Page 12 of Devils and the Dead
The main road up Savior Mountain nearly killed my car’s suspension. The werewolves had done a great job at clearing away downed trees and rocks, but heavy fall rains had created potholes that made driving to their compound like navigating an obstacle course.
I slowly made my way past a stand of spruce and saw movement to my left. One wolf dashed ahead to herald my arrival, while another moved to slowly jog beside me as I drove on. Finally I saw the compound ahead. Among the dozens of buildings, half were unpainted, some of them wrapped in tar paper to guard against the approaching winter weather. What would be neat yards and gardens come spring were now only patches of dirt and mud. Smoke curled from several of the homes, and the tantalizing smell of smoked meat tickled my nose. I parked where my wolf escort indicated and made my way on foot to the lodge that the alpha called home.
Clinton had built a very nice settlement on Heartbreak Mountain when he’d been trying to wrestle a portion of the existing werewolf pack territory away from his father to form his own pack. It had been a shame he’d had to leave it behind, but Clinton’s father, Dallas, had contributed money, materials, and labor to compensate the new pack for the loss. In the end, this arrangement would suit the werewolves better. Distance and distinct territory lines would hopefully stave off fighting between the two packs, and the establishment of a common hunting area on Heartbreak Mountain should give both groups a sense of shared community.
But that was all wishing on our part. Ultimately, the success of this pack would be on their shoulders, and all we witches could do was help whenever needed.
A few of the other werewolves came to the doors of their homes to watch me approach. My escort stayed by my side all the way to the lodge door. Living my whole life among shifters meant I recognized his presence as a courtesy, an honor. There were times when an escort meant distrust. I’m not sure how to explain how I knew the difference between the two, but I did.
Clinton met me at the door and ushered me inside. Three other werewolves sat around a huge table.
“This is Justelle, Bay, and Flick,” Clinton introduced the wolves who nodded in turn. “Each one of them has had an experience during the last few weeks with what they feel is a ghost.”
I sat down across from them and smiled reassuringly. It couldn’t have been easy for any of them to come forward like this. Werewolves hated anything to do with spirits and the undead. Many of them still crossed the road when they saw a vampire or a wraith coming. They probably would have all had a collective stroke if I’d arrived with Maude in tow.
“Lots of us in the pack have had things fall off shelves, or felt a cold spot, or the sensation of something touching us when nothing’s there,” Justelle explained. “Most just chalk it up to a natural occurrence—a shelf not being completely level, a draft, spider webs. But what I saw…I just can’t explain it.”
I took a notepad and a pen out of my bag. My memory was good, but people seemed to be reassured when you took notes, like you were really listening and taking their claims seriously.
Clinton sat at the end of the table. “Flick, you go ahead and tell Babylon what happened.”
The werewolf eyed me nervously. She looked young, not more than twenty, but werewolves aged slowly and she was probably closer to thirty. Flick was pretty with soft ashy brown hair in a high ponytail, big dark eyes, and a host of freckles scattered across her nose and cheekbones. The soft fur of a blonde beard lined her jaw. Werewolves were furry. It was common—and considered attractive—for even the women to have facial hair.
“I was out at night for a walk.” Flick glanced apologetically over at Clinton. “My guard shift was done at midnight, and I can never sleep right away.”
Clinton nodded for her to go on.
“There’s a bunch of sugar maples about a quarter mile or so from the compound. One came down a few weeks ago during a storm and blocked the road. It’s a big stand of trees, all of them really old and thick with a broad canopy. I love to lay in the moss among the roots and look up at the moonlight streaming through the leaves in a pattern like lace.”
That was downright inspirational. Werewolves had a reputation as practical, physical, hot-tempered, but once you got to know them you realized there were just as many sculptors and singers as any in any other group. Flick might serve her guard duty, but I’d be willing to bet she painted or wrote poetry in her free time.
“Anyway,” the werewolf continued. “That’s what I was doing when I saw the ghost. It was this filmy white thing, and at first I thought it was a small patch of ground fog. It came from one of the trees, coalesced into a bipedal shape, then glowed with an inner light. I still thought it was fog, or some of that bioluminescent fungus, because there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“I can assure you there are,” I said.
Flick eyed me apologetically. “Well, I’ve never seen any before. And no one I know has either. So I didn’t think it was a ghost until it got close to me. It was like a person made of light and fog, except it was kinda blurry, so I couldn’t see if it was a human or what. There was no smell to it either. The air got really cold when it came close.”
“How cold?” Shifters tended to think anything above freezing was warm, so I was assuming the air temperature must have dropped thirty degrees or so.
“It was around forty degrees that night, and laying there it suddenly dropped down close to zero.” Flick shivered and rubbed her arms. “It reached out to me and said I needed to help find some tinsel, or something like that.”
“Tinsel?” I asked, wondering if she’d misheard. Ghosts didn’t often speak, and those who could often garbled or slurred their words.
“Ithinkthat’s what it said.” Flick shook her head. “That can’t be right, though. Why would a ghost coming out of a maple tree in the middle of a forest want Christmas decorations?”
“Yeah. If it had been a pine tree, I could have maybe seen it,” Justelle chimed in. “That’s a tree you put tinsel on, not a sugar maple.”
“What happened next?” I asked Flick.
“I ran like my tail was on fire, that’s what happened next,” she retorted. “No way was I gonna lay around and let some ghost freeze me into a block of ice, or stuff me into a tree or something. I got the heck out of there, got home, and hid under my covers until daylight.”
Normally such a confession would have had the other werewolves jeering and calling Flick a coward, but all of them, including Clinton, listened to her story with wide-eyes.
“Have you experienced anything similar since then?” I asked.
Flick shook her head. “No, but I haven’t been back there. It was my favorite place, but now I’m scared to go.”
“Clinton mentioned some of the others had things knocked off their shelves, cold spots in their houses, stuff like that. Has any of that been happening to you, Flick?” I asked.
