Horror and Thriller Fiction posted November 12, 2024 |
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A man uses his young werewolf son to stop a serial killer
Only A Little Pinch
by Dr. Jason Gorbel
![](https://www.fanstory.com/usr/1011871/wolf-howling-moon-stockcake_(1).jpg)
The dim glow of the GPS cast an eerie light over Ralphie’s sleeping face. Powdered sugar dusted his lips—a childish innocence that felt fragile, wrong somehow, under the cold light of the dashboard.
The SUV jerked over rough patches and rattled with each bump, the rural road empty under a rising, swollen moon. It didn’t disturb Ralphie. When combined, two elements triggered his transformation, and a full moon was only one of them. The pain was yet to be administered.
Our quarry haunted these woods like a ghost, slipping through the trees as though he belonged to them. The media called him the Deep Woods Killer or DWK, but I didn’t need a name to know he was a shadow waiting to strike. He was so adept at covering his tracks that the authorities had all but given up on Kayla, the little girl he’d kidnapped and my son’s classmate. The dogs employed in the search for DWK couldn’t pick up his trail and quickly lost Kayla’s.
But soon Ralphie’s sense of smell would be an unnatural thing, attuned to the scent of blood and fear.
Shortly after midnight, we pulled into an unpaved parking lot. Ralphie held the bright LED flashlight for me as I lifted my mountain bike from the trunk. The dark muted its metallic red sheen into the maroon of dried blood. I leaned it against the bumper, then checked that its all-terrain tires were fully inflated.
I took off my KeepYouFit and strapped it tightly to Ralphie’s wrist.
He winced.
“Sorry,” I said. “I have to make sure it stays on when you change.”
“I know,” Ralphie replied in a small voice. His scrunched face and futile effort to get his pinky under the band weighed on my heart.
I handed him the flashlight and asked him to help by keeping the light focused on me. It distracted him from his discomfort, and his eyes widened when I brought out the tranquilizer gun. “It shoots a dart that will put the bad guy to sleep,” I said.
I was a schoolteacher, not a soldier or a cop. I couldn’t even beat Ralphie at Call of Duty. If not for his rare genetic disorder—if lycanthropy counted as such—I’d have no business going into the woods tonight. Fortunately, this gun was air-powered and easy to use. It was already loaded with a dart. I felt the hard case with four more jammed into my windbreaker pocket.
I put my arm through the gun’s strap, and it rested comfortably on my shoulder.
Ralphie handed me the flashlight, then took off his socks and Nikes and stripped to his boxers. He tossed me his clothes, which I put in my backpack.
He crossed his arms over his chest, shivering in the crisp October air.
“I need a second, Ralphie. Can you check the head of the trail for any clues, something the cops might’ve missed?” I pointed behind him with the flashlight beam to where the police had erected a Trail Closed sign. Beyond it, the light touched gnarled trees and thick underbrush. Everything around us felt too quiet, as though the forest itself held its breath.
“Uh, o-okay,” he replied through chattering teeth and approached the trail head.
With a trembling hand, I slipped the yellow Taser from under the blanket, my stomach knotting at the thought of what I was about to do to my own son. But I had no choice.
His energy sapped by the cold, Ralphie had only taken a few steps when he stopped and turned. “Dad—”
“Sorry, Ralphie.” I fired. Two wires ending in tiny barbs pierced the skin of his spare frame. The Taser crackled, filling the air with a sharp, electric scent. Ralphie’s body seized, his face twisted in agony—a look I’d never forget, no matter how hard I tried.
My eardrums ached from his high-pitched shriek, and he fell face first into the gravel.
I wiped the wet from my eyes.
Ralphie’s pitiful sobs ended abruptly. My pounding heart seemed to thunder in the following silence until Ralphie lifted his head, and a guttural growl escaped his distended jaw. Canines, long, pearly white, and sharp as spikes, sprouted from blood red gums.
It took all my will not to turn away when his eyes, glowing an eerie yellow, met mine. The thoughtful human in Ralphie wouldn’t remain much longer.
