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

shambles, a steady, thin wisp of white smoke streamed from a couple pitch black chunks of wood. Crushed beer cans littered the fire pit, scuffled soil cast dust upon the logs and the surrounding grass pressed down into heavy paths in all directions.

Sarah raced to retrieve the pistol from her spot as she noticed Terry's red sleeping bag hanging haphazardly in a tree from broken branches about five feet above the ground at the edge of the clearing. "Oh no." Her fingers covered her lips. "How could I let this happen?" She paced frantically back and forth, holding the sides of her forehead, the cold steel handle of Vance's gun pressed against her face as she wiped her tears. Sarah tried to collect herself, afraid to look toward the tree. “Terry!” she shouted behind her. The chirping of birds and the buzz of locusts were her only answer, but not even the most peaceful sounds of nature could tame the wild hysteria that shook apart everything that held her together.

After several long breaths and a moment to familiarize herself with the revolver, she turned off the safety and slowly walked toward Terry's sleeping bag hanging like a ragdoll from the tree. "Please don't be in there." Sarah walked along the path, grass pushed firmly down all the way there. "Please don't let me find your body." Her heart skipped a beat when she saw one of Terry's boots laying on its side in the grass. "I'm not ready for this." Stepping over a broken sapling bent along the path, Sarah cuffed her hand above her eyes and gazed up at the tree. "How?" she asked. "Terry! Are you up there? Please say something!"

"Should I ask what you're doing?" From behind, the voice jolted her off the ground as she turned to see Terry picking up his boot, already carrying the other one.

"What the hell, Terry?" Sarah shouted at him.

"I had to take a leak, then I heard you shouting and saw you by the woods, so I came to see what you were doing."

"I thought you were dead. Where's Jan and David?"

"Sorry about that," Terry said, reaching for her shoulder as she swiped his hand away and pushed her eyebrows together. "Janice and David left a couple hours ago. I thought I'd let you sleep in."

"That's it?" Sarah asked. "What about this?" she thumbed toward the hanging red fabric.

"Oh, that," Terry scratched his head and laughed. "It got damp from the dew. They said if I hung it up in the sun a few hours, it won't smell like a wet dog and it might be a few pounds lighter." Terry raised his boots in his hand. "Kinda dropped a few things along the way I guess."

Sarah let out a roar of frustration. "One more thing," she said. "Take this damn thing before I shoot your ass with it."

"Oh, no,” Terry said with a wiggle of his fingers. “I don't believe in guns."

"Well, they're real," she said, carefully shifting the safety back in place as she figured out how to eject the cylinder and unload the bullets from it.

As they cleaned and packed up, Sarah looked back at the fire tower. It wasn't long after she got adopted that she met Vance and Tony. Then after Tony and David's parents got together David and Janice came into the picture. Even though they didn't share her first cigarette with her or first beer, they distracted her from the years of abuse and after years of bouncing from one terrible family to another, she found a place she could call home. It was at this fire tower, at Moss Lake, the high school, it was at the Sunset Diner and the cliffs. Pine Bluff had become her home among family. But now an important part of that felt further away than ever before and the past no longer disappeared.

"What's wrong, Sarah?" Terry asked, pack fastened onto his back as he trekked downhill.

"It's nothing." Sarah sighed as she followed him down. "Ghosts of the past."

"I can tell your soul is troubled, Sarah," Terry said. "Nobody is beyond forgiveness and I'm always here if you need to talk about it."

Normally she wouldn't hear of it, but today it sounded comforting. "Thanks, Terry."

The two pressed on through the thick trees, finally arriving at the trail. "Maybe we won't get chased away this time," Sarah laughed.

"I wonder if Vance is alright." Terry said as they turned the bend to see only Sarah's car still parked.

"Nothing can keep him down for very long," she said.

"David's pretty resilient too," Terry said. "He's got an energetic spirit. I didn't think he could do that to Vance, but I wish he hadn't."

Sarah rolled her eyes at him. "David brought all that on himself."

###

As Sarah drove Terry down the bumpy road, she turned the music down to think.

"You think silver kills it?" she asked.

"Who knows?" Terry adjusted his glasses. "If you'd asked me a couple weeks ago, I would have said there's got to be some other explanation."

He was right, she thought to herself. It wasn't long ago that this was the stuff of myth, the magical stories and fantasy world of movies and books. Only emerging to stalk the nightmares of curious children. But the line that separated real from unreal began to blur long ago and now it had reached a climax with a hungry werewolf roaming around the forests of Pine Bluff. It lurked along the edges of town in the dark of night, even venturing into the streets and industrial areas as it widened its hunting ground to expand through town. Nobody was safe, she thought to herself while forests of concrete, asphalt and brick replaced the woods and they entered the wilderness of man along the road into town.

"Do you think we'll all die?" Sarah asked, gripping the steering wheel tighter as she drove, her car hurling itself further down the road of inevitability.

"I think, for that answer, we have to consider the killer’s motivation."

"Werewolf," she said with a half-smile as she