Red Hood (Book One)

Chapter Eight

After I let Snowball back in the house, I heard branches snapping and leaves crunching. I went back inside and closed the front door. Snowball ran around the room on her little paws like everything was fine. She only stopped when I opened my bedroom door. I bent down to pet her and she calmed down. The room got quiet again.

I picked Snowball up and peeked in Grandma's room. She was watching tv with drooping eyes. I went back to the living room and looked out the window. A man stood near the woods, morphing into a werewolf. I locked the front door and rushed back to my bedroom.

My phone vibrated twice before I picked it up. The clicking in the background broke the silence first. I slipped my black wedges off, while I waited for Maula to talk.

"Hello?"

"Hey, girl," I said, tiptoeing to the window.

"You alright?"

"Yeah. Wolf man is still outside."

 "That's good. You want to come to my house tomorrow?" 

 "Yeah. What time?" 

 "Hatchet will pick you up at noon. Bye." 

 Before I could say anything, she hung up. I smiled. Tomorrow, I'll get my answers. It was quiet outside. When I looked out the window, there was no werewolf in sight. 

 The coast was clear. No more ambush encounters. I stripped down to my pink panties and put on a green t-shirt. Then, I sat on my bed and turned the tv on. A movie came on, right at the scene where a white teenage girl fed gave a guy a cookie laced with love potion. This movie gave me Lifetime vibes, but I couldn't stop watching. My phone vibrated during the scene where the guy serenaded the girl in front of his girlfriend. I pressed the mute button and answered the call. 

 Brandon growled. "So, what did you find out?" 

 "Hatchet Woods killed a wolf last year. And it was glorified," I told him.

 I took a screenshot of the wolf photo on Instagram. He sighed heavily. It only took one little scroll on Axel's page for me to end up seeing three more photos of wolves. The photos looked like they were taken from a distance in the forest. And the caption for all of them was unsettling.

'Watching the target.' 

 I went back to my feed, and held the phone to my ear. I've seen enough for tonight. There was no way that what Hatchet got congratulated for last year was legal. Brandon spoke again.

"Oh shit. That's my father."

"I got a question, though. Did your dad really attack anybody?" I asked.

"No. Some son of a bitch hunted my father down."

I looked up the article about the murder, noticed that Tom H. Woods wrote it. Of course, it was written on Medium. Wow. No wonder the glorified it. How many more wolves did Hatchet kill? 

During the commercial break, I heard howling outside. I glanced out the window behind my bed at the full moon. Then, I heard distant howling on the phone. When Brandon howled, I had to hold the phone away from my ear again.

"Now that we know who the killer is, we can turn him in," I suggested.

Brandon laughed. "I tried that, and the cops laughed in my face. They said if I don't have evidence, then it didn't really happen."

"Then, what the hell am I supposed to do with that information?"

"You meet him and bring him to me. Goodnight."

He hung up. I got up, and walked to the bathroom. As I wiped the makeup off my face, I couldn't stop myself from thinking about what a confrontation between Brandon and Hatchet would look like. What if Hatchet showed up armed? I would need to convince him to go to the woods empty handed.

After I returned to my room, I wrapped my hair up. I laid down under the covers. With the volume back on, the movie ended with that white girl getting sucked into a painting. Suddenly, my own eyes got droopy and everything went black.