Sheep's Clothing by Gary Lewis (dark books to read TXT) 📗

in confusion. When the pounding began once again, her eyes opened in realization. The door. David's voice shouted from the other side. "Come on! Open up already!"

She tripped across her charger cord as she clambered to her feet, knocking her phone from the living room table onto the floor before swinging the door open.

"What the hell time is it?" she asked, cuffing her hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight.

"It's almost noon." The agitation in David's voice matched the expression of his wide eyes that rose to his disheveled hair as his arms shifted erratically. "Were you planning on sleeping all day?"

She squinted her tired eyes. "You make a big deal, banging at the door and then just stand on my porch shouting?”

"Didn't you get my messages, Sarah? I saw it!"

"No. I was asleep," she said, still rubbing her eyes.

Sarah yawned as she took a seat in the recliner and watched David pick her phone up from the floor, returning it to the smooth tabletop before anxiously sitting on her couch with tense shoulders, leaning forward to speak. "I went to the cliffs last night to meet Tony."

"Yeah. I know." Sarah rubbed her blurry eyes as she looked at his confused expression.

"How would you know that?" David's tone rang with suspicion.

"Umm." Sarah squatted forward to reach across the room to her phone on the table. She unlocked it and turned it to show him the messages. "Tony said he was going to meet you there in the group chat."

"That's weird," David said. "He said nobody knew."

Sarah listened silently as David continued. "I saw it. It came out right after Tony left."

"Wait." Sarah's suspicions started to collide with David's account. "Did you say after he left?"

David shrugged his arm aside. "Yeah, but it was already coming before that."

"How the hell do you know that?" Her frustration now clashed against David's gullibility as she slanted her eyes at him.

"Because," he said, sweeping his arms out. "We fucking heard it."

"Did you go to the police or anything?" she asked.

"Well, no. What would I say?" David asked before lifting his hand to continue. "And there's more."

"Well, I'm all ears."

"Something happened at the lumber yard and there were two deaths," he said quickly. "They haven't released the details yet, but there's cops everywhere and it looks like they're really enforcing the curfew now."

"Are you absolutely sure it was a werewolf you saw last night?" Sarah tried to hold back the smile that threatened to press its way across the side of her cheek as David rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"Of course I'm sure. Now you're going to act like I'm the crazy one?" His eyebrows pressed as he stared back at her.

"That's not what I mean," she said, her curiosity now beginning to take over. "How could you tell it was a werewolf for sure? Hopefully you got a better look at it than your camera did."

"Oh. I'm sure. Trust me. Give me that thing," David said, walking over to pick up Sarah's werewolf book.

"You see that?" he asked, slamming his finger against the page to land on an old illustration of a two-legged beast, covered in fur with a narrow but snarled snout, large ears and legs shaped like the hind legs of a dog. "Do you see that?" David asked.

"It looked like this?" Sarah asked.

"No. It looked even more like a werewolf than this," he said with wide eyes. "Unmistakable."

Every etched line that marked its way through the picture inked its way into Sarah's mind, filling her with disbelief and awe. "Well, it's settled," she said. She swiftly slung her purse over her shoulder and strode straight for the door before pausing to look back at David. His mouth hung open as he leaned forward from where he sat on her couch, looking at her. "What are you waiting for?" she asked. "Let's go."

"You can't be serious," he said.

She turned toward her porch and continued to the steps.

"But I haven't even gotten ahold of anyone else yet," his voice approached from the door as she strode through the bright sunlight toward his car.

"Janice not answering her phone?" Sarah asked as she climbed into the driver seat of his car. “Hurry up, already.”

David strolled closer to where she sat waiting in his car as he waded through her knee high grass. “I really wish you would cut this stuff some time,” he said as he approached the side of the car.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Sure, your highness. I’ll get right on that as soon as I deal with the dining room.”

“That’s never been a problem,” he said as he opened the passenger side door and bent to look at her, pointing at the jungle of plant life protruding from her yard. “This is the stuff I have to try and walk through every time.”

Sarah’s eyes lowered to the bottom of the steering wheel. I just can’t right now.

He finally slumped into the passenger seat and buckled up with a sigh before he turned to look at her. “For the record, I think this is a terrible idea.”

###

Sarah cruised through traffic along Central Avenue as Bluff Mountain loomed closer by the mile. She observed David's anxious fidgeting while she looked across at the blackening clouds to the west, a heavy shade of darkness that wanted to claim the bright sunny day and smother it with gloom. The four lanes of highway became two and eventually gave way to gravel. The dense forests once again swallowed them into the belly of seclusion as Sarah's stomach began to turn with anticipation of the unknown.

###

"Here we are," David said from the safety of his car as Sarah stepped out onto the rocky parking area near the trailhead at the cliffs. "It was over there."

"Well?" she asked as David let out a sigh and hesitantly opened his door.

"It was standing right here?" she asked

"No. Over that way, just behind the trees."

Sarah walked cautiously in the direction that he pointed, stepping carefully as she examined the dirt. The clumped