The Wisconsin Werewolf Read online

  “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 toward the truck. Somehow during the commotion, 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 the hard frame had my name engraved on it. The panicked sprint was scarier in the dark. It was blinding blackness outside 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 growing closer. Without buckling up, we slammed our doors shut, and I mentally congratulated myself on not turning the truck off—only parking it. I gunned down the road at the same time Simon locked the doors.

  The few miles to 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. Bear? Coyote? Mountain lion? 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 simultaneously trying to process what 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.”

  ***

  I didn’t sleep that night. I tossed and turned in my bed, still frightened of whatever it was we saw eating the deer. Even as I shut down Simon’s hypothesis that it was a werewolf, I wasn’t sure if I was right to dismiss his guess. There weren’t a large variety of animals it could be as I researched it that night. It was far too big to be a coyote or a wolf. Cougars didn’t stand on their hind legs. My best guess was that we saw a bear. They could stand on their hind legs. In the back of my mind, I knew I was only kidding myself. Whatever it was wasn’t a normal animal by any means. There was no one to tell, either. Simon and I couldn’t tell our parents what we saw. They were still overseas traveling for my dad’s large presentation for the sister corporation of his company. We could call or text, but with the time difference, I didn’t exactly know how to broach the topic of a “werewolf” with my parents. Not to mention I couldn’t tell them this over the phone late at night and expect them to take me seriously. Hell, I couldn’t expect them to take me seriously even in the morning. The truth of what we saw was too absurd.

  The next morning as I made coffee, Simon entered the kitchen with his laptop in hand. “Why are there not more lore books on werewolves?” he complained as he shoved his laptop screen under my nose.

  There were many fiction books based on werewolves but not too much regarding any concrete myths. “We’re still gonna tell Mom and Dad it was a werewolf?” The skepticism wasn’t hidden in my question.

  “I can’t think of anything else it could have been.” Simon shrugged as he allowed me to take the laptop to search. He proceeded to the cupboard to pull out a colorful box of cereal. As he found himself a bowl and spoon, I found my voice.

  “They’re never going to believe us.”

  “Yeah, but we know what we saw.”

  “And what exactly are we going to say to them?”

  “I dunno, but we should probably tell someone a giant werewolf is outside hunting the deer…”

  Suddenly Miranda appeared down the stairs of our lavish five-bedroom farmhouse. Her wet hair was put up in a towel turban, her fluffy pink robe covering her from neck to toe. “What are you two arguing about?” She didn’t look at us as she asked her question and proceeded to get herself some coffee. The eldest of us three Davis children, Miranda had gone to the University of Madison for a degree in business. Upon graduation, she had found a nice job for an advertising agency near her college. When our dad announced that he and Mom would be traveling for his job overseas, they offered Miranda the chance to stay in the house in the Dells rent free as long as she looked after Simon and me. It was a joke to even “offer” free rent. My parents would never make any of their children pay rent regardless of what age we reached. Still, Miranda said yes, and that was the arrangement the last few weeks. Given Simon was still a minor, this worked out perfectly for him and our parents, who still wanted him supervised. But I found myself sour nowadays. It wasn’t bad enough my writing career still hadn’t taken off. Now I was back to living at home and under the supervision of my overbearing and know-it-all elder sister. It was like I was twelve again minus the hideous braces.

  Wanting to show Simon that no one was going to believe us, I sighed. “Driving home last night, I hit a deer crossing the road. A large werewolf then came up and ate it.” I nodded seriously as Miranda snorted into her first cup of coffee.

  She didn’t bat an eyelash as she played around on her cell phone. “You’re hilarious. Simon, hurry up or you’re going to be late for school. Everly, good luck today.”

  Miranda ripped open a packet of fake sugar to dump into her coffee. As she went in search of a spoon, I shot a pair of raised eyebrows at Simon to prove my point. No one was going to believe whatever it was we saw last night.

  “She’s not kidding. We saw a werewolf,” said Simon enthusiastically. “It ripped apart the deer and everything! We could have died!” But Miranda was unfazed by his explanation.

  “Yeah…just like the garden gnomes were watching the house.” Miranda nodded seriously. “And just like the snowman you guys built somehow kept finding its way to being outside my bedroom window.”

  A wince escaped me. The practical jokes Simon and I had always pulled on our always serious sister didn’t exactly build a strong foundation for her ever taking us seriously.

  “There’s really not a chance you’ll believe us for this one, is there?” I asked as I sipped at my own mug of coffee.

  “I think I stopped believing your crazy stories after you glued googly eyes to the toilet and claimed Dad did it while sleepwalking.”

