Big, Bad Wolf
by Bridget Essex
Synopsis:
Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?
From the outside, librarian Megan Upton appears to live a quiet, painfully ordinary life. She’s lonely, but she’s content, more or less—that is, when she isn’t being haunted by wolves.
She sees their hulking shadows in blizzards, and their shapes stalk her dreams. Even worse, it’s a family affliction: her beloved grandmother, whose sanity seems to be slowly slipping away, raves about seeing phantom wolves, too.
When a twist of fate brings the beautiful, enigmatic, hungry-eyed Kara into Megan’s life, Megan’s wolf sightings intensify, even as her attraction to Kara grows.
Soon, despite the wintry weather, love begins to warm Megan’s heart. But sharp-toothed danger lurks everywhere. One dark, snowy night at her grandmother’s isolated cabin in the mountains, Megan will have to confront the wolves—and the truth about her family, Kara, and herself—face to face.
Part heart-pounding mystery, part epic romance, the novel Big, Bad Wolf, will leave you spellbound. It is approximately 52,000 words (several days worth of reading or so).
"Big, Bad Wolf"
© Bridget Essex 2014
Rose and Star Press
First Edition
All rights reserved
No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. Please note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
It was January--that terrible month where nothing is joyful since Christmas is over and there’s nothing to look forward to but snow and the wind, howling like wolves at the door.
Normally, I like winter. I mean, sure, it can be terrible, you have to drive carefully; if you don’t own a humidifier the moistureless days tend to give you a lot of nosebleeds (or maybe that’s just me), but that afternoon, as I parked the car, shutting off the ignition with mittened hands, I realized that it was Friday and yes, it was kind of miserable outside, but normally Friday is my happiest day of the week.
Yes, I should be happy. But last night’s dream had done away with any good mood that might have started growing in me. I shuddered as I remembered the gray cast of the dream, like it was a horror movie and had been shot through a particularly dirty lens. Part of me had almost wanted to go to the grocery store just to prove to myself that it had been just a dream, and it was ridiculous of me to even think about it anymore.
It’s kind of obvious that there are usually no wolves between the milk and bread aisles.
Wolves. The dream was palpable in the air, like snow, and I swallowed. I’d tried not to think about it the entire drive to said grocery store, and I’d pretty much succeeded, and that was great. But now I had thought of it again, and it was in my heart and head again as I stared at the sepia-colored brick of Big Al’s Grocery, wondering if when I entered through the creaky automatic doors if I’d be greeted by the demon from my stupid, I-really-needed-to-get-it-out-of-my-head dream: a wolf with large paws and a blood-flecked snout.
Of course nothing greeted me in the entryway but a cart with a wobbly wheel that kept making it lean toward the right. In fact, the grocery store was practically deserted, save for one pimply stock boy who stared at me from under hooded eyes, leaning, apparently bored, against the old-fashioned cash register.
I gathered essentials in my arms before dumping them into the squeaky cart. Bread, two types, since Gramma is old-school and likes white bread and I can’t stomach the stuff. Milk, eggs and cans of tuna fish. The speakers overhead played something so inane it would have been outlawed in an elevator. I shoved the cart up to the cash register and started unloading as the stock boy shoveled my purchases into thin plastic bags.
So, no, very much obviously, there were no wolves in the grocery store. Nothing but rivulets of melted snow on the ground, and the monochrome tones of that hideous elevator music, pumped through the speakers.
So I really needed to stop thinking about that stupid dream.
I loaded the thin plastic bags into the trunk of my car, trying to kick the caked ice from beneath the wheels of the car before folding myself into the driver’s side and revving the engine in the winter stillness. I let it idle for a long moment, keeping my mittened hands in my pockets as the windshield wipers went back and forth, back and forth, a pleasant rhythm that reminded me of metronomes and singing lessons when I was a kid. Singing for my bread, my grandmother had always called it when I’d sing to her before dinner.
There. Yes. Think about anything but wolves. I concentrated on Gramma’s smiling, wrinkled face as she folded the bread dough in the bowl with gnarled hands.
I put the car into drive and made my way out of the snow-covered parking lot. My mind switched from focusing on thoughts to simply concentrating on the falling flakes diving into my windshield like a hoard of angry insects, large and hell-bent on blinding me. The storm had come up fast, but the stations had promised me I had hours to go before it got super bad out. I switched down from my high beams, and the snow pummeled into my windshield, still just as distracting. Still just as fast.
Hours. Hah. Like weathermen have ever been right about anything in their lives.
I sighed and straightened in my seat, tightening my mittened hands on the steering wheel as I tried to make out the road in front of me. I was going to be late and worry my grandmother. And sure as anything, she probably didn’t have her cell phone on her or, worse, she’d probably let the battery die.
My mouth was dry, and I'd forgotten a bottle of water. I took off my mittens because I wanted the connection to the wheel—it made me feel more secure, somehow—and my knuckles shone yellow-white against the wheel now. I hadn't realized how tense I was until that instant. I switched on the radio--the classical station usually helped--but there was a man talking in somber tones about a local weather emergency, some sort of blizzard warning.
