Adam's Turning

I'm really bad at story descriptions. Originally posted on DeviantArt forever ago.

Adam was seven when his sister was born.  He had been very excited and had gladly offered up the little crib in his room that he hadn’t used since he was four, covered in blue and green spaceships like the rest of his room, though they decided to reupholster the little mattress in pink stripes and painted the wooden frame white.  He was perfectly happy to give away a fourth of the old clothing at the bottom of his closet that he had outgrown many years ago.  He would have even given up his toys in their painted green and blue boxes, but his mother had told him he should keep his toys and anyway they could buy new ones for his new sister.  Before she was born he got to go with his mother to buy the new toys and other things she would need, and he even got to pick out a new spaceship lamp to put in his room.  He put in on his end table before helping his mother and father bring up the rest of the things they had bought.  He helped to put things away and after placing the white pillow on the pink mattress in the white crib he promised to himself to be the best big brother there ever was, to protect his little sister from as much as he could and to love her as much as his parents did, maybe even more because he would love her as a sister, and as a friend.

Adam was a big child.  Not chubby or muscular, not even that tall, simply big.  He had thick black hair that tended to stick out all over the place, this he got from his mother’s side of the family, and smiling dark eyes, almost black, with long lashes, this he got from his father’s side of the family.  He like to wear shorts and tee shirts and run around and play outdoors, sometimes with other people, usually alone.  They lived in a big house up on a hill where all the other big and expensive houses were.  His mother had come from a wealthy and influential family and she was on the city council and was looking to run for mayor soon, once the baby didn’t need her all the time.  His father was a police officer and for some reason stayed in the apartment over their garage.  Adam didn’t find out until later, when he was a teenager, why.  He liked the city he lived in.  It was very child friendly, not a sweeping cityscape, but small and compact, full of little houses with little grassy yards, a couple boarding houses, but no apartment buildings.  They had lots of junk yards to explore and a swampy area at the city limits that were fun to splash around in, though Adam’s mother didn’t like it when he did that without his rubber boots on.  You could bike almost anywhere in the city, though it might take almost an hour to get from one side to the other.  There weren’t many rules, they didn’t enforce a curfew as everyone tended to be home around eleven o’clock anyway.  The only rule that everyone had to follow, no matter what, the one rule that his mother and father sat him down and told him with very serious faces every month, was simple.  Never go outside during a full moon.  He didn’t like being outside after dark much anyway.

Adam was ten years old when his sister died.  It hadn’t come as a huge shock, she had been sick almost the entire time she was alive.  His mother had told him that the doctors said that something was wrong with her heart, and Adam decided then and there that she was too good, to kind and sweet and gentle and that her heart had been too big.  He decided that she was born an angel and everyone knows that angels can’t live in human bodies.  He never told this theory to his parents though.  They had changed since his sister’s death.  His father slept more and more in the apartment above the garage and he was even more short tempered than he had been before she was born.  Adam tried to stay out of his way.  His mother was always working, she almost never came home before ten o’ clock, except on full moons.  She was going to be the next mayor of the city, but Adam wasn’t looking forward to this.  He liked it when she was home.  So most days Adam spent with his nanny Hilda.  She was new.  The nanny from before, the one that they hired to take care of Adam’s sister as well, decided to leave when the hours she had to work went up.  And the one before that, the one who took care of Adam, was a man who was fired after a particularly nasty fight between Adam’s parents.  But he liked Hilda.  She was older than his mother, a little plump and soft, and would sing to him when she put him to bed, even though he was ten years old.  She also made delicious desserts and would sometimes let him try one before he had eaten his supper, but only if he promised to eat everything on his plate after.  He never had any trouble keeping that promise.  Some days Hilda was let off to go to the neighboring city to spend time with her daughter and sister.  On those days Adam’s father would come home a little early, the same time that Adam came home from school, and they would spend the day together.  Sometimes Adam loved those days, he and his father would play in the pool and he would help Adam with his homework, and they would order out food because neither of them could cook.  But most days, especially now that Adam’s angel sister was gone, it was awkward and intense and Adam’s father would only grunt or glare, or tell him he had done something wrong and sometimes would push him or pull him around if he wasn’t doing something right.  Adam took these criticisms to heart and tried to do better but he never could.