Bones cracked like breaking branches, skin stretched and tore, reshaping him into something neither human nor beast. Each snap and tear echoed through the stillness, a hideous symphony of transformation. The Taser darts popped out of his body, the shape of which was neither that of a boy or a wolf but a malformed abomination in between. He crouched, lifting his torso on humanoid arms that extended into paw-hands. A curved, black nail protruded from each stubby-finger. The KeepYouFit clung to his furry left wrist.
Bile rose in my throat, but I tucked away the Taser, determined. Approaching Ralphie, I pulled Kayla’s crude drawing of him from my jeans’ pocket and unfolded it. Kayla had recently passed it to him in class. She was his crush, so he’d saved it. Now, I hoped it would save her.
On all fours and almost fully wolf, Ralphie came to me.
The sheet of loose-leaf shook in my hand as I held it to his nose.
His black snout briefly sniffed the paper for her scent, then he spun around and bounded into the woods.
I pulled out my phone and jammed it into the bike’s handlebar-mounted holder. The flashlight attached to the mount beside it and became a headlight. In my haste, I’d let a breeze carry away Kayla’s drawing, but if my plan worked, she’d live to make Ralphie another one.
The Find My KeepYouFit creators never could’ve imagined their app to locate a lost device being used to track a werewolf. It did the job, however. I pedaled onto the trail with all the strength my legs could muster, keeping the display’s blue arrow, me, pointed at the blinking green dot, the KeepYouFit. The dot separated further from the arrow. I veered off the trail and into the brush to keep the dot center-screen, navigating the dense trees through a series of sharp turns.
The bike had been designed for the roughest terrain. I couldn’t say the same about my middle-aged self. Quickly breathing became a chore and the ache in my legs grew near unbearable. Evergreen branches whipped my face, and a tall thorn bush drew blood from my cheek. The seat’s padding did little to spare my spine the constant jolts.
A strange mixture of relief and dread tangled in my chest when the blinking dot halted. Ralphie wasn’t in sight. Had the KeepYouFit fallen off him, or had he found Kayla? If the latter, was she still alive?
As though in reply, a young girl’s high-pitched shrieking echoed through the trees. I followed the sound over a hillcrest and picked up speed on the downward slope. The triangle rapidly closed in on the dot. I looked up from the display to see Kayla, closing the yards between us in a fear-fueled run.
Squeezing the brakes wasn’t enough to stop my momentum. To avoid hitting her, I turned the wheel hard left. Splayed legs didn’t keep me and my skidding bike from tipping over. I hit the dirt hard, and pain shot through my back where the butt of the tranquilizer gun dug in. Curses flowed from my lips.
Kayla stood over me, clothes in tatters and face barely recognizable under tear-streaked grime. Her dirty, matted hair hung over her panicked eyes. “Wolf,” she shouted between gasps for air.
Everything hurt, but adrenaline got me to my feet. “Are you all right?” I asked, once I’d caught my breath.
“Wolf,” she repeated as if it was the only word she knew.
I detached the flashlight from my bike and examined Kayla. She seemed little more than scraped and bruised, thank God, and I took her sprint as a sign she hadn’t been badly hurt.
My gun was intact and still loaded. After slinging it back over my shoulder, I wiped dirt off the case of darts and returned it to my windbreaker pocket.
“Stay here,” I said.
Kayla dropped to the ground, hugging her knees to her chest.
“You’ll be okay.” I was promising myself as much as her. “I’m coming back.”
A spiderweb of cracks stretched across my phone’s screen, but it still lit up. I didn’t walk far before the triangle touched the dot, and faint growls reached my ears.
Ralphie.
I froze. Without the sound of twigs crunching beneath my feet, I thought I detected a man grunting in fear. A sweep of my flashlight beam showed my path blocked by large rocks and dense brush, but the sounds came from ahead.
I pocketed the phone and directed my light into a break in the growth. The beam touched upon a cave mouth then was swallowed by the foreboding blackness.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed away the branches concealing the entrance, crouched down, and ventured inside. Body odor assaulted my nose. Was that from DWK or me? Despite the chill, sweat soaked my skin.
The ceiling lowered as I progressed, eventually forcing me to crawl. The sounds of a struggle accompanied Ralphie’s growling and the man’s groans. I couldn’t have been but a few yards away from them.
