The Howls of Love

Shortly after my husband died, I moved to Appalachia, alone. Wyoming seemed like the perfect retreat. With the little money I managed to raise, I bought a cabin somewhat away from the city and a couple of acres of virgin, wooded land. The trees prevented me from seeing other people.

Sometimes I think about the reason for that decision, and I think that was the biggest attraction: the extensive grove of trees that stood between my window and the road like an impenetrable, living green wall.

I didn’t want to see anyone, or know anything.

What happened with Paul disconcerted me so much that suddenly I didn’t recognize our house or our things, or our pet.

Nothing.

When his life went out, it was as if the lights had gone out for me too, and I was moving alone through the world totally blind and left to my own devices. A prisoner between four walls that insisted on getting narrower and narrower, closing that invisible prison on me.

I exploded, and my only desire was to escape.

His parents wanted to help me, as did mine. We were both only children. But I didn’t need anything. From nobody. I just needed to be alone.

So I sold our house in Minneapolis and left.

Paul wasn’t the only person who abandoned me in the accident. I was pregnant, four months. The impact we received led us to crash sideways into the guardrail of a half-finished cement pillar; there were works on the road. I didn’t faint during the few seconds the collision lasted, but I knew it was over when I came out of my stupor and felt tremendous pain.

A piece of construction iron, thin and lethal, crossed the car door and my belly, from right to left. It was terrible. I spent weeks in the hospital. The car was destroyed, and it was even a miracle that I lived; no one stopped telling me that.

There are times when I still ask God (or whoever, because if there is a God there who loves us, he wouldn’t let things like this happen to good people) why he didn’t decide to end it all right there and take me too.

That would have been easier.

I spent the next two years isolated in my cabin in Wyoming, having promised my parents that when I felt better, I would return to Minnesota with them. However, I had become too accustomed to my loneliness. My name is Johanna Greyson. At that time, I was twenty-six years old, already a widow and had lost a son. And that matter of being away from the city where I was born, it was supposed to be temporary.

But the Wyoming air was so good for me that I decided not to go back to my old life. I no longer needed journalism. I was good at writing, and I had managed to publish a couple of small mystery and supernatural romance novels, the kind that were so popular among young people. In this, I found a way out for many of my nightmares; there is nothing like capturing your worst fears in the head of a character so that you feel that you are not the only person—real or fictional—to whom something like this can happen.

I wasn’t swimming in money, but I couldn’t complain either. My editor adored me and still adores me today. Even my cat adored me, and that’s saying a lot for a cat, other than that we didn’t talk much, no more than necessary. I know. Maybe spending so much time isolated had hurt me more than it might seem.

My psychologist didn’t think the same, I must say. He encouraged me to write, and to talk to my cat.

But still: peace.

There is nothing like silence. Being alone was the safest thing.

***

Obviously, I was alone in the cabin when it happened.

It had snowed quite a bit and I was very happy with that. The snow inspired me to create, and I could invent the craziest things just by staring at an indefinite footprint of any animal on the white blanket. I could have been looking at that print for hours, even. And then, bam! I locked myself in to write.

That night, I spent in front of the computer until three in the morning; I didn’t want to let go of the keyboard. I stopped the scene when the female protagonist closed her eyes to rest, and I, just like her, felt the urge to lie down and disappear from the world for a few hours.

I didn’t like turning off the lights, but otherwise, I didn’t sleep.

I had a big round moon against my window to keep me company.

I think it was almost four o’clock when I suddenly opened my eyes in the darkness and saw through the window the same white moon, but already blinded by shreds of traveling clouds kidnapped by the wind. I got up on the mattress to listen better.

It sounded like…

They were scratching at my door. A pitiful yelp, too. Was it a dog? Only a dog made those kinds of sounds, I knew. Toby, Paul’s Labrador, had this habit when he wanted to come into the house to lie down at my husband’s feet.

For some reason, the sound chilled my blood. I got up anyway and went down to the living room. I wrapped myself in a very thick blue bathrobe and grabbed a broom from the closet, just in case. I felt ridiculous; it was just a dog! Perhaps the poor animal was freezing cold, separated from its family and looking for a place to spend the night. What a shame.

The little animal continued scratching the door with its nails, whining, knocking.

He hit hard, in fact, as if he were throwing himself against the door with his shoulder; but I didn’t relate it to anything at that moment. I turned on the lights downstairs and left the broom next to the coats.

When I opened the door, however, I saw a boy.

Or a puppy. At that moment, I couldn’t define what it was.

Nor can I describe the scream I let out when I recognized its shape in the shadow of the porch. I backed away, forgetting about the door and that it could come in, and screamed more as the creature’s yelps grew louder.

He was curled up on the wooden floor and crawled in until he found the carpet, with his snout pressed to the level of the boards and his eyes fixed on me, his pupils greatly dilated by the light of the low-consumption lamps. His eyes were large, glassy, and blue. Of a deep blue, human, too.

I climbed onto the couch and screamed again, shaking all over.

The creature crouched down and raised its head, letting out a pitiful, shrill howl, interspersed with some clumsy words. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but he obviously wanted to tell me something. Discovering that the entity was speaking shook me completely and left me ecstatic.

Silly me, I just had to look at it to understand.

It was—well, this may sound incredible now, but back then, to me, it was even more incredible: it was a wolf cub, with limbs too long and strange to be a wild animal. Something about his joints didn’t fit at first glance. Of course, what didn’t fit into the general concept was that he had the body of a child, covered in yellowish-white hair and with a long, flexible tail that he hid between his legs.

