ever seen in my life. The tarantula began to crawl up my arm as I gawked at it.

"NO!" I launched the spider far out in to the yard and tore at the rest of his awful webbing until I
felt clean again. My heart beat was irregular. I wasn't normally creeped out by spiders - after all,
in old houses I had way too many of them. But I had a spider ON my HEAD. That was not cool.
As my breathing began to slow to normal again, I was jolted out of my shoes by a ringing noise.
Oh, it's just my phone, I realized. I reached into my pocket and felt my cell phone as it vibrated. I
flipped it open and answered. "Hello?" A labored cough came from the other end. "Excuse me.
Rebecca? This is Amber Love speaking."
"Yes ma'am of course, are you all right Mrs. Love?" Amber sighed and answered, "I should be
just fine. The doctor gave me a tetanus shot because the nail was so corroded. I could have been
in serious trouble if it weren't for you, Rebecca."
"Amber, listen to me, it was nothing. It was just horrible to see that happen to you... would you
like some company at the hospital - I would be glad to come and sit-" "No, you don't need to go
to that trouble Rebecca. But I do wish to tell you some good news." I was taken aback by that
sentence. What about today could possibly be good? "You saved my life, you really did, so I
want to offer you a lower asking price for the home if you are interested in it." As bad as I felt
for Mrs. Love, I was happy to hear that. "I'll drop about five thousand dollars off. I really want
you to have the house over any one else, and I'll settle for no less. What do you think?" Without
hesitation, I agreed to the deal. "Of course. I love that house... when can I start moving in?
***
Later that same day I signed the papers back at the realty office. It was getting dark, so I decided
that it would be best to sleep in the truck for just that one night. I drove back to my new home
and entered the driveway. Surprisingly, there WAS light there when I returned. A lone yard light
stood next to a weeping willow tree. It cast large shadows over the lawn.
As I took in my first official visit to my new home, I didn't even notice the animal darting across
the driveway. I didn't pay any attention to the large dog until it had crashed into my front
bumper. The sickening crunch did, however, catch my attention. The blast sent me into a wild
spin through the dirt.
6
When I finally slowed to a stop, gravel continued to pelt my windshield like a stiff rain. My hands
gripped the steering wheel so tightly, I was afraid it was going to snap under the strain. I blinked
a couple of times as my headlights struggled to shine through the thick dust in the air. I
hesitantly reached for the door handle and stepped out. I craned my neck toward the hood of
the truck. I could not see anything from that vantage point.
I decided that it was probably OK to make my way to the front bumper. SOMETHING had to
have done some damage, by the sound of it all. Sure enough, when I reached the front bumper,
chill bumps running up and down my arm, my bumper was crunched like tin foil right in the
dead center. The polished chrome looked like a crumpled chewing gum wrapper now.
But all of that meant little when I came to the realization that there was no animal on the
ground, no blood, no remnants to suggest anything! A smashed chrome bumper was the only
indication that anything had slammed in to my truck. I crouched down to look under the truck.
Nothing there either.
I stood up and turned to walk back to the truck. A pained yelp echoed from somewhere from
the field, then there was total silence. Unable to determine where the sound originated, I
decided it would be best if I just got some sleep. I climbed into the truck and laid out some
sheets and a pillow. I could only hope that I wouldn't be awoken by any more unpleasant things.
'It sure will be nice to have a nice soft bed to sleep in tomorrow', I thought, as I drifted off to
sleep. truck and finished my drive to the house. I parked the truck and went to the front door.
The Realtor had given me several keys to the estate - unlabeled. I tried three of them before
finally entering the house. I was anxious to get some light in to the house, so I first turned to my
right and walked in to what was the former living room.
A wicker rocking chair had been left behind, as well as an artificial Christmas tree. What a funny
sight that was in Mid-June. I walked to the left side of the rocker to survey the window. It was
boarded up purposely, from the inside. I would have to bring my hammer in later. After looking
over the bare living room for a few minutes, I decided to venture upstairs.
There were two doors upstairs, both of them closed. I went to the first and opened it into yet
another dark room. It's window had a sheet hanging over it. I walked to the window and ripped
it down. I stood at the window sill and looked out it for a moment. The window faced my front
driveway. The grain fields surrounding my house were a pretty sight, but the stalks were very
tall. One could easily get lost if you were to go for a walk in them, I noted.
I turned around to see what room I was in and my heart jumped in my chest! A large mirror
hung from the opposite wall in this room, and when I turned, I could have sworn I saw
something dart past the mirror... right in front of me. I shook the goose bumps off of my arms
and promised myself I would take that mirror down, first chance I got.
