by DG Wood
She stood right by the entrance and kneeled to examine the ground for prints. What could have been a toe and the edge of a heel and even a dog print were barely noticeable in the fine dust that covered the rock of the cave floor. Darkly pointed her flashlight at the cave walls ahead, catching the glint of the semi-precious flecks of stone embedded within. She took a few steps and then a few more. She reached the point where she had fallen during her last visit. It was still littered with bones. Beyond that, she reached a fork in the cave. To the left, a tunnel appeared to narrow and grow smaller, whereas to the right, the cave seemed to open up into a gallery. She took the right fork.
Darkly walked for a couple of minutes, slowly shuffling down the natural corridor. As she moved forward, the walls expanded, and the ceiling continued to open up. The little stars were now visible in the rock below her feet. She was surrounded. It was as though she was on a spacewalk.
Then the walls and ceiling gave way completely, and she found herself in the middle of a large rock bubble. The rock above her head was pockmarked with openings. She could tell this because her head became the occasional target of showers that dried up the moment she took another step and then resumed on the next step.
She scanned the gallery with her flashlight. It was about one hundred feet across. The floor was treacherous, smooth rock polished by running water. Something caught her eye in the center of the gallery. Something white. She made her way gingerly along the slick rock towards the object. It was clothing or a blanket. It was a sheet. Darkly could see it was stained, and that it covered a pile of objects. She reached down to pull the sheet away. It was then that a prolonged shriek cut through her skin and bone. It bounced off the cave walls, so that Darkly couldn’t tell what direction it was coming from.
Darkly raised her gun, not knowing where to point it. She began spinning and lost her footing, tripping over the sheet and pulling it free from what it had been covering. Bones. Most stripped clean of flesh. Human bones. This she knew because the head was very much intact. Staring back at her was Christopher, the actor killed soon after she first arrived at Wolf Woods, supposedly by a bear. This cave was a place of offerings. A place to feed! Who was doing the eating?
Of course, she had since learned from Buck that Christopher was not really an actor. He was a native of Wolf Woods bringing fresh DNA back to his hometown in order to refresh the gene pool and gain forgiveness for past sins. Christopher had been a meal for something. The shriek she heard did not sound like any bear she’d heard before. Darkly knew it was time to get out of there.
She got to her feet only to feel something powerful hit her in the chest and send her onto her back, and sliding along the wet rock away from the center of the gallery. She managed to hold onto her gun, but the flashlight rolled away from her reach. Darkly pointed the gun up and fired a warning shot into the darkness. All was quiet, except for the pitter patter of rain on rock. Her heart was racing, but she slowed her breathing and focused her eyes on the blackness for movement. Her training enabled her to find a path through panic.
Just as her senses were becoming attuned to her environment, she was knocked off guard again, when the most ungodly stench entered her nostrils. Then a hand grabbed one of her ankles and dragged her across the width of the gallery at remarkable speed. Whoever had ahold of her began racing around the perimeter of the gallery slamming her upper body into the rock.
Darkly had seconds to react before she would surely lose consciousness. She let off several rounds into the darkness. Without seeing, she found her target. The unholy shriek that filled the cavern was no human and no wolf. Darkly was free.
She leapt to her feet and ran along the edge of the rock wall until finding a turn in the rock. She followed it, never letting her fingertips lose contact. The pressure in her ears told her that the walls were closing in. She was back in the tunnel. A minute later, and she would be at the cave entrance. She ran through the agony that was filling her mouth…down to the roots of her teeth.
Then Darkly heard it. The snorting and snarling. Her attacker was behind her. It may be wounded, but it was gaining ground. She could make out a change in light ahead. Less darkness. Then she went flying face first into the ground and felt her chin burst open upon the sandy ground. She’d forgotten about the rock step.
There was no time to feel the pain. Darkly got up on her elbows and crawled to the broken boards and flung herself out into the open air, diving down the river bank and landing at the feet of an old Indian man dressed in a long leather overcoat and a cowboy hat.
