Night Howlers (Short Story)

Night+Howlers+%28Short+Story%29

MiKayla Evans, WHS Reporter

As Ray laid on his bed staring at the ceiling, he started to wonder how long it would take for his mother to remember that he was there. Ray started to wish the story his grandmother had told him long ago was true but he knew it wasn’t. He heard his mother coming upstairs and he quickly straightened up his room so that it looked as presentable as it could be. She opened the door and looked at Ray while looking around the room, “I have stuff I gotta do today so I’m taking you over to Mr. Mcgregor’s house so he can watch you till I get back, get ready to leave in 5 minutes”, and she walked out of his room leaving the door open. He got dressed and combed out his hair,  went downstairs. As he stood by the door, waiting for his mother to get ready to leave. She came downstairs wearing a sparkly indigo dress with fancy high heels that stopped around the ankles, she grabbed her keys and purse, then walked outside with Ray following quickly and quietly behind her. She opens the car door and starts to get in and looks to Ray and said, “Get in,” as always he did as told. The drove over to Mr. Mcgregor’s house and parked right in front of the old beaten down house that the little old man lived in. She told Ray to get out and that he better behave. He approached the door, while his mother drove off in a hurry. The door opened and there stood the old man with the grumpy expression. He moved to the side so that the boy could come in. Ray slowly walked in and he saw that the inside was a lot nicer than the outside of the house. He wondered why the old man kept the outside the way it is but kept the inside nice, neat and very clean.

Ray had heard a small growl when he entered the kitchen, not realizing it was his stomach. “May I have something to eat, sir?” He asked and the old man went to the fridge, pulled out a plate covered in tin foil and set it in front of the boy. “Eat up”, he said and then he walked into the living room as he sat down and pulled out a book all while looking out the window at the setting sun. He took off the tin foil off the plate and what he saw next made him extremely sick. He screamed got up and ran out the front door, down the street away from the beaten up home. What he had seen were human intestines, human skin, and other various body parts. Thinking about it made him very uneasy and quite disturbed. He stopped running when he heard it, the howling of the wolves from the story his grandmother had told him. He hadn’t realized that it had gotten dark outside. He ran as fast as he could but he could hear them moving closer and closer to him until there was two in front and two behind him. He has become the old man’s next target marked for death just as it was told in the story. Those marked for death, the ones who had seen or heard too much would be dead by morning. As he stared into the face of death, he started to think that this will be the way the story ends for him. He started to question whether he’d have survived all these if he had just kept quiet or if he’d had to run to the comfort of his home. The thoughts sank in as the wolves devoured him all up. Next thing he knows is that he woke up in his bed and it was morning….