Emerald Martins, freshman, Maryville College
I used to think Maryville College was ordinary, old brick buildings wrapped in ivy, professors who spoke in measured tones about the Enlightenment, and a cafeteria that smelled perpetually of cinnamon rolls and disinfectant. My freshman routine was predictable: classes until mid‑afternoon, a late shift at the library's help desk, then a quiet walk back to Everdale Hall, the girls' dorm perched on the hill like a watchful aunt. But by the second month of the fall semester, a rumor had slipped between lecture notes and dorm gossip, finding soft ground in my imagination.
They called them werewolves. Not in the Halloween‑mask sense, but in the whispered, my‑roommate‑swears‑she‑saw‑one‑by‑the‑lake sense. Supposedly, there were people on campus, students, maybe even staff, who carried a wolf spirit inside them, emerging under the secrecy of moonlight. Most shrugged it off as a prank, yet the story slithered through hallways like mist, leaving a cool dampness on the mind of anyone who listened too long.
I wish I could say I never gave those whispers a second thought. The truth is, I did. I kept hearing about "luring," about strange howls near the nature trail, about claw marks on the side of Old North Hall. I filed each story away the way I file vocabulary words for Spanish class, meaning to forget them but secretly rehearsing them in the dark.
So when everything changed, the foundation had already been poured.
The Night Stroll
It was late, just past 1 a.m. when I left the library. An all‑campus quiet lay over Maryville's quad, broken only by the hum of the central fountain. I'd stayed so long because solitude felt easier than my dorm's overstimulating chatter. I had reading to finish, but mostly I needed to breathe without company.
Streetlamps painted seedy orange halos over the pathway, illuminating swirling moths. The weather had shifted since dinner; the air was brisk enough that my breath drifted in silver puffs. A waxing moon had hung high above the bell tower when I first stepped outside, but storm clouds were gathering torn pieces of charcoal drifting across a parchment sky.
The first sound reached me at the turn by the athletic field: a high, metallic shriek, as if a giant talon had scraped a metal hull. The noise clawed straight down my spine. Gooseflesh pricked my arms even under my hoodie.
Instinct said run. Curiosity, my eternal traitorous friend, urged look.
I should pause to admit something about courage: mine rarely announces itself with fanfare. It arrives quietly, almost sheepishly, and often far too late. Yet that night, after a deep exhale that fogged the air before my lips, I tip‑toed forward, following the echo bouncing off lockers and bleachers.
I rounded the hedge bordering the parking lot. Fluorescent lights above the bus shelter flickered, casting half‑second snapshots over two figures some twenty yards away silhouettes hunched near the campus shuttle. Even from my hiding spot, I sensed tension rippling between them like heat above asphalt.
The screech tore through the night again, this time accompanied by something distinctly animal: a guttural growl that vibrated just beneath hearing, the way thunder hums beneath heavy clouds before a storm.
I ducked behind the mailbox kiosk, pressing my back against cold metal, and risked a peek.
Two in Shadow
The first figure stepped into a trembling cone of light. He was tall, at least six‑four, with shoulders so broad they might have been carved from cedar. What made my pulse thunder wasn't the size alone but the thick pelt of dark hair curling from beneath his open coat, over his collarbone, down his forearms, as though his skin couldn't decide whether it wanted to be fur or flesh.
I clapped a hand over my mouth. Could it be some weird costume? A prank? Yet when he lifted an arm, moonlight glinted off unnaturally long nails, curved, ivory, ending in lethal points that looked grown, not glued.
The second figure shifted into view near the bus's hazard lights. He was slimmer, almost ethereal, with angular cheekbones sharpened by the failing lamplight. I caught a flash of blue, his irises, impossibly vivid, the color of glacier ice. Even at rest, his lips grooved back a fraction, exposing teeth that were too long, too white, his canines pressing against his lower lip so that they protruded even when his mouth was closed. High above, dark hair swept behind elongated ears tapering to slight, elfin tips.
If I'd had time to process, I'd have fled. But awe cemented my feet. Before me stood proof, living proof, that the rumors weren't empty.
They began to circle each other, bare feet gliding over damp asphalt. Low growls rolled in their chests, rumbling like distant engines. The hairy one, let me call him Claw, for his talons, lunged first, sweeping an arm meant to slash. Blue‑Eyes, as I later labeled him, pivoted, catching Claw's wrist. Their movements were brutally graceful, animal and practiced.
Claw barked something that sounded like a word but tore out half‑formed, a mix of snarl and language. Blue‑Eyes replied in the same feral dialect, rough consonants stitched with breathy vowels. Were they speaking? I wondered. Their voices vibrated with a timbre too deep for ordinary throats.
Every screech of nail against metal sent sparks of terror dancing along my nerves. Yet a bizarre calm settled over me too, an almost cinematic detachment, as though I'd been ushered into a story I had only read about.
When Claw whirled, eyes glowing amber, his nostrils flared. I stiffened. He smells me. Panic jack‑hammered my ribs. He stepped toward the hedge, head cocking, inhaling again. Another step, closer close enough I saw pores dilate along his scarred cheek.
Before I could scramble backward, Blue‑Eyes thrust himself between us, shoulders braced. He slammed a flat palm into Claw's chest, shoving him aside with a strength that belied his lean frame. Something wild flashed in his electric gaze—anger, yes, but also…concern? It felt directed at me, a stranger frozen in the dark.
"Not now," Blue‑Eyes hissed. I could almost understand those words. Claw snarled but relented, baring serrated rows of teeth.
