The Turning (Book 1) Read online

  THE TURNING

  by Micky Neilson

  Copyright © 2016 by Micky Neilson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  http://www.mickyneilson.com/

  Cover by Creative Paramita

  First Edition

  This book is dedicated to Samwise Didier, who

  introduced me to The Howling film at age seventeen.

  I've been obsessed with werewolves ever since.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  Shadow Creek, Montana, July 1976

  He should have left town after he saw the old man’s eyes glow.

  Up until the fight, it had been a night just like any other at the Alley Cat, a seedy dive hidden a few miles off of the interstate: the usual crowd of farmers, trappers, boozehounds, and a few long-in-the-tooth women looking for a one-way meal ticket as they whiled away their lives.

  For the most part, hippies stayed away. The Alley Cat just wasn’t their scene. When Brandon arrived in town, he had been dubbed “hippy” right from the get-go, due in no small part to his long brown hair and the scruff on his chin, but as he settled in over the last several months, the suspicious, sideways stares had turned to engaged acknowledgement. He was a hard worker, over thirty, courteous—attributes that earned a fair bit of respect among the small-town folk. Nothing glamorous being a short order cook at a hole-in-the-wall bar, but glamorous wasn’t what Brandon was looking for. Hell, at this point in his life he was happy just to disappear. The less excitement the better.

  So he was less than thrilled when the scuffle broke out. Brandon heard the bartender, Rachel, shout, “Hey!” over the sizzle of the grill, and he stepped out of the kitchen and into the bar to make sure everything was okay. At first the only things remarkable about the old man storming toward the office door seemed to be that he was a stranger—didn’t get many of those passing through Shadow Creek—and that he was most certainly bent out of shape. The dingy shirt draped over his stout frame looked as if it had been hand-sewn sometime in the previous century. His pants weren’t home-fashioned but they also weren’t anything that had been in style over the last twenty years. He had wild, roan hair, a mangy beard, a face like aged leather, and steel spikes for eyes. He drove those spikes through Brandon before smashing open the office door one-handed.

  When Brandon ran in, Jon Adams Beckett was looking up from his desk, wide eyes set to bulge right through his reading glasses. The old stranger was ranting about Beckett hurting “her”—which Brandon immediately assumed meant Beckett’s long-time gal, Susie Millhouse.

  The irate old man leaned across and snatched up Jon by his button collar. “Hurt my girl again and I’ll end you,” he spat.

  Brandon was not a small man. Years of toiling in fields and garages and warehouses, coupled with good genes (the only thing worth a damn his dad had ever handed down to him) had resulted in a brawny physique. Brandon was joined in the office by one of the regulars, Bart Simms. He was a logger from way back and certainly no milk biscuit either. But when Brandon wrapped his arms around the old guy and Bart grabbed his shoulder and together they yanked, you would have thought they were trying to uproot an oak.

  It took way more effort than it should have, but between Bart, Brandon, and Jon, they were able to strong-arm the stranger out onto the floor of the bar. The old man shoved; Brandon jittered back and dropped hard on his ass. Jon and Bart pulled the stranger toward the closest wall, where they ended up tussling behind a small pool table.

  One of the women shouted for the men to stop. Derek Lancaster, a retired millworker, crawled up onto the pool table. With Jon on one side and Bart on the other, it must have seemed like the straightest route to get ahold of the old troublemaker. Unfortunately, skinny Derek only succeeded in knocking his head against the hanging covered lamp that read BUDWEISER, KING OF BEERS. He fell flat, and as Brandon stood and the rabid old man yanked on Derek’s shirt and dumped him on the floor, Brandon saw what must have been a trick of the light—because it seemed for all and everything that just for a second, the man’s eyes had glowed blue in the swinging lamplight.

  Between Brandon, Bart, Jon, and Derek, they succeeded in man-handling the stranger to the door and finally out into the parking lot. He fired a string of curses their way as they closed the door. Jon, flushed and out of breath, ran back to his office to call the sheriff.

  An hour later, just after closing time, they had all given their statements to the sheriff and Brandon was on his way out. Rachel asked if he wanted to have a drink or two at her place, as she did quite often. Brandon, as he did quite often, said no. He and relationships hadn’t played well together in quite a while. So he drove back to his ramshackle trailer and read Robert E. Howard’s Beyond the Black River for the fifth time. Late that night when his head hit the pillow, the old man’s searing blue eyes loomed in the dark and dared him to try and sleep.

  ***

  No one saw the stranger after that, and Brandon had almost gotten the image of those eyes out of his head when Susie Millhouse raced into the kitchen, her voice high and frantic, begging Brandon to tell her the whereabouts of Jon.

  Brandon thought there was an odd smudge around Susie’s left eye, but when he got closer he saw that it was a shiner. Good old Jon Beckett had given his woman a black eye.

  “Where is he? Have you seen him? He always does bookkeeping on Friday nights but he’s not in his office…”

  Rumors had circulated that Jon abused Susie even before the old man had shown up set to rip Beckett in half. There had been no physical signs, however. Not that Brandon had seen. Of course, Susie didn’t leave the house much.

