c h a p t e r s e v e n .
Peter Rumancek
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A SOFT BREEZE CARDED THROUGH PETER'S HAIR, like the tender fingers of a lover, tugging and playful. Whisps of smoke trailed away from the burning end of a joint, spiralling toward the canopy of trees, dissolving in the dappled sunlight like a ghost.
His knee bounced. Up, down. Up, down.
Sweat started to bead on his forehead, brewing in the palms of his hands. His breath was quicksand in his chest-trapping, suffocating, pulling him down, down, down, and his heartbeat felt like a wolf in the woods, running and running and running but without the energy to keep up.
"You okay?" Jude asked, eyes red-rimmed and sunken.
"I'm fine," Peter answered. Peter was not an actor. When it came to lies he was a tattered old piece of fabric, his words falling apart at the stitches.
"You don't look fine," Jude frowned. It wasn't that she was particularly perceptive, it was just that Peter was bad at lying. It did not take a Sherlock to figure that one out.
"You don't either," Peter snickered.
She didn't either, he noticed. Her skin was grey, pale like the ashes in the burnt-out fire pit, her cheeks hollow.
After a few beats of silence, Peter sat up in the hammock after taking another drag, the smoke pooling into his lungs, settling like rot in a hollow log. "Have you ever felt what it's like to....to be something else?" he asked.
"Well- I'm not me, really. I guess I already am something else," she answered thoughtfully. "Why?"
"I just feel like there is always something in me that's not...me. I guess you feel it too, huh?"
Jude watched him closely, nodding, before breaking the stretch of stale silence. "You're talking about the wolf."
He was. For a moment Peter forgot that she had always known what he was. Judith Evergreen didn't know a lot about the supernatural, but she did know Peter and she had seen it for herself when they were kids.
"Yeah, I feel it," she answered. "Like I'm me, but I shouldn't be me. I'm not the version of me that should exist. Something is wrong, broken. But your wolf- do you feel like it's you, or is it something else?" she asked him.
Peter contemplated, tossing the joint into the dirt and crushing it under his boot. He stared at the ground as if the dying ember might answer for him.
"That's the part I don't know. It feels like me, but it feels like something.....older. Like something ancient and wild that got stuck in the wrong place," he said, "I don't know if it belongs to me, or if I belong to it. It moves with a purpose but I don't know where it wants me to go."
It was a question that frequented Peter. During the shift, was he granting the wolf the mercy of being free for a night, or was the wolf escaping of its own accord and returning to the body that it had always controlled? Were they one in the same, or were they two different entities?
Before Jude could respond.
"Alright pup. Time to fetch!" Roman called out.
Peter's gaze fell to the top of the staircase leading down from the roadside as the upir descended into the clearing carrying both a smug grin and a frisbee tucked beneath his arm.
"Fuck you," Peter laughed.
Not long after Roman's arrival, the boy assumed position in an open spot in the clearing, turning his face to the sky, and waiting for the change.
Beneath a setting sun and long shadows, Peter began to shift.
His breath-uneven, sharp, felt like a tort string in his throat, pulled too tight. He ripped off his shirt, his chest trembling beneath the sheen of sweat that clung to him.
"Peter?" Jude's voice was cautious, unsure.
"Stay back," he rasped, his voice already rough, tinged with a growl.
Jude obeyed, though her eyes didn't leave him. Roman stood beside her, frisbee dropped, smirk disintegrated by the power of the spectacle before him. Peter's spine arched, an unnatural curve forcing his shoulders forward. One by one his fingernails darkened, lengthened, and split, peeling away to reveal claws slick with blood.
A guttural scream tore from somewhere deep inside, a contortion of a human cry and an animal's howl. His jaw cracked and stretched, the skin of his cheeks splitting at the seams to accommodate the elongated muzzle forcing its way out. Blood raged from the corners of his mouth as his teeth fell to the grass. New fangs erupted in their stead, yellow and gleaming, their growth tearing mercilessly through the gums.
Fur sprouted on his skin, slick with goo and blood.
Driven to his knees, after what seemed like hours of breaking bone and shedding skin, Peter stood up and the wolf stared back at them. Black fur, yellow eyes. A wolf standing in the discarded flesh of its shell, an animal in its true form.
Jude and Roman faltered.
"Peter?" Jude whispered though she wasn't sure who-or what-she was addressing. The ancient beast or the boy it once was?
The stench of decay reached his nose, and the forest swallowed him whole as Peter turned to follow it, leaving behind the clearing and its occupants. The smell thickened the further he went, clinging to the air like an ancient thing that didn't want to leave.
He found what it came from soon enough.
