It was certainly one of the most disturbing things the girls had ever seen.
Dr. Carter came down every day with cold lunch-meat sandwiches, bottled water, and a bags of way-too-salty chips. The girls tried everything. They looked for exits, looked for heavy things to beat Dr. Carter with, looked for sharp things to stab Dr. Carter with, but it was Al in vain. Dr. Carter was too smart for that. He had removed anything that could be used as a weapon from the room.
The transformation was so excruciatingly slow that the girls had to take turns writing notes, the other two sitting with their backs to the cage.
Dr. Carter had neglected to tell the girls what the last animal the young man had come in contact with.
Over the course of the week, the man slowly undertook his transformation. The girl's notes were lost to history, but the memories of it were stuck with them forever.
On Wednesday, Naomi had noticed something.
"Guys, look at this." She whispered to Adrian and Jackie. The dog-man thing in the cage looked over at them and panted with a tounge that only reached down to his chin. His face was pushed out slightly, he was covered head to toe in a moderate but not too thick brown fur, and a three-inch tail was growing above his rear. His fingers and toes were shorter and his fingernails were sharper. His ears were slightly floppy.
"I want to go home." Adrian whispered. "I can't take this anymore. Whatever sick, twisted freak this guy is, he won't be for long, cause I'm busting his ass the moment we get out of here." "But you can't." Jackie said. "You head him. He'd infect us if we tell anyone." Adrian choked back a sob and hung her head.
"No, listen." Naomi whispered. "Look at our pencils and pens. The tips are sharp. So we'll wait until he comes in wi8th our meal, and then we'll stab him."
Adrian sobbed again. "That won't work. We'll never get out of here..."
"It's our only hope. We'll have to... kill him, though." Jackie shuddered at the thought.
All three girls looked at the helpless thing in the cage. "That poor man." Jackie whispered.
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Around 7:00 AM the next morning, Adrian, Jackie, and Naomi hid next to the heavy steel door. They heard the familiar beeping of the codebox and the door swung open, leaving the girls in the dark.
Dr. Carter looked excited for a moment, then frowned. "What the hell..." was all he had time to say before the three girls flew at him. The tray flew across the room, sandwiches and water spilling on the floor. The hard metal tray cracked against the Plexiglas of the cage, cracking the glass. The thing in the cage gave a happy yell/bark and lunged at it.
The girls knocked Dr. Carter to his stomach and they all got on top of him. "GET OFF OF ME!" he yelled. "YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE..." Screaming, Adrian brought up her pencil and stabbed Dr. Carter in the back. He screamed in pain. Adrian, half screaming, half sobbing, brought the pencil up and down fifteen more times. Blood flew in a spray, coating the ceiling, walls, floor, and all three girls. Dr. Carter stopped moving. Getting up, all three girls panted, looking down at the bloody corpse.
"C'MON, LET'S GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!" Adrian screamed, and bolted for the door. Suddenly, a loud cracking sound filled the room, stopping all three girls dead in their tracks. They looked back and watched in horror as the dog-thing was launching itself at the crack in the glass, trying to get out. Another three and it would give.
With a moan, Naomi ran through the metal door. She whirled around and watched as Adrian followed soon after. They watched in horror as Jackie, who had been closer to the cage, tripped on a water bottle on the floor and went sprawling. Behind her, the dog-thing prepared to the leap it's final blow that would break the glass.
"HELP!" Jackie begged. With a moan of horror, Adrian reached for the door and went to shut it, sealing Adrian and the thing in the room "I'm so sorry...' Adrian sobbed as the door closed and locked on Jackie's shocked face. Before the soundproof barrier kicked in, Adrian and Naomi heard the glass crack and Jackie's scream of terror.
Then all was still.
Screaming, Adrian charged up the stairs, leaving Naomi all alone.
Naomi felt herself feel dizzy. She swayed for a moment, and collapsed on the stairs in a semi-conscious haze.
How long she was out, she didn't know.
When she woke up again, it was night. She got to her feet and pressed an ear to the door. "Jackie?" she whispered in a sad voice.
She received no reply.
Sobbing, Naomi backed away and ran up the stairs, tears streaming down her face all the way.
When she got back to her apartment, she didn't leave it for a while. Soon, so many years had passed that she thought that whole nightmarish few days in 1967 had all been a dream.
Adrian wasn't so lucky.
She had ran into town, hysterical, wailing about dogmen and horrible medical experiments and how she had left her friend in Dr. Carter's underground laboratory to die.
A few of the townsfolk didn't recognize her under all that tangled hair, smudged makeup, and sweaty face. They took one look and called the local psych ward. She was carted away there, and that's were she has stayed for nearly 50 years, never mentally recovering from those three days in 1967.
As for Dr. Carter's mansion, none of the locals would go near it. Dr. Carter had been a creepy enough guy when he was alive and he had come to town so infrequently that none of the locals really noticed he had gone.
So the mansion crumbled and rotted away on the hill for half a century. Looters in the early 1990's cleared out most of the furniture, but none of them would go down in the basement claiming to have heard "strange noises" .
All that's left now is the crumbl8ing structure (still walkable in some parts) and those infamous basement steps. As for the disease, expect for four people, no one knew it ever existed. The townsfolk went on with their normal lives.
Until now.
In the fall of 2016, a member of the town got bored one day and decided to explore the crumbling Carter mansion with a few friends.
And what they released would change the town of Ashbury forever.