I was obviously in a bedroom, because a clothes dresser sat neatly against the wall beside the
mirror. I couldn't help but wonder why no one touched this stuff before they tried to sell the
home. At my feet was crumpled paper that had been thrown to the hardwood floor.
I kicked some of it aside and walked to the dresser. It was rather small, half my size, so I bent to
open the top drawer. It was empty, if not for the stray clothing buttons. I tried the third dresser
drawer next on a whim. This drawer did have something inside. A manila file folder containing
several sheets of notebook paper was inside the musty drawer.
I flipped open the folder and leaned up against the dresser as I read off of the first page...
"Grey number One did in fact respond to Viscera-A.I. with surprising results. Subject One was
extremely agitated for nearly four hours, snapping his jaws at the very sight of me!" 8
I obviously did not understand what I had read earlier that day, but I pondered it as I worked all
day long. The other papers had similar writings on them... none of which made much sense at all
to me. The whole day was quite the same. Nonsensical. It was finally nearing sunset that
evening, so I went back outside to get the pieces of my bed. I had a throw-together type cheap
bed that I had owned for a couple years. I planned on getting a nicer one once I had settled in,
but it was still a bed.
I slapped the bed together in about fifteen minutes, and tucked myself in comfortably. After all
that, I realized that the ghost mirror was directly in my line of sight. I irritably stood up and
removed it from the wall. It left a large discoloration in it's place as a reminder to me of what
had once been there.
Eventually I was safely in my warm bed, and I closed my eyes, all the while thinking of what
needed to be done the next day. My thoughts were interrupted at one point by an extremely
creepy howl that emitted from outside my bedroom window. A dog or some type of canine was
probably just yapping at the moon. It settled down after a few minutes, and I was able to doze
off.
***
The next morning I felt rejuvenated when I awoke. I stretched and squinted the sleep from my
eyes. In my exhausted state the night before, I hadn't even bothered to go into the other
upstairs room. I found my suitcase next to my bed and slipped into some clothes. I stumbled out
into the dark hallway and headed straight for the unexplored room.
I fumbled my hand around the door until I found the knob. I turned it - but it barely twitched. I
tried turning it the other way, but it stayed stuck. The door had been locked tight. 'Great,' I
thought. I decided to sort out all the keys and get into the room later, but for the time being, I
wanted to make a checklist of the things the house needed.
After roaming through all but the one locked room, I had a fairly good idea of what the house
was without. I went to the living room and had a seat in the wicker rocking chair to copy all of
my ideas down on the notepad.
The silence in the otherwise quiet room was cut short by an unnerving scratching sound. I put
my pen down and tuned in to the odd noise. It seemed to come from the door leading outside.
The scratching came to a stop as quickly as it started, though. But then, as I continued to stare at
the wooden door, it slowly began to creak wide open before my eyes.
A hairy outline of some four-legged animal began to take shape as light hit the doorway. It... it
resembled a WOLF! I gasped and began to tense up. What was I going to do? The wild creature
KNEW what he was going to do. He growled at me - from nearly ten feet away - but his cold grey
eyes zeroed in on me. Drool ran around the edges of his bared teeth. I grasped the rocking
chairs' armrests tightly, preparing for the worst.
Unfortunately, he ran much to fast for me to even move. In the blink of an eye, he had crossed
the length of the room, and he had propelled himself into the air. He cut a path straight to my
head. I covered my eyes and screamed in horror as he collided with me...
9
In an instant, it was all over... the smashing of glass was a clear signal of this. Scared to even
open my eyes, I felt my face with my hands. It... felt normal! I blinked a few times and turned in
the chair to see what was left of the window behind me. The wolf must have overshot his
landing, because all that remained of the window was it's frame. Fearing more wolves, I
immediately rushed to the open door and slammed it shut. I dragged the nearest box in front of
the door and dead-bolted the lock.
After staring at the empty window frame for minutes on end, I decided that maybe I needed a
little more sleep. Wolves don't just walk right in to people's houses... do they? And then, how
did the wolf avoid smacking up against me? He was in a direct line with my head! Every possible
theory I came up with was slightly crazier than the one before. I found my way to the bathroom,
where I hoped I could get some blood flowing to my brain once again.
I leaned over the sink and splashed my face several times with frigid water. I sighed downward
at the mildewed porcelain and raised my head to study my face in the mirror. Something caught
my eye at that moment.
