Sheep's Clothing by Gary Lewis (free ebook reader for pc txt) 📕

as hell wasn't running around with hair and fangs to burn down the barn." The suspense fell from Janice's stomach into her feet as she took a deep breath.

"Nobody is going to turn anyone in for anything," Terry said, sweeping his hands outward. "We just need to get to the bottom of this." His words did little to dissipate the waves of nausea in Janice's stomach.

"Something wasn't right at the barn that night and the cattle were making a lot of noise from a ways off," Vance said slowly. "I thought the fire spooked them is all." Vance crossed his arms and leaned back. Janice didn't like the way his eyes darted aside when he spoke, but her stomach was finally calm.

Sarah cleared her voice to continue. "The next night, we have Brad's death... supposedly an animal attack."

"Vance scrapped with Brad a few days before that," David said.

Vance nodded his head to the side where Sarah stood. "Yeah, and he was with your ex at the time." With narrowed eyes, he took a sideways shot at David.

"Oh, please." David's exaggerated denial made him look even more suspicious as Janice saw Terry rubbing his chin and Sarah continued.

"Then Danny was killed in his truck," Sarah said, her hands gesturing in a large square. "It literally ripped his whole fucking truck apart."

"From what we've heard," said Vance with a casual sway of his hand.

"It was." Terry said with a calm but firm tone of certainty. "I saw his truck at the wrecker's."

"Alright." Sarah flipped through pages. "Tony wrote a partial note, saying that he did something awful."

"What the hell, Sarah?" David spoke up as everyone's eyebrows raised.

"Tony?" Janice laughed. "Something awful?" As the others turned to look at her with wide eyes, Janice brought her fist to cover the smile that she squeezed tightly shut. "I'm sorry,” she said quietly. “It's just ridiculous."

David swept his hand aside "It was completely unrelated."

For the next half hour, Sarah walked in circles as she discussed the paw prints, the killing spree at the lumber yard, killings that the security guard blamed on a monster. She pointed out how close it was to the area where Randy had gone missing during his early morning jog just hours after the lumber yard incident. Then she finally told of the storm that stranded them at the cliffs where both Jake and Tony were still missing.

As Sarah spoke, Janice studied everyone's faces, analyzing each one’s level of surprise. Momentary glances of eye contact told her that the others were doing the same.

"I want to ask something," Terry said, turning to Sarah's inquisitively silent stare. "Why exactly do you guys think it's one of y'all?" It was a question that sucked Janice's attention away from the others.

"Yeah, Sarah." Vance's loud voice echoed in the large room as many sources of faint, flickering orange light glowed from the candles, causing their shadows to shutter across the pews.

Sarah nodded at David for a second before clearing her throat. "Some of us already had our suspicions. Brad, Danny, the cliffs, the moonlight camera David set up near his property. But it was all so loosely connected." Her eyes drifted downward for a moment.

"But, then?" Terry asked.

Sarah returned her gaze upward to face the entire group as she spoke more loudly. "During our first meeting, David pointed out where the Perkins lock up their cattle at night."

"The Summer pen," Terry said. "I know it."

"Thank you!" David said loudly as he rose his outstretched arm in Terry's direction amidst Sarah's menacing glance. "Told y'all."

"Anyway," Sarah said loudly while Janice listened with the others. "We decided on a plan to catch the son of a bitch on camera with David's old trail cams."

"Tony set them up," David added from the dancing candlelight glow that swept across his face.

Sarah continued. "Tony was supposed to set up the camera trap and Vance mentioned using his bear traps."

Vance spread his arms as he spoke up. "Couldn't find them."

"We know," Sarah said. "That very night, when it tried to go after Janice-"

"Oh, she would have been just fine," Vance's loud voice set fire to Janice's chest as her fists tightened. "David was there to save her."

His laughter was interrupted by David. "Well, where the hell were you at?"

After the room fell back into silence, Sarah's agitation carried with her voice across the historic hardwood walls of the church interior. "David and I found the remnants of David's trail cams along with scraps of Vance's bear traps in a clustered pile. It was laying in Janice's ditch."

Janice's heart skipped a beat and she turned her face toward Vance, meeting his look of surprise with hers. "How come..." Janice paused for a brief moment. "Why didn't y'all tell me?" Her open palms held out toward Sarah, to her left, as she looked her in the eyes. Sarah silently looked back as if she didn’t know what to say.

"We didn't want you to worry," David spoke up from the other side of the chair they all encircled.

Sarah cleared her throat loudly. "It had to have been someone who was in that room with us that day."

"But, wait," Terry said. "You've all known each other forever." He slowly swept his hand around the group. "Wouldn't you know if one of you was..." Terry paused for a second before saying the word. "A werewolf?"

"Probably just happened," Vance said.

"But how?" David asked. "How does someone just become a werewolf?"

"Who knows," Sarah said, shaking her head with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Maybe they don't know either," Janice added.

"Alright," Terry said to the others. "Let's take a break to consider everything." Everyone looked quietly at one another, the gaps between them growing larger than the air they occupied. "Then I have a game that might help us figure out exactly who it might be."

Janice watched everyone sit and contemplate as they continued to stare at one another. The distrust combined with a paranoia that overshadowed even the candles that still wisped flickers of orange around the room, but the darkness in the farthest