I looked over at the girl as she walked out of our cabin. Her face never changed its expression, but her eyes met mine. A picture flashed inside my head of my father ducking on the ground. A massive beast faced him down. It was seen from neither his nor the wolf's perspective, but a third, farther away. I saw what he had faced. It looked a lot like the comics I had read back in our home before. It was most definitely not a normal wolf. This thing facing down my father was a werewolf. I looked away from the girl as my father continued talking and the picture snapped away.
"That wolf must have escaped a zoo or something. It was larger than any I had ever seen before. I have to admit a small amount of luck went into what happened next.
The wolf charged me again, this time not giving me the room to duck away. His claws tore up the side of my face as I tried to roll away from his attack. As he turned again to come in and finish his work, I backed away from him as fast as I could. My hand came down on something hard. It was a feeling I recognized."
My dad paused a minute and looked at my mom, her black eyes were trained on where my dad stood. Even though she couldn't see him looking at her she nodded her head, giving him permission to continue.
"Shade I never told you this before, I saw you were always interested in the guns in sporting goods stores, I kept you away, hoping you would lose your interest. I used to be in the army. It's not something I like to talk about, and not something my growing boy needed to know. I was in a Special Forces unit, a sniper. It was lucky I managed to stumble over a gun. Someone must have dropped it during the raiding that had taken place.
I pulled the gun up and shot from the hip, not taking the time to check if it was loaded. I was lucky it was. The bullet hit the wolf square in the chest. The howl that came from him, it sounded so familiar. It turned at that moment and tore off out of the store.
Not waiting to see if it came back, I leapt out one of the smashed windows ten feet off the ground. I turned back and aimed the gun up at the window waiting for the beast to follow me, but it didn't. My breath came in short, ragged gasps, never in one of my missions had I come that close to death. My work was always from afar in my past. I started to do what I could to stop the bleeding when out from behind some boxes walked out this young girl."
My father looked over at her standing and waiting just outside our cabin she just stood there. With a shrug he continued.
"She hasn't spoken a word to me yet, must be the trauma from seeing that wolf attack me, or something else that happened in the store before I got there. I don't know what...yet. She helped me find the wagon and load it up. She didn't say a word the entire time.
I kept an eye on the doors and windows just in case that wolf decided to show up again, I half expected to find him dead outside. I didn't see a sign of him so I gathered more ammunition from the floor of the sporting goods area, it was scattered and took some time to find what I needed. This young woman never said a word the whole time I looked."
"Her name is Dawn." My mom said.
My dad concentrated a moment on my mother. His eyebrows furrowed the same as before when he would work on a particularly hard problem.
"Hmn, ok then, Dawn it is... anyway, when we had all we could carry I went out first. I chose an exit near where I had jumped out before thinking to find him outside on the ground dead or dying. If I hadn't seen a few drops of blood under the window, and my face still throbbing from his claws I might have thought I imagined it all. With some searching, I found his trail of blood, and it went off the opposite way we were going so I left it alone. The remainder of our trip was uneventful but I refused to drop my guard the whole time. I swore to never again fall into a trap like that. Now we are back and have enough food for a while. We have a weapon to do some hunting with and a new friend for some company. I'm sure my face will heal soon enough and we can get settled in here." My dad smiled warmly at my mother until she took his hand and dragged him into the cabin.
"Well, now that you have talked our ears off, bring that food inside and let me do what I can to clean up those cuts. We don't need you getting sick from wounds like that."
My Mother pushed Dad inside, leaving Dawn and myself alone outside of our soon to be cramped little cabin in the woods.
Chapter 3
Dawn never did speak, at least, not like the rest of us. She understood us just fine, and there was no doubting her intelligence. She just never said a word aloud. However, to Mom and me she would often show her intent with pressed visions.
A picture is worth a thousand words. My mom used to say all the time, with Dawn it was literal. We knew her importance to our little group later the next day.
Mom did what she could for the cuts on dads face. It didn't take long for them to show signs of infection though. Within hours, my Dad had developed a fever and it was soon raging out of control. He lay in our cabin covered in sweat.
My Mom began to get frantic when it got bad enough that Dad become delirious. His eyes would roll back into his head and he would breathe heavily. His breath came in short and sharp pulls, almost like a dog trying to cool himself off.
My mom had me go through the supplies he had brought back time and again looking for medicines of any kind. It would seem though that other than simple bandages and splints my father hadn't been able to find anything medicinal at all. My mother never left his side.
Dawn and I went out to collect wood often. We simply walked around the woods finding branches, or small trees and pulled them back to use as firewood. I would do all the talking, mostly about events before. I did my best to try to keep my mind off my father's condition. Dawn would just listen.
Occasionally if she had a comment, she would place another image into my mind of what she needed to say. Once the initial shock wore off an image thrust into my mind, it became quite normal. It became so normal in fact that I took it all in stride. On the second day, we came back into the cabin to find my mom in tears at my father’s side.
