Full Moon Fiancé

Encounters

So it was the first thing she typed into the search engine when she opened it. Of course, ‘sacred light of the moon’ mostly turned up irrelevant searches.

“I’m not Wiccan,” she mumbled. “Wait, are the Westerlys Wiccan?” she thought, as she scrolled a dozen or more websites that had results about Wicca. “That would make more sense to me,” she giggled to herself.

She sighed a little, unable to find anything that struck her as important in a glance. She paused, staring at the search terms. She added quotation marks around the phrase, then bit her lip, trying to think what else to add. Her hand shook slightly, a tremor running through her whole body for a moment as she gathered her courage. She couldn’t articulate why she was so nervous.

Then she typed in ‘werewolf’.

It felt so weird, so bizarre, to her. She could hardly believe she was even considering it. “Werewolf,” she said again. “It can’t be?”

But search results began to pop up. ‘A study of lycanthropy in modern America’ was the first result. The domain name was not the most official thing she’d ever seen. “Wolftruth.com” she read. It made her laugh, but it was a dark laugh. She clicked it anyway, despite her doubts.

“I guess I can’t expect an official government press release.”

The website didn’t look as tinfoil hat as she expected. Instead, she was surprised to find a long list of supposed sightings and encounters with werewolves and links to other pages that had more information. Her thumb hovered over a highlighted section which matched her search terms. There was an embedded link.

She clicked it. A huge paragraph of information appeared, the text black against a background of smoke grey, serious and dour looking.

In 1968, an elderly recluse by the name of Vernon Torell passed away in Utah. Vernon Torell had long been suspected as the Utah Underpass Killer, and upon his death his house was seized by local police. Police later admitted to finding a number of unsavory things within the man’s home.

Not only did police confirm that Torell was, indeed, a serial killer of at least 17 individuals from the county in which he resided, they also found what they claimed were books and objects proving that he belonged to a cult of ‘Satanic origin’.

It was not until 1976, as a result of several FOIA requests and mounting public pressure from the victims’ families, that the police revealed the full contents of the Torell home.

Most relevant to police suspicions that Torell was involved in a cult were several strange books written almost entirely in some unknown language. The language was pictographic, using glyphs and symbols that police could not identify but which bore some resemblance to early Celtic signs.

Though police suspected that the Torell tomes, as they have now been named, pointed to a cult or to devil worship, the Wolf Watch community has long believed that the books actually indicate that Vernon Torell was a werewolf. Though this would not exculpate Vernon Torell from his murderous rampage, it would provide a larger context as to why, and how, the septuagenarian killed 17 people that we know of, at least two of whom were adult men in excellent physical condition who by all accounts should have been capable of fending off an elderly Torell.

The Torell tomes are considered by the Wolf Watch community to be the largest publicly accessible collection of lycanthrope literature, though their contents have not been deciphered to this day. Some of the books contain enough known language, primarily English, and enough decipherable drawings, to credibly link them to the lycanthrope community.

Below the article, Diana found scans of the pages considered ‘most relevant’ from the Torell tomes. She couldn’t even muster up a feeling of surprise when she saw the same page she had seen in the library, unreadable except for the phrase “sacred light of the moon” about halfway down.

She felt tears prickle her eyes. It was madness, sheer madness, that she was even entertaining this notion.

“Impossible,” she whispered. She opened another tab and frantically typed in ‘wolf watch community’ and to her surprise, dozens of results immediately swept across her view.

She clicked the first result.

This website was some kind of forum. It looked almost like a chatroom, with places to make posts and places to instantly chat with the others on the site at the moment. Scrolling to the bottom of the page, her mouth dropped when she saw a small banner declaring ‘589 registered users out of 13498 registered users currently online. 236 unregistered users currently visiting.’

“That many?” she wondered aloud.

She clicked on the instant messaging box. Her fingers hovered. She felt compelled to ask someone, ask something, but she had no idea what to ask.

Hi, she finally typed. This is going to sound weird, but would anyone answer a question for me?

She pressed send. Her username was Guest54738475.

Hi! Came a little dinging noise as a response came through nearly immediately. It was loud, to Diana, and she felt herself panic as she looked over at the door.

More dinging noises.

Of course! - lycansoap52.

Hi! - wolfiewareness06.

What’s up? - notawolfjustawere119.

Did you have an encounter? I was nervous the first time I came here too. - moonlight007.

No one outside the room seemed to have heard the noises, but Diana lowered the volume on the tablet anyway.

Yeah, she started to respond. I guess I did? This is going to sound so crazy.

It won’t! Responded a username redwolfbluewolf4.

Don’t worry, we all thought that at first.

She smiled in spite of herself. Okay, well… the thing is that I… she stopped when she realized she absolutely could not start talking about being kidnapped by her fiancé’s wealthy parents and the town’s police chief. That would, surely, be a bridge too far.

I was hanging out with my boyfriend, she decided to go with. I was looking around his house and I found this weird book. I couldn’t read it, the symbols were weird. But it said something about the sacred light of the moon and I ended up here.

Oh, damn. Yeah. -lycansoap52.

Your boyfriend might be a werewolf. :/ - notawolfjustawere119.

Did you ask him about it? -fullmoonfullheartscantlose.

Omg no don’t ask him about it! They are really secretive. He might not like it… are you sure he is safe? - notawolfjustawere119.

Don’t scare her! -fullmoonfullheartscantlose.

I’m just being practical. - notawolfjustawere119.

Does he collect old books or anything? - wolfiewareness06.

If he did, she probably wouldn’t have found this weird enough to come ask us, though. I’d be freaking out. -lycansoap52.

He doesn’t collect old books or anything. But he isn’t dangerous. He’s not like that… she found herself doubting it as she typed, for some reason. But if Joshua had wanted to hurt her, he already would have.

Here: lycanthropyforbeginners.com try this site. It helped me when I had an encounter. There’s a little quiz that might be able to help you figure out if you’re really experiencing a werewolf encounter or if you just watched one too many of the werewolf teen dramas going around these days! :) -fullmoonfullheartscantlose.

Lol omg how corny is Moonwolf Manor these days! - notawolfjustawere119.

As the topic in the chat drifted away from Diana, she felt strangely calm. Dozens of strangers had had ‘encounters’ with this book, or with this idea, or with… werewolves. And they were all okay. They were all alive. They were all gossiping about some show Diana had never even seen.

She clicked the link.

“It’s okay.” she told herself. “Maybe its okay.”