The Little Werewolf

The baby doesn’t belong to them. The mother holds the tiny thing in her arms, it coos and drools and smiles from time to time. The mother thinks it’s because the babe loves her, but it’s just figuring out how to work the muscles in its face.

In the night, the babe doesn’t cry. The father is smug when he sleeps soundly because he is on night-time duty but never gets disturbed. The baby likes the dark, it looks over to the window but the sky is blocked by the curtain. The baby is sad it can’t see the outside. The baby shouldn’t be old enough to develop such a strong feeling for a specific absence. At only a few months old, it should barely know anything but the babe blinks up at the window with longing in its round eyes.

It spits its food down its bib and the mother chastises softly. ‘You must eat, little one, to grow big and strong.’ But the babe scrunches its face and turns away from the incoming choo-choo train of mushed gunk. It doesn’t like the taste. It feels wrong in its mouth.

Laughter erupts when the babe is in the garden. It wiggles in its chair to be free but is bound by restraints. ‘Be careful, little one, can’t have you hurting yourself, can we?’ Laughter turns to tears at its plight. But the dog licks its tears away and the giggles return. Its little fingers run through the soft pelt of the huge animal and it suddenly feels safe. ‘Get away, Mutsy!’ The hound is slapped on its rump and it cowers under the table. ‘Are you okay, little one?’ The babe stares down at the dog, hands grasping and legs wiggling.

Silence returns in the night and the babe struggles for freedom. It pulls itself to its feet and tries to scale the wall of its crib. In its tiny mind it knows that it can do it. Its need to see the night sky is too strong to ignore. But the babe doesn’t know about the camera the mother has installed in its room after weeks and weeks of soundless nights. ‘No, no, no, little one. Lie back down.’ The babe beats its little fists in protest when it is swaddled in its blanket. Its efforts were fruitless.

The mother watches the screen for a moment as she lies in bed, waiting for her babe to fall asleep. But the babe turns and looks straight at the camera, eyes shining like silver coins. The mother shudders at the depth in her babe’s gaze and looks away, now concerned by her own feelings towards her child. The day they had gotten the call about the poor abandoned thing had been the happiest day of her life. The mother couldn’t be a mother and was more than willing to bring home the baby from the wood.

‘Why doesn’t it cry when it’s not with us?’ asks the mother as she watches the babe in the corner of her eye. ‘Isn’t it odd?’

‘She. Maybe she’s just content.’

The mother frowns at the father and turns back to the babe, staring silently out of the kitchen window. She doesn’t think this is true. In fact, she doesn’t know what to think. It suddenly dawns on her that she feels no connection to her little babe at all.

After a whole day spent together, the mother still worries, sizing her babe up like it is something foreign to her. Blissfully unaware of her torment, the babe giggles as it rolls on the grass with the hound.

‘Full moon tonight,’ says the father.

‘Oh really?’ the mother replies vacantly.

At night she leaves the blankets loose on her babe and watches the screen to see if it tries to climb again. But the hours grow long and soon her eyes droop closed. This is the first night since the baby had arrived that their sleep is disturbed. The hound’s deep, booming barks shake the very foundations of the house. Both the mother and father are out of bed in an instant. But it is pitch black and they are fumbling, running into one another in their terror. A squeal follows- a pained, animal squeal.

Blood covers the hallway and the mother nearly collapses with fear. The body of the hound lies at the foot of the stairwell, oozing red from the tear at its throat.

‘Check the baby,’ the father says to the disorientated mother.

But the babe is gone.

The paw prints marked in the blood are far too big for their hound. The father follows them to the open back door.

He freezes at the sight before him. At the bottom of the garden stands a wolf with its cub. The cub cocks its head and blinks, its silver eyes twinkling. The mother looks out of the bedroom window and gasps. The cub looks up before they flee, bounding over the fence and into the trees.

The baby doesn’t belong to them.

The baby belongs to the wood.