The Wereing
Page 9
“I’ve got it Gruff!” I looked back. It was Paul, pulling the hose free.
I stumbled as the water suddenly gushed out, harder than ever. Mr. Parker was half out the door. I hit him with the full force of the hose.
The water lifted him right into the air and slammed him headfirst into the wall.
The Parker werewolf went limp and slumped to the floor.
I dropped the hose. Mr. Parker didn’t move. The last of the werewolves leaped out the door and ran off into the woods. The howls of the real wolves grew fainter as they chased the monsters deeper into the boggy swamp.
I ran to Mr. Parker. His red eyes were closed.
Had I killed him instead of saving him?
Chapter 47
Moaning miserably, I leaned over the unconscious werewolf and bent my ear to his chest to listen for a heartbeat. I closed my eyes to concentrate.
A weight came down on my shoulder. I flinched and jumped three feet in the air, extending all my claws for battle. But it wasn’t a werewolf, it was Paul.
He flinched away from me, then stood his ground. “You saved us, Gruff,” he said in a shaky voice. “Thank you.”
“Gruff?!” Kim had come up behind Paul. She stared at me in shock and disgust. “That monster can’t be Gruff.”
“Yes, Kim,” Paul said calmly. “He saved us. And now we have to save him.”
I looked at Paul in surprise.
“The people,” said Paul, looking nervously over his shoulder back at the pool. People were starting to climb out as the howls of the werewolves grew fainter in the distance. “They were too scared to see what really happened. All they know is monsters tried to get them, and you look like one of the—uh—monsters. When they get their courage back, they’ll come after you.”
Paul was right. Already I heard grumbling and angry shouts coming from the crowd of people climbing out of the pool.
“There’s one that didn’t get away,” a man yelled.
“Let’s get him!” shouted another.
Paul plucked at my arm. “Come on, Gruff, we’d better hurry.” He looked at the limp werewolf on the floor. “Is that a friend of yours?” he asked worriedly. “It may slow you down too much if you have to carry him.”
Suddenly Kim gasped. She sank to her knees beside the injured werewolf. “Daddy!” she cried. “Daddy!”
The blood drained out of Paul’s face. He stared at me. “Is it true?” he whispered hoarsely.
I nodded. Behind us the crowd of people were getting louder. Some had found a pile of lumber and were arming themselves with heavy chunks of wood. “We’ll teach those creatures,” they grumbled. “We’ll teach them to attack our town.”
Quickly I tossed Mr. Parker over my shoulder. I held out my arm. Kim hesitated a second then jumped up and clung to my shoulder. Paul leaped up beside her. The crowd roared. People screamed at me to let them go.
“It’s all right!” Paul shouted. “He helped us. He won’t hurt us.”
But the people were shouting for blood. They couldn’t hear him. I ran out the door, the crowd close on my heels.
Chapter 48
I staggered into the backyard of the Parker house and collapsed on the ground. We’d left the angry crowd of people behind but it hadn’t been easy.
Paul hurried to unlock the door. The three of us carried Mr. Parker inside. “What will we do with him?” asked Kim in a trembling voice. “Will he ever be human again?”
I’d had an idea working in my head as we ran back to the house. I didn’t know how dangerous it was or even if it would work, but we had to try it. I’d managed to keep the werewolf book with me through everything and now I put it on the table and again opened it to the “Rules of The Wereing.”
“You know what to do?” asked Paul eagerly, stepping up to look.
I jabbed my claw at one of the rules. “A werewolf cannot tolerate anything silver,” it said.
“Silver,” mused Kim.
“Silver?” asked Paul. “But what will that do?”
“I get it!” cried Kim. She ran to the dining room and came back with a silver tray and two candlesticks. She dumped them on the floor. “You check the bedrooms, Paul. Get anything silver—picture frames, necklaces, anything!”
Kim hurried out of the room.
Mr. Parker was breathing normally now. I didn’t think he would be unconscious much longer. There was no time to lose. I leaped up the stairs at one bound, going all the way to the attic. I’d seen a trunk there once when Paul was showing me around. It was full of old toys Mrs. Parker couldn’t bear to throw away.
I dumped the toys out and hauled the big trunk back downstairs to the living room. What would happen if this didn’t work? I’d seen the Parker werewolf try to save Kim but I’d also seen him bite another human. And in the end he had tried to escape into the woods with the werewolves.
If we couldn’t cure Mr. Parker—the dad werewolf—I was afraid of what he might do to his own family when he woke up.
Chapter 49
I opened the lid of the trunk and gestured at Kim and Paul. Nodding, they dumped all the silver they could find into the trunk—knives and forks, neck chains, pitchers, candlesticks, everything.
Being near so much silver was hard for me. My muscles began to ache and cramp. Shooting pains stabbed my arms and legs. I grew too weak to lift Mr. Parker by myself.
But once I made Kim and Paul understand what we had to do, they took his legs, I took his arms and we put him into the trunk with the silver.
Instantly, the Parker werewolf came awake.
“RRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRR!”
It bellowed in shock. The werewolf grabbed the sides of the trunk to heave itself out, its eyes blazing. I grabbed the lid of the trunk and banged it down, jumping on top of it. I motioned to Kim and Paul to quick lock the trunk.
But the werewolf reared up, roaring, and bumped me off the lid. As I tumbled to the floor it hissed at Kim and Paul. Patches of its coarse gray fur flew through the air. It had one leg out of the trunk when I reached up and pushed the lid hard, sending it crashing down on the werewolf’s head.
It whirled, swiping at me and baring its fangs. The sudden movement threw it off balance and as the werewolf tried to spring out of the box, it slipped on all the silver inside and fell heavily. I pounced, wrestling it back into the trunk.
