CHAPTER ONE

Someone was shaking him, rattling his teeth inside his skull. Rough, sandpapery hands gripped his shoulders, snagging on the soft cotton of his pajamas. The tugging sensation ripped him, without consent, from the sticky web of sleep. Awareness inevitable, Tab Beard opened his eyes. Senses snapped to attention. The burly silhouette of his father, Tim, loomed over him in the dark. Worry sat heavy on his features, visible even in the low light filtering in from the hall. A bright flash, a crack of thunder, and sleep was relegated to a distant memory.

“Wake up, son.” The older man’s voice resonated with remnants of dreams interrupted. Its texture mirrored the scent of his breath, tinged with the stale odor of Marlboro cigarettes. The taste of it along with a day’s fade of Old Spice burned the back of Tab’s throat. “Come on. Storm’s here. We got to go. You’re too old for me to have to carry you. Come on.”

“Just leave him, Dad!” said a voice from somewhere outside his room. His older brother, Jeremy. The jerk.

In the next instant, he heard his dad grunt. Pressure invaded his armpits as his body launched into the air and snuggled the man’s torso. Tab allowed his chin to rest on his father’s broad shoulder. He wrapped his arms around his neck on instinct. Cheek stubble tickled his left temple, prompting a giggle despite the urgency of the situation. Nine years was too old to be carried, probably. Then again, he was too sleepy to care. And there was something comforting about not having to be in charge of his own body when the urge to remain asleep was this powerful.

Together, father and son bounded down the flight of stairs leading from the second-story bedrooms to the front door. A severe wind slapped the half of his face not pressed against his dad when they dashed outside. He turned away from it, glimpsing his mother, Sandra, running ahead of them as he did.

The gale whipped at her, peeling her nightgown away from her shins as she moved. Alongside, Jeremy ran like the devil was after him. He towed his homemade Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man pillow by one fluffy arm. It had been a birthday gift cut and sewn by his mom before Tab could even remember. At twelve, Jeremy claimed to be too old for toys. Yet the Marshmallow Man remained his buddy. At bedtime, anyway. Tab silently vowed to remember this image and use it the next time Jeremy called him a name. His brother’s sleep-styled dark brown hair parted in a comb-over as he ran thanks to the force of the wind.

The four rounded the corner of the house when a brilliant bolt of bluish-white lightning struck the giant old walnut tree. Chopping it down had been on his dad’s weekly to-do list for years because of how sick it grew. Somehow, he never seemed to get around to it. If the electricity in the air had its way, he might be too late.

The accompanying clap of thunder arrived a short time after. The explosion startled Jeremy, who bumped into his mom, knocking her off her feet. In his attempt to recover, Tab’s brother slipped and fell into the mud himself. Dad stayed upright in spite of Mom bumping him on her way down but had to stumble backward a few paces to achieve it. Tab braced for impact, but his dad righted himself and set him down.

“Stay here,” he said, pressing Tab against the side of the house. He next scurried to his wife and eldest son, helping them regain their footing, making certain there were no injuries.

Another crack echoed through the air, followed by a sharp metallic thud. A new odor permeated the environment: burning wood. Tab associated this aroma most with winter months. In this late spring thunderstorm, the scent created an otherworldly sensation, a stark contrast to the events around them. Dad wouldn’t need to cut the tree down anymore. Creaking, swaying, and seconds later toppling, the beast crashed on its own. A thick, heavy branch now rested atop the door to the storm cellar.

“Fuck!”

“Tim!” his mom exclaimed. But at his dad. Not him. Everyone called him Tab because that’s what his initials spelled: Timothy Aaron Beard, Jr. TAB. At school, he was only “Tim” until new teachers grew accustomed to calling him by his nickname.

Jeremy once tried to grate on him by telling him “Tab” could be short for “Tabitha,” a girl’s moniker. His brother went by “Jeremy” most of the time, although Tab had spent much of his toddler and up years pronouncing it Jermy, skipping the second e. Germs were gross things that made people sick. Tab thought Jermy could be a good comeback insult. Technically. But it had become too familiar among the family to offend his brother now. He once tried nicknaming the older boy “Jab” on account of his middle name, Alan, also started with the letter A, but that didn’t stick.

Rain cascading off his head, Tab’s dad swiped at his eyes to clear his vision. “Sorry.” He motioned to Jeremy. “Come here. We can slide it far enough to get it off the door.”

Tab offered no assistance. There were lots of things around the farm he wanted to help with. Like changing the tractor’s tires or swinging the axe the way Dad does when he chops wood. Or stacking the hay bales in the barn loft. “When you’re older,” Dad would say. This seemed like one of those “when you’re older” times.

