Chapter 5
That night, the temperature had mercifully dropped by several degrees. The air still felt oppressively heavy, but it was workable. And it allowed Max and Chloe to relax a bit as they sat at the kitchen table. Hope had been sent to bed and it allowed them chance to talk properly without her hearing. To say it wouldn't be an easy conversation was an understatement. And it was one they dreaded having. When they'd first met Hope, Trussy had begged them not to judge their shortcomings- numerous as they were. But there was no overlooking this.
"So what could she have meant?" Max asked, sitting opposite Chloe with the charging lead between had been dropped off as promised. Malcolm had been quite surprised to find Max behind the counter serving ice creams. So had Connor. Apparently Hope had told him that neither of them worked there. They'd bought two ice creams, though.
"Well, there's a lot in Ginger Snaps to go through." Chloe shrugged. "It focuses on teenage girls and bodily changes. There's werewolves which they use as a plot device to explore bodily changes like body hair, mood shifts, dietary changes and so on. There's drugs, there's sex... There's a lot of stuff to unpick here and even more if you factor in the deleted scenes. Netflix doesn't have them. I had to YouTube them. But if she saw it on DVD then they could have been on the Special Features menu, so we can't rule them out either. I just- I don't know what anyone could have been thinking showing her that unless they wanted to scare her shitless about her teenage years."
"Doesn't that technically come under child abuse laws?" Max scratched the back of her head, perplexed. "And where did you see these movies? Because it sure as shit wasn't with me!"
"Rachel and I staged a Halloween sleepover about a year before she went missing. "At the time, I thought she was right. Those movies were fucking awesome. Well, the first two anyway. The third one had massive budget cuts and had to re-write something like two thirds of the script after they'd used up roughly half their shooting time or something like that. Predictably the result was a fucking mess. And I think it only comes under child abuse laws if an adult showed it to her. If it was one of the other kids, it's bullying. And for me, those two are on a pretty even playing field." Max let out a frustrated sigh, rubbing her temples and shifting in her seat in agitation.
"There's more to it, though. What about the poem? Something about beasts, evil and danger... How does it all connect up?" Chloe was thinking so hard that Max could practically see the black smoke coming out of her ears. Eventually her head hit the table with a groan.
"God dammit, it just makes no fucking sense!" When she lifted her head up again, Max could see tears in her eyes.
"So what course of action do we have?" Max asked, reaching across and taking Chloe's hands gently. "Do we tell Trussy and hope she can get to the bottom of this? Do we just focus on Hope and try to get to the bottom of it with her before we do anything?" It was a good question and one that Chloe didn't have an answer for.
"I think the best thing to do is just that: think. Give each option a fair amount of thought and pick this up tomorrow night. Maybe try and talk to Hope about it tomorrow. Thanks to that cat-faced little bitch, we now have the pleasure of her company until her new glasses arrive. And I'm still not ready to take the concept of home school off the table."
"I get that." Max nodded. "After today, I'm not either. A tutor could teach her the academic side of it and we can teach her about real life and things that will actually help her. We can make sure she stays in contact with Connor since they get along so well and she has the monthly community play date on the beach with the rest of the kids. That's in two days, isn't it?"
"It is." Chloe nodded. "And I think it'll do her good. Just let her relax and be herself for a while." Max was about to respond when a noise rang out through the air. Their expressions shifted as they registered what it was. It was a serene, droning noise that both sounded beautiful and filled them with dread at the same time. "Wolves!" Chloe raced to the door in the hallway that connected to the office in her auto repair garage and briefly vanished into the office. She emerged two seconds later with her over-under shotgun and was jamming shells into it as she moved. "Does Hope have her window open at night?"
"I opened up the top flap for her because of the heatwave." Max said. "Those windows are pretty tough. If they target her, I'm pretty sure we'll hear them trying to get in."
"Well you'd better be ready with the rewind, Miss Pacifist!" Chloe grimaced as she snapped the shotgun closed. They both knew how redundant that statement was. Max would rewind back to the beginning of creation if it meant saving either Chloe or Hope. And anyone who dared get in the way of their happily ever after had better pray they were immune to buckshot.
The two women headed through the main hall to the outside door as another howl rang out. Chloe decided to take up position outside Hope's window, ready to directly intercept anything that might come near. Looking up, they could see the night sky set up perfectly for just such an evening. The clouds, dark as the sky up above, were highlighted around the edges by the illumination of the bright white sphere that was the full moon. Yet another howl resonated through the night air, this time seeming to come from higher up. Max scanned the rooftops as Chloe's hands tensed on the shotgun's grips, but there was nothing to be seen. Just the foreboding night sky and the rooftops. The roof slates were still so new that moss hadn't even had time to really gather on them and the lone gargoyle loomed big as life.
Wait... That wasn't right! Max had to stop and check herself. There was definitely something up on the roof and it hadn't been there before. Silently, she nudged Chloe and pointed. Chloe swung the barrel up and paused, unable to believe what she was seeing. There was definitely a humanoid shape up there, hunched over and glaring down at them with one clawed hand raised. Its eyes shone blood red in the moonlight and its fanged mouth was open in a snarl. Even silhouetted in the moonlight, they could see that its naked upper half was completely encased in fur. Realising it had been seen, it let out a growl before turning and running. They caught a glimpse of the tail as it left,
"What... The... Fuck...?" Chloe muttered. And then her feet started moving. She didn't know what made her start running, but she knew she had to catch up to whatever that thing was.
"Chloe, wait!" Max screamed after her. Chloe wasn't listening. She raced out onto the main sidewalk, but the creature was already several houses away. She could see it on the rooftop, its eyes glinting in the street light. Another heartbeat later and it was gone. Straight away she knew there was no chance of catching up to it. She lowered the shotgun and turned around, heading back towards the house.
Reunited, Max and Chloe headed in through the front door and went to the living room. They sat down on the couch, feeling totally exhausted despite their minds racing. What the hell was that? It had moved like lightning to be able to clear that many rooftops that fast and excelled at keeping a low profile to be right there and unseen for so long. They'd never seen anything like that in all their time living in Oregon. They were ready to close their eyes and sleep for about a hundred years after everything, but they knew the night wasn't over yet.
"I'd better go close Hope's window. No sense taking chances." Max got up and quietly crept towards Hope's room. She gently pushed open the door and made her way over, closing the flap at the top and turning back to the bed. The sheets were totally unmoving. Eerily so, in fact. Deciding to make sure she was alright, Max went over and gripped the covers. "Hope? Sweetie? Listen, I've had to close your window because there's wolves about. I'll put the air con-" Max inched the covers back as she was speaking before pulling them all the way. Hope wasn't there. It was just a bundle of pillows and blankets wrapped in Hope's night shirt to look like a body was in the bed. "Chloe!"
"What's going on?" Chloe hurried into the room, shotgun at the ready, before staring dumbly at the bed. "Oh hell no!"
Author's Note: This is a shorter chapter today, but hopefully no less entertaining for it. I usually try to aim for about 2,000+ words a chapter. The main reason being that if a chapter is too long I tend to find myself losing my place on the page sometimes since when you update online there's no upper word limit per chapter. I tend to find that sort of length to be an optimum target. That said, sometimes things happen that result in shorter chapters either through personal reasons or me using them as a springboard to launch into the rest of the story. But in no way do I ever let it negatively impact the quality of my stories. If I feel that a chapter is so short it hinders the story, I will take a break and see if I can re-work it. If I can't then I double-update it with the next chapter. And speaking of, I hope you all enjoyed this one. Thanks to everyone who's supported the story so far and I'll see you in the next update.