He was placing a few action figures on top of his TV when he stopped to look at one. In his hand he held Samus Aran, bounty hunter for the Galactic Federation; the helmet to her power suit was off (or more accurately, had been taken from her shoulders and replaced with a naked head) and she looked back at him with that ever-present determination on her face. Patrick realized that in the few weeks he’d spent in Hillward he hadn’t bothered to hook up any of his video game systems. He simply hadn’t had the urge to play a game amidst all the bizarre and incredible happenings.
Perhaps it wasn’t determination on Samus’ face; maybe it was disappointment.
Two weeks is simply too long, Patrick, she said to him with dead seriousness.
He placed the bounty hunter on top of the TV and finished with his room.
Later in the afternoon he accompanied his mother to the grocery store. (It was smaller than the mega-stores they had in the city, but apart from the selection and different price ranges, he found all grocery shopping trips to be pretty similar and rather boring affairs.) He helped her put away the food when they got home, and even contributed a little time to preparing dinner. When the meal was over he was more than happy to join his family in watching the next installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, eager to pass the day quickly.
That night and the next were perfect repeats. Patrick scoured the woods into the early hours of the morning, and whenever he slipped into his bed he was even wearier than the night previous. He slept until noon, but he was only averaging six hours of sleep a night—an amount for which many adults would surely give any earthly possession, but for a developing teenager was simply not enough. By the morning Patrick felt like a sack of mashed potatoes. He had been exerting so much energy and sleeping so little that the very act of getting out of bed was an enormous chore. To avoid suspicion he told his parents that he had simply “tweaked a few muscles” during PE on Thursday, and spent the majority of the days in his room, thankfully finding it in him to read something. He wanted very badly to sleep, but he had never been good at naps. He considered going to Rachel’s house and seeing if she wanted to do something, but he didn’t think he had either the mental or the physical energy. So he lay in bed reading, only dipping downstairs for dinner and the occasional snack. On Sunday night he fell asleep at the gloriously early time of seven o’clock and remained thoroughly unconscious until his alarm woke him the next morning.
*****
Though he was certainly feeling rested on Monday morning, it was still hard to get out of bed. By the time he finally got to school he had barely a minute to spare. When he stepped into the classroom it was buzzing with conversation; not the usual banter, though; there was a different sort of energy to it, a collective excitement.
Patrick sat at the desk Rachel had saved for him.
“Hey, what’s up?” he said with a smile.
“Hey!” She smiled back at him, then her face quickly took on a more serious look. “Apparently there was another attack last night!
Patrick felt that familiar brick in his stomach. He also felt a strange need to play dumb.
“What do you mean?”
“The wolf! Don’t you remember?” She looked confused by his lack of enthusiasm.
“I thought they said it was probably a dog.”
“No, some guy was taking out his trash last night, and he said a wolf just jumped right up out of the bushes and tore up his arm! And apparently he got a really good look at it to, because he swears it was an honest to goodness wolf!” She seemed really excited about this. Then again, so did everyone else in the classroom.
“So he’s okay, then?” He tried to put a little more energy into his voice, but the product didn’t sound very convincing.
“Yeah, it only got his arm. It came out of nowhere and just decided to rough him up a little, then leave. It’s almost like it was messing with him or something.”
“That’s really weird.”
Even though he wasn’t directly responsible for these attacks, it certainly felt like he had a hand in them somehow. It was true that he was quite certain he knew what was happening and who was doing it, yet he didn’t feel that there was any action he could take. Did that make him an accomplice? Despair tried to grab hold of him, but he turned it around and used it instead to fuel his ever-growing determination. This was simply another reason to find some answers as quickly as possible.
A few minutes late and full to bursting with worry, Mrs. Spotts entered the room and briefed the class on the present circumstances, as Patrick was sure every other teacher in every classroom at both schools was doing at that very moment.
*****
The only teacher who never mentioned a single word about the wolf was Mr. Vincent.
When he walked into class that day there was something different about him. As always he looked underslept and haggard, but this time it wasn’t just the way he looked—he was acting differently. He still gave the class a little smile with his greeting, but it was so small that it was barely noticeable. His voice was unusually soft, much too soft to use in a room full of high school kids, and Patrick thought that if the air conditioner were running they would scarcely be able to hear him at all. The teacher tried to guild his voice with the usual pleasantness, but there was absolutely no humor in his entire lesson. He only spoke historical facts, practically reading straight from the text book, as quietly as though he were speaking to a sleeping baby, or even to himself. When he wasn’t reading or writing something on the board he was staring blankly into space while he talked, and on more than one occasion Patrick thought he could sense the man about to lose track of what he was saying.
It was funny to Patrick how there probably wasn’t another human alive that would ever suspect a link between this mild-mannered teacher and the recent attacks, yet to Patrick it was so incredibly obvious. He wondered how many more people Mr. Vincent could stand to hurt before something gave or changed, and what exactly that would look like.
