The Skinwalker's Tale

by Christopher Carrolli

  “That’s all the footage we have of that moment,” Sidney said.

  “Dylan and Leah haven’t returned yet,” Susan said.

  Tahoe lifted his head upward, his third eye envisioning. He saw footsteps in the woods, two figures moving side by side, one a woman; he saw her long blonde hair in the dark. And then the sight was gone.

  “I’ve see them,” he said. “They are still searching.”

  This time, from somewhere farther in the distance, another howl broke the quiet, stirring them in their seats. It began as a low, rolling sound, and then it peaked into a crescendo that pierced the night. The sound of it lingered in every ear. They looked at each other, exchanging glances of fear.

  “It sounds farther away than before,” Sidney said.

  “We have to do something,” Susan said. “We can’t just sit here and wait.”

  Tahoe felt their gazes on him as he closed his eyes once again, seeing the distance and knowing the amount of time it would take. He realized that the hand of fate was dealing fast.

  “I’m afraid we may already be too late,” he said.

  Chapter Eleven

  The wolf had broken free, away from the chaos that had become insurmountable. Pain, worry, death, and grief, all of them were factors that dwelled somewhere deep inside, somewhere unreachable. They were emotions now numbed and overshadowed by the shape of the wolf. The woods were now its sanctuary, and through the red tinge of the wolf’s night vision, the great orb above shined a magnificent pink.

  The wolf felt a solemn oneness with the orb, a great unity that seemed already known, already understood, and as ancient as the trees that surrounded. The orb seemed to understand in its silence, guiding the wolf like a beacon through the night. Instinct, raw in its nature, caused the wolf to turn its head toward the west, and now the wolf stalked with stealth in the desired direction. The surge of a sudden emotion overcame the wolf, something it knew, but...

  Hunger, that’s what it felt, hunger. All things had become part of a distant fog, yet the wolf recognized hunger as the ravenous need overwhelmed it. The wolf was also aware that as it moved, it moved closer toward that which would feed the beastly famine, its path being led by the great orb above. The moon provided the light toward the wolf’s need, and the wolf paid it the honor it was due. The wolf’s howl erupted, lingering in ears that listened from a distance.

  * * * *

  They’d stumbled around in the dark woods for nearly thirty minutes now. Things would be different if the wolf had taken off in the direction of the hills, but it hadn’t. Through the deep, wooded area it had broken free, and now Dylan and Leah traipsed side by side, one foot in front of the other through unfamiliar territory. The crunch of wood beneath their feet was slow and remindful.

  The woods of the countryside had been exceptionally dark. There was no urban illumination here, no faraway neighboring lights to guide to them, only the moonlight. But the darkening of night hid more and more of their path as time passed, and they occasionally stumbled through the near pitch-black. What little they could see was lit by the moon and the fading glow of a single flashlight.

  Then, the howl stopped them in their tracks. They looked at each other, their ears tracing the call of the wild that ripped through the unlikely setting.

  “It came from that way,” Dylan said, pointing to a northwestern position ahead of them.

  “Then we’re going the right way,” Leah said. “That’s the direction in which he’d taken off in.”

  “You mean, it had taken off in,” Dylan corrected her.

  “Yeah,” she sighed, “whatever.”

  “I can’t believe Sid left only one flashlight in the van,” Dylan said, as they resumed walking. “Video cameras, yet there’s only one flashlight. Where are the rest of them?”

  He was referring to the fact that the team usually kept more than one in the van for their investigations. But a recent oversight since the excursion to Cedar Manor had now left him and Leah hoping that the one they had didn’t die, leaving them stranded in the blackness.

  “My guess is that they’re conveniently in room 208, right when we need them,” Leah said. “But don’t worry, I can see well enough.”

  “Speaking of which,” Dylan said. “What do you see, as in see?”