"He's dying." She said between sobs.
"I can't stop his fever, and he hasn't woken from this sleep in almost a day. Shade, I had a vision, like before. Only this time he wasn't in our future. What are we going to do?"
She broke down in tears once again. I stood in shock. How would we live here without Dad? I couldn't think how we would make it for long without him, not with my mother being blind.
Dawn placed a picture in my head at that moment. It was her standing over father. Hands placed scant inches from his face. Her eyes closed, and a light was coming from her hands. I wasn't exactly sure what she was saying but I didn't know what else to do.
"If you can do it, please try." I begged, my own eyes clouded over with tears at the thought of Dad being gone.
Dawn stood over my father as I had seen her do in her vision. Mother didn't notice. She was beside herself with worry. Her tears ran down steadily as she laid her head on his chest. Dawn placed her hands over dad's face, not touching the wounds or him, just holding them a hairs breadth away. She closed her eyes in concentration. I held back my own sobs to see if what Dawn had shown me would work. A faint light formed under her hands, between the slim space between her skin and his wound. It wasn't nearly as bright as her vision had been. Barely a flicker, she held it there a moment while sweat broke out on her forehead. Then she pulled her hands back shaking her head. My Mom's head snapped up from Dad chest. Rubbing the tears from her glossy black eyes, she turned to me. "Shade...Help her!"
I involuntarily took a step back. "What? How?"
It was the first time since the event I had felt fear. I took everything up until now with a dull acceptance, almost as if I was riding on a wave. The current was carrying me along and that wasn't my choice. It wasn't that I didn't want to help Dad. No... I did. We needed him...I needed him. However, how could I help?
"Mom, I don't even know how Dawn is doing that. Let alone how to help her do it."
"You have to try Shade! I just saw it, if you don't help Dawn, he will die!"
My fear climbed even higher. I took a shaky step towards Dawn and she grabbed one of my hands before I could pull it back. Her grip was much tighter then I could have imagined.
She placed her other hand over father's cuts, and once again closed her eyes. The light formed again under her hand, except this time it was brighter, much brighter. I could feel her pulling something from me as she worked.
My heart started to race. I looked at my father for a moment; his breathing was slowing and coming in longer, deeper breaths again. It was then that I noticed something out the window.
We had a tree growing right outside the cabin. I had looked at it many times while we had sat and talked inside this little room. As I stared at the tree, I found I couldn't see the life inside of it anymore. The glow I was so used to seeing inside it was fading away. It looked to me just like a normal tree. Frantically I looked around at other items. Every one of them looked normal. There was nothing special I could see in anything.
I sensed Dawn pulling even more from me and I panicked. I snatched my hand away from her and ran out the door as fast as I could go. Up the hill away from the cabin, I ran until my breath came in ragged pulls and sweat poured down my face. It was there that I fell to the ground and cried. What had I done?
Chapter 4
I watched Shade's light fade out as I heard him burst out of the house. No matter how black my world had become, I could always see Shade and now Dawn too. Since the event, a light inside him shone bright no matter what time of day others told me it was. Even when he was far away on his trips outside, when he went deep into the woods, I could see his light. Sometimes it was only a pinprick to me, but it was always there.
Dawn also had it, but it wasn't as bright. Perhaps it was because she wasn't my own daughter, I didn't know. Something inside her kept it shadowed, as though she were a lantern that had its shutters drawn tight. I also saw the light she used to try to heal my husband, I couldn’t see if it worked or not.
I don't know what had happened to me on that fateful night. Before then, it was easy to accept that things had changed. What else could I do? The visions were a little harder. Who can see the future? Would you want to? I had asked myself those questions repeatedly. The answers never came.
Then I saw the marked grave of my husband and I lost myself. Without him, the rest of us would soon be dead, it was as clear as glass in my mind. I needed him more than ever. He couldn't leave me. My fear over losing him was almost uncontrollable. Then he got hurt. Why didn't I see that happen?
I couldn't concentrate, my mind refused to focus. I was still in a panic, but I saw Dawn pull something from Shade. She drew the power from inside him, and worked with it to make her stronger. She already had the power inside herself, but locked away. Only a little of her full potential seemed to come through those shutters.
With Shade's help, she had the strength to heal my husband. At least I hoped she did. My concentration was on the exchange, I should have seen it sooner. We were both asking so much from Shade he didn't have a chance to think about it. Then Shade broke the connection and ran out of the cabin. I saw his light heading up the hill. It was dimmer then I had ever seen it before. Then it went out. Dawn fell backwards to the floor exhausted from her effort. She sat there fighting for each breath while my husband still lay on his back, unconscious, but his breathing had steadied at least.
