In The Woods

The girl was sitting in the uncomfortable plastic seat in the police station. Her leg bounced up and down in a nervous staccato, her arms wrapped protectively around a messenger bag in her lap. There was an older woman who raised her eyebrow in slight annoyance sitting behind the front desk, a cigarette in her hand despite the No Smoking sign plastered on the wall behind her. 

“Ms. Carter? The detective wants to talk to you,” The secretary’s voice was loud and harsh, but the smile she gave the young woman exuded kindness and motherly affection. 

Melissa Carter gave a wane smile in response as she passed the front desk and walked quickly into the small office stuffed full of overflowing filing cabinets. She sat in an equally uncomfortable chair in front of a young man who was barely visible through the sky-high piles of manilla folders on top of what she could only assume was a desk. 

“What’s the problem?” The officer sounded bored. 

“I think I’ve found something that will be of interest to you,” Melissa said, taking out of her bag a manilla envelope that she sat on top of the hundred others in front of the officer. “This could be the reason that —”

The officer snorted, cutting her off. “I don’t think these photos of yours are in any way something of interest to us,” he said, matter of factly as he shuffled through the small stack one by one. He discarded them back into the now open folder as he finished scouring them, except for the last two, which made him furrow his eyebrows.

Melissa looked down, hiding a triumphant smile. She knew the pictures would catch his attention. What she had seen was unexplainable, but it could maybe serve in explaining the mystery this town was in the middle of.

“What am I even looking at right now?” The officer’s voice was full of disbelief, and his eyes reflected that disbelief when he looked up at her. 

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said casually, though inside, she was starting to get excited. Finally she was going to help someone with her photography, even though her brother had always teased her, calling it a dumb hobby since they were kids despite the box full of ribbons from art exhibitions that now sat under her bed. 

Now, that same brother sighed as he stood up from behind the desk, moving around the filing cabinets and out the door without a word. Melissa huffed. That was just like him, to say something that would eventually come back to bite him in the ass later, and he didn’t even have the decency to admit it. 

While she waited for her brother to go and consult with his fellow detectives or whoever, Melissa’s eye caught on a file that was labeled with a date, October 8, 1973. It was last week’s date, the day that the disappearances started. Before she could think too much about it, Melissa grabbed the file and opened it, revealing only two sheets of paper. 

One had a list of four names and a description of the person underneath their name, along with the date they went missing. The second sheet was strange though. It was a typed paragraph that only took up about half the page, and underneath there was a signature and a date, which was yesterday. Her eyes scanned over the words, and she realized it was an eye-witness account of one of the missing persons’ cases. 

As she read the words, Melissa’s eyes widened. She had been right when she suspected her picture would be of use.

A door opened and closed in the hallway, and footsteps moved closer towards the office. Melissa leaned over the desk, haphazardly replacing the file on top of the twenty others that looked identical, and as she rocked back into her chair, her elbow knocked the name plaque off her brother’s desk. 

The footsteps paused, and she rushed to put the plaque with the name Tony Carson back in its rightful place on the edge of the desk, smiling when her brother stepped back into the room.

Tony frowned at her smile, his eyes scouring over the room in disdain. “What’ve you been up to?” He asked as he sat back down behind his desk.

“Nothing. Why do you ask?” Melissa dropped the smile when she saw her pictures were no longer in Tony’s hand. “What did you do with them?” She demanded.

“Turns out they weren’t very interested in your odd pictures. They thought it was a trick of the light. Sorry Mel,” he said with a nonchalant shrug.

Melissa glared at him, standing up and putting her face mere inches away from his. “Tony, you know as well as I do that these people are disappearing because something is taking them, and what I took a photo of is exactly what that something could be. We may be dealing with a monster here, and ‘they’ don’t want to admit that they have no idea what it is or how to stop it,”

“Go home Mel. This case isn’t any of your business,” Tony hissed, grabbing her by the upper arm and leading her out of his office, past the front desk — where the secretary waved at her — and out of the station. 

*****

The woods were eerily quiet at night, something that Melissa hadn’t expected when she walked through the underbrush, wincing at every snap and crack twigs and leaves made underfoot. She hoped her footfalls would only sound like a small animal moving through the woods, until she happened to step fully onto a dry branch.

It split loudly into two pieces, cracking into the silent night and causing a flashlight beam to veer towards her. Melissa attempted to duck behind a tree, but the beam was now fixated on her, and she had no choice but to look up through squinted eyes at the person who held the flashlight.

“Tony don’t start. I’m looking for this thing with you. And don’t even try to tell me you’re not out here looking for whatever monster is taking these people, because I know you are,” Melissa said resolutely, crossing her arms and staring at her brother despite the fact that the beam of the flashlight was still trained on her face. 

“Mel this is dangerous work. I’m not even supposed to be out here. They have the case on the down low right now and if they find out I’m even out here looking for this thing I could get fired. The woods are supposed to be locked down,” Her brother hissed, turning the flashlight away from her face. 

“Doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving,” Melissa replied stubbornly, turning on her heel and traipsing back into the woods. She could hear Tony sigh behind her but smiles to herself when she heard his footsteps right at her heels. 

“Where are you even going?” Tony asked, stepping up to walk alongside his sister, his flashlight illuminating the still woods in front of them. 

“To the last place Rhonda Mason saw this thing,”

Tony stopped abruptly. “How do you —” he stopped then, suddenly reaching a hand into her coat pocket and yanking out the folded slip of paper she had tucked inside as she was herded out of the police station. 

“You shouldn’t have this. This is a piece of evidence and I can arrest you for stealing it from the police station,” Tony warned.

