*****
As Patrick forced himself to calm down, his pulse slowed and his breathing became steady and he wiped the sweat off his face with a paper towel. He returned to class hoping that he looked at least half-normal.
He sat back down at his desk without looking at Rachel, and for the rest of the class period had to try his hardest not to start panicking again. Fear and shame and remorse ate at his insides like acid.
There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he attacked Mr. Poulton. He wasn’t even sure if you could find a wild wolf for a thousand miles, and the chances of his infuriating bald teacher being attacked by some wolf-like dog immediately after the Owen incident were practically nil. He had gone to bed thinking about the man—had spent an entire day seething with anger toward him, wishing for justice above all other things.
But it wasn’t justice that came down on Mr. Poulton last night. It was revenge—bloodthirsty and lustful. And it came from Patrick.
He thought about his blankets. He had gone to sleep on top, but he woke up fully in his bed. It wasn’t just a casual action done while sleeping; he had gotten up and snuck out into the woods, transforming and eventually attacking Mr. Poulton only to return without a sound or a scratch. He hadn’t woken up dirty or bloody… He brought up the image of himself as he had seen it in the mirror that morning and tried desperately to recall any smudge or blemish that looked as if it might have possibly been blood.
He got a horrible image of it happening. It started with a picture, then against his will progressed into the sensation of fangs tearing into flesh and a bloodied and screaming Mr. Poulton flailing under his weight. It played fluidly and vividly, to its completion, as if it were a movie that had popped up on TV when Patrick couldn’t seem to find the remote. He couldn’t tell if this was a memory or simply his imagination running wild.
A terrible question came to him: Had he simply lost control of his mind and body, seeking to sate the most primal hunger he had at the moment, or had he woken up in a human state of mind and done this on purpose? Maybe he had simply risen out of bed so angry at the man that he decided to seek revenge the only way he knew how, his ongoing rage clouding his waking memory as extreme emotions seemed to do.
The thought made him queasy, and he forced it out of his mind.
When the bell rang and the students shuffled out of the class, leaving Mrs. Spotts to worry in silence for a few minutes, Rachel asked the question Patrick dreaded.
“Are you okay?”
Despite his tendency to stay quiet, it seemed that Patrick had never quite developed the ability to mask his emotions very well.
“Yeah, I’m just kind of weirded out by the Mr. Poulton thing.”
“Yeah, it’s really weird,” she agreed. “I hope he’s okay. I know we like to make fun of him and stuff, but I would never wish that…” she paused, and Patrick felt another wave of guilt pass through him, “anything like that would happen…”
They continued walking. Apparently Patrick’s face betrayed him again, because when Rachel looked at him a moment later she said, “Don’t feel so bad, though… It’s not like it’s your fault or anything.”
Patrick tried to muster a smile, but couldn’t.
*****
As usual, Patrick recalled various aspects of his day while eating dinner. He thought perhaps it was a relaxation technique, though he certainly would have been much more relaxed if today hadn’t happened at all.
Biology had been taught by a man named Mr. Randolph, who was also balding and sporting a beard, though he was much more tall and muscular than Mr. Poulton. He had begun and ended the lesson without so much as mentioning the incident, delivering the information flatly with his deep voice, regarding the class through heavily-lidded eyes. Patrick thought about the lack of substitutes the day before and wondered if it always took a serious injury to get them into the classroom.
Rachel had walked Patrick to lunch detention, but when they arrived the woman at the desk had solemnly said not to worry about it and sent him on his way. It seemed that in her eyes it was inappropriate to enforce a detention that had been given by a man on the eve of his serious injury. It was funny; she had acted as though they had been hugely affected by Mr. Poulton’s injury or might somehow feel responsible. Which was silly, of course… Though apparently not quite as silly as it should have been, Patrick had admitted.
“-al control teams all over town,” his father was saying as he pulled himself back to the present. “They even brought guys down from Fort Clay and Marysville.” He grabbed his glass of soda and took a drink.
“Now I’m sure your teachers have already told you,” his mom said to him and Lizzy, who was dissecting a green bean with her fork and knife as if it were a frog in science class, “things are going to be a little different in town for a while.”
They had mentioned it. In fact, much of PE was taken up by an assembly on the subject in the gym.
“Until this thing is caught,” she continued, “no one should walk alone, or at all over long distances. If you see the dog, run—Lizzy, are you listening?”
Lizzy had extracted the tiny pea heart from the green bean and was grinding it between her teeth. “Yes!” she said loudly, but didn’t take her eyes off her plate.
“Eyes up here,” his mother insisted, and she obeyed, putting down her fork with a sigh. “If you see it, run to the nearest house or building and get inside. Don’t knock, don’t try to run home, just get inside a house and tell whoever is there to call the police department. Even if it’s not running at you or anything, don’t hesitate, even for a second. You get inside.”
Lizzy, always the comic, asked what she thought was a valid question.
“What if we thought we saw it, so we ran into some weird old person’s house, and it turned out it was just a regular dog, and it was really embarrassing and awkward?”
“I’m sure the weird old people would understand,” his mother replied.
