Dogs Will Hunt

Far enough north, the winter seems like a sentient creature. Its ragged breath can make the trees tremble. It howls and moans as it whips snowy tears through the biting cold air. The winter feeds, like any other predator. It consumes the weak and ill-prepared like a wolf picking off stragglers from a herd of sheep. 

On bitter nights, when my knees ache and I sit with my feet towards the fire, I wonder how my ancestors ever survived. I wonder why they possibly thought they should build a town here. But humans are relentless in their quest to conquer nature. Even the most inhospitable tundra must be settled and tamed. 

Pickett is a small town. I wouldn’t expect you’d ever driven past it, unless you make a habit of driving through Montana, near the Canadian border. It’s a town full of ranchers. Old cowpokes and farmers who’ve been waking with the sun to till the land their whole lives. It’s about as close knit a community as you’re likely to find. Idle gossip is the only social currency that matters, and anyone with secrets best bury them deeper than bedrock. 

That’s why the official records say Oliver Watson died of natural causes. Exposure on a cold winter night. The records don’t say nothing about the mangled chickens, lost pets, or the missing girl that led up to his death. 

It’s been so many years since it all happened. Anyone who remembers never talks about it. The young people think it’s just a story to tell around the campfire. Another brick in the endless lore surrounding that godforsaken stretch of train tracks in the rolling fields outside of town. 

The tracks don’t connect to anything, you see. It’s a two mile stretch of steel, starting from nowhere and leading right back to it. 

There’s no shortage of stories about how the railroad was gonna come through and make Pickett a much bigger town. Stories about con artists who stole good people’s money and did just a few days work on a grand construction project before disappearing. The truth of it is probably lost to time. Pickett is too insignificant to have proper history books about it. Local myths are as good as fact, as there’s nothing to dispute them. 

I gave up on trying to correct most stories years ago. People think I’m some crazy old man, ranting and raving about things that couldn’t possibly be true. 

But sixty ain’t that old. I’ve got a perfectly good grasp on my mental faculties. And what happened to Ollie was so terrifying and downright bizarre that it’s been seared into my brain for life. 

***

Ollie and I were twenty-three years old in the summer of 1981. He was a cashier at the grocery store, and I was a mechanic at the only garage in town. We lived in a two-story house off Main Street with a few other local guys. Ollie’s dad owned the place, so we paid pretty cheap rent. All and all, it was a comfortable situation. 

We were pretty average folks with average lives. Ollie and I had been best friends since the third grade. Neither of us was especially smart, but we also weren’t the class dunces. We were never the most sought after fish in the sea, but we weren’t fuck ugly or anything. We worked on weekdays and drank on the weekends. We didn’t go to church as often as our parents would like, but made the occasional token appearance. 

There’s just a couple things you gotta know about Ollie to really understand why we got tangled up in such a messy situation. 

The first being that his grand life goal was to see a ghost. He spent damn near all his free time reading trashy horror novels and blowing his paycheck at the movie theater. Ghouls, goblins, zombies, you name it and old Ollie wanted to hear about it. He wanted it all to be true. 

His mamma died when he was young and I think that had something to do with it. He was always talking about wanting to see her one last time. He wanted to believe in an afterlife and that she really was in a better place. 

The second thing you gotta understand is that Ollie was the ornery type of stubborn. Once he got an idea in his head, there was no disabusing him of it. He’d sooner take a bee sting to the dick than admit to being wrong. 

He wasn’t a bad guy. Just a prickly one. He had big opinions and a big mouth that he’d run for days if you let him. I spent a good deal of our formative years nudging him in the ribs and telling him to shut up. Ollie was a little guy, you see, and I was a linebacker. He’d start fights he had no chance of winning, knowing I’d finish them. 

For all his faults though, he was reliable. Always there when I needed him. Whether I was too drunk, too sad, or too angry, he’d be there with a sympathetic word and a shoulder to lean on. He talked right over most people, but he always had time to listen to me.

***

It started because of some dumb bar story.

This hippy-type fella wandered through town, hitching his way to California. By the time he showed up at our local watering hole, he’d already spent a few nights camping out in the fields. He said he’d ‘been through some real crazy shit, man’.

I didn’t particularly want to engage him, but of course Ollie bought him a drink. 

