by George Wier
He was almost to the barn. His legs throbbed but the feeling was coming back into them. Maybe he’d be able to stand once he reached the barn. If he could get inside, there was light and stuff he could use to defend himself in there. A pitchfork he’d never had any use for. A machete he hadn’t touched in ten years. He’d lock the place from the inside and if the Old Man was able to cave in the barn door, Wolf would draw blood.
“No. Ain’t gonna kill me without a fight. No. I mean it. No.”
But all the while as he moved and felt the raw pain in his legs, he thought of Farrel and the Old Man’s house.
He felt the beginning of a tickle inside his gut for the first time. His cheeks were flushed and red, and spittle leaked between his clenched lips.
Shame, he thought. That’s what this is. Shame for what you done.
“No,” Wolf said. And the no had taken a flip-flop in meaning for him.
“No,” he said to that thought, and for a moment he meant it as a cancellation of the shame, but then even the negation did a little flip on him.
“I’ll never do anything bad again,” he said. “No.”
Wolf Dillard’s back fetched up against the barn and he stopped.
And at that moment he realized that all the sounds from the house had ceased.
*****
It took a great deal of effort, but they brought the roof down in the living room area of the Old Man’s house. Farrel very nearly broke his leg, but he picked himself up, dusted off and hobbled around as they completed their destruction. Wolf broke all of the dolls, with the exception of his and Farrel’s. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to break them, it was just that it was too much like laying a curse on both of them if he did. He left them standing there.
Farrel pulled out his pecker and walked around, pissing all over everything. The floors, the walls. Everything.
“You been savin’ that up,” Wolf said. “Don’t come near me, you queer bastard.”
Wolf set the bedding leaves in the Old Man’s bedroom alight. The smoke drifted up and made a run across the ceiling to the hole in the living room roof. After several minutes the smoke began filling up the place, and both men’s eyes watered.
“Time to go, I think,” Wolf said.
“Yeah.”
As they made their way outside, Wolf wondered to himself whether leaving the dolls of himself and Farrel intact was some kind of message. Something, perhaps, like: Hey, buddy. Guess who did all this shit? You get three tries, and the first two don’t count. But he shrugged it off. It didn’t matter. The damn Old Man probably could spell Wolf, much less reply.
That’s what you get, Old Man. That’s what you get for creepin’ us out like that.
On the way down the ridge Farrel smiled and hummed to himself.
As they neared the bottom, they heard it. The night scream, there in the waking daylight of noon.
“Shit,” Farrel cursed.
The two took to running.
When they got back to the truck and the campsite, there were three men waiting for them. The woodsman and two park rangers.
“Hey there, you old son of a bitch,” Wolf said to the woodsman, who didn’t reply. The woodsman leaned against the truck with his arms crossed.
“Would you be Ethel Dillard?” one of the rangers asked.
“I don’t go by ‘Ethel’. That was the last name of the doctor who delivered me. I’ve tried to have it changed, but the County Clerk won’t allow it unless I’ve got the original birth certificate, and the tornado got it years ago. Folks call me ‘Wolf’.”
“Yeah,” Farrel agreed, “he don’t go by Ethel.”
Wolf offered to shake the park ranger’s hand, but the man demurred.
“We heard the scream,” the other ranger stated and stepped forward. “What did you two assholes do?”
“Uh. Nothin’,” Farrel stated.
“Bullshit,” the woodsman said. “You did something pretty bad. Beat it out ‘em, officers.”
“You hush,” the second ranger said.
The first ranger looked from Wolf to Farrel and back again. “Look, you tell me what you two did, and unless you killed somebody or did something equally heinous, all we’ll do is escort you out of the park. But if you won’t tell us, you two are spending the night and the rest of the weekend in the Conroe jail. You’ve got my promise on that.”
Wolf looked at Farrel, who shrugged.
Wolf began talking.
*****
The barn was seventy feet away from the back steps of the house. How fast could the Old Man run? There was no way of knowing, except...the thing had hit him as fast as he could move the barrel of Brewster and fire.
Wolf made a made scramble to the door and used the handle to winch himself to his feet. A lightning bolt of searing pain traveling down his right leg and it made his stomach lurch. He very nearly passed out.
“No,” he whispered. “No. No. No.”
He stood, and as he did, he felt the long strides thumping the Earth beneath his feet. The Old Man was running, each thump from the ground heavier than the last.
Wolf pulled the door open a few inches and almost fell against it. Instead, he fell against the door facing and used his momentum to propel the door open wide enough gain entry. As he pulled the door closed, the Old Man hit the outside of the door, launching Wolf into blackness.
His hands saved him, but one of his hand come down hard on a piece of two-by-four. There was a burning itch at the center of his palm. The air came back into his lungs again as he realized there was a large nail through his palm, sticking out the top of his hand.
Wolf began crying.
Whump! The Old Man hit the barn door. Wolf heard a rustle as the crossbeam fell into place on the inside, effectively locking the creature out.
He pulled the nail out of his hand with a sudden jerk and cried out in pain. The tears on his face burned.
