The Cry of Wolves

Midnight settled with a graceful descent over Yottville, and the children were all ushered to sleep. Houses were plainly lit with lights mounted on their porches. Silence echoed and people impervious of the claws of the night.

Inside one of these shelters, there was a boy named Scarce cowering in terror in spite of the single light bulb that casted a steady shadow under his bed post, and her mother, a thin, pale woman, might as well withering knew better  than turning the lights off. He was scared, and as the twigs of the trees danced and brushed against the window pane, resembling his most fearful monsters, he pulled the blanket over his head, praying, calling on papa Jesus' name.

The wind blew harder. Something inside Scarce's chest snapped and he let out a piercing scream like that of a little girl. He pulled himself up, refusing to look or pass his eyes on the window that was showing a decayed face of his father, pressed against and leaving smudges of flesh on the glass. Scarce ran to the door and it slammed into the wall with a loud bang, reverberating and filling the rest of the hollow empty world before him.

"Mom!" he called. The gust of wind flowing through the dilapidated windows of the adjacent room answered. There were no ceilings to cover or tame the noises of the old house. It was bold and had no secrets to hide.

Scarce ran through the corridor towards his mother's room. It was like he was passing through a chamber with flashes of memories of his unpleasant childhood wafting in the air. The smell of  distant agony of his younger self nagged under the chipping paint and rotten wood panels. "Father had come! Father had come!"

He was panting as he turned right, and then left. Across the wall, on his right,  words stretched high and haunting:

WORSHIP THE LORD WITH GLADNESS; COME BEFORE HIM WITH JOYFUL SONGS.

At the end of the corridor would be his mother's room. The light had ceased on this corner of the house. Before him was pitch black and dead silence. He was breathing hard and didnt know what to do. What catapulted him to finally grope through the darkness for the knob was his father's voice calling out his name; lasting and sick howling like that of a storm.

The door was never locked.  He saw his mother's back arched severely over the bed. Windows were stripped naked and uncurtained. His mother's face was completely hidden. The back of her head was lit by the moonlight. He ran towards her, crying, saying that his father had come over and over again.

At his mother's side, Scarce sat. Refusing to look of what had become of her, saying that his father had come. He was afraid to turn around as he felt the presence of his father by the door, reaching out its hands, singing their favorite song.