It was difficult for Patrick to look at the man, because whenever he did happen to glaze over the classroom with a distant gaze and land upon Patrick, the brief eye contact that followed was incredibly intense.
They shared a very deep secret, and as far as he knew there wasn’t another soul alive that even suspected a thing. Mr. Vincent’s past was a mystery however, and the secret ran much deeper with him—almost deeper than Patrick wished to learn.
He wanted to confront his haggard teacher, to ask what was going on and what he could do to help, but somehow he couldn’t muster the courage. The secret was so profound that he didn’t have the nerve to even talk about it; the idea of that other world bleeding into this one in any way was extremely unnerving, and for all his desire to protect the people of this town he had yet to even leave the safe boundaries of the woods. But if the man wanted help, wouldn’t he just ask for it? Surely if it were possible for the two to work together on this, the opportunity would have presented itself by now. The best course of action was to just keep looking.
After class, when they were out of earshot of the classroom, Rachel said, “Did Mr. Vincent seem a little down today, or was it just me?”
It had been much too obvious for Patrick to play dumb on this one.
“Yeah, he did.”
*****
That night he searched the woods again.
This time however, he had constructed a plan. He would go to bed immediately after dinner each night and set an alarm to wake him up after he was sure his family was asleep. That would be when he would search; and though it was tempting to do so until the sun began to rise, he would limit himself to only a few hours a night. He would get back to bed in time to catch a few more winks before school, hopefully finding himself rested enough to do it again the next day. It would be difficult getting into the swing of things (especially without arousing suspicion), and it would take a lot of willpower to search for so short a time, but this would ensure
that he could do a little each day without wearing himself out. Besides, many people claimed that a biphasic sleep schedule (as he recently learned it was called) was actually beneficial.
So he began the first night of this new plan. Unfortunately though, as far as the actual searching went, he hadn’t come up with a better plan than to run around and smell everything within nose’s length. He sifted through the woods inch by inch, hoping that he was retaining at least a general idea of what ground he had already covered.
Once I do find something out of the ordinary, how will I know what to do with it, or where it came from? He asked himself. It was the question that arose every night, the little voice in the back of his head that found it necessary to frequently remind him of how clueless he was and of how finding something might not lead to any actual answers. As usual Patrick pushed the little bugger back into the recesses of his mind, assuring himself that the correct course of action would present itself if he only kept going.
He was finding that the more he searched the less new and exciting the woods became. The experience was still fascinating, but it had been a while since he had discovered anything that surprised him. Now he was smelling the same old trails and feces and plants and trees, over and over again. Where before each smell had been a mystery waiting to be solved, he now rummaged through them like he might a pile of junk in the garage. The house he was exploring turned out to be a mansion, but it seemed he had finally found an end to the doors. After a few hours his concentration began to wane and he found himself thinking about arbitrary things, such as his upcoming book report and the grocery store and an old playground he used to play at in the city. Then he was sitting at dinner, recalling the meal from that night…
He caught a scent that snapped him back to reality.
It wasn’t in front of him, clinging to the large rock he was studying; it was in the air.
His ears pricked and a chill went down his spine, putting his hairs on end. His sixth sense went off like an alarm and he turned around quickly to look at the wolf eye-to-eye.
*****
It was big—bigger than Patrick felt, at least. Its eyes were fixed on him and it stood as still as a statue—not threateningly, but in the attentive way a guard dog might stand in knowledge that the signal to attack might come from his master at any moment.
Patrick could smell him clearly; it was the same smell he had chased the other night, the same smell that had been fading and that he had come to ignore, now here again, fresh with life. It was that smell that was so similar to his own, yet different in that way that two squirrels were different, or skunks or opossums or people. And now that he had it fresh once more to study closely, he could recall in his mind’s nose what he had smelled when he shook Mr. Vincent’s hand…
It was different. This wasn’t Mr. Vincent.
He wasn’t quite sure how he was so certain, but that special intuition he only seemed to possess as a wolf was impossible to argue, and he knew it to be true as assuredly as he knew he had four legs and a tail. He had only smelled the man as a human, but in that moment he had recognized something his human mind could not have perceived before this all started. He hadn’t seen the colors, but he had caught something different. Was it his deodorant or his shampoo or the way his house smelled? Patrick didn’t know, but it was much different from this.
He gave a start when he heard words suddenly forming in his head. It was as though the voice he used for his own internal monologue was being manipulated like a puppet and moving against his will, though it sounded just different enough to feel absolutely sinister.
“I know what you’re doing,” it said.
Patrick only stood frozen in place.
After a moment it spoke again.
“It would be in your best interest to STOP.”
Patrick wanted to say something back, wanted to ask what he meant but wasn’t sure he knew how, and couldn’t get his body to work anyway.
To make his final point, the wolf bared his teeth and growled. Patrick could see the whites of his glistening canines through the darkness, could hear the low, menacing rumble clearly in the stillness of the night.
