Who knows.
When Zeke finally returns I’m through with eating. I’m lying on my back staring at the roof again. I turn my head toward him.
“I got you some clean bandages and stuff.” He puts everything down on the dirty hay and looks at me expectantly.
I don’t get up. I don’t want to scare him.
“Thanks,” I say, staring at the ceiling again.
“Um, do you need help? Or anything?”
“Not really.”
“Oh.”
He stands, his shadow darkening the air.
“I’m sorry,” I say when it doesn’t look like he’s going to leave. “I don’t know why I do stuff sometimes. I didn’t want to hurt your dad.”
I can hear him chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I wish I’d never given you that axe.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I shot you.”
“That’s not your fault either.” I swallow. “Sometimes I think I’m a monster.” And sometimes I know I am.
“You’re not a monster. Dad says there’s good in everyone, just in some people it’s harder to find.”
I laugh, a little bit, through my nose. “Did he tell you everything? Did he tell you I murdered my father?”
“He said you must have had a good reason.”
Well. My father’s face looms in my mind, all those times he choked me or smacked me, and that last time when he watched me, watched me without helping me or explaining what was happening to me, his eyes gleaming with the intent to dominate or kill if necessary.
“Thank you,” I say.
-56-
The moon is waning. Each night is darker than the night before. Tonight I undo the latch on the stall and quietly as I can, slip out into the aisle.
My leg feels stronger. My muscles are aching for movement, more so than I can do pacing in that stall. I hobble down the aisle. The animals move restlessly, backing into the corners of their pens. I use the walls for support, but only when I absolutely need it. At the end of the aisle I push open the barn door.
I can smell the outhouse, and there it is, a mere fifty feet away. Fifty feet with nothing to hold onto.
There’s nothing at this end of the barn, no shovel to use as a crutch, no wheelbarrow to use as a walker. Just me, and a burning desire to take a shit like a human being instead of a dog.
I stagger out, my leg finally starting to feel the strain of walking after being torn apart and sewn together and torn apart again. I’m practically hopping along on my good leg, which only makes the gash in my side start to burn.
Crawling. I’m crawling in the darkness now.
Who knew an outhouse could smell so good. I don’t care that it reeks and I have to breathe through my mouth. Finally there’s something to hang onto, a seat to sit on.
Glorious relief.
I’m zipping my pants back up when I feel it. I can’t say as I smell it – the odor of the outhouse is too strong to allow that – and there isn’t a noise. But I feel the presence just as sure as the hair on the back of my neck stands at attention.
For long moments I hesitate to open the outhouse door. I wait, listening, until I’m absolutely certain that there is no pack of wolves waiting to attack me when I do open the door.
The return journey across the yard is made longer and more painful as I am unwilling to crawl along like I did before. I take each step carefully, stopping to listen and smell the air. Now that I’m out of the enclosed space I can smell more things, the wood smoke from the Whittemores’ stove, the pines, the heavy manure in the barn, the chicken coop on the other side.
I don’t smell those other wolves, nor hear them, but I know they are nearby, perhaps watching me stagger along, although I think if they were that close I’d have more than just a shiver of a feeling.
Why wouldn’t they attack now, while I’m weak? It makes sense to me.
And then I think of Kayla.
If they were able to track me here, in the middle of nowhere, after my scent would have been erased by a snowstorm, hidden by the odors of two humans, three cows, five goats, ten pigs, a bunch of chickens, and all the subsequent piles of manure, what chance does Kayla have? I left her alone.
Alone and unprotected.
All the way back to the barn. Staggering step by painful step. Senses on high alert, sensitive to every small sound, every new scent that wafts in, every slight breeze that rustles the trees. I get back to my stall. Get inside. Slide the lock into place. Sink into the straw.
Wonder if she is okay.
* * *
I dream of Kayla, lying beside me. Her skin is cold and it’s dark but I imagine she isn’t wearing any clothes. The night frost has left its mark on the hay, ice coating each straw. I pull her tight to me, not that I am much warmer. She isn’t shivering.