I only halfway listened at first. The hippy kid was dirty, and smelled like he hadn’t showered in months. His long brown hair was matted into dreadlocks and he was wearing the typical Grateful Dead tie-dye. He was a walking cliche and didn’t even seem to know it. 

Of course, I probably wasn’t much better. Your standard hick in overalls and a plaid collared shirt. Calloused hands always smelling of motor oil, no matter how many times I washed them. Ollie was dressed a little nicer than me. Had to wear a green button-down and khakis for work, and usually didn’t change out of it before we went drinking. He’d grouse and gripe about the uniform, but I think he kind of liked how it looked on him.

I tuned in to Mr. Hippy’s story when Ollie perked up, leaning forward more than necessary and resting his elbows on the table. The hippy had just mentioned the train tracks. Apparently, he’d camped by them the previous night, with the mistaken assumption that he’d be able to follow them towards town in the morning. 

The guy said he woke up at around midnight to some howling. He was startled, but not really afraid. He figured it was a wolf or a coyote. Animals like that don’t tend to challenge barriers, even if they’re a flimsy tent. He didn’t have any food left with him. He’d been hungry the last day or so. It wasn’t like anything would come after him for having cheetos in his backpack.

He was starting to nod off again when he heard the growling. It was much closer than he thought. In fact, it sounded like there was something right outside his tent. He stayed real still, looking for shadows or any kind of movement. But the next thing he saw was his tent ripping. Like claws were shredding through the fabric. The damndest thing about it? He didn’t see a culprit. His tent ripped again, and he couldn’t for the life of him see what was doing it.

He struggled out of his sleeping bag, and took off running through one of the holes. He said that the howling and barking must have followed him for at least half a mile, but he never saw any dogs. 

The guy looked genuinely spooked when he finished. Said he didn’t even go back for his stuff until daylight. Ollie asked a few follow up questions, but it was apparent the guy was done talking. He said a quick thank you for the beer, and then took his leave.

I figured it was just some kid who’d taken more acid than he could handle. But Ollie got obsessed with the story. It was all he wanted to talk about for weeks afterwards. He kept nattering on about how other people in town had heard howling out by the tracks. He posited everything from hellhounds, to ghosts, to the ‘Black Dogs’ from old European folklore who were supposedly harbingers of death. I didn’t encourage his theories, but I didn’t outright shut him down. There wouldn’t have been any use in it.

***

It was a warm summer night in July when Ollie finally talked me into going out to the train tracks. It was probably about a month after we’d heard the hippy’s story, and Ollie had built up quite a head of steam. There were two options: either go with him, or let him go alone. I was respectably tanked, but he was drunker than a skunk on garbage day. I figured it was downright irresponsible to let him go adventure by himself. 

We borrowed bikes from our roommates, as we weren’t in any state to drive. It wasn’t a long ride out of town. We really only had the one paved road that lead towards the interstate. Eventually we had to deviate and we were plodding through knee-high grass. Really, it’s a wonder we managed to find the tracks at all. 

It wasn’t quite a full moon, but there were no clouds, and we had plenty of light to see by. They don’t call Montana ‘The Big Sky Country’ for nothing. We ran across the tracks before too long. I didn’t think of it at the time, but the lack of rust or any other decay on all that exposed metal was more than a little odd.

“Welp. Here we are.” I gestured to the empty expanse of tracks leading in either direction. “What now, pipsqueak?”

“We look around, I guess.” Ollie shrugged. He got off the bike and laid it down in the grass. Then, he started walking down the tracks. 

I followed, because what other choice was there?

It happened all of the sudden. Ollie tensed beside me like he’d heard a gunshot crack through the still night air. He grabbed onto my arm and squeezed it so tight that his nails dug into my bicep through the fabric of my shirt. He turned his head to look off into the fields beside us.

“You hear that?” He whispered.

I sure as hell hadn’t heard anything besides the dull crunch of our footsteps on the bed of gravel that lay beneath the tracks. 

“What are you talkin’ about?” I matched his low tone, though I didn’t understand the reason.

“You–you don’t–the howling…?” He still wasn't looking at me. His eyes were fixed on some undefined point in the distance. 

“Look, Ollie, maybe we should head home. We both had a little much to drink–”

He clapped his free hand over my mouth, silencing me mid-sentence. In different circumstances, I would have been sore about it. But I was so damn confused. I had no idea what was going on, or what had gotten him so spooked.

