Silas Mothridge's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Silas Mothridge went back the next night. One frame of red eyes was not enough. He wanted the thing itself, whole and clear. He packed the camera, checked the battery, and followed the trail to the clearing he had never mapped. The bleeding tree stood where he left it. Red ran down its heavy leaves and pooled black at the roots. He raised the camera and started shooting. Then the eyes opened past the tree. Low to the ground, two red points, steady. This time they did not slide away. The shape stepped out. A wolf, black as the soil, its fur catching no light. It fixed on him and came forward, slow and sure. Silas kept shooting. The shutter clicked. The wolf closed the gap. Ten feet. Eight. He told himself one more frame, then one more. His legs would not move. The red eyes held him the way they had held him last night. He could not keep pressing the button and live. He knew it and still his finger worked. The wolf lowered its head. Its shoulders bunched. Silas dropped the camera on its strap and ran. He did not watch the ground. His boot hit a slick patch and the world turned sideways. He went down hard into wet mud streaked deep red, cold and sour on his hands. He rolled. The wolf was almost on him. Behind it, past the weeping tree, a tangle of black vines pulsed with a red glow, ember bright in the dark. The light from the vines caught the wolf's coat and threw its shadow long across the mud. Silas grabbed the only thing near him. His hand closed on a fallen branch thick with dripping leaves. He swung it as the wolf lunged. The wet branch cracked across its muzzle. The wolf twisted away, snarling, and backed off two steps. It did not run. It stood between him and the tree, eyes burning, deciding. Silas got to his feet in the bloody mud. He kept the branch up. He stepped backward, one slow step at a time, toward the trail. The wolf watched him go. It did not follow past the edge of the glowing vines, as if that ring of red light marked a line it would not cross. Silas ran the whole way back. The cabin porch caught him. Inside, he pulled the camera up with shaking hands and found the last frames. There it was. Not Mothman. The black wolf, full body, red eyes sharp, standing before the bleeding tree. He pinned the photo beside the first one. Two years of maps, and the clearest shot he had ever taken was of something that wanted him dead. The wolf had let him leave. It had guarded that tree and those vines like they were its own. Whatever bled up from that ground, the wolf belonged to it. And now it had his scent.