The evening was crisp as leaves crackled underfoot as Clark Estman strode through the wood. A thin glaze of frost lined the beaten path, the wind whispered among the branches overhead. The air smelled of chimney smoke and rotting wood. Clark tipped his hat and the accumulated snow fell to his feet, he returned the old five gallon to his grizzled silver hairs and turned the final crooked joint of the trail to meet the town gates of Deepgrove. The wall had a broken hinge and etchings of wolf eyes across the breadth of the exterior palisade. Clark pushed through the broken old door, which coughed sawdust and ash as the one good hinge squealed weakly. The high street was empty, devoid of life. A horse wandered halfway across the lot. Wolf eyes were drawn on any door and above each window, even those, long bricked over. Clark walked forward a single drop of rain riding down the brim of his hat and down the back of his leather trench coat. Clark pushed through the saloon door. The hinges groaned behind him. Chained hounds outside growled low but did not bark. Inside, the dimly lit room smelled of stale tobacco, whiskey and damp wood. Behind the bar, a frail man with a coppery shock of hair and sunken eyes polished a glass. Two patrons lingered. One, a heavyset man perched on a stool with a cigar balanced on the edge of his cracked lips, watched Clark with dark, unblinking eyes. The other lay slumped in a booth, rose-colored glasses crooked on his face. A leather-bound journal rested under his pale fingers, surrounded by an untidy sprawl of ink pots and pens. “Barkeep,” said Clark, stood before the dried up man, “I’ll have whatever knocked out the doctor.” The bartender stared at him for a moment, then reached for an unlabeled green bottle. He poured a watery liquid into a tall, thin glass. “Three,” he muttered. Clark dropped four gray coins onto the counter. The bartender’s brow furrowed, and the heavy man snorted from his stool. “You ain’t from round here,” the man said. He leaned back, cigar smoke curling around his scalp. “Those ain’t nothing but paperweights in Deepgrove.” Clark tilted his head, his expression unchanging. “Any collector could tell you these are worth two shillings apiece.” The big man shrugged. “Hell do I know? I don’t work here.” He turned away, disinterest clouding his face. “‘Sides, I ain’t interested in foreign gossip.” Clark slid onto a stool three seats away, the rainwater still trailing down his coat. The bartender’s sullen eyes turned first to the stranger, then the hulking man and returned to the gray mound of coins, he swept them into a drawer. He then grabbed the glass and slid it to the gloved hand of Clark. The interception was brief. The drink smelled of juniper and decay. Clark’s eyes wandered back to the drunk alchemist laying in the booth. The hollow bartender took notice of him, “Don’t mind doctor Walz, he’s… tired.” Clark grinned and the shadows lifted from his tightened face and he took a long sip. The drink burned and had a metallic aftertaste. “Careful with that,” chimed the old timer at the bar, “Stuff’s got a kick, last outsider drinking that wandered up to the churchyard and never stumbled on back. Believe that?” He dashed his cigar against the counter as ashes danced to the floor. “Maybe he didn’t want to come back.” Clark grinned coyly. The large man laughed, his behemoth frame quaking at his seat. The bartender smirked loosely, taking the insult of his establishment as lightly as he could muster. Deeper in the evening’s silence, the group had parted ways to rooms of the inn. They weren’t being charged for them. That’s how it works in Arizona, they help you out. Alcohol's for sale because you can’t be alive without it. Clark’s been around long enough to know, they’ll let you stay in at night. Makes cleanup easier in the morning. The hounds were brought inside at dusk, fed and watered by MacKenney, the bartender. MacKenney also left a mouse on a string to a bell on the porch. “Hell that for?” Asks Clark, looking at the strange little alarm. “When something eats it, we know something that’s hungry is around. Then we hide or fight or whatever the fuck you want until it’s either us humans or them creatures left standing.” MacKenney closed the door so that the string to the bell was stretched through the small gap under the door. “Uh-huh,” Says the curious Clark, “And what if some normal coyote scoops up your mouse?” Reasons Clark. MacKenney says, “Then I catch us dinner.” Clark smiles and ascends the stairs to his room. He sits and looks out the fogged over window into the street. Nothing around. In casual conversation earlier, he’d learned there were two other families in the town. Ferguson and Mansard. The other six had died or fled. Clark’s thoughts were stirred by a knock from the door, “‘Ey, Estman was it, was kinda awake downstairs earlier; try forgetting what I know but it all comes back, second I’m sober.”  Walz sat on the bed across Estman. “Yeah, we’re in the ‘they don’t trust us yet’ room.” He tossed a notebook haphazardly across the nightstand. “They don’t got none reasons to trust me yet. I never had a reason to trust no one,” Clark tossed open the curtains and blinds and pulled an old wood chair to sit by the sill. “Why are you in Deepgrove?” Asks Doctor Walz. Clark thought for a moment, gazing at the chestnut horse grazing in the streets, “Where else would I go? The whole world’s a shitshow, Ireland’s the only place somewhat unaffected and I’m stuck across an ocean of leviathans and a countryside of abominations.” Doctor Walz scratched his bald cheek and looked over the room and proceeded to sigh, “You want to be the hero don’t you. I do too, the one to fix it all. Scare off the monsters; I’ve been painting wolf eyes. God knows what they do but rumors say they help. That’s all we got left, rumors and hope.” Doc Walz leaned into his pillow, “You should sleep though. We’re all alive the way we are for a reason. You get sleep and you might live another day, who knows maybe in a week you’ll kill a monster or save some kid that goes on to kill a monster. Just keep living, man. Just keep going.”

