Moonscorn

Chapter Seven

Hysteria passed the afternoon in abject misery. There was nothing good on TV and Raven wasn't answering his phone. So what if Raven had been sent back to Whaterly? So what if he was actually doing his job? She was the fucking werewolf in the building and surely that should take priority over whatever cleanup duty help he was doing out there.

After passing out in the early hours of the morning when the moon dropped below the horizon to touch another part of the world with its majesty, Hysteria slept off most of her aggression. Much of this was weariness from struggling and straining for hour after hour to keep the snarling beast trapped inside. It took it out of you. On occasion the science brains at The Conservatory allowed her to go all out in one of their large pens outside and open herself up, but this was only on rare occasions, normally when they needed to check something on one of their charts.

It was now half six. She had slept for twelve hours and woken up at four in the afternoon. The moon tonight wouldn't be as strong, and although it would be another night of hell. Then again, what nights weren't? She'd missed something she'd wanted to watch on TV, and catch-up was being an arsehole and not allowing her to download it. The doctors had supply issues with the pills that helped through moon-nights, and the dispenser by her door had only given her one for the evening. She'd have to wait until it got bad to take it, or she'd end up strapping herself in. The moon might not be as strong tonight, but so much of her ability to keep her feral side in check was down to context. How much she had to eat that day, or what she'd seen on TV, or what song had popped into her head during the afternoon, could swing her one way or the other.

She'd tried phoning Persephone again but her boss had obviously decided that answering questions today wouldn't be allowed. Grounded means grounded. Fuck this. She wasn't her mother.

Whether all this pent-up anger had anything to do with what happened next was something that wouldn't be answered until a long time later. At the time, it could have been put down to a thousand different things. It could have been anger. It could have been fear. It could have been stress. It could have been the wolf. It could have been the result of drug supply issues; all the gods above and below knew how awful it hit Hysteria when here usual supply of meds went walkies.

Whatever it might have been, it started when Hysteria turned the TV off and got up to boil the kettle. She needed tea. She was British, after all, and whenever the world decided to throw its weight around, the British put leaves in boiling water and drank it. She didn't know what she was, but she knew she was a member of that proud tradition of the past few hundred years.

There were no clean mugs (she only had four), and she couldn't be bothered to wash one up properly with soap and hot water. She grabbed the one she had used a few hours ago, gave it a rinse, and wiped it dry. That would do. She got a teabag out of the jar and threw it into the mug. She wished she had thrown it at Persephone's face. Or Raven's face. Either of them. When would she be allowed to walk down the street to a café and order a pot of tea? When the world had apparently all suffered a wolf bite to the neck. The thought was vaguely appealing. Perhaps she would begin the revolution.

At the moment this thought was in her mind, it was shaken free by a sudden uncontrollable shivering that gripped her body. It was if she had been placed inside a giant block of ice, but without the unbearable temperature. She didn't feel cold, but she nonetheless felt the effects of it. She shook like someone terrified of going on stage to deliver a speech. Utter dread reached up from the pit of her stomach with a skeletal hand and rattled her bones. Her heart slammed against her ribcage. She felt all the hairs on the back of her neck reach up and try to escape the flesh.

Slowly she put the mug back on the side. She forced herself to shove it right to the back of the counter because she was scared that when she let go, the residual shakes from her hand would send it hurtling to the floor. She put her hands on the counter's edge and gripped tight. She closed her eyes. "You're just having a howl episode," she said. "It's just a howler."

But she knew it wasn't the wolf having a tantrum. It was something outside herself, something nearby, a physical threat in the room. She couldn't say how she knew that, but scientific understanding rarely interrupted the belief of the irrational. Someone was standing behind her.

Hysteria slowly reached down, opened the cutlery drawer and took out a knife. Held it tight. The feel of it in her hand helped to calm her nerves, but they didn't fully abate. The feeling of wrongness was still there.

She turned to face back to the sofa, fully expecting to see someone sat there. Maybe the corpse of the wolf from Whaterly. For a fleeting second she almost smelled the unmistakable stink of rotting flesh and canine piss.

But there was nothing. Nothing that she could see, at the very least.

Trying to calm her nerves, she walked across and inspected the sofa. Nothing on it, and certainly nothing behind it. She crouched down and looked under the coffee table, which once again hid no demons in its shadows. She flipped over and faced the underside of the sofa, where the flaps of fabric hid the shadowy underside like theatre curtains. Hysteria breathed heavily to calm her nerves, bared her fangs, and thrust the knife underneath the seat. Nobody cried out in pain. Nothing ripped her hand off as she passed it back and forth to sweep the unseen hiding space. All was clear.

Confidence slowly beginning to overcome the trepidation, she made her way to the bedroom as Scrooge once did after seeing Marley in the knocker, checking every silhouette and every alcove for whatever could have disturbed her. Once again, as the rational, human part of her brain continued to tell her, there was nothing.

"The fuck is going on?"

She checked under the bed. All quiet and empty.

She sat on the edge of the bed, Closed her eyes.

Something is here. I can smell it. Sense it. You know it's wrong. Trust me. Trust yourself. Trust the beast you are.

Hysteria slapped the side of her face. She'd checked everywhere. There was nothing here. Yes, the moon was close. Yes, it wanted out. Goddamn she wanted to let it out. She liked being free. But it was like being naked; there's a time and a place, and sometimes it can be downright dangerous.

The wolf whispered again and she slapped herself again. And again. Then she picked the knife up again and lay the blade at her skin. Waited. Threatening it sometimes worked.

Then she threw it across the room, where it skittered along the floor underneath the sofa and out the other side. She screamed.

When her lungs felt raw and her throat like sandpaper, she looked up and across the room to the TV. Even at that distance away, she could see herself reflected in the black screen by the dimmed lights. She sat on the edge of the bed, as should be.

In the reflection behind her, something else stood. But maybe it was a trick of the light, some strange arrangement of objects in her quarters casting obscure shadows that, when light travelled from them to the black mirror of the TV screen and back to her eyes, took strange form. It had to be. Either that, or there really was a black shape standing there, seven feet tall, thin, gangly, with spindly claw-like fingers like the branches of a graveyard tree in the depths of winter. It was there for only the briefest of moments before it seemed to fade away. It was there long enough for Hysteria to recognise something reprehensible, but not enough for her to be sure it was there.

When her heart had caught up from the beats it had skipped, her breath started again, she turned to look behind her. As before, nothing. Just a wall and a hoodie hooked onto the corner of her wardrobe.

She got up and took the hoodie down. Checking reality with the reflection in the TV screen, she saw it in her hands. There was no strange figure. Her flat was as it had been since she got it. The world had reset. Like always, she was alone.