by Hawke, Jessa
“What secret,” Sam asked. “You guys have been keeping secrets from me?”
During her friendship with the boys she had told them almost everything that there was to know about her. When she thought about something she hadn't told them she had a hard time thinking of something. Maybe it ridiculous to expect everyone else to keep the same level of openness that she did in her relationships with friends, but it made Sam feel a little bit lonely to know that both of the boys had left her in the dark about something. Whatever it was it was obviously important to both of them, she could tell by the pensive looks on their faces.
“Not all secrets are fun,” Dave said. “You know how the world is, they don't understand anything. You know how you were afraid that I wouldn't understand of what happened between you and Bob? Well we are both double afraid, no, even more than that.”
“We are terrified,” Bob said. “That when you know our secret that you won't talk to us anymore. Some secrets are a burden, great secrets to be bore by the knowers, never to be shared with anyone on the outside of knowing who might use the knowledge against us.”
Bob stopped talking suddenly as if he'd said too much, gone too far. Sam looked back and forth from boy to boy.
“What haven't you told me?” Sam asked. “Are you two brothers?”
Sam's mind spun with the possibility that the Bradley “brothers” might actually be brothers.
The boys looked at each other again.
“Well, not exactly anything like that,” Bob said. “It's hard to understand but we'll show you now and I guess see how you handle it. If we tell you, you won't believe us. You'll think that we're drunk or high or playing some kind of trick on you. Hell, when we show you, you might decide that you are going crazy. That has happened to both of us before when we've told people the secret. We never really know how people are going to take it. It's one of those things that people either take really well, or they take really poorly, and most people take it pretty damn poorly.
“Well, not everyone,” Dave said. “And I think that Sam here will take it well. I think she likes both of us for who we are, you know that. Well, at least I like to think that she likes us for us, and not the image in her head that she has of us. That really seems to be what the problem always is, that people come to understand what they thought was actually wrong. They feel tricked and cheated somehow, which is the opposite of how they should feel since they just found out the truth but you know how people can be sometimes, emotions don't have to make sense, like we talked about.”
Suddenly the room filled with light. Headlights had pulled into the front drive. Sam panicked jumped up to run and smashed right into Dave. Instead of cracking her head against the back of his turned head it felt like she'd run face first into some kind of bristle pad used for cleaning. She wondered how his hair smelled so much like horse hair, with some kind of musk that made her think of the wild.
“We've got to get out of here!” Bob said. “It's my parents!”
Dave picked everything up in a hurry, which wasn't hard because they hadn't really been partying. On the way out Bob was sure to grab the joint and eat it to be sure that there was no left over evidence that could be brought up at some future juncture to ground him.
“Fuck,” Bob said. “We should have just partied in my dorm room, at least then we wouldn't have to run.”
“We can't smoke weed in your dorm and you don't have a television,” Dave said. “Now quit gabbing we've got to go.
So they all ran, ducking out the back door that led to the porch, heading down the back steps and sprinting across the yard into the blackness of night. Sam ran with all her might, not wanting Bob's parents to see her and call the head cheer coach. Her coach would lose her mind if she found out she was smoking weed and giving blow jobs. The cheer squad meant so much to Sam she wondered if she would be able to stay friends with the boys if she lost the squad because of them, and then realized that her friendship with the “brothers” was far more important than any lose allegiance she had with the squad. Besides, she thought, I'm not going to get caught because we are going to run as fast as we can.
So they ran, and as they weaved through yards down the block Sam watched in wonder as Dave and Bob were able to vault themselves over tall fences in a single bound, swing through trees with ease, and sprint faster than she had ever seen any human move in her life.
“How do you two do it?” Sam asked, panting. “How can you do all the super human things you just did.”
The boys had slowed down at the end of the block and looked back at the house to see what was happening. The alarm had been sounded when they left and Bob's father was now running around the house checking to see if anyone had broken out a window in order to gain access to the premises.
“Do you think they'll be mad?” Sam asked?
“Probably,” Bob said. “But not at us. Our house has been broken into before without anything being taken, so it won't seem completely out of the question that maybe that could have happened again.”
Sam wondered how Bob seemed so all right with everything. It was like he didn't even care that his parents had come home. Aside from the initial astonishment he hadn't shown much emotion at all.
“Well,” Bob said. “If we wait for a little bit they will eventually settle down and go back to sleep. They will probably think that it's just a false alarm. We can walk in when they are asleep and say we just got there.”
“But what about our cars in the drive?” Sam asked.
“They'll think we got picked up by friends to go out drinking or something,” Dave said. “Bob's parents never ask any questions.”
Slowly the three walked back to the house and by the time they got there the lights were out in every room save for Bob's parents master bedroom. They waited around the driveway until about fifteen minutes after that light went out and then let themselves in the front. Dave and Bob looked around for a note of any kind that might bare a reprimand from the parents if they had suspicion that the two boys had been doing anything sordid but found nothing of the sort.
“Well,” Sam said quietly. “What should we do now?”