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Turning in that direction, he saw two tiny red dots of light glaring back at him from the darkness. Eyes. Animal eyes. Some animals’ eyes glowed in the dark when they lurked on the sides of roads at night. When Dad’s headlights struck them right. Cats and opossums and deer all had glowing eyes. He remembered seeing green ones. They used to scare him, but they were only wild creatures camouflaging themselves away from the noise and lights of passing cars. That’s what Mom and Dad said.

An icy sliver of panic pierced his heart. Alfie! he thought. Oh no! Alfie!

Tab surveyed from a safe distance as his parents and brother, still in their nightclothes, wrestled with the unwieldy limb of the walnut tree. The family’s orange tabby cat, who Jeremy named Alfie in honor of Batman’s butler Alfred, had wandered up to the house a year before as a feral kitten. Tab had not objected to the name because Batman was the only thing he and his brother enjoyed together. Soon after, the cat adopted the Beards as his own. Now he could not be found.

“Alfie! Alfie, where are you?” He swiveled his head in every direction and settled again on the pair of red eyes at the edge of the lawn. They had not moved.

It has to be him, he thought. The red must be a trick of the light. He ran out with us and got scared by the lightning and thunder. He’s hiding in the woods. That’s all.

“Alfie!” he mimicked the singsong voice his mom used to call the family to dinner every night. “Alfie! Psh psh psh! C’mere, boy! C’mon!”

The eyes crouched lower to the ground, the way Alfie did when he prepared to launch attacks on unsuspecting toys that contained jingle bells. Or human toes.

“It is him!” Tab leaned forward, adopting his own crouch. The ground water soaked through his pajama pants and dampened his right knee. He bet he’d gotten them muddy, too, but chose not to care. Like Gramma always said, it would all come out in the wash. They couldn’t allow the cat to stay outdoors all night in the storm.

“Psh psh psh.” Tab stretched his right hand out and rubbed the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger together as further incentive for the beast to approach. He’d seen the tactic work when his dad and mom used it. He had no idea why. Dumb cat must have thought they had food. Whatever lay in the woods did not buy it.

For one anxious second, he thought he’d scared Alfie away. The twin dots of reflected light disappeared beyond the curtain of rain falling between him and them. Then they were there again, revealed by the branches of a small tree returned to its resting state after a fresh gust of high wind. Alfie had not moved.

Guess I’m gonna have to go get him.

He stole a glance at the rest of the family. They’d shoved the gigantic walnut limb most of the way off the cellar door. Not enough to swing it open. Only his brother’s Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man, propped against the side of the house and near a mud puddle so Jeremy could help move the limb, had eyes on him. He could grab the cat and race back to the cellar before anyone knew. Mud sucked at his bare feet, lapping at them as if the earth wanted to swallow him whole. He hated the sensation. Rescuing the cat would be a welcome distraction.

Inching forward, careful to not frighten Alfie, Tab fought the urgency to pry himself free of the ground so he could secure the cat in his arms. The poor beast stood closer to the ground than him. If the rain and mud were going to drown anyone, it would be Alfie first. Halfway to the edge of the yard, where the tree line began, the eyes disappeared again. Tab stopped dead, terrified the cat had run off. Soon enough, they reappeared, closer to him than before.

He sighed. Stay still!

A menacing growl emerged from the maelstrom. Angry. Threatening. Tab’s knees gave when its vibrations traveled through his ears and down his spine. The creature in the woods was not Alfie, and was not friendly. Before the little boy’s brain could command his legs to flee, it was upon him.

Small branches obscuring the thing rustled and moved apart. The creature dashed from the woods on limbs made from springs. It closed more than half the distance to Tab in one ferocious leap. Trails of foaming saliva dripped from bared fangs. Canid lips peeled back to reveal blackened gums stacked with yellow rows of pointed teeth. A pale red tongue lolled from the left side of its mouth. It was as if the organ had died. Black fur hid the rest of the creature, save for the pink inside the bat-like ears at its temples.

The thing reared on its hind legs. In the next second, it transformed into something resembling a man, or a woman, with a mane of hair flowing over its entire body. A ferocious wolf’s head capped these features, too big for the frame it sat atop. Triple-knuckled fingers dangled from the ends of extended hands. Crescent-shaped yellow-gray claws adorned each digit. Its human-like shoulders were broad, meaty, and muscular. As it stretched and straightened itself in the beams of the floodlights, Tab glimpsed pink rippling flesh in its armpits. The creature howled a lonesome, broken note that hung long in the air.

