Lunacy: chapter 2

Chapter Two



 



    The Sheriff, confused and enraged, threw his cell phone on the dashboard; cursing Tuttle for abruptly disconnecting their phone conversation. The old man had been ranting on about the mess his boys left for him, and something about an unexpected visitor snooping in the backyard. He had been adamant about coming at once. He could not choose to ignore his request.

    With a few deep breaths to calm his anger, the Sheriff demanded an immediate U-turn from his old truck with a twist of the steering wheel. With frustration causing his knuckles to turn white, he changed course for Tuttle’s home, gritting his teeth the whole way. As the Sheriff of this town, and the Alpha of his Pack, he should be able to figure out how and why these strange events continued to take place. Yet, with all his senses and resources, he was still unable to put together the pieces of the puzzle. Something was eluding him.

    After his own unexplained escape from the Den a few months ago, the Sheriff had surveillance equipment installed, sparing no expense. Both he and Tuttle personally locked down the Pack for the final night of the full moon. How Carl and Chuck had gotten loose, without the cameras discovering any sign of intrusion, left him even more perplexed. All they revealed were the boys’ opened cages, as if never locked at all. What puzzled him most though, was why this did not happen to Christina’s and his own cages.

  Just this morning, his two boys returned home naked and covered in blood from head to toe, with no memory of what they had done. They told their father that they had no recollection of anything, from the time they locked down the Pack to the time they woke up, cold and confused, in the woods on the outskirts of the lumberyard. As their father had always told them, in an emergency such as this, they used the Catacombs to travel home unseen by the locals.

  The discovery of the Catacombs had been an advantageous find for the Pack. This route went through a series of tunnels and shafts veining throughout the town, leading to any number of different locations, far too vast to chart.

  Exiting his mud-encrusted Ford pick-up truck, with an urgent pace to his step, the Sheriff approached Tuttle with an irritated look upon his face. Looking up from his busy task of digging, Tuttle turned toward his master, and looking into his deep blue eyes condescendingly remarked, “Thanks to those boys of yours, I’ve had two unexpected visitors today, and quite the mess to cover up. I thought you had this situation under control, Sheriff.”

  The expression on the Sheriff’s face quickly turned from irritation to rage, and with a malicious backhand, he reminded Tuttle of his place. “Mind your tone with me, minion. I will not be spoken to with insolence.”   

  The sting, still warm upon his cheek, reminded him of the fact that he was nothing but a servant to the Pack and little else. Drinking the blood of the werewolf gave him the speed, senses, strength, and healing promised him. They never mentioned the servitude that came with it, or the emptiness felt by the inability to change form and complete the cycle. Denied the thrill of the hunt was utter torment. Until his master decided he was worthy to receive “the bite,” and become fully one of them, he would have to endure it.

  However empty or haunted he felt was nothing compared to his alternative. The cancer eating at him was now gone and he was going to live forever. In an old man’s eyes, that meant a second chance at a long, and finally healthy, life. Never more would he suffer from the pains of old age, or would be told he was to die soon of an incurable disease.                                                             

  “I had hung up abruptly because I noticed a teenage boy looking into these sacks, which just so happen to contain the remains of your boy’s fun from last night’s festivities. I caught the little bastard, and had him in my grip, when he goes and decides to kick me in the nuts. He ran for it, but I caught up to him in time and was about to take care of him, when I stumbled into our second visitor. You’re not going to like this one bit.” The Old Man paused.

  “Continue,” his master instructed.

  “He is a new Forest Ranger. Not like the last one, this one is very different. This one had a mystical energy about him. He informed me he knew how to kill our kind, as he had a silver tipped arrow drawn directly at my old heart. This is serious. Never have I sensed this kind of energy from anyone before. Plus, he said he was not without powers of his own, and I truly believe him.”

  “Yes, I have met with this new Ranger, two weeks ago when he first came into town. I also sensed the energy emanating from him. Informed me he was going to hunt down and kill the beast that murdered the other Ranger, his friend,” the Sheriff said as he stared off, deep in memory. “Seeing as I am that beast, I cannot allow him to succeed in his quest. I must first figure out how we are getting loose from the cages. Both of us were positive that the Pack and I were secure that night I escaped and killed that poor Ranger, and now it has happened again.

  “When I awoke that next morning, lying next to Jake’s mauled body, confused and covered in blood, I suspected maybe I had escaped my cage, but after a thorough examination of it, there was no mistake that it had been unlocked. I had no choice at that point. I went home and waited, knowing Mindy would find Jake’s body the next day. I reported it as an animal attack, but now that the same has happened to the boys, I am fearful something is amiss.”

  “You don’t think it’s the Coven, do you? Tuttle asked with wide-eyed concern.

  “Given the bloody history between us, and their irritating cunningness for survival, I cannot rule it out completely. Heading back to his truck, he said, “I’m going to see the boys now to ask if they remember any further details that could help.”

  Shortly after leaving, the Sheriff caught a glimpse of a blonde woman dressed in red robes, standing just off to the side of the dirt road in the woods, staring at him. As the Sheriff applied the brakes, the mysterious woman lifted her hand unleashing a brilliant white flash, instantly blinding him, and then she was gone. Regaining his sight soon afterward, he sat confused and dumbfounded. He was about to go somewhere important, somebody he needed to see, but for the life of him he could not remember anything he was about to do. Instead of taking his original route and seeing his boys at the lumberyard, the Sheriff disregarded the memory loss, and continued driving on his way to the stationhouse. The woman in red wiped from his mind.