Seven inches of ice. That’s what separated Greg Horton from the frigid waters of Indian Head Lake. Sitting on the green and white Coleman cooler, holding a thermos of hot coffee, Greg thought back to when he was a kid skating with his twin sister, Linda, on this same lake and how she would be the one scared of the noises the cracking ice made, those loud twangs that sounded like a gigantic Slinky being stretched and plucked underneath the ice. He thought of Linda often. They both lived in Old Wachusett, only minutes from each other, and yet they were worlds apart. The only time he heard from her was when she needed a lift or was short on cash. Nancy, Greg’s wife, told him that Linda was a grown woman and that she could take care of herself and that he should stop worrying about her. Greg told Nancy that he would stop worrying about her when she left that loser Tony for good and got herself hooked up with a man who actually cared enough for her to treat her right, willing to tie the knot instead of just shacking up with her.
For now, though, Greg took his wife’s advice. He smiled at the skating memory, let it go, and got back to the task at hand, which was enjoying the early morning peace and quiet on the lake. It was cold, and he had never been much for fishing—unlike his younger brother who had spent all his August afternoons as a kid fishing every nook and cranny on the shores of Indian Head Lake—but with their first child on the way, Nancy figured each of them would need time alone to recharge their batteries. After giving it much thought, Greg came to the unlikely conclusion that a frozen lake was as good a place as any to be alone. His buddies on the force would think he was nuts if they knew he was out on the ice before eight o’clock on his day off. They could think what they wanted. He was alone and enjoying his free time.
As much as he looked forward to the birth of their child, he knew that once the little one was born—according to all his friends who had kids—free time would be at a premium, if not completely nonexistent. He’d considered various hobbies that he could get involved in to ease his mind and relieve the stress: model trains (that would take up too much money and space), hunting (he wasn’t too keen on hauling a deer out of the forest), bowling (too boring), even painting (there wasn’t a creative gene in his body).
He had finally settled on fishing. It was relatively inexpensive, took up little space in their one bedroom apartment, he could carry the fish home in a bucket, he was outdoors, and absolutely no creativeness was necessary. When winter had arrived, he figured why not try ice fishing. All he needed was patience, and Greg had developed a goodly amount of that after spending hundreds of hours sitting in his patrol car setting speed traps on the new Route 2 highway that divided—unofficially—Old Wachusett into North Wachusett and South Wachusett. The fish under the ice were no match for him. He usually came home with a catch of at least a half dozen good ones to eat, and that was after he had thrown back a half-dozen more.
This morning he wore one layer of Long Johns, two T-shirts, a sweatshirt, his old winter parka, and a new pair of snow pants. He was still cold. Damn cold. The only parts of him that were warm were his hands. Nothing like well-insulated gloves even if they came at the expense of fumbling with the thermos. Sitting on the cooler, sipping his coffee, enjoying the peace and quiet, he wondered when it was supposed to start snowing. The news last night mentioned getting a few inches today, which, if he were to go by the Boston TV station’s meteorologist’s track record of late, Greg took to mean they had no earthly idea how much, if any, snow was coming. Greg should have been a weather forecaster. He couldn’t think of any other job where you could collect a full salary for failing more times than you succeeded in your job. Well, not unless you were a hitter in the Red Sox lineup last season.
Greg had set up six tip-ups in a circle roughly fifty feet in diameter. The wind wasn’t blowing much, but enough to get him off his frozen rear end to chase after a couple wind flags since he’d set up forty-five minutes ago. He’d gone fishing enough times this summer, catching pickerel, perch, bass, and tons of sunfish that he’d thrown back, so that he’d finally got proficient at removing a hook from a fish that had swallowed the thing pretty good. He was also now proficient at cleaning and cooking the fish. Turns out, he enjoyed all aspects of the hobby. Or sport. Or whatever category fishing fit into. He’d also come to learn that fishing was one of those skills that every man should hand down to his sons, if for no other reason than man was at the top of the food chain and there were certain skills and responsibilities that came with the territory and should be handed down from one generation to the next. If he ended up having a daughter, well, she’d get the skills too, regardless of how icky the worms and fish felt.
Even though he hadn’t been on the ice for too long this morning, had to chase after the wind flags, and was freezing his ass off—he really should have picked up a set of bun warmers at Rich’s Department Store—this morning was shaping up to be a legitimately decent way to get away from it all. His mind was free from the pressures and new responsibilities that had come—and were coming—his way. There was his recent promotion at the police department, the impending birth of his firstborn, and now the house hunting they had embarked upon just after Christmas. Not to mention having to deal with his father-in-law who wasn’t too keen on his daughter marrying a cop (too dangerous) and who also, seeing how he was about to be a grandfather and all, thought it would be a grand idea if he and Greg’s mother-in-law moved up from Pennsylvania to live closer to their daughter. Wouldn’t that be a nice idea, Greg, my favorite son-in-law? his father-in-law had said, his voice thick with sarcasm.
