Black Wolf Rising (Prequel to the Bernadette Callahan Mystery Series)

by Lyle Nicholson

  “Now you’ve done it,” the big girl said.

  Susie rolled over on the floor, slipping several times before she got up. She was wet, she was mad. She came at Bernadette with fists raised. The other two girls joined in.

  Bernadette didn’t remember when she blacked out. The blows seemed to last forever. Susie’s fury had no bounds. She heard the words, “Stop, Susie, you might kill her. Stop—”

  10

  Bernadette felt cold. There was darkness. She couldn’t see her hands. There was no sound. A small light appeared above her that looked like it was on the surface above. Was she under water?

  She lifted her arms and propelled herself upwards; as she rose the water became warmer and there was sound, faint at first, then it became a rhythmic beep. She hit the surface coming into light, and her eyes opened. She was in a hospital room.

  Long cords attached to Bernadette somewhere under her covers, running back to the machine beside her that beeped away in a rhythm showing her vitals as stable. She took it as a good sign.

  Beside the bed in a big armchair her Grandma Moses was sleeping, her breath going in and out in a soft snore. Bernadette had gone to sleep for so many years to her grandma’s snoring; she’d missed it when moving to the city. She looked at her grandma, a feeling of tenderness flooding over her.

  Her grandma snorted and woke up. “Ah, you’re awake finally.”

  Bernadette’s voice was raspy as she spoke. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Three days.”

  “Oh my god, I missed two exams!”

  “Don’t worry, you’ve had all your teachers and school kids in here to check on you. They’ll let you do the exams later. How you feeling?” Grandma Moses asked, sitting up in the chair and taking Bernadette’s hand.

  “Like I got hit by a stampede. Am I badly injured?”

  Grandma Moses massaged her hand. “Not bad. You have something called a stress fracture in your right leg a concussion and a lot of bruises. Some doctor was in here, saying how lucky you were. Said you would heal in a few months if you rest.”

  “A few months. I’ll miss the indoor track event next month.”

  Grandma Moses shrugged. “But you’ll heal. You can run another time.”

  Bernadette’s eyes filled with tears. “There is no other time. The track event would have gotten me into the finals for the year. It was a springboard to a scholarship.”

  “You’re alive, Bernadette. That is what matters. Whoever attacked you came close to giving you a massive concussion. Are you going to tell the school and police who did this?”

  “The police are involved?”

  “You were found in the showers in a coma. The janitors found you. The police have been here. They want you to say who did this,” Grandma Moses said. She gave Bernadette a plastic water cup with a straw and watched as Bernadette drained it.

  Bernadette put her hand to her head. Her other hand had an intravenous line with a drip from a bag. She was realizing how badly the girls had beaten her.

  “But…Grandma, I started it…I struck the other girl first. I pissed her off and she went nuts on me,” Bernadette said.

  “A fight is one thing, trying to kill you is another,” Grandma Moses said. She got up slowly and poured more water in the cup for Bernadette. She moved slowly and stiffly.

  “When did you get here?” Bernadette asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Your aunt phoned me the evening they found you. The school called her at work. I started driving the moment I got the phone call.”

  “You drove the seven hours from Twin Pines at night,” Bernadette said. She sipped more water from the cup—she was amazed at her grandma’s stamina.

  Grandma Moses let a small smile edge her lips. “You take it one hour at a time.”

  “I have a question to ask you, Grandma.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve dreamt of ravens and black wolves in the past week. What does it means?” Bernadette asked.

  Grandma Moses sat down, staring into Bernadette’s eyes. “Ravens are a good omen to our people. They are smart and teach us things. Wolves are also a noble brother to our people, but you say it was black wolves?”

  Bernadette stared out the hospital window. “Yes…yes it was. There were many black wolves, and they howled so much in my dreams I thought they were outside the window.”

