I stared into the window watching Misty and Sivene’s intimacy intensify. I was embarrassed by my feelings, but I don’t think Owen really gave a shit or had even recognized the little love triangle I found myself in. I realized Owen had fallen asleep in my passenger seat. I don’t know why, but that annoyed me. I took the bottle out of his lap and took a long pull from it. The whiskey burned my throat as it went down and combined with the stagnant resentment and spite that swirled around inside of me.

I watched intently for another few moments, but it was too much. To this day I’m not sure what possessed me to do it, but I opened the car door, shut it as quietly as I could to avoid waking Owen and walked closer towards Misty’s apartment. I was going to confront her. I was going to knock on her front door and ask her what the hell was going on with her and Sivene. Were they together or not? Was I being shut out without explanation simply because Sivene decided to show up again?

I would have to cross in front of the window to Misty’s bedroom in order to get to her front door. As I prepared to duck down and walk carefully below the window’s height, I saw the glint of something metal reflecting in the glass. Handcuffs. My whole body tightened with a rush of adrenaline and arousal. Misty was straddling Sivene again, this time while cuffing her hands to the bed frame.

For a split second, I completely lost my sense of self or place. Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was the loneliness, but at that moment I completely forgot about my entire reason for being in Cold Hollow. I longed to be there with them, to be part of their moment. The alcohol had completely obliterated my inhibitions. I glanced back to the car and hoped Owen was still in a drunken stupor and briefly considered continuing to the front door, as if they would let me join them or something.

I watched Sivene pull against her restraints. What was Misty going to do to her? I wanted to scream in protest but at the same time I ached to see them continue. I wondered if Misty was ever in control when they had sex and if this was a way for her to take back some of the power Sivene clearly held in their relationship.

Misty climbed off of Sivene then and, to my surprise, took a couple of steps away from the bed. I realized then how creepy all of this was. I had become some sort of stalker. On any other night, if Owen was in the right state of mind, he would probably arrest me.

I refocused myself, watching Misty and waiting for a chance to dash back to my car before someone saw me. She was still nude but I couldn't understand why she started to put her shirt back on. What the hell was happening? Was she just going to leave Sivene tied to the bed?

A second later, Sivene’s body began to tremble violently. Her legs and hips bucked wildly as if an electric current was coursing through her pale body. I watched in horror as she yanked hard on the handcuffs. I was horrified. Was this Misty’s doing? Had she attached some sort of electrical device to the bed? Was I witnessing her murder Sivene? Then I understood.

Sivene opened her mouth wide and snarled. Misty stood just out of reach as her waifish lover began to thrash on the bed, shrieking. What was I witnessing? I felt like I was in a dream then as I watched Sivene’s limbs swell and stretch. Thick swaths of dark fur erupted across her bare thighs, calves, and arms. Her nose jutted outwards and thickened into a wide snout with huge gaping nostrils and her teeth became two rows of gnashing blades.

I was paralyzed by fear. Sivene was gone and in her place was a wild animal threatening to break the metal of the headboard. The bed jumped with each thrust of the beast’s body and Misty slowly backed away further, shut the door, and left the room.

That was my cue to run.

I stumbled backward on my way back to the car and hit the pavement hard but kept pushing myself forward, crawling on my hands and knees until I was able to force my legs to stand again. I yanked open the car door, threw myself inside, sobbing as I turned the key and sped away.

O’Connor was still passed out when I leapt back into my car. Despite my sobbing, he hardly stirred at all as we left Misty’s apartment building. He was deep in a drunken stupor and, though I wanted to wake him, the fact that he had slept through the entire ordeal would mean he would have to take my word for what I had just seen. There would be no point in telling him what I saw in Misty’s bedroom.

I was shaking as I drove back to the Drift. I left Owen in the car and ran inside to ask Rio if she knew where he lived so I could drop him off at home. She waved me away and said Brian, the barback, would take care of it. Apparently, this had become a fairly common occurrence since Owen’s son had passed. I thanked Rio, and left for home.

My apartment was cold and dark. It looked so empty and lifeless now with the walls bare and I yearned for someone to confide in. I paced the room, debating whether or not to call Elle or simply just get in my car and drive back to Boston and never speak of Cold Hollow again. But I couldn’t do it. I had come too far and seen too much. I decided to calm myself with a cup of herbal tea and crawled into bed.

The silence was torture. I was already a bit down knowing that Misty and Sivene were more or less back together, but that was nothing compared to what I felt after seeing them together and learning what I learned. The image of Sivene shaking violently and changing into something inhuman played over and over again in my mind. I began to doubt myself then. What if that was where all of this had taken place, in my mind, and only in my mind.

