Monsters in the Midwest (Book 2): Northwoods Wolfman

by Burtness, Scott

  Groaning in agony, he doubled over and landed hard on his hands and knees on the kitchen floor. His back arched convulsively, and he felt each vertebrae snap. His eyes roved wildly, looking at everything and seeing nothing, until they landed on the Mason jar he’d dropped. Inside, the tiny wood tick arched and writhed, a tiny parody of his own torment.

  “What the hell is happenaaaaaarrrrrrghhh?” he moaned as invisible hooks snagged his cheeks and pulled until his jaw snapped, sending lances of pain spidering across his face and down his neck.

  “Wha wha wha wha,” he chuffed in agony. Back arching again, he heard fabric rip and felt his shirt and jeans loosen. Still looking at the Mason jar, his vision warped and shifted. Colors were fading, but the myriad of shadows cast by the overhead light were sharpening. Swiveling his head in an unnatural way, he looked at his arms, at the strange, clawed paws that used to be his hands. The pain reached a blinding crescendo, and Dallas’s blacked out.

  A smell roused him. As his mind pulled into focus, Dallas realized it wasn’t just a single smell but an entire spectrum of smells. Clarity followed the coalescing of his thoughts, and he realized he’d been aware of those infinite layers of scents for quite a while. Now, however, he knew that what he was able to smell was far beyond what he should be able to smell.

  That small fact noted, he began to prowl. The objects of his environment were strange, unfamiliar things. Hard angles and clean lines delineated the smells into compartments that seemed contrary to nature. It was frustrating, so he moved toward where the smells were more familiar.

  A thud on his snout brought him up short. Snuffling, he extended a paw and pressed. A flat surface that he couldn’t see blocked him from the forest that was so close it threatened to overwhelm him with its nearness. Everything he wanted was right there. Why couldn’t he move toward it?

  Pressing his snout to the barrier, he inhaled a mix of odors that irritated his nostrils.

  Windex, some small part of him noted. Grease and graphite. Plastic, metal.

  Frustrated, he chuffed to clear his nose of the unwanted smells. He wanted to be in the forest. Why couldn’t he be in the forest?

  It’s a door. A sliding glass door. I need to open it.

  Claws raked across the unseen barrier, and Dallas cringed at the resulting noise. Turning in a tight circle, he raised his paw again and swiped at the unseen annoyance. Another screech rent his ears, and he answered with an angry howl.

  I need to use the... handle. Door handle.

  Curved claws started to scratch and scrabble. Wind and wood and earth and food were so close. Dropping down to all fours, he scratched with renewed fervor, trying to dig his way forward.

  No. This isn’t right. It’s a door. A door! I just need to open the door.

  Whining, Dallas abandoned trying to dig and simply rushed toward the woods he needed to be in. A cacophony of sounds and he was free! The force of his movement through the... the...

  Door. Shit. I just smashed through a glass door. My door. Why would I do that? What’s wrong with me?

  Impulse and a fierce hunger drove him onward. The fresh grass beneath his paws turned to fallen twigs and drying leaves as he moved into the trees. A joyous howl sounded out. He was here. This was his territory. Rising up on his hind legs, he placed one, then a second forepaw against a tree and let loose a warm stream.

  Mine. All mine.

  Chapter 24

  “Dallas! Hey D-Dallas! Holy camoly. What happened?”

  Flipping onto his back, Dallas grabbed impulsively for the covers, but his hand swiped at air. The realization that there were no covers was the first of many sudden and embarrassing revelations. The next thing he realized was that he wasn’t wearing clothes. That was followed by the sensation of cold brick on his backside and a chill wind on the rest of him.

  “Yeeeaaaahhh!” he yelled, rolling and scrabbling to his feet. Once standing, he quickly covered himself with his hands. Eyes wide and roving, he tried to take in his unexpected circumstances.

  “Where the hell are my clothes?” he demanded. “What’d ya do with my clothes, you pervert?”

