The Wisconsin Werewolf

by Alex Gedgaudas

  “I’ll pass on the message,” said Matt quietly, unable to look my way.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say. He didn’t want to look at me. After that, I just quietly allowed myself out.

  CHAPTER 18

  “We blow them all up,” offered Simon lamely. We were talking on the phone; he was on speaker as I drove. This was one of multiple bad ideas he had offered as of late. After confiding with Simon what Matt had told me, I realized I couldn’t stay at the resort. The deaths of Laurel and Jonna had been an elaborate scheme concocted by the pack and their mysterious leader. I felt bad for ditching Tim when he desperately needed someone, but things wound up working out for him. He found a couple more J1 students to help around his department. Then he hired an assistant manager to help the J1 students travel around the resort. I knew this guy from seeing him around the resort during his short stint working as a supervisor in housekeeping. Jaden was overall a very lazy person who looked as though he had never done an ounce of physical labor in his life, but perhaps the job would only require him playing chauffeur for the J1 students.

  As luck would have it, I immediately found a job right after telling Tim I couldn’t work for him. I was driving through downtown Dells when I noticed a small sign on a telephone pole. It was for a supper club that was perched on the lake right on the edge of town. I only stopped by the place to pick up an application, but I wound up getting a job on the spot.

  “That’s not possible without hurting innocent people,” I replied. This wasn’t an actual idea from Simon. That’s why my reply was lazy and not full of too much care. He was merely tossing more random and impossible hypotheticals into the equation. We were seriously lacking any real ideas on how to kill an alpha wolf.

  “We find a real way to kill the whole pack then…?”

  The idea of Matt being caught in the crosshairs made my stomach quench uncomfortably.

  “That’s not too likely, either,” I shot down.

  “All right, all right. I’ll talk it over with Erik and we’ll come up with an idea.”

  We ended the call after that, neither of us having anything else to say. This situation was massively stressing the both of us out. Simon’s eyes now held dark circles under them, showing he hadn’t been getting a good night sleep in a while. Even I wasn’t the same. My eyes also held circles under my eyes indicating a lack of sleep, but I was also losing weight. I hadn’t been pigging out on sugar and junk food as I used to; even my meals were a lot smaller than they usually were. As it turned out, stress and fear were a really great combination for a diet. My size twelve jeans were now two sizes too big.

  Today was my first night working as a bartender at the supper club. It wasn’t a very creative place in the name department. It was solely called “The Club.”

  When I had walked into the supper club two days previously, I couldn’t help but notice that as beautiful as the location and building was, the supper club was smack in the middle of the forest surrounded by nothing but woods and water. According to the owner, it was the seclusion that made the place special. But the location made me uncomfortable. I was no longer fond of the woods; my thoughts often flickered to the possibility of someone among the pack being able to easily stalk me in the woods if they really wanted to. When I went in for an application a few days previously, I was immediately met by a gruff balding man named Richie. He wanted to know why I was inside his restaurant when they didn’t open for a few more hours. It was a rude way to talk to a potential customer.

  Without batting an eyelash, I told Richie I wanted an application for the open bartender position.

  He didn’t cut corners. He then demanded to know why he should hire me. I thought this was also a rather rude way to talk to someone when all they wanted to do was inquire about a job. At that point, I really had no hope that I would be having my application viewed, let alone getting the job. My attitude then got the better of me. I told Richie I was the very best at the position and it would only be his loss if he didn’t hire me. I wasn’t confident I would get the job; I had nothing to fear.

  But Richie took me by surprise. He claimed to have loved my confidence. I had blushed when he said that my pretty face would sell a lot of alcohol as well. That wasn’t something I was used to hearing.

  After that, he didn’t even ask for an application and just told me to show up Monday for training. Two days later, I was walking toward the supper club for my first day at the new job. Nightfall was approaching; the cool November breeze blew the crunchy leaves across the pavement of the walkway. There was nothing to fear; it wasn’t dark yet. There were people all around walking into the club. All were employees arriving to work to set up for the opening in a few hours. Even while being completely surrounded by people, I had the familiar feeling take over me that I was being watched. From where I couldn’t say. The woods surrounded the supper club completely; the club was perched on a small cliff overlooking the glorious lake that looked like a mirror for the trees and sky during the daytime.

  I hurried inside the building while trying not to think about the possibilities of a werewolf watching me in the woods.

  “Now, ladies, you should think of me as your Uncle Richie, because I always take care of my girls,” boasted Richie an hour later. After clocking in and doing the behind-the-scenes stuff of working in a restaurant, we had to line up in the front hallway of the club to greet customers and then be given our specific tables. The behind-the-scenes actions were polishing silverware, rolling them into napkins, and making sure our individual tables had menus. There were two floors of the supper club, an upstairs and the on-ground area. Both had amazing window views of the outside lake perched right next to the building. I imagined it looked glorious in the summertime with the sun shining. The fall season made it so it was darker earlier; it was already dark outside and prevented views of the lake.