  “What happened?” Brandon asked.

  “Oh, we argued,” Susie answered, fixing her silver-streaked chestnut hair. “He accused me of hiding things, which I don’t. You know, I went to my sister’s for a while, but I just can’t stay mad at him, and I called the office here and called my place but there’s just no reaching him, and I’m worried.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Brandon felt heat rising in his chest.

  Susie ignored the question. “I need to go and look in on him, but I don’t like driving out there alone at night, especially lately. I always feel like the woods have eyes. It’s silly, I know—”

  Brandon untied his apron. “I’m going. I’ll… look in on him. You stay here.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good—” Susie was obviously worried that Brandon was planning to knock Jon Adams Beckett’s dick in the dirt.

  “I’m going,” Brandon said, and left without another word.

  ***

  Susie’s concern regarding Brandon was well founded. She was a timid old gal but sweet, and seeing her like that had set Brandon’s blood to boi
ling. What would his dad think? He would be flabbergasted, no doubt, that his “pacifist” son was even considering throwing a punch out of anger—the same scared little boy who had run from home to escape the overbearing old man, the same young pup who had fled the country into Canada to evade the draft. The same man who had, in many ways, been running ever since.

  But what Dad never understood was that there was a difference between fighting for someone else’s cause and fighting for something that you believed in.

  Millhouse Manor was a Victorian cottage-style home that had been in Susie’s family for generations. It was something of a landmark for Shadow Creek, though it sat just a few miles outside of the official town limits, secreted away down a road that, if it ever had a name, no one was aware what it was.

  Jon had moved in with Susie not quite a year ago and had been, as Brandon’s dear old Grandpa—Papa—would have said, “shacking up.” When Brandon arrived, Jon’s Lincoln town car was parked in the circular driveway. An instant later Brandon’s Ford pickup was parked behind it and he was on his way up the steps of the front porch. He rang the buzzer, waited, then rapped hard three times on the door.

  “Jon?” Brandon called out.

  He walked back out to the driveway, looked up at the bedroom window. A light was on. Had Beckett gotten drunk and passed out? Brandon walked around the side of the house and through a wooden gate, his path lit by a dull, bloated, low-hanging moon.

  At the far edge of the expansive back yard was a thick tree line. Susie’s words from earlier in the evening came back to Brandon: I always feel like the woods have eyes.

  The light over the back porch was on. Just up the stairs, a windowed door stood open. There was a faint glow coming from just inside. “Jon?” Brandon yelled. He went up the stairs and in…

  A still-lit flashlight lay on the wood floor. Brandon picked it up and swept it around to reveal a laundry room, with an open connecting door to a passage. He stepped through, then to another doorway and into a large area revealed by the flashlight to be a formal dining room. Brandon continued to call Jon’s name as he made his way to the entry.

  The front door was locked. A tiny lamp on an end table cast wan, red-tinted rays onto the floor. Opposite the door at the end of the entry was a staircase with a single turn. Light from upstairs washed over the second-story walls. Brandon ascended, and midway up the next row of stairs he stopped. The flashlight had passed over one of the many pictures on the wall, a black and white photo. Brandon illuminated the picture, which presented a wood-ringed clearing, and in it a dark haired man Brandon assumed was Susie’s dad, standing with his arm around an older hunter—Susie’s grandpa? Both posed with long rifles on their hips, and each had one foot on a very large, and very dead, bear.

  What had caught Brandon’s attention were the features of the older man, and now that he looked closer, most especially the eyes.

  They were the eyes of the stranger who had threatened Jon in the Alley Cat. But of course, that was impossible. This photo was several years old. Besides, Brandon remembered Jon saying something about Susie’s grandpa disappearing years and years ago. Either way, the elderly guy was most certainly dead by now. Still, the resemblance was uncanny. The stranger must have been one of Susie’s relatives. Brandon continued up to the second floor.

  The light was coming from an open door down the passage to his right as he topped the stairs.

  Don’t go in there.

  It was the voice of his gut, his instinct. What did his gut know that he didn’t? As he neared the doorway he saw legs on the floor, sticking out from behind a large desk.

  Go. Just get the fuck outta here.

  Jon might have had a heart attack. Brandon kept walking, until he was inside the room, angling for a better view of—

  Brandon stumbled back against the wall, nearly dislodging a picture of a tall-masted ship. He had snapped his arm up, flashlight still in hand, mouth buried in the crook of his elbow in an unconscious attempt to force down the bile rising in his throat.

  There was blood, buckets of blood soaking into the floorboards. A rolling chair was shoved against the wall, and at its wheeled base was a fallen telephone, receiver out of the cradle, the spiral handset cord ripped from its jack.

  Jon was lying perpendicular to his desk. His eyes were near-perfect circles, his face ashen and drawn in a frozen snapshot of terror. Jon’s feet and knees were facing mostly down, though his upper torso had been completely twisted so that his chest and face pointed at the ceiling. Most of what should have existed between Jon’s chest and legs was gone. Ribs jutted from the remains of his midsection, and half-eaten bits of intestine and various organs lay clustered about his torso.