“Run.”

It was a command of the most urgent variety. He let go of me and took off back towards our bikes. I followed him at a slow jog. I could feel the beer sloshing around in my belly, threatening nausea if I moved with any greater haste. My legs were longer than his anyway. I kept him in seeing distance till he got to the bike.

He didn’t wait for me. I knew what direction we’d come, so when I arrived at my bike and hopped on, I pedaled at a pace that suited my leisure. Even took a few breaks on the way back.

I didn’t see Ollie until I got home. He’d left the borrowed bike on the lawn and locked the doors and windows. I put both of our bikes in the garage before grabbing the spare key off the top of the back door and letting myself inside. I found Ollie huddled up in my bed. His room was on the bottom floor, and mine was upstairs. He stuttered something about not wanting to be close to the ground. I didn’t think too much of it. When we were younger, sleeping over each other’s houses, he’d crawled into bed beside me plenty of times after a nightmare. I just nudged him closer to the wall so I’d have enough room to be comfortable, and promptly fell asleep.

In the morning, we laughed it off. Or rather, I laughed and Ollie tried to. He stayed skittish for days afterwards. He didn’t want to talk about what he’d heard, so I left him well enough alone. 

***

“I dreamed about the tracks last night.” Ollie and I were sitting on the back porch, smoking cigarettes before work. It couldn’t have been more than a week or two since our little expedition to the middle of nowhere.

Ollie looked like he’d barely slept at all. He was paler than usual, and he had this strange, anxious air about him. He kept twitching and fidgeting like some sort of crackhead. He wouldn’t sit still.

“Oh, yeah?” I raised an eyebrow and waited. I knew he had a low tolerance for quiet. Give him more than thirty seconds of it, and he’d rush to say something.

“Yeah. I was walking down ‘em. By myself this time. I heard growling. I ran fast as I could. But… something tackled me.”

“Don’t sound like much fun.”

“Pete. I’m serious.” 

“I know you are. But it’s just a dream, Ollie. No use getting all bent out of shape about it.”

“That’s the thing though. When I… when I woke up this morning… fuck.” He slumped down in his chair, holding his face in his hands.

“Hey, now. It’s alright buddy.” I patted him on the shoulder. He jerked away from my touch. I reflexively apologized, but it still took almost a full minute before he sat up and looked at me with watery eyes.

He didn’t say anything. He just pulled the collar of his shirt down. Right where I’d put my hand was a nasty red puncture wound. Several wounds, rather, clustered together in a half-moon shape. It was a bite mark. Looked like it had barely stopped bleeding. 

“Ollie—fuck—we gotta get you to the hospital—”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Like hell you are. We gotta get that patched up right away. I ain’t letting you die of a staph infection or something. What if you got rabies? When did you even get bitten? Why didn’t you say something?” I knew I was bombarding him with too many questions to possibly answer, but I was freaked out. 

He mumbled something unintelligible in response to my tirade. I had to tell him to speak up.

“When I went to bed last night, I wasn’t hurt. Either a dog somehow snuck into our house and took a chunk out of me while I was asleep or…”

The or what danced on the tip of my tongue. But I wasn’t going to actually make him say it. Crazy as this all was, we were not going to acknowledge the idea that a demonic dream dog had bitten him so hard it translated into real life. I talked him into letting me at least do some perfunctory first aid before heading to work, and that was the last we talked about it for a while.

***

The change in Ollie’s eating habits was hard not to notice. For most of our lives he’d been picky about his food, and almost never cleared his plate. He was a pretty skinny guy in the first place. I’m not sure if he starved himself on purpose or just didn’t have much of an appetite. 

In the weeks after he’d showed me the bite on his shoulder, I noticed our shared groceries running out quicker than usual. If we went down to the diner, Ollie was suddenly ordering things like rare steak and bloody burgers. He’d never liked undercooked meat before. Hell, it was more beef than I’d seen him eat in all the years I’d known him. Given the option, he’d always chosen chicken in the past.

It wasn’t just his sudden mission to make up for lost time on the red meat front. Ollie started drinking heavily. We had our fair share of booze on an average week. But empty whiskey bottles started to appear in our garbage with alarming frequency. Ollie seemed to perpetually smell like a bar whenever he wasn’t working. 

