Wolf Pack

by Bridget Essex

  “Well. Come on in,” she grunts; then she's standing aside, and I walk into the station, the coolness of the air outside cut off as she shuts the door behind me and the warmth of the room washes over me.

  Barbara stands about a head taller than me, even though I'm pretty tall myself. She has the kind of muscular build that suggests she works out all the time, and that's impressive. Honestly, it seems as if she hasn't changed much at all since the last time I've seen her.

  It's kind of alarming, actually. Like she just doesn't age.

  And when my gaze finally adjusts to the light and I can actually look her in the eyes, I'm doubly alarmed to see something that she never had before: a bright white scar passing over her right eye and onto her cheek. It's a thin, narrow slash that looks like it was probably pretty painful to endure.

  Now she's staring at me with anger, glaring. Her lips move up over her teeth in a snarl as she gazes at me in bare disgust.

  I take a step back, feeling chilled, wary. Yeah, I'd say it's pretty obvious that she's more unhappy to see me than ever before.

  I wish I knew what I'd done to make her hate me so much. The worst thing I ever did to her was be frightened of her. And I used that fright to fuel some pretty outrageous stories after dark, flashlight beam pointed at my chin.

  “Hi, Barbara. How are you?” I ask her, clearing my throat as I force a small smile onto my face. I hold out my hand to her for a shake.

  But she doesn't take it. Instead, she deliberately glances down at it, her lips curling up even further over her teeth. She actually laughs, then, a short, sharp bark of a laugh as she shakes her head, turning away from me.

  Barbara frowns as she sits down behind the desk, steepling her fingers over her middle. Then she sighs and pushes her chair back, glancing back up at my face again. Her eyes are narrowed and flashing with something I can't quite place. Agitation? Annoyance?

  She wastes no time, just gets right down to business. “I'm displeased that you chose to camp here this week, Ms. Reynolds,” she says, her voice strained, forced. “I really wish there was something I could do to talk you out of staying tonight.” When she says this, her head is tilted to the side, her eyes slitted as she pins me to the spot with her hard gaze. Her brunette hair—though she's at least sixty, there's not a single streak of gray in it—is pulled back severely from her face, highlighting the scar. And her scowl.

  I watch Barbara in shock, opening and shutting my mouth.

  Before I can even think, I'm stating the obvious. “I...I'm sorry. I don't know why my staying at the cabin would bother you,” I tell her quickly, spreading my hands as I stare at her, perplexed. “My family's cabin doesn't really even have anything to do with the park,” I tell her, my voice shaking, nervous. I could count on my mother being worried about me, but I wasn't expecting there to be resistance from someone who has nothing to do with me or my life. Someone I'm checking in with, out of courtesy. There's no rule that says we have to stop at the ranger station before we go to our cabin; we've just always done it.

  “There's a dangerous animal on the loose here,” she says, the words coming out low, slow.

  Well. That was unexpected. I blink.

  “Dangerous animal? A bear? But you guys have bears all the time,” I tell her.

  She's shaking her head slowly, still keeping me within her angry sights. “No—not a bear,” she growls, her eyes glinting as she stares up at me from her chair. She licks her lips, takes a deep breath. “There have been reports,” she says, “that what we're dealing with...” She draws out a long breath, still glowering.

  “What?” I mutter.

  She holds my gaze. “A wolf,” she says simply.

  And I laugh—until I realize that she's not laughing, too. And, anyway, she doesn't strike me as the type of person who cracks jokes.

  Ever.

  “How is that possible?” is what I finally settle on replying. When I was a little girl, I thought I heard wolves howling out in the woods, but it was never really wolves. Coyotes occasionally, yeah, but wolves haven't been wild here since well over a hundred years ago.

  She shrugs, but she's still staring at me shrewdly, her eyes narrowed. “So, it's not safe for you to—”

  “Reports?” I ask her, folding my arms in front of me. “What kind of reports? Have there been sightings of this wolf? Where could the wolf possibly have come from? A zoo? Wouldn't I have heard about it?”

