Wolves of Happy Valley Pt. 02

Their kiss was even more electric and he pulled her in to go further. But for no reason at all he looked up toward Mark. But Mark was now Jimmy. Pam and Mark were now both in the passenger seat wolfing it up and making out. Jimmy winked suggestively as he turned on the radio.

Fleetwood Mac sang out: 'When the Loving' starts and the lights go down'

Jimmy knew that song. It was playing the night his mama and his daddy had died. His daddy had been drinking and he ran them off the road into an embankment. His parents didn't die right away though his dad died first. His mother was screaming even as that damn song played on. She screamed and lurched into Terry's seat to unhook his seatbelt. The hot metal scored his flesh. She shoved him hard out of his seat and toward the shattered rear passenger window. Her hand was on fire. Terry was crawling out of the car and he was on fire too. He jumped into the river but this time, unlike that real and awful night when he and his sister who hadn't been in the car thank God, the fire didn't go out. Jimmy and Pam were savaging the girls in the car. Mark was walking calmly toward Carla who was pedaling away on her little bike. He was a full monster now.

"Wake up Terry!" The voice was that of his mother, her hand pleasant and loving not painful on his tortured chest. He began to cry in his sleep. She pushed him a bit.

"C'mon you big dope. Fleetwood Mac means it's time to get up. You guys didn't kill Jimmy and you never should have trusted Marc. If you don't get up you are all going to die!"

He shot out of bed and he could feel it. Something was really and truly wrong. Someone was climbing up the side of the house, they weren't trying to hide it. Someone else was screaming in Cynthia's room and Carla and was crying out:

"They aren't stuntmen or wolf men, they are demons Terry! They are demons and they want to eat us all up!"

Terry had to act fast and he had little time.

Marc stepped out of the shadows and he was smiling a wide smile with blood all down his clothes.

Chapter Seven. Confrontation and leave taking.

Carla.

Carla was shocked from her sleep by her dream becoming a nightmare. Her motocross jump had become a desperate leap over the hungry maws of creatures like wolf men from a horror film. It startled her awake so fast she hit the floor. She heard a girl screaming and someone chuckling evilly as they, just ahead of her gaze, slunk out of her room. There were muddy footprints leading into the hall. No foot falls quiet or loud stomping on the creaky staircase but someone must have swiped the vases from the banister on the left and onto the carpeted floor. They also seemed to have squirted ketchup on the wall on the right in dribs and drabs. The ketchup resolved into bloody handprints which themselves resolved into claw marks which dug bloody grooves into the wallpaper. Rendering the little smiling cherubs on the wall (which Carla used to think were cute) decidedly sinister. Like vicious children spirits laughing in bloody glee at what was about to happen. They stared at her in mocking approximations of childish curiosity. The flecks of what had to be ketchup (but was awful dark) created a grizzly playground for the winged creatures on her wall. She did not find them cute anymore.

"Ok Carla just take it easy. Ha. Ha. You had a nightmare." But she didn't believe she was jumping at shadows. Something was wrong.

The laughter echoed softly from downstairs. All at once she knew. The screaming girl? Had been her. They were here. The creatures from her dream! Hungry and sneaking. Looking to eat them all up.

Gloria

Gloria too had just woken from her dream. Terry was standing in her room looking terrified. He was still in his boxers (footy pajamas were not found that fit him as he was taller and broader at the shoulder than Marc) and he had no shirt on. This made her uncomfortable and she tried not to stare. His scar, which she had never seen, was just like her dream. Yet even though he was obviously drowsy and terrified there was a kindness in his eyes that dispelled her sudden fear at the dream being made real. Terry was good. He was there to help. She couldn't say how she knew it but she did. He caught her staring at his chest as he had been about to speak. He looked down and grimaced as his shorts began to form a tent. This caused him considerable consternation and he turned on a dime, nearly smacking his head in the door frame and darted from her room like a flash mumbling about pants and apologizing. She was closer to laughter now than embarrassment. She also felt a familiar tingling in her girly spot. A warm wetness. She might as well change her underwear and get dressed too. Something told her they would need to leave. Just as she had her panties on the floor and her bottom up in the air there was motion at her door. Her face was alighted with blood! She could have led Santa's sleigh and saved Christmas. Luckily it wasn't Terry but Carla. She had gotten out of her footy pj's and had put on jeans, a white T-shirt and a Red Sweater with a Turtleneck. She knew. We were leaving. Swallowing her relief Gloria smoothly pulled pants on and kept as much modesty as possible with a whispered apology to Carla and had just finished dressing in a thin black T-shirt, black pullover and some charcoal colored jeggings that had a liner for the cold. Terry slid back in also now wearing a dark winter appropriate top and some jeans that fit him a bit snugly but were warm. He also has some boots that he had borrowed from Marc. They had the same size feet despite their height difference and the boots were decent for running but would also provide traction in the snow and would protect his feet much better if they had to hike. He liked being out of his worn out sneakers. Mark had seen them and donated the boots before they had hit their beds.

