Cure for Wereduck Read online

  “Cure for Wereduck is as silly and fun as it is believable: you’ll be checking your friends for feathers at every full moon. Dave Atkinson’s roll-off-the-tongue dialogue and smooth, vivid action make this novel a page-turner kids will simply enjoy. With cliffhanging scenes in all the right places, I cannot wait for book three!”

  —Meghan Marentette, author of The Stowaways

  “Fans will be happy to see that this book starts right where Wereduck ended. I may be slightly older than the target age group, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying this fast-paced fun read. Cure for Wereduck mixes a generous portion of action and adventure with plenty of humour.”

  —Riel Nason, author of 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize–winning The Town That Drowned

  “Dave Atkinson’s Cure for Wereduck is a rollicking good story, with equal measures of mystery, drama, and humour. The wereduck variation of werewolf is a wonderful invention. Readers will love the duck named Wacka in both her duckly and wereduckly forms.

  This novel is just plain fun. Read it. You’ll see.”

  —Deirdre Kessler, children’s author and Prince Edward Island poet laureate

  “I rate Wereduck 10/10 and will be one of the first to buy the next books.

  —John

  “I really enjoyed reading your book! You are an amazing author and I hope that I will become one too.

  —Bonnie

  “I’m writing to thank you for coming all this way to our West Royalty Elementary School and telling us about Wereduck. I loved it. I read it all. It’s AMAZING! Good luck in your new book. I hope it’s as good as Wereduck. I wasn’t into reading too much but when I read your book I loved it so now I’m reading more!

  —Diego

  Copyright © 2016, Dave Atkinson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

  Nimbus Publishing Limited

  3731 Mackintosh St, Halifax, NS B3K 5A5

  (902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca

  Printed and bound in Canada

  NB1212

  Cover and interior illustration and design: Jenn Embree

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places, including organizations and institutions, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Atkinson, Dave, 1978-, author

  Cure for Wereduck / Dave Atkinson.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77108-445-1 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-77108-446-8 (html)

  I. Title.

  PS8601.T5528C87 2016 jC813’.6 C2016-903732-0

  C2016-903733-9

  Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

  To the duck I met that time in Stratford, with apologies.

  Laura woke up with a gasp. The room was dark.

  She stared at the ceiling, the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears. She drew deep breaths to calm her racing heart.

  Her hand fumbled on the night table for her glasses. She put them on and looked at the clock. It was 2:34 a.m.

  Laura swung her legs over the side of her bed and padded on bare feet to the top of the stairs. She descended to the kitchen. The glow from the clock on the microwave lit her way to the sink. She poured herself a glass of cold water and carried it to the back door.

  Calm down, she told herself as she peered through the screen. There’s nothing out there. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

  She knew it was a lie. There was something to be afraid of. She’d known for fifteen years. Everyone told her it was her imagination, but her nightmares were as real as the glass in her hand.

  She knew from experience she wouldn’t get back to sleep tonight. She could return to her bed and watch every minute of every hour creep by. Or she could turn on her computer and lose a couple of games of chess to anonymous people on the internet. Or she could—

  She gasped. That sound.

  Howling.

  Her glass fell, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces. It was her nightmare, but real.

  “No,” she blurted. Her head shook back and forth, willing the sound from her ears. “No, no, no….”

  She was losing control, and she could feel it. Her fear was taking over again.

  Get a grip, Laura, she told herself. Get control. Get….

  Her eyes grew wide.

  She strode to the living room and flicked on the lamp by the couch. She approached the bookshelf and pulled down a cigar box from the top shelf. She blew dust from the lid.

  Get control, she thought. Take control.

  Laura closed her eyes. She forced herself to listen: a chorus of howls, just as she’d feared.

  No, she thought, straining to hear. Not quite.

  It wasn’t the low, terrifying howl she’d heard in her dreams. It was higher, more frantic. This was something else.

  “Coyotes,” she said aloud. “It’s just coyotes.”

  She had read somewhere that coyotes were moving into this part of the country. She had just never heard them here before.

  She carried the box to the kitchen and placed it on the table. She turned to the calendar on the wall and searched for the familiar and ancient symbols most people overlooked.

  “The full moon isn’t for a few weeks,” she whispered to herself. “Of course. It’s just coyotes.”

  She collapsed into a chair, laying her cheek on the cold surface of the table. She breathed in and out, counting to four between each breath until she calmed down.

  She sat up and pulled the box toward her. She traced its edges and corners before she flipped open the lid and reached inside. Her fingers wrapped around familiar, cold steel as she drew out the revolver.

  She had always hated guns. In her earlier life, she would never have imagined the amount of time she would spend researching and reading through gun catalogues before selecting this very one. More specifically, for the single bullet that sat loaded in its chamber.

  It turns out they don’t sell silver bullets at your neighbourhood gun shop.

