Scary & Freaky stories: The Paranormal World

The Werewolf

Werewolf terrorizes an Applachian farm community. Based on a Tennessee folktale, written by Frank Hagelberg.

The creature that first took on deer in the depth of the forest and then moved closer and closer to the village farms, murdering cattle and sheep, was ferocious. It did not bother to eat what it struck. It killed for the sake of killing, or rather shredding to pieces, brutish dismemberment. Once the head of a slain farm animal was found nearly a mile apart from its hind legs. No one doubted that these early victims had fallen prey to a savage, annihilating aggression that would not shy away from humans. Luke, the farmhand, was the first to die in the claws of the mystery beast. The second was a hiker whose identity could only be ascertained after his widely dispersed body parts had been reconstructed by piecing together a macabre puzzle, limb by scattered limb. Footprints connected with those acts of violent rage did not yield a unique picture. Their size was consistent with the anatomy of a giant bear, extinct for millennia in these parts of the world, their shape with that of a wolf.

Mina was no ordinary girl. The forester’s daughter, she went to the girl’s school in the nearby town to attend the traditional curriculum for young women of the middle class. She despised whatever was intended to prepare her for a future career as a housewife and mother. Cooking, sowing, knitting, home decoration were not to her taste. She might have liked French had her language teachers set higher goals than perfection in the art of polite conversation on futile topics. She would have enjoyed her piano lessons had these not aimed exclusively at shallow musical entertainment of house guests. Her interest in the subject of mathematics could have been much more than superficial had her math teacher’s agenda ever strayed away from balancing household income and expenses. Her isolation continued into the hours of recess. Gossiping about other girls was, in her view, not so much immoral as dull and dreary. The strategies devised by her classmates to attract the attention of local boys met with her scornful indifference.

She rooted and bloomed in the woods. Roaming the forest that extended from her doorstep through hundred of miles – and who could have said with authority if it ever ended – walking barefoot through the meadows by the river, running along hidden trails in the tranquil sunshine of August, in January’s ice storms or April’s capricious bouts of hail was her greatest joy. Mina adored her father who, a scientist at heart, had inherited her grandfather’s forestry. On one afternoon each week, she was allowed to accompany him into the woods and delighted in the various tasks at hand: planting saplings, hunting, cutting or taking down diseased trees, and much more. 

The afternoon of the outing had come. ‘Not today’, her father said. A disappointed Mina was instructed that the woods were not safe these days. Her father had no choice but going out with some heavily armed workers, but for children, the forest was strictly out of bounds. Mina was unpersuaded. Everyone knew that the beast struck in the night. Vampires, werewolves, ghouls hunting in plain daylight – what a ridiculous thought. And a plan ripened inside her.

She would follow her father and his helpers at safe distance. Once the workplace in the woods had been reached, she would reveal herself and receive a severe talking from her father, but, of course, she would not be sent back home. In final consequence, this afternoon would turn out to be just a regular afternoon of forestry, untainted by piano practice or conjugation of French verbs. Both her mother and her brother were in the town today, so none of them would notice her absence.

The plan seemed to succeed. No one in the group led by her father spied her as she quietly followed the expedition along narrow trails into the dense forest, in fast and skillful zigzag motions. The field trip led into a primeval region, unfamiliar to Mina. The trail ended, and the last mile of the journey went through brush. The men moved in a single file, laboriously paving their way through the almost impassable thicket. They halted at a small clearing, and Mina hid behind an elder bush that was in full bloom, luxuriating in magic blue-reddish colors.