“Okay, okay…” Simon took in a few deep breaths. He began to pace some more until he finally snapped his fingers. He clearly had an idea as a smile lit up his face. “You’re going to go shower; you look like a cast member of The Walking Dead. I’m going to go park your truck properly before Miranda goes outside and sees it.”
This all sounded like a pretty solid idea. My hands were still shaking at the memory of last night. Ten minutes later standing in the shower, the dull throbbing of water cascading down my head and back did nothing to calm me. I stood in the hot water, hoping some form of clarity would come to mind. None did. My imaginary world of make believe was shattering around me as I stood naked in the water. There were no more hypotheticals or second guessing in regard to whether or not I had seen a werewolf that one night.
I was never again going to think of anything in the world as merely ordinary. There wasn’t just one wolf roaming the outside forest; there were many. My coworkers weren’t just rowdy college-aged guys who never had a hearty dose of reality. They were supernatural creatures. Monsters were real.
After changing into a comfortable pair of sweats and a decent green t-shirt, I headed into Simon’s room. I hadn’t bothered to blow dry my hair. I made a half decent towel turban to help it dry. When I entered my brother’s room, he was already dressed for the day. “Good, you’re out. Let’s get going!”
“Going?” I motioned toward my towel turban and my bare feet. “Where are we going to go?”
“Old man Thompson’s house. We’ve been putting off doing it for too long. It’s time to get it over with.”
I stared at him. “You don’t think we have bigger problems than just getting a story from our crotchety neighbor?” Namely, the enormous new problem that all my coworkers were quite literally a pack of werewolves. All my thoughts regarding the fear of solely Matt being one were now long gone. Our problems were now at a much higher proportion.
A half hour later, I managed to blow dry my damp hair as well as make myself somewhat presentable. Simon and I managed to avoid breakfast and morning coffee with Miranda. She seemed to be in a foul mood as she argued with what sounded like her boss on the phone. She paced and glared, vocally adamant that they weren’t going to hit an important deadline in time. Simon grabbed a pack of Pop Tarts, and I grabbed my keys as we hurried out of the house. I found Simon did a good job re-parking my truck while I was in the shower.
“Who would drive you home?” Simon wondered aloud as he pulled himself inside the truck. He started looking around the floor and the back, seemingly looking for a clue of some sort to confirm the events of last night. But there was nothing. No clues left behind, not even a patch of fur. The only inhabitants of my truck were my pine-scented air freshener hanging and a tire iron under the backseat. My truck was clean, not a trace that anyone had been inside it last night. I could tell I was wondering the same thing as Simon. They didn’t kill me. That only meant that one of the guys managed to take me home and tuck me into bed.
“It was Matt,” I mumbled as my fingers twiddled against themselves.
Simon stopped his searching to pull himself into the passenger seat. He slammed the door shut before speaking. “What was?”
“The one who brought me home.”
“And why would he do that?”
I didn’t quite know the answer. At the party, there had been a moment between us. We spent most of our time squabbling, but when Cale clearly wanted to cause me harm, Matt was the only one who got in his way to stop him. He also prevented Cale from reaching me. Did that act of kindness mean he wasn’t quite a monster?
The drive down the long, winding road to Mr. Thompson’s house was quiet. Neither Simon nor I seemed to know what to say; neither of us pushed to break the silence.
“Miranda didn’t go to the party last night,” Simon finally said. He looked lost in thought as he drummed his fingernails against his thigh.
“Why not?”
“Dunno. I guess we’ll have to ask late…” Simon stopped mid-sentence. My eyes never left the road, so I knew why he stopped talking. About forty yards ahead of us were police cars, their red and blue lights flashing as they remained parked. There were four total, along with an ambulance. I slowly approached the scene in my truck, Simon and I looking out toward Mr. Thompson’s dilapidated house. Police were coming and going; bright yellow crime scene tape closed off the perimeter around the front porch.
