The Wolf

by Alex Grecian

  “So we can trade her the kid for Christian.”

  “We can’t leave him in there. But we’re not gonna hurt anybody. She gets the kid, we get our friend. And this whole thing might be scary enough she decides to leave town. Mission accomplished.”

  “What if she doesn’t wanna do what we say?”

  “It’s her kid,” Donnie said.

  “Those people don’t care about their kids like we do.”

  Donnie shrugged. “Everybody cares about their kids. Even animals. On YouTube one time I seen a mother giraffe chase a buncha lions away from its baby. It’s some kinda instinct.”

  “Pride.”

  “Just nature, I think.”

  “No, a buncha lions is called a pride,” Lance said.

  “Oh, yeah. I knew that. Anyway, you in?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Long as she doesn’t call the rest of the cops.”

  “I’m telling you, she won’t,” Donnie said.

  “But then we gotta go to a hospital. My arm, man.”

  “After this we’ll go see the reverend and he’ll fix it up hisself.”

  Donnie pulled the car to the curb and put it in park, left the motor running. Lance got out on the passenger side and Donnie turned on the headlights. At the same time he popped the trunk open from inside so they’d have a place to put the girl. When the lights hit her, the girl stopped and turned around with a scared look on her face. Donnie chuckled and jumped out of the car to help Lance grab her.

  The fog closed in around him as soon as he stepped away from the car, but he could see a moving shape off to the side that he assumed was Lance. Donnie moved out into the street so he could flank the girl. She was backing away more slowly than he was advancing, holding her phone up close to her face.

  “Hey, girl, whatcha doing out so late?”

  She held the phone up. “Waiting for you to get close enough I could do this,” she said. There was a flash of light. “I already called the police and I just got your picture.”

  Donnie didn’t figure she’d called the police. If so, they’d still have her on the line. “Too foggy,” he said. “You got a pic of fog, is all.”

  That confused her and she looked down at the phone. As soon as her eyes weren’t on him, he leapt at her and grabbed the phone out of her hands. He got his elbow around her neck to hold her still and glanced at the phone’s screen. She’d already exited the camera app, and there was a green bar directing her back to her phone call. His stomach turned over. She really had called the police. He threw the phone to the ground and stomped on it with his boot heel, hoping that would end the call, that the police hadn’t traced the phone. At the same time, somewhere off to his left, Lance started screaming.

  “Lance?”

  “Get it off me!”

  “Where are you, man?”

  “Donnie!”

  Donnie held tight to the girl, who was struggling harder now, digging into his arm with her fingernails, and dragged her along with him through the fog.

  “I can’t see you,” he said. “Lance?”

  Lance had gone silent.

  The girl bit into his hand and Donnie yelped, let go. She ran and disappeared in the darkness. Donnie froze in place, listening for her footsteps.

  “Donnie, where you at?” Lance’s voice was no more than a step or two away.

  Donnie gave up on the girl for the moment, shuffled to his left until he almost tripped over his friend. He squatted and put his hand on Lance’s chest.

  “You hurt?”

  “Can’t tell. My arm’s real bad, though. Feels cold, but like it’s on fire.”

  Donnie squinted, looking his friend up and down. The arm really was bad. There was a pool of blood under Lance, and it was growing.

  “Can you get up?”

  “Shhh. It’s still out there, man. It attacked me.”

  “What attacked you?”

  “It was like a werewolf,” Lance said. “Swear to God, running around out there in the fog.”

  “There’s no—” But Lance grabbed him and cut him off, pointing at something behind Donnie.

  Donnie turned and saw a black lion step out of the mist. Donnie stiffened. The beast stood silently, watching him for a moment. He didn’t realize it, but Donnie was waiting for the animal to growl, to snarl, for some warning that it was going to attack. When that happened, his fight-or-flight response would kick in and he would act. But when it finally did move, there was no signal or sign. It was on them in an instant, its hot breath in Donnie’s face, its black lips drawn back, its fangs dripping. Lance was screaming again, but that was the only sound Donnie could hear. His bladder let go, warmth spreading down his left leg, and he fell back, smacking his head against the pavement.

