Fresh air ruffled my hair. The broken windows! A way out!
I ran into the deserted conference room. I leaped through the picture window into the parking lot and landed running.
Werewolves were streaming out of the building, howling and leaping. It looked like they were going to trample the electric fence in their monstrous frenzy. But slowly the gate began to swing open.
I ran harder, sprinting after the werewolves. The guard at the gate jumped to get out of their way before he was trampled.
The gate started to swing shut. I couldn’t make it before it closed again. I was much too far away. I dropped down, hiding behind a car to catch my breath.
Then the guard at the gate dropped to all fours. His body began to bulge. His clothes split and flew in all directions. He was too excited to stay in human form. He was becoming a werewolf. When the wereing was complete he howled and took off after the others, leaving the gate open.
In a flash I was up, dashing for the gate. Ahead of me werewolves disappeared in the trees, howling with evil glee.
I ran through the gate after them. But they were too fast for my weak human legs. They bounded into the trees and were lost from sight. Some of them leaped the fence into the construction area around the new recreation center. And suddenly all of them were gone.
Gasping with fear and exhaustion, I stumbled blindly through the woods, trying to pick up their trail. But the werewolves had disappeared. I had failed. And tomorrow night was the full moon.
Chapter 35
When I got to school the next morning I went straight to the library without going to class. I had the werewolf book with me, the one that spelled out the “Rules of The Wereing.”
There was something about that library—I felt sure the answers I needed were there.
Mrs. Bookbinder got up from her desk as I came in. She smiled as if she’d been expecting me. “Hello, Gruff,” she said, her dark eyes gleaming. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
The librarian poked her head out the door and looked up and down the hall. Then, nodding to herself, she locked the door and slipped the key into her pocket.
I gasped in fright. Was she one of them? Was she going to keep me here until it was night and it was too late to help anyone?
“No one must disturb us,” whispered Mrs. Bookbinder, gesturing me toward the back of the room. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
She’s got to be one of them, I thought. My hands got clammy. I rubbed them on my pants as I looked for a way out. But the library only had one door and the windows were too high to climb out of. A cold shiver traveled down my back to my toes.
“Here we are,” said a grim, muffled voice behind me.
I spun around, determined to die fighting. But it was just Mrs. Bookbinder, her voice distorted by the effort of carrying a large, heavy book. “Wait,” she said as I took it from her. “I’m not finished yet.”
She turned around. Next thing I knew she was hunched over and her shoulders were wriggling. My breath caught in my throat. I looked around for a weapon, gripped the chair I was standing next to. I braced myself for the sight of the werewolf as she turned back.
I let the chair fall with a bang. Mrs. Bookbinder looked surprised. She was still just a small, mild librarian. “You seem awfully jumpy, Gruff,” she said. “I know you must be tense but we have a lot of work to do.”
She closed the drawer she had been rummaging in and put the stack of papers on the table by the book. “These night creatures are very powerful,” she said. “Very strong. There’s only one way to beat them.”
My heart leaped. I knew I’d been right to come here. “How?”
“You have to out think them.”
Chapter 36
I slumped back in my chair. I didn’t think I was up to outsmarting a whole pack of super-naturally powerful adult werewolves.
But Mrs. Bookbinder went ahead and laid out some old yellowed newspaper clippings on the table. Then she opened the big book to show me more. As she helped me read the clippings, a story began to come together that filled me with horror.
“This has happened before,” Mrs. Bookbinder whispered.
It was true. Years before there had been another town built on the same spot. A town called Pleasantville. Mrs. Bookbinder showed me old newspaper articles saying what a perfect place Pleasantville was going to be when Wereing Incorporated was finished with it. More articles told about the wonderful school and the firehouse and the park and recreation center the Wereing company was building.
“Something happened,” Mrs. Bookbinder said. “Something evil.”
Before Pleasantville was finished, another kind of article starting showing up in the newspapers. The stories were all short and sounded hysterical and crazy. Reports of babies stolen right out of their cribs in the night. People complaining about strange howling keeping them awake and giving them nightmares.
One article described a strange animal running through the streets of the town under the full moon. Another described people behaving strangely and snarling savagely at each other.
“You should read this article,” Mrs. Bookbinder suggested. She handed me a yellowed clipping so old and brittle it almost fell apart in my hands.
In the article a young woman claimed her husband was a werewolf. No one had paid any attention but the very next day the woman vanished into the woods, taking her tiny baby with her.
There was something about the article that really caught my attention. I kept coming back to it, feeling a sad heart-tug every time I read it.
“A few days after the woman and her baby disappeared, police from another town came to Pleasantville,” Mrs. Bookbinder told me. “They found the whole town deserted. All the residents of the town had disappeared.