Wolf tried gaining his feet. There was a pull cord up there somewhere in the dark, about head height. All he had to do was find it, give it a tug, and there would be some light. He had a feeling that the Old Man didn’t cotton to light so much.
“Go away!” Wolf yelled.
A low growl answered him. The Old Man began tapping on the door. A tap here, a tap there. Was it trying to unnerve him, or was it probing for a weakness? If it was trying to unnerve him, the damn thing had accomplished that long before.
Wolf reached upward with his right hand—the punctured hand—that was beginning to throb loudly. He moved it about in the darkness overhead.
“Come on,” Wolf whispered to himself.
There was another small tap from outside, then nothing.
Something brushed Wolf’s fingertips. The cord! He tried finding it again, but he couldn’t. Then he got a picture of what was happening. He’d set it in a circular motion with his gentle tap, and was busily chasing it with his fingers in the dark. All he had to do was hold his hand still, and it would come to him.
Wolf steadied himself as best he could, held his hand still, and waited. He counted.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Contact!
He grasped the cord in his fingertips and pulled.
The light sprang into being at the same instant the barn door caved inward. Wolf fell backward and away, but the door came down on his outstretched left foot, pinning him.
He cried out.
The shadow came. It loomed over him, blotted out the bright overhead light the way it had blotted out the stars before.
It began with a guttural rumble from deep inside the thing. After a short while, it became a recognizable sound.
“...Uuuuuuuuulllllllllffffffeeee. Oooooo aaaaatttt aaaaaddd nnnngggg uuulllllffffff-eeeee.”
What? Wolf asked inside his mind. But he knew. He knew what it was saying. From the dream. Eula had said, Do that bad thing, Wolfie.
“Hurts!” Wolf cried. “Please don’t. It hurts!”
It stood on the barn door that was on his foot. Eve
ry little movement the thing made was translated up from Wolf’s foot into his brain on a cable car of electric pain.
“Urrrtttsss,” the Old Man rumbled. It gave a little hop and Wolf cried out in pain again. The Old Man laughed.
Then it stepped off of the barn door and stood straddling Wolf. It’s head brushed the electric light bulb overhead and it ducked beneath it.
Wolf looked up into the shrouded darkness of the Old Man’s face, and saw...
Ages. Ages of the Earth. The retreat of glaciers. The advance of the forests. The coming of the savages. The long watch as the settlers came. The family coming and disappearing one by one. The time of great loneliness, the solitude that stretched until now. And the desecration. The destruction of his home.
“oooottt ooooo aaaaadddd nnnnggggssss.”
“N-n-no,” Wolf stammered. “Not do bad things. No more.”
“ooooooddddd.”
“Good. Do good things,” Wolf agreed.
A moment passed as he listened to himself and the Old Man breathe. The Old Man slowly raised his head to the small sun that was the electric light, showing Wolf his countenance without a hint of shadow.
Wolf felt the hot wetness, then. The stream of it hit his chest and splattered. Some of the splatter sprayed onto his face. The burning hot stream went on and on and on.
Wolf sputtered.
The spray ceased. The Old Man moved away, stepped around the barn door, and was gone into the night.
*****
It took a year for Ethel “Wolf” Dillard to repair the damage done to his home. He’d almost considered having it bulldozed and starting all over again from scratch. But there was a lesson in it somewhere. He had learned that there was far more to learn in life. Nothing was set. Not the sunrise or the sunset or the seasons. Not home or anything. Nothing was.
He picked up Farrell for the funeral and drove him the long distance to Conroe, both of them in their monkey suits. Neither he nor Farrel had worn a suit since the funeral of Wolf’s father.
Farrell had a similar experience to Wolf’s, but he’d received no lasting ill effects from it. Farrell hadn’t gotten his foot broken, his back screwed up, or a nail through his hand. He had, however, got worse than a pissing on his chest.
There were few attendees at the funeral, but both men recognized the two men in the front row. They were the park rangers.
Words were said. Words about God and salvation, about the great outdoors and nature, and references to the Garden of Eden from Genesis. There were, however, few words about the decedent, Donald Ramsey. The preacher did say that Ramsey had been decorated for his heroism during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. That he’d lived an honorable life. And that he took his solitude and his communion with nature seriously, as few of us do.
Afterward, Wolf spent a few minutes talking with the park rangers. He made his apology to them both and inquired about the Old Man.
“He’s gone.”
“Where?”
“No one knows. His kind, they don’t leave a forwarding address.”
“What is his kind, do you think?” Wolf asked.
“Well...let’s see. What would you say your kind is, Mr. Dillard?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure that out. But, I will say that I’m determined to do so.”
“Good luck, Mr. Dillard.”
Both park rangers shook his hand.
When Wolf got back in his truck, he turned to Farrell, who looked him a question.
“What?”
“What the hell was that all about?” Farrell asked.
“Hmm. As I see it, if you don’t know now and after what we’ve both been through, you never will. No amount of explaining will make it make any sense to you, either.”
“Well. All right. Let’s roll, then.”
Wolf nodded, turned the ignition, and drove off from the parking lot and into the waiting pines.
Finis
