Wolf Storm

by Dee Garretson

  The forest ended abruptly at a small cliff face of jumbled boulders. From where they stood, it appeared that the ground leveled off on top before it started to rise again. Stefan didn’t see any castle, but it was possible there was something up above on the level part. The cliff wasn’t nearly as tall or as steep as the one by the lodge, and in normal circumstances, in good weather, it would have been easy to climb.

  “Before we do this, are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Stefan asked.

  “I’m sure,” Raine said. “I’m very good at reading maps.”

  Stefan lifted his arm up, trying to find a handhold, but a sharp jolt of pain went through him. He tried to use his other arm on his good side, and it didn’t hurt as much, but after a few feet he had to stop. Whatever he had done to his ribs, climbing wasn’t good for them. Raine was already picking her way up a few feet beyond him. She didn’t seem like she was having any trouble.

  “Raine, my side is really hurting. When you get to the top, tell me if you can see the castle and then I’ll try to come up.” As Raine scrambled up the cliff, snow cascaded down each time she moved, like mini avalanches. Stefan moved back to avoid getting plastered with more snow. When he looked up again, Raine had disappeared over the top.

  “Do you see it?” Stefan called.

  When she didn’t answer, he called again. It would be just their luck if the place was empty, or closed up for the winter. Maybe it would be okay to break in and get some supplies. They could leave a note and offer to pay.

  Her face appeared over the top. He could tell from her grim expression something was wrong.

  “It’s just the ruins of a castle,” she said. “Don’t bother coming up. There are some broken-down walls, nothing else.” More snow fell in front of her as she started down. “Sorry. I guess it was a bad idea to walk all the way here.”

  Stefan was about to answer when he was distracted by a flash of movement behind a boulder to Raine’s right. A wolf, the bloody leg of a rabbit in its mouth, stood watching her.

  Chapter 17

  Watchers

  The wolf’s fur was gray and matted; the creature so thin, every rib showed. It stared at Raine with an unwavering gaze, blood dripping from the thing in its mouth onto the snow. Stefan knew Raine didn’t see it.

  “Now you are supposed to say something like ‘It’s okay,’ instead of standing there like a statue,” she said.

  “Raine.” The word came out as a whisper, so Stefan tried again. “Raine, get down here as fast as you can. There’s a wolf up there and it’s watching you.”

  She started and twisted around. “Where?”

  “To your right. Don’t waste time looking for it, just come on down.” He looked around, trying to find a loose rock to throw if it came any closer. There were lots of boulders, but the ground around him was so covered with snow, he didn’t see any rocks. The way his ribs ached, he didn’t know how far he’d be able to throw a stone anyway. The wolf still hadn’t moved. It was almost as if it didn’t want Raine to notice it. He hoped the animal was afraid of her.

  Raine took a few steps forward and the wolf just watched.

  “Keep moving,” Stefan said. “The wolf isn’t doing anything.”

  She was about three feet down when another wolf loomed behind her, as silent as the first. Stefan somehow knew it was the same one that had been on the set. It was bigger than the other and so thin, it was like looking at a skeleton covered with fur. When it turned toward him, Stefan gasped at the sight of the wolf’s head. Part of the skin on the right side of its muzzle was missing, like it had been ripped off. The fangs, stained with dried blood, were exposed as if the wolf had a permanent sneer on its face. And there was something wrong with its right eye. It wasn’t the glowing yellow of the other; it had a white cast to it, like it was covered in film.

  “Move a little faster, Raine,” Stefan said. He didn’t want to tell her about the other wolf, in case the sight of it startled her so much she fell.

  The urgency in his words sent her sliding down the hill. Stefan reached out an arm to catch her. The white-eyed wolf moved silently to the spot where Raine had been standing, sniffing the ground while he watched them. The other wolf had disappeared.

  Raine looked back up at the cliff and gave a muffled shriek.

  “Let’s go,” Stefan said, trying to drag her away by her coat sleeve. “I don’t think they’re going to come straight down the cliff like you did.”

