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

night they were stranded in the forest, they lost one another on more than one occasion. She never even mentioned that part.

Janice's face turned around at each of them with wide, round eyes when Sarah was finished. "I can't imagine it being Tony," she said in a meek voice. "I'm sorry." As much as that should have relieved David, he wondered why she didn't say the same of him.

Then Vance opened his mouth. "Y'all seen the pounds he's been packing lately? Could be from all those missing teenagers." He tilted his head to the side as he lifted his hand. "He always wanted to be a chef, right?"

"Douche." David's words came without hesitation or thought.

"Relax, dweeb," Vance said with a light smile. "Nah..." Vance shook his head as his face slightly dropped. "Truth is... I think he's dead."

David readied his voice to shoot back when Vance's next words stopped him.

"Sorry, man," Vance said to finish his turn. It wasn't a response that David expected, so he left it at that.

David cautiously reached into the box once more as Terry reached to touch his arm. "Wait." Everyone looked at Terry as he hesitated to speak. "I didn't want to say, but we should all put everything out there."

"What is it?" Sarah asked.

"Before my brother and I headed back to the truck last night..." A silent moment sucked the air from the room. "Well, we didn't want to leave Tony there, but he insisted. He wasn't worried about himself a bit."

"Tony never worries about himself," David said.

"He always thought of others," Janice added.

"Not only that," Terry continued. "He’s the one that told us the way back to the truck, down that trail. The trail we were almost ambushed on. And now there's no sign of him."

David didn't want to hear anything else. He pulled out one of the last two cards still in the box and flipped it onto the table. Once again, he was met with a stir in the pit of his stomach. "Janice? It says Janice? Come on," David said in protest.

"It's okay, David. I don't have anything to hide," Janice said. "We all have to clear up any suspicions so we can move on." Her words were always so pure and genuine. She was right, but David still didn't like it. The name was written in neat cursive. It had to have been written by a girl, he thought. That only left one person. Sarah's eyes bared down on him.

"Well, David?" Sarah asked.

His eyes pressed back to her. "Get real. It's not Janice."

"Try to think of something, David," Terry said as David looked toward Janice's soft face.

"I'll go," Sarah spoke up, lifting the burden of his turn. "You've been keeping to yourself. It's understandable after what happened last year. But nobody can account for you during any of the attacks."

Terry stepped forward. "I don't really know you as well as the others, Janice. I'm sorry to ask, but how exactly did your father die?"

David's eyes jumped across the room toward Sarah as she stared back with a sternness that stung the surface of his skin.

"That morning, Dad was getting ready," Janice said softly. "We were going to go fishing at Moss Lake and I wanted to try out my new camera on the fall scenery. But I was really sick and he went without me." David could hear her voice beginning to become unstable and of course Vance reached out toward her shoulder. "It's okay," she said, pulling away. "I'm fine." Vance shrugged and shook his head as she continued. "There was a bad storm the night before and the boat had some kind of electrical problem." David watched her press her eyelids shut tightly as a glistening sparkle leaked from their corners and she tilted her head to the floor. "They said the deck was wet and it probably made the shock worse."

"It can't be Jan," David said. "It was outside her house while I was with her." He was ready to challenge anything that anyone had to say, but they all just looked toward him.

"Final name, David," Terry said.

"Here we go," David said as he pulled the final card from the box. "Tony again."

"Well, I guess that's it," Terry said, rubbing his chin. "I'm still at a loss." He twisted slowly around, seemingly examining each of them, one at a time. "It must be someone who was in the room during your first meeting. Janice, David, Sarah, Tony, or Vance."

Vance turned slowly away. "Then it can control when it transforms." David strained to see him as the darkness was closing in to devour the remaining candles. "It's pretty late and we're all still alive," Vance said, walking toward the entrance. “Only thing I came to figure out.”

"Where do you think you're going?" David asked.

"To howl at the moon, what do you think?" Once he reached the large entrance doorway, Vance turned back to look at David. "We going to nail this bastard or what?"

David didn't like the idea of working with Vance, but he couldn't argue with a proposition like that.

"Way I see it, this thing is a beast," Vance said. "Maybe it was a person once. Who knows? Maybe it can change back and forth. But it's just a beast now." He firmly nodded his head up and down. "I say we meet this weekend and lay a trap for it."

"That's a problem if it's one of us," Sarah said. "If we all know, then it either won't show-"

"Or it will have to," David said to interrupt her.

"Then it's on." Vance held up his fist. "Saturday, blood will be drawn. Ours or his."

###

There wasn't much to say after Vance left. They had each learned so much, but so little. It seemed that the only thing they ever gained was an increasing paranoia about one another as they struggled to uncover the truth. The light within the church began to die as Terry stayed behind to extinguish the candles while Sarah and David rushed to bring Janice home. Along the entire