Fairytale and movie monsters are solely works of fiction created to scare a public that's willing to believe in the unbelievable. That was the logic I grew up believing in. That was the sardonic truth my parents wanted me to believe to outgrow my overactive imagination. When I was a child I wanted more than anything to become a writer. I grew up wanting to scare or enchant people with my writing about monsters or superheroes. It was an outlet for my mind that was always inventing stories. It was a way to prevent my childhood self from spreading tall-tales to my annoyed parents. I didn't necessarily believe in the magical or the unbelievable growing up, but that didn't stop my imagination from soaring to new heights.
There was never a boogeyman that resided in my closet. Nor was there a tentacled monster under my bed waiting patiently to grab me if I ever dared to drape my foot over the edge. At some point everyone realizes that there's no such thing as superheroes or villains, my cynical childhood self just happened to learn this at an early age. To reconcile that the real world is boring and full of uninteresting characters I started trying to entertain others with my writing. I would would write comic books or short stories and share them with people online. Sometimes people loved what I wrote, sometimes not. At the end of the day everyone only gives in to the belief of the supernatural merely for the limited feeling of believing in things that are unexplainable.
But it was the day after the full moon that my twenty-one-year-old self questioned my life-long belief that monsters -real ones- don't exist. It was one night witnessing something that was always known not to live in the realm of reality that would forever change how I viewed what I thought was an uninteresting and boring world. While driving home one night with my brother I saw something that I previously thought only existed in fairytales and myth. We saw something that couldn't possibly be among the living. Yet, it was.
Our drive home that dark night was a night similar to the many others I had experienced in my two months of living in the tourist town called Wisconsin Dells. Uneventful and getting colder as the weeks passed. The air was chill for late September, the temperature was starting to dip into the low forties. Long gone was summer and all the fun aspects hot and balmy weather brought to outside fun. Lightweight jackets would soon be replaced by heavy coats to block the harsh winter air that would arrive in just a few weeks time.
It was a month before Halloween; the red and orange leaves covering the thick dense of trees in the forest had yet to fall to the ground. I was driving my truck as Simon sat in the passenger seat. My bubbly fifteen-year-old brother was animatedly talking about how fun it was to work in the aquatics department at the resort we both worked at. I had started to tune him out at least ten minutes earlier, only occasionally replying to him. My attention wasn't with my brother; I was too cautious of a driver, one who was always watching for the occasional animal to pop out of the woods to cross the road. While driving in the backwoods of central Wisconsin it seemed the local wildlife often played a proverbial game of 'Let's see if we can avoid death by car'. They would wait until the very last minute to pop out of the woods to sprint across the street. If you weren't careful you were going to be scraping possum or raccoon off of your front tires for weeks. This was a lesson I had learned the hard way after my dad borrowed my truck to make a trip to the supermarket.
That night I was right to be cautious.
As I made a turn and drove down the familiar dark and winding back road that led to the last four miles of our parents house, a deer suddenly sprint from the forest and onto the road. It was large in size and running fast. My grip on the wheel tightened as my breath hitched. As hard as I tried to avoid hitting the doe there was nothing I could do that wouldn't result in severe damage that could ultimately hurt myself and Simon if I didn't hit it. I slowed down and attempted to stop but there was no escaping clipping the doe in its mad dash to rush across the dark road. A loud thump sounded as soon as the deer came into impact with the truck's brush bar. The deer bounced off the road before falling hard into the dark woods. I screeched the truck to a halt as I struggled to catch my breath.
"Everly, you hit it!" Simon accused, his green eyes wide with fright. The water bottle he had been holding had splattered open and fell to the ground below his feet. I said nothing for a moment as a shudder ran down my spine. Simon started running his mouth with insults critiquing my driving but I paid him no attention. "Twenty-one and you can't drive properly! C'mon-"
"I didn't mean to!" I finally snapped, pulling off to the side of the road and putting the truck in park. "I couldn't avoid it otherwise we would have wound up in Mr. Thompson's ditch!" Our neighbor Mr. Thompson was an unfriendly old man who owned a large pig farm in Adam's county. His hundred acres of land possessed everything from horses, cows, pigs, to even apple and pecan trees. According to his daughter who had baked a pie for my parents upon their moving to Wisconsin Dells, Mr. Thompson was a widower who became slightly antisocial after his wife's passing. He had a large ditch put in that spread ten acres along the road before touching his forest. His daughter claimed it was to discourage hunters to enter his property in search of deer during hunting season. When my parents told me about it. My cynical self quietly felt it was due to the grouchy old man wanting to majorly inconvenience anyone who could possibly run off the small back roads. With the dark and winding roads covered by forest on either side, it would be all too easy to ride into the steep ditch if you weren't a careful driver. Thankfully I had missed swerving off into the thick area that held the ditch. Still, I clipped the deer, that much I knew.
