Wolf House (Potter's Story) (10 page)

She closed the door behind her and came and sat next to me on the bed. Her hair shone in the dying sunlight that spilled into my room and I fought the urge to reach out and touch it. Madison sat with her face cast down, a forlorn expression on her face.

“Are you okay?” I eventually asked her.

“I guess,” she said softly.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” and I genuinely wanted to know.

“What will happen after tonight?” she asked me.

I knew what she was talking about. “We move on and let go – isn’t that what you told me to do?” I said.

“When I said that, I wasn’t talking about us. I was talking about whoever it was that was haunting you.”

“I’ve let go of her too,” I told her.

“Really?” she said, looking up at me.

“You helped me do that.”

“How?”

“By showing me that it is possible to have feelings for someone else,” I said.

“So you do have feelings for me then?” she whispered hopefully.

“Does it matter?” I asked her.

“It matters to me.”

Leaning nearer, I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “Madison, we can’t go on from here – not together. People like you and me aren’t meant to be.”

“What do you mean, ‘people like you and me’?”

“Vampyrus and Lycanthrope don’t make a good mix,” I told her.

“We did yesterday in the woods,” she reminded me, but I didn’t want to be reminded of that.

Looking away, I said, “Madison, that can never happen again – it was…”

Then taking my face in her hands, she turned my head so she could look into my eyes. I stared into them, and they almost seemed to burn yellow. “You are unlike any man that I’ve ever met before,” she whispered. “Your passion, your anger, your love…I’ve never met a man with such a dark side before. My desire for you has no end.”

“We can’t…” I said.

“We could run away,” she whispered. “Go where no one knows us – we could make a life together. Please, Potter, take me away from here. You could save me.”

I blinked and it was as if a spell had been broken. Gently easing her away, I asked, “Save you from what?”

“From myself,” she said.

“The only people I want to save, Madison, are my friends, Murphy and Luke,” I told her.

She kissed me gently on the mouth and stood up. “Then I truly am lost,” she said, and left my room.

I got up to go after her, but stopped myself. There was very little time left before nightfall and I had to have everything ready – if I didn’t catch the wolf tonight we would all need saving.

Making sure that the door to my room was shut fast, I turned to the wardrobe. I took the frayed-looking jacket, worn trousers, and scuffed shoes and placed them on the floor. Then with my claws, I cut the sleeping bag into strips and removed the pull-cord. Taking the strips, I stuffed them into the arms of the jacket and down the legs of the trousers. I padded out the arms and legs of the clothing until they were stuffed full. Then, with one long claw, I hacked away at the thin mattress until it lay in half on the floor. I wrapped the cord around the top third of one end of the mattress, until the end of it was bunched together and looked roughly the size and shape of a head. I tied what was left of the cord around the ends of the jacket sleeves and the bottoms of the trousers so that none of the stuffing fell out. Placing the jacket around the end of the mattress, I made it look as if a head was sticking out of the end. The other half of the mattress, I stuffed into the trousers. I stared down at the floor and it looked as if I had two halves of a body stretched out.

Lifting the bottom half of the body, I placed it against the wall beneath the window. Then, taking the other half, I balanced it on top. Stepping back from the window, I screwed up my eyes and peered at the dummy I had made. I smiled at my handiwork. I knew with the moonlight reflected back in the mirror, it would look even more realistic – it would look as if I were standing at the window.

Then from below, I heard footsteps on the stairs. They were too heavy to be Madison’s. It was Drake coming to lock me in for the night.

I grabbed hold of the two halves of the figure, and kicking the wardrobe door open with my boot, I placed the dummy inside. With the sound of footsteps just outside my bedroom door, I swung the wardrobe door closed and jumped onto the camp bed, spreading my coat over me so he couldn’t see that there was no longer a mattress or sleeping bag. Lacing my hands behind my head, I looked up as Drake pushed the door open.

“It’s time,” he said, looking in at me.

“Okay,” I said as casually as I could. “You know what to do?”

“I’m not stupid,” he said.

“Of course you’re not,” I smiled. “I’ll be at the window.”

“And I’ll be checking the mirror,” he said back.

