Night Of The Wolf

Night Of The Wolf

Phillip G. Owens

I had just buried my mother; she was sixty-two and died of cancer. My father, ten years her senior, was having a hard time accepting her death as I was, and even though she was buried on December 5, I suggested we go to our lakeside vacation cabin in Lower Michigan, “just to get away from it all.” He readily agreed, so on December, 8, we left our mid-sized, Central Indiana town and headed north.

We got there at about ten o’clock that night and after a light dinner, we bedded down for a good night’s sleep.

There was about a foot of “lake effect” snow on the ground upon our arrival, and a few more inches fell overnight as we slept.

We were awakened by a loud knocking on the front door at six o’clock the next morning. The local sheriff was on the front stoop. He was approximately six feet tall, husky, and about fifty years old.

“Hello, Mr. Owens, Phillip, he greeted us. “I saw your car in the driveway and thought I’d warn you not to leave your cabin until I, or one of my deputies, tell you it’s safe.”

“Oh?” my father said. “What’s the problem?”

“There’s a rabid silver wolf in the area. He’s already attacked a number of deer, farm animals, and a few pets, but no humans as yet, so be careful.”

“We sure will,” Dad said. “How long do you think it will take to catch him?”

“No more than a day or two; we have several bated traps for him and fifteen hunters ready.”

We ate our breakfast, cooked expertly by my father over a wood fire in the stone fireplace. Somehow, his cooking over the fire was better than stovetop cooking; I supposed it was the wood smoke that made it better.

The cabin was wood-frame and was quite smug against the Michigan winds blowing off of the Great Lake.

Later, as we ate dinner, we heard the roar of several gunshots, perhaps a mile away, then, silence. It was about eight thirty in the evening and fully dark.

“I wonder if they got him,” I mused.

“We’ll know in a while, if the sheriff or one of his deputies comes and tells us.”

He had no more said this when we heard him again howling mournfully at the full moon in the night. It sounded like he was heartbroken.

“You know what they say,” Dad mused. “If a rabid wolf gets a taste of human blood, it’ll never go back to its regular diet, so it has to be killed as soon as possible, before it attacks a human.”

“Yeah, I know,” I agreed with Dad, even though I doubted this, as I believed it would go back to its regular diet.

Throughout the night, we heard intermittent gunshots in various parts of the woods, as well as the howling. Finally, about midnight, they ceased and we were able to go to sleep.

At seven o’clock the next morning, the sheriff returned.

“Phillip,” he said, “several hunters had to return to work, so I was wondering if you would care to join us in the hunt.” He was nodding to the gun rack mounted over the fireplace mantle.

“It’s been several years since I’ve been hunting,” I said. “I don’t know how good my aim will be any more. I might only wing it, sending it into more frenzy.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the sheriff said. “We still need you, if you’d come.”

“Okay, I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Good, come with me.”

Turning to Dad, I said, “Will you be okay,” I asked Dad.

“Sure, I will. You go with the sheriff.”

“Okay I said.”

I took my .12 gauge, Stevens Savage, pump, shotgun from the rack I’d made in high school shop class. The shop teacher gave me an A-, which angered me because I’d made it from one of his design books. When I asked him about the A-, he grinned and said: “I would have given you an A+ if you had made it from your own design.” That taught me well—use your own design not someone else’s and you would get a better grade. The trouble was, I didn’t know how to design one, so I used that design instead. I also took a box of shells with me.

In a few minutes, I was in the front seat of the sheriff’s car and we were headed to the area in which the wolf was seen stalking his prey. There was no blood in the snow, so for all of the shooting of the day and night before, it had escaped unharmed.

We followed its tracks for several hours until we came to a tiny, one room cabin in the middle of a small clearing. It was made of scrap wood, tar paper, and other wooden leftovers. In the middle of the floor, was an ancient Franklin stove and plenty of firewood. There were also several empty food cans, some still unopened, bread, and other foodstuffs, so someone had been utilizing the cabin recently.

Knowing it couldn’t have been the wolf, we left the shack, but the sheriff left a deputy to question the person who had been using the cabin, so see if the person had seen the wolf and which direction the wolf had taken when he left the area.

