Read Monsters in the Midwest (Book 2): Northwoods Wolfman Online
Authors: Scott Burtness
Tags: #Horror & Comedy
Monsters in the Midwest (Book 2): Northwoods Wolfman
Northwoods Wolfman
Monsters
in the Midwest, Book 2
Scott
Burtness
For Liz
.
The koozie to my beer can.
All
places and characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual
places or persons living, dead, or in Wisconsin is purely coincidental.
Also,
reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written
consent is strictly prohibited. As in, don’t do it. It’s bad.
***
Copyright
© 2015 Scott Burtness
All
rights reserved.
ASIN:
B00X2VB5E4
***
There
are a lot of great people (and a super cool dog) that deserve a huge shout out.
Sincere thanks to:
My
talented and amazing wife Liz, my wonderful folks and big sis, Author Jeanie
Grey, Author Shay Ray Stevens, Greg at 2 Book Lovers Reviews, Author Lindy
Moone, Ben Kosel, Guy Norman Bee, my little boxer-pitty Gorgeous Frank the
Velvet Tank, the baristas at all the cafes I write at, the many wonderful book
bloggers that have showcased my work, and most importantly…
You!
I
really appreciate that you’re reading my book and hope you have fun with the
folks up in Trappersville, Wisconsin.
Please consider posting a review and telling
your friends about “Northwoods Wolfman.” Reviews for writers are like applause
for actors. We love ‘em!
And
now…
The egg hatched,
releasing the young
Dermacentor
variabilis
larva upon an unsuspecting world. Wriggling away from the nest
into the surrounding grass, it had no thoughts, no plans, no aspirations. Those
were the burdens of more evolved creatures. Only one desire occupied the tiny
ganglion of nerves that served as the wood tick’s brain. It was time to feed.
Six legs pushing it
up a blade of grass, it waited with a spider’s patience for its first meal. A
field mouse happened by, munching hurriedly on small seeds scattered amidst the
brush. The tiny larvae’s outstretched limbs snagged its side, and soon it was
working its way through the fur to the warm skin beneath.
About four days
later, the tick dropped back down to the grassy field. Digesting its meal, the
maturing tick molted, sloughing off its skin to reveal an eight-legged nymph.
Climbing a fresh blade of grass, it quivered in anticipation of its next host.
An unsuspecting ground squirrel passed by, stopped, and scratched, its hind leg
a blur of movement. Despite its efforts to dislodge the sudden and unexpected
itch, the nymph had already sunk its head in deep. Eight legs gripped,
flattening its body tight against flesh as it filled its slowly expanding
abdomen with rich, warm blood.
The squirrel carried
its parasitic passenger on a haphazard path across the prairie until chemical
triggers prompted the tick to drop back to the ground. Saturated with blood, it
molted again, growing to its full adult size. The persistent hunger, all it had
ever known, pressed it onward. Despite its limited awareness, the tick knew the
days were growing shorter, and cooler weather was settling in. Only a few of
its siblings would survive the coming cold. To survive, it had to feed.
***
The man paused in the
clearing, savoring the feel of the setting sun that warmed his brow and the
crisp autumn air that cooled it. Searching for an elusive serenity, he stood
quietly as the day drew to a close. He hoped that he had trekked far enough
into the state park to prevent anyone from getting hurt. Soon, the full moon
would come and with it the now-familiar horrors. For a moment though, he set
his worry aside and simply enjoyed the sunset. Lost in his reverie, he didn’t
feel the wood tick climb his shoe, work its way over his sock, and bite into
the skin of his calf.
***
Jason and Reggie made
their fifth left-turn. While persistence is usually a virtue to be admired, in
this case it has simply made them lost. When looking at a map, Illinois’s
Moraine Hills State Park seemed like an old wilderness long tamed. Color-coded
paths and helpful sign posts ensured that even the most suburbanized of hikers
would safely find their way through the rolling fields, lakes, and wetlands.
What the trail guides
and sign posts didn’t show was that buried deep inside the orderly arrangement
of scenic lookouts and convenient port-o-pots were winding deer trails and
coyote runs that could confound even the savviest of Kicapoux trackers. Rather
than emerging from their impromptu shortcut through the wooded hills to where
their friends waited at the picnic site, Jason and Reggie instead found
themselves in an unmarked clearing. Shadows cast by the surrounding trees
swelled as the full moon rose. Catching the fading rays of the setting sun, its
unnaturally bright silver glow was tinged with hints of orange and red.
“Told you we
should’ve turned left,” Reggie deadpanned after a long drag on the
mostly-smoked joint. The ensuing giggle-fit had the two friends doubled over,
tears streaming down their cheeks, when an unexpected voice leapt through the
dusk.