  Grandma Moses took Bernadette’s hand and squeezed it. “There are always two wolves inside you. A white one and a black one: the white one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

  “But the black wolf is full of anger. The smallest thing will set him off. He fights everyone, all the time. He cannot think because his anger is so great. It is helpless anger, for anger will change nothing. It is hard to live with these two wolves inside you, for both seek to dominate your spirit.”

  Bernadette looked at her grandma. “Which one wins, Grandma?”

  “The one you feed. Now, get some sleep,” Grandma Moses said.

  Bernadette’s eyes felt heavy. They closed on their own, like lead weights dropping. She began to dream. Large snowflakes fell. A wolf appeared beside her; it was white.

  Her hand brushed its fur—it was warm. They walked together, descending down a steep incline into a valley layered with snow. She looked up to the valley ridge and saw black shapes.

  The valley was ringed with black wolves. They began to howl, a long rising wail echoed in the hills. She wasn’t afraid. Her right hand dug deeper in the white wolves fur as they walked.

  She woke up to daylight outside the window. Big flakes of snow were falling. A nurse was standing over her, smiling. “Good to have you with us, Bernadette, I’m Nurse Marcia. I’m on days, and I’ll be unhooking you from these wonderful contraptions you’ve been attached to.”

  Nurse Marcia looked Asian, maybe Filipino, Bernadette wasn’t sure. She’d met few Filipinos and knew they were a different brown than Native North Americans; a softer brown, they spoke with a singsong voice like they wanted to continue their sentence on a high note.

  “I’m going to take your catheter out now, okay,” Nurse Marcia said with a smile, making it sound like this was going to be a mild inconvenience. As the device came out, Bernadette felt like she’d been lifted off the bed.

  “Wow, that felt weird,” Bernadette said.

  “It’s okay, it’s out now, we’ll be taking you to the bathroom from now on so you can go potty all on your own,” Marcia said.

  Bernadette frowned at the word “potty.” Hold old this nurse think she was, three? She watched as the nurse pulled out the IV then unhooked a heart rate monitor from her chest.

  When the nurse was finished, she felt lighter, as if she’d been brought back into the world, but battered and not whole. She wondered what day it was. The track event had been on Friday. Grandma Moses said she’d been out for three days. She figured it must be Monday or Tuesday.

  The smell of food wafted into the room. A large metal cabinet loaded with trays appeared in the outside hallway. A few minutes later a tray was placed before her. Breakfast was a plate with a plastic cover, a juice and milk in a plastic bottle, and a teacup with hot water on the side.

  She removed the plastic cover to find semi-warm oatmeal sprinkled with brown sugar. The food looked awful, but then all hospital food was horrible. She dug in to ease her hunger pangs.

  She was sipping on her tepid tea when a policewoman in a uniform filled her doorway. Her oatmeal did a flip in her stomach. This was a moment she was dreading.

  “Hi, Bernadette, I heard you were out of your coma. I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,” Officer Linda Myers said.

  Bernadette sat upright in bed. “Yeah, the doctors said I’ll be out of here in a few days. Guess I can take a licking and keep on ticking.” She made a small laugh at her Timex watch joke.

  “I re
ad the doctor’s report,” Myers said. “They came close to causing you some pretty serious injuries. You were lucky to be found in time.”

  Bernadette sniffed and pulled a tissue from the beside table. “Well, yeah, I’m a lucky girl.” She blew her nose softly and dropped the tissue on her side table.

  Officer Myers sat in the chair; she didn’t want to stand and make this an interrogation. She needed Bernadette to open up to her, and she could see the hesitation. “Do you want to tell me who did this to you?”

  Bernadette looked out the window. “No, I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I started it.”

  Myers leaned forward, “It doesn’t matter who started this. You were found naked in the shower. There were three sets of boot prints in there. Even if you took a swing at Susie and her gang, they had no reason to beat you so violently.”

  “I didn’t say it was Susie,” Bernadette said. Her face turned red with the stress she felt from Myer’s questions.

  Myers shook her head. “We know it was Susie Ferguson and her gang. I just need you to give me a description of the other girls and a statement.”

