Erin Dameron-Hill
Authors: Unknown
Legend: The Wolf
By
Erin Dameron-Hill
© copyright by Erin Dameron-Hill, August 2010
Cover Art by Alex DeShanks, August 2010
ISBN 978-1-60394-449-6
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s
imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or
events is merely coincidence.
Prologue
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the Earth,
Unseen,
Both when we wake and when we sleep.
--John Milton
The dark heaviness of night pressed down firmly on my chest, forcing me to wake from the nightmare that had taken hold of me. This wasn’t the first time I had seen the creature, no, he had come to me in my dreams before. But this time, I was fully frightened that he might not be just a dream, that he might be real.
My eyes peered through the shadows of my bedroom looking for the beast, for an answer as to why my heart was beating frantically against myself.
The moonlight shined in through the narrow slats of the blinds that appeared to be bathed in white light. The cherry colored dresser and armoire stood motionless with the stale, humid air.
I pushed the white sheets and sage green comforter off my body and took a sharp inhale trying desperately to combat the feeling of suffocation that enshrouded me.
My small hands reached for my forehead and sloppily wiped off the beads of sweat that were racing down my cheeks and resting gently in the crook of my neck. My hair was plastered to my head and felt heavier than the sweltering heat that lived in this room.
I stepped out onto the warm, laminate wood floors and trudged mindlessly to turn on the air conditioner. I pushed the button to ‘on’, but nothing happened.
I moaned silently and cursed the summer heat for breaking the air conditioner and for probably costing me a few hundred dollars in repair. The last time the air conditioner needed repaired I ended up paying a $146 for a new wire. Damn rip off.
I looked to the kitchen and saw that the kitchen night light was on pressing a soft, white light to fold over the shadows of the darkness. I opened the refrigerator, slightly closing my eyes to the blinding shimmer that only man-made light can cause and felt the soft chill dance upon my drenched skin and sweat-ridden, crimson silk nightgown.
My right hand reached for a bottle of water, hoping that I might quench the thirst that had taken hold of me.
Summer nights in Florida are never fun, especially if the air conditioner is broken. The temperature earlier in the day reached over ninety-six degrees and lingered into the night, relentlessly cooling itself only a few degrees. So, the heat remained only to further my discomfort.
I guzzled down the water and felt it shatter the heat of my mouth and throat as it wound its way down into my stomach. The freezing liquid boiled the top of my skin forcing several chill bumps to surface. I shivered.
Still, the heat surrounded me, suffocated me, and enshrouded me as if I was living in a nightmare, as if the very air held my demise, held danger like it was panting for breath.
I swallowed a few more gulps of water and realized I had to pee. I guess the nightmare had squeezed my bladder so that I was forced to use the bathroom. I absolutely hate that.
I sheltered my eyes with the palm of my hand as I flipped the switch. The bright, yellow light of the bathroom shone through my hands and I squinted harshly into the well-lit room. I placed the cold water bottle on the white sink, passing a beige towel rack and finally resting my tush on the cold toilet seat. Porcelain doesn’t care if the heat is sweltering, it will always remain cool.
I looked up at the gray walls and then to the black, beige, and gray shower curtain and realized that my bathroom was very modern. Not only in the design, but also in the architecture. Chrome rods and shower hooks lined the white porcelain tub while granite with silver streaks embedded itself upon the rim and up the side wall. The tub was larger than most, fitting comfortably two people although usually, only one person could be found lounging in it, me.
I sighed heavily into the stifling air, struggling to meet some sort of a breeze when I heard a slight muffle, a slight creak.
I know it’s only a muffle, nothing more, but still the stream beneath me stopped, occasionally dripping one or two drops into the large bowl. I reached for the soft, white toilet paper and cleaned myself as fast as I could. My pulse was hysterically beating against my skin like a butterfly beating its wings against a net, trying desperately to escape.
I took another deep breath and tried to calm myself down. It was just night sound, a creaking piece of furniture, nothing more is what I kept telling myself. But I didn’t want to believe the logic. I couldn’t.
The dream that I had only moments before had told me of a dark shadow that would forever haunt me. I know it was just a dream, but my dreams tend to fall into reality. Cinderella was wrong; I never wanted any of my dreams to come true because they were just too brutal and horrifying.
The dream’s prediction of a dark shadow was more than just shadow; I had seen teeth, claws, and lust so forgive me if I was more than just a little startled over hearing creaking furniture.
I swallowed again feeling the thick air glue itself to the insides of my throat, closing it tightly so that I could no longer breathe. My mind at once ran. The panic set in so fast that I couldn’t struggle against it; all I could do was scream silently as my mind filled itself with chaos, with gnashing teeth and tearing claws of the creature from my dreams. It was like a volcano had just erupted and everyone was running around, trampling their own mothers.
My knuckles turned as white as the sink as they grabbed tighter. I don’t remember standing up on the gray tiles, nor gripping the sink, yet here I am facing the mirror and looking at myself with obscene horror.
My eyes were still green, only darker due to the fear that was racing through them. My cupid-bow pink lips cringed into themselves forcing me to accidentally bite the corners as I struggled to maintain composure.
I slammed my hands on the porcelain counter and forced my mind to cooperate. There was nothing here. There was no reason to panic, no reason to believe in the nightmares that had plagued me this past week.
My tensing hands reached for the medicine cabinet and I pulled out a few prescription pills, just to calm down my nerves. I suffer from anxiety, among other things, and occasionally, I take a few Valium just to settle my mind. I’m not fond of the damn pills, but in situations like this, they were a necessity.
I swallowed the pills and the cold, crisp water down my tightened throat and breathed steadily in through my nose and out of my mouth. The breathing exercises helped, although they were only short term. Another wave of panic and fear would soon be here and I would be screaming silently again into the mirror.