In a patch of ferns shrouded in curling tendrils of mist, the doe lay crumpled in a patch of ferns. Its neck was bent at a sharp angle, its throat torn open, revealing sinew and bone. Maggots writhed in the wound, pale bodies gleaming. The once sleek coat of the animal was patchy, clumps of fur missing, the bare skin beneath bloated and rotting.
Flies danced frantically, crawling out of the creature's hollowed eyes. Its once graceful limbs were stiff and skewed. Peter's wolf sniffed around the carcass. Something killed it, something else had been here, and he didn't like the feeling of it. A territorial instinct took over the wolf, it was all it cared about.
Sirens ahead.
The wolf followed the noise, peering out from the thinning edg of the treeline across the stretch of grassland and out to the crime scene which Kilderry Park, a location he walked past on his way to school, had become. From here he could see the sheen of yellow caution tape. From here he could see the officers trawling the grounds, inspecting the small wooden hut near the swing set.
From here he could smell the blood.
Ears pricked, it sent a quiver down his spine. An awful, shuddering quiver- not the gentle 'oh somebody must be talking about me' quiver. The 'somebody is walking over the top of my grave' kind of quiver. The kind that leeched poison into his gut, that writhed in his bones, that told him something was wrong here. This kind of reaction was difficult to wrench out of Peter- he was a familiar visitor to strange dreams and funny feelings, but nothing unsettled him more than the things that made the wolf afraid.
School the following day.
Brooke Bluebell had died, gutted and left in Kilderry for a mother and her child to find on what was meant to be a nice day out for some ice cream and a play in the park. Brooke used to be friends with Jude as kids, paths that had long since diverged after reaching high school age and showing true colours. This connected the two murders with an obvious red string- whoever or whatever killed Jude was also responsible for killing Brooke. Two murders taking place in the span of a couple of months.
That night after school, Peter did the only thing there was to do. He went to his cousin's house.
Slipping through the hanging beads in the doorway, he moved from the spice-scented parlour and into the home, where he found her eating ice cream on the couch. Her dark curls bounced as she whipped around to face him, a pointed look crossing her face.
"I thought I already told you I don't want anything to do with it."
Peter hadn't even opened his mouth to talk.
"More people are going to die," he pressed, "come on she was always fond of you. She was like a little sister to you when we were kids. Why won't you help her?"
"Because I have a really, really bad feeling about this, and you know what happens when you ignore instinct," Destiny answered sternly. "Whatever this is- whatever she is, it's not something you should be meddling with, okay?"
"I know that! Look- Roman had the same dreams, we followed the signs and it led us to Jude. They started after she died and stopped after we found her, which means that if we start dreaming about more dead girls, we have to do something about it. Like it or not we are all connected which means this doesn't just affect her, it affects all of us-"
"The upir? Are you serious Peter?" she raised her voice, panic skip-roping between the beats of her heart. "You know better than this, I thought I told you to stay away from him-"
"He doesn't know what he is, Dee" Peter insisted. "He needs someone to stop him from ever finding out. Jude is just about the only thing that keeps him stable and if you don't help her, help us, whatever happens will break him, and he will become the monster you think he is."
He could see the pause in her breath. He knew she was thinking it over, knew she was hearing him out.
"We can't just leave her like this, Dee" Peter pleaded. "I can't. If things go wrong, at least tell me what to do so we can move her on to wherever she's supposed to be."
He couldn't bring himself to sit and watch his childhood friend wither away a second time, turning as pale as a ghost, rotting while she sat there talking to him. He could not leave her in this state of limbo hiding at his house unable to do anything else. He couldn't have her back now only to slowly lose her again. He couldn't do that to Roman, who would probably tear apart the world just to bring her back. Who was nothing without her.
"I need you to promise me you won't get hurt," Destiny demanded. An impossible demand, he knew she knew. He knew what she was thinking without her having to say it.
If you get hurt, it's on me and I can't live with that.
"You know I can't promise that."
"Then why should I help you?"
"Des. We need this. We need you," he insisted. "We really really need you. I've been running all my life. I act like things aren't important, I skip out when things get tough, but I can't just ignore this, it won't just go away. Not this time. The girl I care about was murdered and now her ghost is living in my home and I can't let her go on not knowing what happened, what the dreams mean, what I'm supposed to do with this" he said. "The dreams came to us for a reason. You know better than anyone else what happens when you ignore that kind of thing. When you ignore instinct".
Destiny was the only person he knew that would be able to help, the only person he could think of who would have any vague idea of what to do. He needed her. He didn't know what to do without her.
"A shovel," she sighed.
"What?"
"A shovel. You're gonna need a shovel."