  She knew what he meant. She grabbed onto his arm as she lowered her head and closed her eyes, still moving slowly through the darkness. She saw the wolf stalking at a slow pace; she saw the light of the moon, but for some reason, it was pink. She watched the wolf howling.

  Suddenly, she felt the sensation of hunger, fast and gone in a flash.

  “I saw it howling,” she said, as she stopped walking. “That must’ve been what we heard a moment ago. I felt hunger, and then it passed. It’s searching for food.”

  Dylan had stopped walking when she had. She was still clutching his arm, and now she heard the faintest sigh escape him as he listened.

  “I don’t like the feel of this,” he said. “And I’m not even psychic.”

  “I was trying to see what I could of the moon,” she said. “It was odd; it appeared pink in my vision. But from the position we’re facing now, he or it, has got to be somewhere up ahead. The wolf looked like it was searching, like it was on the prowl, so it’s not roaming.”

  “What if it doesn’t recognize us?” Dylan said. “What if we might be in some kind of danger from it?”

  “I doubt it, Dylan,” she said, her voice almost chastising him. “This is Brett we’re talking about. He’d have to recognize us.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Did it look to you like the dog recognized us?”

  She said nothing, but he’d brought up a point so valid she felt her heart drop.

  “I mean, what if the wolf finds us?” he said.

  Something struck her. It was that same familiar vibe she’d felt before they left to search through the woods.

  “We’ll find him,” she said. “I can feel it. Let’s just hope we’re in time.”

  * * * *

  Herb Haller knew damn well what he’d heard last night at the fireworks, just after the grand finale. Everyone else had heard it too, though not everyone was convinced. A wolf had howled, and the sound of it came from the direction of the woods adjacent to Bill Larson’s Farm. There were others who claimed they hadn’t heard it; they’d been too wrapped up in their own festivities. The local news had made a joke and a mockery out of the whole thing, and some were still laughing, but he knew better. He may’ve lived in Pennsylvania his whole life, but he knew what a goddamned wolf sounded like.

  And what he’d found when he returned home last night was even more disturbing. Herb had a small shack on his fifty-acre farm, one he used as a henhouse. Raising chickens had been his farm’s greatest source of productivity, and Herb was well known regionally for his product, a significant asset to his income. But when he returned home last night, he’d heard commotion coming from the henhouse.

  The chickens were warbling and clucking a frightened chorus, and the sound soon heightened into an uproar that had been utter mayhem. He was sure that something had been inside with them. He’d charged full speed toward the small white shack, and upon reaching it, he flung the door open wide. Inside, he’d watched as his frantic livestock flew upward in frenzy, and feathers flittered through the air. The small shack had been empty, except the chickens and the obvious fact that something disturbed them.

  It had taken him a while to calm them, and once he had, he checked the henhouse door. Something had scratched at the old door, slashing claw marks through the chipped and faded white paint. He’d noticed something else—the wood around the edge of the door was broken. Granted, it was an old door, but something had tried to force its way through, and then split the wood along the side.

  He’d thought of the wolf he heard howling not long before returning home. Inside his house, his own dog—a collie named Max—had been livid. Max had been barking and didn’t stop as Herb walked through the front door.
He was excited, jumping up to greet him, yet the whine and whimper that followed his bark told Herb that Max had sensed something. And that something had spooked the hell out of him.

  “What is it, boy?”

  He’d spoken in his playful pet tone, trying to calm the dog and fluffing his fur. Then, he’d stepped back outside and taken a last look out into the night, his eyes searching through the darkness. All had been calm by then. No sounds came from the henhouse; nothing stirred in the dark; nothing moved. And the sounds of the celebration had surrendered to silence.

  Now, he heard that same howl again. This time, he heard it not so far off, but close, close enough to cause his heart to race and his mind to wander in a thousand directions.

  A wolf, a goddamn wolf, he thought, here in Pennsylvania.

