Night of the Miracle Man

By Gerry Grossman

When bloodthirsty werewolves move into the northside of Chicago the result is the terrifying tale of a family's battle between monsters and their neighbors. The fur flies and the blood flows, building to a pulse pounding climax of monsters vs. humans!
But...who are the real monsters?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524655044

Book preview

Chapter One

Chicago

1981

The man stooping to look in the trash can briefly considered picking up what was left of the cigarette, until he realized he wouldn’t be able to light it with what was left of the match lying next to it.

He continued to rummage for another minute, but couldn’t find anything useful. So the man hiked his coat up a bit in a useless effort to ward off the cold, and looked around for somewhere to sit.

The man shifted his weight uncomfortably, because he was having a rough day.

He hadn’t slept much at all last night because it had just been too cold. He had been able to find a heating grate to sleep on, but it had done very little to keep him warm. When there was room in the shelter he sometimes had the luxury of a cot, but when there were no more cots he had the luxury of trying not to freeze to death.

He had wandered around the neighborhood trying to find something to do. He was thirty-nine, but could easily pass for sixty. He knew how bad he looked, and solved that problem by always avoiding his reflection. As long as he didn’t have to actually see the mess he had become he could keep his own image out of his mind.

Having seen nobody he knew, he had spent the day freezing by himself.

The cold wind was making his ears hurt. He usually couldn’t feel them, but today they were stinging.

Chicago’s famous wind was shooting icicles of pain through him.

The gray day told Jack that somehow the weather would take an even worse turn before long.

Jack had become pretty good at predicting the weather.

He knew that it could always get worse

Jack Stren, the man who was sitting on the bench did know that he had a problem which needed solving.

Soon.

Jack hadn’t eaten in two days.

He had never needed a cup of coffee so badly in his life.

He got shakily to his feet, and walked, or more realistically, stumbled, north on Broadway, vaguely remembering that there was a soup kitchen somewhere around. He thought that he may have eaten there once or twice before, and he had heard a couple of guys talking about it at the shelter the day before. In his circle, news was not the property of the media. It was rumors passed around by desperate men and women looking for any way to ease the pain.

Even though it had snowed two or three inches earlier in the day, most of it had been swept away or blackened by the constant traffic.

There was plenty of traffic in Chicago’s Uptown.

This neighborhood on Chicago’s north side, had, forty years ago, been a glittering collection of neon, department stores, and nightclubs.

It had declined to an area plagued with poverty, drugs, gangs, and violence.

Now a few yuppie types were moving in, and the process of gentrification had begun. But for now it was still rough.

He couldn’t remember how he had wound up in Chicago, but here he was, and freezing or not he had to eat. He had been in the Navy, and when he finished up his stint at the now closed Great Lakes Navel Station he had suffered through a series of health and family problems, and his situation had declined to where Jack didn’t recognize his own life.

His stomach growled loudly at him, not only for its emptiness, but a complaint of continual neglect.

It seemed to be darker than usual for this early in the evening, a strange thought. He knew that his sense of time was distorted, but he did have the unsettling feeling that nightfall was somehow arriving too early.

Jack thought to himself that now he must really be going crazy because night doesn’t come early. As he thought about all that plagued his life, including considering if he was now losing what was left of his sanity, he wandered up and down several side streets, having absolutely no idea where he was going, only that he was trying to find the food kitchen.

At least he wasn’t too crazy to remember that he had to eat.

Passing Jack on the street, people looked right through him, making him feel invisible. He hated that, but the hatred had long since been muted by its constancy. Jack found that avoiding eye contact as much as possible made his invisibility feel more private.

When he got to another park, he picked a bench and sat down. The wind whipped him, and even as numbed as he was, it made his bones hurt even more.

There may or may not have been a sound.

Jack wasn’t sure.

It could have been the wind.

Or maybe what was left of his imagination.

Probably, it was nothing at all.

But he cocked his head and tried to listen.

At first he didn’t hear anything.