Bob looked tired and Dave didn't seem to have any ideas of what they could do now. They all agreed that they would see how the next week of school went and then make plans next weekend based off of how much homework each had and if Sam would be busy with cheer leading or not. With that Sam headed home.
Sam tossed and turned in her sleep that night. She dreamed that she stood on a great mountain range watching a herd of goats move across the crags and scaled the sheer walls seemingly effortlessly. She wondered what the goats were thinking, and then wondered at her own thought. Why would she think that goats would have anything on their minds other than running around the mountains and bleating? At the base of the mountains she saw a pack of wolves circling in on itself like a knot and wondered what they planned on doing. It seemed like the pack thought they could get to the goats if they wanted to, but the herd of goats didn't appear like they were afraid of the wolves. Sam remembered from somewhere far away that someone had just told her much about wolves that day, but couldn't really seem to place exactly where she had got the thought. Sam realized she was dreaming and that's why she was having such a hard time organizing her thoughts. It wasn't like it had been when she was high earlier in the day though. There seemed to be a kind of clarity in her dream that was crystal sharp, but of course there were parts of her mind that seemed off limits, as if her memory could only have so much drawn from it while she was in a dream state.
The wolves at the base of the mountain range shook like they were having a seizure and then started to transform. Sam couldn't believe her eyes and peered at the metamorphosis in disbelief. The wolf leaned back so that it balanced only on its hind legs and seemed to grow. Sam could hear the cracking of bone breaking, but instead of falling to the ground in pain the wolf howled to the heavens as it twisted and grew larger, taking on a humanoid form. Its front paws grew to
claws that were as long as Sam's forearm and twinkled in the moonlight. Sam wondered where she had heard about strange man wolf hybrids terrorizing a farmer’s livestock, or what that was she had heard. It was hard to remember anything, but she didn't need to in order to stand in awe as the entire pack started to change into the humanoid wolf forms. Soon they all stood on their hind legs, their heads reared back, howling to the moon. Their breathe shot like steam out of their snouts and they dug their hind feet into the ground like bulls pawing the earth, reading to charge. Sam wondered what they intended to do as they faced a sheer mountain side.
The alpha wolf had white stripes and took a few tentative steps forward toward the rock wall. Then his steps gained confidence and the striped alpha wolf humanoid scaled the cliff said with relative ease, using its razor sharp clothes to puncture into the rock and hold on while pushing with great strength that looked like bounding up a hill. Sam was amazed, and realized that what she was looking at was a pack of werewolves. Sam wondered how such creatures could even exist, and if there was some way to communicate with them. Did the werewolves only transform from wolf to wolf humanoid or was there a variant that changed from human to wolf humanoid. Sam didn't think it was the dream state that made her not remember what was up with werewolves, that instead that she just lacked any knowledge of the mythic beasts to draw from.
What she knew was the basics that anyone knows, werewolves transformed under the light of a full moon and then they became hungry and needed feast on the flesh of humans. But was that really how things were? This pack of werewolves seemed content simply to pursue a herd of goats across the mountains instead of terrorizing the local populace. It seemed strange that the myth would paint them in such a hugely negative light, but it was the same for vampires and other such creatures that maybe could have existed on the shadowy fringes of society if they were careful of who they feasted on. Maybe werewolves in real life weren't so bad. Maybe the myths were like what her DARE councilor had told her about smoking weed, some exaggerated account that didn't really hold up to any kind of real scrutiny.
The pack of werewolves made quick time across the mountains, jumping across huge chasms in single bounds and moving up cliff faces like they were a walk in the park. The werewolves obviously possessed strength that made human strength pale in comparison. When the pack got to the herd of goats Sam expected to see a massacre, but instead the werewolves surrounded the herd and herded them down the mountain slope. When they got to the bottom the striped alpha leader selected one of the goats to be killed. It was slaughtered and the pack feasted on its remains while guards were left to watch the herd.
Sam was amazed of the cunning showed by the werewolves. They weren't just simple animal creatures and obviously possessed a great intellect that went far beyond what the myths allowed for. A beeping noise rang across the mountain range and Sam awoke to her alarm going off.
Sitting up and rubbing her eyes Sam thought about her dream. Could it mean anything? It seemed to leave her with more questions than answers in a way. She had no idea if werewolves really existed, but from the dream they seemed so real. She remembered that it had been the farmer on National Geographic that had been talking about the half wolf half human hybrid footprints.
Where did the boys fit into all of this? Did they know about the werewolves? Maybe that is why they had started to act so weirdly yesterday. If they knew something and didn't tell her, Sam would be very hurt that her friends had decided to keep such a thing from her. Sam got dressed thinking about how cheer practice would go that week. By the time she got to school she had forgotten about the dream and barely even remembered fooling around with Bob until they saw each other in the hallway and exchanged sheepish smiles.
