From The Mists Of Wolf Creek

On sudden impulse, she blasted the horn, hoping to startle the animal and send it on its way. But much to her dismay, her thoughtless action did not seem to have any effect, and belatedly, it occurred to her that the sound might only enrage the beast, inciting it into attempting to destroy the thin glass barrier that was all that separated the two of them.

As her wide, apprehensive green eyes continued to be riveted on the wolf, Hallie could see that behind it in the distance, the thunderstorm that had earlier massed on the horizon was now beginning to roll inexorably eastward, its ponderous dark gray clouds billowing and spreading like giant, smothering cotton boles across the land. In between the titanic, madding clouds, the last vestiges of the pale, sickly sunlight shimmered, thin bony fingers stretching toward her portentously before mutely evanescing, swallowed by the descending twilight and advancing storm.

At the sight, Hallie felt her heart sink. She had hoped to be safely ensconced at Meadowsweet before the storm broke. Now perhaps she would not reach the farm at all.

Still watching the predatory animal hulking on the hood of the car, she covertly unlatched the glove compartment and groped inside for the LifeHammer. She knew that because the windshield was laminated glass, the emergency tool would not smash it. Rather, it was designed to break the tempered glass of the side windows to effect escape.

Nevertheless, she had some vague notion that if she beat authoritatively on the windshield, the beast might mistakenly believe she was not only armed, but also quite capable of defending herself, and would move on.

That, instead, it might perceive her gesture as a threat and try to attack her through the glass, Hallie did not even want to consider.

Nor did she even think about stamping on the accelerator and speeding away. Whether such a result would actually occur, she worried that the impetus of that act might fling the massive wolf savagely against the windshield, shattering it, thus giving the animal access to the inside of the vehicle and causing her to run off the road, at the very least.

She did have her cell phone with her and knew she could call the highway patrol for help. But what if dispatch did not believe her? Even as she tried to envision how to explain her situation, Hallie recognized how wild and improbable it would sound to someone not actually present to witness it.

She might be dismissed as some teenager pulling a silly prank.

Further, even if her story were given any credence, the animal would surely be gone by the time the highway patrol managed to arrive.

No, she was literally on her own. This particular stretch of road was desolate in more ways than one, without even another car in sight.

After rummaging blindly through the glove compartment for what seemed like minutes but, in reality, could only have been seconds, Hallie found the LifeHammer at last. As her fingers closed around it, they trembled with the fear that coursed through her wildly, and a lump rose in her throat, choking her. With determination, she swallowed this last.

Then, grasping the emergency tool tightly, she raised her fist, poised to strike the windshield, in an attempt to scare off the predatory beast.

At that, much to her utter surprise and confusion, its carnivorous visage pressing so close to her own vulnerable one through the glass split into what, in a human being, Hallie could only have described as a wide grin.

Then, just as suddenly as it had sprung onto the hood of the Mini, the great black wolf leaped down, swiftly and silently disappearing into the oncoming darkness and storm.

Chapter 2

Memories

Meadowsweet Farm, Wolf Creek, The Present

For what seemed like an eternity after the wolf had vanished into the twilight, Hallie just sat there in the car, her fear only gradually ebbing to be replaced by overwhelming relief and astonishment at what had happened.

What had prompted the animal’s bizarre behavior? she wondered, still shaking. Perhaps the beast was deranged—or even rabid! At this last thought she shuddered visibly, knowing there was no cure for rabies and her imagination conjuring horrible, vivid visions of what a mad, sick wolf might have done to her, had it managed somehow to break the windshield and attack her.

And the way it had grinned at her! In that instant the animal had appeared almost human, amused by her plight and her desperate determination to fend it off however she could.

Now, for the first time, Hallie vaguely recalled snatches of conversation she had overheard in her childhood, something about the beasts that prowled the copses and meadows surrounding Wolf Creek, that they were not merely wolves, but something more….

No, that was simply impossible, nothing but local superstition and old-wives’ tales to scare naughty children, surely—although at this particular minute, Hallie could almost believe the stories were true.

