The Werewolf [COMPLETE]

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I awoke to the scream of a child just a few feet away from me. I jolted up, spun my head left and right, but there was no one. A raucous croak blasted in the room, and another, and another before I found the crow, perched on a branch just on the other side of the window. I tossed a pillow to the windowpane and the bird fluttered away, losing one or two feathers in its frightened flight.

I slammed my head down on the mattress and sighed. I was fisting my hair in my hand when everything stilled and when the world stopped, when my world stopped.

But there was no one.

My eyes took ages to find the other side of the bed, my brain millennia to grasp the absence on the other side of the bed. My gaze fell on the figure at the end of the bed, bending his back and bowing his head. His hands were holding his face, hiding it from me.

"Aaron." My voice was colder than snow, my mouth and my eyes were frozen. "Aaron. Where is Tommy."

He looked up, the ice cracked. But I force myself to stop. I controlled my emotions. I guarded my wandering thoughts from wandering. I waited for the answer. I waited for the explanation or the clarification. It had to come. It had to.

"I'm... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, Emily... I... I... I'm so sorry—"

"What do you mean you're sorry, Aaron."

"I couldn't... I couldn't stop it... I couldn't... Protect him—"

"What do you mean, Aaron."

He was crying. He was crying and he wasn't trying to avoid my gaze. He was speaking to me with his eyes, he was telling it to me with his eyes. His tears were all the answers I needed. I looked away.

"No." My voice quivered.

"No." My tone was harder. My tone was harsher.

"No."

"Emily..."

I ignored him and walked pass him. I couldn't lose time with Aaron. Not when he was somewhere, somewhere alone. I just had to find him. He had to be in the kitchen eating breakfast, or in the bathroom on the loo, or in the living room on the sofa, or on the carpet.

"Tommy? Tommy, where are you?" I called out shriller then I'd wanted to. I walked faster then I'd intended to. I wasn't climbing down the stairs, I was running, I was dashing, I was bolting down the stairs. I was jerking every chair and table out of my way and I was throwing to the floor everything that was falling in my hands. Tommy! He wasn't in the living room. Tommy! He wasn't in the kitchen. Tommy! I slammed open the bathroom door and banged it shut. Tommy!

I sprung out of the house and ran, ran, ran. I screamed his name with every step I took, in every street and in front of every house. He had to be somewhere, somewhere warm, somewhere safe, somewhere. But he was nowhere. He wasn't by the library, nor by the school, nor by the police station, nor by the town hall. Each street sign and each mailbox I'd pas, each step I'd take led me farther away from him. Because for each inch, or foot, or mile crossed without him, I lost an excuse. He could have gone to the library to look at the books, he was so fond of them. Or he could have walked to the school to see his siblings, he was missing them so much. I couldn't even find reasons for the police station and the town hall. Why would he have gone there? When would he have had the time to go there? I had run after him minutes after I'd woken up. He couldn't have left hours before, or even minutes before, because he was sleeping, he was supposed to be sleeping. He shouldn't have had the time to reach the stairs, never the door.