  “Bear!” The little girl’s voice, somewhere out there behind the curtain of fog.

  And the beast was gone, responding to the girl’s summons, a dark blur, gray upon gray, and then nothing.

  Donnie lay next to Lance in the middle of the street, waiting for his friend to calm down. When Lance’s screams turned to gasps, Donnie rolled over and pushed himself up.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Shut up and lemme listen.”

  Lance stopped whimpering, even held his breath, while Donnie stared into the fog and concentrated so hard that he gave himself a headache. At last he got to his feet and held out his hand to help Lance up.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Unless your arm’s falling the fuck off, we gotta get moving.”

  “The werewolf,” Lance said.

  “That’s the guy’s dog.” Donnie was embarrassed that he’d thought it was a lion, but at least he wasn’t blubbering about it like Lance was. His wet jeans were starting to feel icy cold, and he kept his body angled away from Lance so he wouldn’t notice the dark spot. “The foreign guy. It’s a big damn thing, but it’s just a dog. I killed dogs before.”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “We’re gonna hurry the hell up. That dog’s so big, it can’t move quiet in this. The crust of ice on the snow. It’s breaking through every time it takes a step. You can hear it, you listen close, but we gotta hurry or we’ll lose it.”

  “I don’t think I wanna find it.”

  “You wanna get Christian back from the statie or go back to the reverend empty-handed? That’s his nephew or something, man.”

  “We can’t go faster than a dog, Donnie.”

  “We can if it’s going slow. Like if it’s trying to stay close by a little girl.”

  8

  “Mom, I can’t find Maddy!”

  Emmaline glared at Deputy Christian Puckett, who wasn’t looking at anyone, just rocking back and forth trying to get his arms free from the electrical cord wrapped around them.

  “Where’s my granddaughter?”

  “I don’t know, I swear.”

  “Your friends took her?”

  “No way!”

  “Check her room,” Skottie said. “I told her to hide under her bed. Maybe she went back in there.”

  Emmaline nodded, her angry expression replaced by one of concern. She turned and scampered down the hall to Maddy’s room. Skottie propped her shotgun against the wall in the living room and went to where Christian was lying, braced herself behind him, and yanked him up by the arms. He squirmed, but she kicked him in the back of his knee and he went limp. Skottie retrieved her gun and leaned against the wall.

  “What was the plan here, Deputy?”

  “We weren’t gonna hurt nobody.”

  “That’s why you break into my home? So you won’t hurt me? So you won’t hurt my daughter?”

  Emmaline emerged from Maddy’s room and stood at the other end of the hall for a moment before crossing into Skottie’s room. Skottie poked Christian with the barrel of the shotgun.

  “Don’t move,” she said. She walked past him and glanced in through Maddy’s bedroom door before looking in her own room. Emmaline was on her hands and knees, her head under S
kottie’s bed.

  “Mom?”

  Emmaline pulled her head out and sat back, smoothed her nightgown over her knees. Her hair was in a net and her face was free of makeup. She looked small and vulnerable, something Skottie had never noticed about her before.

  “I can’t find her. She’s not here.”

  Skottie went back down the hall. Christian had just gained his feet, sliding himself up the wall, and she kicked his leg again as she passed him, forcing him back down. He stifled a yelp.

  She hurried through the rest of the house again, checking behind the sofa, under the dining room table, and opening the cabinet doors. She unlocked the back door and stepped outside too fast, skidding out onto the patio, snow arcing up over her bare feet. Moonlight through the fog made the backyard glow as bright as sunrise, but there was no sign of movement, no sense of a living creature anywhere. Bear’s paw prints were everywhere, crisscrossing over themselves, but the only human tracks she could see were her own.

  “Maddy?”

  No answer. Nothing moved in the floating white.