Shivering, she finally realized she still clutched the LifeHammer in her hand, and that the first drops of rain that presaged the impending storm had started to fall, splattering like the saliva from the wolf’s panting tongue against the windshield. She could not continue to remain here on the highway, like a startled deer frozen in the oncoming glare of a pair of deadly headlights in the darkness.

Opening the glove compartment, she replaced the LifeHammer. Then, slowly, she stepped on the accelerator, only to discover that, sometime earlier, she had mechanically and habitually slid the gearshift into Park, so she had not had to keep her foot on the brake to prevent the vehicle from accidentally lurching forward with the animal atop its hood.

After slipping the gearshift back into Drive, Hallie started onward. But she had hardly picked up any speed at all when she suddenly observed a large, deep, dangerous pothole on her side of the road and drew once more to a halt.

Originally, the crater had been visibly marked with an orange-and-white-striped wooden barricade topped with flashing amber lights. But at some point, someone had obviously struck the sawhorse-shaped hazard warning, knocking it flat into the ditch alongside the highway.

Had Hallie come barreling down the road at her previous rate of speed, it was quite possible she would never even have noticed the blinking lights half concealed by the tall grass of the verge. She would have hit the pothole hard and dead-on, doubtless suffering a blowout or other serious accident.

If not for the wolf’s unexpected and still-inexplicable intervention, she might even have been killed!

At the dreadful realization, Hallie felt an icy tingle run down her spine.

Gram had always taught her that the earth’s creatures were a good deal more sentient than most people ever gave them credit for being. Had the animal somehow known what lay ahead of her in the road? Could it possibly have been attempting to save her?

No, surely, that was a farfetched idea!

Still, now that she thought about it, Hallie recognized that the beast had not actually done anything to threaten her. It had only stopped her dead in her tracks, forcing her to proceed a great deal more slowly when she resumed her course.

Oh, it had been a long day’s worth of driving, and she was hungry, tired and letting her wild imagination run away with her, Great-Aunts Agatha and Edith would most certainly stoutly insist. Hallie had little difficulty at all in envisioning their severe expressions of disapproval and dismay, respectively—Agatha stern and unrelenting, Edith flustered and upset that there should be any discord in the town house.

So, for a very long time now, Hallie had kept such fanciful notions as these to herself. But it seemed that the closer she got to the farm, the more her childhood self was struggling to emerge from the strict, sheltered cocoon in which the great-aunts had enshrouded it. For a moment, Hallie wondered if when she finally arrived at Meadowsweet, she would metamorphose into one of the bright butterflies that inhabited it. Then she shook her head, smiling ruefully at herself.

Great-Aunts Agatha and Edith would certainly not have approved of that idea!

But Gram would have. She would have flung her head back in that wholly unselfconscious and uninhibited way she had about her and laughed—a deep, rich laugh filled with the earthiness of the land she had loved so well and to which she had been so close.

At the memory, Hallie felt her eyes suddenly flood with tears, and for the second time in less than an hour, a lump rose in her throat, choking her. Abruptly, she laid her head on the steering wheel and cried her heart out.

But after a short while, she recognized that she must somehow pull herself together and get moving again, that at best, another vehicle might come along at any time and, not realizing she was stopped on the highway, crash into her.

Besides, there were the imminent storm and darkness to consider.

Determinedly stifling her sobs, Hallie carefully maneuvered around the treacherous pothole and at last drove on, eyeing the shadowy sky anxiously through the windshield. She loathed being caught in a storm while on the highway, and she suffered from night blindness, as well.

What if she missed the lonely and poorly marked dirt road that was the narrow turnoff to the farm? She certainly did not want to get lost out here in the middle of nowhere—especially with that huge wolf on the prowl!

Perhaps next time, it might not have such honorable intentions as she had so whimsically sought to bestow upon it.

Once or twice, from the corners of her eyes, Hallie uneasily thought she spied it following her, its silky black fur flashing amid the seemingly ceaseless rows of the tall cornfield that ran along one side of the highway. But as the dusk and the rain partially obscured her vision, she could not be sure, and resolutely, she told herself she was only imagining it, that for one thing, there was no way the animal could keep pace with her traveling car, and that for another, even if the beast were crazy and diseased, rather than sane and protective, it would scarcely be stalking her, but, rather, some other prey.