One day, it was in the fall, the air was still warm but crisp and the leaves had just started falling from the trees in the backyard of their big house, Hilda had to call to say she wouldn’t be able to come back home until the next day.  She wouldn’t be able to get their after dark and anyway her daughter wasn’t feel well, poor thing.  Adam’s mother had decided to come home early and she, Adam’s father, and Adam himself were alone in the big house.  They had a quiet dinner of macaroni and cheese.  Adam’s mother refused to order out, saying he was a growing boy and needed nutrients.  They ate in the kitchen and not in the formal dining room with its long table and eight chairs.  That room was saved for fundraising and dinner parties with the important people in the city.  Adam’s mother tried to start some conversation, asking Adam about how his school was going and if he liked his teacher.  School was going well, though not perfect as Adam had never really been an intellectual child, and his teacher, Mr. Frong, was okay, but Adam really liked Mrs. Baelif, who taught the other fourth grade class, better.  Mrs. Baelif sometimes watched Adam before he went home, if he missed the bus or had some more work to finish, or when he was waiting for his father to pick him up on the days they spent together.  Eventually they finished and his mother took the dishes to wash and Adam left to work on his homework in his room.

He didn’t know what started the argument.  It had started in the kitchen between his parents, and had escalated quickly into Adam-didn’t-know-what.  He was in the hallway between the stairs and kitchen when he heard.  He wished Hilda were back and that her daughter were feeling better.  Whenever his parents argued then, Hilda would take him upstairs and they would play like astronauts in his room.  He should have gone upstairs then, but something was holding him back in that hallway, listening without really listening to his parents as slowly the harsh words turned to yelling.  He wished they would stop yelling and try talking like they had before.  A dark thought crept into his head.  He wondered if Lily would have stayed if their parents had gotten on better.  But that was silly, Adam decided, their parents had never been better at working together than when Lily was born.  But it frustrated him that they didn’t even try to get along now.  He hated that.  Being a jovial child there wasn’t much that Adam hated at all.  But he hated that his father would always revert to yelling and that his mother would always rise and get defensive at the smallest things.  He hated that they would start arguing and stop caring who could hear them.  He hated that they didn’t care that they would wake him up in the middle of the night while they yelled at each other and that he would sit in bed, blanket around his shoulder and cry until Hilda came to comfort him because neither of his parents noticed, nor seemed to care that he was in the room across the hall.  He hated that his mother wouldn’t come home until after he was supposed to be in bed and that most nights she didn’t even bother to stop in and check on him anymore.  He hated that everything he did his father found fault with, and when he didn’t do something well enough his father would grab his arm until it bruised and tell him what was wrong with everything he had done.  He hated that his parents always seemed to blame each other for not being able to take care of Lily when it was nobody’s fault that her heart was too big.  These were the things he hated.

His father came storming out of the kitchen.  He spied Adam standing against the wall.  Angrily he took Adam by the arm, his fingers pinching into the skin of Adam’s upper arm.  He said something about the dirty dishes.  He shook his arm.

Adam pushed back.

He had thought too much about the things he hated.  Being a big child, Adam had pushed his father into the opposite wall.  His father stared at him in surprise.  Adam could feel hot angry tears in his eyes as his mother ran out to the hallway to see what had happened.  He wished he could have said something then, something impactful, something that would have made his parents see how much he hated their fighting and make them stop.  But he was lost in the child-like horror of what he had did.  He had pushed his father.  And he was so angry.  Instead of a thoughtful one-liner, Adam simply glared at both of his parents with fear and anger, turned, and ran out the front door and into the dark night.

 

 

Mark and Terri watched helplessly as their son ran out into the night.  Mark was against the wall stunned at what had transpired and didn’t even come out of his daze when Terri suddenly shrieked.

“We have to go after him.” She said frantically.

Mark turned and frowned at his wife.  “He’ll come back.” He said stiffly.  He wasn’t sure if he was more surprised or angry with what had just transpired.

“The moon!” Terri moaned pointing out the window.  Mark looked and felt himself go as pale as the perfectly round orb hovering in the sky.  He didn’t move.  He couldn’t.  Terri pushed past him and took a coat out of the closet, not paying attention to what it was.  She pulled a flashlight out, a large industrial one, and tested the batteries.  She looked at Mark who was still staring out the window.  “I am not losing my son too.” She said firmly and darkly, her voice thick with a mother’s fear.  Shaking out of his daze Mark quickly followed her out into the dark. 

