For a few minutes everything was quiet and still. Then the werewolf inside started howling and banging on the inside of the lid. Its cries of pain were horrible.
“It hurts!” Mr. Parker screamed into my aching head. “Let me out. You’re killing me.”
Paul and Kim couldn’t understand what it was saying but I agonized. Should I let it out? Would the silver kill it?
Then the pitiful cries changed to roars of rage. The lid bulged from the efforts of the werewolf inside. It screamed and howled and banged.
CRACK!
The lid wasn’t going to hold. Kim and Paul, their eyes wide and blank with pain, jumped up on the lid to help me hold it down. They sat on either side of me, gripping each other’s hands and grasping tight onto my coarse fur.
After a long time, the bangs and howls grew weaker. And weaker. Until at last there was no movement at all from inside the trunk.
Kim and Paul looked at each other and at me, their eyes big and fearful. Had I killed their dad? Or was the werewolf just biding its time, waiting?
There was only one way to find out. Kim and Paul climbed down. Kim unlocked the trunk.
Carefully, I lifted the lid.
Chapter 50
Mr. Parker, human and shivering, lay inside, half covered with dented, twisted, and blackened silver. He blinked up at us, then looked in wonder at his smooth tanned arms.
“I’m myself again,” he whispered. “I’m human.”
“He’s freezing,” said Kim, grabbing a blanket from a basket by the stairs. She tucked it around her father and hugged his neck. “Oh, Daddy, we were so scared. Are you really back to normal?”
Mr. Parker shuddered and pulled the blanket tighter around him. “Yes,” he said in a stronger voice. “It’s over.”
I stepped back and Paul and Kim helped him out of the trunk. “It all seems like a nightmare,” he said, slumping into a chair. Then he frowned at me. “But it was no dream, was it?”
I shook my shaggy head slowly.
The front door flew open with a bang. Mr. Parker jumped to his feet, reaching for Kim and Paul. I flattened myself against the wall, ready to spring.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Parker, sagging breathlessly against the door. “You’re all right! Thank heavens! I ran all the way here. I heard the monsters had got you. But—”
She suddenly broke off with a scream. Mrs. Parker had caught sight of me. She shrank away in horror.
Paul ran to her. “Mom, it’s okay. He’s not really a monster. He’s Gruff. He helped us. He saved the whole town from the werewolves. He saved Dad, too. Dad was a werewolf but Gruff turned him back into a person.”
But Mrs. Parker didn’t seem to hear. Her eyes were fixed on me and her hand was feeling behind her for a weapon, any weapon.
“Look, Mommy, I’ll prove it,” cried Kim. She rushed over to me and threw her arms around me, looking up into my hideous monster face. “You’re our brother, Gruff, and we love you. No matter what.”
My stomach twisted and a fist squeezed my heart. My throat started to close up and my eyes burned. Something was terribly wrong.
I was crying. Painful werewolf tears that burned my snout.
Chapter 51
Mrs. Parker, it seemed, had missed everything. The last thing she remembered was seeing some hideous creature come flying out of a tree straight at her. She had been knocked unconscious and only woke a little while ago, covered with a plastic tablecloth and hidden under a picnic table.
It must have been Mr. Parker who did that, I thought, slipping out the back door while Kim and Paul and Mr. Parker tried to fill Mrs. Parker in on all that had happened.
I stood under the silvery moon, feeling good that my new family was safe from the night creatures.
I lifted my snout into the clean-smelling air and howled. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The howl stirred my blood in a sad way. The wind ruffled my fur.
“AAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
My ears pricked up. An answering howl! Wolfmother! Then I heard the howls of Thornclaw and Sharpfang, my wolffather and wolfbrother, joining in.
Their howls came from far, far away. They were saying good-bye.
And this time, I knew, that strong, sad howling meant good-bye forever. They knew I was one of the humans now and I would stay with the humans.
Now that I knew the “Rules of The Wereing” I could keep my town safe from werewolves. If I wanted to, I could even kill the monster within me and be human myself from now on.
But I still had work to do. Tomorrow night, before the moon rose, Rick would go into the trunk, if he was still around. And then any other humans that had been bitten by werewolves but hadn’t run away would also go into the trunk and be cured. But not me.
The werewolves were gone. They might not be back next month or even next year, but someday they would return. Something about Fox Hollow drew them here. But when they came I’d be ready for them.
And I would need my werewolf powers to defeat them. There was no escape from my fate.
“I am a monster!” I howled.
A good monster. And I have to stay that way.
About the Authors
Rodman Philbrick grew up on the coast of New Hampshire and has been writing since the age of sixteen. For a number of years he published mystery and suspense fiction for adults. Brothers & Sinners won the Shamus Award in 1994, and two of his other detective novels were nominees. In 1993 his debut young adult novel, Freak the Mighty, won numerous honors, and in 1998 was made into the feature film The Mighty, starring Sharon Stone and James Gandolfini. Freak the Mighty has become a standard reading selection in thousands of classrooms worldwide, and there are more than three million copies in print. In 2010 Philbrick won a Newbery Honor for The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P.
