The Land of the Singing Wolf ~Ash

 

The Land of the Singing Wolf

~Ash

   "All homework will be due tomorrow." The class groans as Mrs.Wood hands out yet another homework assignment to add to our mountain. The bell rings, and I head to my locker.

   "Ugh! We are never going to get this all done!" My best friend Wolff complains from next to me. A girl with short black hair and green eyes stares back at me from my mirror.

   "Alexa, seriously, you will have to help me. There is no way any one person could do all this work." I sigh and slam my locker.

   "You're lazy and you know it. You don't want to spend Halloween cooped-up inside." It is Friday, and Halloween is tomorrow.

   "And you do?" Wolff counters. I don't, and he knows it. He leans down, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek before we start walking out of the school.

   "No, nobody does." Together, we walk down the stairs and past the sign of our high school. We walk in silence for awhile, until we get home. Wolff and I have lived next door to each other all our lives, although we weren't always close. I had classes with him in middle school, so we became friends then. We started dating two years ago.

   "Your parents home?" Wolff asks.

   "If they were, I'd know the world was ending." Even though it was a bad joke, he laughs. My parents are always busy with work. They are often only home for one meal every day or two. If you told me to pick out my parents voices in a crowd, I couldn't, because even when they're home, they usually work, sleep, or eat. I practically live alone.

   With another quick kiss, Wolff says, "Good thing I'm such a good person." before he walks to his house next door. He is referring to the fact that if he wanted to, he could move into my room. When my parents come, he could just claim that he was visiting. They would never look into it any farther than that.

   But Wolff would never do that. Like he said, he really is just a good person. Not that I don't agree with him. But I would just love to see the look on my parents face's...

   "I'll be over in a minute." I yell, knowing that he really does want help on his homework. He waves, and his door shuts. I head inside too.

   As I lock the door behind me, something huge and furry knocks me down. Hot breath coats my face, and I can feel claws dig in to me through my thin tee-shirt. My German Shepherd Becca licks my face, then jumps off me. As I sit up, her tail furiously. Clearly, she is happy for some human interaction.

   I pet her on top of the head, and she licks my hand. "Did you miss me, Becca?" She barks, as if to say 'Of course!' Then Becca takes off running for the back door, then to me, and then back to the door.

   "Alright, alright. I get the message." I grab an apple from the kitchen counter, then start towards the door. I don't bother with a leash; I've had Becca since I was six, and she comes when I call. I open the door, and she takes off into the backyard.

   Well, you can call it a backyard, but it doesn't really fit the picture that comes to mind. Rather than a square of grass with a tree or two surrounded by fencing, our backyard is more like fifteen feet of grass, unfenced, until you reach the woods. Singing Wolf Woods.

   Odd name for a group of trees all stuck together, isn't it? Trust me, I think so too. But there is a legend about the woods, and that's where the name comes from. And this isn't Red Riding Hood. This is real.

   Some long, long time ago, when the town was first founded, a wolf pack lived in the woods. The town was small and defenceless, so the wolves invaded, eating the towns food and starving people. So one man gathered everyone willing, and they went into the woods to kill the wolves. The only managed to kill one.

   The Alpha.

   Once the Alpha was killed, the rest of the pack disbanded, unorganized and confused without a leader. But the legend says that the spirit of the Alpha lives on within the woods as a Spirit Wolf, almost like a ghost, and that at twelve a.m., All Hallows Eve, he will sing and call a towns-member to kill, until he gets his revenge on the man who lead the town into the woods and killed him.

   I am the that man's great, great granddaughter.

* * *

   I shake my head, trying to forget the legend. Some of it is true, of course. Just not the spirit and the haunting parts. It's just a scary story, told to keep little kids and tourists entertained and out of the woods.

   I bring Becca back inside, and she curls up for a nap. I go ahead and fill her dog bowl, but by then she's too far gone to care, back legs twitching in her sleep. I decide I'd better head over to Wolff's, as I have a feeling the phone's going to ring in a minute anyway.

   Locking the door behind me, I walk the short distance and ring Wolff's doorbell. I have a key, but I think the doorbell's more polite.

   Nothing. His parents must be out, because they would have been at the door in a flash. Maybe he didn't hear me.

   I bang on the door, pounding until my fist hurts.

   Still nothing. Finally, I just use my key to let myself in.

   "Wolff, where are you?" I call out, but there is no answer. I head into the kitchen. "Are you in-"

   A chair is knocked over.

   The rug is in disarray.

   Shards of vase splatter the ground.

   Leaves blow inside from the open back door.

   Wolff is gone.

   Wolf howls sing to me from the woods outside, pulling me in.

* * *

   Back at home, I dump out my school bag. I grab a water bottle and fill it up, my foot tapping in impatience as it slowly fills. I screw the cap on wrong the first time, so I have to waste even more time to pull it off and put it back on right. There are cloth bandages in the bathroom in the cabinet, and I grab those too and shove them in my bag. I think about grabbing food, but it might attract the wolves I heard. Just as I swing my bag onto my shoulder, I stop.

 

   What am I doing?

   Do I really think the Spirit Alpha from the legend, or even just a regular wolf broke into Wolff's house without breaking his glass back door, and is going to kill him? Do I really believe there are wolves in my woods, the ones only a few feet away?

 

   Yes. No. I don't know! Maybe? It doesn't matter. I am going into the woods to get Wolff, whether he waltzed in there on his own two feet (which isn't likely with the mess in his kitchen) or if he was dragged kicking and screaming.

 

   Becca wakes up from all the racket I'm making, and when I open up the back door and head into the woods, she trots along with me. We walk for awhile, about twenty yards. But after that Becca begins to whine, and eventually turns tail and runs back in the dirction of home.

 

   Great. Abandoned by my own dog.

 

   I keep walking, but now fear clouds my mind. Every shadow is a monster, every animal death approching. The wind shakes the trees, and leaves rain down. It's going to storm soon. I'll be caught in the woods and loose my way and die in the woods of hypothermia in the cold rain.

 

   Rustling shakes a nearby bush and the dead leaves around it. I freeze in my place, too scared to even run. It's just a squirrel, I tell myself. Or maybe a harmless cat out for a stroll. Or even a cute little bunny. Yes, that's what it is. It's just a bunny.

 

   It gets louder, too big to be a bunny. Maybe it's a mutant bunny, enormous but harmless.

 

   A wolf muzzel pokes out of the bushes, followed by the nose, the eyes, the ears, until a whole real wolf stands in front of me.

 

More to be posted soon! ;)

                       ♥ ~Ash