Wolf at the Door

by Victoria Gordon

  ‘Now that’s more like the Kelly we all know and love,’ he muttered. ‘All fire and fury and ready to fight at the drop of a hat.’ His harsh bark of laughter rang in her ears. Then, to Kelly’s horror, his lips descended to touch ever so lightly upon her own. No harshness, no brutality, just a feather touch before he leaned away again and freed one of her hands so that he could bring the cigarette up to his lips once more.

  She stood silent, watching as he breathed out the smoke in a ring that shimmered in the moonlight before it wisped away to nothing. Just like his feelings, she thought idly. But her lips burned as if that brief, ever-so-light kiss had been a brand.

  ‘I’m still waiting,’ he said quietly then.

  ‘For what? Christmas?’

  Grey smiled as he answered. ‘For you to tell me why you deliberately snubbed me earlier on. And why you’ve been avoiding me. Is it because of the dress? Or because of the flower, which I must say looks very nice with it?’

  Kelly felt her anger growing, and she shook her head and gritted her teeth. Reaching blindly upward, she scrabbled the silken flower out of her hair and flung it at him. It struck the shining whiteness of his shirt front and fell to the ground between them, lying like a dead bird in a little pool of light. Kelly stamped upon it, grinding the sole of her shoe down until the flower shape was gone.

  ‘Is that your final word on the subject?’ He was grinning again, that horrible, mocking, know-it-all grin that she found so infuriating.

  ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘All I want is for you to let me go so that I can join my father and get out of this ... this mausoleum! So why don’t you just let me go? We have nothing to say to each other.’

  ‘I really get the feeling you’re angry with me, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why,’ he replied softly. ‘Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?’

  ‘Let’s just say it’s nothing I feel you could understand,’ she replied.

  ‘Your confidence is overwhelming. Why don’t you try me?’

  ‘Because 1 frankly don’t care to, that’s why. Now will you please let me go?’ Kelly was squirming desperately now, but his grip upon her wrist, while not so tight as to be painful, was too firm for her to budge it.

  ‘I’ll let you go when I’m damn good and ready,’ he snapped. ‘Which won’t be before you tell me what the hell’s the matter. Even you couldn’t get that upset about my objections to that black ... black ...’

  ‘Black what? The only thing the matter with that black dress is in your own imagination.’ Kelly had stopped fighting him, but her eyes blazed with growing anger, fanned by the fact she knew he was right about the dress and didn’t dare admit it to him.

  ‘It belongs in your trousseau, not at a party,’ he growled. ‘And what’s more you know it, or else you’d have worn it tonight just to spite me. In fact, I’m damn well surprised you didn’t, it’s just your style.’

  ‘My style? What the hell do you know about my style?’ she retorted.

  ‘I know what I like.’ The statement emerged in a low, almost menacing tone. ‘And that dress — on you — in public — isn’t it.’

  ‘Well, too bad,’ she retorted. ‘If I’d known it would upset you so much I’d have been sure to wear it.’

  ‘I’m sure you would,’ he snapped. ‘So why didn’t you?’

  Kelly couldn’t answer that question. It was too close to her heart. Breath coming in ragged gasps, she tugged once again against the grip at her wrist, but Grey was yet unwilling to let her go. Instead, he pulled her closer against him, flicking away the half-smoked cigarette as he wrapped his other arm behind her back and bent his lips to hers.

  It took all her will power to let his warm, searching lips caress her, touching her lips with a gentleness that was totally at odds with the raging heat of their argument. She stood unmoving, neither resisting nor abetting him, until finally his lips moved away again and she could look up to meet his angry eyes.

  ‘What was that supposed to prove?’

  Grey shrugged, his lip curled in something between a sneer and a smile. ‘Not a lot,’ he said.

  ‘Then why bother?’

  ‘You still haven’t answered my question about the dress.’

  ‘Nor do I intend to,’ she replied with a calmness she didn’t feel. How dared he use his sexual charms in the middle of an argument? Didn’t he realise the effect it was having on her? But then how could he? His affections were already bought and paid for.

  ‘I prefer the one you’re wearing,’ he said then, with a softness she hadn’t expected. ‘At least under these circumstances.’

