He sat up slowly and suddenly remembered his nakedness. And there was more—Uncle Jack was gone. It all came back to him like a thick fog rolling away, unveiling a bitter, icy cold in its wake. Uncle Jack had died. He’d shifted into the wolf. The chaos had been uncontrollable. He felt wet, but it couldn’t have been the damp, dewy grass. The warm wetness settled on the side of his mouth, and after a quick swipe of his hand against it, the dark substance ran down his fingers. More of it moved down his right arm. It was blood. But he hadn’t thought he’d been hurt. He brushed away a few blades of grass that clung to his hair, and then turned his head slightly at the sound of footsteps rushing down the hill.
“Brett,” a voice called out. “Are you okay?”
He recognized the female voice; it was Leah. Though the night was dark, a glint of moonlight cast silvery shadows upon two oncoming figures—Dylan and Leah. He watched as they ran down the hill towards him, careful not to fall and find themselves at the bottom along with him.
“Come on, man!” Dylan’s voice had been sharp and quick. “We’ve got to get you out of here, now!”
Brett lingered on the ground, hesitant to bare his nakedness in front of Leah.
“Both of you—get in front of me,” he said.
“Man, there’s no time for that shit! We’ve got to get you back to the house right away!”
He hadn’t realized how fast they were moving toward him. Before he knew it, they reached him. Dylan quickly pulled him up from the ground and into a standing position, ushering him to move fast.
“Dylan’s right, Brett,” Leah said. Brett could hear her quaking voice. She was on the verge of crying. “No one’s going to see us. We’ve got to get you back to the farm. Something horrible happened tonight.”
Her words caused a stirring, a flash of memories he tried to recall but couldn’t. It was much like trying to remember the details of a dream upon waking. He couldn’t remember anything before falling down the hill, except...an image that had formed in his mind. It was a face he knew well.
“Tahoe,” Brett said. “Is Tahoe here, already?”
He could recall seeing the old man’s face in his mind, and then he remembered tumbling, falling, and then landing at the bottom, looking up at the sky. They were practically running now. Brett was streaking naked in the night, while Dylan ran alongside, scoping a watchful eye around them as Leah trailed behind. They stopped to catch their breaths.
Brett cowered and stopped, catching his breath in a bent position with the palms of his hands touching his knees. Dylan stopped and waited as Leah caught up with them. Brett understood that they had to get back to the farm, but he needed an answer right now.
“The blood,” he said. “Where did it come from? I know it’s not mine; I’m not hurt.”
The sound of separate breaths respired during a pause that no one was willing to fill.
“We can’t talk about that now, Brett,” Dylan said. “We have to get you back.” Brett grabbed onto Dylan’s arm as he was about to turn away.
“I asked you, what happened to me tonight? Why do I taste blood in my mouth?” His tone was fearful, yet wild with impatience. Dylan snatched his arm away defensively.
“Brett, you may have killed someone tonight,” he said. “We have to get you back before anyone sees you!”
They stared into each other’s eyes for what seemed a season, almost unrecognizing one another. The sound of those last uttered words was too much to believe, too incredible to be believed, but somehow, somewhere deep down—he knew. Their eyes hadn’t wavered from one another, and only the sounds of their breaths were heard against the screeching crickets.
“We’ll talk about it when we get there,” Dylan said. “Tahoe is waiting back at the farm. We don’t have much farther to go.”
Their eyes finally broke the fixed stare they’d been locked in, and then the three of them were running again. Soon, Brett could see the back porch looming closer.
Finally, he’d made it back home.
Chapter Fourteen
Sidney had thought fast following Tahoe’s instructions. His first thought was to run up to Brett’s room and find him some clothing, a robe even, if nothing else. He’d stood on the patio, about to enter the house when he saw Tahoe instructing Susan. Then, their voices went mute, silenced by the deafness he knew and understood well. The sound of Vivian’s voice had called out in angst...
“Sidney...the blood,” she’d said. “Be ready to wipe the blood from him!”
