The wolf arrived in the outskirts of the city in little under three hours. He had traveled fast, only stopping few times, like for catching and eating a rabbit and drinking some water from the river.

It was still early but people were starting to head to work and school. The wolf hid in the shadows, trying to avoid people as much as possible. It passed few houses and caused the dogs in the yards bark like crazy. He hurried along heading towards the destination, leaving the dogs barking and their humans wondering what had cause such a ruckus.

Soon the wolf arrived at a small house. The doors and windows were boarded shut and the whole place was surrounded by yellow tape that said: “NO ENTRY”. The wolf slumped on the ground and soon Remy was in its place, shaking and trying to catch his breath. He pushed himself up and hurried to the house, crouching under the tape. Remy removed the boards at the back door. He had done that ages ago after he first came back here, but nobody seemed to realize that there indeed was entry to the house. To be honest, nobody would ever know since nobody ever came to the house. It was cursed after all.

The door creaked when Remy pushed it open. He sneaked in and closed the door. Some light filtered through the dirty windows and cast a few rays of sunshine in the room, revealing the sad state of the house. Air smelled musty and heavy, and there was dust everywhere. There were faint footprints in the dirt that covered the floor.

Remy headed towards the second room without paying attention to the claw marks on the floors and walls, or to the sofa and pillows that had been shredded apart. The big stain of dried blood on the floor made him close his eyes. Determined, he walked straight to the second room and to the wardrobe where he took out a pair of shabby ripped jeans and a slightly oversized hoodie. A pair of underwear too, what a luxury.

After getting dressed he sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the room, sighing deeply. He was happy that the house hadn’t been demolished while he had been away, but he was little sad too. He was happy because he had a place to come back to in case everything else failed, but sad because this was that place. He traced the claw marks on the floor with his foot. Indeed, this was a cursed house.

Four years earlier a family of four had been killed in the house; the mother, a six-year-old little girl, and two boys, thirteen- and nine-years old. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew the family. The mother took care of the kids alone since the father was a yob. He was tall and rugged, with a wild, almost insane expression on his face. He had a short temper, he drank a lot and probably beat his wife too. Nobody had seen that of course but that’s what they suspected. He was often away from home, sometimes for months and every time he came back he seemed to be worse. In fact, everybody would’ve bet their money and their grandmother’s dentures that he was the one to kill the family, if it weren’t for the fact that it had been a slaughter, like an animal had killed them all. Or a monster.

One night, the worried neighbours called the police to the house because they were scared of what was happening in there. When the police came, there was blood everywhere and they found the mother and the daughter dead, barely in a recognizable condition. The boys, however, where nowhere to be found. The police started to suspect they hadn’t been at the scene at all, until they found their blood inside. They had sent search parties everywhere, suspecting that the boys had been kidnapped. They were in the news too, almost every day for weeks but even then, they had no luck. The father also, seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

Due to this and the odd circumstances of the whole event, they also had trouble explaining the murder to the public in a way that wouldn’t incite chaos and fear of mass murderer on the loose. The neighbours had told when calling the police, that they had heard screams and animal-like noises from the house. Based on these comments, the murders were written off as an animal attack (although the animal was never found or even identified), the search parties for the kids were called off eventually to save resources on other “important” things, and the whole thing was soon forgotten. Until few months later, the monster came back.

Again, the neighbours reported screams and weird howls coming from the house. A patrol was sent to investigate but they never reported of their findings. Two police officers were killed in a brutal way and walls and floors covered in claw marks longer and deeper than any feral dog could make.

The house was declared cursed by the neighbourhood and some kind of cult site by the officials and was to be demolished. However, no one dared to go near the house in fear that the monster was actually there and would move on to haunt another house after its home was destroyed. Every few months people would hear the screams coming from the house, but they just plugged their ears and prayed that whatever it was in that house, would stay in the house.

And now, four years later the house was still to be demolished but would probably stand there until the forces of nature would make it fall apart.

Remy sighed again and stood up. He didn’t want to remember these things anymore. It was time to go get food, so he could get out of the city. After staying away for so long he just couldn’t bring himself to enjoy it anymore. It was too noisy, too crowded, too suffocating. He needed peace and quiet the forest gave him.

He went back outside and put the boards back to their places. He quickly looked around in case someone was around but as usual, there was no one there. Remy sighed, tried to shake most of the dust out of his clothes and flattened his wildly wavy hair a bit before heading towards the city centre.

Remy walked for 15 minutes on the streets of the city that was now wide awake for the day. People running around, cars honking at each other at the traffic lights and kids screaming at their parents because they didn’t want to go to day-care or school. Remy closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself but just got his lungs full of exhaust fumes from the passing bus. Coughing and cursing the city, he continued his walk and finally stopped in front of a storefront. A sign above the store read with big blue letters: “4 BETTER TOMORROW” and had rainbows and a smiling sun in it. From the window Remy saw one person moving between tables, setting things out on display. He opened the door and a chiming bell alerted the employee of a new visitor.