  She says nothing for a long moment, only stares at me, her eyes boring into my skull in an invasive fashion. Finally, she says, “I urge you—strongly—not to camp here at the park this weekend, Ms. Reynolds.” Her voice is voice sharp, clipped, succinct. “But if you want to camp against my wishes, there is...nothing I can do to stop you.”

  Coupled with her sarcastic tone, her darkened eyes, and her scowling face, her words take on an ominous tone.

  I stare, holding my tongue. I'm not intimidated by her, and I'm certainly not intimidated by an unlikely story about a wolf terrorizing Allegany State Park. That's like saying there's a sea-monster swimming in the lake. Both of those things are impossible.

  I know Barbara has never liked me, and she doesn't want me staying in the park. But my camping plans have nothing to do with her.

  It's been a long drive to get here, and I was already exhausted when I got off of work this afternoon. So what comes out next isn't something I'm exactly proud of.

  “You've never liked me, Barbara,” I say. Somewhere, far away, my sensible side is horrified at how flushed my cheeks are, at the impassioned words that are pouring out of my mouth. But I can't stop them. “But I don't honestly care. I'm camping here this week, and if you think your half-assed story frightens me, you have another think coming.”

  And then, internally mortified—oh-God-I-can't-believe-I-just-did-that—I turn around and aim for the door.

  “Ms. Reynolds,” says Barbara, her voice low, her tone thick with warning.

  I can't help it. I stop, and I turn on my heel to look back at her.

  My heartbeat leaps up into my throat, because when I look back...

  She's staring at me. Her eyes are wide and wild-looking, and the way that she's smiling... Well, she's showing more teeth than people usually show when they smile.

  It's...genuinely frightening.

  “Watch out for wolves,” she tells me, still smiling that scary, much-too-big smile. I open the door, and then I'm stumbling down the porch steps as her laughter, her genuine laughter, chases after me, out into the night.

  I fall into my car, shove the key in the ignition, and then I'm driving away from the ranger station and the creepy woman that I told stories about when I was a kid, trying to make them scarier than the stories my cousins told, all about how Barbara would eat you up if you got on her bad side.

  A feat I successfully accomplished tonight.

  And the way she looked at me?

  Yeah. Maybe those childhood stories had a hint of truth to them, after all.

  I take a deep breath, trying to quell my too-fast heartbeat as I move down the road, between the thick layers of trees. She's not a friendly person; she just wanted to spook me. Part of me wonders if she'd go so far as to pull a prank or two out in the woods, try to get me to leave, but there's no actual reason for her to dislike me. I know all of her coworkers, her supervisor... If she did something to get me to leave the cabin, I would report her.

  But what the hell was that—that smile, that laugh? What just happened?

  I shake my head, rub my face with my right hand, keeping the left hand tight on the wheel.

  That was just...weird.

  The minute I get to the cabin, I park the car and stare up at the usually comforting building. Our cabin looks like a lot of the other cabins in Allegany, with its small front porch, sharp-looking roof and warm, wooden shingles. And it usually is very comforting to see, filling me with a sense of ease, of rightness with the world.

  But when I get out of the car right now, closing the door beh
ind me, I'm plunged into darkness again. Honestly, I used to love the dark here when I was a kid. When it was summer, I'd catch fireflies, and when it was fall, we'd gather around campfires and tell each other spooky stories and eat s'mores until we got sick. I have a lot of good memories about nighttime here at Allegany Stare Park, but right now, I don't want to be in the dark, and I don't want to be faced with opening up the cabin, fumbling around with next-to-no visibility as I light my lantern, as I try to make the place feel safe.

  So I grab my overnight bag from the backseat, and I find my flashlight in the glove compartment, and I set off down the worn, familiar path between the pines, leading to the bathroom.

