Mike and Micky both looked reluctant, but agreed to follow me. Mike pulled his blanket over his head and gripped Micky's puppy tightly in his arms. Micky took his hand so that he wouldn't trip in to something, since he couldn't see because of the blanket.
"Okay guys," I said. "Where should we look first?" Micky pointed toward the window. I noticed that it was open. I knew immediately what had happened to Peter. I understood why they were scared. Just to be certain, I looked out the window and made sure that there weren't any dead bodies lying on the ground. Thankfully there weren't.
"Don't worry guys, Peter's all right," I said. They appeared less than convinced.
"Not scared fo' Peter. Scared of ghost," Mike said. I was confused. I understood why they'd be scared for Peter, but what was the ghost? I thought. Then I had a radical theory. If Peter had jumped out the window that probably meant that he knew he was going to change soon. And that probably meant it was the full moon. A look out the window confirmed my suspicions. I thought that perhaps Mike had, because of his childlike thoughts, been able to sense that. Maybe he thought of it as something in the air. Or something else that his mind interpreted as a ghost. It was an odd idea, but it could be true. What was important now was to do something about it. I wasn't that good at coming up with great ideas. I wondered what to do then.
After thinking about it for a little while I decided the only thing to do was to wait and see what happened. There wasn't much I could do. I didn't know if I would change. It was very unpredictable, the way it happened. For that matter, was Mike different enough so that he wouldn't change. I thought to myself how much I would have appreciated it if someone would explain all this to me.
I led Mike and Micky downstairs and, after Mike complained of hunger, fixed them some food. I discovered that the only thing we had in the house that Mike wanted to eat was peanut-butter and jelly. So I fixed that for all of us. I wasn't particularly hungry, and Micky didn't seem to care what he ate.
After we ate, Mike's keen ears, which had picked out my banging a few hours before, heard a rapping at the door. At first it was a tapping, but eventually it got louder. Mike must have had sensitive ears at that point, because he once again asked for someone to make it stop. I listened carefully and heard what he was hearing. I got up and went to the door.
"Who's there?" I asked. There was no answer. I opened the door and saw a large dog on the other side. This time there was no doubt in my mind. It was Peter.
"All right guys, everything's going to be okay," I said, attempting to reassure Mike and Micky. Micky had reclaimed his stuffed dog and was hugging it tightly. Mike had pulled the blanket over his head again and was whimpering slightly. I decided to pretend everything was normal.
"It's just a simple thunderstorm," I said. "Everything's fine." No sooner had I said these words when there was another clap of thunder and a flash of lightning. Then everything went dark. "Except for the power outage," I thought to myself. Mike whimpered and, though I couldn't see Micky, I knew he was probably clinging to his stuffed dog tighter than before. "It's okay, guys. It's just a power outage," I said. I left Peter with Mike and Micky and went into the kitchen to find some candles or flashlights.
A few minutes later I returned with both. I'd found a box of about thirty candles and another box of matches. I set up the candles in a circle around the room, lighting up the room. Though they didn't light up the room as well as an electric lamp might have, they did improve the lighting enough to ease the fear. I could feel the fear level in the room that I'd been feeling all evening begin to subside. I looked around the room and shined the flashlight to make sure we were all there.
Mike and Micky looked up with innocent eyes. Peter was lying comfortably in front of them, allowing himself to be used as a giant teddy bear. He didn't look too upset, but then I'm not a good judge of emotions in dogs. I didn't sense anything negative from him, and I decided to trust my senses.
"Tummy hurt more now," Mike said. He held his stomach and let out a moan of pain.
"It's okay, Mike, it'll be okay," I said, trying to comfort him. But I thought, deep down inside myself, was there some was he could avoid the pain? I'd been changing only a little while now, but each time I'd felt pain. Or had I? I remembered that before I'd known, before I'd hurt Micky, I hadn't felt any pain, and I'd actually enjoyed it. What was the difference, I wondered.
