Werewolf Stories to Tell in the Dark

To Tell in the Dark

Anthony Masters

1 Full Moon

2 Sweet Dreams

3 The Institute

4 Meat

5 The Padding of Paws

6 The Prisoner

7 The Stake

8 Freeze-up

9 Wolverine

10 Snap

A Note on the Author

‘
They said we could stay up,' said Will
.

‘
As long as we don't make a noise.' There was an unmistakable threat in Alice's voice. ‘If we do, Mrs Henshaw said she'd send us home early
.'

The others nodded, knowing that their youth club leader was a woman to be reckoned with. They were sitting round the wood-burning stove in the log cabin in the pine woods. The grown-ups were only metres away in another cabin, but they all felt isolated, particularly with the snow softly falling. The flakes were large outside the windows, and with the lights switched off inside the night sky glittered wickedly. The woods were silent, blanketed under the snow
.

‘
Let's tell stories,' said Alan. ‘ Really frightening ones
.'

‘
What's that scar you've got, Kim?' asked Anne. ‘The one on your throat? You didn't get bitten by a werewolf did you
?'

‘
No,' Kim replied defensively amidst uneasy laughter. ‘A dog went for me when I was a kid
.'

'Sure
it was a dog?' asked Alan, grinning
.

‘
Quite sure.' Kim was firm
.

‘
It's wolf weather out there,' Alan continued. ‘Can't you see them hunting in packs – or one padding towards you alone, its eyes gleaming
.'

‘
And its fangs,' added Alice
.

‘
Wolves don't have fangs,' snapped Kim
.

‘
Some do,' said Alan. ‘Go on, tell them, Tom
.'

The boy on the outside of the group winced. ‘It was just about the most awful thing,' he said slowly
.

‘
Let's hear about it then,' said Alice
.

Reluctantly, Tom began
.

The howling began at midnight and went on without a break. The sound was terrifying and soon felt as if it was right inside the boys' heads.

‘What is it?' whispered Richard.

‘One of the animals in the zoo.' Trying to block out the noise, his friend Neil buried himself deep in his sleeping bag, but it was no good. This was the first night of their camping trip and neither of them had been away from home on their own before. Neil had been feeling bad anyway, and the howling didn't help. ‘Monkey, maybe.'

‘Sounds like a wolf.'

‘No chance.' Neil was sure that Richard was right, but he didn't want to think about it – not now.

Eventually they slept, but Neil and Richard woke early, tired and irritable. A farmer had allowed them to pitch their tent on the flat part of a meadow that rose gently from a small stream. It was warm, and the early May morning was already sunlit. An ideal campsite – except for the zoo.

From the top of the hill, the zoo looked run-down and shabby, with small enclosures and even smaller
cages. A moth-eaten-looking giraffe munched at some sparse foliage, a monkey swung slowly on a metal bar and a lion paced miserably up and down.

The zoo was almost completely silent in the morning sunshine, and as the boys cooked their breakfast Richard said, ‘That howling last night …'

Neil's reply was deliberately lost in the crunching of burnt toast. He didn't want to think about last night. The noise had seemed to last for ever and he had had nightmares of being chased over the meadow by something dark and hairy. He had plunged into the deadly chill of the river to escape, but the thing had come after him, swimming strongly, teeth bared in the light of the full moon. Rapids took them, and Neil and the wolf were swept over into a foaming abyss. He had woken up as the creature landed on him in shallow water, ripping at his sodden clothes, its teeth digging deep into his shoulder.

‘Did you have a nightmare?' asked Richard. ‘You woke me up. It sounded as if you were hurting somewhere. What were you dreaming about?'

‘Don't remember.' Neil wasn't going to tell him because he was afraid the dream might become fixed in his mind and return that night. Then he had an idea. Suppose they went into the zoo and saw the animals close up. Maybe that would help to stop the dream coming back. ‘There's nothing like a dose of reality to wash away those night fears' – he could distinctly remember his mother saying that when he was smaller. The trouble was – he didn't know whether to believe her or not.

‘Why don't we go and have a look at that zoo this morning?' he suggested tentatively.

‘It's shut.'

Neil suddenly realized that Richard was as scared as
he was; he even seemed to be afraid of the place in broad daylight. They had to go in now, Neil reckoned; it would spoil everything if they were frightened off.

‘Let's give it a try, Rick,' he said.

‘All right then.'

They grinned at each other rather warily. Richard and Neil were in the same football team and they had grown to rely on each other in emergencies.

‘That'll be two pounds each,' said the hard-faced woman behind the smeared glass window of the ticket desk. ARMSTRONG'S WILD ANIMAL EXPERIENCE, read the sign. THE ZOO THAT CARES.

There were no admission prices on the board and Richard wondered if they were being conned.

‘That's a lot,' said Neil.

The woman pursed her lips. ‘I'm charging you out of season prices.'

‘OK.' Richard gave her the money unwillingly.

‘Welcome to Armstrong's,' said the woman automatically, her flat voice in keeping with her depressing surroundings.