“What are you doing
here?”
Jason gasped in
surprise while Reggie yelped, burped, and laughed in rapid sequence, inducing a
sudden and violent case of the hiccups.
“Oh, um. Hic. We, ah,
just hic… should’a turned left,” Reggie choked out, laughing and trying to take
a quick hit between hiccups. Walking toward the stranger through the darkening
shadows, Reggie held out the joint in invitation.
“There’s a party near
the, hic… McHenry Dam, dude. Trade you a toke for, hic… directions.”
The stranger shook
his head vigorously from side to side and pressed his palms against his eyes.
“
Run,
” the man growled, actually
growled
before an arm shot out cobra quick, hand grabbing Reggie’s neck.
Something between a
hiccup and a scream barely made it past Reggie’s lips before the stranger’s
grip cut-off any chance of air escaping from his constricting throat. As the
hand squeezed, its fingers and knuckles swelled. Nails yellowed and lengthened,
sharpening at the tips until they pierced skin and drew blood. Dark, coarse
hair sprouted from the back of the hand and crept up the corded muscles of the
man’s partially exposed forearm. A series of pops and snaps split the otherwise
silent clearing as joints cracked and bones stretched. Cheekbones and brow
pushed forward while lips so recently red darkened to a muddy brown. The man’s
nose turned up, his ears pulled to points, and brown locks of well-groomed hair
lost their smooth gloss and curled into a pelt-like nap. Soon, his entire face
was covered in coarse fur. Strangest of all though, were the eyes. Bright,
piercing blue with flecks of gold, they stared straight into Reggie’s, fully
aware of the pain and torment being inflicted.
The metamorphosis
from man to beast took less than fifteen seconds. By its end, Reggie’s throat
had been bloodied and crushed. Finally, the massive, clawed fingers relaxed,
and the previously upright Reggie fell bodily to the blood-spattered grass.
Frozen in
uncomprehending horror, Jason watched his friend fall lifeless to the dirt. His
only lucid thought as the beast grabbed his arms was to wonder why the park
ranger hadn’t warned them. You’d think a well-tamed state park like this would
let people know a werewolf was on the loose.
***
Jerry was annoyed.
His boss had scheduled him for three back-to-back sales calls on the same day,
two in eastern Wisconsin and the third all the way down in Illinois. To make
matters worse, he’d gotten a speeding ticket trying to make it to the state
park on time, only to find that the park’s office manager was “busy.”
“He’ll be back soon
though?” Jerry asked the girl at the visitor center’s front desk, stifling his
impatience. “I’ve got the glossed paper samples he wanted,”
and a five hour drive to get home,
he
grumbled to himself.
Shrugging
noncommittally, the girl invited him to wait outside and enjoy the autumn
evening. Since there was nowhere to sit inside, Jerry bought a small can of bug
spray and headed out to the patio. Muttering about how homicidal mosquitoes and
clouds of irate gnats were anything but enjoyable, he soaked himself with the
spray, settled into a chair on the patio, and watched the sun slide down the
western sky.
When Horace Tulane, the McHenry Dam’s office
manager and volunteer Park Ranger of the Moraine Hills State Park finally
arrived, the sun had set, the moon had risen, and the gnats had yet to call it
a day.
“Sorry,” Horace
offered. “I would have been back sooner, but some hikers thought they heard a
wolf howl. Had to check it out.”
Jerry looked worried
as he asked, “Did you find one? A wolf, I mean. Are there wolves here?”
“No,” Horace replied.
“Probably just college kids at the picnic shelter. They’re always sneaking out
there after dusk, smoking their dope and making a ruckus. One must’ve thought
it’d be funny to howl at the moon. Rotten kids.”
Nodding
sympathetically, Jerry flipped open his briefcase and started to lay out
samples and brochures. He supposed kids in rural Illinois weren’t too different
from kids in his home town of Trappersville, Wisconsin. Nestled in the state’s
northern woods, just outside the Nicolet National Forest and near the banks of
the Wolf River, the small town was a tick-infested, cheese-infused,
flannel-clad waiting room for the last train to boredom. Even the summer’s
spate of murders and whispered claims of an honest-to-god vampire couldn’t
change the fact that Trappersville was otherwise one-hundred percent Podunk.
Waving away the
persistent gnats, Jerry shuffled some brochures around, a clear indication that
he was ready to get back on the road. Meanwhile, Horace rifled distractedly
through the various samples of paper stock, anxious to head back into the
darkening woods and bust some college stoners.