  “What’s wrong with that wolf?” She shuddered. “Its eye and its mouth were terrible.”

  “I don’t know about the eye, but it looks like it was injured in a fight. I’m amazed it’s alive with its mouth like that.”

  “Do you think they are going to come after us?”

  Stefan looked back. The wolf still stood at the top of the cliff, just watching.

  “No, Hans said they avoid people. I think we just stumbled on where they live. They were really skinny too. I don’t know if they’d have the energy to chase us.”

  “I feel kind of bad for them even if they are horrible looking. How can they be so thin and still be alive?”

  “Maybe it’s been a hard winter.” The thought flashed through his mind, but he didn’t speak it: If they are really skinny, then they are really hungry. “Let’s just keep walking.” He looked back again. The wolf was gone. Just emptiness remained where it had been standing, emptiness and snow. That should have made him feel better, but instead he felt a sudden burst of fear. An unseen wolf could be anywhere, tracking them, watching them. Between the trees and the snowfall and the silent way the creatures moved, Stefan knew he wouldn’t be able to tell if a wolf was after them until it had already ambushed them. His heart racing, he moved his head from side to side, trying to spot any movement in the trees. Nothing.

  He couldn’t see the set either, and tried to tell himself they weren’t close enough yet. It wouldn’t be visible until they moved beyond the trees. He wished now he had kept count of his steps so he’d know how much farther they had to go.

  Raine was moving faster than he was and she stopped, waiting for him to catch up. “You know, I read this book last year,” she said, “and there was a story in it about hungry wolves chasing a line of sleds. The people in the front sleds could hear the other ones being overtaken by wolves and they just kept going. They were glad the ones in the back were sacrificed.”

  “Okay, not a good topic of conversation.” Stefan looked back over his shoulder and then wished he hadn’t. The wolf was trailing behind them. It wasn’t moving as if it were trying to catch up, but it was definitely tracking them, keeping a fixed distance between them. Grabbing Raine’s arm, he said, “Let’s walk a little faster. There’s a wolf behind us.” So much for Hans’s assurances. This wolf wasn’t scared of them.

  “Is it the one with the eye?” She twisting around and he lost his grip on her.

  “I think so,” he said. He couldn’t see well through the snow, but he just knew it was the white-eyed wolf.

  “We should run,” Raine said.

  “No, remember they are afraid of people. If we run, they’ll think we are prey. Just keep walking.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t, but it just makes sense.” He was more concerned with sighting only one wolf. If there was the one he could see, where was the other?

  The wolf was still there, not hurrying, keeping an even distance from them, his eyes fixed on them. “We’ll walk side by side so no one will be the sacrificial wolf chow,” Stefan said. “Don’t tell that story to Jeremy, okay? You don’t believe everything you read, do you? It was just a story.”

  “Even if it was just a story, a lot of stories are based on real things. Something like that could have happened,” she insisted.

  “Don’t you read any books that aren’t so dramatic . . . like . . . I don’t know . . . clumsy girl makes the basketball team, or something like that?”

  “No. Are there books like that?”


  “I don’t know. Probably.” He tried to think of another subject, anything to keep their minds off the wolves, but the image of the white-eyed one wouldn’t stay out of his head.

  “You know, this isn’t so much fun anymore,” Raine said.

  Stefan had to laugh. “You call surviving an avalanche fun? I haven’t been having fun for quite a while now.”

  “No, I mean the power going out, and us being in the lodge by ourselves, well, almost by ourselves, and then actually surviving the avalanche and rescuing Jeremy and Cecil. It all felt great, in a weird way, like we were really doing something, instead of always just pretending to do something. In acting, it’s all so fake. People who have seen my movies think I know how to skydive and walk on tightropes and skate like an Olympian. I can’t do any of that. It’s all stunt people. I just pretend I’m getting ready to do those things, and then when the stunt people are done, I act like it was me all along. For once we were doing real things, but now it’s getting a little scary. No stunt double is here to face off with a wolf.”

