“So where do you go,” Sam asked, trying to be casual and taking another bite of the intricate cookie. “When you’re gone?”
Gabby was curled up by the fire, her tail wrapped around her body like a blanket.
“Where they want me to be.”
It was as good an answer as any.
“They’ve even taken my staff,” she said clucking her tongue against her big teeth.
Sam looked to the stove where she often rested it. Sure enough, her walking stick was gone. He felt bad for the old woman, though he had to admit that a senile woman with a big stick didn’t seem like the greatest idea ever.
“Now Sammy dear,” she said, “I need you to remember something.”
“Okay,” Sam said, his mouth half full of cookie.
“1891471121681.”
Sam stopped mid chew. “Um, what’s that?” he asked.
“My number,” she said. “For the hospital. If I ever need you to check me out.”
Sam smiled. “You expect me to remember it?”
“I do more than expect it,” she said.
And he would remember it. The numbers had already lined themselves into a neat pattern in his brain.
Sam felt an unexpected warmth toward the old woman. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll remember.” He stood to leave.
“Use the back door,” she said. “The wolves won’t find you that way.”
Sam nodded. “Zinnie,” he said. “Would you care if I ever brought a friend?”
“Of course not,” the woman said. “Though a family member would be even better.”
Sam smiled. A friend would have to do; his dad would never fit through the “back door” even if he wanted to.
As soon as Sam had squirmed his way past the licorice post, he started to run. He had to tell Ella—he wasn’t crazy.
It was two miles to Ella’s neighborhood. The houses rose up like clean, straight teeth and Sam paused. He knew where she lived because Sarah had dropped her off, but he’d never gone to her house before. He hoped it wouldn’t embarrass her. He stopped on the porch and took a few breaths, then rang the bell.
Ella answered. “Sam!” she said. “How’d you find my house?”
“I just…I remembered,” he said.
“So how’d it go with Sarah,” Ella asked, stepping outside.
“Um, okay.” He paused. “Hey, listen, that old shack—the lady’s there. I think she’s got dementia or something and comes when she sneaks away from her family.”
Ella raised an eyebrow. “So she’s crazy, not you.”
“Something like that,” Sam said.
“Hey, I’m freezing. Come on in,” Ella said.
Sam stepped into the warm house. He’d never seen so much white and black. It pressed against him like the walls of an institution. Sam shook it off. Ella’s aunt must have the best vacuum ever, that was for sure.
“Hey Ella,” Sam said. “Come with me to see it. I want you to meet her.”
“And tell you you’re not crazy.”
“A little, yeah,” he said.
“Okay,” Ella said smiling. “I’ll call Sarah for a ride.” Ella took her phone out of her pocket.
“No,” Sam said, too quickly. “Maybe we could. Well, could we…”
Ella looked at his face. “Okay, we’ll run.”
It took them less than twenty minutes to get to the licorice post and crawl through. Sam hurried forward, pushed open the door, and stopped.
Ella came up behind him, bright-faced, and then she stopped too.
The house was empty—completely, one hundred percent empty. No Zinnie, no furniture, no cookies, no fire.
“Sam,” Ella said, reaching out and putting her hand on his shoulder.
He shook it off, ran to another room, and then another. All empty. Zinnie couldn’t have left that quickly. It’d only been forty minutes since he had left her house. He swallowed the lump in his throat and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to say,” he said, walking back into the main room.
Ella looked at him with big, wet eyes. “It’s not a joke?” she said.
He shook his head, imagining his granny muttering about the non-existent things she saw before she died. “I think something’s wrong with me.” He turned to the door and Ella followed, then stopped.
“Sam,” she said, as he touched the knob. “I smell gingerbread.”
Sam hadn’t told her what he’d eaten.
“Seriously, Ella,” Sam said. “It’s not a joke.”
“No,” she said. “Smell.”
She pointed to a little spot on the floor. A pile of crumbs was there, and from it went a little trail of crumbs into the kitchen and up to a tall, human-sized pantry.
They both stopped in front of it. A person would have fit in it perfectly.
“Open it,” Ella said softly.
Sam just shook his head. A fear had started to boil under Sam’s skin—not just a fear of being crazy—but a fear of what he might have done during a crazy spell.
He pictured his granny straining under her restraints, swearing at the nurses, threatening people. And then, later, docile as a lamb, unaware of the bout of violence that had overtaken her just minutes before. Sam bit into his cheek. Was he really crazy? And if he was, had he done something to the old woman? Had he hurt her somehow? It was like the worst horror movie ever.
“You guys,” a voice shouted from behind them.
Ella screamed. Sam jumped.
Sarah stood by the door looking red-faced—mad or worried or cold—it was impossible to know.
“You’re crazy,” she said. “There are wolves on this property. And you crawled through a fake fence. I saw you. I followed you. And you two are here. Alone.” She looked at Sam accusingly.
“And who does this?” She gestured at the house. “Who comes to a place like this unless they want to smoke pot or make out?” Another accusing look. “But you two are just staring at that cupboard like a couple of nut-jobs.”
“We think there might be a body in it,” Ella whispered, so white she almost looked gray.
