The Demon Wolf - Chapter 8：The First Victim

As I’m walking to the edge of the forest I try out figure out how the fuck I’m gonna tell them that a giant six foot tall wolf ate their child.

“You look shaken up, that’s not good,” Loo says, “Oh please tell me it’s not…oh it is isn’t it!” He says bursting into tears before I can say a single word.

“…I…found your son, or at least what’s left of him,” Loo looks at me through confused, teary eyes.

“..W-what’s left, of him..?”

“I can show you where his remains are, but I strongly recommend against it. I’m sure Cindy would faint on sight if she saw it,” Loo looks at me with both dread, and disbelief, hell, I would too.

“I, want to see…” He tells himself more than me.

“Alright, he’s this way,”

“…Chief Wilson..?” Loo asks, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“You’re son’s remains…were right here…How the fuck…” I quickly examine the surrounding area to make sure it’s the right spot. The stains of blood on the dirt and grass are still there. The surrounding bushes have blood on their leaves…Yes, this is the right spot. Kneeling down I take a closer look at the ground. There’s not a single trail of blood or dirt to suggest something had moved the body. And there’s no way it could have been moved without more blood dropping onto the ground. None of this adds up.

“…W-will…W-willson…” Loo stutters with heavy breaths. I glance up at him and see all the blood drained from his face. I quickly turn in the direction he’s looking and only see a moving shadow disappear behind the tree.

“Come on, it’s not safe here,” I quickly get up and knock Loo out of his frozen state. The two of us run out of the woods and don’t stop until we’re in the Diner.

“Why are you two panting?! What was with the gun shot earlier?!” Cindy exclaims, panic stricken. Charles is equally as worried.

“Honey…Grotto is…I don’t know…” Loo says between breaths. Cindy looks to me for an answer.

“Uh…Loo, would you mind taking Charles to the kitchen? He doesn’t need to hear this,” He simply nods and takes Charles with him to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry to say, but Grotto was, eaten…”

“Eat-en..?”

“As crazy as it sounds, your son was eaten by a wolf, a giant one,”

“Are you sure? D-do you have any proof?”

“I wish I had something other than my words and what I saw. But I’m telling the truth, I found the fucker eating your son’s guts, and I managed to shoot it in the eye before it could get me. When me and Loo went back to show him what was left…his body was just gone…” The shadow popped into my head, sending a shiver down my spine.

“Gone? Was there no trail?”

“…No…but Loo saw something,”

“It was a demon,” Loo says walking out from the kitchen, “It couldn’t have been anything else,” Cindy gasps as she turns nearly as pale as Loo was.

“Chief, you gotta do something about this,” She says with teary eyes, “Before it gets Charles, or us, or any of the other townsfolk,”

They’ve always been believers in the paranormal. I grew up hearing about all those Whispers in the Woods stories, but up until now, I thought of them as nothing but some bull people say to get a scream or two out of people for fun.

“…Helen,” I say into my radio.

“Yeah chief?”

“I need you to-”

“Hold on sir, I’m getting a call on the emergency line,” As she says that, I start to hear something from outside. Than I see smoke billowing from the town park area.

“Stay inside and lock the doors,” I command before running outside and getting into my police car. As I’m racing down the roads Helen radios in.

“S-sir,” She exclaims with a shaken voice, “There’s something serious happening at the barbecue, I-I don’t know anything else about what’s happening, the call got cut off!”

“Helen just calm down. I need all officers on duty to head to the town park, armed,”

“A-alright,”

The town park coming into I see the utter chaos happening as cars are taking off and people are running and screaming for their lives. I lose my breath when I see the giant wolf tearing apart someone caught under it’s claws. A huge fire blazes behind them, engulfing one of the trees. The sky is filling up with clouds that start to block the sun. I slam on the brakes as someone runs in front of my car. I get out and pull my gun as I run over to the creature.

“Hey!” I shout trying to get it’s attention. As it turns it’s head up towards me it rips off the screaming man’s arm. I pull up my gun and start shooting at it. It flinches a bit, but I don’t manage to hit it anywhere where it seems to really it. As I’m reloading my clip I notice that both of it’s eyes are open. How the fuck?! I shot this thing in the fucking eye! Is this thing some sort of unkillable creature!

The wolf steps over the man and starts to approach me, showing it’s blood covered teeth. I carefully aim my gun and hold my breath. One step.

Two steps.

Three steps. It’s pace starts to quicken as the distance between us quickly closes.

I pull the trigger. Bulls-eye! It’s still charging. Fuck! I jump out of the way, barely managing to avoid it’s huge maw. The wolf then gets hit by a police car, knocking it down onto it’s side.

“Chief!” An officer exclaims as they exit the car and run over to me.

“Duck!” I shout before pulling up my gun and shooting once more. I shoot it in the mouth, stopping it from chomping down on the officer who barely ducked in time to avoid my bullet. I get up and aim another shot, then pull the trigger. I manage to get it in the other eye. We have to run back a bit to distance ourselves from the thing as it starts wildly thrashing about, completely destroying the police car. It starts running in a random direction, and luckily it’s away from town. Running into a tree, it quickly shakes it off and heads into the forest once more.

“Sir..what was that?” The officer asks.

“No fucking clue Randy, but it’s certainly no normal wolf,”

Though I knew to expect more shit to happen, nothing could have prepared me for the next two years. Every week, there was another attack. And no matter how much lead we put into that fucker, it always healed. It was impossible to trap, fire and grenades couldn’t do anything. We began to call the thing the Demon Wolf. Cindy and Loo did their best to help us with finding any thing that could help, crosses, bullets dipped in holy water, daggers, silver bullets. Nothing worked. We started telling the kids about the Big Bad Wolf in hopes to stop it from claiming another kid. The thing I can’t wrap my head around, is why only Grotto’s body was never found.

To our complete relief, it slowly attacked less and less. And before we knew it, the thing was just gone, and it became nothing more than a Whisper of the Woods. I don’t know what the fuck had happened to it, but I’m thankful for it nonetheless.

…

“Pierre, I hope you just wanted to see me for old time’s sake,” Randy says with a tone of dread as he steps into the office.

“I wish,” Pierre replies as he gets up, “I need to show you something,” The two of them head out of the office and leave the station, heading over to the morgue located right behind it. Inside a woman in a lab coat is examining the body of Gerald, that’s laying on a large stretcher, with a troubled look. She jumps a bit when she notices the two of them walking up.

“Chief Winslow, Randy,” The woman says with slight surprise. The two nod as they approach the body.

“Got anything?” Pierre asks.

“Somewhat, I haven’t been able to completely determine what could have done this. I mean, the wounds are from something large,” She starts pointing at the body in various areas as she starts explaining, “So I thought it was a bear at first, but then I noticed that the claw marks are all four in a row, not five. My next thought was this bear was missing a claw, but I’ve found marks from both a right and left paw. That’s when I noticed these,” She starts hovering a finger over the body, tracing it along smaller marks, “These were done by a smaller claw located near the end of the paw, further away from the others. The only animals like that around here, are wolves, but these marks are just too big…” They can see something clicking inside her head as she starts staring at the markings with wide eyes.

She quickly rushes over to a file cabinet and starts quickly sifting through the folder. She pulls out a large picture

“Chief…” She says as she hurries over to them, “These are the exact same kinds of injuries found on the victims from that case all those years ago,” She puts the picture on the table by the body, showing the claw marks match, “I thought that thing was killed?”

“…No, it had just gone away,” The chief says as he picks up the photo, remembering whose body this was and what had happened before the photo had been taken, “But now it’s back for more…”