Chapter 7

"No vampires, no werewolves, no things that bite.

You have no business here."

-"The Monster Words", from Cujo by Stephen King

There wasn't anything going on at the church that day; and yet, after the events of last night, Samuel Gardner felt the need to go there, as if something were calling out to him. He felt that somehow, Jennifer had also been drawn into the web which he had but recently fallen into. Without realizing, he let his left hand drift to the crucifix around his neck. He'd had to replace the chain after he'd ripped it off from around his neck, but he kept a spare, so it hadn't been too difficult. He kept telling himself that it couldn't have been real, and that somehow, Jennifer could convince him otherwise. He knew that what he kept telling himself was wrong.

Samuel sighed as he swung the doors of the church inward and saw Jennifer sitting on the steps to the pulpit. At her feet, the mangy-looking dog with strange colored splotches on its dark grey coat lay, she idly petted the thing. Jennifer's eyes were dead-set on the door, as if she'd known Sam would be coming soon. When Sam walked through the door, the dog looked up at Jennifer, who nodded to it, and then walked away, toward the improvised bedroom.

"Don't deny it, Samuel," Jennifer said, her eyes still locked on where Sam stood in the doorway, "What you saw last night at the diner was the truth, there are monsters in this world."

"No, that can't be, I must have been dreaming, or exhausted at the very least" he answered. For all the times he'd stood at the pulpit and spoken of God and the Devil, he'd never believed in a literal interpretation of the bible, simply that the Devil and his demons were simply symbols of the evil in the heart of man, bred by the original sin in the garden of Eden.

"Are you so sure?" she sneered, standing up. She walked toward the preacher with the gait of a tiger that had spotted a wounded animal, fast, but not quite running. She grabbed the collar of his shirt with her hands, which were coated with a grime that had taken years to accumulate and would likely take weeks if not months to wash away, and tore it open, revealing the scorch mark left by his scalding cross when it touched his skin the night before. "Explain that."

"Oh my God…" Sam whispered, near breathlessly. He looked at her and for a moment, didn't see a young woman in a tattered yellow tank top and faded jeans, but saw only the steel in her grey-blue eyes, her light brown hair no longer seemed dirty and tangled, but seemed radiant and flowing, as some sort of river. Then, the dog walked back in, and he saw something surrounding it. Patches gave off a deep purple aura, speckled with blue and occasional flecks of a sharp cinnamon red.

The dog stared at Samuel, who then got a sense that it knew he was seeing the aura around it. Patches then stood on his hind legs; obscene snapping, stretching and cracking noises filled the air as it shifted back into human form. Suddenly, it wasn't a dog staring at Samuel at all, but rather a young man (he couldn't be any older than Jennifer) dressed in a loose red t-shirt and baggy jeans.

"Hello," the substitute teacher standing at the front of Kelly's fourth period geometry class said, staring at the girl in the back, the one who was dressed in a camouflage shirt with "ha! Now you can't see me!" written on it and a pair of black pants held up by a chain belt, the one who had dyed her hair black and then put blood-red dye on top of that, the one named Kelly Aprils. "My name is Miss Shaw, your regular teacher is out sick today, and I will be taking his place."

Twenty minutes later, after discussing how to inscribe a circle in a triangle, the class was, for the most part, hard at work. Kelly sat at the back, drawing on the back of her assignment, listening to her CD player. Margaret Shaw looked up from behind the teacher's desk, her gaze locked with Kelly's. "You, in the back," Margaret barked, pointing a pen at Kelly, "I want you to stay in here after class."

"I am sad to say," the young man who had once been a dog began, "that the animal attacks going on outside the city are… um… how to put this, they're werewolf dealings. 's even sad'r t' say that the werewolves that be doin' it," the former-dog continued, Samuel noticed that his English was becoming coarser the longer he spoke, "they're still what y'd consid'r th' good wolves. Now, tha' don' mean th't I 'prove o' wha' they're doin', it don' mean that in th' sligh'est. Now, there's s'mthin' I wan' ask y'all t' do f'r me. Now, I don' rilly 'spect you to do for me, but I think you'd benefit from jus' much as I would…"

"Hey, kid," Margaret asked Kelly, now that the class had gone to lunch, "you find out anything about what happened last night?"

"Yeah, I found out that we ain't alone."

"Really?"

"Yeah, searching the web last night, I found this place called Hunter-net. It's a forum for a bunch of others like us. I'm meeting up with a couple of the others tonight; you care to come along?"

"Who are they?"

"Gingerbread294 and Revalation316."

"No names?"

"Nope, we're meeting at St. Maximilian's church at 8, you gonna show?"

"Yeah, count me in."

"Alright, can I go now?"

"Can I have part of that sandwich?" Margaret asked, pointing to the turkey sandwich that Kelly was eating.

"Sure," Kelly answered, tearing off about a quarter of the sandwich and handing it to her substitute teacher.

"Alright, you're free to go."

Simon sighed inwardly as he sharpened a hunting knife that he'd bought at Wal-Mart just that morning. He didn't want the knife, but knew that he needed it.