Hidden in Sheridan (Tainted Series: Book 1)

Moon: WAXING CRESCENT

Levi - The Wolfe home has always been interesting. They use the back door as the front door and the front door as the back. Visitors that don’t know this will often ring the bell confusing the whole family. Only now do I realize this was by design. The confusion brought by a rung doorbell, gives the wolf cubs the time needed to shift and compose themselves as humans, before inviting guests inside.

This meant the front porch was hardly touched. Its beautiful red wood door is polished and well taken care of, with a paw printed welcome sign and spring appropriate decor on either side. Sheltered beneath the second floor balcony the door’s wood is less weathered compared to the rest of the house. Such as the weathered balcony above. Painted white, it wraps around the side of the house to the set of stairs that drops out beside the air conditioner and a couple of fragrant bushes. The backyard is large and melts into the thick forest, making it feel even larger.

I follow my friend as he walks past the stairs that led into the open utility room. On the other side, lay two large white washed storm cellar doors, slanted on the ground. Only the oldest of houses have them. Equipped with a shiny latch across two black metal handles.

Sterling removes the latch, and pulls open one of the doors. He grimaces, using all his strength to pull the large piece of wood on a double hinge. The awkward angle was sure to make it complicated, but then he drops it on the opposite side. The door slams so hard on the ground it reminds me of those falling anvils in old cartoons.

I flinch, my shoes scramble backward in the gravel, whereas Sterling doesn’t blink.

When the dust settles, he leads the way down the dark cement steps and like a sane person, I pause.

“Yeah. I’ve seen this movie. They follow the shapeshifter down into his secret cellar … I think they find farm tools, plastic, and bloodstained walls.”

Sterling briefly looks like he’s going to object, but instead he shrugs, “You’ll have to come see for yourself.” Then he disappears down the steps, his mocking laugh echoing from the dark tunnel.

“Jerk,” I mutter, my heart hammers in my chest but I will my feet to follow.

The smell that rose from below is pungent with the taste of wet fur and something else. I can’t yet describe it, but the farther down I get the stronger it becomes.

With every step, my shoes scrape across the thick concrete. As most of the houses in Sheridan, the Wolfe’s home was built over a hundred years ago, so it’s common knowledge that each had been built on top of small cellars for storing meats and supplies that needed to stay cool year round. Most families no longer use them, which leaves them in their original condition: narrow, unfinished, one lightbulb hanging in the center of the space, with a shallow set of stairs. This is why I’m surprised how far the steps continue down deep into the ground.

The ceiling isn’t insulated nor covered. The boards and beams supporting the first floor are open, exposing the tubes and wiring running throughout. We reach the bottom step, and the cellar space is very bare. Its floor and walls were made of gray cement. A light switch to Sterlings left illuminates the entire room sending a shock through my forehead. I clench my eyes shut to block the pain as my eyes adjust to the new light.

It happened again.

I wasn’t straining my eyes to see in the dark, but I was seeing just fine. Though the colors were shaded, I hadn’t notice the lack of light at all, until the light switched on.

Brighter now, the room came back into focus. As expected, it’s a shallow room, running long into an open pantry full of food storage packed shelves. Cans and bottles of old fruit, vegetables, and some boxed military meals. Years of untouched dust collected on all.

“My family is gambling with expiration dates.” Sterling jokes, seeing where my gaze had landed.

I give him a courtesy smirk, “Fermented peaches … wanna try them?”

“Maybe later,” Sterling chuckles. He walks into the nearby corner where the large empty wall met the cement, that’s when I notice it. That entire wall is made of reinforced metal. Welding patches are spaced out across it in random locations, but the span of it, is what gives me pause.

I watch silently as Sterling slips his fingers into the corner and pulls.

Scraping metal sends a familiar shutter through my teeth as the entire wall pushes in and then slides to the side. Sterling groans under the weight, but he continues to push until the opening is that of a normal doorway allowing that faint nagging smell to explode into my senses. Unable to turn my gaze away from the wall, I clamp my hand over my mouth and nose, in an attempt to block the smell, which helps but only slightly.

Sterling dusts off his hands pausing only when seeing my complex expression.

“My great-uncle had a friend that designed it,” he motions to the wall, “so you only see the door if you’re looking for it.”

“You have a secret door in your basement?!” My voice is muffled by my hands, but in addition to blocking the smell, it keeps me from screaming. “What the Hell!”

Sterling shrugs, “Are you trying not to scream like a little girl?”

“Yes!” I didn’t have any fear of being teased for being shocked. Things are turning out more and more unbelievable by the second. It would be impossible to react like it was an every day thing. Plus, “… it really smells.”

Sterling’s eyebrows lift, “You can smell that?”

I nod, “What is it?”

The humor melts from Sterling’s expression. His shoes shuffle toward the opening, “It’ll make more sense inside. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

I hesitate but eventually follow him through the dark hole in the wall.