"What are you doing?" Simon asked as I pulled a flashlight out from my truck's console. "I have to see if she's alright."
Simon rolled his eyes as he watched me get out of the vehicle. He looked so much younger when he was afraid. For the last year the childlike roundness of his face disappeared as he grew taller and more gangly. But he still looked so young as he stared at me with fearful eyes. His fear was soon pungent with sarcasm."Would you be after being slammed into by a Silverado?"
"You're not helping Simon," I replied as I used my flashlight to scan the outline where the doe went flying. I left the truck door open as I walked away. My boots made slouchy padded sounds as I walked across the wet pavement of the road. The rain that had been showering down most of the night left a heavy mossy smell on the forest surrounding both sides of the road.
"I'm not trying to help, I'm being realistic," Simon sniffed. "It's probably dead. If you had been paying attention you wouldn't have hit it."
Simon had failed his road test a few weeks previously. He wasn't a bad driver, he had only neglected to look over his shoulder once. His next 'mistake' had been when he hit a squirrel as it ran onto the road. There was nothing he could do to avoid hitting the small creature but his no-nonsense driving instructor had failed him regardless. Given Simon was still feeling salty about failing, he had taken to giving snarky opinions of both mine and our elder sister's driving. I was prone to giving Simon a free pass on his sarcastic nature. I felt given he was my only younger sibling it was often my obligation to try to be the 'cool' sister as opposed to our sister's Miranda's strict nature. But my patience wasn't in the mood to play good cop.
"Well maybe if you hadn't been yapping about your stupid job I would've been paying better attention!" I growled as I scanned further into the brush as I walked farther away.
"Don't be jealous of me because you hated your job."
"I didn't hate my job!"
"Then you wouldn't be transferring departments," called Simon lazily.
I muttered angrily under my breath as I continued my dark search. He touched a raw nerve and we both knew it. As much as I hated to admit it, part of me was indeed jealous of my dorky younger brother. He had immediately taking a liking to working as an indoor lifeguard at the resort we both work at. When I moved to Wisconsin Dells to be closer to my parents...No, that's not accurate. I didn't move home because I was a dutiful daughter. When I moved to Wisconsin to live with my family it was because I couldn't find a job with my near useless Creative Writing degree. I had to start from scratch with job hunting so I came home to lick my proverbial wounds as I recovered from my first failure as an adult. I couldn't find a big girl job so I had to settle with something else. Upon moving home I had to start job hunting. Unfortunately in a tourist trap area like the Dells the jobs that pay higher than seven or eight an hour are quite limited. Still, I was desperate to find a job to avoid sitting at home like the loser I thought myself as. I applied to twenty different places and stupidly said yes to the first place that called me back. I took a job as a shipping and receiving attendant at a busy water park resort. My long days were often boring and spent delivering food, beverages and packages all day eight hours a day. I didn't mind the job but I didn't get off to a good start with my two female coworkers. Even though I was a friendly enough individual I couldn't quite connect with the supervisor or the manager in the shipping department. Both individuals had a rather bland personality that was indifferent to humor or even a sunny disposition. Maybe that was just the Wisconsin nature and I was an alien to it given I was a native of California. My manager never left his office during the 9-5 shift and only grunted a hello in the morning. Other than that the most I conversed with him was the day I interviewed with him and the day I requested the transfer.
My female supervisor and I shared nothing in common minus the fact that we were both female. Every conversation I tried starting with her was immediately shut down. It got to the point that merely asking how her weekend was resulted in a dirty look as if I personally offended her with my attempts at friendly conversation. The only other person in our department consisted of another girl who was best friends with our supervisor. The other girl named Jonna ignored my polite attempts at conversation as well. She wouldn't provide dirty looks similar to our supervisor. She would merely stare at me as if I was a weirdo for greeting her in the morning.
Long and terribly awkward silences started plaguing the almost all-female department to the point I knew I needed a change for my sanity alone. I had never said or done anything to cause strife. My coworkers simply despised attempted conversation.
We worked in silence all day at eight hours a day. More often than not mistakes would be made in the job solely because our supervisor despised communicating with us to explain what needs to be done in a day.
As weeks passed by, I was coming home too angry and hostile for a measly job that barely paid me ten an hour. I then decided to transfer. Given this new job I was transferring to was for banquet set up, I didn't exactly know what my first day tomorrow morning was going to provide me. I had only picked up two three-hour shifts in the department where my time had been spent folding linens or wheeling stacks of chairs out of a room. I would hopefully love this new department as much as Simon loved his wet and chlorine-smelling job, but I doubted it. Perhaps it was my inner cynic speaking but good things always seemed to happen for my brother and sister along with our parents. I had somehow missed out on inheriting the apparent luck gene. After all, I had been the sole Davis child that had been the one who needed braces and two attempts at Algebra one in college. While my parents and siblings are slim and slender I'm the only plump one that's in need of a twenty-pound weight loss. My family's good luck gene that seemed to plague them had bypassed me all through life. If I didn't possess the same eye color as Simon and our mother, I'd swear I was adopted.
