Wolf Man Read online

  Wolf Man

  Copyright © 2008 by Edo van Belkom

  All rights reserved.

  Published as an ebook in 2022 by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

  Originally published in 2008 by Tundra Books in Canada and Tundra Books of Northern New York in the United States.

  Cover Art by Ashley Ruggirello // www.cardboardmonet.com

  ISBN 978-1-625675-66-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Edo van Belkom

  To Shaun Ellis, a true wolf man.

  Prologue

  The wolves had been through this part of the forest so many times, they’d worn a path through the trees. On their previous travels, they’d moved from bush to tree to bush without a sound, without disturbing branches, and without letting any other being in the forest know they were there.

  But not on this night.

  Tonight they followed their leader, who boldly strode between the trees brushing aside branches and stomping saplings beneath him like so much deadwood. The pack’s alpha male didn’t try to hide his presence, but instead moved as if announcing his existence to the world and proclaiming his rule over all that surrounded him.

  In the past, the pack would be cautious around the places of men, scurrying from shadow to shadow for fear they might be caught where they did not belong.

  Some men were good and worthy of respect, and the wolves knew where they lived and how to find them: Other men, however, were bad and killed without reason. They were also weak, but they had cowardly ways of making themselves strong—ways to kill without touch, tooth, or claw.

  Deathsticks! That’s what they were like, and sometimes all it took was for a man with one of those sticks to see you. Then there would be a loud crack, or a boom that echoed down the mountain, and just like that, something would be dead.

  Alive one moment, dead the next.

  That’s what men could do.

  And so the pack feared men and had learned to stay away from them, venturing near their dens and lairs only when there was no other choice, even then only at night and only in silence.

  But not on this night.

  Tonight they would go to the places where men lived. It was dangerous, to be sure, but they really had no choice.

  While the icy chill of Mother Earth had made it hard for the wolves to survive—much of their prey hiding beneath a blanket of snow—men still had food…more than they could ever eat.

  And so the wolves moved from place to place in search of easy prey, hunting the animals that belonged to men, or maybe even the men themselves.

  After all, it was only fair.

  No, more than just fair, it was right.

  Nature’s way.

  Because while the wolves of the pack moved through the forest on four legs, their leader now walked on two.

  He had fought a man-wolf, nearly to the death, but he had survived and grown stronger. Now he was one of them. He was still wolf—of that, there was no doubt—but he was also part man, and if he were man, then those things belonging to men should be his as well.

  He would take what he needed.

  And when he did, Mother Earth help the man who got in his way.

  Chapter 1

  Ernie Ilson pushed a fresh log into the potbellied stove in his living room, then turned the crank at the bottom of the stove to clear the ashes that had accumulated at the base of the fire. The last week had been bitterly cold up on the mountain, and the stove had been going pretty much around the clock. In the morning, he’d have to clean out the ashes and make a few trips to the woodpile by the shed to restock his supply of firewood. But that was work for tomorrow. Right now, it was Ernie’s job to relax. He’d had a fine supper—thanks to his good friend Captain High Liner—tomorrow’s lunch was in the bag, and breakfast was already laid out on the kitchen table. All that remained was for him to sit back in his favorite chair, read the evening paper awhile, then nap til it was time to go to bed. Then, in the morning, Ernie’s life cycle would begin all over again.

  Satisfied the fire would be all right for the next hour, Ernie closed the door on the stove and trudged over to his well-worn La-Z-Boy. He picked up the copy of the Redstone Gazette that lay on the seat and read the big bold headline splashed across the front page—PROVINCE COMMENDS REDSTONE TEEN FOR FOREST RESCUE.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  No one answered Ernie’s question because there was no one else in the room. No one else except for Jaeger, his golden retriever. The two had been together eight years now, helping each other through some pretty tough times, including the death of Ernie’s wife six years ago to cancer. When she passed, it looked for a while like Ernie might join her, but Jaeger pulled him through the dark times by keeping him active and forcing him to go for walks at least three times a day. After a few months, the worst of the pain had passed and the two of them became constant companions.

  Man, and man’s best friend.

  Ernie turned the paper around so Jaeger, who was curled up on the rug next to the chair, could see. “That’s one of them Brock kids,” he said. “The biggest one of the three boys…name of Argyle, or…,” he scanned the newspaper article, “yeah, Argus, that’s it. Strong boy, not the best-looking kid—looks a bit like you, Jaeger, but bigger. Much bigger.”

  Jaeger responded by raising his head slightly and letting out a sound that was halfway between a groan and a chuff. That was one of the things Ernie liked most about Jaeger—he was easy to talk to. Not like the previous dog, Hanna, who’d been his wife’s dog and not much of a conversationalist.

  Ernie sat down in his chair, eased it back into a reclining position, and read further about how Argus, with the help of his brother and sister, had found a lost girl in the forest and brought her all the way to the hospital in Redstone, probably saving her life.

