Gnome Coming: A humorous paranormal novel (Freaky Florida Book 4) Read online

  “Oh. My. Lord.” Thelma Lou said, staring into her smartphone. She was two rows behind Josie. “The Unger tract has been sold to a developer!”

  The Unger tract was their destination. The large parcel of land lay in what used to be an agricultural region. In recent years, the sprawling suburban developments spread west of Jellyfish Beach like a contagion, driving up land prices and turning vegetable fields into communities of cookie-cutter homes with gated entrances and elaborate fountains.

  Aside from some fields of tomatoes in the north of the property, the Unger tract was dozens of acres of virgin forest—native slash pines, palmettos, and scrub oak. It teemed with wildlife. Josie knew nothing about the Unger family except that they lived elsewhere in the state and they apparently didn’t know that elderly werewolves trespassed on their land.

  Hearing that the land had been sold to a developer put an icy grip on Josie’s heart. At her age, she didn’t like anything at all gripping her heart.

  “Where did you read that?” she asked Thelma Lou.

  “The Jellyfish Beach Journal. They keep sending me these news alerts on my phone. I don’t know how to shut them off.”

  “What’s going to happen to the land?” Mary Beth, sitting across the aisle from Josie, asked.

  Everyone already knew the answer: Developers don’t buy land to make nature preserves.

  Thelma Lou studied the article on her phone. “Oh, my gosh. Four hundred single-family homes, two hundred condos, and retail,” she said. “Our land is being destroyed.”

  “It’s not our land,” Mary Beth said. She was a smart aleck know-it-all from Kentucky.

  A tear rolled down Josie’s cheek. “We can’t let this happen. We have to stop it somehow. Does the article say if the county approved the plans?”

  “Um, let’s see. . .” Thelma Lou scrolled down her screen. “The county commission is voting next week to change the zoning and approve the deal. They had a public hearing last week.” She shot a disapproving look at Josie. “Why were we not at that hearing?”

  “I didn’t know anything about it,” Josie said. How would she know?

  Clucks of disapproval came from the rear of the bus.

  “If we lived out there, we might have seen if they posted notices. Who goes out there except on Thursday nights?”

  No one answered. The energy on the bus was dark as everyone contemplated losing their cherished hunting ground.

  “We could start going to the state forest that’s only an hour away,” Josie offered meekly.

  The clucks of disapproval were louder this time.

  Though Josie was the alpha of the club, her seat of power was wobbly. Women at this stage of life were difficult to push around, and the same applied when they shifted to wolf form. The only thing these werewolves had in common, aside from their wolf instincts, was the fact they had all been infected with lycanthropy by being bitten by other werewolves in their past. None had become werewolves by being cursed or using sorcery. None of them were evil. An evil werewolf would never join their women’s club, anyway.

  Josie stood up in the aisle just behind the driver. The petite, eighty-seven-year-old was hardly an imposing figure, but her voice was loud enough to set off car alarms.

  “Ladies, listen up,” she commanded. “Tonight, we will hunt as planned. Tomorrow we will begin protesting against the development.”

  “Why don’t we just kill the developer?” Tanya asked.

  “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,” Josie said.

  Tanya growled and looked out the window.

  They were far west of Jellyfish Beach now. The shuttle bus passed occasional walled subdivisions, but the landscape was mostly flat vegetable fields and irrigation ditches that glimmered in the moonlight. At last, thick trees appeared on the horizon.

  The bus turned left into a dirt parking lot and parked behind an abandoned building out of view of the road. Just beyond a small overgrown field, the forest began.

  The signs were disturbing. A big, white sign mounted on four-by-fours proclaimed, “Coming soon: Fox Landing. Luxury homes by Loopi Communities.” Josie knew there were only a couple of families of foxes living here, and the werewolves left them alone. Soon, Fox Landing would be devoid of foxes.

  Small, hand-lettered signs on sticks dotted the edge of the road vowing, “Stop the sprawl,” “No more homes,” and “Don’t ruin our neighborhood.”

