The doctor shakes his head and with an all too mournful face, says, “The girl is losing her mind.”
Then their words are just mumbles and muffles as I fade into a place that does not exist.
Interlude – Everything
Fangs, flesh, rotting blood. Claws, fur, moon. Images flicker and morph, a continual dream of doom with no sense or meaning.
You can’t have her.
You can’t have her.
You can’t have her.
Grandma’s voice. Grandma’s call. Swirling in my head filled with fragments of moments past.
Blades, wounds, fading life. Consciousness, madness, a blood-dripped knife. Trees enclosing. Moon bearing down. A howl. A promise. A change.
She’s losing her mind.
On repeat. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over… Has my mind already gone? Gone where? Where am I? Who am I?
Four holes in my arm, calling me home.
Be quiet. Be still. Rest in this place.
No. You can’t have her.
Tick tock tick tock.
My grandmother’s clock stares at me—its face a full moon. Its pendulum a swaying knife dripping with blood. I’m losing sense of time, rhyme, life.
I fight it. I fight this venom in my blood and claw my way out of the dream…
10
I wake with a start, jolting upright on the too soft bed. Sunbeams force their way through the window shutters—golden lines of light gilding all it touches within the dim shadows.
“Red? Oh thank God.” Blaxton all but pins me back to the bed with his embrace. His scent is intoxicating and confusing and I don’t know where I am.
Feeling my unease, he collects himself, his ruggedly handsome face pale and gaunt with worry. He rests a hand on my forehead and he smiles. Despite myself, I cannot help but smile back and for one sweet moment, none of this has happened. Grandma. The funeral. The killing of the beast. And yet…
“I did it,” I say, triumphant. “I killed the wolf that mauled Grandma.”
His smile fades and another look takes over his features. What is it? Pain? Sadness? Pity?
The door bursts open and Doctor Revel blusters through the doorway.
“Thank the heavens. You’re awake.” His face is red from the cold, his breath short. His hands, although clean, still have traces of blood sticking to the cuticles around his bitten down nails. He looks at me in the way only a doctor can, and gulps. “Are you, well?”
“Thirsty,” I say and the doctor nods.
“Of course. I’ll fetch you water. Blaxton, perhaps you will assist me?”
Blaxton frowns at the doctor then smiles at me apologetically. His thick lips now pulled into a tight line. He rises and follows the doctor from the room, though he clings to my hand with an outstretched arm until only our fingers intertwine, finger tips, then I feel nothing but space.
A space and a private peace. The beast is dead, and I killed it.
Looking down at a clean night slip I’m wearing, I realize someone has washed the blood from my body and I can’t help but wonder who. The thought of Blaxton seeing my naked skin beneath my clothes both thrills and terrifies me, the idea of his hands trailing the contours of my waist, my hips, my… I calm myself with the realization the deed was probably carried out by Renee, the doctor’s wife and any thoughts of passion are dampened.
The wounds on my arm are clean, and without the oozing blood and puss obscuring my view, I can see their depths more clearly. They are no longer mere puncture wounds the size of a wolf’s malicious fangs, but seem to emulate four moon phases of the blackened eclipse. And the veins, or vines, connecting them, dance in intricate patterns. A delicate dance of shooting stars and expansion. I can’t help but stare. Stare deep down into those holes. Losing myself in another universe.
Falling.
Compelled.
Tick tock.
A cluttering of a bowl in the kitchen breaks the strange hold on me, and I shake my head, woozy, before checking if my strange compulsion has been witnessed. It has not, but it has reminded me of the doctor’s last words before I fell out of consciousness.
There is no wound… The fever could be causing hallucinations.
But I have no fever now, and yet the mark is still here as clear as day.
There is the mumble of hushed conversation in the next room. I recognize Blaxton’s tone and I strain to hear the words they wish to hide from me.