“Something’s after me.” Darkly pleaded, hoping the man was on her side.
The old man looked directly into the cave entrance and sang. It was low and guttural. Throat singing. Darkly had heard it on a trip to the arctic. It was primeval. It was mesmerizing. She looked behind her at the cave. There stood the outline of a man. At least she thought it was a man. An impossibly large man, who must have been three times her size. She turned back to look up at the old Indian just in time to see the end of a staff slam into the side of her head.
CHAPTER FIVE
Darkly smelled the burning, then heard the crackle of fire. She was still mostly asleep, but in that weird state where she was alert enough to know she was asleep. In her mind, she was in her childhood bedroom, and the walls were catching fire. The flames were melting the wallpaper and plaster, so that it pooled on the floor, rising in waves that threatened to engulf Darkly’s bed.
Darkly opened her eyes. She immediately saw the smoke and sat straight up. It was then she felt the pain in her head. The throbbing guided her fingers to the pronounced bump under her hair, and the memories of last night came back to her. At least she assumed it was last night. Maybe she’d been out longer than that.
She looked around her. It was a hut. A weave of branches, whose holes were stuffed with moss. In the center of the roof, a hole released smoke from a small fire in a pit in the ground. Darkly was lying on animal pelts a few feet from the pit. Just inside the edge of the pit were two white eggs. Underneath her head, was a moose bladder filled with water and doubling as a pillow. Darkly removed the cork and took a drink. It was warm, sweet, not unpleasant. But, it wasn’t water. The interior of the small hut became cloudy, and Darkly swore she could see water droplets hanging still in the air around her. She collapsed back onto the animal skins.
Darkly turned her face toward the fire and watched as, remarkably, one of the two eggs rolled up out of the pit and cracked open. Darkly witnessed a fully-grown raven emerge from the egg, fly up into the air, then land back on the dirt ground in the form of a girl.
Surface veins covered the naked girl’s body like the veins of a leaf or the varicose veins in an old person’s legs. The purplish lines covered her face, her arms, her small breasts. The girl looked at Darkly, but didn’t look at her. Her eyes were best described as looking inward. Her body jerked and her face twitched. She jutted her hand out at Darkly, who wanted to recoil, but now found herself paralyzed. The girl brushed her fingertips down Darkly’s face and whispered, “Sing.”
Whispered was not exactly right. Clucked was more apt. The word came out of the girl’s throat, but her lips did not move. The girl suddenly cocked her head and turned and hobbled away from Darkly. She spread her arms and was a raven again, flying up through the smoke hole in the top of the hut, the embers from the fire singeing the feathers of her wings.
Darkly bolted upright to face the old Indian man from outside the cave. He was seated cross-legged on the ground on the other side of the now dying fire. He was eating a hardboiled egg. He pointed at the other egg, still sitting on the edge of the small fire pit. That was some First Nations drug-induced magic.
“Duck egg,” he said.
“Where am I?” Darkly asked.
“In the forest,” replied the old man.
He grabbed the remaining egg and tapped it on a stone. He then peeled the shell and passed it to Darkly.
“What was that I drank?” Darkly ask
ed without taking the egg.
“Medicine.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you are hungry then?”
Darkly took the egg and bit into it, examining the inside. It appeared to be just an egg. She finished it.
“Why did you attack me?”
Darkly didn’t know whether she was a guest or a prisoner. The old man smiled.
“I had to show him you weren’t a threat. In case he came out of the cave. It was raining pretty hard. But I couldn’t take the chance.”
“Him?”
“My grandfather.”
This from a man who was seventy if a day. Darkly was certain she could take the man if he forced her to. She just needed to stay clear of his stick. But, he wasn’t all with it. If his grandfather was genuinely alive, he’d be at least 120 years old. This guy was a hermit, she guessed. Someone alone in the woods for far too long and in such dire need of company, he’ll kidnap it if he has to.
