High Moor (33 page)

After he left the house, the sensations almost overwhelmed him. He’d lain under a bush in Coronation Park and let the sounds, smells, and tastes of the town wash over him. After a couple of hours, he’d learned to process the information. It was as if a light had gone on in his head. He could smell the people in their homes. The myriad cooking scents from each household’s evening meal. The subtle undertone of fear in the household pets that cowered under beds and waited for the predator to pass. The sounds of passing traffic and the footsteps of the people walking the streets. The taste of pollution in the air from the exhaust fumes. It was like a man, blind from birth, seeing for the first time. Malcolm could hear, smell, and taste everything around him for a mile in every direction. He felt like a god.

He moved back into the estate and wound his way through back alleys and gardens, leaving a chorus of panicked, barking dogs in his wake, until he came to Karen’s brother’s house. Darren walked their stupid little terrier at nine-thirty every night, so Malcolm waited behind a hedge for him. When his brother-in-law passed, he leaped from his hiding place and tore him into chunks of shredded meat before he even had a chance to scream. The terrier ran yelping down the street with Darren's severed forearm still clutching the lead. His task complete, Malcolm sniffed the air and then headed towards the town centre on a compulsion.

***

Malcolm crouched beside a parked car and looked through the windows of the pub. It was quiet for a Thursday night. He saw only a few bored people standing at the bar and a group of drunken girls doing a terrible karaoke version of “I will survive” on a makeshift wooden stage. The sound hurt his ears, and he crept behind a line of green refuse containers to the other side of the pub. The walls reduced the grating cacophony to a dull shriek that bored into his nerves like a dentist’s drill. He considered going inside the bar and putting an end to the noise once and for all.

I will survive? Not if I have anything to do with it, you won’t, you tuneless cows.

Then the door opened and two people stepped out into the car park. Malcolm recognised one as Lizzie Fletcher, Karen’s mate. The other one was some bloke…Brian or something. Brian had his arm around Lizzie’s shoulder. Malcolm lay flat on the ground and waited.

“It's crap in there tonight,” he said. “Where’s your mate, Karen? She’s usually a good laugh. Nice arse as well.”

Lizzie pulled away and punched him on the shoulder. “Watch it, you. Don’t talk about my mates like that.”

Brian shrugged. “All I’m saying is that I would.”

Lizzie rolled her eyes. “That’s not saying much. You’d shag anything with a pulse.”

“Well, I’m shagging you aren’t I?”

“Not if you keep up with the gob, matey. Anyway, Karen had to stay in. That useless dickhead she married has ’man flu’ and she has to look after the kids.”

“Is she married to that sweaty, fat bloke that hangs around with Billy Phillips?”

“Yeah, the sad bastard’s a janitor at King's Close School. Anyway, enough talking about that loser. I want to hear about what you're gonna do to me when we get back to yours."

Brian grabbed a fist full of Lizzie's backside and pulled her close. "Wouldn't you like to know…hang on, did you hear something?”

Malcolm let out a deep, bass growl and stepped out from behind the bins.

Brian backed away and put his hands out in front of him. “There. Nice doggy. Good boy.”

Malcolm snarled.
Patronising prick!
. He leaped forward and collided with the man, knocking him onto his back. His head dove forward, and he chewed a hole in Brian’s abdomen. Brian beat at the creature and screamed for someone to help as tides of blood flowed from his ruined mid-section.

Lizzie Fletcher stood motionless for a moment and then rushed forward, wielding her handbag like a mace. “Get off my boyfriend, you hairy piece of shit.”

The handbag struck the side of Malcolm’s head with a savage crack, knocking him a step to the side. He snarled at her and the handbag came down again. This time it struck him between the eyes, setting off a bomb burst of light and pain inside his skull. He remembered something Karen had told him. Lizzie Fletcher kept a half brick in her handbag, for self-defence.

He backed away and shook his head to clear his senses. Lizzie appeared to be in no mood to accept a surrender. She stepped over Brian’s motionless body and advanced on the blood-soaked werewolf with murder in her eyes. She raised the bag. Malcolm flinched and retreated into himself. Then the beast took over.

Jaws flashed out at impossible speed and severed Lizzie’s arm just below the elbow. The rest of the arm was carried by the handbag’s momentum and sailed through the plate glass window of the pub. Shouts came from inside. Movement.

The beast leaped forward and tore out Lizzie Fletcher’s throat in one swift movement and then ran off, away from the strange noises and offensive scents, out of the town and into the woods beyond the housing estate.

***

14th November 2008. Mill Woods, High Moor. 02.48
.

The werewolf moved through the forest, as silent as a shadow. The taste of deer meat was still fresh on its tongue, but already the hunger was starting again. An irresistible urge to hunt, kill, and eat dominated its mind. The wind changed and it caught a musky animal odour, spiced with subtle tones of pain and fear.
More Prey.
The great beast howled and ran off through the trees toward its next victim.

The dark shapes of the trees passed in a blur of movement, and after a few minutes, the creature drew close to its prey. The smell of blood and fear overwhelmed its senses, and every instinct screamed at it to attack, tear, and eat the tender flesh of the goat. It crouched low to the ground and began to circle the animal.

Wait. Not yet. Don’t you smell it?

The beast tried to ignore the small human voice, but it was insistent. Irritated, it lay still and filtered the scents. There. Metal and oil. The scent of human sweat, muted but still close by, with a sickly undertone of illness.

It’s a trap. He’s in a tree on the edge of that clearing, just waiting for us to take the bait.

The beast was outraged. It could see the platform in the tree now, and in the moonlight it could make out rows of silver spikes wrapped around the trunk. Something about those spikes made it uneasy, and it shuffled back, unsure as to how it could get to the insolent human that dared to hunt it.