  “Ignore the signs, ladies,” Josie said as she stood at the front of the bus. “Remember, tonight we hunt. Tomorrow, we protest.”

  The bus driver, a resident of Seaweed Manor named Kevin, exited the bus and walked a discreet distance away. He was also a werewolf, but wouldn’t be shifting tonight.

  Inside the bus, the Werewolf Women’s Club disrobed, carefully folded their clothes, and placed them on their seats. While shifting during a full moon was involuntary, most werewolves can shift at other stages of the moon. All it takes is intense concentration until an ancient switch is flipped inside their brains.

  And then they began their transformation.

  First came the growls spreading throughout the bus. Some growls were painful ones. Changing into a wolf-like creature required enormous musculoskeletal changes and it could hurt, especially if you were older and suffered from arthritis. They say ibuprofen helps when shifting.

  The first sign of transformation is the sprouting of coarse fur all over your body, except for your palms and the soles of your feet. Your canine teeth grow longer, and both your upper and lower jaws push outwards, a condition known as maxillary and mandibular prognathism. Your fingers extend in length, and long, sharp nails protrude from beneath your normal nails until your hands become deadly claws. But you keep your opposable thumbs, so your hands still work like hands.

  Your upper body grows in size and strength while your arms extend slightly in length, allowing you to run on all fours if desired. Though you could stroll about as a biped if you wanted. Alas, you don’t grow a tail, so you can’t run in circles chasing it for amusement.

  While the ladies were shifting, Kevin patrolled the immediate area to make sure no one else was around. He stuck his head in the open door and gestured for the werewolves to exit.

  Josie reached the dirt parking lot first and stood, human-like, a short distance away until all the she-wolves gathered around her. They looked strong and magnificent, unlike their frail human bodies. Of course, their dark-brown fur was heavily streaked with gray and white. And many refused to remove their cherished earrings.

  Tanya whined as she examined her forepaws and saw that her manicure from the previous day had been ruined by the sprouting of wolf claws. Josie barked authoritatively to get the pack’s attention. With a transformed mouth and tongue, human speech was possible but very difficult.

  Josie yipped sharply, dropped onto all fours, and trotted toward the forest, her pack close behind. Once they were inside, they stopped and raised their heads, drinking in the scents.

  The forest in this part of Florida was not one of massive trees forming a canopy above. Spindly slash pines stood the tallest and the low, wide saw palmettos provided plenty of cover for game. In the wet, marshy parts of the tract, cypress trees grew. The only drawback, in Josie’s opinion, were the ticks that ended up in her fur.

  Electricity sparked through the pack. They had all picked up the scent of possums foraging in the underbrush a couple hundred yards away. The pack took off, Josie in the lead, loping across the sandy ground, adroitly leaping between the saw palmettos, sniffing the air to pinpoint their prey’s movements. There were three possums—plump, mature ones.

  This was what they lived for: the thrill of the chase and feet pounding across the forest floor. No one needed to make a meal of the possums. In fact, Josie had dined on a chicken pot pie for dinner earlier. It was the unleashing of their wolf-hybrid instincts that gave each member of the pack satisfaction. These instincts cannot be denied.

  Some of Josie’s werewolf neighbors at
Seaweed Manor were partly in denial of their morphed genes that resulted from the virus that had infected them when they were turned into werewolves. These folks tried to pretend they were normal retirees until the one night a month their genes forced them to shift into their true selves. But Josie knew that to be happy, you had to embrace your truth.

  Tanya, to the right of the pack, barked an alert: One of the possums had scrambled up a nearby pine. She and a few members of the pack circled the base of the trunk, guarding it. Eventually, they would use their human-like hands to climb the tree. Josie and the rest of the pack raced onward through the trees.

