Curse of the Wolf: A Readers' Choice Adventure! Part 6

[mad_docs_of_lit]

After a few more futile rattles at the door, you resign yourself to the fact that the woman isn’t going to come back and let you out just yet. You take a quick look around the room – pull open drawers and rifle through the wardrobe, but there’s nothing that could be used as a weapon, in fact, to all intents it looks just like an ordinary young man’s bedroom. Opening the wardrobe, there are screw holes on the back of the door that suggest there may have once been a mirror there, but it appears to have gone the same way as a lot of the damaged furniture as it’s no longer in place. You crane your neck to try and assess the damage over your shoulder, but without a mirror it’s impossible. Taking off your shirt, you note the long rends in the blood-stained cloth with horror. There are clean shirts hanging in the wardrobe and you wince with discomfort as you pull one on and button it – you figure that the woman did invite you to borrow one – rolling up the slightly-too-long sleeves.

Turning your attention to the laptop, you switch it on and hope. Sure enough, there’s the well-remembered bleeping of a dial-up tone and the thing connects with a pace even more torturously slow than you remember.

You expect the browser to open to the usual search engine or email homepage, but instead what loads straight onto the screen is Livejournal. In the corner of the page, the log-in box is pre-populated with a username – “caleb_bites” and an asterisked password. Out of curiosity you click the log-in button and watch as the black background of a journal slowly loads: could this be the woman’s son’s journal?

The first thing you notice is that all of the entries are marked with the little eye icon that denotes ‘private’. Any other time you might feel guilty about reading someone’s personal thoughts, but you figure that the situation you’re in pretty much justifies any means. Clicking on a cut-tag, you’re confronted with a photograph of a boy who looks to be in his late teens or early 20s, with a chiselled jaw and striking hazel eyes that appear almost yellow. Below it is typed,
“It’s almost time again. Mom’s been insisting on locking me in each night with that big old half-moon key she’s got. I guess it’s for the best – I can’t stand being this thing, this… KILLER. At least when I’m shut in this room there’s no chance I can attack any more people – the Mayor’s already having trouble keeping everything hushed up as much as it is.”

You turn away from the screen, looking frantically again around the sealed-up room. Waiting it out overnight definitely does not seem like a good option.


[Poll #1738221]