Big Bad

The Forest

Kit's foot tapped against the ground of the classroom to the rhythm of the clock ticking away on the wall. He could focus on nothing other than his missing book. Usually he forgot things very quickly, but a deep pit had formed itself in his stomach and was staying solidly in place.

The day felt like it passed with excruciating sloth. It was as if the clock had stalled itself just to annoy him. Kit was used to being slightly restless during school, but his dread mingled with the necessity of his going back out into the forest to retrieve his book.

His teacher, Mr. O'Hara, droned on about the book they'd read. As much as Kit wanted to participate in the class he had a kind of nagging feeling beckoning him back home.

Kit knew the woods, he was one with the woods, but suddenly he felt like they were full of secrets that were just out of his reach. Every bone in his body was simultaneously screaming at him to go out and stay in. The call of the wild was one Kit often felt during his stifling childhood, but never was the call quite so strong or quite so conflicted.

The trees looked thick and treacherous from the school building which sat at the end of Newbury between the slightly larger town and Belford Bay. At the bay the forest was calm and homely, but here it was unfamiliar and dangerous in appearance with closer growing trees and more underbrush to get lost in. When the low lying plants got large Kit felt like they were grabbing at his legs and holding his ankles.

He shouldn't be in a classroom. Kit wanted to run, he wanted to throw caution to the wind and make mistakes, but he was frightened. Something deep within him insisted he wasn't where he was meant to be, with more vigor than he'd ever felt before. It was like his skin was crawling to flee his life.

It was like... like

"Can you believe that?" A deep voice snickered not far from Kit and shocked him back to reality. Usually the teacher's voice trumped everything else, but the new whispers were coming from nearer to Kit than he had originally thought.

"Nah, it can't be," A second voice countered. Kit recognized this as Damien's voice, and assumed the other must be one of Damien's friends. He wasn't one to eavesdrop, but his attention wasn't on the lesson and it was hard to break it away from the conversation once it had shifted.

"Yeah... my dad saw the tracks when he was walking our dog this morning, I saw 'em too.... and shit, they were so big they couldn't be from a fox or something."

"Sure Jack, you found the first wolf in Belford Bay ever," Damien chuckled. "You and your two-bit dad."

Kit frowned: all this talk about wolves. Could Jack have seen the track of the same animal that had tackled him?

There was something comforting in knowing he could perhaps begin to trust his own senses, but something equally unnerving about knowing he could no longer hide behind the veil of ignorance and pretend he was just imagining things.

If Kit wasn't the only person to see the wolf then he couldn't possibly have imagined it. Knowing he wasn't going crazy still opened a mirage of questions all on its own. Was that the only wolf? Did he and Jack see the same one? Where did they come from? Why did it stare at him like that? If it wasn't just in Kit's mind he couldn't explain why it had looked at him so intently but not attacked him. Was it coming back to kill him? It couldn't have been sizing him up, being that a cursory glance at Kit screamed that it could take him in one bite. So why? Why bother? He wasn't going crazy. Still, he didn't know why the wolf stared at him as it did, but at least he could rest assured knowing he wasn't going insane.

"Not the first!" Jack argued back. "You remember what happened to Dupont."

Kit frowned in confusion; he had no idea what had happened to Ms. Dupont, the owner of the inn. She had often made Kit uncomfortable with the way she looked at him, as if he was less than, and he wasn't fond of her-- though he'd never heard any stories of her being in the presence of wolves.

"Shut up!" Damien spat. "Dupont was nothing but a fool without a compass, and the rest was just a story Glover made up."

Kit was nearly desperate to know what they were talking about, but he held his tongue. All he could do was listen and strain his ears to hear their words. He was the only Glover in town, well aside from Sr. Matilda, but he couldn't see any reason why Damien would refer to either of them.

"Christopher?" Mr. O'Hara asked. The tone of his voice suggested that he had just repeated himself. It broke Kit away from Damien's conversation and rushed him right back to the classroom, where he didn't know what was happening.

"I- uh..." Everyone looked over at him and he felt his cheeks flush red. Even Damien and Jack raised their eyebrows at him as if they knew he wasn't paying attention because he was eavesdropping on them. "I'm sorry, Mr. O'Hara."

Mr. O'Hara sighed in disappointment, and ran a hand through his short hair. "See me after class."

Four words and Kit's stomach turned like he was going to be sick. Even being eighteen, he still hated being in trouble more than anything. He hated to disappoint people.

It wasn't long before Kit stood in front of Mr. O'Hara's desk like a scared child.

The man painstakingly cleared the chalkboard of the day's writing. When he finally did return he sat with a small sigh and pushed his glasses further up his stout little nose.

"Are you alright, Kit?"

"Uh—" Kit stumbled over his words. "Yes, why would you think..."

"I noticed you seemed distant today. Students seem to think I go blind and deaf when I stand at the podium. They think I can't see when they look at their neighbors paper. They think I can't hear when they whisper that my class sucks," He paused. "Or when they're gossiping about someone right next to them."

Kit chuckled.

"I can also tell when a really good student is having a bad day. My doors open if you ever want to chat, alright? Take care of yourself now, alright?"

"Of course, thank you.. have a nice day."

"Have a nice day, Kit."

...

Kit emerged from the bus in front of the church and began walking towards the rectory door. When the bus was far enough away that he was certain no one onboard could feasibly see him, he changed direction and began marching towards the forest.

His palms were sweaty and his legs were a little wobbly, but he needed to do it. He couldn't let anything stand in his way anymore or make him afraid. He had to go out, even though he didn't want to, and get back his book.

The sun was bright in the afternoon, almost blinding as it sat above the horizon. The trees were various shades of red and orange signaling the autumn days. If he wasn't so on edge he might have found everything beautiful.

Kit retraced his steps through the maze of trees like he'd done a thousand times before and found it wasn't as frightening as he thought it would be. No, it was really just any other day out in the woods and the birds sang him into good spirits. There was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing that could hurt him in such familiar corners.

When he'd passed far enough he reached a tree that he recognized as the one he had been sitting against that day and began to investigate the surrounding ground. It was scuffed up around the tree. There weren't any tracks but it had been mulled over. Almost as if—

Almost as if an animal had rubbed itself all over that same spot.

Kit sat up with a start as a twig snapped in the distance. The trees obstructed his view, cutting it into different pieces and blocked the sun from reaching within. He suddenly felt extremely exposed being out so alone and strained his eyes to see in the distance. All he could see was acres of trees.

He let his attention fall back down to the spot around the tree once more hoping he might be more successful in locating his book.

Another sound, closer this time, shocked him back up and he decided he no longer cared if he returned with the book just so long as he returned. Kit had never felt so hunted, but suddenly he felt as if there was a massive predator just in the distance.

Then something moved in his peripheral vision and he took off running.