“What the hell?” Simon wondered aloud. I pulled my truck to a stop. Exiting the ugly wooden house were two large men wheeling a cart. On top of the cart was a body bag with a man-sized person inside of it. Given the crotchety old man lived alone, there was only one real idea of who it was inside of that body bag. “I don’t think we’re talking to Mr. T today,” said Simon finally, his eyes wide.
A sharp knock on my window startled us. An officer was at my window. I quickly rolled it down. “We need to keep moving on this road, ma’am,” said the officer. He looked too young to be a cop, barely out of high school perhaps. A multitude of light brown freckles covered his face, and a mop of red hair was neatly combed under a large deputy hat.
“Sorry,” I mumbled as the cart with the body bag reached the driveway. The two men started to load it into the back of the ambulance. “That’s our neighbor,” I offered numbly.
“What happened?” asked Simon, his wide eyes intently watching the black body bag.
“Animal attack,” said the young officer.
My eyes shot to the officer at the same time Simon’s did. “A-Animal?”
“Guy had a couple big dogs on his property, guard dogs gone rogue it looks like.” Hearing this was how I could tell the officer was very young. He seemed to be proud he was able to talk about his job to two random civilians. I wondered if the cop should be giving us this much information until I realized it was rather irrelevant. There was no murder mystery for the officers, no human suspects available to pursue detective work. The cop then said we should get a move on.
I pulled out of park and then continued down the road. I decided to go down the road we were originally traveling on. Simon sent me a questioning look, clearly wondering why I hadn’t turned around to head back home. “I don’t want the cops to think we were only headed down here to talk to Mr. Thompson.”
I watched enough crime procedure shows to know police might find that alone suspicious, animal attack or not. Although they wouldn’t be wrong in assuming we knew how Mr. Thompson died. Simon nodded but said nothing. My quiet words meant nothing. There was something far more important now weighing heavily on both of our minds.
“Why would the werewolves kill Mr. Thompson?” I wondered aloud. It was not lost upon me that just the day before I would have never believed there was pack of werewolves in the Wisconsin Dells. But I knew what I saw the night before. Monsters were quite real. I proceeded to drive down the main highway, fully intent on taking an alternative route to avoid seeing the scene of Mr. Thompson’s body being loaded into the ambulance.
“Isn’t it obvious?” wondered Simon aloud. “They killed him to keep him quiet.”
CHAPTER 12
Simon’s hypothesis seemed to be the most accurate. But his theory only brought more questions. What had Mr. Thompson known? Clearly the old man knew something important in order to be killed.
“Maybe he knew who the leader of the pack is?” I wondered aloud, staring at an open book beside me. Simon had gone to the library earlier in the week to borrow multiple books on werewolf lore and mythology. There was a lot of information on alphas. Maybe Mr. Thompson had information on who the alpha of the Wisconsin pack was.
“Maybe,” Simon allowed as he fiddled around on his keyboard. We had spent the rest of the day huddled up inside of his bedroom pouring over the mythology of werewolves online and in books. “But my money is still on Matt being the leader.”
“It’s not Matt.” But my defensive words caused Simon to shoot me a look. He stiffened and didn’t speak for a moment.
&n
bsp; “Don’t forget he’s not human, Ev.”
His words caught me off guard. “What…?”
“You like him,” accused Simon softly. That wasn’t an accusation I was expecting from my little brother. I shook my head rapidly.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Are you gonna lie and say you don’t?” It was as if Simon could see through me. As if he could possibly see the chemistry Matt and I had been finding we had.
“No, I don’t,” I said with finality, avoiding eye contact. I stood and grabbed another book that was lying on his bed. It was avoiding looking at my brother that taught me something that I hadn’t thought to myself until that moment. He wasn’t wrong.
“Look,” I said, ignoring looking at him as he watched me. “He’s a monster, but he’s not the leader.”
