Witches of the Night Chapter 29 - The Wolf of Perre
A lot has changed since my last entry on this blog. Since the attack on the Gerês camp, I no longer have contact with the Organization. Without their influence, the friction caused in the company where I worked by my long and unjustified absences led to me being fired. For my wife, who was already suspicious, my dismissal and its supposed causes were the last straw. What she suspected was happening was obvious, but I couldn't tell her the truth. I refused to burden her with my knowledge of everything hidden in this world. Though I doubt she would have even believed me. Consequently, she kicked me out of the house and started the divorce procedures.
With nothing to keep me in Braga, I went back to my grandparents' house, in Viana do Castelo, and to the room of my youth.
I also stopped my investigations. After the way they had destroyed my life, I couldn't go on. I also had no motivation to do anything else, including finding a new job. I spent my days in front of the computer reading articles and watching videos to distract myself from everything that had happened and the state my life was in. I rarely left the house, and when I did, it was only to do some errands for my grandparents.
However, after several weeks, an event compelled me to go out. The fact that I finally felt a little better also helped. In fact, at the time, I felt it could be a turning point for me. I took it as a message from the heavens, even though it wasn't exclusively for me.
The phenomenon I'm referring to was a rare fall of multiple meteors, all of which were expected to land in northwestern Portugal. Fortunately, projections showed they wouldn’t hit any inhabited area, although there was always the possibility of errors and/or collateral damage.
On the night in question, I left home and joined a group of local amateur astronomers who had set up public telescopes on a nearby isolated hilltop. There, between casual conversations and discussions about astronomy and telescopy, we waited.
The first sign of the meteors appeared shortly after 1AM in the form of a distant point of light. One of the amateur astronomers gave the alert, and we ran to the telescopes. These weren’t enough for everyone, however, one of the amateur astronomers had brought one telescope equipped with a camera and was able to share the captured image using a tablet computer. It wasn't the same, but it would have to do until I had the opportunity to look through an eyepiece.
The points of light were surprisingly large, much larger than I expected. Some fell closer, others farther, but they, unexpectedly, all seemed to reach the ground. The media had announced that most meteors would disintegrate a few miles in the air. Fortunately, they all appeared to be hitting uninhabited forested areas. Furthermore, given their size, their impacts weren’t that big.
As the telescope connected to the tablet, using the electric motors on its tripod, followed one of the meteors, the bolide began to increase in size, until it became a huge ball of fire. This, of course, meant it was getting closer. For a moment, we feared it was going to crash on top of us, but we soon relaxed when we realized that wouldn't be the case. The celestial object ended up falling onto a hill in front of us. Like the previous ones, the impact wasn’t as big as we expected. It also didn't create much noise, at least much less than an object of its size should have.
As soon as the excitement of such a close call subsided, I and the other amateur astronomers looked at each other. Then, almost in unison, we headed to our cars. Everyone wanted to go see the meteorite and the impact site. The meteorite fell in the middle of a hill, which would normally be hard to reach, but it seemed to be close to a huge hollow rock commonly known as "The Hollow Boulder". It is well known to most of Viana's residents, as is the route to get there.
The crossing from the place where the telescopes were mounted to the dirt road that led to The Hollow Boulder took about fifteen minutes. Some decided to leave their cars there and continue on foot, but those who were more curious, or less fond of their cars, like me, kept going until the end of the forest path. Progress wasn’t easy. My car shook violently while going over holes and rocks, and I scratched the paint in several places. Even then, the path ended before reaching either The Hollow Boulder or the impact site, so I and the other onlookers had to walk the last few hundred meters. Fortunately, I had a flashlight in the glove compartment, left there from my days of urban exploration.
When I finally saw the crater, three other people were already there. I immediately realized, from their confused expressions, that something wasn’t right. Even then, what I saw at the bottom of the crater when I reached its threshold took me by surprise. The object that had fallen from the sky wasn’t a rock, as expected, but a huge triangular object with rounded corners made of strange whitish matter. It appeared malleable, like skin, and was covered in a viscous substance that had probably protected it and allowed it to enter the Earth's atmosphere without being damaged by the intense heat.
The other people didn't seem to have any idea what it was, but I did. It was similar in every way to the "cocoon" that the Organization had found at the mouth of the Lima River some time ago. And I remembered well the creature that came out of it. To my horror, the cocoon at the bottom of the crater had a huge hole in one side, revealing that whatever it was carrying had already emerged.
“We have to get out of here,” I shouted, without thinking. “Now!”
The other onlookers stared at me, alarmed. However, before they had the opportunity to ask me anything, a scream of profound terror drew our attention elsewhere. Reflexively, I grabbed a fallen tree branch as an improvised weapon and ran to the scream's source. Some of the onlookers did the same. Not that improvised clubs would be of much use against the creatures that cocoons like those carried.
Fortunately, when we reached the man who had screamed, there was no sign of the being from beyond space. However, at his feet, lay the violently mutilated body of a woman. Claws had torn her torso apart, while her limbs were ripped off and scattered around. For a few seconds, we all stared at the body, in shock. Some of the onlookers vomited. Then, in unison, we all ran back to our cars.
As soon as I got behind the wheel, I drove out of that place. Fear rushed me, so I was even less careful than before. More than once, I felt like I had done mechanical damage to the car, which I confirmed as soon as I returned to my grandparents' house. However, the overwhelming revelations of that night and their implications completely occupied my mind.
The cocoon previously found by the Organization had been there for a long time. What did this new arrival mean? What was the purpose of the creature it contained? Where was it? And, even more terrifying, were all the meteors that had fallen that night cocoons with similar creatures? The reduced impacts of their falls seemed to indicate that they were less dense than would be expected if they were solid rocks, so it was very likely. And would the Organization, after its defeat in Gerês, have the resources to look for and stop them? After all, they had already caused one death. But Almeida and his men seemed to have disappeared.
With these thoughts running through my head, I went to bed and futilely tried to fall asleep. Finally, I realized that I wasn’t going to find answers to my questions just by lying there. I had abandoned that world that exists hidden from ours, but my intense curiosity and concern got the better of me. In the morning, I would return to Braga, to the usual places, in search of someone who could give me some answers. With this decision made, I managed to fall asleep, although it was filled with nightmares.
Originally published in https://witchesofthenight.wordpress.com