“Grief is a powerful emotion, so too the denial of it,” says the doctor. “It can push people to the edge of their emotional limits—make them do things they would otherwise never consider. Tread lightly, for the worst thing one can do with a patient fraying on the edges of madness is to confront them with their own fantasies.”
“You don’t think she…” Blaxton trails off and there is an awkward silence.
“I think we need to be on our guard. Allow her to talk with you, believe—allow her to think you believe in her tales, hallucinations, anything else that might somehow give us clues to her real mental state and capacity.”
“I will not deceive her,” Blaxton says, his voice louder now, a sharp edge to its tone.
“No, no.” The doctor’s voice placating. “Merely for her own benefit, allow her to open up to you. We need to get to the bottom of this before any further action is taken.”
Blaxton starts to speak but his words are cut off by a crashing door and a roaring call.
Woolsey. I can hear that rich tenor to his silken smooth voice despite his bitter tones. “It happened last night, so I am told. Why did no one alert me of this massacre sooner?”
“Please, Master Frey,” the doctor hushes. “Please, this is a delicate matter and Red is in a delicate state.”
Delicate? If there is one way I do not want Woolsey and his hungry eyes to think of me, it’s delicate.
“Red?” Woolsey says. “What is she doing here? What has she to do with this blood bath?”
I rise, and tip toe between shadow and light as the sunbeams continue to push their way through the shutters of the darkened room. I peep through the gap in the door, and some relentless force pulls me forward.
“I have everything to do with the blood bath. It was me,” I say through clenched teeth as I tramp into the morning-drenched room. The front door is still open and the sun blazes on the snow outside. In the distance I see the bulk of the dead surrounded by stains of crimson and revenge. “It was me, last night. I killed the wolf who attacked Grandma—the wolf who attacked me.”
The doctor crosses himself and takes a step away. Woolsey and Blaxton stare at one another. No one speaks. I shuffle on the spot, suddenly aware I am dressed only in a nearly translucent white night shift. It is the doctor’s wife Renee who fills the heavy silence.
“It was not a wolf we are talking about, Red,” she begins. Her face is pale and drawn. Her hands are shaking. “Kaya, her body was found just yards from the here—”
Kaya, the girl who feigned and fawned over Woolsey at Grandma’s funeral.
“—The wolf killed Kaya? How? When?” I ask, amazed that the beast could have resurrected itself from my attack, and I begin to wonder, again, about superstitious gossip and full moon curses.
Woolsey bites his lip. Blaxton runs his hands through his thick blond hair and turns his face from me. The doctor slumps in his chair making dust particles explode upwards to dance in a stray sunbeam.
Renee takes one minuscule step toward me. Her hands are held in a strange way at her sides, as if any moment she may turn and take flight. “Kaya was not attacked by a wolf, Red. She was killed—murdered.”
Murdered.
Tick tock.
Fangs and flesh and rotting blood.
“Murdered?” I repeat, replaying last night’s attack in my mind. The one blue eye staring up at me in the snow.
“Yes. And the murderer left their knife next to her body…”
And the murderer left their knife…
; “What about the wolf’s body? Where did you find that?” Perhaps it’s the wrong question when a young girl has been found dead, but I can’t think straight, my mind, it shatters. Renee shakes her head a sure ‘no’. Fragments of memory and imagination spread outwards into the universe. “But I killed the wolf. I killed the wolf just there!” I cry, if only to remind myself of what really happened. I point outside to a lifeless bulk in the distance, surrounded by crimson stained snow. They all follow the line of my finger. Nobody looks back.
“That’s Kaya’s body,” Blaxton says but he looks directly at Woolsey, whose eyes shift, uneasy. “There was no wolf found.”
There was no wolf found.
There is no wound.
But there is a knife.
And I know I left it in the snow next to the fur-covered body.
11
A loaded silence. The ticking of time stops, hovers. The world holds its breath.