The Moon's Retreat
Suddenly, all three of us, predator, protector, witness. paused and glanced skyward as if yanked by an invisible string. Where light should have spilled silver across clouds, there was a void. The moon's luminous disk was gone, swallowed by stormbanks rolling in like black surf.
With the moon hidden, a hush fell. Claw's shoulders shuddered inward, hair receding like a tide. His talons twisted, shrinking until blunt nails remained. Blue‑Eyes' ears collapsed to human roundedness, his teeth dulling to ordinary enamel. It all happened in mere breaths, the transformation as grotesque as it was impossible.
And then, human again, two college‑aged guys in torn T‑shirts and sweatpants, they pivoted and ran. I've never seen anyone sprint like that: a blur, soles barely tapping pavement, as if gravity tugged lighter on them. They vanished between the maintenance sheds, leaving only echoes of footfalls.
I blinked, trembling. Had I dreamed it? Yet the acrid scent of metal still stung my nostrils; the shuttle bus's side now bore raw silver scratches deep as carving knives.
Breath battered my lungs. I wasn't brave anymore, whatever rush of courage had filled me drained out like bathwater. I fled, legs jolting, heartbeat roaring in my ears, all the way back to Everdale Hall where I collapsed behind the locked door of my single room.
Sleep evaded me. I kept picturing their eyes, amber and glacial blue, burning with something old, predatory, and oddly human.
Morning After
Birdsong announced morning. When sun‑stripes finally edged across my desk, I tugged on jeans and a hoodie, bracing for class except something else drew me outside: noise at the parking lot.
A crowd had formed, all craning near the bus. Whispers skittered.
"Did vandals get in?"
"Looks like a bear."
"Someone said lightning hit the metal."
I hung back, blending into oak shadows, but I saw the evidence: deep, uneven grooves etched across yellow paint. The metal had been dented, panels warped. Mechanics in navy uniforms walked slow circles, frowning, jotting notes.
No part of me thought to step forward and say, "I saw who did it." Who'd believe werewolves? Even I was still negotiating the memory, weighing reality against exhaustion. I told myself I needed facts before stories.
Rumors sparked anew—rumors layered upon rumors like old palimpsests. Some insisted it was a prank by upperclassmen, others claimed the marks resembled a wildcat mauling. No one's theory matched the claw spacing or acknowledged the moonlit fight.
Deep down, though, I knew what I'd witnessed was no prank. It felt…ancient. Primeval.
Shifting Questions
In the days that followed, I became preoccupied. My textbooks laid open, yet paragraphs blurred. Instead, I rewound the night: the noise, the smell of ozone, Blue‑Eyes stepping between me and danger. Why did he protect me? Who were they—students, townsfolk, something older?
Questions swarmed my mind:
1. Who are the wolf‑spirited? Legends said the soul of a wolf can twine with human flesh, but what pact births that union?
2. Are they dangerous? Claw clearly was. Yet Blue‑Eyes had intervened. Were there factions, moral lines?
3. What do they want? Territory? Survival? Something as prosaic as guiding freshmen toward destiny?
I started taking different pathways to class, scanning faces. Every time a pair of unusually light eyes flicked my direction or a tall silhouette cast a shadow too broad, adrenaline surged. Because if they walked campus in daylight, they blended perfectly—just students sipping iced coffee, just TAs scanning ID cards in the dining hall.
Gathering the Threads
Curiosity is a double‑edged blade. It cuts ignorance away but sometimes slices open the stable walls of your life. Mine had been freshly punctured.
I began in the library's archives—a musty basement room seldom visited except by history majors. I combed microfiche, dusty regional folklore journals, and out‑of‑print theses on Appalachian cryptids. Maryville County Lycanthropic Traditions (1983) by Dr. Howard L. Breyer mentioned "lune‑bound souls" rumored near Cedar Gap College in the 1930s; students described "blue eyes and hair that sprouted like black moss under moonlight." Another clipping dated 1962 recorded a series of livestock mutilations correlated with nights when the moon disappeared behind heavy clouds, halting transformations mid‑phase—or so local superstition suggested.
Each discovery felt like stepping closer to an unseen web, threads converging on present‑day Maryville.
A Promise to Seek
I could have chosen to forget—to treat that night as hallucination borne of stress. But I'd seen too much. He had seen me. Protecting me meant acknowledgment. That connection pulsed like a distant drumbeat in my chest.
So I made myself a promise, scrawling it in shaky cursive at the back of my psychology notebook:
Find the truth.
Understand who they are, why they linger on our campus, and what links moonlight to their wrath and mercy.
And because every quest needs ground rules, I added:
Do not reveal what you know until you have evidence.
Do not approach them alone.
Do not forget the look in Blue‑Eyes' gaze—half wild, half compassionate. That look means there's more story to learn.
Forward into Mystery
Weeks stretch long in college, yet time now feels forked: there's Before‑The‑Scratch and After‑The‑Scratch. I drift between lectures, group projects, cafeteria chatter, carrying a secret so heavy it bends my posture.
But when dusk purples the sky and the first star pricks the velvet, I feel that secret stir like a living thing. I know somewhere in the tree‑shadowed corners of campus those two figures—or others of their kind—prowl, sensing the shift of clouds across the moon.
Someday soon, I will stand in that darkness again. Not by accident, but by choice. This story—my story, Maryville's story—has already set its claws in me. I can't turn away.
Whether they prove monster, guardian, or something in between, I will learn where wolf and human meet, and what price both pay beneath a fickle sky.
And if fate decrees I must choose between my safe life and the dangerous wonder now crackling in my veins—
I pray the moon grants me courage.