The Return of Spirit-Wolf

The Return of Spirit-Wolf

The shrieks of the wounded and the dying were drowned out by the triumphant howl of a wolf. The terrible sound woke Peter from his sleep, and the silence that greeted him was almost as chilling as the din that had shattered his sleep. He sat up with a weary groan. A White Man would have laughed at the dream and set it aside to be forgotten, but Peter knew better.

Outside the little trailer the sky was showing the first pale streaks of dawn. Peter shuffled to the window and gazed out over the darkened reservation where he had lived for the last ninety years, almost upon the very spot where his grandfather had died. Peter had been eight years old then. In those days he had been called Crow-Who-Watches, before he had been made to go to the government school where he was called only Peter. They taught him to read and to count and to speak in the White Man's tongue, which they said would be very useful.

Peter never saw much use in it, himself. His grandfather had taught him many more useful things, and had told him stories of the days gone by, of before the White Man had come. One story had been told in the nighttime just before Grandfather died. Peter remembered it well.

"When my own father was a little boy," Grandfather had said, his voice dry and feeble, as though it were with the last of his strength that he told this story, "Spirit-Wolf walked in this land. Where he walked, people died. That was all. No one could escape. It was because they had forgotten the ways that our ancestors had taught us, and because they had forgotten, they could no longer see Spirit-Wolf. They never saw his hand reaching for them, and they died without knowing why.

"Now it was lucky that not everybody had forgotten the way things were supposed to be. My grandfather knew the old ways, and because he knew them, he could see Spirit- Wolf. That was Spirit-Wolf's weakness. It was only those people who could see him who could command him to go away. My grandfather made him go away, and my father told me this story to me so that I would not forget the old ways. Now I want to tell it to you, so that you will remember them, too, when Spirit-Wolf comes back."

Grandfather was dead in the morning when Peter came to bring him his breakfast. The old man's face had a smile on it that was so blissful that Peter did not cry. Peter tried to get the government men to help him take his grandfather outside so that he could be placed upon a platform and given a pair of shoes so that his feet would not hurt on the long road ahead. The government men instead put his grandfather into a box and put him in the ground, and even took away his shoes, which they thought he would not need. Before the box was closed, Peter looked on his grandfather's face, and saw that the sweet smile was gone.

No one ever called him Crow-Who-Watches after that day. He was always called Peter. On the reservation he grew into a young man, and then he grew old. The White Man built his houses and his cities all around while Peter put pots on the floor of his trailer to catch the rain that trickled through the roof. Sometimes he would go to the movies and watch smiling cowboys shooting at Indians and then picking up guitars and singing songs about how wonderful it was to be a cowboy. Peter never did like those movies.

Eventually, even the cowboys went away, and Peter stayed on the reservation and rarely saw anyone, except when he went to get the little bit of money the government gave to him to buy food. Everyone else who knew what he knew about the old ways began to die off. Their children were not interested in learning what their fathers had known, so Peter was soon left alone.

The sun began to rise. The red stones that littered the ground all the way to the horizon cast long shadows that made the stones look like spots of blood. Soon the shadows would be gone, and real blood would be upon the ground.

Spirit-Wolf was coming.

Peter knew just whose howl had echoed in his mind that morning. He had heard it before in his grandfather's last words. Spirit-Wolf was going to kill everyone who had forgotten the ways of the past, and surely he would start with the White Man, who had never known those ways in the first place.

Sighing, Peter put his shoes on, pushed some coins into his pocket, and shuffled down the road toward the trading post. He hoped that the bus would be on time.

A thunderous explosion rocked the city's shopping district just as the malls were opening their doors. The facade of the Fleet Bank building north of City Hall suddenly burst inward with such tremendous force that the building was literally shorn in two. As the rear wall erupted outward, carrying with it enormous chunks of concrete and the shattered contents of two entire floors of offices, the upper portion shuddered and crashed downward, causing the remainder to crumble into a twisted mountain of wreckage.