Then the quietly whispered word, Jack

It was so quietly spoken that Jack wasn’t sure that he had heard anything at all.

Jack the voice called, and for the first time he accepted the possibility that someone was trying to get his attention.

He would welcome the company. It wasn’t like he was in the middle of an important meeting.

As he looked up he saw that the snow had started up again, guaranteeing him another especially uncomfortable night on the town.

The park was almost empty.

He could see two old men across the open part of the park, and there were a couple of high school kids laughing about something, sitting on a bench fifty yards from him.

He was having his usual trouble focusing, and had just about convinced himself that he hadn’t heard anything when he saw a man facing him from a distance of a hundred feet or so.

The man was dressed in a trench coat with a hat pulled down to his eyes. The hat reminded Jack of the one that Indiana Jones wore.

The man’s hands were in his pockets and he appeared to be staring at Jack, who now didn’t feel at all invisible.

Now he felt naked.

Jack, the figure repeated, you’re so tired, and hungry. Why don’t you come with me, my friend? No one must go hungry.

Jack was startled by the words my friend.

They sounded foreign. It also seemed strange that he could hear the man whispering from so far away.

Still, the man continued to gaze, almost sympathetically. For a moment that gaze seemed crazy, but he couldn’t tell.

But the man’s offer did sound good. To get out of this cold would not only be good, it would be wonderful!

And the man had said that they could eat.

The man was obviously some kind of miracle!

Jack tried to stand up, a somewhat complicated procedure for a man in his frozen, half starved condition.

He made it up to his feet, and shuffled toward the man who offered him the miracle.

Jack kept trying to focus on him, but couldn’t see the man’s face.

The man didn’t seem to have a face, which, of course, was totally ridiculous. The face was just under that hat.

It then occurred to Jack for the first time that he had been assessing the gaze of a man when he hadn’t even seen the man’s eyes!

As Jack continued toward the Miracle Man, the Miracle Man started walking away from him, but he told Jack to follow, and Jack followed.

Now Jack realized that they were no longer in the park, but were on one of the residential side streets that bordered the park. After what seemed to Jack like hours, he caught up with his Miracle Man.

Even from the side, though, he couldn’t make out the man’s features.

The two of them walked down one street then another, turned right, then walked four more blocks. Although the few streetlights that still worked were dim, Jack noticed that he was having very little trouble in the darkness.

Jack thought that was strange, because these days he had trouble seeing in broad daylight.

As they passed a run down courtyard building, the Miracle Man turned and faced Jack directly for the first time since they had left the park.

From somewhere behind the drawn up collar of the coat and from under that hat the voice told Jack that they had arrived, and that dinner would be served, because no one must go hungry.

The weird part was that although Jack clearly understood the man, he already didn’t remember actually hearing the words.

They had arrived at a small, but neat looking single family house. It was a brick bungalow, typical of the neighborhood.

The Miracle Man started down the stairs just off the front of the building toward the basement, with Jack obediently following, now thinking only of food. The Miracle Man knocked, then opened the door halfway, and the next moment they both were inside, with the door wide open behind them.

Even with his nose blocked by the cold, Jack could smell, see, or just somehow tell that they were not alone in the basement.

He was wondering why he could see so well in a basement with no lights on when he noticed how tall the Miracle Man was.

He practically filled the doorframe!

Looking over the enormous man’s shoulder, Jack realized why he could see so well.

The snow had stopped, at least for a while, and shining over the Miracle Man’s shoulder was the light of an enormous full moon.

Chapter two

Although it had been a long day at work, Bart was in a particularly good mood when he got home that evening. He had driven home thinking, as always, of his wife, Sarah and the kids.

He had these same thoughts every day as he drove home from his downtown office to the northern suburbs. He had been making this drive for a little over eight years, the length of time he had worked as the head of production of a major advertising agency, Jones, Frasier, and McDonald, inc. And where only an hour ago all he could think about was the McMurphy account, now it was a thousand miles from his mind.