Ignoring Simon as he continued to nag I scanned harder into the brush, walking in further when I saw drops of blood. "Damn," I muttered as I spotted the deer. The doe was struggling to stand up. It whimpered in pain every time it attempted to move.
The sound of a snapping twig startled me. The noise came from nearby, nowhere near myself or the deer. The poor doe withered in pain as she struggled to stand. She was afraid and her movement was clearly making her broken leg worse. Another snapping of twigs had me suddenly on alert. "Simon?" The mere sound of my voice caused the noise maker to hurry closer towards where the deer and I were. "What?" Snapped Simon as he pulled himself out of the truck. Evidently whatever was making the noise was not my brother; he only started walking towards me on the paved road when I called him. Something was wrong with this scenario. There was something moving closer at a fast pace, but it was clearly not Simon. I slowly backed up my distance from the doe, little hairs on the back of my neck sliding on end. My skin prickled with goosebumps. The rustling noise continued louder. Once Simon heard the movement in the nearby forest he paused his own movements. His eyes went to where I was shining the flashlight. The doe was still struggling to stand. It was terrified and trying hard to get away.
The next few moments were a frightening few. One moment my light was shining on the injured deer, the next, a large, reddish brown creature lunged forward and singlehanded ripped the broken leg off of the injured deer's body. There was a loud rip and pop sound as the leg tore off in a grisly fashion.
The doe cried out in a horrible garbled pain as Simon himself yelled in shocked surprise. That was the wrong thing to do; the creature that had attacked the deer as easily as removing a leg off a fully cooked turkey quickly turned its attention to where Simon and I stood. It's eyes were a piercing and haunting yellow. A low slurping sound started to take place as the animal started chomping on the deers leg in its clawed hands. Whatever had took off the leg had taken off the leg and most of the deers torso with its mighty rip. With a shaking hand, I held the beam of the flashlight close to whatever it was that caused the deer to now have major blood loss. The animal dropped the leg and soon turned its hungry attention onto the deer bleeding on the ground. It lunged. The doe had no chance as the creature went through its throat in a sudden hungry frenzy. The deer gave one last garbled cry before dying. Whatever it was that was now eating the deer's soon-to-be lifeless body stood on hind legs. Its reddish brown fur covered every inch of its large body, the fur illuminating under the glow of the flashlight. Sharp talons protruded from its furry hands, its feet looked to be at least twelve inches long. As monstrous as the animal was, it looked strangely human.
My flashlight quivered as I trembled in terrified fear. I looked up to find the creature was well over six feet in height. My own garbled scream became lost in my throat as whatever the animal was released a loud and utterly inhuman howl into the cold night. Its attention was solely on the deer and not me but that meant nothing. It was as the animal became snarling and snapping did I realize that whatever it was I was staring at could easily kill us if it wanted.
"Run!" I hissed in a voice that was loud enough for my brother but hopefully not too loud for the beast before us. Simon and I suddenly launched ourselves into a panicked sprint back towards the truck. Somehow during the commotion of sprinting back to the truck I found I dropped my flashlight. It was a bulky object that my father had gotten me a few years ago when I had turned eighteen. It was long and hard frame and had my name engraved on it. The panicked sprint was scarier in the dark. It was blinding blackness outside minus the headlights from the truck still being on. I barely noticed the dark. I only prayed Simon got to the truck in time before whatever creature in the dark woods caught up to us. He did. Simon got in quicker than I did, screaming for me to drive. I didn't need to be told twice. Snarling and growling could still be heard, only now the sounds were closer. Without buckling up we slammed our doors shut and I mentally congratulated myself on not turning the truck off and only parking it. I gunned down the road at the same time Simon locked the doors of the truck.
The few mile drive back home didn't calm us. I thought of calling the police, and animal control, but Simon and I were having trouble agreeing on what it was we saw in the forest. Even after we arrived home, the two of us sat in the truck for a few moments in stunned silence. It was as if we both knew we were silently simultaneously trying to process what it was we saw.
"Bigfoot?" I eventually guessed half heartedly as I stared off into space. My mind couldn't forget the horror of seeing the deer ripped into as easily as a knife slipping into soft butter.
Simon shook his head slowly, his face still pale and frightful. He didn't laugh at my random guess or mock it. Instead, he looked at me fearfully. "Everly...I think we saw a werewolf."
***