I turned on the clock radio, just to have the noise of another human being in the room with me. Could it all have been a hallucination? Had someone slipped something into my drink at the Drift? It was possible, I decided. Maybe a mixture of stress and alcohol had jumbled my mind. Maybe being alone and diving so deep into this case had fractured me. I tried to remember the last time I had spoken to my parents or Elle or anyone from back home. What would they think if they saw how I was living here? Would they be worried for me?

I remember trembling in my bed until I finally fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. I didn’t wake again until late morning the next day. Despite how desperate I was to be around people, I called in sick to work so I could take a day to decompress.

What I had seen the night before was scarred into my brain and I knew then it was something I would never forget. My thoughts circled around endlessly. It just wasn’t possible–what I had seen. Sivene could not have been a werewolf because werewolves didn’t exist. And yet, there was that image of her seared into my mind. Her limbs stretched out, her arms and legs covered in thick swaths of fur. I was in a crisis of the unreal.

I considered going to the Cold Hollow Café for breakfast to clear my mind, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax until I could tell someone about what I had seen. Owen was really the only person I felt I could confide in, but telling him would be taking a big chance.

After breakfast, I went to the police barracks again and parked in my usual parking spot. My nerves were shot and every little noise, like the heavy clang of the metal door closing behind me, made me jump. Owen’s office door was closed which usually meant he was on the phone or didn’t want to be bothered, but I opened it anyway.

The office was dark and Owen wasn’t sitting at his desk. I glanced down at my watch. It was almost 11 AM. Maybe he went out for an early lunch or maybe he was in a meeting with his Captain or something. I hung around in the hallway for ten or fifteen minutes before giving up and leaving. An officer passing by told me he hadn’t seen him, but it seemed unlikely that he was still hungover in bed. I needed to find him.

I left the barracks and sat in my car for a few minutes trying to decide what to do. Part of me really wanted to take the day off and go see a movie or something. But another part of me wanted nothing more than to press on until I understood what was happening. After all, I wasn’t the only person who had seen what appeared to be a werewolf in Cold Hollow. I had to find out who the others were, what they had seen, and what had happened to them.

On my way inside the Burlington library, I caught sight of my reflection in the building’s exterior windows and cringed. My eyes were red and bleary and my face looked a little sunken and gray. For a moment, I felt self-conscious about my appearance, but as soon as I was near the front desk, I realized I didn’t look that much different from the students, homeless people, and handful of senior citizens meandering about the place.

The strawberry blonde I had noticed during my last visit was working at the front desk. She had pale green-blue eyes and gave me the sense that she was lonely, but I was in no condition to strike-up a conversation. In fact, I didn’t even want to speak to her considering my appearance, but I needed information.

“Could you please tell me where I might find a local interest section? Preferably older books,” I asked.

She directed me to a room off to the right of the counter that also housed historical records as well as a smattering of old Vermont ephemera. It felt more like a museum or a musty old antique store than a library, which I liked. Its oily wood paneling and low yellow lamps weren’t exactly comforting, but the ambiance of the place was grounding. Mostly, I was just glad to be around other people, most of them more or less normal.

I gathered a new stack of books on the histories of the villages and towns of Cold Hollow. When I finally sat down and opened up the first book in my stack, I hesitated to actually read it, as if learning more would draw me deeper into a sort of parallel universe and the strange happenings taking place in Cold Hollow. I proceeded cautiously, skimming chapters from various books of regional history before stumbling upon a reference to a group of people from around New England that had been connected to the Spiritualism movement and the infamous Theosophical society. They had settled into Vermont and begun experimenting with various forms of witchcraft that involved the use of hallucinogenic substances. Every time I came upon that word, hallucinate, my heart jumped a little. Had I really seen Sivene transform?

Witches, I discovered, were known in some lore to utilize mushrooms and herbs to create certain teas capable of putting a person into a hypnotic state. A person could easily be influenced while in this condition and persuaded to believe almost anything they were told. I thought about the whiskey I drank at the Drift. No, no, I told myself, it was not a hallucination. I saw Sivene transform.

Another chapter later in the book discussed the signs of potential witchcraft and the historical ways in which people defined witches. It was all fairly common sense and reminiscent of my previous research as well as popular belief around witchcraft even today. Accusations of human sacrifice were high on the list of practices indicating Occult activity, along with people reporting being possessed by demons, often in connection with rituals that involved the use of mind-altering substances.

It was time, I decided, to visit Millicent again. I needed to talk with someone who had experience with esoteric matters, someone who could lead me onto the right path and, hopefully, tell me if what I had seen was real, if I was under some sort of spell, or if I was just going insane.