He peered over his shoulder at me with an eyebrow raised.
“I know,” I concurred. My head heavy with too much thinking about a man I barely knew, I peered up at the sky. “It’s a full moon tonight,” I hummed, staring at the bright moon.
The moon was exceptionally bright that evening. It glowed, illuminating the fluffy clouds that passed over it. It almost felt as if I could reach out and touch it. My nana’s saying about the full moon and secrets flashed across my mind’s eye, but I shook it off.
I paused to check the time on my phone and realized that Henry and I had been out walking for almost two hours.
“Oh, gosh, your hip,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Thankfully, I’d given Henry one of his anti-inflammatory pills right before we left for our walk. That should hold him out until we got home, but I tried not to have him walking for too many miles in a row to avoid even more pain.
“Let’s…” I trailed off upon hearing a snapping of twigs in the distance. I glanced around and saw nothing but tree branches and the shadows cast off by the moon’s light. I silently cursed myself for losing track of time like that.
Henry was probably in pain, it was dark, and we were out there alone. Another twig or branch or something broke, and I stood like a statue. I listened for any other sounds, but there were none.
“A small animal or something,” I murmured to myself. When I tried to again console myself with the knowledge that we were outside and noises were common, Henry started to growl, taking a stiff-leg stance in front of me.
Sharp fear coursed through my body as I remembered that night on my back porch. I scanned the forest around us for anything out of the ordinary but didn’t see anything. However, the goose bumps that rippled up along my arms signified that my instincts knew something was wrong, even if my conscious mind hadn’t fully registered it yet.
“C’mon,” I told Henry, trying to pull him along so we could get the hell out of there.
His growling grew to a deep rumble before a bark sprang from the back of his throat. The bark must’ve been the spark to initiate action on the part of the animals lurking around us because a second later, loud, shrieking howls started.
My body trembled in fear. Those were the same sounds of the wolves that had been in my backyard weeks earlier. I knew they were.
“We have to go.” I yanked on Henry’s leash, goading him to keep moving. I had no idea what the hell wolves were doing in this part of Texas, or this part of the country, to be honest. After that night, I’d done a perfunctory internet search on wolves in the state and found that they had gone extinct. Unfortunately, humans had killed all of the wild wolves in Texas decades ago.
Except for wolves on some private wildlife reserves or something, they didn’t exist out here. So why the hell did it feel like wolves were stalking me in my backyard?
“Henry, we have to go,” I exclaimed, almost apologetically, right before tugging on his leash to get him to keep moving with me. “C’mon.”
By then, I could hear the sounds of footprints or paws or something approaching closer from the forest’s darkness. Though I looked every few seconds, I couldn’t make out the form of anything just yet.
My jogging was more of a speed walk since Henry could only move but so fast due to his mobility issues.
“C’mon, buddy,” I encouraged in an attempt to get him to do less growling and more moving. I didn’t know much about wolves, but I did know that usually, where there was one, there was a pack and that Henry, despite his size, could not take on a group of wolves.
“Ahh!” I screeched when, dead center on the rocky trail, I came face-to-face with a pair of glowing eyes. And this time, it wasn’t just the eyes I spotted. The moon’s light enabled me to make out the massive body of a gray wolf.
My stomach plummeted as the damn thing stalked closer. It growled low and bared its long teeth.
“Henry, no,” I yelled when he pushed his body in front of mine and growled back at the wolf. The thing was easily twice the size of my eighty-pound dog.
I tried fiercely to pull him back and away from the wolf.
Are wolves supposed to be that big?I thought, trying to figure out which version of the twilight zone I was in.
I backed away, but with each step I took, the wolf just kept advancing. On one of my steps, my foot got caught in a tree root, and I fell hard onto my ass. I yelped, and my arm got tangled in Henry’s leash on the way down. Henry cried out as the leash tightened around his neck from my fall.
The wolf took that as a sign to pounce, and all I saw was him coming closer.
“No,” I yelled while wrapping my arm around Henry’s body and pulling him back and away from the wolf. With my free hand, I dug into the earth beneath me, gathering a handful of dirt and rocks, and tossed them as hard as I could in the direction of the advancing wolf.
The mass of debris caught him square in the nose. It yelped, stunned, halting its forward movement. But it quickly shook that off and narrowed its eyes on me, the glow in them increasing.
I managed to find another, larger rock and scrambled to my feet.
“Go away!” I yelled as I threw it as hard as possible, pinging it in the head. But I didn’t have time to be proud of myself.
“Let’s go,” I pushed Henry up one of the side trails and tried to run to get away from the wolf. It was stupid to run from an animal on four legs, I knew it, but I had the feeling that playing dead or whatever the advice was wouldn’t be helpful in this situation. That wolf seemed determined to attack.
