From the Mists of Wolf Creek

by Rebecca Brandewyne

  But of course, it was simply ridiculous to assume they were somehow one and the same creature, that Trace was, in reality, a werewolf or something. In the bright light of the afternoon, Hallie realized how ludicrous that idea was, knew her imagination was running rampant again and must be reined in.

  Still, what about all the vague snatches of scary wolf stories she remembered from her youth? No, surely, they were nothing more than tales told to frighten misbehaving children—or dredged up to thrill young girls at slumber parties, like the one about the couple parked in the boondocks, kissing, who heard a news report on the radio about a violent, deranged escaped convict with a hook for a hand. Upset, the girl insisted on going home, and once there, she and her boyfriend discovered a hook on the handle of their car door, so they had known if they not driven away when they had, they would have fallen victim to the convict….

  “Aunt Gwen,” Hallie inquired, curious, once they had reached the farmhouse and begun putting away the groceries in the kitchen. “Do you know anything at all about the history of Wolf Creek?”

  “No, not much, dear. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, no real reason. I suppose that seeing it again, I was just curious, that’s all…you know, how it came to be founded, how it received its name, and so forth. I know there’s a creek that runs through town and the farm, as well, and I imagine wolves and other animals used to come there to drink…probably still do….”

  “I’ve heard the land on which Wolf Creek was built was sacred to the American Indians,” Trace announced, as he set the last of the grocery sacks on the kitchen counter. “Not because it was an ancient burial ground or anything like that, but because of the wolves themselves. Many peoples considered them sacred beasts, imbued with strange and mysterious powers, and connected them with Mother Moon—no doubt because they are notorious for howling at her.”

  “Yes, that’s quite true.” Aunt Gwen nodded sagely. “During our travels, my late husband and I came into contact with many ancient cultures who revered the wolf. Some even believed a great she-wolf was their universal mother.”

  “There are also tribes who think a great wolf was their universal father,” Trace said. “For those who are sick, the wolf is a healer, and for those who are lost, a pathfinder. Whether for good or ill, to spy one is thought a powerful sign—for the wolf is elusive, and only a few chosen ones are favored by it. To see it in a vision quest is the most significant omen of all, for then it becomes one’s totem animal, and one is always guided and protected by it.

  “A spirit talker cloaked in a wolf skin is an undeniably fearsome sight, and there are those who say that a true shaman or witch can, by casting a powerful magic spell, actually bind a man to a wolf, making them one, because Man and Beast have always been inextricably linked since the beginning of Time. I’ve always thought the howl of a wolf is one of the few truly atavistic sounds left in this world, that it still stirs something primal in us all…” Trace paused for a moment. Then he spoke again, abruptly changing the subject. “Do either of you know where the breaker box is? I need to find out what’s wrong with the power and fix it.”

  “Oh, yes, Trace.” Crossing the checkerboard tile floor, the older woman opened the door to the pantry. “It’s right inside here.”

  “Well, that’s odd.” Hallie frowned, puzzled. “I—I could have sworn it was someplace else in the house when I was a child, in a…in a closet in the main hall or somewhere. But perhaps I’m simply remembering wrong….”

  “I don’t know, dear,” Aunt Gwen told her. “However, I do know that at one point, Hennie had the entire house rewired. The original electrical wiring had got very old, of course, and I believe it was becoming a fire hazard. So perhaps the box was moved during that process.”

  “Yes, if that’s the case, you’re no doubt right, Aunt Gwen. I know I was extremely surprised to find the kitchen looking the way it does now…so different from how it was originally.”

  “Is it? I’m afraid I wouldn’t know anything about that, child, as this is how it’s been ever since I came here. It’s a cheerful kitchen, I’ve always thought…so white and bright and sunny. Even on the grayest of rainy days, the kitchen never seems nearly as dark and gloomy as the rest of this old farmhouse does.”

  “I suppose I’ll get used to it in time.” Hallie glanced around the kitchen—but in search of what, she did not know. “During my childhood, contrary to the way it is now, the kitchen used to be one of the darkest rooms in the house, with aged oak cabinets and a yellow pine floor. The bricks of the fireplace are actually red-brown beneath all that white paint.