Melissa shrugged, turning around backwards to better see him as she continued walking along. “If you arrest me, won’t you just have to arrest yourself?” She asked innocently. “After all, you’re the one who could lose his job by being out here,”

Tony glared, or at least that’s what it looked like to Melissa, who’s eyes were still fully adjusting to the darkness.

“Fine. Rhonda Mason said that she last saw her friend by the creek, which should be pretty close,” Tony stuffed the paper into his jacket pocket, ignoring Melissa as she tried and failed to get the paper back from her older brother. 

She opened her mouth to tell him to stop being so uptight about all of this when his arm shot straight out, and she ran into it, letting out a grunt of annoyance. Melissa tried to bat Tony’s arm away, but stopped when she saw the look on his face. 

His eyes were wide and sweat was breaking out on his forehead even though this time of year there was a constant chill in the air. Melissa, having never seen her brother so startled before, took a deep breath and looked towards where his flashlight was shakily pointing. 

There were people, or what was left of them, lying in a heap on the ground on the other side of the creek, the bank of which they were still a few yards away from. The heap was against what looked like an entrance to a fox hole, only it was large enough for a small bear. Not that Melissa would know, as she had never seen a bear and there weren’t any in this part of the country. 

“What…what do you think could’ve…done this,” Melissa whispered fervently, her breath starting to quicken with every minuscule sound she heard around them. 

“No idea, but…I think it’s safe to say all the missing persons are accounted for,” Tony whispered back, starting to move backwards, away from the creek. 

Melissa dug her feet into the earth, trying to push back against her brother with brute force, but to no avail. Just as she was attempting to pry his arm away from her, an inhuman noise came from across the creek.

Tony immediately shined the flashlight all around, searching in vain for what made that sound, when a flash of a dark, muscular body leapt towards them. The creature growled, and Tony whipped around, grabbing Melissa by the hand and yanking her towards safety. 

“Is that what I think it is?” Melissa screeched as they ran at breakneck speed, tripping over roots and branches as the flashlight’s beam jerked erratically, only partially illuminating the woods in front of them. 

“Can’t be,” Tony yelled back, “They don’t exist,”

“Then explain why we’re running away from one,” Mellisa shouted, turning back to get a better look, even as her brother ran faster, jerking her along with him.

“Come on Mel, quit trying to look at it,” Tony called, turning back to face the direction they were running in. He let out a sigh of relief, he could see the street, and further away, his squad car, parked under a street light just as he left it. 

“We’re almost there Mel, do you see —” 

From beside him him, his sister let out a gut-wrenching scream, filling the woods with terror. Melissa’s hand — or to be more precise, everything but her hand — was wrenched away from Tony just as he dashed fully out of the woods. He couldn’t see her or the thing that grabbed her, he refused to call it what is was, but he could hear her screams as she was dragged deeper and deeper into the woods. 

Tony stood, his sister’s hand still clasped in his own, outside the woods, tears falling down his cheeks as Melissa’s screams finally died. He could feel rather than actually see the people in the neighborhood that met the woods coming out of their houses to see what was going on, and the shrieks and cries of terror that came when they saw him standing in the street.

*****

Present day.

Sheila Barker walked confidently into the police station, phone in hand. She ignored the eye roll the ancient secretary gave as she breezed past, walking right into the small office that was at the beginning of the hallway. It was small and full of filing cabinets, though everything that been digitalized many years ago. The desk only had two of the thousand manilla files on top of it, and Sheila eyed them as she sat down, clearing her throat and waiting for the older man to look up at her from behind the large computer monitors that took up most of his desk. 

“Listen, I know you guys have told me that the case has been closed for who knows how long, and that they never actually found the guy that did it, but I found something,”

Sheila slid her phone across the desk of Tony Carson, who sighed before turning away from his computer to take a look. 

Sheila had been to his office many times, trying to gather information from him about that night in 1973 for a school project. He had neglected to comment, and finally thought she had left well enough alone, until he saw what what on her phone. 

The picture was blurry, but still leagues better than the one his sister Melissa had taken all those years ago. The creature was hazy and hard to make out, but he knew without a doubt that it was the monster that had killed Melissa.

He pushed the phone back to the young lady without a word, and she looked up at him expectantly. “So?” She asked hopefully. “Is this what you were looking for?”

Tony looked at her then, his eyes hollow, like that of a man who has seen unknowable horror. “Listen Sheila, I don’t know what that picture you’re trying to show me was, but please, do not go back into those woods. Trust me when I say there’s nothing there, and if you try to go back, you will be arrested,” he spoke gruffly, and tried not to show a trace of emotion, even as he saw the girl’s face crumble. 

“Fine,” Sheila said, taking her phone and shoving it into her back pocket as she stood up. “I’ll stay away,” 

As she walked out the door, Tony sighed. He knew what he had to do now. He had to stop the thing, before it could hurt anyone else. 

*****

The next day, in the same neighborhood where he was found bloody and ragged that night over fifty years ago, Tony Carson stepped out of the woods once again. 

He was still bloody and ragged, but this time he was triumphant. He had succeeded. This thought carried him, even when his legs no longer could and he lay in the middle of the street, bleeding from a gash in his side. 

Sirens whirred in his ears as he was loaded onto a stretcher a few minutes later. People were shouting at him left and right, asking what had happened and what had wounded him. He laughed, and finally, as he felt himself dying — he knew he had lost too much blood — he whispered the name of the creature into a young officer’s ear. 

The kid laughed in disbelief. “Sir, there’s no such thing as werewolves,” he said incredulously. 

Tony smiled then as they wheeled him away, into an ambulance and towards a hospital he knew he would never reach. As he closed his eyes, he saw his sister, who reached a hand out towards him that he gladly took, his mind content with the fact that no one would ever again have to face the monster in the woods.