Short Story - Sworn to Secrecy (Part 1)
The helicopters fly high in the nighttime sky filled with a starlight canopy, the sirens explode with fury. Billy is a bit confused as his bare feet sprint from tree to tree avoiding the spotlights from overhead.
The breeze from the river sent a chill down his spine, with no jacket or shirt to keep him warm. Off in the distance, Billy hears the sound of dogs barking, WOOF, WOOF, WOOF!!! The hound dogs signal they have found a scent, informing their master.
Billy’s parents divorced when he was nine, his mom turned to selling all kinds of artifacts and goods inside a small farmers market down the road from their home to make ends meet. He noticed that she would leave at all hours of the night and return home as the sun rose. One night he stayed awake waiting for her to leave, once the front door shut, Billy jumped out of bed, fully clothed except for his shoes, he tiptoed downstairs not to wake his little brother, Jake, slipping on his boots, and closes the door behind him softly.
He stands at the stairs of the patio looking for any sign of his mom, and as he scans across the dark woody landscape. Billy sees a simmer of light directly in front of him. He jumps off the stairs and starts to shuffle, making sure his steps are light, trying not to make too much noise, and alerting his mother she is being followed.
Billy hop, skips, jumps, and quietly moves through the forest like a ninja of the night as he finds his mother, who is dancing around a fire with a group of women. Dressed in gold sparkly dresses and no shoes. He observes quietly from the tree-line edge in the shadows, he sees a woman with her hands to the sky and howling at the moon shining directly onto her leather brown skin.
The other women follow along and begin to howl throwing their hands to the sky as if they are asking for something. Billy tries to get a closer look, but steps on a branch that cracks, breaking the woman’s attention, he freezes. He then starts to morph like an octopus camouflaging himself into the landscape. The women all start to whisper and walk towards the tree line he is hiding in.
Billy notices one of the ladies has a silver lining around her gold dress that the other woman didn’t have. He remains frozen not moving a body part, he didn’t want to get caught, but that was not his destiny. The lady with the silver lining gets on all fours to sniff the ground, her nose combs over the moist earth floor, she pops up, with a concerned voice, “A boy is near,” scanning the forest.
Billy’s mom was the only one with children living at home, as the other woman's children were grown and no longer live with them. The woman gets closer to the tree line, and his heart starts to race going from sixty beats per minute to a hundred and fifty beats per minute in a few seconds, his palms start to sweat, and he starts to breathe heavier, trying to control his reactions. He stands up and shows himself to the group of ladies, his mom's eyes widen in surprise to see Billy standing before them.
The lady with the silver lining grabs hold of Billy’s wrist and violently pulls him toward her, “Who are you, my child?” Before he can speak, his mom claims him as hers. The lady in silver lining looks at his mother, with betrayed eyes, “You know that he now has to be sworn to never speak of this night again. He must never speak of what he saw.” Billy stutters, “I…I…I…won’t say anything, I…I…I didn’t see anything, I promise.”
Billy from that day forward never spoke about what he saw, and his mom never mentioned it either. As he got older, he realize that the woman he saw that night dancing around the fire and howling at the moon are werewolves. He found a journal that shared this secret in his mom's belongings after she left with no trace, no note for her boys; she vanished. He needed to know more, he knew that there was more to this story and he needed to find out.
Now hiding in the woods running away from the law with dogs chasing him, he looks around in the dark using the flashes of light to find a place to hide, to lay low for a bit, he starts to move again, further into the woods he goes, he finds a red brick cabin, smoke coming from the chimney. He darts to the front door, and kicks the door open, as he enters, the lady with the silver lining dress from his childhood sits quietly on the floor staring at the fire, with no sign of aging, still as young as she once was when he was a teenage being sworn to secrecy. She doesn’t move or look at him, and whispers, “I’ve been expecting you.”
