Flash Fiction Fridays - September, 2024

The Wolf on the Ridge

Busy day today, and I have an essay on the back burner that’s been taking up a lot of heat, but I managed to get this one in under the wire. Enjoy!

Image: St. Mary’s Glacier, Idaho Springs, CO - Photo by J. Kyle Turner

The Wolf on the Ridge

The sound woke him up. Not the hollow thud-splash of a falling rock; whatever it was, it had slammed into the water - dull, echoing - as if it had something to lose in the fight against surface tension. Carl sat up in his sleeping bag, suddenly and completely awake, and followed the moonlit ripples to the far bank.

Please be a deer, he thought.

But of course it wasn’t.

The girl’s head cleared the surface first, then her arms. The force of the impact had ripped her backpack open and spilled its contents out into the lake. The little Ziploc bags and plastic bottles surrounded her like flotsam, like debris. Carl twisted his way out of the sleeping bag and looked around. He and the dead girl were alone in the valley.

Where had she come from? His eyes traced the path to the top of the ridge. She must have slipped while climbing down. If so, he should be able to spot a campsite near the top, maybe yell for help. As he scanned the ridge line, a shape moved in front of the stars.

Even in the moonlight, it was hard to make out what it was. Something massive, four-legged - but without the antlers of a moose or an elk. It trotted back and forth along the ridge, trying to find a way down the steep, rocky scree.

A timber wolf.

His mouth went dry. She hadn’t been climbing. She’d been running, and hadn’t seen the drop until she tumbled over it, too scared to scream on the way down. And this wolf - or wolves, probably - had followed her. Carl backed away, looked around for a tree to climb.

Slipped, and found a rock instead.

***

He woke to the sound of crying.

His first thought was that the girl had survived, somehow managed to claw her way to shore, survived the worst of the hypothermia, and was now crying over a busted leg or broken shoulder.

But no. The dead girl was still dead. Someone else had pulled her from the lake. This new girl sat with her friend’s head cradled in her lap, rocking back and forth, crying and coughing, her face an absolute wreck.

Carl turned away, embarrassed to witness someone else’s grief. A sharp pain split the back of his skull. The next thing he knew, he was on all fours, vomiting onto the rocks.

“Shit,” someone said. “Sit up straight. Look at me.”

He felt hands on either side of his head. The girl’s face appeared in front of him, but it was too close, too blurry. He vomited again.

“Concussion,” she said definitively. “What’s your name?”

He coughed, wiped a line of spit from his mouth. “Carl.”

“I’m Amanda. Can you stand?”

He thought about it, realized nodding wouldn’t do him any favors. “I think so.”

“Good. We need to get off the mountain.”

“Because of the wolf,” he said, remembering. “But what about your friend?”

Amanda didn’t answer right away. “You saw a wolf last night?”

Carl waited for his vision to clear, then pointed. “On top of the ridge. I thought maybe it was chasing her. You didn’t see it?”

Amanda bit her lip, then nodded. “I saw it. I hid when it ran past me, then climbed down the ridge this morning.”

Something in her tone raised the hairs on Carl’s neck, but he was still thinking through a fog, and didn’t have the presence of mind to play detective. If there was a wolf nearby, it made sense to stick together. Once they got back into cell phone range, they could call someone.

He made his way to his feet, and would’ve dropped if Amanda hadn’t caught him with her shoulder. She was a head shorter than him, but wiry strong.

“Take a sip of water,” she said, handing him a bottle.

“Thanks. But…”

“She’ll be here when I get back.”

***

Carl felt better toward the afternoon, but not well enough to hike downhill with a lingering concussion for another four hours, so they stopped to rest beneath a tree.

“What happened to your leg?” he asked. The jeans on Amanda’s left leg had been cut away just below the knee, but Carl hadn’t noticed until they stopped and sat across from one another.

Amanda stared at her leg for half a minute. She looked worse than he did. Carl wasn’t light, and she’d been supporting most of his weight - and drinking less than half of the water.

“Honest truth?”

“Sure.”

“I broke it. The splint came off when I changed.”

Carl sifted through that for a minute, but came up with mud. “What?”

“We were supposed to be off the mountain three days ago, but I broke my ankle. I told Heather I’d be fine until the full moon - I can usually resist the night before, but the full moon is a deal breaker. She wouldn’t leave me until yesterday morning. I think… I think she fell when she heard me coming.”

The hairs went up on Carl’s neck again. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re concussed. And dehydrated. And no one will believe you.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “And because I need to tell somebody.”

“But… werewolves aren’t real,” he reasoned.

Amanda nodded. “That’s a good story. I’d stick to it, if I were you.” She tossed him the last of their water, then turned to hike back up the way they’d come. “I’ll try to fight it tonight,” she called back. “Be off the mountain before the sun goes down.”

Carl watched as Amanda plodded up the trail and out of sight. Then he turned and booked it down the rest of the mountain.

He heard the howl as the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance. It sounded close, or maybe far - that hazy distance that could be anywhere. It sounded like a thing out to get you, a monster in the dead of night.

Mostly, it sounded like grief.

I really enjoy werewolf stories, but I get the feeling that most filmmakers enjoy them for different reasons. Werewolves in movies are usually cathartic, the true self clawing past the façade, howling to get loose. For me, the most interesting part of the werewolf story is the person that comes out during the day to pick up the pieces.

Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones, is an excellent werewolf story for that reason. There are werewolves, sure, but mostly it’s a coming-of-age story with generational trauma and seemingly inescapable poverty. Like any other good story, it’s about people.

I’ll be back on Monday with another microfiction, and probably an essay later in the month. In the meantime, if anyone has any good werewolf stories, let me know in the comments and I’ll check them out.