  A second possum scrambled up a tree ahead and a cluster of the women werewolves stopped running and paced anxiously below it. Josie, Thelma Lou, and Mary Beth continued their pursuit of the third possum. The ground was slightly higher, and the underbrush was thicker. Josie plunged through a beautyberry shrub and her legs became entangled in the branches.

  Mary Beth reached her and tilted her head questioningly. Josie barked for her to continue the pursuit. Mary Beth raced onward, Thelma Lou just behind her. Josie shook herself free of the shrub and tried to catch up.

  The gunshot shattered the night. Mary Beth, leaping over a saw palmetto, yelped and jerked in midair, landing on her back.

  Josie whined and rushed to her pack member. Mary Beth lay in a patch of ferns, convulsing, her coat drenched in blood.

  Her neck arched backwards in agony, her elongated, muzzle-like mouth opened, and her lips stretched tight against her fangs.

  Mary Beth was dying.

  Instantly, her fur dropped off her body as she transformed back to her default human form. The change was much more rapid than a normal shifting. In less than a minute, Mary Beth lay naked among the blood-spattered ferns. An aged, feeble grandmother with liver spots on her skin. No longer a magnificent beast.

  She abruptly went still. And was gone.

  Josie arched her back and howled. Her agonized cry echoed through the slash pines.

  Thelma Lou approached, whining.

  “Who did this?” she asked, her words difficult to understand in her non-human mouth. “A hunter?”

  “A regular bullet wouldn’t have killed her,” Josie said, “though some say if one strikes a werewolf directly in the heart it will kill. The wound is in her back. I don’t know where the bullet traveled inside her body.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Thelma Lou said. “It has to be a silver bullet.”

  Josie’s head swiveled, trying to catch the scent of their attacker.

  “Then we’re being targeted by a hunter of werewolves,” she said.

  3

  Crying Wolf

  The rest of the pack converged in the forest around the fallen body of Mary Beth.

  “Let me get her clothes from the van,” Tanya said. “We can’t leave her naked like this.”

  “No,” Josie said. “We can’t dress her. We have to leave her as she is, because this is a crime scene. We can cover her with a blanket, though. Please call 911 when you shift back.”

  Tanya trotted back to the van and the other she-wolves whined and nuzzled each other in grief, pacing the forest floor nervously. They would have to return to the van and shift soon before the police arrived.

  Josie ran in the direction from which the shot was fired. She doubted the shooter would be around, but she wanted to pick up a scent. She searched toward the southwest but didn’t feel confident about it. She also had no idea how far away the shooter had been.

  She slowed her pace, moving her head from left to right, sniffing deeply. The forest held a rich tapestry of scents telling the stories of flora and fauna, rainfall and drought, birth and death, plenitude and hunger. Often during their hunts, one species or other would be in reproductive mode while others were dormant. She knew these woods well, but there was always more to learn.

  A non-natural scent caught her attention. The harsh smell of rubber. There was no road or path nearby, so she doubted the scent came from an illegal trash dump. The rubber was on an item worn or carried by a human. Probably the shooter. No one else would be in the thick of the woods with no trail nearby.

  The human in her compelled her to search visually as well, having better eyes than a true wolf.

  That’s when she saw the broken twigs and a spot on the ground where leaves and pine needles were scuffed aside. She planted her nose there and sniffed, but all she got was the acrid rubber scent. It blocked everything else.

  So who would shoot at them? An errant shot from a poacher made the most sense, but why would a silver bullet have been used? She couldn’t think of anyone who would want to kill werewolves, let alone believe in them.

  Unless it was one of the few rogue cops who did believe in werewolves.

  She wondered if anyone else knew that werewolves hunted here each week, such as someone who lived nearby. Or, even, the developer. She suspected a territorial individual who wanted to rid the place of werewolves.

  A distant warning bark came from the north of the property where the parking lot was. She needed to return, shift back to human, and get dressed before the authorities arrived. She raced through the trees.

  When she reached the spot where Mary Beth had been killed, some ladies had returned there in human form. Kevin knelt beside Mary Beth’s body and sobbed violently.

