Teaser chapter for my next project once I finish Walking Wolf Road.
The Wild By: Brandon Herbert
Chapter 1 – “Skins”
I should have known better, I really should have…
I had heard the rumors about Morgan, Brett, and Ashley. Rumors of black magic, satanic rights, and a plethora of other foul deeds had been whispered and muttered through the hallways of my school. Heard, and chose to ignore…
Ignored because of Kaitlyn… She was a veritable goddess to my eyes, beautiful and fair, unassumingly dressed, and the only person who I could have really called a friend. And though she didn’t know, she was also the object of a relentless crush I’d harbored for several years now. She was really into video games, and we had a lot of the same favorites, that was what had finally broken the ice one glorious day in art class when I commented on a drawing she was doing of Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII.
The problem had been that she was friends with the aforementioned Morgan and Co. They tolerated me, neither extending a friendly hand, nor shunning me either. I should have been wary of the sudden and intense friendship they’d inexplicably began to exhibit a few weeks ago. I was the video game nerd that nobody but the teachers liked because I could fix their computers. Honestly, what the hell was I supposed to do? I’ve been 99% friendless for the better part of my life, now suddenly people seemed welcoming and even polite to me, I wasn’t about to just wave that opportunity goodbye, especially since there had been plenty enough rumor about me that weren’t true … Besides, it was a chance to spend time with Kate too…
And now… my foolish trust had led me to this place... The thunder cracked overhead, silhouetting the black lines of the trees as I cowered from the pouring storm. I was drenched, and cold, and scared, and… now I was curled up in a shivering ball under the rotting remains of a fallen alder tree, in God only knows where. My delirious mind kept replaying the events of last night like some surreal b-rate movie… only they were real memories… it all really happened…
Yesterday had been a perfectly boring, normal, uneventful day… After school, Kate had invited me over to Morgan’s house to play some Halo 2. I was so delighted to get to spend some time with Kate, so I overrode an initial and completely unfounded sense of foreboding and decided to just go over and call my mother from Morgan’s to let her know where I was. Morgan had met us at the door, and invited us inside. I followed Kate up the stairs to Morgan’s room, Morgan following behind us…
My stomach clenched as I remembered a sudden sense of wrongness as Kate led me through the door… A thin fog of incense smoke hung in Morgan’s room, which was dark and lit only by candles. There was no X-Box… Only Brett and Ashley standing there wearing black hooded cloaks… and then a sharp, sense-rending ‘thwack’ as Morgan hit be on the back of the head with something dense, and my world tipped off balance and out of focus…
I remembered disconnectedly hearing Kaitlyn crying out in outrage. Morgan stepped over me as though I was a pile of laundry and started talking to Kate, I didn’t recognize the words she spoke, sounds seemed muted and dead, but Kate relaxed somewhat and Morgan seated her in a chair as she spoke in calming tones, glancing up momentarily at Brett who stepped over to Kate as well, and knelt down by the chair… I had thought he meant to comfort her too, until with a quick and deft movement, Morgan pushed Kate’s hands behind the chair and Brett’s hands flashed up and locked a set of handcuffs around her wrists. Kate resumed screaming, her teeth bared in rage as she tried to stand out of the chair and Morgan slapped her backhand across her face. Watching her hit Kate like that enraged me, but I found my limbs frustratingly unresponsive, barely registering the cold wet feeling that was trickling down my neck and back. Ashley then approached Kate with a roll of black duct tape, and after taping her mouth, taped down her legs and her waist too, completely immobilizing her and muting her cries.
Once Kate had been subdued, Morgan turned her attention back to me. Brett and Ashley heaved me back onto my feet, making the world swirl sickeningly before I focused again on Morgan’s face in front of me, she held out a hand and cradled my cheek, lifting my face to look at her while her thumb rubbed my cheek comfortingly. Her voice muted as though far away, I heard her say, “I’m sorry Cory, you’re a nice guy, but… you’re the only person who will work, you are the one who would be missed the least…” Rebelliously, I spat in her face, and she slapped me, sending the world reeling and a demanding wave of nausea washed over me.