  “Well, good for him,” Ernie said aloud. Then he leaned right, to speak to Jaeger. “I always thought they were strange kids. You know, like there was something off about them…but then they go and rescue some lost kid in the forest.” He sniffed. “I guess they can’t be all bad, eh, Jaeger?”

  Jaeger barked.

  “Easy, boy,” Ernie said. “When I said they can’t be all bad, that means they’re good.”

  But Jaeger barked again.

  Ernie put down the paper, concerned now because the dog wasn’t usually so chatty. “What is it?”

  The dog got up off the rug and looked toward the rear door.

  “You hear something, Jaeger? What’s out there?”

  A low growl began to rise up from somewhere deep within the dog’s body.

  “Are those raccoons clawing through my compost again?” Ernie said, with a sigh. “Or maybe they’re trying to get into the stable, huh?”

  Jaeger growled.

  Years ago, Ernie owned a few horses and had made a living renting them out to tourists to take on trail rides during the summer months. But since his wife had died, he’d gotten rid of
all but a single horse—an old nag he’d named Sir Brian Hewlitt, after a knight he’d read about as a child—using the empty space in the stable to raise a few rabbits.

  “I don’t care what that Ranger Brock’s got to say about preservin’ wildlife,” Ernie said, scowling. “If them raccoons can’t stay away from my animals, I’m gonna set me some traps and shoot the damn things. Raccoons ain’t no wildlife, they’re just pests. Plain and simple.”

  The dog was up on all fours now, eyes fixed on the back door of the cabin.

  Ernie got up then too, his aged body rising out of his chair a little at a time, until he was standing upright. “You want out, do you?”

  Jaeger barked once and ran to the door. He reared up on his hind legs and desperately pawed at the doorknob.

  “Hold on a minute,” Ernie said. “Let me get that for ya.” He turned the doorknob and pushed open the door.

  Jaeger charged into the darkness, snarling and barking every step of the way.

  “Go get ’em, boy!” Ernie cheered, then hurried over to the closet, where he kept all his coats and shoes. After slipping on his lumberjack jacket and stepping into a pair of winter boots, he pulled a hat over his head and searched the closet for a flashlight.

  Meanwhile, there was noise outside, most likely coming from the stable. It was a pounding sound, as if the door was being knocked down by a fire brigade. Suddenly an awful screech pierced the night, like something was being torn apart.

  “What the hell is going on out there?” Ernie shouted toward the open door. He scrambled over to the wall by the stove, where his Remington was locked securely in its rack.

  Even more commotion outside now…like things inside the stable were being smashed and broken. The horse—Sir Brian Hewlitt—was neighing and stomping its hooves, as if trying to get out. On top of that was Jaeger’s constant snarling and barking, as though the dog had someone or something pinned into a corner.

  Ernie fumbled with his key chain, at first having a hard time finding the right key, then having little luck sliding that key into the padlock securing the shotgun. And while he struggled with the lock, a tremendous roar came from outside. It was so loud that Ernie could feel it in his bones. He’d never heard anything like it before, but if he had to guess, he’d say it came from something big, like a grizzly bear…a mean one, to boot.

  Finally, the key slipped into the hole, and in a single motion, Ernie turned the key and popped open the lock. A second later, he was heading toward the open door with the loaded gun in his hands. But before he even reached the door, there was a sharp yelp, and Jaeger’s barking—as well as all the other noises that had been coming from the stable—stopped abruptly.

  “Who’s there?” Ernie shouted into the darkness. He held the shotgun in his right hand, tucking the butt under his arm so he could keep the gun aimed while using his left hand to shine his flashlight into the forest.

  There—movement among the trees.

  As he adjusted the direction of the beam, he caught sight of a pair of wolves darting between two trees, one of them with a rabbit clenched in its maw.

  “Damn wolves!” he cried, dropping the flashlight and squeezing off two rounds from his shotgun.

  There were two brilliant flashes from the muzzle and, for an instant, the entire forest seemed ablaze with light. But despite the momentary illumination, there was no longer a sign of a wolf anywhere in the forest.

  Ernie took a deep breath and picked up his flashlight. He shone the light, first at the forest, then slowly panned its beam toward the stable. The door had been bashed in and was hanging askew on just one of its hinges. In front, tufts of downy fur floated gently on the air like snowflakes.

  “That’s not a good sign,” Ernie said.

  He rushed over to the stable, slowing as he neared the front door in case one or more of the wolves were still inside. Then, standing to the side of the door, he shone the light inside.

  All of the rabbit cages appeared to be intact, except for one. That cage had been ripped apart, and the rabbits that had been inside were gone. There was no mystery to that, since Ernie had seen a wolf running away with one of the rabbits in its mouth. But the question remained: What kind of wolf had the strength and ability to tear open a heavy steel cage as if it were made of Christmas wrap and ribbon?

  He directed his light deeper into the stable and saw Sir Brian Hewlitt backed into a corner. The horse’s body pressed against the far wall, still cowering from whatever it was that had been in the stable. And its eyes…its eyes were open wide in terror, looking like a pair of full moons in the darkness.