Great. The weathermen had been wrong.
Slowly, painfully slowly, I put miles between myself and town, and I was crawling now. I'd already started up the incline of the mountain. I could somewhat see the white line on the side of the road. I could see nothing of the yellow in the center, but as long as I kept my wheels on the left side of the white, I knew I’d be fine. I'd done this before; I was old hat at driving in these sorts of conditions. I'd done white-outs before, had done blizzards, and I’d driven these roads probably thousands of times, if you counted up all the years.
But for some strange reason, no matter how many reassurances I tried to think of, my stupid dream kept coming back to me. The image of the wolf kept falling over and into my disjointed ramblings of thought. I couldn't shake the image; couldn’t shake the thick feeling of dread as I’d stared into the wolf’s eyes, and it had stared into mine, licking its lips and its blood-flecked snout with a long tongue. My tension bled from my shoulders down my arms, into my stomach, my legs. I was a ball of nerves, but I couldn’t help it. And this weather certainly wasn’t helping…
It was a white-out, all of a sudden. Gusts of snow puffed up walls of sheer white right in front of my headlights, and my visibility disappeared. I couldn’t see anything but snow. I nursed the brake gently, waiting for it to pass. The road went on straight for awhile, I knew, but fear pooled icily down my spine, and I swallowed audibly in the darkness.
It passed almost instantly, a few seconds of comp
lete white, and then I could see the side of the road again, but those few seconds had skyrocketed my heart rate, and I realized the car was crawling, about five miles an hour. I hit the gas again as my vision cleared a bit, though I nursed the pedal gently.
A glint of light flashed in my rearview mirror through the swirling clouds of snow, and I saw lights behind me as I glanced at the mirror. The lights were pretty high off the ground...a truck? The vehicle came up pretty quickly, much too quickly for how fast the snow was blowing, and in half a minute, the vehicle was riding my rear closely, way too close.
Great. One of my least favorite things about driving on winter roads is when some asshole in a four-wheel truck suddenly thinks he’s a better driver and has a better vehicle than everyone else. Have you ever noticed, though, how many four-wheel trucks end up in the ditch? I was already frazzled, but now I was getting pissed as the truck rode me even closer. These were white-out conditions...a blizzard. He expected me to go faster? There was no space to pull off so he could pass, so I kept at the speed I was going. I wasn't going to drive faster for some asshole in four-wheel drive.
Another moment, another white-out. This one came up instantly, so dizzying that the blood drained from my head, and I almost slammed on the brakes. There was a curve very close up ahead on the road, and I wasn't exactly certain where it was. But I didn’t slam on the brakes, because that would have caused me to fishtail or worse. So I tapped the brakes gently.
The guy behind me had had enough, apparently. Though I couldn’t see a single thing out my front window, because of the guy’s headlights, I could see in my mirror. And the lights behind me had drifted off to the left... He was going to pass.
Asshole. Didn't he know about the curve coming up on the road? The roads on the mountain were without guardrails, and often had steep embankments on either side. With no visibility, and if he didn’t know the area, he was either going to run into a wall or off the whole damn mountain if he misjudged how much road he thought he had beneath that big truck’s wheels. And from where I sat, he was misjudging pretty badly.
I felt sick as I nursed the brake some more, but what could I do? He drifted next to me as he started to pass. He was going to get into an accident, and there was nothing I could do about it. He kept alongside me for a little while, not revving or braking—I muttered a few choice expletives and chanced a look out the window into the truck cab, trying to see him (I assumed it was a him—bad, I know). I could see nothing in the blowing snow but the truck’s shadow and the head and taillights, but the lights were a lot higher than mine, so he was definitely in a truck. It's strange, how in these sorts of moments tiny details stick out to you. The headlights are high. It must be a truck.
I nursed the brake harder and drifted over to my side of the road more, trying to give him more room to pass since he still hadn’t pulled ahead.
The truck followed me, pulling over to the right, too.
“What the hell?” I muttered. The classical music was loud in my ears, all screeching violins; I tried to switch it off, but I fumbled with the dial. I was sweating. As he veered almost into me to get into my lane, I realized he must be drunk. He must be. He was going to clip my car in half. He wasn't ahead enough to merge into this lane again. But he was moving and there was nothing I could do about it—I didn’t have room to nurse the brake. I stepped down hard on the brake, because that's the only thing I could do.
I felt the car skid beneath me.
I was a good winter driver, but there are some skids no one can pull themselves out of. This was one of them, with me spinning close to the wall of rock on the right side. I overcorrected, spinning the wheel in sweating hands, and now I was spinning towards the drop-off. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. A violin practically screamed in the background, some sort of crescendo.
I was going to crash.
I stopped. There was really no reasoning behind it or for it, but my trusty Chevy Cavalier skidded, somehow, impossibly, to a halt, and I knew without looking that I wasn't that far from the edge of the drop-off.