“Good morning!” the young lady chirped and turned to look at the visitor. Remy felt his stomach drop and he sighed silently.

“Omg, Arthur, hello it’s no nice to see you again!” the employee almost shouted.

“Hello, Felicity,” Remy replied, trying to sound happy but not bothering too much with it. Out of all the employees here, Felicity was the most annoying one. Others didn’t really care about him, they just did their job without unnecessary chit-chat, but she asked about everything and then Remy had to lie which he particularly didn’t like.

“How’s your mother doing nowadays?” Felicity asked smiling so brightly her braces were showing.

“She’s good. The fracture’s finally starting to heal, and she can walk better,” Remy replied looking at the used clothes that were on neat stacks on the tables, trying to spot something that would please Em.

“Did she break her leg?” Felicity gasped looking very compassionate. “She’s so unfortunate.”

“Yeah… didn’t I tell you that?” Uh oh, had he messed up the stories?

“You told me she had pneumonia.”

“Oh, yeah, right. Well, you see, she was already getting a bit better and of course tried to get back to house work because that’s just how she is, but she got dizzy and fell, breaking her leg. It wasn’t anything serious but enough to put her back to bed,” Remy explained, making the story up as he talked. Hopefully she’d buy it too.

“Oh my God, how is you family so unlucky? I’m gonna give you some extra food, just don’t tell anyone,” she said whispering the last part. Well, actually there was one good thing about Felicity, and it was that she almost always gave some extra food, which was the reason Remy had a sick, bedridden mother and other unfortunate events in his made-up life as Arthur. He did feel little bad about tricking her like that but what could he do? He needed food, and this was the best place to get it. If he could get little bit more by telling sad stories, he would do it.

“Thank you, I appreciate it so much. And mother too,” Remy said as Felicity headed behind the counter to get one of the pre-packed food bags. Usually it contained one bag of rice and pasta, one bag of flour, crispbread and powdered milk.

“I’ll throw some chocolate and canned meat in here too,” Felicity said winking.

“Thank you, I really appreciate it. Could I take a look at the clothes? My, uh, little sister needs new ones.”

“Yeah, of course, of course,” Felicity said not realizing that “Arthur” had never even talked about a little sister before. But she was too busy putting heart-shaped chocolate she had found from who-knows-where in the bag. “Arthur” may have been coming from very unfortunate conditions, living with her mother and a sister, but he was still so caring and nice, and quite handsome too. Felicity had fallen for the muddy brown eyes the first time she saw them. So far, this mysterious boy had been very elusive and not accepting her suggestions of meeting up but she was sure that if she just kept trying, he’d accept at some point.

In the meanwhile Remy skimmed through the tables full of clothes. He picked up some shirts but put them back almost right away. While he was holding up a loose t-shirt with a pretty cute panda print, wondering if it’d be too big for Em, tv caught his attention. The morning news were on and Em’s picture was on the screen. The volume was too low to hear anything though.

“What’s that about?” Remy asked pointing at the tv, and Felicity turned to look.

“Oh, you haven’t heard about that? That girl disappeared from a neighbouring town few days ago. The police have searched everywhere but there’s no trace of her. Her parents are worried sick. They said they had seen a wolf ripping apart her clothes or something,” Felicity explained, looking extremely sad. “That girl has had some really tough luck. Apparently, she was attacked by a wolf couple of months ago. That’s so terrible, she looks so pretty and all.”

Remy felt a lump in his throat and decided to just grab the shirt he had, the nearest pair of trousers and a pair of shoes which looked like they probably would fit Em.

“I’ll take these too. I’m sure my sister will like these a lot.”

“Aww, that’s great. Here’s your food.”

“Thanks.” Remy grabbed the food and stuffed the clothes in the same bag with them and headed to the door.

“Come back whenever you need to!” Felicity shouted.

Remy mumbled something and hurried outside. He walked a few blocks, then stopped, sighed and rubbed his face with his hand. Em’s parents were looking for her. Of course they would, they were her parents and very worried too. And he had just took her away, trying to help her but making things worse. He had known that people would look for her, that’s a pretty obvious thing to do. He had wanted to help Em because it was tough to be a werewolf alone, but he had been selfish too. Finally, he had a chance to be with someone instead of the never-ending loneliness. His wolf had been happy too, he had remembered the feeling from the night they had been together, and he didn’t want it to go away. But was this the right thing to do? Shouldn’t he give Em a chance to go back and tell that she was okay? But what if she didn’t come back? They had been staying together for barely two days but already Remy knew that if she left he’d be miserable. He would get over it, probably quite fast too, he was used to people leaving, but he didn’t really want to go through it again. He wanted to enjoy this a little bit longer. Was that too much to ask?