His father walked slowly across the room and sat down on the bed next to Patrick, who scooted up and rested his back on the head board. His father wrung his hands together and stared at the floor for several long moments. Then he turned to Patrick.
“I know it’s hard,” he said, so quietly that it was almost shocking. “It’s been a long time, and I know you’re worried more than you ever even thought possible. It’s a horrible feeling, just sitting here, not being able to help or do anything but wait… I haven’t had experience with this exactly, but I know what the waiting is like. It’s unbearable. It never feels like it’s going to stop, ever…”
Patrick’s father had been sad before; like any family, they had gone through their hardships—financial stress, the loss of loved ones—but his father had a look on his face now that was unlike anything Patrick had ever seen. There seemed to be several different emotions fighting for dominance in those eyes: fear, uncertainty, confusion, the anger of injustice… His father’s face in that moment looked like a perfect reflection of every feeling inside Patrick’s own heart.
“But I want to tell you something, Patrick,” his father continued. “No matter how hard it gets, no matter how much you feel like you’ll be sitting in this room waiting forever…” he looked directly into Patrick’s eyes, “you can never, ever give up hope. Because when you give up hope, that’s when life itself becomes unbearable. As long as she might still be out there, she is.” His face had taken on a new emotion; now on top of the sadness and the pain there was determination, and a sort of plea that was almost urgent. He didn’t break his lock on Patrick’s eyes, and the look he was giving him seemed to reach out to some deeper part of his heart. A few minutes ago Patrick would have doubted his father was even capable of such a serious look.
He stared back at his father with his puffy eyes and didn’t say a word. After a moment he only gave a small nod of understanding.
His father finally looked away and stared once more at the floor.
“When it’s the only thing you have, you hang on to it, as hard as you can. It’s all you can do…” He sat on the bed for another several seconds, then stood up. “It was good to have you at dinner, Pat,” he said as he walked slowly to the door. He grabbed the handle and pulled it to, stopping to add one single thing:
“We love you, son.”
His father closed the door, leaving him alone.
The tears struggled to escape Patrick’s eyes once again, but he tried his very hardest to hold them back.
*****
Patrick could not have been more relieved that Friday was a teacher conference day. Just as the marquise in front of the school had promised, the teachers were in meetings all day, and the students were once again free to enjoy a three day weekend.
The little guy in Patrick’s mind who wore a suit and tie and wanted to get into a really good college reminded him that the next few days might be a good time to catch up on his homework. (Lately this guy had been much easier to ignore.) Patrick did generally want to do well in school (at least enough to keep him on his teachers’ good sides), but over the last week he’d lost his taste for all the tedium. He’d barely done any work since Rachel was taken, and what little he did was of questionable quality. He still had yet to receive a single complaint from a teacher, though. In light of the disappearance it seemed that no one had the nerve to go up to Patrick and say, “Hey, Patrick, I’m really sorry to hear that your new best friend has gone missing and under the circumstances been presumed dead, but, um, about those stupid little assignments I gave you, do you think you’ll be able to, uh, do them any time soon?”
He woke up somewhere around noon, but his body was still so heavy that he could barely move. He fell asleep again until one o’clock, and half-slept for another half hour after that. When he finally heaved himself out of bed he reflected with disappointment that a long night of sleep after having been enormously deprived of it didn’t feel as satisfying as one would hope. He always somehow expected to feel energized and gloriously alive the next morning, but instead only ended up feeling like a zombie with lead weights on its wrists and ankles.
He shambled downstairs and rummaged through the fridge for something to eat, relieved beyond measure that no one appeared to be home to make some dumb “sleepyhead” comment. He couldn’t seem to find anything very good, so he settled with cereal. When he’d choked down enough of his mother’s “Reduced Sugar Bran Flakes” to satisfy the gurgling void in his stomach (it was regrettably the only cereal they seemed to have at the moment), he pulled on his shoes and went outside.
The day was uncomfortably bright after so much sleep, but it was refreshingly cool. The sky was still without clouds, but Patrick figured that rain couldn’t be too far off. He thought he could smell it, though immediately dismissed it as imagined.
He walked down the driveway and for the first time since he’d lived in this town took a left on the street. Not that the northern part of town was new to him; he’d had the opportunity to explore this neighborhood along with the combined elementary and middle school during his night searches with Dean. Walking this road was still odd though, as all those hours scouring every road, tree, and lawn, watchful for “snipers” and cop cars had seemed like a strange dream, the darkness and the moon and his own altered perception creating a bizarre parallel world in his mind. Now everything was bright and clear, and as he walked he got the strange impression that he was entering a place he had only dreamed of before, discovering suddenly that it was real after all, and that the dream had been some sort of precognitive vision.
One detail of those nights that he certainly hoped had been real was Dean’s car being parked at a nearby house. He had seen the guy driving in this direction every day after school, and though he couldn’t tell its color in his other form (at least not its “sight color”) it had been the only such car he had seen in town thus far. When Patrick turned down the appropriate street and rounded a corner he found that his observational skills had served him well. Parked on the street was Dean’s car; some sort of old, red metal thing that might have been deserving of the label “classic” if it weren’t so beat up.
