“Have you seen Grover?” Ellen asked as she came upstairs.
“No, I thought you had him locked in the basement,” replied Jeff.
“I did. Now I can’t find him.” Ellen said grimly.
“Where could he have gotten out? I mean, all the windows are barred and the door is reinforced. Did you forget to lock the door or something?” Jeff sounded annoyed, and a little alarmed.
“NO I did not forget to lock the door ‘or something’! And this is serious, Jeff. Don’t just stand there and look grumpy. We need to find him, ASAP. Yesterday, if possible!”
“All right, hold your horses, I’m coming. We’ll check the basement again first, just in case he’s hiding somewhere.” Jeff followed Ellen through the locked door at the top of the basement stairs and then to the locked door at the bottom of the stairs.
“I came down to give him his dinner, and he didn’t come to the door-slot to take it. I checked the security monitors and couldn’t see him anywhere on them. I went around the outside, but all the windows are still barred from the outside. I don’t know how he got out, but he must have.”
Jeff unlocked the door, handed her the keys and said, “I’ll go in and look. You stay here, and lock the door behind me. You know how tricky he can be- I don’t want him to slip out when we aren’t looking at the door.”
Ellen took the keys and waited as Jeff carefully went over the entire basement.
When he returned, he looked worried. “His bed hasn’t been slept in and the water we left hasn’t been touched. I’d say he’s been gone since sometime this morning. I think I found where he might have gotten out, too.”
Ellen followed Jeff back into the basement. As holding cells went, it wasn’t too bad. It was carpeted, and Grover had a big comfortable bed and all the amenities they could fit into the area. They skirted Grover’s things, which littered the floor, and the remains of snacks while Jeff led Ellen to the far back wall where the bed was. He pulled the bed away from the wall and they both looked at the hole where the foundation had crumbled. The basement was really almost the first floor here, so it hadn’t taken too much digging for Grover to make an exit. The exit was behind a large bush.
“You know how crafty he gets around this time of month,” Jeff shook his head. “I wouldn’t have thought he would figure this out, though. I HATE full moons.”
“There’s no point in beating ourselves up over this now. We need to find him, fast, before we have to do damage control,” said Ellen.
They grabbed flashlights and their cell phones. At the last minute, Ellen took some clothes from Jeff’s closet and stuffed them in a small back pack. “We might need these, if we don’t find him soon enough,” she said.
Jeff said, “Good idea. And I’ll go upstairs and grab Daisy. She loves Grover. She follows him everywhere. Maybe she can track him.
As Ellen headed for her car, she looked up at the sky. A full moon was breaking the horizon, with misty clouds glowing around it. It was beautiful, but so very dangerous. Since the moon was already rising, it was probably too late already. She called to Jeff, and he looked at the moon and grimaced. “So it’ll probably be damage control, then?” he said. She nodded and they set off.
Martha Watson remembered the clothes on her line just as she was finishing the supper dishes. Grumbling at herself for being so forgetful, she grabbed a laundry basket and slammed out the door to get them. She looked up and groaned. The clothes line had been pulled down and the clothes were dragging in the grass. She took the clothes off and put them in the basket anyway. “Must’ve been some dog!” she muttered to herself, looking at the tooth marks in the corner of one of the sheets. She never even noticed the slightly hairy shadow in the bushes near the clothes line.
Jeff got Daisy, a lovely yellow Labrador retriever, and they set off on foot. He kept a sharp eye out and listened for sounds in the underbrush.
Ellen drove slowly down the lane towards the main highway, looking carefully all the way As long as Grover had been out, she figured he had already made it close to town, but you never knew. She slowly made for the place he always wanted to go when he got out.
A group of children were playing Frisbee and ball under the lights at the park on the edge of town. There were no adults with them, and even better, no dogs. They didn’t see the shadow lurking under the trees near the river.
“Grover!” Ellen called out of the car window as she crossed the bridge over the small river on the outskirts of town. Grover always liked to linger on the bridge and explore near the river whenever he got the chance. “Grover!” She passed over the bridge and saw the empty park on the other side.
Jeff poked in the underbrush near the river. He found a soaking wet brightly printed sundress balled up and tossed under the bushes. Daisy sniffed it and whined. Jeff heard the sound of a child crying and winced. He went to investigate it.
The man with the six-pack of beer was already a few drinks deeper than he needed to be. He sat down on the bench on the deserted street to wait for the bus home, tossing his jacket down beside him. He never saw the shadow in the alley behind him.
Ellen drove down the nearly deserted street. She paused behind the bus when it stopped to let someone off at the stop. There was a jacket abandoned on the bench, and the person getting off the bus stopped and looked at it, as if to see if it were worth taking. Ellen shook her head at the dishonesty of some people.
Jeff heard someone screaming incoherently, but by the time he was close enough to see what was going on, there was no one there.
The girls at the sorority were having an end of the semester party. They were all laughing, eating, and having a lot of very loud fun. Young men wound between the girls like bees buzzing flowers. The shadow watching them through the window noted every move they made. When they were all sufficiently distracted, it made its way to the back door.
Ellen met Jeff near the bus stop. “What do you think, the sorority?” asked Ellen.
