You are to leave Ravenwood within the next hour. I felt big, I felt strong, and when I looked at my hands, I saw that my nails had turned into the curved claws of a beast. I felt a shock and a slight pain in my abdomen where the bullet landed. Eventually I met him lurking at the edge of the woods and shot him.”
“And he died?”
“He died, but as he died, he looked at me with those burning eyes and grinned at me. I needed them to keep me supplied too, for in the state I was in, I had a great appetite. You’ll be pretty resistant to the cold and frosts of winter, but make yourself a hut or find a cave to shelter in, anyway.”
I lost myself in the brush that was at the edge of the woods, and for a moment when I looked back it seemed to me as if the sheriff was going to draw his pistol and shoot me and put an end in a simple way to the curse that was pressing upon me. After my parents were consigned to the earth, the sheriff drove me in his car to the police station and motioned for me to sit in the uncomfortable chair in front of his desk.