  There had to be an explanation. It must’ve been someone’s pet, one of those nuts that kept wild animals as house-pets. Probably some local farmer had been keeping it out on his land, and the wolf refused to be kept. It had tried to get at his chickens; he knew it.

  Now, it sounded like it was coming back for more as that damn howl had been near enough to make him leap off of the couch and grab his shotgun from the case. Max began barking up a storm, just like the night before. Herb shut the dog down inside the basement to protect him. The less he sensed the better. He went out onto the front porch and stood with the shotgun clutched low in both hands, his hunting cap fixed on his head. He wasn’t about to let anything happen to his livestock, especially in the face of naysayers who wouldn’t know a wolf howling if it bit them in the ass afterward.

  This time, he’d be waiting for it.

  * * * *

  The wolf was being led by its instinct, its steps following a path that seemed both familiar, yet unfamiliar. It sniffed the ground and lifted its head, looking far ahead and recognizing. It had followed this path before; it picked up its own scent. Slow and stealthily, it stalked onward, gaining quicker ground once it realized where it was being led.

  The wolf made it through the woods and arrived on the opposite side of the hill it had ascended the night before. It charged up the hill until arriving at a place it had visited before, not long after the fiery streaks had fallen from the sky. Now, the wolf sat watching from a distance, remembering the warbling birds and eyeing the small, white, ramshackle house through the reddish haze. A figure stood by the main house, a short distance from the small white one.

  Hunger—it felt the gnawing feeling once again. The wolf licked its snout with a quick flash of its pink tongue. It watched the figure—a man. The wolf sensed the man waiting, his eyes searching for something he wanted to unleash upon. The wolf sensed fear, anger, and impulsiveness in the man, even as it watched from afar.

  The wolf eyed the small shack once again. It was where the hunger would be sated, but the man was watching. He was clutching something in the grip of his lowered arms; it was the catalyst for his fear and aggression. The wolf crept closer, slyly from the side so as not to be seen. There would be no way to revisit the shack with the man watching.

  Hunger—the need was growing stronger. The wolf kept its eyes on the man and moved in closer. The sense of famine became overpowering. Now, it would be the need, or the man; the man, or the wolf. The wolf’s snarl drew upward, bearing its fangs at the thought. It watched as the man leaned his body forward, his eyes gazing outward, watching with his head cocked.

  The wolf could sense not only the man’s fear, but his false sense of authority just underneath it. It drew its snarl upward again and released a heavy guttural growl from deep inside.

  And then their eyes met.

  Chapter Twelve

  Leah focused her third eye through the darkness, catching only intermittent glimpses of the stalking wolf, and the full moon fixed from a slightly different position. The passing visions were quick and faded to black, an abundance of which had already enveloped her and Dylan as they continued their trek through the woods. It was difficult to see anything, but together they strode, pushing the whipping assaults of thin, unseen branches away from their faces. They stopped for a moment as she spoke.

  “I’m not seeing much, Dylan,” she said. “But the moon in my visions is almost in the same position it’s in now, which means we’re definitely close.”

  Soon, they’d made it out of the woods and reached the base of a steep, grassy incline. At the top of the hill were more woods.

  “This is the hill that leads up into the woods adjacent to Larson’s Farm,” Dylan said. “The wolf would’ve run off in this direction last night during the fireworks.”

  Then, suddenly, a more complete vision appeared to Leah as soon as she’d stopped trying. It was of the wolf, though the wolf hadn’t been on this side of the hill. She watched as it had run up the other side, to their right, some one-hundred yards away.

  “It went that way,” she said, pointing. “I saw it.”

  “And we have no idea where were going,” Dylan said. “Damn! You’d think someone would discover a way for phones with GPSs to work out here in the boonies.”

  It had been difficult for either of them to get cell service deep in the woods, but out here in the vast, uninhabited country, it was next to impossible. Their regular GPS tracker had also been back in room 208. No one had anticipated the need for it.