“I’m afraid so,” answered Jeff. Daisy was pulling at the leash and whining. She was looking in the right direction. Ellen sighed. “I really wish this weren’t happening,” she said.
“I know,” said Jeff. “Me too.”
Ellen and Jeff arrived at the corner of campus at almost the same time. Jeff and Daisy had taken some short cuts through alleys and yards, Daisy pulling on her leash the whole way. Ellen parked the car. She and Jeff exchanged glances and she sighed heavily. “I hate to think what the damage control is going to be like on this one,” she said. Jeff just shook his head.
They made their way to the sorority house that Grover liked best. There were lights on all over the house, and there was a police car out front. Jeff and Ellen broke into a run.
When they entered the house, the young women were all bunched together in a group on the far side of the room. Several of them were whispering to each other. They all looked frightened. There was food spilled everywhere.
Some of the boys were piled on top of something that was thrashing and howling on the floor. The police officer was trying to haul them off, so he could see what was going on.
“Grover!” Ellen shouted.
The police officer turned. “Lady, do you know what’s going on here?” he asked. “I got a call about a fight, but I can’t get to the bottom of it, so to speak. We get these calls all the time, this time of year.” He shrugged. “I don’t see any blood and the only thing that’s broken is that lamp, so if you can sort this out, I won’t haul anyone in.”
Meanwhile, Jeff had waded into the fray, and he and Daisy managed to accomplish what the police officer had not. Jeff pulled the angry young men off and sent them over to the knot of whispering girls. Reaching the bottom, he reached out and hauled the bottom figure upright. “Grover, what have you got to say for yourself?” he asked. “What were you thinking?”
A stocky young man with sleek black hair wearing nothing but a pair of plaid boxer shorts looked up at him and grinned. “I just wanted to play!” he smiled. “The girls didn’t want to play today, but the guys wanted to wrestle. It was fun!”
One of the boys yelled, “Get that creep out of here. He crashed our party, and he’s drunk. And look at him. He’s not wearing anything but boxers. You should get him for indecent exposure!” The young men were gearing up for another fight. Jeff took Grover by the arm and he, Ellen and Daisy hustled Grover out.
“Grover…” Ellen began as they started down the sidewalk.
“I wanted to play. You shut me in the basement and I just wanted to play!” Grover whined. “You always shut me in the basement so I can’t play!”
“Grover, you can’t play all the time,” said Ellen.
“Why not? I am a Labrador Retriever,” replied Grover. “We like to play! Everybody should play!”
Jeff touched Ellen on the shoulder. “He’s right, you know. Just because he looks like a man during the full moon doesn’t mean he still isn’t a Lab at heart.”
“I know, I know. We need to figure out something better. For now, let’s just patch things up and go home,” replied Ellen. “What do we need to do for damage control?”
“First of all, Grover, I smell beer on your breath! Where did you get it?”
Grover shrugged. “The guy at the bus stop already drank a bunch. I just took his extra. He seemed kind of mad, though, and he chased me a long way.”
“One six pack for the guy at the bus stop. I hope we can find him again.” Ellen wrote this down on a little pad.
“Well,” said Jeff, “There’s a Frisbee that needs to be replaced- the little boy was very unhappy. And he may be traumatized for life by the sight of a man in a flowered sundress running off with his Frisbee!” He glared at Grover.
Grover drooped. “I didn’t mean to make him unhappy. I thought he’d like to play chase.”
“New Frisbee. Got it.” Ellen noted this too.
“About that sundress…” Jeff began.
“It was pretty. It was all sorts of what do you call ‘em- colors! Colors almost make up for not being able to smell!” Grover said happily. “But then it got wet. I can’t shake it dry like I can my fur, so I took it off.” Then he looked up at them proudly. “I remembered the clothes this time!”
“Where did you get the sundress and shorts, Grover?” asked Ellen.
“Mrs. Watson. I kind of pulled down her clothesline, too,” Grover looked contrite. “I didn’t mean too, but I hadn’t finished changing yet, and I was in a hurry.
“Is that it?” Ellen asked.
“I think so.”
Jeff looked back in the direction of the sorority. “I don’t think you did any permanent damage there. I just hope they don’t recognize us when we are walking across campus next year!”
Grover looked back at the house with a glazed look in his eyes. “The girls. They always pet me and give me treats. I like them.”
“Grover, it doesn’t work quite the same when you’re a guy,” Jeff began. Grover looked puzzled. “Oh, never mind. I’ll try again later.” Jeff sighed.
Ellen shook her head. “Who knew that if a werewolf bites a dog, he turns into a man at the full moon? I mean, how weird is that?”
“How weird is a werewolf?” Jeff countered. “If you had asked me if I believed in those a year ago, I’d have laughed at you.”
“For now, we need to figure out how to keep Grover happy at the full moon, anyway, so he doesn’t escape again,” said Ellen.
Grover looked up. “Oh, I won’t be bored next month,” he said.
“Why is that?” asked Jeff.
“Well, you know when you were pulling those guys off of me?”
Jeff nodded.
“I got a little overexcited when Daisy started pulling at me.”
“And?” Ellen asked.
“Well,” said Grover, “I kind of bit her.”
-She Wolf (c) May 2007