Sidney ran through the back door and up the stairs to Brett’s room just as Vivian’s voice had ceased, and the sounds of Tahoe and Susan’s voices returned. Jack had kept Brett’s room open for him so that it would be his home away from home, awaiting his return, just as he’d left it. Sidney had quickly found a brown bathrobe hanging on the back of the closet door. He grabbed it, as well as a pair of jeans that had been neatly folded and placed on top of the bed.
But a psychic inkling had told him that there wasn’t much time left. He had to get back out on the patio. He’d sidetracked into the bathroom and soaked a towel in warm water. Now, he stood on the patio, ready and waiting, holding the robe in one hand and the towel with the other as a naked figure ran out from the woods. It was Brett, and two other figures ran fast behind him—Dylan and Leah. He heard the clunking of the benches as Susan and Tahoe quickly rose and took their stances alongside him, watching as the familiar figures ran through the grass and the moonlight.
“It’s them.” Susan stated the obvious with relief. “They’re back.”
Sidney stopped and walked over to the camera that had been set up. He’d almost forgotten about it. He pressed one of the buttons, and the red record light disappeared.
“Sidney, what are you doing?” Susan asked.
“We can’t record this, Susan,” he said. “You’ll know why when you see it.”
Sidney turned and called out to the streaking figure that was running toward him. He clutched the open robe in his waiting hands. Vivian had spoken a warning in his ear, and now he and Susan saw the manifestation of that omen—the blood that covered the right side of Brett’s body. Susan cried out as she recognized it. Then, Sidney threw the wet towel toward Brett as he came closer.
“Wipe off, hurry!” he yelled.
Brett caught the towel in midair, and with the urgency of repulsion, began wiping the blood from his arm and face. He got most of it, including the wet spot that dampened his hair, and then he dropped the bloody towel to the ground. Sidney quickly wrapped the robe around his shoulders. Brett turned to face him.
“Sid, I don’t remember what happened,” he said. “I don’t remember much of anything that occurred after, after—”
“It’s alright, Brett,” Sidney said. “We’re going to figure this out.”
Just then Tahoe stepped closer toward them. He and Brett looked at each other face-to-face. Tahoe looked keenly aware that the secret he’d kept was out and spiraling out of control.
“We meet again, my friend,” Tahoe said. “But I apologize for being too late.”
Brett sunk his head in his hands, holding and gripping the sides in unspoken madness.
* * * *
“Everyone stop looking at me, and tell me what happened!” Brett had wearied of their looks of fear, their stunned faces like blank slates, and their unmoving, speechless lips. His heavily fatigued and slightly battered body swooned where it stood. The exhaustion was overwhelming him, causing him to linger in a dreamlike reverie. Sidney helped him over to one of the benches, where he sat, feeling the lull that was permeating throughout him.
Brett looked into Tahoe’s narrowed eyes. It was clear from the all-knowing expression on the older man’s face that he’d seen something.
“What did you see?” He asked him. “What did you see that made you come all the way here?” Brett’s voice was weakened, but it issued a straight-forward demand for an answer.
Tahoe turned to Dylan and Leah.
“I think it’s wise that your fri
ends fill us in on everything that they saw tonight,” he said. “What they have witnessed is far more accurate than what any vision could’ve shown me.”
Dylan sat down on the bench next to Brett. Leah’s back was turned, her eyes gazing out into the woods from where they had just come, almost searching for signs of anyone who may have followed them. Dylan cleared his throat.
“What I was telling you earlier was that as the wolf, you attacked a man tonight,” he said. “That’s how you got the blood on you. The blood was his, not yours.”
Leah spun around to face them. The tears were streaking her eyes; her voice cracked as she spoke.
“He was about to shoot you, Brett,” she said. “He had a shotgun pointed straight at you.”
“But, the wolf got him first.” Dylan spoke cryptically, referring to the wolf instead of him. Then, he paused before continuing. “It tore the man’s face apart.”
There was silence.
“Is he dead?” Brett asked the question but feared the answer. What if he’d killed a man tonight? How would he live with this? What was going to happen?