***
The werewolf reveled
in the feel of rubbery flesh between his gnashing jaws. Blood-slicked chunks
slid down his gullet as he chewed and swallowed the unfortunate hiker one
ripping bite at a time. Engrossed with trying to literally fill himself with
humanity, he didn’t feel the miniscule parody of his own dark hunger biting
deep into his flesh. He didn’t hear it when it screamed a tiny wood tick
scream, or notice as it rippled and contorted, sprouting coarse hairs all over
its previously bare arachnid carapace. The resulting abomination bit into its
monstrous host with a fierce, unnatural hunger that would only slake with the
setting of the full moon.
***
Fed up with swatting
ineffectually at the cloud of gnats, Jerry reached for his bottle of bug spray.
Glancing up, he noticed a man jog out from the trees near the visitor’s center.
Squinting in the dusk, he tried to figure out what the guy was wearing. It
looked like a sweatshirt and jeans pulled over a gorilla suit.
“Um, Horace?” he
managed before the stranger was on them. Closing the last few yards, the thing
Jerry had thought was a man crouched, leapt and landed directly in front of
him. With a high pitched squeal, Jerry trained his can of bug spray on the
thing and enveloped it in a cloud of DEET before he stumbled backward and
knocked his briefcase from the table.
Snarling, the thing
turned and leapt again. Briefly backlit by the newly risen full moon, it landed
on the roof of the visitor’s center, fluidly crouched and leapt a third time,
vanishing from sight on the far side. Jerry’s mouth worked like a guppy, while
Horace’s face turned beet red with a tinge of purple around the edges.
“Goddamn stoners!” he
yelled, grabbing the radio from his over-stocked utility belt. “Now they’re
doing the PCP in my woods? No way! Not on my watch, they aren’t.” Jerry
forgotten, Horace hurried inside, urgently calling in to report the hairy,
drug-crazed teenager that had just leapt over a building in two bounds.
For his part, Jerry
was simply flummoxed by the whole affair. The rational part of his brain kept
pinging his eyes, advising them that Horace was right, and they had just seen
an unusually hairy teenager on drugs run out of the woods and leap over a
building. A perfectly sensible explanation, reasoned Jerry’s brain.
Unfortunately, his eyes
kept sending a different story back to the brain. They felt quite strongly that
it wasn’t a teenager at all but a six-foot tall dog appropriately dressed for
the early autumn weather and running on two legs instead of four. While his
eyes and brain argued, Jerry decided he’d had enough of the Moraine Hills State
Park. He gathered up the scattered brochures and samples with shaking hands and
returned them to his briefcase. Glancing nervously at the dark woods, he
scurried to his car, unaware of the minuscule monstrosity seething with
unnatural hunger between brochures and invoices in his briefcase.
***
It was a long drive
back to the tiny town of Trappersville, Wisconsin. At least Jerry’s boss had
agreed to let him work from home the next day. The autumn nights were getting
colder, and the furnace was on the fritz.
Just
one more reason to hate Wisconsin
,
thought Jerry.
Sweat all summer and then
we freeze.
He’d called Dallas at
That Blows HVAC before leaving on his sales trip, since it was really the only
option in town for furnace repair, but regretted it the second Dallas picked
up. Jerry could practically smell booze through the phone. The local bowling
champ and Trappersville’s favorite son was known by all to be a bit of a
drinker, but Jerry hadn’t seen him sober in weeks.
A month or so prior,
Dallas had supposedly stabbed Jerry’s neighbor, Herb Knudsen, with a pool cue
at the local bowling alley’s karaoke bar. When no one could find Herb to
confirm Dallas’s story, he swore that Herb was a vampire who burned right up to
nothing after getting stabbed. Other witnesses had differing opinions. A few
sheepishly agreed that Dallas was probably right, but most said they couldn’t
be sure since a significant amount of alcohol stood between them and a clear
recollection of what had transpired. One thing was certain though. No one had
seen Herb since that night.
When the sheriff’s
department finally searched Herb’s rambler in the woods, they turned up a whole
slew of dead animals buried in the root cellar, including Jerry’s pug. With
that discovery, it didn’t take much to connect the unassuming line cook to a
recent spate of murders. The general consensus was that Herb had killed the
animals for practice before upgrading to a tourist, two strippers, and a couple
of frat boys. After Dallas confronted him at the karaoke bar, Herb skipped town
for fear of getting caught. Dallas, however, stuck to his story, insisting that
he’d saved the whole town from a bloodthirsty monster. Since no one could prove
him wrong, he’d crowned himself the Hero of Trappersville and had been soaking
in alcohol ever since.