The silence that followed was quickly broken by shouts and sirens as the streets began to fill with the heroic and the curious. A group of astonished onlookers suddenly fell to the ground, and while those around them stared in horror, their bodies contorted in agony and then collapsed, flattening out upon the ground and pressing themselves into a gory mess as the earth sank down beneath them. Before a single scream could be uttered another group many yards away abruptly dropped and were squeezed flat, their faces twisting in shock and pain before smearing into a thick red ooze. It was as though gravity itself had suddenly increased a thousandfold in that very spot, causing the earth to drop down several feet and crushing anyone within its radius to a lifeless pulp.

Further away a third group of onlookers were suddenly pulled downward, and only then, as blood squirted away from the center of the pulping mass and sprayed upon them did the surrounding crowd recover from its collective shock and begin to panic. Pandemonium reigned as people ran blindly, crashing into each another in their desperation to escape the unknown force. Clawing at one another and screaming in blind terror, a fourth group of unfortunates were driven to the pavement and ground into paste before any of them could come to the realization that the deadly force was moving in a straight line. It struck once more, pressing several running men down to their bellies and squashing them into pitiful human silhouettes, and then two buildings in its path suddenly flew apart, exploding outward to the left and right and reining debris down upon the scrambling crowd. Astonished cries mingled with the awful din of mashing flesh and bone from the next street as the living finally struggled away from the dead and dying. Only a few survivors, wandering dazed through the carnage, had enough coherence to notice that the grisly indentations in the ground were shaped like footprints.

Peter sat by himself at the rear of the bus and watched as the arid landscape that was the reservation gave way slowly to green lawns and expensive homes. At the front of the bus a young man was fiddling with a pocket radio. Peter could hear an announcer's breathless voice describing a series of unexplained explosions and building collapses near some sort of shopping center, but then the young man changed the channel to some glaring and unpleasant music. How ironic, Peter thought with a melancholy smile, that not only can the White Man not see what has come for him, but he cannot even take the time to hear his own kind.

The bus drew to a halt at the foot of a tall building. Peter was almost knocked down as the young man with the radio pushed past him and hurried off on whatever business he had to attend. Peter felt sorry for him, knowing that the young man would never see what was soon going to kill him.

The building seemed to stretch for miles into the sky. Peter stood at its base and peered up along its towering facade as the people around him stared and pointed at the smoke rising in the distance. Ignoring them, he shuffled into the building, past an unseeing security guard whose eyes were locked upon a television screen that was showing the news.

Peter's legs began to ache terribly; it had been a long time since he had walked as much as he had today. He forced himself to walk onward, though, thankful for the modern convenience of elevators when he found them. "Only a little further," he kept saying to himself out loud. "Only a little further."

The streets were beginning to jam with cars and fleeing pedestrians as building after building crumbled beneath the unseen force. Nature itself seemed to be toying with the citizenry, playing out a cruel gamble as again and again a hole would open in the crowd, a dozen or more helpless people suddenly mashing into the earth while those standing mere inches away were left unharmed. Maddened by the uncertainty of where death would again strike, people were rushing in all directions, plowing into one another and forming a vast human gridlock. One man, his eyes rolling in hysteria, drew a pistol and was about to blow the brains out of a woman who was blocking his path when he was instantly driven down to the ground and reduced to a puddle.

The crash of wreckage and the constant din of hundreds of panicked voices abruptly vanished as a thundering howl rose upon the wind, bursting eardrums and shattering windows with its tremendous force. The clamor whipped the crowd into an even greater frenzy, reducing them to snarling animals clawing and biting at one another in their desperation to escape.

The howl faded, and a gale wind suddenly ripped sideways across the street. It swept a narrow swath through the crowd, bunching the shrieking humanity into a pile upon the sidewalk, and then, incredibly, bore them high into the air in a single tight and wriggling mass. They seemed to be clinging firmly to one another as they rose together, shrieking, and then suddenly their bodies began to break. The few witnesses on the street below who had managed to cling to their wits watched as the bodies were pressed tightly against one another, until blood poured out from the tangled mass of limbs and floated in the air around them. Then, as though a part of some horrible aerial ballet, large chunks of the group broke away and began to fall. Some were still screeching, some still flailing their limbs as they descended, and then they vanished from sight, their bodies seeming to dissolve rapidly into the air itself.

