Harvest Moon
The growl that had come from one became communal. As bodies contorted and twisted, Jacob saw teeth sharpen, the canine teeth growing. Claws sprung from fingers that had elongated into a warped combination of canine and human form. Dark hair grew from their faces and some ripped off their shirts, revealing the hair that covered their upper bodies entirely. It was not long before the humanity of their voices had been all but completely extinguished, replaced by growls and howls. Shock, denial, paralyzing fear, those would have been normal reactions, but Jacob felt no such emotions. As the sweat poured from his body, his muscles tensed and adrenaline poured into his bloodstream. His heart pounded so hard that he thought he could hear it, but a familiar trance had taken him over and he fancied the percussions to be the pounding of Celtic war drums.
Bathed in moonlight, they danced around him, and although the individual movements seemed chaotic, as a whole they appeared grotesquely choreographed. They were too caught up in their ritual to see that Jacob was going through a metamorphosis of his own. His muscles strained, not against the ropes, but against themselves. Each fiber of muscle cramped and twisted into something harder, stronger than it had been before. The pain was terrible, but he hardly noticed it for the madness had taken over and the only thing he felt was the fever of rage. It burned, excited, clouded out all that was rational, well almost all. Pulling from deep within his consciousness, he grappled with insanity. He had been in this state before and had developed a certain discipline of the mind that allowed him to balance rage with control. Within seconds his mind was his own again and he screamed as the ropes exploded away from his body. This brought their dancing, howling, and all activity to a sudden halt. Their pause was like the calm before a storm and Jacob knew it. Grabbing the largest log he could find, he lunged into the crowd, just as the first of them lunged toward him.
YOU ARE READING
Excerpts from my Supernatural Suspense anthology "Warp Spasms of the Mind"
ParanormalInitially, writing short stories was a hobby. It started soooooo many years ago in Jr High and continues to be a mix of Supernatural and Science Fiction. It's been quite a while since I wrote and drew one of my comic books, so the likes of Black W...