Somebody help me…
Brett and Ashley handled me onto the middle of the floor, and handcuffed my hands to the posts of Morgan’s bed. They had nothing available to anchor my feet, so they dragged Kate’s chair over, cuffed my legs to her chair, while Morgan whispered in Kate’s ear, “Here, now you can watch… everything…” With that strange detachment, I observed appreciatively how strongly Kate struggled and resisted. It was really quite honorable, but with dread I knew that no matter how much she struggled, she would not be able to help me, because I had been too helpless to save myself…
Please, God, somebody help me…
I willed my limbs to move, to resist, to escape, but they remained sluggish and weak. The room swam around me, sliding in and out of focus, as Brett and Ashley produced elaborate daggers from the folds of their robes. My heart raced as they knelt down beside me. They started cutting away the fabric of my clothes, sawing strenuously with blades that were never meant for real use. “Why are you doing this to me…?” I croaked out through my fear and pain.
“In ancient Greece,” Morgan began as she walked around the room, lighting more candles, “According to mythology, some young men would undergo a ritual that would transform them into wolves... They would remain as beasts for seven years, and if they refrained from tasting of human flesh, at the end of seven years, they would turn back into humans, and would be honored by their society.” One of the knives slipped on a thick bunch of fabric on my jeans, and the sliced my skin, the sting drawing a hiss from me and something to focus on through the cloudy mess my mind had become.
“In the Navajo tribe, there are legends of ‘skin-walkers’, witches who would don the skins of animals to take their form and carry out their desires; but it requires great sacrifice to attain this ability… As for why we are doing this to you?” She pursed her lips thoughtfully and walked back around the room to don a hooded cloak herself. “Well, I personally don’t much care for spending seven years as a witless beast with no way to further my own gains, nor have I been able to procure a suitable wolf skin to become a skin-walker… So… I finally figured out how to make my own wolf skin…”
The last of my clothes were torn away from my body, leaving me naked and partly bloody on the floor. With the surreal detachment of shock and trauma, I watched as though my body wasn’t my own. The part of my brain that had not quite realized or accepted what was going on, felt very embarrassed and self conscious about being naked in front of the girl I liked, while another part that was far more disconnected from the other than it should have been was wondering why the hell I gave a shit at a time like this!
Please God help me…
All three of them began chanting in some foreign language, it could have been Greek, but it sounded more like Russian to me. As they sang in an eerie monotone harmony, they produced a couple baby food jars, which contained a pale, strong smelling paste that they began rubbing into my skin. Where it sat, the salve itched maddeningly, and it only grew worse the more I struggled involuntarily to scratch the itch. The handcuffs dug bloody furrows in my hands as my body convulsed in itching torment, struggling to pacify the sensations of worms writhing under my skin. Beads of sweat began to break out on my body as my heartbeat raced and slowly even the small light of focus the pain on my leg had provided me became mired in a sluggish funk. The room began to slide in and out of focus and eventually it started to spin. It was too much for me and I convulsed so hard when I vomited that I heard Kate’s chair squeak on the floor as I pulled it toward me.
They did not stop until every last possible inch of me was coated in the stuff, though thankfully my fear was sufficient to keep my body from reacting to their touch, but not the gut wrenching revulsion that accompanied it. They even smeared it through my hair and rubbed it painfully into my eyelids, causing my eyes to water hotly as though they had broken a dam holding my tears back.
“Please, don’t do this…” I moaned, rolling back and forth on the floor as my vision began to distort into impossible colors and visions and I began to feel even more disconnected from my flesh. One of them lifted my back from the floor and tied a piece of furry hide around my midsection, though in my disoriented state I couldn’t tell or care if it was Brett or Ashley that did so; the pelt was grizzled grey with longer black hairs sticking out from a visible undercoat.
“Wolf skin? If you have the wolf skin, why are you doing this to me?”
“That skin won’t work, we’ve tried. It’s like something they did to preserve it keeps it from doing what we need it to.” Ashley responded from one of the cloaks.
