His face against the floor, Oswald had to fight against himself to not let his tongue further scout the humid wood. With each breath he took, he became louder, air racked against his throat and a low growl resounded in the room.
He sunk his fingers in the little space between two planks. He used a crouching position with his legs spread a little wider than his shoulder length. Both his feet anchored in the ground, the muscle from his back tensed and the top of his torso widened.
Creak.
The wood cracked under the boy's pull. He clenched his jaw and with his feet anchored, he pulled harder.
Cra-ck!
Crack! Creak!
He pulled one plank, two planks. Five planks. Nothing resisted more than a second.
The nails that kept the planks tied to the others were out rolling on the floor, wooden shards protruded the ground. The remaining part of most planks ended their course under the house's structure. One half of a plank was in Oswald hands, he kept it in close to his head to console himself.
Hidden beneath, as he suspected, a dry puddle of blood, about a meter wide.
An image appeared in his head, he couldn't help but associate the smell with rabbits. His mind went full speed, it spun and started to ache anew.
'That's impossible. I... there's no way I have a mental issue to this extend. I can't be the one cleaning! Mother has been more active than she lets it appear lately she reeks sweat all day and she's suffering from the harsh temperatures, she's the problem! She's hiding the evidences I left behind. That's it! She went to the barn and used the hay bale to conceal what happened.'
He sunk his finger into the hard material. Leaning against the closest wall, he couldn't help but cry.
'Mother is toying with me!' He thought, throwing the piece away.
Corroded with ignorance and confusion, he didn't know what to do. Meryl heard the ruckus downstairs and saw him breaking everything.
She said in a whisper, unsure of her doing. "Ozzy? Can you hear me?"
She froze when their eyes met. It was a much more flagrant reaction than what she expected. She said.
"I was protecting you. From both yourself and the others." It interrupted his rampage.
"You seemed ignorant at first, but now you know. I'm sorry my precious, I couldn't decide whether to shut my mouth or to talk about it, you are totally frightening when you come back from hunting."
Oswald turned around, his glowing eyes were were ornated with black circles and his tears wouldn't stop flowing. He could see her clearly, she was as sad as him and she used the door to keep standing. Her fever was a little higher than the past morning.
"Frightening how?"
In a pan, she poured water and left it on a flat surface. By the time it stabilised, Oswald was above it and looked at his reflection.
"The difference is like day and night, you behave as the kind lamb you've always been and then suddenly reject even the idea of speaking. You throw your game in the entrance and go to bed. I can't leave you alone with this kind of habit. We must hide it from the village, they won't let you alone if you act too strange or dangerous."
His prepubescent beard was thick, more present. The holes where nothing grew were full of black hair, short but dense. 'That's no puberty.' He thought while looking at his two eyes. They were wide open, and the usual brown he had appeared way too bright to still be the usual color, his irises were bigger, almost all of the space in his eye was occupied by the yellow instead of the white of his eye.
"Help me." He asked his mother. His anxiety rose. 'That's not me.'
Oswald had a hard time recognising himself. His headache reached new summits.
"Help me!" He pleaded.
Meryl stepped forward to embrace him. "You're fine. Everything's fine. You are the best little boy I've ever seen." The stress made her voice shaky and both their voices vented their sadness.
"No one will ever know. You are my Oswald, not someone else." She said. "We'll do as we did. As if nothing ever changed." She kissed his forehead, and brushed his hair backward to admire his face. "You look awesome." She added as the face of her husband overlapped Oswald's. 'Mommy is as fine as you.' She thought as fever spread further in her body.
The skin contact she had allowed Meryl to warm her body. Her son never mentioned how cold she was, because it seemed to not bother him, she used him as a hot-water bag every night.
Her nose was clogged up and she was soaked in body fluids. Both of them fell asleep in the living room. Thanks to Meryl, Oswald managed to calm down and not overthink about everything he might've done while sleepwalking.
Next morning, they had their first real talk in a week.
"Ever since the day Stan departed, I feel different. You know, I wanted to hide it from you too... I saw a monster in the barn, it did something to me. I'm kind of fainting every time I go out at night, and while I run, I feel free, I feel the resistance of the wind in my hair, the glow of the moon on my shoulders... I feel great."
Meryl interrupted her son, she wanted him to understand how much she loved him. "Oswald, I can't blame you for going out, but I want you to hide your differences. I don't care if you want to wander day or night, or eat raw rabbit heads. I want you to not do it in front of the others. The thing you do with the knives, continue training it. If you want to appear like a hunter, then know your stuff, right? You can't imitate a shepherd without its knowledge, it is no different."
Oswald nodded and gathered his new stuff to push his training further. He was moved by his mother's words and sorry for doubting her.
Early in the morning, after he fed the sheep, goats and Cluck, he ventured at the periphery of the woods to cut the first tree he had at hand. He needed new targets.