  Bernadette lowered her head. “I have too much black wolf inside me. It was my fault.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. If this a native shaman thing you need to be exorcised from, fine, but in the meantime I want to put Susie and her little thugs into juvenile detention,” Myers said.

  “Susie would go to prison…if I ID’d her?”

  “In a heartbeat,” Myers said. “She has a string of priors. She’s attending school on strict probation. Assaulting you puts her right back in juvenile detention. She won’t be out until she turns eighteen.”

  Bernadette pursed her lips. “No, I have no idea who attacked me in the shower. My memory is blank. Sorry, I have nothing for you.”

  “I hate to say it, but it’s your funeral, kid. Girls like Susie count on someone like you to roll over and play dead. She’ll keep pushing her luck until she hurts someone or kills someone. I just hope it’s not you,” Myers said as she got up.

  Myers left the room, and Bernadette felt a veil of sadness fall over her. What was she going to do? She watched the snow falling outside. The flakes were getting bigger.

  11

  Bernadette came back home to the apartment on Friday. Her aunt couldn’t hide her disappoint—the tirade began the moment she got in the door. “Didn’t I tell you it’s a tough school? Didn’t I tell you to stay away from fights? Look what you’ve done. Your grandma had to drive down to care for you. Don’t you see I got two kids of my own? You think this is easy what I’m doing here?”

  Bernadette walked with her cane to the couch. She had to use it for a few weeks until the stress fracture healed. Her foot was in a brace; she took it off at night and put on a special sock.

  Abigail and Amber crowded around her on the couch and gave her hugs. “We’re glad you’re home,” Abigail said. “We didn’t like going to the hospital—it smelled bad.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty bad. I didn’t like it either. Who’s been taking you to school while I was away?” Bernadette asked.

  “I did, if you want to know—I had to get up after a few hours’ sleep and take them, then go back to bed,” Aunt Mary said as she polished the kitchen table in violent swipes. The table shook, spoons jumped, clattering to the floor.

  Bernadette bit her lip; it was a dumb question to ask. “Sorry…” she said meekly. “I’ll take over on Monday. The doctor said I could walk, just no running. So…no problem.”

  “You’re damn right it’s no problem, you’ll be pulling your weight around here, and fast,” Aunt Mary said. She finished in the kitchen and stomped off to the bedroom.

  “Mom’s mad at you,” Amber said.

  “Yep, I get that, thanks, Amber.” Bernadette said. She picked up her schoolbooks and looked at the homework Melinda had dropped off. There’d be Math, English, and French tests on Monday. She needed to start studying and completing some assignments.

  Aunt Mary left for work at four. Her scowl lingered in the apartment long after she’d left. If Grandma Moses had stayed another few days, things might have been a bit smoother, with little room in the apartment, that wasn’t an option.

  Bernadette made the kids beans and franks with a salad for dinner, got them to do their homework, which was mostly identifying the dinosaurs that ate other dinosaurs and which ones ate plants, then plunked them in front of the television while she did her homework with her headphones on.

  She was into a dreamless sleep when she heard the apartment door open. Her aunt came in, and she wasn’t alone.

  Her aunt was giggling and whispering to a man who was asking in a gruff voice why he needed to keep quiet.

  “’Cause you’ll wake my kids, you dummy,” Aunt Mary answered in a slurred voice.

  Bernadette didn’t wait for Aunt Mary to tell her go to the other room. She grabbed her cane and limped as quietly as she could into the bedroom and closed the door.

  The sounds of lovemaking began almost immediately. The man was talking loudly. Aunt Mary kept telling him in hushed whispers to keep quiet.

  There was a loud slap. A yell of “no.” Bernadette bolted out of bed. She grabbed the cane and came into the other room. Aunt Mary was standing; she had only her panties on, with her hand on her cheek. She looked frightened.

  Bernadette turned on the lights. “I think you’d better leave.”

  “Bullshit. I’m showing Mary how to have rough sex—she’ll learn to love it. How about we do a threesome? I got enough juice for the both of you,” the man said. He was weaving as he stood there. “Mary, you didn’t tell me you had a tasty little daughter.”

