Allan

"And where do you think you're going?" She called after me.

Man, if she finds out where I'm going she's gonna kill me.

" I'm just going out with some of my friends, Mom."

"Alright, but stay out of the woods, okay?"

Of course at the time, I had every intention of going into those woods. There was just something surreal about that forest that drew all of us kids to them.

"Alright mom, I won't." I left the house and was blasted by the scent of wet leaves and the chill of the evening breeze.

"Allan, wait up!"

As I turn to leave, I hear a girl's voice call out from behind me. I recognized it immediately as Elizabeth. She was planning on meeting us in the woods that night: me, Grant and Vanessa.

"Vanessa told me that she and Grant, would meet us by the old oak tree at the end of their street," she told me in between breaths.

"Wait, I thought that we agreed to meet in the woods behind Grant's house?"

"Something came up. Grant said he'll explain when we are all together," she replied.

"Well then, let's go," I said. Then we took off running down the two blocks toward Grant and Vanessa's street.

When we got to the street, I noticed the police cars and vivid yellow tape with the words CAUTION in bold black letters.  

What happened there? I thought. I looked closer, and I noticed claw marks on the side of the house.

"What happened?" I asked Elizabeth, gesturing towards the scene behind me. As I looked closer, I noticed impossibly large, canine-like paw prints in the damp ground. An officer stepped in front of me and blocked my view, so I kept walking.

"Nobody quite knows. But, Grant has some theories," she answered while rolling her eyes. We walked the rest of the way in silence to the edge of the woods.

"Hey Grant!" I shouted when they came into view. Grant and Vanessa just sat in silence, as if they were listening for something.

"Shhh," he hushed, as Elizabeth and I got closer. Then we heard a faint howling in the distance.

"Did you guys hear it? We think that there's some sort of wolf out there," whispered Vanessa. I have to admit that I was a bit creeped out by the events of that night, but at that moment, I wanted to go into the woods more than ever before.

"Do you realize what this means?" I asked them.

"That there is some sort of violent, wolf-like creature out in the woods behind Grant's house," Vanessa answered sarcastically.   

"Exactly!" I said. "This could be our chance to do something useful in our lives. I mean, you saw the size of those paw prints right?

"Yeah…" She looked at me warily, as if she could tell what I was planning.

" Those certainly didn't belong to any known species. If we could find a new species we would be famous!"

"Count me out," said Vanessa.

"He has a point V. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity." Grant and I had been friends for seven years, so his support was no surprise.

" I guess I'll come too," agreed Elizabeth.

So we set off on our journey through the woods. What we didn't realize was that while we searched for this "beast," it was searching for us too.

    "Where are we even going?" asked Elizabeth.

"Wherever the howls take us," I replied.

We had been walking for about ten minutes in silence, trying to remain alert.  

Suddenly, we heard branches snap behind us. As we stopped to listen I heard the sound of a zipper.

"Hey guys," said Grant as he came out of the brush. I shoot him a look to let him know he shouldn't have come out like he did. He answered my gaze with subtle laughter.

At that moment we heard more branches snap in the woods about fifty yards ahead of us. The snapping was followed by more howling, ten times louder now.  We started running in the opposite direction as we heard the sound of an animal crashing towards us.

Then, all of us fell down a hill that we had never seen before. We had been through this part of the woods hundreds of times and never seen it. I got up and looked around and noticed the beast was just an ordinary wolf, but the odd thing was that it wouldn't come any closer. I looked behind me as I got the feeling that there was something the wolf wanted me to see.

"Um, Allan," said Grant, "What is that?"

I turned around and that's when I saw it. An old door, covered in tattered vines and scratches, similar to the ones on the house where the police were. Grant looks at me with a look like he's about to do something stupid, then he does the unthinkable. He opens the door.