Outside, a dark cloud tracks over the sun, devouring the morning light and replacing it with shadows. Shadows of doubt. Shadows of suspicion. The gloom creeps along the snow from the open door, consuming the once glinting light. Its shadow prowls over the threshold, moving along the floorboards towards the tip of my toes. I cannot bear to look at the faces I know are staring at me.
“Red?” Doctor Revel asks quietly, as if I were a wild animal that may attack at any moment. “I need to ask you something…” He hesitates for so long I am forced to look at him, to read his face, his terrified and horrified face. “Are you quite sure a wolf killed your grandmother?”
His words, his accusation slams into my chest, gripping my bruised and assaulted heart. I stagger backwards as the unspoken words spell themselves out in the chilling air.
“You think I made it up? You think I murdered my––”
“Doctor!” Blaxton yells, cutting me off. In three rushed strides, he is at my side. “You can’t possibly be accusing her of…”
An unspeakable accusation.
Blaxton pulls me to him, wrapping me entirely into his protective embrace. The doctor raises one eyebrow and turns to the crimson-stained snow outside. To the bulk of a dead body and my knife.
Woolsey glares, his nostrils flare. He says not a word but his venom is palpable even from the other side of the room, splitting through the gaps between Blaxton and myself; penetrating, menacing, but nowhere as near as dangerous as my own thoughts.
Was it a wolf I killed last night?
Was it a wolf that killed Grandma?
There is no wound.
She is losing her mind.
Grief.
Denial…
No. Their accusations are ludicrous. It can’t possibly be. I know the facts. I was there, so I should know. Nobody else stood witness.
Nobody else stood witness…
Nobody can back up my claims.
Kaya is dead, and my knife will be found next to her body.
But I have my wounds to prove the wolf’s attack on Grandma. The wounds the doctor cannot see. The wounds his wife cannot see.
“Blaxton,” I whisper. “My arm, please tell me you can see the wounds on my arm?” My voice quivers because I am not mad, despite what they think, yet I can find no way to prove my sanity.
Blaxton’s embrace unravels. He looks to the doctor to my arm and back to the doctor again. His lips pull into the tight line, an attempted smile resembling nothing of the sort. My mind whirls. I am so sure. I see the wounds, moving, coalescing, shooting stars and expanding skies. And somehow, the wound no longer pains me, as if it has become me, but nobody else can see it.
“You can’t see it either?” I sob, backing away.
Blaxton pinches the bridge of his nose.
I shoot a sudden glare at Woolsey. He saw it, I know he did. It was he who grabbed at my arm at the funeral before I passed out. He knows. He saw it. I’m not mad.
I break away from Blaxton, and charge toward Woolsey. The doctor and his wife scatter.
“Red,” the doctor warns.
I grip Woolsey, fingers digging into his firm golden skin.
“You see it? You saw it—the wound?” I’m screaming now, and I know that makes me look manic but why can’t anyone see what I can? The wounds, the wolves. The curse that seems to linger over the land?
Woolsey remains statue-strong, despite my best efforts to move him. He glares ahead at Blaxton and refuses to look down at me. “Please,” I beg, tears prickling the back of my eyes, anger cursing through my veins. If he tells them he sees it too, maybe they will believe the other things only I have seen.
Blood stained paw prints morphing in the snow.
The wolf I killed outside.
The wolf that killed Grandma.
The wound, God curse it…
Woolsey continues to glare ahead, refusing to meet my eye. He snarls, a growl-like sound full of anger and threats. And I remember his own threat to me ‘Be careful, be very careful.’ What does he know that he refuses to say?
“Red, please,” Blaxton says softly, but his face is stern. He opens his arms, gesturing for me to return to his safety. Does he too sense the threats behind his friend’s hostile eyes? Can he feel the danger?
Be very careful.
Woolsey grips my arms to push me away, his fingers brush against the phases of the moon wound. As he does, I scream out and we both stagger backwards as if electrified. Now he looks at me, wild eyed. I don’t know what happened but I’m breathless and heady and feint. Does he feel it too?
“Get away from her,” Blaxton yells.