  “Maddy? Baby, are you there?”

  If Maddy had been hurt, she might not be able to respond. Then again, she might not be alone.

  “Bear?”

  The quiet dog didn’t materialize.

  “Bear, come. Come here, boy.” She wished she knew the right words, the right language. But she didn’t think the dog was there. The yard had an empty feeling.

  Fighting her rising panic, Skottie backed away from the door and closed it. She went back through the kitchen to the hallway, where Christian had regained his feet and was hopping as fast as he could from an angry Emmaline, who had found a broom and was swatting him with it. Skottie grabbed him by the collar of his uniform jacket and hauled him forward, faster than he could hobble. She stood aside and let him fall on the living room floor where there was more room to maneuver than there was in the narrow hallway. Then she turned him over and pulled his face up to hers.

  “You tell me where my daughter is, you son of a bitch.”

  “I don’t know. I never even saw her, I swear to you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.” Christian had begun to cry, and Skottie let go of him. She had enough experience with missing person cases to know that she had a limited amount of time before it would be too late and her daughter would be far out of her reach. But somebody had Maddy, or at least knew where she was.

  “Goodman did this, right? The sheriff ordered this?”

  “No,” Christian said. His voice was a blubbering wheeze, and she had to lean in close to understand him. “He doesn’t … He doesn’t know about any of this. Oh, shit, I am so screwed.”

  “Boy, that’s the first true thing I’ve heard you say,” Skottie said.

  9

  Bear padded along next to Maddy. The breeze had now changed direction and was coming from the west, and the dog blocked most of it with his bulk. Still, Maddy was shivering, hugging herself against the cold, dressed in nothing but her T-shirt and leggings. She thought of her phone, cracked and broken in the middle of the street behind her, and wondered if the 911 operator had taken her off hold already. Would they still be able to trace the call? Maddy knew she couldn’t count on it. There was only one other place she could think to go for help, one other person she knew she could trust.

  “It’s this way,” she said to Bear. But she wasn’t at all certain that they were going in the right direction. She had lived in her grandmother’s house all summer, but she had spent most of her time outside looking down at her phone. She scanned the street for familiar landmarks, things she had seen during their walk to the grocery store, but she could see only a few feet ahead.

  “Bear, do you know the way? The grocery store? Do you remember?” Her teeth were chattering, and she didn’t know the word for groceries in Esperanto, and she didn’t want to go to the store anyway, but she knew her father’s hotel was somewhere between her house and the IGA. “Steak, Bear,” she said. “Steak?” She had spent an hour before dinner with Bear, looking up words online to test him, and now she struggled to remember some of her new vocabulary. Grocery store and steak were too specific, but maybe something simpler. What was the word for food? “Um … Manga Joe, Bear?” That wasn’t right, but it was close. She stopped walking and closed her eyes, put her hands and face in Bear’s warm fur and concentrated. “Manĝaĵo! That’s it!”

  Bear snorted and flicked his left ear at her, then nudged her into motion. He crossed the street and waited for her, then led the way in a direction Maddy was sure was wrong.

  “No, Bear, the grocery store. Food. Manĝaĵo.”

  Bear kept moving and Maddy had no choice but to follow along, picking her way carefully across the crust of snow and swiveling her toes a little with each step, digging in the way her father had taught her during their harsh Chicago winters together.

  And two blocks later she saw the looming outline of the hotel. Bear had understood and had led her back along the route they’d taken in daylight, reversing the walk from the grocery store.

  “This is it, boy. You did it! My dad’s here, and he’ll help us.”

  Bear stopped and looked back at her, his fur blowing gently in the wind.

  She knew he didn’t understand and she felt a pang of regret for tricking him. He probably expected more steak, and he wasn’t likely to get it tonight.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “I bet my grandma can make something special for you for Thanksgiving, okay? I’ll tell her.”

  She grabbed Bear’s mane and he allowed her to pull him down the sidewalk and around the side of the building to the front. Orange light spilled out through the glass doors and was whisked away by the mist.