  “It’s okay, Sir Brian,” Ernie said. “Everything’s okay. It’s gone now…” Then, under his breath, “Whatever it was.”

  Obviously these were no ordinary wolves, if that’s, in fact, what they were. But no matter how smart or strong they could be, Ernie took comfort in knowing that they wouldn’t be able to outrun a round of buckshot. The thought reminded him that he’d taken shots at one of the wolves as it ran away. If he was lucky, he’d hit it and he’d find it lying somewhere in the snow, either dead or dying—he didn’t care which.

  He pumped another round into the chamber of his shotgun and headed toward the area of the forest where he’d last seen the wolves. As the beam from his flashlight swept over the snow, he noticed that the wolves had left behind plenty of tracks for him to follow.

  And blood.

  There were spatters and streaks of it all over the ground between the stable and the edge of the forest. But while Ernie should have been encouraged by the sight of all that blood, it left him feeling uneasy. There was just too much of it. If he’d hit one of the wolves, there would have been a few spatters, or maybe even a trail of blood leading into the forest. Instead, there were pools of it. And several angry red slashes seemed to be cut in the snow.

  As he reached the line of trees at the edge of his yard, the bloodstains suddenly stopped and the snow leading into the forest was white and pure.

  And that’s when he kicked something with one of his boots, something soft, wet, and red.

  Ernie shone the flashlight at his feet…and saw Jaeger lying there, dead.

  What he’d first thought was a big red pool of blood in the snow was actually his trusted companion, torn up by half a dozen wolves or more, from the looks of it.

  Ernie fell to his knees and placed a hand on his best friend’s head. “Don’t worry, boy,” he sobbed. “I’ll make those wolves pay.”

  Chapter 2

  Noble opened up the textbook and began to read. “Okay… 1. Sketch a coordinate grid and choose any two points on the grid. Call these points A and B. Now, how is the line segment joining A and B different from the line that passes through A and B?”

  Argus stared at the book for a while, then said, “What’s a coordinate grid?”

  Noble sighed. Argus had always had trouble with mathematics, but sometimes it seemed like he wasn’t even trying. Still, Noble tried to answer his brother’s questions as best he could. “A coordinate grid is a sort of diagram with horizontal and vertical lines on it that allow you to plot points on a plane.”

  “A plane? I thought we were studying math?”

  “We are.”

  “Oh.” Argus shook his head. “Why do I have to know this stuff, anyway?”

  “Well, for one, coordinate grids are used by surveyors to plot out land and building sites.” And then Noble was struck with an idea about how to catch Argus’s interest. “I bet forest rangers use coordinate grids all the time.”

  “You think so?” Argus asked.

  “We could ask the ranger.”

  Argus sighed. “I don’t think I’m ever going to understand this stuff.”

  “Don’t say things like that. Of course you’ll get it,” Noble said. “It’s just a bit tricky, that’s all.”

  Argus smiled at his brother. “Crossing Niagara Falls on a tightrope is tricky. Finding gold in the Yukon is tricky. Getting me to understand high school math
is impossible.”

  Noble wasn’t having any of it. “Nonsense,” he said. “A lot of people have a hard time with math in high school, but they get it eventually…some of them even wind up being geniuses.”

  “Yeah, like who?”

  “Albert Einstein, for one.”

  “Who?”

  “Einstein,” Noble said. “He came up with the Theory of Relativity—you know, E equals MC squared.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Noble thought for a moment. “I don’t know. All I know is, Einstein was a genius and he struggled with math, just like you.”

  “Actually,” said Harlan over his shoulder, as he sat at the computer desk in the bedroom listening to Argus and Noble talk, “Einstein never struggled with math. What happened was, he got so bored with his schoolwork that he just stopped doing it. That’s why he failed math, and that’s why he got kicked out of school.”

  “You’re not helping here, Harlan.”

  “Sorry.”

  The expression on Argus’s face had become a strange mix of frustration, anger, and panic, as if his life were quickly spinning out of control. “I don’t want to be a genius,” he told Noble. “I just want to be a forest ranger like Ranger Brock, and a forest ranger doesn’t have to know high school math.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Noble. “But a forest ranger does need to have a high school diploma, and you can’t get one unless you pass math.”

  Argus’s face suddenly brightened as his attention shifted from Noble to Harlan and the computer terminal on the desk in front of him. “Why don’t you just hack into the school’s computer and fix my mark, like you did before?” he said. “I don’t need anything fancy, just enough to pass.”

  Harlan shook his head. “I can’t do that anymore. The school has better protection against that sort of thing now, and they might even be able to figure out where the tampering came from. Besides, your math teacher, Mr. Surujpaul, knows you’re struggling and he’d realize something was fishy if you suddenly had a passing grade.”

  “Especially when you haven’t gotten over fifty on a single test this semester,” Noble added.