Still, briefly, she did wonder if there might be something about the color of her vehicle that had initially attracted the wolf and perhaps, more down to earth than her earlier flighty musings, even accounted for its odd behavior. The car was painted a vibrant crimson shade dubbed “Nightfire Red” by the manufacturer, and Hallie knew the color red was supposed to enrage bulls—at least, that was why matadors employed crimson capes in the bullring, although some said the hue was to disguise the bloodstains engendered by the brutal sport.

But because she had never heard anything mentioned about the color red inciting wolves, she was finally forced to discard the idle theory, eventually putting the entire episode down as a life mystery she would probably never solve.

Sighing deeply at the thought of other life mysteries that decision brought to mind, Hallie pressed on, wondering again why Gram had ever sent her away from Meadowsweet.

The rain was falling harder now, making it difficult for her see. So she switched on her windshield wipers and headlamps, once more hoping she did not miss the lane that led from the highway to the farm.

Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, she reached for the map she had printed out for herself a couple of weeks ago, her route carefully marked so she would know the way. Hallie had thought that once she neared the farm, her memories would kick into gear and serve to guide her home.

But she was also realistic enough to realize that it had been many years since she had seen Meadowsweet, and that memories sometimes played tricks on one, too. So, with the practicality instilled in her by Great-Aunts Agatha and Edith, she had taken the precaution of arming herself with the map.

She ought to be getting very close now, she thought. But in the end, despite everything, she still almost missed the turnoff. It was now so overgrown that she did not recognize it, and in fact, it was only the glare of her headlights shining on the badly askew signpost at the junction that caught her attention as she flew past.

“Dammit!” Hallie swore heatedly under her breath to herself.

Hitting the brake pedal, she screeched to a halt, glancing over her shoulder to be certain no one was coming. Then she backed up and turned onto the narrow, sandy lane, cursing some more as the Mini bounced along the bumps and ruts that riddled the ill-kept rural route.

Beneath the trees lining the road and forming a half canopy above, it was much darker than it had been on the highway, and in response, she turned on her high beams, totally grateful that the farm could not be much farther now.

Looking at the gnarled old branches of the thorny hedge-apple trees that rustled and whipped in the rising wind, Hallie knew she needed to reach Meadowsweet and batten down the hatches before the full fury of the storm was unleashed upon her.

A tornado might even be brewing, and she would have no way of knowing. Frowning at her own stupidity, she flicked on the radio, trying to tune it to one of the local channels. Instead, static and then rock music blasted into the Mini, and after a moment she gave up, switching the radio off, knowing she needed both hands on the steering wheel.

The rain pelted in splotches against the windshield, and once, a hedge apple was ruthlessly torn from one of the trees and hurled down to skitter like a poorly thrown bowling ball across the lane. Hallie could only feel relieved that the fruit had not struck her car.

As she watched the hedge apple roll off the road into the ditch alongside, her headlamps lit up a weatherbeaten sign hanging by one rusty chain from the barbed-wire fence to which it was attached. It read “Meadowsweet Farm.”

Spinning the steering wheel quickly, Hallie turned onto the narrow, serpentine drive that led up a small hill to the old farmhouse beyond. Her heart pounded with anticipation, and her nerves went taut as she quivered with a strange mixture of trepidation and excitement.

Leaning forward, she strained for a glimpse of her childhood home, wishing she had arrived much earlier, when she could have seen it much more clearly.

Still, abruptly emerging from the windblown trees onto the hillcrest, she spied the house at long last, looming ahead in the darkness, illuminated by a sudden, jagged flash of scintillating lightning that forked across the churning sky.

Much to her dismay, the first unbidden thought that came into her mind as she instinctively paused the car on the knoll was that the Victorian farmhouse looked like something straight out of a horror movie. She suspected it would have been right at home next door to Norman Bates’s creepy old house on the hill.

