The Wolfstone Curse

by Justin Richards

  Carys glanced at Peter, and found he was staring back at her. “What?” she mouthed.

  Then a phone rang. It seemed incredibly loud, as if it was right by Carys’s ear. She felt a sudden stab of fear and horror as she realised it was right by her ear. Peter was desperately fumbling in his pocket, trying to turn the sound off.

  The wolf-guard turned back in their direction, walking slowly towards the noise.

  Finally, Peter managed to turn it off. “Sorry,” he mouthed. He looked pale, and Carys guessed she looked just as afraid.

  The guard stood silhouetted against the low, red sun. He had stopped when the noise cut off. The creature was close enough that Carys could have stretched out and touched his boots.

  It grunted, turning to look one way, then the other – its sense of smell confused by the acrid smoke drifting from the engine. Then it stood staring out across Peter and Carys for what seemed like an age. They lay perfectly still, holding their breath. Finally, the guard gave another grunt, turned and walked away.

  Carys waited until they had crawled back well out of earshot of the guard before she opened her mouth to tell Peter he’d almost got them both killed.

  But he spoke first. “Sorry – I almost got us killed. Should have put my phone on silent. But hey – at least it means we have a signal.”

  “Who was calling?” Carys demanded. “Because it wasn’t exactly the best moment.”

  “Voicemail.” He held the phone between them so they could both hear the tinny filtered sound of his father’s voice.

  “I’m back at Wolfstone. The good news is the funding’s all sorted. The bad news is… well, you know the bad news because it’s you, isn’t it?” There was a theatrical sigh. “Faye has told me what’s happened. I don’t believe a word of it… Well, I don’t know. I do and I don’t. Look – just call. And tell Carys her mother’s worried sick.” There was a long pause, and Carys thought the message had ended, but then Peter’s dad added, “We’re both worried sick. Just call, okay?”

  “Well,” Carys said, “I’ve got nothing better to do right now. What about you?”

  “We could send a text, but there’s no way of knowing they got it,” Peter said. “So, what do we tell them?”

  Carys shrugged. “Just do what I always do. Lie, and say we’re fine.”

  Her own phone still had no signal, so they called the Red Fleece on Peter’s.

  Carys’s mum spent a few minutes telling her off for not keeping in touch, like it was a school trip or something. The fact that there had been no phone signal didn’t seem to count as an excuse. Peter’s dad joined them on the call, and already seemed resigned to the fact that his son had disappeared to Russia, to hunt werewolves with a teenage girl he’d met only a few days earlier.

  Before long he was telling them that Abby and Mike’s findings at the circle seemed to support some of what Carys’s mother had told him about what had been going on.

  “There’s rather more solid and hairy evidence here,” Peter said.

  Carys glared at him. But Peter’s dad didn’t seem to pick up on that.

  “We sent the bones from the graves we found for analysis. Seems the skeletons were mutated – consistent with a transition to lupine anatomy, I’d say.”

  “Werewolves,” Peter whispered to Carys.

  “I know,” she whispered back.

  “They were shot in the back with silver-tipped arrows, as we know. So the working supposition is that they were trying to escape from the circle. If it was a place of healing, then it seems they didn’t want to be healed.”

  “The cure might have been worse than the ailment,” Carys’s mother added.

  “Getting it in the back with an arrow certainly was,” Carys agreed.

  The signal was getting choppy. Peter’s dad’s voice was fading in and out and they missed bits of what he said.

  “We’ll have to go,” Peter said. “You’re cutting out. The signal’s pretty dodgy here. Dad, this might sound daft but do you have a crystal sword lying about somewhere?”

  They could hardly hear his reply. “Sword? Why… when he… want to know?”

  “Didn’t get that,” Carys said, as loudly as she dared.

  There was silence from the other end.

  “Dad – are you still there?” Peter asked. “Look, if you can hear me, that sword is important. The wolves are after it. And don’t trust Forrest – or any of them. Okay?”

  Still nothing.

  “We’ll be back soon, I hope.”

  Carys was about to tell her mum not to worry. About to say, “I love you, Mum.” But the phone cut out, and there was just a steady tone.

  “We’re on our own again,” she said. “You think he heard – about the sword?”

  “We don’t even know if he has it.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “Get home. God knows how. It looks like we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  “There must be something here,” Carys reasoned. “Or else why did they come?”

  “New plan,” Peter decided. “Explore, find out what’s going on. Then go home.”

  “Easy,” Carys told him.

  A faint, damp mist was permeating the forest. It hung close to the ground and smelled of soot and salt. Ahead of them, a clanking and wheezing told them the train was preparing to leave again. With a hiss of steam, the train backed slowly into a siding. Several of the wolf-guards changed the points over so the train could return the way it had come. The clearing filled with noise and smoke as it departed.

  When the smoke cleared, Carys could see that the clearing was actually at the edge of the forest, on a plateau, overlooking a bay. With the smell of the train dissipating, she could smell the salt of the sea. She could hear the distant waves breaking on the shore. A roadway curled away into the distance, hugging the coast further along. Beyond the road, the mountains were now revealed as cliffs, rising ominously above the water as the sun dipped lower, elongating the shadows of the trees.