  ‘Personally, I don’t care which you prefer,’ she answered.

  ‘Like hell you don’t!’

  ‘Will you please let me go.’ Kelly was fast losing her ability to argue with Grey. His very touch sent shivers down her spine, and she was beginning to fear that her body would betray her.

  To her surprise, he released her hand without further argument. ‘Have it your own way,’ he shrugged. ‘Lord knows why I bother with you in the first place — all we ever do is fight.’

  ‘Which is hardly my fault,’ she retorted. ‘If you’d stop trying to run my life there’d be nothing to fight about, would there?’

  She half turned to leave then, but his soft-spoken next words stopped her in her tracks. ‘Has it occurred to you that if I didn’t care about you I wouldn’t bother?’

  The reply emerged before Kelly could stop herself, and even though she regretted them instantly, the words continued to pour forth in a torrent she couldn’t halt. ‘Care? You don’t care about anything but yourself and your precious camp,’ she cried. ‘Well, you can stop worrying about it now, because I’ve had it! Right up to here! With you ... and your camp ... and your ... your everythingl I’m leaving. Right now! So why don’t you just go back to your little blonde girl-friend and her rich daddy. Maybe if you’re nice he’ll buy you a whole new camp, complete with cook!’

  And before Grey could open his mouth, she had turned and was running away from him, running with tears streaming down her face, oblivious to the uneven paving of the path, oblivious of everything but her need to get away. She ran back through the doorway and down the crooked hall until she found herself sobbing in her surprised father’s arms.

  Geoff Barnes held her until the tears stopped, with Kelly’s entire body tuned throughout for the footstep or voice that would warn her of Grey’s return. But he didn’t come, and finally she was able to raise her face and look her father in the eyes.

  ‘I’d like to go now,’ she whispered in a shaky voice.

  During the ride back to the Scofield home, Kelly said nothing, her mind busy working out what she would do. It wasn’t until her father had wheeled the station wagon into the drive that she spoke.

  ‘Will you drive me to the airport if I pack quickly?’

  ‘Of course, but...’

  ‘No questions, please,’ she pleaded. ‘I just have to get away — now! I won’t be going back to Kakwa; you’ll have to send Marcel and I’ll take his place if that’s all right. I can work from home in Grande Prairie until we sort things out.’

  ‘Kelly, are you sure you know ...?’

  ‘I’m not sure of anything except that I have to get away from all of this,’ she replied, yanking open the door of the vehicle. ‘Please, just bear with me.’ And she ran into the house to pack.

  It didn’t take more than five minutes, minutes that stretched into hours as she threw things into her suitcases and quickly unpinned her fancy hairdo and tied her long hair into the more familiar ponytail. She left both the dress she had worn that night and the now-hateful black creation hanging in the closet and ran out to the vehicle, still expecting Grey to somehow stop her from leaving.

  They drove in silence to the airport, only to find that Kelly couldn’t get a flight north until early next morning. Wait? Not a chance, she thought. To wait would be fatal, giving Grey some further chance of catching up with her, if indeed he would
bother.

  ‘The bus station,’ she decided out loud, forcing herself to ignore the look of patient resignation upon her father’s long-suffering face.

  ‘Kelly, I think you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘Perhaps if I talked to Grey...’

  ‘No! Oh, no,’ she protested. Her heart sank at the thought of it. ‘No. What’s wrong between Grey and me is a personality clash, that’s all it is. There isn’t anything you can say to him, or anything you can do about it.’

  ‘Oh, come on, child. I may be your father, but I’m not blind and stupid,’ he replied almost angrily, ‘You’re in love with him; any fool can see that. But damn it, Kelly, even people in love have quarrels. Running away isn’t going to solve anything at all.’

  ‘If we were in love, I wouldn’t be running away,’ she cried angrily. ‘But we’re not in love. I’m in love. Which makes a great deal of difference, as you should very well know. Grey doesn’t care a fig about me, or at least not enough to keep from taking on Sven Jorgensen’s offer, daughter included.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ her father asked, steering the station wagon into a parking lot at the bus station.

