Grim Business

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

“No, absolutely not.” Christopher’s voice brokered no argument, the cold certainty enough to make Phoebe want to scream.

“But dad, this is my first party invite! I get it, you’re pissed, but I already spent one weekend in solitary confinement! Why would you make me spend another one, possibly the most important one in my social life, stuck in my room like I’m some criminal!?”

“First of all, criminals are not allowed to stay in their rooms; they stay in prisons. Second of all, it’s not just a punishment, Phoebe. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to scare you, but when the police and animal control people went to investigate the creature, they found nothing. There was the remnants of a fire, some blood, but they didn’t find a body. That thing is still out there, and until it’s caught I need you to stay safe right here.”

“This isn’t fair,” Phoebe said, trying to ignore the heart-pounding fear her father’s words had ignited in her. “I can’t just stop living my life because one nasty creature happened to be where me and my friends were hanging out. What are the odds that it’ll find me again?”

“Bigger than you think,” Christopher said, rubbing his forehead and standing up from the table where they had been eating dinner just moments ago. “Please, just trust me on this. The creature will be dealt with…in the meantime, I need you to be safe.”

“Whatever,” Phoebe said, shoving away from the table and grabbing her dishes up aggressively. She pushed past her father into the kitchen, ignoring the hurt on his face. She cleaned off her dishes and tossed them in the sink—if he was going to go all disciplinarian father on her, he could load the dishes into the dishwasher and put them away.

Without a single word to her father, Phoebe went up to her room and played video games all night long, trying to forget that everything was falling apart in her life once more. When she finally fell into bed, nightmares were waiting for her.

The woods were eerily silent, not even a cricket chirping in the distance. Phoebe was standing in the clearing where she had faced the creature, dressed only in a pale white night gown. It was coated in blood, as were her hands, but she couldn’t tell if the blood was hers or if it belonged to someone or something else. Even her footsteps were silent as she stepped over the piles of leaves on the ground, searching for whatever had brought her back to this place.

Phoebe felt a sensation on the back of her neck then, as if she were being watched. Suddenly, she turned and faced the creature in the clearing. Only this time, the creature was not a wolf. Her brother stood there, looking exactly as he had that fateful day when he’d left for lacrosse practice and ended up dying instead. At least, everything looked the same except for his eyes. They were the golden color that the wolf’s had been, and she felt a feeling of familiarity and dread hit her with such force that she nearly collapsed onto the ground.

“Derek?” she asked. Her voice sounded distant, the way it might if she had spoken under water. “You’re the wolf?”

“No,” he said, and his voice was louder than hers, a deep rumbling growl. “At least, not the way you might think. I am the wolf, but the wolf is not me.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Phoebe’s voice was growing strength the longer she spent here, almost like she were meant to be here and it had only taken a moment to adjust to it.

“When a person dies, their soul takes on a primal form. That primal form, if kept from moving on, will mutate, change shape;  the darkness will take over and erase the person it was before. That is what you saw in that clearing that night.”