Silhouetted against the night sky, it was all dark, towering cupolas and pointed turrets capped with lightning rods that seemed to pierce the very firmament. As she caught sight of these last, Hallie felt some long-forgotten memory unexpectedly stir in her brain, and she heard herself as a child speaking to her grandmother in the expansive front yard.

“I don’t like the lightning rods, Gram. They look like needles stabbing into God’s eye.”

And in her mind, as had happened in her childhood, she saw Gram throw back her head and laugh, and heard her declare, “Shout at the Devil, and spit in God’s eye! That’s just the way I’ve lived my whole life, Hallie—standing on my own two good feet, working with my own two strong hands, and never asking either man or beast for anything. And I don’t mind telling you, it’s been a long, hard path to follow, child. But in the end, I reckon it’s a journey that’s been the making of me, and I’m too old to change now, besides.”

“Don’t you believe in God and the Devil then, Gram?”

“Of course, I do, Hallie. It’s merely that I’ve never noticed that either one has ever been of much use to humankind. Why, most of the wars in this old world have been fought in God’s name, and if the Devil hadn’t got into people, making them do evil to one another, I don’t know what has.

“Sometimes, it seems like there’s not a lick of common sense or kindness or caring left on this entire earth! We were put here to take care of this planet and the creatures on it, you know, and it seems to me that between God and the Devil, we’ve done a mighty damned poor job of it all.

“No, child—” Gram had shaken her head firmly to emphasize her point “—I rely on myself, and what I know to be right and wrong according to the dictates of my own conscience, to lead my life, and I leave God and the Devil to those who need them. I hope that one day, you’ll understand that and do the same.”

Standing there with Gram in the yard that summer’s day, Hallie had not truly comprehended a single word of their conversation. But now, the full meaning of their dialogue dawned on her, and in that moment she grasped her grandmother’s character with far more clarity than she could ever have done in her childhood.

“Gram—” Hallie spoke now, her words breaking the stillness inside the car “—I don’t know why you ever sent me away after Mom died. But I know you must have had a good reason, one you thought was right, just as you must have had one equally as good for bringing me home again. And while I’m not sure I’ve made up my mind yet about God and the Devil, I do have faith and trust in you.

“So…here I am, Gram, home at last after all these long years. I wish…I really wish you were here, too, standing on the front porch to greet me, the way you used to when you heard the school bus drop me off at the bottom of the hill. Instead, you’re dead and buried in your grave, and I’ve got to rely on myself, just as you did.

“Oh, I guess I’ll manage somehow. You see, I know how to stand on my own two good feet, too, Gram. Still, I’ve got to tell you that sometimes, like this evening, that’s pretty damned cold comfort. What I wouldn’t give for a cup of your hot Earl Grey tea, served with your smile and words of wisdom, right about now. Maybe if I’m lucky, there’ll still be a tin, at least, somewhere on one of your kitchen shelves. I can only hope.”

With that last thought to sustain her, Hallie put the gearshift back into Drive and guided the vehicle on toward the old farmhouse that stood waiting silently for her, a momentous sentinel in the rainy darkness, relentlessly defiant against the blustering wind—and armed with needles that still dared to jab the thunderous sky.

Chapter 3

Home Is Where the Heart Is

By the time Hallie pulled the car to a stop beneath the intricate wooden carport on one side of the house, the wind was lashing the trees unmercifully, the rain was pouring down and the fleeting dusk had well and truly died.

She was inordinately grateful for what protection, however small, the carport provided as, with difficulty born of the storm, she lifted the vehicle’s rear hatch and unloaded the two bags she had packed to bring with her. Then she fumbled in her purse for the house keys Gram’s attorney, Simon Winthorpe, had mailed to her some days ago.

Once she had finally got the side door open and stepped into the small vestibule beyond, she felt for the light switch on the wall. But much to Hallie’s consternation, when she flicked it, nothing happened. Either the electric company had not received her instructions to restore the power, or else the storm had knocked the power out. Either way, she was obviously not going to be able to get the lights to come on.