There were no other customers in the zoo. Tepid sunlight filtered the cages and enclosures, making them look even more squalid than before. The hyenas crept around the cage smaller than Neil's front room, the apes were so short of space they had to huddle dejectedly together and the roof of the aviary leaked. The polar bears swam in a pool that was full of bobbing rubbish and the aquarium stank of neglect. But worse was to come. The mountain wolf was almost motionless, slumped dejectedly against one wall of his cage; it had a low roof, rusty bars and was incredibly cramped. The wolf gazed at his visitors in mute appeal.

‘He looks really miserable,' said Neil.

‘Not for much longer,' said a voice behind them.

The man was young, with ginger hair and a pipe. He looked comfortable, caring and sensible. ‘I'm Fergus Armstrong, the new owner. The zoo used to be run by my uncle, but he let it go downhill – as you can see. I'm just waiting for the builders to come. We're going to have new cages, new enclosures, new landscapes – the lot – so don't be put off.'

Hard not to be, thought Richard, gazing round in disgust. He suddenly noticed that the wolf seemed to be looking at Fergus Armstrong with venom in its eyes. Then he dismissed the idea as ridiculous.

‘When are they going to start?' Neil was asking.

‘Couple of weeks. When you come back, you won't recognize the place.' He shook both their hands with a strong grip and walked briskly away.

The zoo was so depressing that the boys soon decided to leave. Like the howling, Neil thought, it gets to you inside.

‘Enjoyed yourselves?' asked the hard-faced woman as they passed her on the way to the exit, but, like the wolf's, her eyes suddenly seemed venomous.

‘We met Mr Armstrong,' said Richard. ‘He said the builders were coming in a couple of weeks – and all the animals were going to be rehoused.'

‘They certainly need it,' put in Neil.

‘You're right.' She laughed bitterly. ‘But he's been talking about improvements for years.'

‘He said he'd just taken the zoo over from his uncle.'

‘That was six years ago,' she snapped indignantly.

‘Aren't there inspections?' asked Richard.

‘Yes, there've been several. But he keeps telling the
inspectors the builders are coming in a couple of weeks.'

‘But why?' Neil was horrified. ‘He won't keep on getting away with it, will he?'

‘He has so far.' She sounded resigned. ‘There's only one thing that interests Fergus Armstrong: money coming in – not money going out. Anyway, I mustn't go on like this. If I could find another job I would – but …' She slammed shut her window.

The boys walked back to the tent in silence. Richard was wishing they had never visited the zoo; he couldn't forget the venomous look in the wolf's eyes.

The howling started again at midnight, and continued for a long time. Neither Richard nor Neil could sleep and gradually their canvas world became a trap with the sides closing in on them. Just as if we're in a cage, Richard thought. He sat up.

‘You awake, Neil?' he asked.

‘Have been for hours.'

‘I can't stand it in here much longer, can you?'

‘No.'

They pulled on some clothes and stepped out into the night, its stillness broken only by the howling of the wolf. They looked down on the darkened zoo, the full moon lighting up the river, giving it a strange colour, as if the water had turned to milk.

‘At least you can breathe out here,' said Neil.

The howling seemed to redouble and then broke off abruptly. A couple of loud whimpers followed and then there was silence. ‘That's strange.' Richard looked worried. ‘Do you think something's happened?'

‘What?' asked Neil.

‘Maybe Armstrong's got so fed up with the wolf's howling that he –'

‘He what?'

‘Shot it with a poisoned dart,' Richard finished melodramatically.

Neil looked at him doubtfully. ‘Where would he get a poisoned dart?'

‘I don't know,' said Richard crossly. ‘But that wolf's in trouble – I'm sure of it.'

‘I think we should check it out,' said Neil, and Richard stared at him warily. ‘Can't just ignore it,' he persisted.

The boys clambered through the broken fence, keeping close to the shadows of the cages. As their eyes became accustomed to the darkness they realized they were being watched. They couldn't identify the eyes; some large, others small, with narrow slits, or no lids, the eyes balefully followed them as they tried to remember where the wolf's cage was.

They kept taking wrong turnings, all the while followed by the eyes. The smaller monkeys gave a burst of excited chatter and a large leopard a silky hiss.

We're crazy to come in here, thought Richard. If we get caught, we'll be in big trouble. He imagined his parents' faces when the police brought them back – or maybe they wouldn't bring them back and their parents would have to go to the police station and visit them in the cells and then watch them being sentenced in court and …

Neil suddenly dragged Richard round the back of an overcrowded cage of tiny marmoset monkeys. ‘Someone's coming,' he whispered.

Fergus Armstrong was frantically running towards them, and the wolf, much bigger than they had remembered, was ferociously snapping at his heels. The creature had a
long cut on its flank and Neil wondered whether this was the reason why its howling had been so abruptly cut off and the whimpering had begun.

As the animal loped past them, Richard had the unsettling thought that the wolf's eyes now looked curiously human.

Fergus Armstrong glanced hurriedly over his shoulder and gave a little cry of fear; he ran towards a cage, wrenched the door open, and slammed it shut in the face of the wolf, who began to howl. Immediately all the other animals in the zoo joined in, roaring, chattering, shrieking, trumpeting, yelping, baying – the sound was terrifying, and Neil and Richard felt as if they were in a jungle with the wild animals inching nearer and nearer every second.