It sat in front of a run-down looking house that was painted a sad, dirty yellow. The paint was peeling and the roof looked like it had been through many seasons without any sort of cleaning or repair. Two other junky cars sat in the driveway and another in the lawn, the latter’s windows broken and its presumably white paint almost completely gone. The lawn was an ocean of cigarette butts, and a remarkable assortment of other objects littered the barren and rocky ground—engine blocks, broken furniture, various pipes, crushed beer cans… These certainly didn’t look like half-finished projects, however. They just plain looked like junk.
Upon studying the house Patrick was suddenly very reluctant to walk up to the front door. The only thing that pushed him onward was the fact that he could do nothing until he talked to Dean; the hulk had stormed off two nights ago after their narrow escape from the police and the man on the porch, and he hadn’t shown up to school the next day. Patrick felt it important to tell him about his talk with Ramildienne, and though it seemed pointless, Patrick held on to his father’s words and decided that they should come up with a new search plan.
Patrick passed an impossibly dinged up grey car that may have been black once and walked up the sidewalk, avoiding the bits of trash that were strewn about the ground. He stood at the splintering door and placed his finger over the doorbell.
There were raised voices coming from inside the house. At first it sounded as though two people were fighting, but after a minute it didn’t escalate. Were these angry shouts just being thrown around casually? Thinking that if he didn’t do it soon he would lose his nerve, Patrick pressed the button.
He didn’t hear the bell chime inside the house, and thought it might just be a particularly quiet one. When no efforts were made to answer the door however, he gathered
his courage once again and knocked.
This set off another flurry of angry shouts, and after a few moments he heard someone stomping up to the door. Patrick’s heart fluttered in his chest, and despite the cool air he found himself sweating.
The door swung open with a sickening creak and a very large woman looked at him with a scowl. She was wearing shorts that looked much too small and an enormous powder blue shirt with the ghostly remains of a faded sports emblem on the front. Her hair was a mess; it looked like it might have never been brushed in her entire life.
She didn’t put forth much of an effort to make Patrick feel welcome.
“Yeah?” she said with a rough voice, and under those scornful and suspicious eyes Patrick nearly forgot why he was here.
“Hi, is Dean home?” he asked, his voice coming so close to cracking that he could actually feel it. At that moment the smell of the house wafted out to him, and it was so strong with cigarette smoke and old wood and mildew and people that he thought he might throw up.
The woman looked him up and down as though she just might eat him like a monster in a storybook and shouted, “DEAN, GET OUT HERE!” though she didn’t spare Patrick the courtesy of turning her head first. He nearly shuddered under the full force of the yell, yet was very thankfully able to control himself.
The woman turned and walked from the door and out of sight. After a moment Patrick heard a deep voice say “What?” and the woman replied, “Th’door!” There was another moment of silence, then Dean strolled up to the door with his hands in his pockets.
“Yeah?” he said with his usual indifference. His face was straight and unreadable, and Patrick got that familiar feeling of slight shock when he saw that the guy’s frame nearly filled the doorway.
“I need to talk to you,” Patrick said, and even as he spoke the woman and someone else shouted at each other from inside the house.
Patrick moved aside as Dean stepped through the door and shut it behind him. He slipped a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and proceeded to take one out and light it. Patrick only watched with an odd sort of curiosity. (The concept of smoking had always baffled him, and Dean seemed so young and physically fit to start such a damaging habit.
“Sorry it’s not a mansion,” Dean said, flicking open a Zippo lighter and lighting the end of the cigarette sticking from his mouth, his hand cupped around it.
Patrick didn’t know how he could possibly respond to that, and only grimaced unconsciously as Dean took a drag and let the smoke pour out of his nostrils, so much like a raging bull in some Saturday morning cartoon.
“She came to me yesterday,” Patrick said finally. “I went for a walk and she showed up.
Patrick gave him the gist of what Ramildienne had told him, minus the parts about Dean himself. As he spoke the guy’s face was completely unchanging, and at the end you would think that Patrick had been talking about homework for the last several minutes. Dean only stood there with his arms crossed, staring at nothing, taking an occasional drag from his cigarette.
When Patrick was done he stopped, waiting for a response. Dean remained silent for several moments, all the while little bouts of angry yelling sprouting up from behind the closed door. When he’d smoked his cigarette down to the filter he flicked it onto the lawn without snuffing it out. He leaned up against the dirty wall with a sigh.
“If she can just appear wherever she wants,” he said, still not looking at Patrick, “what makes you think we can find her by sniffing around?”
“To be honest, I don’t think we can find her just by sniffing around anymore.”
“Then what do you expect us to do?”
Patrick had hoped that a plan would have magically presented itself to him by now, but it seemed he was still on his own.
“I don’t know,” he said, kicking at a pebble absentmindedly. “We’ve got to do something, though…”
“I want this thing done with,” Dean said, his voice a little sharper but his eyes still pointing nowhere in particular, “but if there’s nothing we can do, just doing something isn’t going to help.”