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Shade lay panting on the ground. Night had fallen as he waited there trapped with fear, while everything around him was dull, lifeless. The landscape looked as it had before the Event. Shade's pulse raced as he tried unsuccessfully to work his way though his fears. A light breeze had picked up in the night. The tree branches swayed back and forth gently in its tender caress. High above the world the stars looked down at Shade and offered him their subtle light.
"What did I do?" Shade looked up at the stars as the realization of what he had just done sunk into him. His father had never before been in such a need for help. As far back as Shade could remember, even before he was born, he knew his father had been a devout military man. His Dad had tried to hide it, but it wasn't a secret. The fact he had been a sniper had been a surprise.
Rules came easy for his Dad and there was always an answer for everything. He was a strong man. Proud in that strength and capable in all that he tried to accomplish. He rarely needed help with anything. In the one moment when his father had needed his help the most, Shade had let him down. Realization slapped him across the face and the tears began anew. Shame replaced his fear as he lay on the ground sobbing. Only the stars noticed the faint flicker of a light form again inside him, its strength faint.
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Dawn couldn't fight her exhaustion. With a glance at her newfound family, she lay down, and fell asleep. Her last thoughts were a weak look of "Sorry" to this woman who had taken her in, who acted like her new mother. Against her wishes, Dawn's eyelids fluttered and darkness overtook her.
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With one night, everything had changed for me. My husband lay beside me. He didn't seem as bad as he was before. Whatever Dawn had done had changed something in him, but he wasn't fully better. I didn't need to see him to know that. His body was still hot to the touch and his breathing, although steadied, was still too forced to be healthy. There was nothing left to do but to wait it out.
Dawn had fallen asleep where she sat back, after her attempt at helping. Her light had dimmed inside, but the reserved strength was still there, it was just hiding. Shade's light had gone out.
There was no way I could find him without the use of my eyes. The cabin was my only world. I knew my way around it as though I could see where everything was. The visions I often saw made it easy enough for that. Even when something wasn't placed back where it belonged I could find it if I paid attention to the flashes of insight I would get from time to time. Now I felt truly alone.
My last vision lay trapped inside my mind's eye, and it wouldn't leave me no matter how much I wanted it to go away. It showed a gravestone with my husband's name etched across it.
I tried to force some water down him. It was the least I could do with his fever. He would need some liquids nothing had changed that. I would have to wait everything out, and hope for a miracle. While I waited, I gave my husband as much water as I thought would be safe. I cried myself to sleep next to him that night and hoped for a brighter morning.
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The sun's light crept over the mountains until it shone upon the small cottage in the woods. My night had been a long one full of broken dreams and sleeping nightmares. I knew something had happened to me, but I couldn't remember what. All I could remember was the pain.
After blinking my eyes a few times against the light coming from the window, I saw Dawn lying down close to me sleeping peacefully. She looked different somehow. Maybe I just hadn't looked at her that well. With all the excitement of the town, and knowing I had to get supplies back to my family quickly, I really hadn't paid her that much attention.
My wife's hand was lying across my chest, as she too was sound asleep next to me, her eyes swollen. Why had she been crying? I tried to lift her arm from me carefully so as not to wake her.
With my movement, a flash of pain blasted through me. My arms failed to respond to my desires and blinding lights exploded in front of my eyes. In the background, I thought I heard a wolf howl, but it was too hard to focus my thoughts as consciousness left me again.
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Shade woke in the midst of the forest. A distant howl of a wolf broke the silence of the morning. It was too far away for him to need to worry about it. He knew exactly where he was. This whole valley had been his home for months now. It would have been almost impossible for him to get lost.
The air was crisp and clean. The sky above was once again clear and bright. It seemed never a cloud formed in the sky. He was more than a little chilled having slept on the ground. Luckily, it hadn't gotten too cold yet
Shade stretched, as he hadn't slept
well at all. His dreams were full of disjointed figures. Shapes loomed around him, always reaching out for him. They pulled at him as though he were made of rubber. A finger from one would hook into him and stretch him out. As he tried unsuccessfully to break free, another would grab him and pull a piece of him another way. He had waked often last night screaming. With only the stars above and the trees swaying around him he would remember his failure and fall asleep again to begin dreaming once more.
The light played across his legs as he sat up and watched the shadows of trees sway back and forth in the light breeze. He knew that he would have to go back. His mother needed him still, and he shouldn't have left. The shame of his actions caused him to move slowly as he stretched his arms and legs. Shade glanced at the grey color around himself. He looked around him at the plants. Was there a hint of life in them again?
Shade concentrated hard to see if he could once again see the life inside the trees, grass, anything at all. He thought he saw, something, but it was too hard to tell. Perhaps it was just the light playing tricks on him. He had to get back. He didn't feel right not being able to see the life inside the world it was as if something was missing. Shade knew his family would be awake now and worrying about him. His head hung low as he began the trek back to the cabin. The shame of his failure played heavy on his mind. He had run farther then he thought in the darkness. Shade was surprised he hadn't gotten hurt as he fled.
THE EVENT Page 2