  Kate stood frozen on the threshold of the small, wood-framed house. Sunlight streamed around her body, showing the dark-haired girl in silhouette. She held a knapsack in one hand and a pillow in the other.

  “Um, Aunt Bea—” began Kate. She stared into the living room, eyes wide. “Bea?”

  Bea strode up behind her with suitcases in her hands. She peered around Kate into the house. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Kate and her family were tired from a long journey. They had driven two days without rest from New Brunswick to southern Ontario, moving all their worldly possessions—few as they were—to Aunt Bea’s house. Until this moment, the only thing on thirteen-year-old Kate’s mind was the thought of a soft bed to crash on.

  “You never told us,” said Kate, slowly pronouncing each word, “that you have a cat.”

  A grey tabby stirred in the corner of the room. It sat on a couch cushion and began to wash its paws.

  �
��Cat?” came a voice. “Did somebody say cat?”

  Kate’s eleven-year-old brother, Bobby, pushed past them into the house, his eyes alighting on the cat.

  “Cat!” yelled Bobby. “Dad, come quick!” He ran at the cat before his father, Brian, could enter the house.

  “Cat?” exclaimed Brian, nearly knocking over Kate as he chased his son through the door. Bea yelped as Bobby dived at her cat, his hands grasping for its tail before it jumped away at the last minute.

  “Mr. Whiskers!” gasped Bea.

  “You head him off at the stairs, Dad,” ordered Bobby. “I’ll chase him toward you.”

  Bobby knocked over a lamp beside the couch as he corralled the terrified cat toward his father.

  “I have him!” yelled Brian.

  Mr. Whiskers paused for a moment, calculating the timing required to dash between the man’s legs and up the stairs.

  “I don’t have him,” said Brian, grabbing at air as Mr. Whiskers breezed past.

  “Up the stairs, Dad! We’ve got him cornered!”

  Bobby and Brian thundered up the staircase.

  “NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO KILL MY CAT!” bellowed Bea.

  She was answered by a crash that sounded suspiciously like a mattress and box spring being flipped over in an upstairs bedroom.

  “BRIAN, I AM SERIOUS,” she shouted.

  Brian appeared sheepishly at the top of the stairs. “Aw, jeesh, Bea,” he said. “We’re just having a little fun.”

  “Torturing my cat isn’t fun,” she scolded. “This is my house. Leave the cat alone.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, walking down the stairs, Bobby in tow.

  “What kind of werewolf keeps a cat for a pet, Aunt Bea?” said Bobby, sitting on a step.

  “Yeah,” said Brian, flashing her a grin. “You’re some kind of sicko.”

  “I like cats,” she replied.

  Kate’s mother and grandmother stood in the doorway, each with an armful of bags and bedding.

  “Backlog in the living room,” announced Marge, a strong-looking older woman. “Where are you going to put us all, Bea? I want to get unpacked.”

  “Mum, you’re in my room upstairs. We’ll bunk together for now,” said Bea. “Brian and Lisa, you’re in the other room up there.”

  “What about me?” came a voice from the doorway.

  The party turned to see John—just a few years older than Kate, he was the only member of the group she wasn’t related to. John’s father had abandoned him in New Brunswick after John refused to help put Kate’s family on the front page of a junky tabloid newspaper.

  “John,” said Bea, “you and Bobby can sleep in the living room on the pull-out couch. Sorry, it’s the best I’ve got, given the circumstances.”

  “No problem,” said John. He dropped his pack and bedroll on the ground beside the couch. He smiled. “Look, I’m already unpacked.”

  “And Katie,” said Bea, eyeing her niece. “I’ve been thinking about what to do with you. Come with me.”

  Bea led Kate through the kitchen to the basement door. They walked down the steps to a room with a ceiling so low they could barely stand up. The walls were the rough concrete of the house’s foundation. It smelled vaguely of dirty laundry.

  “It gets better, I promise,” said Bea, noticing the look on Kate’s face.

  A corner of the open basement was walled off with wood partitions, creating a room with a small door. The room was tiny with swept wooden floors. Shelves lining two of the walls held rows of dusty Mason jars.

  “The old lady who used to live here kept all of her canned peaches and tomatoes and things in here,” said Bea. “I’m pretty sure if you look hard enough, you’ll find jars that date back to the fifties.” Bea smiled. “But it’s quiet and dry, and best of all, it’s private. And it’s yours if you want.”

  Kate looked around the room. A few rays of sunlight squeezed through the narrow window on the far wall illuminating a row of jars, their glass shining even through thick layers of dust. She dropped her bags.

  “It’s perfect,” she announced.

  Dirk Bragg paced back and forth in the hallway outside the New York offices of Really Real News. It had been more than a month since he’d set foot in the newsroom. Since then, he had become the laughingstock of journalism. And for a reporter at Really Real News, that was saying something.

  On a journalism scale of one to ten, with The New York Times at ten and The National Enquirer at one, Really Real News was somewhere around minus fifteen. The name Dirk Bragg had become synonymous with ridiculous, made-up tabloid journalism.

