The Wizard's Herbarium: The Wolf Child

Part 6

The unnerving rustling reached its peak. Colt imagined the beast slinking through the undergrowth, golden eyes on him before it leaped and ripped out his throat. He hoped that it would be painless. Wouldn't it be nice if life just went out, like a candle, snuffed into darkness before anyone noticed?

"What are you doing here?"

A human voice wasn't something he expected and it made Colt start. He opened his eyes to see an unimpressed young man in front of him holding two dead rabbits. Their coats were browned for the summer. Colt supposed that he might have mistaken the brown rabbits for the white wolves in his fear.

"This is private property," the man continued when Colt didn't answer. "There's no hunting here."

He looked to be about Colt's age, maybe even younger, but his eyes were weird. The man's gaze was beyond his years. They were the eyes of a much older man and it set Colt on edge.

"I'm not hunting," Colt said, wondering how he could do so without any hunting gear. "Just walking."

The man eyed him, and then looked like he was going to say something else, but instead turned and walked away. Colt realized that the other man had come down a thin path between the raspberry bushes. There was a tiny white picket gate, but Colt couldn't see further up the path from where he stood, the foliage pressed in too closely.

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The next morning Colt was cursing his life. By the time he'd made it into town after his walk, the store had been closed. So he was forced to sleep on his thin sleeping roll again, which was still uncomfortable, no matter how many extra clothes he shoved under it.

By the time he woke, his back was so full of knots. He was surprised that he could even move. His hands pulsed and ached, reminding him that Chuck hadn't given him a real ice pack the night before, just a cold beer to hold, which seemed to help at the time.

The day of work passed by slowly, uneventfully. There were no visions of strange wolves, and Colt turned down Chuck's invitation for dinner. Instead, he went to the store, bought an air mattress and some microwave dinners, and headed home.

The apartment was quiet and empty. Colt used the foot pump that came in the box to blow up the mattress and set it up on the living room, it being the biggest room in the apartment. As soon as he lay down on it, it seemed Colt had just enough time to close his eyes before sleep overshadowed everything else.

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When he woke, the apartment was dark, more dark than he'd ever experienced in the city. Colt raised his hand in front of his face and he couldn't see his own palm, even if he squinted. There was no light pouring in through the window. The blackness was the only thing keeping him company.

After a moment, it became too much. Darkness made the mind spin, and Colt heaved himself off the air mattress.

Restlessness had gotten to him and it didn't want to let him go.

Illuminating the apartment also meant putting into light how little he had. No TV, no distractions. All Colt had was an old book, but his body felt too restless for that.

So he went for a walk.

There were no streetlights in the town and the area outside was as dark as it had been inside his apartment. No lights shone in the windows of the surrounding houses, and again, Colt feared bears. There were signs everywhere warning tourists about them. In the pitch dark, he told himself to get a mini flashlight to make things easier in the future. Then, at least he'd be able to see death running right at him instead of surprising him. If he was going to die, Colt thought that he would at least want to see what was going to kill him. 

He strolled along the rows of soccer fields, running his fingers over the chain link fence. The metal reflected the moonlight in a way that seemed ominous to him. During the day, the chain link appeared plain, but at night, it reminded him of being trapped, which was a strange thought since the town he found himself in had nothing but wide open spaces. Colt paused when a car passed, the headlights momentarily blinding him. The car was going fast, so fast that Colt was glad he was walking so far to the side of the road. It ripped through town and towards the beach, a place Colt had yet to visit.

He figured that beaches were often sources of trouble, especially in small towns. This beach wasn't exactly isolated, but it wasn't as though it were in the center of town either. Colt could see the headlights from the car from where he stood, but was just far enough away that the wind carried any voices away from him. It wasn't as though he had anything else to do, so he shoved his hands into his pockets and picked up the pace.

The laughing was his first warning, the sound ringing with a malicious edge to it. The group looked and sounded like a bunch of kids, the headlights of the car outlining shadows too small to be full-grown adults. One kid was lying on the ground, and Colt saw a fist being raised to strike.

"Good evening," he said, the sound of his voice making the kids, teens really, pause to look up at him.

They had to have been no older than high school age, their eyes wide and rashes of acne over some of their cheeks and foreheads.

"I'm new in town," Colt said before the boys could speak. "So it's good to know that your guy's definition of a good time is beating on other kids in a group. I'll remember that."

They stared at him with a mix of anger and uncertainty in their eyes. The boy with his fist raised looked as though he wanted to say something back at Colt, his mouth opening and then closing like a fish. Kids didn't have the same confidence that adults did, and even if they did, it was feigned. Ultimately, they didn't know what Colt would do, or what he was capable of. They needed an adult to teach them appropriate boundaries, at least that was something his ex-wife would have said. He waited, not doing anything, but not backing down either.

With a few mumbled swears, they piled back into the car and peeled out of the parking lot, the tires of the car leaving deep grooves in the dirt.

The body they left behind was writhing and groaning in pain. With the headlights from the car gone, they were plunged into darkness again.

"I'm Colt," he called without moving to approach. "Are you okay? Need help?"

The area around the boy on the ground was illuminated as he turned the flashlight on his cell phone on and shined it right into Colt's face. Colt squinted, putting a hand up to shield his eyes a little from the momentary glare. Then the flashlight was aimed at the ground as the boy got up. There was the sound of rustling fabric as he wiped himself off.

"You said you were new?" The boy said, his voice nasally as though his nose were bleeding. "This town doesn't like people poking around everyone's business."