  Simon chuckled while even I snorted. That had been a hilarious moment when we had convinced our parents and sister that our dad had not only been sleepwalking, but also gluing googly eyes to different objects throughout the house. It had only stopped being funny when Dad had scheduled appointments with a local psychiatrist to get to the crux of the matter regarding his “sleepwalking.” Against Simon’s advice, I confessed to the joke. But after spending over eight hundred dollars on two measly therapy sessions, our father hadn’t been pleased.

  It was only after Miranda headed back upstairs that Simon sighed. “Fine, you may have a point.”

  I snorted again as I went to feed my parakeets. The crux of the matter was simple; no one was going to believe whatever it was we had seen the night before. But as much as I didn’t want to believe it, we had definitely seen something.

  “I think I’ll stop by the police department and let them know there’s a wolf hunting close to houses.” I thought this was the better option than not saying anything to anyone.

  “Awesome,” replied Simon. “While you’re there, you can also put the word ‘were’ in front of wolf as well as say it was over six feet tall.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The twenty-minute drive to the Forest Resort and Waterpark was uneventful. The downtown of Wisconsin Dells was practically a ghost town during the fall and winter months. There wasn’t any traffic, only a few cars that I passed down the highway and throughout the city center. People only came to the Dells for spring break and summer vacation. The rest of the year, all the hotels and motels with their fun outdoor pools closed down. All mini golf and outdoor go-kart racing closed down as well. The boat tours would remain open until November, but not many rea
lly wanted to venture on chilly Lake Delton during the cold months. There was no point visiting a town full of summer activities without the summer activities. Only a handful of candy and souvenir shops stayed opened all year, but even they only opened on the weekends. There were only four hotels in all of the Dells that remained open during the winter. That was only because they provided indoor water parks as well as arcades. Even those four hotels would struggle during the winter if not for their convention centers. Businesses and other social groups always needed a place to host a convention or other large gathering.

  I spent the drive through town remembering what it was I saw the night before while trying to come up with a rational conclusion for what the animal could have been. But as I pulled into the employee parking lot for the resort, I sadly realized I lacked any idea of what animal it was. I thought of a bear. But when I thought more about it, bears didn’t have opposable thumbs like the monster did. They also didn’t have pointed ears, I thought with a shudder.

  I clocked in where my new manager told me the week before. The only time clock was in the basement of the convention center, and that was where every department inside the convention center clocked in or out. The large basement smelled strongly of dust and mold. As I looked around, I found it was used mostly as a storage area for all the equipment used throughout the hotel. Tables of many different shapes and varieties were stacked on carts against the wall. Hundreds of stacks of chairs were propped against the other side of the wall. Another area held many types of decorations for every holiday possible. There were many hiding places throughout the basement that it almost provided a creepy vibe even though all the lights in the basement were on.

  Giving up on my halfhearted attempt to stall, I walked up the stairs to the conference center, my chest filling with dread. Orientation had been extremely useless in preparing me for this transfer. Then again, it was useless when I had first started working at the resort at the beginning of the summer. It was a half hour of sitting at HR where me and three others were made to watch a video online. The overly bubbly lady on the screen told us not to touch hazardous cleaning materials. After that, we signed paperwork. Given the three of us at orientation weren’t applying for housekeeping, the advice and the training video we were forced to watch was rather stupid. The second time at orientation and watching the same spew had only made me snicker as I saw how not helpful the entire video was the second time around.

  I proceeded up the stairs toward the employee lounge where I was told the morning shift meets. Evidently shifts were always going to be at different times of day every week because of the unpredictability of scheduling. According to my new manager Perry, you never quite knew when the department would need you according to what was on a Banquet Event Order. Somehow I got lucky to only be scheduled for morning shifts seven a.m. to three p.m.

  Upon opening the door to the employee lounge, I found five sets of eyes were soon on me. Five guys and there was no other female in sight. The room was very large. Ugly pastel yellow paint coated the walls. The room held many different types of shelves for linens and napkins. A few eight-foot tables were set up for employees to eat while two shabby vending machines stood in the far corner. Four of the five guys in the room were standing. The last was sitting at the table. “Um…hello,” I said politely, noting that everyone was dressed in the same long-sleeved navy-blue polo and khaki pants like I was. The image reminded me of prep school where everyone had to look the same while simultaneously looking ridiculous. When I looked at these guys, I placed a mental bet not one of them would wear these colors outside of the building.

  The young men in the room looked lost between the ages of their early to mid-twenties. No one guy looked the same, but they all resembled each other in that no one said a word as they suddenly looked among themselves in what seemed to be confused surprise.

