Legacy of the Wolf

Unrest

Sam was ten years old, in a hospital gown, seated at a table across from a man in a suit. The man was trying to smile, but it was a smile that didn't look like it really belonged on his face. This man had come to see her at the hospital a few times before. He asked a lot of questions.

"Do you remember your parents?"

The scene changed. Now Sam was in a white tube. There were clicking noises. She was supposed to lie very still.

"What were their names?"

She was under blue covers in her hospital bed. There was a thick bandage around her head, and wires that ran from underneath to a machine. Looking out the window she could see a funny kind of mountain that was tall and flat on top.

"What is your name?"

She was in a dark room now, watching bright images flicker on a screen. It was her parents. Home movies... of her as a baby, her first birthday, Christmas, they all looked so happy...

"My name is Samantha."

She was back in the hospital bed, staring out the window at the funny mountain, but there was no bandage on her head. The lights overhead went off and then came back on. Sam's throat felt tight. Her skin tingled. Something was wrong, about all of this...

There were no sounds outside, in the hall; none of the hospital noises that she had become used to. She got out of bed; the tile was cold on the bottoms of her feet. One by one she put on soft slippers, went to the door and out into the passageway.

Her room was near the end of a short corridor. The lights overhead buzzed like angry bees. They clicked, blinked off and then on. Suddenly, Sam wanted to be anywhere but here. She walked to where the short corridor was met by a much longer one. There were doors in the long hall, lots of doors, and a gurney on one side, but there were no people. No nurses, doctors... she shuffled toward the gurney, looking into rooms as she passed.

No patients.

"Hello?" she called.

No answer.

There were more clicks, louder this time. Then, beginning at the far end of the passage, the overhead lights shut off one section at a time. The darkness closed in, swallowing her until there was nothing but the sound of her own breath.

And footsteps.

Behind her. Where she had come from, getting closer. But they sounded... weird. They clicked, almost like the ticking of the lights before they died.

Whatever it was, it would be around the corner soon.

She ran, as fast and as hard as she could, smashing her hip into the corner of the gurney, falling onto her other side on the tile floor. She pulled herself up and walked backward, knowing that whatever it was could get her if she didn't keep moving but she couldn't see anything in the impenetrable black.

Facing front again, she gasped: two blazing yellow eyes hovered just a few feet away. The eyes of something not-human; something dark and awful and hungry. A low growl came from it, vibrating through her chest and ears.

The thing spoke a single word:

"Eclipse."

And then those eyes raced forward out of the void.

Sam's body jerked beneath the sheets, snapping her awake. Once again her pajamas and sheets were soaked. Perkins meowed and hopped off the bed, obviously roused from his own slumber.

"Sorry Perky," Sam mumbled.

She sat up and put her hand to her forehead, then glanced at the nightstand clock: ten minutes before her alarm was due to go off. She might as well start getting ready for her meeting with Detective Barnes.