These words Simon accepted, and it caused him to move on from the topic. He nodded before scanning his laptop screen some more. “But then who would be the pack leader? Your boss, Perry?”
My cell phone gave a loud beep from the next room, indicating a voicemail. I contemplated Simon’s question as he muttered something about doing a background check on my boss. I went to my room and grabbed my phone off my desk. I found there was a voicemail and two missed phone calls. There was also a bunch of text messages from Darren. The calls and voicemail were from him as well.
Darren: Family emergency, I was in the hospital last night.
I’m so sorry I didn’t call you, things were crazy.
There were five more texts going into heavy detail about what happened and how he had spent the night in the hospital after being in a minor car accident. With everything that had happened at the party, I had nearly forgot that we were supposed to meet up for a date at the party. That explained what happened to Darren. But I couldn’t think about that; my mind was still absorbed in what Simon had said. I went back to his room. “But if Perry is the leader, why would he allow me to transfer to his department? Wouldn’t having a human in a pack of werewolves be anti-productive?”
“Think of what the guys said when you first joined,” said Simon wryly. “No one ever lasts a full month in that department. Maybe Perry was betting you’d leave on your own by month’s end and that there was nothing to worry about.”
“Why not just say I can’t transfer to his department?” That would certainly be easier than allowing me to join to begin with. Safer, less messy.
“Maybe it would look too suspicious telling you no?” Simon begun to pace. “You could go to HR and they would investigate?” He looked annoyed. “None of it makes sense, okay? How the hell does a pack of werewolves all work in a popular resort and no one has taken notice until now?”
I sighed heavily. “If Perry really is the leader, why would he take the chance of me getting killed by the wolves? Isn’t it too risky keeping me around the guys?”
“I have no idea,” said Simon as he threw up his hands. “I’m literally just making this up as I go along. All we know for sure is that your coworkers are a pack of werewolves and they killed our neighbor ’cause he obviously knew something important. Why more people don’t realize the set-up department are a bunch of werewolves is beyond me.”
Maybe these words weren’t exactly true. Maybe people around the resort felt they were different even though they couldn’t prove it. “Everyone treats them differently,” I recalled, thinking of all the times different departments ignored my coworkers or purposely avoided them. It didn’t matter if it was other departments in the conference center or housekeeping; all employees regarded the set-up boys differently than they regarded each other, almost as if they purposely went out of their way to avoid them all.
“It’s fear,” I said in slow realization, thinking of all the times the boys said something deeply inappropriate or outrageous. They said and did whatever they wanted, and no one said anything about their atrocious behaviors. I assumed because the town of Wisconsin Dells was so small The Forest Resort couldn’t afford to fire everyone in the department. But perhaps it had been more than that this entire time. Simon picked up on what I was insinuating.
“People can sense they’re different,” he said with wide eyes. He started scanning the contents of the nearest book. “It’s a prey reaction. You wouldn’t antagonize a hungry lion.” My eyes widened as the pieces of the story started clicking together.
“Lotta-Volterra equation,” I murmured. Simon raised an eyebrow. I had clearly lost him. “I read a lot, okay? It’s a predator-prey equation. It’s when two species interact, one as predator and the other as prey. The populations change through time.”
Simon gathered what I was saying. His face crumpled. “So, people don’t say anything because even though they have no idea these guys are bad, it’s the equation coming into play.”
I nodded eagerly. “The other departments are like prey while the set-up guys are the predators. Subconsciously, the other departments know they’re outnumbered by the werewolves.” Simon’s earlier words echoed in my head and caused me to say them out loud. “People can sense the banquet boys are different. They just have no idea why that is.”
I needed to quit my job; that much was certain. As night approached after Simon and I did more research on the lore of werewolves, it was obvious I couldn’t show up to work the next morning. I couldn’t possibly walk into the convention center and pretend nothing had happened at the employee party. I couldn’t not be afraid of my coworkers and what they were.