“He wasn’t when we left him,” Dylan said.
“You left him?!” Susan’s tone was one of reprimand, a sound of astonishment at the situation that worsened by the second. Dylan began detailing the night’s events.
“We’d walked endlessly through the woods, trying to figure out where the wolf ran,” he said. “Then, Leah had a second vision that led us up a hill to the other side of Larson’s Farm. She said that the wolf had taken off in that direction. We came to a vast clearing and saw the white henhouse that Leah had seen in the earlier vision. As we got closer to the farm, we saw a beam from a porch light and a man standing within it. The man was holding something.”
“It was a shotgun,” Leah said. “And then I saw something running toward the man.”
“The wolf,” Tahoe guessed.
“The man aimed the shotgun right at the wolf, at Brett,” Leah said. “But then, something happened. It was like he couldn’t pull the trigger.”
Brett saw Tahoe close his eyes.
“Then, the gunfire erupted like an explosion,” Dylan said, his voice mystified. He looked at Brett, and Brett realized that the shock of how perilously close he’d come to death was now settling. “I grabbed Leah and threw her to the ground. When we got up, the wolf was attacking the man. It was tearing apart his face.”
“We were so afraid that he was going to kill you, Brett,” Leah said.
“And then we’d feared that the wolf would kill him,” Dylan said.
“What about the man?” Sidney said. “You said you’d left him?”
“We called for help,” Dylan said. He detailed how he’d maneuvered into the house without touching anything, how the man’s barking dog had been banished in the basement, and how he then found the phone and dialed 911. Then, he and Leah had quickly fled. “He was alive when we left him, but unconscious. Leah stayed outside, and I touched nothing, not even the phone. No one will ever know we were there.”
“Unless someone saw you,” Susan said.
“No one did,” Leah said. “I’m sure of it. I was out on the porch when I texted you.”
Brett lifted his head slowly as a realization dawned upon him.
“You said the other side of Larson’s Farm?” The question was directed toward Dylan, who nodded, and then Brett turned to Leah. “You saw a white henhouse in a vision?”
When Leah nodded, Brett realized who the man was. It was Herb Haller. He lived on a farm close to Larson’s for as long as Brett could remember, but he’d only known the man by sight. Uncle Jack had known him better. The team said nothing as he told them. They merely watched, unblinking as the small flames danced in the candle shades.
The silence continued. The fact that Herb was still alive did nothing to assuage Brett’s conscience. What had gone wrong? Had it been a defensive reaction as Dylan and Leah contended, or was it the inner fury he felt over Uncle Jack that drove him to want to kill?
Had that urge already been there, buried somewhere deep inside? Nothing was clear anymore; everything began to swirl amid the chaos in some surreal and shadowy vortex. Now, the strange secret he’d possessed his entire life, the one that had begun as a harmless enigma had horribly segued into a dangerous game. Was he now a threat to the rest of the world, to himself? His spinning mind fought to focus. Tahoe reached across the table and grasped his hand.
“You must close your eyes, take a deep breath, and clear your mind,” he said.
He did as the old man asked, letting the night air fill his lungs and loosen the million murky thoughts that muddled his mind. His eyes were closed when Tahoe spoke again.
“Listen to the sound of my voice,” he said, lowering his voice to a tranquil hush. “What is the last thing you remember before becoming yourself again?”
Brett searched through the blackness of closed eyes. The image of Tahoe’s face formed in his mind, his gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, his usual smiling eyes now arched upward in a sobering stare. Suddenly, he felt as though he was falling down a hill, and then the strange sense of vertigo vanished.
“It was you,” he said, feeling the deepest relaxation. “I saw your face in my mind. You called me out of it.”
Brett felt conscious enough to hear the murmurs of surprise around him, but he was too sedate to interact. He only listened to the sound of Tahoe’s voice.
“What do you recall before then?” It was the same soft and coaxing tone.