Another swath was suddenly cut from the crowd as the demonic wind snatched up another wailing knot of humanity. These suffered the same fate, their bodies hoisted high and battered to a pulp, then falling and vanishing into nothingness long before striking the ground. A third bunch rose and vanished similarly, and then a fourth, the mob on the street growing noticeably more sparse.

Another group were treated to an even crueler fate as the demonic winds seemed to grow playful. These wretches rose skyward, floating as the others had, but then individuals began to peel themselves from the group and drifted away, screeching in terror and waving their arms and legs. They would hover in the air for several seconds before they too would fall, only to vanish from sight, their pitiful squeals lingering for seconds more before disappearing as well.

The next group to be caught by the wind rose as high as the others, but after a moment's pause they were suddenly dropped as a group and did not vanish. The bodies plummeted to the street below and landed with dull, meaty thuds, and a series of violent explosions began to travel away from that point at high speed across the city, leaving a straight line of devastated buildings in their wake.

Peter moaned as he found a last and very steep flight of stairs between him and the roof. Slowly, painfully, he made his way upward, crawling with his hands along the rail, his poor old legs protesting with every step. He could hear the sounds of destruction in the distance and forced himself to go faster.

Somehow he managed to reach the rooftop, where he found the door mercifully unlocked. Pushing it open, he was grateful to see an old wooden chair sitting by the edge of the roof. Some workman, no doubt, had taken to eating his lunch up here. Wearily, Peter eased himself down into the chair and gazed for the first time upon Spirit-Wolf.

The monster stood in the shape of a man, but its head was that of a wolf, and its hide was a snowy-white coat of fur. The very sight of it sent a shiver through Peter and brought his grandfather's words to his lips. "Where he walked, people died. That was all."

Spirit-Wolf towered above the White Man's city, dwarfing it into insignificance. His heavy tread crushed the people below him like insects. Peter watched fixedly as the giant gazed downward at them and curled his lip scornfully, and then bent to scoop them up in his hand and cram them into his mouth.

Peter saw Spirit-Wolf devour them, and even from the distance he could hear their agonized cries floating to him on the wind. It amazed him that among their number, there was not a single one who remembered the ways of the ancestors, not a single one whose eyes could see the giant.

Only his.

Spirit-Wolf growled deeply as he felt the wriggling morsels slip down his gullet and warm his belly. It had been far too many years since he had walked the earth, far too long since he had enjoyed the feel of flesh beneath his feet, of prey writhing between his jaws. Eagerly he stooped and seized more, bearing them to his muzzle...

...and stopped. His ears turned this way and that, and then caught the sound of an ancient song. He had heard it long ago in a hated time when Those-Who-See would rob him of his power and chase him away. Those-Who-See were gone, or so he thought, but this voice, as thin and frail though it was to his sensitive ears, was unmistakable. His hand opened and dropped the prey he had just caught, and then with a snarl he bolted in the direction of the song.

The giant's hand stopped as soon as Peter began singing. He watched as the towering figure turned about, and then fixed its gaze upon him. He felt as though the great yellow eyes were two suns, their warmth flooding over him even at this great distance. His voice grew a little louder with the song his grandfather had taught him when he was very small, and suddenly Spirit-Wolf was rushing toward him. The massive legs crashed heedlessly through one row of buildings after another as the monster approached, growing ever larger until it blotted out the sun.

Slowly Peter raised his eyes. Spirit-Wolf's chest loomed before him, an immense wall of fur and muscle spanning the width of the building. The savage lupine head peered down at him with its blazing eyes, its lips drawn back over teeth that were stained red with blood.

"Who are you?"

The powerful voice roared over Peter like a storm gust, and if he had not been sitting in the wooden chair he would have been knocked flat by its force. After a moment he said, "I was called Crow-Who-Watches, Spirit, but not any more."

The nightmarish muzzle dipped closer to him, and the burning eyes narrowed. "You are here to send me away?"

Peter smiled. Even in that fiery gaze he was unafraid. He knew that it was this encounter that his grandfather had foreseen, and that his entire life had been lived for the singular realization of this fate. The years of poverty, the death of his people and their ways, the scorn of the White Man, all of it had led him on an unwavering path straight to this very moment in time.

"No, Great Spirit," he said, and folded his hands quietly in his lap. "Not at all. I am here to cheer you on."

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