“I’ll be here,” I assured him with a smile then added, “Good luck, Drake.”

Drake made a huffing sound, swinging the bedroom door shut. I listened to the sound of him locking it from outside. I waited for him to go to Madison’s room. I heard the deep rumble of his voice as he spoke to her. Then the door creaked shut and I heard the sound of the key rattling in the lock. I listened to the sound of his feet pass by my door and as soon as I heard the top stair creak, I was up. I knew that I had only seconds to get the dummy in place and for me to escape my room before he got downstairs and checked for my reflection in the mirror. And he
would
check – he wouldn’t be able to resist.

Jumping to my feet, I yanked open the wardrobe door and carried the dummy to the window. With my heart racing in my chest, I pushed open the window. Then looking down, I saw something on the floor. Whatever it was must have fallen from the dummy’s jacket. I snatched it up and stuck it into my trouser pocket. Climbing onto the window ledge, I leant back into the room and dragged the dummy into place. It wobbled backwards, and I grabbed hold of it. Once I had it in place, I threw my coat back into the room, pulled the window closed, and before my wings had even opened, I was leaping backwards through the air.

I rocketed upwards and away from the house as fast as I could. Once I was out of sight, I swooped through the night sky and skimmed over the treetops of the woods. Finding a branch that was well-hidden but gave me a good view of the front of the house, I perched on it. Peering through the leaves, I saw Drake come to the living room front window and peer out at the mirror that sat propped amongst the weeds in the front garden, just like I knew he would. But would he be fooled? I glanced up at the window and just as I hoped, in the light from the moon, the silhouette looked just like somebody standing at my bedroom window.

Settling back in the tree, I waited.

20

The wind blew hard and the branches of the tree I hid in swayed all around me. As the moon rose higher in the sky, the temperature dropped and I wrapped myself in my wings to keep warm. The claws at the tip of each wing grabbed hold of the tree to keep me from falling when the gusts of wind picked up.

As I settled back and watched the house, I saw the silhouette of a figure as they went to the living room window and checked the mirror, just to make sure I was where I said I would be.

“Come on Drake, take the bait!” I whispered.

The figure moved away from the window, satisfied that I was still in the Wolf House.

Leaning back in the tree, I felt something in my trouser pocket. Fumbling, I pulled out whatever it was that had fallen from the dummy’s body in the bedroom as I made my escape. It was a piece of paper about the size of a credit card. Turning it over, I could see that it was an old black-and-white photograph. Holding it at an angle so I could see it in the moonlight, I checked it out. The picture was of an old man sitting in an armchair. As I stared at the ancient photograph, it looked to me as if the old guy was wearing the old jacket, trousers, and scuffed-up shoes I had discovered in the wardrobe that was now wrapped around the dummy. Next to the old man was another chair – a much smaller chair – and seated in that was a pretty little girl. She had blond ringlets falling onto her shoulders and the cutest face you could ever imagine. In her hands she clutched a Barbie doll. Both of them looked happy as they stared out of the picture. Looking at the picture closer still, my heart went cold as I could see that it had been taken in the living room of the Wolf House, where the wolf had left his victims. But who were they? Where were they now? The picture was as old as the clothes in the wardrobe, so the old guy and the little girl had probably lived in the house many years before. Looking at it one last time, and feeling a little creeped out, I folded it and put it back in my pocket.

I looked back at the house and I nearly fell off my perch. The front door of the Wolf House was open, somebody had snuck out. With my heart racing in my chest, I scanned the immediate area and then saw something – the bushy end of one giant tail, disappearing around the side of the house.

“Drake’s taken the bait!” I whispered.

While I had been looking at the picture, he had slipped out of the house, keeping low, so I wouldn’t be able to see from my bedroom window – if I had still been in it.

Opening my wings, I sprang from the treetop and swooped high up into the night. With my wings rippling out on either side of me, I circled above the house, and I could see a giant wolf slinking away across the fields in the direction of Little Hope.

“I’ve got you!” I smiled grimly. But I wouldn’t take him yet. No, I if I swooped down now, he’d just give me a load of old bullshit about how he was out looking for a place to take a crap. I needed to catch him red-handed in the act of taking a child before I detained him.