  “I d-didn’t do nothing, Dal,” Stanley answered, blushing furiously and averting his eyes. “I just got here. Saw your truck, knocked, you d-didn’t answer, figured you was in back, and here you are, naked on the patio.”

  Dallas stepped carefully over broken glass through his busted patio door, followed by Stanley.

  “Don’t be looking at my ass,” Dallas growled. Once inside, he ran to his bedroom and dressed quickly. After running his fingers through his hair, he took a few deep breaths. Obviously, he’d been a little out of sorts last night. For a moment, something that was almost a memory tickled his brain. Looking for booze in his kitchen, but not finding any?

  That can’t be right, he reasoned, because I was obviously very, very drunk.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d busted something and passed out after a bender, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. The being naked outside part was a little harder to figure, but Dallas didn’t have time to untangle that particular mystery. More pressing matters were at hand, specifically finding out why Stanley was at his house.

  “Why’re you at my house, Stanley? Phone too complicated?” he asked, rummaging around for a broom and dustpan.

  “I did call, Dallas,” Stanley said. “Three times. Something big happened last night, and Colton wants all hands on deck.”

  The broom and dustpan were still M.I.A., but he did find the previous day’s clothes on the kitchen floor. Well, he found what was left of them. Picking up his shredded shirt and torn jeans, he shook his head in bemusement.

  “One of my best shirts, too,” he complained, tossing it in the garbage. “All hands on deck, got it. Thanks for the memo, Stan. Tell Colton I’ll swing by camp in a bit. I gotta get some plywood and close up this door. Should probably call the hardware store too, and see if they have any glass panes in stock, or if they’ll have to order them. Shit, you know what the weather’s supposed to be the next few days?”

  “Dallas,” Stanley pleaded, “C-colton said it was important.”

  “Then you’d better stop talking and lend a hand. This door ain’t gonna fix itself.”

  The sun had trekked a good way up the morning sky when Dallas’s truck finally rolled into camp.

  “What part of, ‘It’s really important so get here ASAP,’ didn’t translate? I’m sure I was speaking English,” Aletia demanded as he and Stanley walked into the broken-down cabin.

  “Nice to see you, too. I had a few things to take care of. Someone busted up my sliding door last night.” He shrugged, grinning in his usual devil-may-care way. “Or it was me. Dunno. I think I was drunk.”

  “And naked. Outside.” Stanley offered, helpfully.

  Aletia raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t say anything else. Instead, she waved to Colton and Randall.

  “All accounted for, Colton. Want to get the newbies up to speed?”

  Colton waived the three over. “Huddle up. Things just keep getting better. First a vampire, then a boo hag. Now I’m pretty sure we’ve got a newly turned werewolf. Midwest is just full of monsters these days.”

  “Image if there was a bruja, too,” Aletia commented dryly. “That would totally suck.”

  Dallas strapped on his best poker face, but his blood pressure jumped. Desperate to keep the conversation well away from any witch-talk, he raised a hand.

  “So, how do you know there’s a werewolf?”

  “A few neighborhood dogs went missing last night. Not yappy little clumps of fur, either. Big dogs. A pair of huskies and a Malamute. A Rottweiler. We talked with a few locals who said they heard howls, and there was a fair amount of blood at a couple of the sites, too.”

  When Dallas responded with a blank stare, Colton explained.

  “A newly turned werewolf tend to act more on animal instinct than rational thought. Marking its territory and establishing itself as the local alpha is pretty
common. It’ll usually piss all over the place and then challenge and kill large dogs, coyotes, even other wolves if there are any nearby. More often than not, it eats them too. New werewolves tend to have ginormous appetites.”

  “Herb ate a pug,” Dallas remembered. “Could it be another vampire?”

  “Nope,” Colton answered matter-of-factly. “Werewolves wouldn’t bother with a pug, unless they needed to wipe after a healthy bowel movement.”

  Stanley asked the obvious question. “Maybe it was j-just a regular wolf. They don’t come into town often, but it’s not unheard of. No sir. So it could’ve j-just been a wolf, right?”