Wondering what else might go wrong this seemingly ill-omened night, she set her luggage inside, then returned to the car to fetch the flashlight from the emergency roadside kit she always carried in the cargo space. Punching one of the buttons on the key remote, she locked the car, then ran back into the house, closing the door behind her, shutting out the inhospitable elements.

For a moment, Hallie just stood there in the darkness, dripping with rain and shivering with cold. She correctly suspected that the outside temperature had dropped twenty degrees or more in the last few hours, and she was dressed for summer, not for the onslaught of a storm and its attendant chilliness.

But finally, collecting herself, she switched on the flashlight and began to explore the house. Once or twice, she tested other light switches, only to receive the same disappointing result as before. She had hoped the lightbulb in the vestibule was simply burned out, but now, it was clear to her the power itself was indeed off.

As she proceeded down the hall beyond the vestibule and then through several of the rooms on the ground floor of the house, shining the flashlight this way and that, Hallie was swept with myriad emotions.

Much to her vast relief, in so many ways that she now realized had subconsciously been of prime importance to her, the old farmhouse had not changed. In rooms that had clearly been redone over the years, Gram had chosen the very same patterns that had always papered the walls, and she had reupholstered the furniture with fabric identical to the worn material it had replaced. She had moved little or nothing in the intervening years. Sofas, chairs, curio cabinets, and tables still stood where they always had, and paintings still hung in their accustomed places.

The large portrait of Hallie’s mother, Rowan—forever young and beautiful—still looked down at her from its place of honor above the intricately carved fireplace mantel in the front parlor.

On the much simpler fireplace mantel in the back parlor, Gram’s treasured collection of antique Victorian oil lamps were still clustered, along with the sharp, ornate brass scissors she had used to trim the flat wicks, and the beautiful, matching brass box that housed the stick matches she had employed to light them.

Now, as in her childhood she had watched her grandmother do so many times before, Hallie crossed the room to remove the oil lamps’ glass chimneys, carefully trim the wicks and set them ablaze. Soon the back parlor was awash with the warm glow of their flames and with the fragrant scents of the oils that filled the glass fonts. Sweet lavender and vanilla mingled with the pungent smell of the beeswax with which her grandmother had always polished the furniture.

Standing there in the room, closing her eyes and inhaling the old, familiar aromas, Hallie could almost imagine she was a child again, that any minute now Gram herself would come into the back parlor, wiping her hardworking hands on the apron she had always tied on over her simple workaday garments.

But, no, Hallie would never see her grandmother again in this life.

At the thought, hot tears stung her eyes, and almost, she wondered if she had made a terrible mistake in coming back here to Meadowsweet.

It was said that one could never go home again.

Sighing heavily, fighting back the flood of tears that threatened once more to fall, Hallie abruptly switched off her flashlight. Then, picking up one of the oil lamps, she made her way to the kitchen.

There, she drew up short, stunned and incredulous.

For here, at last, everything was changed.

Once, solid-oak cupboards, turned dark with smoke and age, had lined the walls, one of which cabinets had sported an ancient copper sink, and open shelves cluttered with crockery had hung above. There had been a large, worn butcher block in the middle of the room, and a badly scarred yellow pine floor. The open hearth to one side had been composed of reddish brown bricks blackened with soot from winter fires.

The kitchen was the one part of the house Hallie remembered much more vividly than all the rest. It had always reminded her of the old cozy but mysterious kitchen in some fairy-tale cottage, and sometimes, she had half suspected Gram herself was really some enchanting witch.

But now all that was gone, as surely as her grandmother was. In its place were clean white beadboard cupboards topped with black granite counters, above which gleamed glass-fronted upper cabinets. A white porcelain Belfast sink had replaced the copper one, and a long wooden farmhouse table occupied the center of the room. The floor was now a checkerboard of black and white tiles, and the old brick fireplace had been painted white to match. Against one wall stood a massive Welsh dresser Hallie had never before seen. Only Gram’s crockery on its shelves was the same. Even her old stove and refrigerator Hallie thought must surely have dated from the fifties had given way to modern reproductions that looked like Victorian antiques.