  “Are you lost?” a guy with short red hair asked. His tone seemed mocking. His appearance was deceiving as I looked at him. From the back of his head, it looked like he had short hair. But when the boy turned around, his copper red hair was flipped over the front. A reversal of business in the front, party in the back, I thought with amusement. His muscled arms were covered in tattoos, but I didn’t look long enough to see what they were tattoos of. Even with his odd hairstyle, the guy wasn’t bad looking. In fact, none of the young men were bad to look at, even though none of them looked alike. They were all attractive in their own individual ways.

  I flushed to find everyone was looking at me again. I shook my head as I looked at the papers in my hands. They were the forms I had been given the week before at orientation. What I needed to sign before I arrived at work that morning. I stiffened to find the guys were still watching me. Given I had only ever worked morning shifts, I hadn’t come into contact with the night shift crew. Yet here they were, all watching me expectantly. “This is my first day for banquet setup…”

  “You’re the transfer girl,” said another guy suddenly. His voice sounded nasal, as if he had a perpetually stuffy nose. This one was just as tall as the red-headed guy, but his face held more friendliness. His face was pale, making his brown freckles more profound. The boy had a beak-like nose and hawk-like eyes. His hair was ink black and shoved under a ball cap that was so old and worn out I couldn’t tell what team it supported. “I’m Jamie.”

  “Like she cares,” snorted a dark-skinned boy from nearby. A round of amused chuckles took place as if he had said something funny.

  “Get bent, dick face,” Jamie shot back with a laugh of his own. A feeling of dread soon filled my stomach as the group laughed again. These young men reminded me very much of the boys I went to high school with. No one seemed to hold an ounce of maturity. I took a deep breath.

  “I’m Everly.”

  “That’s a weird name,” said a sixth boy as he entered the room. He was nearly half an inch taller than my five-foot five-inch frame. He was Hispanic with large almond-shaped brown eyes and slicked back hair that was just as black as Jamie’s. He was also attractive. A long-whitened scar ran from the boy’s left eye and nearly down to his chin. I had to look away from him to not stare. “It’s like Beverly but without the B,” he continued with a snort.

  “You’re perceptive,” I said mildly, regretting my sarcasm as the boy flushed with his own embarrassment. Two of the other guys snickered.

  “Yeah yeah, new kid in the house,” said the red-headed boy. He sounded bored. He then started to hand out sheets of paper to the guys around the lounge. Guys took the paper either with mild interest or with not any care. I wondered if the guy was going to hand me a paper to read, but the redhead merely walked away after that without so much as a glance my way. The other young men started to talk amongst themselves as they started to follow him. I stood there not knowing what to do.

  Part of me felt stupid standing in place after they left. I didn’t know whether to follow the group or to stay and wait for Perry or a supervisor to arrive and find me.

  “No offense but you probably wouldn’t understand anything on the paper anyway,” said another voice. The speaker was deep, masculine. I looked behind me to see there was tall young man with short, cropped hair the color of golden straw. He was the only one besides me remaining in the room, but he had been so quiet I hadn’t noticed he was there to begin with.

  The young man was casually leaning against the wall, and he wasn’t looking at me as he spoke. His attention was only on the phone in his hands. I couldn’t tell if he was reading a text message or watching a video on silent. One red wireless earbud was stuffed in his left ear while the partner dangled by his neck. The guy was completely absorbed with whatever he was watching, but he still managed to speak again. “Just stay with the group. You wouldn’t understand the terminology we use.”

  “Wouldn’t the obvious solution be to teach me what it means, then?”

  I was a friendly person, but my sarcastic voice always had a tendency to fall out of my mouth before I could stop it. It was a word vo
mit that always got me into trouble growing up. It was my defense mechanism against rude people or the occasional bully who felt inclined to mock my braces or that extra twenty pounds I was carrying. While Miranda was always polite and respectful and Simon was enthusiastic and funny, I could come across as the sarcastic sourpuss of the family if I wasn’t careful. Typically, I always tried to treat others the way they treated me. That way that person usually dictated how our relationship was going to go. Except with my previous employment in the shipping department. I still couldn’t figure out where I had gone wrong with those girls.

  My annoyed words caused the young man to peer up from his phone to finally look at me. A sharp tingle filled me as we locked eyes. I noted how very pale his face was, almost a sickly ashen color. But the paleness did nothing to mar his features. Sharp cheek bones and piercing, powder blue eyes enhanced an already handsome face. The guy answered without a smile. “You won’t last a whole month here. There’s no point in teaching you anything.”