Encore: one more time
It was dark, so incredibly dark. Dad and I were following wolf tracks up the Franconia Notch trail. Annie was gone and I wanted them all dead too. Dad had given me one of the shotguns loaded with silver bullets. We weren't really sure if it would work… But the plan was to kill the alpha wolf and get the hell out of there and that's exactly what we were going to do.
We found them just before midnight in a clearing about halfway up the foot trail. The sound of water surrounded us from the Flumes but even that didn't drown out the wet cracking sound of the wolves enjoying their meal. They'd somehow dragged up a cow. How the heck they'd got it up the rickety wooden stairs that were the only way up the flume walls I'll never know. There they were, ten of them crunching away at the Holstein's insides. Thank god it hadn't been a human, I think I would have thrown up. I was awfully close already.
It wasn't hard to tell which one was their leader. He had glowing red eyes, nasty sharp looking fangs and his pelt was tinted a light grey in the moonlight. Whenever he moved the wolves closest to him cringed away to a respectful distance. That was the one we needed to kill.
Dad took the first shot. It hit square in the old wolf's chest. The thing reared up on its hind legs and let out a blood curdling howl. I felt Dad's hand on my shoulder telling me to stay hidden right where I was before he moved a couple of feet away to take his next shot. We must have been downwind because one of the younger wolves in the pack had scented him. He was attacked as he took the second shot. The shot went wide and my heart stopped as I saw them both go down. They struggled against each other until Dad maneuvered himself underneath it and pushed its head as far up as it would go. "Do it now Dean!" he shouted, and I fired. I'll never be positive of what happened next… it happened so quickly and I was so scared. It could have just been my imagination but I swear that as it fell off dad it changed to human form and then back again. It was Jack. I swear to god it was Jack. That's when I gave us away. I screamed his name long and loud.
The lead wolf didn't go for Dad like we thought it would. It came straight for me instead. I just kept hitting and hitting it, trying to get the smelly bastard off of me. His foaming mouth and sharp teeth were inches away from the soft skin of my face. I should have been afraid but I wasn't. Instead I felt nothing but rage. It was his fault they were all dead. The heat of my lust for revenge pumped through my veins, fuelling me and giving me the kind of strength no ten year old boy possessed. It wasn't until I felt its claws tear into my shoulders and calves that I finally tasted fear. It's flavor the thick and metallic one of my own blood. I heard a scream… loud and agonized… somewhere it registered that the scream was coming from me…
The hot breath in my face was overwhelming, and still I fought him off. The gashes on my shoulders and legs were on fire, making it hard for me to move. Somehow I did though. I thrashed around, trying hard to wrestle the beast so it was the one laying on the ground. Dad yelled out to me just before I heard something imbed itself in the dirt just above my head. Even as the mangy thing stretched out above me, sniffing closer toward the shiny object, my fist closed around its hilt. I pulled the long, jagged edged knife out if its resting place in the ground just by my ear and turned all of my energy on the thing that stood on top of me. Everything else around us faded away, there was just the wolf and I fighting each other to live. For what seemed like forever all that existed were the sounds of my ragged breathing, the werewolf's snarls and the feel of the knife plunging into it over and over again. Nothing more than that mattered.
It was trying to sink its teeth into me but I didn't give it the chance. No longer able to feel my hands, I watched them gripping the knife and slashing away. There was blood everywhere… I could hear Dad's voice calling out my name… I had a moment's hesitation. Doubt started creeping in. I'm not big enough to kill it, I'm only ten years old…
The battle raged on silently. The snarling had stopped and I could hear Dad calling my name, desperation in his voice. It filled the silence and rang in my ears. He was praying, screaming out the prayer. "God please let him be alive, please let him not be bitten, please let my boy be alright." The chant bounced around my head and still I slashed away until finally a single shot rang out in the dark just beyond my line of vision and the weight above me moved away. I blacked out.
I couldn't see. My first coherent thought was that I couldn't see. I think I may have screamed it, although I can't be sure. There was a something thick and sticky over my eyes, neck and face that I couldn't get off no matter how many times I wiped my fingers over them. Dad was there. I could feel his strong hands patting away at my body, physically reassuring himself that I was in fact alive and in one piece. "It's okay son, you're alright. I'm right here." He picked me up and started toward the car, but I tried to fight him off and get my feet on the ground. "The werewolf Dad, the werewolf. I… We have to kill it." "It's alright Dean, you already did. You did good son. Real good. No one will ever have to worry about that s-o-b ever again." I blacked out again. Must have been the shock setting in.
When I came to again I was sitting in the front seat of the car, legs hanging out the side and feet barely touching the ground as Dad ran a damp cloth over my eyes to clean them out. It wasn't until I saw that the towel was a deep rusty red color that I realized the thick, sticky stuff had been blood. It was all over my hands too.
When Dad saw me finally open my eyes he pulled a flask from the inner pocket of his jacket and handed it to me. "Rough one this time around, wasn't it?" He asked as I took a small sip. The warmth was a small comfort as it drifted all the way down to my stomach, spreading to the rest of my body from there. I could only nod in answer.
Nothing about this job had happened as it should have. First the visit with the Morgans…I didn't want to think about them right now… then the father-son talk Dad and I had…finding out a few days later that the werewolf had survived Dad's first attack… and had retaliated by killing the most wonderful people I'd ever known aside from Dad and Sammy… Coming back right away… a whole week to find the pack… the roles reversing so that Dad ended up backing me up instead of the usual other way around.
"How many of them did we get?" I somehow managed to croak out. My throat felt as if it was made of sandpaper from all the screaming I'd done earlier. "Six altogether with that last one." It took a minute for my sluggish mind to do the math…"Six? But there were ten…" "The rest will change back now that the lead wolf is dead. The others already have."
I looked around and was immediately sick. The sight before me was the final straw, I couldn't hold it back anymore. The lead wolf hadn't changed, and wouldn't. But the other five were taking on their human forms in death. There were two boys that I recognized as neighborhood kids from the pictures at the Morgan's house. A couple of unknown shapes that I knew were also people lay here and there. The one that struck me straight through to the core was Jack. He lay on his back, arms outstretched above his head and face turned up to the sky. He looked peaceful, as if he'd fallen asleep stargazing where he lay. So what I saw had been real. "I guess Mr. Morgan missed." was all I was able to say before the torrent of tears began.
For the first time in a very long time I let Dad strap me into my seat like he usually did for Sam. He took me back to the motel where we'd been staying, cleaned me up and got me into some clean pajamas. Instead of getting back into the car and heading back to Sammy though, we spent the night right where we were. For the only time ever since mom died, Dad wrapped me up in a big warm blanket and cuddled me close.
At first I just cried and cried… I cried until I thought my heart was being ripped right out of my chest. Then when all my tears had fallen and there was nothing left for me but silence Dad held me a little closer. "I know it doesn't feel like it now Dean, but you'll get through this. You'll go on and it will get easier. You'll never ever forget… but you will be okay again. I promise." I hugged him back hard until I felt okay again… well better anyway.
We spent the night that way, cuddled on the couch eating take-out and watching late night tv until we fell asleep. Dad may not have been around much while we were growing up, but he was there when it really counted. The next morning it was back to business as usual, I found a spirit for us to hunt in Maine on the drive back to pick up Sammy. That was our next destination. I never looked back. At least not until I had to.