The voice persisted, like an irritating gnat that buzzed just out of reach.
Just lay low. Keep out of sight. He has to come down from there eventually. When he does, we’ll tear him apart.

The man in the tree coughed. A wet rattle that grew in intensity until it seemed that he would not survive the experience.

Now, while he’s distracted. We’ll send him a little message.

The beast moved like liquid through the undergrowth. Swift and silent, it closed on the goat. Before the animal could so much as bleat in terror, a massive clawed paw lashed out and tore the goat’s head off with a single swipe.

The urge to feed on the carcass was overpowering. The gushing blood enflamed its senses, and it bowed its head to feast.

No. Move away. Back, into the woods. Quick, before he stops coughing his guts up.

The beast was struck with indecision. The human voice was right, but the instinctive urges were powerful and difficult to resist. The human forced his way into the beast's mind and added his will to its own. With reluctance, the werewolf bounded away from the bleeding carcass and back into the woods. After a few seconds, the man in the tree stopped coughing and looked down into the clearing. The heady scent of fear blossomed from him, and he scanned the undergrowth with his rifle in panicked, darting movements. Satisfied, the beast settled in and waited for the prey to come to it.

***

14th November 2008. Mill Woods, High Moor. 09.06.

The creature that had once been Malcolm Harrison sniffed the air and let out a small growl of frustration. The old man in the tree had not yet come down from his hiding place and had even called for help. The beast’s sensitive ears had listened to both sides of the telephone conversation while the human half of the creature's mind recognised the voice on the other end of the line. John Simpson. The anticipation was almost too much. Once John arrived, the old man would leave the security of his platform, and then they would both be prey.

A scent drifted through the woodland. Faint and strange, yet familiar somehow. The beast moved away from the clearing, picking a wide circle through the bracken as it homed in on the smell. Growing closer, it could identify two such odours. One was muted, masked against the stink of man-sweat, dirt, and dried human blood. The other was stronger. A heavy, animal musk, laden with pheromones. Female. Both scents moved into the woods, with the female circling the male in long arcs that never came closer than a hundred yards. The male was heading straight for the clearing where the old man cowered.
Simpson. It has to be John Simpson.

The Malcolm part of the creature understood in that moment what had happened. Simpson and the female, most likely the Williams bitch, were like him. He remembered his split knuckle from the fight and the subsequent infection. The stink of dried blood emanated from the male, but lacked the raw animal reek of his flesh. It wasn’t his blood. Malcolm had a good idea who it belonged to, though. He felt a pang of regret for his dead friends that turned into righteous anger in a heartbeat. Taking care to stay downwind of the female, he circled around and moved in to engage his enemies.

He got to within two hundred yards before the female picked up his scent. She came crashing through the undergrowth towards him at an alarming rate. He sprayed hot dark-yellow urine against a pine tree to mark his territory, then submerged himself in a black stagnant pool and waited.

The female, a large beast with green eyes and light brown fur, burst into the clearing and snarled. She sniffed the air and followed the scent to the tree that he’d sprayed moments before. The female bent to sniff the mark. That was when Malcolm pounced.

He burst from the water in a flurry of teeth and claws and barrelled into the surprised werewolf. She struggled to regain her footing, but Malcolm was on her before she could recover. His jaws grasped the back of her neck and squeezed. Marie thrashed about, but was unable to break his grip. He applied more pressure. Vertebrae popped and Marie whined in pain and frustration.

Malcolm felt the beast inside his thoughts as a series of mental images and emotions.
No. Don’t kill female. Mate with female. Kill other male. Be strong. Be Alpha.
He tightened his jaws a little more and felt the female go limp. He dropped the unconscious body to the ground and watched with disgust as the wolf retreated back into the woman.

He heard the male stumbling through the undergrowth towards him, shouting the woman’s name, and knew he would have to get away from this place and take the female with him. Somewhere dark and safe.

With great reluctance, he transformed from the powerful wolf to his human form, now devoid of all excess body fat, picked up the unconscious woman in a fireman’s lift, and walked off into the woods.

14th November 2008. Mill Woods, High Moor. 09.34
.

John and Steven trudged back to their parked cars. The mood was tense, and although Steven insisted that Malcolm was long gone, both men scanned the trees with nervous eyes as they left the deep woods and stepped onto the maintained footpaths near the housing estate.

When they arrived at the cars, Steven let out an audible sigh of relief and unlocked his 4x4. John grabbed the older man’s arm. “Where are you going? We need to get after them.”

Steven’s pale face had the texture of parchment. “John, stop and think for a second. We don’t know where they’ve gone, and even if we did, neither of us is in any shape to go after them.”

“I couldn’t give a shit. I’m fine. Marie might not be. God knows what that sick fuck’s doing to her right now.”

“You’ve not slept for more than twenty-four hours, John. You look ready to drop, and I know that I’m running on empty as well. Like I said, we don’t know where they are, and we have no plan. Charging in like idiots will just get us both killed.”

John looked back to the woods and sighed. Steven was right, no matter how much he hated to admit it. There would be no full moon tonight. When he went up against Malcolm, he would be doing it as a man, not a werewolf. “OK, so what are you suggesting?”

“Follow me back to my place. We can get cleaned up, grab some breakfast and coffee, then try to outthink the son-of-a-bitch instead of running headlong into a trap. Sound like a plan?”

John’s shoulders sagged. “I’m not happy about it, but it’ll have to do for now. It’s not like we have much choice.”

John got into his car and followed Steven through the town. The national press had picked up the story of the deaths last night, and the news reports on the radio talked about nothing else. Even the DJs on the music station were talking about Malcolm’s handiwork. Six people dead, including his wife, their two children, and his brother-in-law. Malcolm was listed as missing, but was not yet a suspect.