There were a couple of weekends where he took off, leaving a note behind about going to visit a friend in Billings or something like that. I wasn’t sure why he even bothered to lie. It wasn’t like he tried to hide the fact that his coat pockets were suddenly filled with matchbooks from the seediest sorts of clubs. It wasn’t like I couldn’t tell he was messing around with drugs, even before I found the bottle of Ludes under his pillow. 

I know, I know, it’s weird to go through your roommate's stuff. But I was worried about him. Call it codependency, or something even more twisted than that, but I was used to Ollie needing my help. So used to it, that he didn’t even have to ask. I’d just take care of things. Despite being a grown man, he still gave the constant impression of being something fragile and helpless.

When I confronted him about the drugs, he broke down crying and apologizing. Like a child caught drawing on the walls in permanent marker. He said he’d been using so he could sleep. He was terrified to sleep because those dogs were going to get him. At the time, I figured he was just suffering some sort of stress-induced breakdown. Too many painful emotions and not enough sleep. He always got a little funny around the anniversary of his mother’s death. We flushed the pills and both took a couple days off work to watch daytime TV, eat junk food, and let him get his act together. 

He seemed a little better after that. For a while anyway. Still drinking, but no longer disappearing. Still eating double what he used to, but I figured maybe that was actually a healthy development. 

***

The first time, it happened on a cool morning in late August. I was leaving for work when I found Ollie unconscious in our front yard, naked and covered in blood. It’s difficult to describe the sort of fear that grips you when you see a friend in such a state. My heart stopped as I stood there, staring at his prone, pale body, marred by flecks and splotches of deep red. I thought he was dead, or at the very least mortally wounded. His skin was cold to the touch. But when I shook him, he let out a pathetic groan. A sign of life. I let out the breath I’d been holding, dizzy with relief. 

I carried him inside and cleaned him up. He was still delirious. High on god knows what. But he didn’t appear to be hurt. I asked him where the blood came from. He didn’t know. I asked him where the fuck he’d been last night. He didn’t remember. 

He said that he’d been tired so went to bed early, before he sun had even set, and he woke up in the yard when I found him. 

I wasn’t sure I bought his story. But I had to get to work. I felt weird about it all day, wondering if I needed to take Ollie to the hospital or something. At what point should I get his father involved? Surely he was on some heavy drugs. He was self-destructing in a major way, for reasons I couldn’t begin to explain. 

I was preoccupied. I went through the motions of a normal day on autopilot. I didn’t hear my coworkers talking. Didn’t taste my simple brown bag lunch. It took old Mr. Aukley at least three tries to get my attention when he came in to pick up his truck. 

“You alright there, Pete? You look like you seen a ghost.”

“Yes. Sorry, sir. Been a strange day.” I got up from where I’d been sitting to grab his keys off the rack. He followed me, chatty as always. 

“I’ll say. I swear the damn foxes in these parts get smarter every year. One of them broke into my chicken coop last night. Took at least half a dozen hens.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir.”

“Age old story, ain’t it? Soon as you think you’ve beaten the fox with a better latch or thicker fence, it figures out some new way to get its dinner.”

“Well, don’t you go giving up.”

“You kiddin’? I’ll be cold in the ground before I let them little bastards win.”

He chuckled and clapped me on the back before walking off. He was a nice guy, Mr. Aukley. He and my dad would go hunting together a lot when I was a kid. He always brought me back a rabbit’s foot for good luck.

I didn’t think too much about Mr. Aukley or his chickens until I got back home that night. Ollie was sitting in the living room, wearing his pajamas, staring blankly at the television. I asked if he’d had dinner and he said he wasn’t hungry. Something in the flatness of his tone made me wonder what he’d eaten to finally fill his new found bottomless pit of a stomach. 

***

Ollie disappeared again about a month after his first episode. Or well, I shouldn’t say ‘about’ a month. It was exactly one lunar cycle. But that’s the sort of thing I didn’t understand until much later. All I knew that particular morning was that I made coffee, eggs and bacon for two, and Ollie hadn’t come down to breakfast despite the fact that I could hear his alarm going off. He wasn’t in his room. He wasn’t in the shower. He wasn’t in our yard. He hadn’t left a note. His car was still in the driveway. None of his shoes were even missing.