The old man pointed at the faint blue spider veins on Darkly’s neck.
“You’re a wolf. But trapped.”
Now Darkly was getting somewhere.
“You know the people of Wolf Woods?”
“The enemies of my ancestors. Stole their hunting grounds. Starved my grandfather. He changed.”
Maybe she wasn’t getting anywhere, Darkly reassessed.
“Have you seen the sheriff? Sheriff Buck?”
At this question, the old man got up and made his way to the draped skin that led to the outside.
“The bird will follow you now. Keep watch over you.”
“No, please wait. I’m trying to find my friends. They’ve disappeared. The whole town has vanished. I’m an RCMP constable on official business.”
The old man stepped out of the hut and let the hide fall down behind him. Darkly followed him out. But he was gone. He had disappeared into thin air.
Marielle heard Wyatt’s voice. Like all canines, she could sense fear. It had a frequency that filled the head with the instinct to take advantage of weakness and claim an easy meal.
“Hello,” he called. “Is anyone here? Can someone tell me where I am?”
Marielle looked out the window. The warm sun hit her face. It was a beautiful face. She was rejuvenated. Two days of rest and recuperation, as well as the healing powers of her kind, had reduced the burns to faint scars. There was one thing, though. A condition that came with permanent change and everlasting repercussions. She was pregnant. She was completely sure of it. She guessed it was the kid in the toilet stall on the night she met Darkly. She had wanted to kill Darkly that night. Now, her feelings had taken another direction.
Marielle watched Wyatt walk past the church and the sheriff’s station. He was stark naked. Here was another change in Marielle. She had always had an insatiable appetite for the opposite sex. She had left home as much to set her desires free as she had to fulfill the mission to give her people a future. Not to mention her confrontations with other young women in Wolf Woods who held back their affections to acquire commitment. Marielle was what they labeled easy. They had made life in a small town unbearable for Marielle.
But, where the sight of a man as well-endowed as Wyatt would have required immediate satisfaction for her cravings in the past, Marielle’s inclinations were evolving. In the night, her dreams had turned erotic, as they often did. She had felt the one hand pinching her breast, teasing her with a little pain, while the other hand brushed its fingers lightly between her legs before plunging inside of her. She gasped and opened her eyes within her dream to see Darkly’s face looking back at her.
What was Wyatt playing at? From what she had heard about him, walking naked through town was something he would find amusing. If he had an audience. There was no audience today. And then there was what Marielle surmised to be fear. Wyatt sat down in the middle of the road and cried. The fear was genuine. This was most peculiar behavior for a psycho.
Darkly made her way through the trees toward the sound of running water. By looking for moss on the trees, she was able to point herself in the right direction and let the river guide her back to town. She passed the old mine shaft entrance to the cave system about an hour after setting off. It had been re-boarded up. By the old Indian, she guessed.
Back in town, Darkly stopped in at the diner and grabbed a few more jars of pickled foods and then headed back to the hotel.
After the few days she’d had, she wasn’t particularly surprised to find Wyatt and Marielle in the lobby. Wyatt was dressed in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. He was devouring what she would soon learn was his fifth raw potato.
“He doesn’t know who he is,” Marielle explained and then introduced Darkly. “Wyatt, this is Darkly.”
Wyatt took a pause from eating and nodded his head. Darkly looked into his eyes in search of the serial killer and the man who brutally murdered Peter and Shane. She saw what Marielle sensed. Her training enabled her to separate liars from honest men. This man’s mind was lost. Darkly began her questioning.
“Do you know your name?”
Wyatt pointed at Marielle.
“She told me it’s Wyatt.”
“Does it sound familiar to you?” Darkly continued.
“No,” Wyatt replied.
“Okay. Well, I can confirm that you do go by the name Wyatt. What’s your first memory, Wyatt?”
“Waking up.”
“Where were you?”
“In the woods. I was naked.”
“Did you know where to go when you woke up?”
