The Bite‑Mark Curse

The police radio crackled inside Caleb’s patrol car, urgent shouts cutting through static, pushing him to speed down the tree‑lined road. “Assault within a family, 144 Woodland Lane — two casualties.” The dispatcher’s voice broke up amid signal noise.

Caleb’s stubble was growing thick; his eyes were heavy from just finishing a night shift, when this emergency call came in. He gripped the steering wheel tight, a faint unease creeping into his chest — not just another violent incident, but a sense that this case would be unlike any he had known before.

As the patrol car turned into the driveway, red‑and‑blue lights flashed across the front yard, other police vehicles and ambulances lined up. Before Caleb stepped out, a colleague hurried toward him, face tight with strain. “Caleb — you’re a little late. The first team’s already secured the scene.”

“What happened?” Caleb asked, pulling on his protective vest.

“The father attacked his own son — we had to subdue him. I’m sorry… the mother was fatally shot in the bedroom.” The other officer spoke in a low, shaken tone. “The boy’s about twelve years old — he’s still inside alone. The medics are going in, but he won’t let anyone come near.”

Caleb bowed his head and breathed deep. He heard faint sobbing drifting from the house, where the front door stood ajar. He stepped slowly inside; the sharp smell of blood hit him at once — thick, clinging, nauseating, filling the living room. Dark red stains marked the wooden floor, with drag‑marks leading toward the next room.

Two paramedics stood back near the sofa, watching the boy sitting on the floor in the centre of the room. He knelt there, covered in blood, his clothes torn, head bowed, hands resting on his knees. His eyes were open but vacant, staring at empty air as if he saw no‑one at all.

One medic stepped forward slowly, reaching out to take the boy’s arm to check his injuries — but the moment his fingertips touched the boy’s skin, the boy twisted sharply, swatting the medic’s hand hard. The medic stumbled backward onto the floor. “He fights violently — we dare not get closer,” the medic said, his voice trembling.

Caleb held up a hand to signal everyone to step back, then moved toward the boy one careful step at a time. The tap‑tap of his shoes on the wooden floor echoed softly in the suddenly quiet room. “Hey… my name’s Caleb. I’m an officer. No‑one’s going to hurt you now — everyone’s here to help. Can you try to stay calm?” He spoke in a low, gentle voice, trying not to look threatening.

The boy lifted his head. For a short moment he looked straight at Caleb — his eyes were not like an ordinary child’s: dark, with a strange glint like a wild dog’s. Before Caleb could take in anything more, the boy leapt up fast, bared his teeth, and bit hard into the back of Caleb’s right hand — then instantly went still again, as if he were just an ordinary boy once more.

“Ah!” Caleb cried out, stung by the sharp pain. Though shocked, he did not push the boy roughly — only pulled his hand quickly back. Deep tooth‑marks were left behind, blood seeping out at once. The boy did not lunge again; he simply stood where he was, staring at Caleb with that same vacant look.

Colleagues rushed forward to restrain the boy to stop further harm. Caleb was taken to the ambulance to treat his wound. Even in pain, he kept thinking about the boy’s eyes and strange behaviour — he could not understand why he had acted like that, or why such terrible things had fallen on this family in one single night.

The next day, as Caleb sat reviewing case files at the station, the same colleague walked in, pale‑faced. “Caleb… there’s bad news.”

Caleb looked up. “What is it?”

“That boy from last night… he’s dead. Investigators say it was suicide.”

Caleb was stunned, nearly gasping out loud. He fell quiet for a moment, a cold chill creeping up his spine. “Suicide…?” he said, hardly believing it. “But he was alive only yesterday, only slightly hurt — why would he do that?”

No‑one could answer. Everyone involved in the case was confused — there was no clear reason for the father’s violence, no explanation for the boy’s bite, no cause for his sudden death. The file was filed away as just another terrible case — but for Caleb, that uneasy feeling was far from over.

3 days after hearing of the boy’s death, the tooth‑wound on the back of Caleb’s right hand healed strangely fast. No clear scar remained — only a grey‑purple stain spreading beneath the skin, like dark veins creeping outward. Doctors found no infection, no poison, prescribed anti‑inflammatory medicine and said it was just tissue damage — yet Caleb knew it was something more.

Changes came slowly at first. At the beginning, he only noticed smells growing far stronger: dust in the office, coworkers’ sweat, decaying road‑kill he had barely registered before. Now these scents pricked his nose until his head ached. Next came sharpened hearing — the click of a key at the station’s back gate a hundred metres away sounded clear to him; the heartbeat of the officer sitting beside him was as loud as if it were right next to his ear.

His colleagues began saying Caleb had developed remarkable instincts. He could sense someone hiding in dark corners, or tell which cases held hidden secrets — everyone praised him for it. Yet deep down Caleb felt uneasy. He had not trained for this; it was as if something inside him was waking up.