School picked up again after midterms. At first, Sam had hoped for some kind of lull in the work but that clearly wasn't going to be the case. All of the teachers lectured their classes that they needed to buckle down and really study for the upcoming finals. College wasn't a joke, they warned, and people needed to take it seriously or they would surely regret it when the grades came in right before Christmas. The cheer team picked up the intensity of the drills, making things even harder than they had been before. She said that even though the team had won they needed to keep practicing like they had lost. It didn't make any sense to any of the girls, but that didn't matter to the coach. She ran the team with an iron fist and had all of the girls spend time running with cross country team in order to get them in better shape.
Sam didn't see Dave or Bob around toward the end of that week, and even then it was just a fleeting exchange of smiles and hugs in the hallway before everyone had to make haste to their next class before the bell rang. School was starting to get overwhelming, especially with cheer, and Sam felt like she needed some alone time with her friends in order to keep everything straight in her head. Whenever she started to feel this way she knew she needed to take a few days to decompress, but she didn't have a few days to do that. Or did she? Acting on impulse Sam cleared with her teachers and coach that she take a weekend off for her mental health to go camping. She texted the boys and both of them responded positively. Dave was the first to see her in the hallway.
“So we are going camping this weekend?” he said. “That sounds like fun. The weather out will be great. We could bring some booze and maybe a little herb to smoke.”
Sam nodded in agreement as Bob walked up.
“Along with the herb we'll need to bring a lot of serious camping stuff, like food, firewood, gasoline and other stuff like that. You just can't run off in the woods and not be prepared. That's how bad things happen,” Bob said. His face grew dark as he finished his words.
“What do you mean bad things happen?” Sam said. “Like if we don't bring a medical kit and someone falls down and hurts themselves then maybe they could get infected?”
The boys exchanged looks and the bell rang. Before Sam could inquire more about what kind of bad things could happen in the woods the boys had rushed off toward their next classes and she did the same. The weekend would be on them before they knew it and Sam day dreamed about all the cool stuff they could while camping. She really wanted to go up into the local mountain range and see if there were any wolves, or maybe see if the streams had trout in them. The mountains near the university weren't very impressive but they were all they had.
Just as Sam had thought it seemed like a blink of an eye had passed before Bob was pulling away from the dorm's curb with her in the passenger seat and Dave in the back. The trunk of the car was weighed down with things they would need when they got out in the wilderness. Bob said that he would take them to a place so secret that only he and Dave knew about it. Sam wondered how Bob could be so sure that they would be the only people out there, especially if the place he wanted to go was cool.
“The way we have to get there is a little bit scary though and is going to require a lot of trust on your part Sam,” Bob said. “It'll also test you and see if you are really friends with us. Which I'm sure you are so it won't be a problem at all. But just letting you know.”
“What do you mean it will test me?” Sam said. “Is it like the trust tests where people fall backward and a bunch of other people behind them catch them in order to build bonds of trust?”
“Eh, not quite,” Dave said. “But it will take your courage to hold on though. The ascent can be kind of choppy sometimes if we need to jump, and that usually freaks people out.”
Both Bob and Dave laughed.
“Yeah,” Bob said. “Usually when we start jumping people get a little freaked out, but not Sam when we had to high-tail it out of my parent's house the other day. When she saw us jumping around she was cool as a cucumber.”
Dave agreed but said that the jumping they had done while running around Bob's neighborhood wasn't going to be anything to what was about to happen. Sam asked what they meant by an ascent and all this talk about jumping, and how they had managed to jump so high when they had fled Bob's house the other nig
ht, but neither of the boys seemed in the mood to answer any questions. They were nice though, and smiled and squeezed her hand whenever she got a sour look on her face because she wasn't getting the answers that she wanted.
They got to a campsite right next to the sheer face of a cliff and started to get everything set up. The evening got hot and sweaty and Sam took her top off so she could stay cool in the nude while she worked. Both of the boys gaped at the sight of her big, luscious breasts. They swayed in the breeze and her nipples stood out like small points. Dave came over to her while she was trying to build a fire, reached around her and started to play with them. She didn't protest at all and instead giggled. She heard Bob approach them as she did her best to build a campfire and Dave ran his hands all over her body, even dipping them into the front of her jeans so he could run a finger through the slit of her pussy.
“Well, well, well,” Bob said. “Look at you two, getting to know each other and everything.”
Dave laughed.
“You two seemed like you got to know each other pretty well the other day, didn't you?” Dave said.
Sam didn't say anything, instead quickly finishing up with building the fire she turned around and crossed her arms over her chest so that her breasts were covered.
“I don't know what either of you are talking about,” Sam said coyly. “I am the most modest girl that I know. How either of you could think otherwise is just ridiculous.”
Everyone had a good laugh at this.
“Well,” Bob said. “Since the camp is set up should we make the ascent?
“Sure,” Dave said.
Both of the boys stripped bare and stood completely naked in front of Sam. She gazed at their hanging members and realized that both boys were extremely hung and it made her wet. Without saying anything, both Dave and Bob started to transform. Like in her dream Sam heard bones pop and dislocate as their bodies shifted into a wolf like humanoid form. Their teeth grew into fangs and their hands grew long claws. Unlike the werewolves in her dream the claws on their hands were retractable like the claws of cats.