  ‘I got it straight from the horse’s mouth,’ she replied with sudden bitter anger. ‘Now please, let’s not talk about it any more. It’s over and done with. And not one word to Grey — I want your promise on that.’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ he replied grimly as he lifted her bags out of the vehicle and helped her carry them into the depot. ‘But you’re being a fool about this. Grey just isn’t the type to...’

  ‘Enough! Now kiss me goodbye and get yourself back to the party,’ she said. ‘I shall phone you from Grande Prairie to let you know I’ve got there safely. And please give my regards to ... to Mrs Scofield and apologies for my strange behaviour, will you?’

  Ten minutes later Kelly was on a northbound bus to Edmonton, seated alone with her thoughts on the seat directly behind the driver and feeling for all the world like a runaway child. Had she judged Grey too harshly? Was she being quite as ridiculous as her father had implied? Throughout the journey, on which the large motor coach barrelled up the freeway, she thought about the problem as clearly as she could. But it was no use, and by the time she reached Edmonton and changed buses, Kelly knew she had to live with her decision.

  Right or wrong, it was at least a decision, and she knew it would be impossible for her to be as close to Grey as the confining circumstances of the camp required. Whether she was right about him having been bought, she no longer felt so sure, but she couldn’t face the uncertainty and him as well.

  She arrived in Grande Prairie long after sun-up but still before the city’s business sector was more than half awake. And even that state was an improvement over Kelly herself. Lost as she was in thought, speculation and just a hint of self-recrimination, the lengthy bus journey had been a sort of waking nightmare for her.

  The miles passed like the lights of oncoming traffic, remote, distant from the dreamlike state in which she travelled. She spoke to no one, and was not spoken to, although several young men passed approving glances at her trim figure and youthful loveliness. Unnoticed, at least by Kelly. It was like walking in a dream, walking without the need to wake, without the thought of waking.

  Yet the trance-like state had not rested her, and once she had exchanged the bus for the less comfortable confines of a handy taxi and been driven to her father’s house, exhaustion began to claim her.

  Dumping her cases just inside the front door, Kelly moved through the house like a wraith, a part of her mind considering tea, another part breakfast, and the major part intent only upon sleep.

  In the bathroom, hooded brown eyes stared out over dark, puffy areas of flesh. Even the eyes were dulled by pain, by emotional conflict, and by sheer sleepiness. She splashed cold water on to her face, wincing at its icy touch, but seconds later she was, if anything, even more sleepy.

  Shambling, almost drunk with exhaustion, she checked the locks on front and rear doors, then stripped away her clothing and stood, uncertain, her mind torn between shower and bed. The softness of the double bed with its eiderdown coverlet won easily.

  She thought of a nightie, but the thought died before she really considered it. Lifting the coverlet, she slipped her slight, naked body beneath it, and was asleep virtually as her vivid hair struck the softness of the pillow.

  It was a poor form of sleep, little better than her trance-like reverie on the bus, except that now her body could rest properly.

  Not so her mind. On the bus, she had floated in a state that was neither sleep nor wakefulness, neither a true soul-searching nor a total escape from soul-searching. Here in a proper bed and with a feeling of security, her conscious mind gave her body the rest it denied itself.

  She was mostly in that half-light drift that comes between wakefulness and sleep, a drift in which reality is bent and exaggeration strengthened almost into truth. She knew the physical sensations of Grey’s touch, his kisses, the strengths and muscles of his body. And she knew also the responses of her own body, which shifted comfortably under its coverlet as her nerves bent to the machinations of her dreaming mind.

  As the waves of pleasure pulsed through her, probing and gently caressing her body like waves upon a beach, she slowly drifted nearer to true sleep, the sleep of dreams and ... nightmares.

  She was alone in a tall, murky forest, thick with dark spruce and pines that muffled the sound of flowing water. Alone, yet not really so. Around her were sounds of animal movement, crashings of branches and crunchings of twigs. There was no track, no obvious opening in the dank undergrowth, yet somehow she was in a clearing where no clearing had been.

  And she was no longer alone; across from her loomed the gigantic shape of a grizzly bear, a bear that walked like a man and wore a man’s clothing. Its teeth were pillars of ivory, and they chomped with a mushy, chomping sound that drooled ropes of saliva down across a bushy, auburn beard.