Where was Marc? They all seemed to wonder at once? Where was Pam? Terry couldn't help but shiver at the thought that Jimmy had found them. They needed to find their friends and get back in the car right away!

He turned an ash gray color because he had just realized that Cythia wasn't here.

Cynthia

Cynthia saw Mark in the corner, his pants down and his hard phallus in his hands. There was a menacing expression on his face and his skin seemed rigid and tight. She was brought, in her mind, back to an image from an illustrated version of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein Gloria had once showed her in the Calamas Town Center Mall. It had been black and white. The monster was cadaverous and huge and half in shadow and had his hands at the throat of Victor Frankenstein in confrontation. His body had a similar aspect. Tight like an anatomy textbook. Or a corpse.

Marc smiled in the corner of her eye as she was ripped from her thoughts and back to the room. He was gone.

But the floor in the corner stank very strongly of urine. There were muddy footprints all around her floor which led into the hall. Some of them were not human feet.

Her eyes squeezed shut in terror and her back stiffened. She just couldn't believe it. Marc and Pam and Carla had been ok! How could this be happening? What sort of bizarre scenario could possibly explain it?! She could feel her rational mind being stretched tight like Marc's skin has been in her... dream?

Wait. Pam! Carla! The girls. She got dressed quickly. Something told her time was of the essence. She had just finished and wandered into the hall when her eyes alighted on the horrifically mangled corpse of her Godmother. Beaten and partially consumed. Her modesty was abandoned and her right breast exposed. Her lovely but damaged legs no longer neatly folded in her motorized chair but splayed lewdly. Ripped at the center and covered in that same urine stink. Cythia's hand went to her mouth and she stifled a terrified cry of denial! Dear God.

She heard a noise at the other end from her and saw a figure darting from the room on the right at the end of the hall. Gloria's room. Carla came next.

Then as she quietly edged closer the figure came back more slowly. Terry, now dressed to go out as well, hadn't seen her yet. She was about to call out when breaking glass and the loud and viscerally unsettling braying howl of two huge inhuman throats from the first floor rendered all of them motionless.

"Oh children! We are hungry. We are so very hungry and we are coming to shave you for dinner. Aren't we buddy?" Marc called out with a low roiling beastial note now awfully blended with his formerly comforting contralto.

"Yeah, the Jimmy thing said, Hungry. Kill em. Fuck em. Kill em and fuck em more."

They both began to laugh.

Chapter 8. Who's afraid of the big bad wolves

Terry knew they were all going to die the moment Marc and Jimmy either got the courage to come up here or we all tried to run down there. They were waiting for something. Something. But what?

"Oh God! Jimmy is back. Ok. We gotta find our purses. Maybe we have knives or baseball bats and stuff up here. Carla, do you have anything we can swing at those pieces of filth down there?" Cynthia asked.

Her eyes shine at me. Her desperate love is a bit closer to the surface.

Gloria looked wild around the eyes and terrified but she seemed to be trying to haul that terror into the lasso of her boundless joy and turn it into violence against their would be adversaries.

