Part of the Plan (Book 2 in the 'part of' series)

Chapter 19 searching

Chapter 19 searching

I slept in the next day, something which was rather unlike me. I still had enough time to go to work. It just annoyed me, I was having a rather good dream. It contained brown eyes and a russet colour. I couldn't remember much about what happened in the dream but the person was rather familiar. There was also a lot of green and trees. I think we were in the forest.

I couldn't dwell on it much as other thoughts were swirling in my mind. The wolves in the forest and the ones on Karim's wall couldn't be a coincidence. If it was, it would be a pretty big one. I wanted to get in touch with Aiden, I wanted to know if he was alright and to let him know what happened. Something was holding me back.

I had to do the right thing, I reminded myself as I was walking home. The animals were in danger and I could help keep them safe. We don't need the extra buildings or office space. If they were building homes there, I would be much less certain. They're not, They're building offices which probably won't get used or will be abandoned in ten years time.

I was so deep in thought that I hadn't noticed my house when I passed it. I blinked a few times and looked around. I knew where I was and I couldn't be bothered to go back at the moment. I sat down on the nearest wall and looked around for something to catch my attention.

The wolves were still at the front of my mind when I sat in my bedroom just after lunch. I was throwing my phone up and down in the air, flinching whenever it slipped past my fingers. I would usually call Aiden right now, he'd always be there to listen to me. I wasn't sure if he was the person that I wanted to talk to. Part of my worries contained him, I definitely didn't want him to know anything of what happened.

Instead I opted to send him a text. 'Construction starts in two weeks.' It was simple and it got the message across. I stood up and started to pace quietly. Father was at work again today and mam was asleep. I was restless to no end.

After a few minutes of pacing I had stopped in my tracks. With one foot in the air I sharply turned around, seeing my laptop on the floor. Why hadn't I thought of this before? I made a dive for the laptop and turned it on. My default browser stared me in the face with a line blinking at me.

'Wolves Quartvear woods' was the first thing that my fingers typed, I hesitated on pressing enter. I doubted that I would get any valuable information over something so untrustworthy as the internet but ti was worth a shot. I had nothing better to do at the moment, I was praying for some peace of mind.

I was faced with so many results, I didn't know which one to click on. The first thing that I did was go to 'images'. I scanned the page in hopes that I would find the wolf which I had seen in the woods the other day. The familiar wolf did not seem to be in any of the photographs. I saw a lot of pictures which Aiden had taken, reminding me of why we were doing this in the first place.

I had almost went back to the web results when my eyes spotted something which made me hesitate again. There was a picture of a beautiful wolf. It was standing up rather on guard. It's eyes were piercing my soul as it looked at me with a sense of alertness. It wasn't the wolf that I had seen in the woods. It was the wolf which hung above Karim's desk.

The cursor clicked the image without my knowledge. It brought up a rather simple and suspicious looking webpage. It was a sort of blog, dedicated to wildlife around my area. I scrolled down a little bit more, passing pictures of other wolves which I did not recognise. The fact that it's gotten to the point where I'm recognising wolves creeped me out a little bit.

I came across the image once again. The familiar chocolate brown eyes and red-tinted fur was much more welcoming now that I was expecting to see it. Just underneath the photo was a subtitle which read; 'Rare encounter with the wild'. I was prompted to read on, once I clicked off a subscription offer which I had no interest in.

'It was like every other camping trip for my family and I.

We went fishing a few times and we went wandering through the woods often. It wasn't the first time that we had camped in Quartvear forest. In fact, it was about the fourth or fifth time. We enjoyed each trip out there and now the children were old enough to actually enjoy it, it was a much more pleasant time.

Of course, if we knew what lurked within the trees, we wouldn't have taken the children. We wouldn't have went at all.

It was rather early in the morning when we had the encounter. I was walking with my oldest son (who was nine at the time) and we were gathering wood. My son was right next to me, we stayed close together so that he didn't get lost. That was the reason that I didn't take any of my other kids. We started to hear rustling further ahead.

We talked about it for a little while in hushed voices and decided to leave. Unfortunately, my son had accidentally dropped his mobile phone (I always knew that thing would get us killed one day) so we had to go back. I didn't want to leave him alone in the forest and I wasn't too fond of my wife knowing that he had lost his phone. So, we both went back.

When we returned to the place we heard the noise we were stopped in our tracks. It was as though our lives flashed before our eyes. A wolf stood there, looking at us hungrily. It licked it's lips and started to chase after us. The wolf was a reddish colour and it had brown eyes. I managed to snap this picture with my own phone before it launched itself at us.

Needless tos ay, my son didn't get his phone back and we will not be camping in Quartervear forest again.

-Jeremy, 34, United Kingdom'

If I had to be honest, I didn't believe a lot of that article. The wolf in the photograph didn't look vicious at all, it was lying down peacefully in a patch of grass. It looked calm, similar to how a domestic dog would look. The biggest and most troublesome worry was still irritating me.

How did Karim have a very close portrait of this exact wolf on his wall?