One hand under her chin, I lift her face to see her eyes.
Two black holes stare back at me.
I jerk away, and awake.
The frost tonight is not so bad as in my dream – no arctic ice covering everything with white – but I’ve nestled myself under the hay for warmth. Even through the stink of the dirty stall, I can smell them. They are everywhere around me.
I’m on my feet faster than you’d imagine, considering my injuries. Those don’t matter now. I need to get out of here. I can feel the wolf pulsing under my skin
(not yet not yet)
As quietly as possible I open the door. The scrape of metal rubbing against itself sounds colossally loud to my ears. The rumble of the door sliding open is even louder.
At the barn door I poke my face out, close my eyes, and inhale.
I can smell their stink, that predatory musk. It’s close. I breathe in again, and again, until I get a clearer picture: they were here. They were sniffing for me, around the house and the barn. They are outside of the cleared area which is the Whittemore farm, but they are still nearby. The trail, the trapping trail. The one I used to run through back when I was welcome in the Whittemores’ house, free to come and go, free from pain.
This must be how they found me.
I slip out of the barn, keeping to the shadows – the moon is bright tonight. I can smell where they’ve been. I catch at least four or five different scents, one female, the rest male. My ears don’t pick up any noise, and I don’t have that uncomfortable feeling I did when I went to the bathroom. They aren’t watching me. Nearby, but not watching me. I wonder if they are still inspecting the area.
When I reach the house I creep around to the bedrooms and peek inside. Mr. Whittemore and Zeke are asleep in their beds, none the wiser. Good.
In the narrow space between the house and the barn, I remove my clothes and change.
The pull on the stitches as my ribcage expands make me feel like I’m going to split open. I guess my leg didn’t hurt as much before because wolf legs are narrower than a human’s. I spend my first moments as a wolf trying to breathe, since breathing pulls on the stitches even more. The wound had begun to heal over the past few days, but the scar tissue isn’t strong enough to stretch so much yet.
When I can focus through the pain, I get down to business. I have to find these wolves and kill them all before they can rally the rest of their pack against me. Why wouldn’t I be able to kill all of them, when I so easily took care of those wolves who attacked me and Kayla? I’m a little weaker, more vulnerable, and I don’t have Kayla to watch my back, but I know what I did when I was thirteen. What I’ve been doing for the past three years. Killing. I’m a killing machine.
I put one paw outside of the alley, and they come.
-57-
They swarm through the trees and into the clearing, yipping and barking, one jet black wolf howling as if the bugle to call more soldiers to battle. This one is not the leader. No, there is no alpha here, but I sense that the black one is in charge. More than five wolves line up facing me.
Nine. Nine wolves.
I draw my paw back into the shado
ws.
I wonder, for a long moment, if they plan on talking to me somehow. I wonder if we can settle this without fighting, and if I’d be able to hear the black wolf’s thoughts, like the way I hear Kayla’s sometimes.
Then two of the wolves come for me, the brindle and the gray.
I jump backwards into the alley. I wait for the wolf to jump up and grab the steering wheel
(….)
Nothing. And in the split second before they’re on top of me, I realize that I’m alone in the driver’s seat, and I can’t count on my inner monster to do the dirty work this time.
The gray
(the female)
lunges at me, snapping her teeth at my neck. I jerk backwards and reflexively lash out with my paws, as if I’m human, a boxer. I’m momentarily confused that I don’t have fists.
(teeth use your teeth)
Before I can recover the gray is back with her fangs, and the brindle behind her in the alley leaps over her. He sinks his teeth into my back.
(rabbits pretend they are rabbits)
But the rabbits never fought back, I only chased them. I don’t remember those times I fought as a wolf. How did I do it?
When I reach around to bite the wolf who’s biting my back, the gray grabs me by the neck.