Simon had other ideas. “You have to go,” he said again, throwing himself onto a kitchen chair. He was watching as I rolled the seasoned ground beef into balls. I was almost finished with my task. Spaghetti and meatballs were for dinner. I had been the one to start everything from making a homemade tomato sauce to preparing the ground beef. All night Simon still prattled on, speaking of hypothetical game plans.
“Are you kidding me?” I demanded as I slipped the baking sheet into the oven. “Those guys turned into werewolves and you want me to show up to work tomorrow? What if they go horror movie crazy and kill me because I know their secret?” For having such a large overactive imagination, he sure wasn’t thinking this through.
“You work mornings and the guys are mostly scheduled nights, right?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, unsure where he was going with this question. I salted the boiling water for the spaghetti. When I looked at the schedule for this upcoming week, I was only doing my morning shifts with either Darren or Matt. The other guys were all scheduled four to midnight. Even though our shifts wouldn’t be overlapping, I didn’t want to come across Matt during my shift.
“They’re not going to kill you,” said Simon with certainty.
“You don’t know that.”
He waved off my concern with a lazy hand. “If they were gonna kill you, they’d have done it last night.”
“Do you not understand that our neighbor is dead?” My harsh tone caught Simon’s full attention. He suddenly looked guilty. “He’s lying in the morgue right now. Yeah, the guys didn’t kill me because Jamie wants me to join the group. But very easily this could end badly. We have no idea that they won’t kill me!”
Simon clasped his hands together. “So, we trick them into thinking you want to join the pack.”
Rational thought told me to send Perry a simple text explaining that I was abruptly quitting. But Simon’s logic had me pulling into the employee parking at The Forest Resort the next morning. I didn’t want to get out of my truck as I put it into park and shut off the ignition. Every thought that filtered through my head led me through the rough terrain of why getting out of the truck would be a bad idea. As luck would have it, I didn’t see a vehicle belonging to any of the guys I worked with. The only cars in the lot were Perry’s and a few others that I knew belonged to the kitchen staff. An unfamiliar light blue Pontiac was also there, but I didn’t recognize it as belonging to my coworkers. Darren and Matt weren’t scheduled until ten. By the time they were both around, I would purpose
ly make sure to stay close to Darren the entire time.
Feeling completely safe with the idea of going to work that day, I ventured inside.
If Perry didn’t secretly want me eaten by his rowdy pack of werewolves, I was gaining the impression that he kept me around solely for the more feminine aspects of the banquet set-up job. That morning specifically, I spent my time vacuuming all entry ways—which were a lot given there were two large entrances to the conference center and a total of eight other doorways to the building—and cleaning windows. It was a job I had never seen Perry have Matt or Darren do. My first week working the department Jamie had half-heartedly shown me how to clean windows, but I had doubted he ever actually did them himself.
It was scrubbing the final window in the large ballroom that I felt as though I was being watched. A careful scan of the ballroom proved useless. The room was set up for a wedding. Thirty round tables with ten chairs at each table were set throughout the ballroom. All had linens and beautiful decorations of blue and white upon them. A large stage for the head table was set in the far corner. Decorations for the wedding were white and royal blue, the latter not looking as though it matched other shades of royal blue decorating the chairs and the linens at the head table. But that was a problem for the wedding decorators and not myself.
A dance floor that was put together in front of the pillars of the room took up a lot of space. I looked around the ballroom, the same familiar feeling of being watched taking over. The lights were off in the far end of the room, cloaking everything in darkness. It was another rainy day in Wisconsin; there was no sun shining in through the main windows to provide light. All I had to see were the few chandelier lights on.
Satisfied that no one else was inside the room, I turned around before letting out a loud squeal of surprise. Matt was suddenly behind me, less than two feet away. Granted, there were a set of doors behind me in the next room he must have entered, but he was so very quiet I hadn’t heard him make a sound as he approached.
The Wisconsin Werewolf Page 9