“But we haven’t even searched the woods around town yet.”
“To hell with the woods! If she can come and go all she damn well pleases, sniffing around for her out in the trees isn’t going to lead us to a trail. She might as well be gone.”
“But she isn’t gone! It’s been a week and I don’t know why, but she’s still here! For whatever reason, she won’t leave!”
Dean stood upright and turned back to the house.
“Until you can come up with a plan to bring her down for good, you know where to find me.”
“Dean, wait—”
Suddenly a high noise was floating on the air. At first it sounded like a siren on the other side of town, but when the steady note began to fall, the two of them recognized it simultaneously:
It was the howl of a wolf.
And it was coming from the direction of Patrick’s house.
Without speaking the two of them set off across the lawn and up the road. They rounded the corner and headed up Deer Creek, Patrick trying his hardest to keep up with Dean (who he was sure under other circumstances would have made a fantastic football player). They passed Patrick’s driveway and headed for the trail that connected the street to the woods, hammering the quiet day with their heavy footfalls. They reached the opening in the trees and launched themselves through, kicking up dust and pushing branches away as they made their way down the trail.
They skidded to a halt in the clearing where it had all began, and lying on the ground was a grey wolf. It was covered in wounds and bleeding profusely. On the other side of the clearing was Ramildienne, standing completely still.
Rachel’s face was solemn, even grievous. Her mouth was turned to a frown, and her eyes were full of pain as she watched the bleeding wolf on the ground in front of her.
“I am glad that you have come, boy, and gladder yet that you have brought your friend.” Her words were slow and meaningful, and she never took her eyes off of Mr. Vincent, who was struggling to stand up and failing each time. “I spoke to you of ownership last night. I told you how it is a deep law of nature, did I not? Well it seems that I have set things in motion that cannot be undone, and as such I find myself unable to leave this place. No matter how I try to escape to the land beyond, giving you these powers and involving you in my plans has bound me to these woods.”
She paused for several seconds, and no one moved.
“This cannot be undone…” her voice became low, almost too quiet to hear, “but it can be ended.”
Suddenly, like an abrupt gust of wind, there was an eruption of sound and the woods were filled with black movement. Crows—hundreds of them, thousands—poured out of the trees and circled the clearing in a cyclone of feathers and beaks and talons. The black wall swirled around them and the flapping of so many wings sounded like a waterfall, the caws a million voices scrambling to get inside Patrick’s head.
He changed on instinct and immediately noticed that Dean had done the same. The sound was now amplified to the point where it was hardly bearable, and the dusty, decaying smell of the birds assaulted his nose.
Rachel’s long blonde hair flapped around her shoulders in the gust from thousands of feathery wings.
“I regret that this is the way it must end,” Ramildienne said, her voice hardly audible over the din, “but it is something that simply must be done. I am sorry…”
She raised a hand in the direction of the two wolves and sheer terror grabbed hold of Patrick as the wall broke and the entire flow of crows rushed at them like a torrent of water breaking free of a suddenly crumbling dam. Before he could even turn to run a black curtain fell over the world and sharp pain ignited all over his body. Crows covered him like a blanket, the fluttering of wings filling his vision and his ears, his mind turning to a single solid color from the awful dust of their feathers. Talons scratched and beaks
pecked, and Patrick yelped in pain. He lashed out and found a few with his teeth, but the ones on his body were relentless and drove him to the ground. He gnashed at them and shook his head, trying to keep them from his face and eyes. With each fresh blossom of pain he could feel the strength draining from him, replaced by a panic and dread and helplessness that began to consume him.
Just when he thought he might soon fall down for good, a noise arose over the awful cawing and fluttering. It seemed distant, unreal, as if floating from a dream, but it sparked the last flair of courage inside him. Using the last of his will and his strength, he lifted his head into the storm of piercing beaks and claws and returned the call with one that seemed to flow straight from his heart. The long, high howl pierced the air and suddenly an enormous pressure began to lift off of his body. The note cut through the darkness, revealing the trees and blue sky once more, and the black cloud that had tried to consume him broke apart into chunks, then further into individual black figures which flapped away madly on glistening ebony wings.
The crows scattered, confused, and Patrick could now see Ramildienne, gazing at the dispersing chaos with shock and confusion. He turned away from her and ran to Mr. Vincent, who was trying again to stand up.
“Mr. Vincent, are you alright?” Patrick asked frantically with his mind.
A low mental voice answered.
“We have to get out of here.” The grey wolf heaved himself up off the ground, blood seeping from dozens of wounds on his back, as Patrick was sure was true of himself as well.
Patrick turned just in time to see Dean running straight at Ramildienne. She only stood and watched him coming, and when Dean was close enough he launched himself at her. Patrick’s stomach clenched and he watched breathlessly as the enormous wolf, fangs bared, flew bodily at Rachel’s tiny, shocked figure.
When she disappeared and Dean landed on the leaf-covered ground, Patrick was both relieved and struck with that familiar sense of dread.