I think I must have passed out sometime after that, because when I opened my eyes my parent’s worried faces swam into view, somewhere above me. I groaned, warmth spreading through my veins, feeling returning. I was aching all over, but the pain was good. I was safe. It didn’t matter what happened, I would live.
Now that I was in the warmth, hunger led a fresh onslaught against my stomach. The foul taste of bile and raw meat still filled my mouth.
“Water,” I croaked. “Food.”
Mum brought me a glass of water and some cereal. Right then I would have eaten anything as long as it wasn’t meat. I ate the cereal gratefully, and for once it didn’t taste so bad. I could feel my strength returning already. Looking around, I realised I was lying on the sofa in the dining room with a blanket draped over me.
“Are you okay?” Mum asked me uncertainly. “What happened to you?”
“Can’t remember,” I moaned.
Well it was half true. I knew why I was out there but I couldn’t remember exactly what had happened. I don’t know if they believed me or not. Dad didn’t look convinced and had it not been for Mum he might’ve beaten the truth out of me. As it was he turned away in disgust and I was left to rest, though I wasn’t going to sleep, not if I could help it.
I could hear them talking in the lounge. Mum wanted to take me to a doctor. Dad thought I needed a psychiatrist. Maybe I did, if only there was one who’d believe me, who I could trust not to turn me over to the Slayers or even the police. Since there wasn’t, I had to somehow convince them I didn’t need any kind of doctor.
Feeling strong enough to walk again, I helped myself to some more cereal and forced it down. Then I went to dress myself and spent the rest of the day arguing with my parents.
“There’s nothing wrong with me, I don’t need a doctor! Just need some time to get over Fiona, that’s all,” I told them, ignoring the stab of pain her name brought.
“Amy was never this bad after Mel, what’s the matter with you?” Dad said angrily. “You always have to be so damned melodramatic!”
“John! That’s enough,” Mum said. She looked at me with understanding and sympathy. She’d lost her dad when she was about my age, maybe even younger. I didn’t know if Dad had ever lost anyone close to him. “If there’s anything we can do to help you, Nick, please tell us.”
I forced a smile to reassure her. “I will Mum.”
My family were wary around me after that, almost afraid of me, as if they thought I was losing it and they weren’t sure how to act around me in case they provoked any more fits of madness. I couldn’t blame them, but I hated it. It dug the knife in a little deeper, bringing home the feeling that I was apart from them, and the rest of humanity. I couldn’t face their fear, so I was spending more and more time in my room, shutting out the rest of the world. Sometimes I’d play on the Playstation, though my heart wasn’t really in it. Other times I’d just sit with Alice, letting the guilt and the grief take over.
Amy came into my room one day while Mum and Dad were out shopping, taking advantage of the January sales. I groaned inwardly. I just wanted to be alone, free of human company.
“Nick, I’m bored,” she whinged.
“That ain’t my problem. Go find summat to do.”
“There’s nothing to do, I’m bored,” she moaned again.
“Well go watch TV or something!” I snarled, annoyed and growing angry.
“I don’t want to watch TV.”
“Then go on the computer!”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to be stuck at home in front of the TV or the computer all the time, I want to do something different.”
“I don’t care what the fuck you do, just get the fuck out of my room!” I shouted.
“Oh, well I’m sorry for not wanting to spend my life in front of a TV,” she snapped, going from cute little girl to pissed off bitch in the blink of an eye.
I completely lost it then. Why couldn’t she just leave me alone?
“Get out of my room!” I shouted, standing. I pushed her out of the room. She tried to fight back but I was too strong for her, until she lashed out and hit me between the legs. I doubled over in pain and felt the wolf stir within. Now I really was pissed off, and the wolf responded to the anger. I felt its hunger, coupled with my anger and the need for violence. I wanted blood. Amy ran back in the room just to spite me, ranting about something, mouthing off at me like she did with everyone. She could be a real bitch at times and she was never a good loser, always determined to have the final blow. But not any more.
“Get out of my room!” I roared and punched her right in her gobby little mouth. She fell back stunned, reaching a hand up to her face. I don’t think I’d ever lost it so bad before. It wasn’t the first time she’d pushed me to the point where I struck back, but never really hard enough to hurt her. I used to be pretty good at controlling my temper as a human; she was the one who’d always snapped first. The shock at what I’d done showed in her face, and the hand came away with blood. Then the pain set in and she started to cry. Blood poured from her mouth where I’d knocked three of her front teeth loose. She fled the room, probably to go crying on the phone to Mum, and I was alone again, fighting to control the anger.
I was panting heavily as if I’d been running. The wolf was pressing for the transformation, and I was struggling to control it. Beneath the anger I was shocked as much as Amy at what I’d done. The nightmare of her wriggling, bleeding body dying beneath me, ripped apart by my jaws, came back to haunt me. The images flashed before my mind until I was screaming.
“No! That’s not me, it’s not me! Get the fuck out of my head, it wasn’t me! I won’t do that to her, never do that to her. Not that, not that!”