Bart and Sarah were more in love now than ever, and they had been in love since the day they had met.

They had two children, Beth, seven, and fourteen year old John.

Bart was forty-one, and still had dark hair and clear, brown eyes that instantly bespoke both intelligence and kindness. He had grown up on Chicago’s north side, always done well in school, and he was a man who was unusually comfortable with himself. At six one, he was still lean and worked out three times a week to stay that way.

Sarah was five and a half feet tall still wore the same size seven that she had worn in college. She didn’t need to hit the gym because no matter how much she ate she never seemed to gain weight, a quality Sarah believed to be a genetic gift.

She was two years younger than Bart, radiant, with long light hair and a natural friendliness which sometimes hid her intelligence. Sarah had grown up in Fairview Heights, Illinois, just outside of St. Louis. She had gone to the University of Illinois, where she met Bart in a business administration class.

Their daughter, Beth, was intelligent, inquisitive, and often showed an usually ironic sense of humor. Beth was obviously going to break her share of hearts. With her crystal clear blue eyes and a smile that was impossible to resist, she was a poster girl for the perfect daughter competition.

Their son John was the picture of energy. He never seemed to slow down, and his enthusiasm for whatever he was into at the moment was contagious. At fourteen he did battle with occasional acne, loved heavy metal played as loud as possible, and was a devoted Bears fan. He was a little under five ten, thin, and a good kid, fun to hang out with.

As Bart opened the front door, Beth jumped on him with a loud, Daddy’s home!

Bart squeezed her as he kissed the top of her head.

As he put Beth down he saw Sarah through the doorway to the kitchen, and when she saw him she lit up, blew him a kiss, and gestured with her index finger pointing straight up that she was on her way.

John was bounding down the stairs three at a time.

Every now and then you catch a glimpse of your son and he seems already too adult. John, for just a moment, had that look. Bart photographed it in his mind, filed it, and then kissed Sarah who gave him quite a wink as she headed back to the kitchen.

That wink promised more than a kiss once the kids were sleeping.

He asked John how his day had been, and when John didn’t answer Bart noticed that John was listenings listening to his new Walkman player, which Bart had surprised him with the day before. When Bart finally got his attention, John said that soccer practice had been intense and that he was starving.

Although Sarah’s own schedule as a fourth grade teacher in one of the city’s best private schools often kept her at work as late as Bart, and sometimes much later, tonight she had come home early enough to pick Beth up from school, and have dinner waiting for him.

And dinner that night was especially enjoyable.

The conversation was fast and funny. They all joked with each other as they Bart had, for the first time in months, not taken home a single piece of work to do that week-end. This one was going to be for the family.

Tomorrow they would go to the Field Museum and the Aquarium, then on Sunday, pizza and a movie.

After dinner they cleared the table, and decided to watch a movie that John had taped the night before. Although it was a movie about vampires invading Los Angeles, it was mild enough for Beth, and they all enjoyed it.

They also enjoyed the popcorn and hot chocolate, and by the time the movie was over, Beth was ready to go to sleep, and Bart and Sarah were ready to go to bed.

John said that he was going to stay downstairs and watch another movie, so good nights were said, and Bart, Sarah, and Beth climbed the stairs toward their respective bedrooms, for their respective reasons.

After they made love, and were in a quiet and warm mood, Sarah propped herself up on one elbow and looked over at Bart. Bart, looking back, was taken, as he always was, with Sarah’s beauty and strength.

As attractive as she had been when they met at the University of Illinois sixteen years earlier, and she was somehow more beautiful now. But what attracted Bart had been her sense of self. It gave her a confidence and natural good humor. There had been some kind of energy which he had been helpless to resist. And when it had turned out that Sarah saw much the same in him, he hadn’t resisted very hard. And that energy had provided the glue for them to build communication and trust, two qualities that were still very much in tact, and which they valued more than ever.

As she looked over toward Bart, he realized that she wanted to tell him something.

