Several Short Fantasies of Werewolves and Other Things

Tom Byron

 When I was 17, I lived with my father in an old house on the prairie in Wyoming, and the antelope would graze outside the window in the morning. That spring was very cold, winter clinging for dear life to the brown fields even though the moisture needed for snow and ice had long since withered away. Only frost was there to crackle underneath each bootstep as I'd walk out to our paddock in the mornings to feed Lily and Morgan, our two quarterhorses, while capping one of our fenceposts a solitary bird, poofing up to stay warm, would give a chirp or two to let the world know it belonged to him. And, the moment I was back inside, it did.

At night the coyotes would yelp and cackle. I could hear them sometimes, the sound traveling as they roved up a dry stream bed at midnight and up the sides of the embankment on our neighbor's property; then they'd peter out. No doubt there was rich hunting there, all the rabbits and rats hunkered down in the dry banks for shelter from the winds that would whip through sometimes. They had lured our old dog out one night and killed him. They were wily and fearless. But one night as I listened, a low, throaty howl rang across the frostbitten turf, and the coyotes all went silent.

My father heard it too. He'd been doing work for his contracting business on our old Gateway, its giant cathode ray tube monitor buzzing with static when he lifted his face from its pallid illumination to glance out the dark window. His eyebrows tightened in puzzlement, and he said, "is that a wolf?"

I didn't know. We listened and worked for a few more hours, he for his business, me on my homework, and then bedtime came. But neither the coyotes nor the thing they feared made any more noise.

After a few weeks the cold finally lost its grip, and after one final, magnificent snow, we had our first really warm day of the year. The trees started to bud, little hints of pink and green working into the tips of their dead branches, barely perceptible; the ground became soggy (and one of the horses got a mild case of hoof rot), and with it, a squelching track developed between the house and the barn where my father and I would walk back and forth. The rabbits started getting bold, and within about a week of the weather changing they were racing around in our front yard after each other the moment they thought we weren't watching. Unsurprisingly, the coyotes took a sudden liking to our property, and every few nights I could hear their feet pattering outside the house, followed more often than not by some small animal squealing. My father would get a bright flashlight and chase them off sometimes, yelling and running after them, but they'd be back within an hour at most. Fortunately for us, we just had horses, who were in little danger from the coyotes; but our neighbors had a flock of turkeys that was constantly under siege. They had to be double-fenced because they had a habit of sticking their heads out of their fence, and then the coyotes would come and bite their heads off. Turkeys are not very smart.

One day, things got quiet. The first indication came when our neighbors, the Hendersons, came over for Sunday dinner. My father asked them how their turkeys were doing.

"Oh, great, great," said Lucas (Lucas and Mary Henderson were our neighbors). "Been kinda funny, actually. No coyotes in the last... two weeks? Maybe they gave up or something."

"Think something could've scared 'em off?" asked my father.

"Heh. Like what?"

"We heard something howling out there back in March. Coyotes all went dead quiet."

"Huh."

We all sat around speculating on what it could have been. We all agreed it could have been a wolf, because they had started moving in since they were reintroduced to the state a few years prior.