  Before Colton could respond, Randall snorted and rolled his eyes. “We’re the Society. You think we can’t tell the difference between a regular wolf and a werewolf?”

  “Prints,” Aletia explained when Stanley started to stammer in his defense. “Werewolves are people turned into a half-man, half-wolf. They usually walk upright but have much bigger feet that a regular wolf. We found a couple of tracks at one of the missing dog sites. Definitely not a normal wolf.”

  Randall piped in again. “Probably made a racket going after those dogs. Where were you last night, Dallas? You hear anything weird?”

  Dallas shook his head. “Sorry, nope. I went to see a... friend. Catching up, you know. Had a few beers and slept like a baby.”

  “Naked and outside,” Aletia added.

  “Well, sure,” Dallas conceded, embarrassment showing. “Happens to the best of us.”

  “While someone busted your sliding glass door,” she continued in a flat voice.

  Colton’s face collapsed into a frown as he looked from Dallas to Aletia and back.

  Dallas scuffed the toe of his boot on the worn cabin floorboards. “I dunno, Colton. Probably me. I think I was drunk.”

  Shaking his head, Colton sighed. “Dallas, everyone needs a bender now and then, but I’m going to make a formal request that you rein it in a bit. For all we know, that could’ve been the werewolf. You have to stay sharp, stay frosty.”

  “Roger that. Say, about that monsters in the Midwest part. You don’t think that, well, you know. I mean, maybe there are monsters that aren’t really... bad. That could happen, couldn’t it?”

  Randall shook his head and clucked his tongue. The look on Colton’s face could’ve soured all of the milk in the Get’n’Gooble’s dairy case. Aletia didn’t say anything for a moment and searched Dallas’s face with concern in her eyes.

  “Entiendo, Dallas,” she finally said in a quiet voice. “Your friend, your best friend, was taken from you. It’s a horrible thing, something almost everyone in the Society has gone through.” Placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, she continued, “But you have to understand. There are no good monsters. Así son las cosas. End of story. The only thing monsters want to do is kill us, eat us, or make more monsters, or some combination of those three. The ones that can pass as human might try to fool us, make us think they’re just regular, everyday people,”

  “Like, when they’re bowling and stuff,” Dallas suggested.

  “Sí. Like when they’re bowling, but when they aren’t bowling, they’re killing people. That’s why the Society is so important. Why you are so important.”

  “Here’s the rub, Dallas. We have to leave,” Colton said, regret plain in his words. “There’s been a Sasquatch sighting about halfway between here and Sault Ste. Marie. This one sounds legitimate, so we’re going to check it out.”

  Dallas looked at Aletia, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. After a quiet moment, he nodded.

  “And it’ll just be me and Stanley tracking down this werewolf,” Dallas said.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Colton said with a reassuring grin. “You’ve been trained by the best. Now, about that werewolf.”

  Chapter 25

  Dallas flipped through the channels, restless and malcontent as program after program flipped by. Public access, news, Andy Griffith Show rerun, talk show, home shopping, weather, another news show, high school football, more news. Flip, flip, flip, half-sentences formed a garbled commentary for the collage of images, but none of it registered. Despite staring straight at the tube and pressing the remote’s buttons, Dallas’s mind was far away.

  Earlier in the day, before the Society had packed up and pressed on, Colton had told them what he knew about werewolves.

  “First, it’s not just a once-a-full-moon thing,” he cautioned. “Werewolves turn the nights before and after the full moon, so you’ve got three nights to worry about. Next, do not kill it until after you’ve seen it turn. No matter how much evidence there is that someone’s a werewolf, you won’t know for sure until they turn. The last thing you want to do is make a mistake and kill an innocent human.”

  Colton held Dallas with serious eyes until Dallas nodded his understanding. Satisfied that his new recruit understood that important rule, he continued.

  “They’re fast, mean, and damn hard to kill when they’ve turned. Silver bullets work, but you can also cut off their head or burn them, provided you can keep them in the fire. If they got free, the burns would heal, and you’d be back to square one, with the addition of an exceptionally pissed off werewolf that you just tried to burn to death.”