She did want to talk to him, she had been wanting to bring this up for days, but something would come up with one of the kids, or the mood would be too cluttered, or, like now, it would simply be too beautiful to break.

She also had not particularly looked forward to the conversation it would guarantee.

Sarah had given this a lot of thought, however, and she wanted the two of them to discuss it. She closed her eyes for a moment to formulate the sentence, and when she opened them again, Bart was asleep.

Chapter three

As Jack was noticing the moon, the Miracle Man finally moved away from the door and closed it. There was barely enough room to see several feet in front of him, but by now Jack was getting a bad feeling about the whole deal.

As the Miracle Man started toward him, Jack backed away, noticing that the floor was littered with sticks, or something like sticks. And because it was warmer inside this place that in was outside, and Jack was already warmer than he had been in ages, he noticed that he could smell something. He had been cold for so long that he hadn’t really smelled anything for several days, but he could definitely smell something now.

He didn’t know what he was smelling, but he didn’t like it.

Jack was trying to figure out the dimensions of the place he was in, but it was impossible.

He knew there were others sitting on the floor, with their backs against the wall, but he wasn’t sure how he knew that.

From beyond him the Miracle Man said, We understand hunger, Jack. Yes, we understand hunger very well!

Jack whipped around to see this man who understood hunger so well.

He was becoming terrified!

As he stared toward the Miracle Man he heard again, We don’t want anyone to be hungry, do we?

Jack was now sweating, in spite of the cold. Rivulets of liquid were running down the sides of his dirty shirt.

As he was about to say there are worse things than being hungry he heard from behind him, No one must go hungry!

Only it seemed to Jack that there were three or four voices that answered, not quite in unison, but almost as if with one voice.

It could also have been nine voices or ten, he couldn’t tell.

The really unsettling part was there was that there may have been no voices at all!

When he turned around to face the man who had lead him there he was struck by how tall the Miracle Man was.

He was too tall.

He was bending over.

He was slouching, or he was bending over, or he was somehow now longer that he had been.

The strange man cocked his head, and for a moment Jack caught a short glimpse of the man’s face. All that he saw, though, was something white or yellow in front of the Miracle Man’s face.

The Miracle Man started to say something again, but this time it wasn’t exactly with a voice.

It was a guttural noise, Jack noticed through what had started to feel like a warped sense of time. It was noise of pain but even more so, a noise of power.

Growing power, like the rumblings of a huge storm on its way.

The Miracle Man’s breathing was now more of a panting, growling, slobbering noise.

Jack thought that he heard that awful sound from all around the room, but he couldn’t be certain!

His head felt like it was spinning!

Hearing a sudden tearing sound, Jack could barely make out that the Miracle Man was somehow exploding out of the trench coat he had been wearing.

The air in the strange place filled with sounds that defied identification.

Cracking, wet, sickening sounds.

Sounds that maybe nobody had ever heard before.

Or maybe nobody that had ever lived to tell about them.

Jack was experiencing the kind of panic where everything seems to go into slow motion, and somehow there is time to take in even the smallest and most trivial details.

Like those damn sticks on the floor!

Now there was a ray on moonlight from a small window, and Jack looked down toward his feet.

The sticks were red and white.

Not sticks.

Bones!

They were gnawed and torn apart, but they were bones, and Jack realized what the Miracle Man had meant when he said that no one must go hungry!

Years ago Jack had been strong.

He had been strong and quick, and Jack decided that the time to recapture whatever wit and strength he had left had come.

As Jack was making this decision, the entire matter became academic, because a set of jaws over fifteen inches long locked on Jack’s jugular vein with an unholy wet crunching sound, and even as he felt himself suddenly wet and hot with his own blood, he was still able to frame the thought that at least, for tonight, nobody here will go hungry.

And just like that, the feeding began.

Chapter four

They had awakened that morning to a beautiful, bright and sunny day. The kind of winter day when the air literally seems to sparkle.