“Please… Please I’m begging you just let me go; I just want to go home… I just want to go home!” I screamed with tears running down my face. “Just let me go, I just want to go home, and play my video games, and sleep in my bed, and forget that any of this ever happened… No one has to know! I won’t tell anyone!” I pleaded, my head pounding from whatever was in that salve, and the blood pressure from my tears.
“Sorry Cory, but I want to be able to run as a wolf. We will have the power of tooth and claw at our command, but I don’t want any of the drawbacks that the old styles had.” Morgan knelt beside me and ran her fingers up and down my fevered flesh, a cold and distant void filling her eyes where humanity should have been. “Cory, no one likes you, except maybe that sap there, and your little family.” She nodded at Kaitlyn, “When you go missing, they will make the token gestures necessary to try and find you, but unfortunately they will fail. Time will pass, and all will forget you ever existed; even your own family will move on in time, you have two other siblings to carry on the genetic line anyway. Out of everybody in this town; you are the most expendable… And so you will die, so that we may have the power, but not the price… We’ll leave that to you…”
Morgan stood and claimed a piece of a tree log and a bright copper dagger from the top of her dresser. She stabbed the knife into the center of the tree-cut, and began walking counter clockwise around me while she spoke in English while Brett and Ashley resumed their Russian mantra, following Morgan around the room.
“On the empty pasture gleams the moon, on an ashstock lying in a green wood, in a gloomy vale…”
“Please God no… no…” I moaned, while rolling on my back, pulling again at the handcuffs, the pain of the steel cutting into my flesh dulled by the funk.
“Toward the stock wandereth a shaggy wolf, horned cattle seeking for his sharp white fangs; but the wolf enters not the forest, but the wolf dives not into the shadowy vale…”
“This is a dream… it’s not real, it’s not real… I’m going to wake up in my own bed any minute now… Please God let me wake up…”
“Moon, moon, gold horned moon, check the flight of bullets, blunt the hunters’ knives, break the shepherds’ cudgels; cast wild fear upon all cattle, on men, on all creeping things…”
“No… no—oo! Just let me go—oo!” I sobbed.
“That they may catch the grey wolf, that they may rend his warm skin! My word is binding, more binding than sleep, more binding than the promise of a hero!”
Brett and Ashley continued to chant as they stopped and lifted my back up off the ground, and Morgan slid the log and the knife under me. They did this two more times, and after the third time, she pried the copper knife out of the wood and touched it to my sternum; pressing just hard enough to break through the skin and draw blood.
With a rush, all the breath left me as my body convulsed; strangling off even my desperate last pleas. I fought to suck wind back into my lungs as every last sinew in my body stretched taut and wildfire spread over my skin as though the salve were alight and burning me like a wick. With a sickening pop, I felt a joint give way in my shoulder, followed by another and another until finally all rationality flew out of me, and all that was left was a writhing shrieking creature of pain and contortion.
I had no idea how long it took, but finally my thoughts regained linearity. I panted, and squirmed, struggling to find purchase on the floor. My head seemed clearer and my leg no longer stung, but in compensation my entire body ached as though I’d just gone through a meat-grinder. I impulsively tried to speak, but all that came out were grunting rumbling whines. Slowly, my eyes came back to focus, and I noticed something in the middle of my vision, it looked like… no… that’s impossible…
Quickly I looked down at myself and saw only shaggy grey fur; my feet had come free of their restraints when they became paws. Kate’s head was slumped down, as though she had passed out.
Kate…
I looked at her longingly past the muzzle in the center of my vision; I wanted to help her, but she looked all wrong… Most of the colors had been drained from the world, leaving the shadows stripped bare of their mysteries in compensation. Movement made my ears move before the rest of me; and I whimpered and cowered back as Morgan approached me. I growled low beneath the whine, and tried to show my teeth, but my mouth had been bound before I woke.