As water streaked down over my eyes, my vision was distorted, but it slowly became clearer as I
glared at the mirror-image of a shadow etched in the vinyl shower curtain. I didn't have to
wonder for long what it was I had seen. A growl slowly reached full volume in the tiny
bathroom, echoing off of the tile walls.
10
The flat curtain slowly began to crumple in the middle and was violently pulled down from it's
rod with brute force - by mouth. The wolf had returned to haunt me. Blood cascading through
his dirty grey coat. He stood now on all fours; teeth bared, eyes bloodshot, hair standing on end.
He was obviously ready to pounce. This time thought, I was quite ready. I watched his paws
closely, sensing the tiniest movement, enough to signal his imminent leap. As soon as his front
paws left the floor beneath him, I moved aside, leaving nothing for the thing to hit... except for
the vanity mirror firmly hanging on the green tile wall.
A hideous crash literally rocked the room as the bulky wolf slammed into the mirror and fell
back to the unforgiving floor. He lie motionless there, almost pitiful in nature. I knew better than
that. He had lived through a stunt dive out of a WINDOW! I didn't take the chance of turning my
back to him as I stepped out of the lavatory and closed the door behind me.
Hundreds of thoughts were running through my head.
'What am I going to do with HIM?
Am I at all SAFE in this house?
Who can I ask for help?'
Then it all become so clear to me in an instant. I realized, 'There is ONE room I haven't even
been in yet. That room may help me out more than I know. It might be the answer to some of
my questions.' But then again, had I not been so distraught, I would have thought of the possible
negatives of entering the room also. The negatives even... of staying at this house.
I decided at that moment that I had to do it. I pulled out the keys the Realtor had given me and
headed up the stairs. I began blindly inserting keys into the lock one by one. I had no way of
knowing how many times I had tried the same keys over and over. Eventually I came upon the
correct one. The lock clicked open cleanly and I proceeded to creak the door open.
Bad idea. Had I known what was kind of information was contained in that room... had I known
the sheer horrors the room would bring to me, I would have stayed FAR, FAR AWAY.
11
"What?" Upon entering the new room, I immediately noticed that light was entering the room.
What a sight! Well, actually, it was just a little sunshine that was being filtered though some
filthy old curtains, but it was light all the same. On a whim, I reached my hand to the wall beside
me as if to hit a light switch. To my surprise, the lights switched on! Long fluorescent bulbs hung
low over work tables, and as they struggled to flicker on, I began to notice more and more in the
room. They finally decided to stay on - and for once, I could see clearly. The frist thing I saw was
two work tables that were pushed end to end to make a fifteen-twenty foot workspace!
I wondered what work had been performed in this room as I continued to turn in a circle on my
heel. One wall of the room was lined with dozens of cages. They were regular chicken-wire
cages with locks on all of them, but one thing was for certain... they were all extremely small. A
regular sized dog would be cramped in these cages.
Next to the line of cages were many taped-up boxes of things marked "STERILE" and "WEAR EYE
AND RESPIRATORY PROTECTION" as well as boxes with large biohazard stickers planted on
them. One of the biohazard boxes was crumpled on the floor, and various-sized vials had spilled
from it.
Along with vials, the floor had many balled-up pieces of paper and other trash items. None of
the things in the room seemed to amount to much in my mind. Nothing struck me as any type of
hobby or profession that I could think of. But then I saw a small writing desk in an otherwise
empty corner of the room. It had a rolling leather chair and a desk lamp.
I kicked trash aside as I made my way to the desk. The desktop itself was barely visible under the
mounds of papers it had accumulated on it. An open leather-bound notebook sat on top of the
mess. A pen sat neatly below the last line of writing, almost as if the owner had just wrote a
thought in it the day before.
I rolled the chair back enough to sit down in it, and I moved the pen aside. Dust off of the cold
metallic pen clung to my fingers. I flipped back to the beginning of the notebook. The front page
had the name Karen Cyrus signed in the middle of it, followed by a date...
>> March Twenty-Second <<
>> Two Thousand One <<
"Huh, but the Realtor said it was fifteen years ago that the LAST owner was here," I pondered.
That number was a little off, I'd say. The rest of the page was blank, so I moved to the next page.
The same date was printed in the upper right-hand corner. This page had large bold lettering
inscribed in the dead center of the page... as well as a tiny footnote.