  Now for the first time, Carys noticed the ruins. Obscured by the train and the smoke, they hadn’t seen the stunted stone walls and broken ground. The remains of a flagged floor stretched into the distance. A flight of stone steps rose into nowhere. Rubble and debris lay strewn across the plateau, grass and ivy growing over and through it. Whatever large building had once stood here, it was long gone.

  “What are they doing?” Peter wondered.

  The wolf-guards were raising what looked like rectangular screens. They positioned them round the middle of the ruins, forming a semi-circle. The screens slotted into spaces cut into the ruined floor. More guards were erecting scaffolding at the edge of the ruins. They hoisted huge lights into place.

  “It looks like a film set,” Carys realised.

  “Except those are mirrors,” Peter pointed out. He was fiddling with his phone, and Carys hoped it was on silent.

  One of the screens to the side of the ruin caught the sunlight and reflected it straight at Carys and Peter, dazzling them for a moment. Then a screen slotted into place, and the light was angled above them.

  “You see the shape they’re making?” Peter whispered. “Remind you of anything?

  Carys saw at once what he meant. The shape of the flattened semi-circle; the positioning of each screen.

  “The Wolfstone Circle.”

  “Vrolask, too,” Peter said. “So that’s three identical circles – except they’re not circles. And the one in Vrolask is pretty much gone.”

  “But why here?” Carys said. “There’s some sort of ruin, but this doesn’t look like an ancient sight – not stone-circle ancient. Medieval, maybe, but no older than that.”

  Peter held his phone so she could see the screen. “I’ve got a signal. It’s not great, but it might be enough.”

  He had the maps app open. A flashing dot showed their current position. The map around the dot was slowly appearing in blocks. It showed a vast expanse of sea and the top of northern Poland.

  “I
’ll zoom in,” Peter said. “Get a place name or something.”

  Carys searched through her rucksack for Grandad’s journal. “We’re on the coast,” she said. “And I’ve seen those cliffs before. I remember the shape.”

  “You’ve been here?”

  “No. I saw them in a drawing. A sketch.”

  She riffled through the pages until she found what she was looking for. She held the book out for Peter to see. A sketch of a castle, large and forbidding. But behind it, the cliffs of the bay formed the same distinctive shape.

  Peter held up his phone as the map appeared fully. Right next to the flashing dot showing where they were there was a word. A place name.

  Wolfenburg.

  A car was approaching along the coast road. It wound its way up towards the plateau where Schloss Wolfenburg had once stood. Its headlights cut through the gathering dusk.

  “Someone important,” Peter guessed.

  The wolf-guards were working quickly now, perhaps to get the lights and mirrors erected before the car arrived.

  “Never mind that,” Carys whispered, “it’s a way out.”

  “Good point. Let’s see where it’s going.”

  The car had almost reached the top of the plateau when it stopped. There was the sound of a mechanism – a heavy, metallic noise. Then the car drove on, and disappeared from view. It looked as if it had driven right into the side of the cliff.

  “Where did it go?” Peter asked.

  “A lot of the castle was underground. Remember, in the journal, they had to go down into the cellars to find the labs and that crypt and the Crystal Room? That area might have been protected from the blasts. Maybe it’s still there…”

  “Surely the whole place would have collapsed into it,” Peter said.

  “Then where did the car go?”

  “Who knows?” Peter said. “And how do we get in? I don’t fancy trying the front door.”

  They sat at the edge of a wooded area, in the shadow of the trees and went through their options. There weren’t many.

  “We can try to sneak past the guards, which is going to be difficult,” Carys suggested. “Or wait for the car to come out again and try to hijack it somehow, or hide inside. We could wait for another car, if there ever is one, or just walk away and hope we find civilisation before we starve to death or die of exposure.”

  That was pretty much it, Peter thought. “Which do you fancy?” he asked.

  “None of the above.”

  “Then we need to think of something else. You got the journal?”

  Carys took it out again. “You think it might help?”

  “There must be something, some clue in here that we’ve missed. Something that will help.”

  Carys leafed through the brittle, yellowing pages. “I don’t know what.”

  “Me neither,” Peter agreed. He was clutching at straws, but the journal was the closest thing to a guidebook that they had.

  They read slowly through the whole book again. Nothing. Carys turned back to the start.

  “You know what’s missing?” she said. “There’s nothing about how they escaped after they planted the explosives and got out of the Crystal Room.”

  “He’d just been bitten by a werewolf,” Peter pointed out. “He probably didn’t remember much.”

  “They blew the place up, though, so how did he and Acer get out?”

  It was a good question. But at the crucial point in the narration, there was just a blank page with a faded pencil sketch. A series of lines joined into an enclosed shape, and another dotted line curved over some of it.

  “He had time to doodle,” Carys said. “He must have written all this on the way home, anyway. It’s not like he was keeping notes during the raid.”

  “But he couldn’t describe what he couldn’t remember,” Peter said. “Unless…” There was something about the random lines. Maybe they weren’t so random after all – the enclosed shape looked a bit like… “Hang on.”

  “What is it?”