“You can never be too safe with this sort of thing,” his father added. “These types of accidents always happen to people who make assumptions and aren’t careful.”
“Also, no walking at all after dark,” his mother said.
“Period.” The severity in his father’s voice was rather uncharacteristic.
Patrick grew more and more queasy as the conversation drug on, and soon couldn’t get himself to take another bite of his roast beef. Everything they were saying was probably being recited word-for-word at every dinner table in the whole town. There were undoubtedly dozens of police officers and animal specialists around town and out in the woods scouring the area for something that wasn’t there. The whole of Hillward was on guard and nervous. And it was all because of Patrick. There was no one to blame in the entire place but him.
And no one had even the slightest clue. The sheer massiveness of this secret and of his guilt literally made him dizzy. He was considering excusing himself due to an upset stomach (which wouldn’t be a lie at all, would it?) when his mother turned to him.
“The lady from the school office didn’t say the name of the teacher that got hurt. Was he one of yours?”
“It was Mr. Poulton,” he said as plainly as possible, trying to hide the guilt that was surely thick in his voice.
There was a brief silence that washed over the table, and Patrick wondered what they were thinking.
“That’s kind of weird,” his father said finally. “After what we heard last night, maybe it wasn’t a dog at all, just Patrick feeling a little bloodthirsty.” He snarled and bit at the air, making wolf-man gestures toward Lizzy. This didn’t help the queasiness in Patrick’s stomach.
He tried to laugh lamely, then said, “I’m feeling kind of weird. I think I’m going to go lie down.” He said it suddenly and probably suspiciously, but he didn’t care at this point. He scooted his chair back and stood up.
“You okay, Patrick?” his mother asked.
“Y
eah, I’m fine” he said. He pushed his chair back in and slid what was left of his dinner onto his father’s plate. He took his dirty dishes to the kitchen and plopped them into the sink. When he realized that they were still watching him expectantly, he called back, “I’ve just been feeling a little ooky since I got home.” He passed the table on his way to the stairs.
“Well let me know if you don’t feel better in a few hours,” his mother said.
“I will,” he said, and walked up to his room.
*****
It felt good to lie down. The queasiness eased up somewhat when he stretched out over the blankets, perhaps only because he was finally alone. He was scared, mentally exhausted, and had no idea why any of this was happening. The unwelcome feeling that his life was spiraling out of control was back. He didn’t know what would happen tonight, or tomorrow night, or the next, or any night for the rest of his life, for that matter. He didn’t know how he could possibly live a normal life with a body that was sly and powerful and equipped to bring terror to the world any time he lost consciousness. What was the solution? Having his family lock him up every night to prevent him from savagely mauling any person who might wrong him in his daily life? He didn’t even know if he was safe now. He didn’t want to ask for help; no one would believe him, and it would be terrible and strange for everybody. But alternately he couldn’t just do nothing when peoples’ lives were at stake…
He was startled by a loud knock at his door.
“Hey Pat, can I come in?” his father called from the other side.
Patrick grabbed the book he had placed on his nightstand a few days previous and opened it up to a random page.
“Yeah,” he called, and his father walked in.
“You feeling any better?” the man asked, one hand on the door jamb. He had changed into a yellow t-shirt that looked like it might be as old as he was, though it seemed a little early in the evening for it.
Patrick lowered the book that he had been pretending to read.
“Yeah, I just needed to lie down for a bit.”
“Awesome. Well, I know it’s a bit of a late start, but we were thinking about watching Fellowship of the Ring. You in?”
A long movie. That would explain the shirt.
“Nah, I’ve got some homework, and I’m feeling pretty tired.” Both of these were true.
“You sure?” His father seemed concerned. “The Lord of the Rings movies are like, your favoritest ever.”
“Yeah, I just watched that one like a month ago.” Not true. “I might pop in sometime.”
“I gotcha, suit yourself.” He started to go, then stopped. “Hey, we should drive up to Mooresville sometime and catch a movie.”
“That’d be awesome,” Patrick said. He wondered if he would hurt anyone else by the time ‘sometime’ came. It was hard to look even a week into the future.
“I’ll have to see what’s playing. Later, Pat,” his father said finally, and he left the room, shutting the door behind him.
Patrick stared at the door for several seconds, then shut the book he had been holding and looked at the cover.
Had he spent a single relaxed or normal night up in this room? It certainly didn’t seem like it. He hadn’t read a book in what felt like months, and other than homework and unpacking he only ever stared at the ceiling. He was more familiar now with the little shapes in the textures of the paint than he was with the rest of the house.
He wanted to have a normal evening. He wanted to go downstairs and watch a movie with his family, or play a game or read the book he was holding… But he couldn’t. It would be like enjoying a leisurely activity in the wake of a loved one’s death. His mind was so full of fear that nothing seemed appropriate. Enjoying himself would seem wrong, and wouldn’t even be possible anyway.
So once more he lay there, and nothing else. Eventually he drug himself over to his desk and did a sloppy job on his homework, then dropped back onto his bed. The sounds of movie downstairs were clear. He didn’t even need to watch it anymore; he could practically visualize the entire thing in his head, he had seen it so many times. He heard his family talking to each other, but couldn’t make out the words over the booming of his father’s surround-sound system.