  Yesterday morning—Was it really just yesterday? thought Dirk—Dirk had made a now infamous appearance on America This Morning. After spending a month undercover in an abandoned house in rural New Brunswick, Canada, Dirk had managed to witness the amazing transformation of human beings into real, actual, no-fooling wolves. Even more amazing—Dirk himself could still hardly believe it—one of them had turned into a duck. He’d taken photographs and video to prove it all. But when he arrived at a TV studio to tell the amazing story to the world…disaster. Somehow, all the evidence of werewolves (and wereduck) had vanished from his camera. In its place was a humiliating video of Dirk singing a country and western song at a karaoke bar. When it played in front of millions of people, Dirk had looked like an absolute moron.

  Not that he had done a bad job at the karaoke. Dirk was rather proud of his performance. Still, in the world of journalism, Dirk Bragg had become a laughingstock.

  Dirk stared at the door of the newsroom, dreading his entrance. His colleagues would be merciless. They would ridicule him. He would almost certainly be fired. And who would hire a disgraced tabloid newspaper reporter? Really Real News was already the lowest rung on the ladder.

  Dirk closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Let them laugh, he thought. He knew the truth. Dirk stood up straight, checked his cowlick in the reflection of the window, and entered the newsroom.

  Halfway across the room, and still nobody had noticed him. Reporters around him chatted on telephones and typed up stories.

  Just a few more paces to my desk, thought Dirk. He could see the light on his phone was flashing. It was probably a message from his publisher notifying him of his immediate termination.

  “Hey, look!” called someone a few desks over. “It’s Dirk Bragg!”

  Here it comes, thought Dirk with a wince. Now I’ll get it.

  Dirk’s editor, Sandra, popped up from the other side of his desk. “Ready, everyone? One, two, three….”

  Every voice in the newsroom sang together:

  “For he’s a jolly good fellow,

  For he’s a jolly good fellow,

  For he’s a jolly good fel-LOOOOOOOW!

  Which nobody can deny!”

  The newsroom rang with cheers and applause. People crowded around Dirk to shake his hand and slap him on the back.

  “Nice work, Bragg!”

  “Attaboy! Ace!”

  “That’s our Bragg!”

  A group of men sang an earnest tribute to Dirk’s nationally televised karaoke performance: “My wheels belong to the road, but my heaaaart—belongs to yooooou!”

  “Way to go, Dirk!”

  Someone popped the cork in a bottle of champagne and thrust a glass into his hand.

  “Here’s to you, Dirk!”

  Dirk took a reluctant sip. He was stymied. Rather than being the embarrassment of the newsroom, he seemed to be…its hero?

  Dirk sidled through the crowd of well-wishers toward Sandra, who beamed at him from the edge of the throng.

  “Sandra,” he muttered from the side of his mouth, “this is real nice, but why is it happening? I thought I’d be fired.”

  “Fired!” bellowed Sandra. “Dirk, if anything you’ll get a raise!”

 
“That’s, um, nice,” Dirk began awkwardly, “but a tad inconsistent with the level of shame and embarrassment I’ve brought upon this news organization.”

  “‘Shame and embarrassment’?” mocked Sandra. “You never change, Bragg. Sure, to someone who takes journalism seriously, what you did yesterday on America This Morning was, let’s face it, a disgrace. But we’re a scummy tabloid! Disgrace is what we do! We’ve sold more subscriptions in the last twenty-four hours than we have in the last twenty-four months!”

  Dirk brightened a bit. “So, I still have a job?”

  “Son, you keep embarrassing yourself on national television, and you’ve got a job for life,” said Sandra. “Now, as your editor, I have just one request.”

  Dirk winced, still dreading some sort of penance.

  “What’s that?”

  “Sit down and write that wereduck story! This is going to be the bestselling edition in the history of the paper!” Sandra took a sip of her champagne and left Dirk to his thoughts.

  Dirk nudged his way back through the crowd to his desk. He plopped into his chair, switched on his computer, and dialled into his voicemail.

  “You have twenty-five new messages,” began the electronic voice on the phone.

  “Oh, sheesh,” said Dirk, pushing a button to queue up the first message.

  BEEP.

  “Bragg! You magnificent moron!” bellowed the voice of Pete Daitch, Really Real News’s publisher. “My boy, you were fabulous on TV this morning. You have a bright future at this paper. What do you think of the title Senior Investigative Reporter? My secretary will set up a meeting. Heh heh. A wereduck. Priceless.”

  BEEP.

  Dirk’s face flushed. This day was definitely turning out better than he’d thought.

  BEEP.

  “Hello, Mr. Bragg,” said a woman with a deep, sultry voice. “My name is Veronica Nightshade, and I’m a big fan of the idea of people who become dangerous animals by the light of the moon. I saw you on America This Morning, and I, uh, thought you looked like someone I would like to get to know.”