Louis Bourne, Aged Forty-Five

Case Summary recorded by Detective 9257:

“Louis Bourne was the last to succumb to the supernatural occurrences before the incidents stopped all together. Being the General Manager of the leisure centre, he carried a lot of weight and stress on his shoulders. Perhaps it was the stress that caused his change”.

Events read by Doctor Emelia Lockheart:

Being the General Manager of the leisure centre had its perks. He was essentially the top dog, in charge of bringing in more money and opportunities to the leisure centre. So far the year had been good to him; he’d been successful in implementing new changes and new activities for customers.

Still it wasn’t all fun and games; it was quite stressful being at the top. He always needed to be one step ahead of the bosses above him and god forbid he finished a month in minus figures!

He had been most unsettled with the recent going-on at the leisure centre. Countless customers had been affected and staff taken away. They were getting a lot of publicity but all of it was negative and driving customers away.

Louis needed to come up with a strategy to improve the name of the leisure centre and restore the hope and security that customers once had in the leisure centre. It was quite a feat to achieve, especially as there was no way to explain these supernatural occurrences or known reason why the leisure centre had been pinpointed as the target.

One afternoon Louis had been called down to reception to deal with a hysterical customer. It wasn’t turning out to be a good day for him, he’d been stuck in a long winded meeting that amounted to nothing and then been told off by his boss for not finding an appropriate solution for all the trouble happening. Now this hysterical customer he would have to deal with was the tip of his quickly melting ice burg.

With heavy shoulders carrying an impossible weight he descended down the steps leading to reception. As he moved he found his body twist and shift and quite suddenly his vision shrunk down to that of a small child’s or dogs. He panicked and called out, however instead of a cry a loud growl reverberated around the reception area.

A regular customer had this to say of the incident;

“The woman was quite hysterical. For once nothing out of the ordinary had happened, no supernatural occurrences anyway, so whatever had distressed her was likely nothing to do with the leisure centre. Still seeing as the receptionist couldn’t calm the customer down and the Duty Manager was otherwise occupied, the General Manager was called down.

I must admit I was quite relieved when I saw him walking down the stairs; however my relief quickly turned to panic as I saw him morph from man to lion. It was the most extraordinary thing and I did the only sensible thing I could and ran, less the lion bite me”.

The lion incident was one of many changes that Louis suffered before he was taken to a secure facility in which to learn how to control his newfound ability before being allowed to return to his normal life.