Finally, after the three and a half hours of extended edition high fantasy had come to an end, everyone came upstairs to prepare for bed. Patrick clicked off his lamp to avoid any further talk and listened as everyone settled into their rooms. Another half hour or so passed, and Patrick was sure that everyone was asleep.
He would have bet twenty bucks that his parents had talked about him before they went to sleep.
“I tell you, that kid is like a light switch,” his father would say as he got into bed, “only two positions: on and off. One day he’s peachy keen, and the next you don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“He’s probably still adjusting to his new school,” his mother would say while typing on her laptop, which would be propped up on a pillow in her lap. The tone of her voice would suggest that she was having a hard time believing her own words. “It’s a really big change.”
“I just wish I knew what was going on in that brain of his,” his father would say, sounding frustrated. He had always been so straightforward and transparent that Patrick’s mysterious moods often left him feeling confused and a little perturbed.
“He just needs time,” his mother would say, then continue working on her laptop.
Patrick sat up in his bed. He stretched his shoulders and stared at his legs.
He felt bad about leaving his parents in the dark. He wished he could tell them things, but more than ever his thoughts and feelings needed to remain a secret. They definitely wouldn’t understand. No one would understand. He thought about his father’s suggestion to see a movie and wondered what was even playing nowadays.
Patrick glanced out his window and a shape caught his eye. There was something standing by the edge of the woods.
It was a wolf.
Patrick’s eyes grew wide and his pulse immediately doubled, thumping heavily in his chest. He had the strange urge to duck and hide for a moment, but didn’t move.
It was staring right at him. It was brown like he imagined he was himself, and maybe bigger, but he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t tell much in the faint light of the moon. It stood completely still, and for several long moments he felt as though he were staring into the eyes of some eerie statue. Then it turned and ran into the trees.
Patrick leapt out of bed and ran to his door. He opened it carefully and floated downstairs as quickly and silently as a phantom. Without worrying about his shoes he moved to the sliding glass door and opened it. Once again he was at risk of being torn apart by the need to both move slowly and go faster, though this time it was a thousand times worse. He could feel his heartbeat in his fingers as he eased the door open, and when he had made a crack just big enough for his body he slipped through, making a mad dash across the yard without bothering to shut it behind him. He stopped when he cleared the yard and felt himself changing before he even knew he was trying to, and after only a few seconds he was moving through the dark trees fluidly and silently.
Patrick sniffed frantically at the ground and the air, trying to pick up the scent, but he wasn’t sure what kind of scent it was supposed to be. He thought it should probably smell a lot like him, though maybe a slightly different shade. There were so many smells saturating the woods however that finding and focusing on one could be difficult even with a cool mind. Tonight his breathing was heavy and his mind a blur.
He chose a path purely on gut instinct and followed it, chuffing air in and out of his nose more rapidly than he had thought was even possible. With each sharp intake of breath his vision filled with a quick burst of color, each one painting a different picture that dissipated after a split second. He smelled the soil and the moss and the different types of grass and weeds and the trees and the trail
s of a dozen or so different animals, but he couldn’t quite pull his quarry out of the mix of half-familiar and unidentified smells.
Eventually he reached a flattened path in the dirt, and judging by the screeches of the bats bouncing off the trees it sounded as though it split into two directions. Panic began to settle as the thought of choosing the wrong path and never finding the other wolf became very real, but just as he was about to take another guess, he caught the scent.
He was right; it smelled mostly like him, yet somehow fundamentally different. It had a particular freshness to it; like that of an animal that had just passed, and so was all the easier to isolate from the staler smells of other daytime critters that faded slowly with the growing night. It led down the path to his left, and he took off after it as quickly as he could.
Patrick ran down the trail, occasionally cutting through the trees when he found a straighter path. He held the scent in his nose and occasionally slowed just long enough to make sure he was still heading in the right direction. Low-hanging leaves whipped at his face as he scanned the woods with his eyes, at any moment hoping to see the wolf appear from behind a tree, or to spot its heels in the darkness in front of him…
But suddenly the trail and the trees ended and the open street gaped before him. Patrick stopped dead on the border, not daring to step out into the moonlight.
The scent drifted out of the woods and into the night. Up the road, the high school was empty. Every window on every house was dark, and Hillward slept soundly.
Chapter 10
Patrick sat at his desk and pretended to go over his English assignment as Rachel did so genuinely at the desk beside him. It would be a few more minutes before Mrs. Spotts arrived, and he took the opportunity to think on his recent experiences one more time before the distraction of school officially began.
Not that thinking was getting him anywhere. After that night he had spent the entirety of the next day pondering this mystery while trying his hardest to maintain the illusion that nothing out of the ordinary was going on. Every spare moment had gone into thinking, and his thoughts had come full circle more times than he could count. He had barely slept at all the night he saw it, and the next wasn’t much better. Every time the idea entered his mind he just had to look out the window and see if there was a wolf staring back at him from the edge of those dark trees.