Changes

chapter one

"Mary," the voice whispered sweet and low. The mid-thirty year old, five foot seven woman laying in bed didn't stir. Her hand just swept a lock of her auburn red bangs from tickling her upturned button-like nose. Her thin brow sat at an angle adding to the natural curve of her rounded face.

"Mary!" A man's voice, like the sound of a graveled trumpet, distressed and strained, was clear on the freezing wind as it blew open her shutters.

It was colder than it should have been for the spring months and the gust of air woke her right away. It chilled her curvy toned frame through the light blankets and her blue country style nightgown. Her strikingly-blue eyes snapped open and she jolted upright in the bed. The voice didn't register at the front of her mind but his name was the first to her thinning bow-shaped lips.

"Virgil," she whispered to the open air. Her voice was midtone and sounded like a brook of water. It lent a more whimsical tone to her often serious set facial features.

She hadn't forgotten, but somehow she managed to fall asleep. After three months of dealing with the changing she didn't think she could get used to it enough to sleep so heavily. She got out of bed, pulling her chest length braid over her shoulder. A sense of light dread just barely at the edges of her mind.

She crossed the bedroom and put on her mud brown leather coat, that had been hanging on the door hook. Then slipped on her matching boots on the floor next to a small stepping stool. She looked back over her right shoulder at the Earp-style shotgun nestled next to her dresser. It wouldn't do much to him, but it might scare others away. She grabbed it by the rounded pistol grip oak stock and crossed quickly through her home out the back door.

She needed no lantern or candle as she walked out towards the shed smack in the middle of the yard. The light of the full moon was enough. She didn't want to bring more attention to herself than she already was by carrying a gun.

The shed was a beat-up wood affair, unassuming and simple, but far away from other homes and barns. She approached it slowly, something was different but she couldn't put her finger on it. She paused a few feet from the door and strained her ears and eyes on the shed. There was no astringent smells, no obvious details and no sound but the wind through the trees.

No sounds.

It put her on high alert: no matter what he always made a noise from within the shed. It shouldn't be silent. In the light of the moon she could tell the door was open a crack. Her hands tightened instinctively on the shotgun and she half-cocked the hammer.

Did he leave? No. He should still be chained to the wall. But then why wasn't there a sound?

She pushed the door open with the gun. As it swung open slowly she looked hard inward. Her eyes adjusted to the dark, and her heart sank. He was gone.

The chain they had nailed to the back stud was hanging limp and broken. Half of the chain just disappeared, most likely with Virgil, wherever he got off to.

The sun would be up soon, she couldn't wait and hope he got back this time. She promised him she wouldn't. There was no telling where he would go or why in that state, but he was dangerous. To everyone and everything in his way.

She looked around the door for any sign of fur or footprint. She found odd pads spaced in the dry dirt with the nail marks at the end. But worse were the long scratches in the wood of the door frame that ended on the door. It would need to be patched to get the door to stay closed again. He had broken it open and she had slept through it.

She scoffed disappointed with herself but there was no time for scolding. She had to find him. Now.

She found more of his tracks leading into the woods where his trail was a little more obvious. If she cocked her head just so she could see the lumbering gate broken through the brush and tree branches. Animal-like monster or no, his higher motor functions weren't well practiced. Hopefully that would slow him down.

She followed the tracks carefully, she couldn't chance him hearing her approaching. If she found him in his changed state she would have to stay hidden until morning.

She tracked him for an hour through the trees, not once coming upon a sign of him. She hoped she was gaining on him right as she saw a drastic change in the tracks trajectory. He had been going southeast from what she could tell, but the trail turned straight east on a pin.

She thought to herself for a moment. Was he suddenly chasing another animal? There were no other tracks but his, save a few small game tracks. But they were fresh, lightly pressed ontop of his. What could he be heading towards?

The next town, Graceton, was miles south, the Bitterroot mountain range to the north. The reservation much farther southeast.

What else was east?

The next farmstead was- "the Coltons," she said softly to herself, her eyes widening with the realization. They'd be maybe a half mile from where she stood.

How could it have known? Why did it head there so suddenly? Does he remember in that state? Questions she would have to return to later.

Mary took her new bearings and advanced at a brisk pace as the sky barely began to change colors with the coming dawn behind the trees. She was taking no chances. She stepped over every stick, avoided every brush and leaf.

Within a few minutes she could make out the edges of the Colton log home between the trees. There was no light inside, no sounds and not even smoke rising from the chimney.

She approached the house silently. Peaking through a back window she saw no one. No sign of the family. Just their dog strewn across the floor, in every sense of the word, amongst broken glass. The entry point, no doubt.

She held back vomit. But that was all the evidence she needed. He was here. With no back door to enter through she crept around the front and before entering looked in again through a front window.

In the dark room full of the family corpses crouched a giant creature, it's back facing Mary. She had seen it now for months. 'Inhuman' was what came to mind, 'a mockery of predators.' But a predator it most certainly was. No person was left alive in its wake.

But as the light of day began to chase shadows through the window there came the sickening sounds she knew too well. Wet pops, cracking and sifting as materials not meant to be moved seemed to sew themselves back together. The figure contorted and stood looming above the carnage. Its frame shook and rattled to realign the skin and bones and become anew again. The experience still twisted her stomach but she knew she would be safe now.

She entered the home cautiously, lowering the shotgun to aim at the floor in her right hand. She was less worried about alerting a monster and now worried about frightening the person left behind. The damage had already been done but she knew he would need help with the aftermath just as much. He whipped around to the noise of her releasing the hammer back to rest as his mind came back to focus.

Before Mary stood her husband, Virgil. He was five foot eleven, built for the work he had done all of his thirty-five year long life. 'Stocky' is how she liked to describe his rectangular frame, 'with weathered hands and a soft heart.' His square jaw hung open, the hard-set thin lips agape. The scowl never leaving his thicker whip-like eyebrows. His stance was one of complete shock, though his willingness to defend his own still shown through.

His hair was a matted mid-face length dark brown mess that looked as if he had literally bathed in mud. She knew too well that it was most likely blood. It splattered the naked man from head to toe, amongst other substances Mary did not want to think about.

Their eyes met and she knew he was still the Virgil she loved. The dark ringed sea-blue eyes never flinched. But they were wild, the flurry of emotions within them revealing the breaking-state of his mind. She held her harsh and loving gaze evenly at him.

"I'm here," she told him softly.

The dam burst and he broke into tears falling towards her and the floor. She jumped forward catching him in her arms. She held him tightly to her.

"I'm here," Mary spoke softly to him.

He burried his face in her shoulder quietly sobbing. Her left hand caressed his hair as she kept him wrapped firmly in her right arm, not releasing the shotgun.

"I've got you."

-End Chapter-