"Peter, can you help him?" I asked. The dog's blue eyes looked up at me. It was almost supernatural, a dog with blue eyes. But then Peter wasn't an ordinary dog. "How can he avoid the pain?"
Since dogs don't have facial expressions, I couldn't very well say that Peter looked thoughtful or pensive. But I sensed such a feeling from him. Then he stood up and went to Mike. Mike held on to him and gripped the fur on his back tightly. Then I watched as Mike began to change.
He began from a kneeling position. First, his feet began to change. They swelled up and his socks ripped in half. His legs swelled up next, ripping the legs of his pants. Under the ripped clothing, fur began to grow, thick and dark. His hands swelled up, and then his arms. His back arched, and he dropped his hands to the floor. His shirt, ripped and tattered, now hung off of him limply. His face twisted into odd shapes, and his nose grew longer. His ears stretched, and the hair on his head grew longer to cover his face. Hair came out of ever skin pore on his body. Finally, he sat back on his haunches, looked up at the sky, and howled a mournful howl that echoed through every deep crevice in my brain.
It was an odd, mournful howl, like none I'd ever heard before. I looked at Micky to see how it had affected him, but saw that he'd already begun to change. The hair on his head had changed color from its usual dark brown to a light shade of gold, and this same color fur was also growing on his arms. His arms and legs swelled to twice their normal thickness, even thicker than Mike's had. He was bent over, and his head looked up at me from under the hair hanging in his face. He caught my eye and I saw a look of pain. I had no doubt now that the lion was Micky. But unlike Mike and Peter, his eyes did change. They were opened wide when he looked at me, and then they glazed over with an odd kind of film. He looked down at his hand, which had hurt before, and I saw the skin ripping off of him to reveal the brownish-gold fur underneath his skin. I could only imagine how painful it must have been for him. His skin began to peel all over, and I saw him open his mouth, getting a glimpse of the large teeth now growing inside. He tried to scream, it was immeasurable, intense pain, but all that came out was a roar, loud enough to shake the house. And to stop Mike from howling.
Somehow, though I don't know why, this roar scared Mike. But instead of cowering under his blanket, as he'd done before, he showed his strength. And the way he did this was by lashing out at Peter.
I couldn't have feasibly done anything here, at least not anything that I'd expected to get out of alive. Micky was too weak, getting used to the change. He looked at his hands (which were now paws) and began to lick them to ease the pain. Mike jumped on Peter, digging his claws into his back and snapping at his neck. Micky watched, uninterested. I suppose that he thought that Peter could handle himself. And Peter did try. He growled back, and snapped at Mike. But he was too afraid of hurting Mike, something he knew he'd feel guilty about later. So he was helpless. I decided I had to take action.
"Stop it!" I yelled. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it was a bad idea. Mike and Peter stopped fighting. Mike turned and looked at me. I could see his eyes. They were still Mike's, the same brown color. But they had a look in them which scared me a lot. I felt a rush of anger go through me, a primal thing, which Mike was projecting on me. I felt a wave of pain from Peter. He was too weak to help himself. I didn't know how bad he was hurt, but I knew I was on my own. I held back as long as I could, but I couldn't forever, and eventually a wave of a fear greater than any I'd ever felt rushed over me.
Mike sensed the fear, and fed on it, leaping for me. In one full force blow, I was on the ground. His claws dug into my stomach like nothing I'd felt before...nothing since....
A million thoughts ran through my head at once. "Mike, no! " I managed to yell. "Please." I saw his eyes blink and he realized what he was doing. He jumped off of me. I watched as Micky threatened to injure him. "Guys, don't. Please," I said. I felt I had to get the words out. My mind was moving to fast....
All of the sudden the million thoughts left my head. My mind was completely blank. Then there was a flash of white light. Not outside, but in my head. Even then I knew that it was in my head. And that was the last thing I knew for a while.....