"Yeah girl! What do you get that brings the pain they like bringing? Maybe we can knock their teeth out! Smack a few noses with some rolled up paper and teach them not to go around hurting and peeing on people (her voice broke and her eyes met the other girls who had all seen Pam's body and smelled the horror of Marc's betrayal)!" Her beauty was fragile and terrible. Her wrath was love forging itself into righteous fury.

Carla just looked back and forth at each of them in awe. She had a big grin on her face.

"You all are shining like little Suns! Cydy, Gloria, you girls shine! So bright. Love and hope and goodness and righteous anger. But you should look at Terry.

They all did. Terry glowed blue and terrible. The gentleness and protective aura he exuded became like armor made from light. He floated off the ground a few inches and he caught each of them in his gaze a moment.

"STAY UP HERE. HE HAS GIVEN US WHAT WE NEED. HE HAS GIVEN THEM INTO MY HANDS! I WILL STRIVE TO SAVE THEIR SOULS. IF I CANNOT? I WILL SAVE YOURS!"

Terry's mouth hasn't moved. It was the energy that spoke. All at once everybody there who wasn't a monster was kneeling down and praying in gratitude. They couldn't look at Terry anymore. But they all loved him fiercely. They all felt like calling out to God. Going to church and living better.

Not a bit of judgment was in that place. Only incandescent Love abounded.

Terry could feel his fists tighten and he rounded the corner. He had no idea anything like what had just happened had gone on. He wondered why the girls suddenly trusted him and who turned on all the lights? But he didn't hear himself speaking or notice his feet weren't touching the stairs. He didn't notice the light bring Pam's body from her cruel display and place it lovingly in clean blankets nor did he see that she went out a window and floated slowly reverently through the open window and down to the backyard.

"GO TO YOUR REST SISTER."

He would have wondered to see the fear in the eyes and hearts of the 8 foot tall vicious snarling hairy wolf like murderous nightmares who were truly confused at just how much that light (and that voice) and the love that normally made them eager and hungry and hard suddenly made them want to flip over onto their bellies and stick out their tongues and avert their eyes! Marc and Jimmy didn't try to catch each other's expression or form a plan. They suffered alone. Frozen in abject confusion and terror.

Terry rounded the last corner and he saw them. The blood and mud and broken glass and snow all mixed up on the floor. The more awful stench and zoo smell coming from each corner and the wonderfully appointed living room now filled with smashed portraits and overturned and splintered couches and ripped and sullied curtains broken windows and scattered plastic fruit and pillows truly thrown and candles that had been munched by horror show maws and books and shelves destroyed and strewn about.

The boys had gotten impatient.

Terry's eyes got wide and his feet touched down on the landing and he felt the old fear return.

It would be a fight then! The two monsters broke from their terror and remembered their courage. They would surround the man child who had foolishly left the LIGHT up there and they would rip out his throat and bathe in his blood!

Then Terry saw the family photo ripped on the fireplace wall. Marc and Pam in front, he on one knee and Carla leaning cutely on Pam's shoulder and smiling into the camera shining her innocent love of light and her family. Bracketing either adult was Cythia on the right one hand on Carla's back smiling the pride a sibling feels and a mother and a friend. Gloria on the left looked like she had just thought of a great joke and she was looking up with a big grin. She would share it and make them all laugh! The portrait was stained with offal. Ripped and wet and forgotten from off the mantle. Each fireplace tool has been pushed into an eye as though to destroy the very image of goodness.

Terry's eyes snapped back to his would-be murderers. His heart swelled in that strange way that came on him when he thought about the accident and his sister and how much he prayed to God and what he would do to help anyone who suffered. What he would do to protect. To love.

Terry's hands closed into fists, the blue light swelled and unfurled like fiery wings round about him and the battle was joined.

Chapter 9. Endings and beginnings.

The Jimmy-Thing was far too bestial in his mind to form words. His body allowed for speech, of a rough and awful sort that would grate upon the ear to hear, but his mind was so consumed with the need to spill blood and dominate this man child upstart who would seek to protect him from his prey, and had escaped his hand (and hurt his face with fire)! He tensed up with vicious rage and prepared to leap for the young boy's jugular.

The Marc-thing that was becoming stopped him.