They weren’t supposed to be out at night, not with the full moon shining above.  It was dangerous.  But Terri didn’t seem to care, or even remember that it was just as dangerous for adults as it was for children as she beamed the flashlight ahead of them, illuminating everything in their path.  She yelled for their son in the night, screaming his name out.  She was shining the flashlight sporadically, first here, then there, never lingering long enough in one place to possibly track the ten year old boy.  Mark took the flashlight from her and made calmer and larger sweeps with the light, looking for any trace of the boy.  Terri continued calling out for him.  Mark thought she should have been quiet.  It would do no good for them to make so much noise. That was simply asking for the trouble to find them.  Then what would the child do, if his parents were in trouble first.  Mark opened his mouth and called out too.

 

After leaving the house Adam had made straight for the trees that covered the side of the hill that they lived atop.  He pushed through the tree line and entered a wooded area.  He had run around this foresty hill many times in the daylight, and he felt confident that he could find his way around in the dark as well.  He was running.  He didn’t know if his parents would come after him or not, but he decided then and there that he did not want to be found.  He would come home the next day when Hilda was back and she would hold him and tell him everything would be okay.  Maybe she would even take him to see her daughter and sister next time she had a day off.  Slipping over fallen leaves and branches Adam thought only about living with Hilda and how nice it would be.  Hilda loved him.  He thought he heard a branch snap behind him and, thinking his parents were catching up, he sped up through the night.  Running at almost top speed in the dark Adam didn’t see the branch that was sticking out of the ground.  His sneakered foot caught and even while he tried to steady himself he felt his other foot slipping on the leaves and mud on the ground.  He fell rather heavily on the slope.  His fingers and hands tried to find a grip on the ground but everything was too slippery and damp for him to keep hold of for long.  He pulled bunches of leaves off the ground as he continued slipping and sliding down the sharp incline of the hill.  His mouth was open in shock and a clump of dirt, kicked up by his scrambling feet, hit him in the face and he could taste the grainy mud on his lips.  It felt as though he were falling forever, though it could have only been a minute or so when he finally slowed down at the bottom of the hill.

Adam lay on his back, now covered in dirt.  His legs were scrapped and his shorts were torn.  One of his shoes had fallen off and was lying beside him in the mud.  His arms were wet with mud and several trickles of blood where he had been scraped.  He was breathing heavily.  Above him the skeletal outlines of the trees waved menacingly.  It was only then that Adam noticed the full moon above his head.  His breath caught in his chest.  His heart began to beat loudly.  He felt paralyzed, frozen with fear.  A rustling sound from his right caused him to sit up straight.  He was shaking.  Numbly Adam pulled his sneaker out from the mud beside him and his frozen finger pulled at the shoe laces.  He put the shoe on his foot and tied it up again.  Slowly he stood.  He was afraid, more afraid than he had ever been at home, more afraid than his mother or father had ever made him feel.  He wished he had stayed inside.  That he had run up to his room instead of outside.  That he hadn’t pushed his father.  That his father hadn’t ever grabbed him.  That he hadn’t listened to the argument at all.  That Hilda hadn’t left him.  That Lily was still with him.  Adam began to cry.  Everything was wrong.  He wondered if his parents were even looking for him.  He had been stupid to just run out, he had known earlier that it was a full moon, his mother was home early and she never came home early otherwise.  They had talked about it in class today, and Hilda had even reminded him the day before.  Tears rolled down his face and his chest felt tight with fear.

A snap of a branch.

