The Beast by Carolyn Walker (Summary)

The beast

The story begins with a woman named Susie Blackmore who had terrible dreams, she usually dreamt that she was in a place she did not know, she knew that she had to escape from something in the darkness and suddenly a voice called her name loudly in her dream and she woke up. She was in a wave of sadness because her father was gone, so Susie wanted to do something of work and she bought a ticket train and waited, Susie remembered when her father went to the hospital very quickly by ambulance, they could not help him and the doctor said he was very sorry. Susie felt alone because her mother died when she was a baby and the only family she had left now were her cousins in Slovenia but she did not know them very well. She got out of the train and went to the zoo, she liked the zoo because it is a place which is away of the traffic and business. There were not many visitors so she was alone except for the zoo keepers, she stooped to look at the grey wolves and she remembered the stories her father said about the “Volkodlak”, it was a terrible beast, a sort of man-wolf-vampire who stole bad children away in the darkness and drank their blood; when Susie was a child, she of course, believed those stories but then she didn´t believe. When she lifted up the camera, one of the wolves stopped and watched her and Susie looked at the animal in the camera, she suddenly felt afraid; she could not move. Her man was worried and asked her “Are you all right?” and she only replied “uuuuuum”.

Another day Susie and her husband, Charlie, were in their house. Charlie was looking at her because she was very sad and he thought “Maybe we need a baby”, so Charlie suggested Susie a holiday in London and Susie replied “it’s a good idea”. Two months later on a cold Saturday in November, Charlie and Susie went to London, in a little house in the forest. Inside, the house was cold and the tall trees outside made it rather dark; they found a piece of paper with information about the house where it said “The wood-burning fire in the sitting-room heats the hot water and the entire house”. Charlie went to the car to bring the suitcases and after he helped Susie to make the fire.

Charlie and Susie went to a pub to eat and they heard the landlady, the man in the bar and a customer that were talking about a beast half men, half fox. Next, Charlie and Susie went shopping and then they came back to the house in the forest; they needed more wood for the fire, so Charlie went out of the house and suddenly looked at the moon and it was not the usual yellow-white moon, that night was an orange-red moon like the hunter’s moon.

When Charlie and Susie were sleeping, Susie woke up because she heard a strange noise. So very afraid Susie said to Charlie “It´s a strange noise knocking on the door” and Charlie replied “It´s only the trees and the wind, come back to sleep” but Susie stood up and walk towards the window and moved the curtains and she only saw the trees and the full moon, she turned on the lights and walked round the house, looking into every room but there was nothing there, so she went to sleep again. In the morning when the light of the sun came, Susie woke up and decided to make something for breakfast, but the wood-burning was finishing, so she went to find more in the garage and suddenly, when she opened the door, looked at a terrible thing and shouted to Charlie, Charlie ran fastly and looked that terrible thing, it was a dead sheep, he said “Oh God, How could that come here? Susie go to the bed”, Charlie looked at the sheep, its mouth was open but the tongue was not there and a perfect cut in the throat until the back legs but there was not blood, so he thought of the Beast of Brynmawr and he said that to Susie, she was very afraid, so Charlie said “maybe it was a fox, don´t think of that anymore”.

Later Charlie decided to go for a walk outside with Susie, to Susie, that was not a great idea, but she only smiled and said “OK”; they went to the Brynmawr hill Charlie, went to the top, but Susie stayed halfway taking pictures with the camera, when the gray clouds appeared Charlie decided to go down and he found Susie, when he looked at Susie she was asleep in the ground and he, very afraid, ran towards her and asked “Are you Ok? What happened here?” Susie was very scared and replied “No, I’m not OK”, so they went back to the house in the forest. A few days later, they decided to go to eat in a restaurant, Charlie was driving and suddenly,it began to snow, the highway was very snowy and a strange creature came out of the darkness,so Susie said “Charlie, What is it?” and Charlie replied “What the…?” while intending to stop, he lost the control and they hit a tree. When Susie reacted, she only looked at the strange creature running away, people helped them and a sir gave Susie a piece of silver for protection. Tom was the man who helped Susie in the accident, her took her to the forest house while her husband was in the hospital. Later Susie saw that the fire-wood was finishing and she went to the garage for more leaving the door of the house open, suddenly she heard the voice of a man and jumped, in fact it was a man who apologized for frightening her, he introduced himself with the name of Richard. Susie invited Richard to come in the house,  they began to talk and
talked about their past; Susie began to think that falling in love with Richard was easy, because he had beautiful blue eyes and suddenly thought "What am I doing ?, this is not good, Charlie is in the hospital", so she said goodbye to Richard saying that she had to go to sleep, which Richard agreed and left saying that he would pick her up tomorrow at 10 or 12 in the morning to take her to the hospital to see Charlie. Richard took Susie in the next morning but she forgot his wallet in his house, so Richard and Susie went to Richard´s house; he decided to show his house to her. Susie only wanted to see Charlie but she couldn’t, Richard prepared coffee for her and she drank the coffee, suddenly her eyes began to close and she tried to keep them open, Richard began to talk and said “You know who I am right? You came here for me” and Susie recognized that voice because it´s the voice of her nightmares. When Susie woke up she was alone in Richard’s house, so he escaped fastly but she left her bag there, so she could not enter in the forest house and she was lost in the forest, suddenly a strange creature with red eyes like the fire looked at her, she could not move and a loud shot was heard in the silence, it was Tom who had shot that strange creature leaving a hole in his stomach; Tom told Susie to go home fastly. This story finished when Tom explained Susie that the strange creature of the last night disappeared without a trace of blood. Susie asked Tom if he could take her to see Charlie, so Tom agreed saying “of course”. Susie asked herself "What will I tell Charlie about this? Will he want to have a vacation again in his life? Maybe the best idea is to have a child, not now but soon".