  “No, no, no.” He moaned with grief.

  Kevin was a stocky widower with a bald head (which strangely remained bald when he shifted) and a hairy chest that spoke of an abundance of testosterone. He and Mary Beth had regularly flirted, but Josie never thought much about it. Wouldn’t you know it, there was more going on in Kevin’s heart than she had realized.

  Tanya placed her hand softly on Kevin’s shoulder and squeezed. He didn’t seem to notice and kept crying, bringing tears to the rest of the group. Josie whimpered, then loped back to the van. Fortunately, no first responders had arrived at the parking lot yet, so she safely entered the van and induced herself to shift.

  Shifting back to human was a little less painful than shifting to wolf. Maybe that’s why werewolves are so vicious—they’re cranky.

  Another misconception about werewolves is that their fur shrinks back into their bodies when they shift to human. No, hair doesn’t grow backwards. It sheds. And when you shed your entire coat, except for the hair on your scalp, it creates a monumental mess. Normally Kevin, or whoever was doing the driving for part-time wages, swept and vacuumed the van after the ladies dressed. But Kevin was too distraught tonight.

  As Josie pulled on her palm-tree print jogging suit, she looked at the piles of wolf hair covering the floor of the van. This would be hard to explain to a cop, she thought.

  And at that moment, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles arrived. It was the Crab County Fire Department and sheriff’s deputies. The property was outside the Jellyfish Beach city limits, so it was odd that one detective identified himself as working for the city police department.

  Detective Affird wasn’t a charm machine.

  “Aren’t you ladies too old to be going on nature field trips this time of night?” he asked while the crime-scene technicians trooped into the woods to examine Mary Beth’s body.

  “We’re not too old to do anything,” Josie replied.

  “Trespassing is a crime no matter what age you are.”

  Josie had almost forgotten about the trespassing part. On such a large piece of natural land, it was hard to remember that someone owned it, especially when there was no longer any sign of human activity.

  “I see you live at Seaweed Manor,” Affird said, pointing to the large logo on the van.

  “You observed correctly, detective.”

  He smirked. “You have some rough characters living there.”

  The realization struck Josie. This might be the cop who executed a werewolf drug dealer in Building A. If so, he might be here tonight because he suspected that she and the Women’s Club were werewolves.

  “Yes, we have some
unsavory characters there, due to the unfortunately low prices of some of the condos. Most of the residents are fine, upstanding people, such as the members of our Women’s Club,” she said, straightening her posture with pride. “We perform many acts of philanthropy for the community.”

  “Be that as it may, do you know of any reason someone would shoot one of your members?”

  “I’m assuming it was a hunter, a poacher.”

  “The victim’s name is Godfrey?” he asked.

  “Mary Beth Godfrey, yes.”

  “Had she made any enemies?”

  “Not that I know of. Certainly not anyone who would shoot her to death.” Mary Beth didn’t have a lot of fans in Seaweed Manor. But a seventy-five-year-old widow is not someone you’d feel the need to shoot. Unless life insurance or a will tempted you.

  “Where was Ms. Godfrey in the hierarchy of your community?” the detective asked.

  Lord, he was asking pointed questions, Josie thought. He was barely hiding the fact he knew about werewolves.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Josie said. “We’re all very easygoing at Seaweed Manor. We don’t have a hierarchy.”

  People who think they know about werewolves imagine they all live together in packs dominated by alpha males. Maybe criminals, biker clubs, and cultists do. But most werewolves are more human than wolf. They have to hold down jobs, raise families, go to church. Then they retire to Florida. Being a werewolf is more of a hobby, like the Werewolf Women’s Club.

  Josie was the president of the club, and if you want to call her the alpha, go right ahead. But senior women don’t get pushed around by anyone and they were hardly subservient to Josie. And at Seaweed Manor, Harry Roarke was the president of the HOA and an informal leader of the community. But he didn’t act much like an alpha.