Sarah stood with her hands on her hips and glared at them. Her face was hard as ice, but Sam could tell the eyes had softened.
“And who,” Sarah said loudly, “would have put it there?”
“Hopefully not me,” Sam muttered under his breath.
“Whatever,” Sarah said, and with three long steps, she went to the cupboard and jerked it open.
Ella screamed and Sam thought he might throw up. But there was nothing.
Well, almost nothing.
At the bottom of the cupboard was a small, white appointment card. In neat print it said, “Napper Psychiatric Institution—Havensborough Unit. November 7th—9 am.”
Sarah picked it up. “Nice dead body,” she said, though it was clear that all the bite was gone.
“I came to see if you were home and wanted to go for a drive,” she said, looking at Sam. “Glad you were busy ghost-hunting with your girlfriend in an abandoned shack.”
“It’s not what you think,” Ella said. “It’s crazy.”
“It’s not,” Sam said, “but I think I am.” He took a deep breath. “I thought an old woman lived in this shack. I thought I visited her with a fire and a cat and cookies.”
“But whenever I come, it’s empty,” Ella said. “Abandoned.”
The rest of the story came out like that—monotone confession from Sam, worried whispers when Ella jumped in.
Sarah sighed and plunked cross-legged down onto the floor. “You guys are so weird,” she said. “I try to be weird and I can’t even manage it. I’ve got rich parents and good grades and my own car. But you guys just…” she motioned around the house. “What’d you say her name was?” she asked Sam.
“Zinnie,” he said, staring at the wall.
“Too bad it doesn’t have a name on the card,” Ella said.
“Doesn’t need one,” Sam said. “It’s just a coincidence.
Ella was chewing
on her nail. “The post is licorice,” she said.
Sam shrugged.
“You’re kidding,” Sarah said. “I thought it was rubber or something.”
“Taste it,” Ella said, a touch of challenge in her voice. “And, Sarah, what does it smell like in here?”
Sarah breathed deeply. “Spices,” she said. “Sweet spices.”
“Gingerbread,” Ella said. “And the trail to the pantry is made of cookie crumbs.”
“Maybe I did it,” Sam said. “With, like, my eighth personality or something. Maybe I made the cookies and the path.”
“Right,” Sarah said. “Because your other self baked a bunch of gingerbread in your house. Sam, do you even own any ginger?”
It was the first ray of light Sam had felt. He was pretty sure that they did not, at all, own any ginger. But maybe he’d stolen it. At this point, that seemed as likely as anything. Sam shrugged.
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Only one way to find out,” she said. “Next Friday morning I’ll meet you at the mental hospital at nine. If we see your old woman, we know at least that she exists.”
“What about school?” Ella said.
“What about it?” Sarah asked like she skipped it every day, though Sam knew for a fact that she was there every morning, and early.
Sam sighed. Whether Zinnie was at the mental unit or not, he was still schizo. She couldn’t have emptied out this house in the forty minutes he’d been gone. He was just glad he hadn’t killed her.
When he got home, the orange tabby was sitting on the step outside the door—stump of a tail.
“I hope you’re the evil twin,” Sam said to her. “Otherwise they’re probably going to leave me at the mental hospital too.”
The cat looked at him like she planned to say something back. Sam just turned and unlocked his door. When he went in, his trailer smelled old and slightly moldy. Not a hint of gingerbread anywhere. Sam would take the good news where he found it.
Chapter 29
Jones scouted the periphery of his land with a loaded gun. Two more dogs were dead—guts ripped out. And lately the rest of the dogs had taken to barking at night.
For a little while after the wolves had arrived in Napper it had looked like everything would die down, like the wolves really would become the eccentric pets of an eccentric billionaire.
Then the sightings had started—a wolf in a field, a calf dragged off during the night. And the howlings—lone calls as though from a stray dog. But soon the lonesome howls had been joined by other voices.
They were not dogs. Jones knew that. These howls were more ancient, more ghostly, more organized.
Wolves were gathering. It was the craziest thing—as though they were being drawn by the Gevudan, as though some father wolf was calling them home.
Jones might have thought he was just being paranoid, but his neighbors had seen wolves too, shot at them, missed. And then, when researching wolves on the internet, Jones had found a tiny article from a tiny hunting journal in Montana. There had been a movement—slight and seemingly insignificant. But the wolves were moving—as a group mostly, but occasionally one would break from the pack and leave, heading east.
Jones had not printed the article. He wished he had because the next week when he looked it up, it was gone. The page came up with a message that said, We’re sorry; this content is currently unavailable for viewing. When he searched the magazine, it looked like it had gone under—publication ended.
Bad timing and bad luck. But Jones wasn’t going to lose more dogs. He wasn’t rescuing and training them so they could be torn apart by wild animals.
Jones thought about the girl who’d been attacked on his property a week ago. At first he thought the attacker had been his pill-head neighbor—dressed like a werewolf and scaring teenagers half to death.
Now he wasn’t sure.
When Jones had gone to confront his neighbor, Jimmy-Duke, later that night, Jimmy-Duke had been passed out on the floor. That was probably nothing out of the ordinary, but his face was gray as ash and his breath wasn’t coming as regularly as it should have. Jones had called 911 and they’d somehow managed to get his heart and lungs moving properly again.