I got in my car and took off. I scoured the roads around our house. Then made progressively wider circles. There wasn’t any sign of Ollie. So I headed off for the tracks. It was probably a crazy hunch. After all, the tracks were almost a five hour walk from our house. 

But as it turned out, I wasn’t wrong. 

I found Ollie curled in the fetal position, in the middle of the tracks. He was half-conscious, shivering, holding something tightly to his chest. My heart raced as I got closer. He was covered in blood again. The thing he was cradling was small and furry. 

Despite his sorry state, Ollie fought me when I tried to pry his arms apart. He snarled. Glared at me through half-lidded, bloodshot eyes. For a moment, it seemed like he might try to hit me. Maybe even bite me. He had his teeth bared like a wounded animal.

It took a great deal of coaxing and soothing platitudes to get him to stand up and stumble toward my car. I wrapped him in the worn navajo blanket I always kept in the back seat. His lip trembled when I finally managed to take the small, lifeless kitten away from him. It must have been dead for hours. The blood smeared on its soft white fur was dried and crusty. The poor thing still had a collar on.

Snowball. 335 West Bayley St. Just a few blocks away from our house. The Morgans lived there, with two young children. They’d gotten the kitten a few weeks ago. 

Maybe I should have returned it to the owners, given them some sort of closure. But far as I was concerned, there were bigger things to worry about. Like my sleepwalking, animal-murdering, probably still drug-using roommate. I was focused on getting Ollie home and getting him cleaned up. So I left the kitten’s body by the tracks. 

The rest of the day was a mess of damage control. I had to apologize for the no call no show shift at the shop. The owner was pretty understanding, considering the situation. But it still wasn’t a great look. Then there was Ollie himself to deal with. After he took a bath, he tried to hide out in his room. I wasn’t having any of that. I told him point blank I’d kick the door down if he tried to lock it. 

I gave him a few hours before sitting down to talk. He told me he didn’t remember anything, just like last time. He didn’t know where the cat had come from. He didn’t know why he was sleep walking. He swore up and down that he wasn’t taking any drugs. I wanted to believe him. 

We laid out a plan of action. We’d put bells on the doors and keep everything locked at night. Even the windows. If the sleepwalking got any worse, we’d take him to the hospital. 

***

Now, this next part of the story don’t make me look so good. Or rather, it makes me look worse than the rest of it. Nobody thinks they’re a bad person. But we all do stupid, selfish things from time to time. 

My unforgivable mistake was named Jane Bucey. 

She worked across the street at the hair salon. I’d see her every now and then when I was leaving work, and I’d always wave. She’d been a sophomore when I was a senior in high school, so we never ran in the same circles or anything. But she was pretty. Looked a little bit like Marilyn Monroe, prancing around with her perfectly-styled blonde hair and cherry red lipstick. 

She drove a junky old Jeep that had a habit of breaking down during the harsh winters. I had to drive out into the middle of nowhere and tow her back to town on more than one occasion. She was always friendly. Batting her eyelashes and flashing a crooked little smile. I didn’t think much of it. Figured that’s how she talked to everybody. 

It was a complete surprise when she marched into the shop one day and demanded to know when I was gonna ask her on a date already. I laughed, even though I could feel myself turning beet red. That very Friday, we went to the taven together and got plenty drunk. She still lived with her parents. So we ended up back at my place.

Ollie didn’t come out of his room, but I knew he was home. He’d declined the invitation to come out drinking, on pretense of feeling sick. I tried to at least not make too much racket, but it turned out Jane was a screamer. 

Needless to say, breakfast the next morning was a little awkward. Ollie walked through the kitchen, grabbed his coffee and a muffin without even making eye contact, and went right back to his room. He’d never liked it when I had girls over, but Jane’s presence seemed to irk him in a very special way. 

It didn’t get any better. In the following weeks, I had Jane over a few times. Ollie never said a single word to either of us. He slammed doors, blasted music, and threw an awful fit when Jane accidentally drank one of his beers. 

I’d only left Jane alone in the kitchen for about ten minutes. I’d just popped out to the store to grab some cigarettes and more beer. I heard the commotion as soon as I opened the front door. 

“Didn’t your momma ever teach you to ask before taking someone else’s stuff?”