We continued searching for several more hours, until darkness had fallen and the full moon had risen. A short time later, there came another howling, about half a mile away. We rushed toward the sound.

We spotted it and shot at it. I fired all five shells in my gun, but judging the speed at which he ran away, I’d say we all missed it.

“Damn!” the sheriff cursed. “I just don’t see how we keep missing it. Three nights in a row, including tonight, we must have taken fifty or sixty shots altogether and missed! How is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” we all said, equally as puzzled as the sheriff.

“Okay, we’ll meet back at the sheriff’s office at six o’clock sharp tomorrow morning, and try again.”

After I drove back to the cabin, I told my father of our failure and he sat down in his chair, the wizened features cracking his face I had known all of my life. Then, he looked at me, as I took a cup of coffee.

“You won’t catch him in daytime,” he said.

“Why is that?”

“Unless I miss my guess, the sheriff and the others have only seen him at night, never in daylight.”

“But why,” I asked.

“Years ago, when I was in the Army in Eastern Europe, there were attacks like this one, and, like this one, they only occurred at night, and,” he said with emphasis, “every time someone took a shot at him, it didn’t hurt him.”

“So?” I asked.

“So, you need special bullets or, in your case, shotgun shells, like we used in Eastern Europe.”

“What do you mean,” I asked.

He went into the bedroom he and my mother shared and returned with a solid silver crucifix with the figure of Jesus on it. He went into the kitchen junk drawer and brought back a small hacksaw and began cutting a small part off of the bottom of the crucifix.

“What are you doing, Dad,” I asked.

“This crucifix is made of solid silver. I’m going to fix you five shells, each with particles of silver from this crucifix. That’ll get him for you.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Never you mind,” he said, and loaded the shotgun with the “special” shells he had prepared for me, using a shell loader, then handed the gun to me. “There,” he said. “You take this with you tomorrow. You won’t see him in the daytime, only after dark, when the full moon has risen.”

Even thought my father was seventy-two years old, I knew hadn’t gone senile with Alzheimer’s or Pick’s diseases, so I remained mum.

The next day, at six o’clock, the remainder of us met at the sheriff’s office. There were only six of us now, but we went back to the hunt. Like yesterday, we hadn’t spotted a thing all day, and we didn’t hear anything until after darkness had fallen and the moon risen, then there came the howl.

He’s over here,” one of the men shouted. “Follow me!”

We all ran after the sound of the howl and about a hundred yards into the forest, in a small clearing, we spotted him eating a deer. He was a huge monster, as big as any man and as heavy and as muscular. There were no other wolves with him, so I knew he was a loner, a rarity among wolves.

He turned and lunged at me full-force, his leap a good fifty feet in length. I raised my shotgun and fired a shot at him, falling over backwards. I jumped back to my feet. He was flipped sideways, screaming in agony, as I had gotten him in the shoulder. To make sure he was dead, I shot him once more in the head; it exploded, sending bones and brain matter in several directions. Then an amazing thing happened.

As we all stood watching, his entire body began to undergo a weird transformation. His body began to change shape, slowly, the bones making snapping sounds as the transformation continued. It took several minutes before the transformation was finished and when it was, we saw, lying on the ground at our feet, the nude body of a slender, average sized man. He appeared to be in his mid twenties, but with part of his face, and the back of his head missing, it was impossible to tell for sure.

The sheriff took out his cell phone and called for an ambulance to pick up the remains of the man. Two hours later, the other men and I had signed our statements at the sheriff’s office. Before we left, we were warned to never tell anyone what we had seen that night.

When I got back at the cabin, my father already knew what we had seen and said so.

“And that’s why you fixed those ‘special’ shells for me last night?” I asked.

“That’s right, Phillip. You men were hunting a werewolf.”

“And that’s what you and your men hunted in Eastern Europe that night, years ago?”

“Yes.”

Neither of us spoke of this incident ever again, Dad taking it to his grave last year. I haven’t spoken about it until now, in this journal. So, you now know the truth—there are such things as werewolves.”

The End