The Smoking Mirror Read Online Free

border when she heard a snarl from Johnny’s bed. Flipping her phone around so that its light fell on her brother, Carol squinted in the gloom. Johnny was twisting strangely in his bed, his back to her. Suddenly he bolted upright, his arms shooting out from under the sheets.
    Both hands were covered in fur, and claws jutted from every finger.
    Stifling a scream, Carol pulled up the camera app on her phone and started taking photos. Johnny’s head snapped around at the clicking noises, and she watched as his face changed. His nose widened and flattened; his jaw protruded painfully, causing a grimace that revealed sharp, feline teeth; his eyes glimmered redly with each flash from the smartphone. With a muted growl, he leapt from the bed and crawled out the open window. Carol hurried to look outside and saw him dashing off, hunched over as if wanting to get down on all fours. She switched her phone to record and grabbed a few seconds of footage before he disappeared into the night.
    Quietly, trying to calm her ragged nerves, Carol made herself a cup of café con leche and sat on her bed, awaiting her brother’s return. She looked up werewolf and wolf-man and everything else she could think of. I can help him. I know I can.
    Despite all her intentions, Carol had begun to doze slightly when Johnny bounded through the window and curled into a ball on his bed. His tail twitched as he closed his eyes.
    His tail? What the…
    Sleep overcame the transformed boy, and slowly his body reverted to its more human shape. This time he had not torn his clothing.
    Can he remember stuff from his normal life? Did he take more care this time? Her questions would have to wait until morning. By now it was nearly 4am, so Carol lay down and drifted off. She was not troubled by dreams.
    ~~~
     
    “Carol, wake up, dude.”
    Blearily, she sat up. Johnny was lacing up his Converse hi-tops. He smiled at her, and for a moment, she seemed to see that feral face superimposed on his features.
    “Johnny,” she said as he got up. “Wait. Lock the door.”
    “Uh, excuse me?”
    “You need to see something, and I don’t want Andrea walking in.”
    Johnny raised an eyebrow and scratched his temple.
    “Photos on my phone, dude,” she explained when he made a funny face.
    “Ooookaaaayyyy.” He locked the door and sat down on her bed. “What are these top-secret pictures of, anyway? Your cute friend Nikki?”
    “Oh, my God. You are an idiot, aren’t you? Look, you wouldn’t believe me otherwise…I found your shirt in the trash.”
    Johnny’s face blanched. “Wait, I can explain…”
    “Hold on. So I stayed up to see where you were going.”
    “I didn’t go anywhere!”
    Carol opened up the camera app and accessed the photos. “Oh, yes, you did.”
    Johnny took the phone and began swiping through the images, his eyes getting wider and wider. “Dude, you totally photoshopped these.”
    “Yeah. In the middle of the night. On Andrea’s five-year-old computer. With my non-existent image-manipulation skills. That’s your department, Mr. Computer-Aided-Design. Here, give me that.” She found the video she’d recorded of him running off into the night. “How do you explain this then, genius?”
    Johnny watched himself rush away like a creature from some 1930s horror film. He set the phone down and ran his hands through his hair. “Holy crap, Carol.”
    “Yes.”
    “But it explains a lot. The strange feelings I’ve been getting, all the shirts I’ve been ruining…”
    Carol thought for a moment about her own dreams, about waking up with a dead rabbit in her hands. She kept all that to herself for the moment. No reason to make things even more complicated. Pushing down the suspicion that something strange might be happening to her as well, she nodded.
    “Yeah. I don’t know…maybe you caught something, maybe you were bitten…”
    “Maybe it’s a family thing,” Johnny finished, almost looking excited. “And maybe Mom’s