even by two . . .