When Bart woke up earlier than Sarah or the kids, he had showered, put on his robe, gone down to the kitchen, and proceeded to whip up a breakfast feast of scrambled eggs, raison toast, orange juice, and coffee.

Before waking up the kids he had brought a cup of coffee up to Sarah, waking her with a kiss, and developing into another session in bed that was loving, exciting, and before long Bart was taking his second shower of the morning.

Afterward, he went into John’s room to wake him. John’s room was typical of boys his age. His walls were covered with posters of heavy metal rockers and athletes. Clothes covered the floor.

John was sleeping in a Bears jersey, and when Bart shook him, John was instantly awake, telling his Dad that he was starving.

John was always starving.

Bart playfully punched his son on the shoulder and told him to get downstairs. Already grinning, John said he would be right down.

Next, it was into Beth’s room.

Beth was into dinosaurs, and colorful pictures of them were everywhere. Stuffed dinosaurs shared her bed.

Toy dinosaurs were on her dresser.

She was sleeping, Bart noticed, with a smile on her face, as if dreaming of riding a friendly stegosaurus through some prehistoric valley.

As Bart kissed her forehead, Beth continued to smile. Then, opening her eyes, the smile widened, and she simply extended her arms up to her father with the word, Daddy!

Bart lifted his daughter out of her bed, gently tickled her, and carried her downstairs, her arms locked around his neck.

Even though by now the eggs had cooled, they were still delicious, and after breakfast they piled into the Saab and took off for the museum.

With all that the city of Chicago has to offer, Bart had always loved the Museum of Natural History the most. He had loved going to see the dinosaur skeletons when he had been a kid. And now, as a much bigger kid, he still loved them, particularly Sue the T. Rex that greets museum visitors in the huge lobby.

They lucked out by seeing a Taurus that was pulling out right in front of them as they started to circle the full parking lot. Bart nosed the car in, and in less than two minutes they were all climbing the steps to the museum.

As soon as the kids saw Sue, it was all over! Sarah was so excited that she was having trouble putting her words together. She had never seen the huge dinosaur before, and to her it was a dream realized.

She paced silently for a full minute, her mouth open in wonder!

Like a proud tour guide, Bart led his family to as many of the exhibits as he could without tiring the kids out. They started with the rest of the dinosaur exhibits, and wound up in Egyptology.

The mummies produced the desired reactions (Daddy, are they real???), but the dinosaurs had stolen the show!

They had lunch in the cafeteria at the museum, giving Bart and Sarah a chance to answer as many of John and Beth’s questions as they could, and the time off their feet charged up their batteries, and they took off for the aquarium.

The aquarium was right across Lake Shore Drive, which they crossed by going under it, using an underpass, which Beth found too dark, and maybe a little scary. And although both kids enjoyed the aquarium, it was obvious that the highlight of the day was the dinosaurs.

Even as they ate dinner at a neighborhood restaurant on the way home, the conversation dwelled on how the dinosaurs had lived, what colors they had been, and what exactly the chances are that somewhere there might still be just one grazing and waiting to be discovered.

This idea had been fueled at the museum when Sarah had shown the children a coelacanth and explained that this fish had been thought to be extinct for millions of years until a fisherman just off Madagascar went and hauled one up in his fishing nets.

To Beth, and even to John, although he was reluctant to admit it, it hardly seemed like such a leap of logic that if it can happen with a fish, it could happen with a dinosaur.

When they got home, Bart produced a copy of the movie, Gorgo which he had rented, anticipating the kids’ reaction to the day.

It’s a movie about an enormous mother dinosaur going into, and crushing, London to rescue her offspring, the youngster having been brought onto a ship in a net. Even if not exactly possible, it sure was fun for the kids to think about.

After the movie both Beth and John were exhausted, but only Beth would admit it. But with yawns and good nights, the kids were off to bed.

Sarah brought out two snifters of brandy and they sat down on the sofa to savor the sweetness of the day.

Neither of them spoke for nearly ten minutes.

Instead, they sipped their brandies with one hand,