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Clark grit his teeth and sighed pushing back from the window, “Bye Doc. I’m heading to the bathroom.” Clark turns and goes through and out the room, through a dusty hall that was dehydrated. Clark enters and lays his hands on the bathroom counter and stares into his own eyes. His mother’s eyes. His mother’s wolf eyes. Clark’s hand begins shaking, he remembers what he did, what needed to be done. Clark washes his face and opens his eyes, but the face in the mirror is always the same. Clark leaves and back down the hall, catching sight of a painting that has yet to be seen on his way there. A portrait titled Doctor Sep Walz, but it was a different man than Doc Walz though, similar looking but much older but older, gaunt, and a sunken face marked by a protruding nose. Sep smiled back down to Clark. Probably a father or something. Doc Walz held his eyelids squeezed shut in the room, Clark is either a long-term drunkard, but even if he was,  that drink would do something. One basilisk brew kept Doc Walz asleep for four hours once. But Clark didn’t even show the slightest signs of drunkenness and didn’t even mention the visions. Eventually, Doctor James Walz slips into a deep sleep just as Clark Estman returns to the room. Clark strides to the bed stand as quietly as he can, making sure Doc Walz is asleep. Clark finds the dehydrated hide of the book, fingering through the warped yellow pages. Clark opens the book and sees drawings. Thousands of images of animals, pages full of them. There are those familiar, horses, sheep, goats, bears, cats, and many more. But as the pages go on, the animals are more and more contorted, extra limbs after a certain point. After that, they begin having growths, bulges, extended limbs, limbs of other species, webbed flesh, scales. Clark grimaces, he knows what’s happening, the only question now is what side is he on and how understanding can he be. The dogs circle at Clark’s feet, smelling him up and down, Clark narrows his eyes and closes the book, replacing it to where it had been stolen. Clark sits back onto his bed, The dogs follow. A long low pitched trumpeting comes from outside, a creaking moan like a tree being bent follows. Clark stands and looks out the window, drawing the curtains and staring at the horse in the yard. A slight bulge forms on the haunches of the horse and disappears just as fast. Clark knows this horse needs to go, but even with what he is in mind, there is no way he is going out there at night, and alone. The dogs circle and press against the door to the hall, preparing to kill anything that may try to come through. Clark closes the blinds, and trusting the three large hounds, lays in a shallow sleep until the break of dawn.

By the next morning Clark was out first, inspecting the horse which stood and grazed idly on the lawn. Its muscles were like sinew, its eyes lay tired, drifting about the frosty grass. Clark kicked a tree at the stump and snow fell over him. The sky was still purple and swirling with crisp sunshine. Clark tipped his hat back, taking in the cold air which burnt at his lungs. Clark fell back to the ground, leaning against the old tree beside the horse. He thought of how there had always been something wrong with him. The onset of the changes have been slow to say the least. But they were noticeable. He decided the least he could do was chop some firewood for the townsfolk before drifting into the woodlands for his own sake. He might even take the horse off their hands; better to have the two monsters together rather than in the town square. When Clark found an axe, with a hilt of softwood and a blade of a sleek gray metal in a barrel which smelled of sweet hay and old tobacco, he carried it on his side to a woodshed.

He’s an early riser. Thought Dr. Walz, watching Estman cut wood in the yard. Sadly, he must be killed, it’s for the good of everyone. A pang of sympathy filled the heart of Walz, this man deserves not death! Regardless, the good doc notched a long sleek rifle with his shoulder. And a marksman’s eye lined up the head of the man splitting wood in the shed across the road. But he couldn’t do it. The gun was dropped, Doctor Walz grit his yellow teeth, this man had yet to kill. There was nothing he could push himself to do to find some sick retribution for what other monsters have done; then he’d be the inhuman one, “Lucky you, Estman,”  Walz tells himself, “I’m sick in the head not killing you. But, there are some things I simply can't do.”  Walz closes the window, its rickety frame protesting as the twin panels of glass come to meet the sill once more.