Big, Bad Wolf

by Essex, Bridget

  After a few more steps, with my hands in front of me like a zombie, I still hadn’t reached anything. Not the rock wall and not the drop-off. But I was going in an upward direction, and that's really what counted. So I tried to drift a little bit to the right, trying to find the wall as I felt forward with my hands.

  I was rewarded for my efforts when my shoulder brushed against the solidity of rock wall. I made a little yelp—I mean, there was absolutely nothing in the snow, and then there was suddenly something, and something so solid. Even if you were looking for it, it comes as a surprise. But then an immense relief bubbled up within me, and I slumped with relief against the wall. The sunglasses made everything darker, but the wall itself was dark and imposing, towering above me. A mountain.

  I patted the rock and rolled my shoulders, taking a deep breath as I tried to get my bearings.

  I had been walking how long? Who knew--who could tell? There was nothing to gauge my efforts and I hadn’t glanced at the time on my cell before I’d shoved it into my pocket. Even if I’d been outside for five minutes, it didn’t matter—I was shaking from exhaustion at this point.

  I was freezing.

  I stood, then, because to rest for even a moment would be stupid in this snow. I’d seen the television specials. I knew that when you rested you began to get tired, and you might give up, and that’s how you get people frozen to death in snow banks. So I kept going, my right hand firmly dragging along the wall.

  Now I had the wall and the wind and the snow. And I kept going, one foot in front of the other. Had it been an hour? Had it been five minutes? Everything began to feel less…well, real is the only way I can describe it. I was now pressing myself against the wind, struggling against its mute roar. The roar was everywhere, as was the absolute cold and the whiteness of snow. I saw nothing, only white. I heard nothing, only roar. I felt nothing, only cold.

  I was exhausted, utterly exhausted, but I kept going, because I couldn’t stomach the alternative.

  In this compress of nothingness, the smallest things become noticed immediately. The tiny points cause your heart to beat faster, cause your mouth to dry...cause a prickle on your skin that drives the cold even deeper.

  This is when things started to get…weird.

  I was trying not to think of my dream. I kept forcing images of my grandmother baking bread over the pictures of the salivating wolf. She'd come up to my waist in the dream--the wolf, not my grandmother. My grandmother was tall; she was still taller than me. When I was a little girl, I'd thought she could bite a leg through...No, that's the wolf again. My grandmother uses just a little yeast in her bread. She said it wasn't good for the mind when she made it, when she used her paws to shape the little loaves.

  Okay, great. Maybe I should stop for a second. My teeth chattered against my skull, and even that loudness was swallowed up by the storm. Chatter, chatter, chatter. I was so tired. Impossibly tired.

  It happened suddenly. It was almost natural, really. The snow was dark and white to my right, but I knew that’s all there was. Just snow. But suddenly, there was something there in the snow. A big black shadow that moved, twisting away from me. And, just as suddenly, it was gone.

  I swallowed and stopped, pressing the side of my body against the stability of the rock. The shadow was black, but everything would be black in this white. It was long and lean. And it had moved like a living thing.

  It must have moved, because my own lumbering movements were so slow I was hardly going forward. I was basically crawling now, crawling on my feet against the wind and the howl of the snow.

  It had swirled in front of me, that shadow, and was suddenly gone, but it had been physical. I knew it--I'd seen it.

  I couldn't think about it. It had come and gone so quickly. I had to keep going. I didn't have time to think. I was going to freeze. I was going to die. And anyway, I reasoned with myself, it was probably a deer. It was probably a deer trying to get to shelter as much as I was.

  That’s what it must have been.

  A deer.

  So I set out again. One foot in front of the other and, in spite of myself, eyes firmly glued on the space of whiteness beside me. I kept shivering, but it wasn’t entirely from the cold this time.

  There would be nothing out in this snow, in this night. Probably not even deer. I was being ridiculous, and I knew it, and I was getting pissed at myself. Great. I was starting to see things. But I couldn't help it. My skin was prickled, my hair stood on end, and I couldn’t think about what the shadow had actually looked like.