  “No matter how dreary it must have been in reality, I always found it quite cozy myself, and I used to imagine it was the kitchen inside some fairy-tale cottage—for, truly, that is what it looked like—and that Gram herself was some enchanting witch.

  “There used to be a butcher block here, in the middle of the room, where she sorted the fresh herbs from her garden, tying them up into neat bunches before hanging them from an old rack above to dry.

  “I can’t…I just can’t imagine why she changed it all, and it seems to me, as well, that there used to be something here that I’ve forgotten and that’s not here now. But I don’t know what it could be. But, then, of course, I was only a child at the time, so perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me.” Hallie shrugged, smiling.

  “Well, I hate to say it, dear, but speaking as one who spent most of her life cooking on a camp stove, I deeply appreciate a kitchen with all the modern amenities—and what you’ve described as its previous state, as enthralling as it might have appeared to you as a child, makes me believe Hennie had quite good reasons for updating it all. Why, it must have been positively depressing to work in before!”

  “Now that you’ve put it that way, I guess it probably was, Aunt Gwen.” Hallie laughed. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m afraid I’ve spent much more time in front of a computer than I ever have in a kitchen. Once I grew up and moved out of Aunts Agatha and Edith’s town house, I tended to survive on pizzas delivered from the nearest parlor, Chinese takeout and sandwiches from the local deli.”

  “Good grief, Hallie.” The elderly lady eyed her askance. “What a diet. Why, it’s a miracle you don’t weigh three hundred pounds from all that fast food!”

  “Well, I confess I also spent a lot of time jogging to keep in shape. But I don’t suppose that’s going to be the most practical option here at Meadowsweet. I guess I thought there would still be horses to ride, the way there were during my childhood.”

  “Oh, no, child, there haven’t been horses here at the farm for a long time now. They were gone even before I came here. Hennie said they’d got to be too much for her manage on her own, and young Tommy Adams, who used to help out around the place, had finally graduated from high school and gone off to college.

  “After that, she couldn’t find anybody else who wanted to work here. The other farmers around here all have their own places to tend to, and all these kids nowadays seem to be such couch potatoes—glued to their cell phones, MP3 players, TVs and video games. I guess they’re afraid a bit of fresh air or manual labor might kill them!

  “We’re actually pretty darned lucky Trace was looking for work, and that Frank sent him over here to us, because we probably would have had a difficult time locating anyone else to come out here on a regular basis—no matter how much we might have been willing to pay.”

  Lowering her voice, highly conscious of the man’s presence in the small pantry, Aunt Gwen continued.

  “If you ask me, Hallie, we got a real bargain in Trace! Room and board and a hundred dollars a week? Why, that’s just dirt cheap. He could charge three times as much and still hope to receive it around here.”

  “Well, for pity’s sake, Aunt Gwen,” Hallie whispered. “Don’t tell him that! I mean, we don’t want to be compelled to pay him any more than we have to. Meadowsweet needs a lot of repairs, and some of them are going to be extremely costly.”

  �
��Yes, I realize that. Hallie, I’ve never been one to pry, so I don’t know how you’re fixed financially. I just assumed Aggie and Edie had left you suitably well off. After all, I believe they had quite a bit of money put by, and they didn’t have anybody else to leave it to—although I suppose they might have endowed any number of charitable institutions with it. They were very much into good works, I know, just the way Father was.

  “Anyway, what I’m trying to tell you is that if you need help with the expenses, I’ll be more than happy to assist you. Thanks to you, Meadowsweet is still my home now, and I’ve never been a freeloader, but always pulled my own weight.”

  “That’s so sweet of you, Aunt Gwen. But in all honesty, I’m not poor,” Hallie declared. “Although Aunts Agatha and Edith actually did leave a lot of their fortune to charity, there were still handsome bequests to me from each of them, and I’ve done very well for myself with my job, too. And of course, even though Gram didn’t leave a great deal of money, she had paid off the mortgage on the farm over the years. So Meadowsweet itself is free and clear.