Adam opened his mouth as if to scream but managed to bite it back.  Nothing jumped out of the darkness at him.  Shakily he stood.  There was no point in remaining here, that would only make him easier to hide.  He ran a muddy and bloody arm across his face, wiping away as many tears and as much snot as he could.  He began to walk.  He didn’t know where.  He was too afraid to turn around, the only option seeming to be in front of him.  Maybe, he thought tentatively, maybe he could find Mrs. Baelif’s house.  He liked Mrs. Baelif with her short cut dark hair and clear blue eyes.  She would watch him after school and sometimes he would play with her daughter while they waited for his father.  He liked her daughter too.  Grady was a couple years younger than Adam but was still fun to play his.  He liked her light brown hair and sparkling eyes, and how she was so smart and listened to him and like to play the same games as he did.  Sometimes they would play with her older brothers.  Michael was the oldest, he was a teenager now in the high school, but he was always fun and wanted to play all the games that Adam and Grady liked.  Karson was older than Grady and Adam, but younger than Michael.  He sometimes played with them, but he usually liked reading more.  Adam had even met Mr. Baelif once.  He had had long hair like a girl, tied in a ponytail, patchy facial hair, and more dirt under his fingernails than even Adam had ever seen.  He had told Adam once that he got to play in dirt for his job.  Adam was jealous.  He wanted to play in dirt for a job too.

He was sure that the Baelif’s would let him stay the night.  He thought of their home.  He had never been inside, but Mrs. Baelif had given him the address and even drawn him a map once, saying that if he ever wanted or needed somewhere else to stay they would be happy to have him for as long as he wanted to be there.  Mrs. Baelif had always been telling him that, that if he needed anything he could come to her no matter what.  But Adam didn’t even know where he was now.  He decided to walk as straight as he could until he came into the open and then he would be able to figure out where he was and where the Baelif’s lived from there.  He imagined their house, it was probably big and warm, full of toys and laughter.  Three children lived there instead of just one, so there was probably a lot of fun things there and not just work things like at Adam’s house.  He thought of how nice it would be to sleep there as he walked, keeping his fear at bay with thoughts of hot chocolate (he was getting chilly), band-aides (his cuts were stinging), and a warm wash cloth (the dirt was drying on his legs and arms and face and was becoming uncomfortable).

He tried to keep his heart rate calm.  They had said in school that a fast heart beat was one of the things that called the creatures to a person, that they would smell the blood and hear your heart and they would be able to find you faster that way.  Adam tried to stay calm, but it was hard.  As the darkness pressed in he found it harder and harder to think of the warm house he was headed to.  He began to think of sharp teeth and matted fur and ripping flesh.  He was afraid.  More afraid than he had ever been before.  There was a sound like walking paws behind him.  Adam spun around, kicking up leaves and sticks.  His breath caught.  There was nothing there.  He turned back around and began to walk again, feeling as though there were eyes on his back.  He continued to turn around and try to catch whoever was watching him, but there was nothing but darkness.  The paw sounds were getting closer, prowling around the child.  Adam began to keep his eyes forward, began to ignore the sounds and feelings as though it would make them go away.

He was almost to the edge of the forest.

He began to run again.  As though reaching the open would make him safe again.  He was almost there when something slammed into his back.  It was large, much larger than any ten year old, or even a full grown man.  Adam fell forward and rolled, his shirt was ripped in the back.  His breath had been knocked out of him or else he would have screamed.  Catching his breath the child rolled onto his back and scrambled backwards.  The wolf gazed at him with glowing golden eyes.

The wolf was monstrous.  The size of an adult man it was covered in matted grey fur hanging in clumps, ragged and filthy.  It’s teeth were huge and white, the largest of them gleamed in the moonlight.  The eyes burned like yellow fire, full of hate and malice.  The hunt was done, the prey was cornered.  The child was shaking, staring with large dark eyes that reflected the moonlight.

Adam opened his mouth to scream.

The wolf pounced.

Adam’s breath was knocked from him again.  He could feel claws racking his body, tearing his shirt to tatters and ripping his skin.  He pushed with his hands, finding the filthy fur and pulling as though it would make a difference.  He tried to push the mouth away from his skin, knowing the fate of those who were bitten by the wolf.  His hands found the wolf’s face.  He pushed.  His hands slipped.  He felt teeth sink into his shoulder, holding on tightly.  Adam screamed again, tears flooding out of his eyes in pain and fear, snot congealing from his nose.  He shrieked as claws continued ripping at his flesh.  Slowly everything began to fade into the burning pain in his shoulder.

He thought he could hear shouting, a man and a woman.  A light shone brightly for a moment before Adam fell into darkness.

Author's Note

This was written a while ago, as in a couple of years, and I haven't really touched it for almost that long. So there is likely a lot of things that could do with editing. If there's enough reason to, I'll go back and fix things, but this was originally just written for fun.

Anyway, go crazy and if there's enough things for me to change, I probably will.