Really, really big trouble.
He slid the door open with both a mental and physical wince, and all at once they stopped to look at him. There was a stunned and very painful silence, and almost simultaneously his parents shouted, “PATRICK!”
His mother said, “We found him, he’s here,” into the phone and turned it off, slamming it on the desk and rounding the couch toward him.
“Patrick, where the hell have you been?” his father shouted. Patrick had never heard him yell or use that word in anger before, and even through the deepening cloud it managed to surprise him.
“What happened to you?” His mother was horrified, looking him up and down, her eyes darting from one streak of blood to the next. There were tears behind her words.
“I just went for a walk.” His voice sounded tiny and disembodied. “I fell down a hill.”
His parents were stunned. They were looking at him in a way with which he was entirely unfamiliar.
“What were you thinking?!” his father shouted. “There is a sick wolf out there, attacking people! Why on earth would you just think it was okay to go for a stroll in the middle of the night?”
Patrick didn’t have an answer.
“I don’t know.”
His father put his hands on his face and then slid them through his hair in exasperation, trying to grasp the situation.
“Patrick, are you hurt?” His mother somehow conveyed genuine concern and accusing anger in one voice. She never stopped scanning his battered body and looked as though she might move to examine him closer at any second, but for some reason kept her distance as though stopped by an invisible barrier. A tear rolled down her cheek, and it hurt him much more than the gashes in his neck.
Lizzy only stood and stared at him from her spot by the couch. By the worried look on her face one might think that she was the one in trouble.
“No,” he said, “I just got scratched up. And muddy.”
“Patrick, why…” It seemed his father suddenly couldn’t think of what he could possibly ask, and could no longer even look at him, opting instead to dart his eyes around the room as if in search of an adequate question. “We called the police! I’ve never…” He closed his eyes tight and put a slightly trembling hand on his forehead. “We’ll talk about this later. Just… go clean yourself up.”
Patrick couldn’t find it in himself to look into their eyes any longer and did as his father said. In the most painful series of steps he had ever taken, he trudged past them and up the stairs, his family watching him incredulously, his muscles screaming in pain. He could feel their eyes on his back, bearing on him like three converged spotlights.
*****
Patrick closed the bathroom door and very slowly took off his clothes. He removed his mud-caked shoes and placed them on the linoleum by the door, away from the clean white bath mats. He peeled off his wet socks and placed them on top, then grunted with pain as he slid each leg out of his soiled jeans. He sat on the toilet and removed his shirt, wincing the entire time, careful to pull it away from his skin as much as possible while lifting it off so as not to rub at his wounds with the dirty fabric. When the shirt was off he held it in his hands, examining it with eyes that suddenly felt dry and very tired. There were tears in several places where he had been scratched and bitten, only after a second glance they didn’t look like tears at all; it appeared as if the fabric had disintegrated in patches and strips, simply wearing away to nothing as if it had been burned a great deal once and long since washed. Before, this might have baffled him, but the science of his transformation failed to seem important anymore. He did reflect however that he had been very fortunate to be so muddied by the creek bed; the brown sludge most likely hid from his family both the existence of this strange phenomenon and his deeper wounds.
There was a long mirror on the opposite wall to the toilet, and he examined himself in it for several minutes.
He had a few scratches on his face, most likely from the bushes. There were more on his arms and down his legs. These were long and thin—much thinner than they should have been, he thought. They almost looked as if they had been stretched across his skin rather than being etched into it when he tumbled through the branches.
When he turned his body to observe the gashes on his shoulder and back, this analogy seemed all the more accurate.
What he could see of the teeth marks weren’t simple puncture wounds or lacerations; they were jumbled over his skin in no discernable teeth-shaped pattern. They looked as though they had been stretched and morphed with image-editing software; some were elongated and unnaturally thin, and some were pulled apart at the edges as if with a surgeon’s retractor. The latter of these revealed bare flesh, some of which still retained a thin layer of skin, all of which stung like crazy. The placement of the gashes didn’t hold a pattern, but their distortion did, different areas blending and moving in particular ways, much like the thin grey layer of filmy suds on the water in the kitchen sink that forms a picture or shape until droplets fall from the faucet and disturb it.
He supposed this was all due to the fact his body underwent a massive change after the ordeal, and his wounds had no way of retaining their original shape. The advantages of this were that his blood had been given help clotting quickly through all the stretching of skin, and that what would have obviously been teeth marks now could be passed off as simple scrapes and long cuts, at least from a distance.
Or if the viewer had misplaced his or her glasses…
He didn’t plan on showing his scars off anyway, so he supposed it didn’t matter. There were a few particularly deep cuts poking up past where the collar of his shirt rested, but he could pass these off as gashes from rocks and insist that they in fact didn’t stretch down his shoulder and back, crawling and spreading like lichen.
Patrick put the plastic stopper in the drain and turned on the faucet. He stared into his tired and dirty face and at the scratches on his arms and legs as the bathtub slowly filled. At one point he could just barely make out the sounds of his family settling into bed over the angry roar of the water. They spoke to each other as they walked down the hall and their voices and footsteps disappeared behind closed doors.