  “She’s not my daughter, she’s my niece, and she’s sixteen.”

  “I’ve cracked a few virgins in my time, happy to do it for her.”

  “You’re not cracking anyone, mister. Get out, now,” Bernadette said. She was breathing heavily. Her hands were shaking.

  “You gonna make me, little girl?”

  Bernadette thought about it for a second. This guy was big and drunk. She had a cane. That wouldn’t do much. There was a carving knife in the kitchen. She could slice his leg and maybe hit his femoral artery then let the bastard bleed to death. She needed another option.

  “No, here’s what I’m going to do.” Bernadette walked to the hallway door. “I’m going open this door and start screaming help—police—rape at the top of my lungs. There’s several people in this building who work nights just like my aunt—they’re home.”

  “Bullshit, you not going to—”

  Bernadette opened the door. “Last chance. You leave or I start screaming. You look like a guy whose had a few brushes with the law; feel lucky?”

  “Bitch.”

  “I get that a lot, mister, now start walking,” Bernadette said.

  The man walked by Bernadette. She could feel the heat from his body as he brushed by. He made like he wanted to strike her, but she shook her head. “Don’t try it.”

  She slammed the door, locked it, and put the chain on before collapsing on the floor.

  Aunt Mary threw on her t-shirt and came to Bernadette’s side. “I’m sorry, kid, it was stupid to bring him here.” She put her head in her hands, and low sobs came.

  Bernadette looked up at her aunt. “You want to tell me what’s really going on here? You need sex so bad you bring a big offensive drunk home? You called me out for getting in fights, but this the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Aunt Mary sobbed quietly; a muffled “I know,” came from her hands.

  Bernadette struggled to get up off the floor then guided Aunt Mary to the kitchen table and put on some tea. The bedroom door opened. The two little faces of the girls appeared.

  “Go back to bed, girls,” Bernadette said.

  “We’re scared,” Abigail said. “We heard loud voices.”

  “Loud voices—like monsters,” Amber said.

&nb
sp; “We had the TV turned too loud, sorry,” Bernadette said.

  “Is mommy okay?” Amber asked.

  “Your mommy’s fine, the television scared her too, now go back to bed.”

  The girls closed the door slowly after peering around the corner to see if any new monsters had appeared.

  Bernadette made tea, placed two mugs on the table with the milk and sugar. She stirred her tea and looked at her aunt. “I need to know, and I’m going to ask you directly, are you having a problem with alcohol? Because if you are, I’ll take care of your kids while you go to rehab.”

  Aunt Mary shook her head, “No, it’s not the alcohol I’m having a problem with, it’s you.”

  “Me? You want me to leave? I can be gone in a heartbeat.”

  “No, it’s not you, it’s what you remind me of.”

  Bernadette stirred her tea and put her spoon down. “Okay, Aunt Mary, enough mystery, why don’t you tell me what you mean?”

  Aunt Mary sighed. “When you came here, it wasn’t having an extra person here—you’ve been great with the kids, and they love you. You remind me of your mom.”

  “I thought you and my mom were tight once.”

  “Yeah, once…” Aunt Mary sniffed. She blew her nose in a Kleenex and looked at Bernadette through bleary eyes. “Long before your dad appeared on the scene, your mom and I sang together.”

  “I never knew. Were you any good?”

  “Good? Hell yeah, we were amazing,” Aunt Mary said with a smile. “We sang here in Edmonton, did some gigs down in Calgary, and we had an agent who wanted us to go to Nashville.”

  “Nashville? You must have been good. What happened?”

  Aunt Mary’s face turned into a bitter frown. “Your father happened, the sweet-talking Dominic Callahan. He convinced your mom she was the star, and I just sang harmony in the group.”

  “I’m sorry about my dad…I had no idea.”

  Aunt Mary stirred her tea then sighed. “No…there’s more to it…”

  “You want to tell me the whole story, ‘cause I got all night,” Bernadette said.