Soaring higher, I sailed over the treetops and fields, never once losing sight of his huge, silver body as it reflected back at me in the moonlight. I followed him as he made his way into the narrow, winding streets of Little Hope. Although the quiet streets were deserted, he was cunning enough to keep to the shadows, remaining out of view. He crept through the town until he came to a small cluster of houses on the other side of town.

With my heart racing out of control, I lost altitude, not wanting to lose sight of him now. The wind rushed past me, and I spread my wings to make my approach as silent as possible. The wolf bounded over a fence and into a garden. There was a Wendy House, a small three-wheeled bike which lay on its side, and a sand pit. Hovering just out of sight, I watched the wolf press his nose to the ground as it sniffed the outside of the Wendy House, the kid’s bike, and the edges of the sand pit. It was almost as if he was trying to locate the scent of a child so he could follow it directly to one who would be sleeping peacefully inside the house.

With his nose hovering close to the ground, he followed the scent towards the back door of the house. Reaching it, he leapt up and sniffed the handle. Dropping onto all fours, he hunched his giant shoulders and put all of his weight against the door. From where I hovered above, I heard the sound of the lock go
pop
! Then, the wolf glanced quickly back and disappeared into the house.

I sped out of the sky and within a heartbeat I was hovering outside the bedroom windows of the house. I circled once, then twice, looking into the windows. Then I saw the child. A girl of about seven, tucked fast asleep inside her bed, with the wolf standing at the end of it. His eyes burned yellow and his giant tongue lolled from the corner of his mouth. Flashing his razor-sharp teeth, he sniffed at the air, made a soft woofing sound in the back of his throat, then crept towards the little girl.

Swooping away, I aimed myself at the window and sped towards it. With my fists held out before me, I crashed through the bedroom window in a shower of glass, wood, and brick as I took the whole of the window and its frame out.

Before Drake even knew what was happening, I’d wrapped my arms around his colossal neck and was flying backwards out of the hole I’d made in the side of the house. As I tore away, I caught a brief glimpse of the little girl sit up in her bed and rub her eyes. By the time she had rubbed the sleep from them, we were soaring away and out of sight. She would probably never know how close she came to death that night or how she woke to find half of her bedroom wall missing.

The wolf struggled against me, his massive jaws snapping at the air, foam flying from his teeth into the night. Drake was unbearably heavy and it was impossible to keep hold of him. We were plummeting out of the sky at an incredible rate. He gnashed at me and his howling was deafening. I could see the fields racing up to meet us, and I knew that if I didn’t release him, I would die as we hit the ground. So, letting go of him, I back flipped through the air to stop myself crashing into the field that was only feet beneath us.

Hovering, I watched Drake land awkwardly on all fours, then saw him race away back towards the woods. With my wings pointing out behind me, I zoomed after him. The wind tugged at my hair, and the skin on my face rippled as I flew faster and faster after him. Madison had been right, the Lycanthrope could run fast, and at times he just looked like a streak of silver ahead of me as he raced towards the woods. If he reached them, then I would lose sight of him from above as he darted between the shelter of the trees. So I stayed low, my arms out in front. He was only feet away now, and his tail looked like a strike of lightning as it whipped back and forth in front of me. I reached for it, but it slipped through my fingers and he was gone, tearing away amongst the trees. Rocketing upwards, I swooped over the treetops, but as I had feared, I’d lost sight of him. Dropping like a stone through the air, I landed on the soft woodland floor. I snapped my head left and right as I scanned the darkness between the trees. Then my heart stopped as I heard the sound of a woman scream, followed by the deep booming of a werewolf’s howl.

Sprinting in the direction of the sounds, I whisked between the trees in a black spray of shadows. Moonlight cut through the treetops in silver slices and it was almost as if I were running through a wood made of giant daggers. Then ahead of me, I saw someone or something stumble from behind a tree. I stopped hard, sending up a shower of fallen leaves and pine needles. It was Madison who was staggering towards me. Her eyes blazed yellow out of the darkness, but there was something else that glistened. I looked at her hands as she clutched her stomach and could see blood running between her fingers in black silky streams.