  He turned back to the beginning of the section – the sketch of the castle, and a rough plan of its layout. The plan was the same shape. “It’s not just a doodle,” he said. He flipped between the two pages. “Look – it’s a map.”

  “Another sketch of the castle – so what?”

  “So, what if that dotted line shows how they got out?”

  Carys took the book from him and examined it carefully. “It’s possible,” she agreed. “You know there are times, just a few, when I’m glad I brought you along.”

  They made their way carefully round the site of the ruined castle. They kept to the trees, though the wolf-guards seemed preoccupied with the lights and mirrors.

  Soon they reached a point where they could see where the car had gone. The edge of the plateau gave way sharply, and they were looking across to where the road entered the original castle. The remains of the gatehouse were built into the side of the cliff – a cliff made of shattered debris created when the had walls tumbled down.

  The gateway had been opened up and scaffolding and metal props had kept the roof from collapsing across the road again.

  Two wolf-guards in their dark uniforms stood either side of the gateway, guns over their shoulders.

  “You’re right,” Peter said quietly. “They”ve excavated right under the castle.”

  “Looking for the labs – for the Nazi experiments,” Carys said. “But how did they know there was anything there?”

  “Maybe they’re putting their own labs in,” Peter suggested. “They need somewhere to keep the wolves.”

  “To ‘acclimate’ them.” Carys nodded. “So here’s the plan – find a way inside, see what they’re up to, then get out.”

  “In the car,” Peter added, though he knew it wouldn’t be easy. “So if that dotted line is a way in, it should be…” He turned to get his bearings. “Should be that way.”

  They looped round to the cliff, and clambered down towards the sea. There was a narrow path about halfway down. It was slippery from sea spray, and in places had crumbled away completely. Bracken and brambles overhung it, so they had a choice of either pushing through and getting scratched, or tumbling over the edge.

  “Is it far?” Peter asked. He didn’t dare look down. The tide was in, and the waves were crashing against the base of the cliff. He pushed a branch out of his way and eased past.

  “Not very. Assuming this map – if it is a map – is anything like accurate.”

  “And assuming the way in is still there,” Peter muttered. After all, the castle itself was all but gone. But they didn’t have a choice – they needed the car to get away.

  They edged on round the narrow path. Finally Carys stopped.

  “I think this might be it.”

  She pulled back a mass of foliage to reveal a dark hole in the side of the cliff. It was too regular, the edges too straight, to be natural. Peter got his phone out and the pale glow of the display lit a muddy stone floor, but not much more. A brighter light cut through the gloom above as Carys produced a small torch. The walls of the passage were lined with ancient crumbling bricks.

  “Always come prepared,” she told him.

  “Always? If you think I’m ever doing anything like this again, you are seriously deluded.”

  The passage was cold, damp, claustrophobic. With every step he took, Peter felt more and more like the walls and the roof were pressing in on him.

  “Your namesake was found not that far from here,” Carys said as they made their way along the narrow passage.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Peter the Wild Boy.”

  “Yeah, very funny.” He had no idea what she was talking about. He tried not to think of the weight of earth and rubble pressing down on the roof of the passage – of what would happen if it collapsed while they were still inside.

  “No, he was real,” Carys said. “He was found in the early eighteenth century.”

  “A wild boy?”

  �
�They called him Peter. Don’t know why. But he was found fending for himself in the woods. They said he was raised by wolves.”

  “What happened to him?” Peter wasn’t all that interested, but it took his mind off where they were, and the danger they were in.

  “King George I took him in at his court in London. He was a sensation.”

  “As “Peter the Wild Boy”?”

  “That’s right. He refused to dress. Slept on the floor. Ate with his fingers. And he never learned to speak.”

  “Can’t see the attraction,” Peter said.

  Carys slipped on the damp floor, and clutched at Peter’s arm. He caught her, holding her hand.

  “Thanks… Maybe they felt sorry for him. He lived at court for years. Grew up there, until the king pensioned him off. He gave him a farm in Hertfordshire.”

  “Maybe he felt at home with the animals.”

  She was still holding his hand. “Maybe. There was a waxwork statue of him in the Strand for a while. Even today, people still leave flowers on his grave.”

  “And you think it’s funny we have the same name?”

  “I’m not teasing you.” She sounded surprised.

  “So why are you telling me this?”

  “Because…” She looked away. “Because I’m scared, and if I’m talking I don’t have time to be so frightened. All right?”

  Peter squeezed her hand. He wanted to tell her he was scared too, but would that just sound like he was trying to please her? He was saved from having to say anything by a noise ahead of them.

  “What’s that?” Carys hissed.

  “Not sure,” he whispered back.

  They stood silent and still, straining to hear. It was a faint, mechanical sound. Irregular but insistent. As they moved along the passageway, it grew slowly louder, until it was reverberating round them. The ground trembled. Then, abruptly, the noise stopped.

  “I don’t think we need this any more.” Carys turned off the torch. Sure enough, there was a pale glow from further along the passage.

  The way ahead was blocked. The roof had collapsed, filling the passage with rubble. But the light and the noise were filtering in from a hole in the wall close to where the roof had caved in. The gap was narrow, but they managed to squeeze through into another, wider corridor.