- EXPERIMENT III -
- VISCERA-A.I.* -
*[Aggression Increaser] "Aggression Increaser? Experiments?" Mrs. Cyrus suddenly sounds like
the mad scientist type. I flipped to the next page, which was blank, and then the next, which
resumed the journal entries.
'Hypothesis: Through the unrelenting use of mind-altering chemicals and certain objects that
have the effect of creating an uneasy feeling in human subjects, I hope to develop a bitterness in
animals - What I expect to be aggression. Ultimately the goal is for each individual animal to be
completely changed for the worse - passing on that aggression to each and every test subject.'
I was developing an uneasy feeling as I read the horrible text at my fingertips. However, this
'Journal' could explain why wolves had it in for me as of late. So, I continued on. The five or ten
more pages were dedicated to the ultimate aspirations of one, Karen Cyrus and her
experiments. After those pages, I began to reach pages listing lab test results. The notes and
tables consisted of snippets like these:
'White rodents Seven through Thirteen, Low response...'
'Black hare One, Two and Four, response exemplified only when forced into it...'
'Vampire bats numbers Eight and Nine are the only subjects displaying clear aggression changes
as of yet...' A common thread seemed to tie all of the failed experiments together, I observed.
Many pages of the journal spoke of small rodents, rabbits, bats, insects, birds, nothing that
could possibly have a large brain, nothing too big either. After what seemed like hundreds of
poor results, I found a page that actually resembled a regular diary entry. The page read:
>> October Twelfth <<
>> Two Thousand One <<
'After MONTHS of failed experiments, I had almost given up on my hypothesis. I had hoped to
increase the potential for deadly attributes in animals. My thought all along was, with the ability
to make certain animals angry, the animals could be used in a positive way. They could be used
to protect people, or used to help the police force, maybe even fight our battles FOR US against
warring nations!
'Everything truly came together this morning. I was walking through my containment areas
outside when I heard a very pronounced barking, almost yelping noise. It seemed as though a
wild animal had walked into one of my many bear traps. Come to find out, it was a wolf!
Instantly, I realized that the animal would be a perfect subject for my tests. The wolf was already
known as a natural born killer, it couldn't be that hard to increase IT'S aggression!
'I approached the grey-haired wolf cautiously, stopping on the way to pick up my canine capture
net. The wolf was in too much pain to notice me approaching, so I was able to net him and
release his foot from the claw at the same time. I then realized that he was actually a SHE. The
net was so heavy. I struggled to get her in the house, at which point I held her down as I
bandaged her hurt paw.
'I waited a few hours before administering the Viscera Aggression Increaser. I had her safely in a
cage and decided to name her - Grey number One - in case she had a family somewhere in those
woods. I sat in the experimentation room for no more than five minutes before the Viscera A.I.
began to kick in. The results were nothing short of astounding.
'The wolf immediately began chewing on the thick cage bars, unable to sit still any longer. She
began foaming at the mouth and growling non-stop. I decided to drop a subject mouse into the
cage to see how she would react. Before the mouse had hit the floor of the cage, Grey number
One had devoured it. Blood spatter covered the ENTIRE steel cage.'
13
'It is safe to say that the experiment was finally a success. But sadly, on the eve of such a
momentous occasion, I have begun to notice something. Fearing that someone is out to steal
my idea, now that it is finally working, I have become more on the edge. And as I peered out the
curtains on several different occasions, I have noticed a dark-colored car. I know exactly whose
car it is. 'You see diary, I have a sister named Amber... her last name was changed to Love when
she married. Sis' has always been out to get one thing from me. My house. After snooping
around my business for years, she may know what I have been doing in here. Amber works for a
Realty company, and if she did in fact tell a single authority figure what I was experimenting on,
she could take my home away from me. That easily.
'That dark car I see, even as I write these very words, continues to sit in my drive. And the
driver... my sister. This might be the end of my research, once and for all. Now I can see the dark
car's door opening, my giddy-looking sister stepping out of it. She has a small box in her hand...
now she is speaking in to it. Whatever it was she said must have been the code-word. How do I
know? Well, the ten police cars pulling up from the shadows is a good clue.
'I must write faster now because the police are busing down the front door now. Ill be in jail in
mer minutes But they don't know that the house will forever be protect by my faithful animals.
They can take me away but they'll never get rid of all the animals I have given the Viscera A...'
The writing ended with a large slash of black ink across the bottom of the page. At eerily the
same time, the silence in the room ended for the third time in the night. I didn't think good
things were to come... not after reading what I just had. As I turned my head slowly away from
the diary, a pack of wolves came into view... all led by the momma,
Grey number One.