  It was a nice place to work, my coworkers were friendly, but I was finding myself uncomfortable working for Richie. Evidently, he was a very wealthy man who owned multiple supper clubs based in Wisconsin and Michigan. I didn’t learn this information based on Google or an outside source; Richie quickly revealed he had a very boastful personality. Anytime around him, no matter the time, he spent it boasting of his own accomplishments regarding his establishments. I learned this while asking who I was training with. My question received an answer before Richie somehow got talking about his teenage years back when he was a bus boy and had to build up to have the incredible name he has today.

  Although I really tried not forming a negative opinion about him, Richie was also incredibly too friendly with his servers. It was borderline flirting the way he touched their shoulders or tried to make them laugh with his cheesy jokes. His Uncle Richie comment was enough to make me cringe. Though it was only my first day, I was thankful to escape his attention. His creepy flirting seemed only reserved for the young women who had been there longer than a couple weeks.

  It was easy to take notice that all twenty of the servers and bartenders at The Club were solely young women. The only males that worked for Richie were either hidden in the kitchen cooking or the sole male host who also doubled as the head of Richie’s small catering company. Everyone else was a young woman with nearly the same look: very young and relatively thin. Even though the hair colors and skin tones ranged between us all, there wasn’t anyone who looked above the age of twenty-three. No one carried extra pudge on their hips or padding in their cheeks. If not for my stress-induced weight loss to leave me hovering between a size 6 and 8, I was quite doubtful I would have been hired based upon my weight alone.

  There was also a singular trait all the young women carried: everyone smiled and giggled at the annoying things Richie would say.

  “You’ll fit in if you drink the Kool-Aid,” muttered a girl the second Uncle Richie was out of earshot. I did a double take, for I wasn’t sure I had heard her right.

  This girl had pretty dark skin and almond-shaped eyes. She introduced herself
as Sasha earlier in the night.

  “Uncle Richie,” I murmured in a low voice so we wouldn’t be overheard.

  Sasha rolled her brown eyes. “Don’t even get me started. Just smile and nod and you’ll do fine. He only fires the girls who don’t suck up.”

  I winced. Sasha gave me an understanding nod. “It’s really annoying, but the tips we make are worth it.”

  Sasha hadn’t been kidding. The tips were solely what made the job worth it. Early on, it was revealed that Richie had the tendency to go from insanely friendly to easily angered as simply as flicking on a light switch. That much was proven when I witnessed one of the newly hired servers accidentally spill a cup of soda on the tray she was carrying. Even though it wasn’t very noticeable, for only a few droplets splashed out, Richie pulled the girl by the elbow into the kitchen to avoid being overheard by customers. His face was beet red and a vein looked to be pulsing on his shiny forehead.

  He then fired the poor girl on the spot. The girl speed walked out of the kitchen crying, and from my understanding, she hadn’t been new; she’d been at The Club for a couple of months.

  The only redeeming quality I could find for Richie was that he luckily allowed even the new bartenders to keep their tips without pooling them. The cocktail prices were definitely overpriced, but The Club was packed from the moment we opened. If someone paid even twelve bucks for a simple cocktail made from rail alcohol, they still tipped about five to seven dollars from it. After serving well over fifty people as well as making cocktails for servers to deliver, I was finding the tips were most definitely worth dealing with Richie and his inappropriate behavior.

  “Hey, Everly, you have a phone call,” said Courtney, motioning her head to the back room. I had just finished running a credit card on the register for a sweet elderly couple who had purchased two gin and tonics.

  I didn’t think anything of a phone call up until I was in the back room pondering why someone would be calling me here of all places. The only two people I had informed of my plans to work at The Club were Simon and Erik; not even Miranda had been privy to my job change. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. Even while on silent, it didn’t indicate anyone tried calling.

  The back room that was the employee lounge was stuffy and small; there wasn’t enough space for anything other than a small table and mini fridge. The landline was new but old, obviously not used when hidden in this small and cramped area. “Hello?” I asked as soon as the phone went to my ear.

  “Everly, Everly, Everly,” said the familiar voice of Cale. “How long are you going to stay at this job? Because I have to admit, Uncle Richie is even getting on my nerves.” All words became lost in my throat. Nothing came to mind as I simply stared at the linoleum beneath my feet. Not only did Cale know how to find me, he knew about Richie and his uncle comment earlier. Clearly he was near enough to have overheard.

  “What, nothing to say?” inquired Cale cheerfully over the line. “I know you’re still there; I can hear your breathing.”

  I did a double take between the receiver and down at myself. There was nothing abnormal about my breathing; I wasn’t panting or anything of the sort. But if Cale had really overheard Richie just from being outside, I had no doubt he could hear my small breaths over the phone.

  “W-why are you calling?” My stutter showcased my fear. But as I thought about it, I don’t know why I bothered asking. It was obvious why he would call the landline at The Club instead of my personal cell phone. Cale wanted to scare me.

  “Just wanted you to know that there are no hard feelings whatsoever about leaving the hotel,” said Cale breezily. “You’re welcome back anytime.”

  “That’s why you called?” I said in the breath of a whisper. “To offer me my job back?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” chastised Cale. “Let’s call this a warning. Come back to the pack, and none of your pretty little coworkers are going to get hurt.”