  Next, he told them where the dogs had been snatched from, figuring that could help them suss out the werewolf’s whereabouts. Once they had an idea of its territory, they could start to check up on the various folks inside of it.

  “Don’t just look for weirdos though. It’s never that simple. Instead, try to find a person who has some dog-like quirks.”

  Dallas felt an itch behind his ear and took to scratching furiously.

  “Aaahhh,” he groaned with pleasure. “Much better. Now, what were you saying?”

  Colton shared a few remaining tidbits. Unfortunately, werewolves weren’t as easy to track as other monsters. Unlike vampires, they had no trouble walking around during the day, and they weren’t stumbling, groaning, smelly corpses like zombies. Until they turned, they were pretty much just human.

  “There’s always a tell though, even when they’re in human form. Many don’t like touching silver. They could be stronger than normal, have better reflexes, even better senses. They’ll hear things no one else can hear, smell things no one else can smell. It’s the wolf simmering just beneath the surface, waiting for that next full moon. But again, don’t strike until you’re one-hundred percent sure.”

  “Got it,” Dallas had said while Stanley nodded along. “We look for an X-man that acts like a dog and doesn’t like silver, wait until it wolfs out and then kill it. Piece of cake. Anything else?”

  Colton had tapped his finger thoughtfully on his lips and looked at Randall and Aletia for suggestions.

  “That should be enough to get them pointed in the right direction,” Randall offered. “Hell, he’s the Hero of Bumblefuck, Wisconsin. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Or die. Whatev’s.”

  “Damn right,” Dallas agreed. “About the being fine part, not the dying part.” Turning to look at Aletia, he asked, “So how do we stay in touch? Like, to let you know we got the job done?”

  Aletia opened her mouth, but words didn’t follow. After a moment, she looked away with a shrug.

  “We’ll try to circle back this way in a few weeks,” Colton said when Aletia didn’t speak. “If there’s still a problem, we’ll lend a hand. If not, we’ll drink. Now,” he said, looking pointedly at Randall and Stanley. “I think I need some help loading up the truck.”

  While the three men gathered up weapons, books, and camping gear, Aletia pulled Dallas to the back corner of the cabin.

  “I’m sorry, Dallas. It’s been fun, but this is how it is. Lo entiendes, right?”

  Dallas stuffed his hands in his jean pockets. “What? Me? Oh, sure. I understand. We had a good time. So.”

  Aletia searched his eyes for a moment. “You weren’t getting attached, now were you? I thought you weren’t the ‘settle down’ type.”


  “Hell no! Not Big D. Life is a highway, babe, and old Dal, he rides. I gotta admit though. You were one helluva road side attraction.”

  “Wow,” she said with a wry grin. “I’m going to decide that what you just said was intended to be sweet.”

  Her smile reached in and grabbed something deep inside his chest a moment before she pulled him into an embrace and pressed her lips against his. When she finally pulled back, Dallas thought her eyes looked just a tad moist. Of course, he might’ve been confusing them with his own.

  Colton stuck his head back into the cabin.

  “Time to roll out, Tia.”

  She waved him off and turned back to Dallas.

  “Ten cuidado, Dallas. Be careful. Remember your training and go get that werewolf. If we head back this way, I’d really like it if you were still here.”

  Dallas placed a calloused palm on her cheek.

  “Damn right, I’ll be here.”

  Long after the sound of Colton’s pickup and Randall’s moped had faded, Dallas was still looking out the door of the cabin. Finally, Stanley’s excited yips and questions had pulled him out of his reverie. They only had two more days around the full moon, and there was a werewolf to find.

  Stanley had offered to follow-up on the missing dogs and do some research on the townsfolk. His thinking was that he’d put together a list of likely perps, and then he and Dallas could go interview the suspects. Since planning wasn’t one of Dallas’s strengths, he’d agreed, headed home, and flipped on the television. That had been over two hours ago, and restless didn’t even start to capture what he was feeling.