The Wisconsin Werewolf Read online

  THE WISCONSIN WEREWOLF

  ALEX GEDGAUDAS

  THE WISCONSIN WEREWOLF

  Copyright © 2020 by Alex Gedgaudas.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: February 2020

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Book Pages By Design

  Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design

  ISBN-13: 978-1-64034-808-0

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to those who inspired it but will never read it. This is why you shouldn’t piss off a writer; they’ll then describe you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  Monsters descended from myth and movies share a very strong singularity. They’re 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. That was the sardonic truth my parents wanted me to believe to outgrow my overactive imagination when I was young. When I was growing up, more than anything I wanted to become a writer. It didn’t matter if it was writing cheesy fantasy novels or screenplays that never saw the light of day. A story came alive when I had a pen in my hands or a keyboard under my fingertips. Or, rather, I came alive when I would write. Reading and writing was an escape for my mind. An overactive imagination that was always inventing stories of the unbelievable.

  I was never one to believe a boogeyman resided in my closet. Nor did I ever believe there was a tentacled monster under my bed waiting patiently to grab me if I ever dared to drape my foot over the edge. Still, I was persistent with telling stories about ghosts, goblins, and other things that go bump in the night. I grew up wanting to scare or enchant people with my writing about monsters. I wanted to help people like me, people who needed an outlet from reality. People who weren’t content with everyday life. Discovering there is nothing extraordinary about the ordinary world we reside in is why I assume people become addicted to drugs and alcohol. Maybe that’s the same as my reading and writing, a placebo to reconcile that the real world is boring and full of uninteresting characters compared to the movies.

  But it was the day after a full moon that my twenty-one-year-old self questioned my belief that myths and legends were only passed on to use as a sort of aphrodisiac for people who wanted to escape reality.

  It was one night that would forever change how I viewed what I previously 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. My brother and I 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 of Wisconsin Dells. The air was chill for late September. The temperature at night was starting to dip into the forties.

  It was a month before Halloween; the red and orange leaves covering the thick trees in the forest had yet to fall to the ground. I was driving my truck as Simon sat beside me in the passenger seat. My bubbly fifteen-year-old brother was animatedly talking about how fun it was 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. 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 road. 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. It took a good week to scrape the splattered remains of a squirrel off my grill.

  That night I was right to be cautious.

  As I made a turn and drove down the familiar dark, winding backroad that led to the last four miles to our parents’ house, a deer suddenly sprinted 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. I slowed down and attempted to stop, but there was no escaping clipping the doe in its mad dash. A loud thump sounded as soon as the deer impacted 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. I wasn’t going above thirty-five, but that didn’t matter.

  “Everly, you hit it!” Simon accused, his green eyes wide with fright. The water bottle he had been holding had popped open and fallen to the ground below his feet. He struggled to pick it up, but it was near empty, so no mess was made.

  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 without winding up in Mr. Thompson’s ditch!” Our neighbor Mr. Thompson was an unfriendly old man who owned a large pig farm in Adams County. His hundred acres of land possessed everything from horses, cows, and pigs to 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 from entering his property 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 backroads. With the dark, 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 the road. 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 all right.”

  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 stil
l 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 actually a bad driver; he had only neglected to look over his shoulder once. Evidently our family has terrible luck when it comes to squirrels. His next “mistake” had been when he hit one as it ran onto the road at random. 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 whenever we had to drive him somewhere. I was prone to giving Simon a free pass on his sarcastic nature. I felt given he was my only younger sibling it was my obligation to be the “cool” sister as opposed to our sister Miranda’s strict nature. But I wasn’t in the mood to play good cop. Simon was too talented at testing someone’s patience.

  “Well, maybe if you hadn’t been yapping about your stupid job, I would’ve been paying better attention,” I growled as I scanned the brush as I walked farther away.

  “Don’t give me attitude just because you’re jealous of me.”

  “What! Why would I be jealous of you?”

  “Because you hate your job at the hotel while I love mine.” He sounded smug. It was amazing how a stupid, minor comment from a sibling could immediately set me off.

  “I don’t hate my job!” I shot over my shoulder angrily. My jaw set and my teeth ground together. It was stupid getting mad at something so dumb.

  “Then you wouldn’t be transferring departments,” called Simon lazily.

  I muttered angrily under my breath as I continued my dark search. He always knew how to touch a raw nerve. It was a major talent of his. But 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 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 for something else. Unfortunately, in a tourist trap area like the Dells, the jobs that paid higher than seven or eight dollars an hour were quite limited.