  Irrationally, I hung up the phone as soon as he spoke, terror flooding through me. I didn’t know what to say or do. This was a warning to say they know where to find me; Cale just made an open threat against my new coworkers.

  I didn’t get the proper time to call Simon to inform him of these developments before the hot-headed Richie barged into the lounge to inform me he wasn’t paying me to socialize on the phone.

  I barely made it through the rest of the night. Cold sweat attacked my forehead as well as the back of my neck. I didn’t have anything negative to say about my new coworkers. They were all so friendly. But as I saw the faces of Sasha, Courtney, Kirsten, and Amber throughout the night, I couldn’t help but fearfully wonder which one of the girls would be targets of the pack because of me.

  At the end of the night after I helped the other bartenders do end of the night closing duties, I clocked out and walked to my truck with a herd of people. It was safer to walk in numbers; that way I could talk with Sasha and ignore the chilly feeling that the woods surrounding The Club were watching me.

  That night, I told Simon about what happened on the phone with Cale. He immediately began helping me go through our own version of end of the night closing duties, locking all doors, setting up wire traps in case someone broke in, and my personal favorite, a high voltage electric wire around the doorknob to our basement. If a member of the pack broke in through the basement window, they wouldn’t be able to allow themselves upstairs without shocking themselves. It wouldn’t kill them or anyone else who tried touching it, but hopefully a very ugly zap would alert us that an intruder was in the house.

  I went to bed after Simon promised that tomorrow he and Erik were going to take some extra precautions they found online.

  I had a near dreamless sleep with the exception of one nightmare. It was a horrible one filled with blood and gore and the sound of a girl screaming.

  But when I awoke the next morning, I found there was no nightmare at all. It was all my reality. My bed was soaked in red, a disgustingly sticky substance that covered my mint green sheets from the foot of the bed and upward. The copper smell made me dizzy. The red was all over my bed, covering me and my pajamas from head to foot.

  The red was blood. As my voice lost pitch and my throat started gasping, I realized the girl screaming was me.

  But none of this was as gory and horrifying than what came next. As I struggled to remove myself from my blood-soaked bed, I jumped out of my comforter when I felt something beneath it. Fresh blood oozed out of my comforter as if the bed itself was bleeding. Red covered my hands and arms, looking as though someone intentionally made it so it was completely coating my arms, hands, and body.

  With a trembling hand, I fearfully through back my now bloody comforter to reveal the decapitated head of Richie.

  CHAPTER 19

  As luck would have it, Miranda had already left for work an hour earlier while Simon had taken the bus to school. No one was home to overhear my horrified and panicked screams. No neighbors lived close enough to hear me, either. It was ten by the time I had woken up. I hadn’t set my alarm since my shifts at The Club were all late afternoon, given it was a supper club that only had late dinner hours. I couldn’t remember pulling myself out of bed or running to the other side of the room. I was trembling with fear and barely conscious of my movements. From the look of it, no other part of Richie’s body was in my room.

  I didn’t know what to do or who to call.

  Simon was my only confidant in all of this, along with Erik. But I couldn’t call Simon while he was at school to tell him what had happened. There was a difference between seeing animals killed by a werewolf and a decapitated head soaked in fresh blood. I knew my brother well enough to know he wouldn’t be able to handle seeing this; he had barely been able to sit in a church during our great-grandmother’s funeral. He had been afraid of the body. There was technically no body here, just a head. But this was much worse than losing someone to old age.

  I couldn’t allow my little brother to see this grisly sight.


  After vomiting in the small trash can under my desk, I realized I also couldn’t call the police. There was no way to accurately explain that a werewolf murdered my new boss and then decided to place his head in bed beside me. They wouldn’t believe me, not to mention I would then be the number one suspect in Richie’s death. It wouldn’t matter that I had a solid alibi for my whereabouts. There would be no way to explain my way out of this.

  I didn’t look near my bloody bed; I couldn’t stand the thoughts of wondering how long I had been asleep lying in all of that blood. My hands shook and my body trembled with shaky gasps. I couldn’t rationally explain how the werewolf had gotten into my house before a cool breeze came in through my second story window. That was the clear indicator to how the werewolf had gotten in.

  Simon and I had never thought to boobytrap the windows or the large willow tree next to the house. With the swaying branches, it really wouldn’t have been hard for the wolf to allow itself inside. I didn’t know what to say or do. All I could think of was how horrible it was that I wasn’t calling the police even though I should. I needed to call someone while at the same time I needed to not tell anyone about what was currently lying in my bed. The glittery purple of my phone case caught my attention. There was only one person I could think of calling at a time like this, and we hadn’t spoken since the day I admitted I didn’t like the idea of anything happening to him.

  “What are they doing here?” I asked in a sneer. No part of me could help that my voice was saturated with pure loathing. An hour earlier, I called Matt against my better judgment. When I worked for banquet set up, I had been given the phone numbers of the managers and supervisors in all of the conference center. Little did I know that I would one day need to use them.

  When I had called Matt, he answered on the first ring. When he asked if I was okay, I didn’t get to say anything before I burst into ugly tears. After that, Matt gently coaxed my location out of me before he promised me he was on his way.