The Dark Guardian

Chapter 2 The Cat

My little rental cottage was chilled when I returned, but I didn't care. I could barely feel my feet moving under me as I lunged myself through the front door, panting and shaking. What had I just seen? What had I just found? I locked the door behind me and anxiously tugged on the door knob several times. But hey, you can never be too sure. The breath in my lungs was as stale as day old bread, I had held it for that long.

"Oh God, Lur!" I yelled at myself and paced around the room like sociopath. "You have to report it. You have to." I muttered to myself in a crazed tone. My shaky fingers fumbled over the phone in my kitchen, and I dialed the emergency number that was posted on the refrigerator. I could barely dial the numbers with my trembling and had to retry a few times before I got it right. The receiver felt cold over my heated earlobe. A male's voice answered in German and then paused making me realize that he was waiting for me to respond.

"Hello?" my voice shook into the receiver.

"Ja Hallo," the voice said.

"I want to report a-a" I began but the words did not seem right. What was I reporting here? Oh yea a fucking zombie coming out of the damn ground.

"Hallo?" the man said.

"Wolves. There are wolves outside. Lots of wolves." Oh shit. Now I know I'm losing it. Yes, Lur, the wolves play outside with all the other critters. "I'm sorry. I'm a bit startled as you can tell." The line went silent.

"Do you understand me?" I slapped my hand over my forehead as I tried to remember the German phrase book I had barely looked at. Lur you stupid American. He started speaking back in German and my brain had become far too murky to even make out a word of what he said.

"I don't speak German" I said more to myself and my hot breath dampened the receiver. "Spanish. Do you speak Spanish. Entiende español?" but it was no use, the line went dead before I could finish my sorry excuse for the Spanish language.

"Fuck!" I yelled out in a language that I knew well and slammed my fist up against the counter-top. I staggered towards the kitchen with my limbs now shaking uncontrollably and my heart raced through my eardrums, reminding me over and over that I was in fact still alive. A trembling hand curled around the the drawer handle and I pulled it open with too much force casing the silverware to shift all over with a jarring sound. There in the drawer was a shining butcher knife, I lifted it up from the thick wooden handle and looked over my own reflection as it shook in my hand.

"What am I doing?" I asked my own reflection. "I guess I'm going to stab it." My mind did not even want to think about that-that thing in the soil. The image of the ground shaking below me began to fester in my mind and I sped off towards the bedroom to find my damn pills. That night I took a few extra doses. The familiar calm warmed my blood and filled my head with the sterile thoughtlessness. But even with the extra meds, I was still paranoid and sat in my room for most of the evening, my trembling fingers curled around the butcher knife.

I was dozing in and out of sleep when I heard the phone ring. I shrieked at first and slipped off the side of the bed.

"Damn phone." I yelped through my own panicking breaths and collected myself from the ground to go answer it.

"Hello?"

"Mija?"

"Hi mom," I attempted to keep my voice calm, she was the last person who needed to worry for me considering she was half way around the world and couldn't do anything anyway. Why torture the poor woman, she was nearly sixty now.

"Are you ok? You sound shaken."

"I was sleeping, ma. The phone scared me."

"You gotta stop being so jumpy, mija."