Then the wolf turned around and took off running.
This time, Patrick didn’t dare follow it.
Chapter 13
Third period world history could not come fast enough.
While there had been plenty of times when Patrick wished with great urgency that the school day would speed up a tad so he could go home sooner, as millions of kids undoubtedly did every day, he had never felt it necessary that he get to a specific class period with similar haste. But even though the period he needed to reach so desperately was very early in the day, School decided that if it were to give him grace it would have to start giving it to everybody, and slogged along at its usual pace, somewhere between a dead fish and an elderly slug.
It would be difficult telling Mr. Vincent everything he needed to hear in the few minutes between periods, but it had to be done. The man needed to know that unless he had any specific memories of doing so, it was most likely that he hadn’t been responsible for the recent attacks.
The prime suspect in that case was now the wolf from last night. Patrick had no idea who he was or where he came from, but he had shown very clear hostility. He told Patrick to stop doing what he was doing; Patrick supposed he had meant for him to stop searching. But how did he even know Patrick’s intentions? And why would he be so insistent that he stopped? Maybe the other wolf was afraid that uncovering the mystery might bring an end to the whole thing, just as Patrick suspected and also feared a little.
So would he stop? He didn’t think that if he had an ounce of courage inside him he could stop after a single threat. The other wolf may have had more experience with violence, but Patrick was still a wolf. He was a creature of power and cunning, and he wouldn’t let himself be pushed around by someone just because they were bigger. His human self might, but he was someone else entirely in those woods.
Patrick wished desperately that he knew who this other wolf was. He wasn’t sure how that would help, seeing how its size suggested that it was an adult, and in the experiences of most kids, adults prove to be immovable and untouchable… but the knowledge might help him get to the bottom of things. He could also then talk to the person face-to-face with human words, which was the only way he knew how at the moment.
He knew he would never discover who it was however, unless he found his own realistic way of doing it. The only thing he could think of would be to follow the wolf’s trail out of the woods and see where it led, but this was simply out of the question. Especially after the second attack, it wouldn’t just be Animal Control people with tranquilizer guns roaming the town at night; every slack-jawed Cletus looking for good shooting would be joining the hunt now, and Patrick doubted that their guns were equipped to shoot darts. Wolves were now Public Enemy Number One, and he didn’t have much confidence that were he to come across a hunter he would have time to explain that he was a different wolf that was running around town after dark, certainly not the same one that had been mauling people left and right.
The only other option was to go door to door, smelling every person in the entire town, and he didn’t think that was a viable option quite yet.
“Hm, not you… I’m sorry sir, but do you have a wife or any children I can smell?”
*****
English was painfully boring that day, and Patrick had to exercise every fiber of his patience to sit still. When it was over he escaped Rachel’s ever-vigilant gaze, and was relieved slightly to be able to bob his legs and twiddle his pencil anxiously throughout biology class. Unfortunately, Mr. Randolph’s deep voice decided that this morning would be an appropriate one to drone on for about six years, and Patrick had never found osmosis nearly as boring as he did today. But finally the golden moment came and he forced himself to meet up with Rachel in the hallway instead of running straight to class to get
in a few (very) quiet words with Mr. Vincent before the bell rang.
“How was Mr. Randolph today?” Rachel asked as she caught up to him on the way to the hallway doors.
“Like listening to a lumberjack after a lobotomy,” he said. He had been saving that little bit of “everything’s fine, look, here’s a joke” all day.
Rachel giggled satisfactorily and the two of them entered the hall and walked to history class.
When they stepped inside, Patrick saw that Mr. Vincent wasn’t there—but the desk wasn’t empty, either. Sitting at the front of the room and leafing through a textbook was an impeccably round woman with very short hair and lips curled into an everlasting grimace—a face that reminded Patrick of a good two thirds of the teachers at his old high school. It was the teacher he had come to know as Mrs. Gomes, and she had traveled back in time from an hour in the future where she would be sitting down to teach political science, obviously for the sole purpose of dashing his hopes like a carton of eggs thrown at a brick wall.
Patrick paused for a split second when he saw her, but quickly broke free of his shock and continued to find a seat with Rachel, hoping she hadn’t sensed anything strange. He wasn’t trying to avoid her suspicion because he thought she would pry, but because she might worry. Also, it was hard lying to her. Really hard.
She hadn’t noticed his pause however, and the two of them sat down on the far right side of the room. As the class began to settle (this particular teacher had the very annoying habit of shushing the class before they ever got a chance to quiet down on their own, even if it appeared as though they were doing so already) Mrs. Gomes stood up and spoke.
“Quiet down, everyone, it’s time to be adults now,” she said with smug condescendence. It was a favorite phrase of hers—almost like a catchphrase. “It seems we’ve been exceptionally unlucky recently in regards to the health of our faculty, and until Mr. Vincent is feeling better or we can find another substitute, I will be teaching world history.”