“I saw the town. I was on a hill.”
Wyatt went back to eating, and Darkly stepped away, calling Marielle over to her with a nod of the head.
“Does he know what he is?” Darkly whispered to Marielle.
“He probably senses something. Those silver beads are to blame. They were in his brain.”
Darkly looked back at Wyatt, who had finished the fifth potato and was working on a sixth. She looked back at Marielle and finally clocked into the fact the girl’s body was healed. More than healed, she was new. Marielle’s cloudy mind seemed to have cleared fully, as well.
“You’re doing better.”
“I’m pregnant.”
“That’s quite the glow.”
Darkly didn’t know what else to say to that, so she turned her attention back to Wyatt, who looked up at her approach.
“Wyatt, we’re in the dark like you. Our friends who lived here disappeared. We don’t know where they’ve gone. But, somewhere locked in your mind, is the answer to that mystery. So, I would like to try and help you remember. After you’ve finished eating.”
“Okay.”
At that, Wyatt stood up and let the towel fall to the floor.
“We should first get you some clothes,” Darkly suggested.
Though of different builds, Wyatt and Buck were of similar height. Where Buck was more solid, Wyatt was wirier. So, with a belt and a rolling up of sleeves, Wyatt fit into his forgotten brother’s clothes.
Darkly took Wyatt on a tour of the home he grew up in, but nothing jogged the man’s memory. Black and white photos of his parents and his brother didn’t cut through the fog. His whole life had been misplaced. Understanding that the sense of smell was the greatest inducer of memory recall, Darkly had Wyatt sniff Buck’s clothes, the furniture, the bedding, the moose jerky in Buck’s cupboard, which he was also happy to taste. Not a recollection found its way out into the open. With this place being the closest to Wyatt’s childhood development, she was forced to ponder the likelihood that Wyatt’s brain had been permanently damaged by the silver beads, and that whoever inserted them, knew they were taking away a man’s identity.
A despicable human being’s identity, Darkly had to remind herself. But, Darkly’s job was not to judge criminals. It was to bring them to the judge. Was this a sentence that had befallen Wyatt? Had Buck defeated him? Then, unable to bring himself to kill his own flesh and fur, Wyatt was condemned
to lose his identity and wander the woods a lost soul?
And what about that warning word, sing? The spouting off from a deranged mind on the edge of oblivion, then recollected later by Darkly in her high state? Occam’s razor made the simplest explanation the most probable. But, what about the cave? Sensory deprivation and a wily old man who was quite handy with his wooden staff and bag of potions was the most reasoned conclusion.
Darkly proceeded to march Wyatt to every building in the town, trying to jog his memory. Doc’s home, the church, the homes of people Wyatt would have grown up with and would have known as well as any flesh and blood relative. Hell, thought Darkly, they were all flesh and blood by now in this incestuous town.
At the orphan Lily’s home, they took a break. In the cellar, next to the sandbox of root vegetables and the pots of coveted beetroot sugar, Darkly found a couple dozen small brown bottles of homemade ale. The three investigators enjoyed cellar temperature beer under a sun that was drying up the wet ground. It was out in the vegetable garden that Darkly first noticed the prints. A child’s feet. In a small puddle of muddy water, Darkly made out the shallow imprint of little toes. She followed them down to the fence of the sheep paddock. The animals had since been let loose, scattered across the hillsides, to be picked off one-by-one by coyotes.
But, within the past three days, a child had walked up to the wooden fence Darkly now looked over to check on her flock. Darkly looked down. On the other side of the fence, facing the tiny feet, were two large bare footprints.
Darkly interpreted the events that followed. The small footprints turned and moved down the fence line, but only for a short distance. After about ten feet, the large footprints replaced the smaller ones, as though they had eaten them up. The prints ended abruptly and reappeared on the other side of the fence. Darkly followed them halfway across the field, and then turned to Marielle.
“Who else in this town had children? Young children who would have been old enough to play on their own outside?”