Tab’s paralysis broke. He backpedaled, incapable of tearing his gaze away. Matching his backward steps with forward ones, the creature closed in with alarming strides. It towered over him. He froze, his terror-struck mind unable to process the scene. A strand of mucous snapped off the creature’s lower lip, oozing onto the boy’s upturned forehead. The glob ran down his left temple and lodged there, dammed by Tab’s curly blond “rock star hair.” His dad’s description. Something sizzled in his left ear. A searing sensation accompanied it. Tab clapped his hand to it, trying in vain to massage it away. Two fingers smeared the goop on his temple. It was thick and gross and...burning? The tips of his fingers felt like they were on fire. Without thinking, he stuffed them in his mouth, then immediately pulled them free and spat toward the creature. Now his tongue and the back of his throat felt hot and sore as well.

Thunderheads opened, dropping a fresh deluge of fat raindrops akin to the force from the end of a garden hose when you press your thumb against it. Only, it poured everywhere. The creature in front of Tab yowled in agony and, he would swear, began to melt right before his eyes. Its snout drooped and ran from its skull like candle wax. Its gleaming red eyes went dark and caved into their sockets. Fur molted from its withering shoulders and fell to the ground in great heaping clumps.

By the time his dad’s rough hand snatched Tab’s left one, the creature had disappeared into the orangey black muck of Tennessee mud and clay. After a few thudding sprints—with Tab struggling both to remain upright and keep up this father’s pace over the soft ground—the family huddled inside the storm cellar as the heaviest of the night’s tempest thundered and crackled in the sky. It hammered nonstop at the steel cellar door over their heads.

Tim deposited his son alongside the boy’s mother on the cellar floor, then strode back up the stairs long enough to latch the door. He knelt in front of his young namesake after, eyeing him in earnest.

“What have we told you about wandering off?” he asked, his voice firm but not unkind. “We heard you scream and thought something had happened to you.”

“I—I didn’t scream,” Tab said. His voice sounded small and trembling to his own ears.

His dad smirked. “Well, somebody screamed. Sounded like someone was sawing your leg off.” He glanced at their mother. “Mom here thought there was another man in the storm with us. You howled like a full-grown man.”

“I didn’t howl,” Tab said, stronger this time.

His dad scoffed. “Okay. Whatever. The point is when I tell you stay somewhere, you stay. We’re all safe in the storm cellar now, so it’s fine. But in the future, I expect you to do what I tell you. Especially in an emergency, and this is an emergency. Got it?”

Tab stared at his feet. “Got it.” He thought a moment and added, “Dad? Are there wolves in these woods?”

His father eyed him, confused. “Wolves? More likely to be coyotes. I don’t think we need to worry about wolf attacks tonight, though. Any wild dogs are gonna hunker down in their dens, same as you and me.”

“Baby Tabitha is afraid of the Big Bad Wolf!” Jeremy said from beside their mother. His almond eyes gleamed with big brother malice. Tab’s mom elbowed him sharply in the ribs. “Ow!”

“Mind your business, kiddo,” she said.

Jeremy returned to kneading smudges of dirty rainwater off the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man with his thumbs. Tab ignored him. He’d wanted to say something about the Marshmallow Man doll but couldn’t seem to think of it fast enough. Besides, Gramma always said that ignoring a monster was the best way to make it slink away on its own. It was never easy, though.

“It’s just that I saw one. A big one. I thought it was Alfie hiding in the woods. But it walked out and stood up on its back legs. I got some of its spit on me. Then the rain came and melted the wolf away.”

Jeremy guffawed. “Oh, wow! Are you sure you’re not still asleep and having a nightmare?”

“Quiet!” Tab’s mom said.

Tab glared at his brother. “I’m sure. The place he spit on me hurts, too. It stings.” He turned his head so his dad could take in his left temple, indicating the spot with his finger. An angry red lump had arisen there. Tab pressed it by accident, wincing at the sting of his own touch.

“It hurts to touch it?” his mom asked.

“Yeah.”

His dad scratched his chin and examined the bump but did not poke at it himself. “It’s a big old pimple. That’s all. The kind we used to grow when we were teenagers. Could be a mosquito bite or something, I guess. ‘Tis the season for those things. Does it itch?”

Tab shook his head. “No. It burns and hurts.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s anything we need to worry about tonight. We’ll put something on it after the storm passes. I’m sure it’s a pimple or a bug bite.”

“He’s a little young for acne, Tim,” the boy’s mother said. She sounded exasperated, the way she sometimes did when she’d had a long day and the boys were “getting on her last nerve.”