  “So I don’t think we need to worry about funds. I guess it’s simply that it was inevitable that some of Aunt Agatha’s frugal ways should rub off on me. So although I’m scarcely in the same penny-pinching league as she was, I’m not much of a spendthrift, either, and if there’s a bargain to be had, I’m not going to be foolish enough to turn it down.”

  “Nor should you, dear,” Aunt Gwen insisted firmly. “Now, why don’t you help me set the table for lunch? Trace,” she called, “how’re you coming in there?”

  “I’m nearly finished,” he answered. “It’s just a simple matter of testing all these breakers, to see which ones have blown and to reset them, making sure there isn’t a bad switch or something else at fault. All the lightning last night probably struck a transformer some distance away, sending an electrical surge through the lines. I’ll be done in a jiffy.”

  “Good. Hallie, I think there’s a fresh jar of bread-and-butter pickles in there on the pantry shelves, and one of olives, too. Why don’t you fetch them, and I’ll make us a relish tray to eat with our lunch. Some deviled eggs would be nice, as well. I’ll set the eggs to boiling. It won’t take more than a few minutes to fix them.”

  Bustling around the kitchen, humming cheerfully to herself, the older woman busied herself with the preparations for lunch, while Hallie stepped into the pantry just off the kitchen. There she found Trace at work on the breaker box, the end of a small flashlight jammed into his mouth, so the beam illuminated his labor.

  “Do you want me to hold that for you?” she asked.

  “No,” he got out between his clenched teeth. “Just try the light now and see if it works, please.”

  Instinctively, Hallie reached for the long thin cord that used to dangle from the lightbulb when she was a child, only to discover it was nowhere to be found.

  Trace correctly interpreted her gesture and quickly set her straight.

  “Your grandmother had the whole house rewired, remember? There’s a switch on the wall now.”

  “Of course. I—I didn’t realize at first.”

  Flicking it, Hallie was glad to see it resulted in the lightbulb coming on, flooding the small pantry with brightness. She had been a bit unnerved before, being in such close proximity to Trace in the darkness. It had reminded her of the feel of the hardness and strength of his broad chest when, to prevent her from tripping and falling in the gravel, he had so briefly clasped her to him in the parking lot of Lucy Bodine’s bed-and-breakfast.

  Hallie did not want to think about that and the emotions that fleeting moment had evoked in her. She told herself sternly that it was only natural she should be physically attracted to Trace, that, after all, he was without a doubt the handsomest man she had ever before seen.

  It was as though there were some strange animal magnetism about him that was so strong, it was almost tangible. She had never before sensed such a powerful charisma in any other man, something so uncanny and earthy. It seemed to emanate like an aura from his very being.

  Try as she might, she simply could not put it down to just his good looks or to his long, lean body, corded with muscle. In the past, she had known many handsome men with physiques honed to perfection by hours spent in the gym.

  But as she thought about them now, Hallie knew they had all lacked some indefinable quality Trace possessed. When he moved, it was with a grace and suppleness that had nothing to do with hard physical training, but, rather, that was inborn—like that of a wolf, she mused, once more unsettled by the notion.

  “Earth to Hallie. Earth to Hallie. Come in, please. Are you receiving?”

  Abruptly jolted from her reverie, observing how Trace stared at her, his blue eyes gleaming and crinkling at the corners, his lips twisted into a teasing smile, she blushed furiously, her eyebrows knitting into a frown of annoyance.

  “Loud and clear, Trace. Sorry. I was momentarily lost in the past,” she lied, reaching for the jar of pickles she spied on one shelf. “It must have been quite an undertaking—rewiring this entire house, I mean. I was wondering what all was involved, whether any of the walls had to be ripped out, if that’s why Gram had several of the rooms repapered….”

  “Maybe—although wires can usually be pulled through the walls and between floors without tearing them out. Did you need something else?”

  “Yes, that jar of olives, if you don’t mind. I don’t think this pantry was meant for two people.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it was.”

