Author: Alyse Zaftig
Category: Paranormal
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/32470_2
The little flashlight struggled to illuminate the darkness. It was as if the trees devoured the light. But still, she turned from the main road and walked, step by step, down the driveway. Her feet crunched against gravel and the rain poured down around her like a lazy waterfall, spilling off the road. The canopy of trees above deflected almost all the rain with a hushed thirst.
The path wound down the mountain in a series of switchbacks for almost half a mile, terminating at a large dark home. It was a large farmhouse, built around the turn of the century as best as she could tell. It stood two stories tall and had a large wraparound porch. Holes gaped in the roof and the windows looked to all be either boarded up or smashed out. The front door had two-by-fours nailed across it, marked with deep slashes that looked like they belonged to some wild animal.
Rose had been hoping for warmth or at very least, some place dry, but this home looked like anything but. It was half-rotten and foreboding and if she hadn’t been so tired and cold and hungry, she would have turned away.
Instead she walked around to the back of the house. Maybe there would be a kitchen door she could sneak through? Maybe there would be canned food or a dry room or even the makings of a fire? She clutched her hope hard to her chest because it was all she had left.
The farmhouse was surprisingly deep. It had suffered many additions, performed inexpertly, so that it’s once handsome silhouette now sprouted a hodgepodge of extra rooms built with little care for the history of the house. Rose suspected that in the daylight it would be a motley thing, like an old jacket that was more patch than fabric.
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The porch boards under her feet creaked and groaned, but they held firm. The porch’s roof, too, kept the rain off her which only made her feel colder and more chilled.
How had she come to this point? Just yesterday she had been the lone librarian of Poppy Valley, running their one-room library on a shoestring budget with an army of elderly volunteers and creative fundraising techniques. And now here she was, marooned in the vast wilderness, freezing to death outside an abandoned farmhouse.
If only Ronald Carter hadn’t taken a shine to her.
If only he hadn’t been so determined to have her.
If only he hadn’t found out she was a virgin.
If only she had said yes to his disgusting demands.
She would have hated herself, true, but she would have been alive and dry.
Behind the farmhouse stood another smaller structure. It looked like a guesthouse or perhaps an in-law—the kind of tiny house people stuff grandparents into. The roof was intact. The windows weren’t broken. Rose’s heart leapt when she saw it.
Popping up her umbrella, she ran across the muddy expanse between the farmhouse and the guest house and nearly cried with happiness when she found the door unlocked.
She didn’t see the eyes watching her from the farmhouse. She heard the rumbling growl that echoed from its depths, but she took it for thunder, not the warning sounds of a furious animal.
Rose barged into the little cottage—it was no bigger than her bedroom back home—and found it dry and pleasant. A bed huddled in one corner opposite an old wood stove. And the rest of the place was taken up by a tiny kitchen and the smallest bathroom she’d ever seen. It was unadorned, save for shelves of books that circled the ceiling, just above her head.
Beside the stove was a neat stack of firewood in a basket. Would anyone care if she used it? Of course not. The place was abandoned. And anyway, without heat she would die of exposure. Rose told herself she had no choice, as she got a fire going and stuffed wood into the stove. The dry old logs took the flame eagerly, flaring up and giving their heat and light to her. Rose stripped off her wet clothes and arranged them near the stove. “Get dry by morning, my pants, and we’ll find a way out of here,” she said.
Beside the bed was a chest and Rose raided it for clothing, finding an old nightgown that smelled of crisp cedar and a thick quilt that had been made with love. Once she was warm and dry, she ate her protein bar and poked around the kitchen. The fridge had no power, of course, and was empty. But beside it she found a wine rack with two bottles bearing dates from the eighties. One red and one white beckoned her. She decided to drink the white, since no one would miss it, and so with her belly full of soy protein isolate and well-aged wine, she fell asleep before the fire and dreamed of running down muddy roads.
She didn’t see the monstrous form that peered in the windows. She didn’t see the hate that burned in his eyes. But her dreams grew troubled in his presence nonetheless.
Chapter 2
It was a troubled night for Liam. He never did well when the moon was full. It seemed to bring out the worst of the beast inside him. And he didn’t need any help in that area. To make it worse, a powerful storm had settled overhead, blowi
ng in from the north and bringing with it freezing rain and a wind that shook his tattered home to the foundation.
Liam hated the rain. Water belonged in rivers full of ripe salmon or in the mountain lakes where the sweetest berries grew. Water should know its place, he decided and its place was most definitely not soaking his fur to the bone.
If he’d been a real bear then thick oils would have made the rain run off him without trouble. If he’d been a man, then he could have used an umbrella or a raincoat. But he was neither. He was Liam Half-Bear, forever cursed and miserable when wet.
He’d slept most of the day away again, curled up in the corner of his living room in a pile of old blankets and ripped up cushions. His belly had been full, yes, he recalled that much. He’d caught one of the rare tule elk that strode the high ridges and its meat had been sweat and delicious once cooked over a fire. He’d shared the kill with a mountain lion and left the offal for the ravens. It was the least he could do. He knew his presence placed a burden on the local animals. He ate too much, too often. So he tried to be mindful and to give back when he could. But the beast in him was a jealous, ravenous thing, and sharing wasn’t always easy.
Had he dreamed? He suspected he had. His mind had the lingering feeling of remembering, though the actual memories were lost to him. It was like coming into your home and sitting on a chair only to find it still warm from the previous occupant. He couldn’t touch those old memories, but he knew they were there.
It had been so long since the curse took him. Decades, he guessed, though his bear half found the idea of time absurd. There was no such thing as time, the bear decided. There were seasons, yes, but time was a circle. There was eating in the spring and feasting in the summer and then the slowness of autumn that gave way to the slumber of winter. And that was all. Life began anew every spring. And if the man called each of these cycles a year and tried to count them—well, let him. It hurt nothing to let the man half of him clutch his odd ideas like a handful of berries too beautiful to eat. In time, the ideas would fade and the man would grow silent and Liam Half-Bear would be a beast again, tromping through the woods.
Liam sat in his home and listened to the sound of the rain and seethed. He wanted to go out to see his land. The longer he sat in the house, the more his thoughts returned to him. And with the thoughts came anger and sadness and rage. He needed to leave before that happened. The old farmhouse couldn’t take any of his furious outbursts. There were few windows left.
So even though it made him soaked and miserable, Liam Half-Bear went out into the storm to take in the air. Was it because being sodden gave him something to focus his misery on? It was a concrete thing, an actual thing, not the ephemeral regrets that taunted him as he slept. He would rather be mad at the storm than mad at himself, he supposed.
The woods in the rain were devoid of game. Every animal, it seemed, was smarter than he was, and hid in their burrows as the downpour lashed the land. The soil had been dry and yes, he had worried that this year the berries would be even fewer and tarter than last, but this amount of rain was preposterous. It was wasteful. The man inside him tried to talk about droughts and storm cycles, but the bear ignored his man-words. “These things happen,” he bear-splained. “There is no use giving every thing under the sun its own name.”