Going from the bright room into the dark again was less painful than the other way around. Slight rays of daylight seep in through slivers of windows. Like the yellow lines in the center of a highway. The small windows run across the top of the eight-foot cement walls. All of the walls, except the one we just came through.

A new scene rolls out before us. The basement isn’t only deep it’s long. The space spans from one end of the house to the other, and possibly farther. Its floor made of cement but Mrs. Wolfe had laid several rugs of various textures and colors across it, and they stop where we now stand. Because off to our left there is no room for anything else besides what is there, and from what I see nothing could make it feel warm and cozy.

A sour bubbling began in my stomach.

Its circular metal bars look like it had been placed there centuries in the past. They were deeply embedded into the concrete and stone walls. Those bars were so corroded and rusted they changed the color of the stone floor below it. Then across the stained floor and even up on the walls deep scratch marks made it clear something had been trapped inside trying to get out.

My eyes scanned down to my wet shoes, where I spot similar scratch marks all around the floor. As if something had tried to get inside as well. I look to the bars themselves, unbent leaving no trace it had succeed. My shoe brush across one of the marks, shifting pebbles and gravel away from the cement. Though small, I could easily assume these marks had been recently made.

That’s where the stench is coming from. I use the palm of my hand to cover my nose and block as much of the smell. I also keep it over my mouth holding at bay any urge to throwing up.

Anger and fear.

If an emotion could have a smell, this is it. With a heavy dose of desperation all swirled together …

“You can smell emotion.” Sterling says, answering my unspoken question. My head snaps around to look at him, “I didn’t think you could, but I can tell you smell it too. The anger, Fury, Fear, desperation, it’s all here, years of it.”

Slowly I try to take some calming breaths, pulling that horrible smell into my lungs, but letting it out again. I manage to let my hand slide from my face to my side.

“Have you been locked inside?” I ask knowing his face is pale.

Sterling takes a deep breath and simply nods. He doesn’t look particularly ashamed or fearful of this fact, it just, was.

“Recently?” I push.

“No. Not recently.” Sterling grabs me by the shoulders, turns me and begins leading me away from the unsightly corner. “We’ve all been locked inside at least once. Sometimes the pull of the full moon is too much and it makes you want to-“

“- kill?” I ask. To my surprise Sterling nods, “You really feel an urge to kill?”

“Nobody in my family within the last two generations has killed a human. I promise.” A tightness in my chest deflates as we cross a deep gray-blue rug, putting some distance between us and the cage. “In fact, biting is a serious offense.”

I note he’s leading me toward what looks like a library, built into the stone sediment. Four large bookcases made of dark stone reached the top of the eight foot ceiling. A ladder resting across the far corner, hooked to a metal pole that runs across each. They spanned a large portion of the wall, split exactly in the middle by a small storm window above a desk made of pale wood. Its corners and hardware of stark black metal and chairs to match, though they were padded with gray conditioned leather.

Incorporated inside of each bookcase were framed copies of hand drawn family trees and photographs, which were speckled between books of various shapes and sizes.

The lighting of the room isn’t particularly complementary of a library or an office, yet I didn’t have a problem seeing. The books are coated in a thick layer of dust. Apparently, the Wolfe family aren’t avid readers, which I knew about Sterling but didn’t expect the entire family to neglect such a dense library.

As I scan the books I suspect each one of them holds a tale or event someone in this family had felt was worth writing. Some were new, spiral-bound with plastic covers. Some even had laminated photos but as it reached farther back in the line, covers changed to leather, or string bound paper. Eventually the typed text change to hand written and the paper itself became thicker parchment. Then there’s the smell. The dust, the leather, the tree bark, I can smell all of it. I swear I can taste the age of the trees used to make some of the papers.

Seeing my amazement, Sterling steps up beside me. “We’ve been around a long time,” he explains. “My ancestors have seen a lot.”

“These were all written by your ancestors?”

“Or collected on their journey’s,” Sterling clarifies.

From the look of it, the Wolfe Family stretched back to the first discovery of the Americas. No, not the Christopher Columbus discovery, but previous discoveries, I knew enough to recognize the picture of the viking ship on the spine of several covers.

I reach up and pull one from the shelf. It’s cover rough leather, not at all what I thought it would feel like. The symbol’s black, like it had been burned as it was pressed into the cover.

My thumb pulls off a thick layer of black dirt, “It doesn’t look like you’ve read any of these.”

Sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck, Sterling nods, “Technically everything is online.”

I flip open the pages, skipping several until I fall on some english words scribbled in the margins.

‘A Lycanthrope family hiding among viking ships as they crossed from Greenland to North America before breaking off to live among the Native American tribes.’

Discovering I had guessed right, a small sense of pride fills my chest.

I turn to the next page, searching for the next familiar words, “Shifting Gods” was written boldly in blue ink.

