He was a strange man, my brother. Never in the same place for more than one or two days at a time and always leaving before the sun came up at the start of a new day. He said it was the curse, but that was all he said. Not what it was or why it happened or why he never spoke about it.

The night was dark. The faint amber glow of a street light flickered on and off outside my bedroom window. It was time. I looked up at the clock on my wall. Five in the morning. I pulled the collar of my coat higher around my neck and made sure all the buttons were fastened. My gloved fingers reached towards the edge of the curtain. A hooded figure waited, their eyes shielded by darkened glasses, stared straight at my home. The front door opened. Then closed only a second later. I peered outside the window again, but the figure was no longer there. I kept watching. My brother, a tall lanky chap, nipped out of the house. I waited.

No more than a few seconds later, I managed to escape. I hurried down the stairs and out of the front door, closing it silently so as not to awaken my sleeping parents who both had work in the morning. I didn't think I'd need to leave a note. I didn't think I'd be longer than half an hour at the most, but thinking back with hindsight maybe a note would have been less painful. 

I watched as he walked down the street where we lived towards the main road. Several paces behind him, but still far enough away that he couldn't see me. He looked left, then right, before crossing the busying road. A steady stream of cars teamed down the road along with the odd late night bus and delivery lorry. Nothing out of the ordinary. Well, not so far anyway.

I too quickly and carefully crossed the road, my eyes still focussed on my siblings whereabouts. Mind confused and wary of what on Earth he was doing and why, for the last two weeks he had left home at the same time in the early hours of the morning, only to return several hours later. 

My head down, the hood of my top pulled over my head and slightly over my eyes. The full moon high in the dark sky above me, but I still wondered what he was doing.

Still keeping him in my sights I watched as he ventured closer to the wrong side of town. The forest. Weird things happened in forests, my dad used to say. His brother went to the forest on a camping trip one day and never came home. I'd always told him that was stupid, which it was. And anyway, all parents said things like that to their kids to stop them wandering off and getting lost, right?

I thought it was the wind at first, a cold howl that only the wind would make, echoed from within the woods. My pace slowed from a normal walk to near a tiptoe as I entered into the thicket. Nothing to fear. Nothing to fear. I could hear wings beating. Animals scurrying around. An owl high in the sky, its hoots almost made me jump out of my skin. Only an owl. Only an owl.

A deep howl called through the trees. A frosty shiver ran down my spine. Only the cold, only the cold. Clouds escaped my chilly blue lips with every breath I took. Even with gloves concealing my hands, my bones still ached with cold.

There he was. It was him. My brother. But not as I knew it. His face was not his face, not human, nor animal, but a cross between the two. His ears were pointed like that of a dog, but bigger and covered with a thick greying fur. He even had a tail. I watched as his fingers contorted to paws as his whole body shifted into something I could no longer recognise as my brother. Large canine teeth were clearly visible in his mouth. I watched as his head lifted up and what came out was nothing more than a spine tingling howl like a wild beast. He took one look in my direction then with an unnatural speed, off he went into the forest.

My thoughts turned back to our parents and what the hell would happen next!

Note
I wrote this on a prompt writing app and the prompt given was 'For a while your brother was convinced someone was following him, and now he's disappeared.' The app only allows you to write 750 words, which I think is really good for a short story.