I looked back at my ruddy face and knew the panic had pushed all of the blood down to my heart leaving me pale and gaunt. Normally I have a natural tan left to me by my Seminole ancestry, but tonight, I looked like my mother, pale and freckled. I have several freckles that run over the bridge of my nose to the tops of my high cheekbones.
So, I focused on them. If I could count every single one of them, then maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t allow that fear to take me again before the valium kicked in.
I pulled my dark hair back into a ponytail so that I could better see the multitude of brown spots that covered me.
I started to count, one, two, three…
Another muffled sound.
Shit.
My heart started racing again tormenting my veins and arteries to work harder and push faster than ever before. The surge of adrenaline ran through me, forcing every muscle to convulse, forcing my lungs to hold and yet breathe faster. I shouldn’t panic, it was just a nightmare and they don’t come true. At least, they shouldn’t come true.
I clutched at my chest, praying to slow this down, praying to make this stop. I closed my eyes and tried for the breathing exercises once again. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Again. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Again.
Slowly, my body began to calm down. I looked back into the mirror and hoped that the surge of blood had moved the valium into the stream and that at any moment; I would be ready to sleep.
I shuffled along the floor, pushing my stiff and sore body closer to the king-sized bed. The green of the walls was bathed in the moonlight making it look white instead of sage. But the walls weren’t important and they wouldn’t be able to distract me long enough to calm down. I needed to hide under the covers, shelter myself from my own imaginative fears.
My knees sidled against the soft, downy bed and the rest of my body followed suit. Adrenaline can only last so long before the muscles fall apart and scream for sleep.
I lie horizontally across the comforter and felt the water in my belly slosh around as the weight of my back forced it deeper into the mattress. I hated lying on my belly but I didn’t feel like moving.
My fingers tried to dance, to tap, to vent excess energy but to no avail. The valium had indeed kicked in and I was fully relaxed. Every muscle, every breath, slowed. I could hear the faint whisperings that used to be blood sluggishly flow through my veins and rest silently in my barely thumping heart.
My eyelids shuttered, just barely, as they fell atop my eyes closing the moonlight from my sight, closing the room to my cognizant mind.
I lazily opened my eyes again and peered around the room. The moon had shifted in the sky and the light was now dancing in the corner of the room, where a lamp rested.
I really needed to sleep. But I couldn’t. Something wouldn’t allow me that wish.
Perhaps it was the air, the stifling, hot, and humid air that kept me awake. Although, being born and raised in Florida your body gets used to the heat so much so that when the temperature drops down to sixty degrees, you literally freeze to death.
So, no, it couldn’t be the heat.
The heaviness of the air had once again forced me to rise and I leaned up against the cherry colored bed post. The cool wood soothed my sweaty back even as the hard bed post edges dug into my soft muscles.
The valium was still in my system, hugging my neurons so tightly that I couldn’t muster a reaction even if I was sleeping with the devil. I was sluggish, so sluggish. And yet, I was wide awake.
My ears pricked in the darkness and the same muffled sound echoed softly through me. I tried to focus, to hear the sound fully this time instead of just panic around it. It was deep, low, and bass-like almost like a growl.
But I didn’t own a dog, nothing would be growling in my room.
My stomach flipped and I suddenly had the sharp distinct feeling of nausea creep into my sluggish system. The butterflies that were once pounding against my skin were now frantically dancing in my belly as that same fear decided to announce its return.
As much as I wanted to gaze throughout the room to see if a nightmare had come alive, I wasn’t allowed to. Even with the soft ebb and flow of adrenaline the pills were still conquering the fear. At any other time, I would have congratulated the creators for making a drug that works, but for now, I wanted to scream and run away.
My eyes worked through the shadows, pushing the light into the dark corners and until…I froze. I couldn’t breath. For a moment, my heart stopped.
Two bright yellow oval eyes glared at me from across the room. I couldn’t see very much else but I knew the horror that was about to beset me. The black of his body hid in the darkness pronouncing those vivid gold eyes. Even though everything was hidden, I knew this wasn’t a person. I knew something otherworldly, something ethereal was staring intently at me. I had seen him before, seen his claws and his teeth before in a dream. But was this a dream or reality that I was looking at now? Did it even matter?
His body stood erect and tall against the moonlight and the faint bristle of hair shivered under the faint glow. In the darkness I could see the rigid ears and watch as the lips pulled back displaying very white and very sharp incisors.
I gaped visibly into those distinct eyes and saw a beast living behind them. It wasn’t a beast that has a name, no, this was supernatural. This was the stuff of myth. It squirmed and howled behind those eyes, threatening to devour me, threatening to tear me limb from limb.
As I continued to stare, my heart pounded faster and more erratic sending shockwaves of frantic heat throughout my terror filled mind.
But this wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. This is what doctors call a night terror, nothing more than a dream so vivid, it feels tangible. After all, the creature was in a suit, an honest-to-God suit. He wore a black tuxedo and white shirt with a black tie that hid the tail underneath a black vest. He looked liked a bad mix between
The Godfather
and
An American Werewolf in Paris
. Only this thing was stately and, for lack of a better word, beautiful.
Again, those hungry gold eyes continued to hold my gaze and there is nothing, not logic, not intelligence, not anything that will allow you to talk or think you’re way out of this.
Regardless of how smartly dressed he was, I knew for a fact that this was real and he was about to pounce. I was going to be his meal. Whether or not he used a knife and fork or just teeth and claws made no difference, I would still be dead.
If I could have screamed, I would have. A soft, high-pitched sound was all that managed to squirm its way out of my mouth when I opened it.
And that was enough to force the creature to attack.