BJ huddled in the bushes, eyeing the large shrubs of the next yard and listening for the crackling sound of movement.
Something at night is the same thing without light.
Something at night is the same thing without light.
His father’s reassuring bedtime poem echoed in BJ’s mind while he huddled against the ground. Often used while waiting for sleep, the nine-word verse reminded him that the room beyond his bed’s footboard—that area lost in oozy realms of shadow—was no different in darkness than before the lights snapped off.
Something at night is the same thing without light.
It seemed to make sense. He only hoped the same held true for the outdoors. He’d watched countless animal shows that stated nighttime became a whole new world when dealing with nature, a world comprised of nocturnal beasts who awoke at sunset to hunt and scavenge.
Something at night…
The snapping noise came again, closer this time. Not from the other yard like before, but right next to him.
He turned.
Two circular yellow eyes flashed into view deeper in the bushes.
BJ flinched at their appearance and his heart skipped a beat. The eyes hovered inches off the ground, level with his flattened body, staring straight at him.
The creature emerged from the bush’s lower branches, gliding into sight with the smoothness of a spirit rising from a grave. It stood up from where it had been lying in the shadows and rose to a height that would’ve come level with BJ’s shoulders had he been on his feet.
A Timber Wolf.
BJ’s body went rigid, locked up by fear.
Lightning flashed overhead, and the animal’s gray fur glowed silver in the ensuing gloom. BJ gazed in amazement, spellbound by his proximity to it. He didn’t immediately realize that the beast had crept closer until it lowered its snout and licked his forehead.
The warm touch of its tongue broke the enchantment.
BJ shrieked and scrambled backward, retreating in reverse. The animal watched him go with only a curious twitch of its ears.
He exploded out the opposite side of the bush and spun around to discover lights now ablaze in the house behind him. Through a rear sliding glass door, he saw a man cross a living room carrying bags of luggage in each hand.
BJ glanced back at the wolf, but the animal had gone, vanished into the night.
He ran for the door.
Tim rode through the night beneath black cumuli made visible by bluish-white sheet lightning. He raced east on Chippewa Road, a less traveled stretch of macadam just north of Loretto—farther north than he would’ve cared to be at the moment.
Initially he’d headed south, toward the same bike trails on which he’d fled from the deer corpse, intent on following them back to the old barn. When he returned to County Road 19, however, he’d discovered that the train he’d dodged earlier had reversed back across the road—so its forward most engine rested just behind the post office, but not blocking the street—and a crowd had gathered. The locomotive’s engineer had no doubt called the police, and Tim knew it wouldn’t be long before an officer arrived to take his report of what had happened.
Not wanting to be noticed riding a bike near the scene, he decided to take a roundabout way back to where the trails crossed the railroad; the spot where he’d first encountered the dead deer. In order to do that, however, he first needed to get around the train’s freight cars, which now extended several hundred yards behind its engines, blocking his passage.
Which took him farther and farther away from Mallory.
He pedaled faster and prayed the detour wouldn’t keep him from reaching her in time.