Andrew Farminga was put in the position of being the only one to notice that inside of the cabin in the woods was not the same as it was a few minutes earlier. The red and gold carpeting, tiling, and related aspects were now completely different. It was as if how the cabin was now how it had always been but that just wasn't true.
His friends picked up on his wide-eyes before anyone else. Zelda, Emily, James, Heather, and Christopher were all standing around the front podium where a greeter might welcome guests before directing them to the counter behind them. At the same time, Coach Banks was encouraging people to take up seat in what was now a very spacious lounge. Breaking people up, he mades sure they were each a few feet apart across the various furniture.
"This is fucked up," Andy confided quietly while everyone else looked around the spacious lower floor of the hotel-looking building. "This place was red and gold not fifteen minutes ago," he explained. "The bathrooms were literally on the other side of the room... there was only one TV... and I could go on," he offered, taking a deep breath. "Actually, I will: it's also bigger in here now. Physically larger." He spread his hands wide trying to get the group to imagine.
"Harry Potter stuff," James noted. "Cabin of Holding, I guess?" he wondered. He put a hand to his head, almost running it through his dark brown hair but stopping himself. His eyes turned to Heather. "So all this normal? Magic is real?" he waved his left hand off to the side of his head. "Sorry. Magic is real," he repeated, removing the question mark verbally.
The young woman with the bright red hair shook her head. "Not normal, no," she said, her equally bright green eyes meeting James's. "Stories passed down through the family... books... AP Mythology learning," she explained. "The occasional scroll or dusty journal." Heather shrugged. "Until tonight, it's all been practice. Well, the last hour really... now I feel it."
Andrew reached for the guestbook, sliding a little closer to Christophe as he moved to stand at the countertop. "Like deja vu?" he asked Heather.
James jumped in with a smile: "I haven't seen a black cat." Emily shook her head while Andy raised an eyebrow. "Sorry... Matrix."
Heather sighed. "Movie knowledge isn't without it's worth, James, but you're going to need to hone what you say else you're going to say the wrong thing and distract people's minds from latching onto the truth of the situation." She reached up and repositioned her glasses. "If your comments are a distraction, we could all end up dead."
James smiled at first, then realized she was serious. His face changed and he looked between everyone, settling on Heather finally. "You really think death is possible?"
"Most serious spells can seem... 'fun' for a time," she offered, motioning to Christopher's front. It was clear his bulge could barely be contained, but his shirt still covered it as best it could. "But if we all end up as animals, that's Identity Death."
Christopher looked up from Andrew's curved ass when he realized Heather was looking at him. His penis grew a little hard at the focus and he was clearly a little embarrassed. Still, her words confused him. "What's... Identity Death?" he asked. "I mean, death, obviously, but... wait," he stopped to think about it even while his black shirt still covered with his own cum from earlier, hardly washed by the rain outside. "Identity... so person. Mindset," he worked out the words. Christopher wasn't dumb, just slow. "Wait, so... you're saying if we become animals the real us... the person, uh... human us would be gone?" He snapped the fingers on his left hand. "Like the fox!?" he asked.
"The fox?" Emily asked.
Christopher nodded. "Seamus thought he saw a fox, but it was a red wolf... before the, uh—" he didn't want to say 'orgy', "—what'd ya call it? Lust wave? Right before that," he nodded. "He pointed out it had giant balls, like... like I do now," his eyes looked over Andy's backside as the black wolf tail lifted slightly. Chris' eyes returned to Heather. "Maybe that wolf was like us."
Andy took a breath, as if suppressing a thought. "Dowd said he saw a half-dozen wolves in the woods... it's why his gun was out in the first place."
"Actually," interjected Heather. "We all saw him pull his gun after he left the treeline, not before." Zelda frowned at that, then turned to look around the room. She didn't see Dowd anywhere.
James had been in his own world for a second, but suddenly shook his head and looked back to Andy. "Deja vu?" Andy blinked, verbalizing a 'huh?' with the sudden reversion to an earlier point. "Heather warned me against distracting the point," he said. "She said that in the last hour she's felt something, and you asked 'deja vü'... the sensation you are doing something you have done before. Deja vü, the sensation you are doing something you have done before. Deja vü, the—"
"I'mma swat you now," Christopher said as he leaned forward.
"Don't cock-slap me!" James yelped jokingly as he put his hands up in front of his face. "Already had my nose broken tonight."
Heather looked from James to Andy before she spoke. "He makes a point," she said. "For my part, I've... like, I've almost, I don't know, seen something... like a colored scent in the air... something about how and where we are," she said. "I bet my brother felt it too. But I wouldn't call it 'deja vü'. This is all new to me."
Zelda looked Heather over, then asked: "So you think Seamus might have felt a draw to the wolf he thought was a fox? Like... it pulled his attention."
Heather nodded, pushing her glasses up her nose with the back of one hand. "Those who have some innate feeling may be simultaneously resistant and susceptible to the magicks." Her green eyes turned towards Andy. "And they may manifest in different ways... what did you feel deja vü about?"
Andrew Farminga took a deep breath and leaned back against the counter, right next to Chris's hand. Crossing his arms, he hugged himself. "This dreadful feeling... like this has happened before," he said. "But also... not?" he wondered aloud, but to himself. "The cabin feels familiar, but it's also never looked like this in my head... the pictures on the walls, the stone path, some of the cars outside... being part wolf."