  Dizziness overtook Brandon. He needed to be anywhere but in that room. In that house. He could drive back to town, back to the Alley Cat. He could call the sheriff from the bar…

  Still choking back the urge to vomit, he returned through the passage to the top of the stairs. His foot hit the first step and he froze.

  There was something moving in the darkness at the base of the stairs. Whatever it was, it was big. And as far as he could tell, it wasn’t human. As Brandon’s eyes adjusted, he was just able to make out a dingy coat of gray fur, almost ghostly in the dimness. He could hear the thing sniffing. Brandon kept the flashlight aimed at the floor, not wanting to alert the animal. Was it a bear? Couldn’t be. No such thing as a gray bear. Just then the thing looked up at him, blue eyes cutting through the gloom—the eyes of some kind of dog. But no dog could get that big. This thing had to be a freak of nature. A freak of nature that had mangled Jon Adams Beckett.

  First a growl rumbled from deep in the thing’s throat; then those piercing blue eyes were in motion as the beast raced up the stairs.

  Oh fuck.

  No sense in running for the office; there was no way out from there. A second passage ran perpendicular to the stairs Brandon was now on, and at its end was a doorway. Maybe he could get to a window or a closet. Buy some time. He backed up and ran hell-bent for leather…

  Through the doorway was a large room lit only by the moonlight through a few tiny windows. Brandon turned and slammed the door shut, catching just a glimpse of those bright blue eyes speeding through the darkness. The wooden door rocked with a massive impact, knocking him to the floor. He shined the flashlight frantically; around him was an enclosed space with some furniture, a TV set, a rug… and a dumbwaiter, set against the far wall.

  Another impact and the door rocked again. Wood splintered. He popped to his feet and sprinted to the dumbwaiter. Luckily the car was there. Brandon squeezed himself into the relatively tight space as the room’s door came apart. He fumbled with his shaky left hand on the wall for the call switch, hit a button, and heard the motor engage.

  The beast didn’t give Brandon time to slide the dumbwaiter door shut. The animal was impossibly fast, rushing to the opening just as the car’s descent cut off Brandon’s view of it. Claws raked the top of the car, and the sound of its bark was deafening in the cramped channel.

  With agonizing slowness the car continued down… and down further, past what could only have been the first floor. Brandon must have hit the button for the basement.

  Finally the car stopped at a closed door.

  Brandon rammed the door open and untucked himself into another large room, sweeping the flashlight out. His heart hammered in his throat when the beam revealed a snarling bear reared up on hind legs. His thundering pulse subsided only slightly when he realized the beast was the work of a taxidermist.

  A fan of the light revealed more stuffed game: pheasant, turkey, mountain lion. He was in a hunter’s trophy room. At the far end of the nearest wall was a set of steps leading upward. Tempting, but what if that thing was waiting for him? Brandon didn’t want to ascend without some kind of defense.

  Closer in on the near wall, mounted moose and buck heads flanked a double barrel shotgun. Within two quick strides Brandon was on his toes, using the flashlight to h
elp dislodge the shotgun from the wall. He hit the release to open the double barrels and shined the flashlight in. Empty.

  Hurry.

  To his left the flashlight revealed a large basket in the corner, thronged with several spears.

  Better than nothing. Brandon dropped the shotgun and hurriedly snatched a spear. He had made his way to the staircase and was prepared to launch himself up when he heard a rumbling growl.

  It was coming from inside the room.

  The beam wavered jerkily from the shaking of Brandon’s hand as he swept it over the far wall, across a deer, boar, and then… an immense, primeval creature, like something out of a Robert E. Howard adventure story. It had gray fur and blue eyes and the features of a wolf, right down to the fangs. These fangs, however, were the size of steak knives and dripped a foamy saliva. The beast was crouched on all fours, and then, in the shaking light, it stood.

  Holy Christ.

  Brandon’s heart turned to ice in his chest.

  Run!

  Brandon stumbled backward on the staircase, dropping the flashlight. The thing rushed him, and as it lunged he had just enough presence of mind to thrust the spear at the wide-open maw, lit by the flashlight beam, fringed with teeth meant to shred flesh like tissue paper. The canine jaws clamped over the head of the spear, teeth shearing through the shaft. As it whipped its head to the side and hacked out the spearhead, Brandon turned over and scuttled up the stairs. He gained his feet at the turn and tore a path up the second flight…

  And out into a small parlor. The beast was milliseconds away from dragging him down and ripping him limb from limb. He ran through a tight doorway into another room, bathed in moonlight, filled with quilts and antique wall decorations. Brandon grabbed a sewing machine, spun, and smashed it down onto the thing’s head.

  There was an exit at the opposite corner of the room. Brandon made for it and collided with a table. The thing behind him snarled. Brandon shuffled around the table and upended it, offering up a barrier to the beast and putting his full weight behind it.