When the tub was full he shut off the water. The hallway was now completely silent, though he knew his parents were undoubtedly still speaking to each other quietly about the best way to deal with him (a subject which would no doubt be confusing and difficult).
Patrick took off his underpants and inched his way into the water. He winced when each wound became submerged, but the stinging ultimately gave way to warm relief. The greatest relief came however when he finally slid in far enough for the water to reach his chin and he laid his head against the back of the tub. Every muscle in his body relaxed and the pain in his joints weakened, soothed to the bone by the heat.
Patrick didn’t think about Dean, or Mr. Vincent, or the crow, or even Rachel. He didn’t feel much like thinking about anything at all.
*****
Patrick slept very poorly that night. He was troubled by his parents’ anger and last night’s encounter, pained by his injuries, and altogether unsure of how the day (or the week, or the month, or the rest of his time in Hillward, for that matter) would unfold. But undoubtedly worse than the aching shoulder or the conversation with his baffled parents that would surely be taking place after school, was the fact that despite his greatest and most valiant efforts, the fear had crept back to him.
The fear, that horrible dark thing that haunted his life like the crow, staring into his eyes and coaxing him—daring him—to fight it. It reminded him of the things that he would never be, and made an effort to tell him every day that it was always worthless to try. That thing that wanted him to stay far from other people, that urged him to hide from the beasts lurking in the shadows, to take shelter from this inhospitable world and its scornful, judgmental inhabitants. That fear that he had recently faced and de
feated, seemingly for good.
But here it was again, and it told him to stay inside today.
Patrick awoke at 6:41 but stayed in bed until it was nearly time to leave, wishing to avoid any early confrontation with his mom; he would have plenty of time for that after school. He didn’t shower, but he changed the two pads of gauze he had put on his back and the one over his shoulder wound which hurt too much to have bare in his shirt. There were only the tiniest spots of blood on the pads, but they had been soaked throughout the night with cold sweat.
Patrick dressed and crept downstairs. When he opened the fridge there was a split second wherein some small piece of lingering irrationality from his childhood flared up and he thought that his lunch might not be there—as if in the heat of the previous night his mother would have stomped into the kitchen, torn open the door and dumped the contents of his lunch bag into Lizzy’s, saving the hard-earned food for the good kid—but of course the green and black bag was where it always was. Lizzy’s matching blue and black bag was gone, traveling with her down the road in the opposite direction of the high school.
Patrick put his lunch in his backpack and walked as quietly as he could to the door. His mother could probably hear him from her downstairs office—it was connected to the dining room, and he could even make out a tiny sliver of the back of her head through the crack in her door—but he put on his shoes carefully and with held breath, as if to avoid evoking a single word from her. He wondered what she was thinking.
*****
Although practically nothing about Rachel was bitter in the slightest amount, it was with great bitterness that Patrick noted that of all the times he had walked to Hillward High thus far, this very inappropriate and uncomfortable morning was the only one in which Rachel had accidentally slept in and therefore was present to walk with him.
Though he knew he would have to face her in ten or so minutes anyway, his heart sank at the sight of her walking up Carter Lane toward him. She spotted him and waved, then held her bag tight to her waist as she jogged the remaining gap between them. Before she even had the time to stop her expression changed drastically, the smile evaporating instantly like a drop of water on a hot pan. All Patrick could do was force a weak smile, the questions and concerns that were to come already bearing down on him.
“Oh my gosh, Patrick, what happened?” She looked him up and down almost exactly as his mother had, worry and bafflement and accusation all rolled into one.
“I went for a walk yesterday and fell down a hill.” It sounded very stupid coming out this way, but he nevertheless tried to maintain his casual smile (which felt a million miles from casual). His jeans were covering his legs, but it was too hot for a jacket, and Rachel looked from the scratches on his arms to the ones on his face. He was suddenly very glad for his last-minute decision to cover the scratch on his neck with gauze.
“You fell down a…” She seemed pressed for words. “How did you… Where was this?”
“There’s a creek by my house and there’s this hill leading down to it. I slipped and got a little scraped up on the bushes, nothing major.” His bruised hips screamed in protest to the lie.
This didn’t seem to comfort her much.
“My goodness, you weren’t walking alone, were you?”
He didn’t enter the conversation expecting to lie this much, but it slipped eagerly out of him. He was ashamed of it, and found himself wishing more than anything that he could simply spill his guts to her, right there on the road, recalling with great detail every single event that had happed to him over the last few weeks.
Instead: “Yeah, my dad was with me. I wouldn’t go out in the woods alone with that wolf wandering around.” It hurt him to lie so blatantly to her face, but he couldn’t stand to see the worry in her eyes any longer.
She paused, resigning to cautious concern. “My gosh… So you’re sure it was just a couple scratches? What about on your neck?” She gestured to the gauze taped to the side of his neck before he could answer the first question.
“Yeah, that one was a tiny bit deep. Just being safe, no biggie.” He cringed inwardly at his choice of words.