Lightning strikes the cabin, a crackling welt as a storm descends. A roar of thunder rips across the canvas of the greying sky. The ground shudders. Outside, a wolf howls and we all turn to the open door, following the sound.
A pack of wolves, six, perhaps seven or more, trot to the bulk of the dead body under the darkening shadow of storm clouds. They sniff the red snow, one wolf pushing the body with its snout. Kaya’s body. For one terrified moment, I am convinced the beasts will start feasting on the dead girl. My innards tighten in response. But they don’t feast. They howl, a chorus of mourning echoes and sadness in the air. And the largest wolf, perhaps the pack leader, picks Kaya up in its mouth as if a young pup and carries her away into the woods, her arms and legs trailing the ground.
“My goodness,” Renee says, her tiny bird like hand to her unhinged jaw. “They are taking her body away to their den to feed the pack.” She gags and runs to the bathroom.
Woolsey watches Blaxton, then he turns to me, then outside. “I can’t stay here,” he says, giving me a disdainful glare. “I shall inform Kaya’s family of her death,” he says before sprinting out into the wilderness.
Does he know something I do not? Is he not somehow connected to all of this?
Think
Think
Think
Bloodied paw prints morphing from Grandma’s cabin to Blaxton’s homestead. Woolsey turning up when the wolves attacked Blaxton’s horse. He turns up now when I attacked a wolf. He’s seen my wound no matter his denial. His warning. His hungry, hungry liquid-gold eyes. I start to sweat but words and thoughts and meaning swim around my head.
He knows something.
He knows something.
He knows something.
Tick tock tick tock.
The phases of the moon expanding.
Fur and fang.
“Red?” Blaxton shouts, urgent. I hear him but I can’t shake my thoughts. I can’t stop the rocking in my mind.
He knows something.
“Red?” He calls again. “Doctor, what is wrong with her? Do something.”
And my hands are restrained, but I don’t fight it. I’m far away.
I’m somewhere else.
I’m someone else.
Falling…
12
There is only one thing I need, and that is the answer to my question;
Am I really losing my mind?
I feel a rope wrap around my wrists.
“Doctor, I don’t think you need to—” Blaxton is cut off.
“––The girl is clearly not in her right mind. We need to restrain her so I can administer the sedation—she has already killed that poor innocent child under her delusions, perhaps her own kin too.”
“She would never have killed her grandmother,” Blaxton spits, but I wonder, would I? Wouldn’t I? Wasn’t she the only person stopping Blaxton and I from being together?
Fangs and flesh, the taste of blood splattered on my lips. I think back to the attack at my house. The wolf was already there, wasn’t it? I heard it howl.
Or did the howling come from within.
I’m falling deep into my thoughts.
“The girl is catatonic. Quick, Renee, the tranquillizer,” calls Doctor Revel. He has to call twice and somewhere in the back of my logical mind, I assume it is because Renee is still throwing up her breakfast in the toilet. There is shuffling and shouting and arguing and I can only think of the bloody paw prints morphing in the snow.
The trembling starts, a fear, a terror.
“No. No. No. No,” I begin, faster and faster until the words are connected and only one—like the images in my head.
The footprints—were they… mine?
“It’s okay, Red, it’s okay,” the doctor soothes. “This won’t hurt but it will help calm your nerves.”
“Doctor, are you sure this is necessary?” Blaxton asks.
But I am not sure. I’m not sure at all. Not sure of anything or anyone… except Woolsey.
He saw the wound.
He grabbed at it after the funeral making me pass out.
If he saw the wound then none of this, none of these so-called delusions are false. All I need to do is find a way to make everyone else believe me.
“You’ll just feel a small scratch,’ Doctor Revel says.
Blaxton holds me upright, stopping me from falling to my knees.
Renee looks on, her fingers covering her open mouth.
“No!” I roar this time. “Get off me, get off me. I can prove it. I can prove everything if you just let me go.”
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