I sank to my knees, head tilted back, and screamed again until it became a howl, an animal sound that didn’t belong to any human. My eyes turned amber and fangs grew. The change was coming whether I wanted it or not. Veins bulged beneath my skin as I fought it with everything I had. I looked back down at my hands and saw the claws forming.
“No!” My voice came out as a growl, becoming more bestial. I dug my claws into the wooden floor and gritted my teeth, the pain of the transformation intensifying the more I fought it. But I couldn’t transform there, not with Amy in the house. The smell of her blood excited the wolf, I could feel it, and I knew if I gave in I would never be able to control the hunger. She would die and part of me would enjoy it. So I continued to fight until suddenly, as quickly as it came, the wolf slid back beneath the surface, sinking back into the depths of my subconscious, and the few changes that had taken place reversed. I ran to find Amy, horrified by what I’d done and what I’d wanted to do, and wanting to put it right.
I found her curled on the sofa in the lounge, crying and shaking. The phone lay forgotten by her feet.
“Amy,” I said softly, reaching a hand out to her. She whimpered and curled up tighter.
“Amy,” I tried again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what’s happening to me but I can’t control it. You have to leave me alone when I tell you to, so you don’t get hurt.”
She didn’t answer, still crying into the sofa. I glanced at the phone.
“Did you tell Mum?”
She shook her head.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “You know you can’t tell Mum right? Please? She’ll take me to a doctor and they’ll take me away. Please Amy. I’m scared. Doctors can’t help me. I have to work through this on my own. The more people who interfere, the more people who get hurt. Please, don’t tell Mum, for me. It’ll be okay, everything will be okay. Just stay out of my way when I tell you to and no one will get hurt.”
Slowly she turned round to look at me. I couldn’t read her face. I didn’t know what she was thinking. I don’t know what had made me say the things I’d just told her, but I knew it was all true and that I couldn’t go down that route. Doctors couldn’t help me. They might even end up dead for their trouble. Or the Slayers might
get me somehow, and then I’d end up dead. Maybe not such a bad thing, or maybe I still wasn’t ready for death yet. Finally Amy spoke.
“Nick, what’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know but you’ve got to trust me on this. Mum can’t find out what just happened.”
She nodded and let me clean her up. The blood flow in her mouth was slowing. She was lucky I hadn’t hit her with everything I had, or it would have been much worse. She agreed to tell Mum she’d fallen and hit her mouth on the desk in my room, which had knocked her teeth loose. Mum would buy it. But after that Amy was even more afraid of me than before, and my guilt was all the worse for feeling the wolf’s hunger directed at my own sister, its need for blood. Recently I’d been trying to pretend it was all a nightmare, that none of this was happening to me, but its desire for flesh had been all too real. And the thought that I’d come so close to killing Amy wouldn’t leave me alone. If I’d not been strong enough to fight the transformation… I spent even less time with them after that.
Barely a week later, I was in my room when I heard Mum and Amy calling from the lounge. I started downstairs to see what they wanted when I heard Amy whisper “Nick smells!” from her bedroom. I paused and cocked my head to one side, listening intently. And then I remembered I was home alone. Was I going insane? Was my brain offering me a way out of reality? I smiled to myself. Letting them lock me away in a padded cell for eternity did have a certain appeal about it. It would mean I couldn’t kill any more and put an end to the misery. But it wouldn’t solve matters. Much as I wanted to run from the harsh reality I had found myself in, I knew I had to face it like a man. I could try running from my fate but there was no escaping what I had become. I was a killer, and even if they locked me away I would kill again, eventually. The wolf wouldn’t be caged for long and it certainly couldn’t be tamed.
“Nick!”
My name came again, louder than before, more urgent. Slowly I descended the stairs, dreading what was waiting for me at the bottom. The door to the lounge was closed. I paused again with a hand on the doorknob, afraid to go in. My name came again, and taking a deep breath, I ventured inside and a scream tore from my throat.
I’d thought after Fiona and the things the wolf had made me relive, and the incident with Amy, it couldn’t get any worse. I’d thought there was nothing worse for me to see. I was wrong.
Mum lay sprawled on one end of the sofa closest to the door. She was just lying there, no reaction as I walked into the room. Was she sleeping?
“Mum, are you okay?” I asked as I drew closer. No answer.
“Mum?” I repeated, shaking her. To my horror her head fell from her body and rolled across the floor, coming to a stop by the fireplace where it stared at me with a wide eye. The other was missing, a fly laying its eggs in the socket in its place. A flap of skin hung down from one cheek, the flesh shiny red beneath, and an ear had been torn off. Amy was curled up on the other end of the sofa. Her head was intact, though it was missing the lower jaw, the tongue hanging out uselessly. One arm lay on the floor; the other bore deep cuts spaced evenly apart, unmistakeably scratch marks. I screamed and ran from the room. When Dad brought home their living counterparts, they found me cowering underneath the table in the dining room.
Back at school, things were getting worse. I’d finally snapped. Friends came to talk to me and all I could do was cringe with fear, seeing my victims coming for revenge, bloody and half eaten and starting to rot. I was convinced I could hear the voices of the dead whispering to me, threatening to drag me back into the earth with them. Everyone seemed to be looking at me, talking about me. Oh God, what if they knew? No one dared approach me though. To my paranoid brain this was proof that they knew, though in reality they were scared of me, either because I was mad or because of what I’d done to Jamie, or both. Then one night after school things rose to a climax.