Sure, Dad, a fantastic idea. Hey, while you’re at it, why don’t you and Mom move right in with Nancy and me? That would be swell, wouldn’t it? That way when we’re in the bedroom and we’re hav—
Fortunately, Greg had censored himself before any of those internal thoughts had escaped through his mouth.
But, hey, that kind of thinking wasn’t for now. He was recharging for crying out loud. Forget about Linda and the father-in-law and the promotion at work and finding a house. Focus on recharging. It was cute how Nancy liked saying things like that. Greg, honey, is it time to recharge? He loved the way she said that instead of what she really wanted to say: Get out of my hair, you’re driving me nuts! He loved her, she loved him, and they enjoyed being together, but she was right. They both were the types of people that needed time to themselves, unlike most of their friends who were still either young enough or childless enough to want to be out on the scene every free night they had, which meant making the rounds in Old Wachusett, driving to nearby Fitchburg, or Leominster, or maybe even Worcester. Greg was a lucky man to have hooked up with a woman who felt the same way he did about having alone time, and who actually encouraged her husband to get out of the house once in a while.
Greg held the coffee in one hand, twisted and extended his other, and looked at his watch. It was creeping up on eight o’clock, and although he had been on the ice for not quite an hour, he wondered how long he should stay. Nancy was more than likely still sleeping in, and he was off duty today, so he had no place he needed to be right now, nor was there any place he needed to go today. He could stay for as long as he wanted. He smiled, thinking that’s exactly what he’d do.
Thinking it would be a good time to check the bait on the tip-ups—he didn’t know if he was supposed to check the bait or not, but it seemed like a good thing to do while waiting for the fish to bite and trying to keep himself warm—Greg set the aluminum thermos in a hollowed-out circle in the snow next to the cooler. Sliding off the cooler and kneeling next to it, he lifted the plastic lid and reached in for one of the three plastic baggies stuffed with PB&J sandwiches. He opened the baggie, shook one of the halves of the sandwich out, devoured it in three bites, shook the other half out, dropped the empty baggie into the cooler, and closed the lid. Biting into the second half, Greg headed toward the closest tip-up, his boots crunching through a couple inches of crusty snow.
He knelt next to the tip-up, finished the sandwich, took off one glove, and tapped away the ice that had built up in the hole. He lifted the tip-up with his gloved hand and set it to the side, was about to pull the line up to check the bait, when movement far off to his left caught his attention. A dog emerged from the forest that surrounded the lake. A monster of a dog, it looked to be a black and gray German Shepherd or Alaskan Husky. It sauntered out of the woods about forty yards away from him, having emerged from the spot where Lone Man’s Walk cuts into the forest. Greg shrugged and turned back to the tip-up. The owner, no doubt, would soon follow the dog onto the ice to set up shop. He was disappointed at the prospect of not having the entire lake to himself anymore.
If he had thought about it for a moment longer, Greg might have realized how silly it was to think that anyone would emerge from Lone Man’s Walk, and he might have paid more attention to what he thought was a dog.
Instead, Greg ignored the animal as he pulled up the fishing line, his bare fingers growing numb. The bait was fine. He dropped it back into the water and cleared more ice from the hole. As he reset the tip-up, he glanced over his shoulder to check on the dog and see who it was that had decided to invade his private time.
The dog was gone.
He looked left, then right, but couldn’t see the dog anywhere on the ice, nor on the shore. It was just…gone. Greg did give that some thought. It was odd, the dog seemingly vanishing like that. Maybe it had gone back into the woods. He finished resetting the tip-up, stood, scanned the lake, and started walking toward Lone Man’s Walk. He looked for tracks in the snow. There were none. The dog hadn’t come onto the ice. It must have turned back into the forest, perhaps in response to its owner calling it back.
Greg turned to retrieve his glove that he’d left by the hole. He gasped and froze. Staring at him, less than twenty feet away, sitting on its haunches, Greg’s black glove hanging from its mouth, was the dog. But now he saw that it wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf. A big, bad-ass, black and gray (mostly black) honest-to-god wolf. Greg closed his eyes and shook his head. Maybe the cold was getting to him and he was hallucinating. He couldn’t possibly be seeing a wolf while fishing on Indian Head Lake in Old Wachusett, Massachusetts. He opened his eyes. Evidently, that was exactly what he was seeing.
