Curse of the Wolf: A Readers' Choice Adventure! Part 5

[mad_docs_of_lit]

The woman grabs your wrist, her face pale and taut. "Did it bite you? Scratch you?" She squints as she manipulates you to and fro. Then her eyes widen. "Oh no!" She begins to pull you deeper in the house. As you balk, she says, in a comforting voice: "Here, come with me, I have a special potion I can put on that scratch for you!"

"It's just a little scratch," you say, as you crane your neck, trying to see how bad it is. Truthfully it hurts so much you're afraid you should really be going to the doctor's for stitches, not slathering on some who-knows-what from a bottle.

She digs through her medicine cabinet and produces a little brown bottle, potbellied blown glass, and when she pulls the cork stopper a reek fills the room that makes you instantly recoil.

"I don't know--" you start to say, as she daubs a foul, blackish liquid from the little bottle to a rag that doesn't look especially clean. But her grip on your wrist is like death's, and you can't seem to squirm away. She blots the dampened cloth against your back. It stings and you bite your lip to keep in the urge to make little high-pitched noises. You shudder at the amount of red that has mingled with the black when she finally tosses the rag into a bucket full of used ones.

"One of my son's shirts should fit you," she says, hands on her hips as she sizes you up. She hauls you towards the back of the house. You drag your feet, resisting slightly--it's not that you aren't grateful, but you would like it if she'd let you walk on your own.

"In here," she says, herding you into a bedroom. The room is unnaturally neat--you suspect the hand of your rescuer--but you're a bit unnerved by the scarred state of much of the furniture.

"I don't know," you say again, when you hear the heavy clang of metal on metal. You spin, gawking; she has closed an iron-barred door, turning the bedroom into a prison. As you look around the room more closely you notice the one small, high window is also barred, and the walls are heavy cinderblock, not the drywall in the rest of the house. When you face her once more, she looks at you sadly.

"It's probably too soon to tell," she murmurs. She seems to be talking mostly to herself. "Too soon to tell if it worked. Oh--but it must work!" Now her eyes focus on you. "You'll be safe here. I'll bring you some breakfast in the morning." She turns and starts to walk away.

You throw yourself at the door. "No, wait!" You try rattling the bars, the way everyone does in movies, but the door's way too heavy for that. "Hey wait! Ma'am!"

"Patience," she calls back at you. "Tomorrow night we'll see if it worked. One more night that the wolves run wild."

"Wolves? Ma'am! It was just a dog! Just some rabid dog."

She pauses, turning to cast one last look at you, and shakes her head, sadly. "Damn tourists," you hear her mutter, before she shuffles away into the gloom.

You shake yourself against the bars again, throw your weight against the door, reach your arm through the bars and try to fuss with the lock. Eventually you exhaust yourself and slide down to the floor.

Can she really be serious? Does she really think a--a werewolf attacked you? That's crazy! … Isn't it?

You reach around and touch your back, hissing as you feel out the extent of the damage. The scratches must be at least six inches long, and they're pretty deep. It hurts. You look at your fingers, sticky and black, sniff them: the smell makes you gag. There's a heavy metallic tang.

You sigh and look around the room.



[Poll #1734965]