I went straight to my room, the only place I felt safe, and the voices were getting louder. I fell to my knees and covered my head with my hands, screaming at them, trying to block them out. They were accusing me, damning me to Hell, promising me payment for my sins. When it became too much I ran out into the hall and shut the door behind me, as if I could lock them in there. The voices only grew louder still. They were whispering worse things then, making me see all the gory details again. I ran into the bathroom and stood over the sink, vomiting until my stomach was empty. Then I raised my head and stared at my reflection in the mirror. The image seemed to change before my eyes until I was staring at a wolf’s head. It grinned at me, blood staining its fangs, and with a roar I smashed the image with my fist as hard as I could, hating what I saw there. The glass shattered, shards raining down and breaking into smaller pieces when they hit the tiled floor. I’d heard shouts from downstairs but had ignored them, and continued to do so even when my parents came running in. Mum looked at me in horror, while Dad was angry. I didn’t even acknowledge they were there. Whimpering, I sank to the floor, still hearing the whispers of the dead. I was vaguely aware of a pain in my hand. Bits of glass were stuck in it but that was the least of my worries. My parents were arguing what to do with me. Mum was afraid of losing me, even though she knew the best thing for me was a doctor. Dad wanted someone to look at me straight away. I think he was ashamed to have a maniac for a son.
They came to a decision and I found myself confronting a doctor. I sat there shaking, refusing to even look at him, or anyone else in the room. He soon referred me to a specialist and before I knew it I was in a mental hospital, surrounded by loonies.
Looking back, it makes me laugh at the irony of it all. I spent my childhood fantasising about being a werewolf and it came true. For more years than I care to remember I’d been telling people someday I would end up in a padded cell, and there I was. Though it wasn’t exactly as I’d been predicting for all those years.
In many ways the mental hospital reminded me of the old people’s home my Grandma was in. They did have a Seclusion Room which was the infamous padded cell for those who needed it. I spent a fair bit of time there, when my depression would give way to fits of violence, but they never put me in a straitjacket. Maybe because they couldn’t force me into one, not with my inhuman strength, all the more potent in my madness.
I had my own room but I didn’t feel safe there. In fact it felt like a prison cell. There was nothing personal about it like my room back home. Just four walls, a window, a door, and a bed. There wasn’t much of a view out of the window. I spent most of my time in there lying awake on the bed, staring at the ceiling, fighting sleep with everything I had. I refused to eat at first so they had me on a drip, nourishing me if I wouldn’t do it myself. I was losing my gaunt appearance again, recovering quicker than a human would have. They couldn’t explain that. Nor could they explain why my hand had healed so quickly where the glass had penetrated the flesh. I was soon feeding myself when it became clear that it was either that or the drip, though there was little pleasure in it. Even if the hospital food had been gourmet, there would have been no pleasure in it.
There was also a room where the patients could go to socialise with each other. They had board games and a TV. People encouraged me to go there but I felt better in my room. Whenever I went in there I tended to shrink away from the others, either afraid I would hurt them or afraid that they would hurt me. A few times a patient said something to me and I would start to rage at them, until I was taken away to the Seclusion Room to calm down.
Doctors spent a lot of time with me, trying to get me to talk and work through my problems so I might regain my sanity. It was evident I needed help and they all thought they could give it to me. Shame I was beyond that. Pity no one could give it to me, even if I could be saved. Whenever I recognised them for what they were, rather than mistaking them for a vengeful victim back from the dead or a Slayer out to kill me, or even a potential victim to satisfy my hunger, I just found something to fix my eyes on and stared at it until they left me alone. Sometimes I’d grunt at
them if they gave me a question that required a one word answer. For the most part I screamed at them through the horrific hallucinations, and I even attacked a few. The next thing I knew I’d be in the Seclusion Room, screaming at more enemies conjured by my mind. The voices drowned out my thoughts often and I’d rage at them. Sometimes I’d draw myself into a tight ball and lie there on the floor, hands over my head, whimpering, like I had in the bathroom back at home. Other times I was more violent, banging against the walls and door in an attempt to escape from the horrors, unseen by everyone but me. I even ripped some of the padding to shreds. And still the doctors sought to tame me. I’ve no idea how long it was before they gave up on me. Must have been less than a month because we hadn’t reached full moon yet.
My family visited often. I treated them like anyone else. Like with the doctors, if I recognised them I either ignored them or grunted. Mum begged me to let the doctors help me so I could come home again. Dad said little. They didn’t let Amy come most times, scared of what she might see there.
And every day I spent there I lived in fear. What would happen next full moon when the wolf found itself in this building, surrounded by prey? There were about thirty patients in residence there, plus all the doctors and nurses. It would be a feast the wolf couldn’t refuse, like a fox in a henhouse. And there would be nothing I could do about it.
Chapter Sixteen
The Mating Season
As it turned out, the next full moon was the least of my worries. We were now in February, the start of the mating season of the grey wolf. And the mating season for werewolves too apparently.
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