Heather put a finger to her lips. "You and Seamus have both noted therian-like ideas to me in the past," she offered. Christopher started to raise his hand. "Therians are people who identify as an animal stuck in human form," she said to Christopher. "But when would you have ever been here before?"
Zelda finally chimed in: "Maybe he's inhabiting himself from the Future... sent himself an impression or something but basically has amnesia of it?"
Heather sighed. "I'm basically book-learned with no real-world experience when it comes to magic," she said. "I guess it's possible."
"What about his coma?" Emily asked.
Heather looked at her, while James raised a finger to interject, but then looked at Andy. It was a touchy subject, and his eyes basically asked his friend if he could theorize. Andrew closed his eyes and lowered his head, not sure if he was ready to hear whatever they had to say.
Heather and Seamus McCormick moved to the school district before junior year. They didn't know all the details about the car wreck which had killed Andy's parents and little sister, only that it had happened overseas on a trip to Europe. That... and Andy hated talking about it.
"Shit," Andrew said, his hands lifted just above his waist, and his now open eyes looking down into them. Christopher reached out and put a hand over Andy's shoulder, and the young man turned his eyes up to look at the other's. Andy looked to James who clearly looked like he wanted to say something. "What are you thinking?"
"What if... what if you weren't in a coma?" James asked. "You went missing at Christmas and missed the next four months because... because of the wreck," he said. "No identifying papers, people didn't know who you were over there until after you woke up."
"I'm aware," Andrew said as Chris started to rub his back.
James shook his right hand in front of him as if to say 'right, right, but'. "What if it was actually amnesia. It wouldn't be functionally different, right?" he asked, but it was rhetorical. He glanced at the others. "What if Andy's been here before, but he escaped... and that's the amnesia."
"There were bodies," Andrew spoke, but it was a stutter as his lip shook.
Emily took a step towards Andrew. "Closed casket, you said," she offered, putting her hands on his shoulders. "What if there were no bodies?"
Zelda frowned. "A cover-up, why?"
"OK! OK." Andrew declared, waving his hands to the side to push Emily away. "I don't want— This doesn't—" He shut his eyes, tears on his cheeks. Christopher was still rubbing his back. He put his left hand over his mouth, thinking things... trying to remember. "OK," he said, his lower lip quivering. "Truthfully, I don't remember the accident."
"Right," James said, though his tone was less 'professing theory' and more 'cautiously inquiring' because Andy was his friend, and this was about the worst thing that had ever happened in his friend's life. "You've said... you don't remember the accident. You woke up in the hospital, and... they had to tell you what happened."
Andrew's eyes turned to face James's. Then they went wide, and he bolted up, Chris's hand slipping to brush over his butt as he stood up. He reached for the guestbook on the podium and spun it around to face him. "No, no," he remarked, running his finger down the page from Harold and Miranda. "Wait, yes..." he stopped his finger, pointing at a the oldest entry: 'Вольга Mackievič'.
Zelda blinked. "Can you read that."
"We were visiting family in Belarus," Andy said. "This name... Volha Mackievic. This name gives me the most deja vü." Putting a hand to his lip for a moment, he reached down and picked up an old pen. Scribbling to one side of the guestbook, he made sure it had ink. Then, below the last entry, he wrote: "Washington Wolves arrive, Wednesday, December 13, 2021, 10:40PM." He then skipped down to the next line and added: "Andrew Farminga, assistant coach" he paused, then added, "black wolf".
Turning, he handed the guestbook to Christopher along with the pen. "Christopher Wright, Linebacker, #55," he spoke as he wrote, holding the book with one hand. Andrew waved a hand at him for him to add more. "White wolf," the big man added with a slight grimmace. Andrew nodded.
Chris handed the book to Emily and she stared to sign it as well. While she did that, Andy sighed. "We need a census before we start loosing people," he admitted. James nodded vigorously at that. "So, we take this guestbook, and we fill in all the entries, noting our name, something short about us, and animal we're changing to if we know it," he said simply.
Heather looked over to the side of the main counter, then walked around to the back side. She was expecting a computer but instead she found a storage wall of tiny drawers with numbers on them. Sliding open drawer number fifty-five, she found three keys for it, each with a silver end with the number in thick black numbers on it.
Looking back over the counter. "Here," she said to Christopher as she handed him his room key. "If everyone's room is their jersey number, it'll be easier to know where everyone is," she suggested.
"Good idea," Andrew admitted as he watched Emily approach Coach Banks and explain the situation with the guest book. "Then we dish out numbers to the cheerleaders and chaperones."
"Volha Mackievic," came Zelda's voice from behind him. Turning around, Andy saw her on her phone. "Hiker. Missing as of March, 2019." She looked up from the small screen. "I can't read much else of it through the translation, but they're from Belarus," she said. "But... look," she said, turning the phone around. It was clearly the woman, Volha, but she was standing in front of a car strapped with hiking gear. "That lime green BMW Beetle look familiar?"
Realizing that was one of the cars parked out in the pavement, Andrew's mouth dropped and he hurried to the front doors...