“I—I’m sorry. I thought it was Pete’s.”

“Well it fucking ain’t. It belongs to me. You know. The person who lives here.”

“Pete left to get some more, I’m sure you can have one–”

“Oh can I? How terribly generous. Now I finally understand what that idiot sees in you.”

 “What the fuck is your problem?”

“Gee, I wonder.”

I dropped the cans of Coors on the counter with a dull thud. Jane was sitting at the table, pale and confused. Ollie was in front of the open refrigerator in nothing but boxers and a bathrobe. I could smell the whiskey from across the room.

“Are you guys OK?” I was probably too drunk to really play diplomat. But the tension was thick enough to choke on. I had to try. 

“Oh yeah. We’re fuckin’ great.” Ollie kicked the fridge shut and blustered past me, retreating fast as he could through the fog of heavy intoxication. 

I apologized on his behalf. Because what else could I do? Jane was kind enough to brush it off. Accepting that Ollie was a mean drunk and that was the end of it. She probably knew better. But it was easiest to pretend she didn’t.

The next day, I told Ollie to leave her well enough alone. He grumbled, but agreed, and even almost said he was sorry. It was the best he could do, and we both knew it. Just like we knew I should probably be the one apologizing to him.

***

Ollie had another sleepwalking episode, and somehow managed to get around all the safety nets we’d tried to put in place. I didn’t spend much time searching the neighborhood. Instead, I drove right out to the tracks. He was there. Naked, bloody, and shivering. I took some comfort in the fact that he wasn’t holding a dead house pet this time. But the red smeared around his mouth made me half-wonder if he’d just eaten the evidence. 

He was silent on the drive home. Silent as I cleaned him up. Silent as I set him down in his room and let out a long, labored sigh.

“Ollie. You can’t keep doing this. It’s October already. Soon there’s gonna be snow on the ground.”

“I know.” His voice was so small. Warbling and raspy like a man three times his age. 

“We gotta take you to the doctor. Maybe a psychiatrist or something?”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I don’t think any doctor can fix what’s wrong with me.” He laughed. It was a hollow, broken sound. A white flag of defeat.

“So what are we gonna do? Just let you wander off and freeze to death? We gotta try–”

“Pete.”

“What?”

“This isn’t a we problem. I know you’ve tried to help me. I appreciate it. I also know it hasn’t done a lick of good. I think this is something I might have to figure out myself. I’m gonna have to… I don’t know. I’m gonna have to find someone who knows about this sort of stuff.”

“I don’t know why this seems like an argument. I’m saying the same thing.”

“No. You’re saying doctor. I need–fuck, Pete. I don’t know. I need a witch or an exorcist or something.”

I blinked at him. My jaw might have even dropped. How’s a body supposed to respond to such an outright bonkers statement?

“I know it sounds crazy. Believe me, I get it. But at a certain point, it’s crazier to just ignore everything else going on. Right?”

He waited for me to respond. Stared at me with wide, frightened eyes. But I didn’t have any words. Eventually he let out a long sigh and told me he wanted to be alone for a while. I took the easy out, and let him be.

***

I figure it was about five o’clock that afternoon when the sheriff came knocking at our door. He said that Jane hadn’t gone home the previous night. Nobody had seen her since her shift at the salon ended. He was gonna have to take me down to the station for questioning. I was the gentleman friend, after all. 

A strange numb feeling settled over me. I’m sure I didn’t say a single thing as the sheriff lead me out the door to his cruiser. At the very least, he let me sit in the front. He even turned the radio on and chatted at me about the baseball game. I didn’t hear any of it. I just looked straight ahead with a dawning horror twisting through my entire body. 

While I’d been washing blood off Ollie’s hands, Jane’s parents were at the sheriff's station, filing a missing person report. They’d probably been crying. Worried sick about their only daughter. I knew in my heart that they’d never see her again. What’s worse, is that I had an excellent idea about who did it. And I wasn’t going to say a goddamned thing.

Who would believe me anyway? Who would believe that my best friend in the world had lost every single one of his marbles and thought he was some sort of ghostly werewolf? Who would believe that Ollie had no control over the terrible things he did while sleepwalking? Did I even believe it? 

