Hunting Shadows in the Dark

The idle time before entering death did not intimidate Walter. Impending transition into what waited on the other end did not ail him. If he were to speculate where he would go, it would be nowhere or Hell. The underworld was not frightening; he knew the comparable hell he was capable of in his former mobile state. What terrified him was his daughters’ rummaging about the house, making order, taking account, finding secrets.

He could not express his distaste for their tidying. His age and condition claimed his voice and movement. Waiting. Waiting on death, waiting on their discovery, and without voice, he could not muster a lie. His authority could not provoke a convincing explanation for the box filled with peeled, yellowed newspaper articles curated around horrific, unsolved, probable animal attack deaths. His whole life was a lie and yet, there he lied, disarmed from spewing the psychological defenses he knew well from occupation and experience.

His credentials spanned to what he did when no one was looking. Only his victims knew that covert skill. Those unfortunate witnesses knew him like he knew the shadows within his clients. Only he did not need to be on the fatal end of their hateful endeavors to see their true nature. His specialization was the criminally insane. However, no one realized he was an alpha in his crimes compared to those he treated.

Between spoon feedings and vital checks, Walter reflected back on his life. The anticipation of his daughters’ findings rotated with sleep and staring at the same ceiling. It pressed him into recollection. The carnal and the sentimental came to him in fragments punctuating each other as if to materialize symbiosis between his sins and pure triumphs. The scales would balance then harshly tilt, crashing his sense of repentance. On the outside, he appeared to be an old, drooling man incapacitated by time and gravity’s unforgiving toll on a body. Yet, within he raged with this trying assessment of procuring a sense that he was not entirely a monster.

He’d go back to his childhood. He remembered how his father would mysteriously night hunt every month but never brought back a carcass. “I was an innocent child, once,” he told himself in his self-history daydreams.

He was a child until his 13th birthday when his father took him out for his first kill, the initiation to what would be every month for the rest of his healthy life. It was that night he discovered where the carrion went. The first kill was counter-intuitive. He strained past his humanity to pull apart a coyote with what was once his bare hands but suddenly claws. He ripped through his prior reality and feasted on the steaming, red flesh until nothing but bones remained.

His training was brief. The hunt was guided by hunger and innate ability. Eager to strengthen, he quickly met his father’s ranking. Despite their skills’ equality, his father was in charge. He taught Walter to only prey on the beasts of the wilderness. During his teens, he relished the visceral experience of transformation. That thrilling sensation was enough. His skin tore open with an exquisite pain that sent him into a rage to tear other flesh. He was satiated in his new, dual identity.

Yet, as he aged, his own beast within craved something superior to the weak and easy feasts he devoured each full moon. The hunt turned simple. He pictured himself as any other sportsman. Only his arrows and bullets were his claws and ravenous teeth. His father warned him of the fate of their ancestors. A compromise to survive needed to be maintained. Their horror was intolerable. Despite his occupational knowledge, the lust for what he was born to eat plagued him. Similar to his patients, the escalation from taking smaller lives to placate cravings into full-blown dismemberments overtook him without consideration. He spent that energy in his youth being conscientious of his kills. The piety was gone from his existence. His shadow needed to be fed.

His first rightful kill was fueled by his own sense of superiority and entitlement. Before that occasion, he contemplated traveling during the full moon on an exotic hunting excursion. Perhaps digesting the falsely titled “king of the beasts” would stifle his blood lust. Yet, he was the king of the beasts, more brutal and gruesome than any other creature, including man.

His father had long past. The looming warning his father conveyed with eyes and teeth at every family gathering ceased as a blockade from fulfilling what Walter deemed his destiny. He kept his father’s order for several years following the loss. The suppressed urge multiplied with each full moon. Without a father to dominate his core nature and squelch the simmering, unrealized predilection, the doctor was emancipated to a wider hunting ground. The deep forest was no longer his cage.

He returned to the cage on that night. He tried. Upon recollection, he knew he submitted himself to habit, false tradition. Yet, he did not fight the underlying passion.

Just as the night would be noteworthy, his day was triumphant. He had won an achievement award for his book that used shadow work to explore the inner mechanisms of his patients. Titled Hidden Hounds, nobody knew the irony except him. Combined with the glory of this recognition, his hunger grew as wide as the moon. The transformation ached in his bones while he turned around from the forest and impulsively surpassed his own point of no return.

His snout peeled back his skin a few paces outside the campers firelight. He snarled at the anguished sensation of his joints popping. What was once biped was now quadruped with hind legs steadied and readied to lunge. He stalked in the shadows until his full form completed with a thick, black coat. Only a sliver of white remained in his otherwise black eyes when he scanned the campsite.