Their teeth are sharp, as sharp as mine. Their jaws are as strong. And they’ve probably had years to learn how to fight.
As my breath is choked out of me, I realize that I may have overestimated myself.
It is as a curtain of darkness is falling across my eyes that I hear the tinkling, far-off sound of glass shattering.
Zeke Mr. Whittemore danger
The wolf rears up inside me, matching his skin to mine, and we twist away. The two wolves with their teeth in me fly off, taking chunks of me with them. I dodge their bodies and race into the fray of wolves in the clearing. Snake through those that attack me.
One catches my rear paw in his teeth, too close to my injury for comfort. I snap around and sink my teeth into his throat, shake until I feel blood spray in my face and flood down my throat, then drop the limp body to the ground.
Three of the wolves jump me at once – I am a fury of fangs and fur
rip shred kill
cutting them down, tossing them aside. Running toward the picture window, broken into the living room. I smell fire and fear and panic.
All I want is to get into the house.
I claw my way through the remaining wolves, chase another as he leaps into the building. My paws crunch on broken glass; the darkness of the interior without the moonlight is disorienting.
There are shouts, human shouts, both Zeke and Mr. Whittemore. I lunge down the hallway. I never went into this section of the house when I was allowed to stay here. Zeke’s bedroom is closest, on the right, a narrow room. I nearly run past it then skid to a stop and face what is inside.
“Dad!” Zeke calls out, his voice querulous. The white t-shirt he’s wearing over his pajama pants has blood on it. I growl, not at Zeke, but at the man behind him holding a shard of glass to Zeke’s throat.
“That’s right, you’d best stay back,” the man says. He has black hair and eyes to match his wolf’s pelt, and thick, overdeveloped muscles in his shoulders and biceps.
I glare at him, emanating hatred from my eyes, my lips in a snarl that shows him my fangs. If I move quickly enough, perhaps the black wolf won’t have time to slit Zeke’s throat before I remove the manhood dangling between his naked legs.
The man grins, a toothy smile stretching across his face, revealing a scar that cuts deep into one cheek. “All I want is to talk. A nice conversation. That’s all.”
Part of me, the wolf part, still wants to rip him to shreds. The other part is relieved. It’s just like I hoped. We can come to a compromise.
I close my eyes and prepare to change.
In the midst of my focus
fur melting away
Zeke screams, and a scuffle breaks out down the hall. For a moment my change is halted, concerned that the other wolf might have gotten Mr. Whittemore. Then I hear distinctly human feet moving across the floor, Mr. Whittemore’s familiar tread muted by socks, and I relax into the change. Then
click BOOM
-58-
I have no time to wonder at these new sounds as I’m already flying through the air and hitting the wall. It feels like a truck going 80 miles an hour hit my shoulder.
“Zeke?” Mr. Whittemore calls. With a sideways view and still reeling from the gunshot to my shoulder, I watch him cautiously make his way down the hallway with the skill of an FBI agent.
He steps over the writhing body of the wolf I’d been chasing, pausing only to put a bullet in the creature’s head. “Zeke?”
I don’t like the fact that Zeke is not answering.
I stop moving, however, aware that Mr. Whittemore doesn’t recognize me in this form and is likely to shoot me too. It’s hard to stay still when you feel like your shoulder is on fire and there’s a knife in between your ribs, stabbing your lungs. I do my best, closing my eyes and focusing on what I can hear going on in that other room.
The black wolf is whispering in Zeke’s ear, so low and soft that Mr. Whittemore obviously can’t hear him. I can barely hear him over the throbbing of my heartbeat in my ears. “Not a peep, human, not a peep.” The black wolf is moving away from Zeke, releasing him, but keeping the shard of glass pointed at the boy.
As I zone in on the black wolf’s movements, his thoughts come to me
Kill the man then the boy and finish off the Other
He’ll wait for Mr. Whittemore to enter the room, which Mr. Whittemore will do, cautiously, wondering why Zeke is just standing there ready to piss himself. Or perhaps Mr. Whittemore is smarter than I thought.