A wolf. All he could think about was all the stuff he’d heard as a kid as to what to do when confronted by a wild animal. Dogs—don’t look at them directly in the eye because they’ll take that as defiance and take appropriate measures to protect themselves. Bears—don’t even think about trying to outrun them because they could top out at forty miles an hour, easily overtaking a human being. Moose—back away slowly, try not to let it see you, because if it did and got mad or felt threatened it could stomp the living hell out of you. And you were never supposed to show fear to any animal, because they can sense that.
Right now a rock would be able to sense Greg’s fear.
Greg didn’t remember anything about what to do when confronted with a wolf. He turned his head in increments, to the right, to the left, looking and hoping for anyone else. There was no one. He had been enjoying being alone on the ice. Now he wished it was as crowded as Hampton Beach on a Saturday afternoon in August. He had to remain calm. No matter what happened, no matter what the wolf did, Greg had to remain calm. Panicking wouldn’t do him any good. So no panicking. But running…running sure sounded like a good idea. No, you idiot, he thought. Are you stupid? Do you have a death wish? Don’t run. Do not run!
The wolf—he still couldn’t wrap his mind around what was staring at him—continued to sit there, motionless. The animal clenched Greg’s glove between its teeth, saliva dripping from its mouth and running over the glove. Greg inched his left foot backward, not daring to lift it, instead sliding it along the crusty snow-covered ice, keeping the rest of his body motionless as much as possible. The wolf raised its tail—which, Greg now noticed, hadn’t been wagging—and slapped it on the ice once, in a deliberate manner. Up, then down. Greg cocked his head at the tail’s movement. Was it…was it a friendly gesture? Could a wolf be friendly… and show it? Still with the glove in its teeth, the corners of the wolf’s mouth turned up. No. Wolves don’t smile. Nor grin, which was what it looked like more than a smile. Greg inched his right foot back, his boot scraping along the snow. The wolf raised and slapped its tail again, this time twice. Up, down. Up, down. Greg started to slide his left foot back again, but stopped when the wolf twitched its head and made a huffing sound.
Run, he thought to himself. Get your ass out of here! RUN!
No. He fought that urge, knowing that running was not a good idea. It would only agitate the animal, and then’ he’d be a dead man. He might already be a dead man and just didn’t know it, but as long as the wolf made no threatening moves, Greg was not pressing his luck by doing anything stupid. The wolf executed what appeared to be a threatening move. It twitched its head, huffed, raised itself onto all fours, and took two steps toward Greg. Its tail remained as still and stiff as if it had been frozen in place.
Greg readied himself. He knew running might get himself killed, but he’d be damned if he was going to let himself be this thing’s mid-morning snack. He started to turn his body while keeping his eyes on the animal, was two seconds away from sprinting for the forest, when the wolf did an unexpected thing. It backed away from him. The corners of its mouth dropped, it looked above and beyond Greg’s right shoulder, and it backed away. Then, it whimpered.
What the hell?
Then Greg did an unexpected thing, the sort of thing that, had anyone been watching him, would have seemed like an act of one who was obviously either out of his mind or had a death wish. He did the kind of thing that he never would have been able to adequately explain the reason for doing to anyone, including Nancy. It was the kind of thing that people, in dire circumstances, did for no logical reason, but knew intuitively that it was the only thing to do.
He stepped toward the wolf.
In return for his act of illogical trust—would he have called it an act of faith? Perhaps, if he’d had the chance—the wolf wagged its tail twice in rapid succession from side to side. It began panting, reminding Greg of how excited his German Shepherd, named Cindy, used to get when he’d played fetch with her in the backyard of his boyhood home. Greg stepped forward again. The tail wagged again, this time faster. Another step forward. And another. Each time the tail wagged faster, anticipation growing. He was close enough to stretch out his arm and touch the animal. The wolf moved toward him, wagging its tail vigorously, nodding its head up and down. On one of the upswings, with the glove still clenched between its teeth, the wolf spread its lips and revealed its pearly whites. Only they weren’t teeth. They were fangs. And there weren’t just two or four of them like you’d see in a picture of a wolf baring its teeth with two fangs up and two down. There was an entire row of fangs.
The wolf flicked its head at Greg and opened its mouth, sending the saliva-slimed glove sailing through the cold February air. It landed on Greg’s boot. He looked at the glove, at the wolf, at the glove. The wolf huffed, nodded its head, wagged its tail. Greg bent forward, keeping his eyes on the wolf, no longer sensing he was in immediate danger, yet not quite willing to surrender all of himself over to that thought. He reached down for the glove, ready to react to anything the wolf might do. It might appear friendly, and Greg was by no means a veteran outdoorsman who was familiar with the ways of nature, but he knew enough to respect wild animals. As far as Greg was concerned there were two things to remember when respecting them: they were wild, and they were animals.