This time the images were quick—a man in the grass, blood covering him; Dylan and Leah, though he couldn’t approach them; the reddish haze. And then he could almost feel the sense of ground giving away beneath him as he moved with incredible speed, yet he wasn’t moving. The feeling stopped as the old seer spoke once more.
“Take us back earlier.”
The scene changed in his mind, and he felt his stomach wince in hunger. He’d been facing the long barrel of a shotgun; it had been him or the man. The man had meant to kill him, but he’d leapt through the air. A flash of orange filled his mind; the pain in his ears was extreme. He tasted blood in his mouth and felt the looseness of flesh gripped between his teeth, teeth that had been sharpened fangs in that previous and deadly moment.
He detailed the few fleeting moments that played out in his mind, and then there was only the blackness through closed eyes once again.
“Brett,” Tahoe said, “When I count to three, you will open your eyes and look at me.”
The old man counted: one, two, and three.
Brett opened his eyes and looked at Tahoe. He looked at all of them. He felt a sense of clarity, as though cobwebs had been dusted from his mind. A clearer understanding now dawned upon him. The images had played out, but the images were not of him; they were of the wolf. Now, the memories were there, no longer masquerading in anonymity. He was aware of what had happened to him as the wolf. But how would he ever undo this night? Was it even possible?
“I remember,” he said. “I mean—most of it anyway. What am I going to do?”
“I’m going to help you,” Tahoe said. “That’s why I’ve come all the way here.”
“Yes,” Susan said. “We all are, but I think you need to call it a night, Brett. You need your rest. You should clean up and get some sleep. We can figure this out in the light of day.”
“No way,” he said. “We figure this out tonight.” He stood from the table, determined. “I’ll go and get cleaned up, again. But when I come back, we figure out our next move tonight!”
No one objected, and Susan looked at the investigators before turning back to Brett.
“Very well, then,” she said. “Tonight it is.”
* * * *
While the team waited for Brett to return, Tahoe experienced the investigators’ awe at what he’d done during the night’s mayhem.
“So, it worked,” Sidney said. “You called him out of it. He heard you.”
“I had question
ed whether or not it could be done, but yes it worked,” Tahoe said. “I remembered the telepathic connection that Brett had projected as the hawk, landing on my patio and drawing my attention to a little girl I hadn’t seen in years.”
He turned to Leah when he mentioned her.
“I knew that he’d been able to do it,” he said. “I felt it was worth a try.”
“It worked,” Leah said. “We found him at the bottom of one of the hills.”
“What really amazes me is what you did afterward,” Susan said. “You hypnotized him, didn’t you? I’ve never seen it done that quickly and so effortlessly. I’ve studied hypnotism for years and still have problems putting patients under.”
“A little trick my grandfather taught me,” he said.
It was then that Brett walked out onto the back patio, having showered again.
“Was he the same grandfather that told you the shape-shifting tales of the skinwalker?”
Tahoe looked up at him, offering a slight smile of affection.
“He was,” he said. “And I think that it’s time to reveal all that I’ve heard to you.”
Brett sat down on a different bench than before. Fully dressed in jeans and a light-blue tee-shirt, he seemed more relaxed, but the expression of worry on his face hadn’t changed. One thing was apparent from the upward lift of his eyebrows and his closed mouth that formed a solemn mask: Herb Haller, the man he’d left in a pool of blood, had stayed on his mind.
“When I was a child, and even later into my early youth,” Tahoe began, “my grandfather told me about the legends and the stories of the skinwalker. The term is predominantly used by our Native American culture, as well as others, to describe what is commonly referred to as a shape-shifter. Many believe that the legend originated with the Hopis and was then passed on to the Navajos, the Utes, and other tribes.
“The legends speak of human beings capable of shifting into the shape or form of another, mainly that of an animal. However, some legends believe that the skinwalker can even change to assume the identity of another human. The stories that my grandfather spoke of dealt with men who changed into wolves, coyotes, bears, birds, and even insects. As I grew older, I’d begun to question the old legends, until my grandfather revealed to me his own personal experience. It was one he’d never spoken of when I was a child.
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