  “Stay here, Bear. Restu, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  She left Bear sitting next to a concrete fountain that had been drained for the winter and she scooted through a revolving door. The rush of warm air made her cheeks flush, and her nose started running. She wiped it on the back of her hand and walked as calmly as she could to the registration counter. No one was in sight, but there was a bell and she rang it. A minute later a skinny guy came out of a back room. He had thick black-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed beard and was chewing something. When he saw her, he swallowed whatever was in his mouth and came around the counter toward her.

  “Hey, you okay?” He bent at the waist, and she was afraid he was going to kneel down in front of her. She wondered how bad her hair looked and wished she had a jacket to cover herself with. Her pajamas were thin and inadequate, and looking down at the little flowers all over her leggings, Maddy felt more like a little kid than she wanted to.

  “Where are your parents?” He looked up at the revolving door and the big window next to it as if he might be able to see the parking lot through the blanket of white fog.

  “I need to talk to my dad,” Maddy said. “He’s a guest here.”

  “Your dad’s here in the hotel?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know what room.”

  “What’s his name?” The guy seemed relieved to have something he could do. He went back around the end of the counter and tapped on a keyboard.

  “Brandon Foster,” Maddy said. “He’s a policeman.”

  The guy nodded and tapped some more keys, peered at a monitor. “Yeah, he’s in 514. I can ring him, but it’s pretty late.” He looked up at her and shook his head. “Never mind. Lemme call him for you.”

  She spotted the elevator in the far corner of the lobby. “It’s okay, I can find it.”

  “Well, I really need an adult to vouch for you. It’s the middle of the night.” He pointed to a couch next to the counter. “Tell you what, wait here, okay? Lemme find your dad for you.”

  Maddy nodded and went to the couch, which was decorated with the same sort of flowers as her pajamas, but bigger. She fell backward into the cushions and watched the guy pick up a phone with a long cord. He punched four buttons and waited. Maddy could hear a pho
ne ringing at the other end and then a muffled voice.

  “Mr. Foster,” the desk guy said, “I have a girl here who says she’s your daughter?”

  The muffled voice said something in response. It sounded like a question.

  The guy looked over at Maddy. “What’s your name?”

  “Maddy. Tell him Mom’s in trouble.”

  “Sir, her name’s Maddy. She came in here pretty cold and wet, and she says her mother’s in some kind of trouble.”

  The muffled voice, her father sounding much less sleepy than when he’d answered the phone, said something sharp and short and the desk guy hung up the phone.

  “He’s on his way down. Lemme get you a blanket. Laundry just came out of the dryer, so it’ll be nice and warm.” He smiled and she smiled back at him.

  The guy returned to his back room, and Maddy watched the elevator. The lobby felt empty and sterile, and now that she knew her dad was coming to help she realized she was shivering. She wiped her nose again and glanced over the counter to make sure the guy wasn’t coming before she rubbed the back of her hand on the arm of the couch. Her eye was drawn to movement outside and, as she watched, a man appeared on the other side of the big window. He put his face against the glass, shielding it with his hands and looking around at the lobby. Then he saw her and pulled back, but not before she recognized him.

  He was one of the men who had broken into her house, the one who had grabbed her and smashed her phone.

  “Bear!”

  The dog was alone out there. Without thinking, Maddy jumped off the couch and ran across the lobby. There was an emergency exit next to the revolving door, and she slammed into the push bar and through. She vaguely heard her name being called, but the door shut behind her and she pressed on into the foggy night.

  “Bear! Venu, Bear! Venu!” She remembered how to tell him to come to her, but she couldn’t remember the word for danger, even though she was sure she’d studied that one.

  Something moved, almost within arm’s reach, and then she saw him. Bear materialized in front of her, fog rippling around his imposing frame. At the same time she felt warm air behind her, heard the door snick open, and a yellow wedge of light spilled out over the sidewalk at her feet.