He reached down the last inch and snatched up the glove with two fingers. He stood slowly and slipped the glove over his numb fingers, wiping the saliva off on his ratty old parka while suppressing the crazy notion of extending his hand to the wolf in a gesture of thanks. The wolf lowered itself back on its haunches, tongue hanging out of the incongruous human-like grin, tail swishing back and forth on the snow. Hadn’t he watched one of those Wild Kingdom shows about wolves being more afraid of humans than humans were of them? Apparently, someone forgot to inform this black and gray mirage sitting before him.
Greg nodded at the animal. What do I do now? Say thank you and walk away? Try shooing it away? How the hell do you go about shooing away a wolf? Wave your hands in the air, make funny noises, only to scare it into attacking you? No thanks. Maybe he should just leave it alone. It would probably go away on its own anyway. It had given Greg back his glove, no need for it to hang around here any longer.
It’s an animal, Greg thought. It’s not your personal butler, picking up your dropped laundry laying around outside, so stop thinking crazy thoughts like that.
Greg shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of you, and you seem friendly enough, but I don’t trust you. You’re a wild animal, so…go.” Greg nodded toward the forest. “Go back into the deep, wild forests of Old Wachusett or wherever it is you came from. Go hunt wild animals, go find the pack you belong to, just go somewhere else. OK?” Greg stepped around the wolf and pointed toward the cooler. “I’m going to finish my sandwiches. I’d offer you some, but I’m hungry, so, sorry. It was nice meeting you.”
Walking to the cooler, Greg glanced over his shoulder. The wolf was gazing at the sky. Greg looked up and saw only gray clouds trucking across the sky. He turned to the wolf. Its tail was not moving. He looked up. Still nothing up there to hold his attention other than the clouds. He turned toward the cooler, thinking maybe the wolf had finally got bored with him and was now determining which way to go to look for food, perhaps trying to catch a scent on the wind. He started to lift the lid, but stopped. Perhaps it would be better to wait for the animal to leave before opening the cooler and letting it catch a whiff of the peanut butter. Although, now that he thought about it, the wolf could probably smell it all over his hands and breath.
Greg turned. The wolf was gone. Good. He’d got a little nervous when he’d seen it wasn’t wagging its tail anymore. A wagging tail, good. Not wagging, bad. But, seeing how the animal was gone, Greg had nothing to worry about.
WHUMP!
The sound of something massive pushing its way through a mass of air.
The sound of incredibly large wi—
A slash across his shoulder. Greg twisting, one arm reaching up and back, grasping at the searing pain, the other flailing to maintain balance. Falling, forehead cracking the ice, nose crunching, blood spurting. Shoulder in agony. Dazed, the world a blur, eyes tearing up from his broken nose. Pushing himself to his knees, reaching across his chest and over his left shoulder, feeling through the layers of torn fabric to the wet, warm, sticky gash in his shoulder.
Pulling his hand back, dripping red.
Trying to stand, falling to the ice in a whirl of dizziness. Trying again, getting to his knees. To his feet.
WHUMP! WHUMP!
A black blur, whizzing by his head. Fire, followed by ice, stabbing into the side of his neck. White and gray and black and red, a kaleidoscope of colors swirling around him, swallowing him, the world spinning out of control. Crumbling to his knees. Swiping at the dark blur coming at him, arm slashed, another instant of flesh exposed and muscle torn and ligament ripped from bone. Fire, yet cold. Pain, yet numbness.
Pulling his arm to his chest, pressing, trying to stop the bleeding. Don’t panic, Greg told himself. Don’t panic. Stay calm.
The wolf…where was…where was it?…the wolf…? What direction was it coming from next? Where was—
WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP!
A third and final slash, this one across the chest, lightning fast and thunderously violent, another blur, black and gray and white. Layers of clothing torn and ripped away. Red stains appearing. Paralyzing pain filling his chest and shoulder and arm.
Falling forward onto his arm, screaming, turning his head, his temple slamming onto the cold, hard ice.
Greg Horton, who moments ago had been enjoying the solitude of being alone, now wishing and screaming for someone else, slipped from this life. In his last seconds, after an image of his twin sister flickered in his mind, Greg thought of Nancy sleeping peacefully in their apartment with their unborn child cocooned safely within her womb.