Shifters, I let the word roll around in my mind for a moment. I liked that definition much better than the official title, Lycanthrope. It was easier to say too.

The notes in the book continue, ‘the family of shifters had been discovered and migrated from place to place. Some tribes accepted them for a time, but most grew fearful and refused them. Forcing them in their early day in America to live as nomads.’

My back straightens, I’d never heard of this story, “All of these are online?”

“No,” Sterling laughs, his hand pushes the spine of another book farther into the bookcase. “None of these specifically are online. At one point we did start to make them digital,” he waves his hand towards an old scanner from the early 2000s sitting in the corner. “That’s when we discovered electronics do not work well for our kind.”

“Is that the real reason you don’t have a cellphone?”

Sterling smiles at this, “I don’t need a phone to communicate with my family.”

“It’s the rest of us that need you to have one,” I put the leather book back before grabbing a book bound with white string, its pages thick with cursive writing. I studied it carefully as a new question forms rapidly in my mind, “When you say you’ve been around a long time are you talking about immortality?”

“No,” Though Sterling answered with unsurprised hesitation, I feel the heat rise in my face. “Those that stay wolves have the life expectancy of normal wolves, and we age like humans.”

Giving up on reading the cursive writing I push it back into place when I catch a glimpse of a steel framed photograph which depicts most of the Sterlings family, along with several dogs … no, wolves.

Initially I would have thought they are animals from the vets office but I’m seeing things in a whole new way. Wolves, and every one of them different in coloring and size.

I open my mouth to ask a question when a cramp tightens in my back sending a ripple of sharp pains across my spine then disappearing just as quickly as it arrived.

I stretched out my side and tried to remember the question I wanted to ask, “How big is your family?”

“Not as big as you might think.” Sterling answers. He found a book of his own and sat down in the large chair at the head of the desk. “Not all the wolves in Yellowstone are blood related to us. Though they do answer to our pack. We’ve actually had a couple of Omega’s join. Joining the pack is relatively easy, as long as they’re not … like us.”

I nod as if I understood what he meant, “Have other shifters tried to join your pack?”

“They do, but only through marriage. Packs make a trade and the ones that marry in become part of our pack.”

“Trade?” As I said the word it sounded strange, but Sterling continued very naturally.

“Mom starts investing when we’re born, something about inflation. She says she’s prepared for it to go either way.”

“I’m sorry, you’re literally saying you pay for your bride?” I don’t wait for Sterling to nod, the laugh was already bursting out of my gut. I grab the side of the desk to keep from falling over. “Isn’t paying for marriage against the law in this country?”

“Well Lycan’s are a bit … old fashioned.” Sterling shrugs a touch of pink rushing to his tan cheeks.

“So your betrothal …”

Sterling snaps his book shut, “Shut up about Cassidy!”

“Oh, her name is Cassidy?” I poke at my friend, Sterling kicks from his chair his fingers primed to grab me by the collar. I step back allowing his hand to brush past me, missing my by inches.

“What is it with you?” Sterling practically growls, “Through all of this, you are still looking for something to joke about.”

With my palm I wipe the tears from my eyes, and force the laugh back into my chest. “You know me. Humor is how I process.” It is a basic truth. The insanity would be too much without laughter and I probably would have checked myself into the mental institution by now.

Sterling didn’t wait for me to elaborate, he threw the book from his hands at me. The pages came at me point blank in the face, but my hands moved faster than they have in my life. I caught the book without breaking eye contact with Sterling.

At this Sterling smirks.

I look the book over in my hands to discover it was written not only in English, but in a handwriting I can understand. I skim through the pages quickly, catching a few details here and there about the New Frontier.

“At the time of the new world, the Wolfe’s had learned to blend with the new dominant people as a matter of survival. They traveled west with the first wagon trains.” Sterling says, his words matching up with the ones I read on the page. “I liked that story as a kid, It’s when my ancestors secretly protected those pioneers, never revealing their true identities. They were superheroes. I do think they ate a few people though, but it’s the Wild West. So it was either that or get shot.”

“That’s dark.” I say.

“Sorry,” Sterling scratched the back of his head again. The action was one he’d done since I’d known him, but now I could see the canine connection in his habits.

“So this story is how they came to Yellowstone?” I ask.

“Yep. It’s the first time they saw it, and they fell in love with it. We also assisted in establishing the National Park and have been unofficially protecting it since that time.”

That part of the Wolfe family history is something the whole town knows. When the Fish and Game officials and park rangers were formed, the Wolfe Family always filled the positions in charge. No one ever suspecting, that the reason for their constant involvement, was entirely territorial.

My eyes lift from the page and travel back to where the cage sits in shadows. It’s just a glance, but it was long enough to wonder, what if they couldn’t find an answer?

Would I end up inside that cage?

Would I survive?

CHAPTER END