  The snow was making me numbing my senses and making me stupid because I was so cold. The shadow--it wasn’t a wolf. It had looked nothing like a wolf.

  But the small part of my mind that knew what it had been whispered: yes, it was.

  I pressed against the wall, curling a hand over my heart as I tried to take deep, even breaths, did my absolute best not to panic.

  I grasped onto the first memory I could think of, tried to think about anything else.

  I'm a little girl again. I'm playing in our backyard. The great woods rings its way around me, and I'm pretending I'm a fairy, though I think I really am one (I’m five—at the age of five, pretty much anything is possible). I have my arms spread wide, like wings, and I'm running in tight little circles, legs pumping, breath coming out in whooshes as I laugh.

  “Come in, Megan! Supper's almost ready!” The voice drifts out the back door, and I know my grandmother wants me inside, and I make my way there. But I hear a noise in the woods, and I turn to look.

  It's a wolf. A gigantic thing, shaggy pelt the color of darkness. She stares at me, one paw in the air, and I realize she is only a few feet away. I will never be able to get away from her. She is going to get me like Little Red Riding Hood in the story. The big, bad wolf swallows her whole.

  I run, anyway, screaming because I don’t exactly want to be eaten. I scream my little head off. I make it into the back door, and run to my grandmother, burying my face in her apron that always, miraculously, smells like fresh bread. I throw my arms around her legs--I'm shaking.

  “Goodness, gracious, child--what is it?”

  “Wo-wo-wolf,” I huff between breaths.

  Gramma lifts the curtain aside and looks into our backyard. “There's nothing there.”

  “There's nothing there,” I repeat to myself now. Here. Where is here? I’m Megan Upton, and I’m in a blizzard. I’m on my way to grandmother's house...and I’m not afraid of the big, bad wolf.

  But that's a lie. I'm still afraid--still terrified after all these years. I've seen that wolf in all of my dreams. I’m an adult, but part of me is still that little girl, arms spread beneath the trees of a forest she thought she knew. But didn't.

  How much worse is it now, thinking (no, my heart says, knowing) that there could be a wolf nearby? It's stupid, but somehow I can’t stop staring at the open space beside me only occupied by wind and snow and gusts of harsh winter. I keep staring at the spot expecting…well. Something.

  So if I expect it, it will come, right? That must be it. There's a dark shadow that moves in the white again to my left. The shadow is there, flickering in my vision, and then it’s just…gone.

  All of the blood drains from my head, and I hold on tightly to the rock wall. It was unmistakably the shape of a wolf, that shadow. It's unmistakable (after all, I know it pretty well at this point: it's haunted my dreams every night), and it's very real, and it's right beside me, going in the same direction I’m going. It's...massive, almost towering over me. A monster.

  Just as suddenly, it's gone. And as I stare out into the dark, my heart pounding its way out of my body from between my shuddering rib bones, I peer through the thick white of the blizzard.

  And then, impossibly, I see other shadows in the darkness, other shapes. They are all around me, shifting, moving like the snow.

  I freeze and lean against the wall, fear circling my insides tightly. I'm so cold that I can barely contain the shaking, barely
contain the breath that goes in and out in a shallow rhythm from my lungs. That breath is freezing me from the inside out as needles of ice, of snow, pelt themselves against my face that I can’t even really feel anymore.

  Just as quickly as they appear, these shadows vanish, and I’m seemingly alone again.

  Okay. I scrub at my face with fingers I can’t really feel. Are these hallucinations? As much as I don’t want to face the fact…am I dying? I think about this for a long moment, realizing that, just like I can’t feel my face, I can’t feel my feet either, and I can’t feel my fingers, can’t feel the rock behind me.

  I take a deep breath, shaking.

  I think I’m dying.

  The shapes are gone. Whether they were in my head or actually real and out in the cold with me, I don’t know. I do know that I’m feverish, my lips are cracked, and I lick them, tasting the metallic cool of snow. I’m so numb, so dizzy.

  I want to sit down... I need to sit down. Just for a moment.