Pain sapped the strength from my limbs everywhere I touched a piece of silver. Strange sour-smelling smoke rose from the Parker werewolf. It tried to push me off its chest but its muscles were weakening. I pulled myself up. Paul grabbed my shoulders and he and Kim dragged me out of the trunk.
Again I climbed on the lid. This time I collapsed on top of it, my chest heaving with the effort for breath. Kim locked the lid in place.
For a few minutes everything was quiet and still. Then the werewolf inside started howling and banging on the inside of the lid. Its cries of pain were horrible.
“It hurts!” Mr. Parker screamed into my aching head. “Let me out. You’re killing me.”
Paul and Kim couldn’t understand what it was saying but I agonized. Should I let it out? Would the silver kill it?
Then the pitiful cries changed to roars of rage. The lid bulged from the efforts of the werewolf inside. It screamed and howled and banged.
CRACK!
The lid wasn’t going to hold. Kim and Paul, their eyes wide and blank with pain, jumped up on the lid to help me hold it down. They sat on either side of me, gripping each other’s hands and grasping tight onto my coarse fur.
After a long time, the bangs and howls grew weaker. And weaker. Until at last there was no movement at all from inside the trunk.
Kim and Paul looked at each other and at me, their eyes big and fearful. Had I killed their dad? Or was the werewolf just biding its time, waiting?
There was only one way to find out. Kim and Paul climbed down. Kim unlocked the trunk.
Carefully, I lifted the lid.
Chapter 50
“I’m myself again,” he whispered. “I’m human.”
“He’s freezing,” said Kim, grabbing a blanket from a basket by the stairs. She tucked it around her father and hugged his neck. “Oh, Daddy, we were so scared. Are you really back to normal?”
Mr. Parker shuddered and pulled the blanket tighter around him. “Yes,” he said in a stronger voice. “It’s over.”
I stepped back and Paul and Kim helped him out of the trunk. “It all seems like a nightmare,” he said, slumping into a chair. Then he frowned at me. “But it was no dream, was it?”
I shook my shaggy head slowly.
The front door flew open with a bang. Mr. Parker jumped to his feet, reaching for Kim and Paul. I flattened myself against the wall, ready to spring.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Parker, sagging breathlessly against the door. “You’re all right! Thank heavens! I ran all the way here. I heard the monsters had got you. But—”
She suddenly broke off with a scream. Mrs. Parker had caught sight of me. She shrank away in horror.
Paul ran to her. “Mom, it’s okay. He’s not really a monster. He’s Gruff. He helped us. He saved the whole town from the werewolves. He saved Dad, too. Dad was a werewolf but Gruff turned him back into a person.”
But Mrs. Parker didn’t seem to hear. Her eyes were fixed on me and her hand was feeling behind her for a weapon, any weapon.
“Look, Mommy, I’ll prove it,” cried Kim. She rushed over to me and threw her arms around me, looking up into my hideous monster face. “You’re our brother, Gruff, and we love you. No matter what.”
My stomach twisted and a fist squeezed my heart. My throat started to close up and my eyes burned. Something was terribly wrong.
I was crying. Painful werewolf tears that burned my snout.
Chapter 51
Mrs. Parker, it seemed, had missed everything. The last thing she remembered was seeing some hideous creature come flying out of a tree straight at her. She had been knocked unconscious and only woke a little while ago, covered with a plastic tablecloth and hidden under a picnic table.
It must have been Mr. Parker who did that, I thought, slipping out the back door while Kim and Paul and Mr. Parker tried to fill Mrs. Parker in on all that had happened.
I stood under the silvery moon, feeling good that my new family was safe from the night creatures.
I lifted my snout into the clean-smelling air and howled. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The howl stirred my blood in a sad way. The wind ruffled my fur.
“AAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
My ears pricked up. An answering howl! Wolfmother! Then I heard the howls of Thornclaw and Sharpfang, my wolffather and wolfbrother, joining in.
Their howls came from far, far away. They were saying good-bye.
And this time, I knew, that strong, sad howling meant good-bye forever. They knew I was one of the humans now and I would stay with the humans.
Now that I knew the “Rules of The Wereing” I could keep my town safe from werewolves. If I wanted to, I could even kill the monster within me and be human myself from now on.
But I still had work to do. Tomorrow night, before the moon rose, Rick would go into the trunk, if he was still around. And then any other humans that had been bitten by werewolves but hadn’t run away would also go into the trunk and be cured. But not me.
The werewolves were gone. They might not be back next month or even next year, but someday they would return. Something about Fox Hollow drew them here. But when they came I’d be ready for them.
And I would need my werewolf powers to defeat them. There was no escape from my fate.
“I am a monster!” I howled.
A good monster. And I have to stay that way.
About the Authors
Rodman Philbrick grew up on the coast of New Hampshire and has been writing since the age of sixteen. For a number of years he published mystery and suspense fiction for adults. Brothers & Sinners won the Shamus Award in 1994, and two of his other detective novels were nominees. In 1993 his debut young adult novel, Freak the Mighty, won numerous honors, and in 1998 was made into the feature film The Mighty, starring Sharon Stone and James Gandolfini. Freak the Mighty has become a standard reading selection in thousands of classrooms worldwide, and there are more than three million copies in print. In 2010 Philbrick won a Newbery Honor for The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg.
Lynn Harnett, who was married to Rodman Philbrick, passed away in 2012. She was a talented journalist, editor, and book reviewer, and she had a real knack for concocting scary stories that make the reader want to laugh, shriek with fear, and then turn the page to find out what happens next.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8540-6
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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