The Demon Wolf - Chapter 29：Haunted Willows Trails

After finishing up with all the decorations, Red heads to the computer as Jerard goes to the kitchen to start cooking something for lunch. Pulling the card she got out of her pocket, she types the url into the search bar. Putting in the last couple of letters and pressing enter, the computer loads up a website that’s orange with two black bars on the side. The Haunted Willows Trails’ icon is the first thing on the screen, followed by a long paragraph of information about the company.

It talks about how they’ve been open for a long time, and do many haunted trails around the country and other stuff Red just skims over. She scrolls down to another paragraph that has a title in all caps in a very large font. It reads, “TIMBER RIDGE LOCATION REOPENED”. Intrigued, Red reads the paragraph under it:

“Lake Luxury? That doesn’t sound scary…” Red mutters to herself. She finds some buttons underneath the paragraph, one leading to buy tickets, one for contact information, and one about their trails. Red clicks on the trails button and the screen loads up several different places in the US, along with the name of the trail. Quickly scanning all the options, she finds the Lake Luxury one and clicks on it, being taken to a page giving a brief synopsis of the trail:

A summer getaway abandoned for years without any trace of the guests who were there. The place was left abanded and seemingly disappeared off the map until your car breaks down and you’re left wandering through the woods, stumbling across this forgotten place. As you wander the empty halls you’ll soon discover the dark history of this once happy place.

Some pictures of a lake and what looks like an old rundown two story mansion sits near the water’s edge. Some boats sit by some heavily damaged docks that lead to a small trail leading up to the building. The picture and story certainly catch Red’s interest. She goes back to the home page and clicks on the buy tickets button. It’s fifteen bucks per person.

Hmm…Dad said to ask Grandpa about getting the scarecrow, but this is much cheaper, and looks even better.

“Hey grandpa,” Red says as she walks over to him.

“Yeah?” He asks, clearly paying more attention to the football game.

“Could we go this haunted trail?” She holds up the card in front of him. “It’s only fifteen bucks per person,” Recognizing the icon, Randy pauses the game and takes the card.

“Haunted Willows Trails? I remember them, use to go there all the time,” He says with a smile, “But, they’re very serious about their work, I mean they do some scary shit,” Jerard wants to tell Randy to watch his language, but it’s impossible to control his sailor mouth, “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“I helped kill a demon, a real demon, didn’t I?” She asks as she folds her arms. Randy chuckles a bit.

“Okay then,” Randy says as he gets up, Red taking him over to the computer. He gets out his card and buys the 3 tickets and prints them out. Red grabs them the second they’re done printing, the paper a bit warm.

“Lunch is ready,” Jerard says as he finishes stirring the mac and cheese. Randy and Red, who leaves the tickets on the printer, head to the kitchen where they get themselves plates of sliced hotdogs and mac and cheese, something Red’s been teaching her father to make for the past two weeks now.

“So what’s this haunted trail thing you two were talking about?” Jerard asks.

“This company comes and rents out one of the hiking trails for the season of Halloween, and puts up a bunch of props and decorations along the trail, at least that’s what they used to do. Me and your mother in law were young adults when they first started coming, and we got to see them change over the years. By the time we had Clara they started having actors all over the place who’d jump out from behind trees to scare ya. Last time we went they even had these robots kind of like the ones they’re selling at the super market right now,”

“How come I never heard this?”

“Well, we never really had time to celebrate Halloween, once you showed up…”

“Oh…”

“But hey, that’s all in the past now, the town’s reopened for Halloween and Haunted Willows Trail is here,”

“What time are they open?” Red asks.

“Usually around seven thirty, eight, whenever it gets dark, but, only on weekends,”

“Could we go this Friday?”

“After I close up the sawmill, sure,”

“Yay!”

After lunch Red goes to her room and grabs a marker off her nightstand, writing down “Haunted Trail” on this weeks Friday, which is two days away. The rest of the day is spent watching tv, tending to the garden. Once night rolls around, Red, huddled up in blankets, is sitting on the couch in the living room, Randy passed out on the recliner, as Jerard heads for the kitchen.

“I’m going out, k Red? Make sure you brush your teeth and go to bed before ten,”

“Okay dad,” Red replies as she continues to watch tv. Reaching the back sliding doors, Jerard turns off the back porch light, closes the blinds and heads outside. He walks over to a nearby wooden box on the porch as he looks around, listening for anyone that could be nearby. Not hearing or seeing anything, Jerard strips naked, putting his clothes in the box. As he walks off the porch and heads into the woods he transforms, becoming a hulking werewolf that stands over seven feet tall, with blood red eyes and a jet black fur coat that lets him quickly blend in with the night as he disappears into the woods.

Though Jerard’s no longer the Demon Wolf, he still has the urge to hunt and the craving for blood. To keep it under control, he periodically goes out into the woods at night to hunt some wildlife once or twice a week.

After Jerard left, Red waited a minute before changing the channel to one that’s playing horror movies. Though Jerard enjoys them, ones about werewolves make him, moody. Red still enjoys them somewhat, but doesn’t like how they’re always portrayed as the bad guy, or young teens all about romance and all that other stuff she finds gross. The movie currently on is a more modern horror movie about some people moving into a place that’s haunted.

Red’s always like horror movie, pondering if she got that from her mother, since she was after all, the only person brave enough to go into the woods to find a giant demonic wolf in order to offer it a pie in hopes of it sparring the lives of the townsfolk. Her mother probably got it from Randy who seems to really enjoy scary stuff and Halloween in general, despite hating sweets.

After the movies comes to a close it’s already past nine. She glances over at Randy, whose still sound asleep, before getting off the couch.

“Grandpa,” She says as she taps him on the shoulder, “Grandpa,”

“Huh? What?” He asks, still half asleep.

“It’s time to go to bed,”

“Oh…okay…” He says groggily before he puts the recliner down and gets up, stretching before heading for his room, still in the hotdog costume. Red heads upstairs and goes to bed.

…

It’s the middle of the night, Jerard’s enjoying the large buck he managed to catch. As he’s eating he hears something. The sound of a bear roaring off in the distance. He’s about to resume his meal when the sound of something else roaring responds. It sounds, like him. Jerard leaves the deer to go investigate, not having to travel too far to see what the source of the noise is. A, werewolf, that looks just like him standing a couple yards away from a bear. He’s only able to see the werewolf from the side, unable to see its face.

How is this possible…

Jerard’s attention is caught by the sound of something else, coming from behind the bear. Some cubs hiding near some bushes are crying out for their mother. The other werewolf also sees them, and backs off, walking away. As the werewolf turns around, Jerard backs up out of sight, before hurrying to his meal and taking it with him back to the house.