  I close my eyes and sink down against the stone as I feel the snow mounding up to hold me in an almost seated position, leaning my head against the rock wall. I’m numb and much more comfortable than I thought I’d be. I just need to rest, just for a minute.

  I close my eyes. I just want to rest, just for a minute, but when I close my eyes, I see a wolf there in my sight. Black, of course. My wolf from my dreams is always black. But her eyes glow, like twin stars, and it seems so real. Somehow, impossibly, real.

  I open my eyes, because I want to prove to myself that there’s no wolf there, she isn’t real, and, instead, I see a form--physical, absolutely, definitely real—right there in front of me. She’s standing on all fours, big, sharp ears pricked forward, yellow eyes glowing like stars. This is no longer a shadow or a shape...or a dream.

  She’s real.

  I don’t know where I get the strength from, but I find it somewhere and wrench myself up, staggering forward, one hand on the wall, the other out beside me like a shield, ready to ward off the wolf’s attack, waiting for the crunch of sharp teeth against the sleeve of my coat as she leaps for me...

  I'm almost running, but not really. I struggle against the wind, against my own exhaustion and numbness, but I’m making progress. I can’t see the wolf anymore, I've lost her in the darkness. The storm howls angrily around me, pushing against me, trying to flatten me, pin me, but I ignore it as best as I possibly can and press forward. I'm not running, I'm slogging, but I believe I'm getting somewhere, and, after all, I no longer see the wolf which is both a blessing a curse.

  Are they shadows? Are they wolves? Ahead of me, shapes move in the darkness, and I pause, breathing shallowly as fear circles in my stomach until I nearly run into one of those shadows and, putting out a mittened hand, realize the shadow is a tree.

  There are no trees near the wall or the drop-off…until you're close to my grandmother's driveway.

  Is it possible? The sheer hope of a “maybe” builds in me, and suddenly my fears are forgotten as I stumble from tree to tree in the snow. I can’t see anything but the next long shape of a tree’s trunk, and now that I know what they are, I’m feeling their pattern. I played under them as a kid, gave them names, swung from them on an old board.

  I’m almost home.

  I run into the pile of wood next. It's half-buried in the snow, but the split logs are unmistakable, and I lean against them for a moment, panting in my excitement. I fumble (At this point, I can’t really feel anything I’m so numb) to the right of them. The shed door should be there. And, miracle of miracles, it is. After the shed door, there’s the clothesline... I take hold of it in both hands, my fingers too frozen to clench or bend. I follow the line steadily, as my grandmother did for so long in snowstorms, using the line to find her way to get wood.

  I follow the clothesline to her front door.

  I fell through the open door and into my grandmother’s arms. Like she'd been expecting me. I didn't ask questions, my teeth chattered, and as my grandmother peeled off layers of frozen fleece and wool, the fever made everything too bright as I began to thaw, pain moving through my body and every numb part of it.

  And then everything else faded away as the blackness around the edges of my eyes ate me up.

  “The wolves told me you were coming,” my grandmother whispers to me, as I faint on her kitchen floor.

  Chapter 2

  I didn’t dream as I drifting in and out of a heavy sleep that pressed me to the bed like gravity. I came to and then I blacked out again, over and over... the parts I remember are my grandmother telling me I was fevered as she soaked a washcloth in cool water and patted my face with it. She whispered strange words I didn’t understand, made strange symbols over me. People always said she was a witch. I remembered an old family friend coming to her once for a charm for her newborn baby, to keep her healthy. But it was just old mountain magic, Gramma would always say, smiling. She had the knowing.

  I was hot. Every last bit of me was on fire, flames eating me from the inside out. At one point, I wanted to go lie in the snow, have the snow as a blanket. Gramma came and muttered over me again. I heard wolves howling outside the bedroom door.

  I don’t know what day it was when I really and actually woke and found myself to be as close to my right mind as I get on any normal day.

  I felt like I’d wasted away. I was desperately weak. I lifted up a hand to itch my nose, and leaned back against the pillows again, because it’s taken everything from me to itch my nose.