  “We’re not going to have to do that.” He said it to reassure both of them, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. Why was the wolf in plain sight as if it didn’t care that they saw him? Stefan had a bad feeling about the one with the white eye. His grandfather had taught him to always beware of a wild animal that didn’t act wild. He could almost hear his grandfather’s voice: “If you see a wild creature who isn’t scared of you, be scared of it. An animal like that is sure to be sick, maybe even with rabies, and a sick creature is an irrational one. Get away as fast as you can.”

  He wished they could move faster, but the snow was so deep, his leg muscles were burning with the effort to raise and lower them enough to move forward. They came out of the trees and Stefan could see some faint shapes of the set in the distance, like a mirage wavering in the blowing snow.

  “It’s gone!” Raine pointed behind them, and all Stefan could see were the trees and their own rapidly disappearing footprints.

  “I hope it stays gone,” Stefan said, wondering why it had been following them in the first place.

  From a distance, the set looked desolate. The bonfire was mostly out. Gray smoke rose in wisps above the blackened boards. He tried to slow down his breathing enough to stop the sharp pain that came every time he took a deep breath. “Go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  As soon as they were on firmer snow, Raine ran ahead into the shelter. She came right back out. “Jeremy!” she yelled. “Do you see him?” she said as she came back toward Stefan. “Cecil sounds better, but he said he was dozing when Jeremy went out. He doesn’t remember when.”

  Stefan scanned the area. “He’s wearing the costume tunic, right? The black should stand out against all this white.” He didn’t see any black blotch. Where could the kid go? “Let’s look by the lodge.”

  He almost missed him. Jeremy sat on top of a pile of stones next to the top of a broken tree, his head bowed. The kid looked so tiny and alone out in the middle of nowhere, like he had been left in an abandoned battlefield.

  “Jeremy!” Stefan called. The boy didn’t look up; he just rocked back and forth, clutching something in his hand. “Raine, he’s up here.”

  As they drew close to him, Raine yanked Stefan back, pointing right beyond Jeremy. The white-eyed wolf stood about ten feet beyond the boy, perfectly still, staring at Jeremy. It turned its head to them, the yellow eye fixed as if it was challenging them to make a move. It kept shaking its head in a strange way, like it was trying to get something off itself. Every few seconds it would snap at the air and growl. Stefan could tell the wolf had no fear of them. He backed up slowly, pulling Raine with him. How had it gotten in front of them? How could it move so silently?

  “Jeremy!” Raine yelled. The boy still didn’t look up.

  “I think his foot is stuck,” Stefan said. He could see one of Jeremy’s boots, but the other was partly covered by some of the rubble.

  “Jeremy!” Raine yelled again.

  Stefan felt sick watching the wolf. Now that he was closer, he could see how the white eye more clearly. The pupil behind the film didn’t track with the other eye; it was like it was locked into place, dead and unseeing. “There’s something really wrong with that wolf,” Stefan said.

  “We have to chase it away,” Raine whispered.

  “Fire,” Stefan said. “We’ll use fire.” He started edging back to the smoking fire, walking backward so he could keep the wolf in sight. A chorus of howls came from behind him and he was so surprised he stumbled. “Are our wolves inside the igloo?”

  “It looks like Jeremy tied Boris and Phoebe up. Natasha’s not there. I was going to untie them once we found him. Should we get them? Maybe they can scare off the wolf.”

  Stefan wasn’t sure the white-eyed wolf was scared of anything. “We can try. I guess it’s two against one. Hurry! I’ll get some burning wood.”

  The fire was down to almost nothing, and Stefan kicked the charred pieces that remained, trying to find something he could pick up. Everything was either crumbled into charcoal or too hot to touch. He’d have to find some new wood to light. He heard a strangled sound from Raine. When he turned to look at her she was trying to speak, but he couldn’t make out her words.

  He took her by the shoulders, dreading to hear what she was trying to say. “Take a breath so you can talk. What’s wrong? Is it Cecil?”

  “No . . . There are two more wolves, wild wolves, right outside the shelter.” She took a few more deep breaths of air. “I can’t get inside and when I yelled to Cecil, he didn’t answer, or if he did, I couldn’t hear him. Our wolves are going crazy in there growling and barking. I think they’re trying to get out.”