Morgan spoke, but I couldn’t understand what she said; her voice sounded different, higher and wider in sound and I couldn’t recognize the word sounds she was making. I tried to back away from her, but my hands—er, paws were still in the handcuffs; as Brett and Ashley circled around me, my ears flattened back and I growled in warning. As they lunged for me, I struggled to get away and succeeding in freeing one of my paws. Morgan’s hand flashed out toward my throat with the knife; intent on cutting my life, but I whipped my face down instead. The knife cut painfully into my muzzle, but it also cut through enough of the duct tape that I was able to tear the rest with the strength of my new jaws and clamped my teeth down on her arm; an adrenaline fueled surge and the bones underneath splintered with a peculiar sensation against my tongue.
She screamed and wrenched her arm back, clutching it against her chest. Brett and Ashley’s grip lessened as they were distracted by Morgan’s wailing and the unexpected turn of events. Until now they had been enjoying an illusion of complete control, and on instinct I whirled to snap at them as the looked at Morgan and began to realize too slowly what was happening. I opened Brett’s arm to the bone, and Ashley jumped back quickly enough to evade my other snap. Brett drew back, clutching his spurting arm, leaving Ashley between me and the door. And I really wanted out that door…
She dug through her robes in a panic, finally finding and drawing out her knife again which she waved at me as though to keep me away from her; too bad in her blind incapacitating fear, she had blocked my exit; the only thing I wanted. She made a lunge, and so did I. Her decoratively designed knife slid harmlessly off the longer guard hairs of my coat, but her luck was not so good. My teeth found flesh and I yanked on Ashley’s leg, pulling it out from under her and making her fall face first. Her scream of surprise was unexpectedly cut short, and the thick scent of coppery blood met my nose before I saw the spreading pool of blood underneath her; the hand that had been holding the knife was folded beneath her, and I realized what must have happened. I looked up at the door and realized two things at the same time; there was no way I could open it, and I needed to get Kate out of here too…
Quickly I ran back to Kaitlyn and licked her face to rouse her. Finally she opened her eyes and panicked when she saw me; I could hardly blame her… I dropped down and quickly chewed through the tape that held her feet; once they were free, I did the same for her waist so she could stand from the chair. She went over to the door and propped her back against it, trying to reach the door knob with her still handcuffed hands. My ears swiveled and alerted me to movement in time to duck below the swing of a pole lamp. I was still unsteady on my new feet, and wasn’t sure I could dodge again.
Morgan wielded the long black lamp post with her good arm, while clutching the bleeding, oddly bent one to her body. I braced myself, but the next swing was not aimed at me, but at Kate. When I realized this, I rushed with a growling roar of snapping fury at Morgan, causing her to scream and fall back. Finally, with an audible click, the door came open and Kate and I rushed out of the room. I rushed ahead of her before I even knew it and lost my footing down the stairs, rolling in a mess to their foot.
Finally free, instinct took over and I fled blindly…
I tore through the back screen door and launched across the lawn. At first I tried to head home, but the inability to read the street signs made it difficult to know where I was or where I needed to turn. The sun was setting and I was exhausted as the adrenaline wore out of my system.
What am I going to do…?
The predicted storm cells were closing the sky, already rumbling their spring fury from afar. I kept wandering in circles through the maddening maze of city streets long after true dark arrived; even after the sky ripped open and began to unleash its torrents. Finally, I stumbled upon a wooded park, laced with jogging paths. I made my way through seeking some sort of shelter from the hard pelting rain. Finding no restroom buildings, I just kept searching until finally I found the dense patch of bushes that provided the best cover to be had…
A far-too-close-for-comfort bomb of lighting went of right above me, ripping me out of my replay and back into the present. I whimpered and curled up tighter, wishing for sleep, wishing for sleep that I would wake up human again; warm, safe in my bed at home; ready to tell my brother and sister all about my fucked up dream over a bowl of cereal while they studiously ignored me…
I licked the rainwater off my muzzle, which ached painfully where Morgan’s blade had cut. Finally exhaustion and shock won over, and I faded away into oblivious sleep while the sky fell…
Book three in the Megan Martin series finds Megan, May, and Brianna trying to find the missing parents of a homeless girl. In addition, the girls are introduced to the local homeless shelter and do their best to make a happy Christmas for all their
The Wild