  Still, I was desperate to find a job to avoid sitting at home like the loser I considered myself. 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 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. I couldn’t quite connect with the supervisor or the manager in the shipping department, either. Everyone 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 nine to five 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 supervisor was worse. We shared nothing in common except the fact that we were both female. Every conversation I started with her was immediately shut down. Laurel hated talking, even if it was friendly small talk. 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 banter. The only other person in our department consisted of another girl who was best friends with our supervisor. Jonna ignored my polite attempts at conversation as well. She wouldn’t provide dirty looks like our supervisor, but it was as if she wasn’t allowed to like me solely because Laurel didn’t. Jonna would stare at me as if I was a weirdo for greeting her in the morning. No hello was ever returned.

  Long and terribly awkward silences started plaguing the 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 conversation. I was unfortunately someone who couldn’t function every day without it.

  We worked in silence eight hours a day. The only words spoken were an answer to me when I would ask what part of the hotel we were going to next. Even then, it was only a grunted response. Sometimes an eyeroll was added in. One time, Laurel told me I talk too much. Ironically, working there, I felt I had never spoken less in all my life.

  More often than not, mistakes were made in the job solely because our supervisor didn’t communicate with us to explain what needed to be done. Something needed to be delivered to a certain place at a certain time? Forget getting a slotted time and delivery day from Laurel. She wouldn’t communicate in regards to anything. She only berated Jonna and me when the time came and went for a delivery. It was as if being able to scold someone gave her meaning to live. That was the only time I would see a small satisfactory smile on her pudgy face.

  As weeks passed by, I was coming home too angry and hostile for a job that paid me a measly ten dollars an hour. I then decided to transfer to another department in the hotel. There was a whole two dollar pay raise that won me over. I gave my manager my two weeks’ notice with my transfer request. He was rather indifferent about it and didn’t ask why I wanted to transfer. It made me think that he probably had problems keeping employees given Laurel’s horrible personality, so my transfer request wasn’t surprising.

  This new job was for banquet set up. I didn’t exactly know what my first day tomorrow morning was going to provide me. To decide what department I wanted to transfer to, I tried out working in a few places to see what I would like best.

  Housekeeping wasn’t something I had any willpower to commit to. I didn’t relish the idea of scrubbing toilets every day or changing the sheets that people slept on. Aquatics was a miserable department to work in. The water dome had a very strong smell to it. For the three days I tried out working there, I came home and had a hard time getting the burning stench of chlorine out of my nostrils. I also wasn’t thin enough for the skimpy swimsuits the girls had to wear, but it was the chlorine that really made me not want to go anywhere near that place again after my three days were done. Looking chubby in a one piece was something I could live with, but the smell wasn’t.

  When I went to banquet set up, I had only picked up two three-hour shifts in the department. My time had been spent folding linens or wheeling stacks of chairs out of a room. There wasn’t much to it. It was easy enough. I emailed the manager of banquets one night, and he gave the okay for my transfer. That was that.

  I would hopefully love the new department as much as Simon loved his wet, chlorine-scented job, but I doubted it. Perhaps it was my inner cynic speaking, but minus our unfortunate habit of murdering innocent squirrels with our cars, 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 needed braces and two attempts at Algebra I in college. While my parents and siblings are slim and slender, I’m the only plump one 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 farther 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 me 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 toward me and the deer.

  “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 toward me on the paved road when I called him. Something was wrong with this scenario. I slowly backed up a distance from the doe, little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. My skin prickled with goosebumps. Something was wrong. Something was coming. The rustling noise continued to grow louder. Once Simon heard the movement, he paused. 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. It knew something was coming, too.

  The next few moments were frightening. One moment my light was shining on the injured deer, the next, a large, reddish-brown creature lunged forward and singlehandedly tore the broken leg off of the injured deer’s body. There was a loud rip and pop sound as the leg was ripped off in a grisly fashion.

  The doe cried out in horrible, garbled pain as Simon himself yelled in shocked surprise. That was the wrong thing to do; the creature quickly turned its attention to where Simon and I stood. Its eyes were a piercing, haunting yellow. A low slurping sound could be heard as the animal started chomping on the deer’s leg. It had taken off the leg and most of the deer’s torso with its mighty rip. With a shaking hand, I held the beam of the flashlight close. The animal dropped the leg and soon turned its hungry attention onto the deer. It lunged. The creature went through the doe’s throat in a sudden hungry frenzy. Whatever it was that was now eating the deer stood on hind legs. Its reddish-brown fur covered every inch of its large body, the glow of the flashlight illuminating the hairs. Sharp talons protruded from its furry hands; its feet were monstrous in size. My flashlight quivered as I trembled in terrified fear. I looked up to find the creature was well over six feet in height. My garbled scream became lost in my throat as the creature released a loud and utterly inhuman howl into the cold night. Its attention was solely on the deer, not me, but that meant nothing. The animal snarled and snapped, and I realized that whatever it was could easily kill us if it wanted.