The image came to mind of a photograph of a kindergarten guru who had been glued on top of the head of a small wolf cut out of a magazine. A little puppy like that, with its big ears, bright eyes, and dark nose, all with very rounded and youthful shapes.

Holy Heaven.

“Holy cow, you’re a werewolf! A little werewolf!” I know what I said.

Later, I noticed that he had blood on his chest and hands, also hairy and with short fingers with small nails that scratched my floor. Despite this, he moved without pain, so I deduced that the blood was not his. From his dinner, perhaps?

Please. You just had to look at that adorable thing and think, “Really? Is it dangerous?”

The creature raised its head a little higher when it heard my voice; perhaps the fact that I wasn’t screaming convinced him that we could understand each other. He stood on his legs, which were normal, human legs, but covered in thick, white fur that seemed soft to the touch, and turned toward the door. He gestured with his arms at the snowy terrain and the trees, my impenetrable border.

I blinked, incredulously. Or not. But it’s what I would have done. I understood him, and at the same time, I didn’t.

I still didn’t have enough courage to move from there, but—

“What’s wrong, boy?” I asked him, stupidly.

The boy laid his ears back and yelped again, pointing toward the trees more emphatically. He began to get agitated, took a few steps toward the ladder, and came back. I dared to get off the couch, considering the situation. It was not difficult to identify what that little white ball wanted; it was asking me to follow him in the direction of the wooded terrain.

“What’s happening?” I asked again, now with a firmer tone.

He croaked softly between his teeth, and I realized that he was crying in his particular language that was unintelligible to me. He looked with an overly sad expression at his blood-soiled paws and the red stain on his chest, and finally he covered his muzzle with both hands, curling up on himself on the porch. My heart broke when I saw it.

A part of me felt sorry for him and wanted to hug him and comfort him. He was just a child; who knows what had happened to him, or where he came from! I was shivering from cold and fear. His fur was wet, dirty. It smelled like lightning. Like a wet and dirty dog, it was a very familiar smell.

I didn’t move, however.

“I know you can talk. Tell me—what’s wrong?”

The vigilant side of me wasn’t ruling out the possibility that it was a trap, because, I mean, what were the chances that if that little guy was at my door, there wouldn’t be a whole pack of adults out there waiting to pounce on me? I should have bought a rifle. Or accepted the one that my father wanted to give me when I moved, and I had rejected it, believing that in that remote corner of Wyoming not even the sasquatch appeared.

The little creature uncovered his face and wiped his streaming eyes with his fists, smearing his white face with blood. He sniffed and raised his muzzle in a very canine attitude. But the words sounded very clear, even through his milk fangs:

“Please help,” was all he had to say.

His voice sounded very sweet, very human. He was a little boy.

I didn’t think about it again. I took down one of the thick coats from my coat rack and dressed in it, put on my boots like this, in my pajamas. For a moment, I looked at the wolf-child and the way he trembled. His hair didn’t look very wintery; it was like thick fluff, chicken down, maybe.

If you looked closely, the poor guy was even gangly, with his face and ears too big for such a small body, and so, standing up, you could clearly see that he was male. I was wet, I was cold. I was never very good at doing these calculations, but I thought he was no more than five years old; he wasn’t very tall.

I took down another coat and carefully approached him to wrap him up. I showed him the garment and with a gesture I silently explained that I wanted him to wear it. Surprisingly, the boy did not recoil or panic, but reached out solicitously for the thick coat with those little bloody claw-hands, and dressed with my help as if he had done so before. That child had a mother or a father, and human customs. Only a father figure teaches you how to dress in childhood.

I pulled the zipper up to his throat, kneeling in front of his small figure. Poor thing, it was almost ridiculous. The coat was huge on him and the sleeves were extremely long; it reached his feet, but it didn’t make it very difficult for him to move.

At least he was no longer shivering from the cold.

“Thank you,” he told me, with those big eyes fixed on my face.

At the risk of continuing to impress myself with the humanity he exuded, I cleared my throat and continued:

“Who needs help?” I asked him, without losing seriousness.

“Please come! There is no time!” the creature urged me.

Another yelp from the boy made me decide, and I got up to leave.

“Okay, take me,” I told him.

I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was going to do or what I was going to encounter, but I closed my eyes and entrusted myself to the will of God, if he was there and was watching me, and wanted to take care of me. Let me take care of my soul, at least, if that wasn’t the result of a restless dream under the moonlight in my bedroom. But my dreams usually didn’t feel as soft or smell as strong. Please, how that child smelled! Now that I was running alongside him, with my hand held by his small paw, I was close enough to the effluvium of carrion as well.

He took me across the yard and we went into the trees, but we were not going toward the road, but toward the mountain, north, toward the sawmill. I was afraid of getting lost; stupid me, I hadn’t even taken a flashlight! What was I thinking? My senses quickly acclimated to the silence and I began to hear all the noises of the night as if they were a recording on my sound system, in addition to our footsteps.

I calmed down a little when I realized that there was enough moonlight to see clearly. The creature was very fast; it was difficult for me to keep up with him, but after a long run in which we crossed a small frozen stream, we arrived at a region of boulders and small rocks, fallen trees, and a lot of accumulated snow, and—

I don’t know how long I was running; I couldn’t take it anymore. But we were not very far from my cabin, because when we climbed far enough into the trees, I could distinguish a white column of smoke in the very clear night. My fireplace. I stopped for a second to catch my breath, and the wolf-boy circled around, sniffing the air, whining sharply under his breath.

Only when he remained silent and still could I hear it:

“Is that a crying baby?” I almost screamed, scared.

There was no doubt. It was the cry of a creature; it sounded loud and close.