The blaring metal music pulsating from near the fire pit provided fuel for his rampage. Conveniently, it drowned out the horrified shrieks that would have otherwise echoed back into the woods and announced Walter’s departure from his previous prey. Walter’s human consciousness separated from his monstrous body. Fully beast, he did not simply kill to eat. He tore through each camper’s flesh and shook them by their necks until they were lifeless. Each body was a light course onto the next. He’d swallow what bits he could as he lunged for another new taste. He did not notice the smaller bodies among his kills. After all seven laid dead, Walter’s fever propelled him into the camper from which a baby wailed. The meal was complete with dessert.

Walter did not realize the extent of his crimes until he was at home and showered. Despite the gruesomeness, he did not see his actions as criminal. It was his order. His humanity briefly worried about cleaning up his sloppy, completely primal induced mess. “Fuck it,” he resolved, “An animal did it.”

It was his ability to compartmentalize the beast from his regular life that made him successful. It anchored him to never showing remorse. Each full moon his ego rose, and he grew more ruthless. Once he settled back into his human state, his awareness of his patients’ complexities heightened. The kills created holistic confidence while his lack of guilt and order when killing baffled those who investigated the deaths.

Once he was approached by a detective wanting insight into the killings. It was uncertain if there was a killer or an animal. The detective inquired if Walter, with his extensive knowledge of serial killers, thought it could have been done by a person. Walter skimmed over the disturbing photos and documents with a startled affront. “I doubt a person did this,” he concluded. “It seems like you should be looking for an animal. A werewolf, maybe, if they existed.”

It gave him a sheer pleasure to state the truth. One of Walter’s patients previously confided a habit of jokingly telling his parents his exact crimes. The absurd reports created a sense of playfulness and disbelief with the patient’s parents. It was part of the thrill, admitting it all without consequence. Walter understood this power at that moment with the detective. Albeit, he would never have greater pleasure as his patient admitted after seeing the look of horror and dismay on his parents’ faces when they learned the truth. That position of trickery did not entice Walter. He preferred his feasts and subtle superiority over blatant boastfulness and deception.

Walter’s monthly ritual continued for years after his meeting with the detective. From what he could gain from the newspaper articles, the kind of animal attacking mostly campers was unknown. The community received a warning almost every month to take care while being out at night. Some months no killings were reported simply because Walter settled on vagrants no one noticed were gone. He relished the big kills, however. The glory of the swift multitasking from one body to the next satisfied him most.

Walter surpassed the age his father died unexpectedly in a car crash. He hunted until the month before his death. Because of this circumstance, Walter never learned old age would ultimately stifle the transformation. A full moon soon after Walter’s diagnosis left him unsettled. He mustered only sudden hair growth and a mouth aching to release fangs. Upon his return home that night he snatched a stray cat but choked on its fur. The resolve that his beast within was fading as quickly as his health was sudden, but his acceptance did not mean the hunger left. It just could not be fed any longer.

Flashes of fulfilling carnage and loving moments with his family cycled through Walter’s mind. His body remained still, far from the robust man he used to be. His daughters lacked the perception that he had any thoughts. His mind remained active despite his inability to express it. That activity was what held him onto life for the weeks leading up to his death. The only action the daughters saw and thought out of the ordinary was his accelerated hair growth during the full moon. They thought it odd, but not strange enough to take note.

The conclusion Walter searched for those last days never came. The horrendous slaughters from his animal remained separated from his human life. Condemnation, as well as justification, were not found. He knew his nature, lived it to his fullest while maintaining a healthy, happy home and an exceptional career. The scales never settled but rather dissipated. Worry of who he was leaving behind replaced taking stock of his life a few hours before his death.

The twins sat on each side of Walter when they said their good-byes. He attempted to rally the strength to speak. It came out in guttural gurgles while his previously formidable hands could barely clench their hands. Soon, they were out of the room. Walter screamed beneath his soon vacant body hoping his message would telepathically meet their oncoming grief-riddled minds. Life faded with the last thought, “I have to teach them.”

The secret did not die, but rather hushed for a few months after Walter’s death. His daughters found the newspaper clippings and disregarded them as a part of his work. It was not until several months after his youngest daughter’s twin boys turned thirteen that the articles became relevant. Each month they told their mother the light blood speckling on their clothing was from “eating people.” They giggled at their admittance while she rolled her eyes at the duty of raising teen-aged boys.

It was a full moon when she realized the true significance of her father’s collection and how it corresponded to her sons’ strange behaviors. Standing in front of their home’s door, she refused to let them out into the night. A mother’s authoritative, stubborn love could not hold twin shadows back. It simply made her another meal dragged into the lunar illuminated night, finally knowing the truth before its darkness consumed her.