A wince escaped me. The practical jokes Simon and I had always pulled on our always serious sister didn’t exactly build a strong foundation for her ever taking us seriously.
“There’s really not a chance you’ll believe us for this one, is there?” I asked as I sipped at my own mug of coffee.
“I think I stopped believing your crazy stories after you glued googly eyes to the toilet and claimed Dad did it while sleepwalking.”
Simon chuckled while even I snorted. That had been a hilarious moment when we had convinced our parents and sister that our dad had not only been sleepwalking, but also gluing googly eyes to different objects throughout the house. It had only stopped being funny when Dad had scheduled appointments with a local psychiatrist to get to the crux of the matter regarding his “sleepwalking.” Against Simon’s advice, I confessed to the joke. But after spending over eight hundred dollars on two measly therapy sessions, our father hadn’t been pleased.
It was only after Miranda headed back upstairs that Simon sighed. “Fine, you may have a point.”
I snorted again as I went to feed my parakeets. The crux of the matter was simple; no one was going to believe whatever it was we had seen the night before. But as much as I didn’t want to believe it, we had definitely seen something.
“I think I’ll stop by the police department and let them know there’s a wolf hunting close to houses.” I thought this was the better option than not saying anything to anyone.
“Awesome,” replied Simon. “While you’re there, you can also put the word ‘were’ in front of wolf as well as say it was over six feet tall.”
CHAPTER 2
The twenty-minute drive to the Forest Resort and Waterpark was uneventful. The downtown of Wisconsin Dells was practically a ghost town during the fall and winter months. There wasn’t any traffic, only a few cars that I passed down the highway and throughout the city center. People only came to the Dells for spring break and summer vacation. The rest of the year, all the hotels and motels with their fun outdoor pools closed down. All mini golf and outdoor go-kart racing closed down as well. The boat tours would remain open until November, but not many really wanted to venture on chilly Lake Delton during the cold months. There was no point visiting a town full of summer activities without the summer activities. Only a handful of candy and souvenir shops stayed opened all year, but even they only opened on the weekends. There were only four hotels in all of the Dells that remained open during the winter. That was only because they provided indoor water parks as well as arcades. Even those four hotels would struggle during the winter if not for their convention centers. Businesses and other social groups always needed a place to host a convention or other large gathering.
I spent the drive through town remembering what it was I saw the night before while trying to come up with a rational conclusion for what the animal could have been. But as I pulled into the employee parking lot for the resort, I sadly realized I lacked any idea of what animal it was. I thought of a bear. But when I thought more about it, bears didn’t have opposable thumbs like the monster did. They also didn’t have pointed ears, I thought with a shudder.
I clocked in where my new manager told me the week before. The only time clock was in the basement of the convention center, and that was where every department inside the convention center clocked in or out. The large basement smelled strongly of dust and mold. As I looked around, I found it was used mostly as a storage area for all the equipment used throughout the hotel. Tables of many different shapes and varieties were stacked on carts against the wall. Hundreds of stacks of chairs were propped against the other side of the wall. Another area held many types of decorations for every holiday possible. There were many hiding places throughout the basement that it almost provided a creepy vibe even though all the lights in the basement were on.
Giving up on my halfhearted attempt to stall, I walked up the stairs to the conference center, my chest filling with dread. Orientation had been extremely useless in preparing me for this transfer. Then again, it was useless when I had first started working at the resort at the beginning of the summer. It was a half hour of sitting at HR where me and three others were made to watch a video online. The overly bubbly lady on the screen told us not to touch hazardous cleaning materials. After that, we signed paperwork. Given the three of us at orientation weren’t applying for housekeeping, the advice and the training video we were forced to watch was rather stupid. The second time at orientation and watching the same spew had only made me snicker as I saw how not helpful the entire video was the second time around.
I proceeded up the stairs toward the employee lounge where I was told the morning shift meets. Evidently shifts were always going to be at different times of day every week because of the unpredictability of scheduling. According to my new manager Perry, you never quite knew when the department would need you according to what was on a Banquet Event Order. Somehow I got lucky to only be scheduled for morning shifts seven a.m. to three p.m.
Upon opening the door to the employee lounge, I found five sets of eyes were soon on me. Five guys and there was no other female in sight. The room was very large. Ugly pastel yellow paint coated the walls. The room held many different types of shelves for linens and napkins. A few eight-foot tables were set up for employees to eat while two shabby vending machines stood in the far corner. Four of the five guys in the room were standing. The last was sitting at the table. “Um…hello,” I said politely, noting that everyone was dressed in the same long-sleeved navy-blue polo and khaki pants like I was. The image reminded me of prep school where everyone had to look the same while simultaneously looking ridiculous. When I looked at these guys, I placed a mental bet not one of them would wear these colors outside of the building.
The young men in the room looked lost between the ages of their early to mid-twenties. No one guy looked the same, but they all resembled each other in that no one said a word as they suddenly looked among themselves in what seemed to be confused surprise.
“Are you lost?” a guy with short red hair asked. His tone seemed mocking. His appearance was deceiving as I looked at him. From the back of his head, it looked like he had short hair. But when the boy turned around, his copper red hair was flipped over the front. A reversal of business in the front, party in the back, I thought with amusement. His muscled arms were covered in tattoos, but I didn’t look long enough to see what they were tattoos of. Even with his odd hairstyle, the guy wasn’t bad looking. In fact, none of the young men were bad to look at, even though none of them looked alike. They were all attractive in their own individual ways.
I flushed to find everyone was looking at me again. I shook my head as I looked at the papers in my hands. They were the forms I had been given the week before at orientation. What I needed to sign before I arrived at work that morning. I stiffened to find the guys were still watching me. Given I had only ever worked morning shifts, I hadn’t come into contact with the night shift crew. Yet here they were, all watching me expectantly. “This is my first day for banquet setup…”
“You’re the transfer girl,” said another guy suddenly. His voice sounded nasal, as if he had a perpetually stuffy nose. This one was just as tall as the red-headed guy, but his face held more friendliness. His face was pale, making his brown freckles more profound. The boy had a beak-like nose and hawk-like eyes. His hair was ink black and shoved under a ball cap that was so old and worn out I couldn’t tell what team it supported. “I’m Jamie.”