1
THE WEREWOLF
OF FEVER SWAMP
Goosebumps - 14
R.L. Stine
(An Undead Scan v1.5)
2
1
We moved to Florida during Christmas vacation. A week later, I heard the
frightening howls in the swamp for the first time.
Night after night, the howls made me sit up in bed. I would hold my breath and
wrap my arms around myself to keep from shivering.
I would stare out my bedroom window at the chalk-colored full moon. And I
would listen.
What kind of creature makes such a cry? I would ask myself.
And how close is it? Why does it sound as if it’s right outside my window?
The wails rose and fell like police car sirens. They weren’t sad or mournful. They
were menacing.
Angry.
They sounded to me like a warning. Stay out of the swamp. You do not belong
here.
When my family first moved to Florida, to our new house at the edge of the
swamp, I couldn’t wait to explore. I stood in the back yard with the binoculars my
dad had given me for my twelfth birthday and gazed toward the swamp.
Trees with slender, white trunks tilted over each other. Their flat, broad leaves
appeared to form a roof, covering the swamp floor in blue shadow.
Behind me, the deer paced uneasily in their wire-mesh pen. I could hear them
pawing the soft, sandy ground, rubbing their antlers against the walls of their pen.
Lowering my binoculars, I turned to look at them. The deer were the reason we
had moved to Florida.
You see, my dad, Michael F. Tucker, is a scientist. He works for the University of
Vermont in Burlington, which, believe me, is a long way from the Florida swamps!
Dad got these six deer from some country in South America. They’re called
swamp deer. They’re not like regular deer. I mean, they don’t look like Bambi. For
one thing, their fur is very red, not brown. And their hooves are really big and kind of
webbed. For walking on wet, swampy ground, I guess.
Dad wants to see if these South American swamp deer can survive in Florida. He
plans to put little radio transmitters on them, and set them free in the swamp. Then
he’ll study how they get along.
When he told us back in Burlington that we were moving to Florida because of