Jimmy-Duke came to sputtering about a werewolf in the cornfields—taking blood from a child. He’d seen it all through his binoculars, he’d said. And he had it on film. He swore up and down he was calling a reporter. Ever since then, he’d been in the mental unit under surveillance.
Which wouldn’t have meant anything, except that Jimmy-Duke wound up in the ER on a fairly regular basis—overdosed, talking nonsense and threatening to tell the news about whatever crazy story his unstable mind had cooked up. The hospital had released him all the same. Every time—back to his house with his pain meds and his drug factory. And no one cared. Until now.
Jones heard the soft tread of one of his dogs as it came up beside him. It was the caped one he’d gotten from the Humane Society. The dog walked step for step with him and it made the farmer smile. “We’ll get it, won’t we, boy?” he said, patting the young dog’s head.
When the animal looked at him with the dark round eyes, Jones could have sworn the dog was saying, “I hope so, sir, I do.”
Which was an observation the farmer planned to keep to himself so he didn’t wind up in the psychiatric hospital with Jimmy-Duke.
Once, before the great red sun fell from the sky replaced by its small white brother, the race of dogs ran in free-ranging packs—singing songs and spinning tales like colored yarn through a child’s hat.
The dogs gave their voices to free their friends—the humans who had sheltered, fed, and fought for them in their times of need. But they missed their song, and their story.
One night, many moons into the era of the high white sun, the dogs took their petition to the Holder of Woods, the Worker of Magic.
The young witch could not bring their voices back—they’d sacrificed them willfully as they’d known they must, but she promised them that if, at the next full moon, they brought the humans who were dearest to their hearts to her cottage, she might be able to give them something. And so they did. And so she did.
To those humans, young and old, who showed up to support their voiceless friends, she gave a gift—touching their lips with a beam from the moon, promising that when they both were kind and good to one another, each month at the fullest moon, dog and man could hear and understand each other again. And so it was.
The gift filtered on through generations, this fleeting bestowal of speech passed to those who loved each other.
Now there are but few remaining who can hear the voices of the dogs at full moon. But they walk among us—keeping their secrets so as not to arouse suspicion or distrust. For we, my child, must not put the dogs at risk.
Ella rumbled along in the city bus on Tuesday afternoon thinking of Loco. She’d spent the night before reading story after story that her mother had written. She’d begun typing the hand-written tales into her computer late at night. Which explained all the weird dreams she’d started to have. Every night since the corn maze, she’d dreamed about Loco; and every time, he spoke to her.
In the magical world her mother had created, all the dogs talked. And sang too. Ella found herself wishing that Loco would sing to her in her dreams. She had an urge to hear the melody, the hondsong, as her mother called it in the stories—earthy, variegated, beautiful. But in her dreams, Loco never sang. He mostly gave archaic, chilling warnings like, “They come.” Then Ella would wake in a sweat.
Between her mother’s stories, Napper’s wolves, and her folklore class, it was little wonder that dog and wolf stories were wrapping around her mind, like a song set on repeat.
The bus stopped on a dusty road that led through two walls of dried cornstalks. “Last bus comes at 6:00, hun,” the bus driver reminded her. “Don’t miss it.”
Ella didn’t intend to.
When Jones answered the door, a teenage girl was standing in front of him. She looked fa
miliar, although he couldn’t place her face immediately. The truth was he could remember a dog’s face better than a person’s.
And then she spoke. “Um, hello, Mr. Jones. My name is Ella Peterson and I was here a little over a week ago at your corn maze.”
Good mercy. She was the girl who’d been attacked. “Oh yes,” was all he could think to say. “I remember.”
Ella nodded.
If she’d come with her parents, he’d fully expect a lawsuit. Truth be told, he’d been waiting for some kind of legal letter to come all week. But none had. And now she stood here alone and looking not angry.
Jones stepped outside and did something his lawyer brother-in-law had told him not to do. He apologized.
“I’m so so sorry,” he said, “about the corn maze. I know I didn’t hire any werewolves that night. I,” he began and didn’t know how to finish. “I don’t like them.” The truth was that the idea of a man shifting into something else had scared him since childhood. He liked to look at a person and know what he was about. Maybe that’s what he liked so much with the dogs.
“I know,” Ella said. “It wasn’t your fault. I mean, I didn’t really figure he was hired.” She paused to look at Jones. “I guess someone took advantage of a situation to scare some people. I don’t think…” She paused again. “I don’t think he was right in the head.”
Jones agreed.
“But that’s not actually why I’m here.” Ella took a deep breath. “When I was here, I thought I saw a dog—he was rusty colored with a dark back that I think looks like a cape. Is…is he here?”
Jones smiled. “Well, I believe he is. Good dog, that one.”
“Could I see him?” Ella asked.
Jones closed the door behind him and walked to the field. It was the least he could do for the girl. He whistled shrilly three times and the dog came running.
Loco stopped when he saw Ella, and she looked at him like she might cry.
“This dog yours?” Jones asked, seeing her reaction.
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