The space grew until I could stand again and opened into a large cavern, well-lit by a tipped-over lantern. The stench of copper clung to the dank air, thick and choking, as if the walls themselves were bleeding.
Dropping my flashlight, I employed both hands to aim my gun at DWK as he lay on the floor with Ralphie, a grey wolf with mouth and forepaws painted crimson, on his chest. The man looked like he did in the media sketches: lanky, with long, unkempt hair and a bird’s-nest tangle of beard.
DWK held Ralphie at bay by having shoved his bloody-sleeved forearm deep into Ralphie’s jaw, stopping the full force of his bite. Not before Ralphie had gotten in an attack, however. Tears the width of Ralphie’s nails stretched down DWK’s camo jacket, from chest to belly, soaking it red.
Unaware of my presence, DWK’s free hand grabbed the hilt of a belt-sheathed hunting knife. Ralphie didn’t have to be hit with a silver bullet to die. That was just Hollywood BS. He was far from invulnerable.
I tried to keep DWK squarely in the gunsight’s crosshairs, but my hands trembled too badly. If I missed and tranquilized Ralphie instead, we were both dead. DWK wasn’t going to idly standby while I reloaded.
I mumbled a prayer and pulled the trigger. The gun whooshed, and its dart stuck in DWK’s neck. His head turned, and his shocked eyes met mine before they closed. The knife fell to the floor. He was motionless save for the steady rise and fall of his chest.
Good. I didn’t want to kill a human being. Even if DWK didn’t act like one.
“Great job, Ralphie…”
But his eyes held a malice that didn’t belong to my son. Ralphie wasn’t home.
He released DWK’s arm and stepped off him, approaching me as a pack of one, with slow, deliberate movements. His snarl revealed dagger-sharp teeth, dripping saliva and red with DWK’s blood.
I’d imagined this scenario, planned to sooth Ralphie with a soft voice while I reloaded. But the gun slipped from my sweaty palms, and no sound escaped my desert-dry mouth.
Ralphie pounced. His nails like razors shredded my jeans and the flesh beneath. I was on my back before the pain could register, but his jaws closing on my right calf tore a bellow of agony from my throat. Trying to kick my leg free only magnified the pain. I jammed my left boot into Ralphie’s snout to no avail.
I was going to die, but I pitied Ralphie more than myself. He’d transform back and find himself orphaned by his own actions. My God, what would that do to him? And who would take care of him if I wasn’t around? Who on Earth could? His mother disappeared after he was born, leaving hospital staff mauled to death, and the police covering it up. I learned I’d be a single parent at the same moment I learned that there was such a thing as werewolves.
Before losing consciousness to pain and blood loss, I remembered the darts in my windbreaker pocket. I reached for the case and fumbled to open it. The darts spilled out. I grabbed one and sat up just enough so my outstretched arm could jam the dart into Ralphie’s foreleg.
The point sunk in, but nothing happened.
The tranquilizer was formulated to bring down a 300-pound deer! Ralphie weighed nowhere near as much, but God only knew what kind of resistance a werewolf had.
I groped for a second dart and jabbed it into Ralphie’s throat.
He whimpered, and the pressure on my leg abated. His dulling eyes half closed, and he came to rest on his side. Within moments, he was asleep.
I slid away. Sitting up made me dizzy and nauseous. The cavern stopped spinning in time for me to see Ralphie transform back into a boy. Dawn was still a long way off, so the tranquilizers must’ve triggered it. Something I hoped would happen but couldn’t know.
His body jerked violently. His bones snapped, ridges rising and falling beneath his stretching, balding skin, but he remained unconscious. The process was horrid yet somehow mesmerizing, and it was no small effort to look away.
I shed my windbreaker and wrapped it around my wound, tightening it enough to stem the bleeding. The pain dulled...or I’d simply grown accustomed to it.
I leaned over Ralphie. The two empty darts in his flesh left raised, little wounds when I plucked them out. I’d tell him to explain them away along with the Taser marks as bug bites he’d scratched at. I put the darts back in the case. I switched the KeepYouFit from his wrist to mine. Lastly, I retrieved his clothes from my backpack and dressed him.
