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You don’t grow up normal in Glenwood Lock, if you get to grow up at all.
My best friend and I were lucky, in that regard.
Well, sort of.
We got to grow up, but the Lock got hold of us, after all. We learned about all the other things in the world that grew up next to us, all the other people and their trials and tribulations.
Then we learned about the monsters in the dark.
The werewolves with their claws, the vampires with their fangs, the fae and their natural cruelty - none of that compared to the real monsters.
*
WE WERE DRUNKENLY STUMBLING our way home after one of the many holiday parties thrown by our fellow students before they left home. Dante and I didn't need to go anywhere; our homes were right here in the Lock, as the locals called it.
Our small community college, like everything else in Glenwood Lock, was surrounded by a dense forest that only the bravest or most foolish tried to trek. Growing up here, we had thought ourselves brave and tried to hike through those woods more than once. We learned our lesson and now only stuck to the visible trails. Back then, as kids, we had told scary stories about the monsters who lived in those woods.
Glenwood Lock is a small, sleepy college town. Over the holidays, which we were coming up on, the town emptied itself out of all its visiting students and it became more like the size of a village.
Dante and I were leaving the last of the holiday parties and our inebriated brains told us that it was a good idea to cut through the woods to head back to our dorms.
“Do you think she likes me?” Dante asked. He slurred his words and they came out rounded at the edges.
“I don't see why not,” I replied charitably. I slid down a small hill, pinwheeled my arms and caught my balance.
The girl in question was Dante's new crush. She had transferred that semester to our college from a private liberal arts college back east. No one knew a lot about her, besides the fact that she was very nice, she was very smart, and she was very, very rich. Savannah Plata was a mystery that Dante was desperate to solve. They went on a single coffee date, a spur of the moment thing when Dante returned her wallet after it fell out of her pocket when he was walking behind her.
It was sweet, I thought.
“Lou,” Dante whined.
“What?” I replied.
The ground beneath our feet was slick with dead grass and leaves and it made it that much harder to navigate our path. And the fact that we were nauseatingly drunk did not help. I was beginning to feel the urge to step behind a tree and puke up my dinner.
“You didn't answer the question,” Dante pointed out.
"Okay, so here's the thing. I know that I am not the straightest guy that has ever walked this planet, but even you have to admit that it's weird for my best friend/step-brother to ask me if whether he's cute or not."
Dante let out a deep sigh. I looked over to him and in the light of the full moon, it was easy to see his features.
He is a good-looking guy, I will admit. He had that chin that all the superheroes have and big brown eyes that were surprisingly disarming. His hair was dark and always neatly combed, which put him far ahead of most guys, in my opinion.
He didn't dress terribly, but I wouldn't say he made an impression either. Dante was genuinely nice and maybe because it is so rarely seen nowadays, people flocked to that.
I opened my mouth to tell him so but I felt the Earth shift beneath my feet.
Later on, I wouldn't be able to say if it was the alcohol or the mud, or maybe both, but either way, I hit the ground hard and slid down the hill several feet.
It stunned me in a way that only drunk people can be stunned. It felt like I was still and everything else had moved. The clearing that we were in gave us enough light from the moon for me to see Dante several feet above and behind me. The fall had knocked the air from my chest and even if I did have air to breathe and form words, I'm not sure what those words would have been.
Look out, maybe.
Move, perhaps.
Get out of the way, would have been another one.
Run, there is a giant wolf monster right behind you, would have been descriptive enough but perhaps wouldn’t have made much sense at the time.
Looking back on that first impression, I knew that I didn't have the vocabulary for the image that was burned into my terrified brain.
Dante stood six foot two, and this wolf towered over him easily by two or three feet. It had a canine snout and eyes much like a dog's on either side of its face. But it stood on its hind legs like a human, slightly hunched over and its giant chest was easily four feet wide. It was covered in black fur, or maybe gray. The moonlight above us bleached everything a liquid silver so it was hard to pin down the exact color.
As I sucked in a huge breath into my aching lungs it bent its head and wrapped its jaws around Dante's left arm and side. It felt like I was watching the whole thing in slow motion and I couldn't do anything to stop it. From where I was laying, I could hear the bones underneath the monster’s jaw crack. Dante screamed and it felt like that sound radiated from the center of my own brain.
Then there was pain, and what little understanding I had of this plane of existence left me. It started from my left side and spread outward. It felt like fire and nails were drilling through my blood. I knew I was screaming, or maybe it was Dante screaming. I couldn't tell the difference anymore between seeing him in pain and feeling it in my own body. As I watched, through blurry eyes, the wolf monster let Dante go and it tilted its head like it was listening to something it couldn't quite understand. Dante's body was limp and he tumbled down next to me. I couldn't tell if he was breathing.
In the distance, I heard one howl, followed by another.
Great, I thought, it brought friends.
Then it was gone without a sound. I wish I could say that I jumped to my feet and ran to my bleeding and dying best friend's side.
Instead, I fainted.
*
WHEN I CAME TO, I WAS floating.
The strong arms beneath me registered a minute later and when I saw the man above me, I had the irrational and hysterical urge to laugh.
“He's awake,” Eli reported to someone I couldn't see. Eli Ortega was the TA in my Women’s Lit class. He was part of the reason I was in there. He was a large part of the reason I was in there if I were being honest.
"Good," a cool and even voice replied.
Her voice seemed to shock me out of what reverie I was in and I remembered what happened with a jerk.
“Dante? I have to go back to get him-” I said and struggled against Eli’s hold. It felt like I was being held in place by steel clamps.
Warm steel clamps.
“I've got him,” the unseen woman said.
The flood of memories was bright and painful.
“There's a monster-” I tried and struggled once more. We had to run. We had to get away. It was going to get us too.
Eli halted and a woman stepped into my vision. She was beautiful in the way that Eli was; untouchable, radiant, cold.
“The monster is gone now, little boy. I chased him away. Go to sleep,” she murmured and raised a hand to my forehead.
Before the darkness closed over me once again, I saw she was carrying Dante over her shoulder, like he was a sack of potatoes and weighed nothing at all.