Tim nodded. “I know, Sandra,” he said through teeth clamped tight together. Tab recognized that tone and expression. It set his stomach to knots. Mom had disagreed with him in front of their sons, an aggravation all–too familiar to the family unit. He didn’t say so. Not this time. But he had before. Although Tab thought his mom should be allowed to speak her mind, he was also afraid of the humiliated rage he saw behind his father’s eyes whenever she did. He wished his mom wouldn’t try to talk to his dad when he was in those moods.

Sandra Beard’s hair, which other than its length was a match for Jeremy’s, hung limp and wet on her head and hid her eyes from her youngest son. He recognized the shape of her mouth, though. She was either worried or angry. Or both. She and Jeremy looked almost the same when they were angry, and Jeremy was always angry. A woman of slight build, the two of them seated together were like twins more than mother and son.

Tab didn’t think he favored either parent. His dad had a round, friendly face and a brawny build. Tab’s Gramma and Grampa always said each parent had their own child: Jeremy matched his mom, and the younger boy resembled his dad. Sometimes he saw the resemblance, but not right now. Right now, his dad’s anger created pinchy lines along the sides of his nose. His warm blue eyes narrowed to ice-cold slits.

Jeremy had been right, he supposed. Mom and Dad were fighting again. Tab had not wanted to believe his brother because he lied. A lot. Once, he’d scared Tab half to death with nasty tales about their house. He said he’d heard the hauntings by noisy ghosts who banged on walls when everyone but Jeremy was asleep. The same night, Jeremy had knocked on the adjoining wall between their rooms. Tab bolted screaming from the bed, terrifying both his parents. He’d also scared the cat. Poor Alfie found cover between the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. Hours passed before the fraidy feline dared show himself again.

The cat. Alfie. Oh, no! Alfie!

He searched the cellar but saw no sign of the cat. “Alfie!” He startled both his parents. “Where is Alfie?”

Tim placed a hand on his son’s shoulder, no doubt intending for it to be comforting. Tab fought the urge to shrink away.

“I’m sure he’s okay,” Tim said. “We’ll only be down here until the storm passes. He’ll find a place to hide.”

“But he’s all by himself! He’s all by himself and if a tornado comes, he’ll be hurt! We need to go get him!”

Tab rose and padded toward the cellar stairs. His father tucked a finger into his shirt collar as he brushed past and stayed him. His voice deepened. He’d pushed Dad too far, and this would be his last warning. “Son, I told you we can’t go back out right now. Alfie’s smart. He’ll go in the bathroom and hide. That’s where people go in these storms if they don’t have a cellar like we do.”

“But he’s not smart! He’s an orange cat and—”

“Sit. Down,” Tim growled at him, pointing a thick, cracked finger at a long wooden bench on which the rest of the family had settled. “Or I’ll make you.”

He tugged Tab backward, guiding him back to his seat. The boy crumpled. A tear rolled down his left cheek. He shoved his elbows into his knees and sobbed. His dad’s reassurances were not. Impatience inundated the older man’s voice. How did he know where Alfie hid? For all they knew, the cat had followed them outside unseen. Alfie might have been devoured by a dog like the one Tab encountered. Or maybe he was lurking in the rain, pawing at the door, trying to find his way into the locked cellar. Tab sobbed but shut his mouth when he spied his dad’s third-warning glare.

“Let’s all just be patient,” Tim said, the scowl on his face betraying his own lack of it. “This will all be over before morning.”

Tim plucked his iPhone from his back pocket and launched the iTunes app. He scrolled for a moment, then tapped. An old Eagles song, “The Last Resort,” started playing. It was from their Hotel California album, Tab recalled. He only knew this because it was one of his father’s favorites. Dad played it endlessly on car trips, short or long. Mom had once pointed out that Dad seemed to play it mostly when he was stressed. Tab enjoyed the song, too, although he couldn’t make heads or tails of the meaning of the lyrics. When he asked, his dad dismissed his questions with something like “it was a different time.”

“I hate that song,” a gruff voice with a gravelly edge announced from the darkness along the opposite wall of the cellar. “Your cat is fine, though. Alfie is hiding under the couch in the living room.”

Tab trained his eyes in the direction from which the voice had come. Leaning against the cinder block sat a mammoth man wearing beige coveralls and a red baseball cap. From beneath the cap’s band, strands of yellow-blond hair hung in short waves. Enormous chapped hands stained with oil or black dirt rested on his knees. His cheeks, chin, and neck sported at least a day’s worth of salty stubble. The shadow of the cap’s visor obscured his eyes. He grinned. It was a broad smirk that flared his nostrils and crinkled most of the musculature of his lower face.

None of the rest of the family appeared to be aware of the new voice in the room.

“Dad?” Tab said, tugging on his father’s sleeve with one hand and pointing at the stranger with the other. “Who is that man?”