I struggled to my feet, in tears from the pain by the time I was standing. There was no recourse but to carry Ralphie’s limp body where the tunnel allowed and drag him behind me at the low-ceiling point.
Once in the open, I collapsed with him on my back. We weren’t making it to the SUV. My phone showed two precious bars, and I called 911.
***
Kayla’s parents could’ve flooded the hospital with their tears of joy upon reuniting with her.
As I was treated, the emergency room staff dressed Ralphie in a gown and wheeled him into another area for examination. He slept soundly through it all.
My leg suffered no permanent damage. Crutches would keep me mobile until I healed. I refused to stay the night for observation or receive rabies shots, however, which alarmed the doctor. Unable to force treatment on me, he could only shake his head.
The police had waited until the ambulance got me to the hospital before questioning me at length. They weren’t concerned about my practice of hunting deer at night with a tranquilizer gun. That wasn’t illegal or unheard of, nor was having your son with you. Riding a bike into the woods was not what deer hunters did, so I didn’t mention mine. The police either didn’t find the bike or found it but assigned it no importance.
Dumb luck, I told them, brought me near DWK’s cave, and Kayla’s cries led me inside. After all, how could I have possibly tracked him down when all those seasoned searchers and their sniffer dogs couldn’t?
I described Ralphie and I’s scuffle with DWK and his big dog, the one that bit me. That explained my wounds as well as Ralphie’s various cuts and bruises. The air was heavy with unspoken skepticism, but they agreed that the important thing was that I managed to get a tranquilizer dart in DWK before he could harm anyone.
They couldn’t wake Ralphie to question him. Because he was obviously exhausted by the emotional trauma, I told them, implying that teaching made me an expert in child psychology.
DWK, now in custody, was still out cold when they found him and apparently mauled by his own dog. They had yet to find the dog, but I had no doubt my version of events would prove more credible than a psychopath’s story of a wolf. Should any mention of one come from Kayla… Well, she suffered terrible trauma. There were simply no wolves native to that area.
The meds they gave me dulled my pain but not my growing apprehension as I waited for Ralphie. Twenty minutes passed, then forty, then an hour. They were taking too long with him, even by emergency room standards. With the aid of crutches, I made my way over to the nurse’s station where a smiling young woman in a lab coat overheard me ask about him.
“Are you the child’s father?” she asked.
“Yes. Where is he? What’s taking so long?”
“Ralphie’s right down the hall.” She gestured to her left. “I’m Doctor Singh, the attending pediatric physician. I had great difficulty waking your son, so I ordered bloodwork done on him.”
“Bloodwork?” I snapped. “He’s just scraped up.”
The doctor’s smile melted away. “You signed the consent form for your son’s treatment, sir. That includes any tests I deem necessary.”
I ran my hand through my graying hair and pulled it back, helping myself to nod while forcing my lips to stretch into a civil smile.
“Ralphie somehow ingested a benzodiazepine sedative,” she said matter-of-factly. “Do you keep Valium or some other tranquilizing medication in your home?”
I replied with a curt, “No,” not having planned on the hospital doing anything to Ralphie beyond bandaging him up. I rescued a little girl from the Deep Woods Killer only to have to prove I’m a good parent?
The doctor attempted to ask me further questions as I hobbled away but, thankfully, didn’t pursue me.
I came to an area sectioned off by curtains. From across the room, I heard an older woman’s voice coo, “You’ll only feel a little pinch.” Ralphie’s protests followed. I headed in that direction.
A chill shot through me as Ralphie’s words twisted into something raw and primal—a howl that pierced my soul. Shouting his name, I ditched the crutches and limped to him as fast as I could. Panting and in pain, I pushed back the curtain to find Ralphie in a bed, eyes screwed shut with tears leaking out their corners. A thick needle sunk into his wrist attached tubing to an IV.”
“Sorry to cause the child so much discomfort.” The nurse, a gray, grandmotherly type, sounded truly remorseful. “I had trouble finding a vein and needed to stick him a few times.”
“Stick him a few times?” I repeated, my blood turning cold.
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