Maybe it had gone away. Maybe—
There was a sound, and my thoughts froze in place. I stood rigid over my workbench, hammer in hand, light from the family room spilling into the rectangle of doorway that separated my dark shop from the rest of the cellar. The sound came again.
Floorboards creaking.
It was directly over my head. I had a horrible vision of the thing peering down through the floor at me, its teeth arched painfully back into a mockery of a smile, its Atlas-like forearm gearing back to smash right through the oak parquet, slicing me in half, the monster howling in pleasure as the life pumped out of my severed body, my mind dimming, the last of my sight beholding the still-bright gleam in its chrome-yellow eyes as it yanked me up before it, holding me like a child holds a doll that has caused displeasure, and its mouth gimballing wide open, its knife-paw dropping me into that gleaming razor-filled cave of darkness…
The floorboards above me creaked as the monster moved away.
I am not good at direction. I spent the next twenty seconds frantically calculating what room was directly over the workshop. It was the back bedroom, the one through whose Venetian blinds the thing had faced me. The thing was leaving the bedroom, snarling and throwing things as it went. I followed it with my ears, out into the hallway. I crept out of the workshop. The footpads ceased again. Then there was rapid movement down the hallway into the kitchen, followed by a pause at the top of the cellar steps.
My heart declined to beat.
I stood at the bottom of the steps, waiting. If it was going to break the door and come, let it. Nothing happened. It did not move away. My ears were so attuned now to its movement that I would have heard it. It simply stood there.
Waiting was madness. If I had counted seconds I’m sure not more than thirty would have gone by, but it seemed as if the sun and Moon had traded places in the sky over and over. The muscles in my right hand where I gripped my futile hammer stood out like hard rivers and tributaries, and my hand began to go numb.
Still the thing stood unmoving at the cellar door.
Finally, I could take it no longer. I had actually opened my mouth to shout, “Come on, bastard,” when the thing walked away.
I was overcome with both relief and rage. A part of me had wanted—was ready—to face the beast that had destroyed my family.
With my ears, I followed its movements to the front of the house. I heard broken glass being stepped on, the sound of something thrown, and then nothing.
The night had suddenly grown quiet.
I thought of the cellar windows again. For a terrified moment I thought I caught the glint of a yellow eye in one of the panes, but it was the reflection of the light bulb over my workbench, which went out, then glowed back up to life as the generator out in the barn kicked in automatically.
I went back to where Richie slept peacefully. I slipped down to the floor with my back against the couch. My right arm ached; I looked down and saw the hammer still clutched spasmodically in my hand. With an effort of will I opened my fingers and placed it on the floor next to me.
One of the cellar windows faced me, and I stared at it, but no wolf face stared back.
I kept staring, and the night wore on. Eventually, my hand went to the hammer at my side and stayed there.
CHAPTER 4
The Lost Son
My son called to me as the sun began to rise.
I must have dozed, because it had been dark and had stayed dark and in my dream I was fighting a legion of wolves. I had a flashlight in my hand, and when I turned it on they howled, and when I hit them with the lighted flashlight their howls turned to screams and they disappeared in a puff of smoke. And then all their screams merged into one unbearable sound, and my eyes opened to the orange of creeping daylight coming into the room and my son screaming behind me.
Still throwing my sleep aside, I reached back for him but he wasn’t on the couch. He continued to scream. I know the sound that had awakened me was him crying my name in a horrible paroxysm of agony, but now the sounds he was making bore little resemblance to human articulation. He sounded as though he was choking on his tongue.
“Richie?” I called out, forcing myself to my feet. His screaming continued.
He was crouched in the far corner of the room, half hidden by an old easy chair with a threadbare red slipcover on it. There was a reading lamp next to the chair. Richie’s arms flailed out, knocking it over. The bulb smashed on the tiled floor.
My son’s unearthly cries continued.
“My God, Richie—” I shouted, moving to take him in my arms, but at that instant he turned to confront me.
The front of his jacket was sliced to shreds. The fingers of his hands had grown out to nearly twice their length. The nails were curved down into sharp talons. His hands were elongated, covered with a mat of long, bristled, dark brown fur.
His face was that of a wolf.
Richie was gone, replaced by this…thing.
This was the face of the beast I had seen through the window: a hateful, yellow-eyed visage consumed by cunning if not devious intelligence.
He pulled himself erect, regarding me like a wary dog. His body had been forced into a longer, bonier frame; there was a sharp bend at the shoulder where it met the neck, almost humping the back into the head. It was a physique that gave the impression of immense and concentrated power.
The creature that had been my son snarled at me and tensed. I searched his eyes frantically for some sign that my boy was still in there but found nothing except deep yellow hate.
“Richie,” I pleaded, but at that moment he struck.
If the transformation from my son to wolf had been complete, I would surely have been killed. The lower part of his body was still pushing into shape, and so he jumped at me awkwardly, with the legs of a twelve-year-old boy. He landed in front of me instead of upon me, and I threw him aside with my forearm. He staggered and fell, his legs collapsing. As he landed, the legs of Richie’s jeans ripped through their seams. The new, powerfully muscled legs bulged out. His sneakers burst apart, revealing long, powerful hind feet.
The hammer was four feet behind me, next to the couch. I scrambled to retrieve it. At that confused moment I could have done the beast in. But the sight of what my son had become prevented me; the vision of this thing still in the rags of my son’s clothes, wearing his body, stayed my hand, giving him the opportunity to recover.
He pulled himself into a crouch a half-dozen feet from me, and regarded me sullenly.
I thought of my son’s pleading with me to kill him, and now I knew what he meant.
And then something happened to give me hope. The creature squinted through the rectangle of one of the cellar windows at the brightening day and flinched. A look of uncertainty crossed his face. Like a drowning man I clutched at the debris of my memory. Didn’t werewolves in the movies change back to men during the day? Wasn’t it the Moon—and then only the full Moon—that held sway over their affliction? I remembered reading actual cases of psychological lycanthropy. The Moon was always involved. Now the Moon was gone—could it be my son would reemerge?
In answer, the wolf snarled, turned abruptly from the window, and leapt at me again.
Again he landed in front of me, but this time he did not fall. He raised one forearm and swung the long curling knives of his claws at me. I feinted with my left hand, then, praying that the blow was hard enough but not too hard, I brought the hammer down on the exposed left side of his head.