“Zeke?” He’s at the doorway, still standing in the hallway, his gun at the ready and now pointed at his own son. “Is there someone in here with you? Another wolf?”
I don’t hear a reply other than a sound that might have been Zeke vigorously shaking his head no.
“Then come on out.”
Mr. Whittemore waits, suspicion beading on his forehead because Zeke isn’t moving. Zeke’s eyes are flickering toward the man in his room, who is hiding somewhere Mr. Whittemore can’t see. Zeke’s eyes must be open wide; they make a very soft squishing noise as they roll around in his head. He gasps, and I know from the reek of wolf that the man has changed. It’s a sudden scent of musk and heavy fur
…and lilacs?
That’s when I immediately know that these wolves, and that black wolf in particular, have done something to Kayla. The bitter scent of a sudden rush of adrenaline fills my nostrils too much for me to tell if there are any other clues, the scent of blood for example, and it doesn’t matter if they’ve hurt Kayla or not. It doesn’t matter if my arm is falling off or my lung punctured.
My four legs shake as I heave myself up. I will get there. I will kill that black wolf.
I push myself down the hallway, chanting to myself
Kayla Kayla Kayla
My progress is so slow that Mr. Whittemore doesn’t even notice me coming.
And then Zeke screams.
-59-
I’m running on legs that shouldn’t hold up. Pain is a distant memory.
I slam past Mr. Whittemore, knocking him over. Leap into the room, and spend precious seconds trying to find the black wolf.
I catch a glimpse of a black tail going out through the window.
Smell blood.
I shouldn’t be able to leap through that window, over Zeke’s rumpled bed, avoiding the broken glass.
But I do.
I land in the melted snow and mud, slip and try to catch my breath as pain flares in my shoulder. The scent is strong, and I follow.
“Daad!” Zeke screams, his voice deafening me. He’s back in his room. I vaguely remember rushing past him, a Zeke-colored blur.
I sprint after that black wolf, who is now so far ahead I
can’t see him. I wish I’d been able to hurt him, just a little, before this. He’s perfectly healthy, well-rested, well-fed. Who knows, maybe if I wasn’t injured and had eaten more than bread and jerky for the past week I still wouldn’t be able to catch him. But I might have had a chance.
A few miles in, the adrenaline wears off. I begin limping. The scent is getting harder and harder to follow.
Panting, I slow to a stop, wanting nothing more than to collapse in exhaustion.
The black wolf is gone, and with him any hope of finding Kayla.
My options are to keep going, maybe after I lie down and take a nap, or go back to the Whittemore farm, after I take a nap. I imagine showing up, naked and bleeding, and watching the realization dawn on Mr. Whittemore’s face when he matches the gunshot wound on my shoulder with the wolf he shot. I imagine slinking back and getting in my clothes and trying to hide my new injury, and my true self.
I decide to take a nap.
Crawling under the snowy branches of an evergreen tree, into the cozy, quiet, warm area created there, I fall asleep.
In my dream, time slows down as I run past Zeke in his bedroom. Instead of focusing only on the escaping black wolf, I notice the blood pouring down the front of his shirt, dark red against bright white. His pale face follows my movements as I go by, one hand clamped on his neck.
I can smell his blood.
It smells of pine and sweat and milk, pure and clean except for a sharp edge to it. A wet dog edge, too clean or maybe dirty underneath the clean. It confuses me, this smell on Zeke, as I’d never noticed it before. So confusing that for half a slow-motion step, I turn toward him.
That’s when he peels his hand away from his neck like a band-aid on a gunshot wound, and I see the ragged edges of the bite.
Birds call to each other when my eyes snap open, telling each other to watch out for the strange creature in the evergreen tree. What is it? they ask, hopping on the branches they hope are out of my reach. A wolf but not a wolf, one says. A human but not a human.