  It lurched down upon all fours, stalking towards her, and she could not move, could not scream. Only stand as if all of her energy were drained, rooted to the ground like the massive, watching trees around her. The animal’s eyes were piggy, pink with a raging fury that seemed to hyp­notise her. Closer ... closer ... and one enormous paw was outstretched, the talons alone larger than her fingers, far larger than the bills that were stacked on its palm, held in place by the claws.

  The money stirred on the paw, banknotes now lifting with a breeze that carried to her the bear’s strong, cloying scent. She reached out, her fingers almost touching the money though she did not want it, fingers moving without commands from her numbed brain.

  But a flicker of movement halted her, stopped her hand and caused the bear to shuffle backwards in a scurrying attempt to rise again upon its haunches.

  The intruder was gaunt, moving with the lean, powerful loping stride of a hunting wolf A grey wolf with startlingly grey eyes that shone silver as it turned to glare at her. And behind it, yet another wolf, only this one was a shimmering, almost metallic blonde colour.

  The grey wolf held her in its gaze, eyes piercing like daggers of ice as it stared through her eyes and into her innermost, private self. But the pale wolf ignored her entirely, prancing lightly forward to gambol at the feet of the bear, leaping and twisting in a macabre dance.

  Kelly could not twist away from the pale grey eyes, and her ears seemed stoppered. There was only silence around them, and the antics of the blonde she-wolf took on a demanding, pleading intensity. The form of it blurred, swirling like pale smoke as it spun more and more erect until its figure became horribly, beautifully, human and naked. But it had no face, only a yawning mouth filled with shining fangs and a pair of huge, ice-blue eyes that twinkled in the dim light.

  Dainty hands plucked the banknotes from the bear’s clumsy paws; slender, shapely legs carried the wolf- creature closer to allow taloned fingers to wave the money in the air, cutting the thread of staring between Kelly and the hug
e, gaunt grey wolf

  Only then could she focus properly on the sinewy blonde-crowned shape, and see with horror the hatred and insanity in its eyes. And she whimpered, and heard herself whimper.

  The grey one snarled, and she heard that too, a snarl that sounded like gravel rattling in a tin, rough and menacing. At the sound, the bear seemed to dissolve, melting down until only a misty paw remained to leave the money on the ground; then the animal was gone and only the wolves remained. Wolves? But yes, the female shape had shrunk away as the figure slumped lower, teeth bared in a snarl that encompassed not only the earth-bound Kelly but the other wolf as well.

  The snarl was returned, and something — a flashing paw, a swift-moving muzzle? — scattered the paper money into a wind-driven miniature whirlwind that spun higher and higher until it disappeared above the swirling, mist-like figures. The blonde wolf leapt in, teeth bared and paws outstretched to reveal claws like those not of a wolf, but of a tiger. And where they touched, redness traced tiny lines across pale grey fur that slowly melted to reveal smooth, dark-tanned flesh.

  Kelly screamed, and as she screamed she saw the blonde wolf-creature leap towards her, jaws champing as they flashed for a death-lock upon her throat. Again she screamed, twisting her body somehow so that the jaws clamped not on her vulnerable throat but on her shoulder, and as she did so the grey-wolf-man shouted her name, over and over again.

  ‘Kelly! Kelly! Damn it, wake up!’

  The sound penetrated, but not the words. And with the teeth grinding into her shoulder, Kelly screamed once more.

  ‘Wake up!’ The voice was more insistent; the jaws now shaking her entire body.

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she would have screamed again had surprise not left her mute.

  Grey took his hand from her shoulder, backing away from the bed with a strangely curious light in his eyes. ‘My God, but you have vicious nightmares,’ he muttered, turning to seat himself in a chair at the far corner of the room. ‘Are you okay now? Awake, 1 mean?’

  ‘Wh ... what ... are you doing here?’ she managed to stammer, automatically reaching down to tug the coverlet up so that it covered her bared neck and shoulders. It was a ridiculous gesture of modesty, but made so without thinking that she had done it before the ludicrousness struck her. Then she frowned.