  “We’re just going to have to try and find him,” Leah said. “We’ll make our way back one way or another.”

  They walked toward the direction of her vision, and then made it up the mammoth hill in five minutes. The night’s heat had not been a scorcher, but the sweat broke on her forehead and dampened her hair just the same. They stood at the top, catching their fleeting breaths. This side of the hill had allowed them to surpass the woods until they reached a wide, open expanse. The immense starry sky loomed over the land unhindered, and up here, it didn’t seem so dark. Here, the sky seemed somehow closer than it did below.

  Spruces and pines shot upward, creating a picturesque, landscape-painting view even at night. Dylan and Leah walked about one-hundred yards and then stopped, momentarily enjoying the inescapable view of the hidden, scenic world somewhere on top.

  “Wow, I wonder what this looks like in the daytime,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s beautiful, and we may never find our way back.”

  They laughed lightly, looking over the scenery, until Leah caught something from the corner of her eye.

  “Dylan, look!” She pointed to it; it stood not more than another three-hundred yards away.

  She watched the puzzled expression on his face.

  “The white shack I’d seen in the vision,” she said, as her voice lowered. “I think it’s a henhouse. He’s got to be somewhere up here.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s walk slowly.”

  * * * *

  Herb felt the weight of his innards plummet. His heart pounded hard in his chest, while his lungs fought hard to catch his escaping breath. He looked right into its eyes, and sure enough, it was a wolf. It moved slowly and stealthily out of the woods, coming close enough in the darkness to where he could see the black sheen of its fur shimmering against the moonlight.

  His mind reeled at the sight before him; his knees shook upon trembling legs, but he would stay calm. He’d been right all along. It was a wolf he’d heard last night, a lone wolf that tried to get into the henhouse. Fear mixed with fascination; he’d never seen a wolf up close before, and now his mind could not get past the wolf’s presence in uncommon territory.

  He gripped the shotgun horizontally in his hands which were lowered. He was careful with it, mindful not to take aim too rashly in the dark, though he’d turned on the porch light. He always practiced safety first when it came to his firearms, but now, he felt his hands shaking. He noticed his white-knuckled grip even in the darkness.

  The wolf was sizing him up, as though it were reading him. It growled at him, its snarl curling upward, exposing a flash of sharp, white fangs behind it. The wolf seemed to be
daring him, sensing the imminent danger of an assault against it.

  Then, their eyes locked again as the wolf stepped closer.

  The moment lingered like eternity. Herb felt the tizzy of a hypnotic daze as wolf eyes met man’s, and man’s eyes met the yellowish orbs of the wolf. He felt numbness. The wolf stepped forward, tauntingly contesting his human superiority.

  Herb raised the shotgun upward in a quick hoist, perching it in the crutch of his right armpit. And then the wolf started to run toward him. Its galloping speed sent a shock that rippled up his spine. The wolf was hell bent, charging toward him with what appeared to be unhindered rage. The daze distracted him again, and for just a second, he took his eye away from his aim.

  The wolf leapt forward, springing through the air at him. Herb’s mind went blank. He stood stunned by the sight, his body rendered motionless. Frozen in shock, his reaction was delayed, and the aim he’d poised with the shotgun was steered away by the stupor. The beast plunged and propelled its weight through the air, and then Herb’s sudden, startled movement caused him to stumble backward. But as he fell, his finger squeezed the trigger.

  The rapport was explosive, a boom that echoed as it ripped through the open countryside. The shotgun kicked and fell from his grip as Herb went down on his back.

  The wolf was on top of him. It wanted his throat, but he managed to move slightly.

  Herb felt the piercing pain in the side of his face as the wolf’s fangs bit through his flesh. The wolf was whining, crying as it tore into him. Herb screamed as he felt the tearing of the flesh from his face, the pain surging through him. Then it was gone, numbed by the instant lull of endorphins. Everywhere, Herb saw blood; it filled his eyes. And then, he saw nothing...