So I’ve been doing a lot of writing in the last year. I’ve done a book. I’m currently correcting my horrendous formatting errors to get it into “marketable manuscript” territory. That, however, is incredibly boring. So I’ve decided to post up a bit of my other stuff in the hope of slowly working through the abject terror of showing other humans the stuff I’ve written.
This one started out as a “supplemental RPG materials” type thing. Then I decided it was more fun just to write the story. I might post it here, chapter by chapter. This, is the prologue. Long story short, it’s the story of a paranormal podcaster recording interviews in the immediate wake of the reveal that monsters were real all along.
…
—Season 4, Episode 1: The Beast Within—
‘Okay, all the mics are running, recording’s running, plenty of space on the drive. Let’s roll, shall we?’ the host said. ‘You guys just jump in when it feels natural, and I’ll introduce you once we get past the intro. Not that you need all that much introducing.’
She was sat at a desk, beside her laptop, in a hotel room she could never have afforded (and would not have sprung for even if she could). She was most certainly not one to turn down a good freebie, especially when it came with the exclusive of a lifetime.
‘Alright, friends, we’re back on the air and in your feeds a little ahead of schedule,’ she said, engaging her podcast voice. ‘Okay, fine, way fucking ahead of schedule. But you all know why, don’t you? Well, if you don’t, just hit that pause button, climb out from under your rock, turn on the news, and give it thirty seconds. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. Good. Now that we’re all on the same wavelength, I should say I’m recording this at, oh, around about lunchtime the morning after the press conference. If that’s what you want to call it. The revelation might be a more fitting title. Between you and me, I had no idea why I got an invitation, right up until it was very, very clear why I got one.”
‘Now, we’ll come back to the revelation itself in a minute. For those of you listening to the show for the first time, I think a little recap is in order. I’m Cadence. You can blame my parents for that. I know I do. I’m a journalist, by trade. I got into it for the same reason I started this show. You see, when I was a kid, thirteen years old, I had an experience which could be described as supernatural. It could also be, and in fact was, described as a hallucination.’
Cadence leaned back in her chair, a distant look on her face as she began recounting a story she had told many times. This time, however, circumstances were somewhat different.
‘I was on a camping trip, with my parents, in the Appalachians. Absolutely beautiful place, but it turned out we picked one heck of a bad time to be camping. The second night we were there, a full on storm kicks off. Torrential rain, lightning, full dramatic weather. Obviously the responsible adults tell me not to go anywhere but kid me, like all kids, was a god-damn dumbass. Everyone was battened down in the tents, and kid me gets up for a piss, as one does. I go like twenty feet tops, and somehow I get turned around, slip over somewhere, and before you know it I’ve no idea where I am.’
‘Now a smarter person than me might have gone “just sit still” or some shit like that, but I thought I knew how to get back. And suddenly I’m lost. I panic. I mean, I was a kid, cut me a break, right? Still, suddenly I’m scared, and I’m panicking, and I’m not quite paying attention to where I’m going. It’s pitch dark, It’s bucketing down, in no time flat I’m a long way from camp and I can’t see a damn thing. And then I lose my footing and slip down this bank, right, and I get to the bottom and what do you know, but my leg’s broken. Bad.’
She shuddered at the memory.
‘I sit there, an absolute mess, soaking wet, crying my eyes out and calling for help. I know no one’s going to hear me, but it’s what you do, right? And then there’s this howl. Now, I’d heard wolves, and they can be scary, but this was something more than that. Just for a moment, I knew what some poor little prey animal feels like the second before the jaws close. And the worst part was this wasn’t some distant thing. It was right on top of me. So I huddle down in the mud and go as quiet as a sobbing, hyperventilating mess can be, and I hope nothing knows I’m there.’
‘Well, as it turns out, they did. A couple of minutes later, this thing comes out of the darkness. It was terrifying and awe-inspiring all at once. I figured I was about to die, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was maybe seven feet tall, all muscle and shaggy fur, teeth and claws that looked like they could rip a car to pieces. And then, right there in front of me, she howls again. That image. In all these years, I’ve never been able to get it out of my head.’
“Then she starts walking towards me, and as she walks, she changes. She shrinks, the fur recedes, and the tail shrinks away to nothing, and by the time she kneels down next to me, she’s just a woman. Stark naked, sweating and panting like a dog, filthy and covered in mud, but just a woman. With a kind face and a reassuring smile. She tells me not to be afraid, and that she won’t hurt me, and if I hold still she’ll take me back to camp. I try to say something and she just shushes me. Tells me she has to turn back to carry me. Then two more of them turn up, full beast mode just like she had been, and she tells me not to worry about them. They’re just her friends. Then, right in front of me, she turns back into the beast and picks me up like it’s nothing.’
‘I can’t have actually gone that far, because they had me back at camp in, like, a minute. She puts me down just outside the camp and I can see lights and hear my parents calling me. I don’t think she could talk like that, so she ruffles my hair, right, then she puts a finger to her lips and then holds up all ten fingers. Like she’s saying to give her a ten-second head start, and then they’re gone. Boy, could they move. So then I count to ten, just like she said, and then I scream my head off in the manner only a teenage girl can.’
‘You can guess most of what happened after that, but no one ever believed me. Not my parents, not the doctors, not the fucking shrink my folks sent me to when I wouldn’t let the whole werewolf thing drop. I will be visiting home in the very near future, and I will be so damn smug that it’s insufferable. Maybe I’ll see if my guests will come with me. Anyway, I never quite grow out of it. So I get into the supernatural, big time, once I get older. It’s what got me into journalism, I thought the skills, the research, the resources. All together, it might help me find that bit of proof. It’s why I started this show, too.’