"Terry! We don't know each other well yet. Let's talk! Have you ever watched Emergency Room tv shows? The doctors have to cut people open to save their lives after they get in accidents or they are shot and the doctors have to cut the bullet out? Maybe someone has an ulcer that bursts or a child will be born breech? You sit on the edge of your seat wondering if they are going to make it. Are you squeamish though? Did you ever turn away when they show the doctors and the nurses plying their trade? When they cut the people open and their insides show? What a curious nudity! Makes me and Jimbo here hard. Hard as steel! We could take on all comers!" His yellow eyes that mocked the form of wolf and man and gleamed with mad cunning locked upon the Jimmy-thing's hate filled, fury blind, squinted regard. Jimmy paused.

What was he doing?

Marc continued his tirade as Terry's approach into the room and toward the monsters that invaded it slowed and stopped. A light began to go off in the Tiny remnants of Jimmy's mind. He understood. He could not help, but he did try to catch Terry's eye and when he had, he hunched his hips suggestively and flexed his claws.The flames grew a bit more dim.

"Maybe you saw just what I mean. Ever wondered what people taste like Terry?

A What your girlfriends might taste like? What Carla might taste like? Ever wondered what it might be like to use more than your tongue? To use your teeth? Ever wonder what your family might have tasted like? I wish I knew! Just walk away and we can find out. Maybe we can share it!"

His words had been dimming the fire and the two beasts drew all the nearer as each awful taunting word let the seconds slip by. Terry's face began to alight with personal rage and spite and as it did the peculiar light that was protecting him and empowering him against them was fading. It was almost gone.

Then Terry's head snapped up. He understood. The light snapped back as the beast men both snapped forward for the kill. The moment stretched out.

Carla and Cynthia and Gloria all huddled close praying that they would see the sunrise and Terry would be ok.

Jimmy's claws itched as he sailed through the air in a killing fury that would not withdraw without blood.

Marc was, true to his word, turgid and hungry for death and blood, his hands were also now mangled claws and his eyes were empty of any intellect or mercy or fear.

But Terry showed them both what fear could be again.

His left hand slipped down and snatched some rolled up newspapers from the fireplace and quicker than he could even see smote down upon the open maw of the Marc thing wringing a terrified cry from him and halting his hellbent charge, forcing him up against the wall to the right of the fireplace and sending Marc careening through the plaster.

Terry's right hand grabbed the collar of Jimmy's shirt as he let the horror slip overhead harmlessly, his foe unaware he was again to be denied the kill and Terry simply tweaked the monstrosities' momentum. Jimmy was flung out the window of the living room and into the cold and unloving embrace of a November hard tree in Oregon at 4:30am. About 1 hour and some change from the mountains. His body was pierced by his own killing charge in about 16 places and he was well into his death throes before Terry had completed his Matador turn.

Terry's eyes regarded the downed foe, his face had a curious look of regret and prayerful mercy as he beheld the death of the wicked beast man that had tried to kill him and his new friends (and had already brutally murdered almost the whole staff of the restaurant where he and Lewis worked, Jimmy had eaten well over 16 people before Terry and the girls had shown up). Terry regretted that it had come to this, then his eyes turned to the Marc thing....

The stunned beast was out cold upon the ground for only a second and then lurched up in pain and terror. It made for the back door and Terry did not move to stop it.

He was far too tired. The battle fury which had been the only thing keeping him on his feet suddenly withdrew, the blue light went out and he was alone in a bitterly cold and dirty shattered living room. The only sounds were the howling wind and the cries of terror held barely in check which echoed down from the second floor.

"IT IS DONE"

Terry passed out.

The girls came down.

Dawn began to break over the quiet suburban home.

They held each other for a long time before they found the newly formed grave of Pam.

After a brief ceremony they all agreed it was time to move on and, bundled up like a family out of a morning headed to the slopes, they trundled off to the car trusting the GPS to help them find the highway. Carla had stifled her crying long enough to suggest the out of season hotel, when Cynthia asked where they could go, that should be closed down. Gloria asked where they could find supplies and Carla suggested the local hardware store where they could find space heaters and sleeping bags and seriously big knives.

Terry really liked the idea of the big knives.