  One of the best things about my family's cabin has always been its closeness to one of the camp bathroom buildings. There are only a handful of bathrooms scattered through the Quaker section of Allegany State Park, and we happen to be close to the best one. Most of the camp bathrooms have showers on one side of the concrete block building, and toilets and sinks on the other, and this bathroom is no exception. But this building is longer, has more showers and toilet stalls, which means it has more lighting and also means, in summer, that if you get up early enough and sprint, you won't have to wait in line for a shower. And you might be lucky enough to get some hot water out of the deal, too.

  So I follow the path, my flashlight on, beam down so that I don't startle any of the small wildlife or critters who might be out on such a cold night (though I doubt there are any; it's just habit). I have my bag slung over my shoulder, my left hand tucked deeply into my fleece pocket, as I mull over Barbara's ridiculous behavior and my own reaction to her. I'm embarrassed by how I responded, but I'm also upset by how she responded. And how very, very creepy she'd become within a manner of seconds.

  Honestly, I hate to keep using the word “creepy.” I usually only use that word for horror movies and poorly lit basements and horror movies set in poorly lit basements. But Barbara was the personification of all those things tonight.

  So much for a relaxing start to the weekend!

  But by the time I reach the bathroom building, I've convinced myself that I must have said or done something when I was a little kid to make her hate me, which means that, at least, she wasn't doing all of this stuff unprovoked. And, for some reason, that makes me feel better. I mean, I wasn't a bad kid, but I was by no saint, either. I got into trouble just as fast as—or perhaps a little faster than—my boy cousins when we went camping every year. I was a tomboy, and I often led the adventures into the mountains, my five cousins following behind me like my band of merry men. I was their sunburned, five-year-old girl version of Robin Hood.

  Yes. When I was in the middle of one of my Robin Hood plays, I must have done something that rubbed Barbara in a very wrong way.

  There. Now that I've convinced myself (not really) of that fact, I can stop worrying about it.

  And I sort of do stop worrying. I open the heavy metal door of the bathroom building and am immediately comforted by the bright fluorescent glow of the lights overhead. I close the door behind me, and for a long moment, I stand with my back to the door, my hand hovering over the lock. I consider locking the door behind me.

  I grimace for a long moment, debating. If I lock the door, that would mean that I could take a shower in absolute peace, knowing that not a single soul would disturb me. But at the same time, I know that there are other campers at the park tonight (I saw a van down in one of the cabin rings)—and what if some poor drunk teenage girl needs to take a shower really badly? I can't deny anyone that. So, even though it's against my better judgment, I obey the wordless camping rules that I was raised on. Never deny a fellow camper a bathroom. It's just good karma.

  I set my pack on the bench along the wall opposite the showers and rummage around in it for my bottles of shampoo, body wash and shaving cream, and my little painfully pink disposable razor. I'm purposefully thinking of a bunch of things other than Barbara right now, like wondering if I should go on another date with Stacey.

  Yeah, Stacey. I'll think about Stacey.

  I gather the bottles in my arms and deposit them in one of the empty shower stalls, as I ponder my not-girlfriend. Stacey is really nice; we went on a handful of dates this month, while also going on dates with other people. She's very pretty, with short red hair and big green eyes and this really cute nose. I liked her on sight. But Stacey just got out of a long-term relationship with a woman she was engaged to...and she said on the very first date that we should date other people while we also date each other. She made it painfully clear that we wouldn't be exclusive.

  I turn on the hot water and hold my hand under the stream; it's shockingly cold, so I wait. I wait, and I wait, and finally, the hot water reaches me—and it's scalding. One moment, frozen water is pummeling the palm of my hand, and the next, it's water hot enough to boil a lobster. I wince and dial back the ancient water knobs a little; then I take a step back from the shower and unzip my fleece jacket.

  Even though the steam from the shower is pouring into the room, I'm still shivering when I tug the jacket off over my shoulders, folding it into a pile on the bench. I'm just wearing a tank top beneath, and that comes off over my head in a second. I wad it up and toss it beside my fleece, running my hands through my hair as I take my ponytail holder out and toss it into my bag. I shake out my hair and groan a little as I flex backward, still stupidly sore from the drive here.

  Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't think about Stacey. I don't know if that's a dead end, or if it's something that could possibly evolve into a relationship... It's just too uncertain. And I'm kind of sick of the uncertainties of life.

  I peel my jeans over my legs and take them off, along with my panties. Then I remove my socks, too, after toeing off my hiking boots. I stand there naked for a moment, rubbing my shoulders and playing with the water's heat, fiddling with the knobs until it's the perfect temperature—and then I step under that blast of water.

  I gasp, letting the heat sluice over me, chasing away all of the cold in an instant as I shiver in delight. I rub my hands over my eyes, my long, blonde hair running with water down my back, and for the first time all day, as I tilt my head back, letting the water rush over me, I exhale, relaxing.

  I draw in long, slow breaths as the water pours over me, letting every bit of the tension in my shoulders pour out, too, as they relax, ease down. I lift up my arms, running my fingers through my hair, working out the tangles.

  I'm so relaxed, in fact, with the water rushing around me so fast and hard, hammering my back and my head, that I almost don't hear the sound over the roar of the water...

  But I do hear it.

  My eyes go wide, and I gasp, grabbing the water knobs for a moment, gasping out water that I got in my nose as I try to hold my breath, try to listen.

  And there it is again.

  The first time, the sound that rose over the shower was this: the unmistakable creaking of the metal door opening.

  And now it's the same creak, but in reverse. The door is shutting.

  The door to the outside opened and shut.

  Every hair on my body is at attention, and I'm covered in goosebumps as I grip the faucet knobs with knuckles so tight, they're white. I blink back the water running into my eyes, and I try to quell my panicked heartbeat. It's not unusual for someone else to come into the showers, obviously; there are other campers here this weekend.

  But it's late. And that run-in with Barbara was so damn weird. I'm still on edge. I kept the bathroom door unlocked in case anyone else wanted to use it, but I honestly didn't think anyone would use it. I know that's not logical, but hearing the door open and shut unnerved me.

  Normally, you acknowledge a fellow camper in the bathrooms only if you're both fully clothed, and even then, it's just a nod. You don't ever call out from your shower stall or yell “Hello!” at them.

  And you certainly don't peer out at them from around the shower curtain like a weird person. But that's exactly what I'm thinking abou
t doing right now.

  I take a step forward on the slick concrete floor, my hand reaching out toward the drab, gray shower curtain as my heart beats uncontrollably inside of me.

  I just... I just have to see who's out there. It'll just be a tiny peek. She probably won't even see me peeking.

  I just have to know I'm safe. Barbara did get to me, as much as it pains me to admit it.

  So I pull the shower curtain back a little, and I peer out of the tiny gap, toward the door.

  The moment seems to crystallize around me. The water seems to slow; the rush spilling down all around me is muffled white noise as I listen to my ragged breathing. I stare from behind the shower curtain, the curtain that is now trembling because my hand is trembling. What I'm seeing out there, in the shower hall, makes my knees actually buckle, weakening. But I don't let them give out. I stiffen my legs, gaping.

  What I'm seeing is... Well, I can't believe it's possible.

  There's a wolf standing in the middle of the bathroom floor.

  And it's bleeding.

  The wolf is about as tall as my hips, big and lanky, with very dark brown fur that's mottled in places with black. It's wheezing, its nose wrinkling as it pants, bracing itself into a standing position on the concrete, its massive paws spread around it, quivering, trying to hold it up. Its claws are pressing, scraping against the concrete floor, and its right shoulder is actually dripping blood. There's a small pool of the red stuff gathered around its front right paw on the ground, spilling outward over the dirty concrete.

  Gasping for air, I let the shower curtain fall back into place, and I stand there, under the powerful stream of water, and I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

  There's a wolf in the bathroom.

  A wolf.

  I'm shaking, I realize, as I stare down at my wet hands, water dripping from the ends of my fingers as the shower goes on, as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening at all. I curl my hands tightly into fists, trying to think of something to do, anything I can do to get out of this. Adrenaline courses through me.