Nightmares followed. Every night he dreamed he was running fast through a dark forest, tree‑shadows swaying all around, wind howling through branches. His legs did not feel like human legs. He felt an unexplainable craving — an urge to run, to hide in shadow, to breathe in the damp scent of earth and leaves. Some nights he woke soaked in sweat, his heart pounding so hard it felt ready to burst.

He tried not to think much of it, telling himself it was only stress left over from the case at 144 Woodland Lane. But as the second week passed, the thing that frightened him most happened.

One morning he woke with an itchy tingling across his arms and legs. When he pulled back the blanket, he saw grass‑stalks, dry leaves and tiny twigs tangled in his hair, clothes and around his ankles. There were long scratch‑marks on his skin, as if he had run through thick underbrush in the night.

Caleb stood frozen beside the bed, heart racing. He could not remember getting up or going anywhere. The bed was untouched, his bedroom door still locked — yet the grass and scratches were real. He checked the door and windows; everything was tightly shut, no sign of anyone entering or leaving. He began to wonder if he was losing his mind — or if something else was taking hold of him.

More symptoms came after that. He grew quick‑tempered. Sudden loud noises made him want to snarl, to tear at something. The smell of blood — familiar from that first case — now drew him strangely. He tried to hide these changes from his coworkers, afraid they would think him unfit for duty. He only said he was worn out from long shifts.

But inside, he knew it was not tiredness. It felt like some living thing within his chest, growing larger, waking something new every day. He began writing down what happened each night — when the nightmares came, what scents he picked up, what sounds he heard, the grass‑and‑leaf traces he found on himself when he woke.

When he looked back over his notes, he saw the symptoms were steadily getting worse — drawing closer to the full moon, only a few days away.

Caleb stared at the dark stain beneath the skin on the back of his hand — where everything had begun. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He did not know what was coming — yet he knew he was no longer the man he used to be.

On the night of the full moon, Caleb had just finished sorting his case files. He took off his uniform jacket, laid it over a chair, and got ready for bed. Ever since he had come home, he had felt strange discomfort all over his body — yet he told himself it was only exhaustion from days of back‑to‑back work.

He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes, trying to sleep — but the unease did not fade, it only grew worse. A sharp itching sensation coursed through every bone, as if something were shifting beneath his skin. He tossed and turned, pressing his palms against his chest and back to ease the tension, yet nothing helped.

Caleb got up, walked to the bedside table, poured water from the glass bottle into his cup, and sipped slowly, hoping it would calm his body. He lifted his gaze toward the large nearby window — silver moonlight streamed through it. The full moon hung high in the sky, bright enough for the markings on its surface to be seen clearly.

The moment his eyes fell upon the moon, the discomfort across his whole body surged violently. Faint bone‑creaking sounds began to ring inside him — noises he had never heard before, as if his joints were reshaping themselves. He tensed up, gripping the edge of the table to steady himself, not expecting the change to come so soon.

Moonlight shone straight onto the large mirror beside the wardrobe. Caleb walked toward it without thinking, wanting to see his own face, wanting to know what was happening. He clutched the mirror’s edge so hard his knuckles turned pale. His eyes in the glass began to shift — glowing golden‑yellow, catching the moonlight, a colour he had never had before.

“What‑what’s happening to me…” he tried to say — yet his voice was no longer his own, deeper and rougher, turning into the low growl of a wild beast.

Bones all over his frame began to reshape violently; the creaking grew loud enough to ring in his ears. He doubled over, his hands forcing themselves flat against the floor. His skin burned with intense itching, thick dark fur sprouting in patches across his arms, legs and cheeks. He fought against it, trying to call his own name in his mind — yet his old thoughts were fading away, replaced only by urges: to run, to chase, to bite, to dwell in the dark of the forest.

He looked up at the mirror once more — his face was lengthening now, his jaw sharpening, sharp fangs pushing out from his lips, his ears growing pointed. His body bulked up, muscles swelling, the clothes he wore tearing into rags amid rising growls.

Faint memories flashed through his mind — Number 144, the smell of blood, the boy who had bittten his hand, the unsolved confusion of the case — yet those images drifted away like clouds blown off by the night‑wind. Only hunger remained, and the freedom to run anywhere beneath the full moon.

He saw a dark shape in the mirror — no longer Caleb the police officer he had once known himself to be. It was a wild creature, with gleaming golden‑yellow eyes, sharp fangs, and a body ready to run out into the dark.

The mirror trembled with the rising growl. A faint breeze slipped through the slightly‑open window, carrying the scent of earth and leaves from the distant woods. He tilted his head upward toward the moon above, and let out a long, howling cry into the night.