I’m not the type to cry. It’s not the way I’m wired. But I think some small piece of me kicked the bucket as I sat in the sheriff’s station, telling him where I was last night. I had an airtight alibi. I’d been at the tavern until almost one in the morning. I’d walked over, so Mr. Aukley gave me a ride home. I invited him in and we had some coffee. One of my roommates passed me in the hallway as I went up to bed. I was accounted for during the time period Jane went missing. 

The sheriff released me after I signed my statement, and said he’d keep my posted. They’d probably find Jane soon. People don’t stay missing for very long in a place like Pickett. 

Ollie was waiting for me when I got home. Nervous and white as a sheet. I told him Jane was missing. Neither of us asked the obvious question. We probably should have. But I’m sure we both presumed the worst. Ollie didn’t like Jane. Ollie had an episode and woke up covered in blood. Jane was nowhere to be found. The math seemed pretty simple, and it pointed to an ugly conclusion.  

***

I almost wish there’d been some sort of dramatic fall out. I wish I’d yelled. Accused Ollie of killing her outright. I wish I’d tried to turn him in to the police, or bring him to a hospital. I wish I’d punched him right between those hollow, haunted eyes and told him I hated him. 

But I’ve never been much for conflict. Maybe it borders on a pathological avoidance. Instead of engaging Ollie at all, I just went up to my room and closed the door. It didn’t take me more than a couple of days to pack up my belongings and move back into my parent’s basement. 

Ollie showed up about a week later. He was obviously drunk. Could barely walk a straight line. I didn’t invite him in. I stepped out onto my parents lawn, arms crossed and jaw set. 

The icy November wind blustered around me, highlighting my lack of a jacket. Ollie wasn’t much better dressed for the occasion. I almost asked if someone had given him a ride over. I almost said that I hoped he hadn’t walked all that way in the cold, before I thought better of it.

“I… I went to see someone.” Ollie’s teeth chattered. “Up in Billings. A psychic. She said if I keep going back to her I might get better.” 

“All right.” I couldn’t look him in the eye. I was disgusted with him. Disgusted with the stench of whiskey, and his reckless disregard for the weather, and that wild mania that seemed to hang in the air around him. 

“If the episodes stop, maybe you could move back into your room. We haven’t advertised in the paper for it or anything yet.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Why not?” He sounded so helpless. My stomach roiled. I wanted to wrap him up in a tight hug. I wanted to shove him to the ground and kick his ribs in. The flood of emotions was far too much to cope with. So I did the cruelest thing of all.

I turned around and walked back inside, locking the door behind me. I’d like to tell you that I don’t know how long he stood out there, staring after me. But I couldn’t resist looking at him out the upstairs window. He stayed for almost an hour before trudging away. 

***

Now, at the very least I don’t have to sit here and tell you that I let my best friend die without lifting a finger to stop it. I didn’t want to forgive him. But when the moon started to wax, and a tense nervousness settled into my bones, I couldn’t help wondering what was going to happen to him. I couldn’t keep from picturing his walking out into the snow drifts in the middle of the night.

I heard through the grapevine that Ollie had stopped showing up to work. The other roommates moved out before long, following my example. They said Ollie wasn’t well. It was a different time, you know. Psychiatric care wasn’t readily available in rural areas. Taking Ollie to a regular hospital for detox would only be delaying the inevitable. If someone wants to self-destruct at the bottom of a bottle, it’s near impossible to stop them. 

But I wasn’t ready to just give up on him. Despite trying to institute barriers and escape the situation–I found myself driving to our old house a few hours before sunset the night of the full moon. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was fixing to do. I had a mug full of coffee, and no doubts that I’d be drinking more. Maybe I had a loose plan to stay up all night, watching him. Making sure he didn’t go outside to his frigid doom.

I felt ridiculous knocking at what used to be my own front door. It took a few tries before he answered. 

Ollie looked worse than I’d ever seen him. Ghost white, bone thin, like he wasn’t even bothering with things like food or sleep anymore. He blinked at me for almost a minute before I saw the recognition flicker in his eyes.

“You actually came.” His voice was raw and ragged. Like a man on his deathbed. The whole house stunk of cigarette smoke. 

“Yeah. Looks like I did. Gonna invite me in?”

He stepped aside to let me through the door. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the relative darkness. For some reason, every overhead light bulb had been unscrewed. From the look, and the smell, of it–things had gone downhill real fast. There were empty beer cans and whiskey bottles everywhere. Garbage piled in the corners. A half-eaten chicken carcass sitting out on the coffee table.  