I shifted into park and got out of the car. The violent chill of the storm hit me instantly, stealing my breath away with a hiss. The roar of the blizzard deafened the tinny sound of the music from in the car as I wrapped my arms around me. I couldn’t see anything, not the hand in front of my face, not the outlines of my car that, if I reached out, I would be able to touch. Nothing but headlights and the flurried snow, dancing in my high beams like ghosts.
I couldn't find the road. There was snow beneath my boots, deep snow that probably crunched as I stepped on it, but I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t see the drop-off, but I knew it was there. So the mountain wall? It must be there too...
My mind leapt from idea to idea, and I took a deep, too-cold breath as I tried to calm myself. Things weren’t so bad. I was a little stuck, but I could probably get the car out no problem.
I peered close to the headlights, gazing at the nose of my car. The nose of my car that was entirely buried in snow. The reason I stopped was because I was going so slow, and I’d simply run into a wall of snow that the snowplows had probably ploughed to the side of the road.
I was stuck. And there wasn’t any traction beneath my wheels because of the quickly falling snow. I’d never get the car out.
Okay. I squashed my rising panic like a bug as I stared in the direction (I assumed) of the road curving upward. Yes--I was on the mountain, far from a lot of things, and not that many cars used this road, so probably no one would be coming by soon. My car was stuck in the snow, and a blizzard was angrily dumping more snow on me by the minute.
So there was really no way out of this...but forward.
I wasn't that far from my grandmother's house. It’d be okay. I could walk the rest of the way, and even though I couldn’t see very well, as I kept a hand on the wall to the right of the road, I’d be fine. For most of the rest of the way, anyway--the end of the journey would lead me out to a bit of forest before the cabin. But I'd played there every day growing up. I knew every tree, knew every branch. I’d be fine. They’d lead me home.
There was a fierce resolve that welled up in me then. I went back into my car and grabbed my suitcase. There were more sweaters, thicker pants. Wrestling in the tiny confines of my front seat, I pulled on two pairs of jeans and another sweater on top of the one I was already wearing. And then the coat and the earmuffs and the hat and the gloves and the scarf and the boots. I was shaking at this point--it was freezing in the car. I'd turned it off, I wasn't stupid, I knew I could die from the fumes if the exhaust got clogged.
Okay. I looked around, unhappy at leaving the food as I pressed my gloves together. I was shaking pretty badly, but it was cold in the car. But as I sat there for a long moment, wondering if I should bring anything, I knew I was shaking from more than the cold. No matter how easy going I was about this, there was fear deep down in my stomach. The woods and mountain were familiar friends in the waking hours, but in the dark, in the screaming snow, I'd transported myself into a nightmare world.
Nightmares. Suddenly, the image of the wolf from last night’s dream came into my head. Great. I breathed out and closed my eyes. I didn't have time to be ridiculous. Not right now.
Because the absolute truth was that, no matter how close I was to my grandmother’s cabin, there was a blizzard raging around me. And absolutely, if I wasn’t careful, I could die. The possibility was very real. No one would bother to look for me until Monday--maybe. By then, I would have long become frozen...become a part of the mountain. No one used these roads all that much, especially in a blizzard. My grandmother might be having one of her episodes, might have forgotten I was coming.
So no, I had no time for stupid dream wolves. I had to get out of this car and start walking. I had to. There was no choice, no direction but forward. No thoughts to think but hopes…hopes born out of the desire to remain alive.
No one really wants to die. Even if people say they're perfectly at peace with de
ath, could go at any time, I’m pretty sure they’re not exactly telling the truth. I knew that; I knew that deep down in my bones and in my gut, as I grabbed my purse and took out my wallet. I shoved it underneath the layers of coat and sweater to my jeans pocket. And then I wrote a note with the pen from my checkbook:
I've gone on to my grandmother's. She lives almost at the top of the mountain.
--Megan Upton
I didn't know what else to put on it; it sounded morbid, even to me. It was the sort of thing that flashed on the news late at night as they get a sudden brief about a frozen body found in the wastelands of the mountains and her short note that would—tragically, of course—not be found until she’d become frozen solid.
I swallowed and bit my lip. This was so stupid. I wasn’t going to die. I put on my sunglasses, because they were the only thing I had to combat the snow flying into my eyes. Okay. No time but the present.
I left the car.
Two steps away from it, I'd lost everything familiar…everything. There were only snow devils and the absence of these walls of snow...which was me.
In blizzards, it’s very easy to get turned around. You hardly even know which way is up sometimes, and I'd tried to set out in the right direction, toward the solid rock wall to the right of the road, but I hadn't been certain where the nose of the car had been pointing when it got stuck, anyway. I put one foot in front of the other, but I stomped down before I stepped, listening to the sound of my boot hitting pavement. Okay. At least there was pavement.
The snow buffeted me back, and I lost a step. I pushed against the wind, shoving against it as I took another step, boot grinding down through the snow against the pavement.
The cold bit like poison, stinging the only exposed skin--my face beneath the glasses. It burned where the needle-like flakes hit, freezing pinpoints that seemed to be trying to tear my skin off. I kept my mouth closed and tried to take deep, even breaths, lips in a firm line that shook from the cold.
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