  “We have to help Jeremy first. Try to find another piece of wood and light it. I’m going to see if there’s something in the prop trailer to help us.” He raced back to the trailer, running through possibilities in his mind. Once inside he shoved things out of the way until he spotted the case with the tanto weapons. He buckled one of them on his arm and extended it, tucking the other in his pocket. He found the pile of ice spiders and picked some up, clamped them along the tanto blade, then gathered as many more as he could carry. He hoped they all still worked.

  Back outside Raine was pushing a board into the fire. “I can’t get the wood to light!” she yelled.

  “I’ve got something else. Hurry! We need to get back to Jeremy.”

  He explained as they went, his words coming in jagged bursts of sound.

  The wolf had moved a few feet closer to Jeremy, his eyes intent on the boy, but Jeremy seemed oblivious to the danger. Stefan feared the wolf was trying work up its nerve to leap at him.

  “When I count to three, switch on your costume so it glows,” Stefan said. “Then start hitting the buttons on the ice spiders. Be ready because they’re going to make a terrible noise.” He took as deep a breath as he could manage. “One, two, three. Now!”

  They charged the wolf, pushing the buttons on the ice spiders as they ran. The shrieking mechanical creatures were so loud Stefan knew he was yelling but couldn’t hear himself. When they were close enough, Stefan launched one of them at the wolf and then the other. Raine added hers to the fray, putting a twist on her throws so that the spiders tumbled over and over in the air.

  The wolf turned on them and snarled, baring its teeth. It crouched down and Stefan was afraid it was going to attack, but then its nerve broke, and it fell back, crouching low to the ground, snapping at the air. Finally it gave one last snarl and sprinted off into the trees.

  Stefan was about to sink to the ground when a loud growl erupted behind them. He turned to see Phoebe rolling around on the ground with the two wild wolves, snapping and snarling. One wolf bit down on her and she gave a yelp of pain. Stefan could hear Boris inside barking frantically.

  Pulling a spider off the blade, he threw it at the wolves, but they were so engaged in the battle, none of them noticed. Phoebe was bleeding heavily. She wen
t down and the other two wolves were on her. A deep cry came from the shelter as Cecil burst out, carrying a torch, the costume skin wrapped around him so that the monster head loomed about his own. The man let out a deep-voiced roar, waving the torch, like an ancient shaman chasing away demons. The remaining two wolves didn’t even attempt to take a stand. They dashed after the white-eyed wolf, and Cecil collapsed onto the ground.

  Chapter 18

  Darkness

  Stefan ran to him. Cecil was breathing heavily, but he smiled as he looked up. “I can still do an action scene when called for,” he gasped. “Is Phoebe alive?”

  When Stefan checked on her, he could see the wolf was breathing. The cut on her neck had reopened and she had a new gash on her back. She whined and then got to her feet, her eyes darting back and forth like she was afraid she would be attacked again.

  “Stefan, help me!” Raine yelled.

  Stefan realized he had forgotten about Jeremy for a minute. “Are you okay?” he asked Cecil.

  The old man waved a hand. “Go, I’m just getting my breath back.”

  Raine was on her knees shaking Jeremy. “Jeremy, wake up!”

  The boy’s lips were blue and he was shivering so hard it looked like his body was moving in ripples. He opened his eyes, but Stefan could tell he wasn’t really seeing them.

  “Let me go to sleep,” he said. “I’ll be warmer if I go sleep.”

  “No! Jeremy, you have to get up!” Stefan reached down to try to pull him to his feet. Raine had already freed Jeremy’s foot.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Raine asked. “Is it something to do with the asthma?”

  “No, it’s a sign of hypothermia. I’ve heard my mother talk about seeing cases at the hospital. We have to get him warm.”

  “What was he doing out here? We shouldn’t have left him alone!”

  “Let’s get him inside.”

  They took the boy between them and helped him back to the shelter, passing Phoebe, who was licking her wounds.