I didn’t know what to say. Who could I possibly call to help me fix this?

“They’ll be here before too long.” Ollie looked out the window, calm and resigned to his fate. “You can stay if you want. I doubt it will do much good.”

“What are you talking about? Who’s coming?”

“The dogs, Pete.” He snorted out a harsh laugh. “Those fucking dogs are gonna drag me out of here one way or another.”

“Ollie. We should take you to the hospital.”

“Nah.” He waved his hand in dismissal. “Less people around the better. I don’t want anybody else getting hurt.”

He walked over towards the couch and settled down on it, hugging his knees to his chest. Everything stayed quiet for a little while. Eventually, I joined him, because it felt awkward to keep standing.

“I ever tell you I saw that hippy kid again?” He lit up a cigarette and took a deep breath.

“No.” 

“Yeah. Or well… guess I should say I saw his body. Out by the tracks. I was walking out there a few days ago. He was pretty rotten, not sure how long he’d been dead. But he still had those dreadlocks. Nobody else around here does.”

I didn’t know what was worse. Ollie actually seeing that, or hallucinating it in broad daylight. I pulled by coat a little tighter around me. It was cold in that house. Like the furnace wasn’t even turned on. 

“I’m not sure why they let me live for so long.” Ollie murmured. “Maybe it’s just part of the game or something. But I’m ready to go, I guess. I mean, what choice is there?”

The wind began to pick up outside, whipping through the trees. Light flakes of powder began to fall, making the world outside look like a snow globe. 

“Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you, buddy. I’m sorry it’s all gone to shit.”

“It’s OK, Ollie. It’s gonna be OK.”

Then I heard it. The piercing howl cracked through the night air just as the sun slipped below the horizon. I heard a sickening thud at the front door. Like something had launched itself at the wood, trying to break in. Another howl. More pounding at the door. 

Ollie stood up. A blank look in his eyes. He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed before making his way towards the shuddering, shaking door. He looked over his shoulder for half a moment.

“Goodbye, Pete.” He offered a wistful smile.

I reached for him. A protest on my lips. I wanted to shout. Urge him to get away from that fucking door. But it was too late. He’d already turned the knob. Snow blew in as the door whipped open. 

One moment Ollie was standing there in the moonlight. Looking at an empty front porch. The next, he fell backwards, like something had grabbed onto his ankles and yanked. He shot out the door faster than I could blink. 

He was gone. Gone by the time I ran out after him. Not so much as a trail through the snow left behind. 

***

The rest of the story isn’t all that exciting. They found Ollie’s body in the spring, after the thick blanket of frost began to thaw. The official record says he wandered off in a blizzard and died of hypothermia.

The fact that they found him curled into a ball in the middle of the train tracks without a stitch of clothes on was chalked up to coincidence. Just like the skeleton of some unidentified drifter they found half a mile away.

They found Jane eventually, too. Still alive. She’d been held captive in a basement just outside of Portland. The police came across her while arresting a man suspected of several other abductions throughout the Pacific west. He must have grabbed her when he was passing through. Nothing but a terrible accident. They brought her home, but her year as an abused prisoner made it very difficult for her to function. Far as I know, she hasn’t left her parent’s house since she got back to town.

I eventually moved into a place of my own a short drive outside of Pickett. I still work the occasional shift at the garage, though I’m retired for the most part. I spent a lot of years being lonely before Russ moved into town. We were both in our forties. Unmarried. He was a city boy with grandiose ideas about the quiet life. He started renting a room from me because I had the space, and not many other folks were willing to accept a relative stranger into their home. Then he just never left. All his clothes, and knick knacks, and books slowly spread from the one room to every corner of the house until the space was as much his as mine. I suppose I’m grateful for the company. 

After all, if Russ hadn’t stumbled into my life, I’m not sure I’d still be here. 

On cold winter nights, when the wind howls and the old timbers of the roof groan, I sometimes see malformed shadows lurking outside the window. Sometimes I hear growling and scratching at the door. On rare occasions, I even find claw-marks in the house’s stained-wood siding. It’s an ever present reminder that the wild, and the various creatures it commands, will one day claim me. In the end, the wild claims us all.