‘Those of you that have been following from the start know that, well, I haven’t exactly had all that much luck. I’ve been all over the USA. Around the world, too, when the budget allows. And while I’ve met some genuinely amazing people, I never found that smoking gun, you know? I’ve applied the full force of my journalistic talents to myths, urban legends, a prank or two, and some downright delusions. I’ve always tried to take it seriously, to give people who’ve always been dismissed like I was a fair hearing, but as you’ll know some of our episodes… Let’s just say a few of them are downright comedies. Farces, even, from time to time. It’s why I try and show you behind the curtain, with these stories. How you learn from the failure, how you approach these things rigorously and carve away the fiction. Unfortunately, in most cases, I ended up carving until there was nothing left.’
‘But not always. There were hints, these moments when I felt like just maybe I was on the edge of something. The ten generations of the Leighton family in Maine who looked absolutely identical to their fathers, stretching back centuries, despite no one ever seeing two of them in the same place, or ever seeing a kid.’
‘Vampire,’ said the woman sprawled comfortably on the hotel bed. ‘You nearly had him, too. He was bricking it. Nice guy, though.’
Cadence sighs and shakes her head in frustration.
‘Or,’ she continues, ‘the man in the trailer in Missouri who found a skeleton that was almost human. Almost. Except for the wings and the bird feet. I took samples of that to two separate forensic labs. Both of them told me it was a forgery. Wouldn’t look me in the eyes while they did it, though, or answer my calls when I tried to get the samples back after the damned FBI swept in and seized the skeleton.’
‘Harpy,’ added the woman on the bed. ‘And Honey, that was not the FBI.”
Cadence groaned and slapped the desk.
‘For fuck’s sake, I knew they were bullshitting me, but I could never prove it. Still, to the present. This seems like a good moment to introduce my guests for this episode. You may not recognise her voice, but the lady who just completely recontextualised two of my old episodes is none other than Haley Stanford, or as the world better knows her, the woman that not twenty-four hours ago stripped off in front of two dozen different live streams and news agency cameras and turned into a wolf-monster for the whole world to see.”
Haley laughed. She apparently had no regrets about the show she put on.
‘Never thought I’d go full-frontal for an audience of ten billion, but what’s life without a few surprises?’ said Haley.
‘Ten billion might be an understatement,’ said the man sat cross-legged on the floor, presiding over a half-eaten pizza. ‘In historical footage terms, your nudes are going to be up there with Armstrong on the moon.’
Haley shrugged.
‘Screw it, it’ll give teenagers a reason to pay attention in history class,’ Haley declared. ‘It did the job, and that’s the important thing.’
‘And our other guest, there, is Jude Gallagher,’ continued Cadence. ‘You should already have figured this out, but I’m going to say it anyway, because it gives me immense personal satisfaction. Here goes,” Cadence says, dramatically clearing her throat.’“My guests today are werewolves. Not fantasists or frauds, but actual, provable, observable, werewolves. And one of them just happens to be the most famous werewolf in the world.’
‘Well, that’s a matter of perspective,’ Haley suggested. ‘Yeah, to the average human, I just happen to be the only werewolf they know about. To us monsters, not so much. I ain’t got shit on Captain Barbeau, for example. Oh wait, it can all go public now, Hollywood I’m talking to you, if you don’t make a biopic of that woman’s life you are money phobic morons.’
‘Not knowing who that is,’ Cadence resumed, ‘I’ll have to take your word for it. As I mentioned before, we’ll circle back to the press conference itself in a later episode. You’ve probably already seen the best bits.’
‘Those would be my bits,’ Haley said, posing dramatically on the bed.
‘Still, it’s worth a retelling. After all, there’s a hell of a story to tell there,’ Said Cadence.
‘And half the world’s press is in the hotel car park trying to get in to tell it,’ added Jude. ‘I suspect the other half is trying to book plane tickets.’
‘And, oh no, it looks like they’re out there, in the cold,’ joked Cadence, ‘and I’m in here in my nice comfy hotel room, with the stars of the show.’
‘She’s not wrong, listener, this bed is dangerously comfy,’ Haley said. ‘I make no promises that I won’t fall asleep at some point. Just poke me if I do.’
‘I’ve got to say, the council picked a nice place, given we’re going to be stuck here for a few days,’ Jude mused. ‘Plush rooms, stocked bar, killer room service, all-inclusive. There’s even a spa. I might go get a massage later.’
‘They picked more than that,’ continued Haley. ‘All that armed security outside is theirs too. I shudder to think how many people have tried to take a shot at this place in the last few hours. Well, after the first guy, that is.’
‘You bet your ass we’ll be talking about that in the upcoming episodes, as well,’ Cadence said, returning to her intro. ‘But for now, it’s all about you two. Fiction has given the world an idea of what a werewolf is. Plenty of them, in fact. From Abbott and Costello and Teen Wolf to American Werewolf in London and Dog Soldiers.”
‘I love Dog Soldiers,’ Jude said, only slightly muffled by pizza, ‘an absolute werewolf classic.’
‘Indeed. But what I want to know is the truth. Forget the fiction. What is a werewolf, really? Now, this is where we’d usually cut to a sponsor segment or an ad or some shit, but for once I don’t have one prepared, so, on with the show!’