She paused again, relief dismissing the worry lines in her face.
“I’m so glad. You could have broken something! I know you don’t need me to tell you this, but be more careful next time!”
Patrick managed a small, nervous laugh.
“I will.” He looked into her eyes. “I promise.” His face conveyed what he hoped was assurance, though inside he wasn’t really sure of anything anymore.
*****
Walking into English class that day was one of the hardest things Patrick ever had to do.
Unspoken words and emotions taken in large doses were overwhelming to him, and made him extremely uncomfortable. Walking up the stairs the night before, just imagining all the thoughts that must be swarming around the room, aimed at him, had been unsettling in a very deep and profound way that Patrick was convinced must only be possible within his own neurotic self. The whole “I know that you know that I know what you’re thinking, but we’re still not going to acknowledge it” thing always made Patrick feel both awkward and vulnerable.
When he stepped into the classroom he could almost literally feel the tension. Every kid there was either jabbering happily to a friend or keeping quietly to themselves, as on any day, and Dean was no exception. Patrick would have bet a hundred bucks that the hulking student was staring at the ceiling, bored out of his mind, but the magnitude of what happened the night before hung over them like a poisonous fog, and he could feel the silent taunts shooting through it and piercing him like hot darts. Everything Patrick did was somehow linked to the fight, and every second that he continued living his normal life in the world of day was an act of submission.
He didn’t even dare to look at Dean. He only stepped in without pause, trudging through that glass wall into a room boiling with unspoken thoughts, sitting down next to an unsuspecting Rachel.
This wasn’t just a scuffle between two boys; this had become a matter of life and death. There was someone in this world that had all but tried to kill him last night, and that person was sitting a few rows behind him, in a classroom, in a high school. There were people—dozens and dozens of people—all around the both of them. They walked near each other on the way to most classes, sometimes crossing paths by mere feet. They existed within the same organized system—one that was lawful and civilized and just, that was patrolled by countless authority and protected by even more laws and regulations.
Patrick could still feel the teeth sinking into his neck.
And there isn’t a thing I can do about it.
*****
When Patrick stepped into the house and pulled the door shut the silence pressed in on him. Maybe he was misremembering, but he thought that there was always at least some movement or sound in the house—the chatter of the TV, Lizzy’s laughter, soft music from his mother’s office, his father’s loud voice… But today there was nothing. He didn’t hear his parents’ low voices until he was several steps from the door. He rounded the corner and saw them sitting at the dining room table, his father facing him from the other side and his mother on the right end. They stopped talking and looked at him when he walked in.
“Sit down, Patrick,” his father said quietly.
Patrick slid his backpack off and put it gently on the floor, then sat in the chair that had already been pulled out for him.
“We’re not mad at you,” his father said, sounding genuine.
“You just… scared us.” His mother may not have been angry anymore, but the worry set her furrowed eyebrows in place.
“We just need to know why you would think that being out by yourself that late at night was a good idea.”
Patrick didn’t know what to say, what he could say. There was absolutely no good excuse for what he did, so he could only try his best.
“I just wanted to g
o for a walk.”
“But two people have been attacked by a wolf! In one week!” his mother said, a little louder. “Didn’t you think of that?”
“I guess I did,” he said with a pathetic crack in his voice.
“I simply don’t understand what was going through your head,” his father said, the calm quickly leaving his words. “How could you possibly think it was okay?”
There was a pause as Patrick tried to think of a decent answer. He couldn’t.
“I don’t know.” There was another pause, almost one of shock, as his parents tried to process this non-answer. He attempted to fix it up. “I guess I didn’t think it would be dangerous if I didn’t go far. I just really wanted to go for a walk.”
His parents looked baffled, and at least a little angry now.
“Is there something you’re not telling us?” his mother asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Patrick said, a little too quickly. “I don’t know why I did it. It was stupid. But it was the only time I’ve done it and I promise I won’t do it again.” His stomach sank at the shameful realization that this was the truth; he doubted he would ever find the courage to enter those woods again.
They considered this for a moment.
“You really promise?” his father asked. His guard wasn’t completely down, but his shoulders relaxed a little.
Patrick nodded his head.
Another pause, then, “Okay.” His father had nothing left to say and the ordeal seemed over.
“Dinner will be around seven,” his mother said with a smile that was obviously forced but a little comforting nonetheless.
The interrogation complete, Patrick stood from the table without another word, grabbed his backpack and headed upstairs to stare at his homework.
*****
Patrick had a perfect track record and thus got away without punishment, but something between him and his parents had been injured that night. Patrick’s secret was creating a disconnection between them, hanging overhead just like the fog over him and Dean, only profoundly worse. They all tried to continue their normal, happy lives, but behind every smile and joke and lighthearted conversation was the memory of this ordeal. His parents saw him and had dinner with him every day, but the break in communication distanced them; though they had claimed the issue to be resolved, as long as he had this secret and refused to offer an answer to his strange behavior, he didn’t think they could all be comfortable. Every day he felt more and more as though he were living with strangers, and he was certain his parents felt the same way.