  Still, he did not take the hint, as she had hoped, and exit the pantry, and she suffered the distinctly discomposing impression that she was shut up with some dangerous caged animal, which was prepared to spring upon her at any minute.

  “I’ll tell you what—you bring the olives when you’re done in here, Trace. I need to help Aunt Gwen with our lunch,” she said, swallowing hard, her heart beating way too fast in her breast.

  Clutching the bread-and-butter pickles, she turned and practically ran from close confines of the pantry, thumping the jar down on the kitchen counter. Behind her, Hallie thought she heard Trace laughing softly, mockingly. But when she glanced irately in his direction, his dark visage was impassive, and she decided she must have been mistaken.

  How she wished she could just fire the man—that she had never even hired him in the first place.

  But how could she explain such an act—either to him or to Aunt Gwen?

  If questioned, as she surely would be, Hallie could not insist Trace had behaved badly, treated her disrespectfully or made unwelcome advances toward her. To the contrary, he had been nothing if not exceedingly gentlemanly and helpful, figuratively rolling up his sleeves and literally pitching right in with the work, assisting with Aunt Gwen’s luggage and the groceries, and fixing the power immediately upon their return home from Wolf Creek.

  She had no reason to get rid of him—none, except that he somehow reminded her of that damned great black wolf, and were she to give voice to that cause, Hallie knew she would only appear ridiculous, that Aunt Gwen would certainly wonder if she really had taken leave of her senses.

  Further, she felt unshakably sure her great-aunt was fully informed and correct about the difficulty of finding employees willing to turn their hands to farm labor at Meadowsweet. It would hardly be wise to exchange Trace—who was obviously a smart, capable man—for some pimply-faced kid who did not even know one end of a pitchfork from the other.

  No, whether she liked it or not, Hallie was stuck with the drifter.

  She was simply going to have to accept that and make the best of the situation.

  “Hallie, child, the way you’re going at that stuffing for the deviled eggs, it’s going to be nothing but mush in a minute,” Aunt Gwen chided gently. “If I knew you better, I expect I’d think you were all riled up about something.”

  “No…no, it’s nothing like that.” Hallie spoke untruthfully, not daring to glance at Trace. “I’ve just go
t my mind on a million other things, that’s all, and wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing.”

  “Well, here, why don’t you let me finish that, and you peel the eggs, then?” the elderly lady suggested. “Do you prefer dill pickles or bread-and-butter ones in the stuffing? And do you like a dollop of mustard? I always think it adds a bit more flavor.”

  “Either kind of pickles is fine with me, Aunt Gwen, and that’s a yes to the mustard, as well. I wouldn’t turn down a sprinkling of paprika, either.”

  “That all works just fine for me, too,” Trace agreed calmly, when the older woman looked inquisitively at him. “I’ve never been a particularly fussy eater, so I generally tend to enjoy whatever’s put on my plate.”

  “That must have made your mother pretty happy,” the older woman noted.

  “I guess it would have, had she been alive. But she and my dad both died young. Their car was struck head-on by a drunk driver. They were both killed instantly. I didn’t have any other relatives, so I’m afraid I grew up in a series of foster homes on the Indian reservation where I lived then. My father was an American Indian…an Apache.” He unwittingly confirmed Hallie’s earlier speculation about his mixed ancestry.

  “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry about your parents, Trace,” Aunt Gwen said, her face filled with sympathy. “I wouldn’t have made that remark about your mother if I’d known.”

  “No need to apologize. You had no way of knowing, and although I’ve certainly missed my parents over the years, I seldom grieve for them now. It all happened such a long time ago.”

  No wonder Trace was not a drunk, Hallie thought, remembering his list of qualifications for a job at Meadowsweet. No wonder he had so accurately surmised the point in her life at which she had arrived with her homecoming.

  He had once been in such a place in his own life.

  After that, she felt much more charitable toward him, and surreptitiously, she ensured he got the best pieces of fried chicken and the largest helpings of the accompanying salads.