  “I knew you'd be up today.” Gramma bustled into the room with a wooden tray. The scent of good black tea with just a pinch of cream and hot porridge with brown sugar filled the space between us, and we both heard my stomach growl.

  “There was a blizzard,” I groaned, shaking my head at her.

  “One of the worst in years,” she sighed as she grinned down at me. “And you were out in it, my darling girl. Here, eat this. It'll put some spirit back into you.”

  She helped me sit up a little, set the tray on my lap.

  “How are you doing, Gramma?” I asked. She looked right as rain, as she always did--but it didn't matter. What she said next confirmed it:

  “Good. The wolves looked after you--I'm glad of it. You were in a heap of danger out there,” she muttered, crossing to the small window and looking out it. She wore her baggy jeans and one of her hand-knit sweaters, her long gray hair up in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. She looked like she always had, before she…well. Before she’d started talking about imaginary wolves.

  “There are no wolves, Gramma,” I said, before I remembered. But then it was too late, and the gigantic black wolf was in my head again, stalking between my memories of the blizzard, jaws flecked with blood. I visibly shuddered.

  “Yes there are,” said Gramma knowingly with a twinkle to her eye as she sighed down at me, shaking her head as if I was the one saying weird things. “Here, eat this up before it gets cold.” She tapped the edge of the tray.

  There was something comforting about the old mug with its strong-smelling tea, the ancient brown bowl with the little crack on its edge, and the shiny spoon, worn thin by countless scrubbings. This was home.

  “I thought I saw...” I picked up the spoon thoughtfully. “How…how long ago did I get here?”

  “Three days ago,” said Gramma shrewdly as she watched me with narrowed eyes. “I called your work, not that it mattered much. The whole village is closed, the valley, the mountain, everything. This is one of the worst storms on record. Certainly the worst I've ever seen, and I've seen ‘em all, child.”

  I stared at her for a long moment before I shoveled a spoonful of oatmeal into my mouth.

  Had I really seen a wolf that night?

  It wasn’t possible, and with my grandmother in the state she already was, I didn’t believe telling her was the wisest choice. And besides, what did it matter? They’d probably been hallucinations brought on by the fever...

  “Clyde is towing your car out of
the snow. He came by at daybreak to tell you, but I told him you were certainly not fit enough to talk to anyone yet,” she folded her hands before her, gnarled and twisted like tree roots, inflamed almost beyond recognition from the rheumatoid arthritis. “So, you'll have your car sometime soon, for all the good it'll do you. They say the plows won't get to us until the end of this week, anyway,” she fixed me in her unwavering gaze. I would always look into those firm, unflinching eyes and find it almost impossible that her mind was failing her. “It'll be nice having you here for a while longer, Megan,” she patted my leg and turned in one smooth motion. “You finish that. I'll be back.”

  I stared down at the porridge as she left my little bedroom. The room hadn't changed since I'd left it, there hadn’t really been a point to change it since I came up to visit her every weekend. It's almost like I lived here part-time anyway. Dolls lined the walls beneath posters of brightly-colored inspirational sayings and baby animals that had been all the rage as a teenager in the early nineties. Thick blue paint covered a small desk and chair beneath the peaked window. There were strips of white paper, used to wrap the meats Gramma bought from the town's little deli, that I'd confiscated and drawn on, hanging by yellowed tape around the corners of the room. Badly formed unicorns and fairies stared down at me, as they had for countless years now.

  It was all so familiar, so comforting. But at the edges of my tired thoughts lurked something…well. Toothsome.

  I slept fitfully that night. I was afraid of my dreams, of what I might see if I closed my eyes and drifted off into that place where I no longer held any control. But I was exhausted. And I slept.

  And I was, thankfully, too tired to dream.

  As the week went by, a little of the snow melted, plows came, and the roads finally became passable again. Gramma told me again, now that I was fully out of the fever, that Clyde had brought my car over. He towed it up the mountain, she'd said, not indicating whether this was bad or good, but having a little sniff in her voice just the same. Modern technology, whether that be cars or not, seemed to inconvenience her, though I wasn’t exactly sure why—things changing had never really upset her.